If the Republican Party of 2016 embraces either of these two senators it will be a radically different party. If either is elevated into a serious national candidate, it would reverse two old truths about presidential politics: that opposition parties promote candidates who are distinct from the sitting president and that governors have the advantage over senators. …

So, Barack Obama has been a bad president because he has no executive experience. He doesn’t know how to make decisions because he has never run anything. Another flaw is that his political success was built on a series of good speeches. That should have warned us all along that he was only good at “playing” a politician, not at actual governing. Finally, Obama is a radical. He came to prominence with the support of the far left that opposed the Iraq war. That connection with the party’s extreme wing has always defined his essential character.

These are three of Barack Obama’s flaws. They are also three attributes of Marco Rubio and Rand Paul. Neither has really run a big enterprise. Both will rise to national prominence on the strength of their speeches—that is all that senators can do—and both are seen by activists as the true representatives of their core beliefs—though obviously Paul and Rubio are favored by different kinds of activists. …

If either of these two senators makes a serious go of it, he will also challenge the historical preference for governors. Both parties have liked men that hail from the statehouse: Carter, Reagan, Dukakis, Clinton, Bush. Four of our last five presidents have been governors. That’s logical: Governors do a lot of things that presidents do. They have to pick a staff and delegate enormous responsibility to them, negotiate with interest groups, battle with a legislature, and make hundreds of decisions when avoiding them is not an option. There are very few senators who prefer their life in the Senate to the sense of accomplishment and agency they had as governors.