“The purists assume that the GOPe WANTS to win a presidential election.”
It was astonishing that H. Bush, Bob Dole, John McCain and Mitt Romney ran such poor campaigns. My thinking at the time was, except for H. Bush and Romney that it was their last chance to play for the brass ring. They’d banked enough political capital and had enough chips to play. But they were incredibly bad candidates.
In business I’ve seen horrible candidates politic for and get high status jobs they were unsuited for. It’s a disaster, though usually not for the jobseeker who gets a golden parachute. All of the above ran anemic lackadaisical campaigns. I don’t think it was because they didn’t want the job. I think it was because they had been locked into their various jobs with no serious rivals so they didn’t know how to run a competitive campaign. Because ego-wise, they all wanted that job.
Obama was transported into the office twice by the media and white guilt. We see how horrible he is at the job because, like the others, he never really had to defend himself. He stands before the few angry questions he does get like a deer in the headlights. Pitiful.
I suspect that the Peter Principle works in politics as well.