The funny thing about that conventional ‘wisdom’ is that it is completely laughable on it’s face. Why would a man leave a high paying job and a nice life to go farting around on busses for 6 months if he didn’t want the job? Say he ran a crappy campaign. That, I’ll buy. But this ‘didn’t want the job’ bunk is ridiculous. Almost as ridiculous as the idea of leaving the cushy position of being Paul Harvey’s replacement AND a high paying TV gig to go screw around and get SOMEONE ELSE the damn nomination. The idea that supposedly intelligent people believe this stuff is an indictment of our public education system.
I think at some level Fred did want the job. Perhaps he just looked at the tasks before him and weighed the risks and probabilities and decided it wasn’t going to happen. He’s a smart man. But he knew that he didn’t have the support of the big “early money” guys and the “prestige” advisers he would need. Maybe he didn’t want to put his wife through the kind of crap that less thoughtful people with bigger egos don’t care about. And I do believe that he was sabotaged, because I’ve worked on campaigns, and I’ve seen it up close and ugly.