We Don’t Need Another Hero

Having briefly become infatuated with the idea of Wesley Clark in 2004, I will never need to be reminded about Ed’s excellent point here again. While “anticipation/hype/disappointment” works, I’d describe the three stages of enthusiasm for the dark horse that will bail out out a dubious primary field as follows:

• Hope: “Opposes Iraq without Howard Dean’s baggage!  Military hero! Rhodes Scholar!  What could possib-lie go wrong!”
• Rationalization: “Maybe he’s a ghastly campaigner because of inexperience, not because he’s an inherently bad campaigner.”
• Whoops: “Uh, let’s forget this whole thing ever happened, OK?”