What if, eight years later...

We were facing a different choice?

What if, eight years ago, Karl Rove and Co. had used their considerable talent to steer the Republicans toward a candidate who was engaged, competent, clear thinking, hard working and, to be concise, George W. Bush's complete opposite?

What if Karl and the Republicans had fostered an era wherein the creative names they assigned to their legislative efforts reflected the actual content?

What if Karl and the Republicans had selected a candidate capable of understanding that content, let alone discussing or actually contributing to it?

What if Karl and the Republicans had been able to decouple their policy goals from the trademark slash and burn incompetence of the Bush-II Administration.

Is there an alternate universe wherein the Iraq war was competently executed, even more so the choice whether to enter it at all? Is there an alternate universe wherein Republicans effectively managed the economy for families of all socio-economic strata? Is there an alternate universe wherein all domestic and foreign policy was basically competently managed with only the occasional blunder, instead of blunderously managed with only the rarest example of competence - usually expressed as a resignation?

There is an enormous contradiction in the fact that the ueber competent Karl Rove and Co. ended up with such an incompetent standard bearer to lead the implementation of their ideas. Is there an alternate universe wherein the potential value of the Republican platform is successfully transformed into policy? I do not agree with many of their ideas, but an honest and competently orchestrated implementation would have been a fairer test.

Is overcoming this history the primary challenge for McCain? Or is its continuation his promise?

In fact, what does a successful implementation of the modern Republican ideal look like? Bush-II? Bush-I? Reagan? Nixon?

On second thought,
never mind.