Yet I think Sullivan is a bit over the top on his assessment of the campaign.

Clinton is a terrible manager of people. Coming into a campaign she had been planning for, what, two decades, she was so not ready on Day One, or even Day 300. Her White House, if we can glean anything from the campaign, would be a secretive nest of well-fed yes-people, an uncontrollable egomaniac spouse able and willing to bigfoot anyone if he wants to, a phalanx of flunkies who cannot tell the boss when things are wrong, and a drizzle of dreary hacks like Mark Penn. Her only genuine skill is pivoting off the Limbaugh machine (which is now as played out as its enemies). Her new weapon is apparently bursting into tears. I mean: really.

Its rather routine to declare election process losers inept, but I chaulk this up to ignorance of the process. Punditry about politics is not the same as punditry about campaigns, which is frankly pretty lamentable no matter what one declares as their particular expertise. I just had the amusing experience of listening to a post Super Tuesday podcast of a NPR program dutifully stocked with various pollsters and political scientists assuring the audience that Hillary was still the odds on favorite to win the nomination. If I had the time, I'd archive all these prognostications just to embarrass a lot of people.

Nobody knows nuthin'

I actually find myself sympathizing with the campaigns because they all look like the marketing campaigns I've worked on--too little information, a moving target and not enough time.

Sullivan has never had a real job that I can discern, so his academic arrogance is understandable if unendurable. In the real world, luck--bad or good, is a constant companion. Often what we attribute to genius is simply serendipity. Mistakes are just as often completely out of a candidate's control. What passes for analysis is simply propaganda, or more charitably entertainment.

There are lots of details one has to manage in a campaign, but the process is fairly straightforward--more like running a McDonalds than inventing Google. You hand out bumperstickers, organize rallies, get addresses and phone numbers. There is some skill required in fabricating the right messages, but in large measure, that is constrained by the political environment and the candidate.

Ultimately, where campaigns succeed and fail is with the candidate themselves. No one can say that McCain's campaign machinery was made in Switzerland, but McCain himself is objectively a great candidate. Great name recognition. A wonderful political brand featuring a reputation as a principled tough guy. Terrific backstory, broad appeal and personal charm.

His staff simply had more to work with that poor Mark Penn. Once Hillary lost Iowa the inevitability factor was toast. What could they work with after that? No one seriously accepted the gravely-offered argument that Hillary had more experience than Obama and once that had failed they had little choice but to risk it all on Democrats latent racism.

Hillary actually proved herself a competent political manager but a poor candidate and fortunately for us, she won't be improving with age.