1. I’ve known Mitt Romney for several years. After he won the Massachusetts gubernatorial election in 2002, he was gracious enough to invite me and my wife to dinner (I had run in the Democratic primary). I congratulated him not only on winning the election but also on doing a good job on the Salt Lake City Olympics. He told me it was easy to avoid terrorists in Salt Lake City because “Arabs stick out there.” Gulp. If good looks, white teeth, and smooth talking were the sole criteria for becoming president (they’re not unimportant), he’d win hands down. But Romney is cursed by having a father who ran for president. Candidates whose fathers have harbored presidential ambitions are handicapped because such candidates do not run for themselves; they run for their fathers. They therefore have identity problems. They will say almost anything to become president. Voters inherently distrust them. This was Gore’s problem in 2000 (Gore would have won with enough votes to give him an electoral majority had he known himself better; but Gore was running to fulfill the ambitions of his politically-ambitious father). Romney will lose the primary because he does not know why he is running.

2. I’ve met John McCain on a number of occasions, and always been impressed with his apparent sincerity. He’s the mirror image of Romney. McCain knows why he’s running, and will usually say what he thinks regardless of audience (he told an audience of Iowans the other day that farm price supports didn’t make good policy sense – he’s right). But McCain is a genuine hawk. He advocated more troops for Iraq before Bush put more troops in Iraq because McCain never imagined Bush would follow suit. Last year I asked McCain why he was supporting a troop increase and he answered “to support the troops already there.” That struck me as absurd. He wanted to be able to blame Bush for the failure in Iraq and do it from the right. But he’s now in the awkward position of having supported what Bush did, at a time when the war is as unpopular as ever – even though there are signs of it simmering down a bit. The public will never go for him.

3. Rudy Giuliani has only one campaign theme: “I’m the meanest SOB on the planet.” If voters want to be tough on terrorists, criminals, undocumented workers, foreign exporters, or any other perceived threat to the nation, they presumably will choose the meanest SOB on the planet. I know several people who have worked with him over the years and can attest Giuliani is also an SOB to work with. My sense, though, is that even if the Christian right were to somehow decide to back him, the nation doesn’t really want an SOB in Washington who will make politics even more partisan, and fill our airwaves with even more anger and recrimination. Unless we have another terrorist attack between now and the primary, I’m not putting my money on Giuliani.

4. That leaves Mike Huckabee. He’s the most attractive Republican candidate because he comes across as the most genuine, the most likely to act sensibly, and the most economically populist. That last point hasn’t got nearly the attention it deserves. Never underestimate the power of economic populism – especially when America’s middle class feels especially anxious. Ron Paul is riding the same populist wave. As I’ve noted elsewhere, the major asset of America’s middle class has been its homes, and now that home values are dropping for the first time in decades, the middle class is scared. Median wages are about where they were in 1970, adjusted for inflation, and the middle class has run out of coping mechanisms to maintain family incomes (women into paid work starting in the 1970s, increasing hours of work starting in the 1980s, home equity and refinancing starting in the 1990s and this decade). Huckabee’s “fair tax” is a joke, but his populism isn’t. He delivers it with power and with wit, a winning combination. His social conservatism is his least appealing quality because most Americans don’t want to revisit the culture wars. But if he keeps sounding the populist themes, he could well be the Republican nominee.