Every four years, the party out of the White House grapples with the question of who they want to serve as their standard bearer. And, like clockwork, the first thing they think about is what went wrong in the previous campaign. Last time, the thinking goes, we put up a candidate who was too/not enough (FILL IN THE BLANK) who didn’t do enough/did too much (FILL IN THE BLANK) and ran a campaign that was too much/too little (FILL IN THE BLANK). The winning nominee, however, is almost always the candidate who fits the mood and the moment of the current time — not one that wants to re-litigate the outcome of the last one. CONT.
Amy Walter, Cook Political Report