Nomination Itself Is a Testament to Obama's Readiness

ST. PAUL, Minn., Sept. 4

Early in the 1960 campaign, Democratic vice presidential candidate Lyndon Johnson jumped on a special train in Washington and headed out across the South, trying to rally that once-solid Democratic region to support his partner, John F. Kennedy. At his first stop, in Culpeper, Va., Johnson, desperately trying to stem the defections to the Republican ticket, left a few hundred spectators pondering his shouted rhetorical question: "What has Richard Nixon ever done for Culpeper?"

Fast-forward now to Sarah Palin, the sudden heroine of the GOP. She wasn't even born when the tall Texan did his thing. But taking their cue from Palin, as she took hers from LBJ, Republicans have decided that they can perhaps shake themselves of Barack Obama by asking voters a simple question: What's he ever done for anybody?

Palin, in her Wednesday night vice presidential acceptance speech, had the throngs of delegates chanting "Zero! Nada! Zero!" in response to her demand to know Obama's achievements. "Two memoirs and not a single major bill" was the way she summed up his record.

The ploy is more than a defensive reflex prompted by the Democrats' questioning of Palin's credentials to be a heartbeat away from the presidency. The former small-town mayor, now 20 months into her first term as governor of vast but lightly populated Alaska, was unknown to the national audience a week ago.

Obama, meanwhile, had attained iconic stature in the eyes of some Republicans -- as a poised, eloquent orator who could hold a crowd of 80,000, and a political phenomenon who had defeated the Clinton machine and threatened to capture the White House.

The first service Palin rendered in her new role was cutting Obama down to size. With deft humor and pointed questions, she left him looking anything but invulnerable.

Democrats insist that she distorted the picture, arguing that in his years in the Illinois Senate and more recently in Washington, Obama has compiled a solid legislative record. But the ethics, health care, nuclear proliferation and veterans initiatives for which he takes credit were more routine than headline fare. Like John Kennedy before him, Obama has been too busy building his national reputation to be consumed by Senate business.

So the Republicans have pounced on a weak spot in his résumé. Mitt Romney, one of McCain's defeated rivals for the nomination, told Washington Post reporters yesterday that he found it a remarkable reflection on the presidential selection process that "a man with no accomplishments" could go as far as Obama has -- especially against such credentialed foes as Hillary Rodham Clinton.

But Romney's reckoning ignores the most conspicuous achievement of Obama's career: the very act of winning the nomination. No one hands a modern presidential candidate anything. Every vote, every dollar, every delegate must be earned, in fierce competition with others equally eager for the prize.

The presidency is a political office, and nothing tests the political skills of an aspirant more severely than the contest that determines the winner.

Some of those most adept at the political game have turned out to be less than successful presidents. Jimmy Carter was a long-shot candidate, a little-known, one-term Georgia governor when he began winning caucuses and primaries early in 1976. He and his young aides, Hamilton Jordan and Jody Powell, outfoxed the entire Democratic establishment and then beat the Republican president.

It was a phenomenally successful campaign, but those skills were not sufficient to carry Carter in the White House. He stumbled badly in his early months and was voted out after one term.

If elected, Obama could suffer a similar fate. But as long as Americans support a political system that counts delegates more than credentials, the measure of a candidate's readiness to be president will be measured primarily at the polls.