Politics is unfair. And in 2008, politics has been more unfair than usual

Politics is unfair. And in 2008, politics has been more unfair than usual. The least deserving candidate, based on actual accomplishments, is on the brink of winning the presidency. That's Barack Obama. Political leaders with far more impressive records and resumes and more believable talking points have either been vanquished by Obama (Hillary Clinton) or likely will be on Nov. 4 (John McCain). How fair is that?

American politics has always worked this way. Young upstarts, like Bill Clinton in 1992 and Obama today, have a special appeal to voters. Presidential candidates with minimal experience in national affairs have frequently been elected. Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush come to mind. Candidates with serious involvement in domestic and foreign policy often lose, as Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale and Bob Dole did.

McCain fits the Washington veteran mold. But his saga has had many twists and turns, including a moment recently when it appeared he would rise above adverse political trends and win the presidency. Then outside events intervened--matters utterly beyond his or his campaign's control--and McCain's prospects fell sharply. How unfair!

It was his experience that once put McCain in the frontrunner's spot in the presidential race. Having run a strong but losing campaign for the Republican nomination in 2000, McCain was regarded as odds-on to capture the nomination this year. He was next in line, with President Bush leaving office, and Republicans usually pick that person. Reagan was next in line in 1980. Dole was in 1996.

But the McCain effort sputtered in the summer of 2007. He was out of money, cratering in the polls and left with an organization on the ground in only a single state, New Hampshire. Staffers fled his campaign.

The McCain candidacy wasn't dead. And it was his rise from the political ashes that makes his recent crash due to the outside events so painful and, well, unfair.

To revive his campaign last year, McCain seized on the issue of the troop surge in Iraq, a strategy he'd been promoting for years. McCain mounted what he called a "no-surrender tour" and it worked. His poll numbers crawled upward. And when he won the New Hampshire primary in January, he was on his way to the nomination.

But Obama turned out to be more formidable than McCain's Republican opponents had been. In August, on the eve of the party conventions, McCain trailed Obama by roughly 10 points in most polls. He looked like a loser again.

But his unconventional TV ads depicting Obama as a mere celebrity and a political empty suit clicked. They captured the most vulnerable aspect of Obama's profile: His lofty speeches masked a thin record of accomplishments. The McCain campaign began to pick up momentum.

Obama's acceptance speech in a football stadium with fake Roman columns behind him was dramatic. The media loved it. But McCain got a bigger boost from the Republican convention than Obama did from the Democratic convention. The chief reason was his surprise selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate.

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