Bill Kristol on Qualifications

Bill Kristol at the Weekly Standard suggests that there's a real qualifications problem for the Republicans' two leading candidates.

Trump is certainly the less qualified of the two, a self-regarding blowhard who’s not much of a conservative to boot, who is not now and will never be qualified to be president.

Carson is a Christian gentleman and a genuine conservative. But he’s not yet prepared to be president, and he’d have to show an awful lot of growth to be ready a year from now. What’s more, for either Trump or Carson to win the general election, voters would have to conclude that he is so extraordinary a figure that for the first time in American history, they would send a man to the White House who had neither held elective office nor served as a general officer or cabinet officer.

Well, first times happen sometimes.

I think you have to say that this applies to the top three leaders in the Republican party's primary so far, after Fiorina's performance at the last debate. She's never held any of those offices either. She has been a corporate officer, but that's far from the same thing (and so have both of the others).

Kristol goes on:

The good news is the Democrats are probably in worse shape than the Republicans. There’s no good reason either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders should be our next president, and it’s very likely that belief is shared by a majority of Americans. The likeliest late entrants into the Democratic field—one or more of the septuagenarian group of Joe Biden, Jerry Brown, and John Kerry—don’t exactly inspire either.

There is one candidate on the Democratic side who has been a decorated military officer, a cabinet secretary, a diplomat and an elected Senator. But let's not talk crazy by including him on the list of possibilities, I guess.