It's Better to Be Lucky Than Good

Ross Douthat writes that the only reason McCain got this far is luck:

But much of what's happened to make McCain the presumptive nominee has been luck, pure and simple. He was lucky, to begin with, that George W. Bush lacked an heir apparent - no Jeb, no Condi, no Dick Cheney - who could unite the movement establishment against him. He was lucky that Mitt Romney was a Mormon. He was lucky that Fred Thompson, a candidate who might have succeeded in rallying both social and economic conservatives against his various heresies, was out-campaigned by Mike Huckabee, whose appeal was ultimately too sectarian to make him a threat. He was lucky that Rudy Giuliani ran an inutterably lousy campaign. (More on this anon.) He was lucky that Mike Huckabee won Iowa; lucky that the media basically treated that win as a McCain victory (though obviously his skill in cultivating the press made a big difference, in that case and many others); lucky, as David Freddoso suggests, that Huckabee decided to campaign in New Hampshire and (taking my foolish advice) Michigan instead of going straight to South Carolina; lucky that Giuliani decided not to campaign in New Hampshire after Christmas; and lucky, finally, that Fred Thompson decided to go all in against Huckabee in South Carolina, thus delivering McCain the Palmetto State and with it Florida. And he was lucky, above all, that his strongest challenger was a guy that almost nobody liked - not the media, not his fellow candidates, and not enough of the voters, in the end.

He goes on and on like that. Immigration worked out just so, he got to play the scrappy underdog again, etc. And of course it's all true. Just like Hillary was lucky to meet Bill Clinton in law school, Barack Obama was lucky someone invited him to give a speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention, and John Edwards, well, he was just lucky to be born in the greatest and most litigious country on earth.

But McCain has always been luckier than most. He was sitting in the cockpit of an A-4 on the flight deck of the USS Forrestal when a missile was accidentally launched and hit the fully-loaded fuel tank on his aircraft. The fire killed 162 of the ship's crew. McCain survived. He later survived being shot down over Vietnam. And he survived a further five and a half years in a POW camp.

When Napoleon was asked what quality he most wanted in his generals, he replied "just one--that they be lucky." Presidential candidates are no different. But the other thing that got McCain this far was hard work. He was out their pressing the flesh in New Hampshire when Rudy and Fred couldn't be bothered. I traveled around with him in New Hampshire for a day--he knew everybody, and he just never stopped plugging away. Like Gary Player, the harder McCain worked, the luckier he got--and there's no doubt, it's better to be lucky than good.