Looking back from the vantage point of 2009, President John McCain made it all look easy. In a long rambling interview with the Washington press corps, he pointed to the John Kerry campaign of  2004 as the “disaster that changed the world.”

     Kerry, said the President, ran on the wrong war. He chose to make Viet Nam the battleground, a place where he had served honorably, and a place where almost all of President George Bush’s cadre, including Vice President Dick Cheney, chose not to serve at all.

     The problem was that the American public was heartily sick of Viet Nam and had been for decades, not least because the Democrats had castigated it as a moral and political defeat, a catastrophic waste of American power and diplomacy. No one likes to have his face rubbed in reversals, and gradually the tide shifted Bush’s way, even though it was clear that he his economic policy was shaky, and his attempts to democratize Iraq had gone badly.

      The President was further aided by negatives from the left. Film maker Michael Moore was given a standing ovation in Cannes, by much the same sort of crowd that once lionized Jerry Lewis as America’s greatest comedian. The middle ground gave way, and more Americans sought to distance themselves from the decayed European cheerleaders.

    And then there were the rioters in New York during the GOP convention. Manhattan 2004 was not Chicago 1968, but there were enough images of Act Up louts and yammering “Bush Lied” shouters to turn off viewers. Bush’s reference to the Hollywood Left finished the job.

     Still, after the popular and electoral college defeat, the Democrats were far from depressed. By choosing Cheney as Veep yet again, Bush had left no heir apparent. The day he was reelected he became a lame duck. Within a week, the Hillary for President machine was oiled up and ready to roll.

    A website was set up, money flooded in, and the Dems were energized as they had not been during the Kerry campaign when Anybody But Bush was the slogan they could come up with. Primary time arrived, and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton easily vanquished her rivals. By selecting Barack Obama as her running mate, she seemed to have it all: a forceful, moneyed candidacy, a brilliant young African-American to buoy the ticket and bring in the minority vote, and all of her husband’s organizers in place—people who knew how to win.

     And then came John McCain. Keenly aware that Viet Nam was an irrelevant issue, he let others speak of his service there, his years as a captive, his family’s great lineage of service. Hillary could only talk tough; John was tough. His image, however, was liberal enough to disenchant the right wing of his party—and attract some unhappy Dems who had never liked Hillary’s cynical carpetbagging when she ran for the Senate from New York, a state about which she knew little. And, as it turned out, there were women who disliked her transparently bogus arrangement with her errant husband. Yes, McCain had a messy divorce, but that was in the 1980’s. Hillary had a messy marriage, and that was still ongoing.

    McCain, it was pointed out, was edging toward 70. At first this was considered a liability. Then the pollsters suddenly discovered that fully one-third of Americans were nearly his age, and a lot of them were older. They liked imagining a mirror image of themselves in the Oval Room.

      For a while it seemed that McCain might have mis-stepped by choosing Rudy Giuliai as his running mate. But several terrorist incidents here and abroad had given Americans a renewed sense of vulnerability. Cries from the Dems of “Too Much Testosterone!” only seemed to boost the GOP ticket.

      Hillary kept bringing up the examples of female leaders—most notably Indira Ghandi and Golda Meir—but foreigners were not in good odor just then.

    The race was close, President McCain acknowledged, but hardly neck and neck. When the final tally was in, it was apparent that the Dems had lost three Presidential races in a row. As of this writing there is talk of “turning” Arnold Schwartzenegger, but the California Governor’s latest statement says “I prefer to stick vit a vinner.” So, apparently, did the preponderance of U.S. voters. Hillary Rodham Clinton is currently in retreat at her home in Chappaqua, N.Y. Her husband, said to be at the Playboy mansion in Chicago, could not be reached for comment.