Republicans’ biggest problem in the 2012 presidential election isn’t President Obama: It’s time. We don’t know where Obama’s poll numbers will be in 2012, but we do know that time is being quixotic: It has given the party an important election, with a collection of candidates one can call underwhelming; and a huge crop of superstars, turned up by the 2009 and 2010 elections, on the horizon and just out of reach. In themselves, they solve all the party’s old problems: They belong to the moment; shaped by the crash, by the debt and by Obama’s expansion of government; they bridge the Tea Party and the establishment; they are also young, and in some cases good-looking; they are brown-skinned, and female, Latino and Indian, from big states and swing states; they can rebrand, and expand, the party.

What they are not is ready: Even by the standards set by Obama, running for president after two months in office may not be enough.