A successful presidential candidacy requires competence in many skills sets and excellence in at least a few.

Think of the decathlon in the Olympics: 10 events, but winning one or even two or three doesn’t guarantee the gold. You have to be at least competitive in each of the disciplines: sprints and runs of various distances, the discus, shot put and javelin, the 110-meter hurdles, the high jump, long jump and pole vault. You can’t win if you are awful in any of them, but you don’t even have to finish in the top three of any of them to succeed.

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