If there’s one sentiment that seems to unite desperate Republicans in the run-up to the campaign of 2008 it would seem to be profound discomfort, if not outright disgust, with the current field of Presidential candidates.

I’ve heard literally dozens of demoralized friends and colleagues express their frustration with this crop of contenders in remarkably similar terms. The common mantra usual proclaims that this must count as “the worst group of Republican candidates in all of American history.”

Of course, this grim conclusion raises an obvious question: if this field amounts to the worst clutch of candidates ever, then which year yielded a better array of choices?

Last time (2004) there was no GOP alternative to President Bush. Does this constitute a richer spectrum of choices?

In 2000, the only serious, durable alternative to Bush was Senator McCain – and he’s an alternative once again this time. The other candidates included ego-tripping Senators Orrin Hatch and Bob Smith – who, in the style of this year’s Sam Brownback, ran more for attention and publicity than with any real thought of winning anything.

The 2000 race also brought its share of hard-right fringe candidates: Gary Bauer, Alan Keyes, Steve Forbes and Pat Buchanan (Buchanan eventually left the Republican Party to run on the “Reform Party” ticket, garnering a paltry 0.4% of the vote.) At least this year’s angry fringe candidates (Tom Tancredo, Ron Paul and Duncan Hunter) can point to real political experience, having each won many terms in the House of Representatives. When it came to Bauer, Keyes, Forbes and Buchanan eight years ago, as well as the brief campaign of Elizabeth Hanford Dole, none of them had ever won election to public office before. Why would we consider a field full of seasoned political veterans less formidable than a group of stumbling amateurs?

Going back to other recent elections, the struggle for the ’96 nomination came down to Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, columnist Pat Buchanan, and former Tennessee Governor Lamar Alexander—with the Buchanan and Alexander campaigns quickly collapsing in the face of Dole’s established position in the party. As in 2000, magazine publisher Steve Forbes and unemployed orator Alan Keyes also tried, without much success, to generate support and other members of the Senate and House (“B-1 Bob” Dornan, Senators Richard Lugar of Indiana and Phil Gramm of Texas) briefly put their names in play before hasty withdrawal. Who, precisely, in that uninspiring field makes it tower over today’s choices of Giuliani, Thompson, Huckabee, Romney and McCain?

And then there was the nomination scrap of 1988, where Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush ultimately prevailed (after finishing third in the Iowa Caucuses) against Senator Bob Dole and religious broadcaster Pat Robertson. Delaware Governor Pete DuPont, former Congressman Jack Kemp, and former Secretary of State Al Haig also bid for Presidential support, but dropped out long before the convention.

I’m running through this recent political history in order to put our current crop of candidates in proper perspective.

We all know the drawbacks of each of the major contenders, and we’ve heard them enumerated on countless occasions: Giuliani is wrong on abortion and went through two messy divorces; Romney is a slick, pandering flip-flopper and the member of a controversial religion; McCain is too old and too cantankerous, having alienated most of the party’s base; Thompson looks indecisive with his delayed entry and seems often upstaged by his micro-managing Trophy Wife; Huckabee can’t seem to raise money, and his background as a Baptist preacher would alienate Catholic voters.

Of course, in any crop of GOP candidates from any year in history, one could go through the list and quickly disqualify all of them. Concerning Ronald Reagan in 1980, for instance: you could say he was too old (nearly 70), too right wing, too “Hollywood” (with suspicions of dyed black hair), divorced, too simple-minded – a “dummy actor” turned two-term governor with no foreign policy experience whatever, but who somehow became one of our greatest presidents.

We now look back on that Reagan campaign for the nomination as the last great group of contenders for the GOP nomination, with the former California Governor finally triumphing over former CIA Director (and his ultimate running mate) George H. W. Bush, former Senate Minority Leader Howard Baker, Senator Bob Dole (yet again), former Texas Governor (and former Democrat) John Connally, and two obscure House members from Illinois --Phil Crane and John Anderson.

The only reason this list of candidates sounds more impressive than the roster of today’s contenders is because it includes the name of Reagan – and we know how he turned out for his party and for his country. But Republicans can only damage our chances for the future if we dwell too obsessively over the glories of the past.

Recently, I hosted a Reagan Ranch Center commemoration of President Reagan’s “Tear Down This Wall” address with former White House speechwriter Peter Robinson, who helped the President prepare that speech. A member of the audience asked Robinson who he believed would be “the next Ronald Reagan” and the one-time White House aide very wisely commented: “There won’t be another Ronald Reagan. He was singular, one of a kind, like Lincoln and Churchill. We get that kind of leader only once a generation, maybe once a century. We shouldn’t expect or demand another one. We were lucky to get one, and we should feel thankful for it.”

In this context, we ought to cut the current candidates some slack and compare them to their predecessors in recent nomination fights, or to the likely Democratic alternatives—not try to measure them against one of the greatest Republicans who ever lived.

In fact, all five of the leading contenders – Giuliani, Thompson, Romney, McCain and Huckabee—are smart, fascinating individuals with compelling stories to tell. Already, they all display better television communication skills than President Bush – and they all give evidence of getting even sharper in their presentations as the campaign advances. Each of the big five has achieved notable success in previous endeavors – though Romney more in the business world and at the Olympics than in his one term as Massachusetts governor, and Thompson more as a crusading attorney in Tennessee and a likable Hollywood star than in his short service in the Senate. Continued...