(Cross posted at MyDD. Please add your comments there.)

On Hardball the other night Sen. Edwards said,

"Running before makes you focus on something different. Instead of focusing on how crowds respond to you and what everybody seems to love of you. That's not the test for being president. The test for being president is are you the best person to occupy the Oval Office and be the leader of the free world? Because literally the future of the world is at stake here. This is not about popularity and excitement."

It seems as if many of us here have worked on presidential campaigns in the past and perhaps we need to focus on something different as well. What does make someone a great presidential candidate?

Clearly charisma, popularity and the excitement you can generate is part of it. I supported Dean in 2004 and the excitement was palpable. It was powerful and empowering. It was also ephemeral. It comes and goes way to easily. We don’t need to abandon charisma as one of the criteria, we just need to put it in proper perspective.

Another criteria that was talked about a lot was electability. This was criteria that I believe was used effectively yet wrongly against Gov. Dean. A very important part of being an effective leader is getting elected to the leadership position. Yet this becomes a game of the polls and trying to outguess what everyone else is trying to outguess.

Then, there is the issue of policies and positions. We need to elect leaders that will fight for our ideas. No matter how charismatic or electable Ronald Reagan was, I could not support him because of his policies. This should be obvious. The question becomes, how do we understand a candidates policies and positions. During 2006 there was a lot of focus on voting scorecards. Lieberman actually scores pretty well on the scorecards, not because of any great policies or positions, but because he games that system pretty well. We need to think more deeply about how we really understand a candidates positions.

Yet to me, perhaps the most important criteria is how effective will the candidate be in bringing about real change. Here, I’m interested in much more than simply change in who is sitting in the White House. JFK’s famous quote, “ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country” captures some of this. Too much of politics seems to be about gathering more people on one side than another. It is about identifying the likely voters that support your candidate and getting them out to vote, instead of reaching out to unlikely voters and changing minds. I think we need to change a lot of minds in our country right now about what is best for us, for our country and for our world.

Here, I diverge even further from many in the blogging community. People often say that they aren’t interested in ‘moral victories’. They want to get their candidates elected. Yes, I want to get my candidates elected too, but I’m much more interested in moral victories. Perhaps that is because of the campaigns I’ve worked on. Gov. Dean, my wife, and Ned Lamont all failed to get elected, but I am very proud to have worked on their campaigns and believe that their moral victories have helped bring about real change.

So, as candidates look in the proverbial mirror, I hope they ask not, “who is the fairest of them all”. I hope they ask not even, “Can I win? Can I endure the trials of a campaign?” No, I hope they look in the mirror and ask, “By running, whether or not I am elected, will I be helping make this country better?” It sounds as if a few long shots are saying these sort of things, and I hope that this was a subtext to what Sen. Edwards said on Hardball.

Granted, I’m an incurable idealist. I will throw my heart and soul into the next campaign, even though I haven’t completely recuperated from the last. I’ve had my heart broken before, and I know I need to be prepared for it to be broken again. I just am hoping that the candidate I support next will be worth it.

So, these are my thoughts on the criteria for a good candidate, what are yours? How should we judge the crop of potential candidates, and how do you think some of these candidates really stand up?