The Fallible Crist

Since entering the Senate race, Florida’s governor has made one bad call after another.

(By Jim Geraghty; National Review Online) - Presuming the sources of Fox News are right, Florida governor Charlie Crist will run for the Senate as an independent.

You don’t get to be governor of Florida without a halfway decent sense of political judgment, and in fact that’s supposed to be one of Crist’s best qualities: He may not be the boldest or most principled politician, but he’s always been popular and displayed a knack for staying on the right side of Florida voters, going back to his “Chain Gang Charlie” days. That good sense of what voters want drove him from one public office to the next: Florida state senator, state education commissioner, state attorney general, and finally governor.

Yet during this election cycle, Crist’s keen judgment disappeared and was replaced with the bumbling instincts of some of our most legendary modern political blunderers (think Martha Coakley, Creigh Deeds, and John Kerry). Almost every key decision made by Crist and his campaign since entering the Senate race has backfired. Consider the following...