The most popular political flavor of the moment is General David Petraeus as the Republican Party's presidential candidate in 2012. While this has a certain appeal for the moderate wing of a beleaguered party still lost in the wilderness a year after its wholesale thumping, there are more problems with it than stars on the popular general's broad shoulders.
These include:
* Petraeus has given no indication that he's interested.
* He's a classy guy, and there is an unseemliness to him running against his former commander in chief even if things really fall apart in Afghanistan.
* It would politicize the Pentagon chain of command in a not good way.
* He's an unknown quantity regarding where he stands on non-national security issues, and it is probable that he would be unpalatable to the right wingnuts who run the party.
* The people who have expressed an interest in running 
aren't going to roll over and play dead.
* While he has been an able and perhaps even a brilliant commander, so what? Americans are most concerned about the economy and jobs and health care.
* Who says he would be a decent campaigner? Former General Wesley Clark had great credentials but he was a disaster on the stump in 2004.
* Former General Eisenhower's successful 1952 run is, of course, the template for a Petraeus candidacy, but 2010 is not 1952 by any stretch of the imagination.
Now as for 2016, that may be a whole different kettle of MREs.
Top photograph by Alex Wong/Getty Images
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