There’s been a boomlet of silly speculation that Jeb Bush will be the 2012 Republican nominee. There is a simple reason why this is wrong: George W. Bush was the most disliked president in modern history. End of story.
Did Democrats put up Billy Carter in 1984? No.
I do wish, though, that all columnists would signal they were about to engage in a round of Slate/TNR-style contrarianism by beginning:
Or at least that’s the conventional wisdom.
Update. Commenters note that Democrats did in fact put Jimmy Carter’s vice-president up in 1984. We know how that turned out.