NOT BY A LONG SHOT

A surgeon is more of an artist than an administrator.

There’s nothing to make me think he can lead a management team, much less a host of competing political and economic interests. Artists, after all, tend to act as soloists or move in small circles. An operating room remains a small stage or studio, all focused on one event, unlike the chaotic forces erupted in the Oval Office.

Before aspiring to the White House, could he show us how he’d function as a big city mayor? Or a small-state governor? Or even as a senator or congressman?

Let’s put this in context. An operating room is much, much smaller than the Pentagon. And the Pentagon’s only part of the Executive Branch.

Ben Carson’s not ready for prime time here. Not by a long shot. No matter how much we might like him.

By the way, his is the first — and the only — GOP bumper sticker we’ve seen on a New Hampshire car to date. This is turning into a first-in-the-nation presidential primary quite unlike any we’ve encountered before.