The question resonates in another context: Mitt's lack of experience in national and international affairs. It's the same rap Mrs. Clinton is using on Barack Obama. Mitt might be OK in these departments, but to declare without equivocation that he's the better man to represent conservatives strikes me as bizarre.

Is McCain as conservative as true conservatives would like him? Of course not. He also might be a lot more reliable carrier of conservative water than they believe him to be, with his strong credentials on national defense -- the most important issue before us -- and a redoubtable mien that the likes of Ahmadinejad in Iran and perhaps even Putin in Russia might find impressive.

Whatever might be the "conservative" objection to this his anti-waterboarding stand, I don't see how anyone could think John McCain, USN (Ret.), ex-prisoner of war in Hanoi, is going to fold on the war against terror. The way a couple of Democrats I could name might fold if it suited their purposes.

A wise aphorism has it that the perfect is the enemy of the good. While conservatives tilt their noses expressively in the air at the idea of John McCain's representing a movement he votes with 85 percent of the time, Democrats offer the electorate two strong believers in the power of big government, two babes in the woods when it comes to foreign policy, two fast friends of every liberal interest from pro-choice to gay rights to let's-kill-the-Bush-tax-cuts.

I have just the feeling that, with conservatives, this moment is one in which pique cancels out reason -- a time for slamming doors and kicking the cat across the room -- just because here at the end of the Bush presidency, dreams of a conservative era flicker low.

I might not say to my fellow conservatives "grow up," as did Barnes. But I might counsel -- if anybody had the inclination to listen -- that the perfect president is harder to find than the perfect job or the perfect church. We do the best we can, and when we can't do any better, that's when we take the ballot and do things such as Ann Coulter instructs us not to do. Sorry, ma'am.