The latest craze among Barack Obama’s media and pundit cheerleaders is to point to his “happy” campaign, a veritable “organizational wonder,” to vouch for Obama’s executive skills and in turn predict a brilliant presidency.

There is some measure of truth in the notion that voters can use the conduct of a campaign to assess a candidate, especially someone with zero executive experience and a very thin public record in general. (Goodness knows he’s been a candidate for about a third as long as he has been in the Senate, so his presidential race is a substantial chunk of his national public life.)

Certainly he gets credit for not hiring and then sticking with a gang of vicious backstabbers who publicly and privately denigrate their peers. So he’s not Hillary Clinton. That faint praise does not provide much solace. But there are several problems with this whole line of argument.

First, a candidate is only a brilliant campaign executive if he wins. If the voters in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Indiana all decide they have had enough Obama-mania his organizational skills don’t look so hot. John McCain became a turnaround specialist in reviving his campaign, but no one would have thought him brilliant if he’d lost Florida. In short, results entirely color evaluations of the managerial skills of the candidate.

Second, neither of these accounts or others like them speak to what role if any Obama actually plays in the campaign. David Axelrod may be a genius. But do we know if Obama delegated all decisions to him? Or which calls Obama is directly responsible for? Not from these accounts. At best we can say that Obama hired a very good campaign manager. But if he is a super-delegator that won’t necessarily make him a good president.

Third, these accounts are highly selective. Doesn’t the conduct of his campaign also show he avoids huge problems until forced by public outcry to confront them (e.g. Reverend Wright)? Haven’t we seen that he does not level with his supporters (e.g. on trade) and uses the slash-and-burn tactics he himself decries? Even one of these accounts lets on that he has shown a dangerous tendency toward “self-righteousness.” ( Ya think?) So you could argue from much available evidence that his campaign conduct should send up warning flares, not champagne corks.