The Conservative Party has invited Sen McCain to be its guest speaker at its annual conference. This is either because they think him an important figure who is a likely successful candidate for nomination and the presidency or because they couldn't find anyone else. We assume it is supposed to be the former

It's early days, but how accurate is this assessment of theirs? What does McCain have that marks him out as a fancied contender?

[The Labour Party had Bill Clinton address theirs Now, he is a star and immensely popular on all sides in Britain. Unfortunately for the Tories the Democrats are historically aligned with Labour and the Republicans with the Tories, though in fact you could accommodate the whole of the Democratic Party, both right and left, within the Conservative Party ( the 'right' of political parties) in Britain. You could never do that with the Republicans ]

McCain, more than any of the possible republican contenders, is seen as a person who can win the election. He's a "truth-teller," and a "maverick," despite the fact that he's backtracked on his (rightful) condemnation of the radial christian right, among other things. He has trademarked a certain appearance of honesty which he's packaged and marketed to perfection. When looked at closely, he's in fact very conservative and willing to play the political game of bait-and-switch as much as any of them. His brand of politics is to appear not to have a brand of politics, and it's very effective. The carefully calculated "I'm not carefully calculated" calculation. I used to be more impressed, until he became a candidate and took on all of that which he'd seemed at one time to reject.