Bob Kolasky is the managing editor of IntellectualCapital.com. His e-mail address is bob@voxcap.com

Without a doubt, John McCain, maverick presidential candidate, made for a terrific story. The fact that the nation's media swooned for the Arizona senator has been noted so often that it has become a cliche -- Jay Rosen did an excellent job of dissecting the phenomenon in last week's IC -- but the truth is that an even larger media swoon occurred around McCain's underdog candidacy and its potential to shock the establishment. It made for great copy, and political journalists -- this scribe, included -- loved every minute of it. For a month there, presidential politics was actually cool.

The McCain candidacy had all the right elements: a too-good-to-be-true back story, a best-selling book, a Star-Wars quoting protagonist, rock-star-like groupies and, at the center of it all, the Tsunami of a man that is John McCain. He was a candidate out of central casting, and to help the story along further, some ready-made bad guys added to the mix.

The fairy tale is over for McCain

First there was the all-powerful Phantom Menace of the GOP Establishment, united to take our man down. Then to spice things up, McCain himself gave the Establishment a persona. The enemies were Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, the twin "forces of evil" bent on stamping out his insurgency. Finally, in this last week, we were introduced to an even trickier enemy: the mysterious, heretofore unknown Wyly brothers (no screenwriter could have come up with a better name) who together were playing Gepetto to the Bush campaign's Pinocchio.

The set-up was perfect; the Hollywood script would have been greenlighted in a second; and the box-office take would have been boffo. But unfortunately, the crowd would have gone home unsatisfied because in the end George W. Bush -- along with the "Establishment," and Robertson and Falwell, and the Wyly brothers -- won the GOP nomination. You see, our boy Luke missed his shot, and Darth Vader's storm troopers got their revenge.

Whatever.

A litany of mistakes

Despite the best efforts of the editors of George magazine and of Tina Brown, politics is not Hollywood, and stories are never as clear-cut as we would like. The truth is that Bush awoke March 8 as the presumptive GOP presidential nominee because he earned it -- and McCain did not. And the story of this presidential season should not be why the McCain insurgency surfaced; rather, it should be why the McCain insurgency failed. It might not be as sexy, but ultimately it is much more informative.

Bush won this campaign in South Carolina. That is where he proved that he was more than Daddy's Boy and that he was capable of handling political adversity. Ultimately, he proved he was ready for prime time.

He found a way to articulate his message -- education reform, tort reform, military buildup, tax cuts, states' rights and moral leadership -- that resonated with Republican voters. He went on the offensive and stopped hiding behind his advisers, and despite some bumps in the road, he established his Republican and conservative credentials. He ran a winning campaign.

McCain, on the other hand, clearly did not. Thrust into the spotlight, the Arizona senator ran a gaffe-prone, uncertain campaign.

• He blasted Bush obsessively for his visit to Bob Jones university (BJU), although The Washington Times reported that the McCain campaign had made overtures to making the same sort of visit. McCain turned an advantage -- Bush's weak-willed visit to BJU -- into a disadvantage by harping continuously on the subject.
• He allowed the public to witness his famed temper in an angry speech he delivered the night he lost the South Carolina primary and in a call he had with talk-show host Michael Reagan.
• His campaign set up the Catholic Voter Alert in Michigan to decry Bush's Jones visit, and then the candidate denied any knowledge of calls made on his behalf, thus undermining McCain's reputation for "straight talk."
• He attacked Robertson and Falwell but gave his supporter, Gary Bauer, and Bauer's mentor, James Dobson, a free pass despite the fact that there is little difference between any of those men's beliefs.
• Later, his infamous always-on-the-record strategy backfired when journalists traveling on the Straight Talk Express reported his "forces of evil" comment (which McCain said was meant as a joke.)

The ultimate factor

None of McCain's mistakes were devastating, none particularly atypical to those that befall all candidates when placed in the harsh glare of the spotlight of running for president. But they proved fatal for McCain because his insurgency had no margin for error.

The not-so-secret reality surrounding McCain's campaign is that there were relatively few policy reasons for him to make the challenge. His most prominent causes -- campaign reform and gutting corporate welfare -- do not particularly appeal to Republican voters, and his other positions, such as debt reduction, strengthening the nation's military, keeping a moratorium on Internet taxes and limiting abortions, did not particularly distinguish him from the rest of the field.

At the end of the day, therefore, the differentiation of the McCain candidacy had to be because he was a new kind of leader who practiced a new kind of politics and who was a better man than his opponent. From Feb. 2 (the day after the New Hampshire primary) until March 7 (Super Tuesday), he was given a chance to prove that to Republican voters, and they apparently did not agree.

You can blame the Wyly brothers and the campaign-finance loopholes, or you can blame the leaders of the religious right and the GOP establishment for McCain's impending loss, but that blame would be mostly misplaced.

None of those bogeymen is the ultimate reason McCain will not be the Republican nominee. Ten million Republican voters are. They saw what McCain stood for and how he conducted himself as a candidate, and they decided they liked Bush better.

It might not make us in the media happy, and it certainly does not make Hollywood happy, but that is what happens when you put your faith in democracy. The voters get to decide.