In hindsight, all victories look inevitable. But for the participants, it is much more as the Duke of Wellington described his triumph over Napoleon at Waterloo: "the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life." The truth is that no one can foretell the outcome of any contest. Yet many pretend prognosticators, who would gladly have us believe that Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980 was preordained, are already telling us that Sarah Palin is unelectable in 2012. Such revisionism and fortune-telling are mutually refuting.
