Raw intelligence & academic accomplishment. George H.W. Bush was Phi Beta Kappa at Yale (Econ), while McCain was famously close to (if not, I forget) last in his class at Annapolis.

I don't believe that McCain is necessarily stupid (he was quite the partier, though), but I think George H.W. Bush is considerably smarter than John McCain.

The nature of the experience Bush and McCain have is entirely different. Bush was a bureaucrat. McCain has thrived in the legislative branch.

How about Bush's experiences prior to his successful run for president? UN Ambassador, CIA director, Envoy to China, VP, etc. I am pretty much a leftwing nutjob, but I would agree that I am glad Bush was president from 89-92 for his maintenance of the end of the Cold War. Let's just say that Bush, before being elected, gave every indication of a much more nuanced understanding of how the world worked. His foreign policy team was also pretty spectacular. McCain has demonstrated none of the nuanced understanding HW did.

One of the difficulties in this election is that we really don't know how either of the two candidates will act as an executive; the best indication we have is their campaign organizations (unlike HW -- we had other things to go on). I am far more comfortable with the foreign policy & economic advisors surrounding Obama right now than those surrounding McCain.

Do people who grasp at straws ever catch them?

The elder President Bush inherited a nation at peace and an international environment moving America's way to a degree rarely seen before or since. President Reagan had through inattention or stubbornness allowed certain domestic problems -- specifically the savings and loan crisis and the federal deficit -- to fester, standing in the way of many Republicans and some Democrats who wanted them addressed, something Bush did.

A President McCain would inherit the younger President Bush's legacy and most of his people. The Republican Party in 1988 was Reagan's party, which GOP political professionals were able to influence to some degree but which was basically in favor of Ronald Reagan. The Republican Party today is George W. Bush's party, which McCain's campaign staff -- themselves mostly inherited from Bush -- can influence only by appealing to their lowest instincts. The elder Bush had little in Reagan's record worth criticizing; McCain has endorsed all of the younger Bush's domestic and foreign policies.

Dan's post here also raises the age question -- not just McCain's age, either. You could make a case that Alan Greenspan and Henry Kissinger were just the people to supervise American economic and foreign policy, respectively, 30 years ago. But for heaven's sake, these men are both well into their eighties. There are not that many statesmen, elder or otherwise, left in today's Republican Party. Today's GOP, and McCain's campaign, are dominated by people who think the things George W. Bush has done in the White House, and the way he has done them, have been just great. McCain couldn't do much to change that even if he wanted to.

At least McCain has a better record with hot looking women.

As the previous posters have said, John McCain does not even belong in the same room as GHWB. One's borderline gifted, the other is a mediocrity. One's hard working, the other is a goof-off. One has tons of executive branch experience prior to his presidential campaign, the other has none whatsoever and unlike his opponent hasn't even tried to compensate for that in any way. One has a stable temperament, the other belongs in a rubber room. One exemplifies due process, the other hints darkly at fascistic behavior. One's a statesman, the other is a bomb thrower. One entered the White House at 64 in top-notch health, the other hopes to enter it at 72 on six prescriptions including Ambien and a track record of every kind of skin cancer known to man. One called for moderation from a popular but occasionally extreme predecessor, the other calls for blind endorsement of an unpopular and universally extreme predecessor. One has definite limits in what political spin he'll dish up, the other will say and do anything to get elected.

And just to stack the odds even further, one inherited a uniquely favorable international environment, the other inherits a uniquely hostile one. One inherited a strong economy, the other inherits a basket case.

Unfortunately, there's one more contrast we need to be mindful of. One had one MSM hack after another making snide remarks about him. The other has had the media feeding out of his hand for the last 30 years (at least until this past weekend when his lies got to be too much even for his Beltway fan club).

The only things Bush senior and McCain share, other than the spurious details brought up by Mr. Drezner, are their common fondness of dirty campaigning and their tendency to be somewhat self-righteous. But even with this, there's a difference -- Bush senior induces you to want to tell him to get off his hobby horse; McCain induces you to want to get him in a straitjacket.

Never since the Depression has the Republican Party served up such an unsuitable candidate, and in such an unfavorable economic and international situation too. This ticket, indeed this Republican Party, is simply not fit to govern.

McCain is Andrew Jackson.
HW Bush is John Quincy Adams.

Military service was just a short phase of Bush I's life, while it was McCain's entire pre-political life. I think that colors the relative emphasis each one places on military's role in US foreign policy.

I think if McCain had been president after the Cold War he would've gone looking for something else to do with the military instead of celebrating the peace dividend.

A very minor one: Bush was a much better pilot.

The scary parallel you didn't mention is that both tend to lead via gut instinct rather than careful deliberation. That worked with Palin and one could argue that Bush's gut worked regularly as well. But when it didn't... Plus even when it did he assumed everything was taken care of when a careful deliberator probably would have seen potential problems.

David Brooks is your source for predictions about how McCain would govern? Brooks has a track record of almost perfect fail, mostly because he's in the tank for the GOP.

What are the major political stories about McCain's decades in public office?

1. The Keating Five scandal, which is pertinent because we're in yet another GOP-caused meltdown of banking institutions. McCain can try to paint himself as a "reformer," can say he learned his lesson back then... but he played-for-pay with the S&L collapse, and his current inner circle is composed of nothing but lobbyists.

2. McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform - which he himself violated the first time it was expedient for him to do so. Again, he's a 'reformer' only when it comes to other people, not of his own actions or those of his supporters.

3. The Anti-Torture Law - which he stood by silently while George Bush eviscerated.

The biggest lesson McCain has learned is that, if you talk the talk, you don't have to walk the walk. In fact, you can do just the opposite of what you say, and you'll still be praised for the empty words.

Add to that McCain's well-earned reputation as a thin-skinned hothead, and his undeniable signs of mental aging, and you have someone who'll be very dependent on his advisors to explain (gingerly and diplomatically and he might not listen anyway) the strange new world in which he finds himself.

But his advisors are, as noted above, either lobbyists for the very institutions and countries whose interests are not those of the United States, or an aging members of the Establishment who share his own fossilized viewpoints.

Just what we need, eh?

G.H.W. Bush was a consistently moderate Conservative. McCain has no ideology that I can identify whatsoever. He has currently unveiled the populist 'wanna re-make' wall street model.

Bush Senior was, and I daresay is, a realist/Pragmatist. McCain's only constant is his embrace of the neocons.

In my opinion Bush vs Dukakis is an unfair comparison, because it pits reality against possibility. Being a conservative, your take on that possibility is obviously grim. Nevertheless, I concur that Bush Senior did a great job as president. And laid the ground work for the success of the Clinton years.

Uh, how does Brooks know that? Especially given McCain's mindboggling self-righteousness and certainty of his own correctness -- which Bush Sr., whatever his other flaws, did not possess? (A comparison to Bush Jr. seems much more plausible.)