WITH 596 days to go before America’s next presidential election, the first serious candidate has announced that he will run (see article). Ted Cruz is an intelligent man with an inspiring life story. His father fled from Cuba with a few dollars sewn into his underwear and settled in the United States. The young Ted made a name for himself in Texas while still a teenager, giving lectures to Rotary clubs about the constitution. By his early 30s he was arguing cases before the Supreme Court—and winning. At 41, he was elected to the Senate, overcoming long odds in a Republican primary to beat a tycoon backed by party bigwigs. Now, at 44, he thinks he is ready to be president. You cannot accuse Mr Cruz of lacking self-confidence.

Republicans who do not like Mr Cruz—and that includes many of his colleagues in the Senate—liken him to Barack Obama before he became president. This is meant both as an insult and a backhanded compliment. They mean that Mr Cruz’s career so far has consisted entirely of talking and that, with no executive experience, he is hopelessly unprepared for the White House. But they also acknowledge that he is a brilliant speaker and a candidate who should not be underestimated. They are right on all points.

Mr Cruz is an outstanding campaigner. He is sharp and often witty on the stump. He jokes to audiences nervous of NSA snooping that they should leave their mobile phones on, because “I want to make sure that President Obama hears everything I have to say this morning.” He is passionate, arguing that “God isn’t done with America yet.” And he is adept at channelling the rage of those who most dislike the man in the Oval Office. But he would make a terrible president.

First, he offers not a coherent plan for governing but a series of applause lines. “Imagine abolishing the IRS!” is one. How he would pay for his proposed trebling of the Border Patrol after scrapping the Internal Revenue Service is unclear, but no matter. He reveres the constitution, yet he wants to change it quite a lot, for example to require a balanced budget. He is one of the few top-tier Republicans who still harps on about stopping gay people from marrying. He occasionally takes a stance that is both brave and wise: he protests when Uncle Sam lines the pockets of Iowa’s corn farmers, for example. But for the most part he offers feel-good mush: “Imagine young people coming out of school with four, five, six job offers!”

Second, he has treated the Senate not as a place to craft laws but as a stage for self-publicising stunts. In 2013 he led the charge to shut down the government in an attempt to defund Obamacare. He was prepared to risk a sovereign default over raising the debt ceiling. He never had a chance of making the president repeal his health reform, but he proved to conservative voters that he really, really objects to it. He compared Republicans who refused to support him to Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler.

Mission Impossible

Mr Cruz will not win the presidency, since he repels the swing voters who decide things. But he could still do harm. If he turns the Republican primary into a conservative purity contest, in which anyone softer on Mr Obama is labelled a sell-out, other contenders may be dragged so far to the right that they become unelectable in the general election. That would be bad for the Republican Party and for America. Voters in 2016 deserve a choice between two grown-up candidates.