When I was a young reporter, one of my mentors, the late Anthony Bambridge, a Fleet Street editor of the old school who started out at the Observer under David Astor and spent most of his career at the Sunday Times, offered me some advice on how to produce arresting copy: treat the serious subjects trivially and the trivial subjects seriously.

This somewhat paradoxical approach to journalism, which for some reason I hadn’t picked up during my time at the Columbia J-School, remains a sound one. However, it does presume an ability to distinguish between what is serious and what is trivial, which is sometimes lacking. Take Rick Santorum: Is he a serious candidate, who is therefore ripe for mockery? Or is he a trivial character, ripe for building up?

Until his victories in Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri, many supposed experts viewed Santorum’s campaign as a curiosity or ignored it completely. Now things have completely turned around. The newspapers and political sites are full of articles treating Santorum as a credible contender. I’ve even written one myself. Last week, I pointed out that his message of social conservatism and economic populism clearly resonates with large parts of the Republican base, and also with some independents and Reagan Democrats.

All the evidence suggests that Santorum’s campaign still has real momentum. According to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, which was released this morning, he is now leading Romney nationally among Republican primary voters by thirty per cent to twenty-seven per cent—a statistical tie. This finding follows two more national surveys released on Monday, which produced very similar results. The latest Gallup tracking poll had Romney leading by thirty-two per cent to thirty per cent; a poll from the Pew Research Center showed Santorum edging Romney by thirty per cent to twenty-eight per cent.

All of these surveys suggest that the Republican primary is now essentially a two-person showdown, with the other candidates trailing badly. State surveys are also swinging in Santorum’s favor. In Michigan, where both the main candidates are campaigning heavily ahead of the February 28th primary, a poll released yesterday showed Santorum surging to a fifteen-point lead over Romney: thirty-nine per cent to twenty-four per cent. Even in California, which doesn’t vote until the start of June, a new survey from SurveyUSA shows that Santorum is now statistically tied with Romney.

To be sure, the polls are volatile, and Santorum hasn’t yet been fully subjected to the Romney campaign’s attack machine, which over the next two weeks will be spending a lot of advertising dollars to portray him as a corrupt Washington insider who lacks executive experience. For now, though, he is clearly on a roll. If he were to win in Michigan, where Reagan Democrats and others who aren’t registered Republicans can nonetheless show up and vote, it would change the entire complexion of things going into Super Tuesday.

Apart from anything else, this makes Santorum a godsend for reporters covering the Republican primaries. His surge keeps going what has already proved to be a bizarre and eventful story. But Santorum as a serious contender for the Presidency? That is where I hop off his bandwagon.

My reasoning is straightforward and perhaps a bit too conventional. Santorum is essentially an ultra-right-wing protest candidate. America is essentially a centrist or center-right country. Therefore, his potential is limited. In times of economic distress, or whenever a national-security crisis arises, the audience for extremist views expands quite a bit—cf. the rise of the neo-cons and the Tea Party—but surely not to the extent of the country at large supporting a religious zealot and armchair militarist of Santorum’s stripe. (For one thing, think of the gender gap he would have to overcome.) And with the economy improving, the market for political extremism is shrinking anyway.

If Santorum were to be nominated, the odds are that Obama would win in a landslide. For that reason, at least for now, I will continue to reassure myself that he is ultimately a trivial candidate, which, according to the Bambridge school of journalism, justifies more “Rick is for real” articles. But what if he really is for real? What if America has turned into such a divided and embittered country that a figure like Santorum can mount a credible bid for not just the nomination but the Presidency? What would that say about us?

I’m only asking. Santorum has already upended a good deal of conventional wisdom. And, as a journalist, you never want to get so wedded to one particular theory that it blinds you to the evidence before your face. That was another piece of advice from Bambridge.

Photograph by Cal Sport Media/AP Photo.