Pete Coors was a guest on The Commissioner's show this afternoon. Needs work. Guy is a little harder on him than I am, but I don't think he's off base at all.

Look, Coors gave all the right answers to the policy questions. But the Big One was weak: Why do you want to be a Senator? His answer (Schaffer can't win, I can, and it's important that we hold the Senate) is a politico's answer, not a voter's answer. You believe in public service? Fine, I can think of about 40 elected offices you could start off with. Why Senator? What do you want to do? What do you think is important, why, and what would you propose?

Pete, when you took over Coors, you knew what had to be done. You knew you had to get the company back to its core and cut costs. I'll bet when someone asked you what your plan was, you could rattle off 10 different changes you wanted to make.

Do the same thing here. When someone asks you about federal judges, bring up Miguel Estrada. When someone asks you about conservation, mention gas prices. Hugh asked you about running a business. You talked about how much more complicated things are now, and about Sarbanes-Oxley. That was terrific, because it was something everyone's heard of. Just skip the part about 404. People hear "404" and they think about File Not Found. Which is the last thing you want to tell the auditors.

You don't have to trade your beer in for coffee, or start wearing purple suits or anything like that. But you do have to give people a reason to vote for you.