Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) argued his fight with unions has prepared him to be commander in chief during his speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference.

“If I can take on 100,000 protestors, I can do the same across the world,” Walker said in response to a question about international terrorism…

Democrats quickly pounced on the comments.

“If Scott Walker thinks that it’s appropriate to compare working people speaking up for their rights to brutal terrorists, then he is even less qualified to be president than I thought. Maybe he should go back to punting,” Democratic National Committee spokesman Mo Elleithee sent in a statement to reporters.

That is a terrible response. First, taking on a bunch of protesters is not comparably difficult to taking on a Caliphate with sympathizers and terrorists around the globe, and saying so suggests Walker doesn’t quite understand the complexity of the challenge from ISIS and its allied groups.

Second, it is insulting to the protesters, a group I take no pleasure in defending. The protesters in Wisconsin, so furiously angry over Walker’s reforms and disruptive to the procedures of passing laws, earned plenty of legitimate criticism. But they’re not ISIS. They’re not beheading innocent people. They’re Americans, and as much as we may find their ideas, worldview, and perspective spectacularly wrongheaded, they don’t deserve to be compared to murderous terrorists.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s comparison of his fight with labor unions to the U.S. struggle against the Islamic State was “inappropriate” and a “mistake,” likely Republican presidential competitor and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry said Thursday.

“These are Americans,” Perry said in an interview after Walker made the comments at the Conservative Political Action Conference early Thursday evening. “You are talking about, in the case of ISIS, people who are beheading individuals and committing heinous crimes, who are the face of evil. To try to make the relationship between them and the unions is inappropriate.”…

“Scott’s a good man, he’s got a good message out there and he’s an energetic guy and he’s a new face on the block–and if you’ll recall in 2011, I was a new face on the block for about 3 hours,” Perry said. “Making mistakes – nobody’s perfect – and how you deal with that and how you get over that very quickly is going to be important for him. I think, you know, some of the statements that he’s made are obviously problematic for him.”

Perry went on to mention Walker’s comment earlier in the day. “Today, I think trying to make the connection between ISIS and unions was a mistake,” Perry said.

Walker spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski said Walker was in no way comparing any American citizen to Islamic State militants.

“What the governor was saying was when faced with adversity he chooses strength and leadership. Those are the qualities we need to fix the leadership void this White House has created,” she said.

But to win the nomination, Mr. Walker will need to prove as capable on the campaign trail as he is on paper. So far, Mr. Walker hasn’t helped reduce concerns about his preparedness.

He “punted” on a question about evolution in London; he did not distance himself from Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, after Mr. Giuliani questioned whether President Obama loved America; he said he didn’t know whether Mr. Obama was a Christian; and on Thursday, at a conservative conference, Mr. Walker argued that his experience facing down union protesters in Madison prepared him to defeat the Islamic State, the terrorist group. He later acknowledged, “There’s no comparison between the two.”…

My review of Mr. Walker’s television advertisements; debates; newspaper and television interviews; and speeches shows that he can be a candidate who deftly deflects and reframes tough questions. On that basis, it seems right to assume that Mr. Walker is less prone to an implosion than past Republicans who have surged in the polls, like Rick Perry, the former Texas governor. As I’ve mulled his chances over the last few years, my main question has been whether Mr. Walker would break out, not whether he could sustain momentum…

My sense is that Mr. Walker can do it. It’s a long campaign. But until he dispels these concerns, it will be hard to argue that he’s a clear favorite for the nomination, as some have argued — even if he would be very difficult to defeat if he proved to be as strong on the campaign trail as he was on paper.

One open-ended question this week asked early-state insiders to pick which candidate of either party has made the biggest mistake this year. Scott Walker was the most common response…

There’s a pervasive feeling that Walker erred by refusing to distance himself from former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, after Giuliani said at an event Walker was also attending that President Barack Obama does not love America. He also wouldn’t say whether he believes Obama is a Christian…

“If he can’t handle easy questions like these, how is he going to fare in a town hall meeting when a grizzled North Country vet has a real tough question for him and no punting is allowed?” asked a New Hampshire Republican.

“Walker’s inartful response to Rudy Giuliani’s comments has highlighted his inability to answer tough questions and allowed the media to frame the debate that he isn’t ready for prime time,” said another.

Walker says these are nothing but minor “gotcha” tempests ginned up by news organizations. His responses, however, suggest a disturbing unwillingness to stand up to extreme elements within the GOP. Walker, trying to position himself as the leading conservative alternative to former Florida governor Jeb Bush, has already sent out fundraising appeals based on his being attacked by a liberal press.

[C]ourting the most rabid primary and caucus voters can make oneself toxic in a general election. Just ask Mitt Romney, whose harsh language on “self deportations” hurt him mightily with immigrant voters in 2012.

Most important, Walker’s deference to hardcore Obama haters is just plain bad form. In 2008, Sen. John McCain had the decency to correct a supporter at a town hall who told him that Obama is an Arab. “No ma’am,” McCain said. “He’s a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues.”

That’s the classy way to conduct a presidential campaign.

How would the form of leadership demonstrated [by Walker] during the protests transfer to the war on terrorism? Scott Walker’s approach to the protests was to let them play out — replete with loud chanting and drumming and lots of taped up signs in the capitol and huge marches outside — all the while knowing he had the votes in the legislature to pass the law that the protesters were protesting. He chose silent inaction, putting up with it, in a situation where he knew he’d win in the end, and, in fact, when the legislation finally passed, the protests ended. There was still the recall effort, and there was plenty more speech lambasting Walker, but Walker knew all along he had the upper hand, and instead of trying to counter the speech of the protesters (or even to get them cleared out of the capitol), he sat back and let them have what probably looked to most Wisconsinites like a big tantrum. He knew that the protesters knew that they could not cross the line from semi-organized protest to anything like violence or the threat of violence. The no-response response was therefore effective.

Is that the kind of leadership he’s proposing to use in the war on terror? It can’t be. The relevant component of leadership that I’m seeing is something I associate with George W. Bush: silent acceptance of abuse from his critics. Walker said “If I can take on 100,000 protesters,” but he didn’t take them on. He let them carry on. That may have been wise under the circumstances, but it tells us close to nothing about what he would do with enemies who won’t limit themselves to protesting and when he can’t control the outcome through partisan domination of a legislature. Sheer cockiness won’t do the trick — “If I can take on 100,000 protesters, I can do the same across the globe.” And that was a cockiness beyond what we saw — and got tired of — in George Bush.

Part of the problem, I suspect, is that few governors have foreign policy experience, and so, they must rely on what experience they do have. For Walker, his greatest crucible has been taking on the unions, and thus, it becomes a crutch to rely on whenever someone asks him any question that might possibly be remotely related (I seem to remember Rick Perry trying to make every question about oil and energy, at some point during his 2012 campaign).

It might sound like a non sequitur, but is it really absurd for Walker to suggest that — just as he was courageous in standing up to the unions — he might also be courageous in standing up to other foes? Consider this New York Times op-ed about Reagan’s handling of the striking Air Traffic Controllers union:

“He showed federal workers and Soviet leaders alike how tough he could be. Although there were 39 illegal work stoppages against the federal government between 1962 and 1981, no significant federal job actions followed Reagan’s firing of the Patco strikers. His forceful handling of the walkout, meanwhile, impressed the Soviets, strengthening his hand in the talks he later pursued with Mikhail S. Gorbachev.”

The early stages of a campaign are precarious times that test a potential candidate’s fitness and agility. Since would-be candidates often are still exploring official runs, they don’t have their varsity teams in place. They’re on their own in their early appearances as they strive to engage donors and voters, and without a press staff, they have no one to shield them, operatives point out.

Facebook and Twitter increase the hazards. “Social media encourages reporters to do little more than throw banana peels out in front of candidates with the hopes that they will slip up. And they will. It’s an absolute guarantee in this information age,” says Madden. “The true test is whether the candidate has the fortitude to recognize the mistake, fix it and move on without getting discouraged. And whether the campaign has the agility and infrastructure to fight back and go on the counter-offensive.”

The early stages are the “invisible primary,” Jon Huntsman, a 2012 GOP presidential candidate, said this week on MSNBC. “You make a few mistakes early on, and it’s a period where you’re expected to make a few mistakes. But you learn from those mistakes, and be better and stronger going forward.”

The backlash to Walker’s comment echoes, in a peculiar way, some of the circa-2007 derision of Senator Barack Obama as nothing more than a community organizer without the chops to handle the world. (Perhaps Walker, by virtue of his anti-union offensive, could market himself as a community disorganizer?) Like Walker, who caused a ruckus when he decided to “punt” on a question about evolution in London, Obama’s foreign trips didn’t always go smoothly.

In the end, it didn’t matter to voters. In fact, the political class may consistently make unrealistic demands for foreign-policy experience in presidential candidates—many of whom come from governor’s mansions—whereas having extensive foreign-policy experience is arguably politically overrated. Among recent presidents, none had a longer global resume than George H.W. Bush, a former CIA director, ambassador to the United Nations, and de facto ambassador to China. Bush defeated a feckless Michael Dukakis in 1988 but couldn’t win reelection against Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton in 1992.

But now think about Scott Walker. He doesn’t share any of Giuliani’s liberal social views. He’s stuck to the same conservative ideology since entering Wisconsin politics more than two decades ago — no sudden Romney-ish transformations for him. He speaks openly of his Christian faith without hemming himself in demographically like Huckabee. His family life appears in order and with the John Doe investigation seemingly going nowhere, he lacks the profound personal and ethical baggage that undermined Gingrich. And he’s run and won three bruising, closely-watched elections in a blue-tinged state — meaning that he’s vetted and accustomed to the media crucible in ways that Cain and Perry weren’t.

In other words, he lacks all of the major flaws that kept McCain’s foes from capitalizing on his vulnerability in 2008 and that kept Romney’s from doing the same in 2012. More than that, Walker brings to the race a story that both Republican purists and pragmatists can get excited about – a governor who pulled his swing state sharply to the right without sacrificing his electability. More than any Republican who opposed Romney or McCain, Walker has the potential to occupy that sweet spot where the party base and establishment meet.

Bush will have an enormous war chest, and the significance of that can’t be overstated. For as long as he’s a candidate, Walker figures to be playing catch-up on this front. But Bush’s poll numbers indicate that the GOP faithful are just as eager for an alternative as they were with Romney four years ago. Romney caught a break because all of those alternatives ended up being spectacularly unviable. Bush may not be so lucky.  

Walker immediately faced criticism from the mainstream press, and even some conservatives, for allegedly likening union protesters to terrorists–a contention Walker strongly disputed in an interview with Bloomberg immediately after the speech.

“One thing I’ve said many times before is that one of the most significant foreign policy actions taken during my lifetime was when Ronald Reagan, who was a governor before he was president, fired the air traffic controllers. Even though it had nothing to do with foreign policy, I think it had a tremendous impact because it send a powerful message around the world that this guy was serious,” Walker said. “To our allies, you knew you could take him seriously and you could trust him. To our adversaries, you knew not to mess with him.”

“My point was just that if I can handle that kind of pressure and kind of intensity, I think I’m up for the challenge of whatever might come if I choose to run for president,” Walker added.