Josh Marshall’s post yesterday illustrates why Ezra Klein is wrong (here and here) to suggest that all prominent political figures end up becoming equally polarizing — John McCain isn’t (yet, at least):

Yesterday, Kos posted some Rasmussen numbers of favorable and unfavorable numbers of major presidential contenders. Kos’s point was that whichever candidate you choose you’ll basically start with one who about half the country likes and about half the country doesn’t.

But there’s one number that’s substantially outside that pattern: McCain’s. Rasmussen has him down at 53% favorable, the highest but by an insignificant margin and 37% unfavorable. The next closest unfavorables are Edwards and Thompson, both at 42%. All but one of the others is 50% or over.

As I wrote before, there’s no reason to expect all candidates to converge to some equilibrium level of polarization. Will McCain’s negatives go up if he’s the GOP nominee? Of course. But he’s starting from a better position than Hillary.