Ah, defeating Communism without firing a bullet.  Ah, inflation rate decreased to less than 4.4% — with 68 consecutive months of job growth. Ah, tax cuts.

That was just Ronald Reagan.  Imagine what could have been — if we had only elected Ed Brooke.

From today’s Washington Post:

… in the Republican Party, Sen. Edward Brooke of Massachusetts had quietly begun thinking of himself as a future president. As the first African American to be popularly elected to the Senate, in 1966, he had quickly become a national star, called on to give speeches and appear at fundraisers across the country. According to Brooke, Michigan Gov. George Romney talked to him about a Romney-Brooke ticket in the early phases of the 1968 presidential race.

Romney’s campaign imploded after the governor made some ill-advised remarks about being the victim of “brainwashing” regarding the Vietnam War. But the Romney overture got Brooke to pondering his own ambitions. “Why couldn’t I be president of the United States? Is it too soon? How strong would the support of blacks be? Would I be acceptable to white voters in the South and Midwest as I assumed I would be for white voters in New York and the Northeast? I delved into it more than I have said,” Brooke disclosed in an interview.

Like Obama, Brooke had just arrived in the Senate and was already wondering what more he could become. He had been an Army officer in World War II, attorney general in Massachusetts and “had gained a lot of confidence,” as he put it, in navigating segregated environments. In Brooke’s time, the prevailing wisdom was that the only imaginable path to the Oval Office for a black politician would be to somehow get picked as a running mate first. On a few occasions, notably when Richard Nixon was pondering replacements for Vice President Spiro Agnew, Brooke’s name was floated. Soon Brooke began thinking grander possibilities. He even perused some national voting data his staff compiled.

“Had I been reelected in ‘78 and served another term,” he says, “I would have thought about testing the waters.”

Brooke, however, lost that year’s Senate race to Democrat Paul Tsongas and never reentered politics.

And to think, we came thisclose to cheering a Brooke-Bush ‘80 campaign — and reaching a far shinier city on the hill.  Ah, perchance to dream.