For those not in on the joke of this post’s title, it is a send-up of the title of a recent article by liberal pundit Jonathan Alter that dares detractors of Barack Obama to explain why he “deserves to be in a dead heat with Mitt Romney and Rick Perry and only a few points ahead of Ron Paul and Michele Bachmann in a new Gallup Poll.”

Since the article’s publication, some half dozen conservative writers have picked up the gauntlet, and the responses have been so comprehensive and persuasive that it seems pointless to offer another rebuttal. Instead, I will respond to my own rhetorical question, modeled on Alter’s.