WE ARE NOW on our fourth governor in a row to be touted, in defiance of sound reason, as presidential timber.

First there was Carroll Campbell, who was far too hotheaded and thin-skinned to run the White House gauntlet. Then there was David Beasley, who was too “What, me worry?” He was followed by Jim Hodges, who would never have been even on the long list of any objective observer.

And yet there were those who whispered Potomac dreams to each of them.

And now Mark Sanford.

Detractors at the State House have groused about this governor’s alleged ambitions since his first days in office — ambitions that they say lead him to grandstand with pigs and horses and such rather than work with them to get things done. I dismissed such talk for quite some time.

Then I went to last year’s Republican National Convention. All week, he shrugged off talk of higher ambition. Still, he kept popping up in situations — from appearing as one of the Club for Growth’s “Four for the Future” to fund-raisers to chatting up the national press — that generated such talk.

On Friday, he assured me that “I’m not running for anything, as far as any rainbow in Washington.” As evidence, he pointed out that bigger national names have taken concrete steps in that direction, and he has not.

But that doesn’t stop the talk.

Last month, the libertarian Cato Institute gave him the fifth-highest score on its “Fiscal Policy Report Card on America’s Governors: 2004.” That may seem a slight drop from “Four for the Future,” but they’re tough graders at Cato.

This past week, National Review ran a piece headlined “A Carolina Kid,” in which he was described as “one of the best new governors in the country.” It was there I learned of the “Draft Sanford for President 2008” Web site.

The site (to be found at http://draftsanford.cjb.net/) is the work of “Sean Wisnieski, a western Maryland student of political science and journalism, a registered Republican, and a Bush supporter (albeit a critical one).”

As if Mr. Wisnieski were reading my mind, his home page includes the hypertext query, “Why Him?” The site’s answer is that only Gov. Sanford can stop the spending frenzy of President Bush and the Republican Congress. Given Mr. Sanford’s record as a congressman, voting down pork for his own district, Mr. Wisnieski could have a point — if you don’t require any other qualifications in a president.

On Thursday, a piece by Charles Rowe of the Charleston Post and Courier appeared on the op-ed page of The Wall Street Journal. It mentioned the governor “being named as a national political candidate because of his consistent conservatism, engaging ‘aw shucks’ manner and winning campaign record.”

But it also referred to Mr. Sanford’s biggest drawback as a presidential contender — his lack of accomplishments. Mr. Rowe rightly notes that while Democrats “continue to fight his efforts,” he also “has been unable to generate sufficient enthusiasm for his ideas among Republicans.”

Which makes one wonder how he would generate enthusiasm on the national level. Yet the hype goes on.

National Review seems impressed by his having been for privatizing part of Social Security before President Bush made it cool. The problem with that reasoning is that the president has not yet made the idea cool, although he’s going to try again here Monday.

But ideologues like the folks at National Review and the Cato Institute don’t care whether you get anything done as long as you agree with them. I can recognize this because as an editorialist, I’ve been guilty of the same thing.

Groups like that dig this guy because he doesn’t dig government, and neither do they. (And I mean “dig” both in the sense of “like” and “understand.”) He doesn’t have to accomplish anything to impress them. Which is a good thing, in his case.

Not that he hasn’t accomplished anything. He signed the campaign finance reform that his predecessor vetoed. He deserves kudos for the systematic way he has framed the budget debate each year. Some of it has even rubbed off on the Legislature. But as for making things happen that affect the lives of South Carolinians in ways they might notice — for better or worse — well, it’s been slim pickings. Most of his really good ideas have fallen flat, as have, happily, his worst ones.

Mr. Rowe writes of “Mr. Sanford’s broad reform agenda” including “market competition, fiscal conservatism and government accountability.” This ignores the fact that “market competition” and “government accountability” are incompatible ideas. The market is about risk and freedom. Accountability is about constraints and meeting expectations.

The governor wants to make government more responsible, fiscally and in terms of its actions (paring budgets, restructuring). At the very same time, he wants to make it less responsible and less effective (abandoning the constitutional covenant to educate, and further underfunding agencies that already lack the resources to accomplish their missions).

But he hasn’t gotten much done in either direction.

Lack of accomplishment can be an asset to a politician here in South Carolina. Our voters seem most comfortable with the officeholders who do the least. Witness the immense popularity of both Strom Thurmond and Floyd Spence. While masters of constituent service, neither made much of a mark as a lawmaker. And the voters loved them.

But on the national scene, folks expect their leaders — and especially the president — to get things done. They have often unrealistic expectations along those lines. But anyone who would hold that office has to show that he can at least get some things done.

By that standard, Mr. Sanford has a lot of achieving to do between now and 2008. I just hope that if and when he gets around to it, it’s his good ideas that rise to the top, and not his awful ones.

Write to Mr. Warthen at bwarthen@thestate.com.