Our Man Mitch?
I realize that we’re at least a year away from seriously thinking about 2012 Presidential candidates, but that hasn’t stopped the hard-core politicos from conjecturing wildly. Most of the action is on the Republican side of the coming race (which I think is a huge mistake, by the way) and I can think of an easy half-dozen people who have had the frontrunner label slapped on them since Barack Obama won the White House.
I’m not a fan of early predictions. Politics, especially on the national level, is about as volatile as a truckload of old dynamite on a washboard road. It’s very easy for someone’s standing to rocket up one week, then plummet to almost nothing the next. Sometimes those folks come back and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes pure, random chance matters as much as merit, as least when it comes to who gets the spotlight at the right time.
Look at Bobby Jindal as a current example. Jindal was seen as one of the brightest lights of the GOP, a successful conservative politician who wasn’t a pasty white guy who was also wickedly smart. He beat the Louisiana Democratic machine for the Governor’s office and immediately started doing some very good things. Then he gave the Republican response to President Obama’s big “Stimulus Speech” and flopped so badly even Robert Gibbs had to have felt sorry for him. The speech was all wrong for him and he delivered it in a humongous marble foyer with all the passion of a kidnapping victim in a ransom tape.
After that, the pundits largely stopped talking about him as a frontrunner. One speech buried him. However, Jindal has been back in the national news, trying to defend his state from a potentially ruinous oil spill and the ridiculously incompetent Obama administration. His stock is rising quickly as people get to see him in his element, as a leader and a problem-solver. My guess is that he’ll be in the frontrunner mix by the time summer is out. I have no idea whether he’ll stay there or not, but that’s the way of politics. No one’s really out of the game.
Well, okay. Maybe Mark Sanford, but he’s probably the only one.
With that in mind, take some time to read Andrew Ferguson’s excellent profile of Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels. The Governor isn’t a candidate at this point. In fact, he’s said on several occasions that he won’t run for President (a point which would weigh against him in my mind if he does). Daniels is an old-school retail politician; he goes out to the voters (most famously on his own motorcycle) and presses the flesh as opposed to the “stand amongst the styrofoam props and give stirring speeches” style of the current President. And unlike the man who now sits in the Oval Office, Daniels has a long and impressive resume. What’s more, he’s been building that resume with a string of successes in Indiana.
I’m not making any predictions here save one. Mitch Daniels is a smart man and a solid conservative. It would not surprise me one bit if he did run in 2012 and did very well.
Other Posts of Interest:
- Okay, GOP Candidates, Time to Put Your Game-Faces On
- Mitt in 2012? If He’s Learned From MassCare, Maybe So.
- So Long Sarah, but Not Goodbye
Category: The 2012 Horse Race, The Republican Minority
Mitch Daniels would make an excellent President for his Governance Skills fixing the train wreck that was Indiana's finances but ironically like a lot of good quality candidates in todays world of Political Beauty Pageants he would not be a strong dynamic TV personality.
Yes its madness to elect people based on how they do the sound bites and manage a hostile to Republicans at least media but unfortunately thats what we have right now.
You may be right. Then again, it's possible that after four disastrous years of a pretty but vacuous President, America will be ready for a leader and an executive.