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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2011 > May > 28 > Entry
Martin Gottlieb: Longing for Daniels more about Palin than Obama
Mitch Daniels gets to be the unattainable, the “if-only,” the unblemished.
The decision by the Republican governor of Indiana not to run for president is being bemoaned by all manner of Republican and non-Republican voices, as if he was the magic guy.
And, in fact, the bemoaners do have a point, given, especially, the other names in the field.
Daniels has not been the miracle worker in Indiana that he is sometimes portrayed as. But he is a sober, experienced, independent man. He was in charge of the budget under President George W. Bush.
He had the nerve to tell social conservatives in his party to give it a rest for a while, to let the national debate revolve around economic issues. He has declined to take a “no-new-taxes” pledge.
Serious people would have to take him seriously, whatever they might think of the likes of Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann or the politically departed Donald Trump.
Others in the field — former governors Tim Pawlenty, Jon Huntsman Jr. and Mitt Romney — deserve to be taken as seriously as anybody. But they are the reason some people are still looking around.
A family man does what he has to do for his family. Daniels says his family didn’t want him to run. That appears to reflect concern about family history being dredged up. If that’s the reason, it’s sad.
Daniels and his wife were divorced for a while. She left the state where her children lived (after trying to win custody) and married somebody else.
Politically, this is a totally surmountable problem, the kind of thing that would make headlines for a while then fade, like Bill Clinton’s sex life or George W. Bush’s drinking life.
But, yes, there would be that national spotlight, given “family values” and all that. Politically engaged people in Ohio first came to know Daniels mainly because John Kasich talked about him so much during the 2010 campaign.
By that time, Daniels had become a favorite of conservative magazines and other such outlets. This is a common way for Republicans to move toward the national ticket.
When George W. Bush emerged as the favorite of the Republican establishment in 2000, it wasn’t entirely because of his name, which was hardly seen as political magic. It was partly because he had won Democratic support in Texas and coasted to re-election as governor.
But it was also because the conservative media were citing statistics about educational progress in Texas and crediting Bush. Such opinion leaders as former national party Chair William Bennett put forth those stats prominently. (Years later, the stats themselves came in for a lot of criticism.)
When John McCain picked Sarah Palin for vice president, she came out of nowhere to most people. But the Weekly Standard magazine, the leading voice of McCain’s general perspective, especially on foreign policy, liked her record in Alaska and had given her attention.
In Kasich’s race for governor in 2010, at a meeting at this newspaper, a journalist questioned whether Indiana’s progress under Daniels was really all that great. Kasich seemed surprised, as if he thought that question was settled.
Later, reporters for the Columbus Dispatch looked into the Daniels record and found reasons not to be blown away. After all, Kasich’s main case against Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland was about jobs lost in Ohio on his watch. It turned out, though, that Ohio ranked 42nd worst among the states — percentagewise — and Indiana ranked 39th.
But, after all, there are no miracle workers in the presidential field.
That field may not be so lame as to blow the 2012 election. If it’s the right year for the challenging party, anybody around whom it finally unites ends up looking pretty good to the public.
For the moment, there’s a problem: The candidates who look like they might be credible nominees are generating so little interest among Republicans as to open an opportunity for the others, like Palin, who would have difficulty uniting the party.
That’s really the nightmare that is sending pundits and others scurrying in search of somebody for the party to rally around. If not Daniels, maybe Paul Ryan, the guy with the Medicare plan. Of course, there are certain problems there, too. But somebody.
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