Yesterday, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels sat down with the Indianapolis Star and answered the obligatory 2012 question.
Compared to his previous responses (which have been fairly unequivocal No's), he seemed to be playing coy.
Q: Have you given any thought to whether you could be a presidential candidate?
A: This again! Well, listen, we've got our hands full here. It's very satisfying if we could keep building what we're doing in Indiana.
I've got my mind on the business at hand, and that's a 24/7 job.
Onto more substantive things.
He had sharp remarks about health care and cap-and-trade.
I think the health-care bill is not only a terrible distraction from jobs and what really matters right now, but it would be a crushing blow to small business, just very ill-advised. I really hope Congress will step back from it.
Cap and trade (to cut carbon emissions) is just simply a disaster. It's senseless. Even if -- we don't know this, we don't -- but even if manmade activity may someday in decades raise the world's temperature, this bill won't affect that. It will impose enormous costs.
One aside. If you follow ESPN's Sports Guy, you'll know that Ben Wallace was so underrated he got overrated.
I think the same thing's happening with Daniels -- not as a governor (he's been a very good one) -- but as a Presidential candidate.
Right now he seems to be a very chic pick among those in the know, but think about where Palin, Romney, and Huck are, and try to figure out how Daniels could pull significant support from any of those candidates' factions.
And even as a Veep possibility, Daniels doesn't make a whole lot of sense. If Indiana's close, then the Republicans need a new nominee. If Indiana's red (as it should be) what demo does Daniels bring to the equation?
Daniels is primarily a symbol and model right now -- a symbol of how a Republican can buck a trend with a sweeping reelection in a very Democratic year, and a model of how a state can be run in very bad times.
To come full circle, Ben Wallace was a shot-blocker and rebounder. But he was never a franchise player. It's hard to imagine Daniels as the GOP's franchise.
