ANALYSIS | It's no accident Mitch Daniels is giving the response to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address. His speech is clearly a trial balloon for Republicans to see if he would fare better in the 2012 election than a Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, or Ron Paul.
Daniels has many characteristics the others lack. He's been a governor, something the others outside of Romney lack experience with. And unlike Romney, he's been in office for more than a single term. He's also served in a presidential administration, as President George W. Bush's budget director, something the other four have not done. His private sector experience cements his position as having more experience than the others.
Normally, being Bush's budget director would be a liability, except that he doesn't have the baggage of others in the administration, like Cheney and Rumsfeld. He left before the disastrous second term to govern Indiana. In fact, in Ron Suskind's book, "The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House and the Education of Paul O'Neill," he comes as one of the few voices of reason, warning about long-term budget deficits.
In Indiana, he's been front-and-center in the fight against unions, which should appeal to the base. But he's also closer to the political center on environmental and social issues.
Now I know what you are thinking, that it is too late for Daniels to run. Most of the deadlines to run in the state primaries and caucuses have long since passed. But you falsely assume that our primary system and nomination process are somehow embedded in the constitution. It's the party's choice who it picks as its winner. And that can take place in a convention or in the primary slugfest, which may not even produce enough candidates for someone to secure the nomination (the Mondale-Hart battle of 1984 wasn't even settled until after the last primary day).
There are even precedents for this sort of contingency. In 1952, Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver won the primaries, even upsetting President Harry S. Truman. But Democrats didn't let the bespectacled coon-skin cap mafia-busting legislator represent them. Instead, the delegates selected the more intellectual Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson in 1952, and again in 1956.
But this isn't the 1950s, you think. And Florida's delegates weren't labeled half a person in the last election by the Democratic Party, right? Parties have a lot more power over the nomination process than we think. And if Daniels wows his party faithful and independents, pressure will build to pick him in the Republican convention in Tampa, Florida this summer.
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