Mitch Daniels: Not A Serious Candidate

Mr. Truce on Social Issues is still not ready for primetime.

“I encouraged four different people to run,” [Gov. Daniels] says, and failed. (He wouldn’t name them but Haley Barbour appears to have been one of them.) At one point he used the words “if I talk myself into this” when discussing a run of his own. Why might he run? “I believe the country’s at a very perilous point arithmetically. And I haven’t yet—still hope to—seen anyone else step up to it. . . . So far my brethren have been a little hesitant.”

When asked if he was ready to debate President Obama on foreign policy, Daniels said "Probably not."

So he gets points for candor, I guess, but you know what would be better than a candidate with candor? A candidate who has candor AND is prepared to take on the President.

Daniels' default mode seems to be too deliberative, particularly when it comes to foreign policy. He held off commenting on the OBL operation for two days. He similarly doesn't care to venture opinions about Afghanistan or Libya.

Daniels said that “it cannot be illegitimate to ask” if some of the country’s military commitments should be unwound, but he has not yet reached any conclusions about which should be—or, at least, any he is willing to share. On Afghanistan he refuses to second-guess the decisions of the president, to whose greater access to information he defers. On Libya he says only that he has not seen the case for intervention made.

"Refuses to second-guess the President." Maybe it's just me, but I'd prefer a candidate willing to stand up and say that President Obama is doing wrong, not just "arithmetically", but as a matter of policy. At some point, Daniels' forbearance will look less like caution and more like ignorance.

posted by Gabriel Malor at 07:14 AM

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