Is Romney The New Dole?

The cry baby is the common denominator.

Mitch, Mitt, And The Race They Can Win

Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana is, according to current criteria, a moderate Republican, which is to say an authentic Reaganite. His mentors include respected centrists such as William Ruckelshaus and Richard Lugar. Now David Brooks and Andrew Sullivan want him to run for president in 2012. I'm a little confused about why fans of a more pragmatic conservatism would feel that way. Assuming an incumbent's advantage in a recovering economy, President Obama will probably be reelected. Why waste a candidate who could win in an open year?

Presidential elections aren't parlor games, I realize. Both parties should try as hard as they can to win in order to keep debates vigorous and urgent and give voters a real choice as well as be in the position to exploit the vagaries of circumstance. A young first-term senator from Illinois didn't start out expecting to beat Hillary Clinton. No one expected the September 2008 financial crisis to guarantee the election of whichever Democrat had been nominated.

No, you never know what will happen in politics. You also don't know what's going to happen when a .240 singles hitter steps to the plate, but you can make a pretty good guess. As political scientists have shown and common sense confirms, the smartest money and best candidates have a tendency to stay away from riskier races. The last year a Democratic incumbent was up was 1996, when Bill Clinton, thanks to his survivor's instinct and the ministrations of the great triangulator Dick Morris, seemed well positioned for reelection. So the GOP anointed Bob Dole, a respected warhorse about whom no one seemed especially enthusiastic.

But as the open election of 2000 approached, the drum beat for George W. Bush began two years or more before election day. In Republican circles you could feel the influence and money massing behind him. That's not happening now with any candidate because most of them (such as Daniels, I'd think) are wondering whether this is really the right time to run. All things being equal, the best nominee, whoever he or she is, will be naturally disinclined, since a better chance looms for a shift to the GOP four years later. It will be an especially tough call for Mitt Romney, who lost a strenuous bid for the nomination in 2008 and can't risk being a two-time loser.

Losing matters less to true believers such as those conservatives who, in Richard Nixon's deathless formulation, would rather be right than president. The likes of Daniels and Romney would be wise to leave 2012 to any one of the tea party's Quixotes. Assuming I've read the tea leaves correctly and Obama wins, we'd see if in 2016 the GOP wanted to try to get another pot out a used bag or come back toward the center where the voters are.

Race For The Pure

A civics lesson from Matthew Yglesias:

I know some liberals who are excited about the prospect of a joke candidate like Sarah Palin or Dick Cheney getting the GOP nomination in 2012. Not me. The basic fact of the matter is that power tends to alternate between the two political parties. Ultimately, the nation’s interests require both parties to nominate the best people possible. So I hope the Republicans find someone who’s very smart and compelling and does an excellent job of identifying and explaining the flaws in Barack Obama’s approach.

That's not what actually happens. Whether the races are local or national, the best, and best-funded, candidates end up in campaigns where they have a good chance to win. Was Bob Dole really the best candidate to run against Bill Clinton in 1996 or Walter Mondale against Ronald Reagan in 1984? And as a matter of fact, it's not just Democrats who are rooting for a Palin candidacy in 2012. If Republicans nominate her or someone similar and lose as decisively to Barack Obama as I assume she would, Republicans will learn the kind of lessons about being an inclusive, winning party that only two consecutive losses can teach.

Goodbye, Jack

A contributing editor for "Rolling Stone," rolling through life having inherited his family's distrust of almost all things Republican, describes his flirtations with heresy:

At the time, Richard Nixon defined the concept of the big, bad Republican to me, being evil and all. This was my first mistake -- my family's very rightful rage about Watergate masking any understanding of Nixon's fascinating complexities and intelligence. Ronald Reagan was the opposite in a way -- the man's charmingly genial personality and communication skills hiding in some ways for me the darker side of his political point of view....

Jack Kemp was always considered another "Good Republican" in my house - and of course it didn't hurt his standing with me that he had been a pretty fine quarterback first. We certainly didn't agree with him on every subject, but Kemp struck me then and now as a very decent man who in his own tax-loathing way truly cared even about people who were never going to vote for him, and for whom being a "Compassionate Conservative" was not just some empty campaign promise and horrible historic punch line.

President Nixon and Jack Kemp struck up a hearty friendship in the 1980s, regularly meeting and corresponding. Though no supply-sider, RN admired Kemp's energy and certitude. His football bona fides didn't hurt, either.

When he came to speak at the Nixon Library several years ago, Kemp couldn't sit still long enough to be introduced or, after his speech, to be given his thank-you gift (an Elvis-Nixon mug). It probably shouldn't have been surprising to Bob Dole that in 1996 Kemp turned out to be one of the most undisciplined Vice Presidential candidates in modern history. His irrepressible, voluble nature and our hyper-poll-sensitive modern politics weren't a good match, nor did some of his open-minded social views fit the modern Republican Party.

Once I had the honor of taking him on a tour of the Library. Within five minutes, he (who, after all, know the material far better than I) was conducting the tour himself, telling his fellow museumgoers that while RN had accomplished much to be proud of, he had committed one egregious, unforgivable error: Taking the U.S. off the gold standard. Eternally youthful, principled and gracious, with a heart for freedom and justice, Jack Kemp was a political and policy supernova. Our civic life is poorer without him.