IF ONLY HE LOOKED A BIT MORE PRESIDENTIAL...:

Daniels may be considered for national run (Kevin Rader, WTHR: Eyewitness News)

Governor Mitch Daniels may be picking up more than he bargained for when he accepts an award in Washington D.C. Wednesday.

The governor will be presented with the 2008 Public Official of the Year Award from Governing Magazine, as the Republican Party works to rebuild itself.

If there was one thing Daniels has been adamant about, other than his campaign theme of change, it was in his determination to make his re-election campaign his last campaign.

The biggest surprise one week after his re-election victory is that some Republicans now want Daniels to consider a national run.

Governors Know Best (David S. Broder, November 9, 2008, Washington Post)

After the celebrations of the success of Barack Obama, Joe Biden and the congressional Democrats, it is time to tip the hat to some other people -- with names such as John Hoeven, Jon Huntsman, Jim Douglas and Mitch Daniels. They are Republicans reelected Tuesday as governors of North Dakota, Utah, Vermont and Indiana. [...]

Indiana's Daniels, just reelected to a second term, may offer the best example of the distinctive approach of these politicians. After telling me that he was not sure he had any lessons to offer his party, he began to rattle off important ones:

"One thing we have learned is that fiscal restraint works. We dug out of a deficit and now we have a triple-A bond rating for the first time. Market principles work. We have begun to insure our uninsured, with health savings accounts, paid for with a higher tobacco tax. And I had no trouble supporting that, because I remember what Ronald Reagan said: When you tax something, you get less of it." [...]

Daniels was reelected with almost 60 percent of the vote, and exit polls indicate that a third of the people who voted for Barack Obama on Tuesday also voted for Daniels. His share of the black vote topped 20 percent.

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Posted by Orrin Judd at November 15, 2008 6:52 AM