GORE EVERY OX:

Can skinflint Mitch Daniels win the presidency? (Michael Barone, October 10, 2010, Washington Examiner)

As much as any American politician of his generation, he's proved that cutting spending and gaining a reputation as a skinflint is good politics.

Now Daniels is being mentioned as a presidential candidate and he doesn't deny that he's thinking about it. He's been holding dinners with national policy experts in Indianapolis, much as George W. Bush did in Austin a dozen years ago.

And he says that, if he runs, he'll be a different kind of candidate. As for "the federal fiscal picture -- and why don't we have the philosophic debate tomorrow -- as for today, can we agree that the arithmetic doesn't work? We're going to have higher and higher levels of debt."

He goes on. "This is a survival-level issue for the country. We won't be a leader without major change in the federal fiscal picture. We're going to have to do fundamental things you say are impossible."

He believes that "Democrats are better positioned to do this, but they're not going to lead. This will probably be a Republican responsibility." To do what, exactly?

To propose "fundamental changes in entitlements and in the size and scope of the federal government." Because "the machine is going TILT."

He thinks voters may be ready to support such changes because they've had a searing experience with debt and their lives are changing. Younger people may be ready to put up with lower Social Security benefits for high earners because they've seen that some companies' new hires aren't getting the pensions and benefits their elders got. "There's nothing radical about this. It's already happened all over the place."

He's also got some more short-term proposals -- a payroll tax holiday to stimulate the economy, reviving the presidential power of impoundment (not spending money Congress has appropriated), a moratorium on federal regulations.

As OMB director, Daniels was on the National Security Council, and as governor he's visited Indiana troops around the world; he says "it's important to support the commander in chief" on Afghanistan. But he's open to cuts in defense spending beyond those Secretary Robert Gates has imposed. "No question that the system is rigged to overspend," he says, "like health care. No question that defense dollars could be spent better."