CUT ALONG WITH MITCH:

The appeal of a Mitch Daniels’s presidential run (Ruth Marcus, May 12, 2011, Washington Post)

I have a soft spot for OMB directors. The job offers a broad perspective on the operations of the federal government and departments’ competing claims for funding. The OMB director knows where the fat is — and the political forces that prevent it from being cut.

I have an even softer spot for governors. Executive experience isn’t essential to being chief executive, but it helps. Dealing with recalcitrant state legislatures or sluggish state bureaucracies is good seasoning for the national stage. In addition, any president has to grapple with issues of federalism; the current fiscal pressures on states make having occupied the governor’s mansion an even more valuable perspective.

But the real appeal of a Daniels candidacy is that I believe he is serious about reducing the debt and realistic about what it will take to achieve that, as a matter of both substance and politics.

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