By H. N. Burdett
During the administration of George W. Bush, the late iconoclast extraordinaire Molly Ivins wrote: "The next time I tell you someone from Texas shouldn't be President of the United States, please pay attention."
But Fred Barnes is not following Ivins's advice. Not that the executive editor of the neoconservative house organ, The Weekly Standard, might ever be expected to heed the sage counsel of the First Lady of Political Satire. In the latest edition of the Straussian bible, Barnes storms out of the closet to reveal his man crush on Texas Governor Rick Perry.
Prematurely speculating on the identity of the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, Barnes hauls out the litany of usual suspects from Mitch Romney to Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul and promptly dismisses the field as "not terribly exciting." Our intrepid pundit for the young, vibrant, well-written right wing elitist publication which virtually always gets both issues and prognoses embarrassingly wrong, then offers the puzzling observation that the GOP -- the party of "no" -- actually "doesn't require a total makeover," only "fresh talent, preferably with respectable track records, at the national level." Fresh ideas might also help, Fred. Well, all right then, how about one single new idea? This would never occur to Barnes, but then conservatism is mostly about preserving the status quo, so what more should we expect from the greatest minds of the 18th century trapped in some kind of time warp?
Barnes casts his eagle eye toward this fall's election, snorts his bloodhound nostrils and presents three potential Republican nominees for chief executive, each a candidate for Governor this year in his or her respective state albeit with name recognition problems nationwide: John Kasich of Ohio, Meg Whitman of California and incumbent Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana.
The Standard's resident sage admits that Kasich and Whitman would have to win gubernatorial races in November to prove themselves worthy of serious consideration. But even assuming that they do win their races, it would still be quite a stretch if either ran for, much less won, the presidency after serving only two years in their respective statehouses. Barnes goes all the way back to Woodrow Wilson to find a precedent. Wilson was elected Governor of New Jersey in 1910, and President only two years later. Daniels is an incumbent governor, but his prospects for leading the GOP national ticket two years hence would be contingent upon his winning re-election. Two other incumbent govenors -- Louisiana's Bobby Jindal and Mississippi's Haley Barbour -- are mentioned in passing by Barnes, and he brushes off Newt Gingrich like lint on linen in a single sentence: "Gingrich, according to various reports, plans to run."
Barnes leaves not a scintilla of doubt, however, that Rick Perry is at very least The Weekly Standard flavor of the month. He could not be more impressed with the incumbent Texas Governor's 51.1% to 30.3% thrashing of incumbent U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, a sufficiently serious drubbing to render her at best a doubtful candidate to retain her seat in Congress.
Most voters outside of Texas might surmise that winning the GOP nomination for a statewide office there is tantamount to election. The Lone Star state is as reliably Republican as Massachusetts is Democratic. But this is the year that Republican Scott Brown won the supposedly forever safe Democratic seat held by Ted Kennedy for nearly a half century. Texas Democrats are hell-bent to turn conventional wisdom on its head and pull off the reverse of the Bay State upset; they feel that in former Houston Mayor Bill White, they have the horse with sufficient giddyup to make it happen.
White is no run-of-the-mill Democrat. He served two terms as Mayor of Houston, winning by margins of 86% and 91% -- no mean feat in one of the largest cities in one of the nation's largest reliably Republican bastions. In his six years as Mayor, White taught a lesson in humility to anyone who still doubts that there is a correlation between employment and crime, as the Houston area led U.S. cities in job growth by adding more than 34 states combined while crime plummeted to its lowest level in 25 years. Furthermore, the municipal government provided more services -- including parks, libraries and health clinics -- on his watch while consistently reducing property taxes and raising exemptions for senior and disabled citizens.
In receiving the John F. Kennedy Profiles in Courage Award, White was recognized for "his political courage in leading a compassionate and effective government response to the (Hurricane Katrina) disaster." To earn that accolade, while politicians in Louisiana and in the Bush administration were spinning wheels and putting lives at risk by their inaction and bickering over who had jurisdiction over what, the Houston mayor mobilized more than 100,000 Houstonians in the public, private, business and faith-based sectors to help evacuees rebuild their lives with independence and dignity. Governing magazine saluted White by naming him among its 2007 Public Officials of the Year, noting: "In times of both crisis and calm, White, a former business executive...is a cool pragmatist who wants results rather than excuses."
In most other states, such credentials would turn the gubernatorial race into a slam dunk. In Texas, Bill White still has a steep, uphill struggle. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone poll of likely Lone Star voters has Perry leading White by 49% to 43%, with 6 percent undecided and 3% opting for a candidate other than the major party nominees. Still, White is doing an impressive job of playing catch-up in one of the more closely watched of the 37 statehouse races slated for this year. When the Democrat announced his candidacy as recently as January, he trailed Perry by 50% to 40%.
Fred Barnes is right to pull himself together before falling into a total swoon over Rick Perry until the outcome of the November governor's race in Texas is known. Of equal interest is Barnes's take on Sarah Palin. With his boss, Weekly Standard founder and editor, William Kristol, Barnes vetted Sarah Palin and led the cheerleading for placing her on the 2008 McCain presidential ticket. Had the Arizona senator been elected, the ill-prepared and perhaps easily malleable Palin would have been a mere heartbeat away from a septuagenarian president. For the moment, at least, Barnes seems to view feisty Sarah for what she is: an invaluable GOP fundraiser whose White House ambitions, if any, her neoconservative buddies appear willing to abandon at the altar of indifference
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