In this post almost a month ago, I provided my personal assessment of the evolving GOP presidential candidate field.
Regarding Michele Bachman, whom I placed among the unelectable, I wrote,
"Bachman- Too little experience. Just too shallow on experience at this point in her life to run successfully against a sitting president."
Ironically, I failed to mention Tim Pawlenty among the undeclared candidates, just as I forgot he was in the South Carolina debate. Embarrassing, but it says how retiring he is. The weird thing is that, right now, he's probably my favorite GOP candidate.
But, back to Michele Bachman. She was the subject of Stephen Moore's feature weekend interview in the Wall Street Journal. Nothing in that piece gave me angst about Bachman's values or beliefs. I liked that she proudly voted against TARP "both times," is appropriately concerned about Libya due to Wonderboy's failure to make a case for the intervention, and reads Von Mises.
Make no mistake- I believe Bachman is motivated, smart, well-educated as she has seen a need for her various political/legislative positions.
I think that, in terms of values and overall conservative disposition, she'd make a great president. But the job is, above and beyond the inevitable crises and presidential initiatives, a very large and potentially-overwhelming executive job. And I'm just not sure Bachman is up to that.
We've got one inexperienced failure in the Oval Office right now.
How does Bachman poll with independents, versus, say, Pawlenty?
But part of me wonders if I'm wrong to judge Bachman by the challenge of running the bloated federal government we have, rather than the smaller government that will be left after she's finished wholesale elimination of functions and cabinet departments.
Maybe it's time we had a Gordian knot-cutter to match, in scope, cutting federal government size the way FDR, LBJ and Wonderboy all expanded it.
Plus, Bachman keeps focusing like a laser on making 2012 a presidential election focused on the economy. If she can succeed with that, and it's clearly any GOP candidate's strongest topic, she might well make voters forget about her lack of executive experience, which matches Wonderboy's weakness, and, instead, vote for her more sensible economic policies.
Finally, I think Bachman is more thoughtful and less likely to go completely off-script and embarrass herself like Sarah Palin tends to do.
So I'd move Bachman to preferable, but I'm uncertain on her electability as yet. A strong showing among independents would change my mind.
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2 comments:
I keep saying it's about electability, not just capability. Bachman, like Palin will just draw out way too many people to vote against her. I actually believe Palin would be more "capable" than Bachman, but neither of them can win. I'm leaning toward Cain because I am just sick of politicians. I like Pawlenty although, honestly I just haven't "wasted" my time deciding who I want since Pence is out (until 2016). I do NOT want Mitt. Bad Bad Bad. Everyone else just fads into the background.
You and I seem to think alike on this topic.
While I'd regretfully vote for Mitt if he were nominated, I wouldn't like it. He's a GOP version of Jimmuh Carter- a stiff technocrat who won't be able to make decisions.
Cain is still sort of wacky, and has zero government experience, which isn't all good. But he has executive experience.
I find myself most comfortable personally with Pawlenty or Bachman, but still, like you, prefer to nominate whoever is most electable among independents.
-CN
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