Steve Towsley (see full comment) nails it, I think:
I don't care what party Daniels hails from, and doubt most other Hoosiers do. If he takes action, as he seems to be doing, and gets the state out of the morass without doing anything felonious or oppressive to his bosses the citizens, he'll be judged a good governor for the times.
Partisans need to understand that simple arithmetic, and begin to realize in the words of the old saw that you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. Messy prosperity is a vastly better outcome than no prosperity at all.
Gov. Kernan promised incremental change in a system we've had forever. Daniels said the whole system was broken and pledged rapid, systemic changes. Listening to the governor's list of accomplishments in his first year, even the people who voted for him because of a desire for change must have been impressed with the breathtaking pace Daniels has set. Obviously we can expect much more change in the rest of his term, but of what nature?
Consider some of the initiatives he outlined: Putting the toll road up for bid. Encouraging school systems to cooperate more in order to get additional teachers into the classroom. Moving township assessments to the county level. Calling for letting local governments set more of their own agenda. Each proposal can and should be debated on its specific costs and benefits, but there is an overall theme that Daniels' opponents will have to deal with.
It is clear that the governor is determined to change the culture of public service at the state level; indeed, he has gone a long way in his first year in doing just that. But he is encouraging -- sometimes asking, sometimes demanding -- that all public officials at all levels change the way they do business. And he is telling all Hoosiers that they should rethink their relationship to their elected and appointed officials. What do they want from government, and what is the best way to get it?
That is the way, I suspect, that the Daniels agenda will be judged at the ballot box, not on whether he succeeded on this or that specific proposal, but on how Hoosiers think the profound, systemic changes he advocates will suit them. Whomever the Democrats find to run against Daniels, I doubt he or she will be able to argue plausibly that we can just return to the way things were. The governor has changed the nature of the debate. In a state as conservative (in the sense of "resistant to change") as Indiana, that's no small accomplishment.
