Now that Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels has opened the door on a presidential run "just a tiny crack," people are trying to stick their feet in and open that door a little wider. Ross Douthat says Daniels is "America's best governor" and that at the bare mention of his name "everyone perks up a bit." Morton Kondracke talks to Daniels about health care, and along the way, "after urging him to run for president in 2012 as a 'conservative who gets things done,' I got Daniels to allow that there's a '2 percent chance' that he might." Mona Charen, in a column our page is running tomorrow, calls him the "anti-Obama":
When Daniels took office in 2005, Indiana, which had been enduring Democratic governors for 16 years, was running an $800-million deficit. Four years later, it had a $1.3-billion surplus. Daniels accomplished this without raising taxes (as 66 percent of states have done); in fact, he passed the largest tax cut in state history. Nor did he cut essential services like education, as 40 states have done.
That last sentence might be outdated or underresearched; "no cuts" certainly doesn't apply to education.
Meanwhile, Daniels isn't keeping a very low profile for someone admitting only to a "2 percent chance" of running for president. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, he touts
