How about this man?

William Howard Taft come again?  "Big Bill Taft?"  Chris Christie would be a dark horse candidate for president in 2012.  Not everyone in New Jersey loves him, but, so what? He seems to have clean coat tails.  He seems to run the government reasonably.  

If he were elected, Washington would work its magic on the man to turn him into the usual zombie driven by special interests, but perhaps for a couple of years we would have a reasonable man governing reasonably.  

What are the alternatives?

More Obama?  Left wing disillusionment may leave him with not much more than his Black base and his ego.  A challenge for the nomination?  Only Clinton could do it and she does not seem interested.

Palin?  She has a reliable but small base in the "know nothing" wing of the GOP.

Romney?  Not enough evangelical Christians will vote for the man and they are unimpressed by political correctness.  Chris Matthews alternately babbles and shrieks about a "religious test" for office.  He does not seem to accept that this principle applies to the government, not to voters.  

Huckabee?  A Baptist preacher from Arkansas who is a TV personality on Fox?  That will sell well on the left and right coasts?

Barbour?  A good man but he knows that his voice is a bar to national office. Yankee prejudice?  You bet, but it is what it is.

Pawlenty?  Who?

OK  Who do you think is a likely candidate?  pl

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Christie

 

Comments

[Al]

Rick Perry of Texas. He would have the strengths of his connections to the Bush political apparatus without the weakness of his name. Also would play well with the evangelicals.

[CK]

Dr. Paul. Again. For the Win.

[Sean Paul Kelley]

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas. All indications here in Austin are that he is preparing a run.

[Steve]

I dislike all potential candidates, republican or democratic.

I'm thinking Jeb Bush for the republicans. Only Obama could resurect the Bush brand.

But it's a race to the bottom for both parties.

[Patrick Lang]

All

Governor Perry is a possibility, but, he like Barbour would have to overcome regional prejudice.

Governor Mitch Daniels is another possibility, but he is of Syrian ancestry in part. AIPAC will just love that. pl

[SD]

Bloomberg of NYC. But hard to sell him to the masses. But a week is an eternity in politics. A serious third party run a la Ross Perot could throw the election to someone who would crow about a 'mandate' to govern.

[DanM]

Christie is intriguing. I'm from Jersey. Find his straight talking/bluster simultaneously refreshing and maddening (he does love the grandstand, and he should have driven a harder bargain on the hudson tunnel, not scuttled it). But i think he would face some regional prejudice of his own. And a republican primary? Not staunchly pro-abortion enough, not pro-gun enough (backs jersey's restrictive laws)... on the fiscal stuff they should love him, and i believe he's proven he's not a "faux" fiscal conservative, unlike most of the folks in congress. Basically i see the social stuff is scuttling him. Maybe i'm working off an outdated paradigm though.

Not that it's that relevant, i also worry about him as a heart-attack risk if he runs. Type A, temper, workaholic, and overweight. I generally find him very likeable, though I disagree with him on quite a bit (which may be a measure of his ability to win independents). I do think he's very, very sharp.

[Cieran]

Rick Perry has actively advocated secession from the Union. That will win him some votes, but lose him many more.

I seem to recall that the U.S. fought a war over this issue some time ago. Apparently, Perry doesn't remember that, hence the opposition research against him practically writes itself.

[DanM]

All that said, this video captures why he could be so great on the national stump:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_dDtnr8SlE

[charlie]

Mitch Daniels is a bad joke. HE is the one person -- to the extent you can blame one person -- responsible for our fiscal mess. The director of OMB is supposed to know something about the budget.

Haley Barbour has impressed me also. Perhaps America wants to elect a politician who can cut deals rather than a preacher.

Bobby Jindal is also a dark horse (no pun).

[Carl O.]

Christie would be a disaster. His budget prescription for the municipalities of new Jersey is pushing them over the edge without addressing the underlying problem, which is the disappearance of productive industry in that state. Christie is demanding that the cities cut their spending, but the fact is the tax base to support the cities has disappeared. His policies don't even acknowledge that fact. Take Camden, NJ as the poster child. It has only about 25 percent of the tax base it needs to support the city government. Under Christie, and by extension under Obama's presidency, the city council has been left with only one option: vote parts of the city government, such as half the police force and one-third of the fire department, out of existence. Where does that leave the 79,000 people who still live there? Were Christie elevated to the presidency, he would apply the same medicine to the nation as a whole and we would disappear as New Jersey is, if we haven't already by 2012.

That kind of thinking is not limited to Chris Christie. All those potential candidates suggested in the comments so far have the same problem to one extent or another. What we need is a new FDR, with his Glass-Steagall-TVA approach to the crisis. Nothing less will work, but our political institutions seem to no longer be capable of producing such leaders.

[Lysander]

Ron Paul, or we all might as well stay home. If he runs, I urge you all to support him. For the public's education if nothing else.

[Fred]

Obama's black base is 17% of the population and less of the vote.

Feingold from Wisconsin.

Perry is certainly possilbe on the Republican side. Huckabee has his own Willie Horton problem. Gingrich has had too many divorces to win the Republican primary. Jeb's got too much bagage from the Terri Schiavo case and his own family issues. (W and daughter Noelle.)

How about Al Frankin? At least it would drive the Fox n Friends crowd batty.

[Cameron]

I suspect what we will see, on the heels of his glorious "victory" in Afghanistan, is David Petraeus.

[Roy G]

Bloomberg is the only sane candidate that you've mentioned. He is a true technocrat, and has done a fine job running NYC. Also, he's rich enough that perhaps the special interests may not have enough carrots to persuade him to go against his common sense.

But then again, we've seen how Candidate Obama transformed after the Beltway Apparatus rendered him into the mold.

[The Moar You Know]

The Dems, a party of which I am no longer a member of as of about six months ago, are done for in 2012.

Obama's made only one mistake but it was a lethal one - he didn't believe the GOP when they said that they would fight him on every single issue and piece of legislation the Dems put forward. He still, for some reason, doesn't believe them.

However, the GOP's constant and ongoing sabotage and subversion of the democratic process wouldn't have mattered, if not for the constant, vicious, and indefensible racist kneecapping of Obama by his own party. Yes, I said racist. Go peruse the Great Orange Satan (Daily Kos) or FDL or any of the other many "liberal" sites out there. It's plain enough to see if you choose to see it for what it is.

There will be no primary challenge - no Dem is stupid enough to want to go in and pick up the pieces of the mess that Bush and Obama will have left behind after 12 years of foreign adventurism - so there will be no Democratic president in 2012.

Now, to the point. The next president will be a Republican, so who will that person be? Christie? Unlikely. Jersey is well and truly in the fiscal ditch and Christie doesn't even pretend to have a plan to get them out of it. He just sits there gunning the accelerator hoping that someone will see all the smoke and tow him out.

Palin? Ha, no. She's got a dedicated cadre of brownshirts to be sure, but they aren't enough to swing an election and most of America is utterly appalled at what they see in her.

Romney? Mormon. Not going to happen, which is a shame. I think he'd be the best chief executive of the lot so far.

Barbour? He's got that accent. That's a shame, too, as I think he'd be pretty good as well.

Jindal? Between the racist teabag contingent and most of America, who will recoil in horror at his voice, he doesn't stand a chance.

Jeb? Well, history has seen to the end of that candidacy before it ever got off the ground, which is a shame. I thought Jeb Bush would have made an excellent president, one in the mold of his father, H.W., who got a very unlucky break. But I give H.W. a lot of credit. He knew how to fight a war properly, unlike his dumb kid, and he knew that fiscal conservatism doesn't always mean tax cuts, but rather doing the right thing for the country whether it is popular or not.

Perry? His hair is awesome. His secessionist ravings are not so awesome. That shtick may play well in some parts of the South and in Texas, but it won't go over so well on the coasts. He's done for out the gate, and I'm pretty sure he knows that.

And to address the inevitable: Dr. Paul. The Ralph Nader of the right. No. The man is a lunatic with no connection to reality whatsoever. He can give a good speech and on some issues his heart is in the right place, but if I wanted an government-dismantling anarchist as President I'm sure I could find the real deal at a street protest somewhere and vote for them instead.

[Margaret Steinfels]

If Obama runs (and that's a question), he'll win.

[fasteddiez]

John Thune (South Dakota):
He's photogenic in a news anchor sort of way. He doesn't have a dixie accent. He doesn't come across as an overly dispensationalist fire and damnation type.

[jonst]

Personally, I'm for going along with Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, and getting the hell out of the union. Maybe linking up with the Canadian Maritimes if they are interested. And wish the rest of the nation good luck.

No one worth a damn CAN be President at this point.

Ok, if you stuck a gun to my head.....you remember the old Soviet punch line to that question? "I would say "shoot")

But if you stuck a gun to my head....I would say Jim Webb. But there may be, I fear, a skeleton lurking.

Christie is in search of a White Horse. Petraus thinks he found his.

[jonst]

by the way....Perry is batshit insane in my opinion. But if he wants Texas to succeed from the Union I will be a huge contributor. I would love to see the withdrawal of Texas.

[Patrick Lang]

jonst

Brings to mind the Hartford Convention. It also brings to mind Joel Garreau's old book "The Nine Nations of North America." There's a lot a lobsta in PEI. pl

[Pete Deer]

How about Alfred E. Neumann of the "What, Me Worry?" Party. Campaign slogan;
"You've voted for worse, and you usually do."

Pete Deer

[jonst]

Col,

Yeah, but the only good lobsta is in Maine, by god. LOL.....

Actually, Kennan, in his last book, I think it was, predicated the the 'center could not hold' and the US might break up into different nations. He did not like the equation that he felt was produced when you combined increased diversity (and he did not exclusively, or even primarily, mean racial or ethnic diversity) with increased central rule from DC. Thought that dynamic bode ill or well, depending on your vantage point, for the future.

[Cloned_Poster]

BO

[Nazgul35]

I'm sorry...were we talking skillful leadership and no attachment to interests?

Many of the names bandied about here are beyond laughable.

Perhaps everyone should take a deep breath, put down David Broder and hit teh Google.