By Brian Howey

“Don’t let it bring you down, it’s only castles burning.”

- Neil Young

NASHVILLE, Ind. – America has a staggering budget deficit of $1.6 trillion. It is fighting two wars on the other side of the planet. It has apocalyptic public debt of more than $12.5 trillion, which, according to the U.S. National Debt Clock, increases $3.87 billion a day. Wall Street has been in the hands of snake oil salesmen we don’t trust with Yale and Harvard degrees. The U.S. auto industry came close to collapse and Toyota seems to be trying.

There were 75.8 million Americans born during the Baby Boom years (1946 – 1964) who are entering the pay back years for their Social Security. I think of how many prescription drugs they will be gobbling, how many doctors, surgeons and nurses they will need as they grow old, and I shudder.

Brian Howey

 On top of these amazing demographics, we have a political situation in Washington that is in shambles. President Obama is pushing through health reforms that supporters like U.S. Rep. Baron Hill say will reduce the federal deficit by $132 billion over the first 10 years and up to $1.3 trillion in the decade beyond. Republican opponents of the health reforms say they are budget busters (how can anything be more busted than it is now?) and want Congress to “start over.”

 Now, for the real warning. I’m reading Niall Ferguson’s analysis in Foreign Affairs magazine entitled “Complexity and Collapse.” When we talk about waning empires, most of us think they occur over decades or centuries. But it took the Roman empire a mere five decades to collapse, with the city of Rome reduced by 75 percent in that timeframe. The Ming Dynasty in China dissolved much quicker. “The transition from Confucian equipoise to anarchy took little more than a decade,” he writes. The Bourbon monarchy in France “passed from triumph to terror with astonishing rapidity” with its role in the American Revolution to 1789, when a financial crisis summoned the Estates-General which “unleashed a political chain reaction that led to a swift collapse.”

 At the beginning of the 20th Century, the Hapsburg, Ottoman and Romanov empires quickly died following The Great War, a conflict no one expected before August 1914. The British empire dwindled from Yalta in 1945 to 1956 when 13 colonies spun into independence.

 And within most of our lives, there were the Soviets. No one in March 1985 was predicting the Soviet Union would unravel and collapse in a mere six years, including my colleagues and professors at the Indiana University Russian and East European Institute. But that’s what happened.

 Ferguson writes, “If empires are complex systems that sooner or later succumb to sudden and catastrophic malfunctions, rather than cycling sedately from Arcadia to Apogee to Armageddon, what are the implications for the United States today?”

 And this “today” comes a mere year and a half after Wall Street and the world wide financial structure came within hours of collapse. Ferguson explains that it is the “precipitous and unexpected fall that should most concern policymakers and citizens. Most imperial falls are associated with fiscal crisis. All the above cases were marked by the sharp imbalances between revenues and expenditures, as well as difficulties with financing public debt.”

 All a Hoosier has to do is go one state west to find Illinois with an $11 billion deficit, with Gov. Quinn proposing the borrowing of $4 billion for a short-term patch. U.S. public debt is expected to reach $14.3 trillion in 2019. Interest payments that you, dear citizen, must pay, will go from 8 percent of federal revenues to 17 percent during the same span.

 Ferguson writes that while the numbers are “bad,” in the “realm of political entities, the role of perception is just as critical.” Here’s his scary prediction: “One day, a seemingly random piece of bad news – perhaps a negative report by a rating agency – will make headlines during an otherwise quiet news cycle. Suddenly, it will be not just a few policy wonks who worry about the sustainability of U.S. fiscal policy, but also the public at large.”

When I look at the petty gamesmanship in Washington and the race for advantage heading into the November elections, I am coming to the conclusion that this past generation of political leadership has exposed America to dangers in ways few of us truly understand. But these anxiety pangs are throbbing across the state at Tea Party events and those of us with progressive views.

I hope I’m not the butterfly in the Amazon.

The columnist publishes at howeypolitics.com.

By Brian Howey

FRANKLIN, Ind. – It’s been fun watching the national press cover Our Governor – Our Man Mitch. They make observations that many of us locals take for granted. Or if we made them, his press people would bar us at the door. For instance, in a recent Politico article entitled “Mitch the Knife,” long-time GOP operative and Crown Point native Mary Matalin noted that our governor has a “giant brain” and “steely courage.”

Gov. Mitch Daniels

This was meant as a compliment. She also said that Daniels has “unparalleled policy depth combined with razor sharp political skills.” When I heard this description, I kept thinking back to the day when our governor called Speaker B. Patrick Bauer a “car bomber” (still one of my favorite moments during this governorship).

Hoosier GOP operative Anne Hathaway asks, “Do we want a president that’s pretty, or do we want one who can get the job done?” I would never call our governor “pretty.” In fact, I try to avoid talking about the physical attributes of elected officials, save for the ever so telegenic Evan Bayh and Brad Ellsworth.

The Washington Post’s George Will has already consigned our governor to the title of “President Daniels” in 2013, but Will has a mixed track record of predictions. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush calls Daniels “one of the best policy-oriented governors in the U.S.” and Politico quotes an influential GOP official as saying “He’s a budget deficit hawk, but he’s also the interesting reformer.” Most reformers are interesting. Former Gov. Sarah Palin comes to mind. I can’t name a “boring” reformer.

Brian Howey

As for getting the job done, well, there’s just so much more for Mitch the Reformer to do in his remaining two legislative sessions. He’s been a good, steady governor. Greatness still awaits the final two years.

Ross Douthat, the New York Times columnist, wrote this past week that, “If Romney looks like central casting’s idea of a chief executive, Daniels resembles the character actor who plays the director of the Office of Management and Budget.”

If I were to cast someone to play President Daniels in a movie, it would be Ron Howard. Douthat says something that no Indiana reporter would ever write: If Daniels were to become president, “he’d be the baldest president since Dwight D. Eisenhower.” First, our governor is not bald. And I don’t believe we’ve ever had a bald governor. I believe it best to just move on here. If anyone is an expert on bald men with giant brains, it would be Matalin.

Our governor told Douthat, “I’ve never seen a president of the United States when I look in the mirror.” Of course he doesn’t, he sees an aging Opie Taylor.

The Mitch for President phenomenon has more cred now than, say, the Mellencamp for Senate thing flitting about the Internet. Since our governor’s reelection, he and his staff always do the “aw shucks” thing, saying they are honored to be mentioned. A couple of months ago, I asked an extremely informed and reliable Daniels’ source, “There’s still nothing to this Blade for president thing, right?” The response: “Well …”

So all the talk is fueled by a legitimate power source as well as a giant brain wrapped in a fine head of hair.

Here’s my take on this: Our governor does whatever it takes to get a Republican Indiana House elected this November. Then, if that comes to pass, January through April 2011 we watch the most extraordinary long session in modern Indiana General Assembly history. It will be like Unigov joins Major Moves joins A-Plus joins Education Revolution 2.0.

If those stars align, and we see the national GOP on track for a Sarah Palin nomination, I think our governor antes up. He might use the reform session to sling himself into the national orbit. Our governor has the intellectual capacity to build the kind of campaign that the Obama-Axelrod-Plouffe team did in 2006.

I’ve said this a number of times, but Daniels has the ability to play on par with Obama. There are so many similarities to the way they govern, the way they campaign, write their own speeches, TV ads, etc. It would be an extraordinary show.

I think the better bet is that a Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich emerges as a frontrunner and our governor is on the top rung of every veep list out there. That’s a three-month campaign as opposed to a two-year slog that would certainly violate the Cheri Daniels term limits.

The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com.

By Brian Howey

“You’ve got to stand for something; or you’re gonna fall for anything.”

                                                                                                                 – John Mellencamp

NASHVILLE, Ind. – If I had tried to concoct a more bizarre scenario than the one a little more than a week into the post-Evan Bayh era, I don’t think I could do it. Hoosier politics have entered the twilight zone with maybe some David Lynch video and a soundtrack by John Mellencamp thrown in for good measure.

Here’s the sequence. Evan Bayh, the boy bred to be a U.S. senator, announces his retirement on President’s Day. So many jaws hit the floor than it registers on the Richter Scale. He does so just hours before the county signature filing deadline, so Democratic primary voters don’t get to choose the nominee who will be voting on jobs, health reform and, say, the next U.S. Supreme Court Justice. No, it will be the 32-person Democratic Central Committee who makes the choice.

Indiana’s three Blue Dog congressmen are natural heirs. Rep. Joe Donnelly says no thanks. Telegenic Brad “Landslide” Ellsworth ponders. Baron Hill is visiting U.S. troops in Afghanistan and he can’t even talk to his staff. Meanwhile, Bayh says he won’t dictate a successor. And an Internet campaign surfaces to draft Mellencamp and picks up steam by the day.

By Thursday, speculation is rampant that Ellsworth is the guy, despite Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott casting an eye and asking, “Is this going to be an open process?”

Brian Howey

Later that day, I’m told the details. Ellsworth runs for the Senate, with the Politiburo … er … Central Committee quickly lending its imprimatur, even though it can’t officially nominate him until after the May 4 primary.

State Rep. Trent Van Haaften files for 8th District Congress. State Sen. Bob Dieg files for Van Haaften’s House seat. Baron is still missing in action. And on Monday, Ellsworth withdraws from the 8th. He gives up his Congressional seat! (I don’t use many exclamation points.)

So, it’s Ellsworth, right? He’s the guy? He’s never had an opponent (in two Vanderburgh sheriff races and two congressional elections) come within 30,000 votes of him. He was voted the most beautiful hunk on Capitol Hill.

Hey, wait a minute. Baron returns from Afghanistan and tells CNN, he’s “interested.” There is no slam-dunk for Ellsworth on the Central Committee. “A lot of non-committals,” Hill says. “Some for Brad; some for me. So it’s fluid.” Hill is a fiery competitor and while Evan Bayh did drop his bombshell on him while he was on the other side of the planet via a phone call through military channels, you can imagine Baron’s reaction.

Does Bayh’s timing have anything to do with Baron endorsing Barack Obama during the critical 2008 primary homestretch while Evan was telling the team to back Hillary?

My publication – Howey Politics Indiana – that includes analysis and predictions moves the Senate race from “Likely Democrat” and the 8th from “Leans Democrat” into the “Tossup” category. And if Baron leaves the 9th for a Senate race, the 9th probably moves into “Leans Republican.”

The Central Committee is all over the map. The Stonewalls see Ellsworth as anti-gay. The Latinos – the fastest growing voting bloc in Indiana – aren’t on board. By Wednesday, McDermott is describing coming events in each of the nine districts where “all” the candidates will make their pitch, beginning Sunday in Baron’s 9th.

That, in a big, big nutshell, is the position Sen. Bayh – the leader of the modern Indiana Democratic Party – handed them when he decided to quit. There is rampant speculation as to why he quit. He says it was due to the “dysfunctional” nature of Congress. And it is, but not as dysfunctional as it was during the Vietnam era, or the McCarthy era, or when senators were beating each other with canes in the Civil War run up.

Could it be that Bayh’s wife, Susan, sits on the board of Wellpoint, which just jacked up health insurance premiums from 20 to 40 percent? Or that she made $2 million in the last two years sitting on the board?

When we last left Evan, Politico was interviewing him: “I’m concerned about the future of the country,” Bayh said over the phone, with Indiana-grown rock star John Mellencamp waiting on hold to speak with him. “We face some major and gathering crises … and we’re not getting nearly enough done to deal with those challenges. Some of that is institutional, some of that is cultural, (and) the way the place operates.”

The way that which place operates?

The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com.

By Brian Howey

FRANKLIN, Ind. – In the early days of my career as a columnist, I watched a young Indiana secretary of state named Evan Bayh enter office only to find a mess. As the state’s chief elections officer, he had to preside over a Congressional and two legislative recounts in Northern Indiana.

In the 3rd District, Democrat Tom Ward had come within a handful of votes of upsetting U.S. Rep. John Hiler in 1986. Several months later, Bayh ruled that Hiler had won after an arduous recount process, angering some Democrats who had pressured him to rule for the party and not for the process.

Brian Howey

When Bayh abruptly announced last Monday that he would not stand for reelection in a decision that stunned just about everyone, he mentioned that 1986 race. “I cast the deciding vote in the closest Congressional race in the nation for a member of the other political party because I believed he had legitimately won the election,” Bayh said.

He would go on to level a searing indictment of American politics today. “After all these years, my passion for service to my fellow citizens is undiminished, but my desire to do so by serving in Congress has waned,” Bayh said. “To put it in words most Hoosiers can understand: I love working for the people of Indiana, I love helping our citizens make the most of their lives, but I do not love Congress. I have always tried to remember that my job is to work for Hoosiers, not the other way around, and I am constantly reminded that if Washington, D.C. could be more like Indiana, Washington would be a better place.”

His assessment of Congress is on target. I have never been more disgusted with the partisanship and lack of progress and issues such as health care, the deficits and reforming the financial system than I am today.

While Bayh rightly targets this polarization on Capitol Hill, he literally did so by disenfranchising every Democratic Party voter in Indiana.

He waited until the day before the filing deadline to announce his decision. His former chief of staff, William Moreau Jr., told me, “This has been going on for quite some time. Certainly it would be accurate to characterize it as months.” There were reports out of Washington that Bayh had considered retirement, but nobody thought he would do it just hours before the filing deadline.

The irony is that he did it on President’s Day, when his own presidential ambitions have been dashed after using the various stepping-stones – secretary of state, governor, U.S. Senator – to get there, only to be eclipsed by Barack Obama.

Why would he do that?

Evan Bayh

It’s about control. Bayh wants to decide who his successor will be. He just didn’t believe that Democrats could work the process, declare candidacies, build campaigns, raise money, come up with new ideas and bring them successfully before the voters.

All of the natural heirs were completely caught off guard. U.S. Rep, Baron Hill was on a military tour in Afghanistan. U.S. Reps. Joe Donnelly and Brad Ellsworth were already deep into their reelection bids.

Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott was interested in running, but didn’t know if it would be an “open and fair process” and wondered if Democrats had been disenfranchised. “If it’s truly an open seat, let us know. Or let us know if it’s a done deal,” said McDermott.

While decrying the decay of the political process in Washington, Bayh chose to bow out with cynical, controlling paternalism; that Democrats in his home state aren’t mature enough or wise enough to decide who would step up.

The roots of this may stem from 2008 when a barely veiled attempt by his team that controls the party backed Indianapolis architect Jim Schellinger for governor. Schellinger ran a terrible campaign and was defeated by former congresswoman Jill Long Thompson. Both candidates were broke at the end of the primary and Gov. Mitch Daniels went on to win by 18 percent. In the eyes of Bayh and the party elders, the primary was messy, expensive and out of their control.

Literally, as I am writing this column, the Indiana Democratic Central Committee is engaged in a conference call to determine who gets the nomination, instead of the hundreds of thousands of Hoosier Democratic voters who could have decided in a “legitimate election.”

Meanwhile, the five Republicans – Dan Coats, State Sen. Marlin Stutzman, John Hostettler, Richard Behney and Don Bates Jr. – are following the law and lining up the 4,500 signatures needed to qualify for the ballot as a prelude to exercising an essential task in democracy.

Bayh began his elective career as a beacon for not only Democrats, but also hundreds of thousands of Republicans and independents that voted for him. He stood tall in the 1986 election and as governor and senator did many good things. Last Friday night, I had dinner with a Franklin College student who benefited from his 21st Century Scholars program that pays for her tuition.

But Bayh ended it by playing party boss, making a decision for his “children” in the Democratic Party, who hadn’t earned his trust after so many years of doing his bidding.

Howey publishes at www.howeypolitics.com.

By Brian Howey

INDIANAPOLIS – Late on the afternoon of Groundhog Day, U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh was meeting with a group of Hoosiers in his Washington office discussing the green economy. As the meeting broke up, Bayh quipped, “Now I’ve got to go deal with a German ambassador.”

No one in the room but the senator knew that all hell was about to break loose. By ten that evening, Howey Politics Indiana broke the story that former senator Dan Coats was preparing a challenge to Bayh. A quick phone call to Indiana Democratic Chairman Dan Parker as the news was breaking brought a response, “You’re going to make me work this late at night?” followed by the chairman noting a few minutes later that Coats had lobbied for Bank of America. That was curious attention to what would have been obscure detail only hours earlier.

In the next several days, Bayh surrogates from Parker – also his campaign manager – to the Democratic Senatorial Committee unleashed a withering array of information attacking Coats. He is a registered federal lobbyist. He represented Yemen, a terrorist redoubt. He helped Bank of American land $15 billion in TARP funds. He worked for a company with a partnership with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. He lives in Virginia, has since 1999 and has voted there for the past decade. He wants to retire in North Carolina.

Brian Howey

By end of the week, the DSCC was pumping out a video recording with Coats speaking to the North Carolina delegation at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis. It began with the former Fort Wayne Republican saying he wanted to retire to NC, but “don’t tell the good people of Indiana ….” Politico described it as the “nuking of Dan Coats” with a series of “ferocious attacks” that was akin to a “freight train.”

And the attacks were not confined to Democrats. State Sen. Marlin Stutzman, who is seeking the GOP nomination, held a press conference, calling Coats a “Washington elitist.” He followed up on the DSCC attacks by asking, “Dan, the ‘good folks’ in Indiana have some questions. How involved were you and your firm in securing billions of dollars in taxpayer money for the bailouts?” He rhetorically asked about Coat’s law firm and its business with Hugo Chavez; its ties to the “terrorist breeding ground in Yemen.”

These defining attacks came straight from the playbook of … Dan Coats. In 1992 he flattened the aspirations of Democratic Secretary of State Joe Hogsett with video of the Indiana Statehouse while the commercial voice-over asked, “Where’s Joe?” The attacks came early in the campaign, questioning Hogsett’s promise to serve a full term as secretary of state before he challenged Coats.

On Wednesday morning, high above the snowy streets of Indianapolis, Coats affirmed his candidacy, leaving little doubt that he would attain the 4,500 signatures by next Friday, and walked through the attacks, confronting some, explaining others, promising full disclosure in the near future.

He also presented the rationale for his candidacy and it hinged on U.S. Rep. Mike Pence’s decision not to get into the race. Coats said that when Pence “decided not to run, I rose to the call” to take on what he called Bayh’s “presidential war chest.”

Coats said that the anemic fund-raising of the pending Republican field that includes Stutzman, Don Bates Jr., former congressman John Hostettler and Richard Behney – under $500,000 combined – prodded him to get into the race. “That was a major factor because I know what it takes. I believed I was in the best position to get what it takes to make this a successful effort. I didn’t think anyone else could do it.”

As for the criticism, Coats said he talked about retiring to North Carolina because his wife’s 90-year-old parents live there. “I’ve owned property in Indiana for a long time,” Coats responded, though he doesn’t now.

As for his lobbying, he said that the some of his partners represented Bank of America, Yemen and companies doing business in Venezuela. “We’re going to make everything totally transparent and let Hoosiers decide whether what I did was appropriate instead of having the Democratic political machine telling them what I did.”

Coats served 18 years in Congress and points to his work seeking a balanced budget amendment and a line item veto that had U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd vowing its passage “over my dead body.” It did pass in the Senate. Coats, along with then Sen. Sam Nunn, crafted the “don’t ask; don’t tell” approach to gays in the military.

“What has happened in this past year is the American public has woken up to what the liberal agenda really means for this country,” Coats said. “They have spoken resoundingly in Virginia and New Jersey and Massachusetts said ‘no.’ A lot of people are getting that message. Nancy Pelosi hasn’t. Harry Reid hasn’t. Rahm Emanuel hasn’t.”

Speaking about health care, the stimulus and TARP, Coats criticized Bayh, “because every Democratic senator is the 60th senator – it would have taken only one person to stand up and say no and stop this thing. On every one of these issues instead of standing up for Hoosiers, he sided with the president.”

The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com.

By Brian Howey

INDIANAPOLIS – In the very twilight of his Senate career, Dan Coats stopped by my office at NUVO Newsweekly in late 1998 to recap his career and bid farewell.

His career had been one of luck, opportunity and uncanny political ability. He had been an aide to Rep. Dan Quayle, succeeding him in both the House and Senate as he ascended to the vice presidency.

Coats won a tough race against State Rep. Baron Hill in 1990, and in 1992 he ran what I called a textbook campaign against Joe Hogsett. He used a radio ad campaign that spring to jet out to a big lead that was never threatened. With Gov. Evan Bayh looking to reclaim his father’s Senate seat as 1998 approached, Coats soured on the Washington political culture that demanded constant fundraising. He decided to retire.

After an hour-long talk and goodbyes and good lucks, Coats disappeared, only to return a minute or so later in what was to be an unforgettable moment. “I could have beat Evan Bayh,” Coats said, with a look of determination, before departing for a final time.

Last week, with U.S. Rep. Mike Pence deciding against a challenge to Bayh, Coats decided to make a comeback. Coats began calling Gov. Daniels and other state Republicans. A few days before, Coats began plotting with his allies in the Indiana Republican Party, Indiana Right to Life, the Indiana Family Institute and even the Tea Party movement to correct what he perceived to be a historic wrong in his mind; for the nation, for him professionally, and personally.

In the second stunning development of the week, five days after U.S. Rep. Steve Buyer announced his retirement, Coats said he could no longer sit back and watch.

“I have become increasingly alarmed and frustrated about the direction of our country and the failure by leaders in Washington to listen to those they were elected to represent,” Coats explained. “While Hoosier families have tightened their belts and sacrificed to make ends meet during these tough economic times, our elected officials in Washington continue to run up massive deficits, recklessly borrowing and spending record amounts of taxpayer money with no regard for the future generations of Americans who will inherit this staggering and ever-increasing debt.”

In the next two weeks, Coats will use his network to attain the 4,500 signatures needed for certification by Feb. 19. If he does, Coats will almost certainly edge out State Sen. Marlin Stutzman, Don Bates Jr., former Congressman John Hostettler and Tea Party revolutionary Richard Behney to take the Republican nomination for the right to challenge Sen. Bayh.

For the Bayh forces, there was a feeling of incredulity. “He’s not registered to vote in Indiana,” said Indiana Democratic Chairman Dan Parker, who is managing Bayh’s campaign. Parker said that Coats has been registered to vote in Virginia since November 1999 and voted absentee in the Old Dominion in last November’s gubernatorial race. “He can’t even sign his own petition,” Parker said.

Brian Howey

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee came out firing Wednesday morning. “According to filings, Coats lobbied for Bank of America in October 2008, just as the bank was receiving $15 billion in bailout funds. Coats’ firm was compensated $120,000 in the period just before the Wall Street bailouts,” the committee said.

Parker scoffed at the notion that the Tea Party would help attain signatures. “He’s going to ask the Tea Party for support when he helped get TARP funds for Bank of America?” Parker asked.

As the Hoosier political establishment began wrapping their heads around the reality of Coats vs. Bayh engagement 12 years after it was supposed to happen, Sen. Bayh was attending a question-and-answer meeting with President Obama.

Bayh stood up and noted that “ordinary citizens are making sacrifices” and asked, “Why can’t Washington make the same sacrifices? Why should people trust the Democratic Party?”

Obama had a grim expression and answered, “The last time the budget was balanced, there was a Democratic president who made the tough decisions. There was a $200 billion surplus at the end of his presidency.”

Obama explained that under President George W. Bush, “There were two wars that were not paid for; there were two tax cuts that were not paid for.” He likened the situation he inherited to a “cartoon character who’s been handed a ticking time bomb.” He explained, “You didn’t construct it, but you’re holding it.”

Obama counseled Bayh and other Democrats, “The way we regain the public trust is to explain, be honest. We’re not going to get out of this hole overnight.”

The irony for Sen. Bayh is that on the Democratic side, he’s been the one warning of the unsustainable spending and deficits. But he was also the senator with a seat on the Senate Banking Committee who acknowledged the “systemic failure” that led to the Wall Street meltdown in 2008 and the Great Recession of 2009 that has seen 650,000 Hoosiers apply for food assistance.

Now he’s the one holding a ticking time bomb.

The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com.

By Brian Howey

INDIANAPOLIS – We are not seeing any “1.19.13″ bumper stickers – yet, but at the end of President Obama’s first year at the White House, he is receiving a stinging rebuke from the most liberal state in the union with the election of Republican Scott Brown to the Senate.It closed an absolutely wild year and prompted me to go back and look at what I said as Obama entered the presidency. I predicted that given the array of problems Obama inherited when he entered the White House, the deck was stacked against him. I said his approval rating would probably be in the 40th percentile by November 2009. There were too many “damned-if-you-do; damned-if-you-don’t” scenarios.

And here we are! Do you pull out of Afghanistan and take heat as a war wimp soft on terror, or push forward with a surge? On that one, Obama committed troops to what appears to be a quagmire, only to find the next terror attack attempt emanating from Yemen, the new al Qaeda redoubt.

Do you let General Motors and Chrysler liquidate? If you do, the 10 percent jobless rate surges to 12 to 15 percent as the rest of the auto sector collapses. The American manufacturing base – a bare 12 percent of the economy – erodes further. On this one, Obama rejected two GM and Chrysler restructuring plans, forced them into an accelerated bankruptcy, and GM plans to repay its TARP funds by June. Chrysler is still a precarious basket case.

What do you do with Wall Street, the true benefactor of the biggest political payoff in U.S. history with $780 billion at the end of the Bush presidency? Here, Obama has made headlines docking executive bonuses and is now talking about a tax to regain the TARP funds, estranging him from 2008 supporter Warren Buffett. But little has been done structurally to keep the barons from doing the exact same things they did leading up to that meltdown. Here it appears Americans will be condemned to repeat history, though Obama is tagged as the “socialist” while Bush is not. Go figure.

The stimulus? It’s fueling the Tea Party movement. Republicans lash out at the stimulus, but here in Indiana, it bailed the state out and kept severe education cuts temporarily at bay. Without the Obama stimulus, we would be raising taxes and shutting down services. Some economists don’t believe the stimulus was enough and others are outraged that Pelosi and Reid back-loaded it for political advantage later this year. With the jobless rate at 10 percent, I can hear James Carville’s wicked voice: “It’s the economy stupid.”

Energy? We had virtually no energy policy during the Bush-Cheney years. Obama’s efforts to increase CAFE standards and incentives to the electric car sector appears to be paying off, particularly here in Indiana as EnerDel grows and Th!nk comes to the state. In a normal year, this would have been a major achievement. In the year of Obama, it’s almost an afterthought.

Brian Howey

Education? I remember riding back from Kokomo with Gov. Daniels in the fall of ‘08 as he contemplated a potential “President Obama” and said that if he had the guts, he could reshape American education in a Nixon-goes-to-China type scenario. On this front, Obama and Daniels are speaking from a similar script. Daniels and Supt. Tony Bennett have embraced the Race to the Top.

Health care? Now we know why the White House was pressing for the reforms to pass the House last July before the August recess. When they didn’t, the Guns of August appeared, watering the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots and young presidents. This is the proverbial snowball in hell that grew into the ballot box shots in Lexington on Tuesday. Republicans like Sen. Lugar counseled Obama to concentrate on the economy and take an incremental approach. Such counsel fell on deaf ears, even for Obama who used Lugar as a campaign example of consensus building.

You can understand how Obama made the decision to use his political capital early, forge historic reforms and hope that good public policy nourishes his reelection three years hence. Today, it stands in shambles. Obama vowed during countless Indiana campaign appearances that he would reach out to Republicans. It was a half-hearted effort on both sides. Leaving the details to the Congressional liberal leaders has provoked a vigorous backlash.

The deficits? Whew! This just makes folks angry, particularly Republicans and Sen. Bayh. The $1.4 trillion deficit is staggering. But give Obama credit for at least putting everything on the ledger; as opposed to the good old Bush-Cheney days where about a trillion dollars spent on two wars weren’t counted.

So, we’re looking at a one-term president, right? Not so fast. President Clinton lost the health reforms in 1993 and Congress in 1994. Two years later, he had a relatively easy reelection victory over Bob Dole. The problem for Republicans is they don’t even have presidential timber as credible as Bob Dole right now.

The odds were so stacked against President Obama and are even more so today. We just can’t wait to get the Republicans back in control so they keep a lid on things.

Howey publishes at www.howeypolitics.com.

By Brian Howey

INDIANAPOLIS – Usually the people of Massachusetts are seen from the Hoosier perspective as outside the norm: the one state that held out against President Reagan’s landslide in 1984 when morning returned to America.This week, with Americans still in an economic nightmare and no clear end in sight, Hoosier Republicans are telling a vastly different story: The people of Massachusetts are speaking for all Americans. The riveting developments in Massachusetts Tuesday night with Republican Scott Brown winning the late Ted Kennedy’s U.S. Senate race will almost certainly have an impact here in Indiana. The extent is unknown, but within hours key Hoosiers were reacting.

It was a one-state rebuke of President Obama on health reforms, though it is the one state that already has universal coverage. It is also considered one of the most liberal states. But the consequences of one state’s election sent a shudder through the Indiana Democratic Party.

Within hours, the Hotline and Politico were reporting that U.S. Rep. Mike Pence was going to listen to Senate Republican pleas for him to challenge U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh. In late December, Pence chief of staff Bill Smith told me that Pence had no interest in the Senate race. On Wednesday, Smith wasn’t returning phone calls.

A Jan. 5-6 Public Opinion Strategies Poll in Indiana showed President Obama with a 44 percent approval rating and 51 percent “strongly opposed” to the health reforms. It is hard for anyone imbued with conventional wisdom to grasp the idea that Bayh could be vulnerable. You don’t have to be too good at connecting the dots to reach the notion that Evan Bayh is probably looking at his worst approval and reelect numbers since he won the Senate seat in 1998. He’s normally in the 65 to 75 percent approval range. Multiple sources tell me it’s now in the mid-to-low 50s.

Bayh told ABC News on Tuesday even before the votes were tabulated, “There’s going to be a tendency on the part of our people to be in denial about all this, but if you lose Massachusetts and that’s not a wake-up call, there’s no hope of waking up. The only way we are able to govern successfully in this country is by liberals and progressives making common cause with independents and moderates,” Bayh said. “When you have just the furthest left elements of the Democratic party attempting to impose their will on the rest of the country, that’s not going to work too well.”

With another health care vote possibly coming up, logic suggests that such numbers will probably dip further. If Bayh were to vote against the reforms, it would do little to help him with the Republicans and independents he has feasted on politically for years. It would aggravate his Democratic base, part of which is already livid about his tepid support or by the fact that he voted against President Obama 23 percent of the time.

Brian Howey

One of Bayh’s potential Republican challengers – State Sen. Marlin Stutzman, R-Howe, – announced he had signed a “repeal it” pledge on the health reforms pushed by former Indiana Congressman Chris Chocola and the Club for Growth. Chocola told the New York Times that the health reforms “will be the defining issue in 2010.” A national Quinnipiac Poll last week showed 34 percent approving and 54 percent against the health reform bill. Last July, Quinnipiac showed that Obama led Republicans by 20 percentage points on the health care “trust” factor. Last week’s poll showed that Republicans had taken the lead there.

Luke Messer, challenging U.S. Rep. Dan Burton in the Republican primary, decided to file his candidacy at the secretary of state’s office Wednesday morning. “From town hall meetings to tea parties to last night’s election, voters in this country are trying to send Washington a message,” Messer explained. “They are tired of leaders who don’t listen. They are tired of the wasteful spending that threatens the future of our country. The people of America spoke last night.”

So now we know why Obama wanted the House to vote on the reforms last July. When that didn’t happen, the town halls took place with angry crowds seeking to water the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots and young presidents.

Stutzman says he has almost enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. Former Congressman John Hostettler, Winchester financial adviser Don Bates Jr., and Carmel plumber Richard Behney are the other Republicans on Senate signature drives. Some Tea Party tribes have offered to help the Republicans get on the ballot. Hostettler is working through Right to Life and evangelical supporters.

But those campaigns would collapse if Pence were to get in. Some leading Republicans wonder why Pence would opt for a Senate seat when he is so close to reaching top House leadership, which is a more powerful station.

But while some are tone deaf, others hear the call of history.

Howey publishes at www.howeypolitics.com.

By Brian Howey

INDIANAPOLIS – Remember that “freight train of change” Mitch Daniels talked about at the 2004 Indiana Republican Convention?

Well, if you’re a mayor or a city councilman or a county official, it’s coming.

The Indiana House and Senate have each passed resolutions that will create a November Constitutional referendum on the 1-2-3 property tax caps. At this point, I support the people’s right to make this decision. But I’m not sure it’s the right decision. All of us – particularly in the news media – have a lot of work ahead of us over the next 10 months to learn and convey as much as we can about the caps.

As a reporter, I’ve covered city and county government in Peru, Elkhart, Fort Wayne and Indianapolis. As an editor at the Elkhart Truth, I oversaw the coverage of town governments in places like Middlebury, Nappanee and Wakarusa. During this time, I saw frugal public servants pinch pennies. One of these servants was Fort Wayne City Councilman David Long, who is now president pro tempore of the Indiana Senate. He supports the caps.

Places I didn’t cover were cities like East Chicago, which had a population of 32,000 in the 2000 Census and at one point had 1,000 municipal employees. With 16 layoffs this week, it’s down to 750 employees. I didn’t cover Kokomo; where some firefighters get seven weeks of paid vacation a year and lucrative benefits. I didn’t cover Goshen; where the city and Elkhart Township each bought expensive fire trucks that they park about a mile away from each other. And some of the small towns I’ve become acquainted with have 1,000 residents and you’ll see seven or eight police cruisers parked outside town hall a few blocks away from the county sheriff with even more cruisers.

Brian Howey

So there are pockets of Indiana where local officials taxed and spent what they received versus deciding what they really needed. Oftentimes there was nary a thought to share resources with those nearby if they crossed an arbitrary line on the county map.

I also saw school corporations construct lavish buildings, build Olympic sized pools and adorn their football stadiums with artificial turf and big video screen scoreboards. These are the things that motivated Gov. Daniels to push for the caps. And he has an ulterior motive. He wants to collapse the layers and layers of municipal government. It isn’t just Republicans who are pushing this. When Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson sought to end townships in a city that also has county government, former Democratic congressman Andy Jacobs Jr. described government as “layers of ear wax.” It just built up over time.

So the whole exercise of re-evaluating how government has built up over the years is a good one. Businesses do this all the time. They have to become more efficient or they’ll go out of business.

And there has been movement on efficiency. Zionsville and two surrounding townships officially merged on Jan. 1. Voters in Greenwood and White River Township will vote on a merger referendum later this year. So will voters in Evansville and Vanderburgh County. Evansville Schools recently announced a cooperative with New Harmony and other neighboring school corporations. I’m not sure any of this would have happened without the caps.

Having said that, there is cause for concern. About 30 states have some sort of tax caps, but it’s hard to draw lessons from them. We know California is facing a financial crisis as well as many other states and, subsequently local governments and schools. We know anecdotally that many municipalities under caps then pass local option taxes and raise fees, so taxpayers still pay one way or another.

What is disturbing is there is little data available on which caps work well, and which don’t. Proponents of the caps as well as the news media must shed as much light on the caps experience as possible over the next 10 months.

There are concerns about putting “math” in the Constitution. Or the unintended consequences we haven’t fully explored; tying the hands of future General Assemblies and municipalities.

Matt Greller, executive director of the Indiana Association of Cities and Towns, notes that the full extent of the caps has only been in place for a couple of weeks. “Someday soon, as the impact of the caps becomes more broadly felt, the reality is that creativity and drive won’t be enough to continue providing the services that residents of Indiana’s cities and towns deserve and expect,” Greller predicted. “When this happens, I can assure you, the leaders of Indiana’s cities and towns will sleep well knowing that we tried to inform lawmakers of the consequences.”

Consequences? We all have a great deal of homework to do so the taxpayer can get beyond the slogans and make a wise decision that we’ll all have to live with for a long, long time.

The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com

By Brian Howey

INDIANAPOLIS – Former Republican congressman Mike Sodrel was supposed to hit the road and wind his way through 20 southern Indiana counties on Thursday, initiating his fifth Congressional campaign with the target being U.S. Rep. Baron Hill.His entry – delayed by a major snowstorm – only deepens the intriguing set of Congressional elections that have launched across the state and will likely draw another round of national attention to Indiana. It is a fascinating array of circumstances that are generating these candidacies.

With President Obama, we have the first African-American head of state, having inherited an almost unprecedented list of major problems. In heading off a second Great Depression and forcing Chrysler and General Motors into quick bankruptcy, the methods used have ignited a political kickback along with a 10 percent jobless rate. Obama promised to address the health care dilemmas facing many Americans. With Congressional leaders like Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid driving the outcome, health care could play a similar role as the 1994 backlash to the Clinton administration’s efforts to do the same. It helped ignite the tidal wave that brought Republicans into control in Congress.

The tribal Tea Party movement has sprung up in a number of locations across the state and while loosely organized and without a charismatic leader as of yet, it has thrown a wild card into the mix. Sodrel, along with former Republican congressman John Hostettler who is attempting to challenge U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh, have been courting the Tea Party movement.

Hostettler, who served six terms until U.S. Rep. Brad Ellsworth soundly defeated him in 2006, fits the Tea Party profile. He actually supported the Constitutional presidential candidate Chuck Baldwin in 2008 over U.S. Sen. John McCain. “We can’t afford to have Harry Reid and Evan Bayh in Congress for the next six years,” Hostettler said in his campaign YouTube kickoff in early December. State Sen. Marlin Stutzman, Winchester financier Don Banks Jr., and Tea Party activist Richard Behney are also seeking to challenge Bayh.

Brian Howey

Bayh has a $13 million war chest and many observers believe he will be re-elected, but that was conventional wisdom when another young Republican – Dan Quayle – upset his father in the 1980 race Evan Bayh managed.

Sodrel’s re-entry has almost a Hatfield vs. McCoy feel to it. He and Rep. Hill despise each other after butting heads four times since 2002. Hill holds a 3-1 edge in victories, losing only in 2004. Sodrel senses that Hill’s vote on health care and Cap-and-Trade legislation leaves the Democrat vulnerable. And he’s not the only one who feels that way. Todd Young, a Bloomington attorney and deputy Orange County prosecutor, has been campaigning through most of 2009. He’s raised around a quarter million dollars so far. He also has the endorsements of Lt. Gov. Becky Skillman, Treasurer Richard Mourdock, Secretary of State Todd Rokita, Auditor Tim Berry and Attorney General Greg Zoeller. So there could be quite a lively Republican primary before anyone confronts Hill.

In the 5th Congressional District, four Republicans – State Rep. Mike Murphy, former legislator Luke Messer, Brose McVey and Dr. John McGoff – are challenging U.S. Rep. Dan Burton in May’s primary. McGoff came within 7 percent of upsetting Burton in 2008 and might have come closer if independents and some Democrats hadn’t been drawn to the Obama-Hillary Clinton presidential primary. Many believe Burton survives with four challengers and at this point, it doesn’t look like that field will winnow.

McGoff is one of three challengers with a medical background, which sets the stage for the health reforms playing a major role. In the 8th CD, Dr. Larry Buschon, an Evansville cardiologist, is challenging Ellsworth. And in northeastern Indiana, Dr. Tom Hayhurst, a Democratic former Fort Wayne councilman, will run a second race against U.S. Rep. Mark Souder, who defeated him handily in 2006. Souder has been a vociferous foe to the Obama health care reforms.

Finally, State Rep. Jackie Walorski, Jimtown, is challenging Democratic U.S. Rep. Joe Donnelly in the 2nd CD. This is Indiana’s most competitive district, changing hands in 2006 when Donnelly defeated Rep. Chris Chocola, who now heads the Club for Growth and will play a role in Republican attempts to retake the House. Walorski describes herself as a “Glenn Beck” Republican while Donnelly sits as a classic fiscally conservative Blue Dog.

It’s much too early to forecast whether the challengers will have much traction. If Burton and Sodrel lose their primaries, it will stoke speculation of an anti-incumbency trend.

Democrats traditionally lose an average of 24 seats in a president’s first mid-term. Health reforms have the potential of driving those numbers up. But it all really may come down to how the economy is doing.

Howey publishes at www.howeypolitics.com.

By Brian Howey

NASHVILLE, Ind. – There was a blog dispatch a week ago from Bill Kristol – the conservative intellect who thought invading Iraq and the notion of President Palin are good ideas – suggesting that U.S. Rep. Mike Pence challenge U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh in 2010. It was Kristol’s idea of a vivid backlash against Bayh’s vote for the health reforms on Christmas Eve.”Sure, it’s a long shot (Bayh got 62% of the vote in 2004),” Kristol explained. “But if voters are as upset as they may well be, Pence could make the race competitive. If he won, he’d be a leading possibility for national office as soon as 2012. If he loses, but runs a respectable race – which surely he’ll do – he’d have a good shot to succeed Mitch Daniels as governor in 2012.”

It reminded me of my radio conversations on “The Mike Pence Show” with the host. Pence would often say that Evan Bayh likes to shoot the lay up, not the three-pointer.

But on Christmas Eve, Bayh shot the trey, even if it came as the shot clock was expiring and his shoe nudged the arc. Bayh had become one of the undecided moderates in the Senate who confessed to being “agnostic” about the reforms at one point. He used his undecided status to help get a new tax on medical device makers substantially reduced in the Senate bill. Throughout Bayh’s undecided period, he was under intense pressure from labor supporters and Moveon.org to get on board and support the so-called “public option” and then simply to help get the bill beyond cloture and up for a vote.

After casting his controversial vote, Bayh explained, “The health reform debate epitomizes all that frustrates the American people, including me, about Congress and Washington D.C. There has been too much ideology and not enough pragmatism; too much politics and not enough statesmanship; and the national interest has been held hostage to personal and parochial concerns. This process has produced a choice between an unacceptable status quo and an alternative that is less than ideal.”

Bayh called the legislation “flawed,” but added that it ends preexisting conditions and expands Medicare for seniors. It will reduce the deficit by $132 billion in the next decade.

“My bottom line is that this is a close call,” Bayh explained. “With a proposal this large and complex, perfection is unachievable. But one thing is certain beyond any doubt: Inaction will only cause our problems to fester, year after year. This proposal gives us a chance for a better health care system. The alternative is to have no chance of doing better, and that is unacceptable.”

Brian Howey

Just to show how polarized even some of the basics around the health reforms are, Sen. Dick Lugar voted against, saying, “Health care reform legislation debate began with three main goals: to cover almost all Americans, to reduce health care costs, and to not increase federal deficit spending. This bill fails on all three of those goals.”

So whether the reforms actually reduce the federal deficit is up for debate, with answers unclear for much of the next decade.

Bayh has routinely won elections in landslide fashion after winning the governorship in 1988. In contrast, his father – U.S. Sen. Birch Bayh – was an unabashed liberal representing a conservative state. He never won a Senate race by more than 5 percent, including a couple of races that were absolute barn burners.

It had appeared that Bayh had ducked the most credible challenger when former legislator Dan Dumezich decided not to run despite $8 million in war chest commitments. That left little known State Sen. Marlin Stutzman of Howe, Winchester financial adviser Don Bates Jr., and Richard Behney of the Tea Party movement as challengers until former six-term congressman John Hostettler entered the race in November. Hostettler probably emerges as the GOP front-runner due to his southwestern Indiana base and vivid ties to the Right to Life wing of the party.

But a Pence challenge would take this race out of the “Safe” Democrat and into “Leans Bayh” territory. Pence’s name has been floated for everything from the 2012 presidential and Indiana gubernatorial races to staying in the House and dreams of being addressed as “Mr. Speaker” some day.

“Sen. Pence” isn’t gonna happen. Pence chief-of-staff Bill Smith said on Monday that the congressman “has no plans” for a Senate race in ‘10. He will seek re-election in 2010 and “focus on electing Republican majorities” in the U.S. and Indiana houses. As for a potential gubernatorial run, Smith said that decision would come after next November.

That’s good news for Sen. Bayh who won’t be facing an all-star opponent. Of course, Dan Quayle wasn’t considered a top-tier challenger in 1980 when he took aim at the senator’s father and delivered an upset.

Howey publishes at www.howeypolitics.com

By Brian Howey

PLYMOUTH, Ind. – After the Roaring Twenties and the Soaring Sixties, some have wondered what we should call this waning decade.I call it the O-O’s. As in, “oh, oh.” Or as former Indiana Republican chairman Rex Early would pronounce it: “wuh-oh.”

Tens years ago, I was partying like it was 1999 because it was. As the odometer turned to 2000, I stood out on the back deck at a friend’s house, sipped a beer that wasn’t called Fat Tire and toasted the coming year. We all thought the good times were going to keep rolling. It had been a little less than a decade since the Soviet Union collapsed. There was peace. America prospered.

When Gov. Evan Bayh left that office, he would brag of putting 300,000 Hoosiers to work. His successor – Frank O’Bannon – would have a re-election campaign in 2000 featuring a bumper sticker that read, “Thanks a Billion” because we had a big, fat surplus. We had national traumas, like the Oklahoma City bombing and a president who had inappropriate relations with a female intern. But as 1999 turned into the Oh-Ohs, we felt fortunate, prosperous and the sky was the limit.

That all changed on Sept. 11, 2001 when the terror pilots took doomed souls into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. That was followed by anthrax letters sent to Tom Brokaw and others, and the Washington sniper terror. Thus, the tone was set. The U.S preemptive invasion of Iraq was wrapped in abject fear. The smoking gun, the Bush administration told us, could come in the form of a “mushroom cloud.” Colin Powell and the CIA’s George Tenent would show us satellite shots of Saddam’s mobile anthrax labs.

Except, they weren’t mobile labs. Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction.

Brian Howey

Since then, the Oh-Ohs became a carnival house of distorted mirrors. The National Enquirer broke real stories while the Chicago dailies went bankrupt. Everywhere we looked there were facades. Senate Republicans – like David Vitter, John Ensign and Larry Craig – stood for family values. New York Gov. Elliot Spitzer was a crackerjack crime fighter with a squeaky clean image. So was South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford.

Barry Bonds was simply a skilled home run hitter who just gained weight and worked out on his way to a 70-homer season. Tiger Woods was a wholesome family man and a disciplined billion dollar corporate front.

Wall Street had thrown off the regulatory shackles from the pre-Reagan era and was the outlier to the good times. The savings and loans scandal of the late ’80s and the derivatives of the ’90s and the Oh-Ohs were simply aberrations.

There was Enron’s Ken Lay, who went from business darling to California blackouts and corporate scandal built on phantom books.

President Bush would come to the Indiana Black Expo and extol the virtues of the “ownership society.”

Three years later, it was the amalgamation of derivatives, lack of oversight, and a subprime mortgage binge — illustrated by a family acquaintance that worked in the mortgage business. He spoke proudly of how he helped people get into homes who really couldn’t afford them as if he were doing a public service, adding “And it’s all legal.” Our best and brightest young people sought out Goldman Sachs instead of becoming engineers or medical researchers.

As we end the decade, Uncle Sam has sold Goldman the naming rights to the U.S. Treasury. One of the very guys who cooked up the poisonous stew became Time Magazine’s man of the year.

The shift from American wealth coming out of the manufacturing sector to the financial sector was stunning. By the end of the Oh-Ohs, the financial sector created about 24 percent of the wealth, while manufacturing declined to around 12 percent. Both are dangerous signals for a middle-aged empire.

Even more so was the fact that while personal income was declining in Indiana, the top 1 percent of Americans controlled 95 percent of the wealth. During the Great Recession of 2009, manufacturing related income fell 12 percent nationally, but here in Indiana it tumbled by 18 percent, according to columnist Morton J. Marcus.

Last year, Barack Obama took America by storm. Every time I heard him speak, he talked about reaching out to Republicans. Some of the loyal opposition said they would reach back.

In our Oh-Oh house of mirrors, there was no such meeting in the middle. Candidate Obama cited Sen. Dick Lugar in key speeches and even a campaign TV ad. As president, there was virtually no dialogue. The Republicans simply couldn’t ignore the next election 22 months away. Thus, the debate over health reform with the most far-reaching impact in a generation was marked by one-sided conversations. Both sides resorted to contradictory studies. There were more people this past year that decided to predict the future than in any other sequence within memory.

Governing in façade while quartering ourselves in places where we see only the images we want to see is a recipe for falling behemoths.

Howey publishes at www.howeypolitics.com

By Brian Howey

INDIANAPOLIS – Despite a wicked forecast $1.8 billion revenue shortfall pushing the state toward K-12 education cuts, Gov. Mitch Daniels said he is guardedly optimistic that the beginning of the end of the Great Recession of 2009 is getting close.

Brian Howey

Daniels said he has yet to see a “robust recovery” for 2010, but that could change if auto sales begin to increase the same way the recreational vehicle industry is. “I’m very guarded about the national economy,” Daniels said. “But if auto sales pick up moderately” the recovery could begin.

And he was optimistic that new emerging clusters – electric cars and wind industries – are poised for a dramatic takeoff in the state.

I asked Gov. Daniels if there is a parallel between now and 1909 when Hoosier wagon and bicycle makers began converting to manufacturing the horseless carriage. “I think we’re on our way,” Daniels said of fledgling companies like Electric Motor Corp. in Wakarusa, EnerDel in Indianapolis, Bright Automotive in Anderson and perhaps Carbon Motors in Connersville. “The electric car will get here more quickly than I thought it would. We’re off to a fast start. Maybe we’ll be the leading place in electric cars.”

He added that the three windmill related companies locating in Indiana, like Brevini in Muncie, are spreading the word to related companies, potentially forging a new industrial cluster.

The governor addressed a number of other topics:

Kernan-Shepard reforms: Daniels said “we don’t want to take a holiday from reform” and suggested two steps that could be passed in the 2010 Indiana General Assembly. They include revamping township boards and “getting rid of conflicts of interests” with city employees serving on city, county and town councils and boards.

Tax caps: Daniels is optimistic the caps will pass, particularly in light of the 21-3 vote in the House Ways & Means Committee earlier this week. He noted that the caps could set off more mergers, citing completed or pending mergers in Zionsville and Greenwood with surrounding townships. Daniels said there are a couple of school corporations looking at merger options. Enough signatures have been gathered to kick off an Evansville/Vanderburgh County merger referendum this week. Daniels said the tax caps have a “salutary effect” on other local units.

Education reform: He expects no major legislation during the 2010 General Assembly. He said the reforms will be carried out by the State Board of Education and will be a “real revolution” in paving the way for “emphasis on content mastery.”

FSSA: As for the “hybrid” revamp for Families Social Services Administration announced by Commissioner Anne Murphy earlier this week, Daniels acknowledged, “Where we want to be is a long way from here.” He reemphasized that FSSA will “keep the parts that work,” particularly with regard to fraud, “and we press on” with reforms that will increase face-to-face contact with those applying for benefits.

2012 presidential bid: Sitting in a room where Gov. Robert D. Orr offered him a U.S. Senate seat vacated by Vice President Dan Quayle in 1989, Daniels deflected talk of a looming presidential bid. “I’ve got my head down on the business. I’m completely absorbed in what we’re doing now.” Asked why he turned down the U.S. Senate seat that Gov. Orr finally offered Dan Coats, Daniels said he and his family had recently returned to Indiana after working for the Reagan White House. His daughters were ages 2, 4, 6 and 8. Had he accepted the seat, he would have had to run in 1990 to finish the Quayle term and again in 1992. “It wasn’t right for us,” he said.

2010 Battle for the House: Daniels acknowledged he took a big role in recruiting Republican House challengers. “I encouraged a lot these folks to run,” he said. “I’ll do anything I’m asked to do.” He said his recruitment was an effort to “reshape the Republican Party” and to bring “new generation of reform-minded Republicans who will help us forge the next set of reforms.” He added, “We need to have more women.”

His successor: Asked if he has in mind a successor for the 2012 Republican gubernatorial nomination, Daniels responded, “No, I don’t,” but added that he will weigh in “when the time comes.” He added that he has conveyed to potential contenders to “keep their ambitions in check. Let’s get in one good season of reform” before the 2012 race begins.

By Brian Howey

NASHVILLE, Ind. – At this writing, the Democrats in the U.S. Senate appear to have forged a compromise on the health reforms. The public option is kaput, but folks between age 55 and 64 will have access to Medicare.Medicare is part of the “socialized” health coverage that the people who have it don’t want to give up, but many Republicans want to deny the rest of us who work for ourselves or have the gall to have a preexisting condition.

David Brooks, conservative columnist for the New York Times, cast the health reforms as a “values question” for America. He wrote last week, “The bottom line is that we face a brutal choice. Reform would make us a more decent society, but also a less vibrant one. It would ease the anxiety of millions at the cost of future growth. It would heal a wound in the social fabric while piling another expensive and untouchable promise on top of the many such promises we’ve already made. America would be a less youthful, ragged and unforgiving nation, and a more middle-aged, civilized and sedate one.”

I beg to differ. At a friend’s party last week, the conversation turned to health care reform. The guests were mainly entrepreneurial-types whose ideologies were scattered across the political spectrum. When I brought up the notion of a more “middle-aged, civilized and sedate” society, there rose a clamor. Just about every person in the room had a spouse or a significant other who at some point had stayed in a less than desirable job simply to maintain the family health benefits. Sometimes they did so for years or were begrudgingly still employed there.

Brian Howey

One of my friends put on his John Lennon hat and said, “Imagine what we could have done if we had been able to pursue what we really wanted to do, not what we had to do.”

What we’ve witnessed over the past 11 months with this debate on health reforms is one of the worst displays of fear mongering. And it was amazing to watch the Republicans decide that their political prospects in the 2010 elections were more important than solving a set of problems that have bankrupted millions of sick Americans, while denying tens of millions more people health coverage in what is the richest, most innovative nation in the history of mankind. Or that they would side with an insurance industry more interested in maintaining the status quo (and their massive profits) at the expense of families and small businesses stooping under the weight of relentlessly increasing health costs.

What has occurred with the health reform and Cap-and-Trade issues is a widening polarization of politics. We’ve all seen the problems: Families are going bankrupt and the glaciers and ice caps are melting. We have in the President a politician who vowed to tackle the seemingly unsolvable issues just a year ago. We have the entire loyal opposition, which isn’t even at the table when the final reforms are forged.

I’m not an economist and just trying to make sense out of what may be valid concerns. Gov. Daniels is warning Sens. Evan Bayh and Dick Lugar that the current bills could cost Indiana billions in new Medicaid costs. There have been dueling reports and studies on both sides where the intent and facts are murky.

I’ve been amazed at the number of politicians who will tell us with great certainty what the harrowing impact of the reforms will be without even knowing what will actually be in the final bill when it hits President Obama’s desk.

I’m generally an optimistic soul. I tend to believe that when we elect a new president or governor, they ought to have a shot at getting their programs passed. The input is vital from all sides. They can stand for re-election on the merits of their decisions.

The real leadership of President Obama must come when a bill passes the Senate. Both the House and Senate versions – flawed as they are – will then go through the conference process where further changes will come. Even if President Obama signs such a bill, there will inevitably be tweaks and even some major corrections.

I recalled Robert Kuttner’s book “Obama’s Challenge: America’s Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency,” who lists Lincoln, FDR, LBJ and Reagan as presidents who fit the category.” By appealing to what was most noble in the American spirit,” Kuttner observes, “these presidents energized movements for change, and thereby put pressure on themselves and on the Congress to move far beyond what was deemed conceivable.”

Folks, in these dark days, with a brooding winter setting in and a lot of pain in American homes, I hope the reformers in Washington stay the course. The past still appears worse to me than the fears brought forth by the stasists in our midst.

Howey publishes at www.howeypolitics.com

Editor’s note: “lamestream” is a Sarah Palin direct quote and we elected not to use “sic” in the first paragraph.

By Brian Howey

ELKHART – I watched Sarah on Oprah the other day. The ex-governor of Alaska didn’t come off as bad as I thought she would, me being one of those “lamestream media” types.

Actually, I found Gov. Sarah Palin before most Americans did. When there was rampant speculation on whether Barack Obama would put Hillary Clinton on the Democratic ticket, I wondered: Is there a Republican woman ready for a national ticket?

Sadly, the names within the Big Tent Grand Old Party were sparse on the gender front. But I remembered Gov. Palin; went to the State of Alaska website and found the Palin family. I liked what I saw: First Dude Todd Palin and a reformer governor who beat the calcified establishment.

After watching Sarah on Oprah, I began to see all sorts of grays emerge for this Palin story. It has a Dan Quayle tinge to it. An obscure but talented politician is plucked out of the masses and immediately put on the Big Stage with the glare of the klieg lamps and a tormented, craving news media, irritated that they didn’t get the scoop. The campaign handlers lose their grip and the nominee twists and twirls in the gale.

Sarah Palin

There were all those adoring fans, like the 24,000 Hoosiers who showed up during rush hour at Verizon Music Center, or the Hoosier Republican delegate who quickly anointed Sarah “one hot chick” at the national convention.

That was not what the Lugar Series on Public Excellence had in mind. If the Republican Party wants to regain enduring power, it needs to not only expand the Big Tent into regions of America (like New England) but also into demographics. It needs more women in statehouses and Congress. I don’t believe Hoosiers have ever sent a female Republican to Congress,with the exception of  U.S. Rep. Cecil M. Harden who served in western Indiana from 1949 to 1959. The Republicans need to take note of the Indiana Senate, where some half dozen female senators have ascended into leadership.

What we’re seeing unfold with Palin book signings in places like Fort Wayne and Noblesville is a Republican love affair with the ceiling shatterer. I can see why. When she talks of learning her child Trig had that “extra chromosome” as she told Oprah, she asked, “Why us?” Todd replied, “Why not us?” As the step-dad to a lovely autistic 9-year-old, the sequence hit a deeper spot within me than the torrent of Palin fan lust and media feeding frenzy.

She talked about her grandson’s father – Levi – who had just finished his photo shoot with Playgirl Magazine in New York. This is the full thrust of the Palin tabloid glare. But Sarah Palin left the family door open for teenage Baby-Daddy Levi (or is it Ricky Hollywood?), even if Oprah had to coax her into inviting him over for Thanksgiving dinner.

She talked about the infamous Katie Couric interviews. It was those disastrous sessions (along with the infamous turkey decapitation presser after the election) that caused great concern with me over someone so green being a heartbeat away from a presidency that would have to deal with two vicious wars, the Wall Street meltdown, the auto industry collapse, and all the lost jobs.

The ex-governor was saying things the McCain campaign handlers cringed at because she was out of the loop. According to Palin, the worst moments of her Couric interviews got stitched together in several 2-minute packages on the CBS Evening News.

Brian Howey

This has that Jim Baker handling Dan Quayle Greek tragedy written all over it. The McCain campaign had wrapped up the nomination essentially in February 2008 and then it wasted time, money and ultimately the vice presidential nomination luster. And it wasn’t Sarah Palin’s fault. She simply got swept up in the whirlwind.

Now her book, “Going Rogue,” has hit the stands. It seems to be more intent on settling scores. Many Republicans wished she had spent more time studying policy. But it will be No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. Why didn’t Sarah just tell Katie that she reads Newsweek, the Weekly Standard, Rolling Stone and the New York Times?

Last Thursday, Hoosiers lined up to see the ex-governor by the thousands as she began her million-dollar book tour. There will be much speculation on a presidential run, even after her participation in the New York 23 debacle that actually gave the Democrats a critical House vote on health care reform vote.

She is a political celebrity. She is not yet presidential material.

As for Sarah and me, I still can’t erase the great unease that she came perhaps one quote (”the fundamentals of the American economy are sound”) away from the heartbeat away. But after watching Oprah, I found a real, compassionate woman. I hope the Republican Party brings us even more.

The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com

By Brian Howey

INDIANAPOLIS – When I tried to contact Evan Bayh’s Senate office last week for some information and perhaps a brief interview, I knew something was up. It was late morning and the switchboard was swamped. I couldn’t get through, couldn’t leave a message.

Moveon.org was waging a full assault after Bayh told Bob Schieffer on CBS News’ Washington Unplugged on Oct. 28 that he might support the Republican filibuster on the health reforms, “if there are things in the bill I think are just beyond the pale. Some people argue that we should vote to go forward on a bill even if we don’t like it. As we get further along in this, I view procedure and substance as being largely one and the same. I’d like to move forward, but some of that’s going to depend on if it is fiscally responsible.”

Fair enough. After two terms in the Senate, Evan Bayh’s station centers on fatherhood and that of a deficit hawk. But the Congressional Budget Office estimate on Chairman Max Baucus’ bill that passed Senate Finance has it reducing the deficit by $80 billion over the next decade. More CBO estimates are coming.

Brian Howey

With Moveon moving in; as activists descended on Bayh’s Indianapolis and South Bend offices with petitions; and with the Progressive Change Campaign Committee producing a Research 2000 poll showing that 52 percent of Hoosiers backed the health reforms and 51 percent of the Democrats would abandon Bayh for a non-existent primary challenger in 2010, the senator appears to be backtracking.

By Oct. 29, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow reported, “Sen. Bayh told us it is extraordinarily unlikely that he would filibuster health reform. He said there is nothing in the bill he is aware of now that would cause him to vote to filibuster and he said that he currently ‘can’t think of a set of circumstances under which he would vote against cloture.’”

But it wasn’t over. He told WLFI-TV in Lafayette that his comments were misconstrued. “They asked if there were any conceivable circumstances where I might possibly imagine not being able to support the legislation? I said I suppose theoretically, and immediately I was opposed to it going forward, but I made it clear it had to be completely unconscionable and I was unaware of anything that meets that test in the bill.”

Whew.

Evan Bayh maneuvered himself to become a moderate arbiter in the Senate. Now he has become the most conspicuous.

Layered on top of all the health reform drama is Obama campaign manager David Plouffe’s new book, “Audacity to Lead.” Bayh, he explains, essentially lost the vice presidential nomination in August 2008 by a “coin toss.”

“Bayh’s answers to our questions were substantively close to perfect, if cautiously so,” Plouffe writes. “Seeing Bayh right after (Sen. Joe) Biden provided some interesting contrasts and comparisons. Listening to Bayh talk, I thought, ‘There’s no way this guy will color outside the lines.’”

Obama announced on Aug. 17, “It’s Biden.” And while the campaign had to endure Biden’s errant off-script cracks, the choice seemed to reconfirm what many Hoosiers already knew: Bayh is the cautious seeker and not the bold reformer that Barack Obama sought as a partner.

But here’s the delicious twist: Evan Bayh may hold the fate of President Obama’s most prized reforms in his hands. And it comes as even more controversy swirls. The fact that Sen. Bayh’s wife, Susan, made $2 million over the past two years serving on the corporate boards of several health and insurance companies complicates the picture. The fact that she joined all these boards after Bayh joined the Senate in 1999 has some suggesting the family has profited handsomely from the status quo.

Or as CNN’s Rick Sanchez put it last Monday, “A senator whose vote could, in large measure, decide the fate of the health insurance companies, has a wife who’s getting more than $2 million from the health insurance companies. Did you hear what I just said? Yes, I’m talking about you, Democratic Senator Evan Bayh.”

Bayh’s wild week had gotten even crazier. But Plouffe offered cover in his book. “It was clear her positions would draw fire if we selected him,” Plouffe says of Susan Bayh. “He passionately defended his wife’s board service, both terms of her professional qualifications and talent as well as the lengths they both traveled to remove any conflict of interest. We were satisfied he could bat down any question on that front.”

So the emerging narrative on this key sequence in the Bayh political career is one of a deficit hawk, an arbiter, a cautious senator, a man in pursuit of power subsequently denied. And now, Evan Bayh stands at the fulcrum that could define that very presidency.

Howey publishes at www.howeypolitics.com

By Brian Howey

INDIANAPOLIS – President Obama took a midnight trip to Dover Air Force Base and solemnly watched, then saluted, as the flag-draped coffin of Sgt. Dale R. Griffin of Terre Haute was marched off the C-17. Griffin was one of 18 Americans killed in Afghanistan earlier in the week.

Obama’s visit honoring Sgt. Griffin comes as he is grappling with a firm decision on Afghanistan that could ultimately destroy his presidency. It will be a gut-wrenching decision; he will be second-guessed and criticized regardless of which way he goes.

Brian Howey

Former Vice President Dick Cheney accused him of “dithering” earlier this week. In urging Obama to “do what it takes to win,” Cheney said, “Make no mistake. Signals of indecision out of Washington hurt our allies and embolden our adversaries.”

Question: When Cheney controlled the war levers, why didn’t he do what it takes to win in Afghanistan?

U.S. Rep. Mike Pence said in a statement, “The sooner we get moving on the counter-insurgency strategy the better. Our soldiers and the people of Afghanistan cannot afford to wait any longer. Now is not the time to relinquish hard-fought, blood-bought gains in this critical front in the war on terror; now is the time for the President to act decisively to win the war in Afghanistan.”

Question: How do we define “winning?”

How – after nine years when the United States basically neglected Afghanistan for its disastrous decision to invade Iraq – do you build a winning strategy in a country that has rampant corruption, a literacy rate of about 25 percent, no local governments and virtually no urban cores? How can we build a military, police force and government with people that can’t even read? The U.S. would be nation-building from scratch.

Where does the U.S. find the military resources when our Army and National Guard have already been stretched thin by the six-year Iraq war? And then there is the budget deficit every Republican likes to tag on Obama. The Bush-Cheney administration got around it by keeping the Iraq and Afghan wars off the budget (thus avoiding the towering deficits that plague Obama). That is a bizarre luxury beyond Obama’s scope.

If the U.S. price tag for Iraq comes to $1 trillion for a country that has some local governments, urban areas, a relatively high literacy rate and fledgling military and a national government, what will the 20-year price tag be to rebuild Afghanistan and defeat the Taliban?

Would it be $2 trillion? Can we afford this when our own problems on the home front need investment in education, infrastructure, and energy?

Then there’s the public support. An NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll released Wednesday showed support for sending additional troops to Afghanistan at 47-43 percent. That is a reversal from September when 51 percent were opposed and 44 percent supported it. Just 43 percent support sending 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan, which is the recommendation of Gen. McChrystal. The numbers come during the deadliest month, when a total of 70 coalition soldiers died, including Sgt. Griffin and 55 other American soldiers.

The political support will almost certainly erode during what will be a long slog over many years, perhaps decades. Or as Sen. Evan Bayh told me last month, “Afghanistan will not be a perfect place in our lifetimes. Once we can withdraw securely, we should.” Those are not the words of a politically astute senator willing to make the commitment to the nation-building required.

Reporter Dexter Filkins wrote in a recent New York Times Magazine article: The magnitude of the choice presented by Gen. McChrystal, and now facing President Obama, is difficult to overstate. For what McChrystal is proposing is not a temporary, Iraq-style surge – a rapid influx of American troops followed by a withdrawal. McChrystal’s plan is a blueprint for an extensive American commitment to build a modern state in Afghanistan, where one has never existed, and to bring order to a place famous for the empires it has exhausted. Even under the best of circumstances, this effort would most likely last many more years, cost hundreds of billions of dollars and entail the deaths of many more American women and men.

If we are concerned about Pakistan’s several dozen nuclear warheads falling into the hands of the Taliban, perhaps we should consider confiscating and removing the warheads that Pakistan should never have been allowed to have to begin with.

A wiser investment would be to keep the drones in the air and recruit and train the intelligence networks in Afghanistan and Pakistan needed on the ground to keep Osama bin Laden in his cave and the terror camps in USAF crosshairs.

Final question: Will Obama, Cheney, President Bush, Pence and Bayh commit their own sons and daughters to fight this war and rebuild Afghanistan?

The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com

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By Brian Howey

INDIANAPOLIS – “It’s all been about politics.” The day after she became the only Republican in Congress to vote for a health care reform bill, U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine made that comment on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

She said the Baucus bill, while not perfect nor guaranteeing her vote on the final package, was based on market principles and not the “government option.” Snowe added, “More small businesses will have access to this immediately, increasing competition. We don’t have to go outside the system to finance this.”

The price tag at $829 billion over the next decade will actually help reduce the $1.4 trillion budget deficit by $81 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

While America faces real problems on many fronts, Congressional Republicans made a political calculation early in the year: There would be virtually no support for any of Obama’s initiatives. The calculation was made in an effort to position the party to regain power in the 2010 mid-term elections.

The strategy is questionable. A Quinnipiac Poll released on Oct. 7 revealed an approve/disapprove rating for Congressional Republicans at 25/64 percent, with 42 percent of Republicans disapproving. Only 29 percent think Republicans on Capitol Hill are acting in good faith; voters trust President Obama more than Republicans, 47/31 percent, to handle health care; voters 53/25 percent have an unfavorable opinion of the Republican Party.

Brian Howey

On Congress as a whole, the Real Clear Politics average is a 25 percent approval rating and 66.2 percent disapproval. Gallup put that number at 21/72 percent; CBS News had it at 22/65 percent. On the generic ballot question, the Real Clear Politics average is 43.7 percent for the Democrats and 39.3 percent for Republicans, though CBS News has the spread at 46 percent for the Democrats and 33 percent for Republicans.

I had hoped a savvy Republican Party would have designed an alternative plan. With three and a half years before the next presidential election, the party could have enlisted their top thinkers – former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and key Congressional Republicans like our own Mike Pence – to then hit the talk shows and the road to stump for the Republican alternative. Romney actually was one public official who came up with a universal insurance plan, though it is a work in progress.

If the GOP alternative had picked up support in the polls, President Obama might have called them into the Oval Office. Instead, it’s the party of no; defenders of the insurance companies. A June Gallup poll showed only 35 percent of Americans had confidence in them, just above Republicans at 34 percent. That won’t win many elections.

After the Senate Finance Committee vote on Tuesday, Republicans like Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley pretty much cut themselves out of any further negotiations.

As for President Obama, there is disappointment with him, too. I covered probably 20 Obama campaign events in Indiana in 2008 and I heard him say over and over how he would reach out to Republicans and that they would have seats at the table. On Election Night at Chicago’s Grant Park, Obama said, “I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And above all, I will ask you to join in the work of remaking this nation.”

To listen to Hoosier Republicans, the door to the Oval Office has been slammed shut. When I asked Sen. Lugar last summer what kind of dialogue he’s had with President Obama, he said none.

I’ve spent a lot of time with Republicans running for Congress over the last several weeks. To a citizen, they will tell you that the status quo is unacceptable. When it comes to the political consequences, they smile and indicate they expect a bountiful political harvest. When I run the “Republican Alternative” scenario I just described, they nod in agreement and wish it had happened.

Here’s what I think is going to happen. There won’t be a public option, because the President will lose Snowe and maybe Senate moderates like Evan Bayh. The public option is the element most likely to fire up even more vividly the Tea Party movement, which right now is lashing out at all things incumbent and has the potential to grow in the vacuum of failure.

Democrats, meanwhile, are likely to talk about a plan that removes pre-existing conditions, capping what a family would have to pay out in a health catastrophe. A plan that would reduce the deficit, include up to 25 to 30 million people, and help small businesses cap their skyrocketing health care costs.

That will make an interesting contrast on the 2010 campaign trail.

The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com

By Brian Howey, Indianapolis

FREMONT, Ind. – As Barack Obama prepared to assume the presidency at the first of this year, I made this prediction: His approval rating would be somewhere in the 40th percentile by November.

The reason was the array and magnitude of the problems he faced: Two foreign wars, the potential collapse of the American auto industry, the Wall Street meltdown, a severe recession and massive job loss, and his vow to take health care, energy and immigration reforms head-on.

Brian Howey

If he followed the vision he articulated during the 2008 campaign, it would be impossible not to gore special interest oxen, touch third rails, become an apostate to sacred cows, unnerve shallow supporters (like many Hoosier Democrats who were late to join his bandwagon) and the stasists who feast off the status quo. And there are the fear-mongers – remnants of the bewildered Republican Party – who have opposed everything Obama has done and have ratcheted up the attacks.

Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Aug. 18 shows that 30 percent of the nation’s voters strongly approve of the way Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-seven percent strongly disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -7. Rasmussen showed that 51 percent fear the federal government more than private insurance companies. Thirty-two percent favor a single-payer health care system for the U.S. while 57 percent are opposed.

Last Wednesday, Gallup Daily Tracking had Obama’s approve/disapprove at 52/42, the lowest of his presidency. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showed Americans opposing health care reforms 47 – 43 percent.

And the polling decline was not limited to Rasmussen. The Real Clear Politics poll composite had Obama’s approval rating at 53.5 – 41 percent on Aug. 11. These numbers had fallen from June 29-July 1 when Gallup had Obama at 61-30 percent or April 22-24 when it was 66-27 percent. On Feb. 18-19, just days after the stimulus package passed Congress, CNN/Opinion Research had the numbers at 67-29 percent.

Or as President Obama put in at Portsmouth on Aug. 18 when talking about health reforms, “I never said change would be easy. If it were easy, it would have already been done. Change is hard. And it doesn’t start in Washington. It begins in places like Portsmouth.”

Obama continued, “Because the way politics works sometimes is that people who want to keep things the way they are will try to scare the heck out of folks and they’ll create ‘boogeymen’ out there that just aren’t real. So this is an important and complicated issue that deserves serious debate. And I know this: Despite all the hand-wringing pundits and the best efforts of those who are profiting from the status quo, we are closer to achieving health insurance reform than we have ever been. Let’s face it, now is the hard part because the history is clear: Every time we come close to passing health insurance reform, the special interests fight back with everything they’ve got. They use their influence. They use their political allies to scare and mislead the American people. They start running ads. This is what they always do.

“We can’t let them do it again. Not this time. Not now.”

To put this in perspective, a Sept. 20, 2007, Research 2000 poll showed Gov. Mitch Daniels’ re-elect at a paltry 39 percent, with 37 percent saying they would replace him and 21 percent said they would be willing to back another candidate. In the head-to-head, Daniels led Democrat Jill Long Thompson 46-38 percent. In a December 2007 Bellwether Research Poll, Daniels’ approval/disapproval stood at 51/41 percent. Daniels ended up defeating Thompson 58-40 percent in November 2008.

A better comparison would be President Reagan, who dipped to a 35 percent Gallup Poll approval rating on Jan. 8, 1983, only to see it rebound to 61 percent on Oct. 27, 1984, a little over a week before his landslide re-election.

The Obama strategy appears to be this: Do the heavy lifting in the first months of his term. The approval numbers will fall, almost certainly to uncomfortable levels. The pundits will proclaim the president a dead man walking. And then, as Gov. Daniels and President Reagan did, the notion that good public policy is the best politics will kick in, given that his vast array of reforms and controversial decisions bring results.

And this president, like Gov. Daniels, has shown little reluctance to use all of his political capital.

The economy is still in bad shape (though it was in a similar anemic state for President Reagan as late as 1983). We all know how that turned out: A 49-state landslide for The Gipper.

Cap-and-trade energy reforms and the health care reforms have proven to be incredibly controversial and no one knows how such policy changes will impact politically by the time Obama is stoking up his re-elect effort in 2011.

As for Republican glee over Obama’s declining numbers, or Democratic hand wringing, the essence of today’s polls is that this was something to be expected.

The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com