I got a call this morning from Indiana Governor and rumored presidential candidate Mitch Daniels. In my column yesterday on his remarks about a “truce” on social issues, I left the door open to the possibility that the Governor’s remarks may not have been a “rhetorical misstep.”
Of course, if you know anything about Mitch Daniels in this respect he’s the anti-Obama. He’s far more concerned about communication than rhetoric, he’s thoughtful and rarely speaks without consideration. Rhetorical missteps are exceedingly rare.
And indeed, Daniels called me to say that he’s dead serious about the need for the next president to declare a truce. “It wasn’t something I just blurted out,” he told me. “It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while.”
He’s emphasized the need to focus like a laser beam on the existential threats facing the country — the two big issues he’s previously identified being the war on terror and the country’s precarious fiscal position. “We’re going to need a lot more than 50.1 percent of the country to come together to keep from becoming Greece,” he said.
He did, however, want to clarify that he’s not just singling out controversial social issues. “I’m talking about all divisive issues,” he said. Clear and unified priorities are the only way he sees the country rallying around common purposes.
When I pressed him, Daniels did seem to concede that perhaps he hadn’t taken into account how the D.C. media would respond to his remarks by playing up the controversy. But Daniels repeatedly affirmed that this is a serious governing proposal, not an electoral strategy or a case where a politician tells people what he thinks they want to hear.
However, Daniels is making a bold proposal. Inevitably, a president is going to have to make decisions that are seen as divisive. And when he does, he’ll be repeatedly charged with breaking his “truce.”
Still, I suspect that if Daniels is serious about this governing strategy he’ll have a lot more to say about it. Daniels is a guy who likes to know details down to the “granular level,” as one of his associates once told me. If he runs for president and commits to a truce, I suspect he’ll have pretty good idea of how exactly this promise is going to be kept.
Many Republicans might regard a “truce” as a non-starter, but Daniels’ social conservative bona fides and impressive gubernatorial record might mean he’s the rare politician that deserves the benefit of the doubt as he continues to explain himself.
