Road to GOP come back goes through Governors'

Bill Kristol:

The Washington Post's front page story on the Republican Governors Association meeting last week carried the headline "Republican Governors Meet, Glumly." After the jump, the Post bannered its account, "Doom and Gloom at GOP Governors' Meeting."

The gathering didn't seem particularly doomish and gloomish to me. It's true that the governors were realistic about the GOP defeats of 2006 and 2008. As Louisiana's Bobby Jindal said, "They fired us with cause." But this kind of candor from an elected official, in other circumstances, would have warranted a headline like "Candor, Self-Criticism Mark Governors' Meeting" from the Post. Those other circumstances, I suppose, would have been that it was a Democratic governors' meeting.

The mood in Miami was hardheaded and forward-looking. The governors, especially in private, were anticipating with some pleasure the prospect of governing freed of the shadow of either a Republican Congress or a Republican White House. They know their efforts in state capitals will help redefine the party nationally.

They're likely to be the stars of the party over the next few years--those who govern successfully and show an ability to get reelected. And Republicans could pick up governorships in states like Virginia in 2009 and Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan in 2010--in all of which they have promising candidates. Pickups in any of these states would make governors even more central to the future of the GOP. And they figure one of their number will likely be the presidential nominee in 2012. All of this made them pretty upbeat.

One pillar of any Republican comeback will surely be successful practical governance at the state level. The Republican revival of the early and mid-1990s--after the across-the-board defeat of 1992, when the first Bush administration was booted out with 38 percent of the vote--was due in part to the examples of effective state governance by Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin and John Engler in Michigan, to say nothing of Rudy Giuliani's efforts in New York City. Then a governor, George W. Bush, retook the White House in 2000.

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And, of course, politics isn't just--or even mostly--about ideas. It's also about political leadership. To see Sarah Palin at the Republican Governors Association was to wonder at a natural politician. Among her peers she may be in a class by herself--like Reagan or Barack Obama. Can she rise to the occasion? The media remain desperate to deny that she can, and even to deny her a chance to try.

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Palin is a phenomenon, and her future is unpredictable. There are plenty of other Republican governors and ex-governors who would be competent and plausible nominees in 2012. The candidate in 2012 is unlikely to be the problem. The question is whether, at the national level, Republicans will have a compelling platform to run on.

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Palin is someone the media and the voters remain interested in. Maureen Dowd could make just as much fun of Joe Biden's stream of conscience communication as she does of Palin. Palin can learn to talk in soundbites between now and 2012. It is a discipline she has not had to master before and one that Biden still has not mastered. Dowd could also make fun of Obama's mental laxatives composed ostly of uhs, ummms and the like, but she tunes them out when quoting him.

One of the governors at the gathering, Rick Perry does not get the credit he deserves for running the most prosperous state in the union right now. Texas has created half the new jobs in teh country in the last year or so and has largely avoided the downturn in housing that has effected much of the rest of the country. Yet he is not particularly popular in his own state for reasons that are unclear to me. He will be challenged in 2010 by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison in the GOP primary.

The rest of the country could learn much more from Texas government than from Michigan government at this time. The country may be burned out on Texas after President Bush, but it is clearly the most dynamic state in the union right now and it would be a mistake to ignore what Texas is doing right.

I think Bobby Jindal bears watching too. He is the classic policy wonk with a keen eye for details.