Mitch Daniels looks and talks like a guy in a painting holding a pitchfork posing grimly next to his sour wife, only Daniels outdoes American Gothic, because you get the sense that he's tightly clenching his buttcheeks so as to prevent leprechauns from stealing his Lucky Charms.
If only he had run for president! He is the Republicans' "A-Team"!
Jefferson “trembled for” our country when he reflected that “God is just.” We must do the same when confronted with the contrasting speeches tonight of Barack Obama and Mitch Daniels. That our best leaders, such as Mitch Daniels, who tonight delivered the finest response to a State of the Union ever, have chosen not to serve, leaves the country to the second-raters. And if we are led by second rate people, we will become a second rate country.
Uh, right.
I tend to agree with a lot of the political-science stuff about how elections are determined by economic factors, and so forth. But I stubbornly cling to the idea that if you can't put on a show, you can't be president -- or at least, you can't stay president.
Mitch Daniels doesn't know that you are supposed to change the speed, tone, and timber of your delivery when you deliver a Rhetorical Haymaker. He has the stage presence of a cube of wood. That he is a labor-hating asshole in his home state is all well and good, but holy shit, he sucks.
Mitt Romney is also really horrible as a public speaker. His laugh especially is just fucking obnoxious and awful.
Newt Gingrich is as it happens not unskilled at rhetoric. George W Bush wasn't either, to give the dummy his due. Not that either is especially inspiring, or even good. But look at it this way: Romney can't even throw red meat to starving puppies effectively.
An underappreciated point is that even by nonsensical non-policy horserace entertainment criteria, the GOP has nothing, now or for years to come.
At least as far as presidential politics goes. Luckily for them, the states-level assault on workers' freedom and the rights of poor people to vote is proceeding swimmingly.
MAS. Preserve us...
I’m currently uploading a “Help us Mitch Daniels, you’re our only hope” holo-message on to an R2 unit.
I feel a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of women suddenly cried out in terror and logged off the Internet forever.