There are two broad categories of Republicans who are running for president in 2016: senators and governors. Senator Rand Paul is the man with the views closest to my own, but I have a strong bias in favor of governors. The Senate, particularly if you are in the minority, is a place to make speeches, to think big thoughts and construct grand philosophies — which, in anything but the smallest of doses, constitutes vice. Talk to a senator from any party or political tendency, and you can count on an interesting conversation. Governors? Dead boring. Even the colorful ones, such as Texas’s Rick Perry: Get Governor Perry started on the specifics of tort reform or his economic-development programs, and his new glasses start to make sense: He may have some big ideas about the Tenth Amendment, but his days are filled with governor stuff: gloriously boring governor stuff.
The Republican party is a more ideologically demanding party than is its opposite number, which is generally a happy thing — philosophy should trump narrow interest-group calculation — but the downside of that is that in the presidential primaries governors are at an inherent disadvantage vis-à-vis senators and other legislators. A senator, especially a senator in the minority, never has to compromise; under Harry Reid’s management, Republican senators really can’t do very much, so they don’t do very much — other than make exciting speeches. There’s no upside to doing anything else. Governors, on the other hand, have to do things — they have to run their states. Some of them, like Scott Walker of Wisconsin, have to work with Democrat-dominated legislatures and electorates that do not vote very much like Texans or Oklahomans. When something exciting happens to a governor, it’s generally bad news. The best executive operations are like the best technology: When it’s working right, you hardly even know that it’s there.
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