Has Mitch Daniels won the coveted Jimmy McMillan primary? On first glance, this video might make you think so:
But notice: McMillan never actually said anything about Daniels, so he's still up for grabs. There is a more relevant point here, however. Daniels' main credential as a deficit-cutter is that he was George W. Bush's first director of the Office of Management and Budget. In fact, he was such a budget-slasher that Bush called him "The Blade." So he must have really done a great job cutting the budget, right? Um, no. Daniels was OMB director for a little over two years. Since the budget for the 2001 was set when Bush took office, Daniels would have been responsible for the budgets for 2002 and 2003. And Bush, of course, took the surpluses Bill Clinton bequeathed him, and turned them into deficits: a $158 billion deficit in 2002, and a $378 billion deficit in 2003. That was mostly due to the Bush tax cuts, but spending went up too. So much for "The Blade." Daniels might argue that that wasn't his fault -- policy decisions over which he had little control had the biggest impact on receipts and outlays. Which is true, but it also means that he can't really argue that he has experience cutting the federal deficit. I suppose he could say that he understand the budget really well, even though he was powerless to influence it, and therefore, once he's in the Oval Office making the big decisions, he'll be able to find cuts to make. But that's a different argument, and not a very persuasive one. Something tells me Daniels would rather not spend a lot of time defending Bush's record on spending and deficits.
