Jonathan Bernstein discusses the strength of the prospective 2012 Republican presidential field:

It seems to me that the first thing to distinguish is between strengths as a candidate for nomination and as a candidate in a general election. It’s pretty clear that these are not always the same thing at all; to begin with, moderation would usually be a minus in primaries, a plus in November. Some candidates have no chance for the nomination because they fail a key litmus test on an issue vital to an important party group, but would be excellent general election candidates if they could somehow navigate that problem.

So: what makes a “strong” or “weak” candidate? For the nomination, I’d start, before anything else, with those veto issues. Indeed, the 2008 GOP field was (in my opinion correctly) thought of as weak in that sense because each candidate seemed to have a serious issue clash with a veto-wielding portion of the party. Thus the demand for a new, broadly acceptable candidate (alas for Republicans, that only managed to produce the ill-fated Fred Thompson semi-campaign).

One thing that makes it harder to estimate the strength of a candidate for the nomination is the ease with which a relative handful of activists can effectively tar a candidate as compromised or tainted very early on. As we are seeing with the treatment of Mitch Daniels, activists from one faction or another will savage a broadly acceptable candidate with no obvious, serious liabilities simply because he does not give their issues the priority that they think he should. This isn’t a matter of single-issue activists objecting to a candidate because of real disagreements on policy. No one can actually point to anything Daniels has said on foreign policy or social issues that would put him substantively at odds with the broad majority of Republicans, but social conservatives and foreign policy hawks interpret a lack of statements on their issues as something close to betrayal. Arguably, Daniels’ main weakness, if we want to call it that, is his consistent refusal to pander to these activists by talking up their issues.

Daniels is convinced that our attention must be focused on the government’s enormous fiscal predicament, and he sees everything else as subordinate or secondary to that. As far as domestic policy is concerned, that’s a very sound position to be taking. It isn’t going too far to say that Daniels is just about the only prospective 2012 candidate making an argument for a governing agenda. He seems to be paying all of his attention to the area of policy he knows best at a time when many conservatives are at least claiming that they take the problem of mounting debt seriously. Since he has not spent a lot of time governing as a social conservative firebrand, it doesn’t make sense for him to campaign as one, and as a governor he isn’t plunging into a foreign policy realm that is less familiar to him. That’s not a bad idea. Unlike certain former governors, he isn’t making the mistake of recycling bad think tank talking points as if they were insights into international affairs.

Despite making a very good impression with his CPAC speech, and despite having a reasonably good record as governor, the received wisdom (as offered by social conservative activists and foreign policy hawks) is that he is blundering terribly. Perhaps that’s right, and perhaps it matters more to pander and offer irrelevant lip service on lower priorities, but I would think that someone conveying expertise, competence, and leadership on the most pressing policy questions of the day ought to be considered a very strong candidate. That Daniels seems to be regarded as weak or perhaps even fatally flawed at this point tells us more about some of the inherent flaws in the Republican nominating process than it does about the 2012 field.

P.S. In light of Obama’s determined effort to avoid fiscal responsibility, a Daniels candidacy offers an even better contrast with the current administration.