by Jules Witcover

In the Republican Party's less-than-scintillating quest for a candidate to challenge President Obama's re-election next year, another prospect of nebulous presidential stature -- Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi -- has dropped out, an action that does nothing to clear the crystal ball.

Barbour is a cheery, good ol' boy from deep in Dixie, veneered with impressive political savvy and credentials beyond his state and region. He certainly could have held his own with the unimpressive field of hopefuls still captivated by White House dreams.

From humble country beginnings in Yazoo City, Barbour learned the intricacies of politics at the knee of one of the South's most savvy and calculating Mississippi Republican chairmen, Clarke Reed, serving impressively as the state party's executive director in the 1970s.

A staunch supporter of Ronald Reagan's failed challenge to the nomination of unelected President Gerald Ford in 1976, Barbour pushed hard against Reed's late convention switch to Ford on a critical procedural vote. Reagan had just accepted moderately liberal Sen. Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania as his running mate in a longshot gamble for the state's delegates, and Reed was outraged but vulnerable.

An unhappy Barbour failed to persuade the White House to ease up on huge pressure on Reed to abandon Reagan. Disappointed, Barbour dutifully read a Reed statement saying "this kind of vice president is too big a price to pay for the (presidential) nomination," and Ford carried the procedural vote and the nomination.

But Barbour's sensitive handling of the Mississippi delegation at Kansas City stood him in good stead. Later that year he worked for Ford's election in the South and in 1980 for the brief, failed presidential campaign of John Connally of Texas. He won the GOP nomination for the Senate in 1982 and was endorsed by President Reagan but lost to entrenched Democratic Sen. John Stennis.

Later in the 1980s, Barbour turned his political knowledge to lobbying and political commentary in Washington, and built a highly successful firm representing major tobacco and oil energy firms and the Mexican government, backing immigration amnesty proposals. In 2003 he was elected governor of Mississippi and in 2009 became chairman of the Republican Governors Association.

The latter posts varnished his political credentials and somewhat eclipsed his lobbying career, but not entirely. Nor did they erase early career racial remarks, including dismissal of the impact of the Ku Klax Klan in Mississippi, remarks he later said were indefensible.

For all his personal popularity with the party and his fundraising skills, Barber never registered higher than single digits this year in the polls among the prospective presidential hopefuls. At the same time, that field appeared to be so shallow and unexciting that when New York business tycoon, self-made billionaire and television celebrity Donald Trump recently declared he was considering his candidacy, he climbed to near the top in some of the surveys.

Barbour could not have been blamed had he looked at the field, as Sen. John F. Kennedy supposedly said to himself in scanning his colleagues on the Senate floor considering a run for president in 1959: Why not me? Some of the others similarly contemplating now, including former Govs. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, Mike Huckabee of Arkansas and Jon Huntsman of Utah, not to mention former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, likely are asking themselves the same.

The one sitting governor who may have the strongest record in office and appeal to moderates and independents as a budget solver, Mitch Daniels of Indiana, also has failed to register in the polls. But he has been a shrinking violet compared to most of the other self-promoters like former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Rep. Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, badly beaten for reelection in 2006.

Daniels, however, won his second term overwhelmingly in his home state, and his low-key manner could make him stand out in the field should he decide to run. He has seemed to enjoy the guessing game in his infrequent national television appearances, but says he will end his own role in it with a yes-or-no sometime next month. Meanwhile the "tension" goes on, with little baited breath among the public.

 

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Haley Barbour Says No | Politics

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