Why Mitch Daniels Heres

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Why Mitch Daniels? Here’s one of the lines circulating around Washington.

You may remember that many Republicans and many Bushies put much of the blame for the original President Bush’s 1992 defeat on the independent-minded then-OMB director Dick Darman. So in this administration the idea was, let’s not take any chances. The new director of OMB had to be a genuine hack who not only toed the party line but jumped at the chance for assignments involving public subterfuge and dissimulation.

But you have to wonder whether confidence men and charlatans don’t have some beef with this man for diminishing their reputation. In his recent article in TNR Ryan Lizza quotes Daniels as “derid[ing] debt reduction as paying off ‘foreign’ bondholders.”

Waiter, could I have that ‘responsibility era‘ now please?

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