Good for his family, bad for his supporters.
That’s the reaction from one longtime backer of Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour following his decision Monday to abandon a bid for the White House.
Barbour, saying he lacked “fire in the belly,” cited the relentless grind of a presidential campaign as the reason behind his choice. The announcement surprised even his closest supporters, and undercut overwhelming consensus among political observers that Barbour would run — and, in fact, would be one of the strongest candidates in a weak Republican field.
Barbour, as Politico reported Tuesday, had his presidential announcement plan already in place: A May 2 launch, followed by a fly-around to Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada and Florida, before winding up in Jackson on Saturday the 7th for a big home-state fundraising bash.
He’d also retained top political talent including Rob Collins as campaign manager and Jim Dyke as media strategist.
“I wouldn’t have signed up with him if I didn’t think he was going to run,” said Dyke, a former communications director for the Republican National Committee. “He was putting together an organization like he was going to run.”
'It horrifies me'
Barbour’s family, meanwhile, had to be relieved. While there’s no easy path to the GOP nomination, early indications were that Barbour would have to endure exceptional scrutiny by the national press — a prospect that his wife and two sons seemed to dread.
“It horrifies me,” Marsha Barbour told a Biloxi TV station earlier this month. “It’s been a lot to be first lady of the state of Mississippi, and this would be 50 times bigger. It’s a huge sacrifice for a family to make. It really is.”
His eldest son expressed similar reservations.
“I am a private person and don’t want him to run,” Sterling Barbour wrote in a recent email to conservative commentator William Kristol that was obtained by the Associated Press.
One Barbour confidant said those concerns weighed heavily on the governor, who lost his own father at age two.
But others said there were more practical reasons that made Barbour an unlikely candidate — starting with the fact that his Southern roots and prior work as a lobbyist made him a tough sell. Barbour, viewed by most experts as one of the sharpest political strategists within the GOP, would have been keenly aware of his electoral liabilities.
Veteran political analyst Dick Morris said Barbour was a darling of Republican “elites” and that he never saw Barbour as a top-tier candidate — a category that he said includes Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Donald Trump, and Michelle Bachmann.
Morris said that Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor who is popular among right-wing conservatives, posed a major problem for Barbour.
“He wouldn’t beat (Huckabee) in a single southern state. In the rest of the nation, his lobbyist record kills him,” Morris said.
Possible White House chief of staff?
Fred Barnes, executive editor of The Weekly Standard magazine, told me that he wasn’t surprised by Barbour’s decision, especially after Nick Barnes, Barbour’s protégé at the Republican Governors Association, signed up as Tim Pawlenty’s campaign manager.
“Barbour was a successful Washington lobbyist and the best Republican national chairman in recent decades,” Barnes said. “He’s done extremely well as governor of Mississippi. But running for president requires raising tens of millions, which he could surely do, and generating massive support among voters, which it’s likely he couldn’t.”
A Barbour candidacy, according to Barnes, would have been more like John Connally’s or Mitt Romney’s than Ronald Reagan’s — “lots of money raised, little popular support generated.”
But Barnes said Barbour may still loom large in the GOP primary, and that there may yet be a role for him on the national stage.
“There’s one big job in Washington at which Barbour would be great: White House chief of staff,” Barnes said. “If a Republican is elected president in 2012, he’d be wise to put as his top priority the hiring of Barbour for that post, which is one of the three or four most influential in Washington.”
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