With their presidential competitors in the Senate silenced by a break until mid-April, the governors eyeing the White House can flex their executive muscles before less-distracted voters.
Last week, for example, while the Senate spent hours and hours debating and voting on budget amendments, New Jersey’s Chris Christie held a town hall meeting answering voters’ questions about state pensions. Wisconsin’s Scott Walker signed two bills into law.
It’s action versus rhetoric. And pundits wonder why voters gravitate to governors as potential presidents?
Four of the last six presidents were governors, and the two Republicans who routinely top 2016 presidential polls are Walker and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Of 16 major possible Republican presidential candidates, half are current or former governors.
To voters, “being governor of a state more closely resembles the executive office of president than being a member of Congress,” said Drew Gold, executive director of the Saint Leo Polling Institute in Florida.
Being a governor does have its perils. They’re not experts in foreign policy, a potential problem if one runs against Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-runner and former secretary of state.
Still, if you want to be president, put in some serious state capital time. Here’s why:
1. You can more easily explain positions on polarizing issues. You’re just following well-established law on such matters. When Walker agreed to appeal a federal court ruling overturning his state’s ban on gay marriage, he explained, “I’m obligated . . . to support the constitution of the state of Wisconsin.” Courts have since upheld the ban.
2. You’re not part of the most unpopular Congress in recent history. Gallup approval ratings sank as low as 9 percent in the last Congress. In January, they “climbed” to 16 percent.
3. You talk like a normal person. “Members of Congress tend to speak in legislative language,” said Dante Scala, associate professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire. They call each other “gentleman” or “gentlelady” or tout the benefits of “conference committees.” Try addressing an eastern Iowa factory worker as “gentlelady.”
4. You’re used to wheeling and dealing. Governors have to push budgets and bills through their legislatures. That means endless wheeling, dealing and compromising. And governors live among their diverse constituencies, not inside the Washington bubble.
5. You make decisions that directly affect constituents. Governors in virtually all states are required to balance budgets. Even if they try to fudge, most states’ media and watchdog groups track the process so closely that playing games is hard.
6. Your results are easier to see. Last week, Christie visited a new outpatient drug-treatment center. Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, helped dedicated a company’s new technology center. “Governors do a lot of things on a smaller scale than presidents are expected to do,” said Bruce Buchanan, a professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin.
Fact of life alert: Being more practical and less worldly can sting. Walker faced trouble talking foreign policy in February, saying that because he was tough with protesters in his state “I can do the same across the world.” Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a fiscal conservative, approved tax increases during his 11 years in office.
Still, it helps to have governed and stumbled rather than never to have governed at all.
Since 1976, at least one major party has nominated a sitting or former governor for president every four years. The only exception was 2008, when Barack Obama, then a U.S. senator from Illinois, faced Sen. John McCain – though McCain’s running mate was Sarah Palin, who was then Alaska’s governor.