Should McCotter Run?

Thaddeus McCotter, a five term Congressman from here in Michigan, is considering a run for President. He's waiting to see what might happen in the next couple of weeks, but feels that there isn't very much excitement among Republican voters within the current batch of GOP hopefuls.

He's certainly right about that. No one in the Republican field is generating any decent press, and this when the sitting Democratic President is weak. The last time we were in a similar situation, Ronald Reagan came out and decimated Jimmy Carter, a fate Barack Obama surely merits. No Reagan is on the horizon to this point, though.

Does this mean that a fellow like McCotter, a great conservative to be sure, has any reasonable chance to grab the nomination? The easy and obvious answer is no. If nothing else, history is against him: no one has leapt from the House of Representatives to the Oval Office since James Garfield in 1880, and he's actually the only one who manged the jump. The Lower House simply doesn't serve as a particularly great base for such an effort. It isn't enough of a national platform. That doesn't mean he can't do it (Michelle Bachmann seems to at least be thinking about it herself) but only that it would be an uphill battle on a steep grade.

McCotter definitely is the type of guy who ought to be President. He's a staunch conservative, well read both intellectually and in terms of the current society (well, he likes Led Zeppelin, if that's not terribly passe), and unafraid to take what the liberal media would paint as controversial stands. But can he win a national race? Not that winning isn't everything on a case by case basis; he could well serve merely to insure that conservative values are at least given cursory treatment in 2012, or plants seeds for later, whether for himself of the broader, truer, right wing movement.

It would probably be better for him to stay in the House, though, building seniority within what will hopefully develop into a long term Republican dominance of that body. Still, the idea of a McCotter candidacy is intriguing. A little window shopping by the GOP electorate might not hurt.