Video: Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels and His State of the State Speech

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels delivers his Indiana State of the State speech

The complete text of the speech is here.

From the Politico this morning.

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels took a different approach, giving a speech destined to make no – or few – national headlines. The most eye-catching line in Daniels’s speech may actually have been a shout-out to President Barack Obama, praising the president’s “call for major change in our system of education.” That was the subject Daniels focused on, the Indianapolis Star reports, proposing to expand charter schools and other school choice programs, and to allow high school students to graduate early and use their senior-year tuition to pay for college. That’s an agenda that could burnish Daniels’s reputation as a conservative policymaker – but it’s not an attention-grabbing national play, like Barbour’s. Add to the picture Daniels’s comment this week that observers shouldn’t “hold [their] breath” for a 2012 announcement from him, and it’s not exactly a fired-up-and-ready-to-go approach to the budding presidential cycle.

Mitch Daniels is a no-nonsense politician with a record of accomplishment in Indiana. If Sarah Palin decides NOT to run for President in 2012, watch Daniels run and soon be head to head with Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee.

Certainly, Daniels is a GOP Pol that bears watching – no matter how much he disdains the national spotlight.