Haley Barbour Would Run on His Stellar Lobbying Credentials

Really. Here's GOP12.com, via Ben Smith:

And if I decide to run for President, I won't know what the answer is, either. But I will know this: if I run for President, what you see is what you get, and I am from Mississippi, I do have a southern accent. I was a lobbyist and a pretty damned good one. And I'm very proud -- we were talking before the show came on -- I am happy about my life. I've got a great marriage. I've got great family, and I've had a great career. Wouldn't do anything differently.

And I will tell you this -- the next President of the United States on January 21, 2013 - - is going to start lobbying. He's going to be lobbying Congress, he's going to be lobbying other countries. He's going to be lobbying the business community. He's going to be lobbying the labor unions, the governors, because that's what Presidents do, and I feel like it's an advantage for me to have the chance to do that.

Embracing one's status as a long-time super-lobbyist is certainly... one approach. Perhaps Haley Barbour would be able to spin lobbying into a positive -- but it'll take some real spinning.

Harris polling from February of this year found that a whopping 83 percent of Americans believe political lobbyists exert too much influence in Washington, a number more or less unchanged over polling from the preceding two years. Gallup first tested opinions towards lobbyists back in 2007, and found that Americans put less stock in the ethics and honesty of the profession than any other profession -- less than lawyers (ahem), "advertising practitioners," and car salesmen. Remarkably, Gallup found that Americans' sentiments towards lobbyists actually got worse the next year, with the proportion of respondents rating the honesty and ethics standards of lobbyists as "low" or "very low" rising from 58 percent to 64 percent. This rating was worse than that of even telemarketers.

Hard to envision voters backing a telemarketer for President. Would they be open to a lobbyist -- and a proud one at that? For the answer to that question, we'd have to see just how good of a lobbyist Barbour is.