Prepare for Patakimania!

Former New York Governor George Pataki, a Republican who considered running for the White House four years ago, is again mulling a presidential campaign.
“Governor Pataki is seriously considering getting into the 2012 race,” said his former communications director, David Catalfamo. “He is deeply disappointed by President Obama’s utter failure of leadership on the debt issue and in the lack of real solutions being offered by the current Republican field of candidates.”
Catalfamo said there was an “urgency to the decision- making process.” The governor will be in Iowa, site of the first-in-the-nation presidential nominating caucuses, this weekend.

In Tim Pawlenty, the race had a candidate who frequently touted his praise from National Review. I wonder if Pataki will be quoting John J. Miller’s profile of him from a few years back . . .

Ten years ago, he had a chance to become one of America’s great governors. But starting in the late 1990s, he devoted much of his energy to raising taxes and fees to keep up with state spending, arranging billion-dollar backroom deals with union bosses, and worrying about what kind of toilet-bowl cleaners swirl into the potties of Albany. Today, he presides over a state that just finished dead last in a survey of economic freedom conducted by Forbes magazine and the Pacific Research Institute. His tenure as the Empire State’s chief executive began with incredible promise — but its legacy almost certainly will be one of squandered opportunity, shrunken ambition, and conservative disappointment…

Eh, probably not.