The syndicated columnist looks at California's 2010 gubernatorial race, and proclaims that:
An especially intriguing candidate in a colorful field is Tom Campbell. Colorful he is not. "Talk softly and carry a small calculator" could be his motto. What glitter, however, are his résumé and agenda.
He has a Harvard law degree and a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago, where his faculty adviser was Milton Friedman. He clerked for Supreme Court Justice Byron White. Working in the Reagan administration in 1983, in the wake of a severe recession, he assumed Reagan would lose in 1984 ("proof of my political acumen," he says; Reagan carried 49 states) and accepted a professorship at Stanford's law school. He represented Silicon Valley in Congress for five terms. He unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for the Senate in 1992. He won the nomination in 2000 but lost the election. His third statewide run might work because, after Arnold Schwarzenegger's childlike faith in personality as the conqueror of problems, blandness may be charismatic. […]
If Campbell is nominated, he can win, but if Californians were sufficiently rational to nominate him, their state would not be shambolic.
