Southern governors: Best and worst

Today's issue of TIME magazine profiles five of the best and three of the worst governors in the nation. Making the list of best are two from the South: Republican Mike Huckabee from Arkansas and Democrat Mark Warner of Virginia. Among the worst: Republican Mark Sanford of South Carolina and Democrat Kathleen Blanco of Louisiana. Some excerpts:

Huckabee:

Huckabee is now a mature, consensus-building conservative who earns praise from fellow Evangelicals and, occasionally, liberal Democrats.

Warner:

He slashed spending for everything but education, cutting $6 billion in costs, eliminating 3,000 state jobs and even shutting down driver's-license offices one day a week. That gave him credibility as a fiscal conservative, which became important when he discovered that spending cuts were not enough to put the state on sound financial footing for the rest of the decade....He pulled together an unlikely coalition that won enough g.o.p. votes to pass a $1.4 billion tax hike, the largest in Virginia history—and put the state on the road to fiscal stability.

Sanford:

Business leaders are losing patience with Sanford's vetoes of budget items like trade centers and tourism marketing. Even G.O.P. bosses charge that he is worse at economic development than at grandstanding, as when he visited the legislature last year carrying piglets to protest what he considered pork-barrel spending.

Blanco:

She was slow to call the legislature back into session to deal with a nearly $1 billion decline in tax revenue. Her suggested cuts--to education and health care--came under fire last week as unrealistic. In 21 years in state politics, Blanco, a Democrat, was always cautious and deliberative. But those qualities have turned into liabilities.