This is two days in a row I’m going to give linky love to the Indianapolis Star, but Matt Tully wrote a darned good column this morning. You should read it.

Gov. Mitch Daniels has bungled his response to valid questions about his use of state airplanes, and that response has kept the issue alive for more than a month now.

With Election Day approaching, Daniels and his campaign continue to offer dismissive answers to the questions hovering around him. The strategy seems clear: ignore this issue and hope it goes away.

I’ve said plenty of nice things about the Guv’s campaigns — this one and the one he ran in 2004. Don’t get me wrong: Both campaigns have been largely predicated on the world as Daniels would like it to be, not the world as it actually is. But no one can argue that the guy doesn’t have some political savvy.

Which is what makes Travelgate so perplexing to me.

Six weeks ago, when the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette broke this story, all he had to do was say, “Oops, you know, in retrospect, maybe this doesn’t look perfect. I’m running the cleanest administration since the dawn of time, so I’m going to pay the money back.” (Note: Cleanest administration where several several top-level aides have made front-page news for their ethical lapses.)

Instead, he chose to put his spokesfolks out there to defend his honor.

That’s the side of Mitch Daniels that always comes out if you give him long enough, the side we saw at both gubernatorial debates and the side that defined his first two years in office.

Put succinctly: “I am always right.”

When you handle a crisis communications situation, the hardest part is getting the person who’s under the microscope to understand two things: (1) it’s not as bad as you think it is; (2) we can make this go away, but you’re probably going to feel a little sting.

Instead of swallowing his pride and eating the one-day story that would have come out of giving the money back, Daniels is now stuck having to endure once-a-week barbs from his opponent, Jill Long Thompson.

Now, he doesn’t really have to worry unless she manages to get back up on the air with a significant buy and a good spot that hits this issue hard. Even then, it may be too late. She hasn’t had ads up for weeks, and now that the RNC/McCain is playing here, it’s going to be even harder to break through the presidential noise.

All of which is really too bad, because those of us who’ve paid close attention to Daniels over the past three years know all too well that this is the kind of behavior that’s not so well hidden beneath the flannel shirts and baseball caps.