“I’m Going to Put My Heart and Soul into This.”

The unpredictability of U.S. politics was most recently exemplified by a Republican known to many Germans as he announced his bid for a U.S. Senate seat.

It could well be the most exciting election year in recent American history. Nothing seems impossible since Democrats lost their bid to retain Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat. Are there any political givens anymore? The latest surprising example is Dan Coats, who was ambassador to Germany from 2001 to 2005 and also previously served as the senator from Indiana from 1989 to 1998. Now he wants to take back his old Senate seat, currently held by Democrat Evan Bayh.

If 2010 were a normal election year, Coats would probably have an outside chance at best. Incumbent Bayh is a political heavyweight who just barely missed being Obama’s running mate in 2008. His name is trusted in Indiana; his father before him was a popular senator and Evan himself was a popular Indiana governor until he, too, became a senator. In addition, he already had $13 million in his campaign chest, while Coats would have had to start with nothing.

But 2010 is an exception. Opinion pollsters have never seen such voter rejection of Washington and its policies. High unemployment and the reduction of government services due to public debt all magnify the national consensus that politicians are getting it all wrong and are pandering to special interest groups instead of serving the needs of the people. It’s a reaction aimed at practically everyone holding an elected office. Only 36 percent of voters say they plan to vote for their incumbent representatives in the November elections.

But Coats himself is also an insider. Since leaving his ambassadorial post in Germany, he has made a living at his old job as a legal lobbyist for various corporations, and lobbyists are currently held in even lower esteem than bankers or journalists. But the reputation of being an elected official in Obama’s Washington weighs even more heavily these days. Coats had barely declared his candidacy — “I’m going to put my heart and soul into this” — before pollsters demoted the seat from “solidly Democratic” to “leaning Democratic.” A few days later, Bayh announced he would not seek reelection because he was tired of the frustration of Senate blockades. But some in the U.S. media speculate that perhaps he intends to run for the presidency in 2012, should Obama’s political fortunes fail to recover.

Dan Coats may be unexpectedly on the road to victory.