Unity 2020: Why Mitch Daniels?
If there is one trait that Donald Trump and Joe Biden share as politicians, it is their cocksure and half-cocked tendency to bloviate and bluster from behind a podium. They both have just one speed: macho. They get carried away with new words (“Malarkey!”) and phrases (“Billions and billions!”), that for some reason get mileage with certain groups despite not being that novel or accurate.
Bipartisan, bold, different
A candidate with the polar opposite demeanor of Trump and Biden would provide excellent contrast and much-needed relief to Americans, who, having lived through the political soap opera of at least the last five years, would appreciate someone with a tone and tenor a little closer to a Mr. Rogers (“Look for the helpers”). Meet Mitch Daniels, the grandson of Syrian immigrants, former governor of Indiana, and current president of Purdue University.
On the issues, Daniels can probably be described as a conservative intellectual’s conservative. His rhetoric if not his policies make him well-positioned in the “center-right” category that Unity2020 is looking for in one of its two candidates.
While he believes in allegedly Republican causes such as slowing the growth of government and entitlement reform (and actually did some of that as governor of Indiana), Daniels is also pro-immigration and even criticized some of Trump’s executive orders on immigration. He has called for a “truce” on polarizing social issues like abortion.
A less strident conservatism
In a 2011 speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference where speakers tend to throw the audience nothing but red meat, Daniels struck the tone of a calm centrist, almost eerily describing the need for precisely the kind of movement we are building at Unity2020.
“Change of the dimension we need requires a coalition of a dimension no one has recently assembled. And, unless you disbelieve what the arithmetic of disaster is telling us, time is very short…
It is up to us to show the best way back to greatness, and to argue for it with all the passion of our patriotism. But, should the best way be blocked, while the enemy draws nearer, then someone will need to find the second best way. Or the third, because the nation’s survival requires it.”
Also in 2011, while receiving the Arab-American Institute’s Najeeb Halaby Award for Public Service, Daniels spoke with hope about what were the early stages of the Arab Spring in his ancestral home of Syria.
“Now I am so proud that brave Syrians have stepped forward… against brutal threats and repression.. and stood up for the right to dream and live free and to try to pursue better lives for themselves. I’m so thrilled about it.”
Could the pro-immigration grandson of Syrian immigrants help us build bridges in the Middle East where the policies of previous presidents have left the region in rubble?
Of no small importance, Mitch Daniels also believes in making the State of the Union (at least the spoken, primetime broadcasted, and increasingly partisan version) a thing of the past. Calling it a “throne speech”, he believes “it diminishes rather than elevates respect for the United States and its institutions”.
Like other potential candidates, Daniels has given at least one excellent commencement address. During his Spring 2019 commencement address at Purdue, Daniels highlighted recent issues on college campuses like Evergreen State, where freedom of speech is under assault.
In words that could’ve come from Bret Weinstein himself, Daniels says, “Students have demanded to be kept ‘safe’ from speech, that is, mere words, that challenge or discomfit them… I don’t pretend to know what’s causing the phenomenon. I do know that in the world you’re about to enter, emotional strength, in the form people are now terming ‘resilience’ or ‘grit,’ will be essential for you to realize the enormous potential we see in you. For those who possess and display it, it will be a competitive advantage in any endeavor they pursue.”
Getting to the root of our national maladies
Finally, Daniels seems to understand the root cause of many of the problems we’ve seen playing out on our TV screens for the past several years and with increasing frequency and passion in recent months.
“Upward mobility from the bottom is the crux of the American promise, and the stagnation of the middle class is in fact becoming a problem, on any fair reading of the facts. Our main task is not to see that people of great wealth add to it but that those without much money have a greater chance to earn some.”
The biggest criticism of Daniels might be his role as George W. Bush’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget, during which a $236 billion surplus turned into a $400 billion deficit, but you could say Daniels partially made up for that during his time as governor of Indiana. Under his leadership, Indiana state government boasted the nations’ third lowest spending per capita, and its fewest state employees since 1978.
The challenge with Mitch Daniels will be in persuading him to run, as some did in 2012 and in 2016, to no avail. Perhaps he could be convinced if presented with that “coalition of a dimension no one has recently assembled” which we are now assembling. As George Washington was drafted against his personal wishes, we need someone of a similar character now who shuns the spotlight yet is willing to embrace patriotic service for a higher cause.
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