Friday, July 1, 2022 9:11 AM
By BRIAN A. HOWEY
WEST LAFAYETTE – When Mitch Daniels was a little boy, the lament of the Brooklyn Dodgers until they won the World Series in 1955 was, “Wait ‘til next year.”
On Monday, I visited Purdue President Mitch Daniels’ office at Hovde Hall. The mission was similar to what I did in 2006 with Evan Bayh and 2013 with Frank O’Bannon, which was to do a 10-year post analysis on their governorships. This sitdown was the first of an analysis coming later this year.
When Daniels was packing up his Statehouse office in December 2012, HPI observed that his governorship can be viewed as “transformative” because of its audacious scope and conspicuous use of political capital. But it will take a decade or more to determine how effective the education and transportation reforms were. Daniels agreed with that, saying, “Your time frame may be about right.”
But as Randy Tobias might put it, there was a big moose on the table. Since Daniels announced he was stepping down as Purdue president earlier this month, with a Dec. 31 departure date, it ignited a raft of speculation on whether he might become Indiana’s first three-term governor, or take a stab at the White House, or, perhaps, as Monty Python would put it, “something completely different.”
“I don’t have anything to add,” Daniels said about an hour into our conversation. “I’m leaving that for later. We’ll see. I always said I was the worst career planner on the planet. Every so often the phone will ring and there’s something interesting to do: What? Eli Lilly? What? OMB? It will quit ringing at some point. We’ll see. I’ve got some big plates spinning right now. Something will work out. I’m under no pressure to do anything.”