Former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, one of the most popular presidential candidates who never ran for the office, believes he would have won the GOP nomination in 2012 but lost to an overpowering Obama campaign backed by a “monolithic, unpersuadable base of black and strongly liberal voters.”
Writing at length for the first time about his almost campaign, Daniels, now the president of Purdue University, also said that he has no plans to run in 2016. “Timing is truly everything in politics, and timing as fortuitous as that circumstance spread before us in 2012 never comes twice.”
His comments are in an “afterward” for a new biography titled Run Mitch, Run. The book, provided to Secrets, is written by friend Don V. Cogman and self-published by iUniverse.
It covers the highlights and low points of Daniels’ possible 2012 bid, including his controversial demand that candidates take a “truce” on social issues like such as abortion. In the end, he decided not to run because his family opposed a bid.
Daniels, a two-term governor, former White House budget chief and one-time top political aide to former President Ronald Reagan, was championed by fiscal conservatives who believed his revival of Indiana could be a model for the nation.
Working for him was a bank of support from the Reagan and Bush teams, 2008 GOP nominee Sen. John McCain and many in the conservative press. “And,” he added, “in terms of the field, well, I think it’s fair to say it wasn’t the strongest.” Mitt Romney won the nomination and is considering another try.
His friends promised victory, but he wasn’t sure. “My own best guess is that we would have captured the nomination but lost to an Obama campaign that had several powerful advantages — a monolithic, unpersuadable base of black and strongly liberal voters; an electoral college head start through its ownership of a few big coastal states; a clear superiority in its grasp of the political uses of social media; and its track record of success in personally demonizing its opponents,” he wrote.
Vindication, he concluded, came from Obama strategist David Axelrod, who said, “We were very relieved when Governor Daniels took himself out. He was the one we were most worried about.”
In addition to family opposition, Daniels said that had he run, a media and political “juggernaut” would have swept into Indiana, picked apart all of his successes and ruined chances for his second-term string of accomplishments. “If I had been off and running for president, it is likely that none of this would have occurred,” he wrote.
Over two years later, Daniels appears happy with his choice, and he has become a leader on higher education issues and just this week took on student debt.
“It’s hard to believe that family life could be much better than it is, at least for now,” he wrote.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
