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.”