When last I checked in on former Indiana governor and former Purdue University president Mitch Daniels, I was a little disappointed. Not by his sterling career, which I have long admired: The quality of his record — which also includes stints in two White Houses and leadership of other institutions, political and non — is impossible to deny.
My disappointment instead arose from his declining to run for Senate in Indiana in 2024. I understood the choice. Daniels, whom I once had occasion to meet, is perhaps the most spotlight-adverse politician of our age, a characteristic that has somehow not inhibited his political success. He is part of a vanishingly small group of people who seek public office not out of a desire for power but out of a genuine aspiration to help others.
Comments