Mitch Daniels: Raised Four Wonderful Daughters and Fixed the BMV

Welcome to The Bulwark Podcast. I’m Mona Charron, Policy Editor at The Bulwark. I am sitting in today for the vacationing Charlie Sykes who will return after Labor Day. And I could not be more delighted to welcome, as my guest today, the President of Purdue University, Mitch Daniels. Now Mitch, you and I have known each other for many years, and it is still the case that when I meet someone or see somebody’s writing and they say that their ideal president of the United States would have been Mitch Daniels I know that that’s a person I’m gonna agree with on a lot of things.

So welcome to the Bulwark podcast. And for those who do not know you, I wanna go back a little bit because of the current political environment, I want you to talk a little bit about your first race for governor of Indiana. Because it is so counter cultural now. You didn’t run a single negative ad, did you?

We didn’t. And made something of a point of it at the time and doesn’t seem all that long ago. It was always well received when I pointed out to people. That we were gonna seek public office. That’s the only office I ever ran for or ever really aspire to.

But I said, I remember in a little commercial that I wrote and released right before the Republican primary, we had a hot like and tested one. Which we ultimately did win two to one. But I said to my fellow Republicans before you vote, And you should know that there’s certain things I won’t do have not run for office before. There’s certain things I won’t do to win it. Those include attacking anyone’s background motives or personal characteristics.

That message Mona was really meant for the a broader audience who I hope to be addressing and and then was in in the general election. But, really, all the way through the end of that experience in twenty twelve, it was a really sort of an easy applause line in a speech point that out that we had run by then in three different elections and never resorted to that. And I do think it’s regrettable that that seems to be the currency of not just part of, but the principal currency of current political campaigns. And I I’m not sure it’s good for the process.

No. It’s not not too much doubt about that. Before we leave

that, maybe I should say, our campaign was very different in a in a second way that I also regret not seeing much of these days. And that was we really put personal contact back in. And I again, I was a no name first time candidate but I already had had a sense that there had to be more to, as I used to say, to to seeking public office than TarMax and TV commercials. And so we we got an Indiana built RV from the low end of the market. And drove the wheels off it, ultimately in both campaigns, went to all the places that, quote, nobody ever comes here anymore, places.

State overnight in people’s homes as

opposed

to motels? You actually slept on people’s sofas. Whatever they had. And, yeah, it started. This will shock you.

It started as an exercise in cheapness. I didn’t wanna spend money, if someone would just put us up overnight, he quickly became a great source of new insights stories. Funny things would happen, but, you know, personal stories that you could tell at the next stop and and enliven or illustrate some point you want to make. But in any event, that was another, I think, somewhat different approach And it was people would say, well, you would waste in your time. Look at do the math.

It doesn’t matter how many miles you go, how many stops you may account. How many people you meet, even multiplied, it can’t be a material factor in the election. And we understood that. But it people knew I was doing it and they I hope God of sense that they had access to them, their governor, and that everybody in every place mattered. That was the message we were trying to send.

Once again, much like the negative advertising. I don’t see much of that, not authentically anyway. In today’s politics. And I think that’s unfortunate. Both as a matter of one’s credibility having one public office And secondly, as as a very wise former elected official, someone you know quite well, Lamar Alexander said to me early on, he said, that’s great what you’re doing.

He said, it will probably make you a more successful candidate. It will definitely make you a better governor. He proved correct about that. Howard

Bauchner: Yeah, such a great story. You are sort of the prototypical, midwestern American. I mean, you have extraordinary ability, but, you know, you your whole effect is Midwest America, Middle America. And yet, I want to probe a little bit about your background because there’s an immigrant story there not that long ago. Right?

Yeah. Second generation. Mhmm.

Very

unremarkable, but Well,

typical. Right? What’s the only

thing remarkable now about it is how common it is in America. Yeah. My on my father’s side, my grandfather and grandmother emigrated early in the century from Syria. Mhmm. And, actually, he came as a young man, never did read or write English, but came and built up a little stake and then went home years later and and took a bride and brought her here and started a family.

Okay.

And then you had did your undergraduate degree at Princeton how did you avoid becoming a progressive at Princeton?

I’m not certain. I I I confess that, like, I think, many, maybe most young people I was probably malleable. I did not come from political family, somewhere I had instincts that these days we would identify as conservative, I guess. I did have one. I I guess the the the the, I’ll say, fortunate break was that being interested for some reason in things political.

I a neighbor whose grass I cut to make a few extra dollars was active. In local Republican politics. And he suggested me to somebody who suggested me to somebody, and I wound up working for a Republican political campaign of a some later very noteworthy person, Bill Rucals House, who lost his election, for the US senate, but ultimately whose talents were visible and he was recruited into the Nixon Administration. He became one of the people who resigned in the famous Saturday Nightmaster, but that’s where it got started. And from then, that campaign didn’t succeed, but another up and coming talent Uber World World will remember a senator Richard Ruger was the mayor of Indianapolis, and I got connected to him.

And that is really where I think my worldview got formed.

Now after you left the governor’s mansion, you became the president of Purdue, and that’s been what is it ten years now? Ten years. And you just announced that you will be stepping down in January. And you have a quite sulfuric piece in today’s Wall Street Journal about the student loan forgiveness plan which we’ll come to. But before that, I want to get some of your reflections on students.

So I talked to somebody who’s been an educator of the college level for about forty years, and I asked him what were the big changes that he saw in the student body from the beginning of his career to the end? And he said, The biggest change is the mental health of the students, that they are so much more fragile now, so much more needing of emotional support and therapy and so on. Produce kind of a unique place. It’s full of people who know what they want to do and they’re very technical and, you know, I mean, not all of them, but many of them. Is Purdue immune from that or did you see that as well?

We’re not immune and we do see it, I think, as a matter of degree, from what I understand and read of other places, it may be somewhat somewhat less a prevalent here. But there’s no question I’ve read a lot and written a lot and took one entire commencement address to talk about this subject. And there there are a lot of diagnoses for how it came to be Mona. There there there is the thought that in some cases loving, but overprotective parents. May may have been a factor that is in other problems or even pathologies we could identify that social media may have played a role.

But it has led us here at Purdue. We’ve always prided ourselves at this school. Think about our mascot, the boilermaker, that we produce young talent, not only learned and knowledgeable and and probably skillful in one way or another, but people with the character traits of persistence and diligence and what we usually refer to as grit. But that’s probably never been more important than today. And so we actually talk about it and have some programming that we hope cultivates it so that if they arrive here, as you said, somewhat fragile, they leave a little more resilient.

But it’s certainly true and it’s been pretty well documented now in the social science research literature that a greater percentage of young people When something goes wrong, as things always will, have the first instinct to find look for an adult to fix it for him. Maybe even a therapist to some kind. And that’s that’s new and different. At twenty years old, I’m not sure I knew what a therapist was, let alone

ever

had the urge to repair to one.

Mhmm. Mhmm. Not that therapy is always a bad idea, mind you. But no. No.

I was in, you know, I always have

to remind people that the longest stretch of my working life was in the private sector, and the longest stretch of that was that Elai Lillian company whose scientists gave the world a molecule called flueoxetine, the world knew it as Prozac And the whole breakthrough of Prozac and then similar follow on molecules was that It help people understand that depression, for instance, is just as often a problem of chemical imbalance in a treatable phenomenon And so it is very important that people find help for emotional or other difficulties that they’re having. They’re very real, sometimes very severe. But that doesn’t mean that, as I said, the first step always is, especially for a young person, is to run to an elder for assistance. Right. Okay.

Now while you’ve been at Purdue, you have managed to keep costs stable. Purdue hasn’t raised tuition. Is that right? That’s correct. Okay.

For how many years? No. This

is year ten. No. We’ve already we’ve already assured our students and their families that next year, so that would be the twenty three four school year will be the will be year eleven. We’ve not raised tuition or fees. We’ve also reduced modestly the cost of room and board and books.

And So the simplest way to think about it is that it’s less expensive to attend our school. This is true for in state and out of state students. Less expensive and nominal unadjusted dollars than it

was

in twenty twelve. It’s become something that almost without exception. People here feel good about and when they can and that happens, help us find ways to keep it going. Okay.

So it’s safe to say this has not caught on. You’re you’re not a babysitter here. So that brings us to your piece in today’s Wall Street Journal about the loan forgiveness and the whole subject of the way we finance higher education and the reason. So, you know, for decade upon decade, right? We’ve always heard that college is too expensive and we need to reduce costs and we need to make it affordable.

And so we keep subsidizing it and universities keep pocketing the subsidies and raising their tuition. What am I not getting here?

Regrettably, I think you just described this situation correctly. It’s been very well documented for a very long time. This this started a long time ago, Mona, you’ll recall it was originally this notion that you just outlined was first suggested as a hypothesis They called it the Bennett hippopotamus. This is our old colleague. We have a friend and colleague, Bill Bennett, then secretary of education flying this goodness.

I don’t know. More more than a quarter century ago. And it’s been born out in all sorts of research now in literature. Yeah. The best estimates, Federal Reserve of New York, I think it was, looked at it very deeply and concluded that something like sixty to seventy percent of any new subsidy would show up in higher prices.

And it’s just natural and it’s just human, but it’s unfortunately a mistake that we have continued to repeat.

And why don’t you give us your analysis of the latest loan forgiveness thing that the Biden administration has announced your objections? They’re multiple. Mhmm. Obviously, it includes the fact that the likelihood

that this move will further exacerbate the cost problem in Higher Ed for the reasons we just gave In fact, may introduce a new chapter, it may induce probably will in some cases oncoming students to borrow more than they should have thinking that they’ll be let off the hook too. This is the so called moral hazard aspect of it, but that’s only where it begins. I I just found it’s such a distressing action constitutionally. The idea that any president of the United States for any purpose with a stroke of a pen ought to be able to spend and something like six hundred billion dollars, I think is on its face is an affront to the Article one of the constitution, which gives that power very specifically to the people’s representatives. I said, when asked this question the other day, I said, you know, folks who believe that they could irrigate to the executive this sort of power circumventing the constitution and the legislative branch, I’d not lecture anybody else about respect for democracy.

So there’s that. Just as a fiscal matter, it’s catastrophe on top of so many others. You know, this is a long time preoccupation of mine. I think we’re doing a huge injustice to future generations and really risking the economic and even national security of the country by piling up debts that we will not be able to pay back. Certainly, huge risk to the safety net programs on which vulnerable people rely.

And so just that the pure spending element of it, I think, is is very, very troublesome too. And then finally, maybe I should have started here. Just the gross unfairness of it. Ninety nine percent plus of the graduates of Purdue University pay back any student loan they may have taken out. And that’s something they should be proud of and we’re proud on their behalf because it shows not only that they were able to become productive citizens earning their way in the world paying back their debts, but that they had the sense of personal responsibility to do so.

And the unfairness of this to all those millions who did that, not to mention those who never got a chance to go to college, You know, people are now contemplating, as someone said, you know, plumbers and hotels made picking up the tab for medical school graduates who will soon be earning millions of dollars. So that really thanks one of the most unfortunate public policy choices of any kind that we’ve seen in a very long while. It is

unfortunate, and we will see whether it will survive legal challenge because it’s it’s based on a fairly flimsy assertion of presidential authority for an emergency based on COVID, which, as I say, may not hold up. And then, of course, president Biden can say, well, I tried, you know, and the courts wouldn’t allow it. And you know, then off the hook. But we will say, meanwhile, other people might have come to rely on it. It’s kind of a mess.

But on the topic of respect for democracy and the way it was done, the fact that it was an executive order, you know, this is has gotten to be a really worrisome trend. So during the Obama administration, you heard Republicans speaking of forminating, you know, forminating about Obama. Was one of them fominating about Obama’s abuse of executive orders, whether it was on Obamacare or he would just issue sort of these u causes and and and that would be the law and people said, okay, or whether it was on immigration or he first denied that he had the authority and then went ahead and did it. And so but but then when Trump did the exact same thing, Funny thing. All those Republicans who are worried about the abusive executive authority said it was completely fine.

All

true. I I don’t I don’t think there are clean hands in this. It’s didn’t start. I suppose you could say it’s been

growing

in almost linear way even before president Obama. Yeah. But it would be a healthy thing, I think, if someone became president of either party. And from time to time said, I agree with you that x is a problem, but I don’t have the power and shouldn’t to try to address it myself. Let’s see if we can’t agree.

As a national community through our our legislators to do this. That would lead to the sort of compromise and and also broader based. When something’s done that way, it has the greater likelihood of staying power because — Right. — of the way in which it was affected, we’ve seen lots of executive orders. Now we’re in this CSOVE administration with the stroke of the pen, take some action, administration b comes along, undoes it, and then administration c puts it back.

Yeah. Not a good way to do business. Now on

the topic of legislators and trying to find better legislators, I would note that I don’t know if you’ve given this any thought, but Alaska’s experiment with ranked choice voting has resulted in Lisa Murkowski one of the ten senators who voted to impeach Trump being able to survive a primary challenge because they’ve changed the structure. And I’m very interested in this reform. Katherine Gail is the sort of moving force behind this. Argues that a tiny fraction, fewer than ten percent of voters, in party primaries, determine who our candidates are, and that this encourages both parties to appeal to their most extreme voters and then in in the general election, the the regular voters just have poor choices. And there are other things about ranked choice voting because it will sort of it will encourage more candidates to run the way you did, not running negative ads because if you want your opponents supporters to choose you as their second choice.

You have an incentive not to be negative. Have you thought about this at all? You know, do you have any views? I

have. And increasingly, I would say the the idea is growing on me. For the very good reasons you just gave, because I’m not for the moment, seeing another way out of the of the corner, you just accurately depicted in which districts, certainly congressional districts. I think we see it on the lower — even at lower levels are sufficiently homogenous that as you say the fringe left or right of a given party dictates who the ultimate off soldiers will be. So, yeah, I I’m watching with interest what I once thought might be just sort of a gimmick.

I think is pretty applicable to the to the situation in which we find ourselves. You know, people have for a long time said, well, if you could just draw districts in a different way, No gerrymandering. And that’s theoretically an answer to this, but I don’t see that working out. And by the way, Mona, I think even if through some magic, you could have a fair line drawing state by state. Another change which comes into play is that entire areas through a self selection of people.

That

be forthcoming.

Yeah. More similar. I’ve I’ve cautioned our students that more than one commencement be careful not to wind up without intending to in some sort of a personal professional enclave where you work with people like you, socialize with people like you, live near people like you, marry someone like you, and wind up detached from the lives of of so many of your fellow citizens. But that is where we are. Increasingly, you could draw and and absolutely fair boundaries.

That is to say compact, no no strange salamander like, you know, peninsulas, of the kind that gave birth to the term — Mhmm. — your remembering. You could do those, and they’d still be you’d still have the the problem of one party or a dominance, which then would make this reform. You’re asking about perhaps the one way to to bring things a little bit back to the middle and a little bit back to civility. Speaking of

that, last night, president Biden gave a speech where he warned about threats to our democracy. And a lot of the speech I have to say, and I’d be curious if you wanna comment on this. A lot of the speech was really very good and noncontroversial or at least I don’t think one would argue. Let’s just play a little a little sound from that speech. We saw

law enforcement brutally attacked on January

sixth. We’ve seen election

officials, poll workers, many of them, volunteers, and both parties, subject to intimidation and death threats.

And can

you believe it? FBI agents. Just doing their job as directed, facing threats,

to their

own lives from their own fellow citizens. On top of that, There are public figures today, yesterday, the day before predicting, and all the coin for mass violence and rioting in streets This is inflammatory. It’s dangerous. It’s against the rule of law. And we, the people must say, this is not who we are.

Ladies and gentlemen, we can’t be pro pro pro insurrectionist and pro American, very compatible. We can’t allow violence to be normalized in this country. It’s wrong.

We just

have to reject political violence with with all the moral clarity conviction this nation can muster.

Now, Alright. So that strikes me as completely right. And we do face a threat from the normalization of political violence. Just as president Biden was saying that, former president Trump was announcing on a radio show that he promises to if he’s reelected to pardon the January sixth defendants, should he be reelected? He says he’s financially supporting them right now.

So before getting to my quibble with president Biden’s speech, I’d be curious to hear your reaction to the nature of the threat, do you see it that way, or do you see it or do you

not? I won’t know. I’ve spent ten years ducking questions like this. And despite a long time French But you’re soon gonna

be an ex president of Purdue. Very soon.

Oh, well, let’s true, but I’m still here and and and as a someone responsible for a public institution. I have resolutely stayed away from things that look or seem partisan, I have felt that It was within our responsibility to talk about higher ed issues as we just did. And I have continued to talk about the debt deficit and spending issues because I think they are so directly threatening to the young people with whom we work here. So I don’t wanna say very much. I’m I can tell you that I wasn’t listening to the speech last night.

I was at a football game, which explains my hoarseness here. But I’ll just I’ll just say that as I think you did, that make no objection to the statements the president made, I trust he was making them in a even broader than the clip you played because I think their anti Democratic tendencies cross our political spectrum or at least at both ends of it. But as long as it was even handed in that way, these are things that need to be said. My

own view is that, yes, there are there are threats on both sides of the spectrum, but it’s but only one side is attempting to subvert democracy at the moment by by not accepting the results of elections. Yeah. So that’s the key the key thing. Now I do quibble a bit with the president’s the direction he took the speech after these stentorian warnings because then he got a little bit Hardison, and he talked about linking Mago Republicans to policy matters that he disagrees with, like the right choose and right to privacy and contraception and so forth. And I think that was that was a mistake.

I mean, those should be kept separate. You know, we can disagree between the parties about all of those issues in good faith. What we cannot have is one party that doesn’t accept the outcome of elections, and that’s I think a crucial and that and that encourages in resorts to violence. It’s crucial distinction. Yeah.

Completely agree. Yeah. Now one of the things that you’ve done and you’ve had the most amazing career. One of the things you’ve done is you’ve become, in addition to being a university president, a columnist for the Washington Post. I always enjoy your your pieces.

And I particularly want to just flag because it’s a bit of a hobby horse of mine, but you know, Charlie Sykes went on vacation, so I’m hijacking his podcast and we’re gonna talk about nuclear power because you did in your in your peace recently, you talked about, you know, when you will a certain end, that is, you know, to fight climate change. You have to will the correct means. Otherwise, you’re not serious. Right? Right.

It seems a simple enough point but I do detect, and I I gave in that column, I I tried to suggest A couple other examples in which people on both sides, again, of our debates, are very passionate But don’t take what I think is the essential step of of any such advocacy and and prescribe a constructive way to a practical way, at least, to make things better. Mhmm. And and the one you mentioned, trying to free take carbon neutral or carbon free future without nuclear power. The facts are very, very plain. And as the old line about the tourist in the Vermont farmer goes, you know, you can’t get there from here.

So I was trying to make a slightly broader point, which you just mentioned. About pragmatism and practicality. But to me, that’s one of the most current and obvious examples But the the one who’s turning, credit where let’s give credit where it’s due to the even many people who have been staunch opponents of nuclear power in the past. We’re giving it a second look now as the technology has improved and as situation around CO2 has worsened? Howard Bauchner: Yes.

And it’s probably the case that eventually everybody will recognize that, as you say, that we, you know, renewables are great, but you have to have a backup that’s that’s running twenty four seven. And and, you know, nuclear power is the is the obvious bridge technology to get us to where we want to go. And, you know, it’s gonna be that or or, you know, surrendering to Vladimir Putin and nobody wants to do that. Well, some people do. But but we don’t have to get into that now.

So, Mitch, you are, you know, ending this chapter And it’s a tribute to you that, you know, at this point, you know, when other people might be looking at retirement, And when you announce you’re stepping down as as president of Purdue, instead of people saying, well, that was a nice career. All this stories, and political, and all these other places are, oh, Mitch Daniels. He’s stepping up. Maybe he’ll get back involved in in in electoral politics. What his next move.

And so what is your next move? I don’t have a clue. I don’t know. I was gonna tell anybody it’d

probably be you, but I’ve never been much of a planner. And literally, I I don’t have one in mind right now. I’m I’m not really sure. And I’ll just say as I’ve had to point out the people in many stages along the line. I’ve never been obsessed with political office.

I only ever ran for one. It was something I was became very interested in doing because I thought we had state here that was not performing as it should, wasn’t serving its citizens as it should, needed to be shaken and reformed in a lot of ways, and and I like to think that we did a lot of that. But it wasn’t doing it as a stepping stone anywhere. And in fact, I became very intent on saying. I said in in seeking reelection.

I said, this is the only I told I said, this is the only office I’ve sought ever sought or wanted to. And, you know, hire us again, and we’ll give you four years more of change and positive change in reform. And

as

that chapter came to the close, I really was intent on on living up to that. People understandably don’t are skeptical. Even cynical about things people in public office say, and I wanted to leave a record that, you know, here and there, there are folks who can believe. They’ll tell you what they really mean. Now, none of that means I would never, after ten years, entertain any other such notion, but I’m I think it’s unlikely, and I don’t I certainly don’t have any plan to do

it

right now. I always like the idea of the citizen public servant. Who builds a life outside of politics, then brings some experience or skills or insights that she or he gained there in the public service for a time and then goes back and in the old saying, you know, lives under the laws they helped. Create. Excellent.

Let’s just close with a quick recap about the DMV in Indiana because you know, one of the things that people think conservatives stand for. And for understandable reasons, many conservatives talk this way, you know, we want to drown government in the bathtub and, you know, We hate government. And and your point was that there were certain things that government absolutely should do and should do efficiently. So tell the story about the Department of Motor

Vehicles. I I enjoy doing it, and I will. I’ll just say that you you’ve correctly identified a theme that has been important to me for a long time. I I’ve said so often, we we can and shouldn’t have vigorous debates about what the proper sphere of government, how big or small it should be. Some of us believe it should be very limited.

Others believe it has a much bigger, should be a more expensive, more expensive, have a bigger role. Fair enough. But we should all agree on one thing. Whatever the proper sphere is, it it ought to do well what it does. That ought to be a fundamental responsibility.

And you and I have known too many people in public life who spent all their time getting there and then thinking about the next one, I didn’t spend much of any time trying to make things work well where they were. That’s first of all, their election. And secondly, what was important very important to me was that if you could make the everyday services of government more effective, more visibly helpful to people, You might build credibility so that when you propose the next new idea, the next change, which is always people are always reluctant to make change. They they might listen a little more tentatively. So arriving in in public office.

I had told folks along the line. I said, you know, if we get there, we got this at that point, bankrupt state. We’ve got this dysfunctional state government. And I say, we’re gonna fix everything we can. We’re gonna go after everything large and small, but we’re gonna start in two places.

The Department of Revenue and the Bureau Motor Vehicles. Why? Because they touch almost every single citizen. I said if we can ever make a noticeable difference there. People will give a listen to the next thing we say we wanna

do.

And so it was a wonderful, there have been business school cases written about it. Every state I know of hates it’s a licensed branch system. It was a laughing stock here running for officers to say things like, you know, people go to the Indiana DMV with box lunch and a copy of War and Peace. Hope you don’t finish both of them before somebody calls their name. And we just attacked it right away.

We had to do things like close a lot of branches that weren’t being used very much, but were costing money. This was hugely conversially in those communities, and I gave a platform for local legislators to post around But, you know, things like that. We we took the savings, put them into a first rate computer system, brought in people from, as I recall, Disney to help us think through what makes positive customer experience when somebody walks in a place like this, I’ll skip over a very interesting set of changes and tell you that within about three or four years, I was able to look on my desktop every morning and see what the average time that someone spent in Indiana DMV was. And when it got below twelve minutes, I knew we were getting somewhere. Even today, I I don’t think the standards have really slipped.

If you have to go and you usually don’t have to go, you can make an appointment for the exact time you walk in. If you don’t do that, a greeter will meet you and say, Oomi’s chair and what’s your other end? Oh, you wanna see, you know, Mitch on line three. When you check out, you’ll be given a receipt that shows what you paid if you did. But it also shows how many minutes and seconds since you met that greeter.

So it’s something even today people remind me of I’ve often said if there’s a tombstone for me, it’ll say he raised four wonderful daughters and fixed the b m v.

Fantastic. Thank you so much, Mitch Daniels, for joining us today on the Bulwark podcast and best of luck in whatever your next Endeavor will be. Great talking

to you as always, Mona. Thanks for having me. The Bowler podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio production by Jonathan Seres. I’m Charlie Sykes. Thank you for listening to today’s Bulwark podcast, and we’ll be back tomorrow.

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