Motorcycles and Meritocracies with Governor Mitch Daniels

>> Andrew Roberts: Mitch Daniels was a senior advisor to Ronald Reagan, the 49th governor of Indiana between 2005 and 2013, the president of Purdue University, and an important political figure on the right for over 40 years. Mitch, you were chief of staff to Richard Lugar between 1977 and 1982. He was a bit of a giant, wasn't he, politically?

Tell me, what do you think his greatest legacy was and what did you learn from him?

>> Mitch Daniels: He'll probably be best remembered for working with Senator Sam Nunn to bring down the number of nuclear armaments in the once Soviet Union. That, at least at this distance, appears to be a signal accomplishment, in a term he would have used.

He spoke a little British, Andrew, because of his Rhodes Scholar experience. And I was with him so long, you pick up some of these usages, legions of this and signal of that. No, he was, outside my family, the most important person in my life in many ways. I was with him, I knew him in a way that most of America never did, as a very talented young executive.

They knew him as a legislator, an explainer of complex events and policies, a forger of compromises back when those things actually happened. And so, he was all of that. But I knew him as a young, idealistic mayor who turned around our hometown. That's where I got tied up with him and, and, and, and stayed with him at his right hand, I guess you'd say, for, 13 years every time.

He had once given me a great advice as a still as a college student, which was to go out and establish yourself in the world, something in business, things he had done, and then come to public life, if that interests you. Then he spent 13 years talking me out of that very advice.

I'm glad he did.

>> Andrew Roberts: You sort of took it in a way, didn't you?

>> Mitch Daniels: It was a great moral force for me in the sense that, as I said at his memorial service, I never saw him make a dishonest decision. I never heard him speak harshly or vindictively about anybody.

I never saw him in what we mortals would call a bad mood. And so some of that, not all of it, unfortunately, but a lot of it rubbed off, I hope, and that was. He deserves all the fond memories that surround him.

>> Andrew Roberts: Do you think it's a world we have lost, the bipartisanship, the lack of harshness and vindictiveness?

>> Mitch Daniels: Well, you don't need me to tell you that. I hope it's recoverable, but it's not the way politics in this country or it appears in several others at the moment.

>> Andrew Roberts: By the time we get to 1985, you're one of the chief political advisors to Ronald Reagan.

Who, obviously, is a world historical figure who, when one thinks of the 20th century, automatically, in the great men and women of that century, Ronald Reagan will loom large there. What was it actually like, though, working for him?

>> Mitch Daniels: First of all, I always considered it a misnomer to speak of a political advisor to him.

He didn't need any advice. He, he operated on one of Churchill's, I'll say second best biographers once as I recall, described as a gyroscope as opposed to sonar, as so many politicians in the way that so many of them operate. But no, it was an enormous privilege. We felt a sense of mission, all of us.

A good friend of mine stuck around for the subsequent Bush 41 administration and when that one ended in defeat, somebody asked him about to describe the difference. Having worked for both, he said in the Reagan years, when we got up in the morning, we knew what the assignment was.

Limit government, cut taxes, fight Russians. He said it was just in the air, and it was. And there was a little less sense of that compass direction, I guess, in, in too many other presidencies. But that was certainly there at the time. And Clare Boothe Luce told him, Mr President, every president gets one sentence in history, yours will be, he won the Cold War without firing a shot.

I've said and written that Reagan was the unusual, at least two sentence president, he did that, he certainly won the Cold War, but he restored America's economy and morale or spirit. Either one of those I think would have marked him as a significant figure. In his case, I think he's entitled, as I say, to two sentences.

 

>> Andrew Roberts: Yes, actually, that reminds me very much of Margaret Thatcher. I think she gets two sentences, and they're pretty much the same two sentences, in a way. By 1987, you were CEO of the Hudson Institute, which, of course, is still a very serious and substantial think tank. I sit on a couple of think tank boards.

Tell us about the role of think tanks both then and now because we obviously both think that they're important. But how are they?

>> Mitch Daniels: Yes, Hudson deserves the, I think, recognition of being the original, at least American think tank. There was a bunch of renegades that broke from the Rand Corporation.

And it was an enormously formative experience for me, in two ways. One was that it was a small business experience. We were a hand to mouth, we were really a contract research organization. If we didn't conceive and sell and produce and get paid for original research, we didn't exist.

And so it also at that time, it was founded, as you probably know, by a legend named Herman Kahn. He was thought to have been the inspiration for the Peter Sellers character in Dr Strangelove, but- That didn't really suit him. But he was a brilliant thinker, a pioneer of game theory, applied it to nuclear deterrence and so many other topics.

I learned there to think in a contrarian way, as they always did. They assumed that by the time some wisdom was conventional, it was probably wrong. And so they weren't always right, but they foresaw things others didn't. They wrote about the coming oil boom when everybody was standing in gas lines.

They predicted The emerging Japanese super state when everyone thought that Japan would never get past transistor radios. And so it was very helpful to me to be around some very eccentric, very iconoclastic thinkers who were always looking for the angle that no one else had seen. Now, think tanks today are different.

They evolved, and Hudson is one of those. Most today have an ideological, a personality or, or profile that's, that's very clearly defined and they serve a good purpose. It's just that one always has to maybe discount a little for the underlying philosophy. There's always the human tendency to go find data that supports your preconceived notions, and some of them do that.

But the best produced occasional surprises. Hudson was constant source of surprise at the time. And so I, I very much value that. It was just, it was just three years, but they were three very important ones to me and, and I'm glad to see them doing great work now, although in a slightly different way.

>> Andrew Roberts: We're going to jump forward now to your time as the director of the OMB between January 20, sorry, 2001 and June 2003, where of course you absolutely, ultimately, although you were interested in, in tax cuts and all of the important things that were happening economically, had to deal also with the financing of a global war on terror, which needless say, like all wars, wound up being fantastically expensive.

How did you do that? How did you fund it? And what was it like being at the OMB when you suddenly realized that you had, essentially a very long war on your hands?

>> Mitch Daniels: Yeah, I wish, I wish we had done it more successfully as life changed, of course, completely in terms not just the daily lives of Americans, but the, the priorities of that administration on that day.

But I gave a speech at the National Press Club, I think it was in October. It wasn't that long after the events, maybe November. And I cited historical precedent where in the past, when suddenly the nation had found itself in an armed conflict, the government shifted spending dramatically.

FDR did it, Harry Truman did it in a, in a huge way. And I suggest that that's what we ought to be doing at that time so that we could take on this new threat and, but do so while protecting the public finances. Congress was hard to persuade of that.

We had occasional successes, but overall, I think fewer than I, than I wished. Now, all that said, there's some, a lot of bad history bandied around about that time. If you go look in 2007, the federal deficit was 1.1 or 2% of, of GDP, a tiny fraction of of what it has been since and is headed in the right direction.

So despite the, all the extra costs, first of the Afghanistan activity and then of course the Middle east, the Iraq conflict, you know, the nation's finances were still in reasonably good shape until the, until some housing mistakes pulled the plug out of the tub. But no, those were, those were momentous days and I was grateful for the chance to be in the, pretty much in the middle of them.

>> Andrew Roberts: Did you keep a diary? All historians are very interested when politicians, you know, have their own reminiscences. What did you do-

>> Mitch Daniels: I didn't, I was too busy.

>> Andrew Roberts: I mean, at the time, that's what they all say.

>> Mitch Daniels: When I got to the next job, I realized I should have because too much had happened for me to remember.

I will say that I've worked on, at the urging of many, a memoir that covers these times we talked about, but for now I'm working until I get to 2003, 2004. I'm dealing with my own imperfect memory mainly.

>> Andrew Roberts: Okay, but of course, in 2005, you become the 49th governor of Indiana and you, you are re elected in that job.

You hold it until 2013 as governor, you cut the state workforce by 18%. You cut and capped state property taxes. You spent less than inflation. I mean, you did everything that a good, sound fiscal conserv would do. Looking today, what do you think about the, the prospects of, of Doge doing these kind of things, especially with regard to the cutting of the workforce.

>> Mitch Daniels: I applaud the spirit of what they're doing and I think it's very valuable as they shine a spotlight on ridiculous, redundant or simply unnecessary things the federal government is doing. I don't expect them to have the kind of success they've claimed they'll have. It's just not the way things work.

They're gonna have to persuade Congress to go along. I support, I have supported for a long time tools that might help them, impoundment being the principal one. In fact, I just wrote a Washington Post column on this subject.

>> Andrew Roberts: I don't radicalize at all.

>> Mitch Daniels: I had this sort of power as governor, that is, that is the power for the executive to decline to spend every penny that has been appropriate appropriated it.

It's not a radical idea. It was the President's had it all the way up until the Watergate reforms. Eisenhower used it, Truman used it. FDR used that, Thomas Jefferson used. And that would help because then when Doge brings something to light, the executive branch would have the authority not to spend it.

They'll try to do some of this but I would rather they had the explicit the power and I wish Congress on some basis, conditional time limited, some basis would restore it. But no, I wish them well. One other thing must be said for all the bravado and all the talk about reigning in government and so forth, they refuse to talk about the entitlement programs which is where all the money is, so to speak or the vast majority.

And as long as you keep those out of bounds, you're really only dealing in a very marginal way with the urgent problem of heading off a real fiscal catastrophe. I use that word advisedly of the kind that history plainly forecasts for a nation in our situation. Neil Ferguson has formulated this so-called Ferguson's Law.

Now I think he attributes it to a.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yeah, it's named after Adam Ferguson not-

>> Mitch Daniels: But yeah, he wasn't trying to name it after himself.

>> Andrew Roberts: No, he wasn't. He wasn't. I think that was just a lucky.

>> Mitch Daniels: For listeners who haven't seen it. He, can't find an historical antecedent where a country wound up was spending when spending more on debt service than it was spending on its, on its security or national defense.

That, that lasted very long and we just passed that point. It's a very important negative landmark.

>> Andrew Roberts: It was a brilliant. Especially, if you actually read the entire article, the long article in, in the academic journal, you actually realize that he's got five major empires of history, world history, including I'm embarrassed enough to admit.

The British Empire, when they spend more on debt reduction than they do on defense, and things start to collapse and sometimes collapse very quickly. And this, this is happening this year in your country. So, but it wouldn't happen if, if people were following the kind of lines that you had laid down in OMB and certainly with your stance on balancing budgets and so on.

>> Mitch Daniels: No, now again, I operated when I got the chance to operate as, as the decision maker. And in those years here in the state we had tools or at least we asserted we did and used them that and, and were able to work with a legislature which was operating under the presumption that we ought to at least over a certain, certain period of time make ends meet.

And but as you know, the federal government comes equipped with a printing press and unfortunately uses it far too extensively. I always like that British saying, and I first read it attributed to the Sea Lord Fisher but probably goes before, before him. But now, that the money has run out, we shall have to begin to.

Think and isn't there another one that you Americans have which is don't just stand there, spend something. Yeah, well, I said that. Yes, you know, that's one, that one time I popped off one time too many I guess because that gets. Has been thrown back at me over time.

>> Andrew Roberts: Well, I'm not throwing it back at you, I think it's a great line to of course essentially take the mickey out of what the Democrats were doing. And I'd like to go back to 2011 when they found they literally, and I remember this happening because it got into the British papers.

It got into loads of papers all around the world. They fled the state sooner than vote on things like school vouchers, and the right to work, and so on. I never really got my mind around how the Constitution of Indiana worked, so that you weren't able to put pass legislation despite them being in the minority and fleeing the state.

So, very quickly. Sorry, can you just give us a rundown? My listeners I know will also want to hear this, a rundown on how the Indiana constitution works so that fleeing the state was an option essentially.

>> Mitch Daniels: We didn't really face too many constitutional obstacles. The eight years that we served divided.

We, for two years we had a friendly legislature, then for four years a divided legislature. And the last two years we won a very large victory which we did all we could to produce and it happened in 2010. And so the last two years we had very large majorities, and we ran the table on things we had not been able to do before.

But you know, it was, it was a different time. We had our very profound differences with our Democratic friends, but even in the inner, in the interior, four years. So it was two, four and two. We tried, we made significant progress every year. You just had to find things that either the opposition favored in principle, they might not like the way you did it.

A good example was health insurance for the uninsured, they were, you know, deeply committed to the idea of that helping more people be covered. I said fine, but we're going to give them essentially health savings accounts for, for poor people. We're going to do it in a different way than traditional Medicaid and so forth.

And so, we were able to effect a compromise that accomplished a goal we both wanted in a, in a. A means you would consider conservative. You know, the last two years there was some unfinished business. I'd always wanted to have universal choice in education. That was anathema to a Democratic party that in our state, as everywhere else is.

Yeah, some almost owned and operated by the teachers unions. And so that we were able to do you, you mentioned right to work. Another litmus test issue, but we had the votes finally to do it. And did we abolished the inheritance tax or the death tax and so forth.

So, you know, the, the political climate meant there were limits in some years to what we could do. But we never took that as an excuse for not making some forward progress.

>> Andrew Roberts: What do you think about the Democrats nationally today? There's been a poll, we're talking about late March 2025.

There's a 20, only 27% of people polled have a positive view and only 7% had a very positive view of the Democratic Party. Where does it go? What does it do now?

>> Mitch Daniels: I've certainly gotten a lot of things wrong about American politics over recent years, but one thing that was just glaringly obvious to me 10 years ago.

And I was telling my Democratic friends this even before the 2016 election. I certainly told them in their, in their shock and dismay at, at Trump's first win, their central problem has been their superciliousness, their sense of, of, of arrogance and superiority, lecturing and condescending and so forth to the American people.

There were other issues, I think, but more that more than anything, I think explains their current low state. I told people then, I've repeated it many times since. If you look down your nose at people long enough, one day they will punch you in it. And that's what happened.

And then it, Biden administration, which of course came in, you know, promising to be Warren Harding and, and then immediately, you know, became Bernie Sanders, was the worst of this. And so, they not they didn't learn from 16 and in fact they, I'm, I'm afraid, renewed that sort of sense of cultural imperialism that I think far, and away was their biggest.

Yes, inflation, yes. Immigration, although to an extent those are offsprings of that attitude they had. Now, here and there, I'm reading Democrats for the moment, they are renegades, or they're Outliers. But they've got the right answer. There are some congressmen saying more or less what I just did.

We've got to quit looking down on people and telling them how to live their lives and want resume relating to ordinary people. You know, Andrew, when I ran for political office and it's not that long ago, the world was upside down compared to today. If you were a Republican, it was assumed that you were, you know, from the country club and, and an economic elite, social elite and so forth, and you had to go prove it.

I spent 16 months traveling this state to all the forgotten places, all the. No one comes here anymore places I stayed overnight in people's homes, never hotels, all to demonstrate that.

>> Andrew Roberts: And didn't you go in a van, didn't you go in a, in a camper van or something?

>> Mitch Daniels: Yeah, so the Indiana built the-

>> Andrew Roberts: Yeah, and you've got people to-

>> Mitch Daniels: RV, it's in the state museum. It became-

>> Andrew Roberts: I was about to say cuz people signed their names on it as well, didn't they?

>> Mitch Daniels: That's correct.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yeah, it's great story, great story.

>> Mitch Daniels: But it wasn't a stunt. It wasn't a, you know, weekend listening tour. It was every day of 16 months. But the big reason, I mean, I learned a lot about. It was enormously helpful in terms of trying to perform the job well. But a lot of it was about proving, as one did have to then, that it was ordinary people and upward mobility that motivated us.

These days, it's. The world's in. Gone into reverse and Democrats are going to have to reestablish their own credibility in that way. You know, these days, Republicans inherits it as they once did.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yeah. Tell me, in 2013, when you left the governorship and became president of Purdue, one of the great universities of the United States, what were your experiences with the Department of Education?

Tell us about the, because there's talk obviously of dismantling it. What are the pros and cons of, of doing that, in your view?

>> Mitch Daniels: Are you asking about the department now.

>> Andrew Roberts: The Department of Education?

>> Mitch Daniels: Yes. Yeah, well, I think we could do without it, honestly. Whether they'll be able to achieve that once again.

It takes like Doge. It takes legislation. I, I can't. You know, you'll never get there simply by issuing executive orders. I don't think. I, I think courts will draw some line there. But no, I mean, it's. Everything that's being said about it being a superfluous or worse, I tend to agree with.

And if we're going to spend that kind of money to support the highly local function, to historically local function of education. Then just send the money. Not the, not the regulations, not the bureaucrats that come with it, not the, not the ideology that is undergirded much of the money they've been sending.

You know, when I was working for President Reagan, Bill Bennett, a just a tremendous figure in recent American times, I'm sure you know him well, was the secretary. And I remember in one meeting he said, Mr President, you came to office pledging to get rid of the Department of Education.

And because of the Congress we have, we can't do that. So we're going to run the department in a way that makes the people who created it want to abolish it and there, that's an option and that they I think have already somewhat embarked on.

>> Andrew Roberts: Let's speak about foreign affairs, if we, if we may.

Well, foreign affairs, but also actually the effects they have on America, including Purdue actually. We've seen how President Trump has cut the funding to Colombia because of the anti-Semitism that's been seen on the campus there. We've seen the Tentifada, as it's called in universities in the United States and also at Oxford and Cambridge here in England.

What's your sense about the sort of dividing line between complete freedom of speech, of course, on one side, and also the really unpleasant scenes that we've been seeing with Jewish students being intimidated by people in the tent of Ada? What does one do as a former university professor?

Sorry, President.

>> Mitch Daniels: Yeah, there's an old American joke about the rancher who hits the donkey with a 2x4. And when asked why, he says, well, you, you want him to move first. You have to get the jackass's attention. And I suspect, but I could be wrong. I suspect, and I rather hope that that's what many of these things are about, whether it's American universities or some of, some of our international friends or other countries that these, that there's a, a sense that of trying to jolt people out of, into action or into a different mode and that they'll back off a little bit if they do.

I mean, I think it's perfectly fine to discipline schools who did what they allowed, what they allowed in some, in some cases or even encouraged it. At the same time, the overall research enterprise in this country needs to go forward and universities need to be part of it.

We need more research, particularly into things that will affect the national security of this country and, and the hard sciences and so forth. So I hope that the donkey's attention has been gotten. We've seen in the international context some of these tariff moves which then led to some behavior modification.

I hope that's what we see ultimately, with all its faults, and I said this for the decade that I worked in higher education, for all its faults and, and all the legitimacy of most of the criticisms about affordability and, and absence of diversity of opinion and all these things are true.

With all that, we want the system to correct its errors and, and remain the, the premier such system in the, in the world. And so I hope that that's what we'll see. And this may be a little bit the crude or blunderbuss way to get it go about it, but the change needs to come or something worse will happen.

You've seen how public confidence, even the confidence of the young people in schools today has unraveled, and that's not a good thing.

>> Andrew Roberts: You mentioned tariffs. Is there a good economic rationale for America's current tariff policy?

>> Mitch Daniels: No, I don't think so. You know, again, unless, unless it's a tactic and if it's an effective tactic, that, that then is able, we're able achieve some goals that are important.

I mean we needed to restore our borders. No question about it. If this helps. Helps speed that and, and cement it in place. That's a good thing. And we need to stop the flow of kill of killer drugs into this country. If, if this can be used effectively.

We don't, we haven't seen that yet. But if we, if it can be, then I understand it. But once it goes past tactics, if it's meant to be a long standing economic policy, you know, here's a, here's one of the only topics I can think of in which economists of all kinds and stripes seem to agree they can't find.

Value in it because trade wars lead to inflation and other bad.

>> Andrew Roberts: And worse and worse outcomes. Yes, they do. Yeah. Tell me with regard to Ukraine, the situation now seems to be completely up in the air. What would be a good outcome for, for the United States and would that be the same thing as a good outcome for, for Europe, for Ukraine, for the rest of the world?

>> Mitch Daniels: Maybe two questions here. What would be a good outcome? What, what's the best available outcome? Those things are not always synonymous.

>> Andrew Roberts: No, very true. Sorry. Do that, do those. Yes, those are the key ones.

>> Mitch Daniels: My friend Stephen Kotkin, he's up there in the Robert's category.

>> Andrew Roberts: He's been on the show. No, we've had Steven.

>> Mitch Daniels: Respect and admiration. Okay. Has been very I guess I'd say pessimistic about the Ukrainian military situation for a good long time, not just recently and leads me to believe that the best available outcome might be one in which most of Ukraine is preserved.

A very positive thing I think we are seeing is suddenly Europe reawakened to the importance of national security. I hope they move quickly, you know to nudge up their, their investments in their own security. 3% probably not enough but, but maybe the speed at which they increase is the most important thing.

So that, that may be the best. I don't affect to be a, an expert in this subject. But we know who Putin is. We know what his long term aspirations are. And as once we contained the old Soviet Union, we're going to need a policy of effective policy of containment.

You know, his, his oligarchic situation is probably as prone to internal decay or even collapse as the old Soviet system is. As long as he doesn't overrun Europe. Before, before that happens and, and so long as pressure is kept up on him. Yes.

>> Andrew Roberts: Lightening the mood a little.

We've got a random member of the public. Sometimes random members of the public ask me questions to ask you and we've got some called Paul Felton from Nevada, who wants to know what are the particular virtues of a big Harley Davidson over the more common BMWs and Japanese motorcycles one sees in the US.

>> Mitch Daniels: Well now we're on to something very important. I'll struggle to keep the answer brief. Well, the first virtue clearly is noise. The BMW is, most of the Japanese motorcycles are entirely to quiet and I should say I owned, I never owned a BMW, but I owned a variety of Japanese motorcycles.

They're all very well made. Hondas in particular. But no, those of us who rode the American Harley Davidson always said it was a safety issue. You make enough noise that the motorists don't run you over.

>> Andrew Roberts: Okay, well, that's, I'll let Mr Felton. P J O'Rourke was a friend of yours, one of the great, great humorists and obviously political humorists of the 20th century.

And he sadly is no longer with us. But you wrote an article recently lamenting his passing. Of course. How important would you say is the capacity to retain a sense of humor at the high level of politics that you've, that you've worked in all your life?

>> Mitch Daniels: I think it's enormously important in multiple ways.

One is for those of us who are skeptical of government and getting too big and too expensive and intrusive and so forth. We need people who can effectively poke fun. As I wrote there, puncturing of pretensions is a very noble endeavor. And PJ was as good as any that we've, that we've known in that respect.

But you know, even more broadly, I think there's such a sad and I hope temporary prevalence in our society, at least these days, to politicize everything and to put politics at the center of life. It doesn't belong there. And humor is a good way to remind people that there are other things far more important.

And I've worried about this, written about this, you know, in other, in other ways, but certainly thinking about the loss of pj, I brought it to mind again. So we, I think we need to recover our sense of humor in many, for many reasons, but to keep our politics in its proper place is certainly first among them.

>> Andrew Roberts: History is important, isn't it? This is a history podcast, so I would say that, wouldn't I? But nonetheless, in terms of the culture wars that we're sorta forced to fight, nobody wants to. But they exist. You were great when it came to putting Howard Zinn in his place the author of the essentially Marxist what he called the people's History of the United States terrible terrible book do you see still today even years later a history being an important sort of aspect in the in the struggle for the future of American culture.

>> Mitch Daniels: Andrew it's not important it's central. And I didn't put him in his place he's still out there that in the sense that his books are used in a depressingly and alarmingly large number of districts I haven't looked lately. But this sort of anti historical poison is being has been fed to a large percentage of today's young people and you see it that you can't blame today's young people I don't anyway for some of the absurd and anti American and anti freedom postures that they take because this is what this is the history they've been taught or mistaught.

And so no I mean I did speak up about its use in now I want to be it's always important to be clear if some college professor wants to teach that rot you know we protect that right. He's not the only professor on campus. There are other books and the, and the students are of an age where we hope they are able to think critically and, and discern, you know, fact from fiction and so forth.

That's very different than teaching a third grader to despise his country, which is what is happening in too many cases or wherever Zen was being taught. So, yeah, I, I haven't dealt with this in, in quite a long time, but as far as I know, it is still.

It is still a problem.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yeah.

>> Mitch Daniels: He's not the only, I think bogus history that's out there, but he's probably the worst example.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yeah, but well, well done for, for being one of the few people to, to sort of stand up and tell the truth on that.

Staying with history, what's the history book or the biography that you're moment?

>> Mitch Daniels: Well, I've been trying to fill in one of the many gaps in my historical knowledge and I don't know, it sort of wandered into antiquity a little bit or semi antiquity.

>> Andrew Roberts: So, great.

>> Mitch Daniels: We love that we read a book, a survey on the Ottoman Empire from its origins to its demise in, in our century.

>> Andrew Roberts: Who by?

>> Mitch Daniels: Sorry?

>> Andrew Roberts: Who by? Who was the author? Was it John Julius Norwich? Was it Stephen Runciman? There are a few-

>> Mitch Daniels: I'll tell you the title, and I'd have to go pull it off the shelf. It was called, it was called Lords of the Horizon, I believe.

>> Andrew Roberts: Okay, you don't need a title. Sorry, you don't need an author. We've got, we've got that, that's good, Lords of the Horizon,.

>> Mitch Daniels: I read a couple about Alexander the Great. And I confess I just read one about the Templars.

>> Andrew Roberts: I was very disappointed to find out that the myths tend not to be, or tend to be mythical in many cases.

>> Mitch Daniels: Which-

>> Andrew Roberts: Exciting ideas about grand conspiracies and secret societies, but-

>> Mitch Daniels: Yeah, and my most recent one was more. Was more recent, but I really enjoyed it. There's a great book called Raid on the Sun, and it's about the Israeli attack on the Osiric nuclear facility in Iraq back in the 80s.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yeah.

>> Mitch Daniels: Fascinating.

>> Andrew Roberts: I've just looked up Lords of the Horizons, the History of the Ottoman Empire, and it's been written by Jason Goodwin.

>> Mitch Daniels: Yes.

>> Andrew Roberts: So anybody who's interested in that. And last question, your favorite what if, your counterfactual history.

>> Mitch Daniels: Well, I'm fond of those little quirky ones.

For instance, the, the finding of, of the orders that led to the Battle of Antietam. So the soldier who lost him is actually an Indiana corporal, I believe he was, who found him wrapped in a cigar wrapper or something. And so McClellan, who had otherwise been out-generaled by Lee at every turn, knew what to do.

And I'll get this slightly wrong, Andrew, but in Churchill's rendition, I guess it's in History of the English Speaking Peoples.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yeah.

>> Mitch Daniels: He had this great line, it always stuck with me. It's something like on such tiny agate points do the wheels of history turn. So I think of that every time you think of some little what if.

I like the one where King Alexander of Greece gets bitten by the monkey.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yes.

>> Mitch Daniels: And triggers a war that might not have happened otherwise.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yes.

>> Mitch Daniels: But you know, in terms of big ones, I suppose I'd pick Barbarossa. You know, if, if Hitler had controlled his mania about Russia and lands to the east, we, we wouldn't like.

I suspect that the outcome of the war would have been less fortunate.

>> Andrew Roberts: What if he times it better?

>> Mitch Daniels: On that, but I just thought-

>> Andrew Roberts: Do you mean if Hitler timed it better and won in the east or push the Russians back beyond the-

>> Mitch Daniels: If he started earlier and it didn't get bogged down in the winter.

Or if he attacked England instead, I don't- Yeah. But-

>> Andrew Roberts: No, absolutely, well, we look at those what ifs and usually people look at what ifs in order to find a better world. But actually in that case, obviously you get a, you get a worse one. I think you would.

With Hitler in control. Being bitten by the monkey, monkeys bite people the entire time. It's his own stupid fault for having a pet monkey, don't you think? Not always with such consequences. Mitch Daniels, 49th governor of Indiana, thank you very much for coming on the show. When you mentioned Ronald Reagan and the difference between politicians who are gyroscopes and politicians who are just sort of sonar reactors.

It's very clear from your entire career that you have been the soundest of gyroscopes and it's a great honor to have had you on Secrets of Statecraft.

>> Mitch Daniels: Well, you're too kind, Andrew, but I would just say in closing that that reading history is this I always thought was the single best way to try to develop a good sense of what to do.

I've told so many young people you get the leadership question all the time. And I tell them I never saw. I didn't find a how to book ever that I thought was particularly helpful. But I said read biography, read the read the life stories of people who either did it well or maybe didn't.

And that's where the best lessons come from. And I think anything I, at least I internalized and tried to use, probably I got that way.

>> Andrew Roberts: That is entirely the underlying philosophy of this podcast. So thank you very much, Mitch. We couldn't have ended better. Thank you again.

Thank you, Mitch. On the next episode of Secrets of Statecraft, my guest will be Daniel Samet, an expert on US-Israeli relations.

>> Presenter: This podcast is a production of the Hoover Institution, where we generate and promote ideas advancing freedom. For more information about our work, to hear more of our podcasts or view our video content, please visit hoover.org.