If George Will had his way, he would make sure that Mitch Daniels becomes President Mitch Daniels. In a lengthy op-ed published in the Washington Post, the political commentator explained that Daniels, the current president of Purdue University is more than qualified to become commander-in-chief.
Columnist George Will is hoping that Mitch Daniels will throw his hat in the race for the White House. On Thursday, Will, a Pulitzer Prize-winning political commentator wrote a glorious piece in the Washington Post where he praised Daniels’ leaderships skills as the former governor of Indiana and as the current president of Purdue University.
According to the newspaper columnist, Daniels, a Republican, who has yet to endorse Donald Trump, has the will and the background to be the next great president of the United States of America. While glorifying Daniels, Will took the opportunity to bash President Barack Obama and the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party in the 2016 presidential election.
In his op-ed, Will went after Mr. Obama, who made the horrible mistake of saying that hard work, is not enough to succeed in life – a person also needs a bit of luck. Obama spoke those words during his commencement speech at Howard University a few weeks ago. Will, who completely disagreed with POTUS, wrote:
“…This matters, because diplomas often are credentials that are not credible, and because ample studies of happiness demonstrate that the most important predictor of it is, Daniels said, “earned success.” This involves sustained, difficult effort to surmount setbacks. And yet, said Daniels, perhaps the most dangerous of today’s many pernicious ideas is that “life is more or less a lottery. That we are less masters of our fate than corks floating in a sea of luck.”
The conservative writer was not the only one marked by Obama’s “luck” line; Daniels gave his own commencement speech a few days later where he directly answered the Democratic president. He continued in his article:
“Daniels spoke six days after Barack Obama told Howard University’s class of 2016: “Yes, you’ve worked hard, but you’ve also been lucky. That’s a pet peeve of mine: People who have been successful and don’t realize they’ve been lucky. That God may have blessed them; it wasn’t nothing you did.”
He added:
“Nothing. Hence the progressive agenda: Government must comprehensively regulate, redistribute and generally fine-tune society in order to engineer “fairness” to counter life’s pervasive and pernicious randomness (“luck”). Obama’s words at Howard were, of course, congruent with his 2012 campaign statement that “if you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” So society did, with you contributing a bit.”
Will also launched a blistering attack on Mr. Trump by calling him a whiner. He shared:
“The presumptive Republican nominee is a world-class whiner (a victim of debate moderators who are meanies, and most recently of a “rigged” judicial system) who is telling Americans that they are comprehensively victimized (by wily Chinese exporters, manufacturers making Oreo cookies abroad, freeloading allies, etc.). Purdue has the president the nation needs.”
Hillary Clinton was not spared in the article; he had the following choice words for the former Secretary of State:
“The presumptive Democratic nominee is a progressive committed to government ambitious enough to iron the wrinkles of luck out of life, and to distribute equity to life’s victims, meaning to everyone.”
Will had also hoped that Daniels would enter the race in 2012 and many Conservatives from Indiana are pushing for him to jump on the #NeverTrump train. However, in an original statement issued by Daniels, he made it clear that he has no interest in going against Clinton and Trump. The university’s spokesperson stated:
“His reaction falls somewhere along the lines of half Gen. Sherman and half Sgt. Schultz on the topic.” In other words, to quote Civil War Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman: “I will not accept if nominated and will not serve if elected.” And to quote Sgt. Schultz from sit-com “Hogan’s Heroes:” “I know nothing.”
Daniels recently signed a contract to stay at Purdue with the promise of $1 million in retention bonuses, through 2020 – which means that the recruiting pleas will start back in four years.
