Mitch Daniels in Shortest Way Home, by Pete Buttigieg

On Technology: Business-minded technocrat uninterested in social issues

In working on his opponents campaign, I began to realize what had made Daniels a formidable opponent- and such a highly effective governor that some national conservatives saw him as their best hope in challenging President Obama. He was a business minded technocrat, with very little interest in the social issues that were used to rile up electoral bases in campaign years but left communities divided long after their political usefulness expired. Instead, he was extremely focused on economic issues and interested in making government work well, even achieving the improbable feat of reforming the Bureau of Motor Vehicles into an efficient and user-friendly customer service organization. (Since the BMV is the one state office that virtually every citizen uses, it was also a politically clever thing to do.)