Mitch Daniels, senior adviser to the Liberty Fund, president emeritus of Purdue University, and a former Governor of Indiana, wrote an opinion piece for The Washington Post, which was published in that newspaper on November 12, 2025.
Daniels' column was titled, "Public norms have been warped. Is the damage permanent?" Here is how Daniels began his column:
There is some small fraction of Americans — conspiracy bloggers, radio hosts, performance artists somehow elected to public office — who prosper from and presumably revel in this century’s rapid collapse of long-standing norms in the public square. Like it or not, standards of both conduct and discourse have shifted unmistakably and radically downward.
I pretty much concur with Daniels' judgment about the downward shift that is so horribly visible in our contemporary politics. "Red" and "Blue" are screaming at each other, as the image that accompanied Daniels' column (and that is reproduced above) makes visually clear. Since Daniels was a Republican, during his political career, his statement is particularly welcome.
Here is what I get tired of, though! The headline on the column, which may or may not come from Daniels himself, asks a pertinent question, but the title suggests that the answer to that question will be found by observation.
We can observe. And we can act. If things are as bad as Daniels paints them (and read the column itself to verify that Daniels thinks things are very bad), it is critically important that our discussion of the current reality not be limited to description and observation alone.
IF things are bad (and they are), outlining all the realities of that (and ending the review of the realities right there) isn't the right approach. People tend to believe that whatever "is," at any present time, defines what is possible. Why? Because what exists now is "real," of course. All the bad things that Daniels outlines are definitely "bad," and they are definitely "real," but they are not "inevitable."
I am tired of political commentary that is "observation" and "description" alone. What is most important is not what exists right now. What is most important is what we WANT to exist.
We can change what exists. We can do something new and different. We will have that option right up to the end of the world.
I get tired of people describing what's wrong, and leaving it at that.
Here's the real question: What are we going to do about it?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/11/12/coarse-politics-profanity-gerrymandering-lawfare/
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