Politics & Power Quote by Mitch Daniels

Daniels reaches for the oldest trick in the reformer’s playbook: make bureaucracy feel not just inefficient, but biologically invasive. “Weeds” and “sprouted” turn the administrative state into unwanted nature, something that grows without permission and survives on neglect. It’s a smart choice of metaphor because it frames government complexity as self-perpetuating, not merely mistaken. If boards and commissions are weeds, you don’t negotiate with them or study them; you pull them.

The intent is managerial and political at once. As an executive-minded Republican (and later Indiana governor), Daniels built a brand on competence, trimming, and measurable results. Targeting “hundreds” of semi-independent panels lets him say “good government” while aiming at a familiar conservative villain: unaccountable institutions that outlive their purpose. The line “far beyond any real contribution” does quiet work. It preemptively delegitimizes whatever expertise or public participation these bodies claim to represent, casting them as performance and process, not outcomes.

Subtext: the real problem isn’t just waste, it’s diffusion of responsibility. Boards and advisory committees are where accountability goes to hide; they complicate chains of command, slow decisions, and provide political cover (“the commission recommended…”). Daniels is telling listeners that democracy has been cluttered with too many intermediaries.

Context matters because these entities often exist precisely because legislatures and agencies distrust each other or want insulation from blame. Daniels’ critique lands because it taps a voter’s lived experience of delay and opacity, even as it sidesteps the uncomfortable truth: sometimes those “weeds” are guardrails. Pruning can be reform; it can also be a power grab dressed as efficiency.