Speaker 1: I am very stressed out, like so many Americans. I'm
Speaker 1: actually having trouble sleeping now. I don't think I should
Speaker 1: be feeling this way about a presidential election, but I
Speaker 1: don't think I'm alone. There's so much anger and rancor
Speaker 1: really permeating throughout the country. Clearly a lot of people
Speaker 1: have been left out of the American dream. This is
Speaker 1: the autumn of our discontent. And I guess the question
Speaker 1: I have is how did it happen? I want to
Speaker 1: know why? What are the underpinnings of our anger? And
Speaker 1: really the class warfare that we're witnessing is trade to blame?
Speaker 1: Is globalization to blame? We hear Donald Trump certainly driving
Speaker 1: that point home whenever he can. You go anywhere, you
Speaker 1: watch Secretary Clinton, and you will see Devis Station where
Speaker 1: manufacturers down thirty forty. Sometimes NAFTA is the worst trade
Speaker 1: deal maybe ever signed anywhere, but certainly ever signed in
Speaker 1: this country. And now you want to approve trans specific partnership.
Speaker 1: You were totally in favor of it. Then you heard
Speaker 1: what I was saying how bad it is, and you said,
Speaker 1: I can't win that debate. But you know that if
Speaker 1: you did win, you would approve that, and that will
Speaker 1: be almost as bad as NAFTA. Nothing will ever dump NAPTON.
Speaker 1: So I decided to invite one of the smartest people
Speaker 1: I know on these issues to come and really give
Speaker 1: us trade and globalization one oh one. Tom Friedman, I
Speaker 1: think is such a great writer. A New Yorker profile
Speaker 1: talked about the fact that he writes like it's a
Speaker 1: conversation with the taxi driver. Well, sign me up, hire me.
Speaker 1: I am your taxi driver, and I want you to
Speaker 1: go along for the ride. Tom Friedman, Welcome to our podcast.
Speaker 1: Great to be with you, Katie. Now normally would be
Speaker 1: our podcast because my friend, my partner in crime, my colleague,
Speaker 1: Brian Goldsmith, is normally with me Tom, and he is wonderful.
Speaker 1: But guess what, he just had a baby. Isn't that nice? Fantastic?
Speaker 1: Her name is Eliza. I'm wondering if there was some
Speaker 1: kind of HAMILTONI yeah, So what the hell is going on? Tom?
Speaker 1: Why whatever do you mean, Katie? I mean he must
Speaker 1: be You've been in this business a long time, Tom,
Speaker 1: as have I, and I don't think I've seen anything
Speaker 1: like this. Are you as upset about the state of
Speaker 1: the Union as I am. Well, there's no question we're
Speaker 1: seeing um election like no other. We're seeing a candidate
Speaker 1: like no other in Donald Trump, and to me, the
Speaker 1: single most honest, true, an important statement Donald Trump has
Speaker 1: made since the beginning of the campaign is that he
Speaker 1: could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue UM in New York
Speaker 1: City and his supporters would still stick with him. And UM,
Speaker 1: I think that is accurate, and I think we have
Speaker 1: I don't think this is an economic event. I think
Speaker 1: it's a cultural event. It's touching something I think very
Speaker 1: deep in the American psyche. Uh. There there are at
Speaker 1: least three things it's touching, if not more. The first
Speaker 1: thing that I think is producing this is a profound
Speaker 1: sense of what I would call stuck nous in the
Speaker 1: country that we we feel stuck, you know, after eight
Speaker 1: years of a lot of congressional gridlock around Obama. Um,
Speaker 1: a lot of it was deliberately engineered by Republicans to
Speaker 1: make Obama fail. But in the end, they they so
Speaker 1: soiled their own garden that um, they ended up inviting
Speaker 1: in an invasive species called Donald Trump. And I think
Speaker 1: one of the Trump's very successful a pe olls is
Speaker 1: that I'm a business guy. I know how to get
Speaker 1: stuff done. I can unstick us. I am King Arthur,
Speaker 1: and I can pull the sword from the stone. And
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people look at that and
Speaker 1: listen to him and think, well, you know, I kind
Speaker 1: of doubt it, But you know what, what if he can,
Speaker 1: why not give him a chance? What do we have
Speaker 1: to lose? Someone I know described him as an experimental
Speaker 1: drug that you've tried everything, nothing has worked. You're willing
Speaker 1: to go forward and and and inject him and just
Speaker 1: deal with the side effects. That's a very very good
Speaker 1: UM analogy. And I think the second thing feeding Trump
Speaker 1: is a profound sense of homelessness, uh, the likes of
Speaker 1: which I've never seen at the national scale. When you
Speaker 1: say homelessness, do you mean lack of community? Um? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean people feeling not at home in their own homes.
Speaker 1: I don't mean people living on sidewalks. I mean, um
Speaker 1: let's remember Barack Obama ran for resident um claiming that
Speaker 1: a marriage was between a man and a woman. All right,
Speaker 1: he will follow Ireland in in uh proclaiming marriages between
Speaker 1: any two people who love each other. That's a big
Speaker 1: shift for a lot of people, and it took Obama,
Speaker 1: you know, eight years to get his mind around it,
Speaker 1: or six or however many. So for other people who
Speaker 1: come from more conservative, um faith based background, I can
Speaker 1: I can understand why all of this is making them
Speaker 1: feel unmoored, really unsettling. It's sort of like the culture
Speaker 1: wars are alive, and well exactly. Secondly, you have in
Speaker 1: the same homelessness vein um. You're You're in the grocery
Speaker 1: store and everyone around you is speaking Spanish again. I'm
Speaker 1: a really pro immigration person, but this rise in the
Speaker 1: number of sort of immigrants we've had and people not
Speaker 1: speaking the language again makes some people feel really homeless. Okay.
Speaker 1: And Donald Trump's a value proposition is that I will
Speaker 1: erect a wall um that will stop these changes, that
Speaker 1: will make you feel home again. And it's really not
Speaker 1: make America great again, per se. It is make me
Speaker 1: feel home again, isn't it Isn't it isn't it making
Speaker 1: make us go back to the way things were, Because
Speaker 1: I think, you know, one of the things that I've
Speaker 1: thought about a lot as I've watched this unfold is
Speaker 1: that we're in the midst of a massive transformation of society.
Speaker 1: Pile on that with globalization, right, and immigration and suddenly
Speaker 1: you have a melting pot that you're not sure you
Speaker 1: love the ingredients. Right, No, absolutely, And then um, you
Speaker 1: know you have the whole rise of political correctness on
Speaker 1: college campuses, which you can also people makes people feel
Speaker 1: I'm not I can I say this? Can I tell
Speaker 1: this joke? Is it going to get me to lose
Speaker 1: my job? Um? And again, um, you shouldn't tell off
Speaker 1: color jokes or or racist or sexist jokes in ways
Speaker 1: that will make other people feel not at home. But
Speaker 1: all I'm saying is all of these changes at once
Speaker 1: are something that I think is propelling him and accounts
Speaker 1: for the fact that he can declare that if I
Speaker 1: shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, I won't lose any support.
Speaker 1: I think on top of all this, we have a
Speaker 1: broader trend where the line between entertainment has become politics
Speaker 1: and politics has become entertainment. I was going to ask
Speaker 1: you about why Donald Trump. Why is he the Night
Speaker 1: in Shiny Armor? Is it because of his celebrity? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of people who just like
Speaker 1: the show. Um. And he even says that he said,
Speaker 1: look at people come to my rallies because they're fun.
Speaker 1: Because you never know what's going to come out of
Speaker 1: his mouth. Just on the pure entertainment level, it's a
Speaker 1: train wreck in some cases. And it's it is like
Speaker 1: a reality show. You can't take your you can't take
Speaker 1: your eyes off it is going to talk about his hotel,
Speaker 1: his steaks, is wine. And we've lost the line between
Speaker 1: entertainment and politics and and that I think you wrap
Speaker 1: all those things together, and I think you can explain
Speaker 1: where we are. And you said, you know this moment
Speaker 1: of rapid change. I couldn't agree more. I a book
Speaker 1: coming out November, plug exactly, Plug Plug Plug. It's called
Speaker 1: Thank You for Being Late Um, An Optimist Guide to
Speaker 1: Thriving in the Age of Accelerations, Because I think we're
Speaker 1: in an age of acceleration. Well, let's talk. Can we
Speaker 1: can we sort of take a step back, Tom, because
Speaker 1: you're such an expert on globalization and trade and there
Speaker 1: there's been so much discussion about you know, China and
Speaker 1: people taking our jobs and you know, the economy, and
Speaker 1: can we sort of just dissect some of these things
Speaker 1: that have surfaced in this campaign so we can hopefully
Speaker 1: get some clarity. Do we need to rethink sort of
Speaker 1: this whole neoliberalism philosophy that free trade is a great
Speaker 1: thing for everyone. Well again, let's let's so let's unpack it. Um.
Speaker 1: People who benefit from trade tend to have no idea
Speaker 1: who they are. People who are hurt by trade no
Speaker 1: exactly who they are. So you begin with that asymmetry.
Speaker 1: No one sits around and say, had cut this basket
Speaker 1: full of goods I got at Walmart? Um, you know,
Speaker 1: for half the price I would have had to pay
Speaker 1: for them, these tennis hues, these T shirts, you know,
Speaker 1: this stereo, this iPod Um, I'm so glad we have
Speaker 1: free trade because that's why it's costing me half as much. Um.
Speaker 1: That person has no idea how much they're benefiting from globalization.
Speaker 1: But the person who lost their job, um at the
Speaker 1: textile factory, it knows exactly who they are. It definitely
Speaker 1: hurts specific groups, and our job as a society should
Speaker 1: be to cushion the impact on those groups. We have
Speaker 1: not done that. I was reading an economist that we
Speaker 1: spend a minuscule amount of the GDP on retraining people,
Speaker 1: and as we are making this massive transition, it seems
Speaker 1: the skill set you need to be successful has just
Speaker 1: changed dramatically. So one that gets to the other. I'm
Speaker 1: in the New York Times Washington office, okay, and I'm
Speaker 1: sitting at my desk with a fancy new Assisco phone.
Speaker 1: We used to have a receptionist at the Washington office
Speaker 1: of the New York Times out in the hall. We
Speaker 1: don't have her there now. She did not lose her
Speaker 1: job to a Mexican. She lost her job to a microchip.
Speaker 1: It's called voicemail. Okay. So the vast majority of jobs
Speaker 1: are not lost to foreign factories or competition. They're lost
Speaker 1: to technology. They aren't outsourced to Mexico. They're outsourced to history.
Speaker 1: They're made obsolete. If horses could have voted, we never
Speaker 1: would have had cars. We know that free trade benefits
Speaker 1: the society overall. Where we have failed is to give
Speaker 1: targeted help to our brothers and sisters who are really
Speaker 1: born the brunt of trade. Why aren't we doing more
Speaker 1: for them? And did we did? Were we blindsided by
Speaker 1: the kind of pain that would be inflicted by some
Speaker 1: of these free trade agreements. I'd love you to tell
Speaker 1: me if you think NAFTA was a good thing or
Speaker 1: a bad thing, because that's confusing. But again, because it's
Speaker 1: confusing because it's a mixed picture. Um Uh, it definitely
Speaker 1: benefited certain companies. If you're in a an agriculture company
Speaker 1: now exporting to Mexico, not to mention to Canada, but
Speaker 1: to Mexico, you love NAFTA. If you were working in
Speaker 1: an auto parts company in Detroit that's been moved to
Speaker 1: the Michauladores or mont Uh, then you don't like uh NAFTA.
Speaker 1: So it's entirely depends you know where you sit. But
Speaker 1: I'll tell you something else. How lucky are we as
Speaker 1: a as a country that our two neighbors are Mexico
Speaker 1: and Canada too stable free market democracies. Mexico one reason
Speaker 1: Mexico is a stable free market democracy was NAFTA. Naft
Speaker 1: to help consolidate Mexican democracy, which is wonderful. But honestly,
Speaker 1: people who are suffering in Detroit or in the rust
Speaker 1: Bell Tom aren't really that excited that Mexico is doing better.
Speaker 1: You know, I think Macrick cosmically, I think that's an
Speaker 1: incredibly important point. But what do you say to the
Speaker 1: guy who cannot, for the life of him, translate his skills,
Speaker 1: maybe on the assembly line or in a factory who's
Speaker 1: been replaced by robots who or whose firm has has
Speaker 1: gone overseas. Yeah. What I say to him is, please, Um,
Speaker 1: let's your legislator, My legislator, Uh, create legislation where I
Speaker 1: can transfer my text dollars to you in a way
Speaker 1: that will give you opportunities to be successful in this
Speaker 1: new world. You really feel for a lot of these workers, Tom,
Speaker 1: because you know it's not that far from St. Louis Park,
Speaker 1: where you grew up a suburb of Minneapolis and had
Speaker 1: a father who was the vice president of a ball
Speaker 1: bearings company. Um. You know, I think people may see
Speaker 1: you as a snobby New York Times columnists, but you
Speaker 1: really understand well, you know I think that you're a
Speaker 1: kid from the Midwest. Well, I grew up with these
Speaker 1: people I want, I'm What frustrates me is we haven't
Speaker 1: had the legislation to properly take care of these people.
Speaker 1: I totally understand their anger. I just don't want their
Speaker 1: anger to be translated into national policy that will hurt
Speaker 1: them and us. Tell me why you think protection ism
Speaker 1: is bad for for the average Joe or Gene Genie. Well,
Speaker 1: let's just start with I mean, if you're a Walmart shopper.
Speaker 1: If we have protection is um um. I mean everything
Speaker 1: in your shopping card is going to cost more. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, the tennis shoes, the T shirts, um, of
Speaker 1: the appliances, the iPods. I mean, if we literally put
Speaker 1: up walls of protection, uh, they all might be made here.
Speaker 1: But you know you are not going to get banged
Speaker 1: for your buck at all. Before we go to a break,
Speaker 1: do you think China is the boogeyman that it's been
Speaker 1: portrayed to be. I'm sure you saw Saturday Night Live
Speaker 1: Alec Baldwin kind of mocking Donald Trump for talking repeatedly
Speaker 1: about China. I think he pronounced it China. Yeah. Right,
Speaker 1: our jobs flee in this country, they're going to Mexico,
Speaker 1: They're going to China. So is China the boogeyman? Or
Speaker 1: is it? You know? I mean what role is China playing?
Speaker 1: And all this time, you know there's no question that China,
Speaker 1: once it got admitted to the w t O UM,
Speaker 1: you know, has engaged in protectionist practices and in some ways,
Speaker 1: you know, shakedowns of American industries. Um that uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I think need to be addressed and should be addressed
Speaker 1: in a in a very tough minded way. At the
Speaker 1: same time, let's remember China holds you know, well over
Speaker 1: a trillion dollars of our debt. So the fact that
Speaker 1: you have the low price mortgage you have today is
Speaker 1: in part because China gives us their money and we
Speaker 1: give them an iou because they're sitting on those io
Speaker 1: U s Uh. Interest rates are what they are, So
Speaker 1: your home mortgage is what it is. So you alienate
Speaker 1: China at your own risk. I always joke that, you know,
Speaker 1: they say China Hong Kong or one country, two systems.
Speaker 1: I say no, no, no, it's America and China that
Speaker 1: are one country, two systems. Uh. China can't roll over
Speaker 1: in bed without hitting us. We can't roll over in
Speaker 1: bed without hitting China. And so we've got to find
Speaker 1: a way to work at out term mutual benefit because
Speaker 1: there's only one thing worse more dangerous to us than
Speaker 1: a rising China, and that's a falling China. And if
Speaker 1: falling China will affect the cost of everything from the
Speaker 1: shoes on your feet to the money in your wallet,
Speaker 1: to the value of your mortgage. And do you think
Speaker 1: Donald Trump will lead to a falling China? You know,
Speaker 1: I I don't want to make any any predictions. Who
Speaker 1: knows what Trump believes? I have no. Whenever people say
Speaker 1: to me, what do you think you know Trump would do?
Speaker 1: I always say which Trump? The Trump who went to
Speaker 1: meet with the President of Mexico and was all sweetness
Speaker 1: and light and we have to get along, we're neighbors.
Speaker 1: Or the Trump who went a few hours later back
Speaker 1: to Arizona and denounced Mexican rapists and immigrants, etcetera. With
Speaker 1: the with Donald, it's always the question of which Trump.
Speaker 1: We'll be back with Tom Friedman right after this. How
Speaker 1: do you come up with the ideas for your columns? Tom?
Speaker 1: It's so demanding, it seems to me. I mean, do
Speaker 1: you have ever have just complete writer's block and think,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I have no idea what I want
Speaker 1: to write about? Or do you have so many columns
Speaker 1: in your head just waiting to to vomit out on
Speaker 1: the page. Yeah? No, I don't mean that in a
Speaker 1: bad way, you know what I mean. I see columns everywhere, um,
Speaker 1: and so for me, I've never ever in twenty one years,
Speaker 1: you'll come to the day of my columns. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: what am I gonna write? That's a good invitation, and
Speaker 1: of me exactly don't about I'm interested in a lot
Speaker 1: of things. Technology is science, education, geopolitics, politics. The way
Speaker 1: my mind works is I'm a dot connector. So I
Speaker 1: tend to see the connections between things that sometimes other
Speaker 1: people don't, and so that gives me a leg up.
Speaker 1: But it's never never been a problem for me. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be doing this job for twenty one years if
Speaker 1: it were a lot of people. Really. I think credit
Speaker 1: you with taking complicated concepts and really distilling them. And
Speaker 1: I think in that New Yorker profile about you, it
Speaker 1: talked about how you sort of are a master at
Speaker 1: branding catchphrases, folks, the analysis of big fat geopolitical issues,
Speaker 1: and it's you you distill it to a point where
Speaker 1: it's like you're having a chat with a taxi driver.
Speaker 1: I went into journalism because I love being a translator
Speaker 1: from English to English. I like taking really complicated subjects
Speaker 1: and breaking them down and ways first of all that
Speaker 1: I can understand and then hopefully others can understand. And
Speaker 1: I happen to think there's some thing very idealistic about that.
Speaker 1: But I will tell you this to simplify something accurately.
Speaker 1: You have to understand it deeply. So I'm not just
Speaker 1: doing advertising branding. I mean I'm able to sometimes distill
Speaker 1: really complex things into simple images that people understand and
Speaker 1: can grasp because I've taken a lot of time to
Speaker 1: understand them, take them apart, and put them together in
Speaker 1: a way that someone can understand. Do you worry that,
Speaker 1: you know, speaking of your new book that's coming out
Speaker 1: later in November, that are you worried about the pace
Speaker 1: of our lives? It seems to me that the desire
Speaker 1: to really dig deep into some issues. And when I
Speaker 1: say dig deep, I'm saying read a column um that
Speaker 1: that people that people aren't really um, they don't seem
Speaker 1: so invested in knowledge. And in fact, there's such a
Speaker 1: strain of anti intellectualism, not only in this country but
Speaker 1: around the world. Dare I say, well, you can get
Speaker 1: such a rise now for yourself, you know, with just
Speaker 1: a hundred forty two characters. If if you come up
Speaker 1: with a really clever, snappy tweet and it goes viral
Speaker 1: quote unquote, wow, you just got a global buzz out
Speaker 1: of characters. You don't have to write an article, a column,
Speaker 1: a book. So the system now rewards that kind of behavior.
Speaker 1: You see Trump doing it, you know, um, And you know,
Speaker 1: all good things require patients. You can't speed up the
Speaker 1: gestation of a baby elephant or a bibob treat things
Speaker 1: that can last for a thousand years, they all take patients.
Speaker 1: It's the reason my book is called thank You for
Speaker 1: Being Late, Um, which is I want to celebrate pausing,
Speaker 1: taking time to reflect or rethink, to renew, to reimagine.
Speaker 1: I remember reading the science of sort of brain interaction
Speaker 1: and daydreaming is actually a good thing, despite what we
Speaker 1: were told in school by teachers, that kind of having
Speaker 1: a moment, to not be constantly stimulated by your phone
Speaker 1: or by conversation ends, or by social media or any
Speaker 1: kind of media. That's when you're creative. Juices really flow.
Speaker 1: That's why people have their best ideas when they're in
Speaker 1: the shower. Do you intentionally disconnect so you can just plaine?
Speaker 1: Thank Tom? Well? Absolutely, you know, I mean again, the
Speaker 1: reason my book is called thank You for Being Late
Speaker 1: is I would meet people in Washington, d C. For breakfast,
Speaker 1: and they'd come sometimes fifteen twenty minutes late. Every once
Speaker 1: in a while, say Tom, I really started as the
Speaker 1: weather driving the subway, the dog game, my homework, and um.
Speaker 1: One day I spontaneously said to one of them, Actually, Katie,
Speaker 1: thank you for being late. Because you were late. I've
Speaker 1: been eavesdropping on the conversation next to me. Fascinating. What
Speaker 1: did you forget your phone? Yeah, I've been people watching
Speaker 1: the law be fantastic. But you know, nobody, nobody does that, Tom,
Speaker 1: because if there's any break in the action, if you
Speaker 1: have any free time, I mean, there's no such thing
Speaker 1: as free time, because you automatically go to your phone.
Speaker 1: Well that's the thing. I don't. I go automatically go golfing.
Speaker 1: I know you do. In fact, my husband John was
Speaker 1: upset he couldn't be here to talk to you about
Speaker 1: the writer cup. I was like, whatever, whatever, John, you
Speaker 1: and Tom get together and go golfing. But do you
Speaker 1: do you? Um? I'm serious about this, Tom, because I
Speaker 1: find it. I have a problem with it. As you
Speaker 1: may know, I'm actually not on Twitter. The New York
Speaker 1: Times tweets my column and I'm not a uh and
Speaker 1: even a remotely Twitter user. I wouldn't even know how
Speaker 1: to use it myself. Really, do you ever feel like
Speaker 1: you're missing out on it? Anything? No, you know, I somehow, Kat,
Speaker 1: you have survived sixty three years without it. You know,
Speaker 1: you have seven sevent thousand followers, So I guess it's
Speaker 1: not hurting you so much? Is that? Um? The New
Speaker 1: York Times tweets my column, so those are followers of
Speaker 1: my column. So I'm thrilled by that. But I myself
Speaker 1: because I don't. First of all, I changed my mind
Speaker 1: all the time. If you asked me to tweet something,
Speaker 1: you know, immediately after an event, my reaction, I need
Speaker 1: to stop, pause and think about it because I and
Speaker 1: by the way, I may change my time my mind
Speaker 1: three times over the next two days as I think
Speaker 1: about it. So I would hate to be out there saying,
Speaker 1: you know, this thumbs up and then next day feel God,
Speaker 1: I really should have made thumbs down and I gotta
Speaker 1: write my column about it. But I have a tweet
Speaker 1: out there on Monday saying this, so you know, I
Speaker 1: just don't. And by the way, if I find out
Speaker 1: about the fire of the earthquake, the shooting, uh five
Speaker 1: minutes later from CNN and from Twitter, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm okay with that. You sound so reasonable. Let's talk
Speaker 1: a little bit more about this campaign. Why is the
Speaker 1: country so divided. Hillary Clinton seems to be much more experienced,
Speaker 1: more competent, but people are so uneasy about her, and
Speaker 1: there's a lot of sort of moral equivalence being made
Speaker 1: between her fallibilities and Donald Trump's. Why is that? You know,
Speaker 1: they say, Katie, that people after a while start to
Speaker 1: resemble their dogs. You know, I hope I don't resemble mine,
Speaker 1: because I have a seventeen year old Karen Terrier and
Speaker 1: she is she's not looking so good. But I think
Speaker 1: over time people start to resemble their problems. And what
Speaker 1: I mean by that is, um, we have started to
Speaker 1: really look like Sunnies and Shiites, Democrats and Republicans. That
Speaker 1: not two parties divided by a different set of competing
Speaker 1: ideas that must and cannon always should be able to
Speaker 1: compromise in the middle but two different tribes who who
Speaker 1: people now would say, I wouldn't let my kid marry
Speaker 1: one of them? And the result is, um, we become
Speaker 1: like the warring tribes in the Middle East. Not two
Speaker 1: parties that go to Washington to govern and always find
Speaker 1: a way to compromise in the middle but two parties
Speaker 1: that resemble those in the Middle East and their philosophy
Speaker 1: and their abiding philosophy in the Middle East is I'm strong,
Speaker 1: why should I compromise? I'm weak? How can I compromise?
Speaker 1: But they never look for that that common ground in
Speaker 1: the middle that can serve both lives and elevate them
Speaker 1: both at the same time. So that's so depressing, Tom.
Speaker 1: You know, what do you do about that? I mean,
Speaker 1: I think you're right. It's almost like we're in one
Speaker 1: of those ovens, a convection of and right, you're just
Speaker 1: kind of sitting in in in your you're marinating in
Speaker 1: your own juices and people you're listening to people who
Speaker 1: agree with you. And my daughter Carrie, who's twenty years old,
Speaker 1: said the saddest thing to me. She said, I cannot
Speaker 1: I think about the Yates poem. Every day things fall apart,
Speaker 1: the center cannot hold and and and it's just this
Speaker 1: feeling of just kind of this huge fissure in our country,
Speaker 1: almost like it's a fault line between two different America's. Well,
Speaker 1: that's this is not a shameless plug, but that is
Speaker 1: why I wrote my book. That is I was feeling this,
Speaker 1: uh that after all my years in the Middle East,
Speaker 1: um covering the Israeli Palestinian Conflict, Saudi Arena, Indian shiait
Speaker 1: Sunni UM. I came back to America and it started
Speaker 1: to look and sound and talk and feel exactly like
Speaker 1: that part of the world. So I felt a need
Speaker 1: to go back to my own roots in Minnesota, the
Speaker 1: small suburb of Minneapolis where I grew up, which was
Speaker 1: not like that, UM, which was a truly center right,
Speaker 1: center left place where the commons worked. UM, that was
Speaker 1: a healthy community. And to go back and try to
Speaker 1: understand why it was that way, uh, and and really
Speaker 1: to just reaffirm to myself that I didn't make the
Speaker 1: whole thing up that um, it really was like that.
Speaker 1: And then to see if those lessons can apply to today,
Speaker 1: because I think that's the biggest issue. I still think
Speaker 1: we're a center right, center left country, but our politics
Speaker 1: does not reflect that at the national stage. That said, Katie,
Speaker 1: if you want to be an optimist about America, stand
Speaker 1: on your head, because the country so much better from
Speaker 1: the bottom up than from the top down. If you
Speaker 1: want to be an optimist, come with me back to Minnesota,
Speaker 1: and I'll show you communities at work, um that aren't
Speaker 1: being torn apart by this politics, where there still is
Speaker 1: a sense of the commons where people do come together,
Speaker 1: but it's it's not that way at the national level,
Speaker 1: and I think it's much worse than the reality on
Speaker 1: the ground in most of the country. Well, I think
Speaker 1: wage stagnation. You know, this is another thing where you
Speaker 1: hear different stories about the economy. I know you wrote
Speaker 1: recently when you wrote your scathing column about Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: uh that there is good news on the economic horizon.
Speaker 1: But then when you hear about wage stagnation and you
Speaker 1: read things like wages and benefits have essentially flatlined or
Speaker 1: declined for four out of five Americans between two thousand
Speaker 1: seven and two thousand fourteen, um, you you can see
Speaker 1: why people aren't feeling like the economy is getting better
Speaker 1: for everyone. They feel like the economy is getting better
Speaker 1: quite frankly for people like you and me. Well, there's
Speaker 1: no question that you know, there's nothing like a growing
Speaker 1: economic pie to make people feel more generous, more pluralistic,
Speaker 1: willing to experiment and reach out. And we had that
Speaker 1: kind of pie in the eighties and a lot of
Speaker 1: the nineties, and and we've lost that kind of pie
Speaker 1: in recent years. Although there's lots of data now suggesting
Speaker 1: that things are improving and coming back. Um, and that
Speaker 1: the politics you see right now as a lagging indicator.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of thriving communities around the country. You know.
Speaker 1: Come with me to Raleigh, to Austin, to Minorapoulis, to Seattle,
Speaker 1: you know. And I will also tell you the number
Speaker 1: of people who, you know, thanks to this world, can
Speaker 1: now start businesses on their own, get educated online in
Speaker 1: ways they never could before. Um. You know, there's the
Speaker 1: thing about globalization. You know, people think because I wrote
Speaker 1: The World Is Flat that Um, I'm somehow love with globalization.
Speaker 1: If you read that book, it's very clear. I think
Speaker 1: mobilization is everything, and it's opposite. It's incredibly democratizing, and
Speaker 1: it's incredibly authoritarian. It's incredibly particularizing, and it's incredibly homogenizing. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, it's incredibly empowering and secredibly disempowering. It all
Speaker 1: depends what values you bring to the system. The system
Speaker 1: itself is not inherently anything. The same globalization systems that
Speaker 1: allows me to start a website or to write my
Speaker 1: own novel now and put it up on Amazon dot
Speaker 1: Com and not have to wait through way through fifty
Speaker 1: rejection letters from publishers. That same system Okay, also, you
Speaker 1: know shifts jobs and wages faster than ever. It's all
Speaker 1: about what values we bring to it. It seems to
Speaker 1: me Hillary Clinton has a big opening, right. Donald Trump
Speaker 1: is is trashing free trade, he's fat trashing China, He's
Speaker 1: trashing a lot of things. But I don't hear a
Speaker 1: lot of how are we going to fix things? How
Speaker 1: are you going to adjust to this new reality? If
Speaker 1: you will, do you think that she's communicated properly, like
Speaker 1: how we navigate this? Well, you know they will tell you.
Speaker 1: You go to their website. It's full of job creating
Speaker 1: ideas and educating ideas and how to get debt free
Speaker 1: college and um those kind of things. So I wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to make a blanket statement because I think there
Speaker 1: is a lot of beef and substance there. But I
Speaker 1: don't think she's communicated it people. It's always been my view.
Speaker 1: People don't listen through their ears. They listen through their stomach.
Speaker 1: If I connect with you on a gut level, O, Katie,
Speaker 1: you're gonna say to me, Tom, I trust you don't
Speaker 1: bother me with the details. If I don't connect with
Speaker 1: you on a gut level, you're gonna say to me, Tom,
Speaker 1: could you show me those details one more time? And um,
Speaker 1: for any number of reasons, I think Hillary has failed
Speaker 1: to connect with people on a gut level, that she
Speaker 1: understands the problem and has the solutions and a part
Speaker 1: of it she's up against. Just she's just been around
Speaker 1: a long time, you know. So it's just so you know,
Speaker 1: he sucks all the oxygen out of the room because
Speaker 1: he he says all these crazy things. I mean, he
Speaker 1: just sucks all the auctions. Yeah, and she's she's been
Speaker 1: around a long time. She's a serious woman trying to
Speaker 1: make serious arguments. They're kind of boring. That's the nature
Speaker 1: of serious arguments. Um Uh, it's much more thrilling to
Speaker 1: have someone you know, I tell you I'm going to
Speaker 1: make America great again and and not tell you how
Speaker 1: that I have a secret plan to destroy isis. But
Speaker 1: I can't tell you how. Um. What I think can't
Speaker 1: be excused is for any number of reasons, she's not
Speaker 1: a natural politician to begin with. You, she has not
Speaker 1: made that gut connection with people, and and therefore there's
Speaker 1: a lot of people who want to keep seeing the
Speaker 1: details do you think that's going to cost her in November,
Speaker 1: that inability to connect on that gut level. Well, there's
Speaker 1: one thing I absolutely haven't done from the beginning, kid,
Speaker 1: and I wouldn't do not. I would not predict this election.
Speaker 1: If you look at Brexit vote in the UK, um,
Speaker 1: if you look at the Columbia vote that just came
Speaker 1: through about whether to do their peace deal with their guerrillas. Um.
Speaker 1: I think these publics are very volatile, and I would
Speaker 1: make no predictions about this election. Do you think we
Speaker 1: might have a U S version of Brexit here? Because
Speaker 1: you know, I thought about the parallels actually coming here today,
Speaker 1: about the fact that so many young people didn't vote,
Speaker 1: and about how all the people who did were mostly
Speaker 1: in rural areas. London overwhelmingly didn't want Brexit, but a
Speaker 1: lot of other places in the UK did. And I think, gosh,
Speaker 1: the parallels are uncanny in some ways. No question, and
Speaker 1: I I just don't don't rule anything in, but I
Speaker 1: sure don't rule anything out. I'll be I'll be a
Speaker 1: very interested observer on the evening of election day before
Speaker 1: we go. I have to ask you about Anne, your wife,
Speaker 1: who you have read all your columns before you hand
Speaker 1: them in, tell me why you do that and what
Speaker 1: kind of UM input do you value from your wife?
Speaker 1: Be careful, she might be listening. Sure. My wife is
Speaker 1: First of all, she is a professional editor. She was
Speaker 1: editor uh, copy editor for Institutional Investor when we met,
Speaker 1: actually magazine um or soon after we met and um uh,
Speaker 1: and then for HBO, So she is actually a copy
Speaker 1: editor by profession. UM. Secondly, she's the most well read
Speaker 1: person I know, and um, she's also the smartest woman
Speaker 1: or man that I know. And so to have her correction,
Speaker 1: by the way, it's my exactly, she's my ever as
Speaker 1: my copy editor and editor and ideas person to bounce
Speaker 1: things off of, uh is really one of the great
Speaker 1: joys of my life. And also, UM, it's fun because
Speaker 1: then she's involved in my column and she's involved in
Speaker 1: my work, and it's not something I go off and do,
Speaker 1: and so we really share these ideas. The biggest fights
Speaker 1: we have in our marriage are over my column. I'm
Speaker 1: not taking that word out. It's my column. I'm not
Speaker 1: taking that word out exactly. So, but it's a it's
Speaker 1: been a source of great joy. It's not only my columns,
Speaker 1: my books. That's something we do together and share. Do
Speaker 1: you get ideas from man? Do you talk about sort
Speaker 1: of things and then you say, you know I should
Speaker 1: write about that? Yeah? I mean sometimes, you know, UM,
Speaker 1: I pretty much generate almost all my ideas myself, you
Speaker 1: know I don't. But UM, every once in a while
Speaker 1: she'll send me something or but but there's never been
Speaker 1: a column that you know, she's edited that she hasn't
Speaker 1: made better. In closing, you know, I started this podcast
Speaker 1: by talking about how anxiety written I am, about the
Speaker 1: state of the Union, about this campaign, about where we
Speaker 1: are as a country, about the fact that maybe we
Speaker 1: need more people willing to run for president. UM. Tell
Speaker 1: me why I should be optimistic. I'm going to save
Speaker 1: a lot of money on therapy bills. Right again, you
Speaker 1: should be optimistic, Katie, because when you get out of
Speaker 1: Washington and you get out of the kind of bubble
Speaker 1: you and I have to write about UM and talk
Speaker 1: about UM. What you find is the country is still
Speaker 1: a center right, center left country. UM. At the local level,
Speaker 1: there's still an enormous number of people working together to
Speaker 1: promote the commons. Uh. You see, if you go to
Speaker 1: towns all over the country, you'll see businesses trying to
Speaker 1: work with local educators and local government and local philanthropies
Speaker 1: to upgrade their school systems to to help young people
Speaker 1: become more productive and competitive workers. UM. I see so
Speaker 1: many good things happening here and um and I'm not
Speaker 1: this is not to flawed by book, but I found
Speaker 1: in doing this book and going to communities, this is
Speaker 1: amazing innovation going on at the local level. We actually
Speaker 1: don't have to invent anything, we just have to scale
Speaker 1: what's going on out there. Uh. It's still the greatest
Speaker 1: country in the world. If only we had the politicians,
Speaker 1: UM we need, deserve and should have at the national
Speaker 1: level to take care of this gym. You know, I
Speaker 1: have a friend from Zimbabwe, UM who I actually quote
Speaker 1: at the end of my book because she she says,
Speaker 1: you know, you Americans kick this country around like it's
Speaker 1: a football. But it's not a football. It's a faberge egg.
Speaker 1: You can drop it, you can break it, so be careful.
Speaker 1: That makes me cry a little bit, you know, because
Speaker 1: I think people are so so quick to um trash
Speaker 1: our country and trash the people who are who have
Speaker 1: the courage to actually lead. Well, you know, I just
Speaker 1: think everyone needs to um step up and appreciate. And
Speaker 1: maybe because I've lived abroad and lived in a war zone,
Speaker 1: in particular in the in a civil war and be
Speaker 1: rout for five years. You know, when you do that,
Speaker 1: you start to appreciate the public. You start to appreciate
Speaker 1: the public square, the public school, the public institutions, UM.
Speaker 1: The things that bind us together and that comments. You know,
Speaker 1: that um, without which nothing good can happen. I've seen
Speaker 1: people tear their commons apart in the Middle East, and
Speaker 1: I'm doing everything I can in my column, my books
Speaker 1: to make sure that virus doesn't come here. Tom So
Speaker 1: many people feel that neither candidate they don't like all
Speaker 1: of the above. UM. And how can we get more
Speaker 1: people engaged and not not in the process of voting,
Speaker 1: which obviously is critically important, but get more people to
Speaker 1: actually run for office. Well, it's again at the local level,
Speaker 1: I think you do see it happening. But at the
Speaker 1: national level, it's going to take someone who dares to
Speaker 1: go out there with a moderate message and show they
Speaker 1: can win. Barack Obama did in many ways, at least
Speaker 1: try to. I wouldn't take this election as the be
Speaker 1: all in the end all the sooner it's over the better. Um,
Speaker 1: we survived a civil war, will survive this, I hope.
Speaker 1: I still think at some point people are gonna understand
Speaker 1: that this was just a moment of madness and we'll
Speaker 1: get beyond it. Well. Tom Freeman is always great to
Speaker 1: listen to a voice of reason in the seemingly very
Speaker 1: unreasonable times. Thank you so much, Tom. I love talking
Speaker 1: to you always and I'm really grateful. Thank you. It
Speaker 1: was really my pleasure. A big thank you to Gianna Palmer,
Speaker 1: Gretta Cone and the right Reverend John Delore. Garrett O'Connell
Speaker 1: and Zack Dinerstein mixed this episode. And also a big
Speaker 1: thank you to Mark Phillips for our terrifically music. And
Speaker 1: thanks to all of you for listening on our next episode.
Speaker 1: Samantha B, who spent more than a decade on The
Speaker 1: Daily Show, well now, as many of you know, she
Speaker 1: has her own show called Full Frontal with Samantha B.
Speaker 1: It's the only American late night talk show currently hosted
Speaker 1: by a woman. So what questions do you have for her?
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