WEBVTT - Why Populism Isn't All About Economics 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:03.080 What if the Great Recession isn't to blame. So called 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:05.720 populists have thrived in the aftermath of the two thousand 0:00:05.720 --> 0:00:09.400 seven to two thousand nine financial and economic crisis, but 0:00:09.480 --> 0:00:11.959 as economics the sole cause of the challenge to what 0:00:12.000 --> 0:00:14.920 we have come to call the liberal democratic order, our 0:00:14.960 --> 0:00:18.239 guests this week argues not there are other forces at work. 0:00:18.760 --> 0:00:22.560 After all, the nine year economic expansion gets heat for 0:00:22.640 --> 0:00:25.079 not generating a lot of wage growth. But it's not 0:00:25.239 --> 0:00:28.320 entirely terrible either. There's something else going on, and it's 0:00:28.320 --> 0:00:40.879 not just Facebook or Cambridge Analytica either. Welcome to Benchmark, 0:00:41.080 --> 0:00:44.080 the show about the global economy. I'm Genus Smilik, an 0:00:44.120 --> 0:00:46.800 economics reporter at Bloomberg News in New York, and I'm 0:00:46.880 --> 0:00:50.760 Daniel Boss, economics run and editor at Bloomberg feut In. 0:00:52.080 --> 0:00:54.480 Joining up us this week is Bill Galston from the 0:00:54.520 --> 0:00:58.840 Brookings Institution in Washington, author of the new book Anti Pluralism, 0:00:58.880 --> 0:01:02.360 The Populous Threat to Liberal Democracy. He's also a columist 0:01:02.360 --> 0:01:04.360 at The Wall Street Journal and was an advisor to 0:01:04.400 --> 0:01:07.880 former President Bill Clinton. Bill. Welcome, good to be here. 0:01:08.800 --> 0:01:10.920 So it's not just about their session in its aftermath. 0:01:11.520 --> 0:01:15.920 What is the popular strivel about it's partly about economics, 0:01:15.959 --> 0:01:19.479 but we have to understand what about economics it's about. 0:01:20.560 --> 0:01:26.600 The Berkeley economist Enrico Moretti wrote a terrific book in 0:01:28.120 --> 0:01:32.080 called The New Geography of Jobs, in which he pointed 0:01:32.080 --> 0:01:37.760 out that the knowledge slash innovation economy is having the 0:01:37.760 --> 0:01:44.000 effect of boosting large, diverse cities because innovation turns out 0:01:44.040 --> 0:01:47.880 to be a social process and not a solitary process. 0:01:47.920 --> 0:01:51.240 So more and more of the economic growth in advanced 0:01:51.280 --> 0:01:57.960 industrialized economies is being sucked into metropolitan areas, and increasingly 0:01:58.280 --> 0:02:02.840 smaller towns and rural areas and former manufacturing towns in 0:02:02.880 --> 0:02:07.760 particular are being left farther and farther behind. So the 0:02:07.880 --> 0:02:12.920 fundamental economic driver, in my judgment, is the new spatial 0:02:13.000 --> 0:02:17.480 geography of growth. But on top of that we have 0:02:18.280 --> 0:02:23.880 the sense of cultural displacement that many people are now experiencing, 0:02:24.520 --> 0:02:29.200 and the tip of that sphere is immigration and its consequences. 0:02:29.560 --> 0:02:33.880 Sounds like the recession might need better pr Are you 0:02:33.919 --> 0:02:37.360 saying the recession has become a kind of proxy or 0:02:37.400 --> 0:02:41.679 a trojan horse for other issues that perhaps wouldn't get 0:02:41.680 --> 0:02:46.920 a hearing in truly fabulous economic times. Well in truly 0:02:47.080 --> 0:02:50.440 fabulous economic times. People tend to be in a pretty 0:02:50.440 --> 0:02:53.320 good mood. I can remember the last of those, in 0:02:53.360 --> 0:02:56.040 the late nineteen nineties in the United States. You were 0:02:56.080 --> 0:02:58.600 in the White House there. Well, I'd left the White 0:02:58.639 --> 0:03:02.760 House after Bill Clinton's first term, but I was certainly 0:03:02.800 --> 0:03:07.519 there to admire the consequences of those policies, and unemployment 0:03:07.800 --> 0:03:12.040 was way below four percent. Economic growth was robust. The 0:03:12.080 --> 0:03:15.720 fruits of that growth were widely shared. But we still 0:03:16.320 --> 0:03:20.400 even then had intense controversy about the issue that I 0:03:20.440 --> 0:03:23.880 think is the heart of the matter now, which is immigration. 0:03:25.000 --> 0:03:29.680 Because immigration, for a lot of people is the trifecta 0:03:29.840 --> 0:03:35.360 of woes. They see it as displacing them from jobs, 0:03:35.680 --> 0:03:39.240 as putting a ceiling on their wages. That's the economic dimension. 0:03:39.840 --> 0:03:43.920 They see it as a security threat, both because of 0:03:44.120 --> 0:03:47.360 increased crime from drug gangs and things of that sort, 0:03:47.400 --> 0:03:51.480 although that's greatly overblown, and also because as things now 0:03:51.520 --> 0:03:54.400 stand in the world, it's seen as a potential source 0:03:54.440 --> 0:03:58.920 of terrorism. But third, and most importantly, I think it's 0:03:58.960 --> 0:04:02.840 seen as the v vehicle of cultural displacement. People see 0:04:02.880 --> 0:04:08.280 immigration as changing the fundamental character of their countries, not 0:04:08.440 --> 0:04:10.760 just the color of their countries, but the character of 0:04:10.760 --> 0:04:15.760 their countries, and they feel increasingly marginalized in a country 0:04:16.000 --> 0:04:19.160 where for generations they were the center of the story. 0:04:19.240 --> 0:04:21.800 Now they're peripheral to the narrative, and they don't like 0:04:21.920 --> 0:04:27.280 it now. People who are friendly to broader immigration will 0:04:27.320 --> 0:04:29.840 often bring up the fact that members of the white 0:04:29.839 --> 0:04:33.600 working class are People who are anti immigration often trace 0:04:33.680 --> 0:04:37.800 their origins to say, Ireland, Scotland, Poland and Nordic region. So, 0:04:37.839 --> 0:04:40.200 I guess, what do you think impoldens people to feel 0:04:40.240 --> 0:04:44.479 uncomfortable about current ways of immigration, even if their existence 0:04:44.480 --> 0:04:46.640 in the United States kind of owes to a wave 0:04:46.680 --> 0:04:49.720 of immigration that happened in the past. Well, it's a 0:04:49.800 --> 0:04:53.000 very good question. And one of the most familiar things 0:04:53.600 --> 0:04:56.280 you have to say about the United States, and we 0:04:56.400 --> 0:04:58.760 say it with a measure of pride, is that we 0:04:58.839 --> 0:05:04.120 are a nation immigrants. That being said, we are a 0:05:04.200 --> 0:05:09.719 nation that's gone through spikes of immigration followed by reactions 0:05:09.800 --> 0:05:13.400 to those spikes. And we saw it with the Irish 0:05:13.440 --> 0:05:16.400 in the eighteen forties, we saw it with the Chinese 0:05:16.440 --> 0:05:21.080 in the eighties, and we saw it with Southern European 0:05:21.200 --> 0:05:24.239 Slavs and Jews in the nineteen twenties, and in nineteen 0:05:24.240 --> 0:05:29.080 twenty four we enacted restrictive legislation that slammed the immigration 0:05:29.240 --> 0:05:33.480 gates shut, where they remained for forty one years. So 0:05:34.320 --> 0:05:38.800 we are a nation with a mixed history on immigration. 0:05:39.240 --> 0:05:43.640 And let me give you the most recent historical cycle. 0:05:44.000 --> 0:05:48.360 In nineteen sixty five, when we reopened the gates of 0:05:48.400 --> 0:05:53.039 immigration after forty one years, first generation immigrants constituted four 0:05:53.160 --> 0:05:57.839 point seven percent of the US population. Today, that figure 0:05:57.960 --> 0:06:01.560 is three times as high and is rapidly approaching the 0:06:01.640 --> 0:06:06.760 highest share of first generation immigrants ever recorded in American history. 0:06:06.800 --> 0:06:10.920 So it's not entirely surprising that this issue has reached 0:06:10.960 --> 0:06:17.200 critical mass. Now. Some of these groups, the Irish, Italians, 0:06:18.040 --> 0:06:24.279 Paul's many of these groups are traditionally associated with generational 0:06:24.360 --> 0:06:29.680 support for the Democratic Party. How is what you're describing changing? 0:06:29.720 --> 0:06:36.800 That these groups white working class voters shifted away from 0:06:36.800 --> 0:06:40.480 the Democratic Party some time ago. There's a long history here. 0:06:41.040 --> 0:06:45.240 In the wake of the cultural revolution of the nineteen sixties, 0:06:45.320 --> 0:06:49.560 the anti Vietnam War mobilization of the late sixties and 0:06:49.640 --> 0:06:56.440 early seventies, the white working class felt increasingly distant from 0:06:56.480 --> 0:07:01.560 the emerging new currents within the Democratic party. So Republicans 0:07:01.680 --> 0:07:06.000 have regularly gotten majorities of the white working class vote 0:07:06.120 --> 0:07:10.880 for most of the past half century. What has happened 0:07:10.920 --> 0:07:17.160 recently is that white working class voters, particularly in twenty sixteen, 0:07:18.160 --> 0:07:22.680 have begun to respond much more strongly to these cultural signals, 0:07:22.760 --> 0:07:29.440 and their turnout, which was relatively low, soared in twenty sixteen. So, 0:07:30.480 --> 0:07:33.760 just to give you the numbers, Mitt Romney, no one's 0:07:33.840 --> 0:07:36.640 idea of a populist, got sixty two of the white 0:07:36.640 --> 0:07:42.080 working class vote in twelve. Donald Trump, who is most 0:07:42.120 --> 0:07:45.560 people's idea of an American populist, four years later got 0:07:45.640 --> 0:07:49.600 sixty seven percent. But turnout in the white working class 0:07:49.800 --> 0:07:52.920 rose by nearly ten percentage points between twenty twelve and 0:07:52.960 --> 0:07:57.040 twenty sixteen. And that was the election. It was intensity 0:07:57.080 --> 0:08:00.480 and not just preference. Now, one of the things I 0:08:00.520 --> 0:08:02.360 found really interesting in your book was the role that 0:08:02.400 --> 0:08:05.240 elitists playing all of this. Can you describe to me 0:08:05.360 --> 0:08:07.360 a little bit about what you mean when you say 0:08:07.440 --> 0:08:09.600 elitist and sort of what what is their role in 0:08:09.600 --> 0:08:15.920 a liberal democracy? Uh? Where to begin. Let's talk about 0:08:16.480 --> 0:08:20.400 modern elites, the elites of the current day, who constitute 0:08:20.520 --> 0:08:28.240 a reference point for either approbation or or intense disapproval. 0:08:30.240 --> 0:08:34.000 What we're talking about now is not so much the 0:08:34.200 --> 0:08:40.640 ultra rich business people. We're talking about highly educated professionals 0:08:41.320 --> 0:08:46.040 who have the kinds of mobile skills that equipped them 0:08:46.040 --> 0:08:52.200 to succeed in the new global knowledge economy. They are, 0:08:52.240 --> 0:08:55.360 as I said, highly educated. And it turns out that 0:08:55.600 --> 0:08:59.040 education is not just a key to economic opportunity, it 0:08:59.160 --> 0:09:03.880 also shape a fundamental outlook on life. The more educated 0:09:03.960 --> 0:09:07.920 you are, the more comfortable you are with change and 0:09:08.040 --> 0:09:13.880 dynamism and diversity, the less wedded you are typically to 0:09:14.000 --> 0:09:18.880 quote unquote traditional values. It's not as though you have 0:09:19.280 --> 0:09:23.840 no place. You're not nowhere. If you're highly educated, you 0:09:23.880 --> 0:09:30.360 tend to flock together in large, diverse metropolitan areas. And 0:09:30.480 --> 0:09:35.200 people with less education believe that elites not only don't 0:09:35.400 --> 0:09:40.240 understand how people with lesser lower levels of education and 0:09:40.360 --> 0:09:45.720 income are living, but really don't understand how they're thinking. Either. Okay, well, 0:09:45.880 --> 0:09:48.600 elates us certainly getting a lot of flak at the moment. 0:09:48.640 --> 0:09:51.360 But as the immigrant at this table, let me just 0:09:51.440 --> 0:09:56.280 position the question this way. Isn't America about aspiration? I 0:09:56.320 --> 0:09:59.200 mean I was born in Australia. I didn't need to 0:09:59.240 --> 0:10:01.680 come hire into accracy. I didn't need to come here 0:10:01.720 --> 0:10:05.240 for freedom of worship or freedom of speech. I'm here 0:10:05.240 --> 0:10:09.240 because of the aspirations that America office. What's wrong with 0:10:09.280 --> 0:10:13.720 aspiring to be an elite. Nothing, as long as the 0:10:13.720 --> 0:10:17.560 people who come after you have the same opportunity. The 0:10:17.640 --> 0:10:22.720 problem that we have right now is that upper middle class, 0:10:22.760 --> 0:10:28.160 professionalized elites have become self replicating to some extent. They 0:10:28.200 --> 0:10:33.560 are able to use their stable families, their high income, 0:10:33.920 --> 0:10:37.560 their networks, their understanding of how the system works to 0:10:37.760 --> 0:10:43.439 position their children for success in turn, and so there 0:10:43.640 --> 0:10:49.080 is unfortunately less mobility between the working class and the 0:10:49.160 --> 0:10:52.040 upper middle class than there used to be. I'm not 0:10:52.120 --> 0:10:55.440 saying that we've hardened into a cast system, but I 0:10:55.480 --> 0:11:00.560 will say this. First generation immigrants are more are likely 0:11:01.000 --> 0:11:06.559 to experience the advantages of aspiration then are incumbent members 0:11:06.559 --> 0:11:08.920 of the white working class whose ancestors have been in 0:11:08.920 --> 0:11:11.280 this country for two or three or four generations. And 0:11:11.360 --> 0:11:15.160 so you, as an immigrant, are an excellent example of 0:11:15.160 --> 0:11:18.800 what keeps the American dream alive. And I would go 0:11:18.880 --> 0:11:21.679 so far as to say that at the heart of 0:11:21.720 --> 0:11:26.240 the American dream is the experience of first and second 0:11:26.280 --> 0:11:31.839 generation immigrants and after that it becomes a much more 0:11:31.880 --> 0:11:35.920 complicated story. Interesting. Now, one of the ideas in your 0:11:35.920 --> 0:11:39.199 book is that non college educated Americans who lost in 0:11:39.280 --> 0:11:42.360 the hope in the future longed instead for an imagined 0:11:42.400 --> 0:11:45.440 past that insurgent politicians promised her a star. I found 0:11:45.440 --> 0:11:47.559 that line to be really interesting. Why is it an 0:11:47.600 --> 0:11:50.839 imagined past? What do you mean by that? Well, first 0:11:50.840 --> 0:11:55.000 of all, I should say that it was not entirely imaginary. 0:11:55.120 --> 0:11:58.240 There was a period during which the manufacturing economy in 0:11:58.280 --> 0:12:01.760 this country was much larger as a share of the 0:12:01.840 --> 0:12:06.080 total workforce. Indeed, not just as a share. We have 0:12:06.240 --> 0:12:09.960 lost thirty of our manufacturing jobs since the turn of 0:12:10.000 --> 0:12:12.960 the century, so there's there's been a there's been a 0:12:13.080 --> 0:12:19.840 very big change. But people imagine that they lived in 0:12:19.880 --> 0:12:24.960 a period without demographic change, without cultural change, that they 0:12:25.040 --> 0:12:29.559 lived in a period in which life in the industrial 0:12:29.640 --> 0:12:33.079 workforce was a bed of roses. If they know anything 0:12:33.080 --> 0:12:35.880 about the nineteen thirties and nineteen forties, they will know 0:12:36.200 --> 0:12:39.760 how many people got their heads cracked in order to 0:12:40.320 --> 0:12:44.319 earn and then keep the right to organize. So what 0:12:44.360 --> 0:12:49.600 we're really talking about is a period between n and 0:12:49.720 --> 0:12:53.720 nineteen seventy when the United States bestrode the world like 0:12:53.760 --> 0:12:56.520 a colossus. The rest of the world was flat on 0:12:56.600 --> 0:12:59.040 its back, much of it had been destroyed by the 0:12:59.080 --> 0:13:04.600 Second World War. Are and we have taken those extraordinary 0:13:04.679 --> 0:13:07.640 twenty five years, that quarter of a century as our 0:13:07.760 --> 0:13:13.280 benchmark ever since. And it wasn't ordinary. It was exceptional. 0:13:13.840 --> 0:13:16.400 And I think we've been mourning its loss now for 0:13:16.520 --> 0:13:19.560 two generations. But we can't go back to it because 0:13:19.840 --> 0:13:24.839 it was the fruit of unique circumstances. Bill, Is this 0:13:25.040 --> 0:13:27.880 such a thing as America anymore? Or are we just 0:13:27.960 --> 0:13:31.640 a series of tribes living within the boundaries of a state. 0:13:32.240 --> 0:13:34.680 Is that something you pointed in your work. Yes, indeed 0:13:34.679 --> 0:13:39.960 it is. And tribalism in America is really nothing new. 0:13:41.320 --> 0:13:46.160 I can remember back for fifty years when political machines 0:13:46.200 --> 0:13:50.480 in the big cities were alive and well, and they 0:13:50.520 --> 0:13:55.840 always constructed their electoral tickets based on the demography of 0:13:55.880 --> 0:13:59.240 the cities. So in big cities like New York, you 0:13:59.320 --> 0:14:02.760 had an Allion, you had an Irishman, you had a Jew, 0:14:02.880 --> 0:14:06.400 and subsequently you had an African American and then an Asian. 0:14:07.000 --> 0:14:09.560 And that was what a balanced ticket was. It wasn't 0:14:09.559 --> 0:14:16.280 balanced ideologically, it was balanced ethnically. So ethnic identification, particularly 0:14:16.320 --> 0:14:20.119 for people not too far removed from their immigrant forebears, 0:14:20.200 --> 0:14:24.560 has always been part of American politics and American culture. 0:14:24.720 --> 0:14:28.520 And I can look at previous previous parts of American 0:14:28.680 --> 0:14:32.880 history when it was as fundamental as it is now. 0:14:33.120 --> 0:14:41.520 So America is not a tribal it's plury tribal. And 0:14:41.680 --> 0:14:45.240 on top of that, pluralism is a set of institutions 0:14:45.240 --> 0:14:49.480 and organizing principles. So the real question that you're posing 0:14:49.920 --> 0:14:53.360 is whether Americans have lost faith in those institutions and 0:14:53.440 --> 0:14:59.080 organizing principles. And to that, I would say not really. 0:15:00.080 --> 0:15:05.400 And I say that based on recent survey research in 0:15:05.480 --> 0:15:08.680 which I've had the opportunity to play a part. About 0:15:08.760 --> 0:15:11.400 a year and a half ago, a two years ago, 0:15:11.560 --> 0:15:16.400 a bipartisan voter study group was organized, and they just 0:15:16.440 --> 0:15:20.000 put out the most recent in this series of reports 0:15:20.600 --> 0:15:26.720 about two weeks ago, and it found that support for 0:15:26.840 --> 0:15:33.400 the organizing principles of American constitutional democracy is still very high. Indeed, 0:15:33.840 --> 0:15:36.920 it's somewhat higher than it was just a few years ago. 0:15:37.040 --> 0:15:40.680 You could even argue that the experience of this president 0:15:41.320 --> 0:15:46.360 has forced many Americans to recall what it was that 0:15:46.440 --> 0:15:48.760 attracted them to this country in the first place, and 0:15:48.800 --> 0:15:51.720 what it is that guarantees their liberties now. But at 0:15:51.720 --> 0:15:56.840 the same time, populism obviously emphasizes homogeneity over heterogeneity here, 0:15:57.000 --> 0:15:58.880 at least it seems it does to me. Is that 0:15:58.960 --> 0:16:02.040 statement correct in you know, how do you see that 0:16:02.600 --> 0:16:04.880 changing in America going forward, given that we do have 0:16:04.920 --> 0:16:07.920 sort of this populous wave. That is the most fundamental question. 0:16:07.960 --> 0:16:12.680 And that's why I entitled my book anti Pluralism, because 0:16:12.720 --> 0:16:15.600 I meant that as the grave woman of my core 0:16:15.760 --> 0:16:21.280 charge against contemporary populism. That is, it does tend towards homogeneity. 0:16:21.320 --> 0:16:26.360 When populaces say we the people, they typically don't mean 0:16:26.480 --> 0:16:30.640 we all of the people. They usually mean we our 0:16:30.760 --> 0:16:35.080 kind of people. And they tend to marginalize from the 0:16:35.120 --> 0:16:40.960 civic body people who are unlike them in ethnicity, or religion, 0:16:41.200 --> 0:16:44.720 or you name it. And this drive towards homogeneity in 0:16:44.720 --> 0:16:48.920 the face of increasing pluralism is I think the central 0:16:49.080 --> 0:16:55.520 threat of populism. The other is unbridled majoritarianism, which is 0:16:55.640 --> 0:17:00.400 impatient with constitutional restraints and impatient with gary of teas 0:17:00.440 --> 0:17:04.160 of rights for individuals and minorities. You put those two 0:17:04.160 --> 0:17:09.080 things together, majoritarianism and a restrictive definition of the people, 0:17:09.600 --> 0:17:12.760 and you have it seems to me the most fundamental 0:17:13.000 --> 0:17:16.639 threat to the liberal constitutional order that the West is 0:17:16.680 --> 0:17:19.240 seen in quite some time. Internal threat, I should say, 0:17:19.280 --> 0:17:21.120 there are lots of external threats that we could talk 0:17:21.160 --> 0:17:25.000 about as well build your book, and many that dwell 0:17:25.280 --> 0:17:28.840 on the conflict between populism and the established order tend 0:17:28.920 --> 0:17:33.800 to have the US and Western Europe as their framework. 0:17:34.520 --> 0:17:39.879 Yet there are newer democracies in very heavily populated parts 0:17:39.920 --> 0:17:42.480 of the world that are wrestling with their own challenge 0:17:42.520 --> 0:17:48.080 from populism. Those countries have grown pretty well economically in 0:17:48.119 --> 0:17:50.960 the past ten years now in the face of it. 0:17:51.480 --> 0:17:54.760 That would endorse your argument that it's not just about economics. 0:17:55.760 --> 0:17:59.480 But these countries also haven't had historically high levels of 0:17:59.520 --> 0:18:05.520 immigrant Asian edith. So what's going on here? Well, you know, 0:18:05.880 --> 0:18:08.760 as the Polish Asians say in our nation's capital, thank 0:18:08.800 --> 0:18:12.399 you for asking. I used at the beginning of this 0:18:12.480 --> 0:18:17.639 interview the umbrella phrase cultural displacement. There are different ways 0:18:17.680 --> 0:18:22.280 in which people can experience cultural displacement. Immigration, I think 0:18:22.440 --> 0:18:25.760 is the principle, though not only way that it has 0:18:25.920 --> 0:18:29.879 been experienced in Western Europe, in the UK and in 0:18:29.920 --> 0:18:33.439 the United States. But let's take a country which is 0:18:33.880 --> 0:18:40.440 reeling under an anti democratic populist onslaught, namely Turkey. The 0:18:40.480 --> 0:18:46.200 founding principle of Turkey was the exclusion of Islam from 0:18:46.200 --> 0:18:52.000 public life. Turkish constitution was structured along the lines of 0:18:52.040 --> 0:19:00.200 the French constitution, and Islam and traditional mores were seen 0:19:00.280 --> 0:19:05.800 as like we're seen as obstacles to modernization, political modernization, 0:19:05.840 --> 0:19:11.320 economic modernization, social modernization. But the fact that it was 0:19:11.359 --> 0:19:15.080 excluded from a share of Turkish public life didn't mean 0:19:15.080 --> 0:19:18.800 that it had gone away. It was always there in 0:19:18.880 --> 0:19:24.600 the smaller towns and rural areas. And what Mr Arnowan 0:19:24.720 --> 0:19:30.760 has done is to crystallized generations of resentment that more 0:19:30.800 --> 0:19:35.120 traditional Turks and more pious Turks outside the big cities 0:19:35.200 --> 0:19:39.879 felt about their values not being seen as legitimate in 0:19:40.200 --> 0:19:46.080 public life. Interestingly, I've just been reading a new biography 0:19:46.200 --> 0:19:50.280 of Hungary's Victor Orbon, and it turns out that Orbon 0:19:50.440 --> 0:19:57.840 and his closest associates came from Hungary's hinterland, and they 0:19:58.119 --> 0:20:02.320 grew up resenting in even as students. They resent resented 0:20:02.640 --> 0:20:08.800 the sense of superiority that urban elites exuded visa vi 0:20:08.960 --> 0:20:12.480 those from the countryside who are seen as bumpkins, somehow 0:20:12.600 --> 0:20:16.879 less sophisticated, less up to the minute, and are to 0:20:16.960 --> 0:20:21.000 want to I meant Orbon has been able to mobilize 0:20:21.040 --> 0:20:27.080 those sentiments against the more liberal and pro European sentiments 0:20:27.280 --> 0:20:31.439 in Hungary's major urban areas. That's the fundamental dynamic, and 0:20:31.480 --> 0:20:34.240 you see it everywhere. You see the same thing in Poland. 0:20:34.280 --> 0:20:38.879 By the way, Poles have experienced almost no immigration, but 0:20:39.800 --> 0:20:43.600 you know, what you have is a mobilization of Polish 0:20:43.640 --> 0:20:50.080 traditionalism and especially Catholicism against parties that identified with EU 0:20:50.280 --> 0:20:54.640 and sort of secular internationalist values. So what's the solution 0:20:54.640 --> 0:20:56.879 to all of this? Do you see a resolution or 0:20:56.920 --> 0:21:00.879 an end in sight? Well, to extent that this is 0:21:00.920 --> 0:21:05.840 based on public policy, I think that people who are 0:21:06.600 --> 0:21:10.880 liberal internationalists are going to have to find more common 0:21:10.920 --> 0:21:15.320 ground on contested issues like immigration. They are going to 0:21:15.400 --> 0:21:21.160 have to compromise with forces that they do not agree with. 0:21:22.000 --> 0:21:24.880 If you know, if we and I'll use that term, 0:21:24.960 --> 0:21:29.919 we simply say, uh, our way is the way of 0:21:29.960 --> 0:21:32.800 the future, the wave of the future. We will triumph 0:21:32.880 --> 0:21:35.520 in the end, and we're simply going to hold our 0:21:35.560 --> 0:21:39.760 ground and wait for you people to die, which is 0:21:39.840 --> 0:21:43.160 a reasonable summary of one strand of thought in the US, 0:21:43.240 --> 0:21:47.320 the Democratic Party, the demographic triumphalists. Then we're going to 0:21:47.400 --> 0:21:50.320 be stuck in this morass for a very long time. 0:21:51.200 --> 0:21:55.240 So number one, and I've i've, you know, I've laid 0:21:55.280 --> 0:21:58.360 out a pretty detailed program for how to do this. 0:21:58.880 --> 0:22:01.679 Get the issue of aigration off the table to the 0:22:01.720 --> 0:22:08.959 greatest extent possible. Number two, understand that the economic challenge is, 0:22:09.480 --> 0:22:11.480 you know, is not something you can read off the 0:22:11.520 --> 0:22:16.000 income distribution tables. It has to do with economic geography. 0:22:16.160 --> 0:22:19.840 And urban America must do everything in its power through 0:22:19.880 --> 0:22:23.879 public policy to reach out to non urban America and 0:22:24.080 --> 0:22:27.600 integrate it into American civic life in the same way 0:22:27.600 --> 0:22:30.680 that Franklin Roosevelt did in the nineteen thirties with programs 0:22:30.680 --> 0:22:35.680 such as rural electrification. And finally, a lot of populism 0:22:36.040 --> 0:22:40.760 is driven by impatients at a gridlock political system that 0:22:40.840 --> 0:22:45.439 seems unable to act. And yet many of these people 0:22:45.520 --> 0:22:51.159 send representatives to Congress, like say, for example, the Freedom Caucus, 0:22:51.320 --> 0:22:54.920 who have zero interest in legislating everything. People say they're 0:22:54.960 --> 0:22:57.800 tired of gridlock. At the Tea Party, which was an 0:22:57.800 --> 0:23:01.160 early manifestation of what you're talking about is not remotely 0:23:01.200 --> 0:23:04.240 interested in governing. I'm not going to argue with you, 0:23:05.520 --> 0:23:09.800 but those who are interested in governing have to get 0:23:09.840 --> 0:23:14.960 together across partisan and ideological lines and govern. If I 0:23:15.040 --> 0:23:17.639 may put in a brief advertisement for another one of 0:23:17.680 --> 0:23:20.240 my ventures other than this book, I'm I'm one of 0:23:20.240 --> 0:23:23.080 the co founders of an organization called No Labels, which, 0:23:23.119 --> 0:23:26.080 over the past ten years has been working very hard 0:23:26.200 --> 0:23:30.280 to develop a force within the two party system that 0:23:30.400 --> 0:23:33.040 can get people from the center left to the center 0:23:33.200 --> 0:23:37.159 light uh to cooperate and legislate together. We've put together 0:23:37.200 --> 0:23:40.159 a bipartisan caucus in the House of Representatives of twenty 0:23:40.200 --> 0:23:43.000 three Democrats and twenty three Republicans who have made common 0:23:43.040 --> 0:23:47.480 cause on a number of important legislative initiatives, and if 0:23:47.680 --> 0:23:50.040 the leadership would ever allow them to get to the floor, 0:23:50.720 --> 0:23:54.200 you might actually see a return to more sensible governance. 0:23:54.520 --> 0:23:59.080 How big a problem is that sensible governments is a 0:23:59.160 --> 0:24:04.040 nuanced thing, embracing the complexity of the world and the 0:24:04.160 --> 0:24:07.880 nitty gritty required to legislate. These are not simple things. 0:24:07.920 --> 0:24:11.600 These are nuanced things. People are just getting shouted at 0:24:12.200 --> 0:24:16.919 from the extremes is what you're talking about even possible. Well, 0:24:18.119 --> 0:24:22.040 a late governor of New York, Mario Cuomo, the father 0:24:22.160 --> 0:24:25.840 of the current governor of New York, once said, you 0:24:25.960 --> 0:24:30.879 campaign in poetry, you govern in prose. Not a bad prescription. 0:24:31.359 --> 0:24:36.240 So the problem was that Hillary Clinton campaigned in prose. 0:24:37.600 --> 0:24:39.480 There weren't a lot of readers who stuck around to 0:24:39.560 --> 0:24:46.280 the second page. And on that happy note, we're going 0:24:46.320 --> 0:24:48.880 to wrap up this week's edition of the Bloomberg Benchmark podcast. 0:24:49.200 --> 0:24:51.240 Check back each week or dive into the depths of 0:24:51.240 --> 0:24:53.680 the years ago. I'm Genus Smilets and you can follow 0:24:53.720 --> 0:24:56.639 me at Genus Smilet. I'm ten of the Mosque. You 0:24:56.640 --> 0:25:00.640 can follow me at Moss Underscore Echo. Thanks star guest 0:25:00.720 --> 0:25:03.679 Bill Galston, so you can follow at Bill Galston and 0:25:03.720 --> 0:25:07.520 to our producer Magnus Hendrickson. Thanks also to friend Chess, THEA. Leavie, 0:25:07.640 --> 0:25:08.400 Head of Podcasts,