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Speaker 1: So I'm about to get on the Amtrak train in

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Speaker 1: New York last week, I took a short tripton station.

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Speaker 1: So if you're wondering why I was on this Amtrak

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Speaker 1: train to DC, and for that matter, if you're wondering

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Speaker 1: why this episode just popped up in your podcast feed,

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Speaker 1: well here's what happened. We originally taped and released the

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Speaker 1: first six episodes of this series, which hopefully you've already heard,

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Speaker 1: and we thought that was the end of it. But

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Speaker 1: then we heard from our main character. We had asked

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Speaker 1: Newt Gingrich to take part in an interview for the

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Speaker 1: first six episodes, and we'd been unable to arrange anything.

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Speaker 1: You probably heard that during the first six episodes. But

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Speaker 1: once we released all six of them, the executive producer

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Speaker 1: of Newt Gingrich's podcast reached out and we settled on

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Speaker 1: a time for me to interview him than thank you

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Speaker 1: very much, have a good one. I also agreed to

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Speaker 1: be on his podcast at a later date. I was

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Speaker 1: thrilled we were going to get this chance, because obviously

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Speaker 1: Newt Gingrich is central to the entire story. We told

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Speaker 1: him yes, but it turned out he had listened to

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Speaker 1: all six episodes of the podcast, and he had plenty

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Speaker 1: of thoughts about our story and about everything that's happened

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Speaker 1: in American politics since. So, my producer Adam and I

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Speaker 1: got off the train in DC, took a short car

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Speaker 1: ride to northern Virginia, and we found ourselves in the

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Speaker 1: office of Newt Gingrich. Hello, Hello, Sorry, how are you, madam?

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Speaker 1: Nice to meet yeah, speaker, Yeah, how are you? You

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Speaker 1: had a good series of podcasts. Appreciate hearing that. Very impressed.

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Speaker 1: I thought number six was wrong. Number six. That's episode

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Speaker 1: six when we convened a panel of journalists who covered

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Speaker 1: Newt while he was in the house and tried to

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Speaker 1: sketch out his legacy. Newt heard that, and he decided

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Speaker 1: he had something to say. I would argue that while

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Speaker 1: we were winning the political wars, we were losing the

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Speaker 1: cultural wars, and that the society culturally was moving much

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Speaker 1: further to the left at the very time that politically

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Speaker 1: it was moving to the right. And that's attention we're

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Speaker 1: currently living in. I'm Steve Cornacky and this is The Revolution,

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Speaker 1: Episode seven New Gingrich. Before we dive in, I should

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Speaker 1: say that this interview has been edited for time and clarity.

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Speaker 1: This was an unexpected surprise in our part. We had

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Speaker 1: hoped obviously in anybody who's listened to the first six episodes, No,

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Speaker 1: we reached out a couple of times trying to get

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Speaker 1: you in the mix. I'm curious, why why did you

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Speaker 1: end up reaching out to us afterwards? Well, and I

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Speaker 1: think we we sort of wanted to do it, and

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Speaker 1: scheduling kept interfering and the election and the campaign and

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Speaker 1: all that stuff. And frankly, when I listened to the

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Speaker 1: first five episodes, I was so impressed with the authenticity

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Speaker 1: and the balance of the program that I thought it

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Speaker 1: was appropriate to sort of become part of it. And

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Speaker 1: then when I listened to the sixth tape, I decided

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Speaker 1: that you needed the balance of somebody who wasn't an

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Speaker 1: automatic critic. If I can't put it that way, the

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Speaker 1: sixth episode was unable. I do want to commend you

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Speaker 1: and your team. I think it was a remarkably useful

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Speaker 1: contribution to history to have the way you guys did it.

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Speaker 1: I appreciate you saying that. So the sixth episode, obviously,

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Speaker 1: that was our that was our round table discussion, and

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Speaker 1: we'll get your take on everything that was raised in

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Speaker 1: that episode. I think in the course of our conversation.

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Speaker 1: I think maybe a good starting point, though, would be

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Speaker 1: taking the sixth episode decide the first five the story

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Speaker 1: we tell of the path from the late seventies to

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Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four to the Republican majority. Are there particular

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Speaker 1: aspects of that that resonated strongly with you and you

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Speaker 1: thought that was right? And were there are aspects of

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Speaker 1: it that you looked at and said they got something

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Speaker 1: wrong there? The biggest thing I think that I reacted

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Speaker 1: to and I was this notion that we had somehow

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Speaker 1: failed somewhere between welfare reform, the capital gains tax cut,

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Speaker 1: Medicare reform, food and Drug administration reform, telecommunications reform, and

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Speaker 1: finally four consecutive balanced budgets for the only time in

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Speaker 1: your lifetime, I thought we were pretty successful. We had

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Speaker 1: fundamentally changed the balance of power in Washington for the

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Speaker 1: first time in forty years, and you could argue longer

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Speaker 1: than that, because we were the first reelected Republican majority

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Speaker 1: since nineteen twenty eight. The majority we created lasted till

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Speaker 1: two thousand and six and was big enough that even

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Speaker 1: in defeat, it was capable of coming back in two

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Speaker 1: and ten, So from my perspective, both on a policy

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Speaker 1: front and on a political front, we'd been really successful,

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Speaker 1: and frankly, I didn't think I had more than four

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Speaker 1: years when I got elected, because I was elected as

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Speaker 1: a genuine revolutionary. I was taking on the entire national establishment,

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Speaker 1: and I figured there was a half life of doing that,

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Speaker 1: and I would argue that while I personally paid a

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Speaker 1: price for that, that was more than worth it because

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Speaker 1: we had fundamentally shifted the direction of the country. And

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Speaker 1: I think had George of your Bush had a clue

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Speaker 1: what we had done, that it would have sustained itself

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Speaker 1: far longer than it did. So you're talking about the

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Speaker 1: speakership itself and the years to follow, and I want

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Speaker 1: to come back around to that, but I guess maybe

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Speaker 1: start out here revisiting the road to the majority of a

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Speaker 1: a little bit, because a few things I want to

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Speaker 1: ask you about. One is this, you get to the

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Speaker 1: House in nineteen seventy eight and you believe there can

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Speaker 1: be a Republican majority someday, and that is, as we

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Speaker 1: try to get across the folks in this podcast, that's

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Speaker 1: a pretty radical belief to hold in the nineteen seventies,

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Speaker 1: when you got there in nineteen seventy eight. How long

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Speaker 1: did you think it was going to take? No, I

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Speaker 1: don't think I thought in those terms. I mean I thought,

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Speaker 1: first of all, mathematically it was very unlikely that you

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Speaker 1: would continue a one party dominance forever. So by definition,

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Speaker 1: at some point we'd be a majority. I think that

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Speaker 1: I probably if you had asked me in seventy eight,

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Speaker 1: I probably thought it was four to six year process. Yeah. Well,

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Speaker 1: because this is what occurred to me while we were

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Speaker 1: putting this together. There's all of these major events they're

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Speaker 1: playing out in the house that you're central to in

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Speaker 1: this period in the seventies and the eighties, your fight

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Speaker 1: with Tip O'Neill on the floor, and there's c SPAN's

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Speaker 1: arrival and Jim Wright, and you get into the early nineties,

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Speaker 1: and numerically you are no closer to a majority than

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Speaker 1: you had been a decade earlier. Was there a point

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Speaker 1: in there when you're saying this just isn't gonna happen. No.

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Speaker 1: I think one of the characteristics that when when I

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Speaker 1: listened to the first five, which are the historical part

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Speaker 1: of your program, I was struck with two things. One

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Speaker 1: was how much we had done and the other was

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Speaker 1: how often it didn't work. I mean, you know, we

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Speaker 1: were we were we were sort of like a classic

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Speaker 1: siege campaign in which we were battering at the walls

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Speaker 1: of the castle and trying to figure out some way

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Speaker 1: to get into the castle. And you know, if you'd

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Speaker 1: sort of say, well that didn't work, let's think, well,

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Speaker 1: you know, what's the next thing we can try. So

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Speaker 1: I think from that standpoint, I really believed, partly because

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Speaker 1: I'm a historian by training, that you know, cheerful persitions.

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Speaker 1: My dad have been a career infantryman for twenty six years,

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Speaker 1: and I think that whole process of growing up in

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Speaker 1: the army and of thinking about endurance that you know,

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Speaker 1: I mean, Washington took eight years to win independence and

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Speaker 1: didn't win very many battles, but he endured. In your

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Speaker 1: you had two battles you were fighting. You had a

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Speaker 1: battle against the Democratic Party that you're trying to topple,

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Speaker 1: but you had battles within your own party in terms

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Speaker 1: of trying to win them over to a direction. It

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Speaker 1: seems to me, tell me if this is wrong, but

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Speaker 1: you saw potential in media, potential in television in particular

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Speaker 1: the cameras coming to the House to nationalize politics earlier

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Speaker 1: than most in either party. Do you think that's a

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Speaker 1: fair yeah. Michael Baron once wrote that I was that

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Speaker 1: I was a gaullist that liked the goal. I come

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Speaker 1: by nationalism and technology, and I think that I'd always

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Speaker 1: had a fascination with technology. I'd studied computing at Georgia

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Speaker 1: Tech just as a side. I'd never went to tech,

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Speaker 1: but as early as nineteen sixty five, I was studying computing.

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Speaker 1: I had studied McLuhan and had a pretty good sense

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Speaker 1: of the whole notion of television, and it had modified

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Speaker 1: my behavior. I did my first radio interview and television

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Speaker 1: interviews in the summer of nineteen six, when I was

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Speaker 1: to my junior and senior years in high school. I

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Speaker 1: wrote my first newspaper article when I was I think eleven.

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Speaker 1: My whole career had been built around the media, and

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Speaker 1: I had risen through the media in Georgia. You know,

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Speaker 1: my first campaign was like eighty five thousand dollars, but

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Speaker 1: I had enough ties to the media and I was

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Speaker 1: able to generate enough noise. You know, a lot of

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Speaker 1: politics is about noise. How essential were the cameras in

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Speaker 1: the House television cameras in the house c SPAN and

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Speaker 1: just the presence of cameras coming to the house basically

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Speaker 1: when you got there. How essential was that to pulling

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Speaker 1: off nineteen eighty four ultimately and everything that led to it.

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Speaker 1: Could it have happened ifs well, yes, it could have happened,

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Speaker 1: but it had been different. I mean, the Jacksonians did

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Speaker 1: it by mailing newspapers, so you know, Lincoln did it

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Speaker 1: without television or I mean, every every generation's leadership has

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Speaker 1: to understand the technolo oology of communication for that generation.

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Speaker 1: So FDR did radio, you know, because he understood John F.

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Speaker 1: Kennedy did television. I would say that c SPAN was

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Speaker 1: enormously empowering in several ways. Art Pine took me out

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Speaker 1: to dinner one night and he said, you know, in

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Speaker 1: the old days they had they had the whales and

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Speaker 1: the minnows, and the whales were people like Richard Russell,

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Speaker 1: and they were the eight or ten or twelve people

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Speaker 1: who really mattered, and everybody else was a Minnow. He said,

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Speaker 1: that system has broken down, and nobody now knows what

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Speaker 1: the hierarchy is, and so noise becomes a heierarchical signal.

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Speaker 1: Now by Pure Luck. Probably the most popular radio show

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Speaker 1: a drivetime was Braden and Buchanan, and Buchanon decided to

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Speaker 1: go on strike for more money, and so they were

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Speaker 1: desperate for conservatives to sit in with Braden. And here

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Speaker 1: I am as a young freshman with you know, not

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Speaker 1: recognized freshman don't have that much impact, They don't have

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Speaker 1: much to do anyway. This is Tom Braden Pat Buchanan,

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Speaker 1: who would go on to be the first host of

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Speaker 1: Crossfire Radio, which I would later joy, but their current

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Speaker 1: they were doing radio drivetime. So sometime, I think in

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Speaker 1: the spring of my first year, I get this call

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Speaker 1: that says, would you like to come in the afternoon

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Speaker 1: and substitute for Buchanan. So for I don't know, six

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Speaker 1: or eight weeks, I would go probably twice a week,

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Speaker 1: and you get three hours of Gingrich arguing with Braden. Well,

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Speaker 1: the impact it had was you're a typical Washington bureaucrat.

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Speaker 1: You're driving home, You're listening to this guy with a

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Speaker 1: slightly strange voice and a weird name, and so all

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Speaker 1: of a sudden I went from being an unknown backbencher

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Speaker 1: to sort of a mid level member. In the first

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Speaker 1: year I was there by just because of the power

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Speaker 1: of drivetime radio in Washington, so that that would be

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Speaker 1: a typical example. C SPAN made that. I mean I

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Speaker 1: almost immediately understood that c SPAN was the opportunity to

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Speaker 1: reach out and educate the country and to develop a

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Speaker 1: signaling system that much of the media would watch. I mean,

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Speaker 1: so again, here you are, you're a backbencher in a

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Speaker 1: committee meeting, you don't have much influence, But in an

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Speaker 1: hour long special order, particularly if you've been a college

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Speaker 1: teacher and you're used to hour long special orders I

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Speaker 1: called lectures, you can have a real impact. So very

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Speaker 1: early on, but Brian Lamb launched it. You have to check.

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Speaker 1: But my guess is by Mayor June I was already

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Speaker 1: on c SPAN. I was actually surprised you weren't the first,

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Speaker 1: and it was Al Gore. But then if I had

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Speaker 1: to guess, outside of new Gingrich, who was the who

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Speaker 1: would have been the first member in the House in

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Speaker 1: that era to CTV the potential of it, I would

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Speaker 1: have guessed Gore would probably been my second choice. So

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Speaker 1: I guess that made some sense. I mean, is there

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Speaker 1: has there been a downside the cameras in the House. Well, look,

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Speaker 1: I think I don't know that it is particularly big

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Speaker 1: downside if you take the combination of cameras and internet,

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Speaker 1: the more radical the member, you know, whether it's Marjorie

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Speaker 1: Green or it's AOC, the greater their capacity to attract

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Speaker 1: a small sliver of a huge country. You know, on

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Speaker 1: a small sliver can be five hundred thousand people. So

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Speaker 1: in that sense it has some impact. I think on

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Speaker 1: balance it's largely an advantage. But that's partly because I'm

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Speaker 1: a genuine populist. I mean, I think it's good to

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Speaker 1: have the chaos of three hundred and thirty or three

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Speaker 1: hundred and forty million people. What were you so cspan

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Speaker 1: was and is. You know, it's sort of a niche audience.

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Speaker 1: It's not gonna you know, it's not going to draw

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Speaker 1: tens of millions. But from your strategic standpoint in the

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Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, you're given these special order speeches. It's a

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Speaker 1: key tool for you. Who, in your mind is your audience.

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Speaker 1: Who are you talking to? Well, in the eighties, the

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Speaker 1: news media, the reg and speech staff, other members and

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Speaker 1: then interested Republicans around the country. There was a group

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Speaker 1: of women in Waterloo, Iowa who we're all Republican activists,

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Speaker 1: and when we would do special orders, they'd call each

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Speaker 1: other and say, oh, you gotta turn on c SPAM.

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Speaker 1: And one of them was in Puerto Rico and ran

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Speaker 1: into Jack Kemp and said, oh, mister Kemp, do you

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Speaker 1: really serve in the house And he said, oh, yes,

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Speaker 1: if I do. She said, do you know Bob Walker?

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Speaker 1: The idea that Kemp was irrelevant but Walker mattered was

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Speaker 1: so so shook Jack up, and we later on had

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Speaker 1: T shirts made up that said I know Bob Walker.

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Speaker 1: But again, I mean, here's a guy from Lancaster, Pennsylvania

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Speaker 1: who has a following in Waterloo, Iowa. Well, look, if

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Speaker 1: you're a guerrilla movement, which is what we were, and

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Speaker 1: or you're the minority of the minority, any sign of

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Speaker 1: hope helps. So whatever group we were appealing to out there,

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Speaker 1: and clearly at one level, I was beginning to build

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Speaker 1: a national reputation just by the sheer persistence, and a

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Speaker 1: piece of that was CSPAN wasn't the core piece, but

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Speaker 1: it was a significant piece. But I was also communicating

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Speaker 1: to our members and that was an important part of this.

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Speaker 1: We were trying to take a morobund Republican base that

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Speaker 1: was defeated in the seventies, had lost any sense of purpose,

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Speaker 1: and we were trying to get them re energized with

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Speaker 1: real ideas. The whole Gym Right episode, obviously we spent

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Speaker 1: a lot of time on the transition from tippo'neil as

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Speaker 1: a speaker to Gym Right as a speaker. How much

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Speaker 1: did that Was that a necessary and greeting for you?

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Speaker 1: And I asked, because I'm curious if a campaign like

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Speaker 1: you waged against Right have even been possible against somebody

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Speaker 1: like Tippy O'Neil, who was first elected in thirty six

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Speaker 1: to the state Legislature, was a great Irish politician. I

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Speaker 1: had enormous respect for him, and he played by the rules.

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Speaker 1: I mean, he played hardball, but there was hardball inside

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Speaker 1: a frame of reference. Right, who had been very good

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Speaker 1: to me when I moved to expel Diggs, which one

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Speaker 1: of the things I had forgotten was how early in

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Speaker 1: my time there, like you know, just like you arrived,

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Speaker 1: you unpacked and he went out and picked a fight.

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Speaker 1: Right was very gentlemanly helped me think through the choreography.

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Speaker 1: Literally here I am as a brand new freshman dealing

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Speaker 1: with the majority leader and doing so in a way

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Speaker 1: that very few Republicans ever did. So I wasn't hostile

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Speaker 1: to write, but Wright did not understand that at the

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Speaker 1: heart of the system has to be a mutuality. Every

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Speaker 1: four hundred and thirty five people win elections, they all

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Speaker 1: come to the Congress, they all have rights, and you

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Speaker 1: get to win if you're the majority, but you have

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Speaker 1: to win within the framework of mutuality, right when in

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Speaker 1: doubt with bully people. I saw him one time with

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Speaker 1: a Democrat have the guy up literally up against the

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Speaker 1: wall in public, rating him because the guy hadn't voted right.

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Speaker 1: And I thought that it was a level of personal

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Speaker 1: abuse that was dangerous if you were going to be

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Speaker 1: as powerful as a Speaker of the House. And so

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Speaker 1: Wright resigned and people will then blame me, And I

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Speaker 1: kept saying to him, it's a little bit like my

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Speaker 1: fight with George H. W. Bush, which is he broke

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Speaker 1: his word over taxes. I didn't, well, it wasn't my fault.

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Speaker 1: The right had done enough stuff that a committee that

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Speaker 1: was had a majority of Democrat or that was chaired

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Speaker 1: by dec I think the requal number the committee unanimously

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Speaker 1: thought that he had done really bad things. We talked

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Speaker 1: to Leam Panetta, you know in the podcast, and I

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Speaker 1: don't think this quote actually made it into the podcast,

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Speaker 1: but I want to read it to you because I'm

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Speaker 1: sure it's a criticism you've heard before, and I think

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Speaker 1: it's sort of this is a succinct expression of the

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Speaker 1: criticism of how you handled these years right in other instances,

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Speaker 1: the way you kind of went about creating the majority

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Speaker 1: of the House. Panetta says, there were a lot of

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Speaker 1: factors at play here, but I think the thing that

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Speaker 1: really kind of sent the House in the wrong direction

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Speaker 1: was the fact that Newton some of the other Republicans

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Speaker 1: at that time, decided that with television in the House,

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Speaker 1: the best thing to do was to really try to

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Speaker 1: undermine the faith of the American people in the institution

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Speaker 1: of the House. And I think that hurt the House,

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Speaker 1: and it frankly hurt both Republicans and Democrats. It was

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Speaker 1: a strategy that basically said, we're going to undermine faith

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Speaker 1: in the House, even if it hurts Republicans because it's

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Speaker 1: about this larger mission of tearing the place down in

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Speaker 1: order to get power. That argument that you torched the

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Speaker 1: place and that's what got you into power, but also

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Speaker 1: permanently wrecked Congress essentially, What do you say to critics

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Speaker 1: who say that, Well, I mean, first of all, I'd

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Speaker 1: like Leon and i'd marry him when we've been friends.

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Speaker 1: But remember that Leon is the Democrat who chaired the

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Speaker 1: committee which stole the seat in Indiana, and when it

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Speaker 1: came down to it in the and he did what

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Speaker 1: Tony Quelo told him to, which was steal the seat. Look,

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Speaker 1: somebody wrote a book the other week. I haven't had

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Speaker 1: time they really critique what I'd like to be could

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Speaker 1: about the destructionists, Well, they're right, as I set out

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Speaker 1: with three goals, change the welfare state, defeat the Democrats

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Speaker 1: in Congress, and defeat the Soviet embar. Well, you could argue,

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Speaker 1: if you were a good Soviet that I was a destructionist.

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Speaker 1: You could argue, if you're a good Democrat, that I

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Speaker 1: was a destructionist. And you could argue, if you were

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Speaker 1: a Liberal who believed in the original welfare state, that

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Speaker 1: I was a destructions That's why I was elected. I

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Speaker 1: wasn't trying to think. I think it is a gross

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Speaker 1: exaggeration to identify the House with the Democratic Party. So

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Speaker 1: I'm not quite sure what the complaint is except that

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Speaker 1: I came along like Reagan and I actually made the

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Speaker 1: right effective and that was of course seen as a

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Speaker 1: grave sin by the Democrats, and a lot of them

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Speaker 1: never forgave me for ending the forty years of domination

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Speaker 1: because suddenly they went from being in charge to being

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Speaker 1: the ranking member. They went for having a huge staff

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Speaker 1: to having a small staff, and they didn't like it.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I don't blame them, but they could have

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Speaker 1: also looked at you know, it was at the end

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Speaker 1: of forty years, and maybe time folks who've heard this

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Speaker 1: podcast this will be fresh in their minds, presumably. But

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Speaker 1: after the eighty four election, there's an unresolved House race

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Speaker 1: in Indiana, the eighth District of Indiana, and the Republican

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Speaker 1: candidate there, Rick McIntyre, gets certified as the winner by

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Speaker 1: the Secretary of State, but of course the Constitution gives

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Speaker 1: the House the power ultimately to be the judge of

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Speaker 1: its own elections, and the Democrats control the House, and

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Speaker 1: the Democrats end up refusing to see either candidate from

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Speaker 1: that race, Frank McCloskey the incumbent or Rick McIntyre, and

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Speaker 1: this whole process ensues where Leon Panetta Democrat from California

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Speaker 1: chairs a three member committee that investigates the election. Two Democrats,

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Speaker 1: one Republican. All the crucial votes go two to one

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Speaker 1: Democrats against Republicans, and ultimately McCloskey gets declared the winner

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Speaker 1: on not quite a partisan vote, but pretty close to

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Speaker 1: a partisan vote in the House, and the Republicans walk

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Speaker 1: out of the chamber. So that's what you're referring to

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Speaker 1: when you talk about leon Panetta's role, and you believe

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Speaker 1: because we talked to Panetta and he thinks ultimately they

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Speaker 1: aid the right decision, you'd think it was staft. Well,

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Speaker 1: I mean, first of all, they can't explain the votes

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Speaker 1: they didn't count because they stopped counting when they were

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Speaker 1: head by four votes. And we've always believed that the

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Speaker 1: rest of the votes might well have been mcintre, in

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Speaker 1: which case they would have had to see macinterre. But

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Speaker 1: I had been telling them for at least two months.

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Speaker 1: I was on House Administration. Bill Thomas, who had been

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Speaker 1: my roommate and who came in with me, was the

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Speaker 1: Republican on that committee, and Bill Schweitzer was our lawyer

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Speaker 1: for that committee, and I kept telling both Thomas and

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Speaker 1: Schweitzer they're gonna steal it, that this is Tony Quelo's

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Speaker 1: wife lives in that district. Tony is not gonna be embarrassed.

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Speaker 1: And in the end, they're going to steal it. And

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Speaker 1: finally they came back to me after it was over,

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Speaker 1: and Schweitzer said, you were right. I mean when you

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Speaker 1: say Steele, because do you think Panetta thought that's what

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Speaker 1: he was doing? Do you think he believed that McIntyre.

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Speaker 1: Actually great virtue of being a machine politician is that

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Speaker 1: you can do the most ridiculous thing with the straight face. Now,

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Speaker 1: if you'd have to ask Panetta, why did they quit County?

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Speaker 1: There were literally more than enough votes outstanding that McIntyre

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Speaker 1: could have won. We talk in the episode play audio

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Speaker 1: in fact, of all of the Republicans walking out, including

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Speaker 1: I thought, most significantly Bob Michael, that was a big

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Speaker 1: turning point in the house, Wasn't it was? It was

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Speaker 1: a major step towards a more militant Republican party. And

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Speaker 1: again I think in terms of why Leon has a

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Speaker 1: hard case, you know, Bill Thomas convinced the conference that

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Speaker 1: it was stolen, while Michael walked out because he was

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Speaker 1: convinced it was stolen. And the person who stole it

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Speaker 1: was Leon Panetta. She talked about Pete about that subsequent years.

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Speaker 1: But what is he going to say. He's going to say,

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Speaker 1: we don't agree, and I would say, so, why didn't

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Speaker 1: you count the last votes? And he'd give me some

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Speaker 1: nonsense answers. I mean, he's not stupid. He's a very

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Speaker 1: smart man. But at this moment in time, he was

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Speaker 1: under enormous pressure and his career would have been different

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Speaker 1: had he reported a Republican victory. I mean the argument

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Speaker 1: has also made I guess that we have voices in

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Speaker 1: this podcast who express it that was changed in the

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Speaker 1: House over the last say four decades or so has

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Speaker 1: been a decline in civility, has been a decline in

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Speaker 1: collegiality between members of posing parties, and with that has

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Speaker 1: come the cost of generally speaking, a lot less by partisanship,

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Speaker 1: a lot less work across the aisles, a lot more polarization,

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Speaker 1: and members who just fundamentally don't even know or understand

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Speaker 1: each other anymore. Is that something? Is that something you've seen,

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Speaker 1: and is that something that you look back to the

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Speaker 1: House that you first entered in nineteen seventy eight and say, hey,

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Speaker 1: maybe maybe there was something working there that I didn't

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Speaker 1: fully appreciate at the time. Well man, okay, I was

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Speaker 1: assigned to House Administration and to Public Works. They're both

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Speaker 1: essentially bipartisan. Although House Administration wanted fought over of election law, wasn't,

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Speaker 1: but most of the time it was. What happened that

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Speaker 1: that is different is that we're in the middle of

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Speaker 1: a cultural civil war. The gap between the left and

430
00:26:50,320 --> 00:26:53,280
Speaker 1: the right is as big as it's been at any

431
00:26:53,320 --> 00:26:57,440
Speaker 1: time in modern America, and it's genuine and it's deep,

432
00:26:58,560 --> 00:27:02,080
Speaker 1: and so each side would love to have civility on

433
00:27:02,160 --> 00:27:06,840
Speaker 1: their terms. Neither side is prepared to have civility on

434
00:27:06,920 --> 00:27:10,440
Speaker 1: the other side's terms, and they have almost no ability

435
00:27:10,440 --> 00:27:13,399
Speaker 1: to compromise in the middle. So you end up with

436
00:27:13,520 --> 00:27:17,320
Speaker 1: Pelosi ramming through every single major piece of legislation on

437
00:27:17,400 --> 00:27:21,360
Speaker 1: a partisan mine, on a party lead book, every single one,

438
00:27:22,240 --> 00:27:25,760
Speaker 1: and then we're told that we are somehow disruptive. I

439
00:27:25,800 --> 00:27:29,720
Speaker 1: would just say the tensions are a reflection of reality,

440
00:27:30,359 --> 00:27:33,719
Speaker 1: They're not the cause of reality. I want to talk

441
00:27:33,720 --> 00:27:36,240
Speaker 1: a little bit about your tenure as Speaker, but I

442
00:27:36,280 --> 00:27:40,600
Speaker 1: guess as a prelude to that, thinking back to November

443
00:27:40,640 --> 00:27:44,760
Speaker 1: eight ninety four. What do you remember about that night? Well,

444
00:27:44,800 --> 00:27:47,439
Speaker 1: it was amazing. I mean, first of all, I had

445
00:27:47,480 --> 00:27:51,560
Speaker 1: been confidence since September seventeenth that we would be a majority,

446
00:27:53,440 --> 00:27:56,399
Speaker 1: and we have been planning the speakership for six weeks.

447
00:27:57,119 --> 00:28:00,320
Speaker 1: What made you? What was the magic? It's a great story,

448
00:28:00,359 --> 00:28:02,600
Speaker 1: which which I'm actually going to talk about at length

449
00:28:02,840 --> 00:28:08,240
Speaker 1: in the upcoming book. On the March the majority, we

450
00:28:08,359 --> 00:28:11,440
Speaker 1: were taking off the Dan Meyer, who was my chief

451
00:28:11,440 --> 00:28:13,679
Speaker 1: of staff and is now Kevin McCarthy's chief of staff,

452
00:28:14,160 --> 00:28:18,159
Speaker 1: having served George W. Bush as legislative liaison in between.

453
00:28:19,880 --> 00:28:21,800
Speaker 1: Meyer was on the plane, Steve Hanser, who was my

454
00:28:21,880 --> 00:28:25,960
Speaker 1: closest adviser, Joe Gaylord, who was my political partner, and

455
00:28:26,280 --> 00:28:30,560
Speaker 1: Carrie not who was Dick Army's chief of staff. And

456
00:28:30,680 --> 00:28:32,480
Speaker 1: we're going to go on a I think maybe a

457
00:28:32,520 --> 00:28:35,239
Speaker 1: four day swing on a private plane where we were

458
00:28:35,240 --> 00:28:37,560
Speaker 1: going to raise money and due events and we're going

459
00:28:37,640 --> 00:28:40,719
Speaker 1: to plan in between. So we're taking off at National

460
00:28:41,040 --> 00:28:44,120
Speaker 1: and I said, all right, are we planning for a

461
00:28:44,200 --> 00:28:47,240
Speaker 1: majority or are we planning for the minority? I just

462
00:28:47,800 --> 00:28:50,600
Speaker 1: which plan are we doing? And Gaylord said, well, you'd

463
00:28:50,600 --> 00:28:53,640
Speaker 1: better be planning for to be speaker because you're going

464
00:28:53,680 --> 00:28:56,680
Speaker 1: to be, at which point Meyer said, wait a second,

465
00:28:57,920 --> 00:29:01,640
Speaker 1: you know, you have to explain this. So Joe started

466
00:29:01,720 --> 00:29:05,080
Speaker 1: in Maine and one through four hundred and thirty five

467
00:29:05,160 --> 00:29:10,800
Speaker 1: districts by memory, and said we would pick up fifty

468
00:29:10,840 --> 00:29:14,280
Speaker 1: three seats. He actually picked up fifty four. The only

469
00:29:14,360 --> 00:29:19,440
Speaker 1: one he missed was Rostenkowski. It never occurred to us

470
00:29:19,680 --> 00:29:22,960
Speaker 1: that an unknown, you know, lawyer would defeat Rostenkowski in

471
00:29:23,000 --> 00:29:27,440
Speaker 1: downtown Treco. Michael Clan again, that's right. So I trusted

472
00:29:27,560 --> 00:29:31,520
Speaker 1: Joe enough that from that point on I assumed we'd

473
00:29:31,560 --> 00:29:33,320
Speaker 1: be a majority. I mean, I didn't know if it'd

474
00:29:33,320 --> 00:29:36,200
Speaker 1: be fifty three, but I was. I was confident that

475
00:29:36,360 --> 00:29:38,880
Speaker 1: he was not off enough for us to be a minority.

476
00:29:39,560 --> 00:29:44,600
Speaker 1: So by the eighth of November, we pretty well knew

477
00:29:45,080 --> 00:29:46,920
Speaker 1: we were going to be a majority. And that was

478
00:29:47,160 --> 00:29:49,920
Speaker 1: that was a you were you had that confidence. But

479
00:29:49,960 --> 00:29:53,760
Speaker 1: I mean, I can I was a teenager, but I was, um,

480
00:29:54,160 --> 00:29:56,840
Speaker 1: I guess as you were into politics as a teenager.

481
00:29:56,880 --> 00:29:59,880
Speaker 1: So I remember it very well, and I remember absorbing

482
00:30:00,840 --> 00:30:04,440
Speaker 1: the consensus in the media coverage, and it was right

483
00:30:04,560 --> 00:30:07,120
Speaker 1: to the day, not gonna happen. It was good night

484
00:30:07,160 --> 00:30:10,040
Speaker 1: for public if it was the shock that night. Yeah,

485
00:30:10,120 --> 00:30:11,680
Speaker 1: I mean the only the only other time it was

486
00:30:11,760 --> 00:30:14,920
Speaker 1: comparable was Trump's victory, which if you watched the go

487
00:30:15,000 --> 00:30:17,160
Speaker 1: to YouTube and pull up those and you watch the

488
00:30:17,200 --> 00:30:19,080
Speaker 1: look on people's face. It was part of the coverage

489
00:30:19,080 --> 00:30:22,200
Speaker 1: in sixteen. Well, as I say, it very similar. Yeah,

490
00:30:22,480 --> 00:30:25,360
Speaker 1: So we had a huge crowd that night. Sean Hannity

491
00:30:26,120 --> 00:30:29,160
Speaker 1: was the host. He was in Atlanta talk radio hosts.

492
00:30:29,800 --> 00:30:32,560
Speaker 1: Two mistakes that night which I regret one one, I

493
00:30:33,200 --> 00:30:36,400
Speaker 1: regret both of them. One the bigger mistake was I

494
00:30:36,440 --> 00:30:39,400
Speaker 1: didn't take the call from Clinton. Initially. It was just

495
00:30:39,480 --> 00:30:41,160
Speaker 1: because we were busy and we were doing stuff and

496
00:30:41,560 --> 00:30:45,440
Speaker 1: I figured, you know, the president, and it was just

497
00:30:45,520 --> 00:30:47,600
Speaker 1: stupid on my part. It's the dumbest thing I did

498
00:30:47,640 --> 00:30:50,640
Speaker 1: that night. And then second, I was doing some walking

499
00:30:50,720 --> 00:30:53,320
Speaker 1: interview with which was one of my traits which gets

500
00:30:53,360 --> 00:30:57,760
Speaker 1: me in trouble regularly, and a lesson I never fully

501
00:30:57,880 --> 00:31:01,840
Speaker 1: learned is when you get to that level, you're no

502
00:31:01,960 --> 00:31:05,640
Speaker 1: longer an analyst. So we're walking along and I said, look,

503
00:31:05,640 --> 00:31:09,560
Speaker 1: you have to understand how much Bill and Hillary were mcgovernights.

504
00:31:11,160 --> 00:31:12,959
Speaker 1: Well that became a story. Of course. The next day,

505
00:31:13,000 --> 00:31:17,200
Speaker 1: Gangwige calls I think counterculture mcgovernis was at the turn Yeah,

506
00:31:17,600 --> 00:31:20,840
Speaker 1: and that was just stupid because it distracted from what

507
00:31:21,000 --> 00:31:23,520
Speaker 1: I should have been saying. So I would give myself

508
00:31:23,600 --> 00:31:26,480
Speaker 1: bad marks on those two. On the other hand, late

509
00:31:26,560 --> 00:31:29,080
Speaker 1: in the evening, I met with twenty or thirty of

510
00:31:29,120 --> 00:31:32,000
Speaker 1: our strongest supporters. When we had people who had been

511
00:31:32,080 --> 00:31:35,800
Speaker 1: supporting this effort through go pack and through the NRCC, etc.

512
00:31:36,360 --> 00:31:39,120
Speaker 1: You know, for years. I mean, no matter how often

513
00:31:39,240 --> 00:31:41,040
Speaker 1: we lost, they were still writing the check and they

514
00:31:41,080 --> 00:31:43,920
Speaker 1: were still helping and what have you. And so a

515
00:31:44,080 --> 00:31:46,360
Speaker 1: bunch of them got together and I said to them

516
00:31:46,400 --> 00:31:51,000
Speaker 1: something which I repeated that Friday, which was because their

517
00:31:51,080 --> 00:31:54,480
Speaker 1: greatest fear was that we would go to Washington become normal.

518
00:31:56,120 --> 00:31:59,120
Speaker 1: And I said, look, I'm going to cooperate, but I

519
00:31:59,200 --> 00:32:02,480
Speaker 1: am not going to come promise, which is a phrase

520
00:32:02,560 --> 00:32:05,240
Speaker 1: I repeated at a Heritage speech on Friday that week,

521
00:32:05,640 --> 00:32:08,320
Speaker 1: which again led to a whole bunch of but that

522
00:32:08,640 --> 00:32:12,600
Speaker 1: I meant, and that was deliberate and it was important,

523
00:32:13,400 --> 00:32:15,640
Speaker 1: you know. So I mean, I don't know that there

524
00:32:15,760 --> 00:32:19,320
Speaker 1: was much exultation, partly just because we had worked so

525
00:32:19,520 --> 00:32:22,200
Speaker 1: hard and so long that it was more a sense

526
00:32:22,240 --> 00:32:25,760
Speaker 1: of exhaustion than exhilaration, but there was a huge sense

527
00:32:25,840 --> 00:32:29,240
Speaker 1: of satisfaction. This gets into the territory in the sixth

528
00:32:29,240 --> 00:32:32,480
Speaker 1: episode where I think you had some issues with but

529
00:32:32,560 --> 00:32:34,720
Speaker 1: I mean, I think what you're alluding to there was

530
00:32:34,880 --> 00:32:38,400
Speaker 1: raised in the sixth episode, and I've heard others make

531
00:32:38,440 --> 00:32:41,880
Speaker 1: a similar argument that a lot of the skills that

532
00:32:42,040 --> 00:32:44,640
Speaker 1: you had in the sixteen years leading up to nineteen

533
00:32:44,720 --> 00:32:48,640
Speaker 1: ninety four strategic skills the approach to politics of drawing

534
00:32:48,680 --> 00:32:52,160
Speaker 1: these very deep contrasts between the parties of the kind

535
00:32:52,200 --> 00:32:55,080
Speaker 1: of rhetoric you're talking about counterculture mcgovernis this sort of

536
00:32:55,160 --> 00:33:00,200
Speaker 1: thing that that hindered your transition to speaker and that

537
00:33:00,360 --> 00:33:03,840
Speaker 1: ultimately hindered your effectiveness. Is how speaker? Is there validity

538
00:33:03,840 --> 00:33:06,640
Speaker 1: to that? Not about the strategic part. I think I

539
00:33:06,720 --> 00:33:09,880
Speaker 1: think that's one of the keys. And I think if

540
00:33:10,040 --> 00:33:12,640
Speaker 1: you looked at the opening one hundred days hoping ninety

541
00:33:12,680 --> 00:33:15,480
Speaker 1: three days, it was astonishing what we were doing and

542
00:33:15,520 --> 00:33:18,160
Speaker 1: how fast we were doing it and how much we

543
00:33:18,240 --> 00:33:21,320
Speaker 1: were dominating the media, which was important because we had

544
00:33:21,360 --> 00:33:24,920
Speaker 1: to keep momentum. And ultimately it is Clinton's decision, which

545
00:33:24,920 --> 00:33:27,960
Speaker 1: I think is in June, that he has to compromise

546
00:33:28,040 --> 00:33:29,920
Speaker 1: with us that he cannot be the defender of the

547
00:33:30,040 --> 00:33:33,440
Speaker 1: left and get reelected. And that changed the world. I mean,

548
00:33:33,720 --> 00:33:35,360
Speaker 1: if you look at the total number of things we

549
00:33:35,480 --> 00:33:40,000
Speaker 1: accomplished that you would have thought, you know, if I'd

550
00:33:40,000 --> 00:33:43,560
Speaker 1: said to you in preceding January, not only are we

551
00:33:43,600 --> 00:33:45,840
Speaker 1: going to win a majority, but we'll get these things

552
00:33:45,880 --> 00:33:48,080
Speaker 1: done in the next four years, you would have thought

553
00:33:48,120 --> 00:33:51,680
Speaker 1: I was a lunatic. Now I think there were two,

554
00:33:53,360 --> 00:33:57,440
Speaker 1: I'd say maybe three big mistakes I made. I'm thinking

555
00:33:57,480 --> 00:33:59,920
Speaker 1: out loud, so which is again one of my weaknesses,

556
00:34:01,480 --> 00:34:04,920
Speaker 1: but also one of the strengths. I mean. The one

557
00:34:05,200 --> 00:34:08,520
Speaker 1: was understanding the change in my position and what you

558
00:34:08,600 --> 00:34:11,280
Speaker 1: could and couldn't do. We tried early on, for example,

559
00:34:11,360 --> 00:34:15,200
Speaker 1: to do televised press conferences, which which I thought would

560
00:34:15,239 --> 00:34:17,279
Speaker 1: be a very good thing to do. Within a matter

561
00:34:17,320 --> 00:34:20,080
Speaker 1: of weeks we realized they just became target practice. I mean,

562
00:34:20,120 --> 00:34:23,120
Speaker 1: the media would get together, the Democrats would feed him stuff,

563
00:34:23,480 --> 00:34:25,920
Speaker 1: and it was not not to our advantage to be

564
00:34:26,000 --> 00:34:30,320
Speaker 1: doing it. So one was just making the transition. Second

565
00:34:30,600 --> 00:34:33,920
Speaker 1: was because I do like the media and I just

566
00:34:34,719 --> 00:34:39,160
Speaker 1: hang out here with you, I would do things that

567
00:34:39,239 --> 00:34:41,960
Speaker 1: were analytical that we're stupid. I mean the whole The

568
00:34:42,040 --> 00:34:45,880
Speaker 1: whole thing about Gingwich complaining about coming off the airplane

569
00:34:46,520 --> 00:34:48,759
Speaker 1: was if you go back and actually look at the transcript,

570
00:34:49,280 --> 00:34:53,520
Speaker 1: is the government shutdown? Yeah? Yeah. The whole thing came

571
00:34:53,560 --> 00:34:57,719
Speaker 1: out of a Christian Science Monitor breakfast where I was

572
00:34:57,800 --> 00:35:01,800
Speaker 1: trying to explain the weirdness that Clinton had all that

573
00:35:01,960 --> 00:35:04,839
Speaker 1: time to sit and talk about how we could solve

574
00:35:04,960 --> 00:35:08,600
Speaker 1: this and didn't, which they of course then trumped by

575
00:35:08,640 --> 00:35:10,880
Speaker 1: showing me in a picture with Clinton, so see they

576
00:35:10,920 --> 00:35:13,879
Speaker 1: really were together, which wasn't my point. My point was, yeah,

577
00:35:13,920 --> 00:35:16,479
Speaker 1: we were together. He was playing cards, and in fact,

578
00:35:17,000 --> 00:35:19,359
Speaker 1: somebody who was with him said later a week later,

579
00:35:19,440 --> 00:35:22,319
Speaker 1: said English was totally right. I was in the room.

580
00:35:23,440 --> 00:35:26,279
Speaker 1: Clinton was not going to talk about anything serious, and

581
00:35:26,360 --> 00:35:29,359
Speaker 1: I was just saying that you either could smoothe us

582
00:35:29,840 --> 00:35:32,480
Speaker 1: and get closer to a deal, or you could basically

583
00:35:32,560 --> 00:35:35,040
Speaker 1: ignore us and be further and it was weird to

584
00:35:35,120 --> 00:35:38,759
Speaker 1: watch him operate. It's not something the Speaker of the

585
00:35:38,800 --> 00:35:43,360
Speaker 1: House should have said. And it was perfectly legitimate for

586
00:35:43,480 --> 00:35:46,520
Speaker 1: our opponents at the Daily News to have a cry

587
00:35:46,600 --> 00:35:49,120
Speaker 1: baby newt cover, which was not what I said at all.

588
00:35:49,800 --> 00:35:52,239
Speaker 1: I mean, I was actually trying to be helpful and analytical,

589
00:35:53,000 --> 00:35:57,040
Speaker 1: and that that was clearly no longer what I could do.

590
00:35:57,800 --> 00:36:00,400
Speaker 1: That wasn't who I was anymore. And then the other

591
00:36:00,480 --> 00:36:03,359
Speaker 1: thing is something I was watching Kevin McCarthy. I flew

592
00:36:03,400 --> 00:36:05,800
Speaker 1: with him for the last three days of the campaign,

593
00:36:05,840 --> 00:36:11,360
Speaker 1: and I was just amazed. McCarthy's, like my wife, Calista,

594
00:36:11,440 --> 00:36:15,480
Speaker 1: has this ability to interact with people, to remember people,

595
00:36:16,600 --> 00:36:21,560
Speaker 1: and to build networks of friends and sustain them for

596
00:36:22,440 --> 00:36:27,080
Speaker 1: fifty years. I don't. I mean, I'm essentially you know,

597
00:36:27,320 --> 00:36:30,080
Speaker 1: I'm essentially a thinker. You know I need lots of

598
00:36:30,160 --> 00:36:35,040
Speaker 1: time to read and study and think. And I think

599
00:36:35,080 --> 00:36:40,920
Speaker 1: I failed to sustain the level of human friendship and

600
00:36:41,040 --> 00:36:44,719
Speaker 1: human teamwork that would have been necessary. And it was

601
00:36:44,800 --> 00:36:49,960
Speaker 1: compounded by both probably my own arrogance in making too

602
00:36:50,040 --> 00:36:53,040
Speaker 1: many decisions, and by the speed with which we were moving.

603
00:36:53,120 --> 00:36:55,360
Speaker 1: I mean, I looked back later on and realized I

604
00:36:55,520 --> 00:36:59,280
Speaker 1: probably averaged I don't know, one hundred and two hours

605
00:36:59,320 --> 00:37:02,600
Speaker 1: a week. I want to told somebody that if I

606
00:37:02,719 --> 00:37:05,120
Speaker 1: had learned golf before I became speaker, I never would

607
00:37:05,120 --> 00:37:07,640
Speaker 1: become a speaker because I wouldn't have had the time.

608
00:37:07,960 --> 00:37:09,960
Speaker 1: But if I had played golf while I was speaker,

609
00:37:09,960 --> 00:37:12,320
Speaker 1: I'd have been a better speaker, because it would have

610
00:37:12,440 --> 00:37:41,759
Speaker 1: broken up the focus and the intensity. I wanted to

611
00:37:41,760 --> 00:37:44,560
Speaker 1: ask you some bigger picture questions here, I think just

612
00:37:44,680 --> 00:37:50,040
Speaker 1: about all right, here's one thinking back to when You're

613
00:37:50,080 --> 00:37:53,640
Speaker 1: won in ninety four, and again, my experience of absorbing

614
00:37:53,719 --> 00:37:56,319
Speaker 1: this as a spectator of American politics at the time,

615
00:37:56,800 --> 00:37:59,239
Speaker 1: you know, was that this, this was taken by many people,

616
00:37:59,320 --> 00:38:02,800
Speaker 1: the Republican romolution in ninety four as the fulfillment of

617
00:38:03,080 --> 00:38:06,680
Speaker 1: a thirty year march. Barry Goldwater starts in sixty four,

618
00:38:07,200 --> 00:38:10,440
Speaker 1: Reagan gets elected in eighty, You've got all these landslide

619
00:38:10,480 --> 00:38:15,280
Speaker 1: Republican presidential victories, and now finally the permanent Democratic Congress

620
00:38:15,320 --> 00:38:18,200
Speaker 1: has fallen, and we are now entering into an era

621
00:38:18,880 --> 00:38:24,359
Speaker 1: of America being a sort of fundamentally conservative country. Did

622
00:38:24,440 --> 00:38:27,440
Speaker 1: you feel that in the moment, And I'm curious if

623
00:38:27,480 --> 00:38:30,719
Speaker 1: you can, since you are a historian and you think

624
00:38:31,360 --> 00:38:35,320
Speaker 1: in kind of big picture terms, did you have a

625
00:38:35,440 --> 00:38:38,719
Speaker 1: sense in that moment of where you thought America would

626
00:38:38,719 --> 00:38:41,600
Speaker 1: be in about a generation? Well, I mean, first of all,

627
00:38:43,360 --> 00:38:47,560
Speaker 1: when Bill Clinton comes to the State of the Union, Yeah,

628
00:38:47,600 --> 00:38:49,360
Speaker 1: I think it was in ninety six and says the

629
00:38:49,440 --> 00:38:52,600
Speaker 1: era of big government is over. You had some feeling

630
00:38:52,680 --> 00:38:55,160
Speaker 1: that something had changed pretty profoundly. And I think it

631
00:38:55,360 --> 00:38:59,600
Speaker 1: goes back to Goldwater, to Reagan's great speech that year,

632
00:39:00,000 --> 00:39:04,120
Speaker 1: time for choosing, then to Reagan's long campaign, and then

633
00:39:04,200 --> 00:39:07,440
Speaker 1: to our winning and frankly one of those stories which

634
00:39:07,480 --> 00:39:10,359
Speaker 1: someday will be written as neither George H. W. Bush

635
00:39:10,400 --> 00:39:13,120
Speaker 1: nor George Bush had a clue. And so you have this,

636
00:39:13,280 --> 00:39:16,480
Speaker 1: this this perennial interruption. I mean, if George H. W.

637
00:39:16,680 --> 00:39:19,759
Speaker 1: Bush had governed as a Reagan knight, we would have

638
00:39:19,800 --> 00:39:22,920
Speaker 1: been in a very different place. And again I think

639
00:39:22,960 --> 00:39:25,000
Speaker 1: if George W. Bush had governed as a Reagan Night,

640
00:39:25,160 --> 00:39:27,799
Speaker 1: but as if George H. W. Bush had governed as

641
00:39:27,840 --> 00:39:31,240
Speaker 1: a Reagan knight. And here we're getting into that tax episode.

642
00:39:31,280 --> 00:39:33,800
Speaker 1: He says, read my lips, no new taxes. Then he

643
00:39:33,840 --> 00:39:35,719
Speaker 1: cuts a deal with Democrats to raise taxes, and you

644
00:39:35,800 --> 00:39:37,880
Speaker 1: go to war with the Bush White House, and it

645
00:39:38,000 --> 00:39:42,839
Speaker 1: tears Republican Party part But he also is a one

646
00:39:42,960 --> 00:39:46,560
Speaker 1: term president. How necessary was it to get control of

647
00:39:46,600 --> 00:39:49,279
Speaker 1: the House for a Democrat to come in in ninety three? Look,

648
00:39:49,320 --> 00:39:52,080
Speaker 1: I think, ironically, I think had George H. W. Bush

649
00:39:52,200 --> 00:39:54,840
Speaker 1: been a Reagan Knight, and had even a two term president,

650
00:39:54,880 --> 00:39:58,400
Speaker 1: we wouldn't have been a majority. I think it's almost

651
00:39:58,480 --> 00:40:03,160
Speaker 1: impossible to gain enough seats with an incumbent president in

652
00:40:03,200 --> 00:40:06,480
Speaker 1: your own party. You have to have a reaction to

653
00:40:06,600 --> 00:40:11,239
Speaker 1: the other side, which is why you see Pelosi arrive

654
00:40:11,360 --> 00:40:15,799
Speaker 1: in six and reaction to Bush. You see Bayner arrive

655
00:40:15,960 --> 00:40:19,719
Speaker 1: in ten in reaction to Obama. That's just the way

656
00:40:19,719 --> 00:40:23,680
Speaker 1: it works. We end our story basically with your victory

657
00:40:23,719 --> 00:40:29,200
Speaker 1: in nine. In the generation since what do you think

658
00:40:29,239 --> 00:40:34,759
Speaker 1: the biggest difference is between what the Republican Party is

659
00:40:34,920 --> 00:40:38,560
Speaker 1: now and what it was where our story ended, Well,

660
00:40:38,680 --> 00:40:41,360
Speaker 1: let me say to a slightly different thing, because you

661
00:40:41,360 --> 00:40:43,480
Speaker 1: asked me a minute to go about whether or not

662
00:40:43,640 --> 00:40:46,600
Speaker 1: that was the beginning of a generation of conservative governance.

663
00:40:48,880 --> 00:40:53,600
Speaker 1: Reagan warns in his farewell address about the decay in

664
00:40:53,680 --> 00:40:58,960
Speaker 1: American history and the decay and understanding American society. I

665
00:40:59,080 --> 00:41:01,960
Speaker 1: would argue that while we were winning the political wars,

666
00:41:02,600 --> 00:41:06,440
Speaker 1: we were losing the cultural wars, and that the society

667
00:41:07,040 --> 00:41:09,960
Speaker 1: culturally was moving much further to the left at the

668
00:41:10,120 --> 00:41:12,920
Speaker 1: very time that politically it was moving to the right.

669
00:41:13,360 --> 00:41:17,280
Speaker 1: And that's attention we're currently living in. Were you feeling

670
00:41:17,320 --> 00:41:20,520
Speaker 1: that in ninety four. Yeah, we were aware of it

671
00:41:20,600 --> 00:41:22,320
Speaker 1: in ninety four, and a lot of my comments you

672
00:41:22,400 --> 00:41:24,520
Speaker 1: go back and look at him, are really against the

673
00:41:24,600 --> 00:41:28,560
Speaker 1: counterculture or against the kind of against wokeism, if you will,

674
00:41:28,840 --> 00:41:33,480
Speaker 1: as it became known a generation later, because you could

675
00:41:34,280 --> 00:41:36,080
Speaker 1: it really goes back to the seventies and eighties. I

676
00:41:36,120 --> 00:41:38,840
Speaker 1: mean the first grade surge of the left wing cultures

677
00:41:38,880 --> 00:41:41,560
Speaker 1: the late sixties early seventies, and there were twenty five

678
00:41:41,640 --> 00:41:45,120
Speaker 1: hundred bombings in a two year period. So a lot

679
00:41:45,160 --> 00:41:47,320
Speaker 1: of that stuff was coming down the road, and you

680
00:41:47,400 --> 00:41:51,240
Speaker 1: could feel it coming down the road, but we didn't

681
00:41:51,280 --> 00:41:54,759
Speaker 1: have a political response to it. And so I would

682
00:41:54,760 --> 00:41:57,480
Speaker 1: say I could not have predicted where we are today,

683
00:41:59,360 --> 00:42:01,919
Speaker 1: but I would have probably predicted if you had told

684
00:42:01,960 --> 00:42:04,680
Speaker 1: me the evolution, I would have predicted the rise of

685
00:42:04,719 --> 00:42:09,880
Speaker 1: a populist conservatism. The other thing where I think we

686
00:42:10,040 --> 00:42:15,000
Speaker 1: just I was just wrong. I really thought, both with

687
00:42:15,320 --> 00:42:21,120
Speaker 1: NAFTA and with WTO, that entering a larger world market

688
00:42:21,200 --> 00:42:25,160
Speaker 1: made sense. In retrospect, I think that Trump's critique of

689
00:42:25,239 --> 00:42:31,600
Speaker 1: NAFTA is more accurate than my view, and that the

690
00:42:31,760 --> 00:42:34,919
Speaker 1: hope we had for China, the notion that Dung shell

691
00:42:35,000 --> 00:42:38,279
Speaker 1: paying in being for open markets was the first step

692
00:42:38,320 --> 00:42:43,880
Speaker 1: towards an open society. Failed. Whether it was inevitably going

693
00:42:43,960 --> 00:42:46,879
Speaker 1: to fail or whether it failed because of a counteraction

694
00:42:47,000 --> 00:42:51,080
Speaker 1: by the communist Chinese Party, I'm not quite certain. But

695
00:42:51,320 --> 00:42:54,120
Speaker 1: the result was we gave away a great deal of

696
00:42:54,160 --> 00:42:58,160
Speaker 1: American economic capacity in order to try to foster a

697
00:42:58,280 --> 00:43:01,120
Speaker 1: China which did not emerge. And so in that sense,

698
00:43:01,520 --> 00:43:09,480
Speaker 1: I'm probably much more an America first person that I

699
00:43:09,520 --> 00:43:11,759
Speaker 1: would have thought I would have been thirty years ago.

700
00:43:12,040 --> 00:43:14,640
Speaker 1: We're also at that point, at a moment of triumphalism.

701
00:43:15,200 --> 00:43:17,560
Speaker 1: You know, the Soviet Union had collapsed. It was a

702
00:43:17,719 --> 00:43:21,200
Speaker 1: unipolar world for all practical purposes, and we really had

703
00:43:21,320 --> 00:43:28,239
Speaker 1: no peer competitor prior to probably twenty sixteen. So, in

704
00:43:28,400 --> 00:43:31,279
Speaker 1: terms of defining the Republican Party today, when you say

705
00:43:31,360 --> 00:43:33,600
Speaker 1: that the culture was moving to the left, has moved

706
00:43:33,600 --> 00:43:37,799
Speaker 1: to the left, are you including in that most Americans

707
00:43:38,400 --> 00:43:41,800
Speaker 1: or are it was It's it's mixed. It depends on

708
00:43:41,880 --> 00:43:46,200
Speaker 1: what you're talking about. Certainly in terms of the woke culture,

709
00:43:46,400 --> 00:43:52,560
Speaker 1: that is a white graduate educated, very small, but very

710
00:43:52,680 --> 00:43:55,720
Speaker 1: very powerful because they are located in the corporate boards.

711
00:43:55,760 --> 00:43:58,800
Speaker 1: They're located in the news media. They're located in the

712
00:43:58,880 --> 00:44:02,680
Speaker 1: senior government, so they wheeled power out of all proportioned

713
00:44:02,719 --> 00:44:05,680
Speaker 1: to their size. I think that what you hit the

714
00:44:05,840 --> 00:44:09,600
Speaker 1: biggest change in the Republican Party is that we are

715
00:44:09,680 --> 00:44:13,600
Speaker 1: now the party of high school graduates and the Democrats

716
00:44:13,640 --> 00:44:19,000
Speaker 1: are now the party of upper middle class, relatively wealthy people.

717
00:44:19,480 --> 00:44:22,480
Speaker 1: That's a very profound shift in the last forty years.

718
00:44:23,200 --> 00:44:25,680
Speaker 1: We in a sense, we're closer to the Roosevelt Coalition

719
00:44:26,680 --> 00:44:30,520
Speaker 1: than the Democrats are. How much did I mean we

720
00:44:31,680 --> 00:44:33,840
Speaker 1: in covering elections are showing this all the time, that

721
00:44:33,960 --> 00:44:37,799
Speaker 1: college non college divide You're you're speaking about there, how

722
00:44:37,880 --> 00:44:42,560
Speaker 1: much that was a product of the ninety four revolution.

723
00:44:43,120 --> 00:44:47,160
Speaker 1: What I'm thinking of is when you look at old

724
00:44:47,200 --> 00:44:50,000
Speaker 1: election maps and you could see, like nineteen eighty eight,

725
00:44:50,480 --> 00:44:53,239
Speaker 1: take for instance, your your native state of Pennsylvania, and

726
00:44:53,360 --> 00:44:55,680
Speaker 1: you look at the Bush Ducaccus map for that election,

727
00:44:56,200 --> 00:45:00,120
Speaker 1: and all the Philadelphia suburban counties are deeply Republican. In

728
00:45:00,239 --> 00:45:03,160
Speaker 1: all of rural southwest Pennsylvania is deeply Democratic, and it's

729
00:45:03,200 --> 00:45:06,520
Speaker 1: the exact opposite. Today it's changed completely, and it's this

730
00:45:06,680 --> 00:45:09,520
Speaker 1: is true all across the country. Exactly what you're talking about.

731
00:45:09,520 --> 00:45:13,480
Speaker 1: The college non college divide. Did the suburban nights, the

732
00:45:13,800 --> 00:45:16,960
Speaker 1: college degree crowd, whatever you want to call them, did

733
00:45:17,040 --> 00:45:19,400
Speaker 1: they have a negative reaction to the Republican Party that

734
00:45:19,480 --> 00:45:26,480
Speaker 1: you helped to bring about. Um, I don't. I have

735
00:45:26,600 --> 00:45:30,640
Speaker 1: to look at the data for the Bush presidency and

736
00:45:30,680 --> 00:45:34,560
Speaker 1: the votes and the afterwards. Certainly they were still with

737
00:45:34,719 --> 00:45:38,160
Speaker 1: us in ninety four and largely with us in ninety six.

738
00:45:38,800 --> 00:45:42,640
Speaker 1: But ninety ninety four, I think you have to check.

739
00:45:43,040 --> 00:45:45,480
Speaker 1: I don't want to, but I think ninety four is

740
00:45:45,520 --> 00:45:49,400
Speaker 1: the year that the rural America left the Democrats. I

741
00:45:49,520 --> 00:45:52,920
Speaker 1: think you were seeing a gradual transition in the suburbs,

742
00:45:53,640 --> 00:45:58,120
Speaker 1: and I think it was accelerated because but knows, ironically,

743
00:45:58,920 --> 00:46:01,840
Speaker 1: George H. W. Bush was a genuine Yale you know,

744
00:46:02,360 --> 00:46:05,840
Speaker 1: Northeastern person who happened to live in Houston. His son was,

745
00:46:06,160 --> 00:46:08,200
Speaker 1: in many ways while he went to Yale, was in

746
00:46:08,320 --> 00:46:11,120
Speaker 1: many ways much more clearly a Texan. And I think

747
00:46:11,200 --> 00:46:15,080
Speaker 1: that that probably in the suburbs. Further Weekend, I'd have

748
00:46:15,200 --> 00:46:16,640
Speaker 1: to go back and look at the two thousand and

749
00:46:16,640 --> 00:46:20,560
Speaker 1: four A re election, but my hunches Carry did better

750
00:46:21,400 --> 00:46:24,640
Speaker 1: than du Caucus by a significant margin in the suburbs. Yes,

751
00:46:25,000 --> 00:46:27,960
Speaker 1: that's yeah, it's it's it's interesting because and it wasn't

752
00:46:28,000 --> 00:46:31,000
Speaker 1: because they liked Carrie. I've I've looked at two thousand

753
00:46:31,040 --> 00:46:36,520
Speaker 1: and four the Bush carry map as Bush got about halfway,

754
00:46:36,640 --> 00:46:38,160
Speaker 1: i'd say, to where Trump was able to get in

755
00:46:38,160 --> 00:46:41,960
Speaker 1: sixte Like he almost won Wisconsin, he almost won the

756
00:46:42,080 --> 00:46:44,480
Speaker 1: states that the Pennsylvania. You know the Trump was able

757
00:46:44,520 --> 00:46:47,000
Speaker 1: to flip in sixteen and he did it without massive

758
00:46:47,040 --> 00:46:50,880
Speaker 1: suburban margins. He did he started to Yeah, he started

759
00:46:50,880 --> 00:46:52,879
Speaker 1: to like you could see the outlines of what Trump

760
00:46:52,920 --> 00:46:56,400
Speaker 1: pulled up in sixteen and oh four M in that election.

761
00:46:58,200 --> 00:47:03,120
Speaker 1: M big picture or last generation. What's the biggest change

762
00:47:03,160 --> 00:47:07,640
Speaker 1: in the Democratic Party? Oh that there's there's no conservative

763
00:47:07,719 --> 00:47:11,719
Speaker 1: or moderate wing left. Uh the Democrat the Democratic Party

764
00:47:11,760 --> 00:47:17,839
Speaker 1: and I believe has two wings, um, a weird wing

765
00:47:18,360 --> 00:47:21,359
Speaker 1: and an insane wing. And you just you just watch

766
00:47:21,440 --> 00:47:25,560
Speaker 1: them and you know we're now for Venezuelan oil. Well,

767
00:47:25,680 --> 00:47:29,480
Speaker 1: what what's the underlying mythology that would lead to that?

768
00:47:30,160 --> 00:47:35,440
Speaker 1: We are for spending money overseas creating um, gay and

769
00:47:35,600 --> 00:47:39,360
Speaker 1: lesbian work groups. Um, I mean just got down a

770
00:47:39,400 --> 00:47:42,200
Speaker 1: whole list of things we think you know, we're we're

771
00:47:42,280 --> 00:47:49,000
Speaker 1: for teaching third graders about their gender. This this is

772
00:47:49,120 --> 00:47:51,959
Speaker 1: not that this is not a Democratic Party, which any

773
00:47:52,920 --> 00:47:58,719
Speaker 1: virtually any Democrat before two thousand would have recognized that

774
00:48:00,000 --> 00:48:05,719
Speaker 1: piction of the Democratic Party. That's your view of it.

775
00:48:05,880 --> 00:48:08,279
Speaker 1: What do you think brought that about? What? What? What

776
00:48:08,520 --> 00:48:12,560
Speaker 1: made that the Democratic Party in your in your eyes? Well,

777
00:48:12,600 --> 00:48:17,520
Speaker 1: I might look, I think there's a very important book

778
00:48:17,600 --> 00:48:22,760
Speaker 1: to be written about the rise of the left, starting

779
00:48:23,200 --> 00:48:26,800
Speaker 1: to some extent with marcusa, the civil rights movement, the

780
00:48:26,840 --> 00:48:29,920
Speaker 1: anti war movement, the Black panthers. I mean, you're starting.

781
00:48:29,960 --> 00:48:32,040
Speaker 1: You have to start in the sixties and you have

782
00:48:32,080 --> 00:48:34,279
Speaker 1: to come all the way up to the present. Um.

783
00:48:34,719 --> 00:48:38,560
Speaker 1: You know, the fact that the day after Trump was elected,

784
00:48:39,280 --> 00:48:43,439
Speaker 1: there were organizing meetings in eight different cities within twenty

785
00:48:43,480 --> 00:48:48,880
Speaker 1: four hours to opposing the networking of the left is

786
00:48:48,920 --> 00:48:56,799
Speaker 1: astonishing and methodical and very well financed. And I believe, Look,

787
00:48:56,800 --> 00:49:00,040
Speaker 1: I believe these people are all sincere. I mean, and

788
00:49:00,080 --> 00:49:02,759
Speaker 1: suggest they were hypocrites. I suggested they were ay weird

789
00:49:02,880 --> 00:49:05,440
Speaker 1: or be insane, but I didn't suggest they were hypocrites.

790
00:49:06,040 --> 00:49:08,880
Speaker 1: And I think that they have They have entirely the

791
00:49:08,960 --> 00:49:12,600
Speaker 1: passion that you would have had in the early Protestant Reformation,

792
00:49:14,000 --> 00:49:16,319
Speaker 1: or you would have amongst say, Jesuits at their peak

793
00:49:16,840 --> 00:49:21,680
Speaker 1: when they were genuinely the soldiers of the pope, and

794
00:49:21,800 --> 00:49:24,640
Speaker 1: they're determined to change this country, and they're determined to

795
00:49:25,080 --> 00:49:27,200
Speaker 1: destroy as many people as they have to to change

796
00:49:27,239 --> 00:49:31,280
Speaker 1: the country. They're very close to both the French Revolution

797
00:49:31,360 --> 00:49:39,000
Speaker 1: and the Bolshevism. I'm curious, then, why so much of

798
00:49:39,040 --> 00:49:42,160
Speaker 1: what we talk about in the podcast is your emphasis

799
00:49:42,320 --> 00:49:46,800
Speaker 1: on creating clear definition between the two parties and making

800
00:49:47,440 --> 00:49:50,759
Speaker 1: you know, countries see Republicans as the conservative opportunities side

801
00:49:50,760 --> 00:49:53,040
Speaker 1: and the Democrats are the protectors of the liberal welfare state.

802
00:49:53,200 --> 00:49:56,759
Speaker 1: And the great effort you went to try to bring

803
00:49:56,880 --> 00:50:00,440
Speaker 1: that about the description you're giving of the day Democratic

804
00:50:00,520 --> 00:50:07,920
Speaker 1: Party right now? What does it say that elections are

805
00:50:08,040 --> 00:50:11,240
Speaker 1: essentially all fifty fifty in this country right now? Biden

806
00:50:11,320 --> 00:50:14,399
Speaker 1: wins a handful of states by forty four thousand votes,

807
00:50:14,400 --> 00:50:16,360
Speaker 1: he's the president. Trump wins a handful of states by

808
00:50:16,440 --> 00:50:21,879
Speaker 1: seventy five thousand votes, He's the president. Does that You're

809
00:50:22,040 --> 00:50:24,680
Speaker 1: you're identifying what you see as a radical shift in

810
00:50:24,760 --> 00:50:30,799
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party, and yet the country, well, I think

811
00:50:30,880 --> 00:50:32,920
Speaker 1: basically half the country seems comfortable with it. What do

812
00:50:33,000 --> 00:50:36,239
Speaker 1: you what do you attribute that to? It's it is

813
00:50:37,000 --> 00:50:41,000
Speaker 1: very hard to overstate the scale of impact of the

814
00:50:41,080 --> 00:50:44,040
Speaker 1: mass media and the degree to which they are part

815
00:50:44,080 --> 00:50:47,719
Speaker 1: of the left. So I would say that the institutions

816
00:50:48,719 --> 00:50:52,800
Speaker 1: to have the commanding heights are on the left and

817
00:50:52,960 --> 00:50:56,080
Speaker 1: the populace is on the right. But what you have

818
00:50:56,280 --> 00:51:01,720
Speaker 1: are really superb mechanism on the left. I mean example,

819
00:51:02,080 --> 00:51:05,320
Speaker 1: if you go back to where you know, Twitter decides

820
00:51:05,360 --> 00:51:07,840
Speaker 1: that will not only block Trump, who's the incumbent President

821
00:51:07,880 --> 00:51:11,120
Speaker 1: of States, but it will block the oldest newspaper in

822
00:51:11,160 --> 00:51:16,600
Speaker 1: America getting into Trump here. Actually that is it's a

823
00:51:16,640 --> 00:51:19,239
Speaker 1: direction that some of the voices in our podcast went

824
00:51:19,320 --> 00:51:22,160
Speaker 1: to drawing a line from you to Donald Trump. And

825
00:51:22,960 --> 00:51:24,600
Speaker 1: I guess the way I wanted to ask you about

826
00:51:24,640 --> 00:51:29,239
Speaker 1: this a couple of things, but one is I was

827
00:51:29,360 --> 00:51:31,799
Speaker 1: on the Hugh Hewitt radio show about a year ago

828
00:51:32,320 --> 00:51:35,360
Speaker 1: and he says the origin story for Donald Trump's twenty

829
00:51:35,440 --> 00:51:40,759
Speaker 1: sixteen campaign should be viewed as you on stage New

830
00:51:40,840 --> 00:51:43,239
Speaker 1: Gingrich on stage in twenty twelve in South Carolina for

831
00:51:43,280 --> 00:51:46,239
Speaker 1: that CNN debate and that first question from John King,

832
00:51:46,920 --> 00:51:49,719
Speaker 1: and I went back and watched it before talking to

833
00:51:49,760 --> 00:51:54,120
Speaker 1: you today, and it is it turns into an attack

834
00:51:54,160 --> 00:51:57,680
Speaker 1: on the media, and within thirty seconds, the crowd is

835
00:51:57,760 --> 00:52:01,040
Speaker 1: literally on its feet, and he says that was the

836
00:52:01,160 --> 00:52:05,480
Speaker 1: source of Trump's appeal to Republicans and he saw it

837
00:52:05,600 --> 00:52:09,800
Speaker 1: in that moment in twenty twelve. Two things I wonder is,

838
00:52:10,200 --> 00:52:12,480
Speaker 1: do you think Trump learned something from watching that in

839
00:52:12,560 --> 00:52:14,600
Speaker 1: twenty twelve? Do you think that's that's valid and accurate?

840
00:52:14,640 --> 00:52:18,120
Speaker 1: And just watching it, I can feel the power of

841
00:52:18,160 --> 00:52:21,000
Speaker 1: the moment to that crowd. What is that? What were

842
00:52:21,040 --> 00:52:28,920
Speaker 1: you tapping into? It actually started at the very first debate,

843
00:52:32,719 --> 00:52:37,680
Speaker 1: where the debate began with Brett Baar saying We're not

844
00:52:37,760 --> 00:52:40,600
Speaker 1: going to have any Mickey mouse questions and we're going

845
00:52:40,680 --> 00:52:43,799
Speaker 1: to really focus on big issues. And I literally wrote

846
00:52:43,840 --> 00:52:46,880
Speaker 1: it down as he said it, and about halfway through

847
00:52:46,920 --> 00:52:51,400
Speaker 1: the debate, Chris Wallace can't help himself and he asked

848
00:52:51,400 --> 00:52:54,920
Speaker 1: me something which is clearly a Mickey mouse question, and

849
00:52:55,080 --> 00:52:58,719
Speaker 1: I read back what Baar had said, and I went

850
00:52:58,840 --> 00:53:01,600
Speaker 1: straight at him. He never forgave me for this, and

851
00:53:01,760 --> 00:53:07,440
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, there's this spontaneous applause and the

852
00:53:07,480 --> 00:53:11,759
Speaker 1: audience was just totally on my side. The next day,

853
00:53:11,800 --> 00:53:13,800
Speaker 1: I'm walking through a hair Airport because the debate was

854
00:53:13,840 --> 00:53:18,440
Speaker 1: in Iowa, and this Airlien pilot, who I had no

855
00:53:18,520 --> 00:53:20,839
Speaker 1: idea who it is, walks up to me and says,

856
00:53:21,520 --> 00:53:24,040
Speaker 1: I was so glad you took him on last night.

857
00:53:24,440 --> 00:53:27,080
Speaker 1: I am so sick of those blankety blank blank people

858
00:53:27,400 --> 00:53:29,840
Speaker 1: and how arrogant they are. And he walked off, and

859
00:53:29,920 --> 00:53:35,680
Speaker 1: I thought, now there's an indicator, and consistently in every debate,

860
00:53:36,080 --> 00:53:38,279
Speaker 1: and they finally figured it out at the very end.

861
00:53:38,320 --> 00:53:42,439
Speaker 1: They crippled me by changing by insisting on rules where

862
00:53:42,480 --> 00:53:45,400
Speaker 1: you couldn't have audience applause and you couldn't. But up

863
00:53:45,520 --> 00:53:49,120
Speaker 1: until that moment, and virtually every debate would I would

864
00:53:49,120 --> 00:53:52,480
Speaker 1: have a fight with somebody in the media because I

865
00:53:52,520 --> 00:53:56,239
Speaker 1: had figured out that for conservatives, the media had become

866
00:53:56,320 --> 00:54:00,520
Speaker 1: one of the major threats to their entire way of life,

867
00:54:01,840 --> 00:54:03,920
Speaker 1: and they wanted somebody to be a champion, to stand

868
00:54:04,000 --> 00:54:06,960
Speaker 1: up and fight him. Now you'd have to ask Trump

869
00:54:07,040 --> 00:54:09,320
Speaker 1: whether or not he actually cued off of that. But

870
00:54:09,480 --> 00:54:14,640
Speaker 1: given how much Trump watches television, plus it's just his see,

871
00:54:14,640 --> 00:54:18,200
Speaker 1: I think Trump learned counterpunching from page six. I mean

872
00:54:18,239 --> 00:54:20,080
Speaker 1: I think he learned he writes about this. I think

873
00:54:20,160 --> 00:54:22,400
Speaker 1: in the art of the deal that he had. He

874
00:54:22,480 --> 00:54:24,680
Speaker 1: had this attack by the New York Times, but the

875
00:54:24,840 --> 00:54:27,520
Speaker 1: very act of attacking him on page one about something

876
00:54:27,600 --> 00:54:30,680
Speaker 1: he was doing with the building told people about the building,

877
00:54:31,000 --> 00:54:33,000
Speaker 1: and the next two weeks he had dramatically increased the

878
00:54:33,080 --> 00:54:35,520
Speaker 1: number of people wanted to rent from him because the

879
00:54:35,560 --> 00:54:39,600
Speaker 1: New York Times had elevated. So, whether he got it

880
00:54:39,719 --> 00:54:41,239
Speaker 1: from me or whether you already knew it, I don't know,

881
00:54:41,320 --> 00:54:44,680
Speaker 1: but that was but that was politically to the Republican

882
00:54:44,719 --> 00:54:49,040
Speaker 1: base that you're going after that primary This was this

883
00:54:49,200 --> 00:54:51,800
Speaker 1: made you a compelling figure, and this is this is

884
00:54:51,800 --> 00:54:55,239
Speaker 1: a source issue. So what because you know we can

885
00:54:55,320 --> 00:54:57,920
Speaker 1: watch and we have this in the podcast audio of

886
00:54:58,000 --> 00:54:59,640
Speaker 1: you in the seventies and eighties talking about what you

887
00:54:59,680 --> 00:55:02,600
Speaker 1: call the elite media. Um, so it's been a theme

888
00:55:02,640 --> 00:55:04,640
Speaker 1: you've you've pressed, there are white rights about it in

889
00:55:04,719 --> 00:55:08,560
Speaker 1: sixty eight. It is that feeling among Republicans more intense

890
00:55:08,680 --> 00:55:11,400
Speaker 1: now than it was. Why I asked why, because the

891
00:55:11,520 --> 00:55:15,640
Speaker 1: media is more There was no Fox News until twenty

892
00:55:15,680 --> 00:55:17,680
Speaker 1: five years ago. When we say elite media, we all

893
00:55:17,760 --> 00:55:20,480
Speaker 1: know what we mean. How would you define it? You?

894
00:55:23,680 --> 00:55:30,040
Speaker 1: I mean, look, did you say MSNBC NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, UM,

895
00:55:31,920 --> 00:55:36,759
Speaker 1: the various New York kind of publications, The Atlantic, etc. Um,

896
00:55:37,440 --> 00:55:41,560
Speaker 1: The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Atlantic Constitution.

897
00:55:41,680 --> 00:55:45,320
Speaker 1: I mean, some of some of these are fifty sixty

898
00:55:45,360 --> 00:55:48,359
Speaker 1: seventy year fights. Well, that's what That's why I'm curious why.

899
00:55:48,920 --> 00:55:51,800
Speaker 1: I guess what I'm trying to get at here is

900
00:55:52,000 --> 00:55:55,399
Speaker 1: why is it more pronounced now? That is feeling given

901
00:55:55,440 --> 00:55:59,920
Speaker 1: that because the culture war is more pronounced, the idea

902
00:56:00,239 --> 00:56:04,840
Speaker 1: that you would move the All Star Game from Atlanta

903
00:56:05,760 --> 00:56:09,640
Speaker 1: over a lie is exactly the sort of thing that

904
00:56:10,000 --> 00:56:13,359
Speaker 1: makes people bitter. People used to be irritated. Now they're bitter.

905
00:56:14,320 --> 00:56:16,040
Speaker 1: And I think that's what people do. I think that's

906
00:56:16,080 --> 00:56:18,120
Speaker 1: what the elites don't understand yet. You were one of

907
00:56:18,160 --> 00:56:23,080
Speaker 1: the first prominent Republicans in twenty sixteen to come on

908
00:56:23,200 --> 00:56:25,720
Speaker 1: board with Trump after he started winning some first primaries,

909
00:56:26,000 --> 00:56:28,080
Speaker 1: and I know you were before you endorsed him. You

910
00:56:28,080 --> 00:56:31,880
Speaker 1: were saying positive things. Did you have a sense that

911
00:56:31,960 --> 00:56:35,279
Speaker 1: were you watching him saying he's reaching, he's connecting with

912
00:56:35,400 --> 00:56:39,399
Speaker 1: the people I was trying to connect with in Yeah,

913
00:56:39,920 --> 00:56:41,880
Speaker 1: and a lot always. I think sixteen and twelve in

914
00:56:41,920 --> 00:56:45,319
Speaker 1: that sense are related. That if i'd if I had been,

915
00:56:45,760 --> 00:56:47,479
Speaker 1: and even further back when you were trying to build

916
00:56:47,520 --> 00:56:50,160
Speaker 1: a majority the House was that way. I mean, well,

917
00:56:50,360 --> 00:56:53,000
Speaker 1: I mean, first of all, I am a genuine populist.

918
00:56:53,200 --> 00:56:56,799
Speaker 1: I mean that's not a mythology. And I came out

919
00:56:56,840 --> 00:57:00,280
Speaker 1: of a family that was blue collar central Pennsylvan idea,

920
00:57:01,360 --> 00:57:04,520
Speaker 1: and I actually believe the country's better off to have

921
00:57:04,680 --> 00:57:08,920
Speaker 1: a pretty broad populist base. That is precisely what led

922
00:57:08,960 --> 00:57:12,320
Speaker 1: to the great reforms in most of American history. And

923
00:57:12,920 --> 00:57:17,080
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I have considerable affection for Andrew

924
00:57:17,160 --> 00:57:22,880
Speaker 1: Jackson because he represented an uprising against the aristocracy. And

925
00:57:23,040 --> 00:57:25,320
Speaker 1: I you know, I have a great affection for Lincoln

926
00:57:25,360 --> 00:57:28,920
Speaker 1: because he really was the common man. And I believe

927
00:57:28,960 --> 00:57:30,920
Speaker 1: in government of the people, by the people, and for

928
00:57:31,080 --> 00:57:33,600
Speaker 1: the people. And that means inevitably you have to take

929
00:57:33,680 --> 00:57:35,880
Speaker 1: on the New York Times and the Washington Post because

930
00:57:35,920 --> 00:57:39,400
Speaker 1: they're not looking at the twenty twenty two midterms. A

931
00:57:39,480 --> 00:57:42,720
Speaker 1: lot of these candidates who tethered themselves very directly to

932
00:57:42,760 --> 00:57:45,440
Speaker 1: Trump's message, especially around the twenty twenty election, you know,

933
00:57:45,600 --> 00:57:49,120
Speaker 1: got defeated in their races. It seemed very clear to

934
00:57:49,160 --> 00:57:52,000
Speaker 1: me that Kevin McCarthy was trying to sort of follow

935
00:57:52,040 --> 00:57:55,120
Speaker 1: your playbook from nineteen ninety four and had that kind

936
00:57:55,160 --> 00:57:58,800
Speaker 1: of victory in mind the fact that, Okay, Republicans have

937
00:57:59,280 --> 00:58:01,440
Speaker 1: won the House, but it's going to be a small majority,

938
00:58:01,480 --> 00:58:03,400
Speaker 1: to the exact same size the Democrats had for the

939
00:58:03,480 --> 00:58:10,320
Speaker 1: last the last two years. Does that speak to Trump's

940
00:58:10,400 --> 00:58:15,760
Speaker 1: lingering presence, especially the feelings generated by the wake of

941
00:58:15,800 --> 00:58:18,560
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty elections. Does that speak to that limiting

942
00:58:18,640 --> 00:58:22,160
Speaker 1: the Republican Party's appeal. Well, I have to tell you

943
00:58:22,440 --> 00:58:25,760
Speaker 1: one I was wrong. I said publicly that I thought

944
00:58:25,760 --> 00:58:27,720
Speaker 1: we there win a lot of seats in both the

945
00:58:27,800 --> 00:58:34,080
Speaker 1: House and the Senate. I am probably more confused about

946
00:58:34,080 --> 00:58:37,160
Speaker 1: American politics right now than at any point in my career.

947
00:58:38,440 --> 00:58:46,280
Speaker 1: And part of the reason is, for example, people had

948
00:58:46,320 --> 00:58:50,000
Speaker 1: all these theories about why Republicans did badly because they

949
00:58:50,080 --> 00:58:52,200
Speaker 1: thought that our popular vote was the same as the

950
00:58:52,240 --> 00:58:55,120
Speaker 1: election outcome. In fact, we carried a majority of the

951
00:58:55,160 --> 00:59:01,000
Speaker 1: popular vote. Now, we did dramatically with women than in

952
00:59:01,120 --> 00:59:06,560
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, yet supposedly abortion really hurt us. We did

953
00:59:06,920 --> 00:59:08,960
Speaker 1: marginally better. I think we had nineteen percent of the

954
00:59:08,960 --> 00:59:12,880
Speaker 1: blackmail vote, which was a significant jump. We did better

955
00:59:12,960 --> 00:59:16,680
Speaker 1: with Latinos, which we've done every election. Now for every

956
00:59:16,960 --> 00:59:18,960
Speaker 1: election we're picking up three, four or five points in

957
00:59:19,000 --> 00:59:23,560
Speaker 1: the Latino community. We did dramatically better with Asian Americans,

958
00:59:23,600 --> 00:59:25,600
Speaker 1: and I think that that's the beginning of the end.

959
00:59:26,040 --> 00:59:29,360
Speaker 1: That community will presently be so alienated from the Democrats

960
00:59:30,000 --> 00:59:34,560
Speaker 1: over everything from quotas to what the Democrats are doing

961
00:59:34,600 --> 00:59:39,520
Speaker 1: to education, etc. So I look at all this, you

962
00:59:39,600 --> 00:59:41,360
Speaker 1: look at it, you look at a Florida and you

963
00:59:41,680 --> 00:59:44,760
Speaker 1: you know, you think, wow, there's Trumps and without Trump.

964
00:59:45,160 --> 00:59:49,360
Speaker 1: And it was clearly astonishingly successful on a scale you

965
00:59:49,760 --> 00:59:53,120
Speaker 1: couldn't have dreamed two years ago of carrying Dade County.

966
00:59:53,800 --> 00:59:57,840
Speaker 1: And it wasn't just governor to Santus. Marco Rubio was

967
00:59:57,880 --> 01:00:01,240
Speaker 1: within a percentage point of De Santis. I mean, so

968
01:00:01,280 --> 01:00:02,600
Speaker 1: you look at that and you think when we picked

969
01:00:02,680 --> 01:00:05,160
Speaker 1: up four house seats, partly because the Santus jury matter.

970
01:00:06,320 --> 01:00:07,880
Speaker 1: So you look at that, you look at New York

971
01:00:07,960 --> 01:00:11,120
Speaker 1: where we've lost a governorship, and when you get you

972
01:00:11,200 --> 01:00:14,760
Speaker 1: have a really interesting problem. This is what we're totally confused.

973
01:00:15,920 --> 01:00:17,880
Speaker 1: Given all the crime in New York City and all

974
01:00:17,880 --> 01:00:20,720
Speaker 1: the problems in New York City, the Republican couldn't get

975
01:00:20,720 --> 01:00:24,200
Speaker 1: above thirty one percent in New York City. You look

976
01:00:24,200 --> 01:00:27,480
Speaker 1: at that and you think, so, you know, what is

977
01:00:27,520 --> 01:00:30,440
Speaker 1: the tribalism that holds the system together no matter how

978
01:00:30,520 --> 01:00:32,960
Speaker 1: painful he gets. I'm now thinking back to something you

979
01:00:32,960 --> 01:00:38,920
Speaker 1: said earlier in our conversation where you talked about sixteen

980
01:00:39,000 --> 01:00:40,600
Speaker 1: years of trying to get to the House majority, and

981
01:00:40,680 --> 01:00:42,320
Speaker 1: you get there and you're the speaker, and you went

982
01:00:42,440 --> 01:00:45,840
Speaker 1: into it looking at it as a four year proposition, right, because,

983
01:00:47,240 --> 01:00:50,000
Speaker 1: to paraphrase what you're telling me, you're a disruptive force.

984
01:00:50,080 --> 01:00:51,520
Speaker 1: You were going to take all of this incoming. And

985
01:00:51,600 --> 01:00:54,080
Speaker 1: this was so there was a there was a limited

986
01:00:54,640 --> 01:00:59,760
Speaker 1: kind of period of effectiveness there. Listening to you described

987
01:00:59,760 --> 01:01:04,120
Speaker 1: to twenty two into Santis in Florida in particular, as

988
01:01:04,160 --> 01:01:06,480
Speaker 1: Trump is him without Trump and to win that race

989
01:01:06,520 --> 01:01:09,000
Speaker 1: by almost twenty points and all the stats, you decided,

990
01:01:10,000 --> 01:01:14,120
Speaker 1: is this a moment for Trump to say, essentially what

991
01:01:15,000 --> 01:01:16,960
Speaker 1: you had concluded about your own tenure, that there's a

992
01:01:17,920 --> 01:01:21,240
Speaker 1: that's that's Trump's decision. You know, as a Republican, what

993
01:01:21,240 --> 01:01:25,600
Speaker 1: do you mean You're looking at what trunced? Right, And

994
01:01:26,240 --> 01:01:29,640
Speaker 1: despite every effort by the elite media, including Fox, to

995
01:01:29,840 --> 01:01:33,320
Speaker 1: avoid him because he's a force in his own right. Um.

996
01:01:33,960 --> 01:01:37,680
Speaker 1: I told him in sixteen that his model was Andrew

997
01:01:37,800 --> 01:01:40,920
Speaker 1: Jackson and that he understand had to understand that the

998
01:01:41,200 --> 01:01:44,440
Speaker 1: entire establishment would try to destroy him. Now I have

999
01:01:44,600 --> 01:01:47,919
Speaker 1: to confess they worked at it more than I thought

1000
01:01:47,960 --> 01:01:50,920
Speaker 1: they would. I'll tell you a quick story. I want

1001
01:01:50,920 --> 01:01:52,680
Speaker 1: to see Cape Weinberger at one point when he was

1002
01:01:52,720 --> 01:01:56,439
Speaker 1: Sectary Defense, and I said, I'm really curious. Were having

1003
01:01:56,440 --> 01:01:59,400
Speaker 1: a huge fight over the MX mobile missile. The left

1004
01:01:59,480 --> 01:02:01,919
Speaker 1: is going They've been going crazy now for eight months,

1005
01:02:02,800 --> 01:02:05,720
Speaker 1: and you cling to it. I mean, why are you?

1006
01:02:05,880 --> 01:02:07,919
Speaker 1: Why are you keeping this fight up? And he looked

1007
01:02:08,000 --> 01:02:10,560
Speaker 1: up me. You're saying, said, now, if i'd dropped the

1008
01:02:10,600 --> 01:02:14,000
Speaker 1: missile this afternoon, do you think the left would thank me?

1009
01:02:14,880 --> 01:02:17,800
Speaker 1: Or do you think they'd find a new target. So

1010
01:02:18,040 --> 01:02:21,640
Speaker 1: the longer I can keep them fixated, the better off

1011
01:02:21,680 --> 01:02:24,320
Speaker 1: I am. And I ain't dropping this missile as long

1012
01:02:24,400 --> 01:02:26,120
Speaker 1: as I can what it. I thought it was a

1013
01:02:26,280 --> 01:02:31,720
Speaker 1: really interesting strategic insight. If Donald Trump would announced today

1014
01:02:31,800 --> 01:02:36,360
Speaker 1: he's not running, the entire weight of the left would

1015
01:02:36,400 --> 01:02:40,440
Speaker 1: go to work to destroy dissentis and dessanis. In three

1016
01:02:40,480 --> 01:02:43,600
Speaker 1: months wouldn't be dissatis. You alluded to the you said

1017
01:02:43,880 --> 01:02:46,360
Speaker 1: you're you're confused by where things are now in your

1018
01:02:46,840 --> 01:02:51,640
Speaker 1: next twenty years are very fascinating. Potentially, I'm wondering that

1019
01:02:51,800 --> 01:02:55,680
Speaker 1: the theme of our podcast is essentially how politics became

1020
01:02:55,800 --> 01:02:59,680
Speaker 1: nationalized and you nationalized the midterm election and you broke

1021
01:02:59,720 --> 01:03:03,320
Speaker 1: it down mimocratic majority. And I've watched and you've watched

1022
01:03:03,320 --> 01:03:05,440
Speaker 1: over the last generation. I think is this process of

1023
01:03:05,560 --> 01:03:10,240
Speaker 1: nationalization has really I think intensified. To me, it's left

1024
01:03:10,320 --> 01:03:13,760
Speaker 1: us in a situation where it seems like almost every

1025
01:03:13,840 --> 01:03:18,480
Speaker 1: election is a fifty fifty election. Again, the House was

1026
01:03:18,520 --> 01:03:21,200
Speaker 1: two twenty two to thirteen Democrats before this election. It

1027
01:03:21,200 --> 01:03:24,160
Speaker 1: will be two twenty two to thirteen Republicans after Joe

1028
01:03:24,200 --> 01:03:26,560
Speaker 1: Biden wins the presidency by a combined forty four thousand

1029
01:03:26,640 --> 01:03:28,640
Speaker 1: votes in three states, Donald Trump wins it by seventy

1030
01:03:28,680 --> 01:03:30,200
Speaker 1: five thousand and three states. I mean, this is this

1031
01:03:30,360 --> 01:03:36,680
Speaker 1: is where we are. This level of polarization. Do you

1032
01:03:36,880 --> 01:03:40,840
Speaker 1: see in this next twenty years away out of it? Yeah,

1033
01:03:40,920 --> 01:03:43,920
Speaker 1: on one side or the other will win? How can you?

1034
01:03:44,000 --> 01:03:45,800
Speaker 1: How can then You'll go back to comedy in the

1035
01:03:45,880 --> 01:03:48,560
Speaker 1: House because the minority side will decide it has to

1036
01:03:49,080 --> 01:03:52,840
Speaker 1: accommodate the reality. You think one side can build a

1037
01:03:53,040 --> 01:03:55,360
Speaker 1: Oh sure eventually, will a man, I can't tell. Look,

1038
01:03:55,560 --> 01:03:59,200
Speaker 1: we went through this from eighteen seventy six to eighteen

1039
01:03:59,320 --> 01:04:03,280
Speaker 1: ninety six. I mean you have cycles like that. You know,

1040
01:04:03,360 --> 01:04:07,240
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton tried, just as Tony Blair tried, to create

1041
01:04:07,320 --> 01:04:11,640
Speaker 1: an alternative center to the left. So it's the deepest

1042
01:04:11,680 --> 01:04:17,200
Speaker 1: reason the left hated him and dislike Hillary. Um. Somebody

1043
01:04:17,240 --> 01:04:19,120
Speaker 1: may come along one day be able to do that,

1044
01:04:19,160 --> 01:04:22,440
Speaker 1: but it's hard for me to see institutionally how that

1045
01:04:22,560 --> 01:04:25,720
Speaker 1: happens with the Democrats because of the power structure. On

1046
01:04:25,840 --> 01:04:29,920
Speaker 1: the other hand, some morning the Republicans, whether it's a Junkan,

1047
01:04:29,960 --> 01:04:33,200
Speaker 1: would not be savage nearly as much because he doesn't

1048
01:04:33,440 --> 01:04:37,080
Speaker 1: he doesn't quite feel as trump height as desandis does.

1049
01:04:38,400 --> 01:04:41,960
Speaker 1: But somebody will come along presently who will have all

1050
01:04:42,080 --> 01:04:45,439
Speaker 1: the core values of the right, but not in any

1051
01:04:45,520 --> 01:04:48,919
Speaker 1: way infuriate the middle, and will be able to either

1052
01:04:49,040 --> 01:04:54,400
Speaker 1: be impervious to or to not excite the hostility of

1053
01:04:54,480 --> 01:04:57,760
Speaker 1: the media, not not just the media, but the whole.

1054
01:04:57,960 --> 01:05:04,800
Speaker 1: But but, but my hunch is that anyone who stands

1055
01:05:04,880 --> 01:05:07,760
Speaker 1: for a non left future is going to have to

1056
01:05:07,880 --> 01:05:13,320
Speaker 1: survive being savaged. That is just it's such an intolerable

1057
01:05:13,480 --> 01:05:17,520
Speaker 1: vision for the left, and that's why it's really it's

1058
01:05:17,560 --> 01:05:23,440
Speaker 1: a genuine cultural war, all right, Well that is that's

1059
01:05:24,040 --> 01:05:25,919
Speaker 1: that's where I want to end it. You You're vision

1060
01:05:26,000 --> 01:05:28,240
Speaker 1: the future is I appreciate you doing this. Really, I

1061
01:05:28,280 --> 01:05:38,960
Speaker 1: thought this was great fun from MSNBC. This is the

1062
01:05:39,120 --> 01:05:44,280
Speaker 1: bonus episode of the Revolution. If you like what you've heard,

1063
01:05:44,400 --> 01:05:47,000
Speaker 1: please give us a five star rating and a review

1064
01:05:47,200 --> 01:05:50,200
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, and be sure to tell your friends

1065
01:05:50,240 --> 01:05:53,840
Speaker 1: and follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you're listening

1066
01:05:53,920 --> 01:06:00,440
Speaker 1: right now. The Revolution was written in host by me

1067
01:06:00,880 --> 01:06:05,000
Speaker 1: Steve Cornaki. The series is produced by Frannie Kelly, Ursula

1068
01:06:05,080 --> 01:06:09,880
Speaker 1: Summer and Adam Naboa. It's edited by Alison mccademy. Our

1069
01:06:09,880 --> 01:06:13,760
Speaker 1: associate producer is Eva Ruth. More that our audio engineer

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Speaker 1: for this episode is Bob Mallory, special thanks to Lacy Roberts.

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Speaker 1: Sound designed by Romteen arab Lewie Bryce and Barnes is

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Speaker 1: our technical director and he wrote our music. So Riah

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Speaker 1: Gage is our executive producer and Madeleine Herringer is our

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Speaker 1: head of editorial