Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discuss the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds. We're on vacation, but that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: we don't have an amazing show for you today. For instance,
Speaker 1: historian and CNN political analyst Julian Zella's her stops by
Speaker 1: to tell us about some recent history lessons for our
Speaker 1: present day. But first we have the CEO of Test
Speaker 1: Ventures and author of The Fixer My Adventures Saving Startups
Speaker 1: from Death by Politics, Bradley Tusk. Bradley Tusk, Welcome to
Speaker 1: Fast Politics you have.
Speaker 2: I'm Miley Tanks forrat Me.
Speaker 1: I am so excited to have you because we're friends,
Speaker 1: and also because you're not like a public facing person.
Speaker 1: I think of you as like a person who is
Speaker 1: very involved in the wills of government in a really
Speaker 1: interesting way, and that a lot of times some of
Speaker 1: the stuff that you've cooked up our listeners like probably
Speaker 1: have not heard about, but is really interesting and in
Speaker 1: some cases it's super effective.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you for me. Look, I just try to
Speaker 2: get shit done, and sometimes that's public and people like it.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's public and people don't like it. Sometimes no
Speaker 2: one notices, you know, whatever it is. You know, I've
Speaker 2: learned that I feel better about myself when stuff's getting done,
Speaker 2: so I just try to focus on that.
Speaker 1: So you learn a novel. Tell us a little bit
Speaker 1: about the novel.
Speaker 2: It's about a campaign to legalize flying cars in New York,
Speaker 2: LA and Austin. And on one side is the flying
Speaker 2: car startup and they're vicious political consultants. And the other
Speaker 2: side is Uber, the Autobot Society, the transi Unions, the Socialists,
Speaker 2: and the Russian Bob. And it's satire. But I spent
Speaker 2: the first fifteen years of my career working in government
Speaker 2: and politics and then transition to tech by running all
Speaker 2: the campaigns to legalize Uber and ride sharing around the US,
Speaker 2: and then eventually using that to launch a venture capital fund.
Speaker 2: And so I've kind of seen this from lots of
Speaker 2: different anger at this point and thought it would be
Speaker 2: a fun book to write to kind of give readers
Speaker 2: a sense of here's why people in politics really make
Speaker 2: the decisions they make, here's why people and tactic the
Speaker 2: decisions they make, and venture capital in media and so on.
Speaker 2: And by making about flying cars and making it slightly crazy,
Speaker 2: it's hopefully a fun rate as well.
Speaker 1: Some of these things, or some elements of it are
Speaker 1: things you actually experienced when you were bringing Ubert to
Speaker 1: New York, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: There are things I experienced are was bringing Obert to
Speaker 2: New York or Denver, Miami or la or anywhere else.
Speaker 2: But there are also things that I experienced just throughout
Speaker 2: my career. Right. So, between being the deputy governor of
Speaker 2: Illinois and working in New York City politics, I've testified
Speaker 2: in five corruption trials or grand jury. So the part
Speaker 2: in the book about the FBI and public corrupt investigations,
Speaker 2: thank god, I've only ever been a witness, but I
Speaker 2: do enough to be able to write about it. And so, yeah,
Speaker 2: I've seen this from lots of different angles. And the
Speaker 2: book is satire and it's fiction, but it's sort of
Speaker 2: bare satire and barely fiction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, isn't that That's the story of my life right there,
Speaker 1: barely satire and barely fiction. So talk to me about
Speaker 1: your work with free school lunches, because this is something
Speaker 1: I feel really committed to. It's something it's an easy solve.
Speaker 1: We are a very rich country. We do not need
Speaker 1: children to go hunger.
Speaker 2: No, it's insane that we allow for this. So I'd
Speaker 2: always been interested in hunger stuff and I've been volunteering
Speaker 2: and weekly into kitchens since I was a freshman in
Speaker 2: college and still do it every week now. But until
Speaker 2: I got out of government of politics, I didn't have
Speaker 2: any money, and so I finally first started my first
Speaker 2: company and started making money. I started writing checks to
Speaker 2: the New York Food Bank. And you know how it
Speaker 2: is the bigger of a check you write, the more
Speaker 2: they bring you in under the tent because they want
Speaker 2: you to write even bigger texts. And that I know
Speaker 2: this when that was happening, is these are lovely people
Speaker 2: and they're terrible.
Speaker 1: Politics because they're not killers.
Speaker 2: No, they're nice people. Yeah, they want to people. As
Speaker 2: a result, I was like, they're just not good at
Speaker 2: this stuff. And so my question was, well, what are
Speaker 2: people who really understood politics ran bills that would mandate
Speaker 2: universal school breakfast or lunch, or expand this snap for
Speaker 2: seniors or whatever hunger program you want to talk about.
Speaker 2: And what if you had the real the tools that
Speaker 2: any good campaign hads lobbying, PR polling, ads, grassroots And
Speaker 2: so I started doing it, created Solving a hunger out
Speaker 2: of my foundation and we funded run campaigns in different
Speaker 2: states to mandate different anti hunger programs. And basically we're
Speaker 2: really just dealing the blocking and tackling of what you know,
Speaker 2: McDonald's or Walmart or any company funding a legislative campaign
Speaker 2: would do. We just do it instead on behalf of
Speaker 2: kids who need food and got pretty well. So we've
Speaker 2: passed twenty four bills in twenty states. About thirteen million
Speaker 2: more people now have access to food on a regular
Speaker 2: basis didn't have it before. About six million dollars of
Speaker 2: my money has helped unlock about two billion in new
Speaker 2: state funding for hunger programs around the country. And the
Speaker 2: other thing that I think maybe we're doing that makes
Speaker 2: me not so popular.
Speaker 1: Yes, tell us, please tell us, sister, I love this
Speaker 1: so much I die.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It is sort of the willingness not just to say, Okay,
Speaker 2: you need political assistication to run these campaigns, you need
Speaker 2: money to run these campaigns. Fine. The other thing is
Speaker 2: you need to be willing to be negative. Right. The
Speaker 2: reality is, politicians, in my view, do things in one
Speaker 2: of two cases. Either they think that you can help
Speaker 2: them win their next election, or they think that you
Speaker 2: could cost them their next election. And if they don't
Speaker 2: think that you can be relevant to either one, you
Speaker 2: just don't matter. And then just the constant something is
Speaker 2: a good cause, Like if that were enough, we wouldn't
Speaker 2: have childhood humber, we wouldn't have school shootings, we wouldn't
Speaker 2: have you know, an environment that's fallowing apart, right, you know,
Speaker 2: the right thing is ever enough to acce again anything done.
Speaker 2: And so last year in New York, which is one
Speaker 2: of the states, we were working on the way the
Speaker 2: New York budget works is the governor submits her budget,
Speaker 2: the legislature submits their budget, and they kind of negotiate it.
Speaker 2: But the legislature's budget because you know, they don't actually
Speaker 2: run anything. It's like maximally act of balance because they
Speaker 2: just say yes to everybody, right, all right, And so
Speaker 2: we got our money in there for school meals, great,
Speaker 2: but sutted everyone else for anything they wanted. And we
Speaker 2: knew we weren't ultimately a priority once they had to
Speaker 2: start making cuts. And the strategy from the New York
Speaker 2: Hunger Coalition was, well, let's just keep our heads down
Speaker 2: and hopefully no one will not this, right, as if
Speaker 2: they're not going to notice two hundred and eighty million
Speaker 2: dollars fitting in the budget. As I'm kind of doing
Speaker 2: more and more diligence and talking and more people inside
Speaker 2: the room, like this is not going to work, right,
Speaker 2: And what he told is, you know what it will.
Speaker 2: It will be too eighty, but it'll be thirty, it'll
Speaker 2: be forty. We have thirty or forty million more than
Speaker 2: you had before, so just be happy with it and
Speaker 2: shut your mouth. And I decided, you know what, the
Speaker 2: reason why we can't do better than that is because
Speaker 2: we have no political swaye right. Kids who get school
Speaker 2: meals don't vote, Their parents typically don't vote.
Speaker 1: There's no big oil lobbying firm doing kids lunches.
Speaker 2: Right, you don't get anything for it politically. But maybe
Speaker 2: we could create a stick. And so we hired these
Speaker 2: mobile billboard trucks and poked them outside the capitol in
Speaker 2: Albany for three weeks, say things like.
Speaker 1: Ad I mean I love it so much?
Speaker 2: Gone, yeah, yeah, sorry, yeah, you know, speaker Hasty, why
Speaker 2: are you letting children starve? Governor Oko? Why are you
Speaker 2: letting children start and just beaten the living shit out
Speaker 2: of them? And we just wouldn't move them, and the
Speaker 2: hunger Coalition went crazy. They threw us out, they banned
Speaker 2: us from using their hashtag You're going to lose all
Speaker 2: the money. And then eventually the people were in the
Speaker 2: room got tired of seeing these trucks and they called
Speaker 2: someone of my staff and said, what's it going to take.
Speaker 2: And my staff said to give him his money, and
Speaker 2: we got one hundred and thirty four million dollars, and
Speaker 2: starting back in September, two hundred and ninety thousand kids
Speaker 2: every single day in the state of New York have
Speaker 2: breakfast and lunch free you of charge, who didn't have
Speaker 2: it last year, and so I'm probably never allowed back
Speaker 2: at like the Christmas party. I didn't get a lot
Speaker 2: of holiday cards from Hunger Coalition this year, but a
Speaker 2: lot of kids got food. So look, that's how we
Speaker 2: do it. Our twenty twenty four states which we already
Speaker 2: launched our Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Arkansas. And
Speaker 2: my hope is is that we can just keep taking
Speaker 2: off states, you know, a couple every single year, and
Speaker 2: then maybe at some point the federal government gets their
Speaker 2: shit together and actually funds this thing. At fall that
Speaker 2: is so great.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just I mean obviously don't quote me,
Speaker 1: because I don't want anyone to be mad at me.
Speaker 1: But you also did some really aggressive stuff in Connecticut.
Speaker 2: Right, same thing, except to make maybe a little worse
Speaker 2: because just physically, the way that the capital works in
Speaker 2: Hartford didn't lend itself to the trucks like being seen
Speaker 2: and effective. We picked the speaker or the center president
Speaker 2: and the governor and sent those trucks all around their districts.
Speaker 2: So Ned Lamont, who's the governor of Connecticut, lives in Greenwich.
Speaker 2: So all through Greenwich for weeks, is this truck accusing him?
Speaker 2: Let me get starve and guess what we got? Universals,
Speaker 2: school breakfast. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But that's how you do all right, how you do it?
Speaker 1: Are there other things you can get that way?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean, I think fundamentally, if you accept the
Speaker 2: fact that every policy output is the result of a
Speaker 2: political import and if you accept the fact that every
Speaker 2: politician makes every decision solely based on reelection and nothing else,
Speaker 2: and you recognize that because of the jerrymannary system, we
Speaker 2: have only primary turnout really ever matters. That's like ten
Speaker 2: to fifteen percent, And so you know, ten to fifteen
Speaker 2: percent on either side or beectillents. Like you said, Big
Speaker 2: Oil have just disproportionate influence, which is why it's so
Speaker 2: hard to get anything done. So the other thing that
Speaker 2: I'm doing out of my foundation is trying to fix
Speaker 2: the underlying problem itself by making mobile voting possible. So
Speaker 2: you know, when we ran all the campaigns to legalizing
Speaker 2: ber and I did this again with fan duel at
Speaker 2: Ease and Bird and a bunch of other of our
Speaker 2: portfolio companies. We mobilized millions of our customers through the
Speaker 2: app to tell their politicians leave this thing alone. I
Speaker 2: like fantasy sports, betting on demand. We delivery electric scooters, rideshit,
Speaker 2: whatever it is, don't take it away from me. And
Speaker 2: it worked right because we change underlying input. Also, the
Speaker 2: politician was like, I don't need this headache, right, like
Speaker 2: forget I just leave it alone. And so the question
Speaker 2: I started asking is what if people could vote like this?
Speaker 2: And then as blockchain and cloud technology both got better,
Speaker 2: went from sort of a theoretical wouldn't it be cool too,
Speaker 2: Let's try it out. So we paid for and by
Speaker 2: the way, the reason that I have the money to
Speaker 2: do all this stuff is that when I worked for
Speaker 2: I took my fee in equity, and that a lot
Speaker 2: of money, and so that's how I get to do
Speaker 2: things like mobile voting and hunger. We paid for seven
Speaker 2: states to conduct elections twenty one jurisdictions were either deployed
Speaker 2: military or people with disabilities were able to vote in
Speaker 2: real elections on their phones. They all came back clean,
Speaker 2: they were audited, turned on average doubled. But I got
Speaker 2: a ton of shit from the cybersecurity community and from
Speaker 2: groups like Citizen Access and Verified Voting, who believe that
Speaker 2: only paper ballots should be used, which to me is
Speaker 2: insane because paper ballots is what got used George W.
Speaker 2: Bush in the Iraq War, right, So I can't even
Speaker 2: wrapped my head around that concept because it seems like
Speaker 2: it's been pretty disproven. So I said, fuck it, I'm
Speaker 2: going to build my own mobile voting tech. So three
Speaker 2: years and ten million dollars later, we are going to
Speaker 2: launch it in Q one and it will be free
Speaker 2: and open source for anyone to download, work on, build
Speaker 2: on use, and then the really hard work begins after that,
Speaker 2: which is we've got to build a movement to force
Speaker 2: politicians to allow mobile voting, because if you know how
Speaker 2: to win elections in low turnout primaries. Whether you're a
Speaker 2: Republican or Democrat, or a lobbyist or a union or
Speaker 2: a chamber of commerce or whatever it is, you don't
Speaker 2: want to risk the power that you have, so you're
Speaker 2: likely to oppose this. And I'm going to need gen
Speaker 2: Z and Jen Alpha. You know, all our kids, Your
Speaker 2: kids and my kids are similar ages to just rise
Speaker 2: up and say like bullshit, we know that it's safe,
Speaker 2: and you only don't want us to do this because
Speaker 2: you don't want us to have any power. So we'll
Speaker 2: work with people like David Hogg from the Parkland Movement
Speaker 2: and Aiden Colin Murphy who runs gen Z for Change
Speaker 2: and other groups, so hopefully build a movement around this
Speaker 2: and past legislation in every state that lets people vote
Speaker 2: on their phones.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's really interesting. So you've been really involved in
Speaker 1: city government. It is very annoying to me to live
Speaker 1: in a blue city in a blue state and have
Speaker 1: a governor and mayor who do not reflect my values,
Speaker 1: and also a mayor who is going to be indicted.
Speaker 1: I mean, right, what what's happening?
Speaker 2: So yeah, so just to give the listen some context,
Speaker 2: I ran Mike Bloomberg's one of his mayoral campaigns. Worked
Speaker 2: for him at Stick Hall and also worked for Edwin
Speaker 2: Dallas City Hall in Philadelphia. I worked at the New
Speaker 2: York City Parks Department, so I know city government reasonably well.
Speaker 2: And the consulting firm that I own ran Andrew Yanks
Speaker 2: campaign for mayor in twenty twenty one. He lost, obviously,
Speaker 2: but I think I understand the dynamics reasonably well. Look,
Speaker 2: we have a mayor and Eric Adams, where there's a
Speaker 2: couple of different problems. The first problem is simply he
Speaker 2: doesn't attract or recognize talent. You know, he has this
Speaker 2: view that he needs to be loyal to the people
Speaker 2: with him on day one when he was a borough
Speaker 2: president or a state senator. And that's, I guess, admirable
Speaker 2: in a very conceptual way, but not whether or not
Speaker 2: the best people to run the parts department, the transportation department,
Speaker 2: the building department, whatever it is. And so the thing
Speaker 2: that made Mike, in my view, a very effective mayor
Speaker 2: it isn't that he thought of any one particular idea
Speaker 2: that he just said, look, I'm going to hire the
Speaker 2: most talent to be buggy yet and I don't give
Speaker 2: a shit about politics, and I don't care about patronage.
Speaker 2: I'm going to make them hire the same way, and
Speaker 2: then we're going to let them do their jobs completely
Speaker 2: independent of politics. And so as a result, thousands of
Speaker 2: people like you and me showed up either at city
Speaker 2: all or at the agency's and got a lot of
Speaker 2: stuff done right. And to me, that's the secret to
Speaker 2: city government. And Eric Adams is the exact opposite, which
Speaker 2: he has only hired cronies and donors and political hacks.
Speaker 2: You know, former city council members run half the city agencies.
Speaker 2: They have no idea how to run anything, and you
Speaker 2: put that all together, it's one we have very ineffective government.
Speaker 2: And I think to me the most obvious example is
Speaker 2: State of New York has managed to issue twenty seven
Speaker 2: licenses for legal week shops and there are as many
Speaker 2: as five thousand illegal weed shops but proliferating throughout the
Speaker 2: city and state, and there's zero ability to do anything
Speaker 2: about It. Makes no sense to me if if Mike
Speaker 2: we're still mayor, who would have padlocked every single one
Speaker 2: of them and said, look, next time someone comes back
Speaker 2: in one of these, you're going to writers and that
Speaker 2: could be a customer and employee, whatever it is, and
Speaker 2: that would have put a stop to it. And I
Speaker 2: don't understand if it's corruption or confidence or what, but
Speaker 2: they refuse to do it, anything about it. And so
Speaker 2: you've got a mayor who, on one hand doesn't seem
Speaker 2: to have the talent around him to execute a replement anything.
Speaker 2: And then the other problem is corruption itself. His phones
Speaker 2: have been seized by the FBI, his fundraisers home was
Speaker 2: raided by the FBI. He has been telling the people
Speaker 2: that he's going to be indicted soon. You and I,
Speaker 2: because we're in around this world. I've been hearing the
Speaker 2: rumor swirling for the last week or so that he's
Speaker 2: about to get indicted. And so, but I think he's
Speaker 2: going to follow the path of Donald Trump and Bob Mendez,
Speaker 2: which is he's going to say, you know what, I'm
Speaker 2: not resigning, I'm not going anywhere. And yes, Katy Oaklood
Speaker 2: governor could remove him, but I doubt she'll do so
Speaker 2: because she's not gonna water risk pishing off black voters.
Speaker 2: And so as a result, we're going to have a
Speaker 2: mayor under federal indictment and then on trial for federal
Speaker 2: corruption while trying to run the city of New York
Speaker 2: at the same time. And that's a disaster.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that seems bad. I Mean what I'm surprised
Speaker 1: by is just what a bad job he's done running
Speaker 1: the city.
Speaker 2: I mean the legal weed.
Speaker 1: Stores is a really good example, but other smaller things
Speaker 1: that you know, like they're cutting library hours, right, I
Speaker 1: mean that public libraries are not going to be open
Speaker 1: on the weekends. I mean, there's no world in which
Speaker 1: the amount of money to keep libraries open on the
Speaker 1: weekends is not a rounding error in this city budget.
Speaker 2: Sure, although I guess people can come to my bookstore
Speaker 2: and read books and put the backup shelves if they
Speaker 2: have to. That's correct. Maybe I'm the secret winner in
Speaker 2: this thing. Yeah. And what the other thing is, Look,
Speaker 2: the migrant crisis is not his fault, right, He certainly
Speaker 2: doesn't control border policy and Texas, Sir Arizona or wherever.
Speaker 1: But the mismanagement of the funds that is housing the
Speaker 1: migrants is his fault.
Speaker 2: It is. And the second thing would be he's already
Speaker 2: accused Biden of targeting him, that all of these corruption
Speaker 2: investigations are just a political ven Data by by once
Speaker 2: you cross into that level of crazy, you might as
Speaker 2: well then leverage what you have to try to get
Speaker 2: more money out of them to deal with the migrant crisis. Right, So,
Speaker 2: like I suggested to him, invite Joe Manchin to tour
Speaker 2: the micro facilities in New York or have letch arfk Junior.
Speaker 2: Not because you want to support any of these people,
Speaker 2: but that will make the White House nervous enough. That's
Speaker 2: somewhere in the couch cushions, they'll find that five billion
Speaker 2: dollars that you need. And instead of us having to
Speaker 2: cut police officers or teachers or firefighters or sanitation pickups,
Speaker 2: so whatever it is, we can have the money that
Speaker 2: we need. So like, he's kind of the worst of
Speaker 2: all worlds, which is he's out there and crazy enough
Speaker 2: to make these accusations, but then not really tough enough
Speaker 2: to actually follow through on it, and so we lose
Speaker 2: in every way.
Speaker 1: Bradley Task, I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 2: I'd love to.
Speaker 1: Julian Zelizer is a historian, a Princeton University and a
Speaker 1: CNN political analyst. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Julian.
Speaker 3: Great to be back.
Speaker 1: I am so delighted to have you and for a
Speaker 1: number of reasons. But you are an academic historian, but
Speaker 1: you also right about what's going on now too. I
Speaker 1: think that's fair. I'm curious what you think this moment
Speaker 1: in history, What is it the closest to in modern history?
Speaker 3: You know, I can't give an exact comparison, but look,
Speaker 3: for me, it always brings back the sixties, which is
Speaker 3: what I study about. In the second half of the sixties,
Speaker 3: where the divisions were pretty deep in this country, and
Speaker 3: there were issues where we were fundamentally in disagreement, whether
Speaker 3: it was Vietnam, whether it was civil rights, whether it
Speaker 3: was race relations. And for me, we're at a moment
Speaker 3: like that and where some of our basic institutions are
Speaker 3: kind of being questioned and under attech.
Speaker 1: Give me more on the end of the sixties, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of what were the fundamental moments that you think
Speaker 1: were sort of the turning point there?
Speaker 3: Well, certainly, look the nineteen sixty eight election where Lyndon
Speaker 3: Johnson decides not to run, which I don't think is
Speaker 3: going to happen today. Vice President Hubert Humphrey runs against
Speaker 3: Richard Nixon. Richard Nixon was a Republican. He had been
Speaker 3: Vice president he had been someone who crafted a whole
Speaker 3: campaign railing against institutions, whether it was the media or
Speaker 3: the academy, liberal institutions that he said didn't represent the
Speaker 3: silent majority. He railed against social protests, which he said
Speaker 3: didn't represent much of America. So that campaign, for me,
Speaker 3: it is hard not to think of when I think
Speaker 3: of how former President Trump is certainly going to position himself.
Speaker 3: And Democrats in sixty eight were deeply divided. Vietnam cut
Speaker 3: the party in the middle, and they had trouble really
Speaker 3: kind of regrouping around that. There were just not on
Speaker 3: the same page. And so that too right now, not
Speaker 3: just with the Middle East, but many issues. I think
Speaker 3: Democrats are struggling with some of that as well. So
Speaker 3: that election, there's just a lot of interesting comparisons.
Speaker 1: You know, It's funny when you think about Nixon, because
Speaker 1: if you close your eyes and you listen to some
Speaker 1: of Nixon's speeches, they sound fair trumpy.
Speaker 3: They do, and I think it's not a total accident.
Speaker 3: I mean, those are the years, the early late sixties,
Speaker 3: early seventies where Donald Trump is coming of age and
Speaker 3: starting to gain a sense of the world, and always
Speaker 3: think that he's really kind of influenced by what Nixon
Speaker 3: tried to do, by many of his appeals, and even
Speaker 3: look when Nixon's going down as a result of Watergate
Speaker 3: in nineteen seventy three and seventy four, he makes a
Speaker 3: lot of the same kind of arguments you hear from
Speaker 3: Trump about an establishment out to get him, about immedia
Speaker 3: trying to subvert him. So I think Nixon really looms
Speaker 3: large for Trump.
Speaker 1: I mean, I do think the split in the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party is a little bit different than I mean Vietnam was.
Speaker 1: You know, do you want to send your son off
Speaker 1: to die? Which I think is different than where we
Speaker 1: are right now, which is a kind of feeling that
Speaker 1: people under fifty do not want for an intervention of
Speaker 1: any kind, which I think is really interesting, and I'm
Speaker 1: hoping you could talk about that because I see anecdotally
Speaker 1: and I also see it in a lot of the Again,
Speaker 1: I hate polls, so I don't want to say poles,
Speaker 1: but I'm certainly seeing a lot of organic events that
Speaker 1: show that people under you know, forty or fifty are
Speaker 1: really against you know, America being involved in foreign wars
Speaker 1: and entanglements in a way that I think I have
Speaker 1: never seen before. I'm wondering if you could talk about that.
Speaker 1: Is it a resurgence to the time before World War Two?
Speaker 2: Is it?
Speaker 1: What do you think is creating that weird sauce?
Speaker 3: Three things.
Speaker 2: Look.
Speaker 3: One, this is a generation which grew up and mine
Speaker 3: is as well without a draft. I mean, the draft
Speaker 3: goes away in seventy three. So military service is just
Speaker 3: not something that lots of Americans have experienced. It's a
Speaker 3: professional and so I think that changes how you think
Speaker 3: of going overseas, serving overseas, and intervention. And then it's
Speaker 3: a generation that has had now two really bad wars
Speaker 3: take place. You know, Vietnam they didn't live through, but
Speaker 3: they've heard about, and that set the template for how
Speaker 3: we think of how foreign intervention can go wrong. And
Speaker 3: then the war in Iraq, which is much closer to
Speaker 3: the younger generation, which is equally a lesson for many
Speaker 3: of them about how things go wrong. So there is
Speaker 3: no World War Two in their memory. Bank does something
Speaker 3: that is perceived as being fundamentally good and kind of
Speaker 3: having the right outcome. They have Vietnam, in Iraq, they
Speaker 3: don't have mass service, and obviously the end of the
Speaker 3: Cold War kind of diminished one of the major unifying
Speaker 3: threats that many Americans saw.
Speaker 1: We're watching the Ukrainian president commander of the army go
Speaker 1: to Washington and beg them for money basically, So one
Speaker 1: of these things where there's a partisan divide, but I
Speaker 1: think in real life it's actually a generational divide.
Speaker 3: I think that's right, and not even kind of millennials
Speaker 3: versus gen X. I think there's several generations where this
Speaker 3: was always going to be hard to sustain. I mean,
Speaker 3: this is what Putin understood that if he could wait
Speaker 3: it out, support here would diminish. And this is not
Speaker 3: seen by many people as a direct threat to the country.
Speaker 3: So I think we're at a point now where certainly generationally,
Speaker 3: a lot of younger Americans are going to want the
Speaker 3: government to address issues here at home as opposed to
Speaker 3: a broader, different sorts of issues instead of Ukraine. I'm
Speaker 3: sure they'll be sentiment to deal with the climate. So
Speaker 3: I think that funding for Ukraine it's not simply a
Speaker 3: partisan issue, and I think Democrats are going to have
Speaker 3: to struggle with that as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean climate was never an issue historically. I
Speaker 1: did see people to show that's seventy percent of all
Speaker 1: Americans care about climate. I just wonder why we're not
Speaker 1: seeing more of that sort of you know, you go
Speaker 1: anywhere and there are climate protesters doing really a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff, including in museums and Europe. I mean, there
Speaker 1: really is a movement of young people who would like
Speaker 1: to have the earth be inhabitable. Not a wildly unreasonable.
Speaker 3: Thing, too very reasonable. And it's not simply protesters. I
Speaker 3: mean you can just see that. And even if it's shallow,
Speaker 3: how Americans are changing their daily practices to basic things
Speaker 3: like what you do with your garbage to what you eat.
Speaker 3: I think it's syncing in by Look, the opposition within
Speaker 3: the United States is fierce, and that includes much of
Speaker 3: the business community, which sectors of business do not want this,
Speaker 3: and so they have money, they have clout, and they
Speaker 3: can fight it. And then the Republican Party, for whatever
Speaker 3: reason has decided, which was not inevitable, to align against this.
Speaker 3: And so in a two party system with the polarized politics,
Speaker 3: if one party is going to stand against this, you're
Speaker 3: just not going to make much legislative progress.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting to see when we talk about the sixties,
Speaker 1: youth protest is such an important part here. When I
Speaker 1: was growing up, we had these low turnout elections were
Speaker 1: of enormous anxiety. Now all of a sudden, we have
Speaker 1: these incredible, blockbuster elections. Can you talk to me about
Speaker 1: that a little bit.
Speaker 3: I mean, look, we'll see how it goes. I think
Speaker 3: we were in these several election cycles where younger people
Speaker 3: were feeling a sense of urgency. Part of it was
Speaker 3: a response against former President Trump, where like many Americans,
Speaker 3: younger Americans felt the stakes were so high you couldn't
Speaker 3: sit home. Part of it was the pandemic.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of young people kind of saw
Speaker 3: the bottom fall out of their whole world, and that
Speaker 3: can energize you politically, and that merged with issues like
Speaker 3: Black Lives Matter, and I think all of that combined
Speaker 3: into high turnout elections. The question is, and I don't
Speaker 3: want to talk about poles since they know you don't
Speaker 3: like them. I really doubt our in the creations. Young
Speaker 3: people are not quite as excited this time around, and
Speaker 3: so it's going to take a lot of basic grassroots work,
Speaker 3: I think to keep that momentum up. Young people are
Speaker 3: clearly engaged with issue. I mean, you see it all
Speaker 3: the time, but the question is does that then turn
Speaker 3: into voting again, And I think it's uncertain. Historically, young
Speaker 3: people just have not come out to vote in the
Speaker 3: same numbers as older people.
Speaker 1: New York Times is obsessed with college campuses. You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of controversy over these three college presidents who
Speaker 1: were not clear about their moral clarity and their condemnation
Speaker 1: of antisemitism. It feels like the mainstream media cannot quit
Speaker 1: the Ivy League.
Speaker 3: That's true. Why some of it is a lot of
Speaker 3: US reporters and members of the press went to some
Speaker 3: of these schools, and so I think it's familiar. Part
Speaker 3: of it is, I don't know, it's like when we
Speaker 3: talk about Hollywood, we tend to talk about, you know,
Speaker 3: ten stars as opposed to the whole range of acting.
Speaker 3: So these become the high profile players. Part of it,
Speaker 3: though it's not coming just from them. I think Look,
Speaker 3: conservatives have been attacking universe for many years, and I
Speaker 3: think Ivy leagues they fit the narrative. They seen by
Speaker 3: the right as these elite, remote places that are disconnected
Speaker 3: from the rest of the country, even though many of
Speaker 3: the legislators doing this actually went to these schools. So
Speaker 3: I think those are some of the reasons, and you're right,
Speaker 3: we focus on a few universities and there's so many,
Speaker 3: and we missed the diversity of the student experience. We
Speaker 3: even do that with the IVY Leagues. I mean a
Speaker 3: lot of this is taking one or two incidents and moments.
Speaker 3: But look, the press should do better. If they want
Speaker 3: to really write about what college university life is like,
Speaker 3: they have to broaden their horizon.
Speaker 1: But I do think that that's a good point that
Speaker 1: there is such a focus on the IVY League, and
Speaker 1: you do have Republicans who you know, people like Ron
Speaker 1: de Santis who went to two IVY League institutions, and
Speaker 1: Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz, all of whom went to
Speaker 1: IVY League institusions, all of whom are furious with IVY
Speaker 1: League institutions. What I think so much about when it
Speaker 1: comes is like, this is not really about anti Semitism.
Speaker 1: I mean, at least Demonic does not give a fuck
Speaker 1: about anti Semitism. I mean she doesn't. She's endorsed Trump
Speaker 1: willingly multiple times, she endorsed Jim Jordan. I mean, these
Speaker 1: are not people who care for the Jews. It's just
Speaker 1: that this is like a moment for them. To go
Speaker 1: after IVY League presidents in the hopes of fighting against
Speaker 1: quote unquote wocism right totally.
Speaker 3: I mean, the hypocrisy has seen her kind of make
Speaker 3: this an issue when right wing anti semitism has been
Speaker 3: a real serious problem, not just rhetorically. We're talking about
Speaker 3: state groups, organized groups, many of them came to January sixth,
Speaker 3: we're a real threat, physical threat, violent threat. And so
Speaker 3: for a party that has been comfortable with that had
Speaker 3: a president from their party that you know, trafficked in
Speaker 3: this kind of rhetoric all the time, to now make
Speaker 3: this the issue, it's hard to take them at their
Speaker 3: word that this is really what they care about, and
Speaker 3: they remain silent about kind of very well documented right
Speaker 3: wing anti semitism. I don't think that's what's driving or
Speaker 3: I do think it's just part of what we've seen
Speaker 3: again for over a decade where the university has just
Speaker 3: become one of the central foils for the right. There
Speaker 3: are other critics who I think have legitimate concerns about
Speaker 3: some of the protests and some of the rhetoric, but
Speaker 3: that's not what's driving the arrogator at that moment.
Speaker 1: Right, None of this is about really caring about the students.
Speaker 1: But I want to sort of segue from that. I
Speaker 1: was spending some time with someone who is an academic
Speaker 1: expert in authoritarianism. We were talking about the authoritarian impulses
Speaker 1: of Iron DeSantis de Santis. Sorry, she took over a university.
Speaker 1: That is a real important sort of autocratic moment, and
Speaker 1: I was hoping you could sort of contextualize that, like
Speaker 1: we see that with Erdowan. This is something we've seen before.
Speaker 1: Can you speak to sort of the historical significance of
Speaker 1: going after university?
Speaker 3: Well, sure, I mean you have the Arrian history in general,
Speaker 3: where strong arm leaders have often not wanted universities that
Speaker 3: were free of thought. That's a danger. I mean, the
Speaker 3: whole point of a strong arm leader is you make
Speaker 3: free thought difficult because ultimately that can turn against you.
Speaker 3: And then even within the United States, since the seventies,
Speaker 3: not just authoritarianism, but conservatives have been going after universities,
Speaker 3: which again back to Nixon. Since that time, they were
Speaker 3: seen as these bastions of liberal ideas, and there's been
Speaker 3: a concerted effort to really put political pressure to limit
Speaker 3: some of the ideas that come out of our campuses
Speaker 3: and so on. Both fronts. Universities are always a target,
Speaker 3: and I think right now, you know, more conservatives are
Speaker 3: feeling like they have a moment and it's broadening support
Speaker 3: for what they have been doing, and they're kind of
Speaker 3: almost capitalizing on the problems that have emerged for their
Speaker 3: own political agenda. But it's important to see kind of
Speaker 3: the risks here. We really need universities in an era
Speaker 3: of disinformation and even polarized discussion. We need universities as
Speaker 3: a place where ideas can still be worked through and
Speaker 3: students can learn, and I think that is genuinely at risk.
Speaker 1: Right Definitely, we're almost at a time. But I was
Speaker 1: hoping you could talk about what's happening with Jimmy Carter,
Speaker 1: and you know, the legacy of our kind of this
Speaker 1: president who was slipping through our fingers.
Speaker 3: It's amazing he's become this symbol, I think for many
Speaker 3: Americans of a kind of politician from another era who
Speaker 3: is so genuine about public service and who did things
Speaker 3: that weren't always politically in his interests. Then he's survived
Speaker 3: after his wife's passing, but he is obviously not in
Speaker 3: great health. But it's one of those people I think
Speaker 3: in our contentious, divisive and often toxic age a president
Speaker 3: who at the time was not seen as successful. People
Speaker 3: are looking back and saying, well, here's someone who really,
Speaker 3: in many ways might be a model for what leadership means.
Speaker 3: And I'm sure we'll hear more of that in the
Speaker 3: coming months.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Julian, I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 3: Of course, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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