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Speaker 1: code toodcast. As many of you know, I have clear
Speaker 1: that I think that the president's situation, iron is he's
Speaker 1: in a no in situation. It's a no in situation
Speaker 1: he's put himself in. The Only way he can get
Speaker 1: out of it is probably either capitulation or some sort
Speaker 1: of escalation that would be likely politically intolerable. But as
Speaker 1: much as I think that I have done my best
Speaker 1: to convey this, I think nobody has written it better
Speaker 1: than my guest today, and it's Kevin Williamson. He is
Speaker 1: at the Dispatch and his columns in particular on a
Speaker 1: run over the last month have been one of those
Speaker 1: where I'm just sitting here nodding yes, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I wish I could have articulated as well as he
Speaker 1: wrote it. But that is the beauty of reading. Kevin
Speaker 1: Williamson and is somebody I've read for a long time.
Speaker 1: It's the first time I've spoken to him, so I'm
Speaker 1: looking forward to this conversation. Kevin, Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much.
Speaker 1: Look, you've articulated in a way far greater than I've
Speaker 1: been able to convey about this just colossal mistake that
Speaker 1: he's made. He I think he knows it, and he's
Speaker 1: desperate to find some sort of way out of it
Speaker 1: that isn't humiliation, and I don't know what that looks like.
Speaker 1: So as much as it can be fun to sort of,
Speaker 1: you know, point fingers and go aha, this was a
Speaker 1: mistake a bunch of us told just so, et cetera,
Speaker 1: the question now is how do we get out of
Speaker 1: this with the United States not having its tail between
Speaker 1: its legs.
Speaker 2: We don't That's the short version. I think now. The
Speaker 2: irony of Trump being in a no win situation is
Speaker 2: that he got himself in there by trying to put
Speaker 2: himself into a no lose situation. So by going into
Speaker 2: this conflict without ever really defining what the mission was,
Speaker 2: what victory looked like, without going to Congress, without going
Speaker 2: to the American public, and so he didn't have any
Speaker 2: kind of you know, verifiable, quantifiable metric that he could
Speaker 2: fail to which even therefore be called a loser. And
Speaker 2: he does that a lot. That's kind of one of
Speaker 2: his things, Like, you know, he doesn't tend to endorse
Speaker 2: in races where he doesn't think he's going to win.
Speaker 2: If you look like the Texas Senate race that's going
Speaker 2: on right now, the runoffs of Republican primary, he still
Speaker 2: hasn't touched it. And so one of the points that
Speaker 2: I try to make, not only in this context, but
Speaker 2: in lots of other context is a lot of things
Speaker 2: that we think of as being ethical questions or questions
Speaker 2: of norms, and you know, kind of tradition and things
Speaker 2: like that. We talk about these things like they're these
Speaker 2: kind of airy, fairy metaphysical things that are primarily of
Speaker 2: interest to the afterlife, but they have really important practical consequences.
Speaker 2: And one of the reasons you don't want to have
Speaker 2: a president who can just run off to war without
Speaker 2: going to Congress to get some sort of authorization. Is
Speaker 2: that you want to know what your goal is going
Speaker 2: in You want to get a read from the people
Speaker 2: who have to get elected every two years about what
Speaker 2: they're willing to commit to that project and what they
Speaker 2: think that the American public is willing to invest and
Speaker 2: tolerate in the pursuit of that project. Because there are
Speaker 2: all sorts of different outcomes and different goals that have
Speaker 2: been articulated about the campaign in Iran that are not
Speaker 2: the same. They change during the press briefings. Yes, I
Speaker 2: mean at times. Yeah. So if you know, if your
Speaker 2: goal is regime change, that's one thing that's a very
Speaker 2: that's a hard thing to do. It's a doable thing
Speaker 2: in Iran. We could do it if we wanted to,
Speaker 2: but it's it's a big investment. If your goal is
Speaker 2: to set back their nuclear program, well that's a different thing.
Speaker 2: You can probably do with air power and maybe some
Speaker 2: special forces stuff. If your goal is to have a
Speaker 2: much stronger conviction and evidence that their nuclear program is
Speaker 2: not functional and going to be functional in the short term,
Speaker 2: that's a much bigger commitment. And if your goal is
Speaker 2: to keep the Straight of horm Moves open to oil
Speaker 2: traffic and other trade, you could have just not done
Speaker 2: this in the first place because it was open. So
Speaker 2: right now the main thing they seem to be trying
Speaker 2: to shoes is going to be open. So they are
Speaker 2: really just trying to solve a problem that they created
Speaker 2: for themselves because the Strait was was open before this.
Speaker 2: And one of the interesting things about this is that
Speaker 2: Iran has not won a battle with the United States.
Speaker 2: Iran is never going to win a battle with the
Speaker 2: United States. It's never going to get close to laying
Speaker 2: a glove on the United States. But it's essentially had
Speaker 2: its territory enlarged over this conflict, because the form is
Speaker 2: an international waterway over which Iran has no legitimate sovereignty
Speaker 2: or right to control. But the Trump administration talks about
Speaker 2: it as though it were Iranian territory, and they're just
Speaker 2: out there begging them please, you know, you crazy bastards.
Speaker 2: As he put it, open the Strait. And I would
Speaker 2: love to play poker with Donald Trump, because I'm not
Speaker 2: a very good poker player, but I think he would
Speaker 2: be worse. He's just the worst of this kind of telegraphing.
Speaker 1: He's literally the cards are in front, are on his forehead,
Speaker 1: he doesn't look at them, and everybody else gets to
Speaker 1: see them. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's got a lot of money to lose too,
Speaker 2: so that would be that would be maybe a good
Speaker 2: good game.
Speaker 1: Remember he is the only guy to own a casino
Speaker 1: and somehow not make money.
Speaker 2: That's not actually true.
Speaker 1: But the point he was not good at it.
Speaker 2: No, he was terrible at it. And uh, he's the
Speaker 2: only person I know that had a casino with a
Speaker 2: strip club in it who didn't make money. And now
Speaker 2: that's that's a much taller so much taller order. But
Speaker 2: a lot of people have lost their butts in the
Speaker 2: casino game over the year. I used to live in
Speaker 2: Las Vegas. I followed the business just a little bit.
Speaker 2: I hate the gambling industry, by the way, and I'm
Speaker 2: always happy to see them. I'm happy to see them
Speaker 2: lose something, as long as it's not in Vegas or
Speaker 2: Atlantic City. We can have those two.
Speaker 1: Be that.
Speaker 2: But like when there's a casino on every street corner,
Speaker 2: not to go off on a tangent here when you've
Speaker 2: got him at places like Valley Forge and rural Connecticut
Speaker 2: in places like that, there's too many casinos.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, I think that's the bigger problem. But we
Speaker 1: can Yeah, that's that's the word digress.
Speaker 2: That's a huge, huge issue. We talk about this some
Speaker 2: other time.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah.
Speaker 2: So he's he's bad at this, and he he tells
Speaker 2: the Iranians what his weaknesses and vulnerabilities are. He makes
Speaker 2: these ridiculous bluffs that they don't take seriously. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm going to destroy our civilian infrastructure. No, you're not.
Speaker 2: Your whole civilization is going to end on Saturday night. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we don't think that's going to happen. We'll roll the
Speaker 2: dice on this because the Iranians know that they can
Speaker 2: take more pain than the Americans can, because we're a free, happy,
Speaker 2: prosperous society where our government has to get reelected every
Speaker 2: couple of years, and they're not. They're used to being miserable,
Speaker 2: and if they're miserable, they don't have much they can
Speaker 2: do about it because the government's got all the guns
Speaker 2: and that people don't have much of anything. So the
Speaker 2: Iranian regime is pretty confident in its place, and Trump
Speaker 2: is not so. So far, they've been calling his bluffs
Speaker 2: one after the other, and they keep they keep winning it.
Speaker 2: And so now we've got this ceasefire so called, which
Speaker 2: I'm kind of a language guy, you know, I'm prestickety
Speaker 2: about language stuff. Am I understanding of a ceasefire? Which
Speaker 2: makes me enjoy reading? You know. I understanding of a
Speaker 2: ceasefire is that's what happens when the firing has ceased,
Speaker 2: and the firing has not ceased, so there is no
Speaker 2: actual ceasefire. But now, but you know, conversations about but
Speaker 2: didn't you know their hold it stops the clock too.
Speaker 1: I bet you didn't know that. And I bet you
Speaker 1: didn't know that A when you execute a naval blockade,
Speaker 1: that that's not an act of war so therefore doesn't
Speaker 1: count against the war powers act.
Speaker 2: Or it is, depending on which which sentence you're getting
Speaker 2: out of them. Oh, my favorite thing about our blockade
Speaker 2: is we're blockading as straight because we're mad that the
Speaker 2: straight is blockaded. That's that's good, that's.
Speaker 1: Every I can't you know. I love one of my
Speaker 1: favorite just visuals and I'm guessing you're you're going to
Speaker 1: be a fan of This is from the movie Uh
Speaker 1: Blazing saddles where he pulls the gun, where the sheriff
Speaker 1: pulls the gun on himself, right, And it feels like
Speaker 1: that's what Trump does all the time. He's constantly going
Speaker 1: to pull the gun on himself. Watch out, I.
Speaker 2: Might choose yeah, and well, and even that, like when
Speaker 2: he's doing this sort of you know, Richard Nixon Madman
Speaker 2: theory stuff and then he talk talks about it on
Speaker 2: social media that this is what I'm doing, And so
Speaker 2: he's like he's reading the stage directions and no one's buying.
Speaker 2: No one's buying the performance. Something I do say from
Speaker 2: time to time that when I say this, people think
Speaker 2: that I'm just like trying to get a rise or
Speaker 2: I'm just being tribalistic or whatever. But one of the
Speaker 2: most important things to keep in mind about the Trump
Speaker 2: administration that Donald Trump is not smart. He's kind of
Speaker 2: a dim guy. He wasn't that bright when he was
Speaker 2: in his forties. He hasn't gotten better here on the
Speaker 2: verge of eighty. He doesn't know.
Speaker 1: But wait, he calls people low IQ, so it must
Speaker 1: mean he is. You're not saying he's projecting, are you.
Speaker 2: No, I'm not saying he's projecting because I don't believe
Speaker 2: in that Freudian claptrap. He's just a liar of course,
Speaker 2: and an insult artist. And so he's the guy who's
Speaker 2: not very smart and doesn't know what he's doing, doesn't
Speaker 2: know how stuff works, and he's surrounded by people whose
Speaker 2: metrics of success or not the nation's metrics of success.
Speaker 2: So there are people around whom who want to make
Speaker 2: money from the administration, who weirdly enough or like after
Speaker 2: social media cloud and stuff like that, which is a
Speaker 2: really weird reason to be Secretary of Defense. But okay,
Speaker 2: because you want to do bench presses on short form
Speaker 2: videos and look weird with your hair and whatnot. But
Speaker 2: I'm not one of the electra people about their hair.
Speaker 2: But it's a really weird administration. There aren't a lot
Speaker 2: of people in it who know what they're doing, who
Speaker 2: have much capability. It's interesting that Marco Rubio, who's outside
Speaker 2: of his campaigning ability, which I think is pretty formidable,
Speaker 2: is in my experience, my read of the guy, kind
Speaker 2: of mediocrity. He's not really a very interesting person politically.
Speaker 1: Do you think that's just autu in this administration?
Speaker 2: Yeah, he is the William F. Buckley would have said,
Speaker 2: he's the tallest building in Wichita, and and he stands
Speaker 2: out like he's Solon among these guys. You know he is,
Speaker 2: he is Dwight Eyes right now, he.
Speaker 1: Is Kissinger, he is these guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeahbo can't do everything, including you know, I guess
Speaker 2: run Spearit airlines or whatever else the administration's going to
Speaker 2: want him to do. And he's definitely out of his
Speaker 2: depth with this stuff. Rubio is fine as the Secretary
Speaker 2: of State doing Secretary of State stuff, which is you know,
Speaker 2: traditional kind of diplomacy and meetings, negotiation and that kind
Speaker 2: of stuff. Expecting him to figure out a way to
Speaker 2: bail the Trump administration out of this war that they've
Speaker 2: gotten themselves into because somebody probably convinced them, hey, we
Speaker 2: can do it like Venezuela. It'll be like a long
Speaker 2: weekend and think of how cool you'll look. And then
Speaker 2: we'll move on to Cuba. And so you can say,
Speaker 2: look at all these people. You know, the Reagan administration
Speaker 2: couldn't deal with the RAM but I did. All these
Speaker 2: American presidents going back to Jack Kennedy couldn't deal with Cuba,
Speaker 2: but I did. Everyone was mad at Venezuela, which I
Speaker 2: don't know that Venezuela was ever that big on our list,
Speaker 2: at least not for a long time. But okay, sure.
Speaker 1: Whatever really was only a priority of Marco Rubio's. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, and a lot of people in Florida that the Trump.
Speaker 1: Is good and he represents I mean, I'm not, you know,
Speaker 1: but it was very much a local I'm from down there.
Speaker 1: They cared about it. I don't think anybody outside of
Speaker 1: Dave Broward and Palm beached it.
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean I cared about, you know, Venezuela.
Speaker 2: It was in my top twenty. You know, it was
Speaker 2: tough to worry about. You don't cared a little bit
Speaker 2: about it. I think I cared more about it when
Speaker 2: Chavez was in power than Maduro years and thereafter. But so.
Speaker 1: I feel like that the and the country that is
Speaker 1: going to bail him out of this eventually is going
Speaker 1: to be China, because China is going to sort of
Speaker 1: get they have the ability to tell Iran to back
Speaker 1: off and open up this straight and let's and that's
Speaker 1: the irony to this is that we may need China
Speaker 1: to somehow convinced or convince Iran to cut it dew.
Speaker 2: Yeah, although the Chinese are willing to bear a good
Speaker 2: deal of pain too. I think if it if it
Speaker 2: disadvantages us, and they intelligently see us as the main
Speaker 2: constraint on their power in the world. I mean I
Speaker 2: worry about this in the sense that I mean Putin
Speaker 2: kind of needs a bailout too. And Iran is a
Speaker 2: country that's got two really irresponsible nuclear powers right there
Speaker 2: on It supporters Russia and Pakistan. And the fact that
Speaker 2: Iran is no longer going to be able to enrich
Speaker 2: uranium or do all sorts of other things like that
Speaker 2: doesn't mean it's nuclear ambitions have gone away. I love
Speaker 2: Pete Hexath talking about bombing their ambitions until their ambitions
Speaker 2: aren't there anymore. That's that's an interesting metaphysical problem. But
Speaker 2: there's no reason to think they couldn't buy one, and
Speaker 2: that the Russians might not want to sell them one,
Speaker 2: or that the Pakistanis might not sell them one. You know,
Speaker 2: if I were if I were Putin, I think having
Speaker 2: the Iranians have one nuclear weapon or two might be
Speaker 2: a real good thing for me. That changes the math
Speaker 2: in the Middle East in a big, big way.
Speaker 1: All you need is heard that like scenario you think
Speaker 1: that's realistic or is that something we need to Is
Speaker 1: that one of those a little bit of failure of
Speaker 1: diplomatic imagination.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that there's no retirement plan for gangsters,
Speaker 2: and that Putin knows that if he is unable to
Speaker 2: close the deal in Ukraine, eventually, it's probably going to
Speaker 2: be the end of him, not just the end of
Speaker 2: his administration, if you want to call it administration, but
Speaker 2: probably the end of him. And is he a guy
Speaker 2: who's above rolling the dice that way and saying, well,
Speaker 2: the Pakistan.
Speaker 1: This has been the great fear of this war is that,
Speaker 1: you know, if he doesn't see a way out, he
Speaker 1: knows he's dead if he doesn't see a way out.
Speaker 1: So what does he have to lose?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and uh and again it's just you know,
Speaker 2: it's one or two. And then maybe he thinks he can,
Speaker 2: you know, exercise some influence over the way in which
Speaker 2: they use them, which he probably could. And it's something
Speaker 2: to keep in mind. There are ways for this to
Speaker 2: get worse that we haven't you know, thought about all
Speaker 2: that much. I mean, five to fifty diesel. It's not
Speaker 2: very popular among my people down in Texas and all
Speaker 2: the f two to fifty drivers and have three fifty
Speaker 2: drivers and all that stuff. But there's there's worse things
Speaker 2: in the world than six or seven dollars diesel.
Speaker 1: Well he might have been, you know, now the president
Speaker 1: is trying to claim, well, hey, it's a small price
Speaker 1: to pay. It's not like he prepared the country for this.
Speaker 1: It was the exact opposite. I mean, and then you
Speaker 1: go through you know, this is a time we could
Speaker 1: use some allies, but we have basically poked a finger
Speaker 1: in the and the eye pretty much every ally we have,
Speaker 1: arguably other than Israel, and right now that alliance is
Speaker 1: politically problematic. Frankly for the president these days. You can
Speaker 1: see a little bit of it and breaking uptema.
Speaker 2: Not to both sides this, but Trump of course has
Speaker 2: been uniquely bad in terms of our relationships with their
Speaker 2: European allies, and that's costing him right now because he
Speaker 2: would like to see them step.
Speaker 1: Up, and they would, I think in another scenario would
Speaker 1: help with the show.
Speaker 2: I think they might. But this is this is an
Speaker 2: ongoing problem for the United States. And as I was say,
Speaker 2: not to both sides of it, but you know, you
Speaker 2: had the Biden administration screwing the French pretty hard on
Speaker 2: you know, that submarine deal and all that. And you've
Speaker 2: had Biden administration and the Trump administration making some pretty
Speaker 2: big decisions about things in Ukraine and other big geopolitical
Speaker 2: issues that touch Europe in a very direct kind of
Speaker 2: way without really even consulting them very much. And that's
Speaker 2: all fine when you want to laugh about, well, what's
Speaker 2: Belgium going to do about it? But you know what,
Speaker 2: it turns out we do need these guys from time
Speaker 2: to time, and there are other reasons to want to
Speaker 2: preserve that relationship other than immediate short term concerns about
Speaker 2: the straight of horror moves. We have other long term
Speaker 2: strategic interests that having good operative relationships with our European
Speaker 2: allies would be would be a great help.
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Speaker 1: vary and rates may vary. I'm assuming that the eventual
Speaker 1: deal is the Iran Nuclear Deal two point zero because
Speaker 1: it's what the Iranians know. It is at least where
Speaker 1: there's some muscle memory and it's it, you know. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure where else they can go. Obviously, Trump doesn't
Speaker 1: want that to look like he's just doing that, So
Speaker 1: like NAFTA, if he renames it, then it's brand new
Speaker 1: and whatever. That seems to me the most realistic outcome.
Speaker 1: But I don't know if he knows how to do this.
Speaker 2: Well, obviously he does know how to do it. I
Speaker 2: think there's some questions about whether the Uranians would go
Speaker 2: for that. I think they're feeling like they've got us
Speaker 2: where they want us in some ways. I mean, they
Speaker 2: know they can't beat us militarily, obviously, can they outlast
Speaker 2: us in terms of what they're willing to endure in
Speaker 2: terms of damage to their economy and their quality and
Speaker 2: all that. Sure, I think they probably they're probably pretty
Speaker 2: confident that they are, So why not do what they've
Speaker 2: been doing, which you say, here's our list of demands,
Speaker 2: here's our fourteen point list. And Trump says, no, I
Speaker 2: don't like that, And they say, okay, well here's our
Speaker 2: list of demands. And it's the same thing. And it's
Speaker 2: the same thing again, and it's pretty maximalist, and they're
Speaker 2: not seeming to be backing off from anything. So, you know,
Speaker 2: I usually like to think the hopeful thing is that
Speaker 2: when you're dealing with people like this, that they can
Speaker 2: be bribed in some way, you know, there's some self
Speaker 2: interest there.
Speaker 1: Well, I think they can't be. I was just going
Speaker 1: to say this is this to me was his biggest miss.
Speaker 1: He I think, assumes everybody's motivated by the exact same
Speaker 1: things he's motivated by, and it is always surprising to
Speaker 1: him when somebody isn't. And you know, for instance, I
Speaker 1: don't think he appreciates that the leaders he's dealing with
Speaker 1: in iran don't care if the Iranian people suffer. Obviously,
Speaker 1: if they cared, they wouldn't have made the Iranian people suffer. Right,
Speaker 1: this is not an entity. So his those threats, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, they're not gonna be able to do this,
Speaker 1: they sort of don't. I think they fall on deaf ears.
Speaker 1: And then I guess the other other part of this
Speaker 1: is they're not as motivated I think, by money as
Speaker 1: he is. And so so when you take that off
Speaker 1: the table, it goes back to your simpleton analysis of him.
Speaker 1: He really is just very simple minded, and so we think, what, well,
Speaker 1: money doesn't work. Well, now what am I supposed to do? Yeah?
Speaker 2: If the Iranians were motivated by money, either just greed
Speaker 2: on the part of the rulers of the country to
Speaker 2: you envench themselves, or by the prospect of economic development
Speaker 2: for their country, they would have been on this a
Speaker 2: long time ago. There's no reason that Dubai and Abu
Speaker 2: Dhabi would have, you know, the huge leap on a
Speaker 2: city like Tehran in that part of the world. If
Speaker 2: the Iranians didn't want it that way, that's what they
Speaker 2: were motivated by. They could certainly have that they could
Speaker 2: be They really could be the you know, the thing
Speaker 2: that the United Airborms really aspires to be. In terms
Speaker 2: of being.
Speaker 1: I've had people say they could be India. What India
Speaker 1: is today should be a run had they never gone through.
Speaker 2: This, they could be they could be Switzerland, you know,
Speaker 2: in some ways. Sure, and because they're a lot wealthier
Speaker 2: than India is, for sure, and and they've got you know,
Speaker 2: more resources, and they're better positioned and a lot of
Speaker 2: other advantages as well. But they aren't. You know, nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy nine was a long time ago. They've had a
Speaker 2: lot of time to think this over, to change their minds,
Speaker 2: to reassess their priorities. They aren't doing it. And what
Speaker 2: that leads me to believes that they are true believers
Speaker 2: to some extent. They really believe in their revolution. They
Speaker 2: really believe in the superiority of their civilization and their
Speaker 2: way of doing things. Their contempt for their Arab and
Speaker 2: Sunni neighbors is not feigned. It's a real thing. We
Speaker 2: do the same thing with China sometimes, where we assume
Speaker 2: that Chinese nationalism is this kind of artificial, synthetic construction
Speaker 2: of the Chinese Communist Party, which certainly contributes to it.
Speaker 2: But Chinese nationalism is also a real thing. It's a
Speaker 2: real organic thing among the Chinese people. They really prefer
Speaker 2: their own country and their own civilization, their own language,
Speaker 2: their own way of doing things. And they don't look
Speaker 2: at Italy or France or the United States and say
Speaker 2: we wish we could be just like that. They say,
Speaker 2: we wish we're that wealthy. We wish I had that
Speaker 2: kind of power and some of that prestige and some
Speaker 2: of the options that we have for being the kind
Speaker 2: of country we are. But they don't want to be us.
Speaker 2: They want to be them. And Trump is, you know,
Speaker 2: he's an example of all liars think that everyone's a liar,
Speaker 2: all cheaters think everyone's a cheater, and all you know, shallow,
Speaker 2: low iq megalomaniacs think that the world is run by shallow,
Speaker 2: low iq megalomaniacs.
Speaker 1: Right, So ultimately it becomes who's got influence on Trump?
Speaker 1: And one group of people that has influence on Trump
Speaker 1: are the Gulf States. At some point, they're going to
Speaker 1: get tired of this too. They are tired of this,
Speaker 1: and they've been in this sort of I am I
Speaker 1: think that there are some that wanted this and I
Speaker 1: think there's some that didn't, but there were of the mindset,
Speaker 1: if you're going to do it, go all the way,
Speaker 1: don't do it the way you've done it right, which
Speaker 1: I sort of I sort of respect that that mindset
Speaker 1: I think that, you know, which is don't do this
Speaker 1: half assed. Well he did it half assed and now
Speaker 1: they've got a worse situation.
Speaker 2: But they have encepcially true that of the UAE. You know,
Speaker 2: I think if you look at the UAE's recent decision
Speaker 2: to leave Opek.
Speaker 1: Well they had more to lose in this with with
Speaker 1: this straight shut down, more than anybody. I mean, the
Speaker 1: Saudi's at least have other ways to sell their oil.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that gives you a real good indication I think
Speaker 2: of where their heads are at, and they're saying, our
Speaker 2: future is not with Saudi Arabia, and our future is
Speaker 2: not with being an oil dominated economy, which their GDP
Speaker 2: is less than fifty percent oil and petroleum these days anyway,
Speaker 2: so I think it's down to like twenty seven percent
Speaker 2: or something. So that's a pretty good number for them.
Speaker 2: They're looking, they're looking away from that world and toward
Speaker 2: toward the future. That's it's a bit different. But then
Speaker 2: they've got this fanatical, you know, semi medieval regime across
Speaker 2: the water they've got to deal with.
Speaker 1: And Abu Dabi's home to one of the largest Iranian
Speaker 1: diasporas outside a LA. Really, so they have influence on Trump.
Speaker 1: What would that look like if they and and what
Speaker 1: At this point My guess is they will. They are
Speaker 1: now going to have to tolerate a regime that's essentially
Speaker 1: not friendly for the medium term. And I think that
Speaker 1: they thought, well, maybe this was going to come to
Speaker 1: an end sooner rather than later. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think that they probably in spite of direct experience,
Speaker 2: didn't expect the administration to be quite as irresponsible as
Speaker 2: it has been. I suspect that they thought there was
Speaker 2: more of a program there. Maybe Trump couldn't spell it
Speaker 2: out because he's Trump, but that we had more of
Speaker 2: a strategy and an end goal in mind of what
Speaker 2: we wanted. And I suspect what they were really betting
Speaker 2: on was was regime change, because there have been these
Speaker 2: popular uprisings in Iran that have been crushed, but they
Speaker 2: seem to be getting stronger each time there's a new
Speaker 2: wave of them, and the responses necessary to stomp them
Speaker 2: back down. Have been more vicious and bloody and wide
Speaker 2: reaching each time. And I suspect that what they were
Speaker 2: thinking was that the United States was going to unleash
Speaker 2: this in some way. That was going to be our goal.
Speaker 2: We're going to take out the leadership, which we did
Speaker 2: take out of a lot of leadership.
Speaker 1: Well, it's certainly what it's certainly the case BB apparently
Speaker 1: made to trumps Trump, even though if you want to believe,
Speaker 1: and this is always one of those where it could
Speaker 1: be some cover your ass hindsight, but if you were
Speaker 1: to believe the New York Times reporting on this that
Speaker 1: our intelligence community did not buy what BB was selling,
Speaker 1: but Trump bought it anyway.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, and again I think that's you know, Trump
Speaker 2: expecting the other people to be like him. So if
Speaker 2: you're the number two guy in Trump's view of the world,
Speaker 2: what you're really praying for someone to take out the
Speaker 2: number one guy so you can step up, and he didn't.
Speaker 2: I think, really consider the possibility that there is this
Speaker 2: religious and political movement in Iran that is very very
Speaker 2: deeply entrenched that makes the number two guy or the
Speaker 2: number three or whatever we're down to. After that opening
Speaker 2: fusillade a lot like the guy you got rid of.
Speaker 2: You know, it's not going to be like Venezuela, where
Speaker 2: you're basically promoting some capo in a crime family to
Speaker 2: godfather's status and doing business with him. That you're going
Speaker 2: to get another guy who's a lot like the last guy.
Speaker 2: And if you kill this guy, you need another guy
Speaker 2: who's a lot like him. And because it's a it's
Speaker 2: a more it's a more legitimate if you understand what
Speaker 2: I mean by legitimate, not in the sense of democratic legitimacy,
Speaker 2: but it's a more real, organic, deeply planted, deeply rooted
Speaker 2: political movement. It's not, I think, a majority movement in
Speaker 2: Iran from what I understand. I think that ideologically and
Speaker 2: philosophically speaking, their government is a minority government in most ways.
Speaker 2: But it's not a tiny minority, you know, it's a
Speaker 2: It's a large enough swath of Iranian society supports this regime, largely,
Speaker 2: you know, religious people in economically undeveloped rural backwaters in
Speaker 2: Aram where their real basis support is, which makes it
Speaker 2: a lot like the Trump administration. Actually, as I observed
Speaker 2: earlier that.
Speaker 1: I was just going to say, I mean, but the
Speaker 1: fact of the matter is this is true with Airdowan
Speaker 1: and Turkey, his base of supporters and the rural. It
Speaker 1: was true of of Chavez. That's how we grabbed power
Speaker 1: was using basically running against Caracas. I mean, it is
Speaker 1: something that I've been concerned about. I've been concerned about
Speaker 1: with our country is that suddenly we look like a
Speaker 1: lot of failed states. We look like we're on our
Speaker 1: way to where the failed small de democracy states have
Speaker 1: looked like, which is this massive divide between urban and
Speaker 1: rural develops into this angry movement that topples the wealthy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the United States, we have this tendency to want
Speaker 2: to compare ourselves to the other English speaking countries. So
Speaker 2: where's the US versus the UK or Canada.
Speaker 1: We don't we don't want to pretend where we could
Speaker 1: we could become a ven as well or Turkey.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, if you think about American sort of society
Speaker 2: and politics and our kind of deep structure, we're a
Speaker 2: lot more like Brazil than we are like the UK
Speaker 2: or Australia or New Zealand or some place like that,
Speaker 2: these little countries. You know, We're a big, complicated, diverse
Speaker 2: country with a lot of very very lively social fissures.
Speaker 2: The urban rural one is a very very important one.
Speaker 2: And it's just not very much like being in Auckland,
Speaker 2: you know, or Toronto. It's a different world here. And
Speaker 2: you know, I began my career working in India, and
Speaker 2: there's a lot about American politics. He reminds me of
Speaker 2: Indian politics in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: There's a kind of very messy politics. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the populaism has the same kind of flavor. There's
Speaker 2: you know, regional stuff there. Regional stuff, of course, is
Speaker 2: a lot more complicated than ours. The urban rural stuff
Speaker 2: is a huge thing. The phenomenon of moneyed urbanites rarely
Speaker 2: against the so called elites, which they are. He is
Speaker 2: a good way to get ahead there. And so yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't see Mody and Trump as being two very
Speaker 2: radically different kinds of figures.
Speaker 1: Well, I think politically he's in such a bad place
Speaker 1: because of this war. Do you believe it's constraining it's
Speaker 1: constraining some of his decision making.
Speaker 2: I don't, actually, I think maybe three or four months
Speaker 2: ago it probably was. I mean, not the war, but
Speaker 2: his other sorts of more general political problems in his
Speaker 2: declining popularity were probably more on his mind then, I
Speaker 2: think than they are now. I kind of suspect, from
Speaker 2: my few conversations with people in that orbit have given
Speaker 2: some support to this, that they've just assumed that a real,
Speaker 2: real serious ass whipping is just baked into the cake.
Speaker 2: At this point, they're going to wipe out in the
Speaker 2: mid terms. They're talking about losing that Senate race in
Speaker 2: Texas possibly and which I still don't think is very likely.
Speaker 2: But there are people in the Republican world who are
Speaker 2: seriously worried about that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And I think Republicans a lot more money of Paxton's
Speaker 1: the nominee than.
Speaker 2: Of yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think that they just
Speaker 2: have decided that, Okay, well, we're screwed on this one already,
Speaker 2: so we don't really have to worry about it anymore because
Speaker 2: there's nothing we can do about it. It's just going
Speaker 2: to be a whipon and that's going to be a.
Speaker 1: Well, if that is the case, then he he ought
Speaker 1: to be using more tools than he's usually.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't well, I think their math, probably Trump's math,
Speaker 2: I think looks like this. He thinks you're going to
Speaker 2: lose the House, which they probably are, and they're going
Speaker 2: to get some worse performance in the Senate than they expected,
Speaker 2: but it's not going to be the case if they're
Speaker 2: going to be enough votes in the Senate to remove
Speaker 2: him from office if he's impeached, which he will be
Speaker 2: impeached again when there's a Democratic majority in the House
Speaker 2: and should be by the way I will. There's ten
Speaker 2: different good reasons to impeach the guy, just from this
Speaker 2: time around.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's let's pause right here, let me get removed. Okay.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's if you don't have the votes,
Speaker 1: I don't think you should do it. And I've actually
Speaker 1: had It's funny, you're going to get some out of
Speaker 1: boys from some of my some in my audience who
Speaker 1: I've been getting a lot of questions and been pushing
Speaker 1: back on it. They're like, you make the case for
Speaker 1: him to be impeached, but you argue against it. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, don't do it a third time if
Speaker 1: you don't have the votes, And I would argue, don't
Speaker 1: do it until you've got Republicans wanting to do it first.
Speaker 1: That if you pursue a third one, you know you
Speaker 1: get defined by this, and I don't think it does
Speaker 1: you any good if you care about winning in twenty eight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not much of a political calculator. I'm dumb
Speaker 2: enough to think that you should just do what you
Speaker 2: think is the right thing.
Speaker 1: I hear you, I know, and damn you with you
Speaker 1: and your right thing to do well, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean. Luckily for me, I'm a journalist and an
Speaker 2: opinion writer. I don't have to run for office or
Speaker 2: organize campaigns or do things like that, and so I
Speaker 2: have the luxury of being able to say I think
Speaker 2: you should just do what you think the right thing is.
Speaker 2: And I've a little sidebar here, but we have a
Speaker 2: real plague of cleverness in our politics. You know, all
Speaker 2: of us expensively educated people with liberal arts backgrounds and
Speaker 2: kind of a high degree of verbal dexterity. We put
Speaker 2: such a huge premium on this kind of very shallow
Speaker 2: form of cleverness and trying to think three steps ahead
Speaker 2: about what's, you know, politically good practice and what's not.
Speaker 2: And I think we defeat ourselves very very often in
Speaker 2: doing this. We get worse outcomes than we would. I
Speaker 2: think people in Congress shoul vote for what they think
Speaker 2: is right and say the right things, say what they
Speaker 2: actually believe in, and let people vote for them or
Speaker 2: against them. And most of them have the opportunity to
Speaker 2: go to all sorts of other good jobs. They want
Speaker 2: to do something else in life, probably not cash, but
Speaker 2: tell but maybe everyone else, and just go do what
Speaker 2: you think is right and let the chips for all
Speaker 2: they may. It's not that hard. Occasionally I'll write a
Speaker 2: column where I write a speech for a politician where
Speaker 2: this is what you should actually say if you were
Speaker 2: willing to go out and tell the truth about things.
Speaker 2: And I think in almost every case, every time I've
Speaker 2: written that column, the speech I wrote for them would
Speaker 2: have been politically better than the one they ended up giving.
Speaker 2: Not only would it be them telling the truth about
Speaker 2: things and saying what they actually think. I think, ultimately,
Speaker 2: politically that's probably easier too, because we're not as clever
Speaker 2: as we think we are. I know a lot of
Speaker 2: political speech writers. I've known a lot of political speech
Speaker 2: writers over the year. Some of the are great people,
Speaker 2: very smart people, as smart as they think they are.
Speaker 2: My father this expression not a very nice expression, but
Speaker 2: I'd like to buy him for what he's worth and
Speaker 2: sell him for what he thinks he's worth. And that
Speaker 2: has been my boy images a lot of Washington life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you'd make a fortune on Donald Trump. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I look, I don't I go back to let's go
Speaker 1: back to the political constraints. If he's not allowing his
Speaker 1: political constraints to constrain him, then what is constraining him?
Speaker 1: Because arguably the way out of this is to get
Speaker 1: control of the Strait, send in some ground troops on
Speaker 1: those islands, not all the way into the country, but
Speaker 1: enough to secure the coastline and secure the straight and
Speaker 1: essentially say and yes, it would probably mean more body bags,
Speaker 1: it would probably mean trips to Dover. It is not
Speaker 1: without a huge cost and probably worse politics, probably another
Speaker 1: Senate seat. You know, maybe it's it's four or five
Speaker 1: or six instead of three, a borderline four. But he
Speaker 1: might actually accomplish something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that what's constraining him. And again, I
Speaker 2: promise I don't say this stuff to get her eyes
Speaker 2: out of people. I just think it's where things are
Speaker 2: that in addition to being dumb, he's also lazy, and
Speaker 2: he's also a coward, and he's just afraid of taking
Speaker 2: the risk of doing the things that you're that you
Speaker 2: need to do. He cares a lot about it.
Speaker 1: I've always that's how I reassure some of my worried friends.
Speaker 1: I'm like, he's too lazy to be Hitler.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as Jonah Goldberg always says, Hitler could have repealed
Speaker 2: Obobmacare you know but remember?
Speaker 1: Is that too soon? Are we allowed to laugh at that?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I don't know, but you know, because he doesn't
Speaker 2: want to have people on whatever his social media thing
Speaker 2: is looking at videos of a ten thousand dollar mind
Speaker 2: destroying a billion dollar warship and it's sinking into the
Speaker 2: into the strait and having to explain that. So, I mean,
Speaker 2: the stupidity and the laziness and the cowardice were really
Speaker 2: his saving grace in the first administration. It is what
Speaker 2: kept him from being worse than he was. He was
Speaker 2: just simply not that ambitious, and to the extent that
Speaker 2: he was ambitious, he didn't know like where the keys
Speaker 2: to the executive restroom were, so it took him a
Speaker 2: long time to figure stuff out.
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Speaker 1: always said. Mike Penson writes, previous actually didn't give them
Speaker 1: the keys to the restaurant. They actually, in some ways
Speaker 1: perverbially they they at least stock the administration with semi
Speaker 1: competent people.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't go on my whole Mike Pence thing here,
Speaker 2: but he did manage to grow a conscience in the
Speaker 2: last eight minutes he was in office or whatever it was.
Speaker 1: You know, again, it's the tall it's the tallest person
Speaker 1: in the little people room.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it was. But yeah, I think Trump is
Speaker 2: worried about what that kind of encounter would look like.
Speaker 2: He also doesn't want to have to suffer the low
Speaker 2: to his vanity of essentially doing all the things he
Speaker 2: said he would never do, which is getting us involved
Speaker 2: in an open ended engagement in the Middle East that
Speaker 2: amounts to an occupational that it would be a kind of
Speaker 2: naval occupation rather than a ground occupational. There'll probably be
Speaker 2: a ground occupation too in some ways. And casting a
Speaker 2: tremendous amount of money with no obvious benefit insight, and
Speaker 2: he can't say, well, we took the oil because you're
Speaker 2: not going to be able to take the oil.
Speaker 1: Well, why do you think this will eventually fracture his
Speaker 1: coalition or not?
Speaker 2: No, I don't. And I think that the reason for
Speaker 2: that is that the Trump movement is essentially a personality cult,
Speaker 2: and they have the cultist's ability to create new stories
Speaker 2: for themselves, which the good guys and the bad guys
Speaker 2: always say the same. So I went down to Texas
Speaker 2: a couple of months ago, a couple of month and
Speaker 2: a half ago, to write about the center race down there,
Speaker 2: the Democratic and Republican primaries, and I talked to some
Speaker 2: soybean farmers. Soybean farming is not huge in Texas, but
Speaker 2: I've been writing about soybean farmers for a while since
Speaker 2: the last Trump had made They should be they end
Speaker 2: up in there. Nope, we like the guy. We think
Speaker 2: he's trying to do the right thing. Yes, it stinks
Speaker 2: for us that our exports have been so messed up.
Speaker 2: We really blame the Chinese and not Trump so much.
Speaker 2: And if it means supporting someone like Kamala Harris or
Speaker 2: someone like that instead, they're just not going to do it.
Speaker 2: And you know, we've got little I don't like the
Speaker 2: whole rhetoric about you know, little family farms versus big, terrible, great,
Speaker 2: big agribusinesses, because agribusinesses where the values really created in farming.
Speaker 2: But we've got a lot of little family farms around
Speaker 2: the country right now that are closing up operations and
Speaker 2: getting ready to build condos or whatever they're going to
Speaker 2: do on their land because fertilizer prices have doubled or
Speaker 2: tripled in some places, and they consume a lot of fuel.
Speaker 2: You know, it takes a lot of gas and stuff
Speaker 2: to run those irrigation systems. And there's pretty good story
Speaker 2: in the New York Times other day about was this
Speaker 2: farm called butter Ridge or something like that, a little
Speaker 2: family owned dairy that just you know, they started losing
Speaker 2: one thousand dollars a day that they were in operations,
Speaker 2: and largely having to do with trade disruptions and then
Speaker 2: Iran and they should be a little bit about this stuff.
Speaker 2: But it's just not the case. We always assume this,
Speaker 2: But there's really no good evidence for the proposition that
Speaker 2: people actually vote in a calculating way that alliance with
Speaker 2: their short term economic interest. That's not how people vote.
Speaker 2: Voting is a cultural thing. It's a matter of sort
Speaker 2: of social affiliation, and it's much more like choosing a
Speaker 2: church than it is like filing your taxes. It's it's
Speaker 2: it's a sense of who they are.
Speaker 1: I and maybe I was. I grew up with in
Speaker 1: a weird household which was mixed politics, so it was
Speaker 1: always sort of encouraged that, you know, you sort of
Speaker 1: could be on you know at a conservative father and
Speaker 1: a liberal mother, and they talked about it.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It was just sort of a fairly normal That's what
Speaker 1: I thought was normal. But I never I never thought
Speaker 1: of in the eighties of politics as religion the way
Speaker 1: it is now in the twenty first century.
Speaker 2: Well, because religion isn't religion anymore, you know, if you
Speaker 2: look at work.
Speaker 1: I buy that this idea in church evangelicals that we
Speaker 1: have as we've lost faith literally as a society. We've
Speaker 1: clung to our political parties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're not a real good substitute.
Speaker 1: As it turns, it's terrible. Yeah, they are. At least
Speaker 1: religion tried to teach a moral code. What moral code
Speaker 1: do you get from politicians?
Speaker 2: Well, the Republican Party used to be a pretty morally
Speaker 2: based party. What was it against polygamy and slavery? I mean,
Speaker 2: that's really why you got a Republican Party back in
Speaker 2: the day. Granted that's been some time. They've gone through
Speaker 2: some iterations since then, but they were a party. They're
Speaker 2: a party of New England Puritans. They had a profoundly
Speaker 2: moralistic streak in them.
Speaker 1: And also the Whigs weren't moral enough. Yeah, on the
Speaker 1: on the most important question of the day.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And now, look, God, I'm just so. I'm one
Speaker 2: of the things in life I'm embarrassed about is I
Speaker 2: didn't have a real long period in my life when
Speaker 2: I had like a really strong sense of Republican partisanship.
Speaker 2: I think, I want to say it lasted from about
Speaker 2: maybe nineteen ninety four in the Gingrich election to about
Speaker 2: two thousand or so. And I remember I quit the
Speaker 2: Republican Party over Arlen spector, which now in retrospect just
Speaker 2: seems quaint small.
Speaker 1: What so explain, explain, explain your journey away from the
Speaker 1: GOP that this specter was.
Speaker 2: So I knew him a little bit because I was
Speaker 2: a newspaper editor in Pennsylvania and his daughter in law,
Speaker 2: I guess, was the chairman of my local Republican party
Speaker 2: there Montgomery County in the Philadelphia suburbs. And he was
Speaker 2: just such an obvious, neolistic, self serving weasel who didn't
Speaker 2: believe in anything and would say or do whatever he
Speaker 2: thought it would take to you know, move him one
Speaker 2: degree up the ladder. And then you had challenge to
Speaker 2: him from to me, and the Republicans just you know,
Speaker 2: they would not get on board with it. And I remember,
Speaker 2: of all people, and this is something else they feel
Speaker 2: kind of guilty about. I remember talking to John Cornyn
Speaker 2: about it when Cornyn, I guess was the chairman of
Speaker 2: the National Republican Senate Committee or whatever, and he was saying,
Speaker 2: you know, I get mad at Arland too. I find
Speaker 2: him very frustrating in all this. And I said, well,
Speaker 2: are you mad enough to back to me in a
Speaker 2: primary challenge? And he said, well, he got real Weasley
Speaker 2: about it, and he said, well is he going to run?
Speaker 2: It's before he was in the race. And I was like, Okay,
Speaker 2: that's the only answer I need, you know, That's all
Speaker 2: I need to hear from you. And so I was
Speaker 2: one of those people who thought that John Cornyn wasn't
Speaker 2: hardcore enough back in the day and now, of course,
Speaker 2: even though he's pretty trumping and pretty awful in a
Speaker 2: lot of ways, he is kind of a semi responsible,
Speaker 2: grown up, halfway patriotic, halfway decent human being that the
Speaker 2: Republican Party could desperately use more of. So I was
Speaker 2: part of the problem. I probably am still part of
Speaker 2: the problem in some ways, but I'm not part of
Speaker 2: the Republican problem because I haven't been affiliated with that
Speaker 2: party in more than twenty years.
Speaker 1: Now, do you want to you consider yourself a what
Speaker 1: kind of conservative would you call yourself?
Speaker 2: Just you know, conservative is a good word, I think.
Speaker 2: I mean, if I'm talking about people sort of understand,
Speaker 2: you know, political terminology a little bit, I would describe
Speaker 2: myself as a liberal, but you know, a liberal in
Speaker 2: the in the Adam Smith right economist.
Speaker 1: This is what frustrates me about labels because I consider
Speaker 1: myself a liberal as far as right political debate and pluralism.
Speaker 1: But you know, I'm an incrementalist, which some people would
Speaker 1: describe as a conservative.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I believes describe myself as an Eisenhower anarchist in
Speaker 2: the sense that I have I have sort of abstract
Speaker 2: policy views that are pretty radically libertarian on some things,
Speaker 2: although maybe getting a little less so as I come
Speaker 2: to trust the American people less and less as the
Speaker 2: days go by. But if you ask me about you know,
Speaker 2: what do I think about drugs, or what do I
Speaker 2: think about prostitution? Or what do I think about education
Speaker 2: or social security? I'm still apt to give you some
Speaker 2: pretty hardcore libertarian answers.
Speaker 1: Driver's license.
Speaker 2: No, if you want to know my favorite president though,
Speaker 2: it's Dwight Eyes now, and because I want that sort
Speaker 2: of incrementalist slow let's not get carried away with ourselves.
Speaker 2: We like ideas, but we also live in a world
Speaker 2: that's not dominated only by ideas, So let's deal with
Speaker 2: the stuff we actually have in front of us. We
Speaker 2: have a country that seems to work pretty well most
Speaker 2: of the time. It's produced a pretty good life for
Speaker 2: a lot of people. Maybe don't go you know, knocking
Speaker 2: down Chesterton's fence before you figure out what it was
Speaker 2: built for in the first place. And so I do
Speaker 2: like incrementalism, I do like slowness. I am anti revolution
Speaker 2: I do not like all of the revolutionary rhetoric you
Speaker 2: get in the Republican Party. One of the places where
Speaker 2: I really party company with with Bill Buckley, who was
Speaker 2: one of my heroes. Would he would He would refer
Speaker 2: to himself as a radical conservative a lot of the time,
Speaker 2: And I don't think there's any such thing as a
Speaker 2: radical conservative. You can't be both. I agree, Yeah, I
Speaker 2: understand what he meant by it, but I don't think
Speaker 2: there's any such thing as a radical conservative. So if
Speaker 2: I'd been around, you know, for the Goldwater election, I'm
Speaker 2: sure I probably would have been a Goldwater guy. If
Speaker 2: I've been around active in politics in seventy nine eighty,
Speaker 2: I'm sure I would have been a Reagan guy. But
Speaker 2: if I'm looking back on it from the point of
Speaker 2: view of where we are now and being a little
Speaker 2: older and a little less app to get carried away
Speaker 2: with things, I might feel a little guilty about some
Speaker 2: of that stuff. Do you also would Bean Billboards? If
Speaker 2: I could? I hate billboards. That's my least libertarian position.
Speaker 2: She could rid of billboards. Well, I live in a town, and.
Speaker 1: But what do you see billboards when you're on the interstates?
Speaker 1: I mean in a weird way. It's what keeps like
Speaker 1: a good I like a good lung drive. We drive
Speaker 1: a floor quite a bit from Virginia, and I find
Speaker 1: the billboards. I mean, first of all, I love I
Speaker 1: love seeing the more unique ways trial lawyers try to
Speaker 1: get you to call up their number, or how many
Speaker 1: different ways they can tell you that Jesus is going
Speaker 1: to save you, or how many I mean, I do
Speaker 1: find billboards weirdly telling about what people are seeing. And
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think I get something from them
Speaker 1: when I'm on the interstate. But maybe I'm a weirdo.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Also, if I ever win, like a billion dollar
Speaker 2: power ball or something, I will I live in a
Speaker 2: pretty small little town, and I will buy every marijuana
Speaker 2: dispensary and vape shop in my town and just turn
Speaker 2: them into bakeries or something. And I just hate having
Speaker 2: them around. I've got little bit of kids I don't like.
Speaker 2: I don't like having that out there. So yeah, I'm
Speaker 2: getting to be a crusty, old, get off my lawn guy.
Speaker 2: I think fatherhood has done that to me as well
Speaker 2: as age.
Speaker 1: So if you're a conservative without a home and without
Speaker 1: a party, sure, I look at the and you we
Speaker 1: just got done talking about how we do not compare
Speaker 1: well to the countries we like to compare ourselves to,
Speaker 1: for instance, the UK. But I'm obsessed with what's going
Speaker 1: on over there in their politics and the fact that
Speaker 1: the two major parties are about to become minor parties.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, obviously we have a system that makes that much
Speaker 1: harder here, but I do believe if six major figures
Speaker 1: of the Democratic Party all left together and said we're
Speaker 1: starting a new party, the Democrats would disappear the next day.
Speaker 1: And I think it's that. I think the brand is
Speaker 1: that fragile, and I think it's that potentially, and if
Speaker 1: Donald Trump said he was renaming the Republican Party, you know,
Speaker 1: the Trump Mega Party, I'd say seventy percent of elected
Speaker 1: Republicans would switch their party affiliations. Point being is, I
Speaker 1: don't think either party has that much of a Weirdly,
Speaker 1: even though they're sort of were stuck with him, this
Speaker 1: dupe duopoly and ballot access make them sort of feel necessary.
Speaker 1: Yet I feel like they could disappear tomorrow if a
Speaker 1: bunch of people held hands and left.
Speaker 2: Yeah. You know, Trump's one really smart political thing he
Speaker 2: ever did was that he ran the Ross Perot campaign
Speaker 2: inside the Republican Party rather than his a third party candidate.
Speaker 2: That's what he did. He ran the Pero campaign. He
Speaker 2: was his one great political inside. But the parties really
Speaker 2: don't matter very much. They matter less than they did
Speaker 2: before Trump was elected in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: Celebrity goals right now, right, Celebrity is a.
Speaker 2: Very very powerful thing in American life. And Trump's a
Speaker 2: real celebrity. He's not like I used to be on
Speaker 2: Fox News guy. You know, he's not Pete Hegseth. He's
Speaker 2: a real celebrity. And that's a huge thing. It's bigger
Speaker 2: on the Republican side than it is on the Democratic
Speaker 2: side because Democrats are more used to being around celebrities
Speaker 2: than Republicans are, because they've got like, you know, Pat
Speaker 2: Say Jack and Scott Bayo and Kid Rock and Ted
Speaker 2: Nugent and that's pretty much the end of their celebrity list.
Speaker 2: But I think the Democrats could be celebrity dominated to
Speaker 2: if Taylor Swift decided to run for president. Yeah, the
Speaker 2: decline of the parties has been a huge loss. You know,
Speaker 2: from a small R Republican point of view, you want
Speaker 2: these mediating institutions. You know. The death of newspapers and
Speaker 2: the death of political parties has made it very, very
Speaker 2: difficult to maintain the institutions of a country that is
Speaker 2: really founded in eighteenth and early nineteenth century political norms,
Speaker 2: when things were run by political parties and newspapers, you know,
Speaker 2: the two big national institutions that mattered most to keeping
Speaker 2: our politics sort of orderly, to keep the aquocracy out
Speaker 2: of the democracy.
Speaker 1: Right. They weren't quite gate keepers, but they certainly were.
Speaker 1: They were people that at least stood in front of
Speaker 1: the openings that you had to build those over if
Speaker 1: you wanted it to break through the.
Speaker 2: Gate Yeah, and they mattered in subtle ways and in
Speaker 2: bigger ways, you know, And that's that's maybe a long
Speaker 2: conversation for another time. But not having those things, what
Speaker 2: has gone into the void to fill that space, Well,
Speaker 2: it's been celebrity, like Donald Trump. It's been social media,
Speaker 2: which is kind of a minor mutant form of celebrity.
Speaker 2: It's it's Andy Warhol's everyone's famous for fifty mendus in
Speaker 2: the future thing kind of made almost literally true. Literally yeah,
Speaker 2: and like, as someone who was once the big trending
Speaker 2: topic on Twitter for twenty four hours, it's not that great,
Speaker 2: but some people really want that, and some people really
Speaker 2: care about that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: I can I can tell you trending on Twitter is
Speaker 1: never a good thing. Really. I don't ever think I've
Speaker 1: ever trended in for a positive reason.
Speaker 2: Not usually, you know, I got a fivot AA and
Speaker 2: I don't use social media, but I saw that on well,
Speaker 2: I guess I used LinkedIn, and I saw that on
Speaker 2: LinkedIn someone a couple of tributes to James Baker that
Speaker 2: had been posted, and I thought, oh, no, James Baker
Speaker 2: has died, because that's the only time people do that.
Speaker 2: It was this his birthday. He was his ninety six birthday,
Speaker 2: I want to say, or something like that, ninety fourth birthday.
Speaker 2: And so every now and then, when you're the subject,
Speaker 2: it's okay because you've had an unusual birthday. Cher will
Speaker 2: trend here in a little bit. When she turns eighty
Speaker 2: or whatever, it still looks like she's fifty years old.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: I saw today Kurt Loder turned eighty one, and that
Speaker 1: did he really? That's meaz, Look that guy. That's one
Speaker 1: of those if you're of a certain generation, you're like,
Speaker 1: oh no, he's eighty one. Yeah, what does that mean
Speaker 1: for me?
Speaker 2: Nothing good?
Speaker 1: Let me get you out of here on this, because
Speaker 1: I had a guest last week who floated progressive strategist,
Speaker 1: who floated Stephen Colbert for president, and there was a
Speaker 1: part of me that said, you know, Stephen Colbert versus
Speaker 1: Tucker Carlston, maybe the presidential campaign we deserve.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a shame that twenty sixteen Donald Trump
Speaker 2: versus Hillary Clinton was not a race for mayor of
Speaker 2: New York City. That would have been a good race
Speaker 2: either one of it. Might have been a pretty good
Speaker 2: mayor of New York, might have enjoyed the job, might
Speaker 2: have been good at it. I don't think Colbert is
Speaker 2: the celebrity likely to carry the progressive banner anytime in
Speaker 2: the near future, because he is too old to white,
Speaker 2: and he's kind of yesterday's news. Ten years ago, maybe
Speaker 2: he would have been a more formidable kind of character.
Speaker 1: I hear where you're going. I'm not sure. I agree
Speaker 1: with you on that. I think progressive so badly want
Speaker 1: to win they'll take almost any vehicle that would give
Speaker 1: him power. And I say this not aggressive, not Democrats generally.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about the progressive wing of the Democrats.
Speaker 2: I bet if I thought about it for a few minutes,
Speaker 2: I could think of celebrities who would be better at that.
Speaker 2: And I wasn't joking about Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift could
Speaker 2: be president. She wanted to. Yep, she could, She could
Speaker 2: win forty states.
Speaker 1: Well, I just I guess to just wonder if this
Speaker 1: is our natural because if you actually look and not
Speaker 1: to I want to land this plane here so I
Speaker 1: know you've got We both have other things to do
Speaker 1: with our lives. You could argue Eisenhower was sort of
Speaker 1: the first celebrity president, right, he saved the world and
Speaker 1: we brought him in and then literally you want to
Speaker 1: nominate him, that's right, TV and celebrity, and then we
Speaker 1: basically celebritied the presidency all the way through. Right, We
Speaker 1: were always looking for the next leading man, the next
Speaker 1: person in it was. It was a role almost we
Speaker 1: were looking for, and communication suddenly was a priority rather
Speaker 1: than the ability to do the job rather than having
Speaker 1: any other skill set, just simply having the ability to
Speaker 1: communicate is everything. And I feel like now we've taken
Speaker 1: that even further. There used to be some skill set
Speaker 1: that matter. Oh, you need a governor, because at least
Speaker 1: a governor knows how to deal with legislatures. So that's
Speaker 1: what made Reagan work, and that's what made Clinton work,
Speaker 1: and and that was the case for w and then
Speaker 1: it's like, now all you need is a communicator now,
Speaker 1: and if you get your majority in Congress, you can
Speaker 1: jam through whatever you want to get through. You can
Speaker 1: feel like you accomplished something until there's a revolt. The
Speaker 1: other party comes in undoes ninety percent of what you
Speaker 1: did and they try to do the same thing. I
Speaker 1: do fear that we are getting more efficient with our
Speaker 1: decision making when it comes for presidential politics, where ability
Speaker 1: is out the window. It is all going to be
Speaker 1: about who communicates and organizes the best. That's it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've for years, I've been trying to finish this book.
Speaker 2: I've been writing on idolatry and the American presidency. And
Speaker 2: there's a reason that kings are just the normal state
Speaker 2: of affairs everywhere in the world. In human history, and
Speaker 2: there's the reason that king worship was widespread throughout the world,
Speaker 2: across different times, different civilizations, different continents. I think that
Speaker 2: the desire to look toward one person, this sort of
Speaker 2: father figure, to be the personification and embodiment of your
Speaker 2: nation and its ambitions and its moral values and its
Speaker 2: greatness and all the rest of that stuff is just
Speaker 2: kind of hardwired into people. It's cultures that don't have
Speaker 2: that are by far the exception rather than the rule.
Speaker 2: And uh, we have to fight our way out of
Speaker 2: this primitivism every generation. You know, we're we're made of
Speaker 2: the same stuff that the first anatomically modern Homo sapiens
Speaker 2: were three hundred thousand years ago or maybe a million
Speaker 2: years ago, depending on which dating system you're going off of.
Speaker 1: We might be a little more muddish mutt like than
Speaker 1: some of the previous iterations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're still barking at the moon though. And if
Speaker 2: you don't have you know the uh, it's it's the
Speaker 2: famous Hannah or Rent line about every civilization being invaded
Speaker 2: by barbarians every generation in the form of their children.
Speaker 2: It's it's true, and that's just that's that's who we are.
Speaker 2: We don't. I don't believe that there's you know, progress
Speaker 2: in that sense is why I'm not a wig. And
Speaker 2: we have we start from scratch every time there's a
Speaker 2: new person I've got I've got four kids under the
Speaker 2: age of four, and they all started from scratch. They're
Speaker 2: all uncivilized little monsters when they come into the world,
Speaker 2: and you have to whip them into shape. And that's
Speaker 2: just how things are, and we're not going to grow
Speaker 2: out of it. We have to have institutions in a
Speaker 2: sort of national memory and a civic memory and a
Speaker 2: shared civic philosophy that elevates us out of that. You know,
Speaker 2: every successful country has an idea of itself and what
Speaker 2: it's about and what it's there for. We're different for
Speaker 2: most and that ours are really spelled out in these
Speaker 2: documents because we're not you know, kind of ethno state.
Speaker 2: We're not you know, the American race. But even countries
Speaker 2: that don't have that kind of literary aspect to their
Speaker 2: national history and their national founding and their founding story.
Speaker 2: And also we're a very modern country. You know, France
Speaker 2: has been around for a long time and we haven't.
Speaker 2: That idea has to be refreshed and renewed every generation.
Speaker 2: And if you lose it, just having the words on
Speaker 2: the page, hanging on a hall, on a document in
Speaker 2: Philadelphia is just not going to not going to do
Speaker 2: it for anybody. It's not going to work. I have
Speaker 2: been losing that because we're postliterate, and because we're rage
Speaker 2: addled and bored, and we're maybe too rich for our
Speaker 2: own good.
Speaker 1: I would argue a majority of our v voters have
Speaker 1: really only known to Presidents Obama and Trump, who were
Speaker 1: both built to be larger than life figures built.
Speaker 2: I think American politics changed radically for the worse after
Speaker 2: nine to eleven because of the kind of psychic trauma
Speaker 2: associated with that event. But now we've got a generation
Speaker 2: of people who've grown up never knowing what life was
Speaker 2: like before that, And pretty soon we'll have a generation
Speaker 2: of people who've never really known life before social media
Speaker 2: and smartphones, and that's going to be difficult to bounce
Speaker 2: back from.
Speaker 1: All Right, give me one reason why you're optimistic that
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with having young kids.
Speaker 2: I know that my redeemer liveth affair, But.
Speaker 1: How about optimistic for the country.
Speaker 2: I've often described myself as being short term paessimists long
Speaker 2: term optimist, and my pessimism has become, if not more pronounced.
Speaker 2: My imagination for what the downside could look like like
Speaker 2: and how intense the dip might be and the bad
Speaker 2: effects that go along with it. It's more intense now
Speaker 2: than it was. Well when I wrote the book The Engineering,
Speaker 2: It's going to be awesome that said, and I think we're.
Speaker 1: Going to hit a low, and I don't think we
Speaker 1: have any idea how bad it's going to ban. Like
Speaker 1: I Americans, I'm borderline prepper for that stuff.
Speaker 2: Americans don't want to be poor, we don't want to
Speaker 2: be miserable, we don't want to be vulnerable. We're smart,
Speaker 2: we have a lot of resources, we have a lot
Speaker 2: of assets, we're very creative. We have this culture of
Speaker 2: innovation that you don't really have anywhere else in the world.
Speaker 2: You know, Germany's got lots of really really smart people
Speaker 2: and good engineers and technicians and stuff. But there's a
Speaker 2: reason that like all the Internet companies essentially coming from
Speaker 2: the United States, and why we have things like venture
Speaker 2: capital that they don't really have in Europe. In the
Speaker 2: same kind of way I've often said, we have our
Speaker 2: murder problem for the same reason we have our venture
Speaker 2: capital industry, because we're just not people who process risk
Speaker 2: the same way the rest of the world does. We're
Speaker 2: very aggressive and assertive and willing to roll the dice
Speaker 2: on things, and that will ultimately service well, I think,
Speaker 2: because capital wants to go to the places where the
Speaker 2: best use can be made of it, unless we really
Speaker 2: really set our minds about destroying our country and our
Speaker 2: institutions in a very programmatic kind of way, which you know, Germany,
Speaker 2: arguably the most civilized country in the world in the
Speaker 2: nineteen thirties, did there is president for this, which China
Speaker 2: did to itself, and the cultural revolution in the Malears,
Speaker 2: which Russia did, although it was still a pretty backward
Speaker 2: country when it went through those things. Although we're very
Speaker 2: civilized and cultured backward country in many ways, so we
Speaker 2: we're our own best hope and our own worst enemy,
Speaker 2: I suppose, is what I would say. And I'm still
Speaker 2: slightly more than fifty percent of the view that the
Speaker 2: better version of that wins out in the long run.
Speaker 2: But I do have a suitcase full of a shoe
Speaker 2: box full of Swiss Franks with a forty five sitting
Speaker 2: on top and on the shoe box lit it says
Speaker 2: plan B.
Speaker 1: Look and note. Look, I am I share with you
Speaker 1: short term pessimism, long term optimates in that the next
Speaker 1: election isn't going to solve this problem. We've probabully got it.
Speaker 1: We've probably got another half generation of this before we
Speaker 1: I subscribe to what Churchill said about America. We'll eventually
Speaker 1: do the right thing after we've exhausted every other essentially
Speaker 1: every other path.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well we're rolling our way.
Speaker 1: That's right. Hopefully we're almost done exhausting all the bad paths. Kevin.
Speaker 1: I enjoyed this a lot. I appreciate it, and we
Speaker 1: could have gone a couple hours. We've gone down other
Speaker 1: rabbit holes, but I appreciate the ones you let me
Speaker 1: go down.
Speaker 2: Well, feel free to invite me down the rabbit hole
Speaker 2: anytime you like.
Speaker 1: I will do that and enjoy fatherhood. It seems like
Speaker 1: you you went from zero to that is zero to
Speaker 1: four nineteen months. That is something else. That is that
Speaker 1: is that is changing your life starting at age fifty.
Speaker 1: That was smart. You know what, get into coach? Wait,
Speaker 1: what do you do that you haven't even gotten to
Speaker 1: the weekend Youth Sports marathons. Just wait, just wait, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure you think, oh not my kids. Oh you wait,
Speaker 1: you just wait, that'll be You'll be driving all over
Speaker 1: southwest Virginia.
Speaker 2: Looking forward to the station Wagon. Yeah. Thanks, Kevin, appreciate
Speaker 2: the time. Thank you,