WEBVTT - David Brooks 0:00:00.520 --> 0:00:03.720 This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing. 0:00:04.480 --> 0:00:07.440 I don't know about you, but after my last interview 0:00:07.480 --> 0:00:10.240 with George will I can't seem to get enough of 0:00:10.280 --> 0:00:13.840 conservative commentary. This week, we're at Joe's Pub at the 0:00:13.880 --> 0:00:17.400 Public Theater in Lower Manhattan for the Public Forum, a 0:00:17.520 --> 0:00:21.760 series of conversations pairing someone like me. I've been connected 0:00:21.760 --> 0:00:24.439 to the public in various ways over the years with 0:00:24.680 --> 0:00:28.640 a voice from outside the world of theater. Today, I'll 0:00:28.640 --> 0:00:31.600 be speaking with one of the leading public intellectuals of 0:00:31.680 --> 0:00:35.800 our time. David Brooks is a writer whose political opinions 0:00:36.040 --> 0:00:39.519 and judgment are so revered that he often gets calls 0:00:39.560 --> 0:00:43.000 from the White House in anticipation of a column. At 0:00:43.000 --> 0:00:46.080 the same time, he's also willing to say things like, quote, 0:00:46.400 --> 0:00:48.760 every kid should take a course on how to choose 0:00:48.920 --> 0:00:53.880 a marriage partner. Unquote. Few topics are off limits to Brooks. 0:00:54.560 --> 0:00:57.320 He's been a New York Times op ed columnists since 0:00:57.360 --> 0:01:00.640 two thousand three. He's known as a conserve bit of voice. 0:01:00.680 --> 0:01:03.320 Brooks was a senior editor at The Weekly Standard, but 0:01:03.840 --> 0:01:08.200 former Obama advisor David Axelrod described him as a true 0:01:08.280 --> 0:01:11.640 public thinker. I was lucky to have David Brooks joined 0:01:11.680 --> 0:01:15.880 me on stage in New York City. Joe's Pub is cozy. 0:01:16.200 --> 0:01:19.160 It seats just under two hundred people who are eating 0:01:19.200 --> 0:01:22.480 and drinking throughout the program. The pub sits right on 0:01:22.560 --> 0:01:25.760 top of the subway. Sometimes you can hear and feel 0:01:26.040 --> 0:01:29.039 the train rumble. Below. Take a listen to some of 0:01:29.080 --> 0:01:33.080 my conversation with David Brooks, recorded last week on October 0:01:33.160 --> 0:01:36.160 one at Joe's Pub as part of the Public Theater's 0:01:36.280 --> 0:01:39.920 Public Forum series. Thank you all for coming, by the way, 0:01:39.959 --> 0:01:42.920 I didn't. I don't have as much time to read 0:01:43.000 --> 0:01:44.720 the op ed page of the New York Times as 0:01:44.760 --> 0:01:47.160 i'd like to these days because of my schedule, so 0:01:47.200 --> 0:01:49.000 I thought to make it easy, I would just invite 0:01:49.040 --> 0:01:52.040 someone and hang out with someone right for the otbed 0:01:52.080 --> 0:01:53.920 page and kind of get a whole kind of, uh, 0:01:54.600 --> 0:01:57.440 the background of what I've been missing in political opinion. 0:01:57.440 --> 0:01:59.640 But thank you very much to David Brooks, and I 0:01:59.680 --> 0:02:06.400 haven't in thirty rock and months, so you better hurry 0:02:06.400 --> 0:02:11.000 because we're off the air. Um Anyway, I just wanted 0:02:11.000 --> 0:02:14.000 to begin by asking you just first to describe your 0:02:14.000 --> 0:02:16.640 own background and where you grew up and what was 0:02:16.760 --> 0:02:19.639 politics in your life when you were in a high 0:02:19.639 --> 0:02:22.200 school and beyond as an undergraduate. So I grew up 0:02:22.240 --> 0:02:25.600 here in Stivesontown, not too far away from here. I 0:02:25.639 --> 0:02:28.160 grew up in a somewhat left wing background. When I 0:02:28.200 --> 0:02:31.519 was five and my parents took me to a b 0:02:31.680 --> 0:02:35.880 in Uh in Central Park, where it explains everything else 0:02:36.320 --> 0:02:39.440 hippies would go to just you know, be Uh. And 0:02:39.520 --> 0:02:41.240 so one of the things they did was they set 0:02:41.280 --> 0:02:44.200 a garbage can on fire and threw their wallets into 0:02:44.200 --> 0:02:46.880 it to demonstrate their liberation for money and material things. 0:02:47.520 --> 0:02:49.119 And I was five and I saw a five dollar 0:02:49.160 --> 0:02:51.639 bill on fire in the garbage can, and I ran 0:02:51.760 --> 0:02:55.400 up and grabbed it and ran away. And so that 0:02:55.520 --> 0:03:01.840 was my first step over to the right. And then 0:03:02.000 --> 0:03:04.360 even closer to here, I my father was teaching an 0:03:04.400 --> 0:03:07.520 n y U. I went to Grace Church School, where 0:03:07.760 --> 0:03:09.760 I was part of the all Jewish boys doving in choir. 0:03:10.600 --> 0:03:13.560 So we were about fifty Jewish and we'd sing the hymns, 0:03:13.560 --> 0:03:15.280 but we wouldn't say the word Jesus to swear it 0:03:15.320 --> 0:03:18.720 with our religion. So the volume would drop and then 0:03:18.720 --> 0:03:21.200 it would come back up. And so I grew up here, 0:03:21.280 --> 0:03:23.840 went to Philadelphia Uh. Then went to college at the 0:03:24.240 --> 0:03:28.239 Chicago the school where Fund goes to die. Um, what 0:03:28.320 --> 0:03:30.720 did your dad teach it? He taught English literature. We 0:03:30.720 --> 0:03:33.960 were part of a culture in New York Jewish circles. 0:03:34.000 --> 0:03:38.320 The culture was called think Yiddish, act British, and so 0:03:38.520 --> 0:03:42.440 you were very anglophilic. And so he taught Victorian literature. 0:03:42.640 --> 0:03:45.880 And actually this is true in my grandfather's generation. All 0:03:45.880 --> 0:03:48.360 the Jews wanted to fit in, so they gave themselves 0:03:48.520 --> 0:03:51.360 names which they thought were super English, so nobody would 0:03:51.360 --> 0:03:55.480 think they were Jewish. Well, no, they picked Irving, Sydney Milton, 0:03:57.320 --> 0:03:59.240 and so it didn't really work out. What did you 0:03:59.240 --> 0:04:02.000 study at Chicago? I studied hit American history. The other 0:04:02.000 --> 0:04:04.240 thing about Chicago was, if I can get this right, 0:04:04.720 --> 0:04:07.960 it's a Baptist school where atheist professors teach Jewish students. St. 0:04:08.000 --> 0:04:13.520 Thomas Aquinas and so. But actually I began to turn there. 0:04:13.840 --> 0:04:15.720 So how did that evolve when you're in Chicago? Yeah? 0:04:15.720 --> 0:04:17.760 So I was a lefty and I was assigned a 0:04:17.760 --> 0:04:20.599 book called The Reflections and the Revolution in France by 0:04:21.120 --> 0:04:23.760 Edmond Burgh. And here's a guy saying, you know, you 0:04:23.800 --> 0:04:27.119 really shouldn't think for yourself the power of reason is weak. 0:04:27.640 --> 0:04:30.520 Well you should do is rely on the just prejudices 0:04:30.560 --> 0:04:33.760 that have survived the test of time. And I just 0:04:33.920 --> 0:04:36.120 loathed that book, that idea, because that I want to 0:04:36.120 --> 0:04:37.400 think for myself. I want to come up with my 0:04:37.400 --> 0:04:39.880 own ideas. But as I got older, and especially I 0:04:39.880 --> 0:04:42.960 became a police reporter covering crime, murders and rapes in 0:04:43.000 --> 0:04:45.839 the South Side of Chicago, I began to see that 0:04:45.880 --> 0:04:48.560 he's right. Our power of reason is weak. And part 0:04:48.560 --> 0:04:52.240 of the core of my conservatism is a phrase epistemological modesty. 0:04:52.600 --> 0:04:55.240 The world is incredibly complicated. We can't know much about it. 0:04:55.400 --> 0:04:58.159 We should be very suspicious that we can plan. And 0:04:58.200 --> 0:05:02.320 then I covered really a horrible housing projects in Chicago, 0:05:02.400 --> 0:05:06.599 Cabrini Green and others and legendary. Yeah, And so to me, 0:05:06.720 --> 0:05:10.159 they were part of the unintended consequences of pretty bad 0:05:10.320 --> 0:05:13.760 welfare policy, which enabled families to break up and and 0:05:13.839 --> 0:05:16.360 tore down good neighborhoods. What year was that when you 0:05:16.400 --> 0:05:21.000 were That was the early eighties, And so I became 0:05:21.040 --> 0:05:23.880 more conservative of a certain story. And would you say 0:05:23.920 --> 0:05:26.840 that alone like kind of failed urban policy, I mean 0:05:26.839 --> 0:05:28.400 it was part. I mean it was partly. I mean 0:05:28.400 --> 0:05:31.120 it was a period incredible social decay. I mean you 0:05:31.160 --> 0:05:33.920 look at all the social indicators they really starting a 0:05:35.040 --> 0:05:39.720 seventy they just collapsed, divorced, drugs, crime, And so you're 0:05:39.760 --> 0:05:41.360 growing up in that and you think what's going wrong? 0:05:41.400 --> 0:05:43.120 But did you think that I'm sorry for spitting on you, 0:05:43.960 --> 0:05:50.200 even from this distance. I'm used to it, and I 0:05:50.200 --> 0:05:52.159 would never spit on you intentionally. I would just say 0:05:53.000 --> 0:05:55.280 the do you think that people that are more left 0:05:55.400 --> 0:05:58.360 leaning they're the ones whould say drugs, divorced crime, or 0:05:58.400 --> 0:06:02.159 the results of other failed social policies, and those policies 0:06:02.200 --> 0:06:04.640 proceeded that that those things are are symptoms of something 0:06:04.680 --> 0:06:07.920 which has failed, of public policies in terms of jobs 0:06:07.960 --> 0:06:11.760 and fairer taxes. And did you think that some of 0:06:11.800 --> 0:06:13.960 the problems that we're facing our society in the sixties 0:06:13.960 --> 0:06:17.120 and seventies and were the results of other bad policies 0:06:17.120 --> 0:06:19.880 that might have some conservative things on them as well. 0:06:19.920 --> 0:06:22.400 I've gotten more educated about it since, and I think 0:06:22.400 --> 0:06:25.159 the sort of the classic more liberal position is William 0:06:25.240 --> 0:06:28.039 Julius Wilson, the sociologist at Harvard. He said the real 0:06:28.080 --> 0:06:31.400 problem was all the urban jobs went away and when 0:06:31.400 --> 0:06:34.279 the jobs went wait for the working class, then the 0:06:34.320 --> 0:06:36.839 social decay came, and I think there's a lot of 0:06:36.839 --> 0:06:39.400 truth to that. I would say there was also a 0:06:39.400 --> 0:06:43.200 breakdown in social Moray's they should stick around in hand, 0:06:43.240 --> 0:06:46.040 and that's exactly my view now that they became a spiral. 0:06:46.480 --> 0:06:48.720 And so now you know, I had a conversation with 0:06:49.480 --> 0:06:53.240 I always have conversations with, let's say, senior administration officials, 0:06:53.640 --> 0:06:55.680 and I say, you know, the breakdown of the family. 0:06:56.760 --> 0:06:59.360 Kids are born out of wedlock. Right now, if that 0:06:59.680 --> 0:07:01.680 remain it's true, and every we all know people who 0:07:01.680 --> 0:07:04.240 are born with single parents and they're doing great, but 0:07:04.320 --> 0:07:07.680 the odds are higher. And so I say with if 0:07:07.720 --> 0:07:09.880 that remains true, then thirty years from now, we'll have 0:07:09.880 --> 0:07:12.800 more inequality than we do now, and the skills gap 0:07:12.800 --> 0:07:14.840 will be greater from that fact alone. So why don't 0:07:14.880 --> 0:07:17.280 you take on family policy? And if you're gonna do 0:07:17.320 --> 0:07:18.960 it right, you got to do it in two ways. One, 0:07:19.240 --> 0:07:21.040 you've got to encourage people to get married and stay 0:07:21.080 --> 0:07:23.520 married or not have kids until they get married. But 0:07:23.560 --> 0:07:26.200 you also got to make give men money so they're 0:07:26.200 --> 0:07:30.240 worth marrying. And that's basically the problem. You've got to 0:07:30.280 --> 0:07:32.320 give them earning come tax credit or some other wage 0:07:32.320 --> 0:07:35.360 subsidy you gotta do you mean also give women money 0:07:35.360 --> 0:07:41.160 so they're worth married. Not well, now see, yes you 0:07:41.240 --> 0:07:42.760 did mean that. You just don't know it, but you 0:07:42.800 --> 0:07:46.440 did mean. We're here. Don't try to make me popular. 0:07:47.880 --> 0:07:51.000 I'm just trying to make you more popular than when 0:07:51.000 --> 0:07:53.480 I think one of the reasons why the marriage has 0:07:53.480 --> 0:07:56.800 fallen apart it's mostly I think on the male side. 0:07:57.240 --> 0:07:59.880 When you talk about, you know, the decay of the 0:08:00.080 --> 0:08:02.360 family and stuff, and then you talk about I mean, 0:08:02.400 --> 0:08:05.840 do you have any particular opinions about birth control? So well, 0:08:05.960 --> 0:08:08.040 I might have a little different view. I mean, first, 0:08:08.040 --> 0:08:09.960 on social issues, I'm still as left wing as the 0:08:10.040 --> 0:08:12.960 day is long. On the I'm I'm not only for example, 0:08:13.320 --> 0:08:15.920 well so I'm not only for supporting gay marriage, I'm 0:08:15.960 --> 0:08:21.240 for coercing gay marriage. I mean, I think we should say, 0:08:21.240 --> 0:08:22.720 are you guys married yet? Are you married yet? You 0:08:22.760 --> 0:08:26.160 guys can get married, but say on in Africa. You know, 0:08:26.240 --> 0:08:28.200 I was at a village in Mozambique a couple of 0:08:28.280 --> 0:08:30.920 years ago where there were no adults. There was grandparents 0:08:30.920 --> 0:08:35.080 and kids. All the adults were dead from AIDS, and 0:08:35.120 --> 0:08:38.360 so you asked the grandparents, are the kids replicating the 0:08:38.360 --> 0:08:41.640 behaviors that killed their parents after they nursed them to 0:08:41.679 --> 0:08:44.080 their deaths? And they said yes, they're doing all the 0:08:44.120 --> 0:08:46.680 same stuff. And so the question becomes, how do you 0:08:46.760 --> 0:08:49.720 change that behavior? And the short answer is you give 0:08:50.120 --> 0:08:53.880 contraception and you try to change behavior by lectures at 0:08:53.920 --> 0:08:57.120 the same time. But who's been most effective at changing 0:08:57.160 --> 0:09:02.199 behavior in my experience, it's not us Westerners with our 0:09:02.240 --> 0:09:06.400 technical expertise, it's the Church. And the Church will say 0:09:06.800 --> 0:09:10.280 it's about your soul, here's how you should live. And 0:09:10.320 --> 0:09:13.200 one of the reasons so many the religions there, the 0:09:13.200 --> 0:09:16.760 Protestants and the Catholics are so incredibly conservative, is because 0:09:16.760 --> 0:09:20.920 they need that ammunition to change behavior. And if you 0:09:21.080 --> 0:09:25.200 don't follow these rules, your souls is damned. That I 0:09:25.280 --> 0:09:27.760 find pretty persuasive as a way to get people to 0:09:27.840 --> 0:09:31.040 change their behavior when you're living with a life threatening disease. 0:09:31.080 --> 0:09:34.320 But they haven't been successful. Well, it's when the Catholics 0:09:34.320 --> 0:09:37.400 are opposed, I mean the Catholics in terms of the brass, 0:09:37.480 --> 0:09:42.600 if you will, of the Catholic Church. They're opposed to. Yeah, 0:09:42.800 --> 0:09:46.679 that's yeah, I think you're absolutely right about that. I 0:09:46.720 --> 0:09:49.320 guess my point is they're opposed in theory. But you 0:09:49.360 --> 0:09:52.720 go into a Catholic mission in in the maybe or anywhere, 0:09:53.200 --> 0:09:55.040 and the rubbers are sitting right there on the table. 0:09:55.400 --> 0:09:57.679 They don't have the luxury of being abstract about this, 0:09:58.440 --> 0:10:01.080 and they say, if you gotta thirteen year old kid 0:10:01.080 --> 0:10:03.800 who comes in, you preach abstinence. If you had an 0:10:03.800 --> 0:10:06.240 eighteen year old, you can hand him a rubber. I 0:10:06.240 --> 0:10:07.839 want to make out that check. I want to pay 0:10:07.960 --> 0:10:10.920 to the Order of the Vatican ten thou dollars and 0:10:10.960 --> 0:10:16.360 in the memo for rubbers, and to see to see 0:10:16.400 --> 0:10:19.160 what happens now from Cabrini Green, where do you go? 0:10:19.400 --> 0:10:22.679 What happens? How much longer? So we all have these 0:10:22.720 --> 0:10:25.280 weird things that happened in our lives. While I was 0:10:25.320 --> 0:10:28.520 in at college, I wrote a humor column, which is 0:10:28.559 --> 0:10:31.880 hard to believe if anybody reads my current column, I know, uh, 0:10:32.360 --> 0:10:34.320 I think you still write a humor college? Yeah, thank you, 0:10:34.400 --> 0:10:38.480 thank you. So I'm just pretty funny, yeah that. And 0:10:38.679 --> 0:10:41.560 then I was trying to be funny, and so William F. 0:10:41.559 --> 0:10:45.319 Buckley came to campus and I wrote a piece calling 0:10:45.400 --> 0:10:48.440 him a name dropping blowhard basically, And so I said, 0:10:48.480 --> 0:10:50.280 you know, he wrote the first three volumes of his 0:10:50.320 --> 0:10:52.760 memoirs in the day of his birth. All of human 0:10:52.800 --> 0:10:57.080 history up to Buckley was glorious dawn. And then he 0:10:57.280 --> 0:11:00.400 in college, he founded two magazines, one called The National Buckley, 0:11:00.640 --> 0:11:03.480 one called the Buckley Review, which he emerged to form 0:11:03.520 --> 0:11:06.679 the Buckley Buckley. And so it was all just one 0:11:06.760 --> 0:11:10.280 joke after another. And he came to campus and he 0:11:10.520 --> 0:11:13.040 gave a talk to the student body and he said, 0:11:13.240 --> 0:11:15.160 David Brookster, if you're in the audience, I want to 0:11:15.160 --> 0:11:19.520 give you a job. And so that was my big break. Now, 0:11:19.679 --> 0:11:22.960 sadly I wasn't in the audience, and I and I 0:11:23.559 --> 0:11:26.200 and I wasn't that conservative. But three years later I 0:11:26.240 --> 0:11:28.080 was drifting a little bit up the right and I 0:11:28.120 --> 0:11:31.439 called him up and I said, is that job still open? 0:11:31.960 --> 0:11:34.480 And he said yeah. And so literally, from twenty four 0:11:34.520 --> 0:11:36.720 hours I was covering a murder on the West Side 0:11:36.720 --> 0:11:38.920 of Chicago. Twenty four hours later I was up in 0:11:39.000 --> 0:11:43.360 his Park Avenue apartment having dinner with finger bowls. Uh, 0:11:43.400 --> 0:11:45.080 and I, you know, I thought it was a watery soup. 0:11:45.880 --> 0:11:48.800 And but so when you get when you became his 0:11:49.200 --> 0:11:53.000 associate editor, you became a pseudo sung for a year 0:11:53.040 --> 0:11:55.520 and a half. So he took me yachting, he took 0:11:55.520 --> 0:11:58.200 me to bout concerts, he asked my opinion, and so 0:11:58.280 --> 0:12:00.200 it was one of those magical experiences where a guy 0:12:00.200 --> 0:12:02.839 who's a real mentor and so I worked in National 0:12:02.880 --> 0:12:04.200 View for a year and a half and he was 0:12:04.280 --> 0:12:07.200 would you admire most about him? There's many people who 0:12:07.200 --> 0:12:10.040 worked with have worked with him, have speak glowingly about him. 0:12:10.280 --> 0:12:14.400 But by the way, incredibly diverse group of people, Joan 0:12:14.440 --> 0:12:17.360 Diddy and John Leonard, a lot of people, and so 0:12:17.520 --> 0:12:23.160 his greatest capacity was his capacity for friendship. If you 0:12:23.200 --> 0:12:26.280 went over his house for dinner. First of all, there 0:12:26.280 --> 0:12:28.280 were not that many conservatives there. There were not many 0:12:28.320 --> 0:12:32.600 political people. It was writers mostly. Anatol Broyard, a literate critic, 0:12:32.640 --> 0:12:36.280 was yeah, and so we we never talked about what 0:12:36.400 --> 0:12:39.240 the tax policy was. It was what Dostoevsky had written 0:12:39.240 --> 0:12:42.280 about this. One of his biographers estimated he wrote more 0:12:42.320 --> 0:12:45.240 personal letters than anybody else in the twentieth century. He 0:12:45.320 --> 0:12:47.280 was one of these guys his brain just couldn't stop 0:12:47.720 --> 0:12:49.920 output had to become and he wrote all these letters, 0:12:50.120 --> 0:12:53.359 cultivated all these friendships, and so it was an intoxicating 0:12:53.400 --> 0:12:57.320 experience to him based in d C or here here. 0:12:57.360 --> 0:12:59.880 How long were you with him? About eighteen months? And 0:13:00.120 --> 0:13:02.400 what happened? So then he sends me off to start 0:13:02.440 --> 0:13:04.400 my career and I went and became a movie critic 0:13:04.800 --> 0:13:07.559 at the Washington Times, and then I came became a 0:13:07.559 --> 0:13:09.560 book review editor at the Wall Street Journal and then 0:13:09.559 --> 0:13:11.360 a movie critic for the Wall Street Journal in the 0:13:11.360 --> 0:13:13.719 Washington Times. When you were doing the movie criticism and 0:13:13.800 --> 0:13:18.800 the Messiah, yeah, the Reverence, the late late he was 0:13:18.800 --> 0:13:21.360 a big movie fans. I'm young Moon. Yeah, like we 0:13:21.480 --> 0:13:23.600 were like a Jennifer Anniston fan. When was his ill, 0:13:24.880 --> 0:13:29.920 it was more Hunt for October that Actually he funded 0:13:29.920 --> 0:13:33.040 a movie. He funded Pearl Harbor. He funded some movie 0:13:33.040 --> 0:13:35.600 that bomb, And so I was in Pearl Harbor. I 0:13:35.600 --> 0:13:40.040 did bomb. But thank you, thank you well if you 0:13:40.080 --> 0:13:42.199 asked me for Reverend, what was it like writing movie 0:13:42.200 --> 0:13:45.400 criticism for for I mean, the Washington Times is a 0:13:45.520 --> 0:13:48.679 is a very very conservative paper. Yeah, I must say, 0:13:48.679 --> 0:13:51.040 when I was there, we had a very talented staff. 0:13:51.040 --> 0:13:53.840 So Malcolm Ladwell was one of my co authors. And 0:13:55.360 --> 0:13:56.800 so when you weren't touch you you were free to 0:13:56.840 --> 0:13:58.520 write whatever you would And I had the best interview 0:13:58.559 --> 0:14:03.240 of my life until this one. It was with Jackie 0:14:03.240 --> 0:14:06.280 Gleason and he was just about the funniest person I 0:14:06.400 --> 0:14:09.040 ever met in my life. When when you wrote movie criticism, 0:14:09.360 --> 0:14:12.200 was it the classic thing where like the movie critic 0:14:12.280 --> 0:14:14.760 died and you were writing the gardening column and somebody said, kid, 0:14:14.760 --> 0:14:17.720 you're the movie critic. When that happened to me at 0:14:17.720 --> 0:14:21.120 the film well, I kind of resent right now that 0:14:21.120 --> 0:14:22.920 you were a movie critic for the Washington Times because 0:14:22.920 --> 0:14:25.480 what was your background in film? You're recovering murders in 0:14:25.560 --> 0:14:29.800 Careeny Green? I had a PhD in film from USC 0:14:30.120 --> 0:14:32.800 and no, I didn't because of my rich social life 0:14:32.800 --> 0:14:36.240 at the Chicago I saw a movie almost every night. 0:14:38.960 --> 0:14:42.160 Uh and so I recall in one eleven week period, 0:14:42.160 --> 0:14:45.720 I saw seventy seven movies, and I for kidding, I 0:14:45.760 --> 0:14:48.080 would do my homework from seven and nine to go 0:14:48.120 --> 0:14:50.840 to the move of the student thing with outstanding film thing, 0:14:50.840 --> 0:14:52.640 I'd go and then I'd go to the bar. That 0:14:52.720 --> 0:14:56.080 was my life and friend, Yeah, I did that lasted 0:14:56.120 --> 0:14:58.360 eight team was why did that end? Because I got 0:14:58.400 --> 0:15:00.240 a hired by the Wall Street Journal to come up here. Okay, 0:15:00.240 --> 0:15:02.200 so how do you how do you How do you 0:15:02.200 --> 0:15:04.240 go from the Washington Times writing film to the journal 0:15:04.600 --> 0:15:07.160 Because I got towards a good piece of advice. And 0:15:07.160 --> 0:15:09.360 I don't know if you followed this. But never say 0:15:09.440 --> 0:15:11.960 no to anything. Say yes everything, at least at a 0:15:11.960 --> 0:15:13.920 certain point in your life. I said yes to Pearl Harbor, 0:15:13.920 --> 0:15:20.040 and I have to beg to different. I said yes 0:15:20.040 --> 0:15:21.640 to a lot of things I shouldn't said yes. Yes 0:15:22.160 --> 0:15:26.760 were the creato with my businesses? Say no until you 0:15:26.800 --> 0:15:31.280 have to say yes? Who never said no? One who 0:15:31.360 --> 0:15:33.280 rang your bell for the Wall Street Journal? Who came 0:15:33.320 --> 0:15:35.400 after somebody asked me to do a piece on economics, 0:15:35.920 --> 0:15:37.920 And because of my deep background and film, I wrote 0:15:37.920 --> 0:15:41.480 an essay on economics. Uh and and the editor of 0:15:41.480 --> 0:15:43.360 the Wall Street Journal saw it and liked it and 0:15:43.360 --> 0:15:45.000 and called me up and said, we need a book 0:15:45.000 --> 0:15:47.520 of your editor. So I edited the book of your section. 0:15:47.560 --> 0:15:49.920 And then I went out from from New York. And 0:15:49.960 --> 0:15:52.160 then I went out and covered the decline in Soviet Union. 0:15:52.720 --> 0:15:56.880 For five years. I was in covering half the world. Yes, 0:15:57.160 --> 0:15:59.280 I lived in Brussels, but I covered the Soviet Union. 0:15:59.800 --> 0:16:01.920 Um and Della coming out of prison married at the time, 0:16:01.960 --> 0:16:03.320 I was married at the time. You have a very 0:16:03.360 --> 0:16:05.840 patient wife. If I told my wife we were moving 0:16:05.840 --> 0:16:10.000 back to Brussels, she would put an axe in my head. Right, 0:16:10.560 --> 0:16:13.200 so you're at the Journal for how long? For nine years? 0:16:13.240 --> 0:16:14.680 And then where do you go? So then I go 0:16:14.720 --> 0:16:17.520 to the Weekly Standard of Conservative magazine owned by Rupert Murdack. 0:16:17.560 --> 0:16:20.200 At that point, what was that like? That was the 0:16:20.200 --> 0:16:22.920 best experience A lot like Buckley. People say, people who 0:16:22.960 --> 0:16:25.840 know Murda personally, and they all say that he's like Buckley. 0:16:25.880 --> 0:16:29.080 He's this very charming, very you know, uh, devoted to 0:16:29.160 --> 0:16:31.440 his friends, you know very was he that way when 0:16:31.440 --> 0:16:33.960 you work with him? I confess I never talked to him, 0:16:35.680 --> 0:16:37.400 and the one time I did was at a party. 0:16:37.440 --> 0:16:39.560 Any mumbled. I couldn't understand what he was saying. But 0:16:39.600 --> 0:16:42.000 you know the problem with writing, especially my current job, 0:16:42.280 --> 0:16:45.760 it's solitary, and so at the magazine it was all 0:16:45.840 --> 0:16:48.360 my friends getting together, right a magazine. I was here 0:16:48.600 --> 0:16:51.600 for a panel about a year or two ago, and 0:16:51.760 --> 0:16:53.840 we were backstage and it was like I was my 0:16:53.920 --> 0:16:56.440 little glimpse of the theater world. It was like group 0:16:56.520 --> 0:16:59.640 hugs and I remember there was even tissues out on 0:16:59.720 --> 0:17:02.720 stage here in case we started crying and and and 0:17:03.200 --> 0:17:05.919 and believe me, if you go to the Brookings Institution 0:17:06.840 --> 0:17:10.920 and you're you're doing a panel on tax policy, there's 0:17:10.960 --> 0:17:13.560 not a lot of group hugging. Uh. And so I 0:17:13.720 --> 0:17:16.920 sort of at the magazine was my closest experience to 0:17:17.000 --> 0:17:19.600 being part of a team, putting on something together as 0:17:19.600 --> 0:17:22.320 a group, And so I really like that. Well, being 0:17:23.119 --> 0:17:26.040 on a team that way and being and having that 0:17:26.119 --> 0:17:29.920 kind of collegiality with people is really Um, I'm gonna 0:17:29.920 --> 0:17:31.400 come and do a play in New York in February 0:17:31.440 --> 0:17:34.479 only because it means like I'm literally starving for the 0:17:34.560 --> 0:17:37.960 oxygen of being part of an ensemble and being part 0:17:38.000 --> 0:17:40.560 of a work where the best work is done when 0:17:40.560 --> 0:17:43.560 we all do it together and integrated together. Now, if 0:17:43.560 --> 0:17:46.640 you're in the theater, can you put on a good production? 0:17:46.680 --> 0:17:48.920 If people don't like each other, do they have to do? 0:17:48.960 --> 0:17:51.640 People have to purse genuinely like in the theater because more, 0:17:51.680 --> 0:17:56.080 presumably more thought goes into the piece. Like whether we 0:17:56.119 --> 0:17:59.000 did street Car on Broad Bay and Greg Moser said 0:17:59.200 --> 0:18:02.040 the great line, he's it, but we know the material works. 0:18:02.040 --> 0:18:06.840 If we bomb, it's us it's like we know, like 0:18:06.840 --> 0:18:09.479 we did revivals. If you do original pieces, it's different. 0:18:09.800 --> 0:18:13.159 But then from Weekly Standard, what happens? We're there for? 0:18:13.200 --> 0:18:16.800 How long? I was there also for nine years? Nine years? 0:18:17.840 --> 0:18:20.000 What do evolved you during that We were you traveling 0:18:20.000 --> 0:18:22.199 all around the world at that time. I'm mostly a 0:18:22.280 --> 0:18:24.439 little I did a lot of Middle East stuff and 0:18:24.480 --> 0:18:28.600 I wrote a book called Bobo that was nineties six 0:18:28.680 --> 0:18:30.679 to two thou three or if I've got the numbers right, 0:18:30.760 --> 0:18:34.720 ninety Weekly Standard when nine eleven happens, Yes, you're a 0:18:34.760 --> 0:18:37.199 Weekly Standard. At the end of the Clinton years and 0:18:37.240 --> 0:18:39.560 the beginning of the Bush years and nine eleven and 0:18:39.640 --> 0:18:44.400 the war, Yes, you're turned. When I was just joined 0:18:44.400 --> 0:18:46.720 the Times somewhere, we were there doing the Clinton if 0:18:46.720 --> 0:18:48.879 I mean think about that, You're there doing the Clinton impeachment. 0:18:50.040 --> 0:18:54.240 Bush is elected nine eleven, the war in iraqis declared. 0:18:55.080 --> 0:19:00.480 How did your politics evolved during that time? Well? I 0:19:00.560 --> 0:19:08.840 married Ken Starr's daughter, and no I didn't. Yeah, I'm 0:19:08.840 --> 0:19:11.639 gonna say this, and it's not to curry favor, but 0:19:11.880 --> 0:19:13.320 it's on the record if you go back. I was 0:19:13.359 --> 0:19:15.280 doing a show called The News Hour on PBS, which 0:19:15.320 --> 0:19:17.960 I still do and on NPR, and all things considered, 0:19:18.160 --> 0:19:22.000 I was not a big impeach Clinton. Guy, I'm basically 0:19:22.040 --> 0:19:24.280 a believer. I'm sort of an older style of conservative 0:19:24.320 --> 0:19:28.439 that human nature is extremely complicated and flawed and a 0:19:28.440 --> 0:19:30.320 lot of people do a lot of horrible things, but 0:19:30.400 --> 0:19:34.600 they can still be served their purpose in society. Yeah, 0:19:35.040 --> 0:19:39.720 um um. Having said that, to turn it the other way, 0:19:39.880 --> 0:19:44.280 I definitely supported the war yellow Cake, all of it. 0:19:44.320 --> 0:19:50.960 And even even with all the valerie, all that hocus pocus, 0:19:51.040 --> 0:19:55.159 is still supported attacking Iraq. Yes, so, I basically, and 0:19:55.240 --> 0:19:58.119 I covered the Middle East a bunch. I basically thought, 0:19:58.760 --> 0:20:02.719 you drive through all towns in Jordan and Egypt and 0:20:02.760 --> 0:20:07.720 it's just deadly dull, and these people have no lives 0:20:07.800 --> 0:20:12.520 and no prospects because they live in stagnant societies overseen 0:20:12.600 --> 0:20:17.240 by oligarchs or worse, dictators in the case of some 0:20:17.760 --> 0:20:21.879 were absolutely true. But I thought, if that part of 0:20:21.880 --> 0:20:24.359 the region is ever going to be healthy, they have 0:20:24.520 --> 0:20:28.000 to have normal societies where young men and women can 0:20:28.119 --> 0:20:30.119 rise and have normal lives. And do you believe that 0:20:30.160 --> 0:20:33.359 in pursuit of having that normal society, in pursuit of 0:20:33.520 --> 0:20:37.800 because whenever anybody says they want to uh, this was about, 0:20:37.920 --> 0:20:41.040 you know, exporting democracy to an area and so forth. 0:20:41.280 --> 0:20:43.360 I mean, I support that in theory, but I think 0:20:43.359 --> 0:20:46.040 that in practice with the Bush administration, that was complete bullshit. 0:20:46.640 --> 0:20:48.239 Um they they had they I mean, I just for 0:20:48.280 --> 0:20:50.919 one I never for one second, I bet everything I 0:20:50.960 --> 0:20:53.720 own that Dick Cheney doesn't roll over in bed and 0:20:53.760 --> 0:20:58.680 his wife says, Dick, what's wrong, Darling, And Janey says, God, 0:20:58.720 --> 0:21:02.119 I can't sleep. I just I've got to export democracy 0:21:02.160 --> 0:21:05.399 to the Middle East. We just got to get this 0:21:05.480 --> 0:21:08.000