WEBVTT - Interview Only w/ James Bennet - Will American Democracy Survive Trump’s Presidency? 0:00:04.080 --> 0:00:07.360 Well, joining me now is somebody I've known personally and 0:00:07.400 --> 0:00:12.159 professionally a long time, a couple deck together in and 0:00:12.200 --> 0:00:18.000 around the Atlantic. It's James Bennett. He is currently the Lexington, 0:00:18.040 --> 0:00:21.520 a senior editor at The Economist. He writes the Lexington Column, 0:00:21.560 --> 0:00:25.120 basically what the Hell, the column that tells the rest 0:00:25.160 --> 0:00:26.960 of the English speaking world what the hell is going 0:00:26.960 --> 0:00:29.160 on in America? 0:00:29.600 --> 0:00:32.120 Perhaps, or at least that's the north star. That's the job. 0:00:32.159 --> 0:00:35.600 Is that fair, that's the aspiration. Yeah, it's great to 0:00:35.640 --> 0:00:37.599 see you, Chuck, and really nice to be with you. 0:00:37.880 --> 0:00:40.159 It's good to see you. I want to talk more 0:00:40.200 --> 0:00:43.479 about what's happening, but and then in sort of the 0:00:45.000 --> 0:00:48.199 role of America and what's happening around the world. But 0:00:48.240 --> 0:00:51.040 at some point I want to talk about how we 0:00:51.080 --> 0:00:54.040 all consume information, since you've been in so many parts 0:00:54.080 --> 0:00:56.560 of that debate as well, both at The New York 0:00:56.600 --> 0:01:00.280 Times at The Atlantic, and yeah, and then some look, 0:01:00.280 --> 0:01:03.840 this is a week where we saw we're taping here, 0:01:03.880 --> 0:01:05.720 this is going to hit on Monday. 0:01:05.760 --> 0:01:06.840 We're taping on a Thursday. 0:01:07.480 --> 0:01:10.440 We've had the big you know, essentially the global the 0:01:10.920 --> 0:01:14.760 meeting of global leaders that happens every September, and I 0:01:14.760 --> 0:01:17.280 guess the most striking thing is just how much of it. 0:01:17.800 --> 0:01:20.680 While the meeting took place in the United States, the 0:01:20.720 --> 0:01:22.920 President of the United States was the guy on the 0:01:22.920 --> 0:01:24.280 outside looking in, was he not? 0:01:25.280 --> 0:01:29.280 Yeah? Yeah, he and very much presenting himself that way, right, 0:01:29.440 --> 0:01:32.040 lecturing all the rest of the world on everything that 0:01:32.080 --> 0:01:37.319 they're doing wrong, and you know, attacking United Nations itself 0:01:37.360 --> 0:01:41.080 as a failing institution, which is the approach he's taken 0:01:41.120 --> 0:01:43.919 to a lot of institutions in the US. And as usual, 0:01:44.200 --> 0:01:48.800 he's not wrong in his critique in every respect, and 0:01:48.840 --> 0:01:51.120 it's hard to make the case that the UN has 0:01:51.160 --> 0:01:54.040 covered itself in glory in recent years in terms of 0:01:54.080 --> 0:01:58.920 solving global conflicts. As always, he pushed it pretty far 0:01:59.440 --> 0:02:05.160 and didn't necessarily offer a very clear alternative that seemed constructive. 0:02:05.560 --> 0:02:08.160 He came across in ways we've seen other sort of 0:02:09.200 --> 0:02:11.480 leaders who are trying to be outsiders, who are trying 0:02:11.480 --> 0:02:15.880 to go against the establishment. And yet as anti establishment 0:02:15.919 --> 0:02:18.280 as he sounded, I mean, the UN can't. 0:02:18.080 --> 0:02:19.520 Function without the United States. 0:02:19.600 --> 0:02:22.880 Most of these countries sort of are tied in to 0:02:22.960 --> 0:02:24.760 the United States in one way or the other. 0:02:24.840 --> 0:02:27.919 So while you know, I think back to. 0:02:28.040 --> 0:02:31.720 Like Hugo Chavez giving a crazy speech or the president 0:02:31.760 --> 0:02:34.320 of Iran. Right, And I'm not trying to say that 0:02:34.400 --> 0:02:40.080 Trump is like Hugo Chavez, but he's behaving the way 0:02:40.240 --> 0:02:44.920 a Hugo Chavez did, like seeing conspiracy and just attacking 0:02:44.919 --> 0:02:49.680 everybody around him and not believing there's anybody worth working 0:02:49.720 --> 0:02:55.200 with and all of that. But you know, I got 0:02:55.200 --> 0:02:58.919 these messages. Europe is still going, what the hell is 0:02:59.000 --> 0:03:01.560 going on here? And they still can't seem to figure 0:03:01.560 --> 0:03:05.359 it out. What my answer is, man, We're still trying 0:03:05.360 --> 0:03:07.919 to figure it out too, to those years. 0:03:08.200 --> 0:03:10.120 What do you say to that? Yeah, I mean, and 0:03:10.160 --> 0:03:13.240 there's a lot of muscle memory in that institution and 0:03:13.280 --> 0:03:15.600 in a lot of the states in that institution to 0:03:15.680 --> 0:03:18.480 look to the US for leadership. As you said, you know, 0:03:18.520 --> 0:03:21.239 we were instrumental in the creation of the United Nations 0:03:21.720 --> 0:03:25.920 and have been this central, the indispensable state in terms 0:03:25.960 --> 0:03:30.799 of maintaining what was understood to be the post war order. 0:03:31.960 --> 0:03:33.960 And Donald Trump doesn't have a lot of patience for 0:03:34.000 --> 0:03:39.080 any of that stuff. He's a bilateralist, not a multilateralist, 0:03:39.200 --> 0:03:43.240 and he's very concerned, you know, obviously with national interest 0:03:43.320 --> 0:03:48.800 as he perceives it. You know, he confuses everybody because 0:03:48.800 --> 0:03:51.720 people think he's an isolationist. He's not an isolationist, he's 0:03:52.400 --> 0:03:53.800 I think, I don't know if you feel he's the 0:03:53.800 --> 0:03:56.920 most interventionist president of my lifetime. 0:03:57.760 --> 0:04:01.360 He has no ideology other than transaction. Right, everything is 0:04:01.640 --> 0:04:05.800 it's just I look at it. He's he's an what's 0:04:05.840 --> 0:04:09.600 another word. It's not isolationists, and it's not internationalists. It 0:04:09.640 --> 0:04:11.360 really is sort of a Trump list. 0:04:11.520 --> 0:04:11.880 I don't know. 0:04:11.960 --> 0:04:15.080 I mean, it's always about him, right, if he can 0:04:15.120 --> 0:04:18.479 get enriched, or why is he intervening in Argentina because 0:04:18.520 --> 0:04:22.000 he's a political ally? Why does he care about free 0:04:22.000 --> 0:04:24.799 speech in Europe in one moment but doesn't care about 0:04:24.800 --> 0:04:28.599 a country's acting unilaterally in Brazil? Right, It's all through 0:04:28.680 --> 0:04:29.920 the prism of him. 0:04:30.480 --> 0:04:33.039 Yeah, I mean, a slightly more generous way to put 0:04:33.040 --> 0:04:34.960 that would be it's through what he perceives to be 0:04:35.000 --> 0:04:38.640 the national interest. But for him, there's no separation between 0:04:38.640 --> 0:04:42.160 the Trump interest and the national interest. So he if 0:04:42.160 --> 0:04:44.719 you're a friend of Donald Trump's, if you're Javier Malay 0:04:44.760 --> 0:04:48.040 in Argentina, he will rush to your rescue, you know, 0:04:48.360 --> 0:04:51.560 if you if you're if you're if you're Jay or 0:04:51.600 --> 0:04:57.359 Bosonaro in Brazil, He'll turn around and say, I respect sovereignty, 0:04:57.440 --> 0:05:00.600 I'm against intervention blah blah blah, but you ziling and 0:05:00.680 --> 0:05:03.280 proposed tariffs on you because I don't like what your 0:05:03.400 --> 0:05:06.120 justice system is doing to my buddy. So is that 0:05:06.160 --> 0:05:09.800 in the American national interest? I don't really understand how 0:05:09.880 --> 0:05:12.120 that is, but I think that's the story he tells 0:05:12.160 --> 0:05:14.520 himself and that his followers accept. 0:05:16.080 --> 0:05:18.240 One of the things that I find when I think 0:05:18.279 --> 0:05:22.680 about sort of where both you and I have lived professionally, 0:05:23.600 --> 0:05:28.960 a lot of those institutions, The Atlantic, the Times, NBC economists, 0:05:29.680 --> 0:05:30.320 there's this. 0:05:31.680 --> 0:05:33.719 You know, what are we seeing? 0:05:33.800 --> 0:05:39.880 Are we should we be sounding an alarm about the 0:05:40.000 --> 0:05:48.159 law losing the democracy or should we be less alarmist 0:05:48.440 --> 0:05:52.560 and more focused on the fact that the public doesn't 0:05:52.640 --> 0:05:55.200 like what's being sold right now by the leader right 0:05:55.240 --> 0:05:57.440 like you sort of see, Like I think sometimes we 0:05:57.560 --> 0:06:02.080 underestimate the voter in all of our handwringing about what 0:06:02.120 --> 0:06:04.479 Trump is doing in the moment, Like I think there's 0:06:04.480 --> 0:06:06.159 a you know, I can't tell you how many people 0:06:06.240 --> 0:06:08.680 say to me, well, you keep saying that the voter 0:06:08.760 --> 0:06:11.320 will eventually get it right, but he's going to cancel 0:06:11.360 --> 0:06:13.120 elections and so we're not going to be able to 0:06:13.160 --> 0:06:17.200 do this. Where are you on that scale of totally 0:06:17.240 --> 0:06:20.039 alarmed being ten, totally. 0:06:20.120 --> 0:06:25.080 Blase, being zero. I think it's the hardest thing for 0:06:25.160 --> 0:06:28.640 us as journalists right in the Trump era is calibrating 0:06:28.880 --> 0:06:33.240 that because you don't want to be hysterical. It said, well, 0:06:33.240 --> 0:06:35.000 you don't want to be hysterical, period. It's just not 0:06:35.200 --> 0:06:36.279 terribly constructive. 0:06:36.920 --> 0:06:39.040 Well, there's some news organizations out there that have been 0:06:39.080 --> 0:06:40.640 at a you know, to do the spinal tap thing, 0:06:40.800 --> 0:06:43.240 that are at eleven all the time. Yeah, my friends 0:06:43.279 --> 0:06:46.719 at the Bulwark, Oh bless them, man, every single day. 0:06:47.000 --> 0:06:51.080 This is the end, right, And you're like, is anybody listening? 0:06:51.360 --> 0:06:53.640 Yeah, and they look they do a lot of good work. 0:06:54.160 --> 0:06:56.520 There's also been a very good business and being either 0:06:56.560 --> 0:07:00.440 a total alarmist about Donald Trump or being totally against 0:07:00.480 --> 0:07:04.359 Donald Trump. And the number of journalism organizations that have 0:07:04.440 --> 0:07:06.800 managed to keep their poise and not be led down 0:07:06.839 --> 0:07:10.280 one path or the other is diminishing by the day. 0:07:11.120 --> 0:07:14.280 But some of that reflects reality in that, like the 0:07:14.320 --> 0:07:17.600 last couple of weeks, Chuck have worried me a lot, 0:07:17.760 --> 0:07:23.320 you know, like things got pretty dark again. Like with 0:07:23.400 --> 0:07:27.720 Donald Trump. It's so hard to tell what I actually 0:07:27.720 --> 0:07:30.720 wrote about this this week. You know, I'm really worried 0:07:30.760 --> 0:07:36.320 about the way Trump is changing the incentives of our 0:07:36.360 --> 0:07:41.040 politics right now, the prosecutions. You know, the more we 0:07:41.200 --> 0:07:45.520 see this turning political opponents into enemies and they'll claim 0:07:45.560 --> 0:07:49.200 the Democrats struck first. Whatever what he's doing is without precedent. 0:07:49.280 --> 0:07:54.520 Now for an American president Nixon era, the stakes become 0:07:54.560 --> 0:07:59.760 existential for holding onto power. For everybody in Donald Trump's 0:07:59.800 --> 0:08:02.000 govern right, they're going to be now at risk of 0:08:02.080 --> 0:08:04.800 prosecution if a Democrat comes in. There's no way not 0:08:04.840 --> 0:08:08.240 to think that's a possibility. And so these stakes that 0:08:08.280 --> 0:08:11.560 have been rising for years now for hyperpartisans on both 0:08:11.600 --> 0:08:13.880 sides feel to me like they're reaching a level that 0:08:14.080 --> 0:08:18.080 is really dangerous to the democracy. And so it just 0:08:18.120 --> 0:08:20.320 concerns me a lot. There's a long winded answer your 0:08:20.400 --> 0:08:24.000 question that you know, I think there's a non hysterical 0:08:24.040 --> 0:08:26.920 way to try to take people by the lapels and 0:08:27.000 --> 0:08:30.080 say this is a really really bad idea. 0:08:30.120 --> 0:08:34.520 Well, like I get I throw myself into into reform, right, Like, 0:08:34.800 --> 0:08:38.600 it's clear that if Trump got elected president, our system 0:08:38.720 --> 0:08:42.040 was breaking anyway. Right, Like, if the system had been functional, 0:08:42.120 --> 0:08:46.000 Donald Trump doesn't become president. So I do think, like, 0:08:46.160 --> 0:08:49.160 you know, the rational way to address this is saying, Okay, 0:08:49.200 --> 0:08:50.600 what is wrong with our institutions. 0:08:50.600 --> 0:08:53.199 They're not working. Let's take the justice system. 0:08:53.559 --> 0:08:56.840 The fact is in this, in the current way we 0:08:56.920 --> 0:09:01.439 conduct politics, you can't have the attorney general be a 0:09:01.480 --> 0:09:03.760 political a direct political appointment of the president. 0:09:04.200 --> 0:09:06.240 I think that's just we've got it. I actually think 0:09:06.280 --> 0:09:07.760 we need to figure out a different way. 0:09:08.040 --> 0:09:10.800 Maybe it's like the Federal Reserve, but a different way 0:09:10.880 --> 0:09:14.960 that there is a little distance between the where the 0:09:15.000 --> 0:09:19.480 president certainly nominates, but that doesn't necessarily fire at any 0:09:19.480 --> 0:09:19.920 one time. 0:09:19.920 --> 0:09:21.520 And we've got to create a. 0:09:21.559 --> 0:09:25.640 System that maybe staggers when different terms of the FBI 0:09:25.880 --> 0:09:26.840 deputy ags. 0:09:27.720 --> 0:09:28.679 Because what we're. 0:09:28.480 --> 0:09:30.480 Doing if we already had half the country, right, Donald 0:09:30.480 --> 0:09:33.120 Trump spent five years convincing half the country the justice 0:09:33.120 --> 0:09:37.360 system was rigged. Now he's rigging the justice system. That 0:09:37.440 --> 0:09:41.880 will in turn tell the other half, well, now it's rigged. Okay, 0:09:42.280 --> 0:09:45.600 doesn't matter when you believed it got rigged. Now we've 0:09:45.600 --> 0:09:47.600 got one hundred percent of people thinking the whole thing 0:09:47.640 --> 0:09:49.760 is rigged, and if you lose the rule of law. 0:09:49.640 --> 0:09:53.040 You lose your country. Yeah, you know, and you cite 0:09:53.080 --> 0:09:55.319 the Federal Reserve as the example, but of course that 0:09:55.440 --> 0:09:58.600 an institution that's now in the process before our eyes 0:09:58.800 --> 0:09:59.960 of being. 0:10:00.760 --> 0:10:02.839 This is such an important moment. I think this is 0:10:03.240 --> 0:10:06.160 this is the single most important moment for the Supreme 0:10:06.160 --> 0:10:08.079 Court yet. Right, We've had quite a few of them. 0:10:09.120 --> 0:10:12.160 But if if they let this Lisa Cook thing go through, 0:10:14.520 --> 0:10:17.840 that's a change in the in the in the unitary executive. 0:10:17.920 --> 0:10:22.600 I mean that that's there's no going back under this 0:10:22.760 --> 0:10:25.400 without constitutional amendments to fix this. 0:10:25.920 --> 0:10:28.520 Yeah, And what we've seen over and over again is 0:10:28.520 --> 0:10:31.719 there's a pretty strong majority on this court for the 0:10:31.760 --> 0:10:35.920 idea that the executive has a lot more power than 0:10:36.720 --> 0:10:41.600 the norms of American politics have allowed a president up 0:10:41.640 --> 0:10:42.160 till now. 0:10:42.480 --> 0:10:44.960 I am very I think Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Barrett are 0:10:44.960 --> 0:10:47.720 going to be fascinating on this. I think they're going 0:10:47.800 --> 0:10:53.560 to you know, they Roberts fairly or unfairly. He so 0:10:54.120 --> 0:10:56.440 it strikes me he's so determined not to have a 0:10:56.480 --> 0:10:59.680 constitutional crisis with with Trump that he's always looking for 0:10:59.720 --> 0:11:00.320 a way out. 0:11:00.440 --> 0:11:00.680 Right. 0:11:00.880 --> 0:11:04.800 He always postpones the confrontation, you know, like when he 0:11:04.920 --> 0:11:07.200 put a warning in there, he tried to tell Trump, 0:11:07.240 --> 0:11:10.120 don't do the fed thing. We're going to treat that differently. 0:11:10.400 --> 0:11:12.679 Well he did it anyway. We're going to see if 0:11:12.679 --> 0:11:14.720 they treat it differently. I think we know where Roberts 0:11:14.760 --> 0:11:17.720 is going. But does can he bring Barrett or Kevinaugh 0:11:17.720 --> 0:11:19.240 with him? That's what we're going to find out. 0:11:19.320 --> 0:11:22.400 Yeah. Yeah, Like his idol Marshall, who managed to manage 0:11:22.440 --> 0:11:25.520 his politics in a way that assured the independence of 0:11:25.559 --> 0:11:27.480 the Court but at the same time didn't piss the 0:11:27.520 --> 0:11:30.000 President off too much. I think he thinks he can 0:11:30.080 --> 0:11:33.840 navigate through this and I hope and preserve the legitimacy 0:11:33.880 --> 0:11:36.840 in the mid Court, I hope. So whether we're going 0:11:36.880 --> 0:11:39.120 to wind up with a radically I think we already 0:11:39.160 --> 0:11:42.560 are seeing a radical revision of what we've understood up 0:11:42.600 --> 0:11:45.440 till now to be the balance of powers, and of course, 0:11:45.480 --> 0:11:49.439 with the soup hine Congress not choosing to exercise any 0:11:49.480 --> 0:11:51.760 of its authority. I think the view from the Supreme 0:11:51.800 --> 0:11:54.160 Court is like Congress is supposed to be a coequal 0:11:54.200 --> 0:11:56.960 branch of government, not a bunch of White House interns. 0:11:57.400 --> 0:11:59.600 But what they're getting right now is White House interns 0:12:00.120 --> 0:12:03.400 can what you said about reform like that is the 0:12:03.480 --> 0:12:07.080 hopeful way and to imagine kind of the constructive outcome here, 0:12:07.160 --> 0:12:10.640 which is what happened after the Watergate era, you know, and. 0:12:10.520 --> 0:12:13.360 It also what happened after the Gilded Age, you know. 0:12:13.480 --> 0:12:13.800 R two. 0:12:13.840 --> 0:12:16.000 If you actually look at the two I've been I've 0:12:16.040 --> 0:12:18.760 been obsessed with looking think about when a lion's share 0:12:18.800 --> 0:12:21.440 of new constitutional amendments have happened in this country. They've 0:12:21.440 --> 0:12:24.640 really only like we basically had three chunks right right 0:12:24.679 --> 0:12:28.720 after the Civil War, right when we had another chunk 0:12:29.120 --> 0:12:33.640 basically between you know, nineteen ten and nineteen you know, forty, 0:12:34.160 --> 0:12:37.200 you know, and then we really haven't had any sinse arguably, 0:12:37.240 --> 0:12:40.160 you know, we've yessed the eighteen year olds to vote. 0:12:40.520 --> 0:12:42.440 I think the twenty eighth amendment has something to do 0:12:42.480 --> 0:12:44.880 with pay raises, which is a very like ourt gain 0:12:45.240 --> 0:12:46.199 one that's sitting there. 0:12:46.880 --> 0:12:50.120 So civil rights, I mean, all the environmental reforms and 0:12:50.320 --> 0:12:51.400 the way, but. 0:12:51.400 --> 0:12:55.040 They're not constitial amendments. Oh I'm sorry, constitutional I'm sorry. Yeah, no, no, no, no, 0:12:55.080 --> 0:12:58.000 that's what I mean. So if you look right like 0:12:58.240 --> 0:13:00.480 if you believe we're sort of in a simil, Like, 0:13:00.800 --> 0:13:03.240 I look at this period and it's sometimes I think 0:13:03.240 --> 0:13:05.720 it's the eighteen eighty sometimes I think it's the nineteen twenties. 0:13:06.160 --> 0:13:08.600 But actually that whole era is very similar. Right from 0:13:08.640 --> 0:13:12.120 about eighteen eighty to FDR. You know, we had a 0:13:12.160 --> 0:13:14.280 pandemic in the middle of it that made us go crazy. 0:13:14.320 --> 0:13:18.160 We did prohibition right after the pandemic. I now understand 0:13:18.160 --> 0:13:20.800 how that happened. Right, Look at how crazy we've gone 0:13:20.840 --> 0:13:23.480 after our pandit. You're like, oh, right, Like you know, 0:13:23.520 --> 0:13:25.679 prohibition has always been one of those things you're like, yeah, 0:13:26.040 --> 0:13:28.800 people bring up the pandemic, but until you experience a 0:13:28.840 --> 0:13:32.000 pandemic and watch the crazy, you're like, oh, that's how 0:13:32.040 --> 0:13:36.800 prohibition happened. Okay, I get it now. So that's where 0:13:36.800 --> 0:13:40.040 I do have some hope, right, is that we did right. 0:13:40.120 --> 0:13:43.760 The first reform of the media happened with the muckrakers, 0:13:43.840 --> 0:13:46.679 arguably in the early part of the twentieth century, and 0:13:46.720 --> 0:13:49.760 in some ways, I think what's happening now with our 0:13:49.960 --> 0:13:53.520 current media ecosystem is we're in the middle of a 0:13:54.040 --> 0:13:57.800 resorting of it and the muckrakers now are on YouTube. 0:13:58.480 --> 0:14:02.240 Yeah, it's interesting, right, I mean the Society of new 0:14:02.360 --> 0:14:05.600 Newspaper Editors was created in I think like nineteen twenty two, 0:14:06.080 --> 0:14:09.880 and that was the first effort to really professionalize the industry. 0:14:09.920 --> 0:14:12.000 It was partly coming out of this experience of World 0:14:12.040 --> 0:14:14.600 War One and feeling like we were being manipulated day 0:14:14.600 --> 0:14:17.319 by day by the government. We're confusing our readers and 0:14:17.320 --> 0:14:19.520 that's you know. One of their first principles was you 0:14:19.520 --> 0:14:22.640 need to separate news and opinion, and that sort of 0:14:23.080 --> 0:14:26.880 led to what then was this kind of golden age 0:14:27.320 --> 0:14:29.680 which may turn out, chuck, just to be an aberration, 0:14:30.240 --> 0:14:33.600 you know, that periodic idea of journalism in America, because 0:14:33.640 --> 0:14:35.840 before that it looked much more like what we're living 0:14:35.880 --> 0:14:38.360 with now, which is fragmentation and partisanship. 0:14:38.640 --> 0:14:42.040 Well, you know, one of my one of the questions 0:14:42.080 --> 0:14:43.760 I keep asking, right, you and I grew up in 0:14:43.800 --> 0:14:46.040 a we might have grown up in an outlier era. 0:14:46.360 --> 0:14:48.280 Yeah, right. I think about the fall of. 0:14:48.240 --> 0:14:52.000 The Berlin Wall, and I think about the Cold War, 0:14:52.040 --> 0:14:53.560 And now I look back on the Cold War and 0:14:53.600 --> 0:14:56.400 realize what a stabilizing force it was for our two parties. 0:14:56.960 --> 0:15:01.720 It kept the isolationist extremists and the right the socialists 0:15:01.760 --> 0:15:08.280 on the left. We're kept from power by sort of 0:15:08.320 --> 0:15:10.840 the the you know, I think sort of the focus 0:15:10.880 --> 0:15:14.200 on the Soviet Union, the focus on the fight for 0:15:14.480 --> 0:15:19.840 you know, essentially for protecting democracy. And I do wonder 0:15:19.880 --> 0:15:22.520 if you, you know, go I express it this way. 0:15:22.840 --> 0:15:25.320 Six of our seven presidential elections a century have been 0:15:25.360 --> 0:15:28.360 decided by five points or less. We only had five 0:15:28.360 --> 0:15:31.160 in the entire twentieth century decided by five points or less. 0:15:31.560 --> 0:15:33.080 But in the nineteenth. 0:15:32.560 --> 0:15:38.720 Century it's something like ten of We had two periods 0:15:38.720 --> 0:15:40.560 of like five or six in a row that were 0:15:40.560 --> 0:15:42.960 decided by five points or less. So in some ways 0:15:43.000 --> 0:15:48.360 our is our natural state in this country polarization. And 0:15:48.480 --> 0:15:54.360 the period basically from Truman to i'd say nine to eleven, right, 0:15:54.440 --> 0:15:56.920 you sort of like a ten year from Truman to Clinton, right, 0:15:56.960 --> 0:16:00.760 Truman to the two thousand election, where we only had 0:16:01.000 --> 0:16:03.600 two elections decided by five points or less in that 0:16:03.640 --> 0:16:07.680 period of time. Sixty eight sixties have three Sidney, sixty eight, 0:16:07.720 --> 0:16:08.680 sixty and seventy six. 0:16:11.160 --> 0:16:14.560 Is that the outlier period of American history? Yeah? And 0:16:14.600 --> 0:16:16.160 you know, it's strange about it, Chuck. It's going to 0:16:16.200 --> 0:16:18.200 sound so stupid when I say this, but I've actually 0:16:18.200 --> 0:16:20.640 gone to political sciences to try to explain this, and 0:16:20.640 --> 0:16:24.680 I can't get a good explanation. Why is it, Why 0:16:25.800 --> 0:16:30.080 is it that there's this kind of homeostatic quality, thermostatic 0:16:30.160 --> 0:16:33.400 quality that we do remain so evenly divided, You know, 0:16:33.400 --> 0:16:35.920 why wouldn't it go to sixty forty at some point 0:16:36.080 --> 0:16:39.720 or seventy we come back to it, just it's split 0:16:39.800 --> 0:16:42.000 down the middle with knife's heads. And some of that 0:16:42.120 --> 0:16:46.000 is now jerrymandering and redistricting and so forth, but kind 0:16:46.040 --> 0:16:50.960 of knife's edge margins in the House, and for the 0:16:51.000 --> 0:16:53.840 presidency being traded back and forth, you'd think at one 0:16:53.840 --> 0:16:55.480 point it would tip one way or the other. 0:16:55.720 --> 0:16:57.680 Well, because it did tip. That is the way it 0:16:57.720 --> 0:17:00.640 worked during the Cold War argument, Yeah, we would have 0:17:00.680 --> 0:17:05.880 these periods where no Democrats waive, no Republican Reagan revolution, right, 0:17:05.920 --> 0:17:09.000 that sort of thing. One theory I've had is that 0:17:09.040 --> 0:17:12.280 our two parties are too big, but we have stuffed 0:17:12.280 --> 0:17:14.880 We're really a four party country, stuffed into a two 0:17:14.920 --> 0:17:19.240 party system because of the duopoly. And so where there's 0:17:19.320 --> 0:17:22.840 really been a ton of change is within the two parties. Right, 0:17:22.920 --> 0:17:27.920 the two parties vacillate between pragmatism and their base. Right, 0:17:27.960 --> 0:17:30.680 they go back and forth between who's in charge of 0:17:30.720 --> 0:17:35.040 their party, and then that in turn sort of has 0:17:35.080 --> 0:17:38.240 sort of driven the other part. The other party almost 0:17:38.320 --> 0:17:40.679 reacts in the same way. The more pragmatic Republicans are, 0:17:40.720 --> 0:17:43.640 the more pragmatic Democrats are vice versa. Right, And now 0:17:43.680 --> 0:17:46.720 I do think you're seeing. I had a progressive friend 0:17:46.720 --> 0:17:48.200 of mine say to me the other day, I'm looking 0:17:48.200 --> 0:17:51.120 for my own Trump. Now I'm done trying to win 0:17:51.200 --> 0:17:54.520 from the ground up. And I went just a big sigh. 0:17:54.520 --> 0:17:57.760 You're like, oh boy, this is exactly my fear. Is 0:17:57.800 --> 0:18:02.080 that every political physics, he said, right, every action, you're 0:18:02.080 --> 0:18:03.760 going to get an equal in office of reaction. 0:18:04.040 --> 0:18:06.240 Yeah, And that's what I mean about the prosecutions. Now, 0:18:06.320 --> 0:18:09.159 it's like redistricting. It's it's just such an appetite in 0:18:09.160 --> 0:18:12.720 the Democratic Party. It's like if you talk about bipartisanship, 0:18:12.800 --> 0:18:15.399 if you talk about not if you talk about not 0:18:15.840 --> 0:18:21.280 responding in kind, that's considered like a weak and pathetic, 0:18:21.520 --> 0:18:24.639 And there's a huge appetite for, as you say, you know, 0:18:25.400 --> 0:18:27.800 among Democrats, for their own version of Trump. I think 0:18:27.840 --> 0:18:29.920 you're so right about the you know, the fall of 0:18:30.000 --> 0:18:33.080 Berlin Wall. It's like the Great crack up. And I 0:18:33.080 --> 0:18:35.400 don't think I certainly didn't appreciate it at the time 0:18:35.760 --> 0:18:38.600 that the nineties were this sort of wonderful time away. 0:18:38.800 --> 0:18:41.840 Since that literally there's our houseyon days where the nineties 0:18:41.840 --> 0:18:42.280 who knew? 0:18:42.560 --> 0:18:45.119 But you think in the way it's underwear, right like 0:18:45.160 --> 0:18:47.560 that you get in that election in ninety two, you 0:18:47.600 --> 0:18:51.560 get Ross Perrot and you get Buchanon, right, And there 0:18:51.840 --> 0:18:55.119 are these two strains that have become dominant, you know, 0:18:55.320 --> 0:19:00.440 in our politics. And it took some time, and then 0:19:00.480 --> 0:19:03.560 I think Donald Trump's recognition in some ways that all 0:19:03.640 --> 0:19:07.720 these institutions were a lot more fragile than they seemed. 0:19:07.960 --> 0:19:11.919 And you know, the tremendous dissatisfaction in the country, like 0:19:11.960 --> 0:19:15.720 we've had wrong track numbers for basically this whole century, 0:19:15.800 --> 0:19:18.040 right so far. Yeah, people have felt the governments on 0:19:18.080 --> 0:19:19.520 the wrong American. 0:19:19.400 --> 0:19:22.640 Well, and it's created And this is where I've been, 0:19:22.920 --> 0:19:26.119 you know, obsessively studying the nineteenth century election patterns because 0:19:27.080 --> 0:19:30.040 we've been voting against we have not voted you know, 0:19:30.040 --> 0:19:32.119 I think in O eight we voted for Obama. 0:19:32.800 --> 0:19:33.000 Right. 0:19:33.560 --> 0:19:36.399 Every other election has been a bit more or it 0:19:36.400 --> 0:19:39.159 felt like the last voters voted against right, they voted, 0:19:39.400 --> 0:19:41.800 they were they were clear what they didn't want. They 0:19:41.800 --> 0:19:43.560 weren't necessarily clear what they wanted, but they knew what 0:19:43.560 --> 0:19:46.280 they didn't want. And that really is the hallmark of 0:19:46.280 --> 0:19:49.600 those nineteenth century elections, every one of them, I mean 0:19:49.880 --> 0:19:53.480 between you know, we had we had seven presidents in 0:19:53.480 --> 0:19:56.879 twenty eight years, between Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln. In 0:19:56.960 --> 0:20:00.320 each one of them, in their own way, won by promising, well, 0:20:00.359 --> 0:20:02.080 they were going to try to this is how they 0:20:02.080 --> 0:20:03.760 were going to bring unity, and this is how they 0:20:03.760 --> 0:20:04.560 were going to do this. 0:20:04.680 --> 0:20:05.840 And you know, they were. 0:20:05.760 --> 0:20:08.520 All and it's very similar to what we're seeing today, 0:20:08.640 --> 0:20:12.600 just over a different issue, where each president is promising, 0:20:12.640 --> 0:20:14.320 you know, that they're going to be able to break 0:20:14.359 --> 0:20:16.520 this gridlock or they're going to be able to break 0:20:16.520 --> 0:20:23.639 this polarization, and you know, unfortunately, you know, the question 0:20:23.720 --> 0:20:25.520 really is are we going to get through this period. 0:20:25.720 --> 0:20:28.200 One of my favorite expressions is I'm short term pessimistic, 0:20:28.240 --> 0:20:30.639 long term optimistic. I'd just said the same thing in 0:20:30.720 --> 0:20:33.560 nineteen thirty nine, and I'd have been right, but the 0:20:33.600 --> 0:20:36.560 short term was really messy, right, But by nineteen forty 0:20:36.600 --> 0:20:40.879 six that was you could be really optimistic, and the 0:20:40.960 --> 0:20:43.280 question is do we get through this without violence, without 0:20:43.640 --> 0:20:46.439 mass violence, and only with isolated violence. 0:20:46.600 --> 0:20:49.000 And I think that's the you know, that's my sort 0:20:49.040 --> 0:20:50.960 of blunt way of putting it. So when you look 0:20:51.040 --> 0:20:53.720 back at the say, the progressive era, what do you 0:20:53.760 --> 0:20:56.520 see as creating the conditions for. 0:20:56.119 --> 0:21:05.119 For There's a reason results matter more than promises, just 0:21:05.280 --> 0:21:08.000 like there's a reason. Morgan and Morgan is America's largest 0:21:08.119 --> 0:21:10.880 injury law firm. 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