Speaker 1: Well, joining me now is somebody I've known personally and
Speaker 1: professionally a long time, a couple deck together in and
Speaker 1: around the Atlantic. It's James Bennett. He is currently the Lexington,
Speaker 1: a senior editor at The Economist. He writes the Lexington Column,
Speaker 1: basically what the Hell, the column that tells the rest
Speaker 1: of the English speaking world what the hell is going
Speaker 1: on in America?
Speaker 2: Perhaps, or at least that's the north star. That's the job.
Speaker 2: Is that fair, that's the aspiration. Yeah, it's great to
Speaker 2: see you, Chuck, and really nice to be with you.
Speaker 1: It's good to see you. I want to talk more
Speaker 1: about what's happening, but and then in sort of the
Speaker 1: role of America and what's happening around the world. But
Speaker 1: at some point I want to talk about how we
Speaker 1: all consume information, since you've been in so many parts
Speaker 1: of that debate as well, both at The New York
Speaker 1: Times at The Atlantic, and yeah, and then some look,
Speaker 1: this is a week where we saw we're taping here,
Speaker 1: this is going to hit on Monday.
Speaker 2: We're taping on a Thursday.
Speaker 1: We've had the big you know, essentially the global the
Speaker 1: meeting of global leaders that happens every September, and I
Speaker 1: guess the most striking thing is just how much of it.
Speaker 1: While the meeting took place in the United States, the
Speaker 1: President of the United States was the guy on the
Speaker 1: outside looking in, was he not?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, he and very much presenting himself that way, right,
Speaker 2: lecturing all the rest of the world on everything that
Speaker 2: they're doing wrong, and you know, attacking United Nations itself
Speaker 2: as a failing institution, which is the approach he's taken
Speaker 2: to a lot of institutions in the US. And as usual,
Speaker 2: he's not wrong in his critique in every respect, and
Speaker 2: it's hard to make the case that the UN has
Speaker 2: covered itself in glory in recent years in terms of
Speaker 2: solving global conflicts. As always, he pushed it pretty far
Speaker 2: and didn't necessarily offer a very clear alternative that seemed constructive.
Speaker 1: He came across in ways we've seen other sort of
Speaker 1: leaders who are trying to be outsiders, who are trying
Speaker 1: to go against the establishment. And yet as anti establishment
Speaker 1: as he sounded, I mean, the UN can't.
Speaker 2: Function without the United States.
Speaker 1: Most of these countries sort of are tied in to
Speaker 1: the United States in one way or the other.
Speaker 2: So while you know, I think back to.
Speaker 1: Like Hugo Chavez giving a crazy speech or the president
Speaker 1: of Iran. Right, And I'm not trying to say that
Speaker 1: Trump is like Hugo Chavez, but he's behaving the way
Speaker 1: a Hugo Chavez did, like seeing conspiracy and just attacking
Speaker 1: everybody around him and not believing there's anybody worth working
Speaker 1: with and all of that. But you know, I got
Speaker 1: these messages. Europe is still going, what the hell is
Speaker 1: going on here? And they still can't seem to figure
Speaker 1: it out. What my answer is, man, We're still trying
Speaker 1: to figure it out too, to those years.
Speaker 2: What do you say to that? Yeah, I mean, and
Speaker 2: there's a lot of muscle memory in that institution and
Speaker 2: in a lot of the states in that institution to
Speaker 2: look to the US for leadership. As you said, you know,
Speaker 2: we were instrumental in the creation of the United Nations
Speaker 2: and have been this central, the indispensable state in terms
Speaker 2: of maintaining what was understood to be the post war order.
Speaker 2: And Donald Trump doesn't have a lot of patience for
Speaker 2: any of that stuff. He's a bilateralist, not a multilateralist,
Speaker 2: and he's very concerned, you know, obviously with national interest
Speaker 2: as he perceives it. You know, he confuses everybody because
Speaker 2: people think he's an isolationist. He's not an isolationist, he's
Speaker 2: I think, I don't know if you feel he's the
Speaker 2: most interventionist president of my lifetime.
Speaker 1: He has no ideology other than transaction. Right, everything is
Speaker 1: it's just I look at it. He's he's an what's
Speaker 1: another word. It's not isolationists, and it's not internationalists. It
Speaker 1: really is sort of a Trump list.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's always about him, right, if he can
Speaker 1: get enriched, or why is he intervening in Argentina because
Speaker 1: he's a political ally? Why does he care about free
Speaker 1: speech in Europe in one moment but doesn't care about
Speaker 1: a country's acting unilaterally in Brazil? Right, It's all through
Speaker 1: the prism of him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, a slightly more generous way to put
Speaker 2: that would be it's through what he perceives to be
Speaker 2: the national interest. But for him, there's no separation between
Speaker 2: the Trump interest and the national interest. So he if
Speaker 2: you're a friend of Donald Trump's, if you're Javier Malay
Speaker 2: in Argentina, he will rush to your rescue, you know,
Speaker 2: if you if you're if you're if you're Jay or
Speaker 2: Bosonaro in Brazil, He'll turn around and say, I respect sovereignty,
Speaker 2: I'm against intervention blah blah blah, but you ziling and
Speaker 2: proposed tariffs on you because I don't like what your
Speaker 2: justice system is doing to my buddy. So is that
Speaker 2: in the American national interest? I don't really understand how
Speaker 2: that is, but I think that's the story he tells
Speaker 2: himself and that his followers accept.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I find when I think
Speaker 1: about sort of where both you and I have lived professionally,
Speaker 1: a lot of those institutions, The Atlantic, the Times, NBC economists,
Speaker 1: there's this.
Speaker 2: You know, what are we seeing?
Speaker 1: Are we should we be sounding an alarm about the
Speaker 1: law losing the democracy or should we be less alarmist
Speaker 1: and more focused on the fact that the public doesn't
Speaker 1: like what's being sold right now by the leader right
Speaker 1: like you sort of see, Like I think sometimes we
Speaker 1: underestimate the voter in all of our handwringing about what
Speaker 1: Trump is doing in the moment, Like I think there's
Speaker 1: a you know, I can't tell you how many people
Speaker 1: say to me, well, you keep saying that the voter
Speaker 1: will eventually get it right, but he's going to cancel
Speaker 1: elections and so we're not going to be able to
Speaker 1: do this. Where are you on that scale of totally
Speaker 1: alarmed being ten, totally.
Speaker 2: Blase, being zero. I think it's the hardest thing for
Speaker 2: us as journalists right in the Trump era is calibrating
Speaker 2: that because you don't want to be hysterical. It said, well,
Speaker 2: you don't want to be hysterical, period. It's just not
Speaker 2: terribly constructive.
Speaker 1: Well, there's some news organizations out there that have been
Speaker 1: at a you know, to do the spinal tap thing,
Speaker 1: that are at eleven all the time. Yeah, my friends
Speaker 1: at the Bulwark, Oh bless them, man, every single day.
Speaker 1: This is the end, right, And you're like, is anybody listening?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they look they do a lot of good work.
Speaker 2: There's also been a very good business and being either
Speaker 2: a total alarmist about Donald Trump or being totally against
Speaker 2: Donald Trump. And the number of journalism organizations that have
Speaker 2: managed to keep their poise and not be led down
Speaker 2: one path or the other is diminishing by the day.
Speaker 2: But some of that reflects reality in that, like the
Speaker 2: last couple of weeks, Chuck have worried me a lot,
Speaker 2: you know, like things got pretty dark again. Like with
Speaker 2: Donald Trump. It's so hard to tell what I actually
Speaker 2: wrote about this this week. You know, I'm really worried
Speaker 2: about the way Trump is changing the incentives of our
Speaker 2: politics right now, the prosecutions. You know, the more we
Speaker 2: see this turning political opponents into enemies and they'll claim
Speaker 2: the Democrats struck first. Whatever what he's doing is without precedent.
Speaker 2: Now for an American president Nixon era, the stakes become
Speaker 2: existential for holding onto power. For everybody in Donald Trump's
Speaker 2: govern right, they're going to be now at risk of
Speaker 2: prosecution if a Democrat comes in. There's no way not
Speaker 2: to think that's a possibility. And so these stakes that
Speaker 2: have been rising for years now for hyperpartisans on both
Speaker 2: sides feel to me like they're reaching a level that
Speaker 2: is really dangerous to the democracy. And so it just
Speaker 2: concerns me a lot. There's a long winded answer your
Speaker 2: question that you know, I think there's a non hysterical
Speaker 2: way to try to take people by the lapels and
Speaker 2: say this is a really really bad idea.
Speaker 1: Well, like I get I throw myself into into reform, right, Like,
Speaker 1: it's clear that if Trump got elected president, our system
Speaker 1: was breaking anyway. Right, Like, if the system had been functional,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump doesn't become president. So I do think, like,
Speaker 1: you know, the rational way to address this is saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: what is wrong with our institutions.
Speaker 2: They're not working. Let's take the justice system.
Speaker 1: The fact is in this, in the current way we
Speaker 1: conduct politics, you can't have the attorney general be a
Speaker 1: political a direct political appointment of the president.
Speaker 2: I think that's just we've got it. I actually think
Speaker 2: we need to figure out a different way.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's like the Federal Reserve, but a different way
Speaker 1: that there is a little distance between the where the
Speaker 1: president certainly nominates, but that doesn't necessarily fire at any
Speaker 1: one time.
Speaker 2: And we've got to create a.
Speaker 1: System that maybe staggers when different terms of the FBI
Speaker 1: deputy ags.
Speaker 2: Because what we're.
Speaker 1: Doing if we already had half the country, right, Donald
Speaker 1: Trump spent five years convincing half the country the justice
Speaker 1: system was rigged. Now he's rigging the justice system. That
Speaker 1: will in turn tell the other half, well, now it's rigged. Okay,
Speaker 1: doesn't matter when you believed it got rigged. Now we've
Speaker 1: got one hundred percent of people thinking the whole thing
Speaker 1: is rigged, and if you lose the rule of law.
Speaker 2: You lose your country. Yeah, you know, and you cite
Speaker 2: the Federal Reserve as the example, but of course that
Speaker 2: an institution that's now in the process before our eyes
Speaker 2: of being.
Speaker 1: This is such an important moment. I think this is
Speaker 1: this is the single most important moment for the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court yet. Right, We've had quite a few of them.
Speaker 1: But if if they let this Lisa Cook thing go through,
Speaker 1: that's a change in the in the in the unitary executive.
Speaker 1: I mean that that's there's no going back under this
Speaker 1: without constitutional amendments to fix this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And what we've seen over and over again is
Speaker 2: there's a pretty strong majority on this court for the
Speaker 2: idea that the executive has a lot more power than
Speaker 2: the norms of American politics have allowed a president up
Speaker 2: till now.
Speaker 1: I am very I think Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Barrett are
Speaker 1: going to be fascinating on this. I think they're going
Speaker 1: to you know, they Roberts fairly or unfairly. He so
Speaker 1: it strikes me he's so determined not to have a
Speaker 1: constitutional crisis with with Trump that he's always looking for
Speaker 1: a way out.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: He always postpones the confrontation, you know, like when he
Speaker 1: put a warning in there, he tried to tell Trump,
Speaker 1: don't do the fed thing. We're going to treat that differently.
Speaker 1: Well he did it anyway. We're going to see if
Speaker 1: they treat it differently. I think we know where Roberts
Speaker 1: is going. But does can he bring Barrett or Kevinaugh
Speaker 1: with him? That's what we're going to find out.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Like his idol Marshall, who managed to manage
Speaker 2: his politics in a way that assured the independence of
Speaker 2: the Court but at the same time didn't piss the
Speaker 2: President off too much. I think he thinks he can
Speaker 2: navigate through this and I hope and preserve the legitimacy
Speaker 2: in the mid Court, I hope. So whether we're going
Speaker 2: to wind up with a radically I think we already
Speaker 2: are seeing a radical revision of what we've understood up
Speaker 2: till now to be the balance of powers, and of course,
Speaker 2: with the soup hine Congress not choosing to exercise any
Speaker 2: of its authority. I think the view from the Supreme
Speaker 2: Court is like Congress is supposed to be a coequal
Speaker 2: branch of government, not a bunch of White House interns.
Speaker 2: But what they're getting right now is White House interns
Speaker 2: can what you said about reform like that is the
Speaker 2: hopeful way and to imagine kind of the constructive outcome here,
Speaker 2: which is what happened after the Watergate era, you know, and.
Speaker 1: It also what happened after the Gilded Age, you know.
Speaker 2: R two.
Speaker 1: If you actually look at the two I've been I've
Speaker 1: been obsessed with looking think about when a lion's share
Speaker 1: of new constitutional amendments have happened in this country. They've
Speaker 1: really only like we basically had three chunks right right
Speaker 1: after the Civil War, right when we had another chunk
Speaker 1: basically between you know, nineteen ten and nineteen you know, forty,
Speaker 1: you know, and then we really haven't had any sinse arguably,
Speaker 1: you know, we've yessed the eighteen year olds to vote.
Speaker 1: I think the twenty eighth amendment has something to do
Speaker 1: with pay raises, which is a very like ourt gain
Speaker 1: one that's sitting there.
Speaker 2: So civil rights, I mean, all the environmental reforms and
Speaker 2: the way, but.
Speaker 1: They're not constitial amendments. Oh I'm sorry, constitutional I'm sorry. Yeah, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's what I mean. So if you look right like
Speaker 1: if you believe we're sort of in a simil, Like,
Speaker 1: I look at this period and it's sometimes I think
Speaker 1: it's the eighteen eighty sometimes I think it's the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 1: But actually that whole era is very similar. Right from
Speaker 1: about eighteen eighty to FDR. You know, we had a
Speaker 1: pandemic in the middle of it that made us go crazy.
Speaker 1: We did prohibition right after the pandemic. I now understand
Speaker 1: how that happened. Right, Look at how crazy we've gone
Speaker 1: after our pandit. You're like, oh, right, Like you know,
Speaker 1: prohibition has always been one of those things you're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: people bring up the pandemic, but until you experience a
Speaker 1: pandemic and watch the crazy, you're like, oh, that's how
Speaker 1: prohibition happened. Okay, I get it now. So that's where
Speaker 1: I do have some hope, right, is that we did right.
Speaker 1: The first reform of the media happened with the muckrakers,
Speaker 1: arguably in the early part of the twentieth century, and
Speaker 1: in some ways, I think what's happening now with our
Speaker 1: current media ecosystem is we're in the middle of a
Speaker 1: resorting of it and the muckrakers now are on YouTube.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting, right, I mean the Society of new
Speaker 2: Newspaper Editors was created in I think like nineteen twenty two,
Speaker 2: and that was the first effort to really professionalize the industry.
Speaker 2: It was partly coming out of this experience of World
Speaker 2: War One and feeling like we were being manipulated day
Speaker 2: by day by the government. We're confusing our readers and
Speaker 2: that's you know. One of their first principles was you
Speaker 2: need to separate news and opinion, and that sort of
Speaker 2: led to what then was this kind of golden age
Speaker 2: which may turn out, chuck, just to be an aberration,
Speaker 2: you know, that periodic idea of journalism in America, because
Speaker 2: before that it looked much more like what we're living
Speaker 2: with now, which is fragmentation and partisanship.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, one of my one of the questions
Speaker 1: I keep asking, right, you and I grew up in
Speaker 1: a we might have grown up in an outlier era.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right. I think about the fall of.
Speaker 1: The Berlin Wall, and I think about the Cold War,
Speaker 1: And now I look back on the Cold War and
Speaker 1: realize what a stabilizing force it was for our two parties.
Speaker 1: It kept the isolationist extremists and the right the socialists
Speaker 1: on the left. We're kept from power by sort of
Speaker 1: the the you know, I think sort of the focus
Speaker 1: on the Soviet Union, the focus on the fight for
Speaker 1: you know, essentially for protecting democracy. And I do wonder
Speaker 1: if you, you know, go I express it this way.
Speaker 1: Six of our seven presidential elections a century have been
Speaker 1: decided by five points or less. We only had five
Speaker 1: in the entire twentieth century decided by five points or less.
Speaker 2: But in the nineteenth.
Speaker 1: Century it's something like ten of We had two periods
Speaker 1: of like five or six in a row that were
Speaker 1: decided by five points or less. So in some ways
Speaker 1: our is our natural state in this country polarization. And
Speaker 1: the period basically from Truman to i'd say nine to eleven, right,
Speaker 1: you sort of like a ten year from Truman to Clinton, right,
Speaker 1: Truman to the two thousand election, where we only had
Speaker 1: two elections decided by five points or less in that
Speaker 1: period of time. Sixty eight sixties have three Sidney, sixty eight,
Speaker 1: sixty and seventy six.
Speaker 2: Is that the outlier period of American history? Yeah? And
Speaker 2: you know, it's strange about it, Chuck. It's going to
Speaker 2: sound so stupid when I say this, but I've actually
Speaker 2: gone to political sciences to try to explain this, and
Speaker 2: I can't get a good explanation. Why is it, Why
Speaker 2: is it that there's this kind of homeostatic quality, thermostatic
Speaker 2: quality that we do remain so evenly divided, You know,
Speaker 2: why wouldn't it go to sixty forty at some point
Speaker 2: or seventy we come back to it, just it's split
Speaker 2: down the middle with knife's heads. And some of that
Speaker 2: is now jerrymandering and redistricting and so forth, but kind
Speaker 2: of knife's edge margins in the House, and for the
Speaker 2: presidency being traded back and forth, you'd think at one
Speaker 2: point it would tip one way or the other.
Speaker 1: Well, because it did tip. That is the way it
Speaker 1: worked during the Cold War argument, Yeah, we would have
Speaker 1: these periods where no Democrats waive, no Republican Reagan revolution, right,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. One theory I've had is that
Speaker 1: our two parties are too big, but we have stuffed
Speaker 1: We're really a four party country, stuffed into a two
Speaker 1: party system because of the duopoly. And so where there's
Speaker 1: really been a ton of change is within the two parties. Right,
Speaker 1: the two parties vacillate between pragmatism and their base. Right,
Speaker 1: they go back and forth between who's in charge of
Speaker 1: their party, and then that in turn sort of has
Speaker 1: sort of driven the other part. The other party almost
Speaker 1: reacts in the same way. The more pragmatic Republicans are,
Speaker 1: the more pragmatic Democrats are vice versa. Right, And now
Speaker 1: I do think you're seeing. I had a progressive friend
Speaker 1: of mine say to me the other day, I'm looking
Speaker 1: for my own Trump. Now I'm done trying to win
Speaker 1: from the ground up. And I went just a big sigh.
Speaker 1: You're like, oh boy, this is exactly my fear. Is
Speaker 1: that every political physics, he said, right, every action, you're
Speaker 1: going to get an equal in office of reaction.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's what I mean about the prosecutions. Now,
Speaker 2: it's like redistricting. It's it's just such an appetite in
Speaker 2: the Democratic Party. It's like if you talk about bipartisanship,
Speaker 2: if you talk about not if you talk about not
Speaker 2: responding in kind, that's considered like a weak and pathetic,
Speaker 2: And there's a huge appetite for, as you say, you know,
Speaker 2: among Democrats, for their own version of Trump. I think
Speaker 2: you're so right about the you know, the fall of
Speaker 2: Berlin Wall. It's like the Great crack up. And I
Speaker 2: don't think I certainly didn't appreciate it at the time
Speaker 2: that the nineties were this sort of wonderful time away.
Speaker 1: Since that literally there's our houseyon days where the nineties
Speaker 1: who knew?
Speaker 2: But you think in the way it's underwear, right like
Speaker 2: that you get in that election in ninety two, you
Speaker 2: get Ross Perrot and you get Buchanon, right, And there
Speaker 2: are these two strains that have become dominant, you know,
Speaker 2: in our politics. And it took some time, and then
Speaker 2: I think Donald Trump's recognition in some ways that all
Speaker 2: these institutions were a lot more fragile than they seemed.
Speaker 2: And you know, the tremendous dissatisfaction in the country, like
Speaker 2: we've had wrong track numbers for basically this whole century,
Speaker 2: right so far. Yeah, people have felt the governments on
Speaker 2: the wrong American.
Speaker 1: Well, and it's created And this is where I've been,
Speaker 1: you know, obsessively studying the nineteenth century election patterns because
Speaker 1: we've been voting against we have not voted you know,
Speaker 1: I think in O eight we voted for Obama.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Every other election has been a bit more or it
Speaker 1: felt like the last voters voted against right, they voted,
Speaker 1: they were they were clear what they didn't want. They
Speaker 1: weren't necessarily clear what they wanted, but they knew what
Speaker 1: they didn't want. And that really is the hallmark of
Speaker 1: those nineteenth century elections, every one of them, I mean
Speaker 1: between you know, we had we had seven presidents in
Speaker 1: twenty eight years, between Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln. In
Speaker 1: each one of them, in their own way, won by promising, well,
Speaker 1: they were going to try to this is how they
Speaker 1: were going to bring unity, and this is how they
Speaker 1: were going to do this.
Speaker 2: And you know, they were.
Speaker 1: All and it's very similar to what we're seeing today,
Speaker 1: just over a different issue, where each president is promising,
Speaker 1: you know, that they're going to be able to break
Speaker 1: this gridlock or they're going to be able to break
Speaker 1: this polarization, and you know, unfortunately, you know, the question
Speaker 1: really is are we going to get through this period.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite expressions is I'm short term pessimistic,
Speaker 1: long term optimistic. I'd just said the same thing in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine, and I'd have been right, but the
Speaker 1: short term was really messy, right, But by nineteen forty
Speaker 1: six that was you could be really optimistic, and the
Speaker 1: question is do we get through this without violence, without
Speaker 1: mass violence, and only with isolated violence.
Speaker 2: And I think that's the you know, that's my sort
Speaker 2: of blunt way of putting it. So when you look
Speaker 2: back at the say, the progressive era, what do you
Speaker 2: see as creating the conditions for.
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Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: Back then, you had, you know, you had a lot
Speaker 1: of movements that were sort of in place for a while. Right,
Speaker 1: you had the movement to get women the right to
Speaker 1: vote that had been sort of percolating for a while.
Speaker 1: Also the temperance movement right that was percolating for some time.
Speaker 1: So you had some So you had the muck rakers.
Speaker 1: That's the problem of what we're missing. There isn't really
Speaker 1: a big movement for reform. I'm surprised there hasn't been
Speaker 1: a bigger call for a constitutional convention, for instance, like
Speaker 1: where we arguably are due for one. But there's always
Speaker 1: there's this weird fear on the left of one. You
Speaker 1: have more interest on it from those you know, from
Speaker 1: people on the right than you do on the left,
Speaker 1: when arguably, if you look at the biggest grievances of
Speaker 1: the left, almost all of their grievances are only going
Speaker 1: to be solved with constitutional amendments. There are no laws
Speaker 1: that are going to solve this when it comes to
Speaker 1: campaign money or some of the existential things.
Speaker 2: That they care about. And so you're right.
Speaker 1: Other than the conditions being similar, right where you have
Speaker 1: a new economy, we were going from an agrarian to
Speaker 1: an industrial. Now we're going from industrial to this to
Speaker 1: this new economy. There are these five or six lords, right,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of you know, the robber barons of today.
Speaker 1: So in that sense, I think, and you you know,
Speaker 1: we don't have our Teddy Roosevelt yet, but I do
Speaker 1: think people but I do think people are looking for
Speaker 1: him or her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know. The idea of it. Honestly,
Speaker 2: it's the it's so hard to imagine a productive constitutional
Speaker 2: convention in a country.
Speaker 1: That's the pass legislation anymore.
Speaker 2: Like it's all one big, beautiful mail because it's the
Speaker 2: only way to do it. Stuff everything into you know.
Speaker 2: But you know, it's it's funny.
Speaker 1: It's like, I also, look, I think one of the
Speaker 1: to solve this is to double the size of the
Speaker 1: House uncap the House, which ironically was shut down in
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 2: It was a dispute over by.
Speaker 1: The way, you want to talk about our polarization. The
Speaker 1: reason we stopped expanding the House is because they disagreed
Speaker 1: on which states should get the extra members of Congress
Speaker 1: back in nineteen twenty. They couldn't resolve it for an
Speaker 1: entire decade, so they just capped it and said, o R,
Speaker 1: We're going to wash our hands of this in nineteen thirty.
Speaker 1: And you know, now, I mean, now we're stuck with
Speaker 1: this system where the irony is the Senate is now
Speaker 1: more apt you know, is the state legislatures will decide
Speaker 1: control of the House of Representatives while the people decide
Speaker 1: the Senate, when the founders actually had it the other
Speaker 1: way around. Yeah, yeah, let me ask you this on
Speaker 1: because you have to you look at sort of America
Speaker 1: through the the economist has to look at it through
Speaker 1: a little bit more of an international prism. The last
Speaker 1: time we had sort of a protect a race, a
Speaker 1: protectionist race, if you will, it did end up.
Speaker 2: In a World war.
Speaker 1: Why why aren't there more people worried about this rise
Speaker 1: of Because nationalism and protectionism is contagious and we're already
Speaker 1: seeing it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we are seeing it. And no, I mean
Speaker 2: you know, the Economists has been terribly worried about this
Speaker 2: for quite a while, and there's been and you know
Speaker 2: that the Economists was founded in the middle of the
Speaker 2: nineteenth century to oppose tariffs in the UK. So this
Speaker 2: is particularly, you know, something subject it's obsessed with and
Speaker 2: you know, as a bunch off, if it wasn't for tariffs,
Speaker 2: the UK would still be an empire, right Well, I
Speaker 2: don't know. I think it might have caught up with them.
Speaker 2: Other issues might have cracked with them eventually.
Speaker 1: But perhaps, but look at we wouldn't have a country
Speaker 1: without UK tariffs.
Speaker 2: So God bless it's true. It's true, and the truth
Speaker 2: there is as you know, I mean, there have tariffs
Speaker 2: are you know, we've had tariffs imposed by for one
Speaker 2: reason or another. It's not nothing new under the sun
Speaker 2: in that sense. But what is it goes back to
Speaker 2: what we were talking about at the outset, is this
Speaker 2: idea that we're no longer living in what we understood
Speaker 2: to be the rules based international order after that war,
Speaker 2: you know, after World War Two, and each country is
Speaker 2: we're back to a kind of nineteenth century idea of
Speaker 2: great power struggle. And that's tremendously destabilizing, you know, and
Speaker 2: that's where it's a little harder to be a long
Speaker 2: term optimist because of what history has taught us about
Speaker 2: what happens when you no longer have systems that are
Speaker 2: capable of kind of because you know, people recognize that
Speaker 2: this sort of order served everybody better, and a trading
Speaker 2: environment in which you know, alls had a chance to
Speaker 2: rawse we've just a been and the we're in the process.
Speaker 2: I think of really backing away from those ideas well.
Speaker 1: I think when you combine that with the ease with
Speaker 1: which a medium sized power or even a small country
Speaker 1: can inflict major damage, right, the fact that you can
Speaker 1: essentially fight with robots, I mean the Clone war, you know,
Speaker 1: the Clone Wars, right, if you're a Star Wars fan,
Speaker 1: the Clone Wars are here. I mean I had Dexter
Speaker 1: folcns on and a couple a couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 1: and he was sounding the alarm about this change in
Speaker 1: warfare and just how And of course I've noticed over
Speaker 1: the last week where so more people are noticing, hey
Speaker 1: that the Russia Ukraine war is a drone war now
Speaker 1: and this is the future of warfare. And you know,
Speaker 1: Ukraine and Russia are able to what normally would be
Speaker 1: a reason to come to the negotiating table. You're running
Speaker 1: out of troops, you're running out of physical resources, human resources.
Speaker 1: If you don't need human resources to fight wars, you're
Speaker 1: more likely to fight wars.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no. And again in an environment where
Speaker 2: the US is asserting its ability to kill these suspected
Speaker 2: drug runners at sea with no due process whatsoever. It's
Speaker 2: it's tough political proposition. The politics are probably good for him.
Speaker 2: The long term consequences of that. For any idea that
Speaker 2: there are rules that govern our behavior, they weren't created
Speaker 2: for naive reasons. You know, they weren't created because we
Speaker 2: all believe people were angels. Quite the opposite, right, I know,
Speaker 2: it's because we knew they weren't, and you know they
Speaker 2: had their better angels that maybe coaxed out I chuck,
Speaker 2: you know this week, that's part of this tragedy in
Speaker 2: some ways of Donald Trump watching him at the UN
Speaker 2: ranting I'll use that word about immigration and excoriating all
Speaker 2: these nations for is like, refugee flows are a deep
Speaker 2: problem in the world right now, and it's not happening
Speaker 2: because people invited them in it's happening because of war instability,
Speaker 2: smartphones that help people navigate in ways they couldn't communication
Speaker 2: we didn't have. They are all sorts of forces driving this.
Speaker 2: And the Refugee Convention, which dates to nineteen fifty one,
Speaker 2: is totally out of date. Here is something the US
Speaker 2: could lead on, you know, like this is, this is
Speaker 2: and Donald Trump is actually, by virtue of his politics,
Speaker 2: is particularly well equipped to provide that leadership. But it's
Speaker 2: not going to happen.
Speaker 1: So for us, this problem, right, No, I mean, this
Speaker 1: is the problem. Like we kind of all know what
Speaker 1: our problems are, what American leader the role American leadership
Speaker 1: can play. But if the leader of America doesn't want
Speaker 1: to lead, what are you supposed to do?
Speaker 2: Right? Right?
Speaker 1: And that's you know that, for the life of me,
Speaker 1: he's always campaigning, he's never thinking about leading. He doesn't
Speaker 1: care if he's got a fifty percent job, right, let
Speaker 1: alone a sixty percent. I used to say, what made
Speaker 1: our twentieth century politics work is that we the incentive.
Speaker 1: Presidential incentives were to succeed, you had to be at
Speaker 1: a sixty percent approval, So you governed to get to
Speaker 1: sixty even if it meant you only won fifty, but
Speaker 1: you always tried to govern a little bit above your party,
Speaker 1: you know, and win over some people on the other side.
Speaker 2: And and you were rewarded for it.
Speaker 1: Politically, we have you know, I sort of I've been
Speaker 1: quoting a lot of Milton Friedman lately, where he famously said,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not about electing the right people, it's
Speaker 1: about having the right and bad people will do good
Speaker 1: things if the incentives are aligned correctly. And this gets
Speaker 1: it to what we really need are better incentives, not
Speaker 1: better people.
Speaker 2: But so, Seranda, what you're saying about Trump when you
Speaker 2: say he's always campaigning, that he's campaigning for his base
Speaker 2: because he has hacked our politics like he's understood good.
Speaker 2: That's what keeps him alive.
Speaker 1: Right, That's what keeps him politically alive and politically powerful.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: How is it that he has tamed the Republicans in
Speaker 1: Congress because he's convinced him.
Speaker 2: I'll go back to a quote I've quote quote Tom Cole.
Speaker 2: I've had this.
Speaker 1: I had a conversation with Tom Cole about this right
Speaker 1: after January six because he he had the most Tom
Speaker 1: Coles January sixth statement is the most incredible statement because
Speaker 1: it was a fascinating attempt at walking a tightrope. He said,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to vote to certify the election because
Speaker 1: my constituents don't want me to, and I'm in a
Speaker 1: representative democracy. He did not say it was right or wrong.
Speaker 1: He just simply said, I'm doing this because my constituents
Speaker 1: have asked me. And I said, and I went to
Speaker 1: him and I said, you know, you have you got
Speaker 1: I think it was in his district he got sixty
Speaker 1: four percent and Trump got sixty two. And Cole says
Speaker 1: to me, he goes, and if I oppost Trump, He's
Speaker 1: going to take his sixty two and I'll keep mine too.
Speaker 2: And you know, now, I love.
Speaker 1: Tom is a just one of He's just I've known
Speaker 1: him thirty years. You know what he was before he
Speaker 1: was a member of Congress or an elected of Fisher
Speaker 1: who is a pollster.
Speaker 2: So the guy is a very very much you're kind
Speaker 2: of guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but he but unfortunately I think he's thought, you know,
Speaker 1: he he he didn't want to take the risks, right,
Speaker 1: That's essentially what he was telling me, Hey, it's too
Speaker 1: risky and he's got control of the base, and that's
Speaker 1: what's broken about our politics? Right, if you control the
Speaker 1: base of the party, you can control your party even
Speaker 1: if a majority of the country doesn't want you.
Speaker 2: Like, think about this.
Speaker 1: You are the Beerau chief in Jerusalem, so let me
Speaker 1: let me throw a question at you that I enjoy
Speaker 1: more of a retal. But did we export our politics
Speaker 1: to Israel? Or did Israel export its politics to us?
Speaker 1: And here's how I frame it. Israel and the United
Speaker 1: States had the same issue. They've got a controversial leader
Speaker 1: that a majority of the public doesn't want as leader,
Speaker 1: but it's the only thing that majority agrees upon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's a parliamentary system versus a republic,
Speaker 2: right that we the democracy that we have. It feels
Speaker 2: like now we have the weaknesses of a parliamentary system
Speaker 2: without its strengths. But you look at Israel and you
Speaker 2: can see a politician who's hacked the parliamentary system too,
Speaker 2: which is vulnerable in exactly the same way. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think, you know, we've learned from each I guess
Speaker 2: who's who's who's learned from who. I think they've reciprocal reciprocally,
Speaker 2: you know, influenced one another.
Speaker 1: I just find it fascinating that Bibe is able to
Speaker 1: get stronger in his position, getting further away from the mainstream.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Again, he's had to do that, arguably to hold
Speaker 2: his coalition together. And it's reflected something that's happened in
Speaker 2: Israeli politics, which is that it has moved right as
Speaker 2: the coalition you know, for some resolution, a peaceful resolutionist
Speaker 2: conflict has basically collapsed over the course of the last
Speaker 2: twenty five years. But it's true. Yeah, I mean it's not.
Speaker 2: It's interesting, it it does. You know, it's similar, and
Speaker 2: that you wind up within a system that's supposed to
Speaker 2: theoretically drive you towards majority resolution of problems, you wind
Speaker 2: up with kind of a minoritarian government, right, which is well,
Speaker 2: I think that's what we have right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we haven't had I mean, we've only had one
Speaker 1: president this century who's gotten over.
Speaker 2: Fifty percent of the vote. It was Obama twice. Right.
Speaker 2: It's a shocking fact, isn't it. It's just yeah, Trump
Speaker 2: got close this time, but he didn't make it. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's really remarkable. And you're right, there's no longer the
Speaker 2: same incentive to aim for sixty percent.
Speaker 1: And I don't know how to change. You know, it's funny.
Speaker 1: The answer is, we got to change our incentive structures. Okay,
Speaker 1: how do we do this?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: It's easy to say, how do you do it? I mean,
Speaker 1: I think partisan primaries probably aren't you Getting rid of
Speaker 1: those are probably an answer. But you know, say, just
Speaker 1: saying you want to get rid of partisan primaries doesn't
Speaker 1: mean it's going to happen overnight and basically change the
Speaker 1: rules in fifty different states to pull that on.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, governors still have to campaign that way. Right,
Speaker 2: I'm trying to think who within our system.
Speaker 1: It's also the one place where voters still vote person
Speaker 1: over party, Right, How else do you explain a Larry
Speaker 1: Hogan in Maryland and a Laura Kelly in Kansas. Right,
Speaker 1: But nobody expected Larry Hogan to win a Senate seat,
Speaker 1: And I promise you Laura Kelly's probably not winning a
Speaker 1: Senate seat in Kansas, right, right, Right, So we do
Speaker 1: see it there as voters, and that you know, That's
Speaker 1: why I do think. Now here's something Remember maybe I'm
Speaker 1: rambling here, but we had two of the most effective
Speaker 1: late twentieth century presidents were both former governors, Reagan and Clinton,
Speaker 1: who both did strive for sixty percent ism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no accident, right right now?
Speaker 1: And then the other and then I always say the
Speaker 1: other president that had some success at being bipartisan was Eisenhower,
Speaker 1: who was from the military and kind of a political
Speaker 1: You know, that's not an accident either, right, Our more
Speaker 1: partisan or polarizing presidents have been senators or Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, George H. W. Bush looks better and better
Speaker 2: in rent spect. Didn't win a second term. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 2: and because it turns out he wasn't a Reaganite, right
Speaker 2: because the Conservatives, as they suspected all along, right, they
Speaker 2: were right.
Speaker 1: Now, they were always right, you know, he was not
Speaker 1: he was, he was you know, he was a little close.
Speaker 2: You know, he was in the the Dewey wing of
Speaker 2: the party. I guess he wanted to go backwards like that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: or now we would call it the Bush wing of
Speaker 2: the party. There was a bushwing in a Reagan wing,
Speaker 2: and they were and a true internationalist, you know, at
Speaker 2: that moment when the wall was coming down, very concerned
Speaker 2: with you know, strengthening you know.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's funny about H. W. Bush's presidency.
Speaker 1: I always thought that if Biden had modeled himself off
Speaker 1: of H. W. Bush, that that was the presidency. You
Speaker 1: know that you can have a successful one term a
Speaker 1: if you kind of behave that way, and obviously Biden
Speaker 1: never did. But he had an opportunity to be the
Speaker 1: Democrats version of that. He just you know, perhaps it
Speaker 1: was just he was too late in his life to
Speaker 1: figure out how to.
Speaker 2: Do it and that so that mistake was what going
Speaker 2: too far left or.
Speaker 1: Totally on misunderstanding the twenty twenty mandate twenty twenty election. Now,
Speaker 1: I think, I really think it's pretty obvious that the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty election was voters saying, I want off the
Speaker 1: roller of the Trump roller coaster.
Speaker 2: We knew that at the time. Of course, we didn't
Speaker 2: clean things downes.
Speaker 1: Please I'm tired. I feel like I'm throwing up all
Speaker 1: the time. I just right, get me off the roller coaster.
Speaker 1: And and instead, you know, somebody whispered in his ear
Speaker 1: that he could be FDR and he and he did.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is that the first two years of
Speaker 1: his presidency or just the just a colossal mistake, you know,
Speaker 1: just when you look back on it, just it is
Speaker 1: just opportunity that he had to bring the country together
Speaker 1: and he blew it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, really did. Yeah, he started inviting all those historians
Speaker 2: to the White House. You know Clinton did that too,
Speaker 2: and you want God knows, we want to learn from history.
Speaker 2: But if the point is to figure out how do
Speaker 2: I like compete with FDR and establish myself to be
Speaker 2: it feels like again you start creating some troubling incentives there.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: The minute you're trying to be more than one page
Speaker 1: in a history book as president is when you're going
Speaker 1: to blow it, then you because then you know you're
Speaker 1: going to be more than one page.
Speaker 2: But for all the wrong reasons. Yeah, yeah, overreach in Hubrews.
Speaker 2: Who's the I'm curious.
Speaker 1: Let's do a little bit of media landscape here in
Speaker 1: the last last ten minutes here, who do you believe
Speaker 1: you're talking to when you write for the Lexington at
Speaker 1: the Economist. Who's your who's your reader? Who is our reader?
Speaker 1: I mean we have a global readership, you know, in
Speaker 1: the English language. They are English, the English language.
Speaker 2: Mostly English language, And yeah, I think that's fair to say.
Speaker 2: Increasingly we're translating the stuff and to other languages. Is
Speaker 2: one of the things that AI is going to allow
Speaker 2: us to do at greater scale, which is excited, exciting
Speaker 2: things right, all right, And by the yeah, not just
Speaker 2: text but podcast, video, all that stuff. All of a sudden,
Speaker 2: there's a real opportunity to get my view is really
Speaker 2: high quality, you know, reporting in front of a lot
Speaker 2: more people. So that's that's good. But I don't, you know,
Speaker 2: it's a mix. It's a we do a podcast checks
Speaker 2: and balance and do a reader questions periodically or listener
Speaker 2: questions periodically, And it's always thrilling to me to here.
Speaker 2: Like there's a guy, you know, he listens to the
Speaker 2: podcast when he's driving his tractor on his farm in Australia.
Speaker 2: Like it's how he keeps in touch with his combine,
Speaker 2: you know, in his cabin. It's how he keeps in
Speaker 2: touch with American politics a little bit. So for what
Speaker 2: I do, I guess I'm thinking about how, as you said,
Speaker 2: how do you We have a very big readership in
Speaker 2: North America too, so it's a tricky thing, like, you know,
Speaker 2: how do you sound you know, relevant enough to readers
Speaker 2: who are pretty steeped in our politics, but still you know,
Speaker 2: accessible to people who aren't.
Speaker 1: Are you the first American that has done the Lexington
Speaker 1: or is the Lexington always.
Speaker 2: Been written by somebody you know? Yeah, I am the
Speaker 2: first American. I don't think that's a good thing. Actually,
Speaker 2: I mean it's something they made an announcement about when
Speaker 2: I got the when I you know, I was grateful
Speaker 2: to get the gig. I think one of the strengths
Speaker 2: of the column has always been that it is written
Speaker 2: by an outsider.
Speaker 1: Well, the tell call understood is better than any American. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I completely agree.
Speaker 2: For me, it's been a great opportunity to get some detachment.
Speaker 2: And my editors are fabulous and they have you know,
Speaker 2: they've kept their poise through this nutty period, and so
Speaker 2: it's you know, our internal editorial conversations are outside of
Speaker 2: the mosh pit, you know. But I do think it's
Speaker 2: always been, you know, a strength of the of the column.
Speaker 2: And there's we're not byline. The column is up byline.
Speaker 2: My joke is, I'm like the dreadpire Roberts. You know,
Speaker 2: every there's different one of us every but I, as
Speaker 2: an American, I've had I've tried to work hard to
Speaker 2: honor that bad spirit, which is not just about funny spellings,
Speaker 2: you know, which is also part of it all. Those
Speaker 2: OUs and.
Speaker 1: So that that you can just let the that's something
Speaker 1: that a I can fix. Hey like this put this
Speaker 1: in the form of the of the economists. Fine, oh
Speaker 1: you're all every oh, we'll have a U after it now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but it is it is, it is. I
Speaker 2: do try to try to think about that about a
Speaker 2: global audience when I'm writing.
Speaker 1: That's what I was curious, is like, is it is
Speaker 1: it You're trying to explain America to the world or
Speaker 1: explaining the world to America.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, at this at this time, Chuck, Honestly, I'm
Speaker 2: out there trying to explain it to myself most of
Speaker 2: the time, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, now, by the way, I've been calling myself
Speaker 1: a political anthropologist, because that's I kind of feel more
Speaker 1: that way now than anything else. I'm trying to understand
Speaker 1: how these various American tribes interact with each.
Speaker 2: Other, which is why this should be a great time
Speaker 2: to be a journalist, right, Oh, I completely in that sense. Yes,
Speaker 2: I agree that this is why we got into the business.
Speaker 2: And if you're curious and you understand, want to understand
Speaker 2: what's going on. There's been a lot going on that
Speaker 2: I don't understand, and so I'm, you know, I'm trying
Speaker 2: to use the column for that purpose.
Speaker 1: But if you had more resources to cover America, what
Speaker 1: would where would you be focused and what would you
Speaker 1: be focused on?
Speaker 2: I would be spending a lot more time out in
Speaker 2: the country than I am. I'm trying to travel a
Speaker 2: fair amount. I haven't been able to the last couple
Speaker 2: of months. I've been in, you know, in DC and
Speaker 2: New York too much, but I would. And it's it's
Speaker 2: a little hard when you're writing on a very regular
Speaker 2: pace to get out spend the time you want to
Speaker 2: spend reporting. But this is this is where I've found
Speaker 2: my you know, the most value kind of you know,
Speaker 2: for in my own work is just I you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, it's such an obvious thing to say, but
Speaker 2: it's spending time in Texas and Florida and Ohio and
Speaker 2: I want to get I haven't gotten to Alaska. I
Speaker 2: want to get to Alaska. It's and getting a better
Speaker 2: sense of how people are processing the national politics in
Speaker 2: their own lives. I don't know, how do you answer
Speaker 2: that question, Well.
Speaker 1: I definitely think it's it's just more of everything outside
Speaker 1: of Washington and New York, right, Like I think this
Speaker 1: is and unfortunately legacy media is stuck shrinking and so
Speaker 1: therefore they have fewer resources, so they're gonna you know,
Speaker 1: I feel like they're retreating from this. The upside of
Speaker 1: the sub stacification of journalism is that in theory, you've
Speaker 1: got people living in Kansas City or Lansing that are
Speaker 1: going to then try to start their own reporting outlets
Speaker 1: or their contributions. And I think there's I mean, I
Speaker 1: do because I do view journalism's problem as I do it,
Speaker 1: I view it through the prism of Craiglist, which was,
Speaker 1: you know, as soon as we made classifieds free, we
Speaker 1: just we ended up gutting the foundation of journalism in America,
Speaker 1: which was local journalism. If you actually read to tokfol
Speaker 1: he was fascinated by how fascinated we were by local politics.
Speaker 1: Well why did that exist? Because every community had not
Speaker 1: one paper, every community had three papers, two papers, you know,
Speaker 1: depending on some places for papers, you know, you might
Speaker 1: have a black newspaper, a democratic newspaper, a Republican newspaper,
Speaker 1: and a wig paper or you know something else.
Speaker 2: Right, And.
Speaker 1: When we lost that local politics, it it really it
Speaker 1: gutted the foundation of journal So it's clear we have
Speaker 1: to go local. Now I'm trying to see if there's
Speaker 1: a way to scale it, you know, is there a
Speaker 1: way to both incubate it and scale it and and
Speaker 1: share some of the resources in order to get some
Speaker 1: of these locals to thrive. But ultimately, you know, we've
Speaker 1: we you know when we talk about our lost communities,
Speaker 1: right that we've we've lost community. Well, the thing one
Speaker 1: of the community glues used to be the local paper.
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying we can bring newspapers back, but
Speaker 1: if if you unbundle the newspaper and think about all
Speaker 1: the different things the paper did for different aspects of
Speaker 1: the community, then you, as a publisher of a local
Speaker 1: information ecosystem, ought to be thinking about how do I
Speaker 1: give something to every segment of my community so that
Speaker 1: they all come back to this one entity called the
Speaker 1: local paper, whether it's high school box scores or places
Speaker 1: to save money on on groceries, or know where the
Speaker 1: concerts are tonight, or micro forecasting. Because you have the
Speaker 1: tools to do this, we know it's going to you know,
Speaker 1: rain harder in this zip code than it is in
Speaker 1: this zip code. And oh, by the way, your city,
Speaker 1: here's who's corrupt on your city council.
Speaker 2: I just I could not agree more. I just think
Speaker 2: and it's a hard story to tell because it's it's
Speaker 2: a story, as we'd say, about a dog that's not barking, right,
Speaker 2: It's about something that's gone away. But when you think
Speaker 2: about the devastation at the local level to wipe out,
Speaker 2: and many of them are ghost newspaper ones that are
Speaker 2: left are barely staffed. People aren't able to go out
Speaker 2: into the streets and interview anybody. There's no stories of corruption,
Speaker 2: the poddles that aren't getting filled, the stories that just
Speaker 2: make you empathize with your neighbor because of what they're
Speaker 2: going through. Oh that's gone. There's some really good experiments
Speaker 2: out there, but chuck. You know one thing, but journalism
Speaker 2: for journalists. That's my biggest complaint, which is most of
Speaker 2: the local experiments are journalism. But posts. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: by that, do you mean that there's too much media coverage.
Speaker 1: Or no, it's more of you know, they're they're they're
Speaker 1: you know, they're covering stories of marginalized communities.
Speaker 2: But oh yeah, oh they're not tough driven y, Yes,
Speaker 2: they're justice stuff or whatever, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: They're all as this as a friend of mine says,
Speaker 1: you know they you know, they all got drunk watching
Speaker 1: Woodward and Bernstein, you know, and all the president's men.
Speaker 2: You know, Well, that's a curse of our business generally
Speaker 2: right now. I think it has been for many years. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you're totally right. Sorry, I misunderstood what you were saying. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and the other thing, you know, it drives me crazy, Chuck,
Speaker 2: and you and I spent a lot of time covering
Speaker 2: white houses, and I'm not faulting anybody for doing that,
Speaker 2: but you look at the white images from the White
Speaker 2: House briefing room. You would not imagine this was an
Speaker 2: industry and existential crisis. You know, with any kind of
Speaker 2: resource constraints. That room is more packed than it has
Speaker 2: ever been. Right, And I even when I you know
Speaker 2: that is not you'll learning a lot in the way. Again,
Speaker 2: I'm not faulting anybody. I've done that well. But but
Speaker 2: this goes to this.
Speaker 1: I always say, you know the problem with journalism in America,
Speaker 1: there's too many journalists in Washington and not enough in America.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, yeah, Ok, And.
Speaker 1: I benefited from that, I always joke. I mean, I
Speaker 1: didn't start local I started at the hotline. You know,
Speaker 1: I was able to shortcut my way. I didn't have
Speaker 1: to go to the city the city hall beat to
Speaker 1: the state house beat, and you know, that's there are
Speaker 1: times that I think that I regret I didn't have
Speaker 1: that route. Then again, I got to where I got
Speaker 1: without that route. But maybe it's because I was benefiting
Speaker 1: from a system that was atrophying at the time, which
Speaker 1: it was right. Newspapers were consolidating in the nineties. Local
Speaker 1: political reporters are getting laid off left and right, and
Speaker 1: so the people doing politics were all in Washington.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, yeah, you could still have a good business
Speaker 2: at the local level, and there was still a lot
Speaker 2: of good local newspapers, many family owned. Still there was,
Speaker 2: but the content consolidation was underway. The hard part of
Speaker 2: it is it's not bad faith. It's business and technology,
Speaker 2: the incentives of our business, and that period we were
Speaker 2: talking about earlier, which now to me looks like a
Speaker 2: golden age. People might disagree, but the rise of objectivity
Speaker 2: and all of that was driven by I cited propaganda
Speaker 2: and journalists coming together to try to do better, which
Speaker 2: is true, but it was really about business and technology,
Speaker 2: you know, you're able to reach a mass audience for
Speaker 2: the first time. In the late nineteenth century with the
Speaker 2: invention of the rotary press and radio and television, all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, what had been a subscriber business became
Speaker 2: an advertising based business. When you're running a big advertising
Speaker 2: business at scale, you don't want to alienate by your
Speaker 2: readers to be broad. They want to be broad, right,
Speaker 2: So that meant just the facts, you know, it meant
Speaker 2: a wide range of opinion. If you're going to do opinion,
Speaker 2: it meant separating news and opinions so you could be trusted.
Speaker 2: All of that was collapsed by the Internet. And now
Speaker 2: you can build a really successful business serving a niche
Speaker 2: what it wants to hear. And if you're going to
Speaker 2: build a subscriber business, by the way, best way to
Speaker 2: hold onto your scribers. Reassure them you see the world
Speaker 2: the way they do.
Speaker 1: And I mean, you know you were a victim of that.
Speaker 1: I felt, frankly, I had I had a show on
Speaker 1: on a cable channel that that we had to move
Speaker 1: because the audience was just we weren't ideal, we weren't
Speaker 1: ideologically aligned.
Speaker 2: You know, how did you hear that from the audience?
Speaker 2: Can I ask you that, like, what was that feedback loop?
Speaker 1: Like it was all negativity and just like just just
Speaker 1: like it was just hate. You know, how dare you
Speaker 1: put a Republican on? Yeah, you know that sort of thing. Now, Look,
Speaker 1: I don't I didn't want to spend our time talking
Speaker 1: about your manifesto, But your manifesto I could have changed
Speaker 1: out the name of your organization and put the name
Speaker 1: of my organization and it would have read.
Speaker 2: It very similar.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm sorry, Chuck, you know, and it just was like,
Speaker 3: you know, you sort of knew and and you and
Speaker 3: now everybody sees it, by the way, yeah, right, like
Speaker 3: everybody now has this.
Speaker 1: Much clearer picture of what you were going through at
Speaker 1: the time. I think what I went through in different ways,
Speaker 1: what some of us were going through. I mean, I
Speaker 1: do I think the you know, we got to this
Speaker 1: moment this week. I always say there were two when
Speaker 1: you think about the Jimmy Kimmel situation, there's sort of
Speaker 1: two original sins here. Original sin one was bullying the
Speaker 1: social media companies to deep platform Trump. It is it
Speaker 1: is literally the Biff gets the gambling book back to
Speaker 1: the future too moment. I mean, if I could go
Speaker 1: back and change that moment and he and he stays
Speaker 1: on Twitter. I think he punches himself. I think what
Speaker 1: Mitch McConnell was betting on, Right, we all know Mitch
Speaker 1: McConnell was betting on Trump was going to punch himself
Speaker 1: out and people were going to tire of it and
Speaker 1: move on. Except we kicked him out of the main stream,
Speaker 1: so nobody if people saw those with social posts and
Speaker 1: a consistent basis in twenty twenty one through twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: I don't think he's the nominated the Republican Party.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But the second original sin was was Iger paying
Speaker 1: off the George Stephanopuloslawsit like that, just that triggered everything
Speaker 1: that we've been dealing with over the last nine months.
Speaker 2: And other people start folding too.
Speaker 1: And because folded, right, it took one to cave, and
Speaker 1: the minute they got one to cave, and then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, everybody lot whatever whatever was remaining in
Speaker 1: people's spines collapsed.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I was thinking about this when you were talking
Speaker 2: about the Tom Cole example. You know what you need
Speaker 2: is people who are willing to say And by the way,
Speaker 2: I was okay with losing because it mattered, you know,
Speaker 2: that's right, And I cared about public service. I cared
Speaker 2: about it. Then, Mike, I disagreed my constituents. So I
Speaker 2: led my constituents, you know, rather than I just did
Speaker 2: what they wanted me to do, which is, you know,
Speaker 2: a way to try to make the compromise. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And that's how you wind up with very few Liz
Speaker 2: Cheney's and they wind up where she is, and it
Speaker 2: just that's how you get this cascade of kind.
Speaker 4: Of of of of cowardice. Really, and yeah, the media thing, Chuck,
Speaker 4: the thing about it, Like I think you and I
Speaker 4: both were. We were acting in accordance to what we
Speaker 4: saw as our journalistic principles and what was good journalism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we were products of the eighties and nineties.
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna lie. I know, I still I believe
Speaker 2: in it. I believe in it too. I think we're right.
Speaker 2: But the thing is, even for the activists coming after us,
Speaker 2: not this is not my problem to think about. But
Speaker 2: it was stupid politics too, you know, it's bad journalism
Speaker 2: and stupid politics, and it empowered Donald. It empowered exactly
Speaker 2: the phenomenon. They said, they were so freaked out about right.
Speaker 1: You don't get an extremist unless you keep the dreamist
Speaker 1: from having a sec you know.
Speaker 2: Wanted to trade everybody on the other side as an extremist,
Speaker 2: Like you said, you can't have a Republican on Like really,
Speaker 2: we're living in a country where you can't hear from
Speaker 2: a member of the other you know.
Speaker 1: How dare you platform this person? And you're just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and that was the craziness about January sixth.
Speaker 1: Nobody told me I shouldn't interview the president of Iran,
Speaker 1: but I was told I shouldn't put on Kevin McCarthy
Speaker 1: because he didn't certify January sixth.
Speaker 2: Seriously, Yeah, yeah, yeah, well that's I mean, at the
Speaker 2: New York Times, I could publish Vladimir Putin, you know,
Speaker 2: I could publish, but I could publish I did. This
Speaker 2: is what I feel. I mean, a talent ban leader,
Speaker 2: but Tom Cotton was beyond the pale, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and again I mean at febreell moments and people are
Speaker 2: but you know, we as journalists, it's in those times
Speaker 2: that we particularly like we owe it to people to
Speaker 2: keep our heads.
Speaker 1: Are you jealous of some people may not know that
Speaker 1: your brother is Michael Bennett, the Senator who wants to
Speaker 1: run for governor. Are you jealous that he's leaving the
Speaker 1: SLA Corridor.
Speaker 2: I am envious that he gets to spend all that
Speaker 2: time in Colorado.
Speaker 1: I had a senator. I had a senator I'm going
Speaker 1: to leave the name out of it. Who's just crestfallen
Speaker 1: that he's running for governor. Always wanted him to replace Schumer,
Speaker 1: and now they don't know who the best person is
Speaker 1: to replace Schumer. There's a real movement to try. Schumer
Speaker 1: would be gone if there was an obvious answer, and
Speaker 1: there's plenty of Democratic senators that just know that he's
Speaker 1: sort of he sort of he's punched out right. We
Speaker 1: can You know, it doesn't matter what you think whether
Speaker 1: Schumer was was once good at this whatever. You know,
Speaker 1: when somebody you know, you know, when Joe Flacco shouldn't
Speaker 1: be your starting quarterback anymore, it doesn't mean he didn't
Speaker 1: win you a Super Bowl once. But your brother was
Speaker 1: the consensus candidate, and now there's no consensus candidate.
Speaker 2: Huh uh. I don't know how to respond that. It's
Speaker 2: nice to your nice things said about one's brother.
Speaker 1: I know, I hear you look I don't want to.
Speaker 1: I put you on the spot. And I know I
Speaker 1: don't write about Colorado or about him. I have a
Speaker 1: real I mean I have He is a conflict for me.
Speaker 1: He is my brother, and uh, you know I I.
Speaker 2: I think sometimes we make two. You know. It's like
Speaker 2: I feel like you two.
Speaker 1: Have always handled that very professionally, and I don't know
Speaker 1: why that's so difficult for some other entities in our business.
Speaker 2: You know what it's worth on that front. Let me close.
Speaker 2: But the Senate like these you know, sorry, yeah, no,
Speaker 2: go ahead, No, we were gonna say about the Senate.
Speaker 2: I mean again, not speaking about him or his No, right,
Speaker 2: that is just like these these these uh, there are
Speaker 2: a lot of people leave in the Senate right now.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't blame them.
Speaker 1: I don't blame And Lisa Murkowski is apparently thinking about
Speaker 1: running for governor.
Speaker 2: I don't blamer Yeah.
Speaker 1: Right, You've already got at least three senators, Marsha Blackburn,
Speaker 1: your brother, Tommy Tupperville, so you might add Lisa Murkowski
Speaker 1: to that. You can't get anything done in the Senate,
Speaker 1: and even if you're a committee chair, only two people
Speaker 1: matter in the Senate. John Puhne and Chuck Schumer. And
Speaker 1: that's the problem. They control the floor, they control amendments,
Speaker 1: they control, and it is you know, this goes back
Speaker 1: to the dysfunctional Congress where you know, we grew up
Speaker 1: in an era where committee chairs mattered. You know, Chuck
Speaker 1: Grassley and Max Bacchus would never have allowed any tariff
Speaker 1: policy that looks like today get through the Senate back
Speaker 1: in the eighties and nineties just wouldn't have happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In the House too, I mean there
Speaker 2: were giants, you know, it's committee chairs like the Dan
Speaker 2: rustin Kowskis of.
Speaker 1: The committee chairs were taken seriously, well, if the bill
Speaker 1: can get through committee, then it's got to be brought.
Speaker 2: To the floor. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a different model
Speaker 2: of leadership that we've really moved away from, you know,
Speaker 2: a more distributed model in both chambers. And it hasn't
Speaker 2: made our politics more efficient.
Speaker 1: No, And this is why I mean, I sort of joke,
Speaker 1: out of the five hundred and thirty five elected members
Speaker 1: of Congress, we only have four that do anything, and
Speaker 1: the other five hundred and thirty one are elected pundits
Speaker 1: if they.
Speaker 2: Choose to be. I mean look at Ted Cruz. He
Speaker 2: has a weekly podcast. Yeah. Should he have that much time? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean he does.
Speaker 1: That's the thing, Like he has that much This is
Speaker 1: not this is like, it's not like he's not doing
Speaker 1: his job right there?
Speaker 2: What is there to do? Although he used it for
Speaker 2: good last week when he came out and criticized the
Speaker 2: rare Republican saying, I thought when he criticized the administration
Speaker 2: over the Jimmy Kimmel situation, he showed refreshing consistency.
Speaker 1: I thought, well, this is where I think that Trump
Speaker 1: is actually acquiring a lot of I don't think people
Speaker 1: realize that. You know, with tariffs, he's quiet got Republicans
Speaker 1: upset with him in the Midwest, right your grass leaves,
Speaker 1: you're Jerry Moran's you know, the Farm States on free speech.
Speaker 1: Now it's got Ted Cruz and David McCormick sided with
Speaker 1: him on the extra judicial killings of the boats in
Speaker 1: Venezuela Ran Paul right, like, you know, that's how coalitions
Speaker 1: break apart, and he's thrown so many different things out.
Speaker 1: You know, his coalition is not they're basically united on
Speaker 1: culture and that's it. But he's cracking it himself by
Speaker 1: his sort of sloppy, sort of sloppy implementation of these
Speaker 1: various ideas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and which is one of the big questions as
Speaker 2: we start looking at the twenty twenty and god knows
Speaker 2: what kind of state the country is going to be
Speaker 2: in and all the rest of it. But if you know,
Speaker 2: is there another figure that can hold this really pretty
Speaker 2: and coherent, you know, set of policies and impulses and
Speaker 2: emotions and grievances together. The way he has history shows no.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, we just talked about Bush forty one, Right,
Speaker 1: he couldn't hold together Reagan's coalition for arguably more than
Speaker 1: two years. Al Gore couldn't even do it for one election. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Joe Biden basically got to the presidency on the fumes
Speaker 1: of the Obama coalition, right, that didn't hold together. It's
Speaker 1: I would argue that in the TV era, the successful
Speaker 1: presidents have all been cults of personality in some form, right, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton,
Speaker 1: even w Obama Trump, And the failures have been the
Speaker 1: ones that couldn't be cults of personalities. Carter, Bush forty one, Biden, Johnson, Right,
Speaker 1: Like you know, the ones that didn't know how to it,
Speaker 1: you know, for one reason or the other.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's becoming a cultural figure as much as
Speaker 2: a political one in a sense, you know. And and
Speaker 2: that's where I feel. And again one of the great
Speaker 2: failures that it just seems crazy in retrospect how little
Speaker 2: he communicated with the American people as opposed to this
Speaker 2: always on presidency that we now have. And I feel
Speaker 2: like that's just the world we're going to be living in.
Speaker 2: You know that to succeed politically, you have to dominate
Speaker 2: attention the way Donald Trump does. It's what Gavin Newsom
Speaker 2: is banking on now, right. Ye.
Speaker 1: Like, I'm a skeptic, but I you know, I always
Speaker 1: say I'm a skeptic, but I have an open mind
Speaker 1: on these things. Like you know, you never know what
Speaker 1: works in America until you see it happen. But it
Speaker 1: is interesting to watch Newsom try to basically do do
Speaker 1: the Trump thing and have more success. He's having more
Speaker 1: success at it than I expected.
Speaker 2: Yeah, me too too.
Speaker 1: Well, All right, do you guys publish every week or
Speaker 1: is it every other week?
Speaker 2: It feels like every week where every day, Chuck, It's
Speaker 2: like everybody else but the but they call it a paper,
Speaker 2: by the way, not a magazine. I got a different
Speaker 2: word for every thing, but this it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's thinner than magazine paper.
Speaker 2: But we published weekly. Yeah, my column comes out weekly.
Speaker 1: Hey, is David Bradley's dream of The Atlantic becoming a
Speaker 1: competitor the Economists actually come true?
Speaker 2: Uh? You know you view them as a direct competitor. Now.
Speaker 2: I don't think you'd have to ask my boss that question.
Speaker 2: I think she would say.
Speaker 1: Or a semaphore, Yeah, I mean everybody, everybody competes with
Speaker 1: the semaphore definitely.
Speaker 2: Right. Wants to be kind of a global digital publication
Speaker 2: reaching an audience, much like we do, and everybody's in.
Speaker 2: We are in a competition of all against all for attention. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of I think there is a lot
Speaker 2: of overlap. I mean, you know, having been you know,
Speaker 2: working with you at the Atlantic back in the day,
Speaker 2: it's DNA is so fundamentally American, you know, and it
Speaker 2: remains that way today.
Speaker 1: But you remember, I mean at north Star, for David
Speaker 1: was always the Economist. Yeah, that was his north Star,
Speaker 1: not the New Yorker. That's what people don't know.
Speaker 2: But The Economist was founded by that collective of writers
Speaker 2: back in the eighteen fifties to promote the American idea.
Speaker 2: That was the whole concept. And I think you're doing
Speaker 2: an awesome job of that actually to this day. But
Speaker 2: that's a different role than the than the economist has,
Speaker 2: so I think that creates some you know, meaningful differentiation.
Speaker 1: I h I miss you, my friend. I miss I
Speaker 1: miss you in a newsroom, miss collaborating with you. But
Speaker 1: I am thankful you're writing that column every week.
Speaker 2: Thanks, Chuck. I'm glad you're doing You're just doing the
Speaker 2: the way you are with you.
Speaker 1: It's you know, there's you know, it's no fun to
Speaker 1: just sit back and watch right.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, and it's it's far from over. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's for sure.
Speaker 1: All right, brother, Well than great to see