I turn on the burner to make some eggs, and I turn on the
wrong burner and goes tick tick tick tick, and it goes whoomph right like
I should, and then I turn it off. Then I turn on the
other burner and there's no tick tick tick, and the coffeemaker isn't working,
and all the power in the kitchen has gone. Ask not what your country
can do for you, Ask what you can do for your country. Mister
Gorbuchoff, Tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast. I'm James Lilyns
back again, Steven Hayward sitting in for Peter Robinson. Rob Long is with
us, and we're going to talk to Henry Olson about politics and elections,
domestic and foreign. So let's have ourselves a podcast. And now I want
to hand it over to the President of Ukraine, who has as much courage
as he has determination. Ladies, John, I'm a president Putin. I
wouldn't have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president. I think she was
not qualified to be president. So let's start there. Did you ever watch
the debate afterwards? I don't think I did. No. Welcome everybody,
It's the Ricochet Podcast. Let's see what number is. It's number six hundred
and ninety nine. I think we had to stop after this one and then
just leave everybody with a shave and a haircut and no two bits. But
no, we'll be coming. We'll be cruising to seven hundred sometimes soon.
In the meantime, we're here for an hour to discuss things small, large
and great. And speaking of great and large, I'm small. We have
Stephen Hayward sitting in for Peter Robinson and Rob Long as well. Now,
Rob, we know that you are in Gotham. I am not that daughter
hates it when I call it that, or really, where are you?
I'm on a little island off the coast of Massachusetts. Okay, you can
go straight to Hell. I'm sure it's absolutely beautiful and well it's been a
little bit foggy, so don't you know, but it's lovely today. So
I want to wrap this up so I can go to the beach. But
go ahead. We have fog on the island where all the rich people are
gambling about, no doubt, wearing white with little parasols and having gin drinks.
It sounds great. Stephen, where are you? I'm the foggy and
cool central coast of California, where today, by the way, I am
identifying as Peter Robinson. Oh okay, good, Well did you what you
have to do? Would you do that? You can't just do it.
You can't just say you Peter Robinson. You have to put some effort into
it. So you know, I'm looking at you in the zoom here.
You're not wearing a sweater that's carelessly knotted around your shoulders. So let's get
to that. Well, last week I was in Glasgow, which is interesting
meteorologically because sometimes it doesn't rain. It actually happened. There's like forty five
second intervals in which the sun blares through, which is great. But now
I'm back in Minneapolis in a beautiful summer day, and here we are barreling
towards the election, wondering exactly what's going to happen. And Joe Biden had
a big boy conference news conference yesterday. So I did not actually see it.
I was working on something else. But I assume Stephen, it being
your job, rob it being your pleasure, you saw it, and you
have thought, do you have thoughts? You know? I have to be
honest, I did not see it. I just read about it, and
I actually feel like it's more interesting what I wanted to read about it wasn't
really what happened, because I don't. My feeling about this is simple that
every American, certainly I do, and I think every American except they're very
young, have a a familiarity, unsought after familiarity with decline in old age,
right either our parents or our grandparents or our relative. I mean,
we all have had that experience, and we know what we're looking at.
So the question isn't do we know what we're looking at? The question is
does President doctor Joe Biden know what she's looking at? And whether the enough
Democrats know what they're looking at? And I think I think the answer is
no. I mean, it doesn't look at this point like this guy's gonna
looks like he's standing for re election in November, which is bananas to me
and just the pinnacle of or the nadier of where we are as a country
where we I mean, say you like about Trump. He's not a normal
dude. He's a weird dude with impulse control and all sorts of emotional problems.
And Biden is completely Scottish cheese and scrambled eggs up there and Robert F.
Kennedy Junior is a crazy person. It's like that we only have mentally
deficient people running for president of the United States of America. And I deficient,
I mean yeah, I mean Trump maybe a short fingered vulgarian, his
spy famously called him, but he can count to five without using him.
Yes, right on Twitter, as somebody was saying, you know, you're
saying Biden's in decline now, you guys were saying that four years ago.
Yes, we were for a reason because those of us have been watching this
guy all of these years, ever since the eighties, know the baseline and
know that this, this adult Joe gildfigure is not the Biden that we knew.
So yeah, we do four years ago and four years on it's mortifying.
Uh so you know we all know this Stephen telling something new. Yeah,
well I did watch the whole thing out of professional duty, and it's
like watching a high wire act at the circus with the wind blowing and you're
riveted to see if he's going to fall, And there were a lot of
wobbles, but I guess the consensus is he cleared a very low bar that's
not very reassuring. So, first of all, so highlights from yesterday if
you missed it. Before the press conference at the end of the NATO meeting,
he has Zelenski standing next to him and he says, and now I
want to introduce the President of Ukraine, President Putin, and then he walks
two feet offices. Oh wait a minute, and he comes back and he
sort of catches himself and tries to make a joke about it. And then
finally Putin could be president of Ukraine. So maybe he's got in his old
age he has second sight correct. And then very early in the press conference,
someone asked him about, you know, if you were had to stand
down, are you confident that Kamila Harris could win and be president? Something
like that, and he says, I wouldn't have picked Vice President Trump if
I didn't think she wasn't qualified. I mean, it was just this total
syntactical disaster, and then calling Harris present vice President Trump, and it sort
of it went on like that, but the questions were mostly too polite.
I thought, I thought they should have had a harder edge about why did
your staff conceal this? Things like that, they didn't do any of that,
and mostly what he did was filibuster with obvious, canned speeches on foreign
policy. So it sort of lean on that. There weren't many questions about
NATO or the Summitter foreign policy. Most of them were about the political problem,
and he sort of dodged all that. But there weren't any complete car
crashes like you saw at the debate. So I think that means that the
democratic agony is going to con you for the indeterminate future. I love the
idea. Okay, sorry, I was going to say, and Rob you
can, you can speak to this. I love the idea that is being
brooded about now on the left and the liberal side. That what we saw
yesterday in a Joe Biden that was not debate quality, that once again reminded
this man really is a modern day Metternick. It comes to Thorn, it
comes to foreign policy. You know, Joe's Joe's got it. He's just
he just has that innate nine dimensional chess. This guy, you know,
inherent understanding of these things, which I find. I mean, I'm trying
to think of an issue on which this man has been correct my entire lifetime
of observing him. This guy who after nine to eleven, I believe was
talking about what was he saying that, you know, we should send a
bunch of money to Iran? We should you know, send him twohundred million
dollars or something like that. Let's uh, let's partition a rack upt.
I mean, I mean, I don't get it. But anyway you were
going to say, well that that is the strangest thing. I mean,
part partly is the idea that this guy who I mean, even if you're
a supporter of his, this guy is the most political hack. He defines
political hack. He's been in politics for one thousand years. He's only been
in politics. He's had failed runs for president. He was a joke for
a long time. This guy is not a statesman. He's been wrong,
as you say, wrong about everything, especially in foreign policy and of course
in legal policy. But I mean, I'm just talking about foreign policy because
it's sort of non partisan, right. I mean, I disagreed with everything
he said is when he was chairman of the House Judicial but I mean the
Senate Judiciary Committee. But that those are partisan disagreements I have with him.
But he's wrong on the commander in chief level. And somehow he's been turned
in by some of this. Now it's winally number of supporters, but still
supporters. Has this great grand old gentleman, this great statesman, thank you
for your service to this nation. This guy is about as dirty a crook
as they come in the White House. And that's saying something. I mean,
he's I mean, even if you love him, you have to say
the guy is guilty of influence, pedaling it at the most extreme degree.
And somehow the people are deciding he's a great hero. And you know,
it used to be this. We used to say this thing about politics,
right, Hey, politics ain't bean bag. We would say, you know,
this is like you want a friend, get a dog in DC,
like all that stuff is because it's tough. People are tough. It seems
like the cushiest non tough job ever. Because any nobody would let this guy
drive home from the restaurant, Nobody would let this guy run a company,
nobody would hire him to do anything. In a real tough world that we
live in, this guy would be fired. As they say, every company
or everybody I know who runs a company says the same thing. Look,
one of the rules is with hr high or slow fire fast, meaning don't
wait if you think it's going to get better, it's not going to get
better. Take your time in hiring somebody, which of course we do in
this concrete we take nine months practically. But fire him, and even if
it's like a little unfair, it's okay. Even if his feelings are hurt,
it's okay. This guy should have been dumped and we'll find somebody else,
is what the Democrats should have been saying, and they haven't. And
to me, it's like, well, anybody, anybody listening to this podcast
who has a job in that performance not be gone. I think he's actually
worse than being wrong and being a crook. I think he's been pernicious to
American politics for a long time. And I just point to one thing that
has plagued us ever since the mid eighties. Remember in nineteen eighty six,
he gives a quote to a newspaper and I don't remember the exact words,
but it went something like, if President Reagan sends up Robert Borock, I'd
have to vote for him because he's qualified. And I'm not Ted Kennedy.
He did. That was a direct quote, I'm not Ted Kennedy. A
year later, Bork is nominated Biden became ted. Kennedy switched on a dime,
stretched out the hearings to enable an unprecedented personal tax campaign against Bork,
and that has poison our judicial politics and many other ways ever since. He's
responsible for that. If he'd said no to Norman Lear and the lefty groups
had said we would have to attack work, and they'd done a normal confirmation
hearings within a month or you know, six weeks, we wouldn't have some
of the poisonous politics that has spilled out to other agents, you know,
other aspects of our ever since. He's responsible for that. That was a
decisive turning point in American politics, much for the worse. People who talk
about how were dangerously polarized today, they ought to point a really fat finger
at Joe Biden. You're right. I was in England a couple of weeks
ago, and I was discussing American politics with some friends who are very smart
people, and one of them was saying that you liked Joe Biden because he
was a He was a kindly man. He was a kindly man who radiated
empathy. And I said, you're thinking of Neil Kinnick. And she didn't
know what I meant, and I had to explain this, and had to
explain who Joe Biden has been all of these years, that what you are
seeing is the diminished nerve version. That you're right, that the perniciousness is
there and we have been suffering from it ever since we woke up after Bork
with a ringing, pounding head. Speaking of which, gotta tell you,
there are times, you know, when you have a great night out and
you just don't bounce back. Yeah, it's hard to bounce back like you
did when you were twenty. You know, I'm not twenty. And there
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Who's at a pub where the selection of ales and whiskies is extraordinary?
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also for our good times and Awi. Welcome to the podcast. Henry Olson,
Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, the author of the
Four Faces of the Republican Party and the Working Class Republican. He is the
host of the podcast Beyond the Polls, which you can find at this thing.
I understand it's called ricochet dot com. Henry, Welcome, Wow,
thank you for having me. We've been talking about Joe Biden and the fact
that maybe it's just us. I know, we're partisans here and sometimes that
blinds a man to the truth. But we're starting to get the suspicion that
the man is a little bit old and feeble in the brain. I know,
I know, I know it's a grotesque extrapolation. But ever since I
don't know, six seven, eight, nine months ago, I've always been
thinking, you know what, They're gonna dump him before the convention. They're
going to swap mod for Gavin Newsom and gall will Win. Tell us how
you think this is going to play out up until to the convention and beyond.
Are we seeing another sixty eight? Are we seeing something unprecedented crystal ball
time. Yeah, Well, by definition, we're seeing something unprecedented because no
one has dropped out this close to a convention in I think history, certainly
not somebody during the primary era where delegates are not controlled by bosses but are
instead controlled by voters. I think that what's going to happen is the pressure
is going to ratchet up. That there are a lot of senior Democrats who
think that Joe Biden is not the person who can beat Donald Trump, and
not only that, that he is the person who can give the Republicans a
massive wave election, and they're not going to stop. That doesn't mean Biden's
going to give in. He holds the high ground. But you know,
if you have more and more Democrats of elected office at different levels come in
and say he shouldn't be the candidate, and maybe you finally have Nancy Pelosi
or somebody like that bite the bullet and go out in front and make Biden's
position politically difficult and untenable, you could see him dropping out. I think
it'll happen before the convention rather than after, but never say never. You
basically have until September if you want Biden's name on off the ballot. And
if you just want to tell Democrats vote for electors and trust them, well
heck, you could even wait until October or so and then swamp them out
to the r n c d As. I've got a couple questions. One
is are they right? I mean, I just have to ask this because
it seems like everybody nods and he goes, there's no way he can win.
Are they right? Is there no way this guy can win? No
way? I mean, you know, like or the risk is that we're
really rolling the dice here. I mean, already a high wire act with
both It was a high wire act for both of these candidates when we thought
both of them had you know, one of them didn't have scrambled eggs up
there. But now it's even higher wire. I think that's an actual phrase.
Yeah, how high is the wire now for them? Yeah? The
fundamental problem is that Joe Biden is the most unpopular president in the history of
polling, which is to say that at this point in a president's first term,
no one has lower job apoofa ratings period. Jimmy Carter wasn't worse than
this. Donald Trump wasn't worse than this. So you've already got somebody who,
by all rights, should be losing in a landslide. He's not losing
in a landslide because of Donald's Jay Trump, who is also incredibly unpopular.
But then you've got the fact that now you have a person who is simply
prone to being incapable of stringing three sentences together. Yes, Biden did okay
at the press conference yesterday. There's no guarantee that over the next four months
there won't be a freeze up on camera. There won't be another moment like
the debate. There won't be extended moments like the debate. Everybody knows that.
So you combine the two things together and you say he could pull out
of it. But it's just not realistic to think so. So my follow
up there is have we mean, part of like building any kind of team,
political or otherwise, right, is that there's a bench. And if
you look at the Republican primary, there was a pretty deep bench. I
mean, the primary vote has voted for, to me, the most risky
of the candidates, But they had a bench, they had people to choose
from. I had. I had my favorites, not the current non presumptive
nominee, but I certainly had my favorites. But you know, we could
argue a whole bunch of things that nobody would say, I'm not sure this
guy's ready or that is ready. The Democratic bench is much thinner. So
isn't this kind of problem the idea of when you don't take the job of
the or the part of the vice president seriously and you throw all in for
a popular president for two terms Obama, and you lose houses house races,
and you lose Senate races, and you lose state houses. Isn't this aren't
they reaping this sort of bad showing season they've had for the past decade or
two, Or am I just going too far? I think they have a
stronger bench than you're letting on. But I think the problem is is that
they've got a week manager and they've got a week assistant coach, and they're
not really willing to rip the band aid off and say let's clean house.
You know, it's if this to continue the sports metaphor, if there were
a new owner in charge, the manager of the general manager, and everybody
this Keith Scout and the person who sells folks would be out the door.
But that's not the case in the Democratic Party. Look, the fundamental problem
the Democratic Party has is it is beholden to a left that is wildly out
of step with the sentiments and values of the American center. They're not willing
to suppress that left and drive it out of the party or limit its influence.
So it means it is continually the tail that doesn't wag the dog in
the way the tail wants, but wags the dog enough that people notice.
The fundamental fact that no one's talking about except me, is this is going
to be the most pro Republican electorate since the Great Depression. The Democrats since
the Great Depression have always had an edge in voter identification surveys, in exit
polls, and general polling. That's not the case anymore, guys. This
is historic. Republicans will have been ahead in either the straight party identification or
the leaned party identification, including independents who say they leaned to one party or
another in the Gallon poll for over two and a half years before Henry Hold
that thought about the Republican edge for a moment. What I noticed is,
I don't want to take you back to twenty sixteen for just a moment.
What I notice is the polls are still really have a wide variance. Right
now, there's some showing Trump with a six even eight point lead nationally in
key states, and then there's a couple of women out the last few days
showing Biden even or ahead by a point. I don't want to get off
into the weeds of polling methodology because we'll drive listeners crazy. But here's the
question. In twenty sixteen, I think you were the first person to notice
and make a point that every time Trump did something stupid, attacked the gold
Star family of the Access Hollywood tape, his numbers would tank five, six,
seven, eight points, but Hillary's didn't go up. And that's when
you were saying, hum, this is interesting. And then Trump would Over
the next week, Trump would improve well like a point a day, and
then, of course we know how that turned out. It looks to me
like something in the same is happening here. I don't see Trump's numbers,
however, you want to wash out the variation going up very much. You
see is Biden's going down. That is the thing that says to me,
Biden's not out of it. You know, we're having this great gooey shot
in freudy happy time right now watching this disaster. But could he sneak up
on us the way Trump snuck up on Hillary? Yes, and that I'm
glad you made that point. That is exactly what's going on. Is Trump's
not going up, Biden's going down, which means that just like Trump with
his incessant foot in the mouth disease in twenty sixteen, would drop and then
people who didn't want Hillary would come back once that faded from view, you
could say that that'll happen with Bien. The question is will this fade from
view that you know with Trump, at some point you just incorporated the fact
that this guy has virtues and flaws to being a president candidate that we've never
seen before, and he ultimately benefited from the fact that people really really didn't
want Hillary enough, people really didn't want Hillary, that they really held their
nose and voted for somebody they didn't want to win. And that's the question
for Biden. But this gets back to the how it's different, which is
that what we saw in twenty sixteen is people incorporated Trump's eccentricity and they would
react to specific examples of it, but then then come back, which meant
that the eccentricity itself was not fatal. Do people feel that about the president's
mental capacity? Follow up question on the Republican edge? You point out two
parts of this. One, is it okay that discount that Trump has got
negatives almost as bad as Biden, and that can account for the fact that
he has a hard ceiling. But second, there are I know, you've
seen a lot of the state by statepholes showing a lot of Democratic Senate candidates
in particular running ahead of Biden and running ahead of the Republican challengers. And
so that makes me wonder is this Republican edge not yet showing up or the
follow up question is a parallel the row brought up a couple times the last
couple of weeks, which is just in some ways the selection looks like nineteen
eighty when it was neck and neck. Sometimes Ronald Reagan was trailing. He
usually was ahead by a point most of the time, but sometimes trailing,
and it broke big at the end when people decided after the debate that gosh,
you know, he actually looks fine to me and Carter really is okay.
So there was a ten point win in the end of the day,
where well beyond the margin of the last public polls. So it looks to
me like either the Republican edge is overstated, oh by the way, and
the Senate races in nineteen eighty, as you know, being history geeks,
you have six or eight Republican candidates who were way down on the polls who
won, right. So do you think we're looking at at this date a
possible rerun of a nineteen eighty surprise where Republicans pick up six eight Senate seats
and Trump actually does win by six points or something like that, or do
you have a hunch on it right now? With respect to the current Senate
polls. I've written about this for National View online, I will worry as
a Republican. As an analyst, I don't worry because I can read the
polls all the time. But as a Republican I would worry if we're on
October first and that's still the case. Why name identification? Every one of
these Democratic senators has an edge in name identification, So What you're seeing is
that when you look at the polls, Republicans like the Republican, Democrats like
the Democrat, and independents are going to the incumbent. Why it's the name
they've heard. What we know is that over the next few months, Republicans
will spend tens of millions of dollars in each of these states, and by
October one they will know the Republican as well, or at least the hard
name idea will be pretty close to the hard name idea of the Democratic senators.
To ask me on October first, how far Democratic senators are running ahead
of Joe Biden. Now I've looked at the numbers being Nerd squared, and
typically Democratic senators will run a couple of points ahead of the president in the
modern era. So if Joe Biden does bounce back and he's down by one
nationally, that probably means he's running even in Pennsylvania, which probably means Joe
Bob Casey will be ahead by a point or two. I don't think that
absent a massive candidate meltdown by Republicans, and I think Steve Danes, the
head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, has done a good job working with
President Trump to make sure there are not going to be doctor Oz's and herschel
Walker's this night. These people may be bland, they may be in experienced,
they may largely be self funders, but they are not fatally flawed in
the way these other people work. So what we know is that Democrats are
only going to run a couple of points ahead of their president. So that
makes Biden's standing crucial, which explains the freak. Biden losing by four nationally
means the possibility of as many as eight Senate seat losses, including West Virginia.
Biden losing by one nationally probably limits those losses to between two and four.
You know, Rob has some questions I think that have to do with
US politics. I've got one that shows that shows that my mind ranges far,
far, very continental man. So we'll get to that second. Here's
my question. My basic premise has been I sort of agreed with the Democratic
Party strategy, which is Trump is awful. People hate him, He's unstable,
he has impulse control problems. He's going to say do something stupid.
Yeah, the Republican Party is now in the grip of uh kamikaze uh,
politics in that they would rather lose and you know, hold dear to their
crackpot views that are unpopular with Americans. And I though thought, like,
that's a that's a pretty that's not a crazy strategy. It's not a strategy
I would use, but it doesn't seem insane to me. The opposite seems
to be happening. You saw a very forceful Trump. I mean I was
watching the debate, the debate with a bunch of lefties from public radio,
and you know, he made good points and they go, it's good point,
made a really good point on abortion. I thought he made a really
good answer in a lot of these things, and he kind of held himself
in check and he at one point he kind of looked at it. He
did a take. He looked at the camera and said, I have no
idea what that guy just said. That sentence means I don't think he does
either, And he kind of looked directly in the camera kind of Jack Benny
style, which you know he's very talented at that stuff. So so he
seems to be in control of himself. The Republican Party platform seems to be
a throwback, almost like you're looking at it and it feels like it's nineteen
eighty eight again or ninety ninety two again. What happens if the Republicans have
their act together. First of all, Donald Trump has been demonstrating for the
last year and a half that he is a more disciplined candidate than he was
in twenty sixteen or twenty twenty. Anyone who was surprised by the debate stage
hasn't been watching, you know, the old liberal bumper sticker. If you're
not angry, you're not paying attention. If you're surprised that Trump's relative self
control, you're not paying attention. And this gets to the incredible bubble that
so many aggressive activists live in. Look two things, one, rally the
base and split the independence. By scaring works when you have an advantage in
partisan identification, it's a recipe for loss when you don't have. Democrats have
never run a national campaign went out holding the highhigh ground. They still think
they hold the high ground. Rally the base, split the independence means Donald
Trump wins by two to four points nationally. It's also hard to scare people
at that this is the democracies on the line. But you know we're gonna
let this old man kind of like Totter his way to November. That doesn't
that doesn't seem those two things cannot both be true. More important than the
choices, the fact is the number show people aren't buying it. Democratic voter
registration has been declining in virtually every state that tracks it during the Biden administration.
They're losing hundreds of thousands of registrants. Partisan identification in polls has been
declining throughout the Biden presidency. This has nothing to do with Joe Biden's age.
This has to do with people look at what's on offer. They hear
what the Republicans are saying, and they don't drink the progressive kool aid.
And that is not something that is getting through to these people because they have
drunk the progressive kool aid. Yeah, that's why I think that if you
ripped the band aid off and put on a ticket of Gretchen Whitmer and Rafael
Warnack, they would have the credibility to say we're turning a new leaf,
We're a new Democratic Party, blah blah blah. It would be trying to
do here. And this gets into the elections. Don't just happen in the
United States of America. This is Jacindomania from New Zealand where they got rid
of the leader a few weeks before their election, and suddenly this new,
fresh, young face made people think, Hey, this is a new labor
party. That's what I would do if I were the Democrats, but it
requires courage to do it and an organization which they've never had. Well,
yeah, that is Will Rogers' statement. I don't belong for the people who
I don't know the same I don't belong to an organized political party, and
I'm a Democrat. But fundamentally, what you just have to do is say
we are willing. I'm willing to blow up my political career, potentially to
blow up the president because that's what's in the interest of the party. And
nobody's been willing to do that so far. But we've still got a few
weeks to go, so I know James wants to come in. I just
have one scenario to pitch you, which is a no. I'm reme'mb rethinking
all of my political fears. So this is my pitch. I was talking
to somebody last night about this. She didn't see that she was completely convinced.
But I feel that's probably because she was an ardent partisan Democrat. It's
entirely possible that Donald Trump in his but it will be his second term,
his last term will be like every other president in his second and last term,
and we'll be thinking about legacy, not so much the fight, but
the legacy. Am I going to get on a stamp? Am I going
to get on a statue? Am I going to get win over the people
who don't like me? How big can I be? And that's to me?
I mean I could be reading he leaves as I almost always do wrong
Lee, But it seems to be that is his ability now to like shut
up, to let a pretty anadyne boilerplate Republican platform get passed through, to
kind of behave a little a little bit suggests that he's thinking, well,
you know, he's not gonna be able to run again. If he wins,
he's going to have four years to become something other than a very controversial,
you know, kind of tainted president. He's gonna have a chance to
become a one of the great president's, A two term president. Is that?
Am I crazy? No? No, I don't think you're crazy.
But I think Donald Trump's entire life is built on a couple of things.
One is bringing the name Trump to the center of every conversation possible. Two
is courting the media in order to build a mass following that brings the name
Trump to every conversation possible. And three is doing so by flaunting conventional wisdom
throughout. He's gonna build the biggest building. He's going to build the biggest
casino. He's going to sleep around and dispense with his lives. He's going
to be the guy who makes it without conforming to expectations. And I look
and I think if Donald Trump were going to be the person who wants to
be popular and conform, he would have done that in his first term.
That would have been the easiest thing. That's what people were kind of hoping,
is, Hey, now that you've made it, make can be presidential.
So I look at this and I think, Yes, Donald Trump wants
to have a legacy. He wants to have his name in the center of
every conversation. He wants that proverbial statue. And he believes he's going to
do it by being the most direct, confrontational, victory focused, ruthless president
that we have seen since Franklin rose Remember Franklin. One of my favorite lines
from Franklin Roosevelt is from the Madison Square Garden speech in nineteen thirty six when
he's under attack from the Liberty Lobby and so forth for destroying America, and
he says, they are universal in their hate for me, and I welcome
their hatred. That's Donald Trump. Yeah, well After Hour was pretty successful.
So yeah, last time I checked, Yeah, Henry. Last Monday,
I was in a hotel room in the UK, enjoying my morning coffee,
watching the television, and there was a bright faced young woman from Labor,
all happy and talking about the new labor and how they're going to fix
the country and sort everything. And then they had the conservative spokesman, who
was a rather portly fellow with an excessive number of jowels, who is named
Lord Pickles. And I'm like, and I'm looking at this, and I'm
thinking, well, you know, Bush comes to shove. I'm gonna go
with the picture. But this, this this bright new face of labor.
Hmm. Not sure. I'm not sure I'm believing it. I spent a
fortnight in England, and you know, I'm the kind of guy who reads
the telegraph so take that for which you will, but dismaying to see what
happened and how everybody said seems to have said, well, yes, we
know that essentially labor is probably lying to us, not going to drive the
country off the cliff economically in terms of energy policy and the rest of it,
and probably can't fish fix the NHL. But on the other hand,
you know, the Tories have just really cocked things. Explain to us exactly
what happened over there briefly and why it matters, because it does, and
maybe throwing in France for the for the fun of it too. Yeah,
well, you know, it certainly matters for Britain and it matters for us.
Look what happened over there was in twenty nineteen. The Tories had done
something that nobody else had been able to successfully do, with the possible exception
of Donald Trump, is that they were able to lean into the global realignment,
which is that upper ed class educated people are moving center left and working
class people are moving center right. And they created a majority that, for
the first time in modern polling history, meant that the Conservatives did better among
the social classes that are less well privileged than the ones that are more privileged.
They blew it up. They blew it up, and they basically blew
it up intentionally, although they didn't know intention would actually give them a direction
and a thought that they did not possess fundamentally. They won an election in
twenty nineteen making promises they did not believe in and did not intend to keep.
They did not intend to bring immigration down to the net ten thousands.
They did not intend to level up working class communities and working class people by
tilting the public policies in their favor. They did not intend to take on
the Tory shires and begin to force them to allow more homes to be built
in the most economically vibrant part of the country, you know, London,
which has massively high home prices because of restrictive zoning in the Tory areas.
They did not intend to do what they said, and the voters finally figured
that out that this was not a problem of Boris Johnson having a lapse of
judgment. This is a fundamental problem with the Tories. And so what you
had was people who wanted competent public services went to the center left, and
for people who wanted the old promises, they either didn't vote or they went
to Reform Party, and that's what happened. This was not a vote in
favor of Kere Starmer and Labor. It was a vote to say, you
are incompetent and did honest and we want the door to hit you very hard
on your way out. Can they come back from that? Well, it's
kind of like Joe Biden. I can always say can. But you know,
fundamentally, in a democracy, to quote somebody who Steve would know,
you know, public opinion is everything, you know. Abraham Lincoln said it.
James Madison said it. Oh well, that's what leads to my follow
up question, Henry, which is to people who go beyond the headlines,
which you do, you'll notice something quite odd about both the British and French
elections. I think it's correct that Labor received fewer actual votes they did five
years ago, and second it was thirty four percent of the total vote,
and yet they got four hundred and twelve two thirds of the seats. The
old Lib Dem Party they got i think twelve percent of the vote in seventy
one seats, and Nigel Faraja's New Reform Party got fourteen percent of the vote.
And what five seats. So, you know, here in this country
and in similar situation in France. Here in this country, all the quote
unquote reformers say, oh, our systems so undemocratic. You know, jerry
mandering for the House the Senate is you know, undemocratic, and of course
they hate the electoral college. Here's a system where you have this massive number
of seats with only a third of the vote. And then similarly in France.
The question I'm coming to is this. It seems to me that although
it's correct that, you know, kick the Tories out for being so incompetent,
but it does seem to me that these parliamentary majorities you see are wildly
out of step with the European public opinion. I mean, I think in
France, all you've done is postpone and make more likely the presidency of Marine
Lapan three years from now. So, I mean, you know, in
the nineties, Bill Clinton, as we all know, moved to the center
after his he understood public opinion was not with him. It doesn't seem to
me that the labor rights in Britain, or certainly not in France, they
understand that they're wrong against public opinion and aren't they setting themselves up for even
more populous furies in the next four years. It's pretty much globally. I
mean, what are the establishment you know, to be frank, what do
the establishment Republicans think? Well, we can wake up and from the political
version of the Dallas Dream season and Pam will go in and you know,
see Bobby's in the shower, and then Trump never happened. Look, good
lord, you're showing our age, Henry. Okay, well, I usually
show my age. I don't know what you boomers are talking about. Yeah,
hold my beer. Okay, Yeah. Look, this is happening globally
because there's a class of people who legitimately see that the people who run their
countries don't care about them. They care more about their own values than the
traditional national values. They care more about their own any economic benefits than anything
that flows to their broader citizens. And this elite class exists, we know
people in it. It spans left and right, and they have now had
ten, depending on the country, ten to fifteen years to see and read
the mood of their people. They refuse to do it. At this point,
they're not going to change. And so the question is do you think
that doing more of the same old little twink here and there of the post
nineteen ninety left right consensus will solve the problems of the West if you do
well, I want to have some of what you're having, but you would
fit very nicely in the elites. I think the entire world developed world is
focusing for a populist showdown. I think that's one of the things that the
devils the inability to see why Donald Trump can win, and center right parties
that want to lean into this and actually become new center right parties kent profit.
Those that don't go the way of the Tories, go the way of
the establishment, old guard Republicans, you know, dream for two thousand and
eight. You know, it's it's kind of like going back to your high
school reunion and thinking that you can still fit into your letterman's jacket. It's
just not going to happen. So Hender, I know, we got to
let you go. But one question is at a larger American history question,
are we living through something that twenty years and now thirty years from now people
will talk about a big transformation period in American history where the parties are out
of gas, where the traditional pathways are got to go, and we look
at it, we look at the past, go, well, you know,
they're the whigs that around heads to cop whatever. We had, all
those parties, wed all those we had, all those movements, and we
think of them as eras that ended. Is this? What is this what
we're living through? Just read the end of five days after the two thousand
and eight election in Los Angeles five six something like that, And I was
with my then young, now middle aged assistant, and I said, let's
go up to the top of the Bonaventure Hotel Bonaventure with its revolving boone and
I had a drink and I said, the reason I want to do this,
of course this person was too young to remember. Why I know anything
about this is that in nineteen eighty I did this after the Reagan election.
And the Reagan era is over. The Reagan era has been over since two
thousand and eight. The post nineteen ninety era has been over since two thousand
and eight. We are in the middle of what we will look at as
a thirty to forty year movement that is on par with the rise of social
democracy from the end of the nineteenth century to its final triumph as the dominant
force after World War Two. We are maybe not in the middle of it,
We're only in the third of it. Maybe maybe it's the end of
the beginning and not the beginning of the end. But this has been going
on. There is no populist moment. It is a populist era and the
only question that remains is how will it end. It will end with a
fundamentally transformed West. The question is is it a fundamentally transformed West that we
want to live in or one that we don't want to live in? And
that is the only question that elites really ought to be trying to answer.
But of course that's not the question they want to answer, which simply increases
the likelihood of strong, rapid and perhaps misguided populism. The question the elites
want to have answered is what exactly is going to be on the menu the
first day of DeVos because I have a peanut allergy and my wife doesn't like
shrimp. Yeah, I think. I think the next statement that's going to
come out of DeVos is let them eat gluten free, right to see.
I mean, I hope it is the West that we recognize and I'll live
in the pod and eating the bug and that sort of thing. But we'll
see, so we'll have you. This is podcast number six ninety nine,
Henry. We're going to have you on for podcast number one, three hundred
and ninety eight, where we'll discuss exactly what has become of the West in
the meantime. Thanks, it's been a pleasure talking to you and hearing your
insights, and everybody go to his podcast at ricochet dot com and read the
books. Henry. Thanks, thank k Henry. Before we go, a
couple of things. First of all, Rob's here, So Rob's going to
be happy to tell you about all the meetups which and he's going to I
think he's going to every single one of them, and he's going to be
I'd love to winch to down a in a breeches boy. And so what's
coming up, Well, of course that's the benefit of being a member of
Ricoshet. You get to go to the meetup, says one, the German
Fest meetup in Milwaukee, which is coming up actually weekend of July twenty six,
and then there's one scheduled in Saint Louis on October third, so there's
only two in the on the docket right now. That can change in an
instant. You could change that by joining Ricochet and picking a weekend or picking
a day. Post it and people, your fellow Ricochet members will show up
and you, guys, I guarantee you have a great time. It is
always fun to hang out with the Ricochet members. They are always lots of
fun to talk to. It is not all politics. In fact, the
last one I went to, I think I don't think I really had a
political conversation with We think we had one, like we won a dinner time
at the table. We had one, and it was just kind of casual.
But it's really more about a big, wide life and world that we
live in which goes beyond the momentary politics. It was music and movies and
architecture the last one that I was at, and not a word about politics,
because you know, there's just so much more to life. Of course,
nothing affects us as deeply on a pocketbook level or a street safety level
or all that stuff. But still there's something about getting together with life minded
people and not expressing the like mindedness that is all of Ricochet. To me,
that's a very good way to put it. Yeah, Stephen, why
don't you host one out there in your cality zone and report back. I'm
sure people would love to congregate and hear you expound on your tales of the
world. Speaking of tales of the world, there's a note here in the
rundown and yes we do have a couple of lines that are suggested to us
by our producers. Perry big thumbs up. It says James Lillax's European sojourn.
Well, my friends, A nobody cares and b it's the entirety of
my diner this week. But it's not I went here and then I did
this. It's who cares. It's just various thoughts, observations and moments from
Europe, which is a different place. I love the UK and I absolutely
now adore Scotland, but I have to say this. The power of images,
the power of deep fakes, the power of falsehoes, the power of
belief. There's nothing that really drives this home like sitting on a big boat
and realizing you've paid forty five dollars to be driven out into the middle of
loch Ness. This whole industry that is of putting out ships and selling souvenirs
for the lock Nest Monster. All seems to be based on a grainy nineteen
thirties picture where somebody took a pen and drew in a sea monster. And
so everybody deeply wants to believe and piles one after the other, sun up
to sun down. These ships are filled with people, and I'm laughing at
myself for a couple of reasons. One, I wanted to do it.
I really did. I had no illusions whatsoever. But there's just something about
if ever the lock Nest Monster comes up shrugging sort of and saying, yeah,
I've been there, and it is beautiful, and it is terrifying when
they tell you the tales the deep in the dark and what they actually do
think is down there. That's fascinating. And it took a long time to
get there and a long time to get back. And we saw all sorts
of Scottish highlands and this and that and the irons and cairns and battlefields and
the rest of it, all narrated by we Dennis McCafferty, who steered the
enormous bus with one hand as we went down these twisty roads at fifty kilometers
while he gestured with the other at empty battlefields full of full of you know,
coups telling us that blood was spent there, and the Campbell's and McDonald's,
and they're still angry about it. But what amazed me, and it
shouldn't have, because I've traveled a lot. The bus stops were to walk
across this bridge to go to the boats that will take us out there.
And it's not a far distance. But between the bus and boarding and boarding
the boat, my wife found a store that she could just nip into for
a second and have a look, And having done so, she found a
sweater. I don't know a man in the world who doesn't think I'm at
the bus. I must get to the boat, and you go to the
boat, and that's your first priority. But she sees, she sees this
little shop, and you know, and I'm just gonna look in for a
second, and I'd be like, why you're not walking around in rags?
You have clothes. God knows you have an escape, but I don't.
Of course, I just off she goes, and then I just have to
wait. James, I reject I reject your your gender conformity. Yeah,
but I will say this, you clearly have been duped by the global elites
because you think that the Lockedest Monster does not exist. That's just what they
want, The dapples crowd wants you to believe. Uh huh uh huh uh
huh. Probably so yes, would you don't don't look, don't don't look
too deep, don't peer too deeply into the midnight blue waters coming up?
You know, But I'm disappointed, Rob. I thought our theologian and training
would say that the uh, the fascination of things like the Lockedest Monster speaks
to the deep innate desire of human beings for some kind of transcendence and mystery.
And sometimes you said default, right, Well, my default is always
going to be like you know, James, that's true. But so I
just I know you got to run, Jays, But I do want to
ask because I've been in this position a couple of times and it is always
weird but really fascinating to be in a foreign country when they are in the
middle of that election. Yes, and you kind of see how that goes.
It was. It's always really interesting and like how they what they think
about the mechanisms. And I'm certainly in England it's or UK. It's interesting
because of their parliamentary. Their elections are always so so weird. There's always
some weird lunatic running as well, but it's always it's just kind of a
strange things. You think, oh, well, elections are run, here's
how they go, the way we go, but they don't and I don't
know. So it's a it's a it's a kind of a tourism only political
nerds would engage in. But I'm I'm I'm jealous that you were there for
that. It was fun, But on the other hand, it was sad
because in my heart, you know, I have motions towards the British Isles.
I love the place I have. I mean, my second favorite place
on Earth is the town of wompers Wick. It's my it's my second home,
and I invested in it all doing well, and it just feels as
if they've taken a path, taken a taken a choice that I I mean,
granted I read the telegraph, but the news is not good over there.
There's not a good feeling about the way the country is situated, and
the problems seem large and insoluble. And again, the political classes, you
know, as Henry was talking about, just just completely blew off their ability
to do anything about it. Now where where I go to Walbers there is
there is a sense of being not besieged but the outside world, but that
it is somehow a they get they it hasn't hit there yet. The energy
prices are ridiculously high, and there are things that complain about, but the
problems that beset the country and the big cities haven't gone there yet. And
a lot of America few was like that too. So yes, it was
fun to be there. But I mean it's fun to be sitting in the
bar and a guy walks in with his dog and everybody's you know, you're
looking at the dog, and then you look at the guy. Oh he's
a movie director. Did those things about missions impossible? He lives around here.
That's right, I forgot. And then another guy walks in and oh,
it's that guy who wrote the movie. It's just amazing town. It
just is. And nobody bothers the people who are there famous. It's just
part of the atmosphere anyway, babbling it Like I say, you thought that
was dull. Listened to the diner this week. I'm really on a terror
now it sounds great. Yes, indeed, anyway, So okay, I
gotta say one of the guys that I met because he's friends of my friends.
He's Jesus of Nazareth in the movie in the nineteen eighties to the TV
mini series. Do you remember that guys, Oh, Franco Zephyrrelli, Anthony
Burgess scriptwriter. Yeah. It's very interesting when you talk to actors and you
want to ask them one little thing, but you really don't want to say,
here's this role for which you were known, you know, thirty forty
years ago. So I'm not going to see you entirely through that prison,
but I just have to know. And then once you ask that question,
of course they go on for seventeen minutes because they're very happy. John and
I didn't even get around to the fact that he'd played Gustav Mahler in Ken
Russell's version of the Model Biography, and I didn't even get to that.
Anyway, enough, we're done, listen, folks. What you got to
do is go to ricochet dot com and sign up because it is your place
for fine, fun, civil center right conversation on the internet. As I
keep saying, you'll be wondering where it's been all your life when you go
to the member feed, because that is really more social, more interesting,
more more of a community than any place I've been on the web. And
you need to go to Apple Music give us five stars, because we are
been asking you to do that for six hundred ninety nine times and it's you
know, maybe seven hundred will be the charm, but that's next week to
find out. Maybe Peter will be with us next week, maybe not.
If so, Stephen, it's always a pleasure to have you here, Rob.
Likewise, always a pleasure to see you guy's face. Good to be
back, and we'll see everybody in the comment, said Ricochet. Four point
oh next week. Next week, Fells Ricochet join the conversation.