1 00:00:17,519 --> 00:00:21,640 We're back with another edition of The Federalist or Radio Hour. I'm Emily Kashinsky, 2 00:00:21,719 --> 00:00:24,239 culture editor here at The Federalist. As always, you can email the 3 00:00:24,280 --> 00:00:27,920 show at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on Twitter at fdr 4 00:00:28,120 --> 00:00:32,079 LST. Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts, and to the 5 00:00:32,159 --> 00:00:37,840 premium version of our website as well. I'm joined today by Joe Pastell. 6 00:00:37,960 --> 00:00:42,520 He is a Hillsdale College professor. He's the author of the book Bureaucracy in 7 00:00:42,600 --> 00:00:47,799 America and also the author of a relevant paper to Today's conversation called Congress in 8 00:00:47,880 --> 00:00:51,920 Limbo that was published by the Heritage Foundation. Joe, thank you for joining 9 00:00:51,960 --> 00:00:55,679 us. It's great to be with you. I was reading the New York 10 00:00:55,679 --> 00:00:59,039 Times. I don't know why, but I was over the weekend, and 11 00:00:59,320 --> 00:01:06,560 they had an article doing some interesting finger pointing, basically casting as a very 12 00:01:07,359 --> 00:01:12,680 dark kind of situation or dark reality, the fact that Jim Jordan is threatening, 13 00:01:12,879 --> 00:01:19,719 allegedly according to their sources, to like unleash the rage of voters on 14 00:01:19,519 --> 00:01:25,840 the House of Representatives if you know, he's if they sort of create obstacles 15 00:01:25,879 --> 00:01:30,760 to him getting the speakership. Now, Joe, you have all kinds of 16 00:01:30,879 --> 00:01:36,239 I think helpful perspective on what the speakership battle means all of that. But 17 00:01:36,280 --> 00:01:38,920 I actually thought this was a good place to start because it speaks to our 18 00:01:40,040 --> 00:01:42,840 concept of the House of Representatives. And when you have the Beltway media that 19 00:01:42,879 --> 00:01:48,040 we have, it's sort of ikey that the House of Representatives would do any 20 00:01:48,079 --> 00:01:53,079 like actual representation because what they represent is very sort of icky to the Beltway. 21 00:01:53,120 --> 00:01:55,840 I don't know whether or not you agree with that, but I wanted 22 00:01:55,840 --> 00:02:00,120 to start there and just ask, you know, whether maybe fundamentally also our 23 00:02:00,159 --> 00:02:04,879 concept of the House of Representatives is in some peril at the moment as well. 24 00:02:05,599 --> 00:02:09,560 Yeah, I think, well, I mean to see where the problems 25 00:02:09,639 --> 00:02:13,639 lie in terms of what's going on in the House of Representatives today, it 26 00:02:13,639 --> 00:02:16,120 would take us probably a lot longer than the kind of time we have, 27 00:02:16,319 --> 00:02:19,919 So, you know, there are a lot of different things that are contributing 28 00:02:19,919 --> 00:02:23,479 to what's going on right now, but the idea that the House of Representatives 29 00:02:23,560 --> 00:02:27,560 is the representative of the people, and that's the problem. I think that 30 00:02:27,599 --> 00:02:30,759 way of thinking is exactly part of the reason why we've gotten to the point 31 00:02:30,759 --> 00:02:37,240 that we're at. So to accuse the House of Representatives of being too representative, 32 00:02:37,280 --> 00:02:42,919 I think actually signals that something's gone wrong. And I really think that's 33 00:02:42,919 --> 00:02:46,800 a good place to start thinking about how we got to the place that we're 34 00:02:46,840 --> 00:02:50,240 at. Yeah, so you know, from your perspective again, you wrote 35 00:02:50,240 --> 00:02:53,639 this paper for Heritage called Congress and Limbo. You know again you made a 36 00:02:53,639 --> 00:02:57,840 really good point not long ago about how this could take us forever to kind 37 00:02:57,840 --> 00:03:01,120 of hash out. But the thekin a short version of this is how did 38 00:03:01,159 --> 00:03:06,159 we get to this position right now? Where you know, they went through 39 00:03:06,199 --> 00:03:12,159 fifteen ballots in January. We covered this here a lot fifteen ballots in January. 40 00:03:12,479 --> 00:03:16,280 Kevin McCarthy lasts, you know, longer than some people thought was possible, 41 00:03:16,479 --> 00:03:21,960 especially because they got him down on the motion of a kate, which 42 00:03:22,039 --> 00:03:25,280 was something he really, really, really really didn't want to do. And 43 00:03:25,319 --> 00:03:30,319 here they are speakerless for about a week now. They've got Patrick McHenry as 44 00:03:30,360 --> 00:03:35,439 pro tem. They weren't able to elect Steve Scalise despite nominating him as a 45 00:03:35,439 --> 00:03:38,199 conference he didn't have the floor votes. So all of that, you know, 46 00:03:38,879 --> 00:03:43,199 with all of that context, and by the time this airs, something 47 00:03:43,240 --> 00:03:46,960 may have changed. The bottom line is Republicans had a speaker that was elected 48 00:03:46,960 --> 00:03:51,879 on fifteen ballots that didn't even last a year, and here they are. 49 00:03:52,280 --> 00:03:55,039 What is the kind of condensed version of how we got here? Yeah, 50 00:03:55,280 --> 00:03:59,719 well, I think the first place to start. And this is actually a 51 00:04:00,120 --> 00:04:03,280 bit of a difficulty for probably a lot of our listeners and for me personally. 52 00:04:03,360 --> 00:04:06,840 The more I looked into this is this is a tough thing for us 53 00:04:06,840 --> 00:04:11,000 to swallow. But I think part of the reason why this is a problem 54 00:04:11,400 --> 00:04:15,439 is because of the Constitution itself. And what I mean by that is that 55 00:04:15,000 --> 00:04:19,319 this is famous essay in the Federalist papers, Federalist number ten. Even high 56 00:04:19,319 --> 00:04:21,959 schoolers in America read it today. It's the most famous of all of the 57 00:04:21,959 --> 00:04:27,160 Federalist papers. And there James Madison says, well, we're creating a large 58 00:04:27,199 --> 00:04:30,519 republic that has extended over a large territory. And what that's going to do 59 00:04:30,639 --> 00:04:34,839 is it's going to create so many different interests and so many different factions that 60 00:04:34,879 --> 00:04:39,680 it's going to be really hard for all of these people with different incentives to 61 00:04:39,759 --> 00:04:46,480 get together and work together and solve and promote national solutions to these local problems. 62 00:04:46,560 --> 00:04:48,759 Now, when Madison writes that essay, He's saying, this is a 63 00:04:48,839 --> 00:04:54,120 virtue of the system, that this Congress that we're creating will be so gridlocked 64 00:04:54,319 --> 00:04:58,319 it'll be impossible for a majority tyranny to emerge. Well, of course, 65 00:04:58,360 --> 00:05:00,959 the problem here is that the same mechanism that makes it hard for a majority 66 00:05:01,000 --> 00:05:05,920 tyranny to emerge also makes it hard for a cohesive majority to emerge at all. 67 00:05:06,560 --> 00:05:11,079 And I think that is kind of the starting point for what happened to 68 00:05:11,079 --> 00:05:15,639 the House of Representatives. Right when Madison's writing there four million people really scattered 69 00:05:15,639 --> 00:05:19,839 along the Eastern Seaboard. The range of interests in different opinions there is, 70 00:05:20,360 --> 00:05:24,240 according to Madison, quite vast, but from our point of view today, 71 00:05:24,399 --> 00:05:28,600 is actually very limited. Think about what Madison would say about the number of 72 00:05:28,639 --> 00:05:31,959 interests and the number of factions we have today when we're stretched over a much 73 00:05:32,040 --> 00:05:36,519 larger territory, we have a much higher population, four hundred and thirty five 74 00:05:36,600 --> 00:05:42,759 different members representing four hundred and thirty five different districts, and so anybody who 75 00:05:42,800 --> 00:05:46,639 tries to sort of lead from the top down in this sort of framework is 76 00:05:46,720 --> 00:05:50,160 really asking to take on a challenge, and that I think has been the 77 00:05:50,199 --> 00:05:55,519 problem with the speakers that preceded Kevin McCarthy, John Bahner, and Paul Ryan, 78 00:05:55,560 --> 00:05:58,399 at least on the Republican side, is they had a sort of top 79 00:05:58,439 --> 00:06:00,920 down idea that they represent ended the whole country, and they could tell these 80 00:06:00,959 --> 00:06:04,879 members in these districts how to vote, which tough votes they were going to 81 00:06:04,920 --> 00:06:08,600 have to take, that they're going to have to go back to their constituents 82 00:06:08,600 --> 00:06:10,759 and tell them, hey, I voted to increase the debt limit. I 83 00:06:10,759 --> 00:06:14,959 didn't get many concessions from the Democrats in return. And so I think in 84 00:06:15,000 --> 00:06:17,800 a way, the system's not built to have that kind of national leader just 85 00:06:17,959 --> 00:06:21,600 impose his or her will on the whole system. So, in other words, 86 00:06:21,639 --> 00:06:25,680 the House of Representatives, in short, is supposed to be a collection 87 00:06:25,759 --> 00:06:28,199 of a lot of different people with a lot of different points of view, 88 00:06:28,240 --> 00:06:30,000 and it's going to be really hard for those people to agree on much of 89 00:06:30,040 --> 00:06:33,319 anything. And that can be a real virtue, of course, but it 90 00:06:33,319 --> 00:06:39,319 also can be a challenge because it's hard to get any kind of majority assembled 91 00:06:39,360 --> 00:06:41,839 in the House of Representatives for a long period of time. And really, 92 00:06:41,839 --> 00:06:46,160 I think that's in a nutshell kind of the start of explaining what happened to 93 00:06:46,240 --> 00:06:50,639 Kevin McCarthy. And you know there also obviously was a motion to vacate filed 94 00:06:50,720 --> 00:06:56,920 what one other time that was unsuccessful. So this was not only that this 95 00:06:57,040 --> 00:07:00,079 was the first successful motion of vacate. So it's not just that it was 96 00:07:00,120 --> 00:07:01,879 one of two times that it's happened in American history. It's also that this 97 00:07:02,000 --> 00:07:04,519 was the only one that was successful. What can you tell us about the 98 00:07:04,560 --> 00:07:10,199 history there, Joe, Yeah, So the turning point, I think in 99 00:07:10,240 --> 00:07:14,600 Congress's entire history, at least the House of Representatives entire history, was the 100 00:07:14,639 --> 00:07:16,680 first time that the motion to a kate was brought on the floor of the 101 00:07:16,680 --> 00:07:21,279 House of Representatives, and that's in nineteen ten, and it's brought by Speaker 102 00:07:21,360 --> 00:07:28,680 Joseph Cannon against himself. So those are listeners that have been to Washington, 103 00:07:28,720 --> 00:07:31,480 d c. And toured Capitol Hill might be familiar with the Canon Office Building, 104 00:07:31,480 --> 00:07:35,519 which is a very large house office building on the House side of Capitol 105 00:07:35,600 --> 00:07:40,399 Hill. It's named after Joseph Cannon, who's one of the two greatest czar 106 00:07:40,560 --> 00:07:44,879 speakers of the House of Representatives in American history. The other was Thomas Brackett 107 00:07:44,920 --> 00:07:48,279 Reid of Maine, who was Speaker in the late nineteenth century. Cannon was 108 00:07:48,279 --> 00:07:54,720 speaker in the early twentieth century during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt and a few 109 00:07:54,759 --> 00:08:00,759 other presidents and Canon and the speakers such as Reading Cannon at this period of 110 00:08:00,759 --> 00:08:05,199 time, say late nineteenth century or early twentieth century, they were called czars. 111 00:08:05,800 --> 00:08:09,600 They ruled with an iron fist, and really they had these three powers 112 00:08:09,600 --> 00:08:13,680 that basically gave them total control of the House of Representatives. First, they 113 00:08:13,839 --> 00:08:16,079 had this right of recognition. They could decide who to call on if a 114 00:08:16,120 --> 00:08:22,079 person rose to offer an amendment or resolution or anything like that. So you 115 00:08:22,120 --> 00:08:24,240 really couldn't get to speak on the House of Representatives on the floor of the 116 00:08:24,240 --> 00:08:28,240 House unless this speaker called on you. Second, they had power over this 117 00:08:28,279 --> 00:08:33,600 thing called the Rules Committee, which for listeners who aren't familiar, this is 118 00:08:33,799 --> 00:08:37,039 really important committee in the House of Representatives that decides which bills go to the 119 00:08:37,039 --> 00:08:41,600 floor. You really can't get any bill voted on in the House unless you 120 00:08:41,639 --> 00:08:43,720 go through the Rules Committee. If it's a bill, it's not going to 121 00:08:43,720 --> 00:08:48,080 be just carried by voice vote. And so the speaker controlled the Rules Committee, 122 00:08:48,120 --> 00:08:50,519 so he controlled every bill that reached the floor. And then third, 123 00:08:50,759 --> 00:08:54,039 the speaker got to name all the committees and the committee chairs. So if 124 00:08:54,080 --> 00:08:58,559 you wanted to be on a committee like agriculture, because you were from a 125 00:08:58,639 --> 00:09:03,559 state or a district where agricultural interests were the dominant interests, you needed the 126 00:09:03,559 --> 00:09:07,360 Speaker to put you on that committee. So imagine you're a first term member 127 00:09:07,360 --> 00:09:11,000 of the House of Representatives. You can't pass a bill on the floor of 128 00:09:11,039 --> 00:09:13,320 the House without the speaker's permission. You can't get on a committee you want 129 00:09:13,320 --> 00:09:18,000 to get on without the speaker's permission. You can't speak on the floor without 130 00:09:18,000 --> 00:09:22,320 the speaker's permission. So basically, these speakers Canon and Read and these others. 131 00:09:22,360 --> 00:09:26,679 At this time they had very strong powers. Again, they were called 132 00:09:26,720 --> 00:09:33,039 stars and the progressives in the Republican Party. Canon was a Republican. The 133 00:09:33,080 --> 00:09:35,960 progressives in the Republican Party revolted against Canon in nineteen ten and they stripped him 134 00:09:35,960 --> 00:09:41,200 of his power over the Rules Committee. And they did this because Canon was 135 00:09:41,240 --> 00:09:46,720 a conservative. Theodore Roosevelt was a progressive president who wanted progressive legislation, and 136 00:09:45,720 --> 00:09:50,240 so they had worked for years to try to get their progressive bills through the 137 00:09:50,279 --> 00:09:54,440 House of Representatives. Finally, in this dramatic Saint Patrick's Day revolt. They 138 00:09:54,519 --> 00:09:58,799 get the power back from Canon, and as soon as Canon does that, 139 00:09:58,080 --> 00:10:01,919 he loses this power. He introduces the motion to vacate on himself, and 140 00:10:01,960 --> 00:10:05,159 he says, well, look, if you Republicans are going to vote with 141 00:10:05,159 --> 00:10:09,600 the Democrats to take my power away, I can no longer lead the House. 142 00:10:09,120 --> 00:10:15,440 And therefore it's time for you Republican progressives to join with your Democratic colleagues 143 00:10:15,639 --> 00:10:18,559 and elect a new speaker, because clearly the Republicans don't have a majority that's 144 00:10:18,600 --> 00:10:22,200 cohesive enough to govern on the floor. In many ways, actually this kind 145 00:10:22,200 --> 00:10:26,639 of resembles the situation that the Republicans were in a week or two ago with 146 00:10:26,799 --> 00:10:31,360 McCarthy, that there were a few Republicans voting with the vast majority or all, 147 00:10:31,399 --> 00:10:33,759 in the case of McCarthy, all of the Democrats to take out the 148 00:10:33,799 --> 00:10:39,240 speaker. And so Canon said, the logical extension of what the Progressive Republicans 149 00:10:39,240 --> 00:10:41,679 did was to get rid of me as speaker, and so he introduces the 150 00:10:41,720 --> 00:10:48,279 motion to vacate against himself, and ironically, the Progressive Republicans immediately vote to 151 00:10:48,279 --> 00:10:52,240 sustain him as a speaker. So they basically tried to have it both ways. 152 00:10:52,279 --> 00:10:54,960 They wanted him to be speaker, but they wanted to be the ones 153 00:10:54,960 --> 00:10:58,840 that held all the power. And so that was really I think the turning 154 00:10:58,879 --> 00:11:01,720 point in Congress's history where we moved from a system where there were much stronger 155 00:11:01,759 --> 00:11:05,840 parties in the House of Representatives to a system that we have today where party 156 00:11:05,919 --> 00:11:11,559 leaders are relatively weak. I can't help but notice the timing there also sort 157 00:11:11,559 --> 00:11:18,080 of coincides with the punting of a lot of congressional duties to the administrative state. 158 00:11:18,120 --> 00:11:20,080 And actually, you wrote a book about bureaucracy in America, so this 159 00:11:20,120 --> 00:11:24,360 is probably a great question for you, Joe. How much of the sort 160 00:11:24,360 --> 00:11:28,320 of erosion here did or has And this is not a leading question, I'm 161 00:11:28,320 --> 00:11:33,559 genuinely curious, gone hand in hand with a lot of punting of those kind 162 00:11:33,600 --> 00:11:39,240 of congressional duties to the executive branch. Yeah, that's my core thesis is 163 00:11:39,279 --> 00:11:43,720 that when the Progressives took out party leadership in the House of Representatives, they 164 00:11:43,799 --> 00:11:48,120 knew that this would mean Congress would have to start delegating power over to the 165 00:11:48,120 --> 00:11:52,559 bureaucracy. Because what the parties had done in Congress was they had made it 166 00:11:52,600 --> 00:11:56,519 possible for a majority to rule. Remember, we were just talking about Federalist 167 00:11:56,600 --> 00:12:00,919 ten. The basic idea of Federalist ten is we want to make it really 168 00:12:01,000 --> 00:12:05,440 hard for a majority to govern in Congress. While the party solved the problem 169 00:12:05,559 --> 00:12:09,039 by giving party leaders a lot of power and then letting those party leaders set 170 00:12:09,039 --> 00:12:15,200 a majority agenda and get a majority agenda through the Congress, by taking out 171 00:12:15,240 --> 00:12:20,039 the ability of party leaders to set a majority agenda in Congress, they paralyzed 172 00:12:20,080 --> 00:12:24,759 Congress, and the Progressive is new By paralyzing Congress, this will ensure Congress 173 00:12:24,759 --> 00:12:28,519 will pass off its powers to the bureaucracy, which has none of the gridlock, 174 00:12:28,639 --> 00:12:31,159 none of the checks and balances that the other institutions have, and we 175 00:12:31,200 --> 00:12:35,840 can get laws passed very easily through an administrative agency. We can create dozens 176 00:12:35,840 --> 00:12:39,320 of them. We can create an administrative agency for food and drug regulation, 177 00:12:39,519 --> 00:12:43,879 for trade regulation, for railroad regulation, and we can have them all basically 178 00:12:45,000 --> 00:12:50,399 be legislatures over their own areas of expertise, and Congress will turn into less 179 00:12:50,440 --> 00:12:54,440 of a legislative body and more of an oversight body. Woodrow Wilson is expressly 180 00:12:56,200 --> 00:12:58,879 interested in doing this. He writes this at the end of a book called 181 00:12:58,919 --> 00:13:03,559 congressional government. He says Congress is spending too much of its time writing laws, 182 00:13:03,320 --> 00:13:07,320 which, of course, when my students read this at Hillsdale they sort 183 00:13:07,320 --> 00:13:09,600 of laugh, like, of course, that's what Congress does. That's what 184 00:13:09,759 --> 00:13:15,320 the point of the Constitutions Particle one is to create Congress as a law making 185 00:13:15,360 --> 00:13:20,000 body, and Wilson says Congress will be much better served doing less legislating and 186 00:13:20,039 --> 00:13:24,799 a lot more overseeing of administration. And so what you see after nineteen ten 187 00:13:24,960 --> 00:13:31,159 is a decentralization of power into committees, and the committees basically serve now as 188 00:13:31,279 --> 00:13:35,240 oversight bodies, and the legislative powers have been transferred over to the administrative state. 189 00:13:35,399 --> 00:13:39,960 So the argument I'm making in a nutshell is if by taking out parties 190 00:13:39,960 --> 00:13:43,480 and party leaders in Congress, the Progressives crippled Congress and facilitated the rise of 191 00:13:43,480 --> 00:13:50,559 the administrative state. Hey, y'all, this is Sarah from the Sarah Carter 192 00:13:50,679 --> 00:13:56,559 Show. 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And you know, not every member 208 00:15:16,919 --> 00:15:20,200 of Congress is as aerad dite and has this sort of well formed substance of 209 00:15:20,279 --> 00:15:24,879 understanding of the process you just described, but some, some of them really 210 00:15:26,200 --> 00:15:31,679 do and they're operating under this correct understanding of the process here. And I 211 00:15:31,720 --> 00:15:37,120 wonder, Joe, what you think the kind of solution is. Let's say, 212 00:15:37,240 --> 00:15:41,000 you know, hypothetically, there is a speaker, Jim Jordan, there's 213 00:15:41,000 --> 00:15:46,600 a speaker, Chip Roy. They have, you know, this power at 214 00:15:46,600 --> 00:15:50,759 their disposal, which is limited, and maybe you can get into some of 215 00:15:50,799 --> 00:15:52,240 that. You know, I don't think most of the country even realizes that 216 00:15:54,159 --> 00:15:56,200 we're without a speaker. I don't think most of the country can name at 217 00:15:56,240 --> 00:16:00,879 any point in time like who the Speaker of the House is, even though 218 00:16:00,879 --> 00:16:06,679 it sort of has Washington d C. Here you embroiled in the sort of 219 00:16:07,120 --> 00:16:14,000 palace intrigue. What should that kind of roadmap to making Congress, you know, 220 00:16:14,039 --> 00:16:15,480 taking Congress as you put it in the Heritage paper out of limbo. 221 00:16:15,600 --> 00:16:21,279 What does that look like? Yeah, well so that's a really difficult question. 222 00:16:21,399 --> 00:16:26,080 But the one thing I'll say about it is that I think conservatives, 223 00:16:26,320 --> 00:16:30,679 and this includes people on the Freedom Caucus side of things, Jip Roy and 224 00:16:30,840 --> 00:16:34,879 Jim Jordan, who looks like you very well maybe the next speaker, I 225 00:16:34,919 --> 00:16:38,320 think conservatives have a bit of a blind spot here. They tend to really 226 00:16:38,360 --> 00:16:44,120 love the idea of regular order. They're very nostalgic for the idea of regular 227 00:16:44,240 --> 00:16:48,000 order. They love the notion of the committees being back to doing the legislative 228 00:16:48,039 --> 00:16:53,080 work that the committees used to do. And they're right about this, they 229 00:16:53,360 --> 00:16:56,159 say, in the seventies and the eighties, you know, forty or fifty 230 00:16:56,240 --> 00:17:00,360 years ago, committees were places where you did see serious legislative work. You 231 00:17:00,440 --> 00:17:04,839 had markup sessions where you would dig into a bill and you would mark it 232 00:17:04,920 --> 00:17:07,359 up. You would you know, you would amend it, and then you 233 00:17:07,359 --> 00:17:10,839 would vote it out of the committee and it would go to the floor. 234 00:17:11,119 --> 00:17:14,200 I mean, this is Schoolhouse Rock, right, that famous you know, 235 00:17:14,319 --> 00:17:18,200 short video of how a bill becomes a law. And there's something beautiful about 236 00:17:18,200 --> 00:17:22,839 that image. Where the committees are these many legislatures, they get all this 237 00:17:22,920 --> 00:17:26,039 expertise, and they do all of this, they do all this serious work. 238 00:17:26,480 --> 00:17:30,559 The problem with that vision, and again this is the vision that many 239 00:17:30,720 --> 00:17:33,480 Freedom Cocus members want to return to, is that the committees tend to be 240 00:17:33,559 --> 00:17:38,359 captured by the interest groups. This is essentially the iron triangles that we used 241 00:17:38,359 --> 00:17:42,960 to describe when we would talk about how Congress works. People don't go seek 242 00:17:44,000 --> 00:17:48,279 out positions on the Agriculture Committee because they just want to do serious legislative work 243 00:17:48,279 --> 00:17:52,960 on agriculture. They get on the Agriculture Committee so that they can protect their 244 00:17:52,000 --> 00:17:56,880 constituents' interests. And so what happens in a lot of these committees is that 245 00:17:56,920 --> 00:18:02,839 they work in tandem with the administrative agency to whom they've delegated power and the 246 00:18:02,880 --> 00:18:07,319 interest groups, which of course grow up around those administrative agencies. So take 247 00:18:07,400 --> 00:18:15,920 something like military base closures or you know, Rivers Harbor's Infrastructure Transportation Committee legislation. 248 00:18:17,640 --> 00:18:21,680 These things tend to actually be less about what's good for the whole country 249 00:18:21,720 --> 00:18:25,160 and much more about what's good for the interest groups that are overly represented on 250 00:18:25,240 --> 00:18:29,319 these committees. So, in other words, what the Freedom Caucus tends to 251 00:18:29,559 --> 00:18:34,400 like is the idea that the committees will be revived as the places where legislative 252 00:18:34,400 --> 00:18:40,279 work happens, and the leadership the Speaker's office basically becomes just a facilitator of 253 00:18:40,279 --> 00:18:42,440 what the committees are doing. I think the problem with that is it gets 254 00:18:42,480 --> 00:18:47,839 captured very easily by special interests, and that's why you need strong parties who 255 00:18:47,839 --> 00:18:52,519 can think about the national interest and offset all of these interest groups as they 256 00:18:52,559 --> 00:18:56,440 try to capture the government in these various committees. So there's a reason why 257 00:18:56,519 --> 00:19:02,519 Newt Gingrich and other conservatives over the last you know, generation or so saw 258 00:19:02,559 --> 00:19:07,559 the need to nationalize elections and in so doing, nationalized Congress and put more 259 00:19:07,599 --> 00:19:11,119 hands in the put more power in the hands of the party leaders. They 260 00:19:11,160 --> 00:19:15,640 did that because they saw the administrative state thrives when there is no national party 261 00:19:15,720 --> 00:19:21,480 leadership in Congress. So I would warn anybody on the on the in the 262 00:19:21,480 --> 00:19:26,240 Freedom Caucus or serious conservatives that if you try to put the committees in charge 263 00:19:26,240 --> 00:19:27,920 of the process, you're going to find out that you're going to get a 264 00:19:27,960 --> 00:19:32,920 lot less conservative legislation out of those committees than you think you would. That 265 00:19:33,039 --> 00:19:37,079 is a really interesting point, and it's one that I rarely hear when these 266 00:19:37,079 --> 00:19:41,599 conversations come up. And you know, I think the last time Speaker Gingrich 267 00:19:41,680 --> 00:19:44,680 was on the show. Someone can go back and listen and correct me if 268 00:19:44,680 --> 00:19:47,640 I'm wrong. I want to say, I asked about the kind of counterintuitive 269 00:19:47,720 --> 00:19:51,039 effect of also slashing congressional staff, and I wonder, Joe, if you 270 00:19:51,079 --> 00:19:56,519 have some thoughts on ging Gritchian changes that were made to Congress that after four 271 00:19:56,599 --> 00:20:02,599 decades of democratic role in the House of Representatives did feel fresh and actually refreshing 272 00:20:02,799 --> 00:20:07,359 at the time in the nineteen nineties, but may have had deleterious attacks effects 273 00:20:07,400 --> 00:20:10,960 on the body downstream of that over the last couple of decades. Again, 274 00:20:11,000 --> 00:20:12,960 that is not a leading question. As somebody who talks to a lot of 275 00:20:14,000 --> 00:20:18,359 these Hill staffers, you kind of watch the twenty two year olds, right 276 00:20:18,400 --> 00:20:23,799 the bills, questions do come up, what's your take on whether that kind 277 00:20:23,799 --> 00:20:30,799 of the Gingrich revolution had some counterintuitive effects? And the nationalization point is an 278 00:20:30,839 --> 00:20:34,680 interesting one. Are there others? Yeah, so it's a great question the 279 00:20:36,039 --> 00:20:40,720 ging Grish Revolution. Everybody likes to point the finger a New Gingrich for why 280 00:20:40,759 --> 00:20:44,559 Congress is so broken. In fact, if you google New Gingrich Congress broken, 281 00:20:44,599 --> 00:20:48,200 you'll find articles in The Atlantic. I think one title is I think 282 00:20:48,240 --> 00:20:52,200 this is a direct quote how New Gingrish broke American politics. So he's sort 283 00:20:52,200 --> 00:20:56,400 of like the evil genius of the nineteen nineties who comes along and just destroys 284 00:20:56,440 --> 00:21:00,319 everything. I think that is a dramatic over simple of what's happened over the 285 00:21:00,400 --> 00:21:03,880 last fifty years in Congress. And in fact, I've made this argument in 286 00:21:03,880 --> 00:21:10,839 a few places online. The real turning point in Congress that gives rise to 287 00:21:10,880 --> 00:21:15,200 this nationalization effect, it's the middle of the nineteen seventies. That's when it's 288 00:21:15,240 --> 00:21:18,720 the post Watergate election in nineteen seventy four, when a bunch of left wing 289 00:21:18,759 --> 00:21:23,640 Democrats come in and they basically overthrow their speaker, a man named Carl Albert, 290 00:21:23,680 --> 00:21:26,400 who says, I tried to be the leader of this group that refused 291 00:21:26,400 --> 00:21:32,559 to be led because Carl Albert from Oklahoma was a sort of moderate conservative Democrat. 292 00:21:32,960 --> 00:21:34,759 And of course the left wing Democrats, as the Democratic Party moved to 293 00:21:34,799 --> 00:21:38,160 the left, they had to overthrow their party leaders because they wanted a more 294 00:21:38,880 --> 00:21:44,559 monolithic party, a more ideologically cohesive party, and so they sort of took 295 00:21:44,559 --> 00:21:47,799 the party over from the grass roots. And what they ended up doing then 296 00:21:47,920 --> 00:21:52,039 was replacing Carl Albert and then turning over more power into the hands of the 297 00:21:52,039 --> 00:21:56,119 speaker of the House. This led to a guy like Jim Wright in the 298 00:21:56,200 --> 00:22:00,960 nineteen eighties becoming a very partisan speaker. You know, this is the thing 299 00:22:00,960 --> 00:22:03,640 about these movements in Congress. For every action, there's an equal and opposite 300 00:22:03,680 --> 00:22:08,680 reaction. So as the Democrats kicked out the conservatives from their party as they 301 00:22:08,680 --> 00:22:12,880 became more monolithically liberal, they centralized power in their speakers' hands, and then 302 00:22:12,920 --> 00:22:18,640 this gives rise to a more conservative Republican Party, a more combative Republican party. 303 00:22:18,000 --> 00:22:22,839 And Gingrish's rise is really a counterweight to the rise of a more liberal 304 00:22:22,880 --> 00:22:26,839 Democratic Party. So it's not that the Republican Party moved right, it's that 305 00:22:26,920 --> 00:22:32,000 the Democratic Party moved left, and that caused the Republican Party to become more 306 00:22:32,119 --> 00:22:37,920 monolithically conservative. And so Gingrish is really kind of a symptom of a deeper 307 00:22:38,160 --> 00:22:42,319 trajectory in American politics over a long period of time. But then to get 308 00:22:42,319 --> 00:22:48,279 to Gingrish more specifically, some of the things he did worked very well. 309 00:22:48,680 --> 00:22:52,839 He really did by centralizing power in the speaker's hands, he disciplined these committees 310 00:22:53,079 --> 00:22:57,279 that were full of Republicans who wanted to do business as usual. And in 311 00:22:57,319 --> 00:23:00,920 fact, what did we get by the time Gingrich had become speaker for a 312 00:23:00,920 --> 00:23:07,759 few years. We got budget surpluses, we got negotiation between Clinton and Gingrich. 313 00:23:07,799 --> 00:23:11,319 You know, everybody thinks about Clinton as a sort of triangulation third way 314 00:23:11,480 --> 00:23:15,799 moderate Democrat. Well, the point is he was forced to be that way 315 00:23:15,839 --> 00:23:19,720 by a very powerful speaker who had united the Republican Party behind a conservative agenda 316 00:23:21,240 --> 00:23:23,799 instead of letting all these these Republicans sort of, you know, do business 317 00:23:23,799 --> 00:23:30,200 as usual. So Gingrich I think had a good strategy in the broad scope 318 00:23:30,240 --> 00:23:34,119 of things to nationalize power, or to centralized power and nationalize elections. He 319 00:23:34,160 --> 00:23:37,480 did make some mistakes. I think the biggest one that most people on the 320 00:23:37,559 --> 00:23:45,160 right have identified is the just absolute gutting of staff on the House of Representative 321 00:23:45,240 --> 00:23:49,039 side really has destroyed oversight, the ability of the House of Representatives to hold 322 00:23:49,039 --> 00:23:53,359 the administrative state accountable. So I think even Gingrish himself, if you know, 323 00:23:53,440 --> 00:23:57,359 he were forced to reflect on that aspect of if his plan, I 324 00:23:57,400 --> 00:24:00,920 think, or at least I hope he would, i'd say admit that that 325 00:24:02,079 --> 00:24:06,200 was a mistake. And one of the things I think conservatives and Republicans can 326 00:24:06,240 --> 00:24:08,880 agree on right now is it would probably be a good idea to strengthen the 327 00:24:08,920 --> 00:24:14,279 House by adding more staff. The problem is, it's really hard to pitch 328 00:24:14,359 --> 00:24:17,559 that to your base because it kind of looks like a swampy thing to do. 329 00:24:18,440 --> 00:24:22,880 But sometimes increasing the power of the House and increasing the staff of the 330 00:24:22,920 --> 00:24:26,200 House is needed. To offset the permanent government that exists in the administrative state 331 00:24:27,039 --> 00:24:32,119 right and to disincentivize the revolving door to some extent as well. If you 332 00:24:32,160 --> 00:24:36,319 can't make a middle class living raising a family in the House of Representatives in 333 00:24:36,519 --> 00:24:38,720 Washington, d C. Where super expensive to live. Anyway, this sounds 334 00:24:38,799 --> 00:24:42,839 like, you know, crocodile tears for Washington, d C. But there's 335 00:24:42,920 --> 00:24:47,839 a very important point actually that you're making. It's also you get the revolving 336 00:24:47,880 --> 00:24:51,880 door because you can't you can't make a career on the hill totally, and 337 00:24:51,920 --> 00:24:55,839 that means you end up leaving by the time you're thirty, and then you 338 00:24:55,880 --> 00:24:59,839 go and you know, use all those contacts for industry and et cetera. 339 00:25:00,160 --> 00:25:03,480 It's not a great thing, but everyone who follows this closely season happened just 340 00:25:03,519 --> 00:25:10,440 about every single day now. Kevin McCarthy is a really really interesting figure, 341 00:25:10,519 --> 00:25:14,240 I think a very misunderstood figure in the media, and I wanted to ask 342 00:25:14,759 --> 00:25:19,119 Joe about how he was very much a reaction to Nancy Pelosi's speakership. Nancy 343 00:25:19,119 --> 00:25:23,400 Pelosi was a very intentional speaker. I always say, when she passes away, 344 00:25:23,440 --> 00:25:27,079 there will be buildings here in d C named after her, certainly in 345 00:25:27,119 --> 00:25:33,039 San Francisco, but she she's just a towering figure in Washington, d C. 346 00:25:33,200 --> 00:25:36,279 In no small part because she was so intentional as Speaker of the House 347 00:25:36,319 --> 00:25:44,000 of Representatives. Kevin McCarthy interviews with me and other journalists and even up to 348 00:25:44,279 --> 00:25:48,039 just this last month, has repeatedly said, you know a lot of this 349 00:25:48,200 --> 00:25:51,759 when he when he lost the vote on the floor, he came out and 350 00:25:51,799 --> 00:25:53,359 said, you know, I think we lost a lot of this when Nancy 351 00:25:53,359 --> 00:25:59,559 Pelosi started yanking people off committees or or you know, not allowing Jim Banks 352 00:25:59,559 --> 00:26:03,880 and Jim were going to be on the January sixth committee and doing the first 353 00:26:03,880 --> 00:26:06,920 impeachment. You know, a lot of people talk about how on the House 354 00:26:07,000 --> 00:26:10,920 side that was. Kevin McCarthy talks about how for him that was kind of 355 00:26:10,960 --> 00:26:14,759 a make or break moment when he had his eyes opened to almost what you 356 00:26:14,799 --> 00:26:18,599 were describing from the nineteen seventies show. What is the interplay between how Pelosi 357 00:26:18,640 --> 00:26:22,400 governed and then how Kevin McCarthy sort of stepped into her shoes ended up saying 358 00:26:22,400 --> 00:26:26,680 he wasn't going to put ilhan Omar on foreign affairs and Eric Swallwell on intelligence. 359 00:26:27,599 --> 00:26:32,200 What does that dynamic tell us about you know, Congress and Limbo. 360 00:26:33,240 --> 00:26:36,839 Yeah, it's hard to know exactly what to make of it. I'll take 361 00:26:36,880 --> 00:26:41,759 a stab, but it's hard to It's really hard to figure out what's going 362 00:26:41,759 --> 00:26:45,160 on on the Democratic side right now. So one thing we can say for 363 00:26:45,200 --> 00:26:48,880 sure is historically the Democratic Party has been much more united than the Republican Party 364 00:26:48,880 --> 00:26:53,960 in the twenty first century in the House when it came time for the Democratic 365 00:26:53,960 --> 00:26:59,839 Party to push for hard left legislation, for say, the Affordable Care Act 366 00:27:00,119 --> 00:27:03,039 Trade Dodd Frank, this is all the stuff that gets done in Obama's first 367 00:27:03,119 --> 00:27:07,960 term. You have a very sizable number of blue dog Democrats, moderate Democrats 368 00:27:07,960 --> 00:27:12,880 who say, this is not what our constituents want us to vote for. 369 00:27:14,119 --> 00:27:17,039 And in fact, we're going to be taking a really big hit in the 370 00:27:17,039 --> 00:27:22,279 twenty ten midterm elections because you're governing from the far left instead of kind of 371 00:27:22,680 --> 00:27:26,519 where the party is as a whole, which includes some moderate districts. And 372 00:27:26,640 --> 00:27:33,799 Pelosi got those, even those Democrats representing moderate or even conservative districts to vote 373 00:27:33,839 --> 00:27:37,039 for all that stuff, even though it sort of against their own interests, 374 00:27:37,240 --> 00:27:40,640 and of course they lost their seats in twenty ten, but the lot of 375 00:27:40,680 --> 00:27:45,680 the legislation is still with us. So Pelosi manages to managed when she was 376 00:27:45,759 --> 00:27:49,559 Speaker, really to keep the party much more together than say Speaker Bainer or 377 00:27:49,599 --> 00:27:56,400 Speaker Ryan or Speaker McCarthy. However, I don't know if that's going to 378 00:27:56,480 --> 00:28:02,000 continue indefinitely because one of the things I'm suggesting here in our conversation is that 379 00:28:02,160 --> 00:28:06,920 parties in American politics are actually quite weak, and party leaders are actually quite 380 00:28:06,960 --> 00:28:11,920 weak. It's the incentives for individual politicians is to go against their party leaders 381 00:28:11,000 --> 00:28:15,160 if their constituents want them to, and there's not much that the parties can 382 00:28:15,200 --> 00:28:21,640 do to maintain that kind of cohesion or maintain that kind of unity. I 383 00:28:21,640 --> 00:28:23,720 don't know how Pelosi did it so effectively. I mean, she raised a 384 00:28:23,759 --> 00:28:27,000 lot of money, and she could distribute that money to a lot of members 385 00:28:27,039 --> 00:28:30,640 to help them with their reelections, so that certainly played a role, but 386 00:28:32,119 --> 00:28:34,400 that didn't help McCarthy. McCarthy gave a lot of money to a lot of 387 00:28:34,480 --> 00:28:38,599 Republican members, and I suppose you could say it helped with the overwhelming majority 388 00:28:38,640 --> 00:28:42,599 of them, and it only took eight for McCarthy to be ousted, but 389 00:28:44,000 --> 00:28:48,200 one of the most telling things I think involving the Democrats in this respect is 390 00:28:48,240 --> 00:28:52,960 that in twenty fifteen, when Speaker Bayner was facing the motion to vacate, 391 00:28:52,039 --> 00:28:56,240 it had basically already been threatened, and he knew he was going to have 392 00:28:56,279 --> 00:29:00,599 to have a vote on the floor of the House to maintain his speakership speak 393 00:29:02,079 --> 00:29:06,440 or Nancy Pelosi, then, of course, Minority Leader, told Bayinner that 394 00:29:06,559 --> 00:29:11,799 she would have all of the Democrats vote present in that vote, basically in 395 00:29:11,920 --> 00:29:15,240 order to save Speaker Bayner. So in twenty fifteen, the Democrats were ready 396 00:29:15,240 --> 00:29:19,359 to set out such a vote in order to maintain the power of the Republican 397 00:29:19,400 --> 00:29:23,319 Speaker. I think because they interviewed Pelosi about this, and she said, 398 00:29:23,640 --> 00:29:27,359 no person can govern, no person can lead or set an agenda. When 399 00:29:27,400 --> 00:29:30,680 ten percent of your own conference has a knife right to your back, right, 400 00:29:30,759 --> 00:29:37,000 that's just a recipe for a disaster. And so that's twenty fifteen, 401 00:29:37,039 --> 00:29:40,920 and that's Pelosi leading the party. What happens in twenty twenty three is that 402 00:29:41,119 --> 00:29:45,400 under Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic Party is now much more eager, just on 403 00:29:45,440 --> 00:29:48,960 a purely partisan basis, to embarrass the Republican Speaker and so what you see, 404 00:29:49,000 --> 00:29:53,119 I think is that the Democrats are no longer interested in thinking institutionally, 405 00:29:55,039 --> 00:29:57,440 or to put it a different way, the Democrats are doing kind of the 406 00:29:57,440 --> 00:30:02,000 same thing that the Republican Party has done over the last twelve years, which 407 00:30:02,119 --> 00:30:04,680 used to say when the Democratic Speaker Jeffries, if and when that day comes, 408 00:30:04,720 --> 00:30:08,279 when he's Speaker of the House, he's going to find that his left 409 00:30:08,319 --> 00:30:11,599 flank, that the squad is going to be much more difficult to deal with 410 00:30:12,200 --> 00:30:15,079 as with him as leader than it was for Pelosi. I'm not sure how 411 00:30:15,119 --> 00:30:22,119 Pelosi kept those people from destroying the Democratic Party agenda, but I don't think 412 00:30:22,160 --> 00:30:25,480 that if he becomes Speaker, I don't think that Speaker Jeffries will be able 413 00:30:25,559 --> 00:30:32,359 to do the same that yeah, the Democratic dynamics. I also wonder if 414 00:30:32,359 --> 00:30:37,799 there's sort of what the kind of precedent is going back for Democrats either helping 415 00:30:37,839 --> 00:30:44,000 Republicans or Republicans helping Democrats, or maybe even before those are the two major 416 00:30:44,039 --> 00:30:48,720 parties when it comes to electing the speakers, there anything where they've because right 417 00:30:48,759 --> 00:30:52,000 now, for example, the centristwing of the Republican Party is kicking around the 418 00:30:52,039 --> 00:30:56,839 idea of working with the centris stwing of the Democratic Party to cobble together a 419 00:30:56,880 --> 00:31:02,000 coalition and support someone for speaker, which I mean, I think there's virtually 420 00:31:02,119 --> 00:31:07,519 zero percent chance that that would work out. There is some I guess mathematical 421 00:31:07,759 --> 00:31:10,599 You could put the math down on paper and say, I guess, in 422 00:31:10,680 --> 00:31:14,279 theory there's a way to do this, But is there any precedent for anything 423 00:31:14,319 --> 00:31:17,440 like that. There is, but you have to go back a long way 424 00:31:17,559 --> 00:31:22,880 and the context is completely different. So coalition style governments have existed in American 425 00:31:22,920 --> 00:31:27,319 politics, but they're basically a relic of the nineteenth century. And in fact, 426 00:31:27,359 --> 00:31:30,039 if you look at some of the speaker races prior to the Civil War, 427 00:31:30,359 --> 00:31:33,880 I think there's one where there was over one hundred, maybe even over 428 00:31:33,920 --> 00:31:37,279 one hundred and thirty ballots to choose the House Speaker of the House prior to 429 00:31:37,359 --> 00:31:40,640 the Civil War. There's one point in which they just give up and they 430 00:31:40,680 --> 00:31:41,920 say, okay, well it's a plurality vote. Now, you don't need 431 00:31:41,960 --> 00:31:45,200 to get a majority of the members to vote for you. It's just whoever 432 00:31:45,240 --> 00:31:48,640 finishes first. And this is because of course the two party systems breaking down 433 00:31:48,720 --> 00:31:52,359 leading up to the Civil War, a lot of people are going to draw 434 00:31:52,440 --> 00:31:56,200 some interesting comparisons here, right that you know, what happens to the two 435 00:31:56,200 --> 00:31:59,200 party system in the nineteenth century as we get closer and closer to civil war, 436 00:31:59,319 --> 00:32:02,160 you basically get sectional parties and the splitting up of the two parties into 437 00:32:02,200 --> 00:32:07,039 four parties, right, Northern Democratic Party, a Southern Democratic Party, a 438 00:32:07,039 --> 00:32:10,359 Northern Whig Party, and a Southern Whig Party. And people will draw analogies 439 00:32:10,359 --> 00:32:14,440 to today, right, the sort of cold civil war that we're in, 440 00:32:14,960 --> 00:32:17,519 and look at what's happening to the parties that they're governing like coalitions now instead 441 00:32:17,519 --> 00:32:21,960 of two parties. I don't really think that's what's happening though. I think 442 00:32:22,000 --> 00:32:27,160 what's happening really is that there's no incentive for anybody to work towards the middle. 443 00:32:27,839 --> 00:32:34,680 So the problem essentially is that you have there's no way a coalition style 444 00:32:34,720 --> 00:32:37,720 government would work in this context because Democrats would never move to the middle in 445 00:32:37,799 --> 00:32:43,759 order to capture those twenty moderate Republicans that they would need to maintain their coalition. 446 00:32:43,960 --> 00:32:46,680 Like if we sort of game theorized this out, you know, the 447 00:32:46,720 --> 00:32:52,440 Democrats could get to a majority by grabbing like fifteen Republicans, but in order 448 00:32:52,519 --> 00:32:54,960 to do that, Democrats would have to start governing from a more centrist position, 449 00:32:55,640 --> 00:33:00,920 and the members of Congress and the House on the Democratic side would immediately 450 00:33:00,920 --> 00:33:04,920 start to look like they were compromising, they were selling out, and then 451 00:33:04,920 --> 00:33:08,599 they would face primary challenges back home. So their incentives aren't actually they'd rather 452 00:33:08,640 --> 00:33:14,119 govern, or they would rather not govern and be in the minority so that 453 00:33:14,160 --> 00:33:19,039 they can be reelected, then build a coalition compromise to do that, and 454 00:33:19,039 --> 00:33:22,759 then get primary out of their seats. So and increasingly then you see the 455 00:33:22,759 --> 00:33:28,519 Democratic votes fall off. So I don't see the opportunity. I mean there's 456 00:33:28,519 --> 00:33:30,480 an opportunity, but I don't see Democrats actually being able to pull it off 457 00:33:30,480 --> 00:33:35,119 where they can get Republicans to vote for a Democratic speaker. And so I 458 00:33:35,119 --> 00:33:38,480 think you're left with just a situation in which the majority party is going to 459 00:33:38,519 --> 00:33:43,839 have to be the one to assemble the majority to govern. And this again 460 00:33:43,880 --> 00:33:46,359 shows how the Democrats, as opposed to the twenty fifteen when they were willing 461 00:33:46,400 --> 00:33:51,119 to set the vote out, the Democrats aren't thinking institutionally, what are they 462 00:33:51,200 --> 00:33:52,680 likely to get as the result of all of this. It looks like they're 463 00:33:52,720 --> 00:33:55,480 going to get Speaker Jim Jordan. Now, from the point of view of 464 00:33:55,519 --> 00:34:00,640 the Democratic Party, this is not improving their situation, right, They're not 465 00:34:00,640 --> 00:34:04,799 getting a speaker that's more amenable to their priorities. They're getting a speaker who's 466 00:34:04,839 --> 00:34:08,840 going to be less amenable to their preferred bills. I suppose what they're thinking 467 00:34:08,920 --> 00:34:13,800 is that they can just retake the Chamber in twenty twenty four and that they're 468 00:34:13,800 --> 00:34:15,840 thinking, well, if we embarrass the Republicans, that we can score points 469 00:34:15,840 --> 00:34:20,199 in order to do that. So which you're really seeing that is the perpetual 470 00:34:20,239 --> 00:34:23,719 campaign instead of a bunch of people getting together and trying to govern. And 471 00:34:23,760 --> 00:34:30,760 how much of that can be explained by maybe special interests captured too, Because 472 00:34:30,159 --> 00:34:35,159 one of the conversations going on right now, this is like a tertiary storyline 473 00:34:35,199 --> 00:34:38,679 in the presidential election, is that you have people like John Huntsman and Joe 474 00:34:38,840 --> 00:34:45,280 Manchin kicking around the idea of, you know, a third party run. 475 00:34:45,440 --> 00:34:49,679 Robert F. Kennedy Junior obviously announced the third party run, but no labels 476 00:34:49,760 --> 00:34:54,079 is such in particular, that is such an interesting group because where Joe Manchin 477 00:34:54,119 --> 00:34:59,960 and John Huntsman so ostensibly a Democrat and Republican are able to find common ground, 478 00:35:00,039 --> 00:35:04,280 and that strikes a lot of people as really appealing and attractive. But 479 00:35:04,440 --> 00:35:08,320 in reality, where they are able to strike common ground and where people in 480 00:35:08,480 --> 00:35:15,760 Washington are going to find themselves striking common ground between Democrats and Republicans on committees 481 00:35:15,800 --> 00:35:17,679 and then on the floor, it's going to be on things like the farm 482 00:35:17,719 --> 00:35:22,320 bill. It's going to be on That's why they love the omnibuses. They 483 00:35:22,400 --> 00:35:25,880 love those freaking things. And so to a lot of people on the right, 484 00:35:25,960 --> 00:35:29,800 they would hear, you know, there's no incentive to move to the 485 00:35:29,840 --> 00:35:32,840 center and think hell yeah, like that's awesome, and you know, go 486 00:35:34,000 --> 00:35:37,119 Matt Gates. You know, we're at a great position now, Like who 487 00:35:37,159 --> 00:35:43,760 cares Congress isn't working? Congress is in limbo to borrow phrase, screw it. 488 00:35:43,800 --> 00:35:47,280 Is there is that kind of air of celebration in any way appropriate or 489 00:35:47,480 --> 00:35:52,079 is the bigger story here that something is fundamentally broken and it's not working for 490 00:35:52,119 --> 00:35:59,320 the American people? Yeah? I think it's the latter, And I encountered 491 00:35:59,400 --> 00:36:05,239 with thinking all the time what we really like is the fact that Congress is 492 00:36:05,280 --> 00:36:09,159 now broken, Congress is now dysfunctional with a speaker who's really going to govern. 493 00:36:09,320 --> 00:36:13,880 From our point of view, that means that nothing will get done because 494 00:36:13,880 --> 00:36:15,679 there will be no compromise. But that's a good thing because that means that 495 00:36:15,760 --> 00:36:20,800 the government is crippled. That whenever the parties get together and do something, 496 00:36:20,880 --> 00:36:23,880 it's always bad. And therefore we want the parties not to be working together. 497 00:36:23,920 --> 00:36:28,360 We want there to be gridlock. We want Congress to be crippled. 498 00:36:29,639 --> 00:36:31,639 I think in order to believe that that's good for conservatives, you have to 499 00:36:31,679 --> 00:36:37,760 presuppose that if Congress doesn't pass bills, nothing happens in Washington, DC. 500 00:36:37,480 --> 00:36:44,440 And that's the fundamental error because that presupposition is wrong. When Congress doesn't act, 501 00:36:44,639 --> 00:36:49,320 the administrative state just goes on autopilot. What we need right now and 502 00:36:49,360 --> 00:36:52,519 this is this sort of reversal thinking that is a challenge for people on the 503 00:36:52,599 --> 00:36:58,559 right. We need to actually reverse our thinking. The constitutional checks and balances 504 00:36:58,599 --> 00:37:02,480 are not working against us, because once you've entrenched the administrative state, you 505 00:37:02,559 --> 00:37:06,960 now need government to put together a coalition to take power back from it. 506 00:37:07,760 --> 00:37:12,800 And this means that you have to proceed as if Congress must act in order 507 00:37:12,840 --> 00:37:15,119 to reign in the EPA or in order to reign in Oshia or in order 508 00:37:15,159 --> 00:37:19,679 to reign in some of these other agencies. To this point, we've said, 509 00:37:20,119 --> 00:37:22,719 we know Congress isn't going to reign in these agencies, let's hope that 510 00:37:22,719 --> 00:37:27,760 the Supreme Court will do it. And I think that strategy might be working 511 00:37:27,760 --> 00:37:30,119 in the short term, but it is going to fail in the long term. 512 00:37:30,599 --> 00:37:34,400 It's already putting enormous stress on the Supreme Court as everybody kind of realizes. 513 00:37:35,039 --> 00:37:37,440 What we really need is for the American people to take power back from 514 00:37:37,440 --> 00:37:42,000 the administrative state, and they have to do that through their elected representatives, 515 00:37:42,400 --> 00:37:45,719 but that means that they are going to be compromises along the way. You 516 00:37:45,800 --> 00:37:50,239 never accomplish great things in a republic all at once. You always accomplish them 517 00:37:50,280 --> 00:37:53,079 incrementally. You build the consensus, you accomplish something, you show that you 518 00:37:53,119 --> 00:37:58,679 can govern responsibly, and then you expand that consensus and you take steps further 519 00:37:58,760 --> 00:38:02,880 and further and further. That's the kind of institutional and incremental and strategic thinking 520 00:38:04,400 --> 00:38:07,000 that we need, and I think it's the kind of thinking we don't see 521 00:38:07,079 --> 00:38:09,679 very much on the right these days. So it's sort of counterintuitive, right, 522 00:38:09,719 --> 00:38:13,639 What we really want to do is to shut everything down. But the 523 00:38:13,679 --> 00:38:15,760 ironic thing here, the paradox here, is that in order to sort of 524 00:38:15,760 --> 00:38:20,880 take power back, you can't shut it down because you can't shut the administrative 525 00:38:20,920 --> 00:38:28,159 state down unless Congress affirmatively acts. So I think something is fundamentally broken here, 526 00:38:28,559 --> 00:38:30,519 but it got broken over the last century, and it's not going to 527 00:38:30,519 --> 00:38:34,679 be an easy fix, and we really are going to have to work incrementally, 528 00:38:34,800 --> 00:38:37,239 and that means compromise in the short term in order to get to where 529 00:38:37,239 --> 00:38:44,599 we want to be in the long term. You started by talking about Madison 530 00:38:44,719 --> 00:38:47,440 and Federalist ten and one of the big questions I have and wanted to ask 531 00:38:47,519 --> 00:38:52,079 you, I think about this a lot. There's that John Adams quote people 532 00:38:52,119 --> 00:38:57,440 go to all the time about, you know, how a republic depends on 533 00:38:57,639 --> 00:39:00,320 a virtuous citizenry, and are some Madis quotes to that effect. Now, 534 00:39:00,679 --> 00:39:06,960 the specific ones are eluding me at the moment that there should be an incentive 535 00:39:07,039 --> 00:39:09,159 to sort of move to the center, even though they're the Madisonian kind of 536 00:39:09,239 --> 00:39:16,760 obstacles to just pure direct democracy like California has demonstrated just so beautifully, So 537 00:39:17,639 --> 00:39:22,599 you know, there should be an incentive to kind of work together, but 538 00:39:22,239 --> 00:39:27,320 it does seem like we're on such different pages now. It does seem like, 539 00:39:27,760 --> 00:39:32,800 you know, the question of whether a citizenry is virtuous when you know 540 00:39:32,880 --> 00:39:39,679 you are nationalized to the anth degree you have social media, you know, 541 00:39:39,960 --> 00:39:45,840 it's tempting to not just see these as evolutions in the human strains on constitutional 542 00:39:45,840 --> 00:39:51,679 republicanism, but something that is a new threat altogether, because you know, 543 00:39:52,199 --> 00:39:54,960 it feels now like in the country where wop was what the top song for 544 00:39:55,039 --> 00:40:00,639 however long, we just we just don't have a virtuous enough it doesn't to 545 00:40:00,639 --> 00:40:06,440 sustain a constitutional republic at this point. Is there evidence of that as we 546 00:40:06,480 --> 00:40:09,360 look at the abject chaos that has enveloped Congress for the last year or so. 547 00:40:10,280 --> 00:40:15,440 Yeah, I think I am on both sides of that question, and 548 00:40:15,480 --> 00:40:19,239 it's really hard to know which of my impulses is actually the correct one. 549 00:40:19,400 --> 00:40:22,199 So all of the evidence that you're start of putting together, right, the 550 00:40:22,239 --> 00:40:25,960 rise of social media, the fact that people seem to be behaving in less 551 00:40:27,039 --> 00:40:30,440 civil ways, just some of the positions you see people staking and being proud 552 00:40:30,480 --> 00:40:36,320 of it these days are pretty remarkable and seem to be positions that no sane 553 00:40:36,320 --> 00:40:38,599 person was taking twenty or thirty years ago. It does kind of look like 554 00:40:38,639 --> 00:40:44,519 we've just lost virtue. We've lost basically the necessary prerequisite for self government. 555 00:40:45,159 --> 00:40:47,840 On the other hand, when you look at American history, I think you 556 00:40:47,880 --> 00:40:52,400 see a lot of moments where everybody was saying the same stuff that we're saying 557 00:40:52,480 --> 00:40:54,599 right now. They say, oh, well, you know, it's all 558 00:40:54,639 --> 00:40:59,760 over. The republic is lost, We've lost our virtue. And they're even 559 00:40:59,800 --> 00:41:05,039 saying this in like seventeen ninety eight. The Jeffersonians and the Madisonians and the 560 00:41:05,039 --> 00:41:08,960 Democratic Republicans are saying this because they think the Federalists have turned the system into 561 00:41:08,960 --> 00:41:14,559 a monarchy, they've basically corrupted the entire government. And then when they win 562 00:41:14,599 --> 00:41:16,280 the election of eighteen hundred, the Federalists all say, well, basically, 563 00:41:16,320 --> 00:41:21,079 now all of the vicious people, all of the demagogues have gained power, 564 00:41:21,119 --> 00:41:25,119 all of the Jacobins and the French revolutionaries have taken over. So I don't 565 00:41:25,159 --> 00:41:30,360 think that virtue is ever completely lost in a self governing republic, and I 566 00:41:30,400 --> 00:41:36,719 think that there's always hope to recapture it. And I also think probably we 567 00:41:36,760 --> 00:41:39,000 spend a little too much time looking at social media and taking that to be 568 00:41:39,199 --> 00:41:44,679 sort of where most Americans are. I think that most Americans aren't even on 569 00:41:44,840 --> 00:41:47,599 these platforms, and so we're getting a bit of a skewed sample when we 570 00:41:47,679 --> 00:41:52,920 look at those places, those places for gauging what's going on in terms of 571 00:41:52,960 --> 00:41:57,199 the virtue of our republic. I guess maybe the last thing I would say 572 00:41:57,239 --> 00:42:00,239 about that is because this is a point that's sort of been in my mind 573 00:42:00,280 --> 00:42:04,719 a few times during this conversation, but I've not quite been able to sort 574 00:42:04,760 --> 00:42:08,079 of added into the discussion. If you look at what's happening in state governments, 575 00:42:08,280 --> 00:42:10,639 and this is not true of every state, but it's true of many 576 00:42:10,679 --> 00:42:15,760 states. State governments are performing or their functions at a much higher level than 577 00:42:15,800 --> 00:42:22,119 the federal government is right now. And a lot of these things that you 578 00:42:22,199 --> 00:42:25,239 know we see happening in Washington, the gridlock, the dysfunction, the inability 579 00:42:25,280 --> 00:42:30,199 of parties to work together to accomplish goals, that's not really happening at the 580 00:42:30,199 --> 00:42:32,719 state level. So maybe one of the things that we should be working to 581 00:42:32,800 --> 00:42:37,039 do to restore this kind of virtue and self government in these habits is to 582 00:42:37,079 --> 00:42:40,880 be investing a little bit more on what's going on in our states and trying 583 00:42:40,880 --> 00:42:45,920 to use those as mechanisms for rebuilding our muscles for self government and showing how 584 00:42:45,960 --> 00:42:51,960 parties can function effectively in a legislative body. And maybe we can sort of 585 00:42:51,960 --> 00:42:54,000 have that filter up a little bit into Washington, d C. Which really 586 00:42:54,079 --> 00:42:58,400 was always the way the system was designed, right, It was supposed to 587 00:42:58,559 --> 00:43:01,000 have Washington d C. As the representative of what's going on in the states, 588 00:43:01,079 --> 00:43:07,320 rather than a top down model in which Washington was imposing its model on 589 00:43:07,719 --> 00:43:10,280 the states. So, actually, there are places that you can find virtue, 590 00:43:10,599 --> 00:43:15,159 There are places where you can find hope, you just have to look 591 00:43:15,159 --> 00:43:20,199 for them, and maybe not the usual the usual places. And last question, 592 00:43:20,239 --> 00:43:22,840 actually I realized as we were talking, I'd be remiss if I didn't 593 00:43:22,880 --> 00:43:28,199 ask whether the So we're waiting on the or arguments in the Chevron deference case 594 00:43:28,280 --> 00:43:30,559 to take place in the next couple of months, and that means within the 595 00:43:30,559 --> 00:43:35,599 next year we expected judgment on Chevron deference that could be sweeping, could be 596 00:43:35,719 --> 00:43:38,320 minor, could be bad, could be good. But if this current Supreme 597 00:43:38,360 --> 00:43:43,280 Court rules in a way that is sweeping against Chevron deference, is that going 598 00:43:43,320 --> 00:43:47,440 to be again not a leading question. A big step to addressing this problem 599 00:43:47,519 --> 00:43:52,960 of bureaucracy in America is you wrote at book's length about how serious is that 600 00:43:52,000 --> 00:43:55,159 a threat to the administrative state? It, Yeah, I don't think it 601 00:43:55,199 --> 00:44:00,199 will change much of anything. So the Chevron deference principle right, which says 602 00:44:00,239 --> 00:44:06,960 that judges have to defer to administrative agencies when they issue their interpretations of law, 603 00:44:07,280 --> 00:44:09,280 and essentially pretty much everything an agency does is, you know, a 604 00:44:09,280 --> 00:44:14,840 sort of interpretation of law. So basically Chevron means the courts have to defer 605 00:44:14,880 --> 00:44:16,920 to the agencies, and this gives more power to the administrative state. I 606 00:44:16,920 --> 00:44:21,880 think that's true, but I don't think that getting rid of Chevron deference will 607 00:44:21,960 --> 00:44:25,559 change much because I think courts will defer to agencies in a lot of cases 608 00:44:25,599 --> 00:44:30,400 anyway, because they're going to be afraid to second guess the experts on things 609 00:44:30,480 --> 00:44:37,000 like food and drug regulation or energy regulation. And so I think the courts 610 00:44:37,360 --> 00:44:40,320 will not save us from the administrative state. And I think that's one of 611 00:44:40,400 --> 00:44:45,119 the things I've been trying to tell conservatives now for close to a decade, 612 00:44:45,239 --> 00:44:51,599 is that we've been trying to use the courts to fight battles in taking on 613 00:44:51,639 --> 00:44:54,880 the administrative state, and we've won important short term victories. You know, 614 00:44:55,000 --> 00:45:00,360 West Virginia versus EPA sort of limits the power of the EPA to implement climate 615 00:45:00,440 --> 00:45:06,199 change regulations. And we've used the courts to strike down vaccine mandates issued by 616 00:45:06,199 --> 00:45:09,519 Ocean and so forth, and those battles need to be fought. But I 617 00:45:09,519 --> 00:45:15,199 think in the long run the only way we recover authority from the administrative state 618 00:45:15,320 --> 00:45:20,199 is through legislature rather than through the judiciary. So then you have to ask 619 00:45:20,239 --> 00:45:24,199 the question, what do we do to rebuild a functioning legislature? And I 620 00:45:24,239 --> 00:45:30,079 think the last couple of weeks have put on pretty stark display that you have 621 00:45:30,159 --> 00:45:32,599 to have some form of leadership. You have to have a party that's capable 622 00:45:32,599 --> 00:45:37,760 of acting together to some extent, because you don't accomplish much of anything if 623 00:45:37,760 --> 00:45:42,159 you're constantly fighting amongst yourselves. And really all that does is it opens up 624 00:45:42,159 --> 00:45:45,760 a lane for government and especially the administrative state, to operate without any oversight 625 00:45:45,880 --> 00:45:51,519 at all. So I think the Chevron case is important. I will be 626 00:45:51,559 --> 00:45:54,639 watching it very carefully. I have my own I'm rooting for the fishermen and 627 00:45:54,679 --> 00:46:00,000 not for the government in that case. Not that that would surprise anybody listen 628 00:46:00,280 --> 00:46:02,480 to this. But and I care about that case. I think it's an 629 00:46:02,519 --> 00:46:06,800 important case, but I think it is a short term victory if it's won, 630 00:46:07,400 --> 00:46:09,159 and it's not one that will fundamentally. You know, the swamp will 631 00:46:09,199 --> 00:46:14,039 not be drained by the ending of Chevron deference. It's a much bigger problem 632 00:46:14,360 --> 00:46:19,079 that requires a much more ambitious solution. Really helpful perspective. Joe Postel, 633 00:46:19,719 --> 00:46:23,000 professor at Hillsdale College, author of Bureaucracy in America and also the author of 634 00:46:23,039 --> 00:46:27,760 the Heritage Foundation paper Congress in Limbo. Thank you so much for joining the 635 00:46:27,760 --> 00:46:30,880 show today. It was great to be with you. Of course you have 636 00:46:30,000 --> 00:46:34,599 been listening to another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily Dashinsky, 637 00:46:34,639 --> 00:46:37,960 culture editor here at The Federalist. Will be back soon with more. Until 638 00:46:37,000 --> 00:46:47,599 then, the lovers of freedom and anxious for the friend I heard the fame 639 00:46:47,719 --> 00:46:49,920 by the reason