Dan Snow's History Hit - Harris vs Trump: How We Got Here

Episode Date: July 28, 2024

With the news that Kamala Harris is the assumed Democratic nominee for the November election, the presidential race looks very different than it did just over a week ago. Dan is joined by Ben Rhodes, a Former Deputy National Security Advisor for Obama and host of Pod Save the World, to look at the history that informs the platforms both candidates stand for. They discuss the development of the Republican and Democratic parties over the 20th century, the enduring appeal of the 'strongman' from before WWI to now and the changing landscape of campaigning in the 21st century due to social media and the internet. And, what would a Trump administration mean for the rest of the world? Ben offers his thoughts on that too.Ben's show is Pod Save the World is a weekly podcast that breaks down international news and foreign policy developmentsProduced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal PatmoreEnjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign up HERE for 50% off for 3 months using code ‘DANSNOW’.We'd love to hear from you - what do you want to hear an episode on? You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History. And I think it has to be the most dramatic, the most tumultuous, in some ways the most exciting, perhaps the most consequential, certainly the most swingy, if that's a word, yo-yoing US presidential election campaign, well, certainly in my lifetime. How will history look at this moment?

How will historians understand what is going on right now? We do not know, but we can try and write a little rough first draft here. And we've got the man to do it. We've got Ben Rhodes. He is a former Deputy National Security Advisor for President Barack Obama. He worked very closely with President Obama through all eight years in the White House. He was a speechwriter. He helped come up with the chant, Yes We Can, for Barack Obama. He's now co-host of the must-listen-to foreign policy podcast, Pod Save the World. He's written some great books. He's an observer of US politics in the global context. He's a very smart and interesting guy and it's

great to have him back on the podcast. We're going to talk about what has been going on in the States and we're going to try and make sense of it from the historical point of view. Enjoy. T-minus 10. Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black-white unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off, and the shuttle has cleared the tower. and lift off, and the shuttle has cleared the tower. Ben, thanks so much for coming on the pod, bud. Good to see you.

Good to see you, Dan. Good to see you, man. Things look like they've been busy over there. Yeah, Dan, I gotta tell you, I feel like I've been through quite a lot the last 10 years in American politics, but nothing, nothing like the last couple of weeks. Absolutely insane. Let me ask, you've been through that. You've been on that 10-year journey. You've been on the inside. You've been in the room where it happened. What is your sense of what is going on right now?

Give me the first draft of history for this campaign, and then let's blow it up globally. But for the moment, how do you characterize what's happening now? Well, I think right now in the Democratic Party, there's been this passing of a torch that once it actually happened, was even more kind of cathartic and dramatic than we all anticipated. I mean, I, by the end, had a feeling that Joe Biden was going to do this. But when that statement hit, Dan, and you realize there's an 81-year-old man, historic man, who's been in politics for decades, stepping back,

the person stepping forward is a younger Black woman, Indian American woman. The energy unleashed by that was truly extraordinary. I mean, she's raised $100 million in basically a day. There's tens and tens of thousands of people that sign up to work. They don't even know what they're signing up to do, just to volunteer for this campaign. And what I think is happening in the room is, you know, she's building a team. She's building a plane that's taking off, flying, and has 100 days to reach the destination. So on the one hand, you're trying to, if you're in those rooms, you're trying to figure out how can we just build a campaign that can absorb all of this energy and kind of direct it towards the finish line. And that's probably what looks pretty good on the outside right now, Dan, is probably complete chaos in there. What about the wider strategic picture here? Like how this campaign is going, how information is being used, how people are making their decisions, how we're relating to politicians. What is your sense of where you are? Like I say, how will historians characterize this campaign,

what you've witnessed so far? Well, the interesting thing is that this seemed like it was going to be the most boring and most grim campaign in our history. You know, as recently as two months ago, nobody wanted these two people to be running against each other. Maybe the Trump diehards were glad he was there, but a huge majority of Americans are pretty tired of Trump. Overwhelming majority of Americans didn't want it to be Joe Biden. And then, you know, all of a sudden you had, I mean, it was only like six weeks ago that Donald Trump is convicted of 34 felonies. Then you have this debate, which is unlike anything we've ever seen. It's been the worst debate performance in American history.

Then you have this Shakespearean drama play out involving a lot of people I know, you know, from Joe Biden to Barack Obama to Nancy Pelosi, and the sense of a shrinking inner circle around the aging president. And what's interesting, Dan, is it was real interior political party stuff. We don't usually have parties like this, you know, I mean, you guys have leadership fights. This felt like a leadership fight, you know, in what is not a parliamentary system. All this time, the voters are kind of on the outside. You know, then on the other side, of course, Trump gets nearly shot or shot in the ear, nearly assassinated. We go through their convention, the kind of cult sudden voters could reconnect. Okay, this is it. This is the person. If you're a Democrat, it's like, okay, let's go. I'm just glad that's over. And if you're not, you're looking at this and you're thinking, wait a second, I'm giving Kamala Harris a second look here. You are someone who thinks more than most about global affairs,

foreign affairs. Is what's happening in the States, is the way this campaign has been conducted, are the currents that you're identifying exclusive to the US? Is the US an outlier? Or is it part of a bigger story? I think it's entirely part of a bigger story. And I think Americans, because we, I think, fall prey in a wrong about a certain kind of exceptionalist thinking, we sometimes exclude ourselves from global trends where we are very much a part of the global trend. We're essentially living in a time in which there's been this overwhelming backlash, I'd say, to globalization. Ever since the twin seismic shocks of the Iraq War and then

the global financial crisis, more importantly, the right wing has captured that energy. And a kind of strongman, autocratic nationalist playbook has emerged. And you know it's global when it's as diverse as Donald Trump here, Viktor Orban in Hungary, Vladimir Putin in Russia, Narendra Modi in India, Bibi Netanyahu in Israel. We had Bolsonaro in Brazil. We had Duterte in the Philippines, and it could go on. But essentially, what's being put to the test is whether liberal democracy can hold against this kind of tide of autocratic nationalist strongmen. And I think the stakes in this election, look, the United States doesn't determine global events. But I think in this case, we are right now the

biggest belt weather. And we've all watched elections in places like France. It felt like the stakes were everything. But if the United States tips in the direction of Trump, if he is elected for a second time, kind of validating that direction that he wants to go in, he's going to come back much, much more autocratic and much, much more aware of what he needs to do to essentially make the U.S. government an extension of his personal interest. Not only does that have huge consequences in the United States, but I think it validates the trend globally, Dan. And we are suddenly in a kind

of, okay, we really are in a pre-World War I. The international order kind of doesn't exist. It's basically just big nations and strongmen duking it out in very transactional ways. Those are the stakes, I think, in terms of Trump tipping this whole political era decisively in the direction of the strongman. You've done the work. You've put in the shoe leather. You've met with groups all over the world. What is it with the strongman? 10 years ago, if you and I had sat down and had a beer and we'd have been told that the strongman is coming back, we'd have laughed. We thought that was dead and buried, that phenomenon, mid-20th century. Why are we drawn to it?

I think because we're going through a time of convulsive change. That essentially the model that you and I came of age with then, the post-Cold War globalization period failed. It collapsed. People felt like the bottom fell out, I believe, of that system, particularly after the financial crisis. I could kind of feel this building in the Obama years. And they wanted an alternative. And the strongman offers, at a time when there's a crisis of belonging, a crisis of identity, the ground is moving beneath your feet. Technology is encroaching on your identity and your sense of culture. The economy isn't guaranteeing a future for your kids that is better than the one that

came before. It's incredibly disorienting, right? Whether you're in Northern England or whether you're in Ohio, where J.D. Vance comes from. And what's on offer? If the old system is broken, what's on offer to replace it? Well, the kind of traditional national identity stuff is the oldest play in the book. And so what the strongmen have on offer is we're going to show up, we're going to tell you what you are a part of. And you are a part of, you know, if you're an Indian, you're a part of a

Hindu nationalist solidarity movement, essentially. If you're in America, you're part of this MAGA movement, which is kind of a white Christian nationalist movement, very familiar to people, touches those deep chords. And we're going to tell you who to blame. We're going to tell you it's the immigrants' fault, it's the Muslims' fault, it's the liberal elite's fault. And that's enough. That's not answers. It doesn't solve policy problems, but you get solidarity back and you get to know who to blame. And that's kind of, unfortunately, our side, the small D Democrat side, in many cases, has not put forward a better offer yet. And that's what everybody, I think, has been struggling with, particularly in democracies. when you were like, geez, this would be a lot easier if we like turned Obama into a strong, like if we did hit some of those, played some of those tunes, do you have to abjure?

Did you have to actually turn away from handles that you could have pulled when you were in the White House? Yeah, you know what? I kind of think about this because in a way, Obama was so charismatic that he absorbed some of the popular support that accrues to a strongman anyway, because it was essentially like people just want to get on board that train. I get the Obama, so-called Obama-Trump voters,

right? He's this outsider, charismatic outsider who comes in and just attracts people like a moth to a flame. And I think the trick of working for an Obama is you're trying to harness that for good. You're trying to turn that into coalition building. Yes, we can, not yes, I can. And that's, frankly, Obama's inclination. I do think the strongman bit, it's harder if you're in something like the Democratic Party, which is a big tent, a multiracial coalition. It's easier if there's some homogeneity to the people you're speaking to. And so, you know, we didn't do it because obviously it's not who Obama was. But also, to be honest, Dan, like and somewhat critical, like Biden was starting to show some of this, I'm the guy who did this, and I'm the most historic president. And

it just clanged with Democrats, you know, makes us uncomfortable, like, whoa, well, this is about us. It's not about me, you know, and, but I do think, you know, you can be strong without being a strong man. And Kamala Harris, already you saw her in her first campaign appearance, you know, basically talking about like, I know Trump. I put people like him away when I was a prosecutor. And that's strong. That's strong woman stuff, but it's strength. It's saying you'll stand up to the strong man. You can do that, I think, without becoming a autocratic figure. And that, I think, is going to be the trick in this campaign. How do you show strength without being a mirror image of the strongman? And also, we saw the last Trump term, it looked like a feral genius. He put his name on those COVID checks that went out to people. He insisted that his name was on them. He used the White House in contravention of norms, I think,

or even perhaps of laws, as a forum for partisan campaigning. There must have been moments when you would be like, this is something that would work, this world would be in our narrow partisan interests, but we are deliberately not going to go there. Because of what? Because you had a sense that this bigger thing, this liberal democracy, was too dangerous to compromise that. Yeah. Obama used to say that all of this is a thin veneer. What we've learned is that norms are not self-executing and they're not the same as laws. One example I give people after 2016 is they'd be like, why didn't you stop the Russian interference in the election? Well, number one, the US president can't go in and basically start taking down content off

the internet. That's against the law. We had no capacity to do that. And number two, there was no law against a presidential candidate seeking interference from a foreign power because nobody thought that anyone would do that. And they thought if somebody did that, it would be so odious to voters that, you know, they'd be punished for it naturally, right? And, you know, when we were in the White House, there are things like, you know, presidents are not supposed to comment on ongoing legal matters, which could get you tied in knots because there'd be something everybody wanted to know Obama's opinion about that was happening out there in the country. A police violence issue in Ferguson, for instance, right? Where if he weighs in on the actual case, that's a problem, right?

And so you're kind of constantly trying to figure out where is the line where he needs to speak to what's happening. And every now and then you do want to just kind of burst through that. Like, why are we withholding what we think about something? Or we have the person that Americans want to hear from the most about a certain thing. You know, why does he have to kind of couch what he says? And I think the reason why is because once you start doing that, it becomes a slippery slope and there's a kind of cascading collapse of those kinds of norms. But that said, I think in retrospect, you know, sometimes a little selective strongman presentation is not the worst thing in the sense that in this world, you know, when you and I were growing up, Dan, I'm sure everybody watched like one or two newscasts

and listened to one or two radio programs. Now, to get people's attention is a huge uphill battle. And doing something dramatic is one of the only ways you can break through. If you give a speech about policy, nobody's going to hear it. It's literally not going to reach people. You listened to Dan Snow's history here. Talking to Ben Rhodes. More coming up. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history.

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by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Wherever you get your podcasts. Well, we had a recent case, which you'll have been very familiar with as someone who's an Anglophile, where effectively our third party leader every day pulled off some stunt in the UK election campaign, jumping off paddleboards into the lake, firing himself out of things at fairgrounds. And that's the logical conclusion of where we're going, because that's viral content that got people talking about the party. It was wild. Yeah. And I think that there's the viral piece to this, and Kamal Harris has had some benefit too, because some of this is outside the politician's hands. So this is an interesting thing happening here now where the Republicans keep putting out videos to attack her, showing her kind of laughing and being a little goofy.

But it's going viral on TikTok in a positive way because people are like, wow, look at this normal, interesting person, you know, with some charisma. So some of this is like, you know, you have to let something go viral naturally when a politician looks like a little too thirsty for it. Like doing something every day to get attention, like it can kind of fall a little flat here. But I think the other thing we've learned as Americans last few years, Dan, I was wrong about something. You know, it's always important to admit you're wrong. I thought that after four years of Trump, Joe Biden would be kind of boring and that would be what people wanted. And I think what's been frustrating knowing that some of the Biden people is they're like, well, he got in there, he's governed well, He's being a past legislation here to like invest in infrastructure and semiconductors. He hasn't commented on ongoing legal cases.

Yeah. Well, he's doing the job, but there's something missing. He was really low approval ratings, people really grumpy. And what I think it is, is it's not just his age. That's a part of it. Part of the job of the presidency is to narrate what's happening, to be the voiceover to American life. And that is missing here. Because you have to think about it, I always tell Brits, it's like if you combine the office of prime minister and monarch, you know, and there's been nobody here to tell us in a way that breaks through, in a way that I think Obama did, in a way that Reagan did, a way that Bill Clinton could do. Here's what's happening. This disaster that happened, I'm going to talk about it. Or this sense of things going out in the culture around technology

and how is that interacting with our kids, I'm going to talk about that. Ukraine to Gaza, I'm going to step back and put this in context. We are missing that. And I think that has created a void that needs to be filled. And Trump did that on a daily basis, certainly through his social feeds and those press conferences, yeah. You lived through every minute of the presidential election in 2016. Is what you're seeing now in terms of these patterns we've been discussing in terms of reaching voters, in terms of communication, in terms of political communication,

is what you're seeing now similar to 2016? Are the trend lines maybe clearer, more defined? Have they progressed? Is there new stuff happening? In terms of how you literally reach voters? Yeah, in terms of how you win elections, you conduct the campaign, you win elections. I mean, yeah, I worked on 08 and 12 for Obama. I kind of was a very close observer of 2016. Things change each cycle in terms of really technology and context. Here's what I see is somewhat different this time around. First of all, in 2012, we were out to define Mitt Romney. A lot of Americans didn't know he was, so we want to tell you who he is. Even in 2016, Donald Trump is incredibly famous, but he's relatively new as a politician. By 2024, but he's relatively new as a politician. By 2024, people know who Donald Trump is.

So one thing that's changed is it's going to be very hard to kind of move. His support is relatively fixed. Nationally, it's in the kind of 44 to 46 percent band of people. Not all those people, by the way, are strong Trump supporters. His floor to ceiling is a very small distance. I think what swings in this election is how many people are excited to vote for the Democrat versus how many people might stay home or might vote for a third party. Or just in such a close election, there's a tiny shift to Trump, and that makes a huge deal in a few states. And so the number of voters in play is much smaller than in the past in terms of like who might be a swing voter. And therefore, you are literally focusing very specifically on a relatively small number of people and a relatively small number of states in terms of your targeted campaign.

And so Joe Biden was running what felt like a 2016 campaign because it felt like it was a losing effort to reach those people. what felt like a 2016 campaign because it felt like it was a losing effort to reach those people. What Kamala Harris brings to this that we didn't have in 2020, and I think frankly didn't fully have in 2016, potentially is opening up the aperture a little bit because she's got people excited about her

that we could win back and then grow the block turnout as Obama used to do. Young people all of a sudden are excited about her. And how you reach those people and put new states in play, weirdly in this day and age, sometimes it's not something you do through the campaign. It's something that happens organically outside the campaign. The way that Obama came in was the first one where you had kind of viral things. I was a speechwriter, Dan, on that Yes We Can speech that became the Yes We Can speech. Well, I had no idea. And the campaign

had no idea that like, Will.i.am and Scarlett Johansson and all these people were going to make a music video that went totally viral. The first political viral content of my life raised all this money for us and made it seem cool to be supporting Barack Obama. And then all of a sudden you got people signing up to volunteer. I think what she needs is that sense that, hey, I want to be a part of that Kamala campaign. You know, there's all this stuff on TikTok that this looks interesting. This looks different. This looks like it's not Trump or Biden. And, you know, it's a campaign you're trying to orchestrate it a little bit. You're trying to find the thing that is going to catch in that space. And so the campaign is going to try to talk to those swing voters in a few states. But then the other thing they need to do is try to catch that cultural moment where all of a sudden it's like, hey, like, do you want to go volunteer for Kamala?

You know, that's the dynamic you want. Ben, we had an American history professor on the podcast recently who said that he feels that we're in a tumult because the U.S. political consensus, or at least the solid cross-party governing Overton window, if you like, has broken down. It was capitalism, it was liberalism, but it was within the context of New Deal, welfare, safeguards, the state had a role. And that's collapsed, and it's yet to be replaced. Does that feel right to you? And what is the replacement that you, the Democrats, Kamala, what is the replacement you're trying to build? You know, I think Obama was trying to build the kind of post-Cold War, big, multiracial, majoritarian coalition of Americans that are kind of embracing the changing nature of the country.

The changing, not just demography, but extension of rights and opportunities more equitably across the country. And in some ways, obviously, Trump represents a kind of backlash and reactionary response to that. I'll say, Dan, I'm actually, I'm writing a history book, which has been an interesting thing to do. And so I've had to go back and look at the past and look at the arc. And the two things I'd add to this are, one, we're still living back in the roots of identity debates that started in the 60s about, you know, are we truly multiracial and committed to equality so that like a recent immigrant is just as American as I am? Or is there a core of essentially a white nationalist kind of America? And look, it's no

mistaking that since the Civil Rights Act was signed in the 60s, that the Republican Party has become, instead of the two parties being these diverse coalitions, right, that had conservative to left, well, we've had the parties sort themselves out, whereas the Republicans are now, you know, generally a largely white party, largely anchored in the South and in the center of the country. And the Democrats are largely multiracial coalition, frankly, dependent on increasing on minority voters and coastal voters. And therefore, the parties are sorting into different identities, different kinds of people. It's not just we're fighting about taxes and spending and foreign policy. We're fighting about identity in the United States. And this gets to the last thing I've been thinking about a lot, which is that, you know, when I grew up, the

shared identity was largely tied to the Cold War. It was like, well, we know we're not those guys, you know, like we're for freedom, we're for open societies and open markets. And there was something disciplining about the Cold War. You could disagree about all these other issues, but we had to kind of come together because in the end of the day, we couldn't afford to be as crazy as we are now because, you know, people are living under the specter of nuclear war and we had to be the leaders of the free world. And we had to, we actually had to actually look like we were trying to live our values.

You know, the civil rights movement was powered in part because the Kennedy brothers didn't want to look bad. They didn't want to look racist, didn't want the Soviets to be able to say, look at those Americans, they're hypocrites. And I think that we've been looking, casting about for national identity since the end of the Cold War, you know, and Bush kind of came with terrorism on offer. Well, that's not really an identity war on terror. Obama came with this, you know, idea of like truly embracing multiracial democracy. Well, that, I think, appeals to a majority of Americans, but not everybody. And we're at a place now where the enemy is each other.

If you're a Trump person, a MAGA person, the enemy, literally, what used to be the Soviet Union, the enemy is now people like me. It's people, Democrats, libs, whatever you want to call it. And frankly, and I think this has become a corrosive force in the Democratic Party, you know, the enemy is Trump and it's kind of broken some people. And that's what has to change. Like if the enemy is each other, civil, not full out civil war, but this kind of low boil civil war that we're in is going to continue to kind of eat away at our politics and society. If Trump wins, if the Republicans win in November,

they take office early next year, what does that mean for the Middle East and Eastern Europe? So the biggest concern I have with a Trump victory is it's kind of a green light to people. Hey, this is the time to do what you want because this guy doesn't really care. In the Middle East, if I am the far right Israeli government, I annex the West Bank.

This is the window. If ever you're going to try to do the thing you really want to do, do it with Trump, because he's not going to impose any consequence. So I think Gaza, and I've been very critical of Joe Biden's policy there, but I think essentially it's green light, do whatever you want in Gaza, de facto occupy it. But really, it's the West Bank that I worry about in the Middle East. And then in Eastern Europe, Trump is not going to give Ukraine assistance. And everybody knows that. And Putin knows that. And Europe can fill some of that space. But there's no way that Europe can fully make whole the kind of military assistance that the Americans provide. I'm not one of these people

that thinks Putin is going to march into the Baltics and Poland or something. I do think he's someone that will continue to try to just eat away at as much Ukrainian territory as he can. And then places like Georgia and Moldova and these other peripheral countries, he just wants to steadily start, you know, expanding the inkblot of essentially Russian annexation into new places. And that can be really destabilizing. And then Taiwan, Trump's already said, like, I don't really care about Taiwan. You know, if ever, if ever Xi Jinping is going to make a move, why wouldn't it be in a second Trump term when America is divided from its allies and seems to not care about things? So I'm not suggesting everything is going gangbusters under Joe Biden's foreign policy. But I think politically, what I worry about in a Trump term is this green light to people to do what they want,

particularly a guy like Putin or a guy like Netanyahu, because the first time Trump was in there, there were more guardrails. They're less in place now. And he'd come back, I think, without the conventional Republicans around him. He'd come back with the ideologues who truly would pull out of NATO, right? He had to be talked out of pulling out of NATO last time. There's not going to be people that are talking him out of that this right? He had to be talked out of pulling out of NATO last time. There's not going to be people that are talking him out of that this time. Happy thoughts to end on. Thank you very much, Ben Rhodes.

Your brilliant podcast is must listen every week. Tell us what it's called. Pod Save the World. Thank you very much, Ben. Thanks for coming on the podcast. Thanks for that. Thank you.