The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Is It Over Already?

Episode Date: January 16, 2024

Donald Trump wins the opening round in the race for the Republican nomination for the US presidency. But does that mean it's all over already? One of the best analysts I know is our guest today. Someone who has covered Trump, someone who understands politics and history and where the two intersect. He's Keith Boag former CBC Washington correspondent and former CBC Chief Political Correspondent in Ottawa.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. Is it over already? Trump crushes the opposition in Iowa with over 50% of the vote. Does that mean the nomination is his already? That's coming up. And hello there, welcome to Tuesday, welcome to Peter Mansbridge and the Bridge. It's a snowy, cold day in Stratford, Ontario, as it is in many parts of the country, because, as we said yesterday, it is winter. This happens. It's pretty, though, today. I'll say that, especially from inside looking out.

It's pretty. Okay, big night last night for Americans in Iowa, as the caucus gives, the Iowa caucuses give Donald Trump a significant victory in his march towards trying to achieve the Republican nomination for President of the United States. But there's more to this story, and we're going to talk about it in a moment. But first of all, a reminder. First of all, a reminder of this week's question, because I want you to be thinking about that. You may think about it even as we're talking U. First of all, a reminder of this week's question, because I want you to be thinking about that. You may think about it even as we're talking U.S. politics in the next little while.

Here's the question. At a time of polarization, we all know what that means. We all know that it's happening. Setting, you know, families against families in some cases, regions against regions, provinces against provinces, you name it. Things have polarized a bit. So the question for this week is if you could name one thing that would improve the way we understand each other, what would that be? Now, you can kind of shape that question any way you want. If you could name one thing that would improve the way we communicate with each other, what

would that one thing be? Or another way of saying this, if you could name one thing you'd do to improve Canadians' knowledge of each other, what would that be? We've already had a lot of great answers, but we're always looking for more. And we're always looking for new, first-time listeners. So don't be shy. Jot down your thoughts on that question. Make them concise.

You know, one paragraph. Remember to include your name and your location that you're writing from in the country. All right? Deadline is 6 p.m. tomorrow night, Eastern Time. So you have today and tomorrow during the day to get this in. Send it to themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com, themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com,

themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. Okay, today's topic, you know, I was looking at who should I talk to about American politics. Well, there are any number of Americans I could get, analysts and commentators, but, you know, quite frankly, in my experience, one of the best is right here in Canada. He's the former Washington Bureau Chief, Washington correspondent for CBC News, Keith Bogue. And Keith and I have been friends for a long time. He was also the chief political correspondent in

Ottawa for quite a long time. We did many election nights together. And Keith has a deep sense of trying to understand politics, wherever he may be. He reads an awful lot. He experiences the situation by going to it. In the U.S., as our Washington correspondent, he traveled a lot. And he'd been in and out of Iowa, too. He was one of the first to give an early sense of Trump.

2015, 2016, of this guy should be taken seriously, when a lot of people weren't taking him seriously, myself included. So Keith has his, I guess, analytical finger on the pulse of politics, wherever he happens to be, whether it's Canada or the U.S. or overseas, where he's been posted as well. So Keith, like your old man host here, is in semi-retirement, but that doesn't mean that he's stopped looking and listening and reading and analyzing. He does all of that.

And today he's going to do it for us as we have a good conversation. I think you'll enjoy this. A good conversation about what happened last night in Iowa and what we should assume it means. All right? Enough with all the American analysis. Let's have a Canadian's analysis,

a Canadian who knows the story and knows it well. So enough with me. Let's get into our conversation with Keith Bogue. So trying to make sense of what happened last night, I mean, there are two ways to look at it. You can use that word that is part of the terminology these days, crushed it, Trump crushed it. He got more than 50% of the terminology these days, crushed it. Trump crushed it.

He got more than 50% of the vote, which is unusual in a primary. So, you know, good for him in that respect. On the other hand, you know, it's Iowa. It's a Midwestern state. It's a small state. Only about 14% or 15% of Republicans actually took part in the vote on their primary yesterday. The population of Iowa, I'm not sure how representative it is of the United States. I mean, it's about 3 million, so roughly 1% of the American population.

It's a very white state. So there's all these different things to look at. You've been there. You've done this before. What's your take on what happened last night in Iowa? Well, so much of it was predictable. I mean, Trump was bound to win there. The question was, was there a possibility that he would get less than 50%? That might have made it interesting because it would have shown more people against him than for him.

That didn't happen. At the same time, though, you know, you mentioned that 51% is a hell of a good score, except that he got 97% when he was president there, and the last time they had a caucus for the president there. And he is different from any other candidate that we've seen in a caucus in the modern era in that he is a former president. Shouldn't we not expect him to do at least 51%, but really better than that? I think there is something in the result for people to say, hmm, this maybe is fine for him winning the nomination,

maybe not so fine for him going into a general election. So I think we're going to hear some discussion about that, particularly if it repeats itself in other primaries where he's really not showing that he gets the kind of support inside the Republican Party that would guarantee that he would be a powerful general election candidate. You know, history has taught us not to go overboard on assuming too much coming out of Iowa

because there have been lots of winners in Iowa who you never heard of again in terms of how they do in future primaries or how they do in a presidential race. But yet, there they were last night, the different analysts last night and this morning doing the, well, you know, it's all over. Why did DeSantis or Haley even bother going on? You know, they're probably right. It's also right to say that, you know,

President Huckabee and President Buttigieg also wish that they may have got 51% because whatever they did get, it just simply wasn't good enough. Remember, just in 2020 with the Democrats there, Pete Buttigieg finished first there and Joe Biden finished fourth, I think, and then fifth in the hatcher after that.

And then a couple of weeks later, he was the prohibitive favorite for the nominee for the party. I mean, why they do this, I guess is clear in a historical sense, but it doesn't make kind of common sense when you look at what they're trying to achieve with the primary system, which is to get some sense of how a candidate appeals to the broad swath

of the American public. And as you point out, Iowa really is not very representative, completely unrepresentative of the Democratic Party now. They don't even bother there. They're not having a caucus at this time of year there. And they're having serious discussions about whether they really want to begin this whole process in the Northeast anyway. But for the Republicans, yes, it's a little bit more representative, but not a whole lot, because, you know, it's a rural constituency in a very urban country. It's, as you say, a small population.

It is a very white population, so it appeals to the kind of core voter that they already have. But that's not their problem. Their problem isn't getting white voters. Their problem is getting non-white voters, right? Now, whether they care about that under Trump is a whole separate question about which we could do our whole other podcast. But it is just a very strange way to begin the process of trying to select a president for a country of 350 million people that is very, very diverse. I, you know, I, if I was the Trump people or not, yeah, if I was a Trump people, I'd be worried about one thing last night. I mean, I know the weather was bad. It's been bad

across much of North America actually in the last few days, but it was pretty bad in Iowa and that restricted the vote. But still, having said that, to get only 14% of your party's voters out on a caucus night, which is a strange night to start with compared with, you know, primary, the regular kind of primary voting system. But is that not something they should be concerned about? You know, if Trump and the others can only attract 14% coming out, even with bad weather, that seems to be not a very good turnout.

I mean, when you look at the amount of money they spend in there, you know, it's over $50 million on 115,000 voters. That doesn't make any sense. But I think the weather is an important thing, too, because it's disenfranchising. And they don't have to do that. What they could do instead is show a little spine and stand up to the traditionalists in the party. And in Iowa, we think it has to start here or the sky will fall.

It does not. Iowa may lose its chair position as the starting point of the race, but so what? The weather makes it disenfranchising. The demographic makes it unrepresentative. The population size makes it unrepresentative.

What is the argument other than tradition for doing it in iowa now i'm sure that iowans will now call in and tell me all about what the uh the real reasons are but frankly they don't even choose presidents anymore you know what they like to say in new hampshire right in new hampshire we choose presidents and they we pick presidents they pick corn in iowa that isn't even true i mean when was the last time that New Hampshire picked a president? Obama, I guess. Well, fine. But he didn't win New Hampshire.

So, no, not even Obama. I think the last time they even picked a nominee was Al Gore, and he didn't win. Or he did win, but they took away whatever your shoes to believe on that. Yeah. You've done the Iowa caucuses. You've been there. Tell me the experience. What strikes you about

covering that state? You know, different things. Partly that it's a charade. There may have been a time when small groups of people could get together and a representative of the candidate would make a speech and that would affect the voters in the room. And then they'd cast their ballots and you'd see how it went. Nobody believes that anymore. This is all about ground team, about getting the organization on the ground to get the

right people to the event on voting day so that when they are allowed to vote after eight o'clock, they get the votes that they need. The speeches don't matter, but they make them, right? What makes it different from primaries is that you don't see the candidates at these events either, right? It's not a system where people are going through the polls during the day. They're actually going to meetings that don't really mean anything because, as I say, it's the organization that gets the crowd out and they have already decided who they want to get to the equal to the to the precinct to vote so like there's a lot of charade to it but again you know i mean covering these things is really difficult because you go to one or two of these things looking uh recover uh or color rather and you

always think you should be somewhere else right wherever you are you always think you should be somewhere else because you don't really get, you always think you should be somewhere else because you don't really get a handle on the story by doing that. You do get your color, but what does it mean to speak to one or two voters and draw a broad conclusion about what it means for the nation? Not very much. So, you know, it's interesting to have it in my experience and to see what it's really like.

And I enjoy spending time in cold weather, as you know, we all do, especially when it's windy. But it's hard for me to say that this is a really exciting moment in the political story of the nation because so often uh it's forgotten a couple well you know it's forgotten as soon as we get past new hampshire we realize iowa didn't mean anything in the first place were you trying to be too negative about this i don't know people are talking about it today, and I'm just guessing the thing and saying, don't pay attention to what went on last night. There are more important things ahead. Yeah, but as you said, history's on your side on that.

I mean, the political graveyards in the United States are filled with people who did well in Iowa, and you never heard of them again um let me uh let me get your take on trump because as listeners to this podcast know i i'm not a fan um and you know i i don't think much of him at all but clearly there's a segment of the american population that does think very highly of him uh certainly within the republican party and i i don't get it the guys you know was impeached twice he's been indicted four times on 90 whatever charges including being found liable for rape you know selling secrets or or harboring secrets taken out of the white house and a variety of other things. There's a whole bunch of stuff about him,

and his lies, which have been constant since the day he was inaugurated, and the con artist, all of these things. Yet, having said all that, here he is, 51% of those who did vote in Iowa yesterday and doing well in Republican polls and doing well in a one-on-one contest against Biden. How does that happen? What is it? You've been to not just Iowa,

but you've been to a number of states that have had primaries and you've watched these people who line up for donald trump knowing all these things yet not seeming to either believe them or that they matter to them why why is that i think there are so many answers to that question and all of them are right but which ones are the most important i don't know what he does do for sure is good give them a license to believe what they want to believe. And that's hugely important, I think, for everybody, right? Everybody wants to believe what they want to believe. But if you have some sense of critical thinking, you resist that temptation, and you look at the facts and the evidence, and you try to decide what reality is. But there's nevertheless a clear sense that that's a very powerful force that is reinforced by the media that serves the Republican Party. Whether it begins with Fox News or whether it is just amplified by Fox News

is also an interesting question, but not really important in terms of understanding the impact that it has on the voting public. They are told that they can believe what they want to believe. Their media reinforces that their beliefs are correct, even when they're not. I mean, we could talk about the lawsuit that Fox News had to pay out three quarters of a billion dollars on because they admitted they lied to their viewers to preserve their audience. All of these things are happening at the same time in the United States. And the result is that the country that I think, if you look at history, many commentators over

centuries have said that the population can be vulnerable to a demagogue here. We have to guard against that. Well, Trump is a demagogue, and he does have a media tool at his hands, and he has a media-created profile that not only boosts him but denigrates the opposition. A lot of people actually do believe that Democrats are running a secret underground pedophilia ring. It's absurd. But there are a lot of voters who actually believe it, just as there were a lot of voters who actually believe

that Barack Obama was not born in the United States and therefore was not eligible to become president. Those were the early warning signs, the canaries in the mine shafts that we were paying attention to, but maybe not closely enough when Donald Trump came along. He is a very, very savvy media manipulator. He has cracked the media in the sense that he knows what our incentives are, and our incentives are always to try and find what we consider an approximation of balance and fairness

between competing candidates. But in an asymmetrical race between Trump and just about any other normal candidate, there is no symmetry. And so sometimes the symmetry gets invented and he's a con man, a liar, incompetent. And I can't say those words. Well, let me pick up on that. You got the picture. Yeah. Let me pick up on that point, though, because this is what puzzles me. And you've had both sides of the fence

even in that answer that he is a con man he is a liar there's no disputing that where there's lots of evidence of it but is he stupid or is he smart smart like a fox in some of the things he does he's clever he's sly um but in terms of like when i say incompetent i'm talking about about public policy management more than political management. So there is this belief, I think fairly commonly held, that Trump would have been reelected in 2020 were it not for COVID. And I'm willing to buy that explanation under one condition, that it's not COVID itself that led to his defeat. It's his management of COVID. And that exposed him.

It was really the first crisis that he faced in his presidency. And he tried to handle it, you know, like with all the bravura and bullshit that he has become famous for. And it hurt him to the point where his own people were getting a hook and dragging him out of the press room to get him to stop talking about it because it was hurting. But I think it's important and instructive because other leaders around the world, you might even argue here in Canada, were doing well, doing better. Because they were being graded on their management of COVID and they were using the opportunity to show confidence, to show caring, to show daring in many respects. And what you got from Trump on the other side of the border was like confusion and gibberish,

mockery, and outright stupidity at times. And I think that's what hurt him. When he was first given a very difficult challenge, he dropped the ball completely, obviously, plainly, in plain sight. Okay. Not good enough. No, no, no. You know, I think I know what you're getting at, though. There is temptation to easily dismiss Trump,

who has obvious talent. And people respond to those as much as people like you and I recoil from the other things that are, shall we say, unattractive about Donald Trump. You know Steve Kornacki, who works for NBC and MSNBC, and he's a great guy with numbers and figures and and and taking you know research data and kind of boiling it down to in terms of what it means same with the you know john king at cnn with his you know magic board or whiteboard or whatever they call it but i was watching kornacki earlier today and he did an interesting thing he kind of looked at Trump over the last year and tried to figure out where he went from you know the twice impeached guy was had legal

troubles to suddenly back in the game and leading the game on the Republican side. And he was able to pinpoint where that happened. And this says something about Trump because where it happened was on the first indictment. As soon as he was indicted the first time, you see the numbers going from sort of, you know, average and in a race with DeSantis to Trump pulling away. And who called that at the time?

Trump called it at the time. Everybody else was going, oh, he's in huge trouble now. He's going to be charged. He's going to be in trial. He won't be able to run his campaign and blah, blah, blah. He's going to lose support and lose people. Some of his staff were saying the same thing, but not Trump. And when Kornacki looks at those numbers, he sees that Trump was right. That was a turning point in the last year. Once he started getting charged, people went, oh, that's not fair. Republicans, some Republicans, enough Republicans to open up the race. So that says to me, there's something about this guy who I have no time for

that is ahead of the rest of us on analyzing certain situations in politics. And here's a guy who has never been in politics up until, you know, 2015, 2016. How do you explain that or can you well i think there are ever-present elements of his personality that might help to understand um he's a whiner and he's a whiner because that's effective for him and has been i suppose through his business career for me for me um but in this case, he is also saying, as he has in many other contexts, my enemies are your enemies. Your enemies are my enemies. We're all on the same side. And I think that has tremendous appeal to those who really do feel that they have been ignored, looked down upon, condescended to, alienated, and perhaps feel like they've been made the enemies of

a kind of a liberal elite, or if you like a post-elite, whatever. I mean, you understand the point that I'm trying to make. I think he, better than most people, sees all of these things as opportunities rather than defeats. And he goes in

there, and I mean, you know, the reason other people can't do it is other people aren't willing to say anything, absolutely anything at all, uh, in order to exploit a situation. But he is, um, and you hear him now having developed this idea that they're coming after me to get to you. And the only thing that stands between them and you is me. And apparently they buy it. I mean, what utter nonsense, but they buy it.

I think. I don't have a better explanation than that. But I think, you know, there's no denying that that is what happened. That the numbers prove that Krakowski's right. That's when it happened. When they saw their what they sometimes call their orange Jesus under

attack again, they rallied around him. So what did they need to send this for anyway? And also there's a contagion to it as well. So that the fact that Trump looks like a winner again, makes him look more like a winner

again, makes him more effective against the argument you can't win again. The impeachment's the criminal, you can't win again. He's proving to them, or he believes he is, maybe they believe it too, I suppose, that no, he can still win. You know, I know that people think

that an effective argument against Trump for all of these candidates is to repeat his record and point out what a loser he is. And that would be true if they believed him, but they don't. They think he's a winner. They think the election, the last election last presidential election was stolen from him. And he's still their champion.

And when people come after him, as I say, they rally around him. And who needs Ron DeSantis when you've got the real thing? Just one last point on Trump. Then we're going to take a break and then move to the others. Um, but the last point on Trump is, uh, trying to understand the evangelical thing. I mean, here's a guy with a personal track record that is appalling, right? I mean, let's face it, it's pretty bad. Um,

and yet he's got the evangelicals or a huge percentage of them on his side working for him, you know, doing the door thing, driving cars around, delivering people to the caucus meetings in Iowa, and one assumes to the ballot boxes in the primaries starting in New Hampshire next week. Is it as simple as Roe v. Wade, or like, what is it? No. It started before the 2016 election. Just before that. There was a poll that was done

regularly that asked evangelical Christians a series of questions that amounted to how important was moral integrity and character to their vote choice. Prior to Trump, it was like 70% or more said it was an extremely important thing. And it was determinative. They had to have a candidate that respected their

values and principles. When Trump came on the scene, and before he was elected president during the primary season, that all flipped. Among evangelicals, the same questions are getting like 30 percent support no not that important at all and um like there's no way for me to understand why it happened at that moment you know you mentioned roe v wade that's a rational response i don't think this is rational i think you can put roe v wade in there as a rational element of it, but largely, I think it's irrational and has remained irrational since the beginning eight years ago. Okay, we're going to take that break, and then we'll come back with Keith Bogue right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge, the Tuesday episode.

This week, Keith Bogue, the former CBC's chief political correspondent in Ottawa, former Washington correspondent for the CBC, and various postings elsewhere around the country and around the world. And it's good to have Keith with us as we try to understand uh what's happening in u.s politics which is like a full-time job and i think keith even in in in retirement or semi retirement if you will certainly he is in semi retirement this morning um spends a lot of time thinking about uh what's happening south of the border and the impact it has on us and the impact it has on politics in the United States. Okay, we've dealt with Trump as best we can. Now let's try to deal with the others.

I mean, there's still, as of the time we're having this discussion, two in the race against Trump, and that's Nikki Haley and DeSantis from Florida, Ron DeSantis from Florida. Their combined vote didn't come close to Trump. Their combined vote was around 40%. Trump's vote was around 50%. We were talking the Iowa numbers last night. What's the point at this point for the two of them?

Beats me. No, my slip answer would be beats me. I don't see a path for either one of them. But I guess having come this far, spent that much money, they have to at least play it out for a little bit longer. Nikki Haley especially. I mean, towards the end of the run-up to the primary season, she was the only candidate who was at least heading

in the right direction against Trump. She was gaining on, not much, very slowly, but she was overtaking people. And she is now heading into New Hampshire where she trails Trump. It's by less than 20 points, but in some polls, it's as little as 11 points. She is probably hoping that the former Republican candidate, Chris Christie, will put in a word for her, endorse her, that that would make up the difference or at least go a long way towards making up the distance for her in New Hampshire. But she was clearly hoping to get a springboard off Iowa that was much more energetic than the one she got. So it's not clear to me that she is in as good a position in New Hampshire today as she was on Sunday,

because she's now fizzled a little bit. You know, she finished third. It was the expectation in the last week that she might finish second, and she didn't. And DeSantis is not even going to New Hampshire, right? He's heading straight to South Carolina. He figures that's where he's going to make what might be his last-ditch stand.

It's not clear to me that he doesn't drop out of the race before we even get to New Hampshire. I think Nikki Haley is in it for sure because, you know, she really does have a reason to go to New Hampshire. But then comes South Carolina, her home state, and it looks pretty clear that she's going to lose by a lot to Donald Trump there. What is the future for either DeSantis or Nikki Haley after we get that deep into it?

I don't know. I don't know. This seems to be after last night. And if we go into New Hampshire and it goes the way it looks like it's going to go, it seems to be confirming what polls have been saying all along, which is that Trump owns the Republican Party and the nomination is his. And the only way he's not going to be the nominee is if he chokes on a cheeseburger or something happens in his court cases that makes him. Well, that has an impact on his numbers,

the likes of which we have yet to see. You wonder whether if either Haley or DeSantis, neither one of whom really went after Trump until just actually the last couple of days, but for the past year, they have not targeted Trump in the way many thought they would have to if they were going to make serious inroads. What if one of them drops out and supports the other at this point?

Does that make a difference? As unlikely as that may seem, because they don't seem to have a lot of time for each other, but if something like that happened and it narrowed it down to a one-on-one? one uh i you know trump or desantis represents a kind of more acceptable like this is in quotation marks right this is not my opinion but the the desantis campaign is based on him being kind of light version of trump in a character sense and a heavy version of Trump in a policy sense, right? But he's the Trump, he's what you'd like Trump to be when he's misbehaving. That's what he's selling. So his constituency is very Trump friendly. He drops out,

they're more likely to go to Trump than they are to go to Nikki Haley. Nikki Haley, in the last two or three weeks, has become the anti-Trump candidate. And it's really quite interesting to look at what happened to her numbers, according to polling, in Iowa. Not the horse race numbers so much, but her favorability number and her horse race number separated. Her horse race number went up and her favorability number went down, which I think indicates that she had clearly identified herself as the anti-Trump, had attracted the anti-Trump vote. And because of that, that essentially makes her ineligible to be the nominee for most of the party. I mean, it's a conundrum, but they cannot get around. She has to attack him. The more she attacks him, the more support she gets.

The more support she gets from the anti-Trumpers, the less likely she is to become the Republican nominee. There's no winning in any of this for anybody but Trump. A moment on Biden, because we're led to believe, we're told that the White House, the White Horse, have you ever driven the TransCanada from Winnipeg to Portage or Prairie? I haven't, but I'm going to guess that you have. There is many, many times, having lived in Portage Prairie

and going into Winnipeg for wild weekends when I was in the Navy at Portage, but there's a white horse near Headingley right at the side of the Trans-Canada Highway, and it's beautiful. It's a beautiful white horse. So I must have been thinking of that white horse statue. I must have been thinking of that white horse statue. I must have been thinking of that. I think we're going to do the old soft shoe about it all started in an airport. Yes.

In Churchill with an announcement from. Exactly. We've done that to death on this show. Enough of that. Anyway, we're led to believe by the White House that Biden really wants Trump. That, you know, the dream race for them is a repeat of 2020. So that it's Biden versus Trump. He doesn't want anybody else.

Do you believe that? Well, I look at the head-to-head, Nikki Haley versus Biden, and she beats him. Now, there were polls showing, I mean, look, I think that where we are in polling is not where the real world is going to be in six months. And I think Biden probably looks at that and says, these polls that show Trump getting significantly above 50% and me significantly below 40%, they are not real. And he's probably right about that. I think he has really good political instincts, don't you? I mean, I think there's something to this.

When the age comes, wisdom, and in politics, that's worth an awful lot. Well, he's always, yeah, no, no, I agree with you. I'm asking you because the age and wisdom thing is something you know a lot about. That's right. Certainly more than I do. But you're right about his instincts because he has always had the timing issue down pat about when to get in, when to get out. When not to run, he chose not to run for the nomination against Hillary Clinton in 2016, which is unusual for a vice president. Now he had gone through some tragedies on the personal side.

But he'd run for president before in the 80s and 90s and decided, you know, dropped out early in the race for a number of different reasons. And here he's decided to stay in, even though at his advanced age, which will be an issue and is an issue, his instinct is that he can win this. And I don't think it's all based on just, gee, I love being president. I want to stay being president. I think he actually believes that he can win and he actually believes that he's doing a good job in spite of every indication from the American public that they don't think he is. So I agree with you.

The guy has good instincts. I just wonder whether they're still good when he thinks the best candidate for him to run against is Trump. You know, one of the reasons that I think he has good political instincts is very recent, right? It's not that. I mean, I did think he did before for the reasons I do mention. But the 2022 midterms was a real shock to a lot of people not him right and i say that with confidence that it wasn't a shock to him

because in spite of what punditry said and i believe what a lot of his his democratic colleagues said and perhaps even his advisors about what to run on he chose running on on the issue that he felt would resonate which was democracy and um and abortion was obviously a big factor in that too which i think he says very very well people's freedom right everybody thought that he made a mistake and in the week before the actual vote, there were Democrats going on the TV saying, you know, we're going to have to have a talk with him because this is a stupid strategy for the beginning. There's going to be a red wave. We're going to be wiped out. They were all wrong. And he was right. a little too inside baseball maybe for the media in the sense that I've seen so many people and how they react to reporters and how reporters can easily get up the nose of some politicians and

are really deftly handled by others. And I see Biden with reporters and they're tossing him bait, you know, seeing if he'll take it. And he just doesn't. He he's just calm he's collected and he's seen it all before and he is not going to make a headline out of a scrum right he's going to say what he has to say and if somebody puts a barb on a question and asks him something he's just going to put his head down shake and then he's just going to tell him truth i like that style and i've seen it before and i saw it two times one with um uh brown the third coming of Brown as governor of California, was a different Governor Brown than the previous two. He was a man who was very sure of himself, confident,

was not going to get rushed into anything, was not going to rise to the bait and react to every news headline. He was just going to do what he thought he had to do. The other guy was Jean-Claude Tient, who I thought was like that as well. A guy who left politics, but only briefly, but enough time to reflect on what a political career meant to him, the mistakes he had made

and the mistakes he would not repeat. And I remember going into the first Biden, I guess it might've been Iowa or New Hampshire in 2020, and talking to people about this. And I thought, the real test of Biden is whether he's going to be John Turner or Jean Chrétien. Both guys who came back from politics. And one did it well, and one not so well.

And both were fine people. But I thought I saw more Chrétain in Biden than I saw Turner. And I believe that has turned out to be the case. No? Keith Bogue, fascinating conversation. You know, Keith loves politics from both sides of the border and has proven that over the years. But I find it interesting.

I mean, our audience can't see the picture. We can see each other because we do these conversations over Zoom. And when I look in the background of Keith's home in Ottawa, what do I see? I see a statue, a bust of Abraham Lincoln. Not Laurier, not McDonald, not Chrétien, not anybody but Lincoln.

And obviously, the Lincoln effect, the Lincoln impact, you know, crosses borders, crosses time. And obviously, it had a huge impact on you. Yeah, I have another, I have a George Washington over here too, but you're right, there's kind of a heavy American influence. I mean, to be personal about it,

the last years of my career were in Washington and they were the most exciting and rewarding years of my career. I guess I'm proud to say that I cottoned on to the Trump story ahead of most people that I know. I did the first piece on Trump for our network, and it was 13 or 14 minutes warning people that this guy is activating

a clearly racist, authoritarian, street and American public life. And he may not win the Republican nomination, but the Republican Party itself has yet to figure out a way to deal with him. And I watched that piece just to remind myself of where this all came from and my appreciation for talking to you.

And I'm still pleased at how well that stood up but more than anything I understand myself now and my fascination for this story which is one of the great stories of our political era and has given us a window on to history in a sad way right I mean I never thought that I could understand,

I want to be careful how I put this because people go berserk when you say it, but, you know, Weimar Germany was a difficult thing for me to understand in a real way. Conceptually, I got it, you know, intellectually understood it. But now I think I really understand it because I've seen the way people react to a demagogue in real time, in real life. And they are nice people.

They are ordinary people. And when you meet them as individuals, they're pleasant to spend time with. And when you put them in a group, in a tent with Donald Trump or an arena with Donald Trump, they become a mob. And it's frightening, especially in pure media. But these are valuable lessons to learn, I think, for any individual, but especially for a journalist who maybe thinks too much about what the people inside the Beltway consider to be important in politics and pays not enough attention to what Donald Trump was paying attention to, which is those people who feel they've been left behind, shut out,

uh, badly treated by the system. Um, he's not a hero to me, but, uh, that assessment applies outside of the U S as well, clearly,

uh, in terms of, you know, don't get trapped by the inside, the beltway or the inside, the Queens way in Ottawa, clearly, in terms of, you know, don't get trapped by the inside the beltway or the inside the Queens way in Ottawa, thinking that it's a big country out there. And there are a lot of different opinions and, and different theories about what needs to be done. Keith, you know, it's always great to talk to you, but it's been a long time.

And I'm glad we've had this conversation. And if you're willing, I'll want to draw upon your expertise and you're thinking uh as we go through this year because there's a lot of a lot of interesting um intersections along the way so thank you well thank you peter if you if you're willing to have me back i'd be honored to come back it's a great time with you't worry, we will be. Cheers. Cheers. Keith Bogue. And really great to have Keith with us, former chief political correspondent in Ottawa for the CBC and former Washington correspondent through a number of times,

including the period in which Donald Trump emerged as a political force in the United States. So we'll have Keith back during this year, during this election year in the United States and all the various things that are happening as a result. Okay, we're almost out of time. So we're going to just remind you of the question for this week because tomorrow, of course, is an Encore edition of the program,

being Wednesday. Wednesdays, we will have Encore episodes throughout this year, and tomorrow's Encore episode is a More Butts from about a year ago. It still applies today, really good, and it helps us flag the fact that we will have a new More Butts next Tuesday, a week from today, right here on the bridge. Okay, the question for this week, so get your cards and letters in with your ideas. You can send them to themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com.

Include your name and the location you're writing from. The question is, if you could name one thing that would improve the way we understand each other, we communicate with each other, we acknowledge each other, what would that one thing be? All right? Keep it short, paragraph or less. Name, location.

Don't forget, looking forward to getting your answers already. We've got lots of answers have come in. And we're looking forward to more between now and 6 p.m. Eastern Time Wednesday. Later than that, you're not in. If you are in, you run the risk of winning a signed copy of one of my books. All right, this has been a treat, as it always is. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Peter Mansbridge.

We'll talk to you again in 24 hours.