The Chaser Report - EXTRA: When America Stopped Being Great | Nick Bryant

Episode Date: September 7, 2021

BONUS EPISODE – Former BBC Correspondent, Nick Bryant joins Dom and Charles to discuss his book When America Stopped Being Great. He portrays the broad sweep of American politics as it became increasingly more partisan, ideologically extreme, and unable to agree on anything – even facts – and explains how Ronald Reagan laid the groundwork for Donald Trump. An excerpt of the book features in today's regular episode as well. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report, news you can't trust. Welcome to a bonus edition of The Chaser Report. This is just about our entire conversation with Nick Bryant. He was a BBC correspondent for many years, only just left, and his most recent book about America is called When America Stopped Being Great. In a moment on the Chaser Report, Nick Bryant. Nick Bryant recently finished up several decades working for the BBC as a senior foreign correspondent. He worked in Australia for many years.

And then, most recently, he was in the United States, where he was up close for the whole of the Trump era. His latest book is called When America Stopped Being Great. So, Nick, you're obviously a great lover of America. Where did that begin? Because throughout the book, you're also quite critical of America. And yet, you still seem to love it. Dom, I think my mind migrated to America long before I actually stepped foot in the country. And that didn't take place until I was about 16 years old.

I mean, I was always more interested in Washington than Westminster. I could quote more presidential speeches than prime ministerial speeches. I mean, I guess like so many kids around the world. I mean, I just grew up on, you know, those great American kid shows, those great American cop shows. And I was just absolutely fascinated by the country. And when I went to America, it really consummated that sense. Because I arrived there at this extraordinary moment. It was the eve of the Los Angeles Olympics.

It was this amazing summertime of American resurgence, really. I mean, America had been in the adulterance, what with Vietnam and Watergate and the Iranian hostage crisis. And then in 1984, they hosted the Olympics. And they had this modern-day gold rush. I mean, you remember, they won virtually every medal it seemed because of the Soviet boycott. McDonald's had this scratch car promotion at the time, which they decided to do before the Soviets had boycotted, where if you scratched off the card and the event that you got, they won a gold, you got the big mac of silver, you got the fries, the bronze you got. a Coke and I basically feasted that entire summer on free fast food and whenever I hear the chant

USA USA which basically echo throughout the country in that summer of 1984 I kind of think that somebody's going to hand me a free burger and I really fell in love with America at that stage I love the sense of possibility I love the sense that people thought their lives were going to be better and their kids' lives were going to be better and I guess that's something that really changed I noticed that when I went back to live in America about eight years ago people just didn't seem to believe anymore in the American dream. And so when Donald Trump says the American dream is dead, I think, you know, millions of voters actually agree with them. And it's interesting you mentioned 984 because so much of the book is about Ronald Reagan and how he really changed

America in a very enduring way. And certainly there are plenty of aspects of that that I wasn't really across. In what way did Ronald Reagan create the America that we see today? Well, in 1984, of course, Ronald Reagan perfectly encapsulated the mood of the country. When he came up with that ringing slogan, it's morning again in America. That was his re-election slogan. They came up with this amazing ad that was probably the most successful political ad in U.S. history. And Ronald Reagan won 49 out of 50 states, a landslide. You don't get landslides anymore in American politics because the country is so divided.

But you did back then, he would have won 50 states if it hadn't been for just a few thousand votes in Minnesota, which is where his Democratic opponent, Walter Mondale, came from. And so Reagan, you know, seemed to be this sort of unifying figure, somebody that could bring the whole country together. But, you know, on reflection, Reagan was really the godfather of polarization in so many ways. He first emerged in 1964, which was an incredibly polarizing year because that was a year that the Civil Rights Act was passed. Reagan opposed it. It was the year when the whole landscape of American politics changed. I mean, prior to 1964, that the South used to be Democrat.

They hated the Republicans because the Republicans were the party of Abraham Lincoln. But after 1964 and the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which basically ended segregation in the South, the South started becoming more reliably Republican. And Ronald Reagan was a part of that. He opposed the Civil Rights Act. But there are other ways in which he sort of brought about polarization. He really brought together the modern-day conservative movement in its present form, this alliance of gun enthusiasts.

evangelical Christians, supply-side economists, people who really didn't believe that government had a major role to play in American life. And I think also in the Reagan years, you had that sort of greed as good ethos that really changed corporate America. Prior to 1980s, I think corporate America really did try to look out for everybody that worked for the corporations, whether you're the lowest paid or the highest pay. But what we saw in the Reagan years was this massive discrepancy, between executive pay and shop floor play. And one of the reasons why America is so polarised is because the economy is so polarised.

And we really see the beginnings of that during the Reagan era. There were sort of echoes of Trump, even when he first started, wasn't there? There was a real show business to the way he operated. Yeah, I mean, the obvious thing to say, obviously, is that the movie star president paved the way for the reality TV star president. But it goes a bit deeper than that. Because Reagan really did create the modern presidency. And the modern presidency is a very performative presidency.

So much of it is about what you do in front of the camera rather than what you do behind the scenes in the kind of nitty gritty of day-to-day governance. Reagan really wasn't a full participant in his own administration in the same way that Trump wasn't. There's a great story of Jim Baker, who was his chief of staff. He became his Secretary of State, famous Texas politician, real sort of black belt in Washington,

complained to Reagan the night before a economic summit that he just hadn't done his homework. And Reagan looked at him and said, Jimmy, got to realize the sound of music was on last night. And that personified, you know, Reagan devoured movies, he watched something like 360 during the course of his presidency, in the same way that Trump devoured cable TV news. You know, Reagan was always looking for the big set piece,

foreign affairs speech, the most famous one of which obviously was in front of the Brandenburg gate when he told Gorbachev to tear down this wall. Reagan really created the modern-day state of the union. and those moments where they look up into the balcony and they cite these human heroes with these stories that personify or supposedly their political agenda.

You know, that was a Reagan invention. He really turned it into a performative presidency where the people who occupied the White House had to be performers. And it is not a coincidence that, you know, up until Trump, there was only one, one-term president. It was George Herbert Walker Bush. He was probably the worst performer on TV.

And I think that's one of the reasons while he became a one-term president. But one of the things I really got from the book was a re-appreciation of how good he was at the traditional stuff of presidents, things like statecraft, winning a war with unprecedented success, and all this didn't seem to matter

according to the new rules of the presidency that Reagan had established. Yeah, George Herbert Walker Bush was very much a statesman rather than a showman, and I think that was one of his big problems. I mean, an example of that came after the fall of the birth, Berlin Wall and he did a press conference in the White House briefing room where the White House correspondence were incredulous that he was staying in Washington rather than heading to Berlin

for a victory lap. I mean, America had essentially just won the Cold War and people wondered, why aren't you having a celebration here? And he knew that if he did celebrate, it would rub the noses of the Russians in it. And it would create real problems for Gorbachev with the hardliners in the Kremlin. Another instance of that came after the Gulf War. I mean, an extremely extraordinary triumph, not just militarily, but diplomatically as well. I mean, America assembled this very broad-based coalition. They got support of the United Nations from China and Russia, which, you know, these days would be obviously, you know, beyond them. And after the Gulf War, they said the commander-in-chief should take part in the ticker tape welcome in New York for the returning forces.

And he said, no, you know, it's the soldiers that fought this war, not me. And again, it spoke of this kind of modesty in an office that no longer rewarded modesty. It's interesting, too, that you go back and look at the culture war as fitting in with this as well, and the roots of that, people like Grover Norquist, and how that has really become to dominate the Republican Party to the point where issues like abortion, which we see on the front page of America once again at the moment, are all that matter. And it's to do with rights rather than facts and ideas. and I thought that was a really interesting analysis.

How did that evolve? Well, the Republican Party really used to be the party of Wall Street. It used to be the party of the northeast. And then it became the party of the South, and it became the party of the Bible Belt, and it became the party of the megachurch. And a lot of evangelical Christians started supporting the Republican Party. And also these evangelical Christians took a look at what had happened in the 1960s,

when a lot of liberal people of faith, a lot of clergymen, had joined with the civil rights movement and really given it a moral force and a moral authority and they thought they should do the same thing but from a right wing perspective and the issue that they decided to champion of course was abortion

and abortion became this litmus test within the Republican Party and abortion obviously became one of the big angry fault lines of American politics which rumbles obviously to this day I mean given what we're seeing in Texas right now And then during the Clinton era, because that was another sort of pivotal moment, wasn't it, during the Clinton impeachment, where that sort of set in train a whole lot of other parts of the Trump sort of ascendancy, didn't it?

Yes. Yeah, look, the arrival of Bill Clinton coincided with two things. One was the end of the Cold War. And the Cold War had implosed the discipline on American politics. You know, there was this sense of patriotic bipartisanship. There was this sense that both the Republicans and the Democrats had a common enemy in the Soviet Union. Now, when that enemy went, that glue that had sort of brought the country together just disappeared.

And this coincided with a generational shift in American politics as well. The greatest generation, the generation that have fought the Second World War, people like George Herbert Walker Bush were ousted, basically. They had the torch wrenched away from them. by the baby boomer generation, people like Bill Clinton, people like Newt Gingrich. Now, their formative political experience have been in the 1960s, the culture wars of the 1960s, and they brought that mentality to Washington. Washington became the New Berlin, the place where America fought its ideological battles.

And alas, it was a battle that was fought internally between American and American. But you also mention Clinton as the beginning of the idea that you could simply shrug off scandal. And ironically, that came back to bite Hillary Clinton when she ran against. So she suffered twice over, didn't she? Yeah, when you look at the origins of political lying, I mean, an author of it was Bill Clinton. You know, I did not have sex with that woman, Mr. Lewinsky. A big lie. But a lie that really helped him politically.

It brought him time. He managed to sort of get some democratic support on Capitol Hill. They've been talk about him having to resign, that the Democrats would drive down Pennsylvania and tell him it was time to go. And what Clinton also did in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and Donald Trump learned a lesson from this as well, especially when Access Hollywood was coming, was to frame the question. Not so much as a case of right and wrong,

but whose side of year or one? Who do you want to win? Because if I get impeached and remove from office, the Republicans have won. Do you really want to give Gingrich a victory? And Donald Trump really played from that playbook when Access Hollywood came and he could basically ask the question

who do you want to win? Do you want Hillary to be the beneficiary of this or do you want to keep the Republic you know, do you want to get a Republican in the White House? Again, it was playing on a polarised framing and Bill Clinton was an absolute master of that. Just getting now to the 2000 election, which was another sort of pivotal moment,

you know, the recount there, one of the fascinating things I thought in the book was just it was an all-star cast that went down as part of the Republican sort of recount team I mean it was just basically everyone who's now there today well two Supreme Court justices for a start John Roberts was a key lawyer during that time

so too was Brett Kavanaugh and curiously some of the people on the Democratic side who are now playing a very big part in national politics, Ron Clayne, who's the chief of staff in the White House. He was involved in that fight as well. And I think that was very useful to him in the aftermath of the 2020 election, because he'd learned a lot of the lessons from 2000. One of the lessons that the Republicans learned was, you know, make the narrative early on. The narrative that they put out there was that George W. Bush had won, that Al Gore was a sore loser. And that really helped them, I think, in building momentum and creating a legitimacy around the idea that George W. Bush had won.

which helped when the Supreme Court finally intervened and basically made him a victor. And I think in 2020, people like Ron Clayne very early on were saying, you know, Joe Biden's the victor here. And building that narrative. I mean, it really began the moment the polls had shut. I remember I was in the car park in Delaware. I was actually with Ron Clayne. And I went up to him and said, Ron, you know, tell us how you feel in the camp. He said, we've won. We have won. He said we've lost Florida, but we've won Georgia. We've won Arizona. We've won Arizona. and we've won those three crucial Rust Belt states, Pennsylvania,

Michigan and Wisconsin. And he was right, but I also think he was trying to create the narrative that Biden was a victor. And that became very useful over the coming days, of course, when Donald Trump questioned whether Biden had won. But the other lesson learned during that 2000 recount

was that voter suppression was a very useful strategy for the Republicans. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that was a real blow to American democracy. I mean, I'll talk about three convulsions in the book. One was the economic convulsion of 2008, the Great Recession. One was obviously the national security convulsion of September the 11th. And the other was the democratic convulsion of the 2000 election.

I think a lot of people lost a lot of faith in American democracy during that election, not just because of the intervention of the Supreme Court, that 5-4 ruling that was basically a long party lines, basically on ideological lines, all the Conservatives voted for Bush, all the Democrats voted for Gore. But also the site of all that voter suppression in Florida. I have no doubt that more voters that day went to the polls in Florida wanting to vote for Al Gore. Some of them were blocked from doing so. Many of them were African Americans. And ever since, the Republicans have realized they face a demographic death spiral. We are approaching a majority minority country. You know, more people are going to be of color than white people in American elections.

The Republicans realize that, and now they are pursuing a voter suppression strategy across America. I mean, some people now speak of blue states and voter suppression states. And I think we have reached a real crisis in democracy, where Republicans have not only become anti-democratic party, you know, some of them have become almost anti-democratic. And you trace in the book the way that really white supremacy as a way of winning elections goes back decades, which is something I didn't really understand to that same degree. But I'm keen to ask you about the system because one of the things you learn from the book, if your knowledge of American politics from the 70s and 80s isn't as deep as yours is,

but I didn't realize how well the system used to work. To me, it's always been sclerotic and tribal and very hard to get anything done, even if you win the Senate and the presidency, as the Democrats have now, it's enormously hard to pass anything because the, opposition simply say no, but you point out that it didn't used to be like that, the people used to work together and argue things on their merits. Do you think the system is irredeemably broken, or is there hope? Look, I do think the system is irredeemably broken at the moment.

I think one of the big problems in America is that they regard the constitution as having an almost Quranic status. They regard these as sacred tablets that should never be changed. And the founding fathers, of course, never thought that. They thought this was an experiment in a kind of form of democracy. They didn't really like mass democracy. They wanted representative democracy. And those two things were very different.

And actually that thinking has created many of the problems that we have today because they created institutions like the Senate where you'd have two senators per state regardless of the population size. And that's created huge problems. But yeah, I do think the system really has problems. It works when there's compromise. And as you said, there was compromise in the 1990. 50s. Part of that was because of the Cold War. Part of that was this spirit of patriotic bipartisanship.

Part of it was because a lot of politicians have served together in a real war, World War II, and they didn't see the need to fight a political war in Washington. But that compromise has now disappeared in American politics. And a lot of the moderates who used to sort of work out those deals have gone. Many of them are primed, as you know. I mean, if you compromise with the Democrats and, you know, on the other side, too, some Democrats compromised with the Republicans, often these, days, actually almost always these days, they face a primary challenge from somebody further to the right or further to the left. And that, again, has been an accelerant of polarisation. It's ironic, isn't it, that given that they're so Talmudic about the Constitution, that

they also go on about the First and Second Amendment all the time. But sorry, I'll ask you any question. No, I was going to say, like a lot of my American friends are sort of convinced now that the sort of laws that the Republicans are bringing in that will allow the sort of ratify... So Trump in the 2020 election tried to sort of get the state committees to strike out the results, and of course none of them did it, like the electoral commissions, basically. And a lot of my American friends are now desperately worried

that actually next time around, those electoral commissions have now been replaced with people who will actually just refuse to ratify the thing, and that is where the game has shifted. Do you think that's true? Look, a lot of people regarded the outcome of the 2020 election as this constitutional triumph. It was proof that the Constitution works, because ultimately, you know, Congress actually ratified the results. You know, you didn't get state legislatures overturning the results. in their states. But, you know, it was a close run thing. And let's just imagine a counterfactual. Let's imagine that the Republicans were in control of the House of Representatives and the Republicans

have been in clear control of the Senate when it came to counting the votes. And then you would have had the real possibility that Donald Trump could have overturned the results of the 2020 election. So it wasn't so much that the Constitution was a safeguard in this instance. It was the fact that the Democratic majority in the House was the safeguard. And I think that's often overlooked. You know, my argument would be that you really need a huge constitutional overhaul to remedy a lot of the problems in America. The problem is, if you have that constitutional over overhaul,

you would basically be handing victory to the Democrats for quite some time to come. And obviously, then you would be in the position where you would have a very strong backlash from the right. and a possibly violent backlash from the right-wing militia groups. It is interesting, though, because the argument is made, and I know a Democrats put a lot of faith in this, and it never seems to transpire, but perhaps it did this time for the first time, that demographics are going to be the end to all of this,

that the country is becoming so diverse that even the notion of an ethically white majority is doomed, that in the end the Democrats will have permanent control unless this sort of stuff comes through. Do you think that those hopes are overblown? Well, that's certainly where the demographics are heading. And that's why so many Republicans thought that Donald Trump's message that he began with when he came down that golden elevator escalator in 2016 was so ridiculous and just wouldn't be viable.

I mean, he was basically alienating all the Hispanic voters in America. And people thought, this is crazy. This comes at a time when the Republican Party needs to reach out to that constituency, to reach out to that demographic. Donald Trump was doing completely the opposite. But he calculated that there were enough sort of angry white people out there who hadn't voted in the past who would vote for him.

And he got that calculation right. And the vagaries of the Electoral College helped because obviously that white vote was concentrated in the states that he needed to win. But yeah, the Republicans really do face a demographic problem. And that's why they like the system as it is because the system as it is

has always helped the minority. It's always helped the minority to block things from happening. And in many instances, in two recent cases in presidential elections, it's actually helped the person who won less votes actually win the presidency. George W. Bush, obviously, in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016. I noticed that you're no longer living in America. You've moved to Australia. What were you thinking?

Does that mean you've given up somewhat? Donald Trump Jr. said that this was a gul. that we are living in now. Have you given up a little bit on America? A little bit, a little bit, yeah. I mean, ultimately, you know, you have to make the decision where is best to raise your kids. I mean, our kids, our oldest kids were born in Australia, you know, and to be honest,

we always wanted to raise them here. We love Australia. It's a great lifestyle. I was called it the lifestyle superpower of the world. And, you know, I think it is. Even in lockdown, it's kind of a wonderful place to be when you're walking along those gorgeous coastal walks. seeing those beautiful beaches.

Yeah, America, I didn't really want to raise the kids there, to be honest. You know, I mean, I've spoken about, you know, just in our area. And we lived in a sort of safe and fashionable area of New York, a place called Dumbo. It's just by Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan Bridge. In the seven years that we lived there, there were over 75 shootings. And 25 of those were fatal shootings. Now, you know, we didn't cower and fear. We didn't sort of hear the sound of gunfire.

It wasn't as if we felt our lives were in danger. it speaks to the sort of craziness of America right now. And, you know, we were in a real bubble. You know, we were in one of those places that, you know, Woody Allen used to describe as an island off the northeast coast of America. We were sort of detached in many ways from the real craziness. But, yeah, I mean, my love for America is deep and abiding. But, yeah, the romance is, as much of the romance is gone.

And yet, that said, despite all the portrait of the sclerotic system and all these problems, we do now have a, president who's getting stuff passed, who's passing these extraordinarily large plans, trillion-dollar plans. Afghanistan's clearly been a big problem for Joe Biden, but in another respect, he seems to be outperforming what just about anyone expected of him. What is your thought about how he's going and what his presidency is going to look like in the years ahead?

He has managed to get things done. You know, obviously a big infrastructure bill. I mean, the joke, obviously, during the Trump years was every week, was infrastructure week and Trump would never get an infrastructure bill passed. Joe Biden has done that. He's got a big stimulus package through. You know, his mantra is America is back. And, you know, he can point to things like, you know, the Mars thing, landing on Mars.

I think the Mars thing is a good way to describe it. They've even got, you know, they can even claim a sort of galactic success during his presidency that kind of revives the great days of the space program. But his overriding mission was to heal the country, to reunite the country. And I just don't see that happening because those fault lines are as angry as ever. You know, it's abortion at the moment. It'll be race, no doubt. In a few weeks' time, there'll be another mass shooting somewhere in America and the gun debate will flare up again.

And then we'll come round to the elections next year. and there'll be disputes over who's won. I mean, America cannot even agree anymore on who has won a clear-cut election. Biden was the clear winner in 2020, but a majority of Republicans do not believe that. So when it comes to his overall mission to sort of end this cold civil war,

I don't think Biden is going to succeed. It is funny, isn't it? Because normally when someone loses an election, they slink off. You mentioned Michael Jukakis in the book that's name I haven't heard for a while. and Hillary Clinton of course was fairly quiet even after winning the popular vote so overwhelmingly

and yet Donald Trump seems to still have a complete hold on the Republican Party or people who want to win elections and primaries go down to Mara Lago and kiss the ring so to speak is he going to be the nominee and despite clearly losing last time could he even win in four years time well I think a crucial point to make Tom

is obviously so many of his followers don't think he did lose and he has created this big lie around his defeat in 2020 and so many of his supporters believe him. I mean, I was actually in Florida when he made his comeback speech after January the 6th. It was a CPAC, a conservative conference in Orlando and it was fantasy land stuff. I mean, Disneyland's just down the road and this was fantasy land because he was creating this fantasy that he'd won the election and so many people outside the hall and inside the hall you know totally agreed and he has that constituency that is prepared to back him again he is the dominant figure in the conservative movement any hopes amongst the republican establishment the

january the sixth the storming of the capital would be the moment that the conservative movement repudiated Donald trump just didn't turn out to be the case it turned out to be a moment of radicalization when the republican party went even further from you know its its origin story and it's it's set of Belize, which has sort of governed the party for more than 100 years. You know, very much is the Trump party now. He is the presumptive nominee if he wants to run. I think that's the big question. Is this sort of campaign, a money-raising campaign, or is this a serious attempt to get

back in the White House? But if he does go for the Republican nomination, I suspect he'd probably win it. So just on something a little bit more personal, at the end of the book, you reveal that you actually ended up getting COVID. last year, what is it like to have COVID? Well, I mean, relatively few people in Australia have had it. I mean, that's the extraordinary thing, isn't it? You know, we look at the sort of case numbers here,

and they're so small, relatively speaking, to what we were seeing in America during the height of COVID. I mean, I was living in a city, New York City. It was the global epicenter. At one stage, we had 800 deaths a day. And I got COVID early on. I mean, very early on, and my wife did too, and she had it sort of more seriously than I did. And I had it. It was absolutely horrible. I mean, I lost the taste. I felt like somebody sort of smashed me over the head with a hammer.

Lost the energy for days. My wife, though, was struggling to breathe. And a doctor friend said, you should really get to hospital. But this was a time when, you know, ambulance drivers were literally telling people, don't get in my ambulance if you can in any way avoid it, because arguably you're in more risk and more dangerous. in a hospital and outside of it right now. So we waited an hour or so, and Fleur, my wife's breathing, did improve. And thank God. I mean, she was heavily pregnant at the time. Gosh.

It was a really, really worrying time. I mean, I'm a foreign correspondent. I've been a lot of nasty places. What I've never had before is my family living the same story as I was. And that was really alarming. But, you know, you're living that right now in a kind of, you know, slightly less extreme way. Welcome back.

I hope your immunity holds me. Well, look, I mean, I've got really good immunity, and I've also got two jabs in my arm. So, you know, I feel fairly bulletproof, but, you know, you hear these stories about people getting the delavirus, so we've just spent two weeks in quarantine in five-star detention, and we've just got out. But, yeah, it's a weird time to come back to us,

because it does feel a bit like traveling backwards, along the COVID timeline. You know, I came from a city, New York, that was, you know, not normal, but definitely heading in that direction. And we stopped off for a couple of months in Britain on the way back. And, you know, obviously Britain is pretty vaxed up. And, you know, it's trying to get back to normal as well. So it's kind of strange and ironic.

We didn't time our run particularly well that we're back in Oz. Because for 18 months, we've been looking at Oz like it was this COVID changri-la. It was. And people leading these normal lives. so it's so ironic to to see it in this state right now actually can I just ask this is a personal thing

are there shows on in New York and Britain like can you put on a yeah I mean in Britain the shows are open again the cinemas are open again the restaurants are open again the pubs are open again the sports stages the festivals I mean that's probably a mistake because I think the festivals

did end up being super spread or events I mean you'll have seen the Euro Championship obviously you know bit by bit, they were getting more people in the crowd. Again, you know, some of those semi-finals and finals at Wembley ended up being super spreader events. But, yeah, I mean, Britain's decided to go down that path. America, not quite there.

I think Broadway is just opening up. And New York is very much a shadow of its former self in many ways. But I think September, you know, it's just after Labor Day. I think a lot of people will start going back to work for the first time in New York. since the pandemic began, and I think we'll see the sort of big apple returning to some sort of semblance of normalcy. And, uh, yeah. Hang on a sec.

Charles, are you thinking of doing your live shows that you're going to have to cancel in Australia overseas? Is that your aim here? That's what I'm worried about. I've got a whole national tour lined up at the end of the year. And I don't, I think I'm going to cancel it. You won't be allowed to leave.

We're living in this bizarre place where you can't even leave the country. It's very, very strange. Just to tie, just to get back to America, briefly, finally, Nick, surveying the scene, you were up close for so many years, is there anyone who gives you hope for the future? Are there people there who you think might be able to achieve the kind of transformation that American needs? Or do you think it's going to be a tribal war for decades to take?

Look, that's a great question. And it's a question I really kind of do think about, because I hope that I'm wrong. I mean, I end the book saying, you know, I fear more American carnage. And that line was actually written prior to Germany and the city rather than after it. And I really hope that my pessimism about America is misplaced. My worry is that a lot of the younger generation of politicians coming to the fore are pretty tribalistic. They tend to come from the sort of extremes of their parties. I think that is potentially problematic.

You know, you wonder whether the Republican Party will have this epiphany and realize that they do face electoral and. annihilation if they don't start reaching out to groups of color. But, you know, I think they'll look at Trump and, you know, he had some success with the Hispanic vote and also some African Americans. So they will think, well, that Trumpian brand is viable, even in a kind of more multiracial country. So, you know, the short answer is I'm still really pessimistic. I'm looking for rays of sunshine and I find them hard to see. Because a moment like COVID, where you thought this is a potentially unifying moment, as actually ended up becoming an accelerant of polarization. America has ended more polarized than it began. And the economy has ended up more polarized than it began as well. The beneficiaries of this have been the online traders like Jeff Bezos. And that continues a trend which is really problematic. One of the reasons where America has a broken politics is because it has a broken economy. And not everybody is a beneficiary of the American economy in the way that it was in

the past. And again, that has become a driver of polarization. And I don't see how that gets reversed in the short or medium term. Well, welcome back to Australia where it doesn't really matter what happens, the coalition wins. Well, look, it is lovely to be back. And, you know, despite the weirdness of this moment, you know, I was walking along the headway this morning on the way to get my coffee, my flat white, a lovely little, you know, surf, lifesaver coffee shop.

And I just thought, wow, this is just sensational. So even in the midst of all this weirdness, you know, It's still very good to love Australia and to have a sense that, you know, we made the right decision to come back. Thank goodness. Well, it's been fascinating. Yeah, just ignore Canberra and look at the beach. That's a way to hear of the guy.

Nick, thank you so much for joining us. My pleasure, guys. It's a real treat to speak to you. Nick Bryan's latest book is called When America Stopped Being Great. In recent social media photo, he shared a picture of Joe Biden with it on his bookshelf in the Oval Office. Nick's other books include The Rise and Fall of Australia and Adventures in Correspondent Land. If you enjoyed this, we're going to have another in-depth conversation later in the week

with John Safran. He's got a new book out about Philip Morris and the new ways that they're marketing cigarettes. Catch you then.