The Daily Signal - Ep. 295: The Next Revolution's Steve Hilton on 'Positive Populism'

Episode Date: September 10, 2018

America experienced the latest wave of populism with the election of Donald Trump in November 2016. Since then, people across the country have been trying define populism, how the Trump presidency embodies it, and what it means for our nation. Steve Hilton, host of Fox News' "The Next Revolution," joins The Daily Signal to discuss his new book, "Positive Populism: Revolutionary Ideas to Rebuild Economic Security, Family, and Community in America."We also cover these stories:* Senate Democrats delay a vote on Judge Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court.* Sources indicate the president may impose sanctions on foreign agencies or persons caught interfering in U.S. elections.* Former Secretary of State John Kerry admits to having met several times in recent months with top Iranian officials to try to salvage the Iran nuclear deal. The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, September 13th. I'm Jenny Malta Bono. And I'm Daniel Davis. Populism has been on the rise in recent years, not just in the U.S., but across Europe. Now, the definition of populism is definitely up for grabs, but one British political operative, Steve Hilton, has a new book out advocating what he calls positive populism, a return to local community. We'll sit down with him to discuss his book. Plus, Jenny and I look back on 9-11.

from the perspective of an elementary schooler. But first we'll cover a few of the top headlines. Senate Democrats have delayed Judge Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court by at least a week. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley intended for a committee vote to happen today that would advance Judge Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court to the next phase. Democrats are using a committee rule that will push this vote another week. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has indicated that they are planning to have Kavanaugh confirmed by October 1st in time for the new Supreme Court term.

Well, those rumors about John Kerry doing shadow diplomacy turned out to be true, it seems. In an interview on Wednesday with radio host Hugh Hewitt, the former Secretary of State admitted to having met several times in recent months with top Iranian officials to try to salvage the nuclear deal that he helped to forge in the last years of the Obama administration. President Trump withdrew the U.S. from that deal earlier this year. Kerry said that in his discussions with Iranian leaders, he has chided the Trump administration for ditching the deal and for not negotiating with Iran. President Trump is using sanctions to target foreign meddling in U.S. elections, sources are saying,

now the White House has declined to comment, but it's been said that the potential executive order would put sanctions on foreign companies or persons who interfere in American elections. This move would come roughly two months before the November 6 midterms and after a wave of claims and controversy about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Well, yet another sex abuse report is rocking the Catholic Church, this time in Germany, where two major newspapers have reported on leaked documents from that country's Sexual Abuse Commission. The commission reports 3,67 victims of pre-sexual abuse in Germany dating back to the 1940s,

with most victims being boys under the age of 14. This bombshell report comes just as the Pope has called an unprecedented gathering of the world's top bishops next February to discuss the growing sex abuse scandal. Well, up next we'll sit down with Steve Hilton to discuss his new book on populism. Do conversations about the Supreme Court leave you scratching your head? Then subscribe to Scotus 101, a podcast breaking down the cases, personalities, and gossip at the Supreme Court. Well, we are a few years into the populist revolution. It began with Brexit and then came across the pond with the election of Donald Trump. But what comes next for populism?

And by the way, what does that even mean? Joining us in studio to unpack those questions is Steve Hilton. He's author of the new book, Positive Populism, Revolutionary Ideas to Rebuild Economic Security, Family, and Community in America. Steve is also host of the Fox News Show, The Next Revolution. Steve, thank you for joining us. Thank you. It's a great pleasure to be here. So before we get into some of the details of your book, Steve,

the term populism, some people it has negative connotations of alt-right and that sort of thing. For others, it just means grassroots populism and actual democracy. What kind of populism are you advocating in your book? I think that the most important characteristics of the populism that I am arguing for, first of all, the focus of the ideas that I'm putting forward, they're intended to help the people who've been left behind and hurt by the policy agenda that's been implemented for the last few decades by governments of all parties, both here in America and in the UK, which those policies have really benefited many people,

those at the top, those who work in the knowledge economy and in the thriving urban centres, but many more actually have been left behind. If you look at the income data, for example, turns out that up to 2016, incomes were flat or falling for 44 years since 1972. This is a really long-term problem. And so the first point I'd make is that this is an agenda directly aimed at helping working people. By that term I use to mean 80% or so of regular working Americans. The second thing that's important about it for me in terms of who it's trying to help

and what it's trying to do is families. I think that one of the biggest, biggest social problems we've seen over many years is the breakdown of family and the impact of that on social mobility and opportunity and inequality. So I think that's a really important component. And then the third I'd point to is community. I think that we've seen a tremendous centralization of power over the last few decades, both in government and the economy, where more and more decisions are being made distant from the people that are affected by them. by bureaucracies and multilateral international bodies and all the rest of it. And I think people feel that they really want more control over what happens. And therefore, and the community, I think, is at the heart of that.

So those are the key focus areas. But I think above all, what I mean by positive populism, is that it's not just complaining about what's gone wrong. It's not just saying we're against something. We're against the elites. we're against big business, we're against pitch forward populism. Look, I think that that kind of anger is well merited in many cases.

There are legitimate grievances. But you've got to move on from that. If you don't put forward positive solutions for actually dealing with those underlying problems, the anger just turns into more and more resentment and self-pity and feeds the whole cycle. So I think we've got to break out of that. and above all put forward practical positive solutions to deal with all these longstanding problems that seem to have festered for decades now. You know, Steve, when we look at American history, we can see how populism has come in waves, come in cycles, usually as a reaction to something most recently with President Trump's election in 2016. Where do you think populism goes from here?

Well, I can tell you where I'd like it to go, which is an agenda for politics. policy reform that this administration could absolutely push forward on, which doesn't touch on just the, some of the more economic issues that we think of when we think, for example, of President Trump's focus, immigration and trade and so on. I think that there's a whole set of things that should be part of a populist and positive populist reform movement. For example, what a populist have to say about schools, about skills and training. And that's got to be a big part of it, because if we can't.

come back to where a lot of this anger and resentment comes from, it is connected to unemployment and jobs and low-paying work and all those sorts of things, wage stagnation. So in order to help lift up those working people, you've got to actually think about how productive they can be, because it's their productive capacity that will determine their employment prospects and their incomes. So raising, to use a bit of jargon, raising the productive capacity of every American is a huge part of this. That's not about trade. That's actually about how our school system works and how we think about skills. Equally, we don't really think so much when we hear that term populism about family, but actually it's intimately connected because again, it's about

helping people climb the ladder of opportunity and achieve the American dream. And social mobility in America has totally stalled. And one of the reasons for that is the breakdown of the family. And so we need to think about how we, now we can see. That's been talked about for many years now. It's not an original observation. The question is, what do you do about it? And one of the other characteristics I'd say about populism,

certainly the populism I believe in and advocating for, is it's pretty pragmatic and non-ideological. It asks like, well, how do we solve this problem? And I think that was one of the things. things that appealed to people about Donald Trump in the 2016, campaign 2015 and 2016. He actually won precisely, people say, oh, he's not a conservative. That's why he won, because he wasn't presenting himself as an ideological politician. He was presenting himself as a pragmatic problem-solving business guy who would just get things done.

That's actually what people want. Now, you do consider yourself a conservative or free market libertarian that sort of Well, I definitely would say that I'm, I mean, I don't like those labels. I have consciously chosen this label, positive populism, because I think it accurately captures the spirit of what I'm trying to do. I absolutely feel comfortable talking about conservative ideas and libertarian ideas, but I don't think that conservatism or libertarianism has all the answers. and I think that some things in my book

will absolutely challenge conservatives who may say, well, hang on a second, that's too interventionist, that's too much government going on there. I understand that. That's a conscious choice. So walk us through a couple of examples of that. What would it mean for government

to intervene in some way that actually empowers and enables a kind of local organic community? Because usually, you know, conservatives consider those things to be at odds as you recognize, you know, how can government enable something local and organic to flourish while doing it from the top down? What are a couple of examples that you think that would actually work? Well, before I do that, I'd like to just set out a general principle, which, which, and I would love everyone to read the book, because I think it's got stimulating practical ideas

and people will have opinions and so on. But when you read the book, you'll see that there's something in common with a lot of, a lot of the ideas and a lot of the policy prescriptions. And I try and draw this distinction between services or interventions or whatever that are guaranteed by government, but provided by the market through full-profit companies or non-profits or community organizations. Immediately when you start talking about government intervention, people recoil because they think it's some giant bureaucracy that's going to come in and make a message. And I absolutely agree with that. critique. I worked inside a giant government bureaucracy, the British government when I was working there

with David Cameron, and the UK is a very centralised country. The civil service and the bureaucracy does run things to much greater degree from the centre than you see in America. So I'm as skeptical as anyone of that kind of thing. And in fact, there is a chapter, well,

there's a whole, three of the chapters in the book are about reforming government. And one of the central themes there is about how we need to decentralize power. We need to break up big government and decentralize it and take the functions out and also constrained and reduce in size the bureaucracy that drives all this forward. However, it doesn't mean that you just sit back and do nothing. I think this is the mistake that conservatives have made.

They've typically said, well, if you just get government out of the way, good things will happen. And that is often the case, but it's not always the case. and it's certainly not true for some of these deeper entrenched social problems where if you just leave people to their own devices and assume that everything's going to be fine, that's not at all fine. And so one of the examples I point to is, I would say is the family policy where I think both sides, left and right, have got this wrong.

The left have been far too complacent about family structure and not wanted to make moral judgments about people's behavior. Do whatever you want, have children on your own, don't worry about having a two-parent family and so on. But on the right, I think that there's been a reluctance to understand that actually helping families with the work of raising children so that you can help achieve the goal I think we don't want, which is to have every American child raised in a stable, loving home. interventions to achieve that are good and conservative because they support a conservative institution. One example that I cite in the book and one of the ideas that I talk about is home visiting.

The reason I think this is interesting is because when you look at the data around family breakdown, there's a real clustering of that in the year after a child is born for very obvious reasons. It's an incredibly stressful time. People don't get enough sleep. Couples are arguing, you know, like anyone who's had children understands. that it's just a hugely stressful time. And that's when a lot of families break up. That's not something we should just leave to happen

and think, well, it's just like the weather. It's just something that happens. You can actually do something about it, constructive and positive. And there are programs that have done that, and I talk about them in the book. One of the most effective is the nurse family partnership that operates out of it started in Colorado many years ago. It's been heavily evaluated and it's incredibly effective.

It basically helps families with nurses go into homes. They visit the parents in the home and just show them. And there's a combination of practical tips. This is how you get the baby to sleep. This is how you do feeding. There's a whole bunch of practical advice. But it's also more emotional and social and what's going on, how's your relationship? Do you need help with anything?

That kind of early warning system for problems that confessor. And my argument is that that shouldn't be something which typically here in America is done now just named at-risk populations, that's something that could really usefully be delivered right across the board because every family needs help with that. Again, it doesn't mean the government has to come into your house and so can be delivered at the local level by community groups and faith groups and all the rest of it. But that kind of practical help for families I think is a good example of where if we're serious about family stability, that kind of intervention can help achieve it.

shy away from it. One of the things that I also think is interesting you talk about is what I think can fairly be called a kind of hipster conservatism or at least a, you know, you know, you talk about hipster cultures actually being amenable to certain conservative or free market principles. Walk us through, what do you mean by that? Well, one of the things that I think is really interesting about that culture, which is very much a phenomenon of the last kind of decade or so. and in typically urban areas, affluent urban areas, is part of the elite, frankly.

But there's a strong focus on entrepreneurialism. I think that's a really interesting. It's probably, for me, they're defining characteristic, actually. People wanting to set up cafes and coffee shops and artisanal chocolate makers and so on. You know, it's great. I love that.

I think that it's something that conservatives should really understand and appreciate and find ways to connect with. And the other element, I think, of connection that conservatives, particularly my kind of positive populism I think would make is through the community aspect, the neighborhood aspect. That's skepticism that this generation has of big institutions, remote distant institutions, the skepticism of the experts and the big brands and so on. There's a real suspicion there and a desire not to have anything to do with it for a lot of people. and that's really healthy, I think. And in a way that that may be

intellectually, there's a heritage there that's maybe more towards the libertarian, Hayekian view of the world in terms of decentralized and dispersed power, which I definitely share a lot of that thinking, particularly when it comes to how government is structured for it. So, for example, in the book, I make a strong argument for not just taking power as we hear about all the time from the federal government to the states,

but also from states to counties and cities and towns. And then beyond that, I talk about neighborhood governance and the neighborhood actually being the ideal unit for governance if we can achieve it, because that's where people can really connect on a human level and actually know each other. Steve, something I'm sure a lot of our listeners are wondering, how did you go from working for David Cameron

to now hosting a weekly Fox News show? You have a book coming out. What was that leap like? And what is the experience of hosting a show? So what has that experience been like for you? Well, I feel I've had the incredible opportunities of the American dream in a way that I could never have imagined. We actually moved here six and a half years ago to America for family reasons. My wife at that time was a senior executive at Google.

She was running a global team, but that was difficult. I was in the government, and so she was commuting a lot. It became tough. So we decided to move. We moved to California. I started teaching at Stanford, started a tech company in a terrible cliche. I was being in Silicon Valley, that's what you have to do, I guess. The thing that really, and that was great, and then I really stayed away from UK politics

and focused on our new life here. But the Brexit vote really was the moment that things started to change because I actually had written, I'm just trying to recall, I think I had a previous book around about that. time called More Human, that was out in the UK. And then the paperback version came out roughly around the same time as the Brexit vote. And more human makes it actually takes some of these arguments we've been talking about. But it's very, it again, argues, as its name suggests, for kind of more decentralization is a really power to the people, decentralization.

A big theme of that book. And when the Brexit vote was announced, I felt that in updating that book, I really wanted to make clear that I was in favor of Brexit because the EU is the ultimate example of a distant distant centralizing unaccountable institutions. So I'd always been in favor of leaving. So I went, I went back to the UK, talked about it, then went back to campaign for Brexit. And during that process, it was interesting. Here in America, I think most people weren't interested in Brexit until it actually happened. And then suddenly it's, oh my, wow, what was that? And I think I'd just been on Fox News, not even the, I think the business channel, talking about Brexit, connected with the book or something like that.

And then when Brexit happened, I suddenly became in demand to talk about it. And that seemed to go well. And then remember, that was at the beginning of, that was 2016. Then you're moving into the summer of the election campaign. And the audience seemed to like what I was saying about Brexit and populism. And so I had the opportunity to talk more about that. and the comparisons with the Trump campaign, and that was a really interesting topic at the time.

Like, is it going to be like Brexit? Are we going to see the same thing happen here? I thought that we would. And that's really how it all began. And so I have this most unlikely new life as a TV host, which I never would have imagined, but it's an incredible honor and opportunity to do it, and I love doing it.

Well, we welcome you to the United States, and we appreciate you coming on to talk about your book. It's called Positive Popular Popular. socialism, revolutionary ideas to rebuild economic security, family, and community in America on Amazon and all the other stores. Thank you for joining us, Steve. Thank you very much. I'm Rob Lewy, editor-in-chief of The Daily Signal. And I'm Ginny Maltabano. Each weekday, the Daily Signal delivers the Morning Bell email direct to your inbox. We created the Morning Bell to be your one-stop source for credible news reporting and insightful commentary on the

issues that are shaping the agenda. You can subscribe today and get it delivered to your inbox each weekday morning. Sign up now at DailySignal.com. Just click on the connect button at the top of the page and subscribe today. Well, on Tuesday, our nation marked the 17th anniversary of 9-11, a horrific day that so many of us will remember for the rest of our lives. But not everyone walking around these days remembers 9-11. In fact, most people in high school today weren't even born then. Jenny and I are probably among the youngest Americans to remember 9-11 vividly. So Jenny, I just want to ask you, what were you doing on 9-11?

11 and what do you remember? So I was in first or second grade in Houston, Texas, and back then all of the classrooms had TVs and a lot of times the news would be on. And I remember that day, all of the TV suddenly going off and then, you know, they let all the kids out early. We're all going home. Well, my mom was a teacher there. So I got to go in the teacher's lounge and they had all the TVs on and teachers were crying and I'll never forget turning the corner and seeing an image of both of the towers on fire and just recognizing that something horrendous had happened. And my mom, to her credit, did a good job explaining it in a way that didn't overwhelm me, but I was able to understand this is truly horrendous.

And it's interesting, you mentioned that most high schoolers today weren't born. My mom was actually pregnant with my younger sister. And so both of my younger sisters were not alive in the world, C-9-11. And so it's interesting every year that it comes up, the conversations between us three, and since I do remember it. What about you? Yeah, well, I was, so I was in third grade, so I guess I would have been nine years old, and I was actually living in Hong Kong. My dad was working at the American Consulate there, and so that was an interesting experience. It actually happened while I was asleep.

My parents were still awake, because, you know, the time difference, and it was nighttime, and they stayed up late enough to actually see it starting on the news. and it was when I woke up in the morning that I was going to breakfast in the kitchen and my dad told me something really horrible happened last night and he told me about it and showed me the newspaper and I saw a picture of this big fireball and building in New York City didn't even know what the World Trade Center was until then but yeah that was always sticking my mind I remember going down to the bus stop that morning and talking with the other kids about it and seeing, you know, bringing the newspaper down and talking to them about it.

And then, you know, at school, we talked about it. I was watching closely what the president was going to do. I was a big fan of President Bush, especially being from Texas. You know, he was our governor in the 90s. And it was really the days that followed, I think, as, you know, I wasn't in America, but it was a very proud time to be an American. I remember people leaving flowers outside the consulate, like, bunch of people, just local people in Hong Kong leaving flowers. And I know that happened around the

world. So yeah, I'll always remember that. But I'm really curious with you because my only sibling, my sister was actually also old enough to remember, but you, your siblings don't. So what's it like for them? I mean, what's the dynamic like? You know, they have a lot of questions. So, and I'm kind of a history buff. So every year I try to make them or, you know, encourage them to watch them kind of a documentary. And they have a very simple question that I think a lot of kids who are so innocent happy, how could something this evil happen? And that's tough to work through. And actually a couple days ago, it made me think of this book called And God Cryed Too. My parents actually got it for me shortly after 9-11. And it does a really nice job of explaining, you know, why terrible events

happen. But, you know, my sisters try to stay up to date and they just, I try to answer all of their questions about it. And, you know, they try to educate themselves. But it's, it's tough. to fath them that something like that could happen. And they're huge baseball fans like myself. And so I did show them that clip of George W. Bush throwing out that first pitch. I think it was Game 3 of the World Series. That was such a proud moment, even for people who don't like sports, didn't like the Yankees, you know, whatever. It was such a great moment. Yeah. And that was the kind of gutsy thing that you needed the president to do. I mean, he, he walked out on the field without secret service. Nobody knew if, you know, if someone could have been in the audience of

terrorist, you know, shooting him. He goes out there, throws a strike, and it's just a great way to, as America, you know, with baseball to get back to our culture and our everyday. You know, I was just thinking, you mentioned your siblings, like a whole new generation is coming, everyone who's born, basically everyone who's in high school now and after them will not have remembered 9-11. You know, how do we pass this on to the next generation? You know, we do have monuments now that have been, you know, Trump just was speaking earlier this week at the new monument in Pennsylvania and Shanksville.

But, I mean, how do you think, how do we pass this on, you know, the memory and, yeah. Well, you know, it's simple by never forgetting you bring up the monuments. So I think any time you're on a family trip or can get away to see this stuff, it's so important. I know we took my sisters to the 9-11 museum during one of our New York trips and it was somber and sad. but it was important, very important. And I think through personal stories. So some of these survivors, I mean, they're all heroes, but some of them did exceptional things

that helped America fight back and get us the information that we needed. Do any of those stories stand out to you? Oh, totally. In fact, when I was in college, one of our buildings is named after Todd Beamer who went to Wheaton College. He was a graduate of ours.

And so we were just, you know, it was kind of an honor to name our student building after him. He was like on our basketball team and he was, um, went to a school in the 90s. And, and, and that was kind of sort of stuck in my head. Um, just, you know, knowing the story of his that was in flight 93, you know, the movie, remembering the actions of those people. And, uh, you know, when you look on those actions, it's like, those people were

willing to die to fight back against the terrorists. Um, and you got to ask yourself, you. got to ask yourself, you know, would you be willing to do that kind of thing? And, you know, they saved, who knows what they saved? I mean, they could have saved, you know, the Congress, the Capitol or the White House. But it's really that kind of, you know, self-sacrifice. I think is just important to ask ourselves, like, we're willing to do that for our country. Yeah, we definitely need to keep those memories alive. And in doing that, 9-11, we'll never be forgotten. Well, we will leave it there for today. But thanks so much for listening to the Daily

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