The Dispatch Podcast - Are We Doomed Yet?

Episode Date: September 29, 2023

Making sense of the latest carnival of inanity posing as a presidential debate is a task too great for Steve and Jonah. So they have summoned the fabled (and bingo'd) Yuval Levin, director of social, cultural and constitutional studies at AEI, to help them analyze the GOP primary debate, rank pre-government shutdown asininity, and determine whether we should even be paying attention at all. Show Notes: -Yuval Levin's profile at the American Enterprise Institute -Watch our pre-debate discussion featuring Kevin, Jonah, and Chris (Members only) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I'm Jonah Goldberg. I am guest hosting this week's dispatch podcast, and we're going to do something a little different this week. Last night was the GOP presidential debate. I think it's fair to say to everybody, it lived down to everyone's expectations. in fact, exceeded those low expectations. And we decided in our fits of despair yesterday when we were thinking about the current situation

that we needed to go a little more big picture. And our big picture guy, it's actually his official title at the American Enterprise Institute is Big Picture Guy, is Yuval Levin. So Yuval has joined us along with Steve Hayes. And we're going to talk about, we're going to ease into the, pool of Despond by talking about last night's presidential debate and then brought it out to

everything from the shutdown to a sort of novel version of not worth your time where we ask is American politics not worth your time. So let's dive right in. the debate. Alas. I'm grateful to you for watching it, because when I ask you to come on, you said, I guess this means I got to watch the debate. And last night, while watching it with my wife, I must have said three times, I cannot believe I made you've all watched this. So, big picture, what did you think of last night's GOP debate? Well, I was going to watch anyway. It is kind of my job, I guess, as I have to tell myself regularly when these kind of things happen. But, you know,

I guess I think calling it a presidential debate is being a little too nice to what that was. It didn't have the feel of a debate among people who actually think they're going to be president. But I would say it probably exceeded my very, very low expectations. I think it was better than the first debate. It was more substantive. It was, you know, everybody seemed to learn some lessons from what they did wrong the previous time. And so they all surprised each other by kind of who they were. Everyone was waiting for a repeat, which didn't quite come.

It was a little bit substantive. It wasn't just about Donald Trump, but that's about the sum of the good things that can be said about it. And I don't know how much time he got, but there are a lot of bad things that can be said about it. I mean, I think it was evidence of what's become of the Republican Party. And in that sense, you know, Unserious was the most, was the overall title I'd give it. and I think that's a commentary on where our politics is. Yeah, Steve, when I was trying to score it last night, I kind of felt in many ways that almost everybody had a better night

than they did the first time. But collectively, the experience was worse. You know, DeSantis, I think, did better than he did in the first debate. Tim Scott clearly did. Bergam, I think, kind of shown. Nikki Haley, that's more of a judgment call. I think she did very well. There was a lot of substance in there,

but she also got a little and shrill is kind of the wrong word, but the whole thing was shrill and she kind of joined in on it. But is it folly to be judging this thing as just a political, you know, scorecard kind of thing or is that sort of falling for the hype? No, I think it is folly in many respects. So first of all, the way I consumed the debate was different. I didn't sit down and watch it straight for two hours. I listened to the second half and then I went back and read the transcript of the first half.

So I'm basing my judgments or my analysis on an unconventional way of looking at this. It's very interesting. I mean, not surprisingly, you've all answers the very first question and it sort of changes the frame on the way I'm thinking about the debate. I can see the case for this being a better debate because it was more substantive. I do think it was more substantive. There were sort of spasms of policy discussion, which I would say in most contexts welcome the kind of. thing that we at the dispatch would applaud. And it was interesting to hear you all say that, you know, it wasn't all about Donald Trump. And that, if I'm understanding you correctly,

of all being a good thing. I guess I don't agree with that. I would say in normal circumstances, I might, because that would mean we're not obsessing about something that's, you know, less substantive and less important than the kinds of policy debates that, that the country needs to have. In this case, though, I was struck by the fact that it wasn't about Donald Trump. And the whole thing felt really phony to me because the whole point of the Republican nominating process is to defeat Donald Trump, if you're one of these seven candidates. And the kinds of policy discussions that we saw last night, I feel like in many ways are besides the point, because Donald Trump looms so large in the race, he's polling

above 50%. You know, the next closest candidate is a quarter, pulling it a quarter of what Donald Trump has. And more specifically, he's running a campaign that I think could be fairly characterized as kind of unapologetically authoritarian. And so I was, you know, it was, it was, I guess not surprising but disappointing to me that none of the candidates took the opportunity to point out that Donald Trump is called for suspending the Constitution or, you know, retaliating against NBC because he doesn't like bad coverage by killing their First Amendment rights to operate or, you know, suggesting that the proper punishment for Mark Millie reaching out to the Chinese was his execution. You're going to make a big deal about that?

The thing that they were most upset about was that he was missing. And I guess the fact that he was missing from the stage just pales in comparison to all of that other big stuff. So I guess I'm a little bit porn. On the one hand, I like that they didn't get sucked in. And I love a policy debate as much as the next guy. On the other hand, he's the big question. And the way that he's running is the big issue, I think, in our politics today. Yeah, so you've, I mean, like, how there's a World War I lead up to World War I analogy somewhere in here where all the players in the exercise sort of have narrow imperatives for their own.

self-interest that lead to a collective action problem, right? And it doesn't help in any way, shape, or form that the most memorable attempt to call out Donald Trump to show up was Chris Christie's perplexingly lame Donald Duckline, which just it was one of the nexted Mike Pence bragging that he's been sleeping with a teacher for 38 years. It was one of the most cringe-inducing moments, right? But the, you know, in 2016, we talked about this a million times. The GOP had a Belling the Cat problem.

And it feels like the only thing that's different about this time is they all know they have a Belling the Cat problem. And they're doing what they're doing anyway. And how do you adjudicate that? I mean, obviously you can have sympathy for individual players because they want to be president. and they're trying to game this out how to win. But something important is being lost when all the players are doing that. Yeah, I think that this year in both parties

is just the epitome of collective action problems. I mean, both parties are going to do things that the people with any power in the party don't want to do. And they can both blame other people for it, but essentially they're all operating as observers waiting to see what happens rather than thinking of themselves as, actors with a job to do.

As you say, that's very much what happened in 2016. It's a little different this time because Trump himself is not actually being very active. I mean, he wasn't there. He just literally wasn't there. And they all were treating this thing as in a sense a problem to be avoided rather than a reality to be confronted. And they're all trying to position themselves to be in a place to do well if somehow, for some reason, which none of them can name or conceive of, he doesn't end up being the nominee.

And that's just a very passive way to try to be president of the United States. I think it does lead to some bizarre kinds of deformations of passivity. I mean, that's kind of what happened with Chris Christie there. He was clearly been practicing that line in the mirror all week, and the mirror didn't tell him that it was really, really lame. And, you know, I think it's one of those things where his style really works when the person he's bullying is actually there to be bullied. It doesn't work very well when that person is just a subject. But, you know, the collective action problem is the story here. And, you know, in a way,

they need to think about it in terms of speaking to voters about the choice those voters face. And it's true. If you're going to talk to those voters, you have to talk to them about Donald Trump because that's really the question those voters are asking themselves. Otherwise, it's just a show. It's another Fox show where a bunch of commentators are talking about the moment rather than a debate where people are asking for your vote. I think there's no getting around that here. I mean, we're in such a strange situation where, you know, one party, despite itself, is going to nominate a two old sitting president that everybody recognizes as a liability. The other party, not even despite itself, is going to nominate someone who, you know, the most unpopular president. politician in this moment in American life.

Obviously, you have to step back and say, this is what a collective action problem means, but those candidates don't have the luxury of stepping back. They need to play an active role in the story they're trying to dominate. And I think you'd have to say, looking at that debate, that none of them knows how to do it. None of them is figured out a way to be an actor here rather than an observer. Steve, the moderators, look, we're friends with Dana Perino. I don't really know. through Varney or the other person

personally. And I'm always loved to be too harsh on Dana because I think she's a good and decent person and smart and competent and all that kind of stuff. Which makes that final question that she tried to do all the more inexplicable to make, the vote them off the island thing. And I got to say good for Ron DeSantis

and the rest of them for saying that's beneath the dignity of this thing. I mean, something has to be really undignified I did after two hours of that debate to be beneath the dignity of everybody up there, but such as it is, I think he was right. And you've helped with some debate prep stuff before on the journalistic side.

What do you think the thinking going in there was? I mean, we're told that Fox would very much like Trump to be in the rearview mirror too, but you wouldn't get that sense from Fox. What was their obligation? I mean, they didn't bring up the Millie stuff. They didn't bring up constitution. They basically did not bring up Trump at all.

Was it incumbent upon them to do it? When they brought up Trump, it was in the electoral context. They didn't bring him up in a more substantive way. Well, first, let me endorse everything that you said about Dana Prino. She's a good person, smart, smart journalist and does a good job. In this case, I think, having been in some of those meetings before, there's always this desire to attach what's going on in these political discussions to what's happening in the country more broadly

or bring in pop culture references or things like that. I don't think it's necessary, but it's certainly been a part of most of the discussions that I've contributed to over the years. So I suspect that's what was happening there. How do you sort of break out beyond the political junkie crowd and ask a question in a way that might reach a broader group of voters? It didn't work, obviously.

As you say, and I think we're on to say it's and others were right not to answer the question. It was, I think, vaguely insulting. You remember they did that in the first debate by opening it up with a question about the singer, the song, Richmond, North of Richmond. They like to include these sort of pop culture moments. I think it's unnecessary and not very important. You know, on the Trump question, I thought a lot about that last time and tonight because it really weren't. Last time there was a question about whether the candidates would still support Donald Trump if he were convicted felon. And it produced one of the more memorable moments from that debate when they all

said, with I guess the exception of Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson, that they would. And there was that sort of memorable moment where Ron DeSantis kind of looked around the stage from center stage to see what other candidates were doing and then decided that he too would support Donald Trump if he were a convicted felon. I think that brought more clarity. And again, I'm torn on this. On the one hand, I like the idea of a more policy-focused debate. And I thought some of the policy questions that were asked last night were good policy questions and important questions if we were having a policy-driven primary process. But we're not.

And I do worry that because Donald Trump is at the center of everything that's happening in the Republican Party in our broader political debate, because the things that he's doing are so, in many cases, radical distorting that process. that it really is a failure not to ask about that. I mean, shouldn't they be asking these candidates? What do you make of Donald Trump's suggestion that Mark Millie should be executed? It sucks that we have to ask those questions.

It sucks that that has to be part of a debate, but it does and it is. I think in the longer term, one of the things that concerns me most is this is almost sort of like play acting. On the one hand, you have this group of people and a broader political system, including the media, that covers this as if it's just the same as every debate that we've seen in the past. This is all familiar. I went to the debate in

Milwaukee, and it all felt very familiar. You watch the candidate surrogates scurrying around and the journalist trying to get a quote and people trying to tee up interviews after the debate. And it's all familiar. If you've done it, I've done it for 25 years. You've seen this all before you've been there before. And yet, so little of what they say is, feels like it will matter because Donald Trump has this, this, you know, potentially insurmountable lead. But more to the point, because they're not talking about the malignancy that Trump is in any way. They're just avoiding it, as you've all says. You know, I think there's, there's a real question about what their responsibility here is. In one sense, there was something almost reassuring about this debate,

because it suggests that people other than Donald Trump can't really play in the kind of Trump tone and mode that's required to sustain a Trumpist politics so that post-Trump politics might just look like politics again. I think it's an open question whether that's true or whether voters will really want that and tolerate it, but I hope so. And last night did give some suggestion that most politicians only really know how to be politicians and they don't really know how to be. Donald Trump, even though they would all kind of love to be, unfortunately. On the other hand, though, I agree there was something weird about the nature of the questions. I love Dana Prina, too. She was a colleague of mine at the White House and is really a decent person and a very smart person. I think they must have made a decision not to ask about Donald Trump in this debate.

You can see how such a decision would be made, but I think when you're done watching the debate, there's something profoundly strange about the fact that it didn't come up and that, in a sense, the question that voters have to be asking themselves, too, in this moment, just wasn't really raised. It was a weirdly pre-Trump and post-Trump kind of debate. And I think by choice ended up being separated from reality as a result. Jodda, can I ask you a question about that? Don't we have the answer for why Fox was reluctant to ask hard-hitting questions? about Donald Trump in the text messages and emails we saw come out of the Dominion lawsuit,

they're in the business of audience fan service. They don't want to ask questions that will make the people watching Fox angry. And those, I think the frame of any of those questions, is it appropriate for Donald Trump to suggest that Mark Millie ought to be executed? Donald Trump repeatedly invoking violence. Those are questions that will make Fox viewers. uncomfortable and angry at Fox. Isn't that the simple explanation?

It is inconceivable that it's not part of the explanation, right? That it's at least a partial explanation and maybe a full explanation, right? But at the same time, it seems to me that motivated reasoning and group think can lead you to places where you think sincerely you're doing your due diligence. And so I could entirely entirely imagine them having, meetings where they'll say, well, look, these guys are going to bring up this stuff about Trump. We won't need to. They'll do it for us, right? And that's the excuse they want to have because they don't want to do it because what they don't want is to have

Trump do a post saying, look how biased, how much Fox hates me. That's why you should go to Newsmax, right? And so if there's a soundbite where it's coming out of Stuart Varney or Dana Perino's mouth saying, you know, is it appropriate that the former president of the United States is suggesting that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs South should be executed, then they become part of the right-wing echo sphere conversation about how Fox is establishment, doesn't like Trump and isn't pro-Trump, and since they don't want that, you could see how they could rationalize their way out of avoiding that. It's not to say you're wrong. It just, it's, it's, it's, it's, it may not have been as conscious post-dominion, you know, as it was pre-dominian. And pre-dominian,

they flat out basically said it amongst themselves. Now they, I think, you can talk yourself into something while still thinking that you're doing it the right way. And, you know, maybe that's what happened. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is the consequences of not having life insurance can be serious. That kind of financial strain on top of everything else is why life insurance indeed matters. Ethos is an online platform that makes getting life insurance fast and easy

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Seven Time players Champions out again Fly the seven time world's best leisure airline champions Air Transat You know they did have that third moderator there Ilya Calderon from Univision who seemed to be there to anger Fox viewers and she could have asked about Trump

It would have been perfectly natural along the lines of questions that she had but they must have decided not to do that. There's a lot of criticism of her participation from the, from Trump supporters, from Trump supporters online, from Trump supporters reacting on Twitter. And you saw, I saw a proposal from former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker in the middle of the debate, tweeted out a series of criteria that he thought debate moderators needed to meet in order to be considered for future debates.

And one of them was no debate moderators who, disagree with anything in the Republican platform. So sort of playing the type. So I didn't see that, but that's interesting and I'll take moderator's privilege for two seconds. You know, our colleague from all sorts of angles, Chris Starwalt,

he's been making the case for a while because he used to be one of the guys negotiating with like the League of Women voters or whoever it was to set up these debates. He's been arguing for a long time that Fox blew it or the RNC blew it by

clawing back the debates and not partnering with outside organizations because when you partner with outside organizations, it gives you this space, this maneuvering room to say, hey, it's the League of Women Voters. This is their standard for who qualifies for a debate. When the RNC takes it upon itself

and says, we're going to decide all these things, it gives, there's no bad cop for them, right? And so that was one of the big major headaches they bought for themselves. But also by saying, we're basically only going to do debates with Fox. They don't do Fox a favor because it makes Fox more of an adjunct media operation for the RNC. And it compounds the echo chamber problem that the RNC has, where the only feedback they're getting are from people who already agree with them and then are outraged by pretty trivial level.

of disagreement from the Ilya Cotoronic types. I mean, it's part of this larger story of the centrifugal force of our institutions where you cannot tolerate anyone even slightly outside of your core coalition for fear of it inducing cognitive dissonance. Yeah, I mean, you can see it in what Scott Walker had to say, because you have to say what Republican platform, there isn't even a Republican platform. What it would actually mean now not to disagree is just to go all. along with whatever Donald Trump said that day.

And that's basically where it would leave you if you wanted that kind of relationship with the moderate. So I want to broaden out a little bigger picture on this. That's what we got, Eval here to begin with. Last night, there was at the debate, some attempts at public policy stuff. I mean, Nikki Haley had a litany of public policy things to talk about Ron DeSantis, even Tim Scott,

certainly Doug Bergam. I think, you know, Doug Bergam, He didn't get many shots at bat, but I don't think he hit a false or bad note the entire time any time he spoke. So, like, his batting percentage was really, really great, you know. At the same time, so I was on CNN yesterday, and we were talking about how to appeal to these various voters and Trump is going to speech as a speech in Michigan and, you know, on the issues of unions and workers and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it just feels to me that all of this is kind of a kabuki now and that our politics really doesn't, you know, the three of us, particularly the two of you can talk the glories of policy and issues all day long. But is it actually the case that voters care very much about the issues? I mean, we're seeing Trump test this with the mother of all issues, which is abortion.

haven't, isn't it the case that basically our politics has become tribal about personalities? I hate Joe Biden. I love Donald Trump or vice versa. And, and culture war signifiers that you can shoehorn some issue stuff into, but the issue stuff isn't going to be dispositive about anything because as Donald Trump has proven, you can change your position on issues. And so long as you have this charismatic hold on the voters, that's all that really matters. And so it's a very remnanty kind of question, but does, do issues matter? Are issues worth our time? You know, I think this is, I think there's a chicken and egg question here. It certainly is true that in the Trump era, the issues are just a stand-in for pro-Trump or anti-Trump.

Whether that means that voters aren't interested in what politics can do for them or to them or for the country, I think is actually a somewhat different question. I would say the sense, The feeling I walked away with from last night, but the feeling I walk away with from a lot of what happens in our politics now is that we are at the end of a phase in the American political story, not yet at the beginning of a phase. And that's not always obvious. I mean, it can certainly seem like Trumpism brought in a new style of politics that obviously is alarming and problematic and maybe is our future. I tend to think that not only because it's embodied by two presidential candidates who are about 80 years old, but also because of this sense that everything comes down to just the team you're on without much substance behind it, that we're now living in a moment

that is a kind of pre, that is a prequel to the next phase of the story of the American Party system, and that there really is a kind of realignment that is almost inevitably coming. And that realignment will be built around some set of national challenges, some set of issues, foreign and domestic. And you can begin to see in the ways that some younger politicians, younger than 80 politicians think about and talk to voters, that they're trying to find their way around some new issues, that there is a new way to talk about immigration and migration that they're looking for, that there's some way to talk about technology, that they're looking for, that there's a way to talk about China that they're looking for, which

aren't just the kind of generic party alignments, which team are you on, and that they're working their way towards some way of talking about the future of the country. That's not happening in the present moment. And I don't think this election is going to be that realignment election. I don't think it's going to be a substantive policy-driven election campaign, obviously. But I don't know that that means that voters have lost interest in that or that this is what everybody wants to be doing from now on. I think that we're watching the exhaustion of the politics of the kind of post-Cold War phase of American political life.

And we have not yet seen the emergence or the shape of the next phase, but that like it or not, that's going to be about policy challenges because ultimately politics is about national problems. Stan? Yeah, I guess I want that to be true. And if you say it, you've all, I tend to think it probably is or will be. But you'll forgive me if my views a little more cynical. I think to the extent that we're seeing, you're right that it's a chicken and a question. Are these, is this kind of national rethinking that you describe taking place because you have elected officials taking their job seriously, you know, spending time with constituents, with policy experts, thinking through what the right solution to problems of displacement. I think for some of them, the answer is clearly

yes. I think for most of them, the answer is this is what Donald Trump is doing. So I'm going to do this. And I think we've seen that most especially on Ukraine policy over the past 18 months. You have politicians elected Republicans in particular who struck a certain position or made statements supportive of Ukraine in the immediate aftermath of the Russian invasion, who are now making precisely the opposite arguments. And look, it's not, you can be consistent and say, I support Ukraine, I oppose this Russian invasion, and also say, we shouldn't be sending billions and billions of to Ukraine. There's a consistent position in there. But you've seen this turn, I think, driven largely by Donald Trump's position on Vladimir Putin, his attempts to make Ukraine

sort of pit of corruption that he could use for political purposes. And you're now seeing an increasing number of Republicans just make that argument. It's not terribly sophisticated. It doesn't really demonstrate any deeper understanding of the complexities of the issues at stake. They just know that Trump doesn't like Ukraine and he's not as hostile to Russia as old school neocons, old school Republican party types. So I do, I do think that we're seeing a lot of the debate just driven by the whims of Donald Trump on any given day. And we've seen this in the polling. I mean, you know, you all probably remember with greater specificity than I, but it was this famous polling question about Donald Trump's health care plans. And, you know,

they asked, do you favor this health care plan? And it was a description of what it was and Republicans opposed to two to one. And then they said, Donald Trump believes in this health care plan, do you favor it? And they switched. I mean, it was basically flipped two to one in favor. I think we can point to those kinds of outcomes on a broad number of issues. And it just points to the centrality of Trump in our political debate. Yeah, I don't disagree with that at all, Steve. I think that to the extent that it's a bigger picture question of the future of our politics, the question is which way does that reality cut?

I think there's no doubt that a lot of our politics now is driven by a sense Republican politicians have that Trump has a hold on their voters and they need to be where he is and that has not, they've not let go of that. And there's truth to it. They're not wrong. The question is, is this what our politics is from now on? And I think the answer that is not as obvious. I don't want to, I'm not an optimist. I don't want to suggest to you that I think everything's just going to be fine. That is not the impression I get from contemporary America by any means. But I think the question is, are we stuck in a phase like this from now on? Or is there, a function of Donald Trump's persistence at the top of Republican politics, I don't think it's

likely that the 2024 election is going to be redeemed. I think it's just going to be a train wreck. But 2024 is not the end of the American story, we can hope. And the question of what the next chapter looks like seems to me to be a more open question than the morosity that is perfectly justified by this year might suggest because that next chapter is one way or another, a post-Trump chapter. And I think the question of whether that means that our politics can focus on the country again or not is a real question, is an open question. And at this point, given the few years we've just lived through, an open question is good news, because the reality we're in is not a place we want to stay. Yeah, no, I agree with you. It's an open question, and there's a certain amount

of Stein's law going on here, you know, that cannot go on forever, must eventually stop. That said, I guess I'll get a little more meta on this question because I just talked a little bit with Brink Lindsay about this on the Remnant. And you've all, you've heard my spiel about how culture wars are becoming a positional good and that people are fighting more and more about signifiers of status for their tribe than they are about material things, right? It used to be, with some exceptions, because cultural world, cultural stuff was always around. You know, my old boss at A.I, Ben Wattenberg was the actually the guy with Bill Scammon

who coined the term social issue. And, you know, even Ben would concede that we may not have had the word for social issues, but social issues go back to the founding of republic because that's what politics is sometimes about. That said, if you, so you look at Trump trying to win over the union vote, would not shock me at all if Trump did well among auto workers. The paradigm that the left operates under or the progressives under operate under, or that a lot of normals prior to this moment operate under is that you appeal to voters

based upon their essentially economic interests and they vote for you. And you start to look around. the crime is a real issue but I I would suggest that the bulk of say Fox viewers who are obsessed about crime and Fox hosts who are obsessed around crime crime doesn't actually touch their lives very much save for the inconvenience of having to get someone at the Walgreens to come unlock deodorant in Midtown Manhattan. The immigration issue is overwhelmingly a real issue for sure. The voters who are most furious about it, most engaged on it, most likely to vote for it, at least outside of a couple border states, it probably doesn't touch their lives very much

directly either, right? I mean, they're not losing their community rec center to house refugees in Long Island City, the people that were sort of were the animating spirits of all of this. And you start going down the issue. Ukraine itself does not affect very many people on either side of the argument directly in the United States of America. All of these issues, which are the animating spirit of so much that we're talking about, even abortion, which, again, obviously a real issue. In the Republican coalition, it is about loftier, more visceral, more passionate, symbolic things in some ways than it is about their tangible lives. And that seems to me to be the kind of politics, the kind of issues that are driving

our politics now. And I agree with you, eventually it has to stop because, like, eventually actual issues that affect people will impinge upon them to such a degree that they say, hey, how come we're not doing something about this? But in a society to sort of draw on some of your work where people are withdrawing from communal institutions and they're getting their politics basically from screens, handheld screens or screens across their living room, that changes the notion, that changes the salience of what issues that people think that affect them. Because if you're not actually going outside and interacting with anybody and with real life, you think politics is this performative thing, it's this choose your own adventure thing about how

you want the images on your screen to go. And that could have a long half life in our politics. You know, I guess I think I'm just less of materialist than that to begin with. I think our politics is, in some sense, always about which team you want to understand yourself to be a part of. Who's the we? And the thing that can't go on is that both parties are answering that question in a way that leaves them as minorities. The striking thing about this moment in American politics, and I mean the past generations, the past 30 years, is that both of our parties are minority parties at the same. time. That's very unusual in American politics. Almost any moment you look in in our politics, you'd find a majority party struggling to keep together a really complicated coalition and a minority

party that defines itself against the majority. The sun and moon theory of parties. Right. Yeah, the sun and moon theory. I think it's basically right. There was one period at the end of the 19th century that didn't look like that. And now we're living in another period that doesn't look like that. And that for 30 years has not looked like that. Both parties have been losing every election for the last 30 years. Maybe 2008 was the one exception or there was a kind of persuasive victory for the Democrats. But basically, it's been 50-50 for a very long time. And that changes when someone with real political talent helps to frame people's sense of the moment in a way that persuades something more like 60% than 50% of the electorate to

say, the we that that guy's talking about includes me. And I think, that is very often a social issues kind of thing. It's very often, how do you understand your aspirations? How do you understand the country? How do you understand the problems we have? How do you understand what you don't like and what you're against? Both parties have been failing to do that in an effective way for a very long time. But because the elections are so close, neither one of them recognizes that it has been failing for 30 years, because you only really learn that when you lose really badly. And a 50-50 election doesn't feel like losing really badly. You think I could just do the same thing next time and it'll work. And it's true, it really could work. So when I say,

I think we're at the end of a phase and we're sort of looking for what the next phase is going to look like, I think what we're looking for is what the next majority party coalition is organized around. And that could come for either party. There's an imaginable way that the Democrats become that party. I think there's a much more imaginable way that Republicans become that party. But what it would take is a leader or a set of leaders with a kind of vision of what people are really looking for. I think that mostly would be about symbolic and social issues. I actually think it usually is. But we haven't found anyone with the capacity to do that just yet. There's an incredible hunger in American society now that is not being met. There's a market demand that no one is meeting.

That's true in the culture. It's true in our politics. There's a kind of sense that people want something. And instead, what they're being offered is the same thing they've been offered for a long time. In some ways, Trump was very different and did something dramatically new in our politics. But I think it was an exaggerated version of where Republicans had been going for a long time. The Democrats also are kind of living out an exaggerated version of the role they've had in this phase of our politics since about the 1990s. And so this feels to me like a moment that we're going to break out of by virtue of a talented politician finding a way to speak to more than 50% plus one of the country.

I don't think that that necessarily is going to be a hugely substantive policy-wankish kind of politician. It's actually not likely. But I do think it's going to be someone who can understand the public's aspirations and worries in this moment. in a way that we're not seeing yet in either part. Steve, you can respond to that, but try to do it as I try to move us on. We gently but firmly criticized Fox for not asking certain questions, not addressing certain issues. It would be remiss and hypocritical of me not to point out that by the time this

airs, the government may well be shut down. And certainly by the time many listeners listen to it, the government will be shut down and or likely shut down. And it seems to me keying off of Yuval's point about we have two minority parties, you know, or my go-to heuristic to the last few years about when in doubt, trying to understand why a party is doing something that it's doing, ask yourself, does it want to be a minority party? and it kind of answers the question, right? And so the government shut down. I don't know any remotely literate political observer who thinks it's a great idea for the Republicans. It doesn't mean that there aren't people who think

it might, in some weird circumstance, chain of events, work out for them better than expected or something. But I don't think anybody thinks, oh, yeah, this is obviously the right play. so Steve like this could also be a not worth your time thing because it's so deja vuy it's so predictable how this is going to play out

at the same time we are in a business where you have to talk about the fact that the government is about to shut down what do you think about it how do you think it's going to play out is there any silver lining or or

or non-eye-rolling aspect to it that you think is worth pointing out to people? Well, I mean, you know, this does fit, I think, nicely with Yuval's earlier point. It feels to me, and I don't think this is irretrievably so, but we're certainly living in a moment, it seems to me, where our politics are not about persuasion. People aren't primarily interested in persuading. They're interested in affirming, and they're interested in the raw exercise of power, I'm probably just not creative or thoughtful or smart enough

to come up with what might be a precipitating event to get us back to a politics where persuasion matters more than it does today, absent some major crisis. I mean, you can imagine if we finally have the debt crisis that we've been talking about for years and years, you know, people might be open to a persuasion. is a political figure who can help us understand how to get through it. But I think what we're talking about with respect to the Republican primary and what we're witnessing on Capitol Hill with respect to House Republican behavior on the shutdown, it's sort of all of a piece. It's performative. And we've talked about this on this podcast a million times. I've listened

to you all talk about it on the remnant. And, you know, Joni, one of your favorite phrases is incentive structures. The incentive structures today perpetuate this kind of. of political behavior. And I guess my concern, not to go even deeper and darker, is that while I hold out hope that we can get to, you know, either a political figure who can help us get beyond this moment or a series of political decisions that can help us get beyond this moment. My concern is, given the democratization of information, given the eagerness of many voters to go seek to seek the information that affirms what they

already believe we're not having those kinds of cross-partisan or cross-ideological discussions where persuasion is even possible. And what worries me is I think about the shutdown is its own problem and I think the result of these broader political forces but also just a fair amount of standard idiocy from a handful of Republicans. What worries me is in the current political context is, are we at a point where our realities are so, so totally different? The people who are part of Donald Trump's MAGA base and the Republican Party understand the world in such a fundamentally different way than the people who are from the core

of the Democratic Party that feeding on itself this, this, this, creates unresolvable problems. But what if it leads to violence? You know, I worry a lot about this election cycle. You listen to the rhetoric from Donald Trump on the stump, arguing that everything that he's facing with respect to the prosecutions is a result of a corrupt justice department wanting to interfere with the election, wanting to keep Joe Biden's strongest potential political opponent

from being strong and winning. And you look at what happened at the end of the 2020 election cycle when Donald Trump sort of hinted that he might not accept the results, set the stage for arguing that the election was stolen and then asked, I think,

ask people to act on those beliefs based on a rather thin case. I mean, he demonstrably lost the election. And yet we still saw on January 6th. Now, I think you look at what he's setting up with the arguments he's making now, listen to any of his speeches at his rallies. And he's saying, in effect, they're stealing the election now.

This is happening in real time. And we won't stand for it. I will be your retribution. Do we end up at a place that's even darker in the next 13 months that prevents us from ever getting to the point where persuasion matters again? And I'm sorry to be so dark, but I worry about it. I mean, it literally keeps me up at night. Yvall?

You want to lift Steve spirits? From that depth, it might even be possible to lift them a little bit. Thank you. I appreciate any attempt. Get them from the sub-basement to the lobby. Well, look. I think, first of all, that this concern, which I share and which I think is very real, is connected to the point I made before,

which is that we are living in a 50-50 moment. Both the fact that our politics is driven by people who live in two different realities and the fact that it's not substantive. Generally speaking, the beauty of our system is that by compelling people to be part of broad coalitions, it forces them to be realistic about the world. And when coalitions are not broad, they're not compelled in that way. So the fact that we have 50-50 elections, that majorities are so narrow means that the marginal people in each coalition have enormous power. And those two groups that live in different worlds are marginal on the left and the right, but they're very, very important.

You know, the average House majority in the 20th century was 82 seats. The majority that the average, the majority that Republicans now have, and by the way that the Democrats had last time, is four seats. That means that the margins of those parties, which do consist and often consist of people who don't live in the real world, are tremendously important in a way that they normally wouldn't be, and that they wouldn't be in a healthier politics where coalitions are a little broader than what we've seen. So I think these things are related to one another, and that getting out of a place where these margins are so important is the same challenge as getting out of a place. where our politics is tied and incapable of doing anything. And I do think that that requires an argument that is native to the 21st century about problems that people recognize in ways that are appealing, that speak to them. I don't think it's quite right that we're in a place where persuasion doesn't matter.

I think we're in a place where persuasion is not being attempted. There are people who are persuadable. I think the parties are actually just wrong about whether it's possible to win bigger majorities than they're winning. And they're stuck in a place where, because things are so close, they're very defensive, very protective of what they have, and they don't want to lose the extremely narrow majority that gives them a chance of barely winning elections now. And so they don't seek out ways to broaden it. Because when you broaden your majority, you do run the risk of upsetting the people who are most devoted in your party. And maybe they don't turn out and maybe they're angry with you.

So I think these things are connected. Now, that doesn't mean that it's easy to solve them. I think it means it's harder to solve them. And I do think it means that we run a very real risk of those margins driving our politics into a very dark place. It doesn't take much for political violence to get going in a society as big as ours. You know, what we saw on January 6th of 2021 was a couple hundred people. So, you know, a millionth of our society. It can take even less than that for some kind of. crazy person to do a crazy thing that really puts us in a new place that's much darker and more dangerous than what we've seen. That is definitely a possibility. And as you say, there are

enough people who live in these different worlds, separate worlds from one another that it absolutely could happen. But I think the question is whether that danger is fundamental and central to the character of this moment or whether it is marginal in a moment when the margins are unfortunately more important than they ought to be. And I do think it is the latter. But that what it would take is to see that it's possible to really win broader majorities in American politics and drive our politics in a particular direction that allows us, again, to have a substantive debate about the future of the country. Whatever our politics is about right now, it's not about the future of the country. There are very few people talking about the future as if it's actually going to happen, as if we're actually going to live there. We talk about the future as if it's separated from us in the present by some cataclysmic event.

And the question is, is that party responsible for the fact that we're all about to die or is this one? And the fact is, life is harder than that. We're not all about to die. We actually have to live in 2050, and we have to do what it's going to take for us to be strong and prosperous and free in that time. And our politics is avoiding that question right now by terrifying itself about the next five minutes. I think that won't continue because it's not sustainable, but that's not exactly a way of being hopeful. Maybe it's a little less morose than where I found you, Steve.

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a bunch of different tools. All seamlessly integrated. Go to Squarespace.com slash dispatch for a free trial and when you're ready to launch, use offer code dispatch to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. So I'm going to, we're going to spin-off episode of The Remnant where I will fully confront your walls charge

of my materialism. But, which I don't think is entirely unfair these days. I've changed my views on some of this stuff. But getting back to the government shutdown for a second. And your point, which obviously I agree with, written a lot about this, about the power of factions closer to the center

that is not being utilized, right? I mean, the old, I've used my favorite phrase, incentive structure, was that, politicians ran to their base, Democrats to the left, Republicans to the right, in primaries, enough to get enough of the base support to secure a nomination,

and then race to the center to get that majority maker, marginal voter, right? And because of incumbency and the big sort, and the fact that now the vulnerability point, like Steve and I spent a lot of time when we were launching the dispatch

trying to figure out why these politicians we've known for so long have changed. And it's that the desire for re-election is not changed. The desire for incumbency is not changed. What has changed is that the threat to incumbency happens earlier in the pipeline with the primaries. And so that changes your incentive structure about how you behave, right? And so you're looking to secure the base more than you care about the marginal voter

because you know the general design of the electorate will carry the general election for you. at the same time why haven't these factions in the center emerged? Because if they do have this obvious, if you just look on paper, they have this obvious power. Moreover, like, just, and this is what I want to get back to the shutdown thing about. So Kevin McCarthy doesn't want to shut down. He wants a continuing resolution.

There are a bunch of Republican holdouts who say, absolutely not. And they also say, if you use Democratic votes to pass a continuing resolution, we'll fire you. Now, what is infuriating to me about that is that, first of all, it will probably work. But second of all, that the people making those threats are explicitly using Democratic votes to make the threat. right? I mean, like, Matt Gates is relying on the fact that he is with 200 whatever Democrats in these votes to be able to say, don't you dare use Democrats to defeat me. And it's probably asking too much of Kevin McCarthy, but wouldn't it be a very useful thing for our politics for Kevin McCarthy to say, hey, look, we can still have the Hastert rule where like a majority of Republicans have to agree on Republican legislation? I'm not sure I agree with the Hastert rule,

but it's a perfectly fine thing for him to say for political purposes. But we're not going to be held hostage by some guy running for governor and for Fox News host who's using Democratic votes to shut down the government and hurt the Republican Party.

Isn't that sort of an obvious play? And why does it feel incredibly naive for me to even suggest such a thing? Yeah, I mean, look, I think that there's at the heart of the shutdown fight, now, there's a disagreement about what Congress is for and what leverage in Congress means. I think that you do have, you have two sides here who both think they're using the leverage they have as members of Congress, but the sense that the relatively small group of freedom

caucus Republicans have of what they're there to do is in a sense that they're there to channel the frustrations of their voters and to play out the kind of narrative of elite versus populist politics that their voters are energized by and elected them because of. And playing that out doesn't really involve ending up with a legislative outcome. They're playing out that narrative now in a way that can't really lead anywhere as a matter of legislation. And you see a lot of Republicans just kind of scratching their heads and thinking, what is the strategy? But the strategy doesn't really have the same kind of outcome in mind that most members of

Congress would when they think about what they're doing and what their job is. And it's related to what we talked about before. I think what's changed in terms of the incentives is a sense of what we're trying to achieve in politics, right? Primaries are not new. Primaries are how members of Congress, candidates for Congress have been chosen for 100 years in most of the country. What's new is the sense that the purpose of the primary is not to win the general election, but to affirm that story that matters so much to the party's core voters. And I think you see the same thing in Congress. What's changed is that some members now have a sense that their purpose is to affirm

that story and affirming that story doesn't even mean winning this standoff. It actually means first being strong and then being weak because that is the story. The story is getting run over by Kevin McCarthy. And that's actually what they want. And at some level, McCarthy's got to be willing to say, okay, well, if that's what you want, then I'm going to run you over. And the trouble is he's not sure where he wants to be in that story. And that's been a problem for Republican leaders for a very long time since the beginning of this century. It's not clear if they're supposed to be playing the role of the establishment that runs over the Freedom Caucus members or if they want to be part of the Freedom Caucus's story. I think they've got to decide that.

And again, if they had a broader majority, they'd be in a position to see more clearly where their incentives are to appoint them. But I think that's a juncture about what are we trying to do in politics? What actually is the purpose here is the most peculiar, the most interesting, the most problematic thing about our 21st century politics is that there are a lot of people in the system now whose sense of what they're trying to achieve is not well connected to the purpose of the constitutional system. The jobs they have and their sense of what those jobs are are very, very different now. And that does have to do with the primary system, but I think it has to do with a change in our political culture more generally. And so they've lost sight of what they're trying to achieve. And the parties and a lot of members of Congress now no longer really have the sense that the goal ultimately is to win elections and advance the interests, the priorities of their voters.

And if that's not what you see politics as being, then you're just going to have a lot of trouble making sense of our politics and making sense in our politics. Yeah, Steve, I'll let you go in a second. But I agree with all of that. The only thing I would push back on the point about how we've selected Congress, with primaries for 100 years, the difference there is that base voters knew that you still needed to nominate somebody who was electable 100 years ago. That's what I mean.

I mean, the purpose of the party process was to win the general election. And for a lot of people, that's no longer really how they understand the purpose of participating in a party. But now that you know that the person who gets the R after their name after the primary will most likely win because of the sorting of the district. itself, you get to elevate the importance of story over the importance of the election, right? And so that's where I agree with you. But it's like, things have happened to the technology of primaries that make primaries worse now than they were 100 years ago because of

changes in demographics and sorting and all of that kind of stuff. Absolutely. I would say the prescription in politics is not diagnosis in reverse. Seeing why something has happened doesn't actually tell you all that much about how to fix it. And so I think that the fact that we've had primaries for a long time doesn't mean primaries are not now the problem. I think they are. And the way forward requires rethinking the way our primaries operate, even if the way they operate isn't exactly what brought us to this point. Steve, thoughts, concern? Yeah, I mean, I agree. I think there's a means-ends question that's sort of a part of all this. But I also think, I mean, to go back to the earlier discussion about the centrality of policy, there is this disconnect.

And you look at what the Freedom Caucus members are doing. And, you know, there is this some urgency around government spending. And, you know, I think you can make a couple arguments. One, the urgency around government spending or the solutions they're proposing around the problem of government spending don't actually address the real problems of government spending in this particular fight. number one and number two, many of the people who are now saying we have to shut down the government, we've got to stop this orgy of spending in Washington, cheered along that very same orgy of spending in Washington under the Trump administration. I mean, I remember having a fight with Mark Meadows, who was then the head of the House Freedom Caucus after Donald Trump's, it wasn't

the state of the union, but it was his first joint address to the Congress in which he didn't mentioned the debt in a 90-minute speech and proposed all manner of new funding. And Mark Meadows, when I talked to him afterwards, gave him an A-plus. And I said, well, don't you can't, how Freedom Caucus if it stood for anything was limiting the size and scope of government? I mean, you were fairly narrowly focused on debt and deficit issues. He didn't talk about reforming Medicare. He didn't talk about entitlements. He didn't mention the debt. Doesn't that bother you? And he said, we've got to sort of, you know, bite our time. to have bigger fights.

But that's not what it was about. It was about fealty to one man. I do worry that, you know, when we talk about what is politics for, it just feels less to me like it's about policy, in particular policy ends. For many members of Congress,

I mean, it's not fair to paint with too broad a brush here than it used to, to be that may be my sort of narrow understanding or failure to appreciate um you know historical trends going back decades or centuries but it certainly feels to me that we're in this moment where policy just matters a lot less to people and really the the the goal of politics is to get famous to get on a fox show or to be a a pundit to have a podcast like ted cruise where he can go and you know pick culture war fights with people on the left rather than spend real-time legislating.

Okay, so we're running out of time here, and Yuval has to rule with an Iron Fist at the American Enterprise Institute. Normally we do a light item here where we say, you know, is something, some weird controversy in the news really worth our time, something on Twitter or whatever.

We're going to skip that. Instead, I'm just going to ask for either of your cases about whether or not if you are actually really concerned about issues and not story promotion or narrative maintenance or cults of personality, is politics really worth our time right? Steve, you can go first,

but we'll let you all mic drop us. I'll let him think about it. And I trust that he will come up with a much better and more optimistic answer than I am. I would say yes, but because it has to be. it really isn't an option for people to opt out. And I understand, I mean, I talk to these people all the time who say I've just had it.

I'm so tired of what the Republicans have become. I used to consider myself a Republican. I can't even listen to these people anymore. I don't understand why they're following Donald Trump the way that they are. And the Democrats with their insane wokeness are, you know, in many respects just as bad. I'm out. I can understand the appeal of that, and I will even cop to having days where I do that. You know, there are days when I can focus much more on the business side of the dispatch than

the editorial side and wrestling with these issues. And some days I just wake up and say, this feels like a good day to focus on new revenue or increasing our members. But we don't have that luxury. I mean, it matters too much. And the, you know, David French, you used to write about. the exhausted majority all the time. We talk about it here.

You've all has certainly written, talked about it. That's sort of the key to getting back to this place that we make these collective citizens, where persuasion is possible, where we can improve the lives of our fellow citizens through policy. And I realize that sounds sort of naive and hopeful and maybe Pollyannish, but it's true. Yeah, bless your heart. I agree. I think also that you actually want to be a little naive about the things that you really love in life. You're not a cold-eyed realist about your wife and you shouldn't be about your country either. And so I do think that it makes sense even in moments that make it awfully hard to be engaged, that ultimately we have to and we owe it to the country, we owe it to our future. This is a moment that makes it awfully hard. I mean, I often think about a, after one of the debates in

2016, my brother-in-law sent me a text that said, it's never too late to become a dentist. Basically saying, boy, am I glad I don't have to think about all this for a living. And at some level, that can be appealing sometimes, not becoming a dentist, but doing something else. But first of all, I don't think we should overestimate how much fun this kind of work used to be. It's always a tough moment. There are always reasons to be depressed and worried and anxious about the future of the country. And, you know, I think there are a lot of prior generations in America who had a much better excuse than we do for giving up on the country. I often say this to younger conservatives now, who are really inclined to despair and to kind of wallow in despair.

And if you think about the kinds of circumstances that a lot of prior generations of Americans faced, they had a much better reason to give up on the Constitution than we have. And we should be very glad they didn't do that. And we owe it to the future not to do that now. We just have an obligation. But more than that, I also think we do have some opportunities. This kind of work really can matter and being engaged is worth your time. This is a country that allows the sort of work we're doing to matter, that allows persuasion to matter. It's not a moment that seems to relish that, but it's incumbent on us to change that in some way. And I don't think we have the option of giving up. And I also don't think that we should be drawn to the prospect of giving up.

So don't give up. This is the greatest country in the world. It's a great time to be alive. And we can make it even better. So we have to try. I'll just say, I agree. I endorse all of that for anyone who's even remotely in our lines of work, journalism, politics, public policy, research and all that kind of stuff, for the Legion of Normals, who are also listening to this podcast. you should, I think people should agree with youvall about not giving up where it's relevant to their lives. But at the same time, the most important things in your lives are in your backyard and are in your family and in the realm of, in the microcosm where you actually know people by name. And if you get the stuff in those parts of your life right, then you'll want the right kind of politics.

and, you know, a, a country that didn't have some deep cultural problems, deep societal problems, would have rejected Donald Trump in 2016, would have rejected a lot of these politics. And, you know, we just saw a poll came out yesterday. Among Republicans, 53% say Donald Trump is a man of faith and that Mitt Romney, and only 35% say Mitt Romney is, and 52% say Mike Pence's. that is a symptom of something that is not going to be fixed by Washington to begin with. If you fix the stuff in your own life, closer home, your own communities, better politics will follow. And I think that that's something that

is lost on a lot of people who think that the answers are going to come from Washington when most of the important answers in life don't come from there. That's anyway, my pious folding. Amen. You all of them, thank you so much for doing this. Maybe we'll make this like an annual tradition when Steve starts, you know,

polishing his pearl-handled revolver and thinking, I'm done. We'll say, no, no, we'll get you all on and he'll talk you out of the sub-basement. Thank you very much. And Steve, whatever. And so for the Dispatch Politics, and to all of you,

thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next time. Thank you.