The Dispatch Podcast - Russia, Iran, and the American Response

Episode Date: March 18, 2022

As we pass the third week of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, our hosts are here to discuss the latest: The Biden administration looks to make a deal on Iran’s nuclear program. What are we to make of the president’s foregin policy? Plus, Sarah and the guys talk about inflation and the Federal Reserve’s decision on interest rates.   Show Notes: -The Dispatch: “Concessions to Iran, Russia Pile Up in Nuclear Talks” -Uphill: “The House Hits Russia on Trade” -TMD: “An Interest Rate Increase” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isgir, joined by David French, Jonah Goldberg, and Steve Hayes. Plenty to talk about today, the latest in Ukraine. What's going on with the Iran deal now and the Biden administration's foreign policy takes shape? And lastly, of course, we will talk about inflation, the Federal Reserve's decision on interest rates, and the failure of another Biden nominee, thanks to Joe Manchin. Let's dive right in. Where are things in Ukraine? Stuck.

I think things are stuck. Lots of reporting over the past 48 hours about the inability of Russia to move forward toward Kiev. of more details about the difficulty the Russian military is having both taking and keeping cities, towns that it's targeting, and also keeping morale high, increasing number of stories over the last couple of days about potential morale problems associated with how Russia went into the war and how many Russians have been killed in the war. And I think, you know, there's been heard more optimism in the past couple days about the possibility that Ukraine could quote unquote win the war militarily. That feels a bit premature to me, given what we know

Vladimir Putin can do and I think what we believe he's willing to do. But certainly this has been another bad week for Russia. international court found Vladimir Putin guilty, at least preliminarily, of war crimes related to targeting civilians in Ukraine. I'm curious if you can put this in some context. You know, there's been a simmering debate over international law for the last 20, well, maybe 50 years in terms of what it is, is it real, is it effective? And on the one hand, you know, Joe Biden has now called Vladimir Putin a war criminal and he has some of the receipts to back that up. On the other hand, the court held that Vladimir Putin was to stop his invasion of Ukraine immediately, which obviously will have no effect.

So what are we supposed to think about international law at this point? Yeah, international law is relevant only to the extent that is enforceable. And it's enforceable only to the extent that somebody has the will to enforce it. So the United States self-polices to a large degree on its adherence to international law. So if you're talking about rules of engagement that American forces comply with in our own conflicts, those rules of engagement are influenced by international law. They actually go beyond international law of armed conflict and the restrictions they place on our forces. But how is that policed?

Why is that police? It's because we self-police. Now, it does not mean that in the current world that international law is completely irrelevant unless a nation self-polices. In fact, I've worked in the past on issues involving Israel, where allegations of war crimes against Israeli officers and Israeli military are directly relevant to these members of the Israeli military because if they travel outside of Israel's officers, and Israeli military, are directly relevant to these members of the Israeli military because if they travel outside of Israel into a country that would enforce some of these international, say that the edicts of the international criminal court, they could be in real jeopardy. So there is a way in which international law has relevance, but it has to be enforced, and it's just not enforced at scale in a way that is relevant to Russia's military operation.

it does, however, matter to the extent that Western powers use it as a norm that regulates the way they interact with Russia, for example, a sanctions regime, or for example, would they in the future if they had the ability arrest Vladimir Putin? Maybe, possibly. So the way I would put it is it is far, far less relevant than the battlefield outcome. But it does, it does. does matter to the extent that Western nations use the norms of international law to govern their actual policy. So it's it's somewhere in this gray area between, oh, please, symbolic nothing. It's sort of the, it's sort of the legal aversion of putting a Ukraine flag in your Twitter

bio and real teeth. It's there is, it's in between there because to very powerful countries, these international norms matter and dictate policy to some degree, if that answers your question. Jonah, the Kremlin put out a statement. We hear and see statements that are actually personal insults to President Putin, given such irritability from Mr. Biden, his fatigue and sometimes forgetfulness, fatigue that leads to aggressive statements, we will not make harsh statements so as not to cause more aggression. I read that and I see the little digs they're trying to mate, right,

on the pressure points of American domestic politics and our fissures. And it reminds me so much of, you know, how much around Trayvon Martin or Black Lives Matter was actually paid for and pushed by Russian GRU officers. It is not, by the way, to minimize any of the people who sincerely were protesting about that. But the Russians were certainly trying to add fuel to that fire. And here we have them, I mean, not subtly, right? Suggesting adding fuel to the fire of Biden's competence, because Biden called him a war criminal. Of all the things to criticize Biden for, calling him a war

criminal, I would think you are fine with. Yeah. So I'm, um, um, it's worth pointing out that Putin's a former KGB guy, and it used to be verboten to point this out, but now it has gotten this new lease on life, in part because of all the Russia collusion chatter in 2016. The KGB, the Russians, spent an enormous amount of money fomenting racial discord in the United States in the 1960s. They wanted various black power outfits to supplant Martin Luther King. they um you know and it was funny it was like used to never be able to say that there was any relationship between sort of the hardcore black left and the kGB and now there are all these

liberal websites in the last five years who have written about it it was a subplot of the first season of the americans it's i think it's just sort of fascinating culturally how people are okay to say it now that's it beyond that though look i mean i think it was i mean i i I agree with David's take on the legalities of it. As a matter of foreign policy, I'm not sure it was good for Biden to say this. It is objectively true that Vladimir Putin is a war criminal. But if the concern is that he weakened, cornered, no exit, Vladimir Putin is more dangerous for Ukraine and for the world, announcing that he's a war criminal, sends a signal like

his only exit is going to be in the dock at the Hague, which is not where Putin's going to voluntarily go. And it creates a whole cascade of policies, both diplomatic and legal, when the president of United States and then his subaltern say that the president of Russia is a war criminal. And I would be okay with it if this was the product of a strategy. But Biden clearly was just responding off the cuff to somebody shouting a question at him. And then all of a sudden, the administration has to run in with the brooms behind the elephant and change their policy, at least their rhetorical policy, to sort of make it policy. And that's not a way to handle something like this.

I do think that the Russians are clearly, you know, I mean, it's no, as Russians used to say in good Marxist fashion, it is no coincidence. that Tucker Carlson and Madison Cothorn are on Russian TV. And it is no coincidence that Vladimir Putin is echoing a lot of the sort of talking points of the disgruntled, if not necessarily pro-Putin, then certainly anti-Putin right these days because he wants to create discord here. I just think the Russians have so misread where the West is on all of this stuff, almost as badly as they misread the military realities that it's just noise right now

and really will have no major effect except maybe to change Tucker's opening monologue. I think I would agree with you if I thought the United States could play a different role in this conflict similar to what the Israelis are playing trying to pressure each side towards ceasefire to protect lives

but America we're in too deep with the Russians in terms of our relationship there's too much history, so we can't play that role that the Israelis are playing. So in that sense, you know, I think Biden can kind of say whatever he wants with little effect on how this is going to shake out because the Russians aren't confused that we're neutral, that we are, you know, I don't, for lack of a better word, like acting in good faith toward them when it comes to what we think they should do vis-a-vis Ukraine. Steve, I've had a question I've wanted to ask you for a while now.

Looking back, I know that you don't like the way we got out. out of Afghanistan. Nobody likes the way we got out of Afghanistan. However, by getting out of Afghanistan when we did, two things. One, it prevented Russia from retaliating against the United States on different, you know, turf against our military assets who would have been there. Two, it's freed up resources, special forces, resources, et cetera, that are most likely in Ukraine at this point, I'm curious what you think of that argument that we're now hearing from people who are now trying to defend Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan, despite, you know, the American people wanted to get out of Afghanistan, Trump wanted to get out of

Afghanistan, Biden wanted to get out of Afghanistan. They didn't want, again, not the how, not how he did it. But the only people who didn't were the military. I'm curious how you would weigh all of that in hindsight with the benefit of hindsight at this point. Yeah, well, I don't, I don't by that we've reduced our targets necessarily because we have forces elsewhere in Europe, we have forces pretty close to Ukraine. So if Vladimir Putin wanted to mess with us in that way, which would certainly be escalating what he's doing, he's in a position to do it. And while we have, I think, you know, we have, let's say, an active CIA presence on the ground in Ukraine, certainly ground branch and others, you know, there's no indication that we have active U.S.

troops fighting in Ukraine at this point. So I don't, I guess I don't buy the argument from Biden defenders that Afghanistan may have ultimately been a net plus. And I think the, the better case is that doing what we did in Afghanistan signaled Joe Biden's unwillingness to stick out tough situations. And, you know, if you, if you think about what that signaled to Vladimir Putin, Biden made very clear, I don't want to fight a war. I'm done fighting wars. I'm not doing this. And you have to look at it, I think, in the context of the other decisions that Biden had made with respect to Russia, early decision on start extension, decision on Nord Stream 2 to open up that pipeline.

These are things that I think Vladimir Putin had to be seeing in the context of sort of a long recent U.S. history of not following through on threats, on looking for additional opportunities to reset with Russia, whether we're talking about George W. Bush and the seeing in Putin's soul or the actual Russian reset with Hillary Clinton or our failure to really punish Russia after 2008 in Georgia. 2014 in Ukraine. Then you have the Biden administration come in and make a series of friendly moves or moves that I think Vladimir Putin could be perceived as friendly, even if, you know, they were undertaken for different reasons. And then on top of all of that, you see the U.S. withdraw from Afghanistan. You see its disastrous consequences. And I think Putin had to say sort of now's the time. And he did. And that's what he did. Just one quick point on what you said, what you and Jonah were saying. I mean, I take Jonah's point on the war criminal rhetoric, but my main critique of the Biden

administration in this moment is that we have too little of that kind of clarity. I mean, of course, Vladimir Putin is a war criminal. His troops are killing people indiscriminately on the ground. They're bombing buildings marked with children on the top. top of them. There's an increasingly persuasive case, I think, to be made that they're actually targeting civilians, that it's not actually indiscriminate, that in fact, this is part of the strategy. Absolutely, Vladimir Putin is a war criminal. And I would hate to think that Joe Biden would dance around that fact. I mean, it's clear that Putin is a war criminal. I understand the

implications of Biden articulating that fact, but I think it would have looked even dumber if he didn't say it. The complicating factor to me is you look at what Biden is doing with Russia across the table on the Iran deal. And you say, well, okay, are we negotiating with a war criminal? Are we providing outsourcing our Iran negotiations to a war criminal or the willingness of the State Department is to talk to Russia about climate in a diplomatic way? As we've said before, they're not treating Russia like a pariah state. They're not treating Russia like a state that's being led by. a war criminal. Yeah, Steve, I don't disagree with anything.

My only point is that if you have a diplomatic, strategic legal plan to treat Vladimir Putin as a war criminal, then do that. But if you have a plan not to do that, if you don't want to call him a war criminal, and then because Joe Biden can't resist answering a question and sounding, you know, impressive, blurts it out unintentionally, that's not reassuring, right? I mean, of course, he's a Putin's a war criminal. I don't dispute that. And I'm fine with the United States having a policy of treating him like a war criminal.

I'm not fine with the Biden administration playing catch up with Joe Biden's mouth because he accidentally called him a war criminal against their own internal policies, because as to your point, the idea that Biden wants to be negotiating with Iran, with someone he's just called a war criminal is just not great politics. And so it's so clear to me that they did not intend to. But then Blinken has to say, of course, you know, Biden, the president is right.

He's a war criminal. And blundering into the policy of treating him like a war criminal is less desirable to me than doing it or not doing it on purpose. David, Ukrainian President Zelensky spoke to Congress, this week. Did it make any difference? Did anything change? I would say,

well, did it make any difference? That's, is it making a difference to solidify support that was already really solid? I think it just reaffirmed that supporting Ukraine in this war is decisively,

decisively in the mainstream of American politics. and that a lot of the rhetoric that we're seeing online from parts of the right, which it's not exactly pro-putin, it is certainly somewhat anti-Ukraine or anti-Zolensky or anti-Putin or wearing out Volodomor Zelensky for calling for a no-fly zone. There is a weird level of discourse on the right that if all you do is look on Twitter, you would think the right is extremely divided about what to do about Ukraine

but then if you look at the actions and Congress or the polls or the polls it's not really divided at all now it is true and some of the polling shows that Republican support for Russia is much lower outright than the Democratic support Republicans are much more likely to say that they support neither

although one side actual support for Russia is only about 5%. There was a UGov poll that put Republican support for Russia at 57%, 28% support for neither, 5% support for Russia. But yeah, what it showed, I think, was the overwhelming and reaffirmed that overwhelming support. And the vote to remove most favored nation trade status from Russia was 424 to 8. The eight were Republicans, but it's only eight. What was the reasoning for the eight? I think it varies.

You know, you had some who are obstinate against any sort of further response against Russia that would maybe potentially harm the U.S. economy. And then, you know, Chip Roy is always kind of a wild card. He kind of has his own reasons for what he does. I think Marjorie Taylor Green's position was because vests have no sleeves. So, yeah, did he make a difference? I think it all is reaffirming. It's all just reaffirming.

Every bit of news from overseas from where we're seeing happen to Maripole is reaffirming. What we're seeing happen outside of Kiev or the missile strikes that were reported out in Lviv, all of that's reaffirms. And which is important, which is important, because we know that support for. strong action can flag over time. So, yeah, that was worth, it was absolutely worth doing. It wasn't a game changer. The fundamental American policy is unchanged. David, you mentioned polling.

And yesterday on advisory opinions, you and I discussed evolutionary biology. And in line with that, I am surprised we haven't seen a poll on what female Americans think of President Zelensky. Does one not exist? Not that I've seen. And look, I am making a light point, yes. But in a conversation that frankly, the country has been having about masculinity for the last 10 years, there is a real point there, too. I would be curious to see whether women find President Zelensky attractive in whatever way they'd want to ask the question. because my hunch is the answer is yes,

and that that should inform what we think about masculinity, toxic masculinity, et cetera. Well, and you know, I'm so glad you raised that because this actually circles back to an interesting discussion that Jonah wrote about, Charlie Cook wrote about this polling question about what would I do if America was invaded? Well, actually, the question right was, what would you do if you were in a similar position to the Ukrainians, which I have heard from

people can be interpreted different ways. Okay. I read it as basically, what would you do if America was invaded? And a majority of Republicans said that they would fight and not leave. And a what was it only about 40% Jonah of Democrats said that they would fight and not leave. And that caused a a lot of discussion and this is what at one point I think that you made nobody knows till it happens nobody knows till it happens and I when you look at Putin and Zelensky and in fact one of the things that you know it's almost a cliche you see it so much that often the guy who postures the most is the one who's least sort of equipped emotionally and psychologically for when things really get real. And there's this really funny side-by-side picture of Vladimir Putin on horseback.

Do you remember that famous Vladimir Putin? He's on horseback. Shirtless, shirtless, just exuding all of his manhood. And then right next to it is the Zelenskyy, a Beyonce parody dance that he did where he's in high heels and leather. And which one of these people, fast forward a few years, which one of these people is Churchillian, it really is an interesting and sober reminder that you just don't know until the bullets start flying. You can think you know,

you can imagine that you know, how people will react, but you just don't know. And that's in many ways what's made Zelensky all the more impressive is how unanticipated it was. Indeed.

Let's take a larger frame here for a second, Jonah. We've now, we're a year and some change into the Biden administration, while Ukraine and Russia are certainly dominating the headlines, all the headlines, but particularly foreign policy related headlines, is, are we starting to see an emerging Biden foreign policy if you combine Afghanistan with Russia, with what's going on with the Iran nuclear deal? What is the through line that you can draw for us? I know there's this great I think it's by what's his name

oh gosh he was the sort of political he was like the Carl Rove for FDR he was the head of the postal service but he was also like his campaign manager and he has this great line No not Ickies like Mosley

God it's going to come to me after this thing Raymond Moli okay I think that's it anyway he has this great line where he says to think that there was a coherent theme to the new deal would be like thinking the collection of old shoes, stuffed snakes, random pillows, and an outdated beach furniture in your garage were put there

by a decorator. And I think that there is not a major strategic theme to, at least not one that holds for the Biden administration, in part because it's been a mixed bag, right? I mean, I think his handling of NATO and a handling of Ukraine deserves fairly high marks with some criticisms to be sure. His handling Afghanistan is an F at best. But part of, I think part of the problem is that Biden and his team, particularly John Kerry, who's the climate schnoor is so obsessed with this old version

of liberal internationalism and foreign policy that basically sees diplomacy as an ends rather than a means, right? I mean, like, allies are important because of what they help us do, not just to have them, right? Diplomacy is important because of what it helps us do,

not just because talking is its own reward. And there is this ethos in a big chunk of the liberal internationalist foreign policy establishment that thinks it would be better to be wrong in a big group than right alone. And you see it infecting all sorts of things, right? John Kerry speaks eloquently as best John Kerry can in his sort of stentorian senator schick talking about delinking climate change from all the other things. And that's great for him, right? Because it's like, that's his portfolio. But this notion that the Russians or the Iranians or the Chinese delink climate change from their other foreign policy goals is just sort of ridiculous. And ditto on a whole bunch of other fronts.

And so I honestly, you know, like it drives me crazy. The stated reason why we got out of Afghanistan was because of this reset to deal with traditional. great power rivalries in the region. And I know I'm a broken record on this, and I'm no expert on foreign policy and military stuff, but it seems to me to have a base right in the middle of where the contest of all these great powers are would have been a nice thing to have

in terms of being able to project power and all that. But they pulled us out of, you know, Bogram, they got rid of that base, which is a huge asset, and they have yet to figure out how to actually do great power politics. they're very fortunate in a purely political sense to have Ukraine thrust an issue set on them that they're actually good at, which is getting the Europeans to see their own self-interest and standing up. But I find no theme in the pudding yet.

Steve, theme in the pudding. Yeah, so I think what the Biden administration supporters would tell you and officials would tell you is they came in with a primary goal of reestablishing multilateralism and rebuilding our relations with traditional allies because they had been either neglected or diminished as a result of the Trump presidency. And I would include in that NATO and certainly our Western European allies,

you saw early overtures to Germany and other traditional allies, and that that's what they were doing, was re-elevating multilateralism, making clear that America was a good partner on these things, a good coalition partner in these broader alliances and broader friendships, both on a bilateral and multilateral basis. And I think there's a justification for doing that. You can understand why they came in with that mentality. I think, unfortunately, what we've seen is we've seen

it, sort of take precedence over what are sort of bigger issues, both in terms of their practical effects on U.S. security interests and in terms of their long-term effects, both symbolic and real world, in terms of the United States standing in the world as a superpower. And obviously, you've seen Afghanistan, you saw this withdrawal. I think the message that sent, we've spent a lot of time talking about the message that that sent. I'm much more critical, I think, of the Biden administration on Ukraine than it sounds like the rest of you are. I don't give him a ton of credit for what he's done with NATO and what he's done with Europe. We were laid on virtually every one of the sanctions regimes

that we've imposed that Europe imposed first. We followed on. Congress had to drag them to do the Russia oil ban. I think we've sent rhetorically, we've sent very mixed signals. you know, essentially approving the Meg transfer, not approving the Meg transfer, were obsessed with the idea of escalatory rhetoric or escalatory steps so that we're taking things off the table again and again and again, which, as I talked about with Eric Edelman, is its own, in its own way, escalatory. So I think there are problems all around. And then if you look at what we're doing with the Iran deal, and there's a very good Charlotte Lawson piece on the dispatch website today about this, the Biden administration seems willing to do almost anything to get the

deal, which is very reminiscent of the way that the Obama administration approached anything. Iran could do virtually nothing to stop our determination from getting the deal. It feels that way again, including, as I said, using Russia as a treating Russia as a legitimate diplomatic partner in this effort, despite what's going on in Ukraine. And in setting aside things that should be hugely problematic. We're talking about removing the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps from the list of foreign terrorist organizations and all that that entails when they are attacking their neighbors. There's no question that the IRGC is still a terrorist entity.

You had a leading general, say that in front of the U.S. Congress within the last week. The Biden administration seems determined to do this. There's new reporting today about a, just this morning, Friday morning, about a, in a Wall Street Journal piece, about a clandestine banking and finance system that Iran used, that it basically built and used to circumvent U.S.-led sanctions, according to the article, enabling Tehran to endure the economic siege and giving it leverage in multilateral nuclear talks. Now, that's a problem. if you're talking about lifting sanctions, but a lot of the sanctions were evaded in the first place, you're talking about signing a deal that supposedly includes verification, but you're signing it with a nation, a rogue nation that has proved itself not only willing but pretty capable at evasion, whether you're talking about sanctions, whether you're talking about inspections

on the nuclear program, but I think we're likely to end up with a deal. And it seems increasingly clear that it's going to be a bad deal. So I think the Biden administration is sort of a more dovish version of the Obama administration. And that is a big problem, in my view. David, last word to you on this. When we look back at the Biden administration, will anything matter except what happens in Ukraine and Russia? Or do you think there can be other foreign policy wins or losses that will affect his overall rating? I mean, barring anything that we don't immediately anticipate, like a Chinese,

invasion of Taiwan, Ukraine and Russia will be 1A, and the possibility of a nuclear Iran would be number two. And let me put it this way. Ukraine and Russia will be one. I should say it this way. It'll be 1, 1A, 1B, 1C, it'll be 2, it'll be 3, it'll be 4, and then maybe a number 5 will be what happens with Iran. Because, look, I think we haven't paid enough attention.

right now to what's actually happening on the ground militarily. I know we led with it for a bit, but conventional, the Russian conventional forces right now have suffered staggering losses. This is something that is pretty much consensus at this point. I mean, you know, there's going to be how many thousands of Russian soldiers have died. We don't really know. We know it's thousands. How many hundreds of Russian tanks have been destroyed? We don't know exactly, but we know it's in hundreds. Russia has been dealt a conventional military blow, even as it has captured some territory, it has encircled some cities, that it is going to take years to recover from.

Years. I was reading an analysis just yesterday that this throws a lot into doubt about Russia's relationships with its allies. Is Russia going to be able to meet its commitments to supply allies with arms that allies have purchased from Russia because Russia is going to have to prioritize restocking its own military. And, you know, we're going to be able to argue over time how much is the Biden administration, how much credit does the Biden administration deserve, if much at all, for the way in which the Ukrainian military has been prepared to receive the Russian invasion and how it responded to

the Russian invasion. There are going to be books written about what is the exact relationship that we've had between the Ukrainian military and U.S. intelligence services throughout this conflict. But if at the end of the day, present trends continue, and NATO is dramatically unified, Russia is dramatic,

and Russia is dramatically weakened, that's going to overshadow in the real world, almost everything else, with one exception. And the one exception is, if Iran gets nukes. And so I think that there is a sort of, an almost desperate desire to do something to make sure that Iran does not get nukes on our watch.

And why you would have that desire and almost it would be a desperate desire and maybe one that you're willing to make concessions to achieve if you've taken military action completely off the table is that we now see how limited so many of our options are if our opponent has nuclear weapons. We have dramatically limited options, and that is not something that we ever want to face with Iran. So the Iranian situation is extraordinarily difficult. I tend to agree with Steve, but I also tend we need to acknowledge how difficult this situation is,

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Ukraine and Russia was a known, unknown, if you will, that things could always happen that would accelerate inflation. But look, the Fed raising interest rates, to me, is politically quite fascinating heading into a midterm, because what it means, you know, in the most simplified terms, is that the Fed is trying to slow down the growth of the economy, slow down wage growth, slow down job growth. And yet how much of what we're seeing really is within the Fed's control when you think about what's driving inflation right now isn't necessarily an overheated economy. It's two years of COVID, supply chain issues, labor shortages, that then companies are scrambling to solve by raising wages, et cetera.

Jonah, we'll start with you. Is the Federal Reserve going to help or hurt Democrats heading into the midterms? Well, there's a third option, right? Which is be utterly ineffectual either way, which is also very possible. I mean, look, I'm... I tried really hard to stay out of the inflation fights because I have friends on all sides of monetary policy and it's all witchcraft to me. And that said, the problem with inflation is that once you have, it's like a fire, right? Once you have it, like the fire can be burning the curtains and you're like, nah, I didn't ever really like the grip.

But then the fire spreads to something that you really don't, that could be super combustible, right? it's it's really hard to contain it moves around and so once you have the psychology of inflation in a society or in an economy um the responses from people to economic stimuli tend to be inflationary regardless of what the stimuli are and then you add in the stuff that you're mentioning about supply chains and um and oil prices it's just a hot mess and like i don't think there's been a worst time to be a central banker anywhere in our lifetimes because there's just like the ability to sort of thread the needle and curtail inflation without triggering a recession without getting us into stagflation when there are so many um as sarah who likes all the fancy words would say

exogenous things going on uh it's it just i think it's nearly impossible and so uh i suspect that the Fed will do an okay job. I think Powell sort of gets the problem that he's got, but I don't know that he can do it on a political timetable before the midterm elections. And even if he did a fantastic job, I mean, just brilliant, you know, the Tom Brady of Federal Reserve, you know,

actions kind of thing. At the end of the day, just the lag time of the inflation we already have is going to be politically poisonous. and it's going to last, well, I would suspect last into the election, particularly if we can't get the oil prices down and we head into the summer driving season. Because the pent-up demand for Americans to get the hell out of their houses after two and a half years of COVID is enormous.

And if all of a sudden they're finding that it's almost as expensive to drive as it is to fly, people are going to be pissed. And so I think it's a disaster. Steve, is this 1979, or is it something else? That's a good way of framing it. Let me answer this question that I think is the right way to think about the question, especially the question you posed Jonah in terms of the political impact, but also of what allows me, yeah, I was going to say,

allows me to further Jonah's dodge of actually the intricacies of monetary policy, because that would be bad for everybody involved, particularly people listening to this. I was once a panel on special report. Remember that it was in the context of the Greek debt crisis. And for about a couple days, Cyprus was having serious issues. And one day we got, we sort of got a heads up on what we'd be talking about. They didn't tell us what to say, but they just said, hey, here are the topics.

And the number one topic of the day was Cypriot monetary policy. I spent six hours study. I'm not very good on U.S. monetary policy, so Cypriot monetary policy was a challenge. I think the bigger risk to the Biden administration, look, if inflation remains bad, the Biden administration will be blamed. The political effects, I think, will come in part because it's just the reality people want to be paying more. That'll matter most. but it'll also matter how the Biden administration addressed this. And remember, they told us again and again and again that this was transitory.

This wasn't anything to worry about. This wasn't a big deal. You can imagine Republicans in competitive races playing clips from Jen Saki's press conference where she downplayed concerns about inflation. And this was true sort of across the administration. And I think if you're worried about the political effects and you're a Democrat, that's where the concern comes in. You had people like Larry Summers all along sort of ringing alarm bells about what was likely to happen. Republicans, you know, saying many of the same things.

And it was downplayed and dismissed in a way that I think will likely boomerang. David, that's all well and good. And I actually think Steve's exactly right that the Biden administration will get blamed to the near exact extent that prices go up with maybe like a 5% add-on of, you know, things they said that were stupid. But I haven't heard Republicans really offer an alternative to what they would be doing right now to address inflation. I've heard plenty on gas prices, some of which is nonsensical, if you actually work in the energy sector.

But set aside the energy independence talking point. Have you heard Republicans or conservatives, for that matter, talk about what they would be doing to address inflation? No, not really. And I think there's a really good reason for that, which is the minute they open their mouth to talk about what they would be doing to address inflation, it's a minute you're not talking about Biden's failure to deal with inflation, and the minute you're revealing that your solution is probably not super adequate.

And so there's a really good, just flat out, brass tax political reason. And, you know, we do this all the time. And it's not that presidents are irrelevant to the economy. it's just that they're not as relevant as we tend to talk about, as we tend to argue. So if you looked at the pre-pandemic arc of the American economy, what you couldn't really tell by a lot of measures, if you just took the dates off when Trump became president, there was just a steady increase in employment, there's a steady increase in GDP, there's a steady increase in a lot of economic indicators and that just kept, it was increasing through the end of the Obama administration and kept increasing. Then, bam, pandemic happens. Everything changes. Then the economy reopens and then the increase takes off again. But at the same time, Obama took credit

for every last job created in its presidency. And then here comes Trump and he takes credit for every last job created in his presidency. And so we have this weird world where, presidents take credit for everything that they're, well, I guess there's a sort of rough justice to it, right? If they're going to take credit for every good thing that occurs, then they're going to have to accept blame for every bad thing that happens as well. And, you know, the Republicans are just doing something that's pretty smart politically, which is keep the focus, where the focus should be for their interests, which is on the fact that inflation is going up under Biden. And if they're not talking about that, they're not talking about the right thing from their perspective.

So, David, I agree with you entirely on the substance of the point. And fairness, Obama wasn't the only product, you know, it goes back as throughout living memory, presidents taking credit for your job creation. But Obama was an innovator in one regard. And I want to bring it up because it is one of my favorite things in rhetorical, nonsensory, which is Okay. He not only claimed credit for creating jobs, he claimed credit for saving jobs. So he would say, I've saved or created three million jobs, which is approving the negative thing. And I'd always respond to that.

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All right. Before we go, Steve, I'm going to start with you on this. Kentucky has four assistant coaches who make more than the St. Peter's head coach. Why? Why? Why? Why are we doing this? Their entire

budget is $1.5 million while Kentucky's coach makes nine million a year. So we had, I mean, look, a 512 upset in the men's NCAA bracket isn't unheard of at all. In fact, it's expected. We had two of them last night, though, so, you know, more than usual. But boy, did you watch that Kentucky St. Peter's game. Wow. I mean, amazing basketball game. I'm eager to get David's thoughts on it. But what struck me after watching the game was, you know, David's head is in his hands.

And I just want to be clear to listeners who weren't watching. This was number two Kentucky, who I'm going to guess David had going into the final four, if not winning the whole thing, going down to number 15 St. Peter's. Steve, please continue. Yeah, I mean, I'm tempted to call it a David and Goliath upset. but that probably further frustrate, David.

The best part of it was watching Kentucky head coach, the highly paid Kentucky head coach, John Calipari, after the game. You know, those are really difficult interviews. There are difficult interviews to give national television anytime your team loses a game, particularly difficult when you lose to a 15 seat and you're Kentucky and you're John Calapari and you've got this reputation, this track record. And I waited, the right thing to say is pretty clear. The right thing to say is hats off to St. Peter's.

They played amazing and then point out two or three things that St. Peter's did to earn the victory, right? Right. And Calapari, it'll be analyzed, I think, for a while. Calapari said something like, well, you know, we had an eight-point lead and we blew it. And I guess that's on me as the coach. But I kept telling the players to shoot the ball. And I took them out when they didn't shoot the ball.

And that's terrible. And St. Peter's played well. But really, Kentucky should have, we should, all about Kentucky the whole time. And I guess that's on me. One of the worst answers, one of the worst answers you can possibly give in a tough situation. David, what advice do you think you should have given Kentucky? Because it seems like they didn't, you know, the advice that you normally give in the situation is that the team that scores the most points wins the game. Maybe they needed more of that in the pregame interviews.

I don't know. I mean, look, we're not that far. removed from the first ever 116 upset in the entire history of the NCAA. And that was David going with the, it could have been worse. It could have been worse. Yep. No. I'm going with, this is

a harbinger of great things to come. Because UVA lost 116 and then what happened? UVA won the title. They won next year. They won next year. So, congratulations in advance for 2023 NCAA national champions, the University of Kentucky Wildcats. That's my takeaway.

So Sarah's lost our audio for some reason. So I'll just sort of jump in here and point out that the fact that a coach for a team makes $9 million a year is evidence how we should get rid of college basketball. basketball and make it a minor league sport because it is distorting higher education in every way. Sorry to just throw that out there for you. All right. So we had a gremlin of sorts come in and it was terrible. It carried Sarah off and we don't know what happened to her, so we got to go deal with that. But she cannot do the normally euphonious and melodic clothes to... What does euphonious mean? Pleasing to the ear. Oh, I'm going to use that. That's a good word.

The EU means to, like, speak well of in a eulogy. It means good. So pleasing to the ear. Oh, okay. So, and Steve had to go do some phone check thing that he does every day. So that leaves basically me and David sitting here. So I'm going to sign off for everybody. Thanks so much for tuning in.

Please, if you can, become a subscriber to the dispatch. Meanwhile, I'm watching Sarah scream into the camera, desperate to have the microphone back doing a full. like I paid for this microphone, Mr. Green. All right, so we're out. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time. Vladimir Putin was found guilty of war criminals, uh, war crimes, sorry. Uh, an international court found Vladimir Putin guilty preliminarily.

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