The Pomp Podcast - #1410 John Avlon | Bitcoin Politician Will Shock You!

Episode Date: September 21, 2024

John Avlon is an American journalist and political commentator running for U.S. House representative of New York’s 1st congressional district. In this conversation, we break down what the Founding Fathers were thinking when they wrote the Constitution, how we should be thinking about technology, the impact of technology on the economy, what the Founding Fathers would have thought about crypto, what John thinks about crypto, and what it will take to push America forward.  ======================= Buy and sell cryptocurrency in a tax-advantaged crypto IRA with iTrustCapital. Enjoy 24/7 access, lowest fees in the industry, and tax benefits for your retirement. Open and fund an account today at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.itrustcapital.com/pomp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to receive a $100 USD funding bonus. ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 265,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/ ======================= View 10k+ open startup jobs: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://dreamstartupjob.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Enroll in my Crypto Academy: https://www.thecryptoacademy.io/

What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. What's up, guys? Bang, bang. I've got a great episode for you today. Today, we have John Avalon. He is a centrist Democrat candidate running in New York's first district, and he also

is the author of a number of books covering American political history. In this conversation, we break down what the founding fathers were thinking when they wrote the Constitution, what they were thinking about as they built this rebellious country, as John will explain, and then we get into how we should be thinking about technology, its impact on the economy, what the founding fathers would have thought about crypto, what John thinks about crypto, how he thinks centrist candidates should make a comeback and what it will take to push America forward, make us a much more economically prosperous country, but also get rid of some of the divisiveness and bring people back together. I really enjoyed this conversation

with John, and I think you guys will as well. Here is my episode with John Avalon. Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Today's episode is brought to you by iTrust Capital. Are you buying crypto on an exchange because you're excited about the bull run? Well, I hope you're reporting your crypto gains to the IRS because they want you to pay

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So opening a tax-advantaged IRA at iTrust Capital only takes a few minutes. You have 24-7 access to the markets with some of the lowest fees in the industry. The bull run has begun and people are starting to see their accounts go up. So start taking advantage of tax benefits with an IRA at iTrust Capital. You can start maximizing your crypto investment today. Go to itrustcapital.com. That's itrustcapital.com. All right, guys, I thought a great place to start the conversation is the founding fathers

warned about a number of different forces that would destroy a democracy. And I'm going to say you're a historical expert on you've written multiple books about some of the founding fathers and some of these different topics. And so, like, what are these forces that they thought hundreds of years ago would actually destroy democracy? And then maybe let's talk about, you know, where in the world do we see that actually playing out as examples? A hundred percent. And you got to understand when they were building the country, right, when they were devising the Constitution, they were really consciously looking at how democratic republics had failed before. And Washington's farewell address, which was actually released on the day we're recording

this as the anniversary, September 19th, 1796, is really bringing all that to bear. But it was in place in the federalist papers. It was in place in the deliberations around the Constitution. And for Washington's farewell, it really can be distilled to four. But they're incredibly ripped from the headlines relevant today. What we would call hyper-partisanship, what they called faction. That's the number one. The second, excessive debt.

The third, foreign wars. The fourth, foreign interference in our elections and our domestic politics. Those are the forces that had taken down democratic republics before going back to ancient Greece and Rome. So, you know, folks are big fans of the Ryan Holiday stoicism podcast or studying ancient Greece and Rome. The founders were really drawing on that really consciously and trying to construct a system that would discourage or constrain those forces. But washington's farewell was doing was really it was written as a letter to a warning to his friends and fellow citizens but also the future us and when you see how we're wrestling with that stuff today um you realize why we need to study history and we need to apply those lessons because we're

playing with dangerous forces uh that are they've already you know what washington warned when i wrote this book a couple years ago in the founding in the hyper partisan section he talks about you know it leads to occasional riots and insurrection and when i wrote that it was before january 6th and and that seemed like a really distant you know concept and then of course it hits a lot harder now so you see how wise these guys were on hyper partisanship um you know one of the things that i always point to is um i i think it was scalia was asked one time hey what is the uh the beauty of america what is the thing that america kind of hangs his hat on and um he almost had like this smirk on his face there's like this viral clip he often does and um he basically says deadlock

like everyone thinks that in america it is you know whatever party is in power just implements their plan and his point was that we have checks and balances we have the three you know uh different uh aspects of the government we do have two political parties sometimes they have full power sometimes they have uh you know kind of a piece of the power but this idea of deadlock really does actually create uh a grinding to get change and so i before i heard him say that would have told you bureaucracy gridlock all these things are negative things right like you want to be efficient you want to get things done um and so how do you measure the balance between you know the checks and balances which maybe is like a piece of uh partisanship versus

hyper partisanship which then becomes one of the forces that destroys the democracy sure so i i think deadlock is classic scalia right he's being intentionally provocative yes um and i think he's putting a negative tone uh on on what is essentially checks and balances right it's balance of power it's that no one branch gets too much power and that is a check that keeps and what's the purpose of the check and the balance well it's so that we reason together that's the idea And you need a common set of facts to do that. And you find where the common ground is. You've got the Federalist Papers back there. I saw Fed 10. No one thought we could do a democracy on this scale. But Madison's argument in Fed 10 is no, because we've got a really diverse pluralistic country, even in that time by those standards, we will only be able to agree upon the things that are sort of a super majority support. And we'll have to focus on that. And our politics will gear towards that. Where hyperpartisan ship turns that on its head, and it can lead to gridlock, which itself means democracy is less responsive to changing dynamics, which can be dangerous, right? Although don't buy the autocrats' eternal claim that they're more efficient, and that's why you should bet on them. Always bet on a democratic republic at the end of the day. But when hyper-partisanship starts undermining it, it's because we're not reasoning together. It's because we're demonizing across our disagreements. It's because we can't agree on a common set of facts. It's because we take that tribal warfare and find all sort of hind-minded excuses for it. That's BS. And that is uniquely dangerous. Why?

Look, I'm a patriotic guy, so are you. It's because America is the first nation in the world based on an idea and not a tribal identity, right? And that means we're uniquely dependent upon a unifying idea. If that starts getting undermined, if we start losing the ability to focus on what unites us, not what divides us, and that's what the best leaders do, uniters in divided times. But that also requires citizens and their representatives. And if you have a political structure that is moving political power to the extremes because of polarization, right? Where all of a sudden people are ignoring their constitutional obligations because of some combination of careerism and cowardice, usually driven by a desire for

political gain or really just self-preservation. That screws up the system. And that's why the founders warned about it, right? That's why they were saying, you know, when ancient Greek and roman republics begin fighting among themselves that's when they're easiest to divide and conquer and that's why people who rationalize or or fetishize that division they say well hyper partisanship is actually a positive force for good you know as george will used to say the four most important words in politics are up to a point and and so i really reject that i think we got to throw our shoulder to the wheel in the other direction and and that i've been arguing that as a columnist as a journalist as an author and that has everything to do with why i'm running

for congress right now we got to rebuild the middle rebuild the middle of our politics rebuild the middle of our economy to create some stability so we can reason together again and that means getting things done deadlock is not a positive good um you know being able to deliberate and make sure we don't lurch from one extreme to the other that's that's positive because the founders were also clear anarchy is the past fastest path to tyranny right that's that dynamic balance that wise balance we always got to work towards how many books have you written uh four and two anthology so uh so you've done some work on a lot of this yeah the uh the book that we're going to talk about uh today washington's farewell um is the founding father's warning to future generations

and what i find so interesting is um uh how forward-looking many of them were but what you're basically making the argument is they were only forward-looking because they actually were uh using the data from the past that's right right they have been able to extrapolate out these are the same issues that countries, democracies, different economies, societies continue to fall or stumble on. And so rather than try to predict some new thing, it's just these four things are really the threat. Well, look, it's a guide, right? Things change. But human nature doesn't change, right? So, you know, Will Rogers used to have this great line about how, you know, America has the group, two greatest friends in any world, any country ever did,

called the Atlantic Pacific Ocean. Right. And so while Washington never argued for isolationism, that is a frequent misunderstanding and slur. And sometimes people say in the farewell address, the famous quote is no entangling alliances. That phrase does not appear in the farewell address. That's actually Jefferson's first inaugural. But, you know, the the the world changes. Technology makes it smaller. And one of these you can learn from history is how to how to deal with technological change. Right. Don't fight it. Channel it. Make sure they're intelligent guard rails, but lean into the, you know, history business. Uh, you know, I've, I've gotten an MBA, that's my graduate degree. And, and so, you know, you, you want to lean into change and figure

out how to channel it constructively, but be mindful of those larger forces that are rooted in the worst aspects of human nature. And, and because if you empower those things fall apart real fast. So another one of the forces is foreign wars. We, um, for 20 plus years were locked in two of them. They were quite expensive, both in terms of human life loss, but also economically. We today are not officially engaged in either one of those wars anymore. But the United States is involved, and I think it would be debatable in terms of how involved, in a number of wars, whether you describe them as proxy wars or being engaged in terms of supporting allies in their war um and so uh you know i think the ones people immediately jump to is russia ukraine or they'll

jump to hamas in israel but there's other situations going on whether it's syria you know uh kind of uh in the middle east or you can go around the world and and see that the united states obviously is paying attention to china and taiwan and a number of these different things and so how do you look at um which wars are worth fighting which ones are not worth fighting How do we evaluate, you know, the support of allies versus, hey, at some point, you know, another country's got to kind of stand on its own two feet and defend itself. These questions don't seem to have very simple, you know, singular answers. And so you're running for office, you get into office, like, how do you think through, you know, maybe there's a framework or some way to try to evaluate how does the United States choose to engage or not engage in these wars? Sure. So I know you serve in Iraq, and I'm a 9-11 guy. I worked for the Republican mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani. At the time, I was his chief speechwriter during 9-11. My team and I wrote the eulogies for the firefighters and police officers. So that's fundamental to me.

um and and i do think uh there are wars that are entirely justified for matters of national self-defense nation has a right to defend itself um and for the united states it's a matter of getting the right balance you know we're a republic not an empire but we are a leader in the world and retreat uh nature abhors a vacuum and i do believe one of the things that washington would say this is a lesson of history as well as just you know human nature weakness does invite aggression right and that's why it is cheaper to stop aggression early than late um what the us came up with with our allies in the wake of the second world war and this was actually the subject of my most recent book called lincoln the fight for peace which is about how you win a

piece because if you don't win a piece you don't really win a war and and what we did the us and our allies did after the second world war is dramatically different than what we did after the first and that demands a lot of study so the establishment of nato for example is the world's most successful multilateral security organization, right? Designed to defend democracies initially against the totalitarian Soviet Union. And it remains a really powerful tool. Why? Because it means that going back to history and human nature, the smaller countries won't be picked off by the bigger countries because you have a collective security agreement among liberal democracies in particular. And I think an alliance of democracies is smart.

But the idea is, is that you create a check and balance, if you will, against autocrat, aggressive autocrats. And I do believe that right now, and this is a perennial problem, but it's pretty acute right now, that the defining struggle of our time is democracy versus autocracy. It's one of the reasons I think the stakes of this election are so big. um i think it's interesting because a lot of the 9-11 generation some of my friends who were republicans have been sort of you know whether it's adam kinzinger who's actually chairman of republicans for avalon which we announced today uh where mike gallagher got effectively chased out of their party right and it's it's a mistake just to say oh they're neocons that's not the case but but the people who recognize you need a strong national security and there was a broad bipartisan consensus which by the way perfect's never on the menu right there was a consensus around China and the WTO that we've now reconsidered, right? So, but when people are

campaigning to undermine NATO, right? Saying, oh, well, you know, obviously we're not going to vote on Article 5 for this. That's an invitation to more aggression. It's why it's important to stop Putin at Ukraine. And what troubles me is when, as we've seen through recent indictments, that Russian propaganda is getting disseminated through domestic political debates and sanitized. And it's a departure from those historic traditions, whether it's the Reagan tradition. I think you could draw a pretty direct line between Harry Truman, the Truman Doctrine, JFK, Cold War liberalism, and even Reagan, which was not a real politic balance of power approach as much as there's a right and a wrong, and we need to make sure we're stopping autocracy's expansion by defending democracies. That's a mainstream thread that I think we have an interest in pursuing. Now, you can get into recent times, the right lessons for the 9-11 generation, Afghanistan. If we'd kept our focus there, I think in the fullness of time, that would have been appropriate.

I think the researchers, the Taliban is a tragedy. And we can get into, you know, negotiating with the Taliban in Doha without the Ghani government. But Iraq clearly in the fullness of time was a bridge too far. And that's where the danger of overextension comes in. And there was a desire to make sure we bled blood and treasure. And there needs to be a reminder that wars are expensive. Investing in peace, right? This is peace through strength.

To be prepared for war is often the best way of ensuring peace. Weakness invites aggression. And what I find ironic is you've got this sort of horseshoe right now where folks on the far left and the far right are finding ornate excuses to try to say, well, let's not confront Vladimir Putin because that will be peace. No. though history is pretty clear if you embrace that approach you encourage more aggression and that's why it is smart I believe to stand with multilateral organizations like NATO stand with

democracies that have been invaded and to stop aggression before it expands um because that that's that's the slippery slope to something far worse and when we look at the economic uh you know kind of implications of this um I've found it interesting that the central bank for two and a years or so has been saying, hey, we're going to tighten financial conditions, sold off almost $2 trillion worth of balance sheet. They've drastically increased interest rates, fastest pace in history. But politicians were approving legislation and bills that was creating inflationary pressures. And so the central bank and politicians, it's not like they go in a room and they coordinate. And I always say that if you're a baseball player and you get put on a

football field might have a hard time and vice versa. And so I don't know if there's politicians that really think- Unless you're Bo Jackson, yes. Yeah. Well, I just don't know if there's politicians who really think they could run the central bank and vice versa. I don't know if the central bankers think that they could become politicians and whatever. So they kind of have different mandates, different jobs, but in an ideal world, there would be some degree of alignment, whether it was coordinated or not, where if the central bank is trying to drain liquidity and tighten financial conditions,

politicians would also at least not spend more, if not spending less. And so vice versa is during kind of COVID, the central bank said, hey, we're going to drop interest rates. We're going to help print money. Politicians said we're going to also spend a lot. And it was actually very well aligned and was a benefit, I think, to the U.S. economy because it saved us from a big liquidity crisis and all these things. So we kind of have two examples, I would say, over the last four years or so where like there was alignment, even though I actually don't think that there was as much coordination as many people, you know, assess. And then also there's misalignment over the last two years or so. And so if you're sitting in a political seat, a war is happening. You don't you don't get to choose when it happens, right? You have to kind of make a decision like, are we going to support or are we not? at what point does the economic impact enter? Or is it actually something where you say,

look, we have to do the right thing regardless of the economic impact. And I've always been fascinated by, you know, as a politician, nothing comes with like a price tag. You know, if you go to the store, you're like, hey, I want that food. I know how much it costs. I'm making a decision of like, how bad do I want it? How much is it going to cost? There's a price tag in the sense of like how much money is in the bill, but not necessarily what is the, you know, five, 10 year impact of printing more capital or you know whatever the the kind of medium to long-term impact economically is and so like how do you think about you know making the evaluation of do we participate do we not how do we participate versus economic impact there's a lot there in that

question right yeah um i mean um and and i should say i don't think of myself a politician at all this is my my first run for office i think of it as this is a time where citizens need to step up and kind of roll their sleeves get in the arena for a time i don't think people should i think public service should be a stage of your life right where you you've done other things with your life you bring those experiences to bear and then you you go back that's the way it should work that's why i support term limits you know not like personally i think it's like six terms of the house three terms of the senate that would create like a the right kind of balance um so there's a lot there let's start with the the central bank and i want to be clear i'm not a expert on the fed

but i do think an independent fed is a is a good thing i get i get troubled when people and i was was always surprised when a lot of free market, historically free market economists would sort of excuse like Trump's sort of playing the ref with the Fed, right? Is that good business or is that meddling? And I think one of the things that's dangerous is particularly when the economy is good, if people for political reasons want to goose the economy to benefit their political position and you lose the ability to have a lever if a crisis does occur, because it can be just a random blue sky Tuesday in September where things go sideways. I would agree Trump did it 100%, But I actually think it's both sides do it, because like Elizabeth Warren just wrote a letter calling for 75 basis point cut.

Biden called Powell into his office at one point and kind of was like, hey, what's going on? This doesn't look so good. And so what I wonder is, again, going back to coordination versus not. I know the central bank definitely doesn't want coordinated. They don't want the right. Right. But I do think that it's just human nature. Right. If you're in a position of power influence, you're supposed to be governing. a huge part of it is monetary policy. And so I don't think either political party can resist at least stating their opinion or trying to influence. I think the better question maybe is like, does the central bank listen? And I think that historically we can always say they're not influenced as much as maybe people, you know, kind of like conspiracy wise want to

think. I think that's right. But I do think, you know, an atmosphere of threats, human nature being what it is, can cause people, right? Which is different than a consultative, right? So when When Volcker comes in, what he did ultimately in the first couple of years of Reagan was very tough medicine, but it succeeded in basically stopping a decade of inflation that had been out of control. We hadn't in our adult lives dealt with the kind of inflation we have the last several years. And we can get into the roots of it and how much of that is global pandemic supply chain versus printing money and how much of that was necessary to stop a liquidity crisis that would hurt the citizenry versus how much was overdone. But I do think that one of the things

we've remembered is inflation is enormously regressive, right? And having a low inflation environment is something we should strive towards and stick to and not take for granted, right? I think that's enormously important. That's a proper role for the Fed. And I do think this Fed seems to have pulled off a soft landing that a lot of people thought was a myth, was fictitious, was impossible. With that, and we probably have a slight degree of disagreement, I do think the CHIPS Act, which is reshoring essential manufacturing and looking forward, anticipating a problem, right? In this one narrow case, if China were to attack Taiwan, that would cause a global crisis that would impact the US and our ability

to be independent, in effect. And this goes back to sort of Washington, right? It's a foreign policy of independence. And reshoring essential manufacturing, I think, is very smart. Now, it's best done through incentives, right? I think the government works best when it creates incentives, not manages innovation. And that can apply to lots of different things. But I do think that that approach makes sense. We can't be dependent, particularly on an occasionally hostile foreign power, on essential goods and services. That should be probably within a broader ring of allies. And so I think that's smart, farsighted policy. And that it was trying to create an incentive to look out for future eventualities. And there may very well come

a day where we say that was brilliant, even though, and it was bipartisan, even though it's not as heralded, you know, I think infrastructure bill is a very smart thing to do. Presidents have been trying to do it for a long time. It needs to be done. There are a bunch of different reasons, resilience, as well as also just getting back in the business of building again, right? I think when people are using dollars to get short-term benefit, I think that's when it gets dodgy, right? And this is related to your question, but one of the interesting things about Washington's view was focusing on as many commercial... He was very conscious about not having the US as an emerging power be a satellite to a larger power. So he wanted

actually commercial relationships with as many nations as possible and political dependence on none, right? Which he got caught a lot of hell for in the context of the French and the British, which we're fighting at the time. So that's another historical touchstone. And I think that's the basis of the idealistic side of increasing free trade. And I do think that when, for example, we looked at Central and South America with the good neighbor policy, that had a stabilizing effect hemispherically that we should probably look to again. Probably took our eye off that ball. I think in disengaging from the world, Fortress America actually compounds problems. I think having a, going back to the central bank, a low inflationary

policy makes good sense, but we do need to make sure we also have a vested interest in a thriving, strong middle class. And that is something that I think we took our eye off on. And my mother's from Youngstown, Ohio. She was actually born in Springfield where we've had all the chaos, but- Where they may or may not be- They are not, to be very clear. It's not a may or may not. And what's actually the journal today is a story that it was known to be factually untrue before they started spreading it, which that's a civic sin i think but um but you know the hollowing out of manufacturing cities uh created this i mean the squeeze of the middle class you know democracy is a particular i think

if we haul it out it's not a coincidence we haul it out the middle of our politics at the same time we haul it out the middle the middle of our economy and we need a strong middle class that provides ballast um and i do think that's something we need to think how do we do that like This is one of the things that I've been blown away by watching the two presidential candidates. I could be wrong. I haven't watched every comment they've both made. I don't think that I've heard either one of them at any point campaign promise, I'm going to balance the annual budget. I don't think either one of them have talked about, I'm going to get the national debt down.

what they say is we're going to spend less i'm going to find an efficiency uh both of them you know i have this theory that actually uh they're both populist candidates in terms of who they're they're trying to go towards and um they both actually uh agree on much more than people recognize so they no tax on tips both agree on the southern border wall now um they both uh have suggested pretty aggressive tax cuts. How they do it is different, but they both are using the tax system as an incentive. You know, Harris is suggesting $50,000

for entrepreneurs and small businesses, $6,000 for first-time families. Trump has come out and said that he wants to lower the corporate tax rate, no tax on tips, on overtime, and on social security. And so when you start looking at this, you're like, wait a second. In a weird way, the last maybe decade of American politics,

really pulled people to the extremes and maybe not either presidential candidates, but just in general, the media and I think people online and stuff just got pulled. Both of these candidates, I think, are getting forced back towards the center a little bit. Like she historically had a track record where she was considered the most left leaning senator. And, you know, I think there's a lot of people who on the right would critique her and say, hey, she's very, very liberal. I think Trump, on the other hand, would get the exact opposite critique and say, hey, he's really, really far on the right. But if you look at like, you know, her as an example, there's a number of things that she previously said, which now she's saying, Hey, look, I've

either changed my mind or, you know, I think kind of a more centrist view. Yeah. Fracking is a good example for him. IVF, right. I think he's really kind of started to shift and seems to be kind of coming back more towards the center. And so what I wonder is like, if we want to build out the middle class, if we want to service, you know, what I would consider like an everyday American, most of them actually want the central viewpoints, right? Like they want to, the political candidates come back. But on the economy, I wonder how much can the politicians do, right? And it's, again, it goes back to this idea of the central bank versus the politicians. Like, how do you view, let's rebuild the middle class. Like, what do we actually do?

So, first of all, I think what a government can do is create structures that can incentivize behavior, right? I mean, we're not a command and control economy, nor should we be, right? There are times where, for example, we talked earlier, the Second World War, it made sense essentially to spend a significant amount because that was a crisis that government had a unique role to play. And ultimately, that probably helped us get out of the long tail of the Great Depression. But this is not that, right? This is more, and we built, the middle class was built after the Second World War in its recognizable form. And a lot's changed, but I think there are things that we can do. First of all, whenever we can identify, and you just did some areas of

agreement, that's a good thing, right? We should be guided of areas where there are bipartisan agreement, where there's super majority agreement. Like for example, choice. Abortion is a deeply held view for people, but over 7% of Americans basically believe it should be between a woman, her doctor, and her God, not the government, right? And the IVF, Trump pivoted because he had a political vulnerability, he was being told. But then, you know, just days afterwards, Senate Republicans blocked a bill that would have done the thing, right? So I think it's important to take away the campaign posturing at this point from what are actually core proposals and commitments. I have been impressed with Kamala Harris focusing on, for example, small

businesses. I say, look, Democrats can't be the party of the middle class if you're not the party of small businesses. And a lot of small businesses feel burdened by the kind of regulation and bureaucratic, that a large corporation could deal with because they've got a phalanx of lawyers and accountants. Small businesses aren't built that way. So you need to make sure you're supporting them. And I think that's an innovative way of sort of encouraging that risk capital at the start. I think that's a really good step in the right direction. I think Biden's got a very good record over a long period of time, beginning with the Reagan administration, when some of the policies manufacturing was being offshored. He was warning that, look, the economy's growing,

but it may be coming out of the expense of these Midwestern manufacturing cities like Scranton, like Youngstown, you know, and then really, you know, huge manufacturing base on Long Island was 40% of the jobs, you know, in 1950. And now it's around 5%. So I think reshoring essential manufacturing, creating incentives to do that can really help rebuild the middle class. I think infrastructure bills can help build the middle class, right? I think getting, you know, encouraging and incentivizing housing. Now that's not necessarily a big short sort of incentivization play, but if it's, for example, saying we're going to create an incentive and this is something i support um to to build uh residential housing on top of commercial so

you can revive aging strip malls right which have decent you know transportation sewer networks but there's not a lot of nimby caucus right it doesn't impact or or think reimagining the office park and how that can be incentivized to be developed because we have a housing shortage we're having a very constructive debate and actually red state cities are in some ways leading this national conversation so the things we government can do to incentivize you could also for example and this is something it's a variation of what's known as the helpers act uh which would prioritize a set aside of of housing that's affordable for cops teachers nurses and uh firefighters right so it's first responders and teachers and nurses because in many cases these folks are being priced

out of the communities in which they live and that's unsustainable right it compounds traffic it's just it's there's we can do to adjust through incentives and i'm a nudge guy i think you do incentives, but it needs to be done in conjunction with communities. And so look for the opportunities for common ground, look for the opportunities where you can have win-win, but those are all things government can do to help. I think a child tax credit, right? If we want more people to have families and we know people aren't having families in part because they're afraid of, they're concerned about the costs. There's things we can do like the child tax credit, which cut childhood poverty in half the one year we had it. We can create sort of make sure there's

those support networks in place because it is in our interest for more middle-class families to have lots of kids. That's a good thing for the economy in the long run. It's a good thing for our country and our culture. Even though raising kids is you and I think you and I both have young kids, it can feel like a pretty counter-cultural activity. I've always wondered, should we just create a system where rather than a one-time credit, should we say to somebody, for every kids you have you get five percent lower income tax or some number maybe it's two percent or whatever it is but like your actual income tax rate is some percent lower for every kid that you have there would be an explosion of uh children in this country i'm always mindful

this is an area where i've got an overlap with my friends on the center right and i really my first book 20 years ago history of centrist leaders in american politics like i am a card carrying old school, we need a strong and vital center, right? So I'm always wary with any proposal, try to imagine the unintended consequence, right? And you could see people having kids, not because they want kids, but because they see financial benefit and they may or may not be able to support. Now, if they're getting a tax deduction, that's different than some of the incentives that were set in place. But for example, we had a tax system for a while that was incentivizing families to not stay together because they had a better tax rate. So I'm always

very mindful of the unintended consequence. But I think what we can do to make sure that it's just a little bit easier to raise a family, a little bit easier. That's what Abraham Lincoln say about the proper role of government. He said, it's to do for individuals and communities what they cannot do so well for themselves, which is to say individuals, communities can do a lot. But if we can make it a little bit easier to raise a family and encourage folks to have more kids, not where if i have 10 kids i'm going to be a terrible parent but i'm going to get a big tax deduction um i think that that that's the wise balance we want to encourage that kind of what about um i forget who suggested it i think it was somebody on the right um who basically said that

um if you have children you should get like 2x vote or something like like basically uh this idea of certain people are long-term thinking because they have children versus not uh you said terrible idea. So like, yeah. So explain like, why do you think things like that? I mean, it's a variation on the same thing that said only people who own property should be able to vote because they're invested and have a long-term investment, right? I mean, it is a terrible idea for lots of reasons. I mean, George Washington couldn't have children, right? You know, would you deprive him of a vote? The key is thinking, and this gets to, I think, the real point. We need to put generational responsibility at the focus of how we think about our politics.

I always say, if you really want to boil it down, we want to maximize individual liberty, equal opportunity, right? Not outcomes, opportunity as much as possible, and generational responsibility. Those are three complementary sort of guiding lights and figuring out the right balance. But the generational responsibility is key. And I think short-term thinking has actually been one of the things that got us in this mess. I think a lot of the economic decisions people make, right? Corporations focused on quarterly earnings as opposed to long-term value creation and structures that set up that incentivize that. They're rewarded for that. But that doesn't actually help us in the long run, right? So you want to cut long-term capital gains dramatically?

Great. We want investment. We want to encourage that kind of long-term thinking. And I think whatever we can do societally, ultimately, politics is downstream from culture. So we want to be very mindful about the the culture we create and if we can incentivize long-term thinking if we can incentivize generational responsibility we will be healthier so it's almost like in um i i pride myself on being an independent that uh looks at it from uh you actually agree with uh i think the desired outcome of whoever said that on the uh children voting it's just the way that they're implementing it sounds like a horrible idea so it's like how do you think long term and get more and more of the society to do that is really what everyone's

trying to figure out it's just some people may have better ideas than others yeah yeah so my wife's a republican right she's um oh that's interesting well sure yeah how do you guys uh communicate all the time obviously my wife's margaret hoover she hosts firing line on pbs she revived the bill buckley program firing line uh and and and i think you know we it's a reminder that i think and this is where best what we do not just hopefully model how to disagree agreeably, but politics works best when people have a common problem and you maybe approach it from two subtly different perspectives, but you find the common ground, right? Oh, we know there's a problem. Let's have a really good debate about different ways to solve the problem and have

slightly different philosophical perspectives or how to do that. At the end of the day, what do we find? We're actually not as far apart, right? The teamism, the labeling actually makes us all seem further apart than many of us actually are, particularly if we take the time to talk and get to know each other, right? It's easier to demonize someone you don't know. And most of the evils in the world come when people are reduced to groups. So let's not do that. That's why I'm very much a country over party guy. Wherever you can find ways to work, let's do that. All we ask is some sort of like the politics of the golden rule, right? Treat other people like you'd like to be treated, right? And let's have a fact-based debate. And there are a lot of like genuine

disagreements, but let's have it in a civil way. And by the way, if you do that, it's the whole Tip O'Neill and Reagan, or you can find other examples, Everett, Dirksen and Johnson, you know, have a beer or bourbon at the end of the day and remember that you're people and get to know each other as people and you'll find ways to work together. I think the problem in Washington is it's the only place where people go to work and people go to work with people they have different perspectives with every day. By the way, it usually makes organizations better, But you do it with a sense of civility and let's find common ground. And remember that we're all Americans at the end of the day. And we just got to lower. But remember, the stakes of the election are unusually high. And this gets to Washington's farewell address is also about the peaceful transfer of power. That's the sentence that he was walking away from power. George III says, well, if he does that, voluntarily gives up power, he'll be the greatest man in the history of the world because nobody did that. And so I don't think we want to project too much normalcy on this particular election.

But then what we have an absolute obligation to do on the other side of this is reach out, ratchet down the rhetoric, find ways to work together, to reason together. Because there are a lot of things, like you just pointed out, where we actually probably have points of agreement and interesting new coalitions can be created. And that's cool. That's how we move forward. America works best when we work together. That requires reasoning together. I love meeting people from different walks of life because I always learn something. And in the first call that you and I ever did, you said something to me that I almost had to sit down because I couldn't believe it.

And then when you explained it to me, it made sense. But you said that when political candidates go to run for office, there are advisors and consultants. And one of their recommendations is do not tell anyone your policies. Do not put it on your website. Don't write them down on your website. Do not put, you know, the things you're going to do. It is a train wreck. It's actually, you know, to a degree, maybe political suicide to put them on your website,

what your policies are. Why is that the advice they get? And then more interestingly, why are you not listening to those people? And you've put your policies on your website. Because it's honest, because it's about what you believe and what you hope to do. And the answer is, is that elections, people get in a defensive mindset where they think about vulnerabilities. And they say, well, if you write down what you believe, you might offend somebody.

Well, let's stop tiptoeing around for fear of offending people and just say forthrightly and simply, here's what I believe. And here's some of the things that I think we can do about it. Now, it just so happens, A, I am a centrist. I'm a card-carrying centrist, right? So for better or worse, that's, you know, and there are going to be varying degrees of that that'll, you know, I mean, my opponent in the primary called me a secret Republican and my general election opponents calling me a hyper-partisan liberal and they can't both be right. Right. So, um, but the idea is that you are to say what you believe. It shouldn't be that hard. Additionally, because

I've been a journalist for 20 years and a columnist, I have a pretty long track record of saying what I believe. And then you evolve on some things as a result of experience or time, but you know, don't hide from it. Tell people what you believe. I think you'll find they reward the authenticity, but the political consultant advice typically is if you write it down, you'll alienate somebody you'll create some kind of vulnerability and and that dumbs down our politics i think if you take the risk of actually telling people what you actually believe in a way that's authentic i think they'll respond to it i think it's when people start trimming and holding their finger up to the wind or you get someone who's you know um really you know far right but

then they realize in an election time they say actually i'm you know i'm moderate we see this a lot on long island particularly in my opponent's case but not exclusively where they're you know pretend to be moderate at home around election time, but then vote MAGA in Washington. Well, those two things are, are, are in pretty stark tension a lot of the time. And, and so I just tell people what you believe, be authentic and, and also say that, you know what, it's not that you have a silver bullet because you're going to have to reason together other people. But I think, I think that's what we owe people in a democracy. And the idea that we're telling people not to do that is just as much of a, I think political and civic sin is saying simply play to the base and

don't try to reach out and reason together and win over the reasonable edge of the opposition. That's how democracy is supposed to work. The rigged system of redistricting has screwed that up. Now, speaking of policy, crypto is something that I think you're pretty passionate about, and you've got some unique ideas. What do you think crypto policy should be in the United States? What it should not be is partisan. Technology cannot become a partisan issue. And I think There's a danger of that right now. I'm a big, and this is true on any number of issues. We need broad bipartisan coalitions.

And I come from a background, I sometimes joke, you know, we could use, there used to be a time when journalists served in Congress, and that's not true for the most part now, where I say we could use more people who are presidential historians, you know, or historians. But we could really use someone who's run a digital, you know, media company in Congress who actually understands algorithms, who understand blockchain, that understands these things. Because generationally, there's a huge divide. Whenever we see technology become partisan, and particularly when Democrats should be the party historically that sort of leaned into the future, and conservatives by the name of it suggests they want to conserve and hew to the

past. And those are definitions that go beyond any political party because the party coalitions change over time. I find it troubling that Gary Gensler in particular has sort of impeded clear regulatory rules of the road that would allow Bitcoin that's flourishing or crypto that's flourishing and putting the US at a competitive disadvantage globally. You can't be in denial about technological progress. You certainly shouldn't make it partisan. And that's why I was really heartened, for example, to see, I think, 71 Democrats, you know, back in the Fit 21 bill. And notably, my opponent, Nicolodo, was one of three Republicans to vote against him. He's got an F rating from Stand With Crypto. And I think that's an interesting question as to why. I think

we really need to make sure, though, that the crypto community, but also members of Congress, are not approaching this in a partisan way and leaning into innovation. Apply clear rules of road. Apply the regulatory framework that protects consumers. Absolutely. But because we live in a global world, by its very nature, crypto being a global commodity and security, depending on its form, why are we sacrificing that to other countries? That puts America at a competitive disadvantage. And we as Americans are ultimately, we're the country that historically at our best embraces innovation and leads innovation. And if we're forcing it elsewhere because of some sort sclerotic bureaucratic system that does us all a really great disservice what do you think the

founding fathers would have thought about bitcoin and crypto that's a great question and um you know there are limits to the what would washington say or what would lincoln say you know if you saw an airplane you know an iron bird i mean i don't know you know um i i and it's actually that's a really interesting question because some things you can find touchstones um hamilton uh and roger morris who you know they really understood the importance of um international finance the rep the reputational benefits that come from good source of credit the uses of a small degree of debt the dangers of excessive speculation um and i don't think they would have run from it you know um and also remember you know the u.s and its founding is a we're a rebellious project against what had been

established wisdom that governments were inevitably going to be monarchies or aristocracies and democracy everyone thought was doomed to fail that's the rebellious project democracy is inherently decentralized so i made it is is not only the understanding of international finance but the decentralization might have made them uh uh you know uh amenable to it and i think certainly i mean you were at pub key the other day some of the roles that coffee houses or bars have played in the creation of of new markets i mean that's that's an interesting historic parallel as well um but i i can't say with confidence that i can predict what george washington or thomas jefferson would say about crypto but it's always fascinating to me because

pseudonymity was a very big part of that's a great how they communicated yeah that's true obviously you know with satoshi nakamoto but also uh to a degree um twitter i think is where a lot of this conversation happens today it's kind of like a digital town square uh you could imagine uh you know the pseudonymous founding fathers like posting back in their day they were literally writing uh the papers they will and also you know i mean take somebody like ben franklin right i mean how many different pen names and he's almost like writing to himself you know to some degree yeah and so you look at this stuff and you're like some of this has been going on for for a long time it's just like now in a digital form you know it's called twitter not uh whatever um

but then also uh to your point about the rebellion you know one of the things that i find most interesting about uh bitcoin in particular is uh with bitcoin for a change to be made you really have three different groups of people you've got the miners you've got the node operators and you've got the software developers that sounds a lot like three branches of government and checks and balances right and then you think about this idea of an immutable ledger that sounds a hell of a lot like protecting first amendment and speech right your ability to say anything whenever you want and nobody can come and stop you and so but also creating a transparent record which is interesting yeah right and i think i think you're developing an essay here right on right in our conversation

this is a good one it's just um you know i've been thinking about this for a long time but it's just like the founding fathers obviously were very forward thinking they were very i think intentional about many of the things that uh they put forward and and you know part of it was avoiding these forces um i don't think that we can say satoshi nakamoto looked at what the founding fathers were saying but i do think that um there is inherent like i'll call them american ethos values and and maybe structure built into some of these technologies in a way that you know people have not really talked about as much as they should so i i'm i'm not kidding when i say you should build out that essay. I think very often it helps to think about guiding principles or values,

right? We should be principled, certainly about partisan politics. I'm a country over party guy, but principles first, right? And so what are these principles for us, right? I mean, first of all, America as an economic engine is because we lean into innovation, right? And the level playing field, the ideal of a level playing field and equality of opportunity plays into that. But also So don't fight change. Channel it in a constructive direction, which is just clear rules of the road. So those are all things. One of my rules as I think about politics or policy, I think about two things.

I think about to the best ability, what will it look like in the rear view mirror of history? What's it going to look like in 20 years? And how does it connect to the lessons of the past or founding values? And that's where you see that there are, it's fine if you want to, in a chaotic environment create clear regulatory rules, right? You know, and this is one of the things, and AI is another variation on this theme. And this is one of the challenges we have as a democracy

to go back to your deadlock quote from Scalia. There are times where we need to move faster, right? And we need to be very careful because go back to the 1930s with the last time we had something like this. One of the claims that autocracies always make is that they're more efficient. Democracies are dysfunctional.

They're slow moving. they're unable to embrace the the speed of the times in which we need to live and so that's where you get to sort of totalitarian approach that's always a bad bet particularly if you believe in elevating the individual and human ingenuity which leads to that kind of creativity no centralized you know totalitarian state or cult of personality strongman is going to have the same creativity and ingenuity as a as a pluralistic democracy that liberates people's ideas. And that's what we need to hew towards. It's a really fascinating thing. But I think if you think about, okay, how's it going to look? Don't fight technological progress, channel it.

You want to create clear rules of the road that regulatory? Yes, that's absolutely necessary. But do that. Do that in a way that doesn't put the US on the back foot. Because also if the technology goes in the global competition to less free areas, what's the ultimate threat of that is they're promising wealth without liberty. And some people will think that's a good trade, but it's not in the long run. It's not. And so I think we need to make sure that the US remains at the forefront of that. And these issues aren't also used to divide. A partisan approach to this on either side of the ledger, politically, in Congress or out of Congress. And there are Democrats that are really, you know, Richie Torres and Senator Gillibrand and Cory Booker

have been, you know, leading on this stuff or working with it. And I think that's very healthy. It would be, I think, a major mistake for the political parties or the organizations that are advocating for crypto to get pulled into partisan positional bargaining. Because that's not the way we're going to actually make progress. We actually got to lean against that. So I'd humbly say, like, if there are Democrats who are very pro-crypto and leaning into the technologies and trying from a national competitive standpoint and a clear rules of the road standpoint, work with them. Support them. Because that's how we depolarize this. Again, I'm against polarization, but we also need to, especially at critical times, and this is one of those critical times, we need to make sure we're throwing our shoulder to the wheel to counteract that polarization.

I do think that the public narrative, which I deem is inaccurate, but I do think the public narrative is, hey, the Republicans have embraced it, the Democrats haven't. But if you go and you look at, I mean, you rattled off a number of names, there's many others, there is plenty of support on the Democratic Party side, there's plenty of support on the Republican side. And, um, I think maybe my hope is that it ends up being a, you know, bipartisan thing and people kind of, uh, realize that, uh, imagine if one political party embraced the internet, right. And the other one didn't like, you know, you can get a car, right. You kind of go back. It would be this crazy thing. Yeah. And, and I mean, maybe there's like some crazy sci-fi novel of like literally one political

party embraces the internet and the other just refuses to use it. And like what happens, um, big horse buggy, the horse buggy lobby. Yeah. But, um, uh, I always wonder how much does the political narrative matter, you know, versus like the actual facts. And my hope is that the facts end up becoming the public narrative, right? That's a unique opportunity responsibility you have is to correct that narrative. I mean, you have a huge number of listeners and narratives are powerful because people will default to that structure. That's why you got to lean against it and point out when the facts don't fit and point

out where there are two creative coalitions being met and also say, look, stand with the people who are working to build those broad bipartisan coalitions. And when there are folks who are opposing that, you know, who are trying to actually polarize or oppose for whatever special interest-driven reason, and it usually is that, you know, make your voices heard. I think that's, you know, I do think in my particular race on Eastern Long Island, the fact that, you know, my opponent, Nickelodeon, is one of three Republicans to vote against, you know, fit 21, and as an F rating, is an opportunity in a swing district to make a difference. You know, Andy Biggs is going to be hard to dislodge because of the rigged system of

redistricting. But you want to back Democrats who understand and lean into new technologies and understand that technology can't be partisan. And we do need broad-based, bipartisan, just so we can make progress. Do you think that the opposite is true as well? If there's an incumbent Democrat and there's a Republican that supports these technologies, should people? Sure.

Sure. Look, I mean, principles above partisanship. I mean, that's not that hard, right? I mean, to me, or it shouldn't, I think to most of us, you're an independent. Washington was actually an independent. Washington, the Constitution doesn't mention political parties, right? And so, yeah. Don't shock people. They don't need all the information. But sorry, you know, I know. But but right. I mean, a Democratic crook is as bad as a Republican crook. Don't don't don't default to partisanship principle. Apply principles consistently. That should be common sense. It is to me. Where can people go find out more about your political campaign and the race that you are engaged in? Sure. Just johnavalon.com is our website. You'll see the policy page, the aforementioned controversial policy page, which shouldn't be controversy at all. And a lot of clips from interviews, debates, primary election night, which candidate was coming to me to the left, and we won by 40 points, which again, is contrary to the narrative around partisan primaries,

a desire to elevate the center. And I think that's the opportunity here. And you really you want to know me, you can read my books or reach out, email directly, donate directly on the campaign, reach out. But now's the time. This is the most consequential election of a lifetime. And I really am hopeful we can build something better on the other side. My last question for you is, you've written a number of books. If somebody in the audience says, where do I start? I always find that when authors have multiple books, people are always like, are they sequential? Should I read one over the other? What would you say is if they only have time to read one book, the book that they should read to get the

best understanding of history, but also things that apply to today. I'd probably say the one you're holding, Washington's Farewell. I wrote Lincoln and the Fight for Peace to be a companion to it. But that also gives you an interesting idea about the foundational thinking and philosophies of the founders and how they apply today. And they really do apply today. And that can help ground us in a way that's beyond partisanship and hopefully reunite us.

Washington's Farewell, the founding father's warning to future generations. So go go check that one out. And I know that authors hate to pick between their beautiful children, but you got to pick one sometimes. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Yeah, we'll definitely do it again in the future. Awesome. Look forward to it.