The Ricochet Podcast - Later, Kevin

Episode Date: October 8, 2015

It’s not often we get the chance to cover breaking news on the Ricochet Podcast, but as we were recording the show this morning, the news that Kevin McCarthy was dropping out of the race for Speaker came across the series of tubes and our team provides instant commentary that you can use in the office, on the Stair Master, walking the dog, or where ever it is that you listen to the show (tell us... Source

Hello, everyone. I'm not going to get, I don't know what's going to happen here. I don't have any information on that. They don't understand what you're talking about. And that's going to prove to be disastrous. And what it means is that the people don't want socialism. They want more conservatism. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. I'm James Lilacs. The issue of the day, McCarthy. Stay, go, hero. We'll talk with Bill Kristol and Todd Lindberg. Let's have ourselves a podcast. There you go again. Yes, welcome to this, the Ricochet Podcast, number 277,

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possibly fathom, you fell away from the community. Well, go to Ricochet.com slash membership and use the coupon code rejoin and you'll get two months for free. Now, podcast listeners, you'll get 30 free days of Ricochet if you go to Ricochet.com slash membership and use the coupon code join. So, see, we got you covered. Join and rejoin. And why do you want to do this? Because Ricochet is the best place on the web for center-right conversation. It's a civil place, as you well know if you've looked at the comments.

Oh, we can throw some hammers, elbows can be poked into ribs, but it's one place where you can go that isn't infested by all the trolls that multiply by the millions under the bridges of the Internet and swarm onto the shores and the banks. So help keep Ricochet alive. And that is by joining or rejoining. Peter, hello. Welcome to the podcast. You founder type person, you. And while we're waiting for Rob to join us here, let me ask you this. Kevin McCarthy made a statement about Benghazi and getting some flack for it. Gowdy's pushing back at him. And what I find interesting is some of the defenders of Gowdy had said, well, he may not be the best at explaining, you know, finding the right words, but he's great for all these other reasons.

Does the right, does the GOP at this point, can they afford not to have a guy who is able to make points and doesn't make you wince or wince anticipatorily when he begins to speak? We could probably – the GOP could probably live with a little wincing. The difficulty is that what Kevin McCarthy did is much, much worse than merely making people wince. He implied, he didn't imply, he said that the purpose of the Benghazi investigation was not to provide information to the American people, not to uncover what actually happened in Benghazi as a matter of record for this great democracy in which we live, not to attempt to see that some justice was done to the Americans who were killed in Benghazi, but that the purpose of the Benghazi investigation was to bring down Hillary Clinton's poll numbers. It was an incredibly foolish thing to say. And for him to say that right at the get-go, what was it, two or three days after Speaker Boehner announced that he would be resigning at the end of this month is just so people will be sent. The members of the House GOP will be saying to themselves, how often is he going to do that?

How many more of those do we have to put up with? Hillary Clinton has already cut campaign tape using Kevin McCarthy, the man who wants to be the next speaker of the house, using his own unbelievably foolish words against him. So this is a serious problem because Kevin McCarthy is capable of great foolishness. He's a wonderfully likable guy. He's tactically very gifted. Everybody says that. I feel it myself. I interviewed him on Uncommon Knowledge last year. But he's capable of just gigantic, serious, serious gaffes. And on the other hand, there's nobody willing to run against him who seems capable of garnering the support of

more than a couple of dozen members of the House, and you need 218 votes. So, James, we shall see. Well, let's get that Washington insider Rob Long on the line. He's got all kinds of direct lines into what's going on in the cloak rooms of D.C. But not into the internet apparently, although I do have it now. No, I agree with Peter. Look, what we need in that position is a really, really smart, persuasive communicator. We need our own speaker Marco Rubio. That's what we need.

And Kevin McCarthy ain't it? Well, there's no need apparently to expand on that idea. But he's going to be it. So does this mean that we're going to have to, again, suffer through another stumble-tongued person who may be beloved in the industry itself, but to the rest of the people outside there is a baffling spokesman, an inconceivable – Well, yeah. I mean but luckily we don't have to worry about it too much because the party right now has no leader.

But what we hope is that the party will have a leader and that leader will be the president. And so having a technical apparatchik in the house delivering votes, essentially a glorified whip as speaker of the house if it's the same party as the white house would be a good thing that's what that's that's what the that's what a republican president will need is a uh is a glorified whip as speaker not at that point someone like uh you know someone grand and communicate in a communication expert like newt gingrich or uh or somebody like that is a liability. You don't want two presidents on either end of Pennsylvania Avenue. You just want one.

So the Republican president who's elected in 2016 is going to want a technician in that office, I suspect. Right. And if – again, I don't have any – well, let's get to Bill Kristol. When he comes out, we'll ask Bill this question. Bill will know. Bill is an outsider's insider, so to speak. But if Kevin McCarthy is smart, and he is smart, right now what he's saying in these huddled groups of members of the Republican caucus in the House is, look, fellas, elect me. I won't do it again. And as a matter of fact, I'm going to limit my public appearances to press conferences that deal with legislation, what we're sending before what committee.

The guys who are going to be the face of the party are going to be Paul Ryan, Trey Gowdy, and he'll name two or three others, get their support, wrap it up, and then genuinely remain modest and very circumspect about how often he goes in front of the camera. Well, we'll see. I wish that the whip was actually taken literally, that the guy was striding around with a wet piece of leather. But of course, that's the House of Lords in the back room. I just love the way that Rob so casually said, we have a Republican president. We can, as if, as if, as if, right now,

it's just a dream, it's just a hope, and we've got absolutely no clue as to whether or not that's going to happen. I mean, if it's Trump. Oh, we'll ask Bill about that in a second. But before we ask Bill about that, I have to tell you that Harry's. No, we've with with this many sponsors, with this many guests, no time for segues. I believe that was a Broadway play in the 1950s. You know about Harry's, don't you?

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Just a little segue. Just something. There's got to be a segue. He can't go cultured. How can there not be a segue? This is cruel, James. It's cruel. I don't know what I'm going to do.

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That's H-A-R-R-Y-S.com coupon code Ricochet at checkout for $5 off and start shaving smarter today. Speaking of smarter, let's go to one of those Beltway insiders who's been so long marinating inside the K Street corridor that he's lost touch completely with America. And as an example of everything that's wrong, and that's why we got Trump.

So we welcome back to the podcast, our good old friend, Bill Kristol. Hey. Hey, thanks for the flattering introduction. Just anticipating the first couple of columns. I've lost touch not just with the American public. I've just lost touch with reality altogether, you know? We were talking about Kevin McCarthy before you came on. And what's the scuttlebutt now with the speaker's race?

And second question, does America really care about this, or is this as inside, inside, in the dugout baseball as you can get? Pressing inside baseball in my opinion, because he's a nice guy, but no one, I don't know that he's really the best guy to be speaker. In fact, I don't think there are many members of the house who are better qualified to be the fate. It's an important job. And so let's realign to the residency, you know, senior faith to the Republican party, to the, to the fate. It's an important job. It's on the three-year line for the presidency. It follows the most senior fate

of the Republican Party to the country, while the candidates argue. And they got rid of Boehner, which maybe it was time for that, but now they're replacing, honestly, Boehner with his lieutenant

who really isn't as impressive as Boehner. I assume he will... I don't know if he'll win or not. You know, he'll win this vote today. Again, the majority will be able to get sort of an 18 on the floor. The whole spectacle, I think, will not be very good of congressional Republicans over the next few weeks and months.

It will help the outsiders even more in the presidential race. It will be very hard just for the straight face to say, hey, you know what? Having really been in Washington, having been a senator or a congressman, or even having been a governor, that's what we need more of in the presidency. Bill, Peter here. The Freedom Caucus, 40 or so members of the Republican caucus in the House, have grouped themselves into what they're calling the Freedom Caucus. And they're the ones who are getting the blame, not taking it, but getting the blame in the press. It's the Freedom Caucus that brought down Boehner. It's only fewer than four dozen members of a body of 435 members. My question to you is, in the last few years, keeping pressure on Boehner, by the way, as far

as I can tell, it is correct. They're the ones who did make his life so unlivable that he finally decided to chuck it all in. And they're the ones who may make the election of Kevin McCarthy difficult. But over the last couple of years, in your judgment, have they done any good, more good than harm or unambiguously more harm than good? This is the whole question about the Tea Party versus the moderates. How much damage has the Tea Party done would be the way the mainstream media couches it? How do you see it? On the other side of that, more good than harm,

which isn't to say that technically they don't make mistakes. And look, they're not all united all the time. If Jim Jordan were to get the chairman of the Freedom Caucus in the House for a run for Speaker, I would super enthusiastically support him. I don't know that he couldn't win it consistently. A lot of moderates are quite where he is on all these issues, but respect him tremendously for various reasons, and good reasons, and personal reasons, and other reasons he's not running for Speaker.

Others who I think would be very impressive aren't running for Speaker. Trey Gowdy, the chairman of the Gowdy Committee, people like Mac Thornberry, the chairman of our House Armed Services Committee, Paul Ryan. And these guys all have other things that they think it's important to do. And no one gets a tough job being Speaker. But as a result, we're not going to get a great outcome, I suspect, out of this particular round. Having said all that, I would prefer the turmoil, the challenges to the establishment, the holding aloft of conservative views, even if they're sometimes not always articulately expressed or tactically

advanced in the most clever way. I still think that's better than just letting a Republican establishment trot down the path they like to tread down. And I think that's not been a very productive path. And so I'm pro-Federal Caucus on that. And in the Senate, same question about Ted Cruz. There was an exultant piece the other day where I can't remember, I think it was the New York Times,

but it may just have been one of the so-called analysts' blogs. There's no difference between a reporter and an analyst and a pundit at the New York Times anymore, as you know. In any event, it was an exultant piece talking about how his colleagues in the Republican caucus in the Senate had finally figured out what to do with Ted Cruz, which was to isolate and ignore him. And that day he had returned from the campaign trail

running for president to give a long, tedious speech to an almost empty Senate chamber. At last, they were figuring out that they needed to ignore Ted Cruz. Has Ted Cruz done more harm than good, or the other way around? No, I think on the whole, more good than harm. I think the shutdown, he had unrealistic expectations of what his colleagues would support, so that ended up not working out great. I don't think it did any great damage, on the other hand, to either the country or to the Republican Party in 2014. Again, I wouldn't agree with all the tactics and all the kind of manner with which he's done things.

Well, look at the Republican primary electorate from the day four. I don't see them supporting a lot of establishment governors and senators very enthusiastically. I mean, people, you know, some of those things, the establishment types want to console themselves with the fact that Jeb Bush is at 6% and, you know, Christie and Kasich are at 3%. And all their conventional wisdom about how it's time for a governor who's sober and sound to be leading the party. And all that's totally out the window. And we have Trump, Carson, Fiorina, and Rubio, the one semi-establishment guy now, even though he was a Tea Party guy in 2009, 2010,

VP of the establishment candidate. Think about that. Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn supported Charlie Crist in 2009. That tells you everything you have to know about this. When people criticize the Tea Party and the conservatives and the rabble-rabblers and the insurgents, let's just talk about who in this palace thinks Charlie Crist would have been a really good revolver for Saturday Night Live. Right. Hey Bill, it's Rob Long here.

So why isn't and this is, we got another we have a member in the chat room, man with an axe asked a question I want to know. Why isn't Marco Rubio soaring? He seems to have all of it. He's articulate. He's smart.

He answers the questions. He has Tea Party cred. He can say, listen, the establishment tried to knock me down and I stood up to them. He's young. He's Latin. I mean, why isn't he being carried around on our shoulders right now? I think he is

gaining. He's gone, which is in which I look at the last two months. The first debate was a little bit too long ago on August 6th. Rubio was at 5% and he's at 10% now. So if you read it in cards and absorb the most, Rubio has gone up and pretty much Trump's been so stable, actually went up and then back down after August 6th. And that was where he was then. And the others have all gone down, obviously.

Walker's out of the race. Bush has gone down. So Rubio's out of the race, Bush's gone down. So Rubio's had a good couple of months. I think the struck in New York, I've talked to a lot of sort of Republican types here. There are some Republicans in New York, more donor types, obviously, but some are quite conservative. Many of them very favorable to Rubio, and I would say everyone likes him, everyone respects him. Everyone respects him. Has he quite shown the skill, the nerve

to be president? I think that's the question. I don't know how you show it exactly, honestly. It's an unfair challenge. He's being a good senator. He's good in the debate. I mean, he can't make himself 10 years older, magically. But somehow I think a moment where Rubio

shows a kind of toughness, a little more like a little touch of feariorina would not hurt with Rubio. But I think he has a pretty good chance to be the nominee. He and Fiorina, if I had to bet right now, I'd bet on one of the other of them. And I think he's such a bad pick at Rubio, Fiorina, or Fiorina, Rubio. I was at a dinner last night for Jay Nordlinger's book party. And there was at dinner afterwards with a bunch of you know movement guys sitting around and that was the conclusion it was uh

rubio fiorina or fiorina rubio but uh there were some heavy hitters there not donors just sort of pundits and historians and writers and they said they said rubio fiorina seems to them like a winner so if you're one of the zillions of zillionaires who gave pots of money – Given that, of course. Yeah. The ticket is doomed. Given that, it won't happen. You're taking it back.

This year has been so crazy. Okay, but if you're one of the zillion zillionaires who gave pots of money to Jeb Bush and he still got tons of it in his Right to Rise pack. What are you doing right now? What are you saying right now? Well, I'd be waiting a few more weeks to see whether he can sort of get some momentum. He's not an able guy, and maybe as he reintroduces himself to the public as a Republican primary electorate, he can begin to take off. There's a kind of solidity there that people might respect. But I am a little stunned.

I really don't think this is a hostile way. Just analytically, I'd say you've got to be stunned at how weak he has been as a candidate or how weak people think he has been. I'm not making a judgment here. I'm just sort of saying people do not seem to be responsible at all. I mean, apparently he's gone down the most. Started off at the high teens. Now he's limited to single digits. He doesn't seem to be resonating.

He got some ads up there in some of these early days. It doesn't seem to be working. On the other hand, honestly, this is such a crazy year. I think all bets are off. People will bounce around. The biggest mistake people can make now is think, boy, it's been a crazy six or eight months. Who would have expected this? Trump, Carson, Fiorina, they made

a lot of money betting on that trifecta. One, two, three in the polls eight months ago. Who would have expected this? Bernie Sanders at 25%. Blah, blah, blah. And then the typical thing that Edwin does, and I found that following for the trap too, is, from now on it's going to get kind of normal. From now on,

it's kind of, well, Rubio looks pretty good, Juniper looks good, the legislature's going to be, and of course that's not really the way the world often works. Sometimes it does. You get kind of reversed into normalcy, but sometimes, you know what, if you're in a crazy year, maybe it stays crazy. The public is unhappy. The country's on the wrong track. They correctly sense

the public that we need big changes, and they're sort of not quite happy with what anyone's really been able to propose so far. So I just think, you know, it could be pretty amazing next few months. And it does seem like the longer some of the long shots stay in, the more comfortable we get with the idea of their presidency, right? I mean, you know, six months ago, four months ago, no one took Carly Fiorina's actual chances seriously. I mean, able person, you could have respected her, all sorts of things. But the longer she stays in, the more viable she gets in a sort of a weird, hard to sort of manage, hard to sort of put your finger on it way.

And is that happening? I mean, all jokes aside, is that happening with Trump? It's happening with all of them. I totally agree with that. It's a very important point that people haven't probably thought of. I saw two different Republican donor activists, thoughtful individual types. I mean, people around the board, concern of think tanks and stuff like that. They would have said, as you were just saying,

and I would have said four or six months ago, come on, the last person who hasn't had an election from office who was nominated for president was Eisenhower. He had kind of an important job before that in the public sphere. You have to go way back to find people who were nominated and who hadn't had an election from office. It's not going to happen, ultimately. One of these people told me,

he was in quantity for Fiorina. The other one in this really kind of forwarded, said if he had been elected, now he might go to Ben Carson. And this person isn't, you know, the normal profile of Carson supporter. So that tells me that something that we all thought was unimaginable eight months ago,

extremely unlikely three or four months ago, extremely unlikely three or four months ago, is now in many people's minds, you know what, if they do a good job, if they make the case, I'll be for it. I don't think that the premium you get, you know, for having been elected senator or governor counts from much anymore. And that does mean that it's a wide open race on the Republican side. And certainly, I think Democrats who six months ago thought, well, I guess Bernie Sanders might be it. Eight months ago, it was Martin O'Malley

who did the main challenge for Hillary. Four months ago, it was, gee, Sanders might be kind of an interesting boutique kind of candidate here, Gene McCarthy, you know, kind of interesting. But of course, I mean, he can't really be the nominee. I don't know. I don't know today that Bernie Sanders

can't be the Democratic nominee. Yeah, I mean, he seems to be running as if he's going to win, and that's exactly what – that's the playbook that Barack Obama had in 2007, 2008, and it really worked. One last question, though, about Jeb, because I think it's – the Jeb partisans I know, the Jeb supporters I know – You know Jeb partisans? Yeah, Jeb supporters. People who are really excited. Yes. And their point is he is the most effective conservative governor and was running and certainly more conservative than any other governor currently running.

He articulates conservative values really well. He has a great record to run on from Florida. He – the idea that he's some kind of rhino is unfair. But doesn't he seem – because of his name and because of just the fact that he's been in politics – seem to represent, whether fairly or unfairly, just the old way? And he's carrying all that baggage that the Republican primary voter wants to change. He's the channel they're trying to get rid of, and it doesn't really matter if Jeb Bush spends the next $100 million reintroducing himself to that public, reintroducing himself to the primary voter. Here's how conservative I've been. Here's my fantastic record in Florida. He's just yesterday. Well, I think he is as long,

I mean, I think you put it there. He can't be introduced as something that's a fear that's assertive. I didn't. Here's what I did in Florida. If the only way you can trump a negative kind of view

of I want to make a change, I'm bored with the channel, I'm bored with the movie, you know, franchise, whatever you want to, whatever metaphor we want to use here is, hey, here's what I'm want to, whatever metaphor we want to use here is,

Hey, here's what I'm going to do. And this is really dramatic. And you may be a little surprised that I'm the guy that's going to do this, but I'm actually the guy who's going to fundamentally change the following five aspects of the way the federal government works. I can't tell you one, one would have, you know, one, if you've watched the Bush campaign so far, you just really come away with that impression. So they need to, I oppression so they need to and i'm going to go off at this point it wouldn't be needed to be your pivot

for the future and i think all this we would be taking a common work in certain you think you think i would remind them governor florida rather pretty conservative article behind a pretty good governor for that week eight years ago and what are you doing about the cup you have to sense of urgency in terms of the magnitude of the changes that need to be made? That's what Trump, Carson, Fiorina, whatever their other deficiencies, have a sense that things are really on the wrong track,

and I'm going to go in and radically change things. Trump doesn't give you much detail. Carson doesn't give you much detail. Fiorina a little more, I would say, but she still needs to flesh a lot of things out. But I think that's the one thing they have. Rubio has some of that. Cruz, who in a way you'd expect to have more of that, because he is such a

strong, ideological conservative. I think somehow he has the right to put the pieces together. So he's sort of like, check every box that conservatives read in. And I do, mostly. Almost all of them, really. But somehow it's like, is there an overall vision, or is he going to go and change 19 things

that will put everything in a more conservative direction? But is there a real sense of sort of zipping it up almost and restarting parts of the government? And that, I think, is where Peter Rubin has an opportunity. I do think Rubio, if he can pivot and be a little bolder, could pull it off. Bill, Peter here. Last question.

You served in the George H.W. Bush White House as chief of staff to then Vice President Dan Quayle. As you know, we've known each other since those days. I served in the Reagan administration. Over and over again, I hear Rick Bruckheiser, I think, is the one who famously coined this phrase, the presidency of the United States is not an entry-level position. And I find myself thinking, why not? I watched Reagan for six years. You worked in a White House at a high level and were able to watch a president, if you are capable of thinking through your position clearly on the issues, if you are capable of articulating your position and willing to work hard in

doing so, working the phones to members of Congress, working the press and giving speeches and bringing along the American people, and you surround yourself with intelligent people, you can do the job. That's my view. There is no reason in principle why a Ben Carson or a Carly Fiorina or a Donald Trump couldn't be president. Am I right or wrong? I think you're mostly right. I think you're right in principle.

And I would just say in practice, most people have a sort of sensible default that all things equal kind of refers to someone who's been a governor or a senator or has been involved I would just say in practice, most people have a sort of sensible default that all things equal. You kind of prefer someone who's been a governor or a senator or has been involved in public life a lot. Just like in the baseball playoffs, right? It all seems equal. You prefer a 28-year-old, excellent starting pitcher who's pitched in one or two playoffs before to take them out in the first game. But you know what? If you have a great 21 or 22-year-old who has no experience,

you could do pretty well in that picture, right? Especially if the 28-year-olds and the 34-year-olds look kind of tired and they were hit hard the last couple of times out, and they don't seem to have much of a sense of how they should change their approach to make the outcome better. And I think that's kind of where we are. So I think voters can say all things equal. I prefer someone with some

experience, but all things aren't equal. And the people with experience don't have much to say. That, to me, is the lesson of Walker. It's not like people turned against Scott Walker. If you ask a Republican primary voter, if they think he's a good governor of Wisconsin, they probably would respect him. You didn't see that many were saying about what he would do

nationally. Well, Bill, we understand the weekly standard. Aren't you guys moving or have you moved? We want to get as insider-y here as possible. We're moving in a couple of months. We're moving too far. We don't like to go too far outside of the... We move very minutely within the Beltway to keep my personal status.

You were kind of missing that at the beginning of the show. Right. Exactly, right. So you're close enough to your... Washington president, and that's what, so we're staying, we're staying safely

inside the Beltway, you know? Right. I mean, if you moved a block outside, nobody would exchange your calls, nobody would return any of your messages, and it would, but on the other hand,

you'd have a strange new respect, I think, from the establishment press as being outside. Right. We all want that strange new respect from the uh from the media thank you very much once again sir for joining us in the podcast we'll see you down the road when uh we're talking about the uh the much surprise to everybody's jindal biden matchup of 2016 totally okay thanks bill thanks bill well it's possible it could happen. I mean, stranger things can happen.

It's not going to happen, though. The Biden thing is interesting, though, because what I'm waiting for actually is if Joe Biden does go into the race, is we're going to have a wonderful example of how to take his personality and match it to a strategy that connects with America. Because here you have a guy who's known in a lot of photographs for putting his hands on people's shoulders, leaning in really close. So I can just imagine right now you get political emails from people and they have that little false tone of authenticity and just between you and me. I'm just waiting for something from Joe Biden so creepy that it actually makes you want to douse yourself in Purell afterwards because I don't know. Everyone loves crazy old Uncle Joe, but he gives me the raging creeps. Frankly, I'd black hole the guy if I wasn't in the business of having to read what they meant.

What do you mean by black hole? Well. Oh, okay. Segway. Okay. Just had to give you something. I feel better.

Just a little, just a little. It's all I need. Just a little, a little lady cracker in a fan, in a cupcake, a sane box. Now, you know,

we've been talking about this for a little while here. Rob's a sane box member. Peter's a sane box member. I am. I am. I love. And all of us have found our little, our lives are a lot easier because, well, you know what happens. Some of the best conversations

you'll have happen through email, right? You know, you're talking to a friend and they share some thoughts and you're right back with stuff of your own. And before you know it, you've got, oh, you've got a new fan, you've got a new friend, you've got a new customer, maybe all the above, and maybe you've got some new ideas to share. But unfortunately, the more you talk, the emails become a hundred and five hundred. And then of maybe you've got some new ideas to share. But unfortunately, the more you talk, the emails become 100 and 500, and then, of course, you've got the email box that everybody has, which is thousands of messages compacting down and down and down into these sort of stratified layers.

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I got more than that, frankly. That's more time you can spend engaging your audience or just sending emails back to the people that you want to talk to. I use it because, well, it's fun to train it, frankly. You have to go through these little things. You don't have to, but you're dragging things you never want to hear again. I get mail from Spanish hotels. I have no idea why. Spanish hotels are having a 25%.

And when I drag that thing to the black hole box, I never get an email from that place again. Ever. Ever. So, try it yourself. What the heck? Two free weeks of SaneBox. Visit SaneBox.com slash Ricochet to start your trial. No credit card needed.

After that, Ricochet listeners get $25 off a membership, which is, I might add, the deepest discount you will find anywhere in the known universe. Again, it's S-A-N-E-B-O-X slash Ricochet. And do so to thank them for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Moving right along, as we say, we've got Todd Lindberg. Todd's the research fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, and he's got a new book. It's called The Heroic Heart, Greatness, Ancient and Modern. As it seems, there's more greatness in the ancient than there happens to be in the modern.

Well, let's ask him about that. Welcome to the podcast, sir. Hello there. Welcome. Tell us about your book. You wrote, and let me just quote here, just off the top of my head from memory, of course, from the beginning of recorded history, heroism has been most often associated with prowess on the field of battle. Heroes excelled by slaying their enemies and conquering their neighbors.

Our modern-day warriors have no less fighting spirit than their counterparts from centuries past, but their fight today is not to conquer the world in the manner of Alexander the Great. Whatever their sense of personal ambition, the reason they fight is to defend their country from harm. They fight for us, not for territory or glory. That's good and that's bad. That's mostly good. It's mostly bad. A mixture of all of the above. Expand on that, if you will. Well, I think it's all to the good. You know, we don't really have a place in our way of doing business for Achilles, that kind of character, the marauding, self-important man of great superiority to others who asserts this on the battlefield. It's just not part of the modern spirit. We live in democratic and egalitarian

societies, and that kind of character is frankly a little bit on the unwelcome side, a rather disruptive force I think. But on the other hand, the rap against modernity has always been that it just leveled everybody off. Maybe there's a little bit of democracy. Maybe you have individual rights. Maybe you got good cable TV, all that good stuff. But you chopped off the higher heights of human achievement that were possible. That's the Achilles type. Well, I don't think that's right, actually. It's true that we don't want Achilles, but we do have people and we do need people who are willing to take on the same kinds of risks. Certainly our warriors, certainly

the 9-11 firefighters, but they don't do it in order to assert a claim of superiority over others. They do it for others, ultimately, in some instances, you know, to give their own lives for others. And that is the kind of heroism that I think distinguishes modern society, our society. Todd, Peter here. I'm just here. Hang on one second, because there's something I want to read to you. Yes. And I think, oh, bugger, hang on one. Ah, yes, yes, yes. Orson Welles in The Third Man, he's playing Harry Lyme. In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias, they had war. You know where I'm going.

In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed. But they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love., Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love. They had 500 years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. It's a withering, withering statement. And it's a very good statement of the indictment of the modern world. And you want to talk back to Orson Welles. Go ahead. How would you play the rest of that scene? Here's the deal, Orson. In the first place, have a glass of wine and calm down.

In the second place, what we have is a warrior class that is probably second to none in the world. These are the people who have been fighting our wars for quite some time. They're very good at it. What they don't have in mind is scenarios like the colonel, I mean the general in the seven days in May taking over the place. There's nothing wrong with a society that honors and recognizes high standards of achievement, but at the same time retains its democratic character. And that's where I think Wells is way wrong.

As for Michelangelo, yeah, I will grant that American society is not currently in possession of its Michelangelo. But in the scheme of things, I'm not entirely sure that that is because we are democratic and egalitarian in New York. I got a question here. I mean, Caesarism. There is something really attractive about Caesarism, right? The general who comes back and can clean the stables and fix things up and comes back and joins politics. We didn't have one with Eisenhower, but we certainly hear – we hear people in business who have been successful in business saying, I want to – I'll be president and I'll clean everything up and I can use my skills, which are kind of militaristic skills in business, to clean up politics. We heard when those three guys on the train in France tackled and subdued that attacker, there were people in here saying, one of those guys should run for senator. They have the right stuff. I mean what's wrong with that? Well, I think in a way nothing is wrong with that as long as you're willing to try your hand by democratic means at being president or being senator or being whatever you want.

It's a free country. There's a book, American Caesar, about MacArthur, and, you know, he might have been a fairly potentially dangerous character in his unwillingness to bend readily to our ideas about civilian control of the military. But even there, you know, the effect of that was not the military takeover of the United States of America. The effect of that was MacArthur getting cashiered. And even when Stan McChrystal – when people in the company of Stan McChrystal mouth off in a disrespectful way of people close to – of high officials, not directly the president, he has to step down as a result of that. That is – and by the way, that wasn't just liberals who said he – that that was questionable conduct on his part. Now, I thought he was a great general, but you got to kind of watch it.

The reforms must be complied with. Well, so who's the danger here? Is the danger the military hero who succumbs to that kind of Caesarism or is the danger, which I'm giving it away i think it's about to say is the is the danger of the people who who want that well i think who are willing to give up their willing to give up their freedom i think for the next caesar i think it would be the uh i think it would be more the latter, but you would have to have somebody who would be willing to exploit that appetite on the part of the public. Somebody who would be willing to present himself as just a kind of a regular guy but one who's got a unique capability in this particular moment to save us. So this character would present himself, I think, as a kind of saving

hero. That would, you know, only I can get us through this. The anti-George Washington, right? Yes, that's exactly right. And, you know, we are at considerable, you know, we're not above the risk of falling for that. I mean, I think it would be arrogant in the extreme to assume. I mean, imagine, say, a decade of no economic growth in this country and increasing crime rates and gradual withdrawal of the rich into their little sort of enclaves of relative safety. And then along comes somebody who says, you know, I can fix this. I have some ideas and some gifts. And no, I can fix this. You know, I can – I have some ideas and some gifts. And no, I'm not actually drawing an analogy to Trump at this present moment. But, I mean, I think, you know, to some degree there is, you know, there is an appetite.

There's always a kind of an appetite for this kind of cleansing presence. But the question is, does it ever become a majority appetite? Yes. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead, James. Well, I had a last question. Oh, well, then let me get in the next to last question. The next to last question, really quickly, Democrats and Republicans, Democrats first, Hillary, Joe Biden, let's include him. Bernie Sanders, let's exclude Martin O'Malley because he's in, what, decimal point digits in the polls. So Bernie Sanders, Hillary, and Joe Biden. Who is the – and I force you to pretend that one of them – who is the least non-heroic?

How about if I put it that way? Who is the least non-heroic? Who's the most heroic? You're not giving me Jim Webb as an option. No, no, no. That's too easy. Much too easy. I figured you'd say that.

The least non-heroic, I think – well, obviously we're answering this question in a kind of formal sense. We're not talking so much about the content of the heroism, whether we agree or disagree with it. Bernie Sanders has, in fact, articulated a vision for America of some consistency for some time. It's certainly not my vision, but he has persevered and succeeded in the promotion of it. So I think I'm going to go with Bernie. Also with Bernie Sanders, there's a sense of sacrifice, isn't there? The determination, his willingness to be an outsider. Maybe this is all his self presentation, I guess, but he's never made any money. He just cares about the cause. Okay, got it. And then obviously on the Republican side, who? On the Republican side, yeah,

we were going to get to that one too, weren't we? You absolutely knew it was coming. Yeah. You know, I'm stalling here while I try to figure out where I want to come down. Let's make it easier. Remove Trump from the equation. Yeah. Well, it's clear, by the way, I think, that when Trump looks in the mirror, he sees a hero looking back at him. Right. I mean, I think Trump, if he thought about the Trojan War, would have thought that if he had been there, it wouldn't have taken 10 years to win the damn thing. But of the current – I think when you – yeah, wow.

This is really challenging. I appreciate the – It's not supposed to take that long. Well, I'm just kind of ticking down. That's a problem. That's an RNC problem to be solved I think. Maybe that. For some reason I can't get John McCain out of my mind but he isn't running obviously.

Well, there are so many quotes and so many people in your book. You've got Cicero. You've got Aristotle. You've got Mowgli from The Jungle Book. And I'm told that you have a quote in there from Spider-Man, and we all know what that quote is. And I think we can paraphrase it in the Trump age, with great hair comes great responsibility. Thank you very much, sir, for being with us today.

The book is The Heroic Heart, Greatness, Ancient and Modern. Thank you, Todd. Thanks. He mentioned Harry Lyme. Now, that's the only quote that anybody ever gets out of Harry Lyme. Well, what people don't realize is that the third man isn't all there is, actually, to the Harry Lyme story. A couple of years after the movie The Third Man,

they made a radio show with about 50, 60 episodes in which Harry, played by Orson Welles, slums his way around Europe in this demi-monde of Central European places with dukes and the like performing various grafts. Yes, and acting in a vaguely almost heroic fashion from time to time. He had his standards. He had his morals. And he really shaded the character an awful lot more than you might expect. And it's quite delightful. Wells did a lot of radio. And towards the end, he was doing some bad, regrettable radio up. I'll get out of the way. If so, it is so well disguised. Yeah, it's good, actually. I want to Google it. Yeah, I want to listen to those

and use them as podcasts. Is that downloadable, James? You know all of this stuff. How do you know so much? Well, you can probably find it at archive.org if you search for The Lives of Harry Lyme. And that's what it was. It ran for about two series or so, and it's quite delightful.

But, you know, how do I know all this stuff? I don't know. It's just what interests me, I pay attention to and try to find out a little bit more about it. And a lot of people who listen to the Ricochet podcast are like that. And that's why you are the ideal audience for the great courses. Now, whether or not they have anything on Harry Lyme, I can't say. But do they have something about Vienna? Do they have something about the culture of Vienna?

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The special price of $9.95 is only available for a limited time, so order today. Go to thegreatcourses.com slash ricochet. That's thegreatcourses.com slash ricochet. And at this point, gentlemen, I think we should recut the beginning of the show. Let me start out right there. Well, Kevin McCarthy's out. I think I saw that coming. Matter of fact, I called it in the comments section a little while ago in a ricochet. Lyle and Peter were disagreeing and they said he was in for the duration, but I think I'm vindicated here. So let's restart. Boy, breaking news just blows apart everything. But now, in hindsight, isn't what we were saying doubt-wise tremendously relevant?

Well, here's what Kevin McCarthy told Republicans this morning at a meeting. He said, quote, I am not the one at this time, meaning to run, because he didn't think he was going to get the 218 votes. So what it means is that we weren't the only ones thinking, hey, this is not the guy we want front and center, camera center. We want somebody else. Now, Paul Ryan says he's not in it, and a bunch of other people say they're not in it, but who knows? Who knows? The pressure on Paul Ryan will start now. It'll be intense. By tomorrow at noon, he'll announce for speaker. Why not make a prediction?

Why not? Why not? What about Daniel Webster? Well, nothing wrong with Daniel Webster. Love the name, of course. Samuel Clemens is behind this. I mean, yeah. Right.

But nobody could say to Daniel Webster, as they will be saying to Paul Ryan right now, you're the only person with national standing. You ran for vice president on the republican ticket you are the only person in this moment of disarray in the house of representatives who can unite the republicans and keep us together as we oppose obama through the rest of this term you must do it it's your nobody can say that to daniel webster he's one of half a dozen who would be new to the country who would have to be introduced to the country. Paul Ryan commands everybody's respect, and he has national standing. Yeah, and he's done it.

Yeah, he's right. He's been tested. He's been in front of those cameras. He kind of knows how to do it. Yeah, he's the perfect choice. I think he doesn't want that job because he doesn't want to run for something larger from that job. But I think as we now know, that job is like every other job now in politics. You don't have it anymore for 20 years.

Those lions of the house who have that 20-year or 25-year – I mean how long was Tip O'Neill's speaker? A thousand years? I mean since the earth was lava. They just don't – it just doesn't last that way anymore. Thank god. I think it's a good thing, and I think people are starting to see that these things are – they're not – you're not entombed in that job anymore the way you used to be. So if you're an ambitious young man, as we know that Paul Ryan is, it's not a bad move. Well, I think this is good news.

I think it is. I mean, we want somebody who can clearly articulate exactly what the party is doing and why they're doing what they're doing to the – and do so in short and sharp enough bites so that when it makes it through the media filter – no, Rob, I'm not going to complain about the media. No, but I know what you mean. I know exactly what you mean. You're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. You only get 30 seconds, so make those 30 seconds count. Especially when you have a willful batch of prevaricators on the other side. The Jeb Bush stuff happens comment is – I mean if that didn't give the game away for an awful lot of people, that lie was all New Yorker, which prides itself pompously, scrupulously on getting all the facts right. They have these teams of fact-checkers.

They always talk about how fact-based they are, and this thing – well, look. I don't think it hurt Jeb Bush in the party. We already talked about it. I Jeb Bush in the party. We already talked about it. I think he's in real trouble. But if anything, maybe it helped him. He's the right kind of enemy anyway. We had a piece in our paper the other day to go to another issue in the news, which was a cri de coeur from somebody about the need to finally do something about guns, that this will be the time when we finally realize that we have to do something. And, you know, Charles C.W. Cook last week when he was on Morning Joe was very kindly asking his interlocutor what they would do.

And they really can't come up with anything. Well, this guy came up with something, and that is to ban handguns and semi-automatics, okay, and to confiscate them whenever they come up. And then that's the start. And that if we don't do this, the blood of the next innocence will be on our hands. Right. So that, as you might expect, I think, in the comment section of our newspaper,

I believe there were 57,000 comments within an hour and a half. And to be stunningly, no new arguments were advanced. Did this then again just gutter out as it always does, the president having politicized it to his preferences and demonized the other side and on we go. Or is this going to drag on for another week or so before we start paying attention to, I don't know, the fact that we're the Russians are buzzing our jets in positions in Syria? Well, I think what happens. OK, Peter. No, no, no, no. I was perfectly happy to have you on this one. Well, I think what happens is you – Charlie did was ask for people to make specific recommendations, which was a jujitsu move because he knows they're either going to suggest things that are already part of the law. So you already – so you see people saying things, well, we've got to close the gun show loophole. Well, there isn't one. There isn't a gun show loophole.

It doesn't exist. So we have that background. We already have all that stuff. So what you really are trying to do is to maneuver your opponent into saying what they really want, which is the confiscation of all firearms. And that's the one thing they don't want to say. So that's why Obama says these weird bromides. On Morning Joe, it was these strange sort of large issues. I think we have a national conversation. We ought to explore issues.

He said, like what? And what you really need is you need them to say, because I want to take all those guns away. You shouldn't be allowed to have them. Because that's the only thing left. That's really the only thing left. Confiscation and banination is the heart of the progressive movement. There's a piece I have in National

Review, I think coming up today, about a couple of tweets and pieces about self-driving cars. I like the idea of self-driving cars, frankly. If I make it to be an old man, I'd like to totter into that thing and have me take me off to the soil and green place where I get to watch the movie and go to sleep. Because if you can have mobility when your license is expired, that's great. For people who can't stand, it's great. For a lot of cities, it's great. But the thing that I get in the back of my head, I know a lot of these people want self-driving cars because they can regulate where they go. It's one thing to say, we're going to have a centrally controlled system

that regulates the number of cars that can come into the inner city. I mean, New York would love that, right? Reduce the traffic congestion. But also if you have, for example, I imagine that a lot of these state, these self-driven cars are going to be owned by the state of the city because what people can afford to buy new ones, people can afford to retrofit everything they have. No. And if you can control that, you can control exactly how far out people get to live. You can say, you know, all right, you can live in the suburbs if you want, but you're going to pay X premium about it. And it's going to be built into the software. Oh, and by the way, you can only go 47 miles an hour today because India's carbon output yesterday between noon and three was 14% higher. So we have to adjust for the world's global carbon. So there's all of these wonderful ideas in there for

this. But the thing that I loved the most was a couple of pieces, one in BuzzFeed and the other a Politico. Was it Politico? One of those writers. Who wants – who is eager to ban human-driven cars. I like that. Wow. They want to ban the ability of people to get into their cars. And this is non-negotiable to them. It's just simply the way the future is going to be.

And again, I would love for the left to make this point. Yeah. They want to ban cars. Say the left to make this point. Yeah. They want to ban cars. Say what you want. Say what you want. You want to ban guns. You want to ban any kind of tobacco. You want to ban, I mean, just be honest so we can have a clear line.

You want to do all that. You want to do all that. But the first thing you say is, well, there's no way we could deport 10 million people. Right. Somehow we can collect all those guns and do all that stuff. We can't deport 10 million people. But wait, I know we're going to wrap up, but before we do, I do want to say if you're listening and you're a member or not a member, you should go to member page 6'2 in heels. Member has a post of the Ricochet members meeting at the Reagan Library in front of a picture of the, in front of the piece of

the Berlin Wall. It's a tribute to our own Peter Robinson. It's very sweet. Thank you. Well, wonderful. That's right. I saw that picture and I could tell from a distance that that probably what it was. Now I'll go back and scour the post and read it. And we also want to ask people who are in Iowa and New Hampshire, members of Ricochet, of course, we are scattered throughout the globe. Write, if you will, about the caucuses and primaries on the ground. We'd love to hear your voices. And Ricochet, of course, is the place where you can just plug yourself in and write and find a center-right community that's there to argue, discuss, encourage, but do so in a manner that is civil and doesn't frighten the horses. So if you want to join Ricochet again, that's

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The like walk around and parade that great R and let people look at you and say, I know what that means. And then conversation starts. A friendship begins. Love blooms. Who knows? Speaking of love,

we'll see you all in the comments where everybody can say, I probably go off on some other tangent that has nothing to do with what we've been talking about today, but we thank you all for listening to this, the Ricochet Podcast, and we'll see you in the comments at Ricochet 2.0. Thanks, fellas. What you say? Hit the road, Jack, and don't you come back no more, no more, no more, no more. Hit the road, Jack, and don't you come back no more. Oh, woman, oh, woman, don't treat me so mean. You're the meanest old woman that I've ever seen.

I guess if you'd say so, I'd have to pack my things and go. What'd you say? Hit the road, Jack. And don't you come back no more, no more, no more. Ricochet. Join the conversation. No money, you just ain't no good Well, I guess if you say so I'll have to pack my things and go That's right, hit the road, Jack And don't you come back no more, no more, no more, no more Hit the road, Jack

And don't you come back no more What'd you say? Hit the road, Jack And don't you come back no more, no more, no more, no more Hit the road, Jack And don't you come back no more, no more, no more, no more Hit the road, Jack And don't you come back no more Well Don't you come back no more