The Ricochet Podcast - Say It Ain't So, Joe

Episode Date: August 21, 2020

This week, Joe Biden accepts the Democratic nomination and we devote all of the opening segment to the just ended Democratic Convention. Then, this may sound a bit inside baseball (inside Ivy League baseball), but stick with it, because it has implications for cancel culture, affirmative action, and a host of other issues that stem from the way higher education is conducted in the U.S. Source

This is extremely, extremely niche. I have a dream this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. The president takes no responsibility, refuses to lead, blames others, cozies up the dictators and fans the flame of hate and division. He'll wake up every day believing the job is all about him. I'm the president and you're fake news. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lalix. Today we have talked to Victor Ashe about the Gale Corporation and Jerry Baker about campaigns, conventions, and Black Lives Matter. So let's have ourselves a podcast. I can hear you! Welcome everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast, number 609, two years into the Kamala Harris administration dealing with the wreckage of Taiwan. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm getting ahead of myself. It's Ricochet Podcast, number 509. Not that far ahead.

2020. James Lattlick's here in Minneapolis. Rob Long, who knows? And Peter Robinson in California. Rob, where are you today, peripatetic soul that you are? I'm in New York City. Okay, good. You know, I was looking the other day online at flights to New York and hotels to New York because apparently Minnesota is no longer quarantined. I was looking at a hotel that I used to stay at that I liked that was like now $500 a night, $100 a night in an absolutely premier location in a fantastic hotel.

What's the hotel? The Millennium near Times Square. Yeah. premier location in a fantastic hotel. What's the hotel? The Millennium near Times Square. And I was stunned to find that it was that steep, but we can I mean, the decline in prices had been that steep, but then again, if you're following the news, riots, disorder, COVID, everything,

it's taken its toll on the major cities. But don't worry, don't worry, because the Democrats, who speak very well, are here with a program lacking in specificity. But the general idea is they're smart, they care, and they're not that horrible man. We had perhaps you could call it the soft bigotry of Joe expectations when Mr. Biden gave his speech and everybody liked it. And the rest of it again. Say it again. The soft bigotry of Joe expectations.

That is a perfect phrase. That phrase should be, that's the phrase of the campaign, I've got to say. Well, it just occurred to me moments before we went on the air, and I said, do say that. I hope the lads will like it. So I, frankly, watched clips. I wandered in and out. i saw some of the stuff that they didn't put in prime time because it would make people shriek um i the whole idea of a virtual convention to me is absurd because it's the commune it's the great big communal show that

we love and roll our eyes at but still love because it's, I don't know, I still love the great state of Delaware. Idaho, the potato state, casts all of its delegates for the next president. I love that stuff. I love that pageantry. And what we got were people standing in front of green screens saying things. And it's like, well, of course, that's the way it is now. And your mind reels at how quickly we adapted to this virtual convention nonsense. But there you have it. First, you know, one in the pocket, RNC to go. What did you guys think of the DNC convention?

Well, it was a little bit weird. It was slickly done. I think we could say that. Ava Longoria as the hostess was good. The lighting production values, Rob can speak about that better than I, although even at that it was weird. At the end of Kamala Harris's speech, which she addressed to mostly empty, I guess it was a kind of ballroom where there were, hotel ballroom, where people were seated 10 feet apart, there was applause and she turned to a huge sort of jumbotron screen, which had a kind of mock Zoom layout with maybe 20 or 30 people as

if they represented the millions of Americans who were listening to her speech, which was okay, fine. And she sort of waves to them, and they wave back, and they're applauding excitedly. And about 10 minutes later, somebody had a clip up on YouTube in which they froze that screen and circled the people who appeared on it. And they were duplicates. There were three pictures of the same person and two pictures of another. It was a total fraud. And I don't – it was weird that they had to resort to sort of – once you realize what they've done, it seemed as crude as filling up the Circus Maximus in Rome during the Charlton Heston's ride in Ben-Hur with obviously fake

figures. So it had that quality. Joe Biden's speech, he delivered it pretty well. I thought there was a little bit of slurring of words, but he delivered it pretty well with a high energy level. So, okay, a lot of people will say he's good enough. He's not demented. He's not suffering from Alzheimer's. He's good enough. It was, if what you wanted to listen to was yard after yard of velvet, pretty well-written speech as well. What it comes down to is a fundamentally dishonest strategy. In policy, he's moved hard to the left, but he's going to try to tell the American people that he's a moderate, that he's a calming influence, that he will rise above the divisive politics of the hour, when in fact he has committed himself to very divisive policies. But the main thing, of course, was I'm not Trump. I'm not Trump. Let me tell you again, I'm not Trump. That's a bad guy. I'm a

good guy. And, you know, we'll see. That may be enough in the current moment. Last point is that we'll see what the polls say tomorrow and the day after. But in 1988, Michael Dukakis came out of the Democratic election 17 points ahead of George H.W. Bush and still lost. Going into Biden's nomination speech yesterday, there were signs that the polls were closing. There was a major poll that showed him tied with Trump in Minnesota, another poll that showed him leading Trump by only four or five points within the margin of error in Pennsylvania. Trump is not out of this yet. That's my conclusion. Rob? Yeah, no, I think that's probably, look, conventions are supposed to do two things, right? They're supposed to rally the base, right? Get everybody excited. I remember when in 1996 I went to the Republican convention in San Diego.

I was considerably younger, but I went, and I was still pretty cynical, and I left thinking, oh, man, Bob Dole's going to win this in a landslide. Because that's what a convention's supposed to do, right? Convince you, if you're already on the side, that you're going to win. And the second thing is supposed to do is to appeal to all the people who are like i don't know i don't know really i don't know um and in that sense i thought i don't know what the whole convention it was it was weird right but everything's weird now so you know the stuff that you and i miss everybody misses but

you can't really blame it i mean just wait till next week it's going to be weird um yes yes that's right that's gonna be weird too and they're gonna put in you're gonna do what the nba does or put in fake uh you know spectators they'll do all that stuff um everybody's figuring it out so there's no particular uh problem there the question really is can you win the White House if you're Joe Biden by running a, hey, I'm normal. I'm just normal. Everything's going to go back to normal. We're not going to have this incredible high wire act we always have with Trump where we don't know what he's going to tweet next or say next. Aren't you tired? Aren't you tired of that?

That's right. That's exactly what I'm saying. And that is a very, very smart way for somebody who is considerably to the left and now represents a party that's considerably to the left. That's the best way for them to run. It's good for them to have John Kasich on there. It's good for them to have Colin Powell on there. It's good for them to have all those people on there to kind of wallpaper over the fact that they're they are the defund the police reparations party um and i think i mean my i've said it before i think it's gonna work uh because i think it will work i think it will work i think a hard part the uphill for

the incumbent president is that he can't run as change he can't say don't you hate what's happening in portland or seattle elect me re- me, and I'll fix it because he's president now. What's going to be different in December? And so the non-political voters who are just kind of like, oh, whatever, you know, who are basically creating the crazy political turbulence that we're experiencing, have been experiencing the past 25 years. Those voters are saying, okay, I'm going to think about all the problems in my life and in the country, which one of those problems do I think Trump makes better?

And the answer is none. And it's an emotional question. And it's what, the reason that Trump is president is because of an emotional question. And that is kind of how the electorate works right now. And so there's a lot of uphill. I mean, I'm not saying Trump is down for the count, but it is. There's a lot of uphill for him.

He has not shown any ability, any ability ever to bring more people, to convince people who didn't like him to like him. That's a very hard thing for him to do. I agree, but I don't think that the people have to like him to like him. That's a very hard thing for him to do. I agree, but I don't think that the people have to like him to vote for him. And I think there's a lot of people who still don't like him who will vote for him because there seems to be a rather stark divide between Trump and Biden. I mean, Biden, I just see as this sort of malleable figure who will say anything, believe anything. There's nothing at the core there anymore. He's adopted this stuff, Green New Deal. Fine, whatever.

It'll get us into power. But look at it this way. Everybody forgot the economy. I mean, everybody's completely forgot that we were going absolute gangbusters. We had 7 million more jobs than we actually had people to fill. I mean, taxes went down, business came up, there was this great animal spirits released. And even though everybody hated Donald Trump and thought that we were in the depths of the most black, fascist period you can imagine, that wasn't the case. But the voters in the middle,

the voters who are undecided, we're the only voters that count, don't think that way. I know. Or at least they haven't in the history of voters that count, don't think that way. They haven't in the history of American elections, they haven't thought that way. We keep making political arguments, whether it's in fact an emotional question. And the problem is, Donald Trump doesn't embrace anybody. But it is emotional. I mean, it's not a political argument to say that the economy was really good. It's a combination of, you know, retrospective historical analysis and truth and data and the rest of it. It's not that hard to comprehend. It's not like going to those middle people and saying, now, if you look at the real macro levels here, this chart will show you that in the long

run, no, we were going great. But if you look at the psychographics of the voter, now, these all could be wrong, but this is just stuff I just saw last week. And it shows the, not that it's doomed, but the challenge for the Trump campaign is that people hold Trump accountable for the COVID response. That may not be logical or rational, but they do. He reminds them of this bad time, and he didn't make it better. He made it worse with his crazy press conferences. He was never more popular than he was in the first two weeks of it when he was kind of like. He seemed to be in control.

He seemed to be in control. He seemed to know what he was doing. And he seemed to care about people who care about this thing rather than only care about himself. And if you look at the. Again, you could argue with that. But the people that the danger for the Trump campaign is that they believe this. They believe that there's this hidden Trump voter. They believe that they're going to win.

And the best way to win the presidency is to be convinced that you're going to lose. Hillary Clinton's team in Brooklyn thought that she was going to win. They were sure of it. And they had all sorts of reasons why. And I don't see anyone in the Trump campaign, and I certainly don't see the head of that campaign, acting as if what he needs to do is persuade about a million more people to vote for him. That's a hard thing to do. Again, but like I say, a lot of people don't have to like him to vote for him. And even if you bring it down to COVID, you're looking at a guy who wants a national mandate, a national mask mandate.

That's right. That's right. It helps. Go ahead. No, go ahead, Peter. Just scratch your head a little bit to say that so all of a sudden we're going to have from on high in every single state and county and locality and small municipality and hamlet and bergen this time that that they're going to tell us what we have to do under penalty of explain that what do you think something like that might focus a few minds anyway you were going to say peter yeah no it sure helps to be liked but it's not absolutely decisive and we know that from the 1968 election when Hubert Humphrey, who was a wonderfully engaging, likable, warm, even lovable figure, lost very narrowly, but he lost to Richard Nixon because Nixon's policies, law and order, strengthen the world, standing up in Vietnam and so forth, all of those policies resonated more with the American people. They will hold their noses and vote for a less likable figure. They, we, we will hold our... Rob, it seems to me that we know exactly what Biden is going to do. He did it last night. He's going to run against Donald Trump

and blame all the world's woes on him. I say it was almost laughable. Actually, I was chuckling. That proves it was laughable that he began by saying, with a quotation about giving people light. Biden literally was saying, I am a force of light. He is a force of darkness. And that's about where it comes down. Trump has to say, well, okay, Joe's a nice guy, which is a terrible concession to make when all you know how to do is run against someone such as Hillary Clinton, who isn't a nice guy, which is a terrible concession to make when all you know how to do is run against someone such as Hillary Clinton, who isn't a nice person. But Trump has to admit that Joe's a nice guy and then draw policy distinctions. My view is that if he does that,

and the Republican Party has plenty of money there, I mean, in a certain sense, you ought to say the Biden people should be assuming that he's peaking right now because now the Trump campaign will open up. They should be assuming Biden's peaking right now. I beg your pardon. Thank you. That Biden is peaking right now. We'll see what the polls say. My view is he needs to be up eight or nine points because the Trump people will open fire.

Campaigns tighten. And Democrats need to lead because they have the press making their argument for them. Republicans only get to make their argument when they start spending money on advertising. All of that is to come. But actually running on policy, I actually, in a certain sense, I was relieved when I saw Biden last night because it strikes me as such an opening for Trump. Whether he can pull that off i guess we'd have to i guess i'd have to agree with you rob that you just look at the history of the way he's run it's uphill in the past it's uphill it's uphill what you're saying is that

donald trump needs to explain his policies consistently and effectively which is a very hard thing for me yes it is a very hard thing from this is a lot of uphills all what i would say in private i say something different but me to do. A lot of uphills, is what I would say. In private, I say something different, but in public, I say a lot of uphill. And yet, we're not talking about this. I just have to say this, because this, to me, is the way it sort of sums it up.

I'm sorry, James. When it comes right down to it, in my judgment, presidential campaigns, there are only two kinds of presidential campaigns, really. In one kind of campaign, the implicit message is, vote for me, I'm smarter than you. And that's what Hillary Clinton's message was. Also, by the way, Mitt Romney's message. The other message is, and it's generally more potent, vote for me, I'm one of you that was ronald reagan that was bill clinton we have a campaign

romney versus obama was a campaign in which both candidates were saying in effect i'm smarter than you i'm the smartest guy in the country vote for me it's more complicated than that but that's what it came down to no i think that's really close here we have here we have two candidates biden and trump both saying vote for, I'm one of you. Well, we'll see. Yeah, I was going to, just my corollary of that is the old cliche is always, the voters vote for the president they want to have a beer with. Right? That's what people say.

Right. I think it's the obverse, actually. I think your argument is the obverse, which is what I would say is the voters vote for the person they think would want to have a beer with them. Ah, yes. Actually, that's a deeper answer. Obama-Romney was like, they were both kind of chilly, but it felt like Romney was sort of a distant corporate fat cat, and Obama had already been president. That's kind of like, and you know that Hillary Clinton did not want to have a beer with you. She doesn't want to know you. She has nothing to do with you she doesn't want to know you she has nothing to do with you donald trump doesn't drink beer but he'd sit there and have a diet coke and a bucket of chicken with you just as soon as he would you know get on his jet he doesn't seem like a snob in the least right um and i feel like that is a very very powerful um that's a very powerful uh tool that donald trump

has but unfortunately i don't think he i think he's got a problem appealing to more people i mean 70 i keep saying it 72000 votes across three states. That's statistically trivial. You have to be making that bigger. I guess of all the possible places we might be by now, there are two possibilities that are now ruled out. One is that the country would have taken a good look at Joe Biden and said, God bless him, but he's just too old. He can't do this job. That's not going to happen, not after last night's speech. There'll be some concerns about how old

he is, but nobody's going to rule him out. And the other possibility would be, I think, by now, we could have seen the polls break hard against Trump. You could have seen the country rejecting him almost like an organ rejection. And you know what? That hasn't happened either. We're in a race. No, I agree. I think that's true. I don't think it will be a race in November, but yes, I think that is very true. Well, we haven't even discussed these speeches from the Obamas.

We'll do that at the end of the show because I'd like to get you guys' takes on how disappointed they are with us, but at least that Barack fellow, though. I mean, really, there's a guy who seems to have his grasp on things. We should elect him president, give him eight years, and see what would happen at the end of it. But I understand right now that he's got some nice houses and some good book advances, and he's got an awful lot of money, so he probably doesn't want to. Probably got a lot of debt. I don't think Barack Obama has any personal debt at this moment.

You could see that in the way he carried himself he didn't sort of have that i mean yes barack obama was very concerned about the future of the country but personally you could tell there's a man who's on the plus side of the ledger sheet yeah and not maybe when either well maybe when he was a kid he had student loans and knows that the debt is horrible debts debt debt stinks it does is rob's right that it's a horrible thing. You got your credit cards. You got your student loans. You got your mortgages.

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city of Knoxville, Tennessee in 1987 and served until 2003, making him the city's longest serving mayor. He also served six years as a Tennessee state representative, and he's been appointed by former U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama to federal positions. He's a member of the Yale class of 1967 and is currently running for a seat on the board of the Yale Corporation, which is the university's governing board and policymaking body. Welcome to the podcast, Victor. Mr. Ambassador,

what is the Yale Corporation? Thanks for inviting me. What is, I mean, I'm from the University of Minnesota. What do I know about these things? Rob Long, of course, is a Harvard class of 1951 or 1997 or something, I don't know. So he knows. But explain to the world what the Yale Corporation is and what its impact and effect and importance is. Well, the Yale Corporation is just a fancy name for the Board of Trustees, but they are the governing body of the Yale University. And it goes back before we were founded as a nation because Yale existed when Connecticut was still a royal colony. And unusually, even though it's a private university, its constitution, the charter, rather, of Yale University, is within the constitution of Connecticut.

And that's why the governor of Connecticut and the lieutenant governor of Connecticut actually serve on the board of a private university. They very seldom attend, but they are voting members if they show up and wanted to vote. But otherwise, it's 17 members. Six are elected by the alumni, and then the others are self-perpetuating, which is not unusual. And, you know, they do everything

from employing the president to vote on tenure individually for professors to adopting the budget and setting up general policy. They are the ultimate authority in running the university. Well, hey, Victor, it's Rob Long, class of 87. But I can say that between 1967 at Yale and 1987 at Yale, things drifted leftward considerably more. And so, you know, I got to vote. I'm voting for the members of the corporation that you get to vote for.

So what's the big, what's your, if I vote for you, what do you promise to do as a politician? What's the first thing you're going to do? Well, first of all, right now you're not voting for me. You're just voting to let me be on the ballot so that I can run in May of 19 of 2021. Assuming there's a Yale in May of 2021, but go ahead. Right. You have to get 44,394 signatures to just be on the ballot against a person who Yale has yet to select. I don't know who they'll select, but they'll select someone in April.

And I, and perhaps there's another person seeking to be on the ballot named Maggie Thomas, and she may or may not make it. But if she does, the three of us will be on it. If not, I guess the two of us. But I don't know yet who it would be. But the reason to vote to put me on the ballot, the reason, first of all, it's very American. You know, I used to sign petitions for people I might not even vote for,

but I thought they had a right to be on the ballot. It's democracy with a fine, with a small d. And, you know, if someone wants to run, I have no problem with them running. I may or may not be for them. In most cases, I hope you will be for me,

but right now I have to get on the ballot. What do I want to do? I'll sign the petition. I think I might have already, by the way, just between us. Tell me why I'm going to vote for you. What are you going to do to Yale? Well, what I'm going to do is try to bring about more transparency

with the corporation. For example, did you know the minutes of the corporation or embargo, that is, they're not released, for 50 years, 5-0? That's a very Yale attitude. Well, I mean, so how do alumni or members of the Yale community know what the corporation's doing? They have to wait. The earliest minutes you and I could look at today are

1970. Secondly, I want to reduce this excessively high number of signatures just to even run. This is the alumni seat. I think any Yale alumnus should be entitled to run and to be on the ballot. If 10 or 15 people ran, you might want to have a runoff of visits, where if no one got 51%, it'd be a runoff between the doctors. And secondly, fiscal responsibility. Why is Yale having a tuition increase this year? The year of the pandemic, we're going up on our tuition 3.9%, and there's one fewer class

coming back to Yale because they're alternating. So what's the need for the increase? On the other hand, our sister Ivy League University, Princeton, is having a 10% reduction cut in its tuition. And I don't know the reason for it because the meetings are secret. But if I'm on the board, I'm going to ask plenty of questions of what are we doing to hold costs down? Purdue University, a great university, has gone nine years but not a single tuition increase. Well, then let me ask you this.

I know Peter wants to jump in. I've got two questions. One, that's all procedural stuff that doesn't seem very uh very exciting to me i was hoping i was hoping you were going to be talking about how you're going to like uh hire more conservatives to teach history but in the second part i'd say like well i mean as a spell as a fellow yale alumnus um well why wouldn't you just go to purdue mitch daniels who's a friend of ricochet is a friend of a podcast he's like he seems to be running a tight ship there it seems seems like a good school. He's doing great stuff

with, you know, online or remote learning. Why wouldn't you just go to Purdue rather than spending a million, zillion dollars a year to go to Yale and to learn just how awful America is? Well, first of all, my son did go to Purdue because my wife is a graduate of Purdue. And we didn't pay Yale's tuition, but since he was out of state, we paid about $40,000 a year for him to go to Purdue. He got a wonderful education. He's now working for Cisco in San Jose, California. But the answer to your question is I think Yale is still one of the premier universities, not just in our country, but the world. The four years I spent there, I value and treasure. So I'm

a little distressed when Yale does things to itself which are harmful. And certainly I think in terms of admissions, there needs to be an absence, no discrimination. So it's distressing to read when the Department of Justice is making certain statements. I'm not saying Yale is guilty because I think everyone is innocent. Well, I don't know that. No, I didn't go back to the premise.

You're innocent until proven guilty. And Yale has not had a stay. It's very honorable. And they're entitled to the presumption of innocence. Okay. I would say, let me ask you this, though, because, you know, I love Yale. I love my time there. I'm very loyal to it. I live, you know, 90 minutes away.

I like to go back. You know, I've got a mall. I'm some friends from Yale. I loved it. It was great. I got a great education. But it seems to me in 2020, when I see what's happening at Yale in the news, and I see what's happening in academia in general,

that maybe it'd be better for people on the right, or even just people in the center, to pool their money together and build the new Yale. What's the next Yale? What's the next Harvard? Part of me feels like, why should anybody try to save Yale? It doesn't seem to want to be saved. Well, first of all, I don't know how you build a new yale i mean as in new haven is it some other place wouldn't have the same name uh i i i'm not willing to throw in the towel yet uh and what i do believe is there should be a diversity among the faculty since uh there should be there are people professors who are more liberal, there should be ones who are more conservative in the middle.

I think by and large we all accept the fact that a lot of academia tends to be more on the liberal side of things. But I have no problem in the diversity of representation. I have a problem with the absence of any representation. I think that's a serious problem, whether it's with student body or with faculty. Victor, Peter Robinson here. We spoke the other day. You asked about my experience serving on the Dartmouth board. At Dartmouth, and boy, what an education that was. Well, let's be fair. Did you have the same problem at Dartmouth? How did you handle it? Did you have the same problem with Dartmouth? How did you handle it?

Oh, well, I ran to the board. I fought. I did what you're doing here. So here's, now, we just got a sample. And you told me for a while you were ostracized. That's exactly right. We just got an example in the last few minutes of the way Yale people care about the university.

Rob couldn't help getting into it with you about Yale because you both love the place. And, of course, Dartmouth alums love Dartmouth. Here's the question. Can you explain to the rest of our listeners why—it's a version of the question Rob just asked, why not ignore Yale? Why not forget about the Ivies? They've moved so far to the left. Who cares? What is it about Yale and other of the old established traditional institutions that matters to the rest of us? Why does Yale matter to America? Or would you argue that it doesn't? Well, I would argue that it matters to America

If you look at the people who over the years and centuries Who graduated from Yale Whether you go back to Nathan Hale Who famously said, I regret I have but one life to give for my country And, you know, three presidents William Howard Taft and both Bushes And a couple others got close to it, but didn't quite make it.

Secretaries of State, Cabinet Member Henry Stinson of World War II, and numerous senators. I mean, we have trained people for leadership over the years. I don't know that we're doing something, and I hope we're still doing it, but I guess the DNA in me for the four years I spent there that we're doing some... I hope we're still doing it.

But I guess the DNA in me for the four years I've spent there is so much part of who I am, I'm not willing to throw in the towel. Now, that's an answer for Victor Ash. It may not be an answer for someone who has no particular ties to Yale. And

at the same time, a little bit of my effort is tough love in the sense of I'm talking about things I think it was not going right they need to do better sort of like telling your children when they've messed up you've got to do better Victor, last question here that answer by the way, that's the way it came down to

things came down to that for me with Dartmouth. I love the place so much, I'm not willing to throw in the towel. Fair enough. Last question. You need signatures to get on the ballot. Right. Where do people find your ballot? Where's your website?

They go to ash4yale.com. And Ash is spelled with an E. With an E like Arthur Ash. A-S-H-E-4 F-O-R Yale.com. When you click on, you'll see sign petition and it takes you automatically to

the link. It's easy to do. I'll do it right now. That's the best way to do it. If you have any other problems, just call Victor Rash at this number. I don't mind you giving it over there, and I'll mail one to you. That's retail politics right there. I'll be the only trustee who has a listed phone number and email. It's been amazing since this campaign.

The number of calls I get from people, to be honest, I don't know, but I'm glad to hear from them. I think some of them are just calling to figure out, is this phone number for real? Or is he just putting me on? But I said, you know, when I was mayor of the city of Knoxville for 16 years, I had a listed phone number for all 16 years. And people said, well, didn't you get some weird calls at 3 in the morning? I said, well, one or two from the drunk tank at the city jail. But other than that, it wasn't bad. And, you know, I'll be an elected representative alumni.

They ought to have a person they can call. Excellent. Victor, thank you so much. Although I have to say that two of the most important words in a Dartmouth man's vocabulary remain, beat Yale. Good luck. Thank you so much for joining us in the podcast, Mr. Ash, and good luck. Well, thanks so much. Great to talk to you. You know, we didn't have the time, but I was going to ask our guest about the relationship with Poland since he was the ambassador there, And it seems that that was fractious during the

Obama years. And it's now it's different. And matter of fact, the whole Eastern European situation is in flux and play. And it's hard to know exactly what's going on anywhere. I mean, you can quit your job and just read everything all the time and be a little bit up to date. But making sense of current events during this extraordinary time can be trying at best. That's why there's Conceived in Liberty. It's a Bradley Speaker series, a new video series that offers meaningful perspectives through engaging 15-minute interviews. Visit BradleyFDN.org slash Liberty to watch their most recent episode featuring Mitch Daniels, podcast favorite, president of Purdue University. Daniels is former governor of Indiana, previous director of the Office of Management and Budget, and a 2013 winner of the

Bradley Prize. In this episode, you'll learn more about why Purdue was one of the first universities to announce its intentions to reopen, and hear some encouraging news about students' response to returning to campus. Mitch also addresses the loneliness crisis amongst younger people and offers guidance to federal and state leaders on managing the COVID-19 pandemic. Timely as you can get, right? It'll help. And it's Mitch, so go to Bradley. That's Bradley with an L-E-Y-F-D-N dot org slash Liberty. And our thanks to Conceived and Liberty for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And now we welcome to the podcast, Jerry Baker, the editor-at-large of the Wall Street Journal. His weekly column for the editorial page, Free Expression, appears in the Wall Street Journal each Tuesday. Mr. Baker is also host of the Wall Street Journal at Large with Jerry Baker,

a weekly news and current affairs interview show on the Fox Business Network. Thanks for joining us. Before we get to the subject of some of your recent columns, any thoughts on the DNC? I imagine that you were riveted watching every single precious moment, is it, unspooled on your television or web browser? What do you think?

Yeah, other people have commented it was a slightly odd spectacle. It was a bit like watching one of those telethons where you really don't want to actually donate any money to them. But you feel obliged, feel obliged out of some sort of sense of public duty to kind of sit through it. You know, I think that I had two two obvious takeaways. I mean, I thought Biden's speech was I thought he delivered a good speech. I think he kind of passed the, you know, he cleared the very low bar that had been set for him because, you know, I think we've all seen his fairly obvious cognitive deterioration over the last few years. And I think, you know, perhaps we thought that maybe that there was a risk that that would be more visible, but it wasn't. He gave a perfectly well-delivered and crisp speech. And I think that it was a clever speech in that it really

captured, I think, what is the democratic strategy, which is all the emphasis on character and personality and abstractions like bringing the nation together, which Biden, I think, again, makes the case because of his own personality and because of his long experience of bipartisan dealmaking in Washington is capable of doing that. I think that came across well against, you know, the rather controversial, put it mildly, character of Donald Trump. So I think that was their main message while downplaying dramatically any serious discussion of policy. I mean, that's, you know, the Democratic strategy is to play up character and personality and national spirit and to downplay policy for the very good reason, I think, that they are saddled with a bunch of policies that they know, you know, position the Democratic Party well to the left of any Democratic candidate there's been in the last 30 years.

I mean, you know, well, well to the left of barack obama whether it is on whether it's on um immigration uh the green new deal taxes and spending crime and criminal justice yeah the party party is a pretty you know that unity platform that biden signed up with signed with um uh you know with bernie sanders and the rest of them after the primaries is a pretty radical platform they don't want to and for understandable reasons they don't really want to talk about that so so i thought b, you know, that was the message of the convention was, you know, it's all about bringing the country together under the leadership of this actually, you know, rather decent and honorable man. But we don't want to talk at all about what we may actually do if we get power. Did you expect that they were going to address the unrest in the

cities? Because you've written about this recently in your columns, but in particular, how the elites fiddle while America burns is the title of one of them. You would have thought that they would have acknowledged it, tipped a hat to it, said something, assured us that they actually don't have some lingering nation simpatico feelings toward the people who want to commit, oh, I don't know, revolution and scour the country back to year zero. But they seemed to avoid that, didn't they? Yeah. I mean, again, I think they're treading a fine line there because I mean, I thought the other interesting thing about the convention was the succession of speakers who subtly and not so subtly took to the TV screen to once again lecture America on how, you know, irredeemably racist it is. And Michelle Obama, you know, with that remarkable thing saying, look, you know, not a lot of people are going to, some people won't listen to me because I'm black. And then Kamala Harris saying, you know, there's no vaccine for racism. So I think they,

on the one hand, they are trying to signal to their black supporters and also their sort of hard left radical supporters, look, we kind of, you know, we get the message and we get the story and you people out in the streets, you know, we understand what you're doing and we're kind of you know we're on your side at the same time they don't want to be they don't want to be out there defending um the disorder and the you know and the and the lawlessness that we have seen and they know that and so they don't want to be talking about that they want to be emphasizing that it's all about you know again about repairing the terrible um sin or you know remediating the terrible sins of american history uh but they don't want to be associated really with you know what's going on on the streets of portland and seattle and what we saw here in new

york city uh just a couple of months ago so, that's a fairly fine line there because I think, again, they know, look, if Trump can make this election about the Democratic platform and law and order and crime and disorder and the sort of radical left, then I think he has a very good chance of winning. If the Democrats can make the election about COVID and the character of the person who should be president of the United States, I think the Democrats have a very good chance of winning. Hey, Jerry, Peter Robinson here. Thanks so much for joining us. I have a question about Jerry Baker, and the question runs as follows. I'm sure I'll get a little bit of this wrong, Jerry, and you can correct me on any details that I do get wrong, but here's what happened

to Jerry Baker in the last few months. You were editing the Wall Street Journal. You stepped down from that to become editor at large, which was good news for me because then we hear more of Jerry in his own voice. You do an interview show on Fox Business, and you were on the news side of the Wall Street Journal operation, which meant that your column appeared in the review section each weekend, all right? And then you got reclassified to the opinion side, and now you're, this is also good news for me because you're easier to find. Now your column appears right there in the opinion section of the Wall Street Journal, which is what I and hundreds of thousands of other Americans read first every day. And then, and here's what happened. My old friend ages, it seems. Do you feel somehow unleashed

or freed, or what's going on with you professionally, Jerry? Yes, well, thanks, Peter. Is that all fair to say? I don't mean to... Well, no, it's essentially fair. I mean, look, as you know, Peter, very well, and all your listeners and your colleagues know, there is a very tightly defined and well-observed division in the journal. I'd say better observed in the journal than in any other newspaper between the opinion pages and the news pages um i you know like i think everybody i know uh who every sentient being hey i have quite strong views on a range of topics i don't i don't think i'm easily pigeonholed and in in one ideological category or or other but i you know but i have quite strong views and i can express those views when you when you're on the news side you know it's an obligation to be very

um judicious if you like not a word but it's an obligation to be very um judicious if you like not a word but it's an obligation to be you know it would be wrong i think for because because there's a very good reason which is that well you know when i was editor of the job i was deputy editor for four five years and then i was editor for five and a half six years you know there's an obligation to suppress whatever i think um to make sure that my view my my opinion about, you know, our current predicament, shall we say, that my opinion is not, you know, is not dominating the news coverage, is not driving the news coverage. It's my job to make sure that we do as good a job on the news side as we can of reporting all sides of a story and making sure that the reader gets that so that it doesn't undermine the reader's trust, you know,

because the reader can see if there's an opinion coming from somewhere whether it's right or left so i so yeah so so i so i think i tried hard to suppress you know what i think about some of these issues and again by the way i'm not easily i'm just not easy no no no that's why i often as i read you i think jerry jerry we must sort this one we must we must talk about this issue or that issue so this okay so this is great on the opinion side i I'm able, I exactly say I'm unleashed, I'm liberated, free at last, and I can, and the editorial

page is wonderful, as you know, brilliantly by Paul Gigo, and I am really privileged, I mean this, genuinely privileged to be able to write for the, you know, it's a fabulous audience, it's a fabulous readership, it's incredibly loyal, it's incredibly smart, wonderful team, wonderfully led by Paul Gigo, and I'm just absolutely delighted to be able to play my small role in contributing to, you know, to those columns.

It is the most important editorial page in the most important newspaper in the English-speaking world, as far as I'm concerned, and you are an adornment to that page. Great. Here's my next question. This is also a kind of career question. Rob Long wants to get in to talk about politics. But you've had a remarkable career, beginning with being politically sentient from your days at Oxford, and you become a very important journalist in Britain. Now you're writing for, you've edited the Wall Street Journal,

now you're writing for the editorial pages of the journal. How do you explain this, Jerry? How do we go from Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan to Forrest Johnson and Donald Trump? Does this strike you, there's a famous line in The Education of Henry Adams that the progression from Abraham Lincoln to Ulysses Grant disproves evolution. Does this just strike you as a kind of evidence that everything is crumbling and standards are slipping around the world? Or is this a kind of moment of when there may be restoration, both countries could come back? What do you make of this the larger arc good good question i'd probably much rather hear your uh views with your erudition and knowledge on the topic than people would probably listen

to mine but for my my for my for what it's worth my view first of all i you know i i don't i do i'm very conscious especially as i am getting in quite advanced in years now that there's always a tendency to think oh my god things were never never never as good today as they were a long time ago and i'm and i'm conscious that there is an element of that in my own thinking, as in everybody's thinking there is a sort of a nostalgia, you know, where are the snows of yesterday and all that stuff, which I think we do tend to fall into. Look, my view is, though, and I'm glad you asked because I'm actually working on a book project, which is going to attempt to answer pretty well that very question, Peter, that you asked.

Look, I think what the principal thing that's happened is that the axes of politics, the axes of politics have shifted, right? In the post-Cold War world, this is a very oversimplified version of what's gone on. But the axes of politics have shifted. You know, in the Cold War world, we were still operating, you know, on the fundamental, on what were the, you know on the fundamental on the understand what were what were the you know you could even argue were the the political acts the political axes that were laid down you know beginning with almost with the french revolution if you like that was the sort of the kind of economic the materialist you know what marxists would call the materialist interpretation of history that we had a left and a right and the left were in favor of you know big government

role and redistribution and you know higher spending and um social justice and all of those things you know and whether again whether it was social democrats in the in europe or democrats in the in the u.s or um communists and socialists whatever you want to call them that you know that was that sign on the left and conservatives conservatives were, you know, for all the other stuff. I think there has been in the, as, you know, post end of history, if we dare, we call it that with the, you know, with the kind of triumph of certainly of sort of capital of the capitalist system that we saw, you know, at the end of the, at the end of the cold war, politics has shifted to, again, the axes, the axes of left and right are now much more

about, if you like, sort of social and personal identity issues. So it is about a sense of belonging and which community you belong to. And this is where I think the nationalist populist, you know, which is now broadly speaking on the right, although I think we have some difficulty characterizing on the right because there are many things that Donald Trump and Boris Johnson stand for that, you know, 25 years ago we would describe as being on the right because there are many things that donald trump and boris johnson stand for that you know 25 years ago we would describe as being on the left like you know relatively sort of protectionist economic policy for example but um i think those axes have shifted so now you have this nationalist populist um versus globalist um kind of uh you know for want of a better word identitarian kind of politics on the left and i I think that's where we've got to. Now, your larger point is how do we go from these icons of the 20th century, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, to anti-icons, I suppose we could call them. You know, I mean, again, look, politicians come and go, and we have good ones and bad ones.

And, you know, and I think we're probably right now, yeah, I agree with you about completely as you and I've had many conversations. And I know you saw them. You saw Ronald Reagan up very close. I have nothing but, you know, awed admiration for Ronald Reagan and for Margaret Thatcher. And I don't have quite the same feelings about our current leadership. But but look, I also think that we are doing you know, we are we are working through a period and i think maybe it's partly because of the turmoil caused by the you know the shifting of politics on its axis that we aren't necessarily clear about you know leadership it's it's hard for leadership to be clear in these circumstances so i don't think to some extent we're kind of suffering from that but but i but i think you know again i

have great faith in the wisdom of the american people and actually the british people and i think they you know irrespective of their leaders, will actually, are actually finding a way to promote and preserve, preserve and promote the values that have made the Anglo-Saxon world, candidly, the, you know, the most important, most successful, most culturally consequential, you know, politically, at least culturally consequential political system, you know, in the last hundred years. And I think we're still working our way through and finding our balance in this new system. But I think we are still steadily getting there. Hey, Jerry, it's Rob Long in New York. Thank you for joining us. So can we just drill down a little

bit? You wrote a great column called The Elite's Fiddle While America Burns. And we'll put a link to that in the show notes. It's great.'s it kind of echoes something i've been feeling during covid uh the new york city we were all wearing masks we're all staying indoors we're all following our our our rules and there was this kind of social and cultural pressure to do so and be a good person and yet all these sort of elites who live in Manhattan were perfectly happy to order in seamless or grub hub deliveries, almost always delivered by a brown person who was basically riding a bike for a living. And that freed up all the elites to write think pieces about how fun it is to bake your own bread. Do you think culturally there'll ever be a reckoning here? It does seem like part of the appeal of Trump, certainly part of the appeal of Trump in 2020 and definitely 2016, but 2020 as well, no, actually bend the knee, just like football players, to the sort of larger cultural left-wing oligarchy?

Or am I just throwing red meat around? No, I think you're right. I mean, I think you live in – you're in New York. You've been – I shouldn't say amused. Amused is probably the wrong word. Subjected to, but cheerfully subjected to it. But you'll have witnessed this spectacle on the west side, I don't know where you live in Manhattan, but on the west side of Manhattan where, you know, at the height of COVID, the wonderful, wonderful

enlightened and progressive mayor, Bill de Blasio decided to house a lot of homeless people, some of whom had COVID, some of whom didn't, in these buildings, these couple of hotels on the Upper West Side. Now, you know, these poor folk, most of them, and sort of poor benighted folk, many of them have all kinds, you know, homeless, many of them have got drug addiction, some of them have been, you know, offenders released from prison, some of them including sex offenders. It's, you know, this is, you know, again, this is an underclass, right, what we used to call an underclass. You know, heavily, heavily disadvantaged, shall we say, people who've moved into these places on the Upper West Side. Upper West Side, you know, I'm sure your listeners all know, but for those who, the two or three out there who don't know,

it's kind of also the citadel of liberal progressivism. There is more political diversity amongst the homeless and the drug addicts in the upper west side than amongst the voters for sure yeah so here they are so there's this interesting cultural moment where all these the denizens of the upper west side are you know are kind of our political cultural elite who've been lecturing to us for the last 30 years about um the need to be more socially you know for social justice and to be more socially aware and to be um you know to be properly mindful of our of our own privilege um now find themselves suddenly you know i mean candidly inundated with with with a lot of people who are causing some issues over there you know and there have been reports and even in even even the new york times has actually deigned to report that some people

are unhappy about you know seeing needles in the street and being accosted by drug addicts and all that kind of stuff. And suddenly, guess what? All these all these liberal Upper West Siders, the ones that are left anyway, who didn't actually already flee at the start of COVID are now getting out of there because they because they don't want to be confronted with, you know, the the the life that they're now seeing. So, look, I think, you know, you make a good point, Rob. I mean, we are. Yeah, we just I do think this has been something that's been going on and perhaps we didn't quite grasp it. You did, Peter, the others, the others did too, but I think many of us didn't grasp it. This cultural, you know, the disdain, it's not just that we have inequality in this country, which we do, and it's a problem and it's getting worse

and something needs to be done about that. And by the way, it cuts across racial and ethnic. I mean, one of the many problems with the Black lives matter or the whole woke movement is is that these issues you know the problems of economic and social equality cut way across class ethnic lines or gender lines or any of that stuff um they're a real problem so we know there are real problems but i think perhaps the most striking thing and i do think it was the reason one of the primary reasons donald trump was elected and i do think it's one of the primary reasons by the way people in britain voted for brexit is that they've not just been they've not just been left behind in the sort of dreaded dreaded phrase by globalization by the

advance of these elites but they've been made to feel like dirt i mean the disdain the disdain in which people are held if you are a kind of white working classclass Christian, you know, who votes for Donald Trump, who believes in the rights to own a gun, who has maybe conservative traditional views on things like gay marriage and transsexuality and all of that kind of stuff. Again, it's not just that these people disagree with you. You've been held in utter contempt you've been made to feel you know in the infamous but absolutely you know the one of the most you know one of the most instructive terms we've had in the last 10 years in politics hillary clinton's term deplorable the and i i think people you know you know this is what we've

been seeing with trump and brexit you know it's kind of the revenge of the deplorables and now whether or not now as a result of the just the complete disruption and turmoil that we've seen largely as a result of covid this year whether you know that is going whether whether the sort of fault lines are kind of being blurred again i don't know but but yeah i think it is um you know i think this it is and going back to my point when i answered peter's question earlier on i think we have got away from a kind of fairly clear left-right economic cleavage to a kind of cultural – I agree. To a kind of the elite versus everybody else.

And I think that's going to define our politics for a long time. Yeah. I was noticing that for years – I mean, really, for decades, there were out-of-work coal miners. But it really wasn't until 2016 that they discovered that for a whole part of the american politic that they they were happy that they were out of work it's one thing to be out of work holmeyer it's another thing to hear that a presidential candidate is thrilled that you're out of work and wants to keep you out of work and there doesn't seem something punitive about that but i mean i am the resident pessimist on this podcast but i'm gonna i'm gonna pitch to you an optimistic theory and you can

shoot it down so i was talking to a bunch of uh York, my fellow New Yorkers, and they were all under 35. So in their memory, the city was glorious. In their memory, you could walk around. Nobody was talking about crime. Nobody's talking about shootings and killings. In their memory, there was no reason not to get a nice apartment in Crown Heights in Brooklyn or places like that or Bedford Stide. No reason at all. The crime was, you know, one of the safest cities in the world. As opposed to a 35-year-old in the 60s or 70s or 80s or even 90s where you had only experienced decline. They remember New York not that long ago when it was a great place to live. Do you think that that cohort, that voting cohort, will snap us back?

And if we can figure out a way to put some, you know, dress up and put some lipsticks, some little socialistic ornaments on a Christmas tree that's essentially Rudy Giuliani, they'll vote for it? Or am I just dreaming? It's a good question. I do incline towards optimism. I'm hard to be optimistic about New York City right now, although long term I think I'm still optimistic. It's a great place, and the country's a great place. I think it's a good question, and I think it does, and it goes back to the point you started making, the point I made also about the poor residents of the Upper West Side who've suddenly been confronted with the kind of consequences of their ideology.

You know, it's all very well. It's very easy to be for, you know, defunding the police and for, you know, I don't know, punishing the rich in the ways that sort of the left were kind of proposing until, obviously, you are literally confronted, until you find yourself in that position. And you're absolutely right on crime in New York City. And I think a lot of younger people are going to be quite surprised by how much extra they're going to have to pay in tax and things like that. By the way, that's always been one of the long-term generational, you know, sort of intergenerational, a law of intergenerational politics is that, you know, as people, you know, get older and get married and earn more and have responsibility, they suddenly realize that, you know, there are a lot of things that they don't like about the kind of socialist nirvana they've been trying to create, including the fact that they have to pay more in taxes and they want decent schools and all that kind of stuff. So I think there is, you know, I think as that goes on, I think that will change.

I worry a bit about – more than a bit. I worry a lot about the extent to which culture has been so – is so controlled by. And I do think a whole phenomenon – we haven't got time to discuss it on this podcast i'm sure but i'm sure you have discussed before but it's the follow-up you know the woke corporation i i worry a lot about the extent to which companies you know you know every company from tech companies out where you know out where peter is to you know i mean frankly everything i mean we even saw it with this bizarre story with goodyear tire this week you know that you know that that we have got into this situation where companies, I think, have found it to their utility to emphasize these kind of cultural issues rather than addressing some of the economic issues that they deal with.

I worry about the extent to which that is further entrenching the kind of, you know, the sort of liberal hegemony, you know, among our younger people. But I agree with you. Look, I think in the end, people, once people start to see the reality, you know, what's the old phrase about, you know, neoconservatives, you know, socialists mugged by reality, I think these people are going to be, metaphorically and very sadly, literally mugged by reality in a way that I think might make them think twice about things like, for example, defunding the police. I imagine Rob Long, like Winston Smith, after his tryst with Julia, looking at the washerwoman outside and saying, the millennials will save us. They will, they will.

But you're quite right. I mean, even if they don't believe the whole set of intellectual priors they've been handed, they feel obliged to mouth obeisance to them. When you mentioned before that Western civilization had this marvelous cultural heritage, I thought, well, there's a fellow who needs to decolonize his mind. There's a fellow who probably believes that two plus two equals four. There's a guy who doesn't understand that critical race theory and anti-racism of Kendi, etc., all of these things have redefined what is appropriate, what is required for somebody these days to think. So given that we have a new set of ideas being promulgated through the woke corporations, we just learned that every single diversity exercise that a corporation has now

seems to be based in critical race theory, which is inimical to the American experience. How much of a role do you think that this new fairly radical thinking is going to play in a Biden administration should something like that come to pass? Or will it just be intellectual background noise for democratic business as usual? No, I mean, I worry, but I worry that it will be like, I don't think we are, you know, months away from the Ministry of Truth or the Cultural Revolution. Fortunately, I think American democracy is a bit more robust than that. kind of wokery and critical, you know, the triumph on our campuses of critical race theory and that migration of that into our corporations, you know, as more and more of these kids who are minds are filled with this stuff come in, you know, come into the workplace. That's been going on. And we've seen all this extraordinary eruption. And I've seen it, by the way, very much up close

here as a journalist, you know the the attempt i mean they're actually quite quite deliberate and concerted attempt to quash all forms of dissent or to sort of marginalize push to the push to the sidelines any kind of any any real alternative any any anybody arguing against the you know uh against that we you know we've seen quite a lot of that in the media in the last few months and all that's been going on where we have a Republican president and a Republican Senate, at least, you know, divided Congress. If they get the reins of power, if Biden wins, and, you know, presumably it's a sort of, you know, kind of a regency for Kamala Harris, a Kamala Harris regency, right, a sort of presidential regency, she will have enormous power and then may well be either the president or the or the nominee next time around um and they and they win and they increase

their majority in the house of representatives and they control the senate and they abolish the filibuster um which i think they'll do all of those things they haven't they have they have in it they have in addition to the enormous amount of cultural um uh power that these people have already to that they add the reins of political executive and to some extent even judicial power i mean you know how far they go with that you know on that front and that worries me a lot i mean i would not be at all surprised to see look it is an example you know we've just seen the New York attorney general essentially trying to prosecuting in a way, trying to trying to put out of business the National Rifle Association. I worry that that approach, that prosecutorial kind of litigious approach is going to be pursued quite aggressively by a biden administration and by the way even if joe biden is not right and again i don't think joe biden is quite out of it

but i don't think he's quite in it either so i mean i think i think it'll be i think i think whoever is his attorney general will have enormous latitude to do things and depending who it is i think they will you know i worry a lot uh that they go that they'll go after the media media hostile media that they'll go after they'll go out you know and you're in subtle ways you know the you know the tissue the attorney general here in new york's um measure of action against the nra is not particularly subtle but but it was you know it's built around allegations about wayne lapierre but they will go i i worry that they will give they will they will push and probe in all kinds of areas we had at the wall street journal editorial page

had a very good editorial last week um you know looking at a case that and you'll again over there in california know more about this than i do but a case that when she was attorney when she was a california attorney general kamala harris pursued i think in the interest essentially of one of the union one of the big unions over there um you know they they will use the levers of power that they have i mean it's classic classic you know marxian whatever you want to call it elect or alinsky you know theory that they'll use the powers that they have to pursue the agenda to which they are absolutely committed and i do again i don't think i don't think we're about to become Winston Smith or Animal Farm, but I genuinely worry that they will be able to advance, that once they actually get real political, executive, legislative,

and to some extent judicial power, they will be able to advance this agenda much more aggressively than even they have been able to do recently. You're right. In 2020, we're not going to have the Ministry of Truth. However, give them four years and let them get rid of the Electoral College and pack the Supreme Court and do Lord knows what. In 2024, Jerry, we'll see you at the Goldstein hate rally, and you'd better be shouting yourself hoarse because they're going to be watching exactly how much you do. If I am still at liberty, then I will be happy.

Yes, if Attorney General Amy Klobuchar hasn't already subpoenaed you. Hey, listen, I'm from Minnesota. Amy Klobuchar is not the horrifying bugaboo that some people think that she is. I agree with that. I actually have spent a bit of time with Amy Klobuchar, and, yeah, I do agree with that. I actually have spent a bit of time with Amy Klobuchar. Yeah, I do agree with that. But there are more. There are definitely scarier figures out there who may well be very influential in the next few years. If they'd run her, I think they would have walked over Trump much more than people are fearing that Biden is going to. Hey, Jerry, thanks so much for joining us in the podcast.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Real pleasure. Thank you. That is the first time we've had him on the podcast thank you so much thank you real pleasure thank you all right that uh it's the first time we've had him on the podcast isn't it it is yeah fast talker i don't think he's i don't think he's from america yeah what kind of american are you uh i i that is interesting point about a counterfactual with amy klobuchar that's uh that would be i think you're uh i i sort of i agree you. I think it would have been a better choice. Oh, definitely. I am on record at the 2016 NR Cruise as postulating

that that would be the smart choice to make. And it's not just because I like her. I do. She would have gotten the suburban women managerial class sewed up because all of those stories about her being frustrated with her young hapless staff would resonate with all the women who I think are bedeviled by their own hapless staff. Where is Jerry from, though? Do we know exactly?

How long has he been here? Well, as you can tell from his accent, Jerry is British, and he had a very distinguished career in British journalism. And then Mr. Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch, brought him over here to this country, and Jerry pretty quickly became editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal, a position he held. That's the news side. He held that position for six, seven, eight years. I've lost track of it. And then just last year, he stepped down from that. In certain sense, he stepped up from that. He's editor-at-large, which gives total freedom to write and speak and conduct interviews.

I'm just trying to imagine the confidence it takes to go to another country and speak with that amount of confidence about their system. I mean, if I found myself in England, they would know right away, for example, that I was an American, not by just my speech or my inability to summon up all the little details of their culture. But of course, they might notice that I have that telltale American dentition,

which doesn't have the necessary, you know, the British cliche. That's the way to put it, by the way. Yeah, you know what I mean? It'd be true these days, but you know the old cliche of British teeth and the rest of it. Hey, but if you are listening to us in Britain, in England, in Blighty,

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The James Lydon's Member Post of the Week. Very good. And this one was just bait. It's from Jenna Stocker. Minneapolis isn't lost yet. Quote, The initial riots and violence in the aftermath of George Floyd's death engulfed the city like a blowtorch. But there is still a city here with people struggling to survive,

to pick up the pieces of their neighborhoods, to find hope in the ashes of their reality. There's a fight to save the city, once at the threshold of vibrancy and decency and opportunity, now at the edge of the morass. Why did I choose this? A couple of reasons. One, obviously, I'm in Minneapolis, so that's going to get a lot of points. Two, it's an example of what Ricochet does well, and that is reporting from all over the country. For some strange reason, a lot of major news organizations haven't seen fit to go back to the epicenter where this all began. And so you have to rely on people like, well, like Michael Tracy we spoke with a few podcasts ago, or our own Jenna here in seem to be a leadership that is comprised of gaseous fools,

unschooled in human nature and economics. And it truly is a thing to worry about. I mean, I live here. I know this place is not a smoldering wreck. I know there's a lot more sirens. I know there's a lot more violence. There's a huge gang war going on. There's a lot of scores being settled. There's a feeling of emboldenment. But I was downtown yesterday looking at the new towers rising. Granted, I wonder who's going to live in them. But I was looking at the beauty of the city and still the civility of it and the way that this is something to be saved.

And it made me think of Chicago and of New York and of Portland and Seattle and all the other great places that we see on the brink of squandering this incredible accomplishment lost in us you know six months because of a feckless class of leadership that cannot wrap their brains around the fact that the people that they support are not good people and they're not doing good things this is only going to lead to destruction so rob peter um i don't know if you read the post i hope yeah can i just say the other thing i i mean just just i know that you read the post. I hope you did. Can I just say, the other thing, I know we like the post, but Jenna Stocker is the member, and this is her profile. She left a D.C. research job to be a Marine Corps officer. She's back home with four rescue dogs, had the run of the house.

She's a wife of a Coast Guard veteran, loves baseball, believes in the virtue of first principles. That is a classic Ricochet member. And she puts the posters up with pictures and everything. It's like this is why Ricochet members are so great. And this is why, if you're listening, you should be a member. You should be able to read this stuff and read more like it and join this incredible community of writers and thinkers and people from, you know, like pretty, pretty disparate viewpoints, but essentially the same first principles, right? Can't I see that on Facebook though, Rob?

No, you cannot. No, you cannot. And if Attorney General, I'm trying to think of the, who's the, who'd be the most, the worst Attorney General, somebody later. Right. Attorney General Elizabeth Warren, I think. She'd go right after all of us. But she's not. She's going to be Secretary of the Treasury. She's going to be too busy stealing all your money to put you behind bars. It'll be like Attorney General Shirlane, and I forget her last name, Bill de Blasio, the mayor here, his wife.

Oh. That's going to be the Attorney General. So you're going to have to join Ricochet because that's where free media lives. Absolutely. Do so. And, of course, I'm going to explain to people. Ricochet is the main page anybody can read. And it's got the member posts, which are delightful.

They're all over the road. It's sports. It's politics. It's art. It's culture. We've got one member who posts an old radio show on Saturday night for you to listen to. It's a great community. And, like I say, it isn't

Facebook. Yes, you could go to Facebook and get somebody ranting in some little post on an ugly page, or you could go to something that the members themselves curate and intend with great affection. Before we go, a couple of things.

Steve Banner arrested on Chinese supervillain mega yacht. So I imagine that the chins were on sternums everywhere and the absolute surprise and shock about this. What did you guys think? I didn't do too much for Steve's reputation as a man of the people to be... I mean, it's just, I shake my head in bewilderment that he's so smart and so talented and such a lunatic, presenting himself, I'm a man of the people, I'm a man of the people, and then he gets arrested on a yacht, which, of course, I don't know whether you saw this, but other people immediately put up links.

This yacht has been for sale, and the last time it changed hands, it did so for $25 million or something of that nature. Oh, I don't. I mean, I don't. I just shake my head. Yeah, I mean. Go ahead, Rob. The problem with all of this stuff, and I really don't. Steve Bannon is very smart.

He's not nearly as smart as he thinks he is. Oh, nobody could be that smart. Yeah, exactly. He's only 10% as smart as he thinks he is. He's still pretty smart. And my encounters with Steve Bannon took place before 2016, and he had a very clear agenda early on, which is he, and just to give props here, he said I don't think it was 2015, I think it was 2014, he said he was helping fund a book called Clinton's

Cash, which was the really the first kind of incredibly laid out, very well researched, absolutely irrefutable and very respectably written by a respectable journalist Peter Schweitzer, a jot and tittle and list of everything that was unethical and stinky and tainted with Clinton's money.

And he said, that's the way we're going to beat her, whoever runs against her, by reminding people that she's crooked. And, you know, that was pretty smart. That was a pretty smart strategy, as it turns out. So he's not out of the main... He's definitely got some political chops. The problem is, like all those people, when you start raising money and doing direct mail pieces like he was doing, like people do with the Tea Party, like people do for the Greenpeace even. When you see the cascades of cash coming in, it's just – assuming he's guilty – it is just incredibly tempting.

It has nothing to do with your politics. It has nothing to do really with your beliefs or anything other than your sense of ethics, which, if you're in politics in the first place, are already compromised. And if you make a mistake and you're like Paul Manafort and you get too close to an independent counsel investigation, or you're on the target list because people don't like you, you know, they're going to find something. By the way by the way this liberals believe this this is this in a liberal country run by liberals you believe this you're guilty you did something and the truth is you probably did because there are so many laws and regulations you probably broke it if you've ever raised money for a political candidate

and you've hired attorneys and try to do everything according to fec rules you probably still broke the law somewhere that's how that that's true but i think if your organization says that it's going to build a wall i think at some point you actually get down to the basics of building shouldn't buy a wall yeah right that's very true okay we've got you know we've got 25 million is floating this week. Great. I'll take $24 million for expenses, and then you take the rest of that, give it to the lawyers, and I'll use that. That's true. I'll be looking through the wayfair catalog. I don't know. I'm just trying to provide context for, you know, whatever.

Yes. Eric Hoffer. Eric Hoffer. Long forgotten, I suppose. Eric Hoffer, the longshoreman philosopher, as he used to be known. This guy who was a wonderful writer, and he was a longshoreman all his life up in San Francisco. This is in the days when ships had to be unloaded by actual human beings.

Stevedores. The great quotation from Eric Hoffer, every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and degenerates into a racket. Yes, he's absolutely right. So when do we hit the grifting part here at Ricochet? Unfortunately, we're still a movement. Good question. We're still a movement. I keep telling Peter, stop it with the ethics. All right, one more point to make, but before I do, I got to say the things that if you heard them at the end of the show, you'd think, that's the end of the show. I'm out of here. And you

wouldn't hear it. So I got to tell you, we've been brought to you by the Bradley Foundation, bills.com, and Quip with that new fancy Bluetooth-enabled toothbrush. Not making that up. It exists. It's fantastic. Support them. Support us. Everybody wins. And if you could, I don't know what's stopping you, go over to Apple Podcasts and leave a five-star review complete with fulsome, detailed praise, especially about Rob and Peter and their insights and the rest of it. That will help surface the show, as we say. And the more people who go and listen to the podcast, the more fine ricochet, the more members we get, and the more we're guaranteed to be here, not just for the 2020 election, but for 2024 and beyond. So thank you for doing those things. And buy that stuff. It's good for you.

Last point here. I suppose I could circle back to what we were talking about at the beginning of the show and say the Obama speeches. Did they, you know, I listen. I rate them. I study them. I hear them them i hear the familiar cadences and i realize that i've always been somehow inured to i've i've always had a guard all shield that that for some reason a face shield as it were sneeze guard the right the the the wonders of his rhetoric just don't pierce my sternum the way they do for some people and don't make me weepy and goopy. I hear the same thing. I hear the same hectoring, lecturing tone.

I hear the same false comparisons. I hear the same tropes and the rest of it. But some people just absolutely love this stuff. If you guys listen to it, what did you think? And do you believe, really, uh our democracy is just is going to die unless um i just quoted it in regard to steve bannon let me say it again every great cause begins as a movement becomes a business and turns into a racket michelle and barack obama are selling books and commanding speaking fees and they with a netflix deal and they bought a

house on martha's vineyard for what was that was in the news for 25 million dollars they're in business and it's pretty close to a racket now maybe correct me if i'm being unfair truly correct me if i'm being unfair but i they're just they're pretty close to the Clinton Foundation phase of things in which the Clintons turned it into a racket and the Obamas are doing the same thing. I would push back against that. I don't think anything approaches the Clinton racket. That was pretty amazing. This is late- stage presidential economics. And, you know, it's like it's hard for Trump supporters to complain about the that the

Obama's had their hands out. The weird thing about it was that we know we don't know, but there isn't there are enough reports and incredible reports to suggest that obama just wasn't wasn't a big biden fan oh so it felt a little weird but all these things just seem weirder when there's no crowd where there's no shh imagine remember in 2000 the very popular bill clinton outgoing president had made it through impeachment was very popular very popular Bill Clinton, outgoing president, had made it through impeachment, was very popular, very popular he's walking down the hallways, and they're all the sort of the convention workers and security people and caterers coming out and shaking his hand. He's kind of – he's doing this kind of like Pride Spider Sinatra thing, and the audience is watching this in the hallway, and they're going insane. They're just going crazy.

And then he comes out, and's there he is and it was an incredible moment for i'm sure for him because he this is his life's blood is this but it also showed just the power of a crowd and that's why i think these conventions are so weird without a crowd it's just so strange and so there's something even stripped of the crowd screaming and yelling you certainly you see the clinical quality to the obama speech by the way we would have seen i think i wouldn't i personally would not have noticed it with all the crowd it's just that's why you have a crowd there can we agree right now that the republican convention will be worse that with regard to production values these things i think it's

hard to put this on without a crowd which covers up a lot of mistakes and cutting to this and getting the lighting right. If you've got cheering people, the Republican convention will be even worse. Somehow or other, they'll screw it up. Well, there are fewer Republicans in general in life. And this particular Republican is, I mean, despite the tightening of the polls, has always been underwater in terms of his popularity. So his argument has to meet beat of people is that you're not alone if you like me if you're going to vote for me you're not alone it's not weird you're not alone look at all these people by the rallies are successful look at all these people

who like me right you're not weird for liking me uh and without a crowd it's just a little bit more uphill for him crowd what i miss i miss him i him a lot, but I miss being there. Rob mentioned earlier, 1996 in San Diego, I recall being taken to an island, um, off the coast where we, where we had one there. They just walked around with all the various examples from the, from, of the wine distributors and got everybody hammered. And then at the end of the night, Brian Setzer played the Jimi Hendrix version of the Star-Spangled Banner from a float out in the bay with fireworks afterwards. So everyone's half in the bag and eating fish tacos and watching Brian Setzer and thinking, yes, certainly we journalists are completely men of

the people now, aren't we just? And even to mention something like that these days is like you're discussing a lost world. And part of the misery of 2020 is not knowing if we ever get back to that, if we are ever allowed to take off our masks, if we are ever to get back to shaking hands and being in close quarters and places. And looking at Biden saying we're going to have a national mask mandate in 2021, I see a bunch of people who may not think this is a wonderful opportunity to control people. But since it is, let's see how that works out for us. Let's see what we can do with that. I want to get back to the real convention as soon as possible, to the people in the hall, everyone shouting and screaming and talk closing and no mask and the rest of it. And it's just the damnedest thing in 2020

to yearn for normalcy and to pin it on this doddering old man who's been in politics for half of a century and has done what exactly outside of that? Nothing much comes to mind. Anything more, gentlemen, before we go? Or did I just pretty much kill the mood in the room entirely? Yeah, you killed the mood, but that's okay.

Okay. We're at the end. All right. All right. Well, that's it, everybody. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you all in the comments at Ricochet 4.0. Next week, boys. Next week, fellas.

Rebecca rode up on the afternoon train. It was sunny. Her saltbox house on the coast took a mind off st louis bill was the heir to the standard oil name and money and the town said how did a middle class divorce say do it the wedding was charming if a little gauche is only so far new money goes they picked out a home and called it

holiday house their parties were tasteful if a little loud the doctor had told him to settle down it must have been her fault his heart gave out. And they said, there goes the last great American dynasty. Who knows if she never showed up what could have been.

There goes the maddest woman this town has ever seen She had a marvelous time ruining everything Rebecca gave up on the Rhode Island set forever Flew in all her bitch-packed friends from the city Filled the pool with champagne and swam with the big names And blew through the money on the boys in the ballet And losing on card game bets with Dolly And they said, there goes the last great American dynasty. Who knows if she never showed up or could have been.

There goes the most shameless woman this town has ever seen. She had a marvelous time ruining everything. They say she was seen on occasion. Facing the rock staring out at the midnight sea. And in a feud with her neighbor. She stole his dog and dyed a key lime green. Fifty years is a long time. Holiday house side quietlyly on that beach Free of women with madness

Them men and bad habits And then it was bought by me Ricochet Join the conversation