The Ricochet Podcast - Silent Cal

Episode Date: February 1, 2013

This week on the Ricochet Podcast, Dr. Walter Russell Mead joins to discuss U.S. foreign policy. Then, author Amity Shlaes discusses her important new biography Coolidge. Also, Peter Robinson on the burdens of writing a Big Book, Rob Long reports on what he saw in DC, and James Lileks covers and an important legal dilemma ongoing in Minnesota. All that and more and just a click away. Source

Activate program. The expenses of the government reach everybody. Taxes take from everyone a part of his earnings and force everyone to work for a certain part of his time for the government. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. That was Calvin Coolidge you just heard there. Not so silent after all. Well, we've got the author of a new biography on Coolidge, Amity Shlaes, on the podcast.

We'll also be discussing foreign policy with Walter Russell Mead. I'm James Lilacs, and of course, Peter Robinson and Rob Long are here to give you all Ricochet Podcast number 154. There you go again. Yes, indeed. Ricochet Podcast number 154. And guess what, folks? No sponsors this week, so it's going to be a commercial-free talk blog here on Rick95. We've got great new sponsors coming next week. You're not going to believe who they are. We'll tease it with that. And we'll tease you with these guys. Hey, California, early in the morning, Peter and Rob, I don't know how you do it.

I'm dragging myself. I'm on my ninth cup of coffee. But of course, you're just, you're recovering from the rigors of having to go to Washington, D.C. and decide the future of conservative movement, right, Rob and Peter? Well, I stayed home, Rob, but I am very eager to hear Rob's report. I was there. I was there. Well, I was only there about 24 hours. So I flew in around 2.30 in the afternoon on Saturday and then flew out about 2.30 in the afternoon on Sunday. It was a great event. It was really interesting. I wasn't quite sure what to make of it when I arrived because it seemed very grim and very kind of downcast, as you might imagine, only a few weeks in the occupied zone of the District of Columbia.

The interesting thing was – and I'll just be super honest. The speakers at night, the nighttime speakers, the only ones I really heard in full were Bill Bennett and Jim DeMint. And I honestly thought, oh no. I mean look, I love Bill Bennett. But I remember in 1993 going to the National Review Institute Conservative Summit on the – a week before the inauguration of Bill Clinton and hearing Bill Bennett speak. And I thought, well, this may be part of the problem we have. We have the same cast of characters talking about the same stuff. He was great. He was great and he – very thoughtful, very inclusive in the way that I'm sure curls everybody's hair when you hear it but in fact was kind of very – was useful to hear. And Jim DeMint, I think – I said this on podcast.

I'm not a big fan of Jim DeMint. I have not been a big fan of Jim DeMint. I don't know whether he was terribly useful for the Republicans, certainly for the Republican Senate in the past four years. But everything he said, I agreed with. What this means, Rob, is that you have been corrupted and co-opted over the course of 10 years. Bennett appeals to you now because you're part of that rhino establishment. That could be, or he has. There's a website I saw this week that I decided, you know what? I think I'm probably finished reading this one on a regular basis because he was talking about the, quote,

conservatives who were gathering out in Washington. The, quote, conservative National Review. And apparently, if you don't believe in instantaneous deportation and execution, you're a rhino. You're a mush. You're the problem. Which is, you know, was there any of that there? Peter, from what you read, did you detect

that there was some of that, we've got to be pure or else we're going to lose? There's a big argument against that, and a lot of arguments against it. I mean, there are arguments left and right on certain issues, but there are big argument against that and a lot of arguments against – I mean there are arguments left and right on certain issues. But there are big arguments against the idea of this 100 percent purity, which is fine for me because I'm not, as you all have established, 100 percent pure. And then that was great because then after all those speakers and after a skin full of wine, we got to go and Mike Stein was there and so we got to hang out.

Jonah and Mark and I did an evening which I think you could hear on Ricochet or you may still be able to hear on Ricochet. I'm not really sure how that works. It was good to get the whole band back. It was fun to be together. We were a little rusty. We had no way to end this.

Ordinarily, we know when it's over, but we took questions and the questions, people were lined up and couldn't really see how many. So we ended and someone said, wait a minute. There's still five people. I'm like, OK, so we'll answer more questions. We went on and on and on until finally the hotel decided that they really needed the room back. Somebody told Rich Lowry, hey, you've got to get out of here and Rich Lowry kind of snuck on stage and whispered in Jonah's ear something urgent like we simply cannot afford another hour in this room. So we all of course went to the bar. But it was fun

to see. It was fun to go and then the next day, there's obviously some topics that I'm not particularly enthusiastic about but there were some topics that need to be discussed and I think they were. It's probably a good idea for people to get together every couple of years like this. Even mine, or especially mine I should say, was our problems are not in Washington and our solutions are not in Washington, not just for the country but also for our movement, our way of thinking. It's out there with the Republican governors. It's out there with the state houses that we've won. It's out there in places like Wisconsin. So why don't they have this thing in Des Moines? Why don't they have this thing in Williston, North Dakota?

Why do they have to go to Washington, D.C.? Well, mostly because that's where the speakers are. Right. Well, Peter, you're one of those speakers on the other side of the country, one of those thinkers and shakers. Do you think that this is maybe the time when the best reformulations will be made, or do we have to wait a little bit and see exactly what emerges from the next election and the president's attempt to destroy the party? I've been paying attention to the governors. I'm a little bit – I don't quite know if you were simply provoking Rob by saying here I sit in Minneapolis and you're telling us that there's too much

focus on Washington and how was Washington last week. Right. But I share the impulse. I'm delighted the NR conference took place. It sounds as though it was a marvelous event. All was just wonderful. But I just am more and more impressed by the governors in place and by the number of governors. We have three or four governors now who are proposing to eliminate their state income taxes. I just feel that the shape of the battle over the next couple of years at least has already come into focus. We already know. And it is roughly speaking that the members of the Republican Party in the Senate and the House have a very difficult, by and large, quite dreary, albeit heroic, task ahead of them's very difficult to shape an agenda, to point the way to the future. If all your – if every single day you're trying to combat a new set of regulations, a new encroachment on the constitution, a new proposal for tax hikes, the governors are where it's going to be, I believe. And to a remarkable extent, we're already seeing nothing against the heroic actions taking place in Washington.

Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan trying to make it less bad, terrific. But keep an eye on Bobby Jindal. Keep an eye on Scott Walker. That would be my – at least that's what I'm doing. I just – Right. We're interested right now. Bobby Jindal and Scott Walker were there and I heard Jindal speak on Sunday. He was great.

Jindal is a really interesting guy. Did he say anything that surprised you? No. That was the one problem I think. With him or with the conference? You didn't hear anything really new? With the conference in general, I think probably – I heard some grumblings about there were – a couple of speeches seemed to be stump speeches. A couple of things seemed to be addresses, a couple of things.

It doesn't have – it didn't have, I don't think, the feel of a good family reunion where everybody – where every now and then you get – you're knocked off guard, which is too bad. I mean I remember going – I've been going to these things for 20 years. I mean I went to the one in 93 and I went to the one – and I was the emcee of one a few years later. And I remember it was – I was introducing Ed Koch and then Jack Kemp and then somebody else. I mean it was Gene Kirkpatrick or something. And Jack Kemp – this was before 96, so this must have been 95, maybe 94. And Jack Kemp was fantastic and weird, the way he always was, and completely, completely off script. Yes, yes.

There was always that. Well, it's interesting because we have the governors, true. And when the governors attempt to make it less bad, as you said, they will be blamed by the administration and its various talking heads that actually it's the Republican headwinds that are keeping the economy from bursting out into the glorious trot that any day now will happen. So if the Republicans would stand aside and let all of these laws and regulations and everything else come into force, then we would be in a perfect place. Then that glorious blue state model would be spread across the land and nothing but milk and honey would result. That is not exactly what you might get from reading the works of Walter Russell Mead who has been characterized and cataloging the decline of the blue state model for some time. And it's fascinating stuff. And his pellucid prose is a delight to read.

And we got him here. Dr. Mead is the Henry Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations and one of the country's leading students of American foreign policy. Writes regularly on international affairs for the L.A. Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, International Herald Tribune, Washington Post, Financial Times financial time you know i could just get repetitive stress injury the jaw citing all the places that he writes for we're going to link to them you can read them right now we'll tell you he's a native of south california he lives in jackson heights new york and he's here in the podcast with us thanks for joining us walter russell mead Hello. A native of South Carolina, I think, right? That's right. Yeah.

Peter Robinson here, Dr. Mead. Question. You've written, I guess, the best book on American foreign policy in, oh, a couple of decades. Fantastic piece of work. How are we doing now? In foreign policy? Yes, yes. Well, good and bad in some ways. In the biggest of all possible ways, the world is kind of going America's direction in the sense that this international system of trade that in my book I'd call the Hamiltonian support is doing very well. The China, which is the one great power that could potentially be a rival to us in the way that say Germany and Japan were in the 30s and 40s, is really not well positioned to dominate Asia.

On the other hand, the Islamic threat, the threat of these radical terrorist groups, is one that we haven't really quite figured out how to deal with yet and is likely to be around for a long time. So we're in good shape in some ways, but we have a lot of problems. And why is China not well positioned to dominate Asia? Well, you've got people often look at Asia as it's sort of, you know, it's just the story of the rise of China. China's not alone in Asia. You've got India, which is also rising, also has more than a billion people, will pass China in population in this century. You've got Japan, which, while it's not growing quickly, remains a very, very formidable country and is actually thinking about stepping up its defense spending. You have Vietnam, you have Indonesia, you have Korea. If China starts acting too assertively and trying to control the neighborhood, these other countries immediately

turn to the United States and start to tighten the alliance among them. So China can only be successful in its foreign policy if it tries to integrate itself into Asia rather than trying to take Asia over. And we're kind of okay with it if it's integrated in Asia. And now with regard to the Islamic threat, Mark Stein makes the point, Mark Stein, of course, Canadian and deeply grounded in British history. Mark Stein makes the point that during the British Empire, the British got used to their political system could handle and their military establishment knew how to deal with constant wars on the periphery of empire, constant insurrections, unrest. They were able to handle it. And what we know about our troubles with the Islamic world is that as a political matter, it's very, very rough.

The American people don't like Iraq. They want to get out of Afghanistan. So is there a prospect? We're not the British Empire. I mean, in one of your books, you draw parallels between us and the British experience, demonstrate all that we derive from the British experience, but draw sharp distinctions as well. Can we learn how to handle constant pressure on the periphery, so to speak? Well, you know, we're Americans and we don't want to do things the old way. We certainly don't want to do things the British way of, you know,

conquering countries and sending in our civil service to run them. And I think we'd have more trouble today if we tried to do that rather than less. You know, I think it's more, it's a question of, you know, the civilization of Islam or the civilizations that have been influenced by Islam have really gotten a rough deal from their own perspective in the last three or four hundred years. Americans look at, say, the 300 years since 1700, and we see the world's getting gradually more the way we'd like it to be. There's more democracy. America's bigger, more prosperous. Capitalism has grown.

But if you look at the standpoint of someone from Turkey or Iran or Pakistan or other places, in 1700, the world was filled with large, powerful and very, very wealthy Islamic countries. Ottoman Empire was one of the great powers in Europe and it almost just conquered Vienna. The richest empire in the world was probably the Muslim Mughal Empire in India and so on. And over the next couple of hundred years, these venerable, powerful empires were smashed by contact with Europeans, but even more profoundly by British power. And the world order that we live in today feels kind of good to Americans. It feels like, well, there are problems, but basically the world that

we live in is the world our ancestors tried to make. For many, many people in Islam, the world today feels like almost an abomination. It's gone way off track. A lot of conservatives feel that way too here, by the way. But I think it's a much more profound feeling. And you look at a place like Africa or India, 300 years ago Islamic power was large in those societies. In one sense, Islam seemed to be sort of digesting India like a python that has swallowed something.

And slowly there were conversions to Islam from Hinduism. Same in Africa. Islam was on the march. The British basically put an end to that. What I'm saying is that the problems that Islamic civilizations have with the world order that as it is today are profound. It doesn't mean we're going to necessarily have this sort of Sam Huntington clash of civilizations or permanent war or anything like that. Just saying that we shouldn't expect that problems this deep are going to be settled in 15 minutes. Well, my buddy Charlie Hill, whom I know you know as well, Charlie Hill's formulation is that the great challenge of the time is to bring Islam into the Westphalian system of nation states. I think that's a fair summation of a long conversation I had with Charlie about this.

And you're saying what? Either that that's the wrong way of looking at the problem or it's going to be a lot harder than you might suppose. Yeah, I doubt Charlie thinks it's an easy thing to do. But that still is the challenge? We still have to move in that direction? Well, yes and no. I mean, yes, you look at a place like Mali, and it's not even really a state in the sense that we think of a state.

We think there's a government in the sense that we know we think of a state, we think there's a government in the capital, there are officials all over the country who do follow the orders they get from the capital and so on and so forth. In much of the world, and not just the Islamic world, you know, people, there are bureaucrats who sit at desks and get salaries, but they may not have that much influence on what happens 100 miles away or that kind of thing. So part of this, in order to have a Westphalian state, you have to have a state. And the concept of the state is one that really grew up in European civilization out of a whole long history, a lot of the political ideas behind our concept of the modern state really trace back to Christianity, Christian theology, one way or another. So we'll take a utilitarian idea like, okay, you guys should be part of the Westphalian order. And to us, it may seem like just a kind of a neutral, unbiased, let's organize ourselves so we can get things done.

But to people in a lot of the world, it sounds like we are – this feels like a form of cultural imperialism and they resist it. Well, hey, Dr. Mead, it's Rob Long in LA. I have two questions about that. One, yesterday, Israel bombed Syria, bombed a research facility right now in Mali with the French troops on the ground trying to drive back the sort of that unholy alliance of al-Qaeda in North Africa that in fact exists. And the Tuareg rebellion in Mali, that's going to spread or trying to spread across that part of the Sahara. Probably there's continuing trouble in Algeria. I mean this feels to me on the Islamic side like maybe that it's a new kind of – what's happening in Africa now is what would happen in Africa in the 60s and 50s with communism and communist rebels taking over. I mean it does feel like we're in the very beginnings of a protracted war. Am I wrong?

Well, war is – we got to think about the word war here because it's – this is going to be – this feels to me more like what people used to call a fire in an ashtray rather than sort of World War II. That is, there is, the threat to us is potentially strategic. That is to say, if the Islamists, these radical jihadis ever got control of a chunk of territory that they could, or a government, they could do what the Taliban did in Afghanistan, shelter Al Qaeda, plan strikes against the West, against

the United States. All of that's possible. So we can't ignore it or, you know, whether we like it or not, we're committed in these places. But that may well mean something well between, you know between the Normandy invasion and a day at the beach. Just that we let – I mean I'm certainly in favor of it, but there was really no general worldwide discussion or even I think NATO discussion about French activities in Mali. We all kind of looked at our shoes and let them do it. At some point, don't we actually need to sort of sit down with our allies and our sort of European friends and have a policy about this?

It doesn't seem to me like trouble in Mali, Niger's next. It doesn't seem like this is an isolated incident. It seems like we're going to probably need to figure out what we're going to do when Islamists want to take over Africa. Well, again, takeover Africa is kind of big. I think there's a group of countries around the Sahara, on the southern side of the Sahara, and there's a kind of a band in Africa where predominantly Christian populations border predominantly Muslim populations and there's a kind of a mixed zone. So there are a lot of things going on there. It's very complicated.

Okay. Yeah, that's right. I mean again, I'm sort of glad the French did that. I'm glad they liberated Timbuktu. I think that's probably a good thing. I've actually been to Timbuktu and I'm'm not really sure it's there, but I'm glad they did it. If I can just turn – if we can just turn back quickly to Syria and Israel. I mean do you think this is one of these sort of intermittent skirmishes that happens, or are we sort of – should we be bracing ourselves for – well, I have two questions.

One is bracing ourselves for something continuing and worse to happen between Israel and that region, sort of a more hot war. And then the second question is how confident are you that Secretary of State John Kerry is the one to be leading American foreign policy at this moment? Well, two big questions. Look, nobody knows what's going to happen in Syria. And it could begin to quiet down. There's signs that, as you may have seen, the rebels are announcing that they're open, think about how do we wind this thing down. Or the thing could go on until Syria really falls apart and you get kind of ethnic violence, religious violence, and all kinds of horrible things taking place in the absence of a powerful government, sort of Lebanon on steroids. And in that kind of situation, that's terrible for Israel, certainly terrible for the people in Syria. We'll see a lot of so nobody knows what's going to happen there, but everybody's pretty concerned. And we'll just have to watch these events unfold. I wish that earlier in the crisis, the U.S. and others had done more to try to find some groups that we could work with and maybe help them win.

But that – I think that moment may have passed. Can I go to one more trouble spot and just – Sure. The one other trouble spot is North Korea. It's been a trouble spot now for almost 20 years, pretty much along the same lines. They build a missile. We tell them not to. They fire a missile.

We tell them don't do it. And the subtext of all those conversations is returning to China and saying to China, control this pit bull that you – that is a client of yours. And the pressure seems to be on China. Is China prepared or even inclined to take responsibility for, I guess, neutralizing North Korea? Or is this something, again, that American leadership needs to do? Well, I'm not sure what American leadership can do unless you have in mind an invasion of the North. And the Chinese are actually, I think, frustrated by North Korea as well.

Actually, China does not benefit by North Korea's militancy. The thing that China probably fears most in East Asia would be a full out Japanese decision to rearm and get nuclear weapons. And North Korea is pushing Japanese politics to the right. It is strengthening the voices in Japan who really do want to militarize. And the Chinese would like to control them. The North Koreans, I think, they're not just blackmailing us with these kinds of acts of violence. They're also saying to the Chinese, look, you know, give us this money and stop yakking at us about concessions or we're going to make you even more trouble.

And North Korea is a problem that nobody quite knows how to solve, but we shouldn't think of them as just sitting there as kind of soft puppets of the Chinese. We often think, oh, you're a big power, they're a little power. You should just be able to wag your finger and they'll do what you want. But in fact, it doesn't work that way. And it doesn't work that way, especially with North Korea. One last question, Dr. Mead. James Lilac's here in Minneapolis.

We've been talking about war and force. In order to deter and in order to project power, you need a military and a well-funded one at that. France has seen what it can't do after not spending money. America is looking at a lot of cuts and looking at an American population that maybe doesn't want to pay for the military as they did before. You've eloquently detailed at the blog, the blue state model, how everything we got is going for pensions practically, it seems. Are we in the mood to spend what we need on the military? And does this worry you going 10, 20 years into the future? Well, I am concerned. I think, you know, I've written a couple of times on the blog that I think that the current foreign policy that Obama, the administration has announced,

is in some ways, if we fulfilled it, not a bad policy, but it means much more military spending than the administration seems willing to contemplate. And look, I think democracies are not necessarily the smartest beasts on the planet. And if you look back at American history, what you see is American people very often get tired of thinking internationally. They they look to cut back defense. And then somebody comes along and whacks us on the head with a two by four. We say, wait a minute, we need to start spending again. And I think that, you know, there's that kind of cycle is sort of the way human nature operates. We haven't had a huge terrorist attack mounted from abroad on us really since September 11th.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were not exactly what you'd call resounding successes in terms of public opinion or anything else. So the tide has turned and we'll just have to see what happens. But I think that worrying about projecting the trend out 10 to 20 years is somewhat premature. I don't think our enemies are going to leave us undisturbed that long. Well, thank you. Peter, Rob? Well, I have about 100 questions. As do we all, but he has a life to get to.

Okay. So, Dr. Mead, here's my next assignment for you. Would you put up on your blog post – I haven't seen, what do you make of George Kennan? This is apropos of nothing exactly, except that I know that you will have studied George Kennan in detail. And what you just said reminds, Kennan, of course,

with his long telegram in February 1946, lays out really everything you need to know about the Cold War. And within about 10 years, he begins and then spends the rest of his life second guessing himself, second guessing the way containment was put into effect and really sort of making it clear that he thinks democracy doesn't work all that well. Are you a pro-Kennan man in the end? Do you like the early Kennon and have doubts about the later Kennon? Look, I think

you know, I think Kennon spent a lot of his life outside the United States in part because he never really liked American society, American democracy. He didn't, did he? You picked up on that too. Okay, you make me feel better. I felt that myself. No, but it's, you know,

but he's a very interesting figure. You know, he was actually very, very close to Reinhold Niebu you know but he's a very interesting figure you know he was actually very very close to reinhold niebuhr and that's a very interesting thing to think about but you know there is this kind of there is a kind of um sort of a radical sense of the imperfection of all human institutions and governments. And I think it's, I think it would be important to see the kind of Nibiruism in some of Kennan's skepticism. Now, aside from all of that, there's the question of judgment and practicality in foreign affairs. And there, I think Kennan was a much better theorist than policymaker. Exactly. Okay. I can't tell you how much better this makes me feel because I've, he viewed himself as a man, he yearned, as best I can see, he yearned to have his hands on the levers. He wanted to be a man of action. He wanted to be an Atchison.

And in fact, he just wasn't suited to that at all. He wasn't intellectual, right? I think he was an intellectual and he's a very good intellectual. Was he ever? But he was not a politician and most of his contacts with power didn't end happily.

Sounds like a lot of us, actually. Thanks so much. Great. Thank you, guys. Thank you, Dr. us, actually. Thanks so much. Great. Thank you, guys. Thank you, Dr. Bean. All right. See you. Bye. So many things to get to. That was sheer self-indulgence. I'll put up a blog post explaining why I asked that question about George

Kennan and explaining who George Kennan is. Let me ask you, do we not I mean, I think that I'm just having this conversation with thinking, we don't talk about foreign policy that much. No. Or is it just that we haven't in a while and we've been talking a lot about sort of the immediate political landscape and not – I mean it's kind of fun to talk about the world. Well, everybody – It was very childish when I said that.

Sorry, it's early. Well, everybody – I was very childish when I said that. Sorry. It's early. No, because I mean it's very, very satisfying to give the impression that one understands the complexity of the planet having listened to NPR and read the Times and skimmed some blogs and you can talk about these things. I mean when you were talking about the Israeli strike on Syria, I was nodding along sagely. Yes, I've heard of that too. It does raise some troubling questions, does it not? It's a lot of fun to talk to you. You're absolutely right.

But you run up against somebody like Dr. Mead who knows what he's talking about. And I was actually cheered a lot by him saying right out of the gate that things are kind of going our way. Doesn't this – Rob, doesn't this run contrary to our natural donkey-like insistence that everything is turning against us when we're lost? Yeah, I guess. I mean I was going to – I mean I personally am fascinated by what's happening in Africa. I've been to the region, spent a lot of time there. I've seen some of these countries and cities I've been to and I don't find much about that in the American press. I don't find much about that in the American conversation. No, I don't think anybody cares

about Africa here. I think it's made up primarily of TFS. Nobody here cares about France, let alone Mali. But what's strange is that the French invaded, or not invaded, the French landed a rescue mission. This also feels very late

50s, early 60s Cold War stuff. Drove the rebels back, split the Tuaregs and the Al-Qaeda in North Africa no longer sort of together, at least in Mali. It's unclear whether there is such a thing as Al-Qaeda in North Africa, and it's just not somebody taking on the brand. The brand is out there. There's no central authority. We may as well declare ourselves that. By the way, you don't hear much about this. You don't hear much about the fact that there was an intervention

in an African country. You don't hear much about it in African press either. It's just sort of like, yeah, well, you know, when push comes to shove, that's what we need. We need Western powers to come and clean up. And that the Western power was France. Which I love. My French brother-in-law is always

hammering about American imperialism and George Bush and his cowboy diplomacy. I can't wait. Which I love. My French brother-in-law is always hammering about American imperialism and George Bush and his cowboy diplomacy. I can't wait. That's right. You know what? You know what? I have to say this is one of those moments when I feel oh dear, I have to, I think twice

before saying it out loud but I'm going to go ahead and say it. That Barack Obama's fundamental impulse is the correct one. If the French want to take action, let the French take action. It's up to them. For me, I mean, and if as I hope he has, he's already made it clear you're on your own. Rob is quite right. This does sound like, feel like the 1950s again. But of course, we know what happened after that. The French got stuck in Dien Bien Phu and said to the Americans, come bail us out in Vietnam. And we did attempt to do so and got, anyway. So I, for me, my constant

exasperation for a quarter of a century has been those Western Europeans can't solve anything on their own, can't take any responsibility for anything in the world. And look, the French have. You know what I say? I say bravo. Well, there is something about that. I mean the French believe they have three things happening, right? International security. They have always been on the side of fighting terrorism and standing up to the Islamic fundamentalists,

whether you believe that or not. That's a separate thing, but that's one thing they've always claimed. The second thing they've claimed is they have a national security issue with these – this is French Central Africa. These are French-speaking nations. These are former French colonies. There's an enormous amount of traffic back and forth between these countries in France. There are a huge number of those immigrants in France and there are a huge number of – would have been a huge number of refugees if somehow the Islamists had managed to turn Mali into Afghanistan. Mali didn't start being Afghanistan. Mali was sort of a – it wasn't a growing and prosperous nation. It was one of the poorest it wasn't a growing and prosperous nation.

It was one of the poorest nations on earth, and Timbuktu was in fact pretty much of a dirt patch but had some beautiful old mosques in it. But Mali at the time had like a music festival. It was actually sort of a – in many ways, it was sort of a cool destination. And so all those people were going to have to go somewhere and they were going to go to Paris. So they had a national security issue. taken over by a cult against its will, that a few armed bandits coming together with some armed terrorists could wreak havoc on an otherwise peaceful and fairly secular country. Those seem like legitimate arguments for intervention. But what I think is the amazing thing is they intervened,

and we haven't had a conversation about intervention. Whereas I can remember, I'm old enough to remember, and Peter, you remember, you were in the Reagan White House. That was the thing that if you did that, that would have been a worldwide freak out. That was absolutely against all of the directions of the intellectual movements of the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, was that whatever you do, you don't intervene. And we've just intervened, or one of our allies just intervened, and nobody wants to talk about it. Well, of course, because it's France, for heaven's sakes. If somebody in the course of their history ever said, if one of their bureaucrats ever said Sacrebleu, then France is entitled to do so. And what's more, we're sure that they did it with

style and elan. And who cares? It's just Africa anyway. And if you want to talk about invading a country because you fear that it was taken over by a cult, you can say the same thing about America at various points in its history, maybe perhaps even now, or maybe the 30s when some of the experimentation going on in Washington, D.C. struck some as the ravings of a madman. And if you want to understand the 30s and presidential economic policy, there's no better place to start than The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes. It is a tremendous book and will upend the way you think about the Great Depression. And if you have an opinion of Calvin Coolidge as a silent dullard who said nothing did nothing and

simply occupied the office like a warm body for the X number of years, you might have that idea upended as well by her latest book, Coolidge. Amity Shlaes directs the 4% Growth Project at the George W. Bush Center, which seeks to advance knowledge of economics, markets, and growth, something we could use a lot of. She's chairman of the Hayek Prize, which is of course a prize for free market books given by the Manhattan Institute. Columnist, speaker, lecturer, I was lucky enough to hear her here in Minneapolis a couple of years ago. We're happy to have her on the podcast to talk about Cal. Amity Shlaes, welcome.

Amity. Hello. Can you hear me? Yes. This is Peter here. Pub date is February 12th. Yes, sir. And I pre-ordered on Amazon. It's still pre-ordering, right? They haven't started shipping the book yet? Not as far as I know. No, it's still pre-ordering, right? They haven't started shipping the book yet? Not as far as I know. No, it's still pre-ordering. Thank you. What you have to do is you have to put out an audiobook version that is simply 90 minutes of blank tape.

Amity, let me read you a quotation, and you tell me how this fits into the life and thinking of Calvin Coolidge. Quote, if all the folks in the United States would do the few simple things they know they ought to do, most of our big problems would take care of themselves. Coolidge was most presidents are at about action. They just go and go. And the more they do, the better their energizer bunnies. Coolidge believed in strength through inaction to govern by inactions very different and so that quote reflects his attitude is it a coolidge quote is it a coolidge yeah that's a coolidge quotation i think it is yeah i found it where did i find it on it doesn't matter where i found it on the way uh no it was quoted it was i plucked this from a a George Will column a couple of years ago.

So George Will has researchers. It must be a Coolidge quotation. And if he's – so he's called Silent Cal. By the way, in his honor, we named the company that owns Ricochet, Silent Cal Productions. He's Silent Cal. He believes in expressing strength through inaction. And how did this make him as a subject for a biographer? Just so different from our modern presidents, isn't it?

It's the opposite of what we're used to. Whether it's a Republican or a Democrat, the candidates always speak of more action and vigor. So we live in the Theodore Roosevelt model, don't we, where you use the bully pulpit, that was the phrase TR used, to get stuff done that needs done. And I just thought how curious this fellow is so different. He's an economic hero and a hero of inaction was something we wish we had, which is stronger growth, budget balanced. And the most remarkable thing, Peter, the only thing you need to take away from this story, if you take one thing, is that when Coolidge left office after 66 or 67 months in office as president, the federal budget was lower than when he came in. Wait a minute. How did he do that? Is that real? Is that nominal? These are all the questions we automatically ask with our modern reflexes. Yes, it was real. It was also nominal. He did it. And this is a mystery we want to look into. And is he good company, Amity? Did you enjoy spending time with Calvin Coolidge and his letters, his documents, his family?

Very much so. Very much so. Sometimes life was difficult for him. To be president is not always easy. To be a politician is not always easy. But at each stage, you can feel his struggles. And he did so much good for other people. He was not a narcissist, to put it in modern terms.

And that's rare. Even if you're not a narcissist, you become one if people pay enough attention to you in a sustained way over time. He fought against selfishness at every stage. And I came to love that about him. And is the model of Calvin? So you mentioned Theodore Roosevelt yourself, and he that that's certainly the model, the vigorous president taking action, giving speeches more, more, more, as opposed to the model of Calvin Coolidge, which is speak when you have something to say, take action only when you must cut the budget,

unless there's a good reason not to do so. Almost opposites. Is the Calvin Coolidge model recoverable at this stage in the life of this republic? Or is it simply a wonderful historical oddity about which we ought to feel we conservatives properly should feel nostalgic? We should deepen our knowledge of him and appreciate him, but it's not relevant for the present day. Is it recoverable? Oh, it's totally recoverable. I certainly believe so. You want to remember, I mean, some of this has to do with external events. After World War I, the U.S. wondered if it would be a debtor or a creditor nation. It wondered maybe sterling would overtake the dollar.

We had enormous debts. Imagine you have $1 billion in debt or $1 billion or $2 billion in debt before the war and it goes up to $28 or $29 billion after the war. We had unemployment and we were wondering whether we would have a revolution. In between, in the time when you have worked, it was clear the U.S. was the superpower. But it now is like then,

more than it's like the 80s, which is to say we're not sure the dollar will always be king, currency of reserve. And because we have competition, we are aware that we must eventually fix our finances. This little situation we have currently where people buy U.S. bonds, even though the U.S. is deepening its debt, can't abide forever. Maybe the Chinese will create a currency. Maybe PayPal will create a currency. Maybe a currency will come from a place whose name we do not yet know. But we know that our competitiveness matters. So we're more like the 20s than we are like the 80s. I don't say this in this history book, but I do believe that.

And that's one reason I studied Coolidge, because they said in order to really become the superpower, they didn't use that word, let's say, sustain our position as a creditor country in the gold standard and move the U. the US ahead into a permanent position of leadership, we must cut our debt. We must narrow our deficit and turn it into a surplus. We must cut taxes. So they saw the challenge and rose to it. That's awfully interesting now. Well, I think, hey, Amity, it's Rob Long in LA. How are you? How are you? Good. So here's my fear is that you're right. I'm terrified that you're correct and that we are – it is close to the 20s. And what we need to do is to survey the political landscape and find a politician who is not a narcissist.

And I don't think – I don't see one. I mean do you – I guess from my readings of Calvin Coolidge, Peter said we named our little company Silent Cal Productions because we revere him. So he feels like a character and a personality you could not find now anywhere. interested in the accolades or praise or the entourage or any of those things that are sort of part of the current imperial presidency. And I just – I despair of finding a guy or I guess a woman too who's going to run for that office who's going to not be some kind of creepy diva. I'm not sure I believe that. We work in the media, right? So here we are. I've known Peter a long time. I've met you, right? We've all been in this media business for a long, long time. And currently people worship the media as if the journalists were priests and ministers,

right? The media says that spin matters and perception is reality. The media are just sheep like everyone else. We know that. Do we? The press are sheep. They follow the shepherd. They follow the one who makes the most noise. They don't have any kind of moral superiority.

And one of the problems we have now that I'm preoccupied with is that the press tell the people that perception is reality and that people only care about payments now. Perception is reality. And if you appear austere, the people, you the people, won't follow a candidate who represents austerity. And therefore, there can be no candidate who represents austerity. Well, people are a lot deeper and more moral than that. They raise families. They do a lot of things that require balancing, calibration, and sacrifice. Every day they save money.

That's evidence of their long-term thought. And whether you look in the redistributionist crowd or you look at Milton Friedman, I mean to put it in, in, in data terms, Milton had a thing called the permanent income hypothesis that said people aren't cheap. If you give them a stimulus today, they might not spend it, um, at the, at the target because they know that their taxes might go up later and therefore they save it. And we've seen that empirically when when the results of recent stimuli have been disappointing people have deep souls and i have a lot of confidence in people

one of i i'm more concerned about the way we talk to people or they talk to one another and this received idea that there must be either um that there must always be anger, one. We see that on TV. It's not alive unless it's angry, right? Right. And anger isn't necessarily the way to come up with the most creative solution. It feels good, but it's not creative in terms of solving the very solvable problems we have. Or that people will never accept anything but greater entitlements, the ever greater entitlement network. I don't believe that. But we do need leadership. And I don't want to say my favorite politician is this person,

because I'm here about Calvin, right? And if I say, I like this person, and my audience doesn't like that person, well, then I've lost the chance to share Calvin, whom I like so much. I think he's much more modern than we allow. And one of the ways that he's been marginalized is to be treated, and you're aware of this, as a kind of regional fluke. The old New England. Ha, ha, ha. He said cow with three syllables. And that's nice. You can appreciate the regional in him.

And long for it, all of America comes from New England. Just about, right? Many, many people have ancestors who were in New England on their way to Texas, right? Or to California, even if it was just changing planes, but some of them had farms there. And that's quaint and nice, but he's more than a region. And he's certainly, I was surprised how modern he was. I mean, you hear today, President Kennedy, or now you hear, oh, technology is paradigm changing and it will get us out of our policy challenges, right? And you hear that a lot. I mean, these cross thinkers who come on and say, the issue is not how to solve social security,

it's how to change the national, blow the national mind with a new technology that will then obviate the social security debate or make it solvable. And Kennedy did that, of course, with the space race, speaking of another president, right? Let's take their minds off their troubles and have a space race that's good for economic growth, but also good spiritually. Coolidge was the same, and he did it with flight, with Lindbergh. So that's astoundingly modern. Amity, Peter here once again. Could I, another piece of Calvin Coolidge with a question. He's speaking now on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. About the Declaration,

there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. Those who wish to proceed from those principles cannot lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient than those of the revolutionary fathers. Wow, he could sling words.

Did you find your appreciation for him as a prose stylist deepening as you worked on this project? So much. I mean, if you want to look at it sort of professionally and psychologically, authors often compete with their subjects. Do you want to hear Peter? Do you want to hear Peter Haniford? Do you want to hear Amity on Coolidge or do you want to hear Calvin? And Coolidge was a president who could write. Could he ever. Could he ever. So we should just give him,

and I did go speak to some lawmakers a couple of years ago, and we gave every lawmaker a copy of his autobiography. Because Coolidge said it well. I recommend this autobiography. The details behind it, though, awaken our curiosity.

And that's what Coolidge, my book, is about. But yes, and he would always turn opponents around. There he's saying, you who want to change the Constitution, you're the old-fashioned ones. We're the modern ones. There's another speech he gave at Westfield in Massachusetts about people who want to always change things, where he quoted a farmer who said he might not particularly like the Constitution, but we needed rule of law. And that speech surprised me. It was around the time of the very difficult decision to put down the Boston police strike. Right.

When he was governor, he was governor of Massachusetts at this point, right? Right. I'll read that just to, as you read a little, shall we throw the constitution overboard because it does not please us all alike. Supposing two or three of you had been at pains to break up a piece of rough

land and sow it with wheat. Would you let it lie waste because you could not agree what sort of fence to make? Oh, he's good. And this is not just, he's quoting this farmer going back in the debate over the Constitution. That would be Jonathan Smith, a farmer from Lanesborough, and Smith watched Shays' Rebellion, which was anger over debt and anger over the new government before the Constitution, right? And Smith was appalled at the anarchy that resulted when people always fought over rules. And that's important for us to remember too. Order, you know, is restful. And Smith said,

last winter people took up arms and then if you went to speak to them, you had the musket of death presented to your breast. And so Smith said, is essentially saying, I'm not wild necessarily about all aspects of the constitution, but order is its own blessing too.

Fantastic. Then there's the guy, hi, is its own blessing, too. Fantastic. Then there's the guy, Amity James Ladd, here in Minneapolis. Then there's those moments when the federal government decides to go nationwide, coast to coast, and says you can't have a drop of booze. Where was Cal on prohibition, and how exactly did he feel about it personally? Oh, that's a good question. I'm not sure he would answer that. So I hear I'll be his attorney would answer that. So I hear I'll

be his attorney, shall I? Shall I? I'll be his attorney. I would say he was pragmatic. He didn't like, this is like a lot of our parents, those of us who had the fortune to have good parents, they didn't like, he didn't like to see the law broken. He saw no charm in that because it was bad for other laws he prized. So the problem, his argument on prohibition, if he would allow himself to make it, but he didn't want to undermine the law, so he didn't, it was an impractical law because it was broken a lot and that undermined the rule of law, including good laws, which he did support and want to see enforced. He used the phrase, reign of law. But you see him, let's just think of examples. He didn't really want to become a pharmacist because in those days, the pharmacists were

the ones who had the liquor. He didn't necessarily think that was good. There's some writing, oh, a pharmacist father, because I think his father thought of him being a pharmacist for a while. Then he could have stayed in Plymouth. He was in Northampton, which had liquor. It was a so-called licensed town or a wet town, and he had friends and political constituents who sold liquor, and he didn't want to see their business hurt.

Ryers is the name of the inn. And he would stop there. R-A-H-A-R apostrophe S. At times he represented beer concerns. He was after the new ethnic vote. The Republican Party, as now, had an existential crisis. Did it have any future? Oh, my gosh, all these immigrants, they may not be for us. What shall we do? And as a pragmatic,

small town, Western Mass Republican, he said, I think we can do a lot for the new immigrants in Northampton where he was or in Hampshire County. And one of their concerns was that they made beer or sold it. And it was nice to get the revenue in the town from the liquor license. And that meant he didn't have to levy other taxes so he saw liquor quite pragmatically and i want to mention one last thing which makes me laugh um the political mood was such that people could pick up that prohibition might be repealed during his presidency right and what is the evidence of calvin on that well i noticed um that towards the end of his life, he bought stock in something called Standard Brands, which sounds nice.

It was sort of a brand. The thesis of that company was that with supermarkets coming, economy of scale mattered, and they'll send a lot of things to supermarkets fast, and a distribution company will do very well. So he invested in that. Okay. But also Standard standard brands had yeast and yeast is especially valuable when you are allowed to make beer. So you can see him shorting prohibition in a tiny way to his stock purchase of standard brands. Muscular pragmatism. Well, that goes to a question that somebody asked in the chat.

Or profit. Right. In the chat room, somebody asked, what exactly was the philosophical basis for Calvin Coolidge? Did he have one or was he just an extremely practical man? Would he have been happy with big government if it ran by the rule of law and didn't have deficits? Oh, no, he was profoundly unhappy with the concept of big government. He went at it slightly differently from the way we do today. Today we would say sort of in a behaviorist way, big government doesn't work. It's impractical.

There are fewer productivity gains. That's the econ speak. When government spends, it builds a bridge to nowhere. How impractical. The private sector is cleverer. That's how he put it. He saw it more spiritually. He said government impinges on the air.

I'm paraphrasing here, so there's not a quote. But he said basically government impinges on the spiritual and moves into realms where it does not belong. So I don't think Coolidge would have been happy with a national law like prohibition outlawing abortion because he didn't think it was the role of the federal government to be involved in abortion at all. A lot of other areas, social areas. And like many men of his time, including Franklin Roosevelt, for many years, he believed if somebody was going to write social laws, well, heck, it should be the state, not Washington, right? That states could do certain social things, but certainly not Washington. And he was profoundly uncomfortable with the concept ofachment of the federal government into all sorts of spheres in the 20s, what would he make? I mean I know this is – what would this temperate kind of sober individual do if we could somehow reanimate him and bring him back to 2013?

I mean would he – would we finally see the silent cow just freak out? I mean what would – what do you think his – after he was done screaming, what do you think his first words would be? Oh, I think it's what we said before. The US will have to be more competitive in future years. And so the value of leaders like Coolidge will become evident without them screaming. It will be obvious that we need to elect someone like him when our credit rating goes down a couple more points and our bond price starts to reflect, interest rates start to push up, which they will, to everyone. And we will go hunting for Calvin. He won't go hunting for us. He can whisper. He won't need to scream at all because he was so careful. The reason he was able to do what he did,

you know, he came after another man who was for small government, Harding. Why did Coolidge succeed in finishing where Harding stopped? Because Coolidge did what he did with utter integrity and made sure the people who worked for him got as clean as possible in most instances. So we're going to look for a virtuous cutter like Coolidge very soon, I believe. That's a perfect phrase, hunting for Calvin. Hunting, longing for, longing for.

So I thought I'd found someone I had hoped to meet and I'm lucky he gave me his time. In researching Calvin, you had to research his times as well. Did you enjoy going back to the 20s? I mean, it's a fascinating time. It's the rise of mass popular culture coast to coast. You have national publications. You have national

movies. Surely your study of the subject was not completely confined to Calvin himself. You had to understand what the culture was in the 20s, right? Oh, so much. Calvin himself, I had enormous help from Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation for whom I'm a trustee, and the Forbes Library, which I commend to every visitor in Northampton, and the Barry Center, where the Vermont State has Coolidge material.

But for the 20s, oddly, there's a book that's considered left-wing, sort of, you know, the Linz book, Middletown, which is a sociology book. Two sociologists went to a town. Actually, it was Muncie, Indiana, but they called it Middletown and studied every aspect of what people did, you know, that they didn't go to church now. On Sunday, they went for a ride in their new vehicle, right? The astounding changes that the telephone and the automobile brought to our culture. And one has to look at that. I will say, though, I hear there's a new Gatsby movie coming out, right? The 20s were, and it's not like Boardwalk and Gatsby alone. The 20s were a period with real growth. People got cars, they got power, maybe

they got some, the wives got appliances, which meant they had more time. Housework was such terrible drudgery before the 20s and the teens. And all this was part of their life. The Coolidges got a Lincoln car. He liked Lincoln. I think he liked the name. And the Coolidge's had their children learn to type. I mean, they were very much of their age. This idea of them as quaint throwbacks, that's what people insist on when they want to minimize Coolidge or make him just an object of nostalgia.

So, yes, the part of the 20s that's understudied is the incredible economic achievement, though, and we needed to bring that out. Right, which has subsequently been sold to the American people as nothing but a bubble waiting to be pricked, that there was actually nothing there. And if there was any good to the 20s, it was simply setting the stage for the munificent salvation that FDR provided, which is nonsense. Right. You're saying why did the 20s look so bad? Why do we – and then you have to sort of work backwards in a very perverse way to figure out the emotional logic. I won't even call it true logic.

Okay. The 20s had to be really bad so that the incredible ambition of the 30s is justified, of the New Deal. But the 20s weren't that bad. The stock market went too high. Well, it went too high. Coolidge knew it was too high. He bought a depression-proof stock, Standard Brands. Everyone knew it was too high.

But was the 20s so bad that – was that decade so bad that it necessitated a Great Depression of 11 years? And was the stock market such a lie that it would take a generation for the number to come back to where it was in 29? No, the stock market was not such a lie that it was zero. So this is all – I mean we work backwards when we write history. History is very much manipulated in the schools. I think we were, I mean, you work all the way from World War II. Roosevelt was right in World War II. Therefore, he had to be right in the 30s. Therefore, the 20s had to be bad. What a very strange logic. But yet, that's the logic of the text high schoolers tend to get.

Precisely. In the 20s were a time of tremendous American cultural strength. We were able to withstand European nihilism until things got bad enough here that that seemed a reasonable alternative to the old American optimism that had preceded. I can't wait to read the book. And everybody who's listening to this podcast, be well aware that we'll be talking about it an awful lot. And I believe you'll even be blogging at Ricochet. Is that right, Amity? I'm going to write some things about the book and Coolidge for you. And your audience, I want to say thank you to your audience for caring about Coolidge this much. I'm going to try to share with you as much original material as I can, because it's, it's, it's he, you know, you want to have not just opinion, but his astounding words. And I'm very

grateful, Peter, you read some of them today. Wonderful. Wonderful. We'll see you at the site and we'll get the book as soon as it's out. And we thank you for coming by. And we would love to talk to you down the road again. Amelie Schlaes, thank you for being here today. Thank you. Well, that is extraordinary. Like I said, I can't wait to get my hands on that because I really enjoy The Forgotten Man. Which, of all things, you know, The Forgotten Man that you titled that book about, does anybody know the reference there? I mean, it was a song.

It was a big number in an early 30s Hollywood musical about the guys who fought in World War I and then came back and suffered in the Depression, couldn't get a job, that they were forgotten. And again, when we write history, you go backwards to find all the stuff that justifies your conclusion. How does it come to be that during FDR, the reign of the most wonderful, benevolent president in human history, that you would have the forgotten man?

Why, it's almost like reading, as I did the other day, that two things are happening in New York. One, Bloomberg spent more than anybody else. Huge deficits. Gargantuan amounts of spending. And two, another link that I got from Stitcher from CNN Radio talks about how homelessness is on the rise in New York City because a chief key subsidy for housing has been cut. How can it possibly be that big government spends more

and yet people's services are reduced? Rob, Peter, do you have any answer for that whatsoever? How the promised bonus from World War I and they failed Hoover and they did not get it under Roosevelt. Do you remember that? Roosevelt did not do that. Nobody wanted to and that's – and the republicans possibly kept them from doing so. So that's – But they did get it under Hoover. I'm trying to remember. Congress did after the bonus marchers were – this is a long story. Forget it. I don't remember the details well enough. But I'm almost certain that Congress did vote to give them something because everyone was so horrified by the –

General MacArthur moved the troops in to drive them out of Washington. All right. Enough of that. That was a separate incident. I will now fall silent. What a lovely week we've had. What a lovely week we've had. What a lovely podcast we've had here, boys. Peter, you sound like somebody who was attempting to load Wikipedia pages and then gave up halfway through.

No, no, no. It was actually much harder. I'm trying to read the line. You are your own Wikipedia entry here. For heaven's sake. You would know these things off the top of your head. Congrats to you. I actually do know that,

but the hard drive is so deeply asleep that I can't pull it. I mean, the hard drive in my brain. There's something I do know. I'll put up a post about it. I'll figure it out

and clarify it and put up a post. Generally, you have to agree a couple of things here. One, this has been a generally optimistic podcast, correct? Well, as long as you're talking

about the 1920s, yes. Yeah, yeah. And, you know know it's early so i'm not in my best no between me talking about the fact that uh you know we are not doomed to sink into the sea as china inexorably rises and amity talking about the fact that the republican party has been here before and seen some of the similar straits and there's been the usual caterwauling then as there is now. All is not lost, and history repeats itself, and these guys are on top,

which has got to mean that their time of comeuppance will be coming. You just want there to be a party to step into the void when that particular thing happens. Yes, I hadn't thought of it this way before, James, but you're right. Hunting for Calvin, I think, is the right phrase. We finally got Barack Obama exactly where we want him. Yeah, come on, fellows, here we go. But I actually

do believe that that's given me a little bit of cheer. Now I know what I'm looking for. I'm looking for Calvin Coolidge. Calvin Coolidge, in other words, to go up against Hillary Clinton. Do you guys think that she's going to be running in 2016, or do you believe that she's content to just go home and sleep and tend to a garden and write her memoirs? Oh, I hadn't thought that far ahead. I find it impossible that she wants to go home and write her memoirs and be done.

Yeah, I agree with that. I don't know whether she wants to run for president or what, but I just find that really hard to believe. So do I, and I imagine that there's a lot of family pressure from the distaff side to get them back in the White House with all the perks. Although, who knows? Maybe Bill's having fun making money and scooting around and wouldn't enjoy being first man so much.

A little bit more scrutiny, a little bit more attention. But I don't know. Who knows? If she does run – He would love it. Are you kidding me? He would love it. Attention.

Waiting for somebody. He's the classic narcissist. So if Hillary Clinton then does run for president, is there anybody in the Republican quiver at the moment who can beat the two things that she has? One, she's female. And two, of course, there will still be Clinton nostalgia for the wonderful boom years. I see the stupid party throwing up a bush against her, which would just absolutely contort the mind into boggling that I can't even conceive. Who do we got? Who would take on Hillary?

Rob, you were just out there at the future scanning the horizon. Well, I don't know. I don't even think it's productive to think about it. I mean for me anyway, it's productive to think about it. It's too soon. I think we just got to find a Calvin. I mean I trust Amity that there's one out there, that one is sitting there whittling on the front porch, sipping sweet tea, waiting for us to say, hey, how about you?

That may be true, may not be true, but I know what I'm looking for now. I'm looking for that guy. That's sweet mint tea, I believe, if you're sipping when you're looking for yellow cake. Well, that's... I'm going to go make myself some lunch here, and I believe that you guys have got some things to do as well.

An early morning podcast leaves us all with a day just stretching ahead and all these things to do. I have to go interview a guy about the food truck controversy in our town. The people who have restaurants with fixed costs are sort of peeved that these guys could just drive up and serve food in a truck and drive off. It's one of those little things that defines a big city, and Minneapolis is becoming one. Oh, who am I kidding? We're a small town with small little people. And Rob, you're off to what?

Well, it's 8 o'clock, so I'm going to have a cup of coffee and get on Ricochet and go to work and continue my pace. And Peter, what have you up for the rest of the day and the week? I've got – I have a huge amount of writing to do to tell you the truth. Oh, the book. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean I can tell you in detail what my day is going to be like, but everybody would be asleep within 20 seconds. It's boring, hard, tedious work when you're organizing research materials, but it has to be done.

And I can't find anybody to do it for me. I'll leave you with this then. I also have to finish a column for the newspaper about a recent Minnesota Supreme Court decision, which says that it is okay on the internet to call somebody, quote, a tool, end quote. Somebody sued the appeals court, said, go ahead. And the Supreme Court had to decide that it's okay to say, what a tool. I'm just thinking of all these people who strived their entire life from law school and upwards to get to be the ultimate robed soul and sitting on the bench adjudicating these matters. And they open up to, what do we got today? Whether or not somebody's a tool. So use that word indiscriminately at Ricochet.

We won't sue. We will, however, remind you that there is a code of conduct, and that's why you love Ricochet. Thank you for listening. Guys, we'll see you at the site. Fellas, see you next week. Next week. Hello, darkness, my old friend. I've come to talk with you again.

Because a vision softly creeping Left its seeds while I was sleeping And the vision that was planted in my brain Still remains within the sound of silence in restless dreams I walked alone narrow streets of cobblestone

near the halo of A Street Land I turned my collar to the cold and damp When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light It split the night And touched the sound of silence Ricochet!

Join the conversation. People writing songs that voices never share. No one did disturb the sound of silence. Who said I do not know silence like a cancer grows? Hear my words that I might. Silence like a cancer grows