The Ricochet Podcast - Texas v. Greece

Episode Date: July 9, 2015

A busy news week mean we have to book the best experts to parse what’s important and what’s not. This week, we call on Ricochet podcaster (on hiatus) and Perry campaign advisor Avik Roy to help talk us through what the fallout will be from the SCOTUS ACA decision that came down last week. Also, he gives some insight on Perry’s speech on race and why the Texas economy is the best in the country. Source

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for the 2025 Aer Lingus College Football Classic. Enjoy the full American football experience with cheerleaders, marching bands, tailgating, pep rallies, as well as an exciting halftime show. Don't miss out on one of the biggest sporting events of the summer. Tickets on sale now at Ticketmaster.ie. Hello, everyone. I'm not going to get, I don't know what's going to happen here. I don't have any information on that.

They don't understand what you're talking about. And that's going to prove to be disastrous. What it means is that the people don't want socialism. They want more conservatism. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Troy Senec sitting in for Peter Robinson. Guest today, Ovik Roy, Perry Advisor, James Bethakoukis on Greece and China. Let's have ourselves a podcast.

Yes, welcome everybody to this, the Ricochet Podcast number 266. It's brought to you by The Great Courses. There you go again. Ricochet, and we'll tell you a little bit more about that later. But skitter off, if you will, to thegreatcourses.com slash Ricochet. And, of course, we're brought to you by Harry's Shave because overpaying for drugstore razors is just a bad habit. It's like taking free or money at a very low rate from European bankers. It's a bad thing to do, and you should leave that habit behind. You should make the smart switch and go to Harry's. Use our coupon code Ricochet. And we're brought to you, of course, by Ricochet.com. Esteemed founder Peter is not with us.

He is off, I think, somewhere. I don't know. He's off at a sweater competition, but we have Rob Long who has swanned in once again from the East Coast. Oh, I'm not. I'm West Coast. I'm here. I'm in L.A. I know, but you made the move from the East to the west, and I assume a certain amount of swanning was involved en route.

So now that you're here and ensconced in your usual seat with a dog barking in the background and the beautiful Venice shore beckoning, tell us why people should give their money to Ricochet and what they get in return. I would like to say – I want to say this. If you are listening to this podcast and you're a member, we are thrilled to have you as a member with us. We're on here. We're all fellow members together. We're glad that you're part of the big conversation and we're happy to see you on the site. And if you're listening and you're not a member, you're a Greek freeloader. You might as well vote for us. Look, we don't want to say that.

A lot of people listen. We need 10,000 members to make this thing work. We have slightly fewer than that. We We need 10,000 members to make this thing work. We have slightly fewer than that. We still need 10,000 members. If you've been listening and you mean to become a member, just do it. Just do it today. Please do it this week. Please do it today when you listen to this podcast.

And that's all I'll say. It matters to us. It's a big, big deal. It's not nothing. And that's all I'll say. It matters to us. It's a big, big deal. It's not nothing. And that's all I'm going to say today. This week, all I'm going to ask is for people who know how great Ricochet is and have been meaning to join and have not done it, please do it today. It will mean a great deal to us. Exactly.

And once we hit 10,000, then there will be 50% smaller in time in treaties from Rob. So you get everything, everybody gets something out of this. You get Ricochet, the Ricochet Project. That's me. And then who, and everybody wants less of me. If you get less of Rob in the front,

you get more of him in the large capacious argument portion to come. And we'll start that out with, well, Rob, I wasn't going to say it, but there you went, with Troy Sinek, who's replacing Peter this week. And welcome, Troy. I know that as you survey the popular landscape, you're thinking, gosh, it's really kind of

fun to see the Democrats' enthusiasm go behind an avowed socialist. It really does kind of rip the mask off just a tad, doesn't it? Are you, as they say, feeling the burn? And given what he said about women wanting really to be gang raped and how you get cervical cancer from lack of orgasms, I think feeling is a term that I really don't want to use in terms of Bernie Sanders. But explain, if you will, his meteoric rise. Well, I think Bernie Sanders appeals to the fact that Bernie Sanders is representative of a dynamic that has happened in the Democratic Party the last couple of years, which is that they have moved – they're getting restless, which is what happens when a party controls the White House for eight years. And no matter what a president accomplishes for you, there's always more that he can do. And there's always been these shock troops on the left who felt like President Obama – President Obama doesn't have his

heart in it and they want something more. Bernie Sanders is something more and he's also – to be fair about this, he's the only alternative these people have to look to. There's no Elizabeth Warren in this race. Hillary Clinton is being cautious as is her want and everybody else – I mean O'Malley is sort of a non-entity and then you've got these two other guys, Lincoln Chafee and Jim Webb who are both republicans for most of their careers. But I look at this and I am delighted because I see the Democratic Party in 2016 looking very, very similar to the Republican Party in 2008, which is that you've got a party that has an incumbent that has polarized the country.

They're intellectually exhausted. They've got this aging, unloved candidate as their frontrunner and the field is so barren that they're turning, as some of our people did to Ron Paul in 2008, to the slightly wacky 70-year-old guy who takes every argument to the ideological extreme. And these are not things that augur well for a party winning the White House. So I am delighted to see the crowds turn out in places like Madison, Wisconsin for Bernie Sanders. If they want to make that the face of the Democratic Party, fine by me. Hey, Troy, help me out with this thesis I'm working on.

Okay. Republicans have traditionally always nominated the next person. And their primaries have always been a little bit a kabuki theater, right? And there's the next guy. The next guy in line usually gets – always gets the nomination. But there's a brief flirtation with an insurgent and the primary voters in the back of their minds or the front of their minds when they talk to pollsters, they talk to pundits, they talk to reporters. They always say, well, I know this – I know person X has got no chance, but I'm trying to push the eventual nominee to the – farther to the right. Farther to the right. Go further to where I think the heart of the party lies.

The Democrats have always had 27 candidates all on stage there running around trying to cobble together a coalition to win the caucuses, the primaries. This year, it's exactly the opposite. That's right. Bernie Sanders' support is really – I mean look. I love everything you said I love, but I really think half that support, two-thirds of that support, 90 percent of that support – by the way, I have zero evidence for this, but I believe it in my bones. It's just people thinking I'm fine with Hillary. I'm fine with her. But I want the liberals to have something. I want to fly the

flag for the liberals and I want her to remember who her people really are. So I'm going to be for Bernie now and I'm going to shut up. The minute New Hampshire is wrapped up, I'm going to shut up and be for Hillary. They may even have Hillary bumper stickers on their car right now. It's the Republicans who have this

gigantic beauty pageant. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing for Republicans or necessarily a bad thing for Democrats for that matter. But it's weird. It's a very strange kind of flip that I never would have predicted. Yeah, that's exactly right. And I think you're right about the Sanders dynamic, which is let's keep in mind how low the cost is to tell some pollster at this point. If you're a Democratic primary voter, that you're in favor of Bernie Sanders. It's gestural politics.

That's all it is. How low the cost is to run now in that party. Exactly. It proves you're a good person because even though you may not vote for Bernie or don't think he's going to get traction, he's a socialist and socialism is good. It's a humanitarian alternative that we've never really tried. But the few places in which it's been applied. It's never been tried, James. Never been tried.

The few places in which it actually has been. They've attempted a little bit of it in some Scandinavian countries, and it worked marvelously. And so why we can't transplant the model that works for 12 million ethnically homogenous, culturally homogenous people into a nation of 360 million people with all sorts of different cultures, it ought to be an easy thing to do. And besides, even if it doesn't work, it shows that we cared to try. And so that's what it's all about. You're right. It's a signifier that you're a good person who cares. And of course, to the left, care is defined by taking other people's property away and giving it to those people over there and feeling good about yourself in the middle.

But more about that in a little bit. I just find it amusing that he's got this surge, and it supposedly says nothing whatsoever about people's attitude toward Hillary, who, remember, Hillary in her conversation this week, her interview, believes that she's trusted and that she's worthy of trust. And we got to get to this with our guest. That's fantastic. Among other things.

It's so beautiful. And to hear all of the worried people on MSNBC or CNN talking about how she seems defensive, tired, prickly, peevish, wondering if she's up for it. Not a veteran campaign. And you know every single one of those people making the critique will vote for her in the end. Anyway, let's talk to Avik, shall we? Avik Roy. He's a senior advisor to Governor Perry.

He's the author of How Medicaid Fails the Poor, Transcending Obamacare. You can find him at, oh, all kinds of places, National Review Online and of course here, our podcast where we welcome him back. Thanks for joining us again. How are you doing today? Hey, good day from Austin, Texas, land of the free, home of the brave. Hey, Ovik. It's Rob Long in Los Angeles.

Thanks for joining us again. So Peter Robinson is not on today, which allows me to ask a series of really amateurish questions, but I need to ask before we talk about policy or politics. You're in Austin, headquarters of the Perry campaign. What do you – does he hang out there? Does he walk around? Do you guys talk every – I mean is he – how does that even work? I mean do you travel with him? Do you sit in an office? Do you talk to him on the phone? I mean he's mostly traveling to the early states, so he's spending most of his time in Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina. So he's not in the office that much once in a while.

I'm in the office probably a lot more, working on a lot of things that senior advisors do I suppose. And what's his favorite ice cream? You know, I don't know the answer to that. I'll have to ask him. Is this your first presidential campaign? I was an outside health care advisor to Mitt Romney in 2012. So I helped work on the Obamacare replacement plan, the Medicare reform, things like that. But this is my first time at this level of being involved.

Is it cool? Yeah. I mean it's – well, it's a real honor to work for Governor Perry who I think – I get that what happened last time and now there's skepticism about him. But I've followed his – I graduated from high school in San Antonio. So I've followed his record just as an honorary Texan myself for all this time, from 2000 to 2014. And his record is astoundingly good. And even though we all as conservatives generally know that Texas does well,

I don't think people really appreciate how successful Texas has been and how innovative Texas has been at pushing the policy envelope for conservatives further and further down the field. And so it's really exciting to be working for a guy who's an innovator in public policy, who I think brings a lot to the table and is going to really improve the quality of this race. All right. But I mean, just let me ask you some. I mean, we had an innovative governor in Jeb Bush in Florida. You have a very innovative governor, very aggressive governor in Scott Walker in Wisconsin. You have a very successful governor, very popular governor of Ohio and John Kasich. How's Rick Perry going to break out? Well, I think there are pretty important distinctions between all those governors that you mentioned.

For example, to bring Jeb Bush into the conversation, I mean Jeb – Governor Bush is somebody who I have great admiration and respect for. He likes to talk about – that is Governor Bush likes to talk about the economic performance of Florida being superior to that of Texas, I would suggest to you that a big chunk of Florida's economic performance during Governor Bush's tenure was driven by the housing bubble, which mysteriously crashed months after he left office. So I think you can contrast that to Texas, where we had a 50%, 60% drop in the price of oil last year, and yet Texas continues to add jobs. I think the robustness and the diversity and the strength of the Texas economy is really, really impressive. If you go from the end of 2007 to the end of 2014, so really the period that spans the time since the financial crisis, the US lost – without Texas, the US lost 1.1 million jobs.

So Texas was responsible for on net the entirety of US job growth during that period. So I think that's really the difference between Florida and Texas is that Florida really suffered after the financial crisis. Texas kept going. Oh, but you don't understand. Even if Texas did add jobs, they may have been the wrong kind of jobs. And the gap between what they paid and what the boss made may have been really horrendous. So that's what, of course, people are going to ask. Let's look at income inequality since we're all concerned about that now.

Wages, have they been going up in Texas regardless of whether the gap has been growing? Have wages been going up in Texas regardless of whether the gap has been growing? Have wages been going up in Texas over the last four or five years under the Perry administration? They have. I wrote a piece for – and don't hold this against me – for AlJazeera.com. You got to eat. Everybody's got to eat. I wrote a piece for them last year on this very topic that there's been this allegation that the quality of the jobs in Texas is very poor.

But actually, the national trend in the U.S. in the Obama era has been a hollowing out of the middle class. There are a lot more poor people and there are a lot more wealthy people, but the middle class is being pushed aside. Texas had the opposite situation. The middle class is thriving in Texas. Wages or income for people in all income quartiles has gone up. And in Texas, one thing that's really important, and the governor talked about this last week in his speech on black poverty, one of the big things about Texas is that whatever your income is, your dollar goes farther in Texas because taxes are effectively – the income taxes are zero because the cost of housing is so low compared to Rob Long's California that we actually – you can actually afford to live here.

My rent in Texas is a fraction of what it was in New York City, and that alone is powering my checking account every time I take a look at it. Over – this is Troy Sinek. Let's get into your wheelhouse for a moment. Actually, everything is sort of your wheelhouse. First among equals, healthcare. There's a sentiment amongst a lot of conservatives that while they may not have liked the King v. Burwell decision on the merits, that the Supreme Court may have sort of pulled our chestnuts out of the fire, that the disruptions that would have resulted from having all of those subsidies canceled for people who were getting their

insurance from the federal exchanges would have been politically anyway a net negative for republicans because the politics of it would have been so treacherous and that it's just easier to be shooting for repeal and replace in 2017. Do you think that's right? Do you share that sentiment? I would say that that's a sentiment I've heard a lot. I just came back from a trip to DC and I heard that a lot from people on Capitol Hill. I have to say personally the issue of the rule of law really matters to me and the idea that John Roberts thinks that it's not quite getting enough attention yet, is how much consolidation is happening in the healthcare industry as a result of Obamacare. Can you explain why that's happening and what the implications are for sort of your average American consumer of health insurance? Yeah, so it was a Scott Gottlieb op-ed.

Scott's at AEI among other places, and he was absolutely right. The way I would talk about it two ways, one generally and one specifically. So in general, I think most of us who think about free markets a lot understand that the more the federal government or state governments for that matter impose regulations on the economy. Big businesses can afford all the lawyers and the compliance officers to comply with those regulations. Small businesses can't. So any industry or any sector of the economy that's heavily regulated tends to become biased towards big players because those big players can shoulder all the costs of government. Healthcare is, as you know, heavily, heavily regulated, and that's compounded by all the other messed up things that we do in U.S. healthcare that drive

consolidation. So what's happening in healthcare is that you have this, so more than half of what we spend as a country on healthcare is spent by the government. So one thing we don't realize, a lot of conservatives don't realize is, just as a step back here, we thought that – a lot of people have this impression that we had this free market healthcare system before Obamacare came around. That isn't true. Prior to Obamacare, US government spending on healthcare per capita was higher than all but two other countries in the world, higher than most of those single payer countries we like to make fun of. So we were already very heavily down the road or the catheter to serfdom, as I once wrote in National Review. So it's- By the way, I can't now unsee that image in my head.

So that's the problem we've had. And so how have hospitals responded to that? Hospitals have responded to that by merging. And the reason why is this. If more and more of your patients are getting insurance through the government, through Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, and the like, the number of patients you have that have traditional private health insurance is shrinking. And because the government dictates prices to you, Medicare says, hey, this is how much we're going to pay for that knee replacement or that angioplasty. So you don't have leverage with the federal government to negotiate price, but you do

have leverage with private insurers. So here's what hospitals do. They merge so that even though they're getting paid a little less by the federal government, they can jack up prices that private insurers pay for those hospital products. So in response to the mergers that are going on in the hospital sector to jack up prices to charge insurers more money, which means your premiums are up too, by the way. Insurers are countering that by merging themselves because if the insurers merge, then the hospitals don't have as much leverage because then the insurer can say, hey,

I'm delivering 10 million patients to your hospital every year or 10 million patient visits to your hospital every year. You better listen to me or I'll take those patients to the hospital next door. So that's the game that's going on is there's an arms race between hospitals and insurers over that shrinking portion of the pie that's private sector healthcare in America. So, Ovik, January 23rd, 2017, President Rick Perry takes office, walks in the Oval Office. Presumably you're there having not made some kind of embarrassing tweet or something during the campaign. You never know. Well, you never know.

I mean I don't want to put it past you, but just say you're there. What does he do? Does he repeal Obamacare? Does he amend Obamacare? Does he stroke of the pen? he says it doesn't exist. I mean this is – part of the argument against Obamacare when people were arguing against it was that once it's law, it's law, and it's going to be really hard to undo. What's the official Rick Perry position? Governor Perry is committed to repealing and replacing Obamacare, and he said in his announcement speech, I believe, that one of the first things he will do when he's president is submit to Congress – well, he'll submit to Congress a couple things. One, a freeze of all pending federal regulations from the Obama administration. Two, a regulatory reform bill to take – to roll back and put under strict regulatory budgets all federal agencies.

So what does that mean? We have a federal government right now which issues regulations without any regard congress actually to estimate the regulatory cost of all new regulations being put out by the executive branch, make sure that those – that there's a fixed cap on the economic costs of regulations that can come out of a specific department of the executive branch and thereby force those agencies to, say, retire old regulations if they want to impose new ones. So the thing about Obamacare to understand is that it's really – it's two different things. It's two different pieces. You can understand Obamacare as two different pieces. One is the taxing and spending, right?

So that's the – That's what I understand. Right. The second part is a regulatory part. So Obamacare is actually a profound expansion of the federal government's power to regulate the healthcare economy. And so to repeal and replace Obamacare, you got to do two things. You got to tackle the regulatory element of Obamacare, the individual mandates, things like that, the regulations, the insurance market, and you also have to tackle the taxing and spending. And so Governor Perry does intend to unveil at a later point – and by a later point, I don't mean like a year from now. I mean in this calendar year and possibly in a sooner timeframe than that, his plan to repeal and replace Obamacare.

Okay. Can we just switch gears just quickly to one other topic that he's talking about I think alone among Republican candidates right now? Sure. candidates right now sure um and which is you know i give a lot of props for because i think it's it's a it's a difficult one for republicans to talk about especially now especially with the way the tone of the country is and that's race um he seems to be the only i mean he has said that you know he he is the republican candidate this year there's always one i mean i'm gonna i'm giving it the most cynical gloss possible. There's always one Republican candidate who says, I will not. I will not give up the black vote this time. I'm going to go after the black vote.

And they say it usually in the primaries and somebody covers it and then they end up doing what every Republican candidate does. They give up the black vote. How is Rick Perry going to be different? You know, I have never been prouder to work for Rick Perry than I was when he delivered that speech last week. I think that there's a couple of points that I would highlight to your audience, and I encourage everyone to either read the full text of the remarks or to watch the speech on YouTube or C-SPAN or what have you, because the full content of it is hard to summarize in the short time that we have. But there was a couple of points that the governor was trying to make that Republicans almost never make. So as you noted, yes, Republicans say we shouldn't

give up on the black vote. We should go into speak at black colleges or go into the cities. And and, you know, they like our school choice proposal. So we'll win the black vote by pitching them on school choice. And I think those those are none of those things are wrong, I guess. But they've really failed to understand the depth of the problem. And the depth of the problem comes from the fact that Barry Goldwater in 1964 ran for president campaigning against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because he had the view that some parts of that Civil Rights Act were unconstitutional. And that was the moment in which the black vote went from being, say, 60% Democratic to 80 to 90% Democratic. And that is something that Republicans

have failed to really process, which is to say that we talk a lot about the importance of states' rights, and yet we haven't figured out a way to reconcile that with the fact of states' rights, and yet we haven't figured out a way to reconcile that with the fact that states' rights were the justification for slavery and segregation. And so what the governor pointed out, and I think the governor is, of course, the guy with the maximum credibility to point it out, right? Because he is a guy who's passionate about the Tenth Amendment and say, look, the Tenth Amendment is the way to go, broadly speaking, in terms of how we run our affairs. But the history of slavery and segregation compels us

to recognize why we also have a 14th Amendment, which is to say the 14th Amendment was passed by Republicans in the 19th century in one of their first great contributions to American life so as to create an exception to the Tenth Amendment when it comes to race and segregation and slavery. And for reasons that are somewhat mysterious, I guess, Republicans and conservatives haven't talked about civil rights in that way. And I think that's one of the most important things that the governor was trying to say. There are a lot of other things the governor is trying to say too, which is, look, we should hold Democrats accountable for the economic results of their

policies in inner cities and in urban communities and in minority communities. And Texas has a very, very strong record of reducing unemployment, reducing the poverty rate, improving graduation rates for those very people that Democrats claim to have a policy monopoly on. So there's a policy argument to be made about how best to advance the interests of black voters. But you're never going to get there unless you're willing to acknowledge the real, real intellectual issue, which is that blacks in general rightly and understandably feel that the state's rights of political philosophy is profoundly contrary to their history. I mean, imagine if you're, you know, an African American of our age, and you have a grandparent who was threatened with lynching or who had friends who were lynched, you know,

how are you supposed to respond to a Republican who just blithely says to you, oh, yeah, the states should be in charge of everything. You're just not. And until we recognize the moral legitimacy of that argument, we aren't going to win the black vote. And so that's a big part of – I think recognizing the Barry Goldwater mistake, something I think as a conservative movement we have not done, and also recognizing the civil rights exception to our federalist approach to governance. Those are two things philosophically and intellectually that we must do if we're ever going to erode that monopoly that Democrats currently have on the black vote. We have to recognize that blacks don't vote Democrat in the proportions that they do because somehow they've been manipulated by the liberal media. They vote in that proportion for Democrats because they genuinely believe that Democrats

are more concerned about their interests. Well, changing that perception is a long-term project that makes sending a probe to Pluto look like something you dash off overnight. And good luck with that. But one of the things that Barry said in a recent, I believe, editorial was you have to look at the consequences of progressive, for example, land use policies, zoning to get the desire of what they, the nice little urban utopias that they wish. And when they finally get it, by some strange coincidence, it's sort of white and elitist and not particularly as diverse as they would celebrate.

And that's holding them accountable for their consequences. Now, when you talk about this, though, if you say that in a debate with Hillary Clinton, she's going to look at you and say, well, if you want to go to Texas where you have no zoning whatsoever and people can build a poison factory next to a school, then I guess people should go to Texas. I'm in favor of making sure that we have healthy kids. I mean, the governor has to be ready for a high-minded intellectual argument to be met with codswaddle of the most pandering sort. And when he trains for the debates, is that what he's expecting? I mean, is he actually going out there expecting a point-by-point refutation from progressives because he's not going to get it? Yeah, I mean I think that Governor Perry feels that he's very prepared to address those questions. Again, I think that the record of Texas in advancing the economic interests of minorities is unparalleled.

If you look at the supplemental poverty rate, which by the way takes cost of living into account, California's supplemental poverty rate for both blacks and Hispanics is 50% higher. That's 5-0% higher than Texas's. So if the lefties in California are going to tell us that their policies are achieving – are helping minority communities, there's plenty of data to refute that claim. All right. Ovik, thank you very much. We hope to have you and what the heck, the governor on the podcast again as the election progresses. Thanks much.

Regards to the Lone Star State. Get back to work, Ovik. All right. We'll do. election progresses. Thanks much. Regards to the Lone Star State. Get back to work, Ovik. But I am, you know, if it does come down to Perry versus Hillary, and remember, I said a long time ago, it's going to be Perry-Fiorino. And somebody else recently said that. You did. I remember that. You did. A long time ago. Yeah.

And that has to, it doesn't have to do with, I like this guy because everything he says is what I feel. It has to do with that, those 11 spice everything he says is what i feel it has to do with that those 11 spice blends of electability and you know but one of the things that i would like to see come but you but you also like him right i mean that there is a yes i pick a winner it's like it's hard to pick it's hard to pick the winner if if you hate it like it there is something about him like i don't know rick perry it'd be kind of cool. You want to go – right. That has to be a – part of it is the desire to, from these 16 candidates,

assemble Frankenstein like his charisma, his intelligence, his speaking style, et cetera, but you can't do that. So if it comes down to Perry versus Hillary in a debate, I would like at some point for him to develop this little idea that when he takes his glasses off, all of a sudden he's going a little bit more authentically Texan than when they're on. Sort of a two-faced thing. Just like I'm signaling to America when the glasses go off that here comes the real thing. And then I put them back on to show how these glasses indeed enforce a certain sort of rationality on me. Because that's what glasses mean to everybody, right?

Smart person. Smart, rational person. Clark Kent. Glasses on. Hard-working guy. Glasses off. Then he's Superman. glasses mean to everybody, right? Smart person, smart, rational person. Clark Kent, glasses on, hardworking guy, glasses off, then he's Superman. Perry should work on that. Or maybe he should go to thegreatcourses.com and get the lecture series, The Philosopher's Toolkit, how to be the most rational person in any room. And then he doesn't have to depend on cosmetic cues like glasses, but he can use his own intellect in order to dominate the room intellectually.

Now, most of you listening to this podcast, of course, are lifelong learners. And like us, you're interested in learning for your own personal enrichment. That's the motivation behind The Great Courses. Now, The Great Courses series, The Philosopher's Toolkit, as I mentioned, is taught by the award-winning professor Patrick Grimm. And he gives strategies on how to be more creative, more rational, and inventive as well in your own daily life. He'll supply exercises to help you think outside of the usual paradigms. It shows how to use conceptual visualization to manage information. In other words, if you've ever found yourself sitting there listening to somebody blather on like I'm doing now

and wondering how you're going to get a word in edgewise and when, well, this is that. It gives you the strategies that you can use to turn the argument. Well, it's not necessarily enough to win. You got to be right and you have to be right for the right reasons. So The Great Courses, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, by the way, it's got 500 courses in many subjects, philosophy, history, religion, and more. You can get it in DVDs, CDs, streaming, digital downloads, or with The Great Courses apps, of course. Now for a limited time, The Great Courses has a special offer for you, the Ricochet listener.

Order from eight of their best-selling courses, including The Philosopher's Toolkit, at up to 80% off the original price, but only available for a limited time, so make haste. Order today. Go to thegreatcourses.com slash ricochet. That's thegreatcourses.com slash ricochet. Don't forget, all together now, thegreatcourses.com slash ricochet. That's thegreatcourses.com slash ricochet. Don't forget, all together now, thegreatcourses.com slash ricochet. Well, we were talking- That was a wonderful segue, James, but I have to say, I hope that there's one person who I hope

isn't the most rational person in the room, and that's Rick Perry, if he's going to debate Hillary Clinton. Whoever's debating in a presidential debate, I don't want them to be rational. I want them to be sort of aggressive. I want them to win. It's sort of like you don't – as you put it, I don't want them to lay out this perfect pellucid argument. I want them to sort of go for the jugular. Right. That's when the glasses come off and that's when you go full text and that's when you get that – I, as I said last time he ran it at National Review, sometimes he has that expression where it's like in the back of his head, he's got this little grin, and it's like he's imagining how you would look if somebody said, dance

partner, and shot a 45-inch. And America wants that. Part of America might want that, especially if something bad happens, twixt now and then. And, you know, over the last couple of weeks, people have been saying, well, what can go worse than the culture collapsing? How about the economy? When you cast your eyes around the world, you see Greece and then you see China.

Ah! A lot of fingernail biting down at the critical level of the Chinese. It was a good Simpsons, it was a very good Simpsons sound effect. Oh, yeah, that's good. Hello. You can do Krusty the Clown when it comes to the economy. Yeah, that's good. Hello. You can do Krusty the Clown when it comes to economy. Ah, this is how he's

dead. Bring in somebody who has both a Greek surname and who has an economics background and who sounds as though he's broadcasting from a plane at 30,000 feet with cabin noise in the background. Are you indeed in a Learjet right now going off to Europe, James?

I wish. I wish I was. I would have no fear to go to Greece. Greece is a wonderful country full of wonderful people smoking lots of wonderful cigarettes and drinking lots of wonderful coffee. All right, Pethokoukis, enough of your boosterism, although I do agree. I'm going to ask you a series of questions from the deeply American perspective. When I read news about foreign economies, here's what I really want to know. Greek referendum, does it have any effect on me in America and the American dollar?

Here's how it would have a big effect. It would have a big effect if Greece ends up leaving the euro and then investors look at the debt of some other highly indebted European countries, Spain, Italy, Portugal, and they think, well, gee, maybe these countries aren't so safe after all. Maybe they're not guaranteed forever to be in the euro. Maybe their debt isn't so safe. So then we begin to have a repeat of what we saw a few years ago. People begin to wonder, gosh, maybe this euro, the euro isn't isn't a forever thing. Maybe maybe it can collapse. And there was a great there was a great research report put out during that time by by Citigroup. And I read a lot of Wall Street

research, but rarely, particularly when you're talking about Europe, does Wall Street research use words like civil war? Yeah, right. I didn't remember what you wrote about. Doomsday. So that is a concern. It affects the global economy. People here get worried. So yeah, Greece in and of itself, it's a lovely place, but it's a very small place.

So I mean, if we begin to get those other worst case scenarios. All right. But OK, just help me again. of itself it's a it's a it's a lovely place but it's a very small place so i mean it's that worst case if we begin to get those other worst case scenarios all right so but okay just just help me again like i'm a six-year-old um okay so i think it's happening now by the way there certainly is uh there's a reason one of the reasons why the dollar is so strong um and the dollar will only get stronger right i mean if people feel that the euro is no longer a competitor in strong currency to the dollar, they will go to the dollar for safety. Dollar gets stronger. I'm an American. Does that bug me? I mean I remember back in the – I'm old enough to remember back in the Reagan days that one of the biggest raging debates among conservatives was strong

dollar versus weak dollar and one of the things that Steve Forbes kept saying, and I think even Larry Kudlow says, is that you don't help your economy by weakening your currency. So won't a strong dollar be good for America or will just hurt us more in our trade? Well, right. Well, right now, I think that's exactly the thing. It's hurting trade. It is a drag on the economy. I mean, over the long term, a strong dollar is good if it reflects that people think very highly of your country, that they feel like it won't suffer lots of inflation, that you're very productive, that you're growing. People want to hold U.S. assets.

So from that perspective, a strong dollar is good, you know, or a stable dollar is good. But right now, in any like short-term, medium-term framework, it can be good or it can be bad. Just saying like, is a strong dollar good? Is a weak dollar bad? You can't really reason from just like that kind of movement. You have to see what is the overall context. And if the overall context is that people are flocking to the dollar because if you the rest of the world uh is imploding uh then that that that may not be a good situation so a strong dollar you just can't say strong

dollar strong dollar as kind of a de facto um you know kind of you know rule of thumb i i don't think that works okay so uh on the scale i mean so, so I, so it is true that my reaction, which is I'm not proud of it, but my gut reaction when I hear things like this may make the euro weaker, or the European, the countries are, the European Union, the European Central Bank is in a mess. Part of me is like, good. Those Europeans deserve it. That's a childish response that will probably end up hurting me in my immaturity.

OK, I accept that. The second issue from my own American perspective, Chinese asset inflation, Chinese stock market trouble. Part of me, again, maybe it's a childish part of me, sees that and I think, good, let that bubble burst. That can only be good for us. Stupid or not stupid? Well, I mean I think what you're seeing in the stock market really reflects maybe a – right. It's a stock market bubble. It's a stock market bubble to a great degree generated by the government, which was encouraging through the media, through newspapers, buy, buy, buy.

Now it's permitting you to sell, right? Right, right. I mean what? There's an editorial in the People's Daily, which of course I'm a regular reader i'm saying don't worry after every rain there's a rainbow that's amazing but it also reflects that you know brad is that the underlying chinese economy i don't think it's nearly as strong as what we think i think it's probably maybe an economy that's really maybe not growing very much at all i think the next question is exactly what you said. How will China react? Will they think, gosh, what we're doing worked for a while.

It's no longer working. We need to have a lot more privatization and market reforms. Or are they going to say, we cannot show any weakness. We have to make sure everyone realizes the party can control the economy, and you're going to get a lot more government intervention. I think over the long term, that doesn't work. But over the near term, that may be their response. I'm guessing the latter. If anybody in the Chinese stock market comes out and says the fundamentals are sound, which is always what they say after the Dow goes down 1,000 points.

Whenever anybody says the fundamentals are sound, you know that the floorboard beams are completely rotted with thermites, and it's time to sell. But I always thought that if China had – It's like when a baseball team says we have a lot of confidence in the manager. Yeah. He better start packing. But I figured with China, the problem was going to be a property bust because one of the reasons, of course, you can keep your economy roaring around at the mandated 8% every year is to build empty cities in the middle of nowhere and then also to have these massive projects that they have in the big cities that people

will sell and, you know, sell all their assets to get a little tiny portion of a piece of chunk of concrete in the sky. So even if the Chinese stock market stabilizes, don't they have a big property bust on route as well that they have to digest? Well, I do know. I mean, I think we've all seen on the internet like the ghost cities, you know, just skyscrapers and everything and no one there.

I mean, but some of those ghost cities have ended up filling in as more people have sort of moved from the countryside. But yeah, right. This is a very, it is, I think, you could say it's a bubble. We have an equity bubble.

And I think the question is whether the Chinese economy is just going to be sort of in a permanent state of kind of, you know, like one bubble to the next to the next, or can they actually create a sustainable growth model? I don't think a top-down government-run economy is a sustainable model. And can they transition to a more market-based economy, which I don't think they can if you continue to have the communist party in power because by its very nature, a sustainable market-based economy is not a centrally planned economy. And if you don't have a centrally planned economy, you don't need

the central planners. Jim Troysenik, let me take you back to Greece for a moment because there's so much uncertainty around this right now. What does a reasonable outcome look like to you in the Greek situation? What's the move or the sequence of moves that seems to you to make the best sense long term? I think realistically, I think they leave the euro. They don't pay back that debt. The economy goes – I mean just goes further into the tank. But eventually, they have a better priced currency, and they get more visitors.

They begin to trade more. And I think we've seen that with some other countries, but it's going to get a lot. It'll get worse before it gets better. And I'm not sure this is I'm not sure none of this will lead Greece to anything that you could call prosperity. It's a poorly run country. What do you want to call crony capitalism or clientelist capitalism? It's nothing. There's nothing really resembling market capitalism. So I think that is your scenario, which is a country that will eventually sort of get out of the bottom, but it's not going to be anything – it will not be a country that you're going to call flourishing.

And listen, I don't think it's ever going to be Switzerland on the Aegean. So is the right way to think about it? The short-term pain is inevitable. You guys are going to have to deal with that. You have to be thinking about what gets you to the highest level long-term. Yeah, I mean that's been sort of the criticism all along, that this was just a – that the euro was a bad fit between a lot of the northern, very fiscally sound, very productive economies and all these other economies. To make the euro work long term in that sort of arrangement, it has to look a lot more like the United States, where you have not just a similar, the same currency,

but your budgets are coordinated. You have a fiscal union. So there's wealth transfers from the north to the south. That does not look like that's going to happen anytime soon. So that may happen, but it's going to be too late for Greece. Well, maybe they should replace the euro with the hero, go to a meat-based economy where people are just...

That'd be great. Sign me up. Or gyros. I never could really get a definitive answer on that. I believe it's gyros. Well, there you go. Okay, so you go and you just exchange wonderful pita breads dripping with cucumber sauce instead of money. And frankly, I think a lot of people would be up for that.

James, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. We hope not to talk to you for a while because that'll mean that nothing has collapsed, cratered, and destroyed. I'm on alert. I'm on alert. All right. We'll see you around. Thanks for joining us today. Thanks a lot. Everybody's right. Rob's right. Troy's right about Greece being an absolutely wonderful,

beautiful country. When I was there and had an authentic hero at a seaside resort, I remember two things. One, the proprietor of the shop was helping everybody read the menu because nobody of course – I know where you're going. I know where you're going.

I know where this is going. This is great. Go ahead. Really? Because I don't. I honestly – I do know where you're going. I know where you're going.

I honestly don't. Well, since Rob knows – Want me to help you? Want me to help you? Yeah, go right ahead. How does he get those – how does he get that meat so thin on that sandwich, on the gyro? No. He shaves it. No.

No? Oh. I wasn't even thinking about that. Oh, God. Sorry. To tell you the truth, I forgot that I had a commercial coming up at all. Oh, man. Whoa. Well, thank God I'm I forgot that I had a commercial coming up at all. Oh, man, whoa. Well, thank God I'm here to remind you.

It's good that you did. No, I had a little tale that actually – because sometimes people mention Greece. People mention that you should go. You keep reading this, right? That just because the company – the country is falling apart doesn't mean you shouldn't go. And the owner of the place had a little – he was wearing a shirt and it had New Orleans Jazz Club or something, some embroidery on it. It was something that you would buy in a gift shop made in China or whatever. And I asked him if he'd ever been to New Orleans and he got a very sad look on his face.

And he said, no, but it is my dream someday to go there. It is a dream someday to leave. And here I'm thinking you've got a little cafe by the most beautiful blue waters in the world. This, I mean, this is, this for most people is heaven. And yet the United States still, still, still beckons out there as this wonderful place that you want to go. Well, when we finished our order, you know, we got the order and there it was, and they were heroes. All right. And they were delicious looking, but they had French fries on top of them. And I wondered whether or not, but they had French fries on top of them.

And I wondered whether or not that they just put French fries on top of them if they discerned that the customer was American. That this was just an odd – but they put French fries on top of them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes they're lemon. They put lemon French fries on them. Lemon French fries, right, which is a wonderful thing. But again, you think, does Michelle Obama know about this exactly? Yeah, right.

That's why. That's why they're broke. Look, the food in Greece – I spent a lot of time in Greece and Turkey. You can't say this. I couldn't say this with pethokoukis on because they – or with any Turk on because the Greeks and the Turks hate each other. But the truth is the food is really very, very similar and it's delicious and I would – I mean it's a horrible thing to say but if Greece does go sort of – go rogue a little bit and has some financial trouble, the beaches are beautiful. The cities are great. The people are great.

The food is really, really good. It's a great vacation destination and of course it's the cradle of civilization. So why not go? I don't know that it's the cradle of civilization. So why not go? I don't know that it's that terrible of a thing to say, is it? I want to see Greece eat it. I don't mean gratuitous suffering. That's kind of a terrible thing to say. No, I don't mean gratuitous suffering because I was once hit on by Tali Savalas' daughter. So the Greek people have retained a special place in my heart. But what I mean is that I am sick to death of this consensual fantasy that the Western world has lived under for the last eight years GM can spend a few decades creating an object lesson in how you destroy a great company and the federal government is going to be there at the end of the line with some hot towels and a mint on their pillow.

And so Greece can spend money. It has no capacity to pay back because let's be honest. It's all on Germany's credit card in the end. If you want better decision-making, if you want rational decision-making, you have to let people live with the consequences of their actions. As long as that connection is severed, you are going to get more of the same. And the irony is that the people who should be punished here are not the Greeks. They are actually the Germans. They are the creditors, the ones who actually lent the money and had this grand scheme and thought you could conjure up this stuff which did not exist. They could conjure a currency based on nothing.

I mean assuming it all falls apart, right? That – based on an economy they could cobble together that really had very, very few understandings, very, very few cultural understandings. Look, everybody in Germany, all those German taxpayers. And I'm sorry we lost Jim because I would like to have asked him this. I'd like to respond to this. The truth is, go to go to Greece before the EU. Greek houses had they didn't have what they called corresponding taps in the bathrooms. So you had a hot faucet and a cold faucet. Like the old-style America, you go to an old house in America and in the US, that's what you had.

You had a hot faucet and a cold faucet and you kind of had to mix them in the basin. And then they had corresponding taps where the hot faucet and the cold faucet mixed and it came out the center – a center tap and you could mix it and have warm water. Everybody in Germany for the past 15, 20 years has basically bought everyone in Greece corresponding taps and a new kitchen and a new bathroom. It's been a remodeling boom in Greece and a remodeling boom for that frankly in Spain and Portugal and the various countries that are in trouble now. That's what – that's where the money went. People borrowed money and they remodeled their houses, and you can see it. You can see it in Greece. You go to Greece.

You go to Spain. You go to Portugal. You can see exactly what happened. And this is – certainly there is a – and I think these people, these creditor nations have a point that there's a certain culpability on the part of the creditor too. Well, you were saying that it was Germany's fault for lending money to people who couldn't pay it back. And I would say sure, perhaps maybe OK. But there's also something about the fault of a people who themselves through the manifestations of their culture have come up with a dysfunctional political society. I mean if they didn't want the corruption and the no tax compliance and the over military spending, then they would vote for it. But when you've got 113 pension funds and we have people who are able to retire from the profession of broadcasting at the age of 50 because of possible microbial exposure to microphones.

Yeah. So I mean – What you have is the state of microphones. Yeah, so I mean – What you have is the state of California. Yeah. Right. And all those wonderful things. I want to get back to the fact that – Troy, did you say that you were actually hit upon by Telly Savalas' daughter?

Yeah, we can't let that go. We can't. I actually met Telly Savalas and this was at a poolside uh in a hotel where he lived i think i think he actually lived there because he had a bar there called called universal that would be the one he had a bar called telly's and he was just lounged around the pool and he you know looked great sitting out there with his cronies i had a laptop this was like 1994 i had a very early macintosh laptop which weighed 478 pounds but it was a-looking little gray object with a trackball and the rest of it. And Telly waved me over.

He wanted to take a look at the computer. And so I gave Telly Silvalus a lesson in the Macintosh, and I hope that I sold him one. And it's just a pity that I never knew what happened to Telly and the whole Apple thing. And it's a pity that Telly had to leave us before something like Harry's could deliver a razor to his door so he could shave right there in the hotel, that famous bald dome, without having to schlep his way down the street to buy some blades.

Who knows what? Did they even have CVSs back then? I don't know. Anyway, Tully would approve. Tully would approve of Harry. Because overpaying for drugstore razor blades is stupid, okay? Now, you all know the story, and I imagine that you can repeat it with me by heart. Harrys.com was created by two guys

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Well, I had to do that for Rob. Anyway, so gentlemen, more – let's drift back to our own situation here domestically. One of the things that people have been talking about in the member feed, which is always a great source of contentious, bumptious elbow – not elbow throwing but elbow rubbing. It's a collegial place. Collegial elbows, yeah. Right. One of the reasons that Carly and Donald are doing well, says Canadian Cincinnatus, is that they fight. This is something Glenn Reynolds at Instapunit always says about Carly. I like her. She fights. I mean, if you listen to Carly's responses compared to Hillary's responses, it's really not just the fighting. It's a nimble intellect that is willing to answer questions and not dance around them.

And the contrast is extraordinary. So if these guys are getting the traction, Trump in particular, because he's fighting and saying things that nobody else is saying, is there a lesson for the rest of the guys running or are they all just leaning back and letting Trump blow off steam and self-destruct? Troy, take us through this Trump thing and where it's going. Well, I think there's actually an instructive contrast between Carly Fiorina and Donald Trump, which is that Carly Fiorina fights the right way. And Donald Trump tends to create these spectacles. And look, I've made plenty clear in the past that I regard Trump as something of a carnival barker and kind of an unserious and ungracious person.

But there has long been a trend in presidential politics, especially on the Republican side in recent years, that style outweighs substance in the early going. I mean that's how you get the Michelle Bachman or the Herman Cain boomlets last time. And then eventually we have to picture this person behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office and we all kind of come to our senses. But that said, the thing that I think is appealing about Trump more than anything is that he is not politically correct. And I think there is a simmering resentment, a justified one I might add, amongst Americans who are fed up with being told that having the slightest misgiving about immigration is de facto evidence of xenophobia. And this murder that we saw recently in San Francisco is a good example of that.

I mean we shouldn't be having this discussion. Someone who is in this country illegally and has seven felony convictions, that is not a close case. And yet the policy atmosphere in places like San Francisco is so skewed that five minutes before this murder, it was considered gauche to think that someone like this ought to face legal consequences for a history of destructive behavior. And when you are that far removed from reality, the Trump message is going to have some appeal, and I understand why. And that your government is supposed to do – protect you from precisely these people and that if you're a voter and you're listening you're paying attention to the last three weeks in america when a crazy uh devil a demon um bursts into bible study in charleston and kills nine people um the entire country stops and we go through this period of self-reflection and then we start talking about these abstract ideals and we uh then we have a political fight about a flag and there's all

sorts of complicated internal debates going on and when uh an illegal alien and a person in this country illegally who found refuge in a what they call a ref was a refuge city or a sanctuary sanctuary city and he commits murder um there is precisely zero debate right from certainly from the left and there does so that does seem to be the deck is stacked uh so i yeah i think that's why that's probably why i think trump is getting traction only on that one issue and he's only getting traction and i think it's unfortunately i i think because he's such a loud mouth he may actually end up hurting the more rational arguments um uh that they're out there um for for border security and for um you know i mean i was about to say immigration reform but i mean that's what it is.

So we need – just tougher than what anybody else is saying. So yeah, I mean I think – I don't think Trump is fighting. He's just making noise. Carly Fiorina though – well, anyway, you finish what you're saying because I think I agree with you, Troy, about Carly. Well, yeah. I mean I think just Carly Fiorina does it in a way that doesn't really create any collateral damage. I mean I think that we have to keep in mind too with the Trump thing that the media is chasing these stories every day because that's the time horizon that they work on.

And some of the poll numbers for Trump are overstated on the basis of the fact that Trump just has way greater name recognition than almost anybody in this field. And I think really the long-term question isn't where does this take Donald Trump. It's where does this take a slightly more sober candidate who can co-opt the salient points of his message. That's the historical pattern is that you have somebody like this who is a marginal candidate or not a viable nominee. It's not about where they end up. It's about who can find a way to appeal to the same sorts of folks who are responsive to that message but build it in as part of a coherent platform that is going to appeal to a lot more people and we will see where this Trump thing

goes. Apparently, I read this morning that Reince Priebus, the RNC chairman, I guess placed a call to Trump yesterday asking him to tone it down. I can't imagine – that seems like a call that was not very well briefed. I can't imagine what you think you're getting out of that. You know, and Hillary, of course, in her recent no-holds-barred interview on CNN says that she believes in a compassionate response to immigration, that she's known a lot of immigrants over her life. They've shaped her. They're important. And she believes in, you know, she's castigating the Republicans

for not believing in a path to citizenship, which she does. Well, Andrew Wilkow, the Wilkow majority yesterday at Sirius XM station, he played some clips from Hillary just a few years ago where she is staunchly anti-path to anything. We've got to have border security. We've got to have tighter controls. We've got to do some exporting. And it's quite remarkable. It's almost as if there was a shift there in tone and policy in order to tack to the political winds of the moment. Now, for any other candidate, this would be something that the media would be,

and I do, hold on, Rob. I know I'm doing that thing you hate. No, I know, it's the political season, you're allowed to. If this was any other candidate, her statement there would be held in stark contrast to what she had said before, and she'd be asked to account for the differences in tone and ideas. Just as if this were any other candidate who said, I never got a subpoena, and the next day, Troy Gowdy is waving the subpoenas around. That would actually be in the paper at some point. At least they would say troubling issues have been raised. But in order for that to work, you know, you've got to have a media that is vested in doing to

her what they would like to do to whoever the Republicans put up. And we're just going to have to get out the message as much as we can. But here's the thing. When we're talking about immigration, we're talking about what Trump says. We're talking about what Perry says. We're not talking about somebody else. And I wonder if the air has gone out of the enthusiasm for Scott Walker. I'll throw that out there.

Well, I mean, look, I don't think he's – there is that fear. I think he is running a very strange campaign tactically. I'm not sure it's the smartest move for him to do. I think he's trying to win Iowa, which I don't think is necessarily a smart thing for him to do. I don't think it's necessarily a smart thing for the – for someone who wants to win the Republican nomination to really go after winning Iowa. Iowa doesn't seem to be a very good state to – a very good bellwether state for that honor. And I think he's putting himself in the second tier candidates, trying to be the first among the second tier rather than the first among the first tier. And by the first tier, I mean the people who we all kind of think could actually win. Rick Perry, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, Jeb Bush, Scott Walker. He should be in that group and I don't think he's in that group. ruling to talk about having a constitutional amendment. He could have said something else that seemed to be pandering in a very odd way for that issue. And I just kind of feel like he's kind of lost his – he's sort of rudderless now. A lot of it is because these guys started so early and they started so early and then

they have to go raise money and now they have to keep paddling and there's just only so much ground you can cover. And then you have to keep reacting to things and you don't control the timetable. Now the timetable controls you. But a lot of it I think is also just that this is a marathon now being turned into a triple marathon because of how early everything started and um this really does start to show where the professionals are and where the sort of seasoned pros in national politics are and what's one of the reasons why i think you're looking at a very different rick perry now um because he's done it once and having and having done it once or having been in national politics for a long time kind of really does say something i mean i i still believe he may flame out because of personality issues because John Kasich can be a prickly guy, but he's been in national politics for a long time.

He's seen a lot of presidential campaigns up close, although I do agree with some of those points, especially the thing that troubles me so far and it's so early that it's tough to tell what you can extrapolate and what you can't. But the Walker campaign does seem to prioritize I think wrongly tactical decisions over strategic ones sometimes and we've seen this with him bending in six different directions on immigration. There was that seeming flip early on in his campaign about the ethanol subsidies in Iowa, the gay marriage thing. I mean these all seem like things that they're doing to sort of chase the news cycle, which probably don't sort of help you in the long term. I don't think it's as much of a problem as it sounds like Rob does for him to go after Iowa because I think Iowa is sort of – you're right as far as the historical track record not being great for people who win Iowa. But I do think Iowa is a much more logical place if you're Scott Walker to focus in a place like New Hampshire just because the electorate fits you better. I think Walker is going to have a harder time in New Hampshire and maybe in South Carolina.

I don't know. South Carolina is a little bit harder to pin down. Well, he's got that – his anti-union message I think does well in New Hampshire, does really well in South Carolina. That's right. I mean he's got to get out of that. He's got to – once you're in that – Iowa is a very weird place. It's very weird. It's very difficult to get any traction even if you win.

Iowa – you win Iowa with 10,000 votes. It's not a significant victory. It just is the first. And so the optics of it are important, but I don't think it really gives you anything operationally. It can be this – it's like a land war in Asia. You just get stuck driving around Iowa going to hot dog fries and you don't quite get any of the juice you want. It's tough. I have a vision now of Marlon Brando type character in a barn

somewhere. Outside of Coralville. The horror. The horror. Well, a marathon indeed it is, perhaps also comparable to those old, early, late 19th century boxing matches where John L. Sullivan would go up against a guy and there'd be 87 rounds. Who will be standing at the end of 20 or 30? We'll find out down the road, but that's why we have the podcast here and a stable of guests stretching under the horizon to tell us what they think. Peter will be back next week, I hope, but Troy, thank you for stepping in today as well. We'd like to remind you

the podcast has been brought to you by thegreatcourses.com. Go to thegreatcourses.com slash ricochet and get up to 80% off on eight titles and be smarter for it. And also shave smarter at Harry's Shave. That's harrysshave.com slash ricochet for $5 off your first order.

Visit, of course, the Ricochet store, too, so you can walk around in public and ex John with a mug or just have one of our custom-made T-shirts that tells you you are a Ricochet cognoscenti. And don't forget to stop in the comments and tell us what you think, won't you? We'll see you there. Thanks, Rob. Thanks, Peter. And we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet 2.0. Next week, fellas. See you there. Thanks, Rob. Thanks, Peter. And we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet 2.0. Next week, fellas.

See you again. We start believing now that we can be who we are. Grease is the word. They think our love is just a growing thing. Why don't they understand it's just a crying shame? Their lips are lying, only real is real. We stop the fight right now. We got to be what we feel. Grease is the word. Ricochet. Join the conversation. We can be who we are. This is a life of illusion