David Frum: The Kraken Is Never Coming

Welcome to the

Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. It is September twenty ninth two thousand twenty three, and it feels as if all the stars are aligned, at least for the Republican Party. I mean, they’ve been going through some things. So they are fresh off at, chaotic pointless debate the other night.

They appear poised to re nominate the, defeated twice impeached former president who faces ninety one felony charges. We are barreling toward a government shutdown. And Republicans decided this week would be a good time to take some time off to roll out their first hearing on the impeachment of Joe Biden, and it didn’t go well. MSNBC put together a little bit of a montage of the Democrats reacting. And and before you go, well, of course, Democrats are gonna say that.

Just keep in mind that the reviews across the board were pretty bad. I think there was kind of a universal assumption that this was a real shit show, that this was a dumpster fire inside a clown car wrapped inside of a fiasco, but he had a little flavor. Of the way that Democrats were reacting to James Comers, I would say, underwhelming, rollout hearings. Let’s play that.

Alright. So let’s get it straight. We’re sixty two hours away from shutting down the government of the United States of America. And Republicans are launching an impeachment drive based on a long debunked and discredited lie. What a day we are having.

Here. Isn’t it? Right? I mean, listen, I as a former director of emergency management, I know a disaster when I see one.

And I wanna say thank you to mister Donald Trump for calling this hearing today. We see the long arm, but little hands of mister Donald Trump, who’s fingerprints are all over this hearing and this sham impeachment.

Donald Trump impeachments. Oh, how many impeach We got two there. How many indictments we got four? How many provide in zero zero? Donald Trump is right.

He’s sick of winning. He’s just winning, running away with it. And that’s why we’re here. They can’t save Donald Trump. They can’t take away the two impeachments and the four indictment, but they can try

to put some numbers on

the board for Joe Biden. But the problem is when you sling mud, you gotta have mud. And they just don’t have anything, mister chairman.

Honestly, if they would continue to say if or Hunter and we were playing a drinking game, I would be drunk by now.

If

the republic is at a smoking gun, or even a dripping water pistol. They would be presenting it today, but they’ve got nothing on Joe Biden.

Come on. If you all think there’s so much evidence, we’re here. Call the vote on impeachment. Impeach him right now. I dare you.

Yeah. That’s not likely. So, to sort all of this out, a good friend, David from staff writer, the Atlantic author of ten books, most recently, trumpocalypse and trumpocracy. So, David, what does your hot take on what Republicans were up to? I mean, my reaction there was the Republicans were not bringing their their best.

This was this was not their best.

This is their best. No. That that I think about. That’s that’s the mistake when you listen to the second day reaction among Republicans. And the rage of people like Cash Patel and Steve Ban and against this hearing.

They’re they’re denouncing it as as reciferously as as the Democrats are. You see a pattern that is very similar to what happened when Donald Trump began alleging election fraud in twenty twenty and twenty twenty one. Which is the non insane people, the people who remain on earth are too weak to say no. But they are not insane enough to indulge all the fantasies. So they they start something procedural.

They begin looking for holes and then the more radical element get angry. And they say, we want you to unleash the kraken. Do you remember that? That’s what sitting out out to unleash the kraken. And the others are saying, there is no kraken.

It’s imaginary, and the people believing the kraken are crazy. And, no, no, we want the kraken. We want the kraken. And And so it creates this kind of tension inside the Republican coalition where Comer would, I mean, okay. He’s obviously no genius, but he’s not a crackpot.

But he understands the kraken isn’t imaginary, but he has to understand. He has to do the buildup. Any minute now, kraken coming, you know, countdown to the arrival of the kraken, get ready, big kraken, but he knows there’s no cracking and he knows the people think there is are crazy.

Okay. But does it actually matter? This is my is my cynical question. And because in terms of actually lining up evidence. It was embarrassing.

They brought in Jonathan Turley. They brought in this forensic accountant, and they both testified that, no, there’s there’s not enough evidence. These were their star witness, that there was not enough evidence to go ahead with the impeachment. But isn’t a lot of this just simply counter programming, David? I mean, isn’t basically look, let’s flood the zone.

Let’s at least have the news cycle talk as much about the alleged Biden crime family as they do about the ninety one actual felony charges against Donald Trump. And to a certain extent, if you throw up enough smoke, if you get enough people with their nose pressed against the window, waiting for the crack and to arrive, haven’t you achieved at least something, at least in terms of the politics of distraction? And what about isn’t?

Well, if your goal is to appeal to the hardest core Yeah. On America, then, yes, you this is a good way to raise money. It’s a good way to go make TV careers. Do I think it’s powerful politics? No.

If you were actually trying to compete to run the government of the United States. And, look, that’s not the business that Matt Gates and Lauren are in. But if you imagine you were, here are some things you wanna bring against the Biden administration. I’m writing story right now on a important new report on the extraordinary educational deficits. That were caused by the COVID lockdowns.

And

Disaster.

Disasters, disasters, and Yeah. Something that a Republican party could indeed pin on the Democrats because Democratic states kept their schools closed longer than Republican states did. The deficits are bigger among the children, Democratic Ron DeSantis. And, of course, Democrats, because their obligations to teachers unions, don’t even acknowledge. They won’t use the phrase learning loss.

They talk about unfinished learning, not accepting It’s really gone and endangered being gone forever. And the things you have to do to overcome the learning deficits, cancel summer vacation. And focus, schools on intense drill in reading and math to get recover the basics. Those are things that Democratic teachers unions don’t wanna do. So there’s this thing you can talk about.

Why was the Biden administration taken so by surprise in Afghanistan? There’s something you could talk about. The border, that’s a real thing. That’s not imaginary. You could talk about that.

And those would all be things that would frame a debate that would be useful for the country, and maybe you’d lose on those issues. But those would be real issues where voters need to make fundamental decisions, and the two parties should be competing. So is this a win for the Republicans? No. Because in the end, the kraken is never going to arrive.

And in this eighteen months till the day. And that that’s a lot of time for people to realize as they did with the voter fraud. There’s no bracket. There’s just nothing. And you’ve wasted everybody’s time.

You’ve wasted your own time, and you haven’t dealt with issues that are important to the voters.

Okay. But they they made the calculation haven’t they, though, that at least their primary voters don’t care about policy. They don’t care about any of these issues. They want the crack in. They’re completely okay.

With the felonious seditious former president who is threatening to give the death penalty to one of the nation’s top most decorated generals that this is what they do. I mean, I I’m trying to, like, connect all the dots this week. I mean, that debate was so substance free. It’s sort of an indication of this is the non trumpian wing of the party, and they’re just throwing spaghetti up against the wall. The Republicans and Congress are just fighting with them one another.

Nobody knows what their in game is or what it’s really about, but they’re gonna shut down the government because all performative. And, of course, you have Donald Trump extending his lead. So in terms of actually talking about government and public policy, They seem incredibly disconnected, don’t they?

Well, when you say they’ve made a calculation, if you zap a a steer with a cattle prod, it will move in the opposite direction from the capital point. But it’s not calculated. Right. It’s just reacting. And even if the steer had a plan, which the steer probably doesn’t, the show’s not executing plan.

It’s just getting away from the prod. And I think that is the way to understand what Republicans are doing. There is no central committee. There is no one who’s making decisions. And when they have failures, they reinforce failure.

So the people who are writing big checks on the Republican party say, what we want is a candidate who is an alternative to Donald Trump who will never verticized electron. And we have two or three of those now, and they’re not working. So let’s add a fourth in the form of Glenn Youngkin, maybe a fourth candidate who is different from Donald Trump, but won’t criticize. And maybe that will be the charm. That that’s not a plan.

The plan is always you have to consolidate, and then you have to attack. That may Bulwark. But at least it might Bulwark. Whereas what you’re doing now is guaranteed not to work. It’s driven by fear.

It’s it’s it’s just, like, steer stepping away from the prod.

Let’s talk about this Young and buzz which broke out this week and appears to be wishcasting that, there are, you know, members of the the donor class who are waiting for the unicorn to come over the hill and save them from Donald Trump. How seriously should we take this young and talk? First of all, I mean, do you think that Glenn Youngen actually is interested in this? I mean, would he actually do this? Would he throw himself into the volcano in order to save the Republican party at this point?

If you could give a standardized aptitude test for presidential qualities, Young Kim would probably outscore any of the people in

in the It’s not implausible. Now.

He was a capable business executive. He’s been a reasonably responsible governor of Virginia. He doesn’t project a completely unattractive and offensive personality in the way that Ron DeSantis does, and he doesn’t have a long record of cringing and cowering before Trump the way Nikki Haley does. So, yeah. Like, if somebody said you, David Frum, have the only ballot in America choose a Republican nominee.

You know what? I I I think yeah. I I like to look at that. I like to look at this guy. I think he’d make a fine president probably.

But will he run? Will he actually pull the trigger knowing what happens to him? He’s a

very wealthy man. So he doesn’t need to act fast. And he’s got, you know, a stable life and a lot of good options. So from his point of view, the the smart play is write a book. Youngian’s vision for America.

And then after the likely Republican defeat, then start working the New Hampshire Circuit. And run-in twenty twenty eight. He’s got time and just hope that Trump will go away. Like, why put yourself into this mess? And in a way, DeSantis can’t say no to his donors.

Because that’s not just his political future. It’s also his backup retirement plan. He owes them everything. They will decide whether he goes on corporate boards. They will decide whether he has an economic future.

He has no marketable skills. Whereas, young Kim can stay note to his donors. He’s got money in the bank.

Before we move on to other things, your thoughts about that debate, because I think the reviews were pretty uniform that this was, one of the worst debates. The the moderators were rolled over. It’s a lot of yelling. It was a lot of screaming. It did feel like the kids table debate.

It felt like a a debate between the candidates were vying for second place. Doesn’t seem that it has changed anything in this race. I mean, I know it’s lazy punditry to say that Donald Trump comes out the winner, but here’s a guy who is thirty points ahead. He doesn’t show up at the debates, and they don’t label a really lay a glove on him. So what was your take about and also What does it tell you about the state of the non Trumpian Republican Party?

I mean, for the people who are looking for, okay, that stage is filled with people who are the alternatives who will who will pull us out and bring us past the era of Trump.

Yeah. But one of the questions if I were advising somebody’s thinking about running for president, I would ask them is your problem since you’re probably going to lose because only one person wins, and the odds are statistically even even if you get to be like one of the top ten most likely people to be the Republican nominee. Is that still, you know, one in ten chance? You’re probably going to lose. If it comes to that, how would you like to lose?

You hope to win. You need a strategy to win, but you also need to think about the more likely option. So these people are going to be remembered as cringing week links, broken in advance, unworthy of the office. And that’s the that’s what they convince you. And I get it.

There there was a survey released yesterday. I think by, I’m gonna forget which Republican group did it. That there’s nothing you can say that doesn’t make Republican voters like Trump more. Because like women in an abusive relationship who have not yet made the decision to leave, he’s been beating you for twenty years. So you have to defend that or else you look.

Like, why did you put up with it for for twenty years? You have to create the structure of rationalization. Well, that’s that I think there’s one thing to do in a debate this is the debate after the indictments. We stand up there and your first line should be a lot of people are asking why me and not Donald Trump. And the answer is because we have to face the very high that Donald Trump will be in prison on voting day.

Yeah. And I give you my word. I will not be in prison on voting day. And if you’re not willing to confront the party with that reality, then why bother? Why bother?

There are beautiful beaches, there are wonderful hiking trails. People have families, they have pets, interesting books to read. There’s Netflix. I mean, there’s just a lot of other things can do if you’re not gonna do what it takes and what it takes. Yeah.

How do we

care about this?

And you don’t wanna say too much to a Republican audience that may be hopeless but he really is in danger of going to prison and more than danger

of going to prison. But wouldn’t that make Republican voters like him even more?

That may make him like him even more, but you Paul Ryan at an event, your friend. He was recently at where he said, that he won’t convert suburban women. That’s an argument to try in twenty twenty. Right. But in twenty twenty three, you have to face, he’s going to prison.

He’s gonna have to commute between the different prisons where he’s wanted. He’s gonna be wanted in a federal prison in one state, and a federal prison in another state, and he’s gonna be wanted in a in in a state prison and another state prison. And by the way, his company is going to be dissolved. And there that’s probably going to trigger along the way more fraud charges in the state of New York. So they’re gonna have to have a fleet of buses to move them around, the different prisons he’s going

to be occupied. Will they have wifi at these prisons? Will be will he be able to deliver his his acceptance speech at the Republican convention in Milwaukee via Zoom. Yes.

Yes. Sure. With an ankle bracelet on.

Or the with the ankle bracelet on, which you know, that my theory is is that he steps from behind the podium, pulls up his pants leg and says, you know, this is my ankle bracelet. I wear this as a badge of honor. I wear this for you, and the crowd goes nuts. Just completely nuts.

It may be that the Republican Party has become a party so alienated from the institutions of American life. And so deaf to ordinary ethics and morality that being a proven criminal is a plus. But the Republican party is a minority of America, and that part of the Republic party is probably half of the Republican Party. I mean, you’re not gonna win an election that way. And there’s a book that’s that’s worth I’m gonna recommend to people, which is a biography of Mayor Curley of Boston called the Rascal King.

The Rascal King. Okay.

And Kerley was a criminal upon criminal. He’s active from, I think, the end of the nineteenth century until the through the nineteen thirties. And he’s the point of the spear where Massachusetts decisively swings. In the late nineteenth century, it’s a Yankee dominated state, and then there’s a period of swing, and then it ends up being an Irish Catholic dominated state. He’s the point of the spear for that takeover.

And so what he’s always able to say to the Irish Catholics is the yankees wanna put you in prison as they did. They wanna stop you from voting as they did. And so I represent you and you have to overlook my stealing. And so it’s a good model of how this can work. And you saw this in the period, you know, from the eighteen nineties to the nineteen thirties in the white south, where again, people who felt beaten down by a hostile state would often put their trust in people who are blatant criminals.

And so Donald Trump is doing that, but if we’re at a at a point where we have that many people who are alienated in American society, Donald Trump, is only an expression of the problem. I don’t believe that Americans are that alienated.

Hey, folks. This is Charlie Sykes, host of the Bulwark podcast. We created the Bulwark to provide a platform for pro democracy voices on the center right and the center left for people who are tired of tribalism and who value truth and vigorous yet civil debate about politics and a lot more. And every day, we remind you folks. You are not the crazy ones.

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Okay. So this is what I wanted to talk to you about today because, you know, amidst a great deal of democratic bedwetting and and angst, you have written a piece that argues that Not only is Donald Trump not going to win next year, but that there’s going to be a Biden landslide. Now, of course, since you wrote that, there’s been a series of polls some outliers, but generally, I would say consistently showing this to be a very, very close race that that Donald Trump is very competitive. So Make the anti bedwetting case that assuming that you still believe that Joe Biden is gonna roll next year.

Okay. So I just wanna be clear I don’t mean that he’s going to win in a landslide and that he’s going to get fifty six percent of the vote. I think he’s he’s gonna get fifty one fifty two. What I meant by a blow was I think it’s gonna be a down the ballot. Win.

That is it’s not just that. So Biden’s going to win fifty one forty seven, something like that. But I think Democrats are going to do unexpectedly well in down ballot races and especially in state races.

Okay. Tell me more about that.

Well, first, we have some real world experience, which is Biden has had bad poll numbers, almost beginning at about month nine of his president. Right. But despite those bad poll numbers, Democrats have consistently done well. In elections in twenty one and twenty two and twenty three. And the election result that I pay the most attention to is their pickup of four state houses.

In the election of twenty two, which is I understand that the party of the president has has not done anything like that since the nineteen thirties. What that tells me, I had thought when the abortion decision came down overturning Roe versus Wade. I thought abortion would be an important issue of twenty four, but it would be too abstract. To motivate people in twenty two. And I was completely wrong about that.

Oh, yeah.

As consumed as you and I and people that model regard by the threat to American democracy, Lots of people pay a little less attention to the structure of American public say. What is happening is the Republicans wanna police surveil and harass me and the women in my life. And if you’re a woman, me personally, and I don’t like that. I’m an American. I don’t wanna be police and surveilled.

And bossed around and told I can’t travel across state lines if I’m pregnant. So the the reaction that I think is just enormous. And I think Republicans can’t stay away from that, nor can they develop an answer? They keep saying we need an we need an answer to this question, and they can’t do it because they’re too committed

And yet, Donald Trump is pivoting on this issue. And you you have Ron DeSantis and other Republicans who’ve gone along with a six week, band with a lot of punitive legislation, Donald Trump is, isn’t he, trying to pivot? And I wonder whether that’s going to have an effect because Democrats have been assuming they’re gonna run on dobbs, and they’re gonna run against Republicans who are stream, and here’s Donald Trump going, okay, I am not one of these people. I am separating. My it was terrible.

They did the six week ban. I’m now talking about a fifteen week ban, which pulls completely differently. So does that change the dynamics? Because clearly, Donald Trump looked at the midterms, and he said it was abortion. That killed us.

And he’s not gonna make that mistake. So this is like a weird moment to say Donald Trump is now more centrist than many other Republicans on this particular issue. Does that make a difference?

Well, this is why I emphasize the down that when I say blowout, I mean, down the ticket. I I don’t mean huge win at the top of the ticket. I mean, decisive results down the Trump will try to do that pivot, and it may have some success for him, but he has so many other problems, including prison. But

It’s relevant.

Republicans funding for state office are not going to be able to pivot. They won’t wanna pivot, and they won’t be able to, and they’re deeply branded. One of the things that we see is the parties have deep brand identities. That are very, very hard to change. It’s it you can’t say magic words and convince people that, like, on the inflation issue.

People believe the Republicans of the less inflationary party, even when they have been doing things since twenty seventeen that are more inflationary than what the

demo baked in. If we

have because people have just they they remembered that Republicans are always more comfortable with contractionary policies than Democrats are. And that goes back half a century longer, goes back to the gold standard. So it’s hard for you to say I’m gonna spend the next six months trying to change a Century established brand identity. And you have just so much tape so many Republicans saying, yes, I wanna put women in prison if they buy abortion pills for their daughters. And indeed, right now, there are women in prison in Republican States who are buying abortion pills for their daughters.

So it’s gonna be hard to say that didn’t happen because there’s the woman in Nebraska who’s in prison for buying an abortion bill for her daughter.

The point you’re making about brand, I think, is really, really important. You know, so so for example, you can have the Republican party, you know, supporting the January sixth rioters who attack police and still claim to be the, you know, pro police party and people, actually they are. They they think that they can block all the military promotions and still be able to pose as the pro military party. These are very, very difficult things to do. What did you make of Joe Biden’s speech in Arizona yesterday?

He went down and opened a library for John McCain. And delivered one of his strongest denunciations of how dangerous and extreme Donald Trump is. And once again, laid out the threats to democracy. Now I I agree with you that I think I think that this is the is the most serious threat the existential threat. I’m not sure that’s the way most voters are thinking about it, your reaction to Joe Biden’s speech, which, which I actually thought was kind of a laying out the gauntlet, laying out the fact that, okay, I am gonna take this fight to Donald Trump, and I’m gonna hit him hard.

Yeah. President Biden has given a version of that speech before. He gave it in Philadelphia just before. Right. Twenty two election.

That was the one where he he had the the red lighting that looked very dramatic. That speech had the effect of poking Donald Trump into intervening in the twenty two election. That speech was very powerful to the good democratic results because the Republican strategy in twenty two is don’t talk about Donald Trump. This is not a referendum on Donald Trump. Is a referendum on post COVID price increase and the price of gasoline.

And if it had been such, Republicans would have done well. Are better. Instead Biden said, let let’s let’s be a referendum on Trump, and Trump who was supposed to keep silent, then it’s damn right. It’s a referendum on me. And if you vote for a bubble, can you get me and more me?

And that’s one of my tells about what’s going to happen in twenty four. When you remind people, that this is not an opportunity to protest gas prices. This is a vote for Donald Trump. And when Donald Trump cooperates, I think one of the things Biden didn’t that Arizona speech, that’s a different point in the cycle, so it doesn’t have the same impact. But Those pictures of Joe Biden and Cindy McCain.

I mean, if your problem as a republican is to convince people that Joe Biden is a dangerous radical. Which is a pretty difficult project. But if that’s your project, Joe Biden, Al Sharpton, same. That’s your project. Joe Biden’s images with the wife of, you know, John McCain, and being applauded by the McCain family.

And we’re gonna be in a situation twenty four where it’s it’s gonna be like the last scene of Richard the third when all the different warring factions that we love the I’ll say, okay. You know, York blanket, we all hate each other, but we we’re telling you this guy is the worst. So you’re gonna have the romans and bushes and the mccain’s is symbolically saying, We don’t mind

if you’re

by it. I mean, we don’t love him. He’s everybody’s second choice, but he’s running against everybody’s last choice.

No. This is a really interesting point. It virtually every Republican, every non crazy Republican in America, wants twenty twenty four to be a referendum on Joe Biden. Right? Except Donald Trump wants to make it a referendum on him, which changes the dynamic.

I have a confession to make. When when Joe Biden is telling the story, about how he was responsible for John McCain meeting Cindy McCain and getting married. You know, I’m thinking, oh, man. This is this is Joe Biden. This is another corn pop story.

And then Cindy McCain’s asked about it and said, yeah, that’s absolutely true. Joe Biden introduced mccain, which is like, there’s a there’s kind of a flash back to when politics was completely different when these guys would have these personal relationships when they were human. I mean, I’m old enough to even remember when when Lindsey Graham was, you know, asked about Joe Biden, then he says, he’s the best person. He’s the best human being ever. And, of course, that was from the before times.

It is a counter image, isn’t it?

I mean, it is a reminder of how long Joe Biden has been around, and that is a lot of people find that unnerving. You know, you’re talking about how I introduce somebody to his widow, someone who did not die tragically young. Lived a long and full life, and I he’s gone, and I’m still here. And I’m a little bit I was a little bit bolder at the time even than he was then. I’m still older.

There is that. But, yes, it gets the humanist, but mostly gets the point. If you’re trying to sell that this guy is some kinda Bulwark or radical, it’s always been an implausible project, and And the more he looks like this kind of rambly grandfatherly figure, the harder it becomes to sell the idea that, Joe Biden is going to be the man who achieves, you know, Afro Socialism in America.

I mean, I guess that’s the cognitive dissonance. It was on the one hand, they are arguing that he’s he’s so senior that he’s sitting drooling in the corner and he doesn’t know what day it is and he can’t put his Socks on. On the other hand, that he is this this architect of the deep state that is gonna destroy America and destroy, the church as as we know it. You know, it is interesting. You know, now I’m going off on a digression, how the conservative media incorporated, you know, obviously thrives on outrage and anger, and it needs a villain.

It needs a cause all the time. And you’ve written about this very, very extensively. Do you have any thoughts about the last week? And I can’t believe everything seems to have been happening in the last week. We have so many of the Maga influencers who decided, okay.

Who can we vilify? Who can we attack this week? And they decided to go to war with Taylor Swift. I think it’s another reminder that these guys are not real men of political genius, that they’ve decided that she’s woken. So go to war with one of the most popular figures in American culture.

And at the same time, go after her boyfriend who is one of the most talented NFL stars. It’s like, there’s another reminder that there’s not like a brain trust that sits around with a white board thinking, what is the smartest move that we can do this week?

No. It it tells you something else. And we’re we’re talking here not about Republicans. And we’re talking not exactly but even MAGA. We’re talking about is the this hyper online radical right world.

And how much of that is driven by thwarted male sexual desire? All of it, That’s their politics. And so, of course, they hate Taylor Swift.

She’s never gonna date Roger Kimball.

Right.

It’s just never gonna happen. Right?

I’m sort of surveying my demographic, which is one of the most vulnerable male over a certain age, over a certain income, we are just completely so, yeah, and yet I see a certain number who don’t succumb. And you think what is what is the most powerful inoculating factor for people in my And and the answer is is personal happiness. We’re happy in your life. You just don’t resonate to this message. And the Taylor Swift thing makes it, you know, you can’t get so angry about this if you have a program of your own.

But if you don’t, because Taylor Swift is this huge because she’s not just a very talented musician, obviously, but she’s also joins that to being an object of sexual desire for so many people and they can’t have her, and they don’t have anything, and they never will. And they’re in a rage about it. It just certainly describes many of the pro creators of this content, and it absolutely describes just about all of the consumers of this content.

Well, it is an interesting paradox that that you have this movement that is so invested in masculinity you have, you know, Tucker Cross and talking about irradiating testicles and everything. And and and yet, you also have at the same time, you know, all this manliness with that sort of in cell culture. Right?

Yeah.

That I really hate these women because I don’t know. They don’t like manly men like me. And, of course, most of them are not that mainly men anyway. Most of them would not wanna walk into a locker room and say to Travis Kelsey, the things that they’re saying online. Right?

I mean, these keyboard warriors would not really wanna be in a room with Travis Kelsey?

One of my suggestions back in twenty sixteen for the Hillary Clinton debate prep was that she should arrive on the stage with a vacuum sealed jar of pickles, hand it to Donald Trump. Say, I bet you a hundred dollars. You can’t open this.

I like that a lot.

Yeah. I I proposed that some phrases. They said that that’s a little

bit No. No. No. No. No.

No. No. I don’t think that one’s ed has expired yet either. Okay. So you were at the Atlantic Festival this week talking about the future of conservatism.

Our good friend Tom Nichols, was ill have not been able to read anything about it. So, you know, I’m asked this question all the time, and I find it very, very puzzling because You have to define what you mean by conservatism, you have to define what the timeline is. What did you say? What was your takeaway? From this conversation about the future of conservatism, especially, you know, given this week when we’re seeing what conservative candidates for president do, what conservative voters or quote unquote conservative voters?

What a conservative congress is doing? Where are we going?

I’ve been working on a book for the summer about this it may take a bit of a while. And it’s it’s a very different book from anything I’ve ever done before, because it tries to be a little more poetic and visionary rather than highly specific. But One of the things that what I’m with people who are my new readers is I always have to caution, you know, there’s gonna come a time Donald Trump is gone. And I’m gonna disappoint you because you’re gonna find out what I think about all the issues that are not Donald Trump. And that the future of conservatism is we’re still, you know, you know, you we’ve been in this fight.

And so, you know, the reins coming from a certain direction, and that’s the direction which your umbrella is pointed. Do I believe the government is efficient at allocating resources. I do not. Do I believe that the government should be driving the direction of industrial policy? I do not.

Do I sympathize with the criticisms of American history, even acknowledging many of their truths. I do not. I think they they focusing on things that matter less and ignoring things that matter more. Do I think that anyone who works hard at it can make us sufficient success of their life in the United States. I do.

Do I think that the constitutional scheme basically is sound and, should should be protect rather than radically change. I do I mean, not that there are no reforms, I would imagine. But, you go through these things, you know, and even if I’m wrong about any of those particular things, the system needs me. They need me and people like me to be saying those things. I mean, it can’t always be true that anytime anyone has some, you know, brain wave that we try it, that you need a lot of people to say, I don’t know, the last ninety nine brain waves, you know, proof kind of, unreliable.

That’s that maybe we should road test this brain wave. Try it in Delaware before we take it national. The debates that we used to have are debates that need to come back. And Donald Trump has been because he he believes in nothing except protecting himself from consequences of his own criminality. He has stopped discussions that that we need to have.

I mean, there is inflation. How do you what what’s the right way to deal with that? Mean, I do believe if you wanna stop inflation, the Republicans of Old were right, you need contractionary policy. You don’t, as Biden thinks you do, have government investment to create new production to catch up to the money supply. You control the money supply.

And these are conversations and debates and arguments and battles and votes that we all need to have. And I, you know, I hope I’ll live long enough to see them return, but in the meantime, we have this threat to all that we hold dear, and you have to you have to see that off before you can go back to all as it should be.

Right. Jonathan Rausch, is explained this as the difference between a heart attack and and cancer that the the attacks on liberalism from the left are serious and they’re long term. But we’re dealing with the heart attack right now. And, you know, there are people who push back against that, that analogy. And I think that that’s going to be a fight that we’re gonna have as well.

I mean, when Donald Trump leaves, obviously, we don’t snap back. But the arguments that you’re describing are are debates that we’ve had for hundreds of years. In Western society, actually globally, you know, between how much creative destruction do you want? How much change? What is the pace of change?

What is worth conserving? What is not worth conserving? There are a lot of things that are not worth conserving as we’ve learned. On the other hand, there are institutions and there are habits and prejudices that should not be lightly thrown away, that if you destroy these things, because somebody, you know, in a seminar room has a quote unquote better idea. Well, maybe we ought to be skeptical about it.

As you point out, maybe we ought to try it in one of the laboratories of democracy, say, in San Francisco or Burlington, Vermont before we foisted on the rest of the country. And that is a back and forth. You know, yin and yang. That, yes, you want to increase opportunity. On the other hand, do you want to destroy the expectations.

I mean, you know, people live their lives with a certain expectation, a certain idea of fairness, a certain idea of what society is is going to be, you can make it better, as liberals have been pointing out, on the other hand, you have to be careful what you burned down. Because there are things that exist for a reason. And I do think that conservative instinct is important. And also, I think there is that tension between individual freedom and the common good that is always going to be somewhat complex, and we need to have those debates.

Somebody wants to walk down the street singing a song. Should that be legal? Yeah. Somebody wants to walk down the street shouting at the top of his lungs. Should that be okay?

And you think, you know, okay. Well, somewhere between the guy singing a song as he walks down the street, which, you know, maybe you don’t like the tune. But you have live and let live. It’s a complex society versus maniacs wandering around the street shouting. So somewhere along that line Yeah.

You need to do something about the maniac shouting and not do something about the and singing us off. But we have to get from here to there. And what we may need and this is a thing that I specifically have to accept. And that’s one of the things I talk about in the book sometimes generations go off the scene and say, you know what, your generational task is done. You know, as we today, as you and I record, the country is marking the death of Diane Feinstein.

I’ll say this with respect, but, because it is the day of her death, but it is true. Also a warning that there are times you have to, accept that your time is up. And it’s not literally on the day of your your time is up, your time is up for that. And you have to move on and allow new peep new generations because many of the things I’ve been talking about, some of them will be intelligible to people in their twenties. And some not.

And the more of the future belongs to them than belongs to me. And you may say, you know, we have to have these new debates in new ways for the people who will have Fifty more years on this earth as opposed to those of us who have, you know, ten, twenty, thirty.

I had a conversation with Will Saletan, I think, on the podcast earlier this week. And he was making this similar point. And maybe at a certain point, you know, some of us get a little bit jaded. We get a little bit worn down. We become a little bit more pessimistic.

And so when you see No, young people, you know, coming on board who have a more hopeful view who are not willing to just, give up. It it is a reminder that these things do go in in cycles. And another thing that I think that conservatism has understood in the past has been that, you know, there may be moments in which we we run off the rails. There may be, you know, moments where you embrace fads or or innovations or or horrors, but they’re not necessarily forever because human nature is what it is. And so I I go back and forth between being a little bit horrified by the fragility of the world that we live in.

On the other hand, You know, you’re looking at dead histories behind you. And I’m thinking of all the periods where where you had, you know, decades of just darkness that somehow we overcame, that somehow the power of these ideas were able to bring us out.

This is a book written by Ann Morrow Lindberg. And she published it just after the fall of France in nineteen forty.

When when things were dark. Yeah. And she was

not authentic fascist, but she she wrote as someone who was sad And she said, you know, democracy was good. I know and loved it more than I did, but we just have to accept that it’s over. And that the wave of the future belongs to these new regimes, Nazi is fascism, even communism, even Soviet communism. We just that’s the future, and Americans have to adjust to it. And it’s called the wave of the future, a confession of faith, and it’s published in the summer of fall of nineteen forty and sold a lot of copies.

And the Americans of nineteen forty said, screw off. Absolutely not. Right.

No. Everything in there is wrong. Yeah.

We’re gonna leave that wave of the future eighteen inches high. And I keep it nearby. Just remind This is either way I ended my talk at the festival. When you get to a certain point in your own life, the future holds decline leading to extinction. And it’s very natural to project that your personal fate onto the society around you.

And that’s why old people are so pessimistic. Or tend to be so pessimistic. Because who wants to face the possibility that after you quit the scene, that’s when things get really good.

It’d be cool. The sun’s gonna rise as soon as you leave. Yeah. Yeah.

Maybe be the problem. You’re like the prophet Jonah. We throw you overboard in the storm ends. So I I keep this at hand drawing. The in nineteen forty, liberal democracy was the wave of the future, not fascism, and so it is now.

You know, maybe we ought to have an anthology of these prophets of doom. I think it would probably make for some interesting reading. I was, recently rereading, Whitaker Chambers’s witness. And he was he was deeply pessimistic I know for people who are are not familiar, he was a former time magazine editor who had actually been a communist and then broke with a communist, and he was the one who exposed Alagerist. But he constantly he did the deep pessimism that he had that he that he was going from the winning side to the losing side because he liked it and moral limber really did think that, you know, Soviet communism was on the march and was probably going to be the future.

And so when he left them, He had this very dark view that the West would not be able to survive, and clearly he was also wrong. At least in the in the short term?

I we read it the other day again for this this thing I’m working on. In the late nineteen fifties, Hugh Trevor roper, who was a liberal conservative best known because he was the first scholar. He was a British intelligence officer during the war, and he was one of the very first scholars into, the Hitler bunker. In nineteen forty five. And he wrote a book called Hitler the last ten days that was this for a long time, the definitive study of the ten days before Hitler suicide, But he was a a capital c conservative in British politics and was appointed to the house of lords.

The last years of his career, he had a bit of an academic scandal. So there’s a blight on it But he wrote this devastating review of Arnold toynbee who was a great pessimist of the thirties, forties fifties, and a great, you know, the jig was up And he has a line in the eye. So he said, when radicals have left to right say that the future belongs to them, it is only a very feeble conservative. Who says they are writing calls for the the last documents. The the conservative of character pops them on the nose and says you’re absolutely wrong.

It does not belong to you. I think we need we need some of that attitude, and that’s why he banned Mora Lindberg at hand.

That is great. And and what a great note too. And, David Frum, thank you so much for joining me on the weekend podcast. It is always great to talk with you.

Thank you so much. Bye bye.

And thank you all for listening to this weekend’s Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. We will be back on Monday we’ll do this all over again. The Bullworth podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.