State of Biden Is . . . Strong? But Kamala Harris, Not So Much

Welcome to Bank to differ. The Bulwark’s weekly round table discussion featuring civil conversation across the political spectrum. We range from center left to center right I’m Mona Sharon’s indicated columnist and policy editor at The Bulwark. I’m joined by our regulars, Bill Galston of the Bookings Institute in The Wall Street Journal. Linda Chavez of The Nistanaan Center and Damon Linker who writes the Substack newsletter, eyes on the right.

Our special guest this week is Jonathan Chase, political columnist. For New York Magazine. Welcome, one, and all delighted you could all be here. Jonathan, nice to have you back. Thank you.

So let us begin with a story that turned out to be a little bit surprising. I think it’s fair to say that Joe Biden delivered what most people think was quite strong state of the Union address. Not too many people watched it. The viewership was down even compared to his last state of the union address, but among the chattering class, it was viewed as a huge success So the first thing to address, I guess, is did he succeed in beginning to push back against the narrative that is out there. There was poll, for example, showing that sixty two percent of respondents felt that he had accomplished not very much or little or nothing while in the Oval Office.

And clearly, this speech was at least in part designed to rebut that idea. So, Jonathan, what do you think? You

know, he hasn’t accomplished much of what the Democratic liberal base wanted him to accomplish. But what he did accomplish, I think, are some items that are going to help him a lot in his campaign. He got an infrastructure bill, which Donald Trump elevated into a, you know, the definition of a presidential accomplishment. And one that Trump was unable to do. And he also got the chips and science bill, and he got a lot of infrastructure funding in the Inflation Reduction Act that he did pass.

So I think what he was able to do is frame himself as a kind of economic nationalist who really was able to direct a lot of investment into towns that have been hollowed

out.

The towns that Donald Trump claims to have represented. So I think that aspect of his message was pretty effective. And I think he’s signaling his attention to make that probably a good chunk of his reelection message and use that to take credit for the economic recovery, assuming the recovery stays on course, so I thought we really started to see

a preview of the campaign themes he he tends to use, and and I think they’re pretty good ones. Damon, some people criticized him for leaning so heavily on the economic message because they said, you know, he’s giving a hostage to fortune here. It’s possible that we are in the wonderful unicorn land of a soft landing and no recession after about a pretty intense inflation that is beginning to abate, has been for six months. But we might not be. We might be about to plunge into a recession.

And if this message is heavily weighted toward the economy is terrific,

What do you think? Well, I think if the economy isn’t doing well, if we hit a recession and it lingers on into twenty twenty four, Biden’s gonna have a very tough reelect regardless of what he said at this state of the union. Yeah. And I think as a kind of laying down a marker for what the message in that real act is going to be, this was a really, really smart move. Republicans do best when they can get traction on culture war issues.

And the fact is they have taken that insight, which I think is largely true and they have leaned into it so heavily. As you could hear from the Sarah Sanders rebuttal message, but you really get the sense that Republicans are painting a view of the country where we’re divided into kind of armed camps and conservatives or kind of at gunpoint at the progressives trying to make them bow down before the kind of tyrant state of the woke regime. And instead of that, Biden is saying in effect You know what? Whatever you think about some of those issues, their kind of niche issues, their boutique issues, even if you think they matter, lots of other things matter too. And on those things, what we the democrats are saying and doing, are on the right side.

And actually, as soon as we say that the Republicans are gonna have to try to hit us back on it, and the fact is that on those economic issues, they’re not where the voters are. They want tax cuts. They want to cut entitlements. And so as soon as Biden can establish that the actual debate is going to be about economics. Democrats are on much firmer ground.

So again, if the economy tanks, then, of course, that doesn’t hold. But aside from that eventuality, the general kind of either or question of what Democrat should be talking about, it’s clearly an economic message, one that’s focused on people’s struggles, the efforts of the democrats, over lots of Republican opposition to pass legislation that’s gonna make people’s lives a little better and certainly not hack away at the programs that people rely on to pay the bills. And get through the day. So as a minor member of the chartering classes, as you put it at the top of the show, I thought Biden did a remarkably strong job in the speech and I think is headed in the right direction and fingers crossed that the economy holds up.

Bill, one problem with the economic, you know, accomplishments message. And certainly, there’s lots to brag about. I mean, the unemployment rate was three point four percent last month, which is its lowest level since May of nineteen sixty nine. Which is even before I was a grown up. So that’s pretty impressive.

On the other hand, he only slightly mentioned inflation. And look, it just seems to me that the reason people give him such low marks on the economy, which they do, is that the inflation has been eating away at their paychecks. And so real wages have not kept pace. People do not feel wealthier. They feel poorer.

And you mentioned that that was coming down, but the failure to address that directly I don’t know. Maybe there’s nothing he can say, but what did you make about?

Well, the overall theory

of the speech was talk about things that are arguably going well, and don’t talk about things that are arguably going wrong. And if it were the case that the president can completely control the public’s agenda of concern, that would be a very effective strategy. I don’t think that’s true. And to build on your question, politics, I think, is a matter, like a football game, of both well judged offense and effective defense. And if you have a great offense, but you’ve neglected your defense, unbalance things aren’t going to go very well for you.

And so I think that the speech leaned much too far in the direction of offense to the neglect of defense. I’ll give you another example. As I pointed out in a piece that I did for Brookeings, a company days ago, over the past two years, public concern about the budget deficit has shot up by fifteen percentage points. By the way, that’s a broad based increase. It’s up seventeen for Republicans, but also fifteen for Democrats, and about the same for independents.

And The president really didn’t take on that issue at all. And we’ve gone through an extended period where that issue didn’t matter. I think we’re back in the zone where it does matter. So I agree with Damon. That the speech has a clear strategy and that the president was effective in executing that strategy Whether it’s a good strategy, a different question altogether, I must say I have my doubts.

Linda, one moment

during the speech that everybody thought was, you know, very very strong for Biden and kind of funny and great was that tangled with the Republican hecklers, and they got into it about Social Security and Medicare. Look, it’s perfectly fine to point out the hypocrisy of Republicans who talk about cutting government programs until they’re in charge, and then they just increase them. Which is fact, but at the same time, I’m not cheering that both parties are cheerfully agreeing and shaking hands on never confronting our problem of out of control entitlement spending I mean, that’s what we saw. We saw both parties say, yep, we can see a huge crisis coming in a very few years, you know, some people say it’s gonna be, you know, less than ten years, less than five, according to some estimates, before the Social Security Trust Fund is out of money and you have to use treasury funds. But in any event, the cheering about that, both from the commentators and the politicians strikes me as not a good thing for our country.

Well, it was wonderful political theater. You have to give it that. I mean, I, you know, it’s been a long time since I sat up and actually listened to a state of the an address. I find them generally boring. I notice Fox News was touting that this was the second lowest watch.

Stated the union in recorded history, I guess. And the last one that was lower than this was Bill Clinton. In nineteen ninety three. And I thought, well, if that’s the case, it may be bode well from Joe Biden. But look, you’re right on the substance.

There is no question that if Americans are indeed worried about us having to pay for our debts and being able to keep solvent both the Medicare and Social Security program that requires changes and those changes are either going to happen or we’re going to be in a crisis. One of my substantive criticisms of Biden’s message was when talking about the economy and this relates to Social Security. Was that he didn’t talk about immigration in the context of the economy. Because the thing that is saving and has saved Both the Medicare funds and Social Security is the contributions of people who work because as we all know, you know, this notion that

those of us on

Social Security are simply taking out of the system, the money that we put in. Is nonsense. It is current workers and their contributions that are paying for my Social Security check, and I assume bills as well. I don’t know if anybody else is eligible on the program, but that’s the way it is. It is paid for by existing workers.

And the fact is, we don’t have enough new people coming into the system to keep these programs afloat. And one of the reasons we don’t is that we have been so stingy, and our immigration policy certainly, essentially trying to shut it down during the Trump years, and it hasn’t recovered. And so I would have wished that when he was talking about the economy, even talking about Social Security and Medicare, he could have thrown something into that effect. And I know I’m sort of one note, Linda, on this topic, but immigration is the issue that’s probably nearest and nearest to my heart. And the fact is the only way you’re ever going to sell reform is by selling it to the American people as in their interests to reform the system.

It cannot be sold as the Democrats always tried to do as humanitarian and as, you know, we’re doing something nice for people who want to come here. It’s got to be sold. As this is in Americans who live here now in their interests that we bring in more people. So that would have been an opportunity for him talk about it in that way. I guess I have one other quibble with his economic message, and it was sort of just a throwaway line, but he talked about wanting to penalize stock buybacks.

And this is a big thing on the left. And I just wanna say that that is the most insane stupid thing imaginable that you would tell companies that they not be able to buy back their own stock and thereby make sure that they value of stock is not diluted for current stockholders is just wrong headed. And the idea that you’re going to tax it and that somehow you know, it is as if Democrats have not the single most simplistic understanding of American cap and what it is the company exists for, which is to make profits and to return to those investors some profit on the money that they’ve invested. And one of the ways that you do that when you have to issue additional stock, which you normally have to do because you’re issuing it to workers, to employees of the company in the form of bonuses and other things. Is that when it becomes profitable to go ahead and buy back some of that stock so that you’re not diluting shares you do that.

And to try to penalize that behavior is just nonsense. But, Linda, I thought that stock buybacks are only done by little capitalists

with pinwhez and top hats and that all the money goes into the hands of the greedy capitalists. Yeah. Right. None of it goes to anything

good. No. It goes to the pensioners who have stock in their portfolios. Because if you dilute the value of the stock, then you make each individual stock worth less than it should be in one of the ways to stop that from happening is to buy back stock when you have to issue. As you do as a company, Generally speaking, you have to issue new stock over the course, not necessarily every year, but you do end up having to do that.

And when stock values drop and it’s profitable for the company to buy back some of those shares, it makes sense to do it. Anyway, it shouldn’t be realized that just you know, basic economics at one.

A very fair point, and I’m very glad you made it. Now I’m gonna toss this to Jonathan, and ask you how you feel about what Linda just mentioned about immigration. And also, I’m gonna throw in something else, my particular that noir about all this is that there are two areas where Biden has really pretty much stayed within the lane that Donald Trump tread, namely on immigration and on trade protectionism. And this speech was larded with references to by American and all of that as his legislation has been. Just as with immigration, I think, you know, it would be better in an inflationary moment if we had more immigrants because part of the reason we have high inflation is not enough workers.

Similarly, we’d be better to provide me if he didn’t tax the things that Americans especially poorer Americans buy. I mean, you know, inflation causes prices to go up, taxes on imports are yet another way to raise prices for ordinary Americans. This is not a tax on the rich. It’s mostly a tax on everybody, but the rich can afford it. What do you make of those two arguments?

Right. They haven’t really rolled back the Trump tariffs. Yeah. And I also agree that the Buy America provisions unnecessarily raised the cost of projects and we really have a crisis in this country where construction has gotten prohibitively difficult, inexpensive for everything. We should be prioritizing, making that easier.

Especially because the green energy agenda requires building so many things of all kinds — Right.

— a

lot can be made easier. Where I have changed my mind over time and and have come to see Biden’s point of view is on some of the domestic onshoring agenda. That he managed to get done and he was boasting about it in in his speech the idea of we’re going to consciously shape our policies that we’re building batteries semiconductors, cars, manufacturing in general here in the United States that there’s economic foreign policy and social value in having all those things rather than just trying to maximize GDP as you might do by going in a pure free trade direction. I think he’s really kind of trying to take that aspect of Trump’s promise and and actualize it. And and I think there’s some real optimism that is working, that that lots of companies are announcing new investments and opening up new factories in in some of these towns that are hollowed out.

And simply, the expectation that people would just go to school and learn new skills or or move out of their towns and go somewhere else isn’t realistic. That isn’t the way any of us want to live our lives, and we need to accommodate reality by creating decent jobs where they live.

And so I think that aspect of the strategy is worth trying. For decades, Rolling Stone has set the bar for entertainment publications. Today, Rolling Stone Music now takes over in podcast form. Cesar.

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Damon, the number of observers say, that this speech was a practically an engraved invitation by Biden to the Republicans to behave badly and that they fell into his trap So what do you make of the Republican reaction? I’m not talking about how could be Sanders though. Feel free to adjust that too if you’d like. But just about the people in the room, did they give him an in kind contribution, do you think?

Well, sure. I mean, it certainly made them sound, pretty rapid. I’m not someone who really gets up in arms about, oh, the decline of our norms about these things. Given question time in the House of Commons with the prime minister getting jeered. You know, we’re still pretty tame by those British standards.

Oh, Damon, no be so much better if we had them all going.

Sure. I mean, Yeah. I mean, it’s not like I’m eager for that. But, you know, what I heard the other night was not really even at the close to that level. It’s more about the kinds of things they were getting up in arms about.

Just made them sound, I think, really peevish, and especially with the exchanges having to do with Social Security cuts, there’s just too much paper trail evidence of prominent Republicans, including the governor of Florida on the record supporting cuts to entitlements that are very popular with voters. Now we can have obviously, big to differ disputes on the podcast about, you know, whether there should be some trims to Social Security and Medicare or Medicare aid and how they’re funded and raising the age retirement things. And those are the usual kinds of pragmatic policy debates about how to pay for all of this. But on the simple question of which of the parties are committed to keeping these programs that people rely on versus a party that seems to really you know, deep down on its heart, if they could, if they could, you know, have three wishes and choose one, one of them would be kind of just get rid of the welfare state. You know, again, that maybe that’s a little extreme, but there are people on the record in the Republican Party who definitely wanna push very much in that direction and seem to be stopped from going further simply by the limitations.

Of the politics on it. And Biden wanted to get them stuck in that trap. And I think he sprung it on them pretty effectively and especially given that another narrative that was at play and being tested that night was the things the Republicans have been saying over and over again that Biden is a senile daughtering old man who can’t string two sentences together, let alone actually run the government and he’s not actually in charge. You can’t possibly run again. He’s a loser.

He’s not gonna win. And not only did he do a decent job of to bring the speech, but he, again, real time, responded to these provocations, I think, pretty effectively. And that I think really did a lot of good for him and the democrats, both at the level of morale, but then also in kind of resetting the narrative in the news media. They’re like, well, wait a minute. Actually, he sounds pretty with it.

He can parry with this in real time without the dreaded teleprompter. Keeping him on track.

So

again, I’m gonna Otley gets through. It sounds like this episode of Bank to differ of being a real Biden cheerleader. I was I was encouraged by what I saw. I guess I won’t jump in because I’ve been going on too long about the Sarah Huggabee Sanders response. Other than to say, you know, a version of what I said earlier, I really think it was stunning.

How extreme her rhetoric was how much it sounded like if Biden was kind of starting the twenty twenty four campaign for reelect, The Republican answer to that appears to be we’re going to say that the country is a kind of dystopian horror. Show where tyranny is being imposed under a booty hill right now, right before our eyes. And I swear There are, I know Republicans who believe this is true. Anyone who isn’t a super partisan Republican listening to that. I think was like, what are you talking about?

I I really think most Americans probably were kind of baffled by what she was saying. Again, not that we’re living in some kind of utopia here, but there are problems. I’m a critic of woke trends and so forth, and I wish Biden actually had a more full throated criticism of some of this, but that is not the core experience. I think of most Americans in twenty twenty three, And I really doubt that it’s gonna be a message that’s gonna gain the kind of traction they seem to be presuming it will on the right.

Bill, that does bring up a very interesting contrast between the approach of the two parties. While certainly between Huggabee Sanders and Biden, and and even to a degree with the congressional Republicans as well, namely Biden’s speech for all that I have my problems with his economic policies and whatever, but his speech was intended to reach out beyond his base. He was clearly making a play for independence for the white working class voter who feels neglected and forgotten, etcetera. That was a very obvious play. And how can be Sanders was gearing her pitch completely to Republican primary voters?

Do you think that was because of their differing political agendas? Like, you know, she may want to be somebody’s vice president? Or does it say something about the nature of the two parties at this moment.

Oh, boy. What a big question, boy. Where where to start? Well, I’ll start with the passage of the Sarah Huckabee Sanders speech that struck me the most. And that was the paragraph where she took JFK’s wrath about the rise of the new generation and translated it into Republican terms.

And I think that there is a clear sense among Republicans that the terms of the debate have changed, and that cultural issues are much more central in the minds of the American people and therefore much more central to a politically effective strategy than they would have been a generation ago and certainly two generations ago. And leading Republican candidates for president headed by Ron DeSantis have basically bet the farm on that theory of the case. And I will say, based on what happened in the Florida gubernatorial case, that at the very least mister DeSantis and people who reason as he does have not been punished. I would also say that if memory serves a man who was elected to the presidency seven years ago, chose the theme of American carnage for his first and god willing only inaugural address. The fact that the likes of us think a depiction of the country is over

the top

is no guarantee that a majority of the country is going to agree with us. I have no idea. And certainly, after twenty sixteen, I have no idea whether the Biden Democratic theory of the case, namely it’s the economy stupid, or the new generation Republican theory of the case, namely it’s the culture stupid, is going to prevail in the particular circumstances of twenty ninety four, but I guess I may differ slightly from others who think that the cultural bet is obviously mistaken and doomed to failure. I’m not sure that that’s true at all. For the simple reason that it’s not clear to me, analytically whether culture or economics has been the bigger contributor to the flight of the white working class from the Democratic Party, which began let us remember, in nineteen sixty eight, it has been decades since Democrats have had a reliable majority among white working class voters.

This is not something that Donald Trump’s political genius brought about, and much of that drift away from the Democratic Party, I believe, started with white working class ire over what they saw as a lack of patriotism and cultural extremism among Democrats. And maybe we can cure the problem why we, I mean, democrats, without addressing that question. That’s Biden’s theory of the case, but there’s another theory of the case that has a lot of political science behind

it. Yeah. That’s really, really interesting. Okay. Linda, one of the things that I liked the most in Biden’s speech and that I think showed him off where he is best is where he showcased the parents of Tyria Nichols.

He spoke with great compassion about what they’ve been through. And then he broadened it out and talked about how most police are honorable, good people, and so on and so forth. And threading that needle and doing it with skill and sincerity, I thought was a fine moment for him and the sort of thing that we certainly would not have seen from his predecessor. Or perhaps even from some of his would be successors. So I liked that.

I’m wondering if you did and if there’s something else that you found particularly, praise worthy or worthy of criticism that you wanna just mention?

Well, I find myself in agreement with much of what Bill Galston just said in terms of the culture issues not being irrelevant. Put aside Huggamy Sanders, that her response I thought was dreadful. I didn’t think it was very effective. She used terms like CRT, which probably listeners of this broadcast know what it means, but the average American probably doesn’t, and so it didn’t resonate at all. But cultural issues are important.

And the needle that was threaded as you described his dealing with that horrible beating and the parents who are there to be honored as guests of the first lady. Was exactly right and was attuned to anxiety about cultural issues. I mean, I think what we saw with the various writing that took place during the pandemic was that many on the left, decided that the police were the enemy. And all of the to fund the police stuff backfired, it hurt democrats, And I think that president Biden wants to make sure that that doesn’t happen to him. And that it is quite possible to say that what we witnessed in that terrible beating was absolutely unforgivable, cannot happen in America, and we must figure out ways to prevent that kind of thing from happening.

At the same time as we don’t suggest that every policeman is in fact going to be engaged in that kind of behavior. And if there’s one thing that I think all of us on this podcast understand, is that the communities that are most in need of good policing are low income communities where more crime is committed. And so being simply being anti police doesn’t solve anything. And so I thought he did that very, very definitely. I thought it was handled exceedingly well.

I guess the only other point I would make and we’ve sort of made passing reference to it is that he was really at his best when he was sparring with the Marjorie Taylor Greens and others in the audience who were yelling out liar and it’s your fault in terms of the fentanyl. Crisis in America. And that, you know, for those who were concerned about his age, whether he’s got all his marbles, you know, whether he’s functioning, working on all cylinders. I think he certainly showed there. That he was and that he could not fall into a trap that had he ignored what was going on.

He would have looked weak. If he had been more combative than he was, if he tried to engage in tip for tad, it would have come off badly. But he was able to handle it with a somewhat light touch that diminished the people who were doing the heavily So, you know, in terms of the speech, I think the takeaway was really not so much about the substance on any of the elements. It was really about the overall effect of this president who is old and who is not always as sharp as some of us would like him to me seemed very, very sharp during that speech, and it was not a short performance that went on for well over an hour. Yeah.

And he Three hours, so I recall. Yeah. It said seem to go on forever. But, you know, as I say, I’m not a big fan of states of the union, including from, you know, people I agree with more than I agree with president Biden. But I thought he did a good job and he held the audience.

And I think that was the big takeaway.

Okay. Well, that’s gonna be the last word on that. Subject. Thank you for that. And let’s turn now to the question of somebody who is not old, but does have a very bad press.

And that’s Kamala Harris. There were stories in both the New York Times and The Washington Post in the last few days about Her struggles and specifically about the Democratic Party’s worries about her. It is seen that she might be a drag on the ticket, presuming that Biden is running and that she will be his running mate again. Because there are a large number of people who feel that she has not risen to the occasion and that people will hesitate to vote for an eighty two year old president, if they are very, very dissatisfied with his likely successor, should anything happen to him in the second term? And so there’s been a lot of talk.

So Jonathan Chate, I’m gonna start with you. Not all of this is people who are on the other side of the aisle. In fact, a lot of this is coming from Democrats, and I’m just gonna play a little clip to set the stage here. This was from The Daily Show. And it was a takedown of Kamala Harris by comparing her with the fictional vice president Selena Meyer Indi.

So let’s hear a section of that.

My fellow Americans, words have many meanings and sometimes instead of conveying our meaning, they can suggest other meanings. When

we talk about the children of the community, they are a children of the community. Well, we are the United States of America because we are united. And we are states. Talking about the significance of the passage of time. Right?

The significance of the passage of time. So when you think about it, there is great significance to the passage of time. Whatever we have in store. Cannot be known. The past was once the future.

The future is, I should say, unknown. We gotta take the stuff, Sarah’s as seriously as you are because you have been forced to have to take it seriously. Obesity is a serious disease and it needs to be taken seriously. You need to get to go? And need to be able to get where you need to go to do the work

and get home. I hope that clarifies the issue, and this can be the last word on those words.

Okay. It goes on a little bit longer in that same vein. So Jonathan Chate, your take on all this, do you think that was Unfair, what’s your sense of it?

My sense is that Harris hasn’t really done anything to prove that she has the talent to be the presidential candidate. And I think she’s done at least some things to make people think she doesn’t have it in her. Her twenty twenty campaign was was not well organized. She had four different positions on Medicare for all, which was number one, the top issue substantively in the campaign. And and I think the the the main issue, the press was using to gauge the seriousness of the candidates and to judge them ideologically.

She was all over the place. She could spring some really effective attacks, but she didn’t seem to have any plans to follow them up or or to defend herself when she was under attack. And then she’s really churned through staff at a high rate since she’s been in in office as vice president. So I think Democrats are really concerned about her ability to leave the ticket. The New York Times had a piece about this.

The media coverage has been really tough on her. And the Times noted that she gave several names to the Times as Democrats who would defend her And some of those Democrats privately said they don’t really think she’s up to it, which is one of the worst things I’ve ever heard about politicians is in terms of raw political skill. I don’t think she’s a bad person. I I I’m not saying that people would be terrified of what she would do as president, but people really have doubts about her skills as a entertainer because you just have to be a very, very good politician to run for president and win. So that’s really what’s hovering over the whole question of twenty twenty four, you’ve got the people who are four Biden mostly just don’t want them to leave in Make Way for Harris.

And the people who do want them to step aside just kind of yada yada yada yada weigh the whole question of what are we gonna do about Kamala Harris if he does step aside? And I and I just don’t see a lot of people who really want her to leave the

ticket or have a real good plan for getting around or if Biden steps aside. So that’s the conundrum. Linda, there have been only two presidents in our history who have swapped out their VP when they were running for reelection. One was Lincoln who dropped Hannibal Hamlin in favor of Johnson, which didn’t turn out too well. Mhmm.

And FDR who dropped Henry Wallace in favor of Harry Truman, that did turn out very well. But in both cases, the VP went on to assume office. Nixon had agnew. That was a special case. Agnew had pleaded guilty to a crime.

Yeah. So those are the only examples. I mean, you know, we’re a lot of people think Jay would really be better for everybody concerned except maybe for Kamala Harris. If Biden were to swap her out with somebody else, you know? Gina Raymundo, Cory Booker, who knows?

But it really hasn’t

happened much, certainly in recent history. It hasn’t, and by the way, I don’t think it can be something that biden leads. It would have to be something that Kamala Harris herself decided. And, you know, I haven’t seen any indication that she has that sort of self awareness and is willing to take one for the party, but frankly, it would be a good thing. I think the difficulty will be that the Democratic Party is very heavily dependent on the black vote.

And if there were not a replacement, you mentioned Remundo, who’s obviously a woman, but she’s white, I think Biden made this promise that he was gonna pick a black woman. I didn’t like the fact that he’d limited his choices in that way. I don’t necessarily think it has to be a woman since that black ceiling has now been broken, but I do think he needs to have a black running mate. In the Democratic Party. It would have to be something that Kamala Harris herself decided.

And I just don’t know if she, you know, is the kind of person who could do that. I mean, it would clearly help him if he had a stronger running mate. I think she is one of the weaker people that I could imagine being on the ticket. I think you’re absolutely right that a lot of people are fearful that a man who would be eighty six by the time he left office, if he blasted his whole second term, you know, you just don’t feel confident in not having somebody who could step into that role and step into it quickly and

assume

the office of the president and I don’t know anybody other than maybe Kamala Harris’ husband who thinks that she could do that. Damon, people, myself included, you know, you read

stories about churning through staff and you think, oh, well, you know, some people are more difficult to work with than others. But first of all, I’ve heard these stories not just from reading them in the press, but from, you know, actual personal experience of, you know, one step removed from people who say the exact same thing, which is that she is very bad about doing her homework. So she demands that staffers stamp all night and get her big briefing book, and then, you know, she goes to the event without having read the stuff, she performs badly, and then she berates the poor staff for not having prepared her enough. Apparently, this happens. Fairly frequently.

It’s utterly demoralizing for staff, and she has just lost so many. So she’s on her second or third chief of staff, her second chief spokesperson, her third communications director, I looked up a story from December of twenty twenty one, so more than a year ago, this story was from the Washington Post and they said a device president entered the White House with few longtime staffers. Among the senior staff in her vice presidential office, only two had worked for her before last year and they named those people. And guess what? Within a few months of that story coming out, both of those staffers were gone as well.

So that’s pretty intense. What’s your reaction?

I’m a little hesitant to rely too much on those kind of disgruntled staff member stories. Because you never know what the full story is behind the scenes, and the principal is never going to give you an honest account of what happened no matter what it was. But I do think that what it points to is a combination of probably two things. One, as you said, she’s pretty difficult to work for. But then again, if you’ve ever worked in an executive position working for the principal, the person who owns the pronoun in the room, and I don’t mean, you know, in the transcence.

I mean, in the sense of when everyone who works there says he or she they every you know who they mean. It’s the person we’re all here working eighteen to twenty hour days to make look good. We’re kind of creating their whole entourage to go through the world and get things done. It’s a grueling kind of job and those jobs are very, very difficult. In part because in addition to the job itself being hard, the people who end up in those forward facing, public facing jobs are very ambitious.

They’re difficult people who’ve clawed their way to the top and they’re not fun to work for. And this comes in part from my experience working for Rudy Giuliani. Also Tina Brown in the journalism world is one of these people and I revere her, but, you know, it’s hard. You leave at the end of the day and you’re you’re like, oh, alright. I’ll be back here in three hours and I’m exhausted and so forth.

So there’s that, but the bigger problem. It’s not just that she’s difficult to work for, but that people are quitting. So rapidly tends to point to the fact that they don’t think she has much of a future. If they really believe this person was going to be president, anytime soon or could be an effective, positive, good president if Biden were to die at any time and she stepped into it, they would probably be more inclined to just suck it up, stick it out, endure the rigors and bad attitude and abuse because they would be figuring well. I’m a Democrat.

I care about these things. I wanna be the person who’s working next to the president of the United States. No matter how difficult she is. But the fact that people are leaving either means working for her is off the charts awful or I think more likely it’s bad probably not that far off the spectrum of normal, but combined with the feeling of this person isn’t gonna do this, or if they do become president, it’s gonna be a disaster and why would I want to be associated with it? As Jonathan pointed out, that bit from the New York Times piece this week, just brutal.

That is without precedent in my experience. It’s one thing off the record to dish on. The person, but to be a close confidant who she sent you to, either shows atrocious judgment on her part or it shows she has no defenders anywhere that even the people who are her extensible defenders, Deep Down think she’s really bad and is worthy of getting kicked, you know, in the gutter. Because they must have known if they work in the political world, the effects of a quote like that and then you’re times would have. So it’s distressing.

I really don’t know how this ends other than the best case scenario as Joe Biden runs he wins and he lives a long time and and we somehow get, you know, January twenty twenty nine. And just breathe the sigh of relief and then she

His mother lived to be ninety two.

So there you go. Although, you know, women do tend to outlive men. So I don’t know. We’ll we’ll we’ll

see what’s possible. His dad lived to be eighty six.

So there you go. But This cat will at least make it to the last.

Alright. So, Bill, let’s imagine the arguments on her side. Okay? People will say first of all that a woman or and especially a woman of color is always going to be held to a higher standard than other people. People will say that president Biden has not helped her because he has given her kind of intractable issues to be responsible

for, like the border illegal immigration or voting rights People will say all sorts of things. I’ve noticed. So let’s talk about reality and not what people say. Reality number one is that unless as Linda recommended, she does the right thing. Joe Biden is stuck with her.

He made his bed and he’s going to have to lion it for either two years or six years. So his job is to minimize the damage. And that means starting immediately Consulting with her to figure out what her political comfort zone is. What are the issues where she feels comfortable being full throated and feels comfortable enough with the substance of the issue to be able to spar with honuts, etcetera. I think that she turned out to be more effective after the job’s decision on that issue than she probably had been on any other single issue.

So what are the issues? What are the audiences? Rather than assigning her tasks that she’s not interested in and not very good at, and that’s not about to change anytime soon, make her through scheduling, through issue selection the best of all possible comma haruses. Because simply hanging back, letting nature take its course, allowing people who are pretty close in with the Democratic Party, Bob grenades at her over the fence is not good for anyone. It’s not good for her, not good for him.

But now let me put my political scientists hat on for just a minute. It is very hard to find an election where the vice president was either a significant boost for or a significant drag on. The presidential candidate. A lot of people in Bush forty one’s entourage were afraid that Dan Quail would be a huge lie ability, particularly after his disastrous vice presidential debate with Lloyd Benson. And I can tell you, political scientists have worked hard to find that evidence and they can’t.

And it is possible in a really, really close election. That the identity of the vice president and the vice president’s public profile can have a big effect. There’s always a first time as I’ve learned the hard way in recent years, and it is possible that with an unprecedentedly old president running for reelection and a vice presidential candidate whose reputation for gravitas and simple political skill is about as low as I’ve ever seen and that twenty twenty four could be the year where the identity of the vice president really makes the decisive difference, but I’m skeptical. So his best place since he cannot remove her. Is to make her, to repeat myself, the best of all possible Kamala Harrises and then take the sequences, whatever they are.

Of

course, there’s always the fantasy that some Silicon Valley billionaire who really wants what’s best for the Democratic Party in the country, decides to create for her some irresistible lifelong cynicure while she’ll make gobbs of money being the international ambassador for climate or something. I don’t know. And it will be something she couldn’t resist. Crazy? Okay.

Never mind. Moving right along. Okay. Alright. Well, thank you all for that.

We now turn to our final segment, our beloved highlight or low light of the week, and I’m going to start with our guest, Jonathan Shape. Thank you. My highlight of the week

was Marjorie Taylor Greens stated that you mean costume. She looked like a Russian emigre in a white fur coat, but her staff subsequently explained that she was trying to dress as the Chinese blimp to embarrass Biden. Now, I don’t think she pulled off the costume very well as evidence it had to be explained. I think she probably would have had to gain several hundred pounds to convincingly pull off the wall But the idea of treating the state of the Union address like Halloween where people will come in costume as their chosen political theme, I think, is inspired and I hope that it catches on in future years. What did you make of Kirsten Cinemas banana dress?

You know, it’s a great start. I just think we need to go to just full Halloween concert. Like, in Washington, there’s a great tradition of people dressing as political themes or political characters. For Halloween. I just think we need to bring that to the studio.

Okay. Linda Chavez. She and I thought she just was dressed like she was going to about floor at party and was at a tequila bar. So I’m like, yeah, missed that whole balloon thing altogether. My low light of the week was an article in the Washington Post about the US Supreme Court and their failure to come up with a code of conduct that they would adopt and all agree to.

The supreme court is declining in the view of many Americans are now don’t have as much respect for the court as they once did. That’s not as if the court has always been well beloved. It goes in and out of favor with the American public. But certainly, over the last couple of years, the question of Jenny Thomas’ role working as an activist on sort of Mag political issues, raise questions about Clarence Thomas and whether or not he should have recused himself from hearing any cases having to do with the reelection of Donald Trump. There are other questions that have been raised with the spouses of members even chief justice.

Robert’s wife who gave up apparently her partnership in a prominent law firm now does recruiting for law firms? And that question was, if she was involved in the recruitment of a particular person became involved in a case or his or her firm got involved in a case that went before the court should the chief justice have to recuse himself. But it all raises questions about the standards. And I think there was a point at which we believe that everybody who managed to make it onto the U. S.

Supreme Court was upstanding. Laurel would only act in the best interest of the country and in breeding the law and do it absolutely in an ethical fashion. But that’s now being questioned. And so it would seem to me that the court would want to get ahead of this and come up with a code of contact. But they so far have not been willing to.

And as a result, we now have members of Congress who are suggesting legislation to create a code of conduct for the court. So that’s my low light for the week.

Okay, Linda. And since you have hit on a subject that Damon Linker returns to regularly, namely the lack of trust in institutions in our society. I’m gonna go to you Damon for your highlighter, Lillight.

Okay. And my highlight of the week is a totally non political thing. So it

Two weeks ago, I have

yeah, two weeks in a row and I’m sorry I don’t have an elegant bridge from that very nice transition to me. Like imagine if I had an essay about lack of trust in institutions. However, I’m gonna be pointing to an essay in Vulture by Sam Adler Bell, one of my favorite left leaning writers. He writes about many things that aren’t always connected directly to politics, and this is one that sort of half does that binds it with culture. An essay titled, the movie industry is confused to eat the rich fantasy.

This is a very nice very thoughtful essay about several recent films and TV shows that the main emphasis is on the film’s glass onion, the menu, and triangle of sadness, but it also takes in, in part, bits of HBO’s white lotus and accession to very popular TV shows and then other recent films. It’s about the fact that their dues seem to be a lot of cultural artifacts these days that express a resentment and anger toward the super rich and how that plays out in our culture and in our politics. And this essay kind of synthesizes them, brings them all together, and says some very interesting and thoughtful things about the trend. So it’s an essay. I recommend to everyone listening.

Thanks. I’ll look forward to that. Okay, Bill Galston. Well, for me, this one is

a no brainer. And unlike demons, it’s entirely political. Mitt romney, I think, is a genuinely moral man and is turning into something of the conscience of the Senate and even the Conference of Congress. And when he saw George Santos edging his way towards the isle, as President Biden walked down it. He had the guts to say to Santos, you don’t belong here.

I cannot imagine that pithier or a truer way of characterizing mister Santos. And Romney said it. And in the Jewish tradition, the ability to deliver a rebuke. When it’s deserved is highly prized, and Romney, I think effortlessly found it within his self to do just that and it was a highlight of my week that he did.

I could not agree more that Romney has become a truly inspiring figure. I would like to mention a piece by friend of this podcast, Tom Nichols, who wrote a piece for the Atlantic called Check voters Deal of Load Populism, where he celebrates the fact that the Czech people have just elected a president by a really thumping majority who is opposed to the populist nationalism of his opponent. And Nichols says, look, this is a great victory for NATO for Ukraine for democracy, for decency, for many things. And he he acknowledges that, of course, this struggle is not over. I mean, we still have a populist right wing government in Poland and Viktor Orban in Hungary, but he says quoting a Czech diplomat that Pavel, that’s the name of the new president.

His win, seems to follow a tide turning against global populism, including the defeats of former Brazilian president Yair Bolsonaro and former Slovenian Prime Minister John is Johnson. And he says, and we could add the American twenty twenty two midterm elections to that list. So maybe too soon to pop the champagne, but definitely an encouraging encouraging movement to be celebrated in the Czech Republic, and again, that is by Tom Nichols in the Atlantic. So with that, I want to thank Jonathan Chegg for joining us. I want to thank our usual panel as well as our sound engineer this week.

Joe Armstrong, our producer every week, Katie Cooper and our wonderful listeners, and we will return next week as every

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