December 31, 2023 • 31 mins
Princeton historian and CNN political analyst Julian Zelizer examines some recent history lessons for our present day. Bradley Tusk, CEO of Tusk Ventures and author of 'The Fixer: My Adventures Saving Startups from Death by Politics,' examines the inner workings of how policy gets passed.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discuss the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds. We're on vacation, but that doesn't mean
we don't have an amazing show for you today. For instance,
historian and CNN political analyst Julian Zella's her stops by
to tell us about some recent history lessons for our
(00:24):
present day. But first we have the CEO of Test
Ventures and author of The Fixer My Adventures Saving Startups
from Death by Politics, Bradley Tusk. Bradley Tusk, Welcome to
Fast Politics you have.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
I'm Miley Tanks forrat Me.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
I am so excited to have you because we're friends,
and also because you're not like a public facing person.
I think of you as like a person who is
very involved in the wills of government in a really
interesting way, and that a lot of times some of
the stuff that you've cooked up our listeners like probably
(01:01):
have not heard about, but is really interesting and in
some cases it's super effective.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Yeah, thank you for me. Look, I just try to
get shit done, and sometimes that's public and people like it.
Sometimes it's public and people don't like it. Sometimes no
one notices, you know, whatever it is. You know, I've
learned that I feel better about myself when stuff's getting done,
so I just try to focus on that.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
So you learn a novel. Tell us a little bit
about the novel.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
It's about a campaign to legalize flying cars in New York,
LA and Austin. And on one side is the flying
car startup and they're vicious political consultants. And the other
side is Uber, the Autobot Society, the transi Unions, the Socialists,
and the Russian Bob. And it's satire. But I spent
(01:45):
the first fifteen years of my career working in government
and politics and then transition to tech by running all
the campaigns to legalize Uber and ride sharing around the US,
and then eventually using that to launch a venture capital fund.
And so I've kind of seen this from lots of
different anger at this point and thought it would be
a fun book to write to kind of give readers
a sense of here's why people in politics really make
(02:06):
the decisions they make, here's why people and tactic the
decisions they make, and venture capital in media and so on.
And by making about flying cars and making it slightly crazy,
it's hopefully a fun rate as well.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Some of these things, or some elements of it are
things you actually experienced when you were bringing Ubert to
New York, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
There are things I experienced are was bringing Obert to
New York or Denver, Miami or la or anywhere else.
But there are also things that I experienced just throughout
my career. Right. So, between being the deputy governor of
Illinois and working in New York City politics, I've testified
in five corruption trials or grand jury. So the part
in the book about the FBI and public corrupt investigations,
(02:48):
thank god, I've only ever been a witness, but I
do enough to be able to write about it. And so, yeah,
I've seen this from lots of different angles. And the
book is satire and it's fiction, but it's sort of
bare satire and barely fiction.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Yeah, isn't that That's the story of my life right there,
barely satire and barely fiction. So talk to me about
your work with free school lunches, because this is something
I feel really committed to. It's something it's an easy solve.
We are a very rich country. We do not need
children to go hunger.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
No, it's insane that we allow for this. So I'd
always been interested in hunger stuff and I've been volunteering
and weekly into kitchens since I was a freshman in
college and still do it every week now. But until
I got out of government of politics, I didn't have
any money, and so I finally first started my first
company and started making money. I started writing checks to
the New York Food Bank. And you know how it
is the bigger of a check you write, the more
(03:39):
they bring you in under the tent because they want
you to write even bigger texts. And that I know
this when that was happening, is these are lovely people
and they're terrible.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Politics because they're not killers.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
No, they're nice people. Yeah, they want to people. As
a result, I was like, they're just not good at
this stuff. And so my question was, well, what are
people who really understood politics ran bills that would mandate
universal school breakfast or lunch, or expand this snap for
seniors or whatever hunger program you want to talk about.
And what if you had the real the tools that
any good campaign hads lobbying, PR polling, ads, grassroots And
(04:14):
so I started doing it, created Solving a hunger out
of my foundation and we funded run campaigns in different
states to mandate different anti hunger programs. And basically we're
really just dealing the blocking and tackling of what you know,
McDonald's or Walmart or any company funding a legislative campaign
would do. We just do it instead on behalf of
(04:35):
kids who need food and got pretty well. So we've
passed twenty four bills in twenty states. About thirteen million
more people now have access to food on a regular
basis didn't have it before. About six million dollars of
my money has helped unlock about two billion in new
state funding for hunger programs around the country. And the
other thing that I think maybe we're doing that makes
(04:55):
me not so popular.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Yes, tell us, please tell us, sister, I love this
so much I die.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yeah. It is sort of the willingness not just to say, Okay,
you need political assistication to run these campaigns, you need
money to run these campaigns. Fine. The other thing is
you need to be willing to be negative. Right. The
reality is, politicians, in my view, do things in one
of two cases. Either they think that you can help
them win their next election, or they think that you
could cost them their next election. And if they don't
(05:24):
think that you can be relevant to either one, you
just don't matter. And then just the constant something is
a good cause, Like if that were enough, we wouldn't
have childhood humber, we wouldn't have school shootings, we wouldn't
have you know, an environment that's fallowing apart, right, you know,
the right thing is ever enough to acce again anything done.
And so last year in New York, which is one
of the states, we were working on the way the
(05:45):
New York budget works is the governor submits her budget,
the legislature submits their budget, and they kind of negotiate it.
But the legislature's budget because you know, they don't actually
run anything. It's like maximally act of balance because they
just say yes to everybody, right, all right, And so
we got our money in there for school meals, great,
but sutted everyone else for anything they wanted. And we
knew we weren't ultimately a priority once they had to
(06:06):
start making cuts. And the strategy from the New York
Hunger Coalition was, well, let's just keep our heads down
and hopefully no one will not this, right, as if
they're not going to notice two hundred and eighty million
dollars fitting in the budget. As I'm kind of doing
more and more diligence and talking and more people inside
the room, like this is not going to work, right,
And what he told is, you know what it will.
It will be too eighty, but it'll be thirty, it'll
(06:27):
be forty. We have thirty or forty million more than
you had before, so just be happy with it and
shut your mouth. And I decided, you know what, the
reason why we can't do better than that is because
we have no political swaye right. Kids who get school
meals don't vote, Their parents typically don't vote.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
There's no big oil lobbying firm doing kids lunches.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Right, you don't get anything for it politically. But maybe
we could create a stick. And so we hired these
mobile billboard trucks and poked them outside the capitol in
Albany for three weeks, say things like.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Ad I mean I love it so much?
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Gone, yeah, yeah, sorry, yeah, you know, speaker Hasty, why
are you letting children starve? Governor Oko? Why are you
letting children start and just beaten the living shit out
of them? And we just wouldn't move them, and the
hunger Coalition went crazy. They threw us out, they banned
us from using their hashtag You're going to lose all
the money. And then eventually the people were in the
room got tired of seeing these trucks and they called
(07:22):
someone of my staff and said, what's it going to take.
And my staff said to give him his money, and
we got one hundred and thirty four million dollars, and
starting back in September, two hundred and ninety thousand kids
every single day in the state of New York have
breakfast and lunch free you of charge, who didn't have
it last year, and so I'm probably never allowed back
at like the Christmas party. I didn't get a lot
of holiday cards from Hunger Coalition this year, but a
(07:43):
lot of kids got food. So look, that's how we
do it. Our twenty twenty four states which we already
launched our Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Arkansas. And
my hope is is that we can just keep taking
off states, you know, a couple every single year, and
then maybe at some point the federal government gets their
shit together and actually funds this thing. At fall that
is so great.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
I mean, I just I mean obviously don't quote me,
because I don't want anyone to be mad at me.
But you also did some really aggressive stuff in Connecticut.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Right, same thing, except to make maybe a little worse
because just physically, the way that the capital works in
Hartford didn't lend itself to the trucks like being seen
and effective. We picked the speaker or the center president
and the governor and sent those trucks all around their districts.
So Ned Lamont, who's the governor of Connecticut, lives in Greenwich.
So all through Greenwich for weeks, is this truck accusing him?
(08:37):
Let me get starve and guess what we got? Universals,
school breakfast. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
But that's how you do all right, how you do it?
Are there other things you can get that way?
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Yeah? I mean, I think fundamentally, if you accept the
fact that every policy output is the result of a
political import and if you accept the fact that every
politician makes every decision solely based on reelection and nothing else,
and you recognize that because of the jerrymannary system, we
have only primary turnout really ever matters. That's like ten
(09:07):
to fifteen percent, And so you know, ten to fifteen
percent on either side or beectillents. Like you said, Big
Oil have just disproportionate influence, which is why it's so
hard to get anything done. So the other thing that
I'm doing out of my foundation is trying to fix
the underlying problem itself by making mobile voting possible. So
you know, when we ran all the campaigns to legalizing
(09:28):
ber and I did this again with fan duel at
Ease and Bird and a bunch of other of our
portfolio companies. We mobilized millions of our customers through the
app to tell their politicians leave this thing alone. I
like fantasy sports, betting on demand. We delivery electric scooters, rideshit,
whatever it is, don't take it away from me. And
it worked right because we change underlying input. Also, the
(09:49):
politician was like, I don't need this headache, right, like
forget I just leave it alone. And so the question
I started asking is what if people could vote like this?
And then as blockchain and cloud technology both got better,
went from sort of a theoretical wouldn't it be cool too,
Let's try it out. So we paid for and by
the way, the reason that I have the money to
do all this stuff is that when I worked for
I took my fee in equity, and that a lot
(10:10):
of money, and so that's how I get to do
things like mobile voting and hunger. We paid for seven
states to conduct elections twenty one jurisdictions were either deployed
military or people with disabilities were able to vote in
real elections on their phones. They all came back clean,
they were audited, turned on average doubled. But I got
a ton of shit from the cybersecurity community and from
groups like Citizen Access and Verified Voting, who believe that
(10:32):
only paper ballots should be used, which to me is
insane because paper ballots is what got used George W.
Bush in the Iraq War, right, So I can't even
wrapped my head around that concept because it seems like
it's been pretty disproven. So I said, fuck it, I'm
going to build my own mobile voting tech. So three
years and ten million dollars later, we are going to
launch it in Q one and it will be free
and open source for anyone to download, work on, build
(10:55):
on use, and then the really hard work begins after that,
which is we've got to build a movement to force
politicians to allow mobile voting, because if you know how
to win elections in low turnout primaries. Whether you're a
Republican or Democrat, or a lobbyist or a union or
a chamber of commerce or whatever it is, you don't
want to risk the power that you have, so you're
likely to oppose this. And I'm going to need gen
(11:17):
Z and Jen Alpha. You know, all our kids, Your
kids and my kids are similar ages to just rise
up and say like bullshit, we know that it's safe,
and you only don't want us to do this because
you don't want us to have any power. So we'll
work with people like David Hogg from the Parkland Movement
and Aiden Colin Murphy who runs gen Z for Change
and other groups, so hopefully build a movement around this
and past legislation in every state that lets people vote
(11:38):
on their phones.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Yeah, that's really interesting. So you've been really involved in
city government. It is very annoying to me to live
in a blue city in a blue state and have
a governor and mayor who do not reflect my values,
and also a mayor who is going to be indicted.
I mean, right, what what's happening?
Speaker 2 (12:01):
So yeah, so just to give the listen some context,
I ran Mike Bloomberg's one of his mayoral campaigns. Worked
for him at Stick Hall and also worked for Edwin
Dallas City Hall in Philadelphia. I worked at the New
York City Parks Department, so I know city government reasonably well.
And the consulting firm that I own ran Andrew Yanks
campaign for mayor in twenty twenty one. He lost, obviously,
but I think I understand the dynamics reasonably well. Look,
(12:23):
we have a mayor and Eric Adams, where there's a
couple of different problems. The first problem is simply he
doesn't attract or recognize talent. You know, he has this
view that he needs to be loyal to the people
with him on day one when he was a borough
president or a state senator. And that's, I guess, admirable
in a very conceptual way, but not whether or not
the best people to run the parts department, the transportation department,
(12:44):
the building department, whatever it is. And so the thing
that made Mike, in my view, a very effective mayor
it isn't that he thought of any one particular idea
that he just said, look, I'm going to hire the
most talent to be buggy yet and I don't give
a shit about politics, and I don't care about patronage.
I'm going to make them hire the same way, and
then we're going to let them do their jobs completely
independent of politics. And so as a result, thousands of
(13:05):
people like you and me showed up either at city
all or at the agency's and got a lot of
stuff done right. And to me, that's the secret to
city government. And Eric Adams is the exact opposite, which
he has only hired cronies and donors and political hacks.
You know, former city council members run half the city agencies.
They have no idea how to run anything, and you
(13:26):
put that all together, it's one we have very ineffective government.
And I think to me the most obvious example is
State of New York has managed to issue twenty seven
licenses for legal week shops and there are as many
as five thousand illegal weed shops but proliferating throughout the
city and state, and there's zero ability to do anything
about It. Makes no sense to me if if Mike
we're still mayor, who would have padlocked every single one
(13:48):
of them and said, look, next time someone comes back
in one of these, you're going to writers and that
could be a customer and employee, whatever it is, and
that would have put a stop to it. And I
don't understand if it's corruption or confidence or what, but
they refuse to do it, anything about it. And so
you've got a mayor who, on one hand doesn't seem
to have the talent around him to execute a replement anything.
And then the other problem is corruption itself. His phones
(14:09):
have been seized by the FBI, his fundraisers home was
raided by the FBI. He has been telling the people
that he's going to be indicted soon. You and I,
because we're in around this world. I've been hearing the
rumor swirling for the last week or so that he's
about to get indicted. And so, but I think he's
going to follow the path of Donald Trump and Bob Mendez,
which is he's going to say, you know what, I'm
(14:29):
not resigning, I'm not going anywhere. And yes, Katy Oaklood
governor could remove him, but I doubt she'll do so
because she's not gonna water risk pishing off black voters.
And so as a result, we're going to have a
mayor under federal indictment and then on trial for federal
corruption while trying to run the city of New York
at the same time. And that's a disaster.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Yeah, yeah, that seems bad. I Mean what I'm surprised
by is just what a bad job he's done running
the city.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
I mean the legal weed.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Stores is a really good example, but other smaller things
that you know, like they're cutting library hours, right, I
mean that public libraries are not going to be open
on the weekends. I mean, there's no world in which
the amount of money to keep libraries open on the
weekends is not a rounding error in this city budget.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Sure, although I guess people can come to my bookstore
and read books and put the backup shelves if they
have to. That's correct. Maybe I'm the secret winner in
this thing. Yeah. And what the other thing is, Look,
the migrant crisis is not his fault, right, He certainly
doesn't control border policy and Texas, Sir Arizona or wherever.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
But the mismanagement of the funds that is housing the
migrants is his fault.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
It is. And the second thing would be he's already
accused Biden of targeting him, that all of these corruption
investigations are just a political ven Data by by once
you cross into that level of crazy, you might as
well then leverage what you have to try to get
more money out of them to deal with the migrant crisis. Right, So,
like I suggested to him, invite Joe Manchin to tour
the micro facilities in New York or have letch arfk Junior.
(16:03):
Not because you want to support any of these people,
but that will make the White House nervous enough. That's
somewhere in the couch cushions, they'll find that five billion
dollars that you need. And instead of us having to
cut police officers or teachers or firefighters or sanitation pickups,
so whatever it is, we can have the money that
we need. So like, he's kind of the worst of
all worlds, which is he's out there and crazy enough
(16:23):
to make these accusations, but then not really tough enough
to actually follow through on it, and so we lose
in every way.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Bradley Task, I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
I'd love to.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Julian Zelizer is a historian, a Princeton University and a
CNN political analyst. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Julian.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
Great to be back.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
I am so delighted to have you and for a
number of reasons. But you are an academic historian, but
you also right about what's going on now too. I
think that's fair. I'm curious what you think this moment
in history, What is it the closest to in modern history?
Speaker 3 (17:11):
You know, I can't give an exact comparison, but look,
for me, it always brings back the sixties, which is
what I study about. In the second half of the sixties,
where the divisions were pretty deep in this country, and
there were issues where we were fundamentally in disagreement, whether
it was Vietnam, whether it was civil rights, whether it
(17:32):
was race relations. And for me, we're at a moment
like that and where some of our basic institutions are
kind of being questioned and under attech.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Give me more on the end of the sixties, you know,
sort of what were the fundamental moments that you think
were sort of the turning point there?
Speaker 3 (17:51):
Well, certainly, look the nineteen sixty eight election where Lyndon
Johnson decides not to run, which I don't think is
going to happen today. Vice President Hubert Humphrey runs against
Richard Nixon. Richard Nixon was a Republican. He had been
Vice president he had been someone who crafted a whole
campaign railing against institutions, whether it was the media or
(18:12):
the academy, liberal institutions that he said didn't represent the
silent majority. He railed against social protests, which he said
didn't represent much of America. So that campaign, for me,
it is hard not to think of when I think
of how former President Trump is certainly going to position himself.
And Democrats in sixty eight were deeply divided. Vietnam cut
(18:35):
the party in the middle, and they had trouble really
kind of regrouping around that. There were just not on
the same page. And so that too right now, not
just with the Middle East, but many issues. I think
Democrats are struggling with some of that as well. So
that election, there's just a lot of interesting comparisons.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
You know, It's funny when you think about Nixon, because
if you close your eyes and you listen to some
of Nixon's speeches, they sound fair trumpy.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
They do, and I think it's not a total accident.
I mean, those are the years, the early late sixties,
early seventies where Donald Trump is coming of age and
starting to gain a sense of the world, and always
think that he's really kind of influenced by what Nixon
tried to do, by many of his appeals, and even
(19:21):
look when Nixon's going down as a result of Watergate
in nineteen seventy three and seventy four, he makes a
lot of the same kind of arguments you hear from
Trump about an establishment out to get him, about immedia
trying to subvert him. So I think Nixon really looms
large for Trump.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
I mean, I do think the split in the Democratic
Party is a little bit different than I mean Vietnam was.
You know, do you want to send your son off
to die? Which I think is different than where we
are right now, which is a kind of feeling that
people under fifty do not want for an intervention of
any kind, which I think is really interesting, and I'm
(19:58):
hoping you could talk about that because I see anecdotally
and I also see it in a lot of the Again,
I hate polls, so I don't want to say poles,
but I'm certainly seeing a lot of organic events that
show that people under you know, forty or fifty are
really against you know, America being involved in foreign wars
(20:22):
and entanglements in a way that I think I have
never seen before. I'm wondering if you could talk about that.
Is it a resurgence to the time before World War Two?
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Is it?
Speaker 1 (20:33):
What do you think is creating that weird sauce?
Speaker 3 (20:36):
Three things.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Look.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
One, this is a generation which grew up and mine
is as well without a draft. I mean, the draft
goes away in seventy three. So military service is just
not something that lots of Americans have experienced. It's a
professional and so I think that changes how you think
of going overseas, serving overseas, and intervention. And then it's
(20:58):
a generation that has had now two really bad wars
take place. You know, Vietnam they didn't live through, but
they've heard about, and that set the template for how
we think of how foreign intervention can go wrong. And
then the war in Iraq, which is much closer to
the younger generation, which is equally a lesson for many
of them about how things go wrong. So there is
(21:19):
no World War Two in their memory. Bank does something
that is perceived as being fundamentally good and kind of
having the right outcome. They have Vietnam, in Iraq, they
don't have mass service, and obviously the end of the
Cold War kind of diminished one of the major unifying
threats that many Americans saw.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
We're watching the Ukrainian president commander of the army go
to Washington and beg them for money basically, So one
of these things where there's a partisan divide, but I
think in real life it's actually a generational divide.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
I think that's right, and not even kind of millennials
versus gen X. I think there's several generations where this
was always going to be hard to sustain. I mean,
this is what Putin understood that if he could wait
it out, support here would diminish. And this is not
seen by many people as a direct threat to the country.
So I think we're at a point now where certainly generationally,
(22:21):
a lot of younger Americans are going to want the
government to address issues here at home as opposed to
a broader, different sorts of issues instead of Ukraine. I'm
sure they'll be sentiment to deal with the climate. So
I think that funding for Ukraine it's not simply a
partisan issue, and I think Democrats are going to have
to struggle with that as well.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Yeah, I mean climate was never an issue historically. I
did see people to show that's seventy percent of all
Americans care about climate. I just wonder why we're not
seeing more of that sort of you know, you go
anywhere and there are climate protesters doing really a lot
of stuff, including in museums and Europe. I mean, there
(23:00):
really is a movement of young people who would like
to have the earth be inhabitable. Not a wildly unreasonable.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
Thing, too very reasonable. And it's not simply protesters. I
mean you can just see that. And even if it's shallow,
how Americans are changing their daily practices to basic things
like what you do with your garbage to what you eat.
I think it's syncing in by Look, the opposition within
the United States is fierce, and that includes much of
(23:29):
the business community, which sectors of business do not want this,
and so they have money, they have clout, and they
can fight it. And then the Republican Party, for whatever
reason has decided, which was not inevitable, to align against this.
And so in a two party system with the polarized politics,
if one party is going to stand against this, you're
just not going to make much legislative progress.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
It's so interesting to see when we talk about the sixties,
youth protest is such an important part here. When I
was growing up, we had these low turnout elections were
of enormous anxiety. Now all of a sudden, we have
these incredible, blockbuster elections. Can you talk to me about
that a little bit.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
I mean, look, we'll see how it goes. I think
we were in these several election cycles where younger people
were feeling a sense of urgency. Part of it was
a response against former President Trump, where like many Americans,
younger Americans felt the stakes were so high you couldn't
sit home. Part of it was the pandemic.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
I think.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
I think a lot of young people kind of saw
the bottom fall out of their whole world, and that
can energize you politically, and that merged with issues like
Black Lives Matter, and I think all of that combined
into high turnout elections. The question is, and I don't
want to talk about poles since they know you don't
like them. I really doubt our in the creations. Young
people are not quite as excited this time around, and
(24:52):
so it's going to take a lot of basic grassroots work,
I think to keep that momentum up. Young people are
clearly engaged with issue. I mean, you see it all
the time, but the question is does that then turn
into voting again, And I think it's uncertain. Historically, young
people just have not come out to vote in the
same numbers as older people.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
New York Times is obsessed with college campuses. You know,
a lot of controversy over these three college presidents who
were not clear about their moral clarity and their condemnation
of antisemitism. It feels like the mainstream media cannot quit
the Ivy League.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
That's true. Why some of it is a lot of
US reporters and members of the press went to some
of these schools, and so I think it's familiar. Part
of it is, I don't know, it's like when we
talk about Hollywood, we tend to talk about, you know,
ten stars as opposed to the whole range of acting.
So these become the high profile players. Part of it,
(25:50):
though it's not coming just from them. I think Look,
conservatives have been attacking universe for many years, and I
think Ivy leagues they fit the narrative. They seen by
the right as these elite, remote places that are disconnected
from the rest of the country, even though many of
the legislators doing this actually went to these schools. So
I think those are some of the reasons, and you're right,
(26:13):
we focus on a few universities and there's so many,
and we missed the diversity of the student experience. We
even do that with the IVY Leagues. I mean a
lot of this is taking one or two incidents and moments.
But look, the press should do better. If they want
to really write about what college university life is like,
they have to broaden their horizon.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
But I do think that that's a good point that
there is such a focus on the IVY League, and
you do have Republicans who you know, people like Ron
de Santis who went to two IVY League institutions, and
Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz, all of whom went to
IVY League institusions, all of whom are furious with IVY
(26:54):
League institutions. What I think so much about when it
comes is like, this is not really about anti Semitism.
I mean, at least Demonic does not give a fuck
about anti Semitism. I mean she doesn't. She's endorsed Trump
willingly multiple times, she endorsed Jim Jordan. I mean, these
are not people who care for the Jews. It's just
that this is like a moment for them. To go
(27:17):
after IVY League presidents in the hopes of fighting against
quote unquote wocism right totally.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
I mean, the hypocrisy has seen her kind of make
this an issue when right wing anti semitism has been
a real serious problem, not just rhetorically. We're talking about
state groups, organized groups, many of them came to January sixth,
we're a real threat, physical threat, violent threat. And so
for a party that has been comfortable with that had
(27:45):
a president from their party that you know, trafficked in
this kind of rhetoric all the time, to now make
this the issue, it's hard to take them at their
word that this is really what they care about, and
they remain silent about kind of very well documented right
wing anti semitism. I don't think that's what's driving or
I do think it's just part of what we've seen
(28:07):
again for over a decade where the university has just
become one of the central foils for the right. There
are other critics who I think have legitimate concerns about
some of the protests and some of the rhetoric, but
that's not what's driving the arrogator at that moment.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
Right, None of this is about really caring about the students.
But I want to sort of segue from that. I
was spending some time with someone who is an academic
expert in authoritarianism. We were talking about the authoritarian impulses
of Iron DeSantis de Santis. Sorry, she took over a university.
That is a real important sort of autocratic moment, and
(28:45):
I was hoping you could sort of contextualize that, like
we see that with Erdowan. This is something we've seen before.
Can you speak to sort of the historical significance of
going after university?
Speaker 3 (28:57):
Well, sure, I mean you have the Arrian history in general,
where strong arm leaders have often not wanted universities that
were free of thought. That's a danger. I mean, the
whole point of a strong arm leader is you make
free thought difficult because ultimately that can turn against you.
And then even within the United States, since the seventies,
(29:18):
not just authoritarianism, but conservatives have been going after universities,
which again back to Nixon. Since that time, they were
seen as these bastions of liberal ideas, and there's been
a concerted effort to really put political pressure to limit
some of the ideas that come out of our campuses
and so on. Both fronts. Universities are always a target,
(29:41):
and I think right now, you know, more conservatives are
feeling like they have a moment and it's broadening support
for what they have been doing, and they're kind of
almost capitalizing on the problems that have emerged for their
own political agenda. But it's important to see kind of
the risks here. We really need universities in an era
(30:01):
of disinformation and even polarized discussion. We need universities as
a place where ideas can still be worked through and
students can learn, and I think that is genuinely at risk.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Right Definitely, we're almost at a time. But I was
hoping you could talk about what's happening with Jimmy Carter,
and you know, the legacy of our kind of this
president who was slipping through our fingers.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
It's amazing he's become this symbol, I think for many
Americans of a kind of politician from another era who
is so genuine about public service and who did things
that weren't always politically in his interests. Then he's survived
after his wife's passing, but he is obviously not in
great health. But it's one of those people I think
(30:47):
in our contentious, divisive and often toxic age a president
who at the time was not seen as successful. People
are looking back and saying, well, here's someone who really,
in many ways might be a model for what leadership means.
And I'm sure we'll hear more of that in the
coming months.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Thank you, Julian, I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
Of course, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds
in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you
enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend
and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discuss the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds. We're on vacation, but that doesn't mean
we don't have an amazing show for you today. For instance,
historian and CNN political analyst Julian Zella's her stops by
to tell us about some recent history lessons for our
(00:24):
present day. But first we have the CEO of Test
Ventures and author of The Fixer My Adventures Saving Startups
from Death by Politics, Bradley Tusk. Bradley Tusk, Welcome to
Fast Politics you have.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
I'm Miley Tanks forrat Me.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
I am so excited to have you because we're friends,
and also because you're not like a public facing person.
I think of you as like a person who is
very involved in the wills of government in a really
interesting way, and that a lot of times some of
the stuff that you've cooked up our listeners like probably
(01:01):
have not heard about, but is really interesting and in
some cases it's super effective.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Yeah, thank you for me. Look, I just try to
get shit done, and sometimes that's public and people like it.
Sometimes it's public and people don't like it. Sometimes no
one notices, you know, whatever it is. You know, I've
learned that I feel better about myself when stuff's getting done,
so I just try to focus on that.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
So you learn a novel. Tell us a little bit
about the novel.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
It's about a campaign to legalize flying cars in New York,
LA and Austin. And on one side is the flying
car startup and they're vicious political consultants. And the other
side is Uber, the Autobot Society, the transi Unions, the Socialists,
and the Russian Bob. And it's satire. But I spent
(01:45):
the first fifteen years of my career working in government
and politics and then transition to tech by running all
the campaigns to legalize Uber and ride sharing around the US,
and then eventually using that to launch a venture capital fund.
And so I've kind of seen this from lots of
different anger at this point and thought it would be
a fun book to write to kind of give readers
a sense of here's why people in politics really make
(02:06):
the decisions they make, here's why people and tactic the
decisions they make, and venture capital in media and so on.
And by making about flying cars and making it slightly crazy,
it's hopefully a fun rate as well.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Some of these things, or some elements of it are
things you actually experienced when you were bringing Ubert to
New York, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
There are things I experienced are was bringing Obert to
New York or Denver, Miami or la or anywhere else.
But there are also things that I experienced just throughout
my career. Right. So, between being the deputy governor of
Illinois and working in New York City politics, I've testified
in five corruption trials or grand jury. So the part
in the book about the FBI and public corrupt investigations,
(02:48):
thank god, I've only ever been a witness, but I
do enough to be able to write about it. And so, yeah,
I've seen this from lots of different angles. And the
book is satire and it's fiction, but it's sort of
bare satire and barely fiction.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Yeah, isn't that That's the story of my life right there,
barely satire and barely fiction. So talk to me about
your work with free school lunches, because this is something
I feel really committed to. It's something it's an easy solve.
We are a very rich country. We do not need
children to go hunger.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
No, it's insane that we allow for this. So I'd
always been interested in hunger stuff and I've been volunteering
and weekly into kitchens since I was a freshman in
college and still do it every week now. But until
I got out of government of politics, I didn't have
any money, and so I finally first started my first
company and started making money. I started writing checks to
the New York Food Bank. And you know how it
is the bigger of a check you write, the more
(03:39):
they bring you in under the tent because they want
you to write even bigger texts. And that I know
this when that was happening, is these are lovely people
and they're terrible.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Politics because they're not killers.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
No, they're nice people. Yeah, they want to people. As
a result, I was like, they're just not good at
this stuff. And so my question was, well, what are
people who really understood politics ran bills that would mandate
universal school breakfast or lunch, or expand this snap for
seniors or whatever hunger program you want to talk about.
And what if you had the real the tools that
any good campaign hads lobbying, PR polling, ads, grassroots And
(04:14):
so I started doing it, created Solving a hunger out
of my foundation and we funded run campaigns in different
states to mandate different anti hunger programs. And basically we're
really just dealing the blocking and tackling of what you know,
McDonald's or Walmart or any company funding a legislative campaign
would do. We just do it instead on behalf of
(04:35):
kids who need food and got pretty well. So we've
passed twenty four bills in twenty states. About thirteen million
more people now have access to food on a regular
basis didn't have it before. About six million dollars of
my money has helped unlock about two billion in new
state funding for hunger programs around the country. And the
other thing that I think maybe we're doing that makes
(04:55):
me not so popular.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Yes, tell us, please tell us, sister, I love this
so much I die.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yeah. It is sort of the willingness not just to say, Okay,
you need political assistication to run these campaigns, you need
money to run these campaigns. Fine. The other thing is
you need to be willing to be negative. Right. The
reality is, politicians, in my view, do things in one
of two cases. Either they think that you can help
them win their next election, or they think that you
could cost them their next election. And if they don't
(05:24):
think that you can be relevant to either one, you
just don't matter. And then just the constant something is
a good cause, Like if that were enough, we wouldn't
have childhood humber, we wouldn't have school shootings, we wouldn't
have you know, an environment that's fallowing apart, right, you know,
the right thing is ever enough to acce again anything done.
And so last year in New York, which is one
of the states, we were working on the way the
(05:45):
New York budget works is the governor submits her budget,
the legislature submits their budget, and they kind of negotiate it.
But the legislature's budget because you know, they don't actually
run anything. It's like maximally act of balance because they
just say yes to everybody, right, all right, And so
we got our money in there for school meals, great,
but sutted everyone else for anything they wanted. And we
knew we weren't ultimately a priority once they had to
(06:06):
start making cuts. And the strategy from the New York
Hunger Coalition was, well, let's just keep our heads down
and hopefully no one will not this, right, as if
they're not going to notice two hundred and eighty million
dollars fitting in the budget. As I'm kind of doing
more and more diligence and talking and more people inside
the room, like this is not going to work, right,
And what he told is, you know what it will.
It will be too eighty, but it'll be thirty, it'll
(06:27):
be forty. We have thirty or forty million more than
you had before, so just be happy with it and
shut your mouth. And I decided, you know what, the
reason why we can't do better than that is because
we have no political swaye right. Kids who get school
meals don't vote, Their parents typically don't vote.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
There's no big oil lobbying firm doing kids lunches.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Right, you don't get anything for it politically. But maybe
we could create a stick. And so we hired these
mobile billboard trucks and poked them outside the capitol in
Albany for three weeks, say things like.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Ad I mean I love it so much?
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Gone, yeah, yeah, sorry, yeah, you know, speaker Hasty, why
are you letting children starve? Governor Oko? Why are you
letting children start and just beaten the living shit out
of them? And we just wouldn't move them, and the
hunger Coalition went crazy. They threw us out, they banned
us from using their hashtag You're going to lose all
the money. And then eventually the people were in the
room got tired of seeing these trucks and they called
(07:22):
someone of my staff and said, what's it going to take.
And my staff said to give him his money, and
we got one hundred and thirty four million dollars, and
starting back in September, two hundred and ninety thousand kids
every single day in the state of New York have
breakfast and lunch free you of charge, who didn't have
it last year, and so I'm probably never allowed back
at like the Christmas party. I didn't get a lot
of holiday cards from Hunger Coalition this year, but a
(07:43):
lot of kids got food. So look, that's how we
do it. Our twenty twenty four states which we already
launched our Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Arkansas. And
my hope is is that we can just keep taking
off states, you know, a couple every single year, and
then maybe at some point the federal government gets their
shit together and actually funds this thing. At fall that
is so great.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
I mean, I just I mean obviously don't quote me,
because I don't want anyone to be mad at me.
But you also did some really aggressive stuff in Connecticut.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Right, same thing, except to make maybe a little worse
because just physically, the way that the capital works in
Hartford didn't lend itself to the trucks like being seen
and effective. We picked the speaker or the center president
and the governor and sent those trucks all around their districts.
So Ned Lamont, who's the governor of Connecticut, lives in Greenwich.
So all through Greenwich for weeks, is this truck accusing him?
(08:37):
Let me get starve and guess what we got? Universals,
school breakfast. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
But that's how you do all right, how you do it?
Are there other things you can get that way?
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Yeah? I mean, I think fundamentally, if you accept the
fact that every policy output is the result of a
political import and if you accept the fact that every
politician makes every decision solely based on reelection and nothing else,
and you recognize that because of the jerrymannary system, we
have only primary turnout really ever matters. That's like ten
(09:07):
to fifteen percent, And so you know, ten to fifteen
percent on either side or beectillents. Like you said, Big
Oil have just disproportionate influence, which is why it's so
hard to get anything done. So the other thing that
I'm doing out of my foundation is trying to fix
the underlying problem itself by making mobile voting possible. So
you know, when we ran all the campaigns to legalizing
(09:28):
ber and I did this again with fan duel at
Ease and Bird and a bunch of other of our
portfolio companies. We mobilized millions of our customers through the
app to tell their politicians leave this thing alone. I
like fantasy sports, betting on demand. We delivery electric scooters, rideshit,
whatever it is, don't take it away from me. And
it worked right because we change underlying input. Also, the
(09:49):
politician was like, I don't need this headache, right, like
forget I just leave it alone. And so the question
I started asking is what if people could vote like this?
And then as blockchain and cloud technology both got better,
went from sort of a theoretical wouldn't it be cool too,
Let's try it out. So we paid for and by
the way, the reason that I have the money to
do all this stuff is that when I worked for
I took my fee in equity, and that a lot
(10:10):
of money, and so that's how I get to do
things like mobile voting and hunger. We paid for seven
states to conduct elections twenty one jurisdictions were either deployed
military or people with disabilities were able to vote in
real elections on their phones. They all came back clean,
they were audited, turned on average doubled. But I got
a ton of shit from the cybersecurity community and from
groups like Citizen Access and Verified Voting, who believe that
(10:32):
only paper ballots should be used, which to me is
insane because paper ballots is what got used George W.
Bush in the Iraq War, right, So I can't even
wrapped my head around that concept because it seems like
it's been pretty disproven. So I said, fuck it, I'm
going to build my own mobile voting tech. So three
years and ten million dollars later, we are going to
launch it in Q one and it will be free
and open source for anyone to download, work on, build
(10:55):
on use, and then the really hard work begins after that,
which is we've got to build a movement to force
politicians to allow mobile voting, because if you know how
to win elections in low turnout primaries. Whether you're a
Republican or Democrat, or a lobbyist or a union or
a chamber of commerce or whatever it is, you don't
want to risk the power that you have, so you're
likely to oppose this. And I'm going to need gen
(11:17):
Z and Jen Alpha. You know, all our kids, Your
kids and my kids are similar ages to just rise
up and say like bullshit, we know that it's safe,
and you only don't want us to do this because
you don't want us to have any power. So we'll
work with people like David Hogg from the Parkland Movement
and Aiden Colin Murphy who runs gen Z for Change
and other groups, so hopefully build a movement around this
and past legislation in every state that lets people vote
(11:38):
on their phones.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Yeah, that's really interesting. So you've been really involved in
city government. It is very annoying to me to live
in a blue city in a blue state and have
a governor and mayor who do not reflect my values,
and also a mayor who is going to be indicted.
I mean, right, what what's happening?
Speaker 2 (12:01):
So yeah, so just to give the listen some context,
I ran Mike Bloomberg's one of his mayoral campaigns. Worked
for him at Stick Hall and also worked for Edwin
Dallas City Hall in Philadelphia. I worked at the New
York City Parks Department, so I know city government reasonably well.
And the consulting firm that I own ran Andrew Yanks
campaign for mayor in twenty twenty one. He lost, obviously,
but I think I understand the dynamics reasonably well. Look,
(12:23):
we have a mayor and Eric Adams, where there's a
couple of different problems. The first problem is simply he
doesn't attract or recognize talent. You know, he has this
view that he needs to be loyal to the people
with him on day one when he was a borough
president or a state senator. And that's, I guess, admirable
in a very conceptual way, but not whether or not
the best people to run the parts department, the transportation department,
(12:44):
the building department, whatever it is. And so the thing
that made Mike, in my view, a very effective mayor
it isn't that he thought of any one particular idea
that he just said, look, I'm going to hire the
most talent to be buggy yet and I don't give
a shit about politics, and I don't care about patronage.
I'm going to make them hire the same way, and
then we're going to let them do their jobs completely
independent of politics. And so as a result, thousands of
(13:05):
people like you and me showed up either at city
all or at the agency's and got a lot of
stuff done right. And to me, that's the secret to
city government. And Eric Adams is the exact opposite, which
he has only hired cronies and donors and political hacks.
You know, former city council members run half the city agencies.
They have no idea how to run anything, and you
(13:26):
put that all together, it's one we have very ineffective government.
And I think to me the most obvious example is
State of New York has managed to issue twenty seven
licenses for legal week shops and there are as many
as five thousand illegal weed shops but proliferating throughout the
city and state, and there's zero ability to do anything
about It. Makes no sense to me if if Mike
we're still mayor, who would have padlocked every single one
(13:48):
of them and said, look, next time someone comes back
in one of these, you're going to writers and that
could be a customer and employee, whatever it is, and
that would have put a stop to it. And I
don't understand if it's corruption or confidence or what, but
they refuse to do it, anything about it. And so
you've got a mayor who, on one hand doesn't seem
to have the talent around him to execute a replement anything.
And then the other problem is corruption itself. His phones
(14:09):
have been seized by the FBI, his fundraisers home was
raided by the FBI. He has been telling the people
that he's going to be indicted soon. You and I,
because we're in around this world. I've been hearing the
rumor swirling for the last week or so that he's
about to get indicted. And so, but I think he's
going to follow the path of Donald Trump and Bob Mendez,
which is he's going to say, you know what, I'm
(14:29):
not resigning, I'm not going anywhere. And yes, Katy Oaklood
governor could remove him, but I doubt she'll do so
because she's not gonna water risk pishing off black voters.
And so as a result, we're going to have a
mayor under federal indictment and then on trial for federal
corruption while trying to run the city of New York
at the same time. And that's a disaster.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Yeah, yeah, that seems bad. I Mean what I'm surprised
by is just what a bad job he's done running
the city.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
I mean the legal weed.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Stores is a really good example, but other smaller things
that you know, like they're cutting library hours, right, I
mean that public libraries are not going to be open
on the weekends. I mean, there's no world in which
the amount of money to keep libraries open on the
weekends is not a rounding error in this city budget.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Sure, although I guess people can come to my bookstore
and read books and put the backup shelves if they
have to. That's correct. Maybe I'm the secret winner in
this thing. Yeah. And what the other thing is, Look,
the migrant crisis is not his fault, right, He certainly
doesn't control border policy and Texas, Sir Arizona or wherever.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
But the mismanagement of the funds that is housing the
migrants is his fault.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
It is. And the second thing would be he's already
accused Biden of targeting him, that all of these corruption
investigations are just a political ven Data by by once
you cross into that level of crazy, you might as
well then leverage what you have to try to get
more money out of them to deal with the migrant crisis. Right, So,
like I suggested to him, invite Joe Manchin to tour
the micro facilities in New York or have letch arfk Junior.
(16:03):
Not because you want to support any of these people,
but that will make the White House nervous enough. That's
somewhere in the couch cushions, they'll find that five billion
dollars that you need. And instead of us having to
cut police officers or teachers or firefighters or sanitation pickups,
so whatever it is, we can have the money that
we need. So like, he's kind of the worst of
all worlds, which is he's out there and crazy enough
(16:23):
to make these accusations, but then not really tough enough
to actually follow through on it, and so we lose
in every way.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Bradley Task, I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
I'd love to.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Julian Zelizer is a historian, a Princeton University and a
CNN political analyst. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Julian.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
Great to be back.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
I am so delighted to have you and for a
number of reasons. But you are an academic historian, but
you also right about what's going on now too. I
think that's fair. I'm curious what you think this moment
in history, What is it the closest to in modern history?
Speaker 3 (17:11):
You know, I can't give an exact comparison, but look,
for me, it always brings back the sixties, which is
what I study about. In the second half of the sixties,
where the divisions were pretty deep in this country, and
there were issues where we were fundamentally in disagreement, whether
it was Vietnam, whether it was civil rights, whether it
(17:32):
was race relations. And for me, we're at a moment
like that and where some of our basic institutions are
kind of being questioned and under attech.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Give me more on the end of the sixties, you know,
sort of what were the fundamental moments that you think
were sort of the turning point there?
Speaker 3 (17:51):
Well, certainly, look the nineteen sixty eight election where Lyndon
Johnson decides not to run, which I don't think is
going to happen today. Vice President Hubert Humphrey runs against
Richard Nixon. Richard Nixon was a Republican. He had been
Vice president he had been someone who crafted a whole
campaign railing against institutions, whether it was the media or
(18:12):
the academy, liberal institutions that he said didn't represent the
silent majority. He railed against social protests, which he said
didn't represent much of America. So that campaign, for me,
it is hard not to think of when I think
of how former President Trump is certainly going to position himself.
And Democrats in sixty eight were deeply divided. Vietnam cut
(18:35):
the party in the middle, and they had trouble really
kind of regrouping around that. There were just not on
the same page. And so that too right now, not
just with the Middle East, but many issues. I think
Democrats are struggling with some of that as well. So
that election, there's just a lot of interesting comparisons.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
You know, It's funny when you think about Nixon, because
if you close your eyes and you listen to some
of Nixon's speeches, they sound fair trumpy.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
They do, and I think it's not a total accident.
I mean, those are the years, the early late sixties,
early seventies where Donald Trump is coming of age and
starting to gain a sense of the world, and always
think that he's really kind of influenced by what Nixon
tried to do, by many of his appeals, and even
(19:21):
look when Nixon's going down as a result of Watergate
in nineteen seventy three and seventy four, he makes a
lot of the same kind of arguments you hear from
Trump about an establishment out to get him, about immedia
trying to subvert him. So I think Nixon really looms
large for Trump.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
I mean, I do think the split in the Democratic
Party is a little bit different than I mean Vietnam was.
You know, do you want to send your son off
to die? Which I think is different than where we
are right now, which is a kind of feeling that
people under fifty do not want for an intervention of
any kind, which I think is really interesting, and I'm
(19:58):
hoping you could talk about that because I see anecdotally
and I also see it in a lot of the Again,
I hate polls, so I don't want to say poles,
but I'm certainly seeing a lot of organic events that
show that people under you know, forty or fifty are
really against you know, America being involved in foreign wars
(20:22):
and entanglements in a way that I think I have
never seen before. I'm wondering if you could talk about that.
Is it a resurgence to the time before World War Two?
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Is it?
Speaker 1 (20:33):
What do you think is creating that weird sauce?
Speaker 3 (20:36):
Three things.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Look.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
One, this is a generation which grew up and mine
is as well without a draft. I mean, the draft
goes away in seventy three. So military service is just
not something that lots of Americans have experienced. It's a
professional and so I think that changes how you think
of going overseas, serving overseas, and intervention. And then it's
(20:58):
a generation that has had now two really bad wars
take place. You know, Vietnam they didn't live through, but
they've heard about, and that set the template for how
we think of how foreign intervention can go wrong. And
then the war in Iraq, which is much closer to
the younger generation, which is equally a lesson for many
of them about how things go wrong. So there is
(21:19):
no World War Two in their memory. Bank does something
that is perceived as being fundamentally good and kind of
having the right outcome. They have Vietnam, in Iraq, they
don't have mass service, and obviously the end of the
Cold War kind of diminished one of the major unifying
threats that many Americans saw.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
We're watching the Ukrainian president commander of the army go
to Washington and beg them for money basically, So one
of these things where there's a partisan divide, but I
think in real life it's actually a generational divide.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
I think that's right, and not even kind of millennials
versus gen X. I think there's several generations where this
was always going to be hard to sustain. I mean,
this is what Putin understood that if he could wait
it out, support here would diminish. And this is not
seen by many people as a direct threat to the country.
So I think we're at a point now where certainly generationally,
(22:21):
a lot of younger Americans are going to want the
government to address issues here at home as opposed to
a broader, different sorts of issues instead of Ukraine. I'm
sure they'll be sentiment to deal with the climate. So
I think that funding for Ukraine it's not simply a
partisan issue, and I think Democrats are going to have
to struggle with that as well.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Yeah, I mean climate was never an issue historically. I
did see people to show that's seventy percent of all
Americans care about climate. I just wonder why we're not
seeing more of that sort of you know, you go
anywhere and there are climate protesters doing really a lot
of stuff, including in museums and Europe. I mean, there
(23:00):
really is a movement of young people who would like
to have the earth be inhabitable. Not a wildly unreasonable.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
Thing, too very reasonable. And it's not simply protesters. I
mean you can just see that. And even if it's shallow,
how Americans are changing their daily practices to basic things
like what you do with your garbage to what you eat.
I think it's syncing in by Look, the opposition within
the United States is fierce, and that includes much of
(23:29):
the business community, which sectors of business do not want this,
and so they have money, they have clout, and they
can fight it. And then the Republican Party, for whatever
reason has decided, which was not inevitable, to align against this.
And so in a two party system with the polarized politics,
if one party is going to stand against this, you're
just not going to make much legislative progress.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
It's so interesting to see when we talk about the sixties,
youth protest is such an important part here. When I
was growing up, we had these low turnout elections were
of enormous anxiety. Now all of a sudden, we have
these incredible, blockbuster elections. Can you talk to me about
that a little bit.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
I mean, look, we'll see how it goes. I think
we were in these several election cycles where younger people
were feeling a sense of urgency. Part of it was
a response against former President Trump, where like many Americans,
younger Americans felt the stakes were so high you couldn't
sit home. Part of it was the pandemic.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
I think.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
I think a lot of young people kind of saw
the bottom fall out of their whole world, and that
can energize you politically, and that merged with issues like
Black Lives Matter, and I think all of that combined
into high turnout elections. The question is, and I don't
want to talk about poles since they know you don't
like them. I really doubt our in the creations. Young
people are not quite as excited this time around, and
(24:52):
so it's going to take a lot of basic grassroots work,
I think to keep that momentum up. Young people are
clearly engaged with issue. I mean, you see it all
the time, but the question is does that then turn
into voting again, And I think it's uncertain. Historically, young
people just have not come out to vote in the
same numbers as older people.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
New York Times is obsessed with college campuses. You know,
a lot of controversy over these three college presidents who
were not clear about their moral clarity and their condemnation
of antisemitism. It feels like the mainstream media cannot quit
the Ivy League.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
That's true. Why some of it is a lot of
US reporters and members of the press went to some
of these schools, and so I think it's familiar. Part
of it is, I don't know, it's like when we
talk about Hollywood, we tend to talk about, you know,
ten stars as opposed to the whole range of acting.
So these become the high profile players. Part of it,
(25:50):
though it's not coming just from them. I think Look,
conservatives have been attacking universe for many years, and I
think Ivy leagues they fit the narrative. They seen by
the right as these elite, remote places that are disconnected
from the rest of the country, even though many of
the legislators doing this actually went to these schools. So
I think those are some of the reasons, and you're right,
(26:13):
we focus on a few universities and there's so many,
and we missed the diversity of the student experience. We
even do that with the IVY Leagues. I mean a
lot of this is taking one or two incidents and moments.
But look, the press should do better. If they want
to really write about what college university life is like,
they have to broaden their horizon.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
But I do think that that's a good point that
there is such a focus on the IVY League, and
you do have Republicans who you know, people like Ron
de Santis who went to two IVY League institutions, and
Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz, all of whom went to
IVY League institusions, all of whom are furious with IVY
(26:54):
League institutions. What I think so much about when it
comes is like, this is not really about anti Semitism.
I mean, at least Demonic does not give a fuck
about anti Semitism. I mean she doesn't. She's endorsed Trump
willingly multiple times, she endorsed Jim Jordan. I mean, these
are not people who care for the Jews. It's just
that this is like a moment for them. To go
(27:17):
after IVY League presidents in the hopes of fighting against
quote unquote wocism right totally.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
I mean, the hypocrisy has seen her kind of make
this an issue when right wing anti semitism has been
a real serious problem, not just rhetorically. We're talking about
state groups, organized groups, many of them came to January sixth,
we're a real threat, physical threat, violent threat. And so
for a party that has been comfortable with that had
(27:45):
a president from their party that you know, trafficked in
this kind of rhetoric all the time, to now make
this the issue, it's hard to take them at their
word that this is really what they care about, and
they remain silent about kind of very well documented right
wing anti semitism. I don't think that's what's driving or
I do think it's just part of what we've seen
(28:07):
again for over a decade where the university has just
become one of the central foils for the right. There
are other critics who I think have legitimate concerns about
some of the protests and some of the rhetoric, but
that's not what's driving the arrogator at that moment.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
Right, None of this is about really caring about the students.
But I want to sort of segue from that. I
was spending some time with someone who is an academic
expert in authoritarianism. We were talking about the authoritarian impulses
of Iron DeSantis de Santis. Sorry, she took over a university.
That is a real important sort of autocratic moment, and
(28:45):
I was hoping you could sort of contextualize that, like
we see that with Erdowan. This is something we've seen before.
Can you speak to sort of the historical significance of
going after university?
Speaker 3 (28:57):
Well, sure, I mean you have the Arrian history in general,
where strong arm leaders have often not wanted universities that
were free of thought. That's a danger. I mean, the
whole point of a strong arm leader is you make
free thought difficult because ultimately that can turn against you.
And then even within the United States, since the seventies,
(29:18):
not just authoritarianism, but conservatives have been going after universities,
which again back to Nixon. Since that time, they were
seen as these bastions of liberal ideas, and there's been
a concerted effort to really put political pressure to limit
some of the ideas that come out of our campuses
and so on. Both fronts. Universities are always a target,
(29:41):
and I think right now, you know, more conservatives are
feeling like they have a moment and it's broadening support
for what they have been doing, and they're kind of
almost capitalizing on the problems that have emerged for their
own political agenda. But it's important to see kind of
the risks here. We really need universities in an era
(30:01):
of disinformation and even polarized discussion. We need universities as
a place where ideas can still be worked through and
students can learn, and I think that is genuinely at risk.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Right Definitely, we're almost at a time. But I was
hoping you could talk about what's happening with Jimmy Carter,
and you know, the legacy of our kind of this
president who was slipping through our fingers.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
It's amazing he's become this symbol, I think for many
Americans of a kind of politician from another era who
is so genuine about public service and who did things
that weren't always politically in his interests. Then he's survived
after his wife's passing, but he is obviously not in
great health. But it's one of those people I think
(30:47):
in our contentious, divisive and often toxic age a president
who at the time was not seen as successful. People
are looking back and saying, well, here's someone who really,
in many ways might be a model for what leadership means.
And I'm sure we'll hear more of that in the
coming months.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Thank you, Julian, I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
Of course, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds
in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you
enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend
and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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