Chuck’s Commentary - What If 9/11 Never Happened? + College Football Playoff Reaction - The Chuck ToddCast

Episode Transcript
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day returns quints dot com slash chuck. Hello there, Welcome
to my I guess you could call it the third

(01:50):
what If episode, although it was I gave you a
two parter in the first what if of this holiday season,
which was the twenty twenty what ifs. I knew, we
knew there'd be a lot of them. Everybody wanted to
go through them, and it was necessary, but it was
a really healthy exercise. I hope you got I got
a lot out of it, and you know, the big conclusion,

(02:11):
as I said, before for me and I still am
carrying this is just how much Biden's presidency essentially got
completely changed in the post election environment, right and more so,
you know, I think the initial motivation for doing the
what if on twenty twenty was, you know, how different
was would Trump two point zero b as a continuation

(02:34):
of his first term versus with the And there's no
doubt it is. There are a lot of large differences,
and there certainly I think would be there would be
less upheaval. I think that was the But I really think,
I really think what turned out to be an underrated
part of the what if it was doing the other
what if, which is what if Trump had conceded gracefully?

(02:58):
How much that would have ended the era of Trump
right then? Because we know how those worlds plays in
some ways. Trump's own personal instinct of his fear of
being sort of eradicated from history or filed into the
dustbin of history, you know, his need to not be
erased is so great that he sort of almost singularly

(03:22):
created a new timeline for himself. And it was very
impactful both on the Biden presidency itself and of course
Trump two point zero. So there's no doubt, you know,
when you it's an interesting I think you look. There's
no overrating Trump's initial victory in twenty sixteen. But in

(03:43):
some ways the changes Trump is making to the presidency
to our politics are more impactful, not because of his
twenty sixteen election but because of his twenty twenty loss
and his behavior around it. Anyway, it is apascitating. So
in that spirit, the other big what if that got

(04:03):
a ton of requests sort of like even you know
people would submit it, which was a what if nine
to eleven hadn't happened? Meaning and really the more realistic
version of this is what if we had stopped it?
Which we were very close, right, we could have easily seen.
You know, we learned a lot lesson about stove piping
of intelligence, but you know, the bread crumbs were there

(04:24):
if we were looking, if we knew to look for
those bread crumbs, about the Saudi citizens going to fight
schools and all of that. So and sure it looks
easy to see. Oh that needle in that haystack was
so easy to see. How did they miss it? Or
it's possible maybe Bill Clinton gets bin laden when he

(04:45):
takes the shot at him back in ninety eight during
the middle of the Lewinski thing. So we're going to
dive into that, because I do think what's interesting about
nine to eleven was it's is that it you know,
there was a phrase that got said all the time.
Nine to eleven changed everything, and it did change a

(05:06):
lot of things, And so I think it is hard
to try to figure out the counterfactual of what would
have happened without nine to eleven. What does Bush presidency
look like with No. Nine to eleven? What does the
Democratic Party look like with No. Nine to eleven? You know,
and what does the media world look like with No.
Nine to eleven? And I'm going to get to that

(05:29):
in a few minutes. So look, to start out, I
think it's a way to say this, nine to eleven
didn't just change what we covered. It also changed how
we consumed information, and in some ways, I think we're

(05:49):
going to discover it accelerated sort of the attention, the
the the importance of the intention economy, because you know
what nine to eleven did to our psyche as a country, right,
we always felt, you know, look, the only time we

(06:09):
were attacked before then really was Pearl Harbor Hawhy wouldn't
even a state when that happened. We've never been truly
hit on the homeland, right on the continental United States. Yes,
there had been a bomb, a bombing of the World
Trade Center in eighteen ninety three, and we've certainly had
our sheriff terrorist attacks and hijackings. We had the Oklahoma

(06:31):
City bombing, which was domestic terrorism. So it's not as
if we didn't have these things. But this was a
what a form sort of a non state foreign power
right in Al Qaeda, and it really rattled our psyche
because it we were suddenly our vulnerabilities just showed up everywhere,

(06:54):
and we realized how vulnerable we were to essentially asymmetric warfare,
how vulnerable we could be to terrorism. I mean, I
know my feeling on October one, two thousand and one,
was that Washington, DC was going to feel like Tel
Aviv in the eighties and nineties, where you just or
even Berlin back then, you just sort of had to
accept the premise that there were going to be more attacks.

(07:17):
The most remarkable thing that happened post nine to eleven
is what didn't happen post nine eleven, right, And the
point was is that I think it was our own
Why did we feel why did I feel that way?
Why did we all feel like we were so vulnerable?
Because that initial sense of oh my god, they turned
our own systems against us, right the airline are you know,

(07:39):
domestic airplanes something any of us could have been on.
And so it really had a psychological impact on us
as a society. So what happened we sort of we
sort of clung to information. Right, It's what really turned
the three news channels into twenty four hour Like, if
I'm not mistaken, not all the channels programmed twenty four

(08:01):
hours a day. After nine to eleven, there was an
intensity to program twenty four hours a day. I was
at the hotline at the time. We added publications. We
called something we added something called Hotline World Extra because
we were just all so consumed with this network of
terrorists that we're just going to hobble societies all over

(08:22):
the world. And we certainly, you know, all of us
got a lesson in in extremism, in general religious extremism.
So it was the point being is that we we
really it changed, it changed our own psyche and I
and that's so in doing this, what I've exercised, I'm

(08:43):
going to do my best here. It is really hard.
This turned out to be a much harder attempt at
what I'm going to What I was trying to do
is is it's my way of saying, like I said before,
I'm there's gonna be a lot more questions asked than
definitive takes. I'm gonna have some theories of directionally where
we could have come. But I want that initial underscoring

(09:08):
of just the real impact of nine to eleven was
psychological on us, and in some ways a question that
I want that I'm pursued throughout this what if exercise
that I put together was how much of our information
ecosystem problems of today began with both our desire for

(09:35):
more information constantly frankly to make us feel better because
we felt so unsafe and insecure. And when you do,
you're just constantly seeking more information. Right if you've ever
been prepared for a snowstorm or a hurricane, and you
know a big storm is coming but you hadn't hit yet,
and you're waiting, what do you do? You keep looking
for more information. You want a more detailed forecast, more

(09:56):
detailed what if scenario is basically because it's really your
own survival instinct. It's human nature where the more information
we have, the more we think in our own heads,
we can plan for our survival in these things. So
I cannot underscore how that is the through line for
me that I think that this is, this is what

(10:18):
what sort of really changes changes things because and there
are some things that I don't think change at all,
the dot com bubble, things like that. So let's start
with the America of two thousand. That keeps breathing is
probably the best way to put it. We're still so
we're living in this post Cold War home. There is

(10:40):
concern at this point it's early odts. There is there's
been a transition in Russian leadership. Is this guy Putin
going to be you know, a small D democrat or not?
And the keeping Russia in the West was a priority

(11:02):
before nine to eleven I think would have stayed a
priority with Bush two under that scenario, I don't know
whether it succeeds or not. Right, if Putin is who
he is, which we now, if you know, you know,
I don't know if anything in the relationship changes Putin. Right.
The question I have is when does you know, by

(11:26):
two thousand and eight Putin's invading Georgia, which in some
ways was the precursor to Ukraine First Crime in twenty fourteen.
In that, does that accelerate, does that get delayed? Does
the you know, our focus on all things nine to
eleven and Islamic terrorism and domestic security, which then took

(11:49):
our eye off the ball a little bit of European security,
of keeping Russia in the west, of sort of these
fledgling Eastern European democracies. I think it's fair to say
that that probably is the biggest you know that and
bringing China along, right, because at this point everybody's very

(12:11):
bullish on China. In early two thousand, late nineties, there
wasn't a huge difference between Gore and Bush and that
two thousand campaign on China. It was a little bit
of rhetoric, but not too much. Essentially, both were were institutionalists.
Both were believers that, hey, bringing economic opening, the opening

(12:33):
the China economy will ultimately be good for democracy, good
for freedom, et cetera. So there was a bipartisan consensus
in China, which we now know we all got wrong. Right,
There was this bipartisan consensus that China, that essentially we
were going to be able to bring China along and
eventually the communism Communist Party would break there because of

(13:00):
middle class demands for the state, et cetera, et cetera.
None of that has turned out to be true. China
was able to somehow bring the country into a controlled
market economy. It's not a free market, but it's a
it is sort of they got into it right, and
we let them in because of the desire to get

(13:24):
American businesses into China. So I do think that we're
sort of pursuing and it's much more front and center
this bringing China along, you know, and maybe there's maybe
there's more of that. I do think, by the way,
George W. Bush's presidency was going to be much more
focused on the Western hemisphere pre nine to eleven. Here

(13:46):
was a guy, and we probably try to attempt some
massive immigration reform sooner in the Bush presidency, easily that happens,
I think in Bush one. In the first term. I
don't know if there's a second, right, we don't know
what the second term is over. It's probably over the
economy in some form or another, because most elections are

(14:10):
unless there is something essentially overwhelming the economic issue in America,
which sometimes it's war in the war in Iraq nine eleven.
Those are types of stories that do that. But I
do think I go back to the information ecosystem. You know,

(14:30):
nine to eleven happened nine months after the delayed two
thousand election, and I do think that without nine to eleven,
we're probably in a much more polarized political environment in Washington.
We cannot forget that there's still a lot of Democrats
who don't accept that Bush one Farnce Square. After nine

(14:54):
to eleven, those you know that none of that became mainstream, right.
Al Gore is a bigger figure inside the Democratic Party
pre nine eleven than he is post nine to eleven.
Probably means al Gore is more likely to be the nominee,
you know, four, it's more likely without a nine to

(15:15):
eleven he is a bit more front and center Democrats
are a bit more, a bit less willing to work
with Bush. There is and Bush has to make more
effort to sort of get legitimacy. You know that that
was you know his you know after look we we

(15:35):
you know. The Bush presidency basically began on September eleventh,
as far as history is concerned, but we forget this
was this was a this was a presidency that was
having to immediately make the case that it was legitimate.
It was the first presidency we'd had in the modern
era that won via the electoral college, not the popular vote.

(15:58):
The recounts of Florida that the media was doing would
have been extraordinarily more covered and consequential without nine to eleven.
It took all about anywhere from nine to months to
twelve months. Those things still happened, but there was almost
like they looked more like political science experiments than they
did mainstream news stories. Because I think again, so much,

(16:19):
so much of the resources of the national news media
was devoted more to covering nine to eleven. And then
of course with the two wars with Iraq and Afghanistan
and the focus on all that, So I think you
have to you know, when you think about the political environment,
we shouldn't lose side of that. But I keep coming
back to the acceleration of the information ecosystem almost becoming

(16:43):
wired into our brains. Right, we'd never had anything like
the two thousand election, And you know, my old friend
Lester Holt became sort of he got a nickname Old
iron Pants, right because he was constantly able to go
hours and hours without leaving the leaving the anchor table,

(17:05):
no matter whatever. Nature was calling for him, and it was,
you know, I believe we started the ticker, and then
the tickers on cable news weren't ubiquitous. Then nine to
eleven happens and they become ubiquitous, and it really, I
think also accelerated. Not everybody had moved fully to the

(17:26):
Internet to get their information and get news and information.
Nine to eleven was a bit more of a trigger
because you suddenly needed real time information. You didn't want
to wait for the newspaper, you didn't want to wait
for the evening news, so you did anything that was
in the immediate. Cable news was immediate, and the Internet
was immediate. So it I do think that one of

(17:46):
the cultural impacts in nine to eleven that probably is
delayed without nine to eleven happening is sort of is
our full embrace the digitized information ecosystem. Was this eventually
going to happen? Of course it was, but all of
this suddenly there was more demand for immediate information. So

(18:10):
what happened? Companies responded by creating more products to feed
this demand for more information, and so we end up,
you know, with social media beginning in twenty oh seven,
in twenty oh eight, Does all that happen on the
same timeline? Is it adopted as mainstream on the same timeline?

(18:32):
My theory is that it is not. And I think
this is one of the underrated parts of the impact
of nine to eleven on us is that. So I
think when you throw that in there, I think that's
a pretty important differentiator and how our timeline changes. So

(18:56):
then there are the things that you know, sort of
we've all lived with, still live with, that wouldn't have happened, right,
the emergency that never ends. So there's no Patriot Act,
there's no Iraq war, there's no permanent sort of non state, right,
we don't have this sort of congressionally authorized war against

(19:21):
terrorists that are still being the sort of ambibiguously worded
pieces of legislation are being used now to justify attacks
in Iran, attacks in Venezuela. And so we don't have anything.
We don't have the USA Patriot Act, we don't have

(19:45):
the Department of Homeland Security. So let's immediately realize this, right,
Homeland Security. The idea of the Homeland Security Department had
been partolating for a while among the sort of the
there's a group of sort of good government infrastructure folks.
And because you know, this was sort of a plan

(20:05):
that had been sitting on the shelf, right, there was
always some question why are there? You know, why is
the Secret Service with Treasury? You know, yes, it started
as sort of looking at counterfeit money, but it's bigger
than that. Now, where's the Coast Guard? Should that be
with the Pentagon? Should that be here? And so there
was this idea of like, okay, should there be a

(20:25):
some domestic security agencies, arguably including the FBI. But for
whatever reason, we didn't put the FBI in here that
you know, should be in this cabinet department. I will
at some point do a time machine about you know,
I I the entire creation of the Homeland Security Department

(20:47):
was just a reminder of why, as much as I
would love to see more government efficiency, it is sometimes
impossible to make happen because of members of Congress refusing
to give up a subcommittee a subcommittee influence on some
dying agency that should go away, But because this person

(21:10):
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(23:01):
I absolutely embrace, so use that code. You know, the
whole point of Homeland the Department of Homeland Security was
sold as a way, Hey, we're going to create more efficiencies.
This is going to put agencies, you know, border security
should be in there, so igrant Now. I tell you
what people didn't realize at the time is that that

(23:22):
somehow that Homeland Security would simply become an immigration agency
over time. But that is what it's been turned into. Essentially,
it feels like that that is, and it could if
you listened to my conversation with Jonathan Martin. In some
ways the obsession of turning the Department Homeland Security almost

(23:43):
into singularly a border enforcement department. When it drops the
ball on a natural disaster with FEMA or drops the
ball on some other issues with the Coastguard, is that
going to cause? Is that going to cause Christy Nomes
some problems perception problems if something bad happens on her watch,

(24:04):
regardless of whether she was following orders or not. So
I do think that was, you know, one of the
and this and this is another sort of what if
scenario here did Trump Trump's did Bush's endorsement? And the
Republican member who was in charge of the House and

(24:25):
the Senate. The Senate was divided. Democrats had a narrow
majority thanks to a party switch for about until the
twenty oh two mid terms, but Republicans had controlled the House,
and obviously the White House is there. They became George W.

(24:51):
Bush became synonymous with expanding government right. So it really
was this beginning of redefining what is conservatives. And one
could argue that the splintering of the Republican Party into
this magafaction versus this business wing right. George W. Bush
was very much right the avatar of the business wing

(25:12):
of the Republican Party, and so the embrace of China,
the embrace of expansion of government power, I do think
planted the seeds for what is now known as the
Maga wing of the party. Right, these are the true
you know. I think Marjorie Taylor Green really in some

(25:33):
ways articulates this version of conservative better than anybody out there.
She talks about being America first. Hey, no get out
of other people's foreign wars, no foreign excursions. Right, that
mindset the real sort of more Pat Buchanan isolationists view
and sertain where Trump's instincts go. Right, I say, is

(25:56):
instincts right. He's instinctively an isolationist but can't help himself
and always wants to be in the middle of a
deal here, a middle of a deal there. But we
shouldn't underestimate that the birth of the Trump wing of
the Republican Party, or the rebirth of it, right, it
was a sort of a dormant wing of the party

(26:17):
that the Republican support for these expansive government powers that
came in in two thousand and two, two thousand and three,
two thousand and four, the expansion of Department Onland Security TSA.
I thought, imagine a Democrat advocating all of this, right,
there'd be these protests allah from the right that we're
seeing already with Zoon Mormondani. Right. And it was a

(26:40):
Republican presidency that increased the surveillance state, a republican presidency
that sort of concentrated more power in the executive branch. Right,
So it is. I do think some of the seeds
of the rise of MAGA are due to some of

(27:00):
the responses to nine to eleven. And then of course
there's the Iraq War itself, you know, and you know,
this is not my first sort of version of doing
various what ifs on that are nine to eleven related.
I did a what if on if Gored become president
in two thousand, how how do we politically respond to

(27:23):
nine to eleven if if it were the ninth year
of a democratic presidency when nine to eleven happens, rather
than the first year of a republican presidency after eight
years of a democratic presidency. I do think things would
have been a bit more polarized and the response to
nine to eleven had goreb been president than with Bush's president.

(27:43):
But you know, all of it sort of we became.
You know, when you think about the impact of nine
to eleven on on our politics, I do think, like
I said, Bush's support of a stronger, more robust, larger government,
I do think inadvertently planted the seeds for the rise
of Trump a little bit. And then I think when

(28:06):
it comes to our obsession and consuming of news, it
then inevitably led the cable news channels to one to
have to Instead of being informational, they suddenly became affirmational, right,
And that was the beginning of the flag pin fights
who was the most patriotic news channel and that was
being used as a wedge right folks at Fox in particular,

(28:29):
we're trying to use patriotism as a way to disqualify journalism.
And it was the beginning of this sort of part
one of what became a very polarized news information consumption market.
But in some ways, because we were constantly clinging to
these cable news channels for information, then it quickly morphed

(28:51):
us into and morphed the cable news channels into being
captured by their audience, so to you know, think of
it this way. Right before nine to eleven, we thought
of the news as sort of more informational things we
needed to know, but it wasn't a priority. After nine
to eleven, news became something you had to follow for

(29:14):
your own survival, for vigilance, and in many ways, nine
to eleven created an entire generation of news junkies, reinforced
news junkiedom and where you constantly felt like you needed
to have more and more information, so right, the breaking

(29:35):
news alerts, the constant notifications on our phones, the tickers,
and in some ways it also created impatience, right since
information we were expecting information on our fingertips all the time,
it sort of accelerated that aspect. Now, I again, I
think all of these technologies don't It's not like the

(29:58):
technologies don't happen. Our adoption of these new technologies or
is what accelerates. And I think that that's where I
would go, right, And now, you know, I think the
question is where we always was this an inevitable result
of once we sort of put all we put algorithms

(30:22):
in deciding what news we saw on all this stuff
that once these filters and this was going to happen anyway,
or would gatekeeping still be strong, would be at least
stronger today than it is. If we never have this
desire or concern or need to constantly feel as informed

(30:44):
as we absolutely felt like we had to have in
post nine to eleven. Without nine to eleven, would there
been a Would constant breaking news alerts have turned us off? Right?
Would unverified speculation have sort of been like, oh, that
belongs in the high end of AM radio? Would we

(31:06):
be less tolerant of emotional framing of news? Right? Maybe?
But I think there's a strong case to be made
that while we, I think now look at social media
as a result of smartphones, did nine to eleven actually

(31:27):
train us to never look away and therefore accelerate the
the creation of these social media platforms because we knew
there was a demand. Right? In many ways, you don't
create something unless you think there's a demand for it. So,

(31:47):
if this means we don't have politics without a hyperintendent
attentive culture, what does that look like? Right? Does this
mean we'd never have a Donald Trump or a Barack Obama?
That we saw to stick to the very I don't
want to say convent. Yeah, I guess it's conventional. You

(32:09):
know at the time, right, is a Barack Obama sort
of convinced that he should be running for governor before
he runs for president type of thing. Don't forget what
powered Obama to the White House arguably was the fact
that he came out early against the Iraq War before
other mainstream Democrats did it, and there was a recording

(32:31):
to prove it. Right, without it, does he ever win
that nomination against Hillary Clinton? Anyway? And think about how
much that how much that issue absolutely divided the Democratic
Party and what happens without it. By the way, I
don't think John Kerry's the nominee in two thousand and
four without nine to eleven. Right, Democrats needed to have

(32:54):
thought they needed to have a military veteran after what
happened in O two. There was this whole after the
who Max Cleland thing in two thousand and two, with
the weaponization of the Department of Homeland Security as a
wedge issue in those two thousand and two midterms, right,
it really sort of made the idea of what Democrats
need to find somebody with military service. That's what got Carrie,

(33:15):
you know, sort of jump started his candidacy. You know,
I think it's more likely we have Al Gore as
nominee in two thousand and four because you're more likely
to run again. Perhaps, you know, perhaps Hillary Clinton is
not seen as this hawkish because there's nothing to be
hawkish about, and then she's a more conventional potential candidate

(33:38):
in twenty oh eight. Now do I think eventually in
the same mindset, we the public would have been like,
wait a minute, what's with the dynasties? We're not just
trading Clinton for Bush for Clinton. You know, I still
think that demand would have been there, but maybe it's
not as powerful yet. Maybe it takes a one more
term of Hillary of Clinton actually serving as president before

(34:01):
it becomes a powerful political force on that front. So
what things still happened that probably impact our politics back then?
So essentially what replaces nine and eleven if it never happens,
I think we still have a financial crisis because that
was you know, the seeds of those were planted in

(34:22):
the nineties, and you know, maybe it accelerates nine to
eleven with all the extra spending that came may have
propped up the economy for an extra couple of years.
And therefore, remember there was sort of it was your
patriotic duty to go shop it do you does that?
Does all of this accelerate and maybe the financial collapse

(34:44):
happens in four oh five rather than oh, seven oh eight, Right,
that's possible. We still have tech discoveries, tech disruptions. The
question is is the if there's not demand for information
every second of the day, do some of these social
media platforms take off as fast as they did and
we're still going to have inequality? We were still going

(35:06):
to have this. And I think the question is whether
is just when it happens on how intense I look
at nine to eleven, and I assume it delayed our
inevitable sort of reckoning that was about. That was taking
the unit party reckoning right, the whether it's the center

(35:29):
left of the Democratic Party center right. But if you
think about it, Bush, Clinton, the Bushes and the Clintons
were really seen as between the forty yard line presidents.
And they were also on foreign policy very much in
uniparty and that and and in trade it was uniparty.

(35:49):
You know, both Bush and Clinton were pro NAFTA Both
Bush and Gore were pro NAFTA both, you know, so
they were both bullish on China in some ways, both
bullish un keep trying to bring Russia into the West.
So the point is is that I do think that
reckoning still takes place inside both parties. You still have
a there's still likely I have to be a financial

(36:13):
crisis that ends, that has a bailout. It all just depends.
I've always and I've done this. What if, right, what
if McCain had won the two thousand and eight presidency
instead of Obama. Well, instead of the Tea Party being
the driving force of the twenty ten midterms, I think
it's Occupy Wall Street that's the driving force of the
twenty ten midterms. Sort of that there's still that it's
more of a because it would have been all Republicans

(36:35):
making the decision. It would have been a Republican president
spending tax dollars to bail out banks and all that.
So it would have I think, just galvanized that. And
you may have had Bernie's dream of his sort of
urban rural coalition coming coming together much quicker and much
faster than even now when we haven't seen it. So

(36:59):
it's not as if any of these things don't happen.
If the question is on what timeline, and the more
I've gone through the what ifs on the things that
happen that we're nine to eleven derivatives, and then the
things that probably happen regardless of whether nine to eleven happens,
like the financial crisis and the continuation of tech disruptions,

(37:22):
I think it really is just about timing. And I
think the biggest conclusion I come to is that our
brief unity post nine to eleven essentially delayed everything that
we've been dealing with now, So probably bring everything four
years earlier. Right, But there's some open questions, right, is

(37:44):
there ever? You know, does a Barack Obama still rise up? Is?
You know? But if you don't have an Iraq war
as a defining distinction between sort of the Obama wing
and the Clinton wing, which in some ways now is
kind of the Clinton wing and the Sanders wing, with
Obama folks two thirds on the Clinton side of that argument,

(38:07):
one third on the Sander side of that argument. You know,
where where is that in its sort of formation? And
all of that. I think those are small details, but
the larger trend lines I'm assuming do continue. They just
go in different Look, that doesn't mean that Saddam Mussein

(38:28):
wasn't going to fall, and I think you still would
have had his fall. There's probably still you know, my
guess is Cheney's still kind of interested in finishing the
job with with a rock, so that there we deal
with the rock sort of the way we've been dealing
with Iran. So you know, it's not as if there
aren't the potential for some for some foreign policy uh

(38:51):
involvement and maybe even involvement that becomes politically less popular
in the Middle East. But it's it all obviously looks
different and it's all consumed different. So ultimately the conclusion
I've come to is at nine to eleven in some
ways intensified and accelerated our information consuming culture, and at

(39:18):
the same time it delayed are political reckonings that we're
going to I think now it's there is that they
were going to come do, and in some ways nine
to eleven may have delayed them. All about a cycle, right,
due to either you know, trying to pump money into

(39:38):
the economy or into building up our defenses, which sort
of artificially sort of you know, expanded when you're when
you're expanding government as fast as they were, you're creating
more jobs, you're throwing money into the system. It is
sort of it is sort of propping up the you know,
having some impact on the economy, so likely delayed the

(39:58):
financial crisis a bit, so, you know, sort of it's
sort of two things can be true at the same time.
Right nine to eleven sort of conditioned us to become
these information junkies that now in some ways we've allowed
it to both consume us and destroy our information ecosystem.
But at the same time it delayed the political reckonings
that we're still in the middle of now, this political realignment,

(40:22):
which arguably, you know, as I said, you can actually
see the very first beginnings of this realignment with the
Pap Buchanan challenge of George H. W. Bush in ninety two.
It is it's still I still think you see what
we're dealing with now, all of it. We may be

(40:42):
on the other we have made me have already on
the other side of it by then, and who knows,
we may not have been as interested in celebrity candidates either,
which sort of we came so ultimately without nine to eleven,
you know, we'd still be the imperfect country that is America,
but we might be a bit less frantic, right we

(41:04):
might trust our institutions slightly more, or or we may
feel the same way, you know, or we may just
you know, we may have gotten through this era quicker,
and right now we're still not done. I think we're

(41:24):
still not through this current realignment that it's clear we're
going through. That to me is as much a transition,
because we're transitioning from an industrial based economy to a
service globally a global service economy and its globalization, which
was an inevitable force that began in the nineties and
wasn't going to go away. And in some ways nine

(41:47):
to eleven I think just had a huge impact on
our psyche, had a huge impact on sort of the
perception and role of government and the size of government.
But some of these longer trends, it disrupted them for
a few years, but it didn't erase them, and it

(42:07):
didn't make them go away. So would love your reaction
to this one, Like I said, just like I did
promise with the other what if I would like to
I'm happy to discuss other scenarios that are missing here
that I didn't fully get through. I could have gone

(42:28):
down a Donald RUMs rabbit rumsfeld rabbit hole. Rumsfeld was
going to do some massive Pentagon restructuring before nine to eleven.
I think we were going to shrink forces. I think
the modernization to become a more nimble military was actually
going to take place under a Rumsfeld. I remember a
lot of legacy military folks didn't like what Rumsfeld was planning.

(42:51):
But there were a lot of reformers, including people like
Bill Clinton, who were very got in the hole about
Rumsfeld wanted to do at the Pentagon before nine to eleven.
But then nine to eleven happens and all of those
plans go away. So there's there's there. That's just one
extra thing that that but between, you know, immigration, My
guess is Bush in his first term tries to do immigration.

(43:15):
Uh you know, that's the big lift he attempts without
a nine to eleven that both his tax cut and
his immigration reform. I don't know if he's any more successful,
by the way, I don't though without the specter of
nine to eleven, maybe there's a little less anger on

(43:35):
the right that allows it to pass but I don't.
But it probably does nothing to stop the current sort
of current structure of where we are in the two
parties when it comes to immigration right now in current skepticism.
It just means we might have had at least a

(43:56):
better set of asylum laws than we do at the moment.
All right, look, this is the last What if I'm
going to read you a few that I didn't do,
and if you've got stronger feelings about them, make the
case of why you think I should spend thirty to
forty five minutes. Maybe I can turn a couple of
them into podcast time machines. My favorite one, But I

(44:19):
was so I didn't have enough. I wasn't as well
educated about the issue that I. It was going to
be a heavier lift for me. But this one was
what if the Greco Turkish War had ended favorably for
the Greeks, assuming it's survive World War two? What would
the long term ramifications of a modern Greek state spanning

(44:39):
southeastern Europe and much of western Anatolia be for regional
and world affairs? Would religious tensions be better or worse
than they are today? You know, this gets at to
you know, what if we had You know, what if
they're essentially the French and the Brits hadn't tried to
create countries out of thin air after the fall of
the Ottoman Empire. So I think it's an interesting one.

(45:01):
But like I said, I felt like I wasn't ready
for this another idea that we looked at, but I couldn't.
I didn't. I didn't really have forty five minutes. What
happened to pro boxing? As a kid? I remember watching
boxing on Sundays with Dad. That tradition has gone. I
feel the same as slowly happening in the NFL, and
don't know what what if? To shape around that? Right?

(45:22):
Maybe it's what if? What if? What if mister t
never does the WWE and we start mixing boxing with
entertainment and then mixed martial arts happens. I don't know,
it's a it's interesting things. Here's another one. What if
Princess Diana had lived, which you have continued reshaping the monarchy? Interesting?

(45:46):
What if Nelson Mandela had never been imprisoned? Would the
would apartheid have ended sooner? Oruld the anti apartype movement
have actually lost a unifying symbol. That was an interesting one,
and again I want to find a good historian to
help me out on this one. Here was another fun
one that we decided not to do. What if Steve

(46:06):
Jobs hadn't been ousted from Apple in nineteen eighty five?
Would the personal computing revolution have come sooner? Or would
Apple have burned out before the iPhone era? But that's
a fun what if that. I think the folks over
at the Acquired podcast who have done this might be
better suited for if that one. And here's another one
that I actually do want to figure out how to
do next year. What Malcolm X had lived? Would his

(46:31):
partnership or rivalry with Martin Luther King Junior have redefined
the Civil Rights movement second phase and the rise of
black political power in the seventies. Essentially, if both MLK
and Malcolm X had lived, would there have been a
sort of faster rise in the seventies of black political power.

(46:53):
It's an interesting thesis and one that I think is
worth worth diving into. And then here's another one. What
if Netflix had never pivoted to streaming? Do we still
live in the era of binge culture? Or just cable
survive longer? Boy? Those things that one I'm not one
hundred percent sure of, and I don't think it would
have carried a whole thing. But here's another one that

(47:13):
I do want to dig into at some point, What
if China had democratized in the nineties, how would the
global balance of power look today? The only reason I
didn't do this one, and it might be worth doing
down the road, is I think the conclusion I would
have come to if China had democratized in the nineties
would have been like, yeah, China would have been Russia,
and there'd have been an elected strong man that just

(47:35):
sort of stayed strong man of that country that we
probably see some combination of Modi in India meets Putin
in Russia. That that's what the leadership of China would be.
I think what we're I think the thing that I've
come to the conclusion under the fall of the Soviet
Union and why democracy has been sort of in fits

(47:55):
and starts with in former Soviet republics, is just look
at the story of democracies in any country. There are
always a fits and starts, and they don't It's not
a straight line. It does eventually get there, right, you know,
but it you know, it took France a while, it
took Germany a while. You know, they had a false start.
The women are republican to fall once before they got it,
and it took us. But from our you know, it

(48:18):
took us from eighteen seventeen seventy six to nineteen sixty
five until we gave everybody the right to vote, right,
So you know it took us a while as well.
So I do think some of these it's hard to
do some of these what if I'm democracies around the world,
because the history of democracy in all of these countries
is never a straight line, right, There's sort of this circles,
Like if China is a democracy by twenty fifty, tanam

(48:41):
And Square is going to be seen as one of
the early indicators that China wanted democracy. But if China
doesn't get democracy by twenty fifty, Tienaman Square becomes less
and less of irrelevant moment right in the history of China.
Just something to be thinking about as you pitch your
ideas to me. Well, given that I'm recording all of

(49:08):
this on January tewod, it means I've now had two
days to marinate in Miami's victory over the Ohio State University.
It is. I think I told you at the start
of this college football playoff that my fan expectations were

(49:28):
we better win one. That would be embarrassing not to
win one. I think we you know, I won't. I
won't feel like the season successful if we're not in
the semifinals. So we're in the semifinals. So I think
that Miami's where we always should be, where we belong.
And of course, now in this day and age, can

(49:48):
you win two more? And let's just say that once
you get this far, you get greedy and you say
to yourself, well, you're only two games away, and let's
get this done. I go back to Miami. It's so

(50:10):
funny in this Miami of Miami Ohigo State game because
Miami literally was Ohio State twenty o two in this game, right,
It was sort of a you know, the announcers noted
that the last time Miami was in a relevant game
was that two thousand and three Fiesta Pole, which was
for the two thousand and two season where the upstart
was Ohio State. They were the former power trying desperately

(50:35):
to get into the elite. Beating Miami was the way
that they could get taken. Seriously, Miami was sort of
part of the elite of the last you know, nearly
twenty years. At that point, they had been on won
five titles in eighteen years at the time, the best
run really since the old Notre Dame Army Navy, you

(50:55):
know era of the forties and fifties and the Bear
Bryant era in Alabama, and it seemed like an era
that nobody was ever going to top until a guy
named Nick Saban showed up at Alabama a few years later.
But that's how this game felt that Miami was the
sort of the old, an old power that was looking

(51:18):
to prove it was back, and it had to beat
one of the current blue bloods, which happened to be
Ohio State. So that's why symbolically I found that the
Ohio State game was so much. This was extraordinarily important
for Miami to win, to prove that it is back.
Important for recruiting. Ohio State success over the last twenty

(51:39):
years has been largely due to its success at recruiting
in South Florida wide receivers more than anything else, and
it's been a huge blow to Miami, Florida and Florida State,
Ohio State's success in recruiting South Florida, specifically that one
position group. It was important to win a game like

(52:03):
that in order to win some recruiting wars that we'd
been losing. Miami over the last twenty five years had
lost recruiting wars to northern schools. We had dominated the
recruiting wars against those northern powers back in the eighties
and nineties, but in the odds we were not winning those.
We won them at first and then started to lose
them after Miami's run started to fade. So that's why

(52:27):
I think symbolically it was an important victory. But now
it's a very winnable right the road is there, and
Miami has built essentially not to lose games badly, so
it means they're going to be in every game. The
defense is good enough to keep them in any game
against any team. The question is whether the offense can

(52:50):
score enough points to win said game. Now they just
you know it is. They scored more points against US
State than any team has done all season, including the
number one team in the country, Indiana. So look, I
think that there's certainly Miami has the talent to win

(53:12):
two more games. If I think Miami's defense can slow
down Old Missus offense, the question is is Miami's offense
good enough to exploit some of the weaknesses on Old
Missus defense. And that's a fair question to ask. I
don't know the answer to it, but I'm feeling pretty bullish.

(53:34):
I think I will fully admit I misread the psyche
of the Ole miss players. I did think with the
portal opening now and that that game against Georgia was
going to be problematic. Now I think they're still going
to have a distracted coaching staff, but the players seem
to be in some ways using this as fuel, using

(53:56):
this as energy. So there's a part of me worried
that Miami is goodded is just simply another episode in
this sports movie that is known as the team that
loses its coach and wins the championship anyway, right, kind
of like the Michigan basketball team Steve Fisher. Back in
nineteen eighty nine, I think it was when the head

(54:20):
coach of Michigan's basketball team leaves before the start of
the NCAA tournament. I becau his name was Bill Freeder.
He went to Arizona State and Michigan was like, nope,
you get out of here. They appoint the interim coach,
Steve Fisher, and all he does is win the whole thing.

(54:40):
On that one, I think that was the Glen Rice
team if I'm not mistaken, but it was. That was
at the time a pretty impressive run, one of the
all timers at that one, And this feels very similar
to that. So there's a part of me worried are
we just a speed bump on the way to Old
Miss documentary history here? Then again, if you're a documentarian,

(55:02):
which story is better the rise of Indiana football or
the resilience of Old Miss after Lane Kiffen leaves them
at the altar? Right? Like, this a pretty good sports
movie in either direction that you choose to go. Miami
and Oregon in comparison, are just very conventional narratives. Although
Miami versus Oregon is a fun little Mario Crysto bo Bowl,

(55:23):
which would be fun. But that gets me to a
few perception things that I want to get off the bat.
First of all, I give Shannon Dawson, that Miami play caller,
a lot of grief. This was the best game plan
I have ever seen him put together. He answered, everything
that I was upset about in the last game. You
don't seem like a game plan for the defense you're facing.

(55:45):
Look like we game plan for the defense we were facing.
It feels like you didn't trust Carson Beck to make decisions.
He trusted Carson Beck to make decisions. By the way,
Carson Beck, he wears number eleven for Miami fans. It's
the last guy to wear number eleven and do some
incredible things with that jersey number. Was Ken Dorsey, the

(56:09):
quarterback for the greatest college football team of all time,
the two thousand and one Miami Hurricanes, and the quarterback
who should not have been in the last in the
last play of the game in that Ohio State game,
he had been knocked out. Today's concussion protocol never would
have let him back in, and Miami's backup quarterback probably
should have been allowed to finish that game. And I

(56:33):
still wonder to this day. I think Dorsey was still rattled.
He shouldn't have been brought back in. But I'm still nitpicking, right,
never mind the bad call. We tie that game. We
should We were right there at the one yard line,
we had two shots at it, But he was still
he wasn't fully in that game on that front. But
my point I'm back is Beck reminds me of all

(56:54):
the good traits of cars of Ken Dorsey. Look, you're
not ever saying I never said nobody, no Miami fan
thought Ken Dorsey was going to be an NFL starting quarterback.
You knew that. And yet he was the best quarterback
Miami could have had guiding that team. He was a
point guard quarterback. He knew how to get the ball

(57:14):
in the hands of the people that needed to have
it and what to do in the moment. And that's
what it feels like Carson Beck has done. You know,
There's all this and this gets into sort of a
larger New Year's resolution that I think we all need
to have, which is be careful of Internet perception. Painting
a picture of somebody that you don't know anything about.

(57:37):
There's this internet perception, right. I'll tell you a classic
case of where this came in over the weekend. It's
a great story in The Athletic about the new managing
one of the late Jim Mercy's three daughters are collectively
running the team, but one daughter is the managing partner.
She's sort of the one that sits at the owner's meetings,
and the Athletic did a whole profile of her. You know,

(58:00):
I had first sort of noticed her when the Internet
exploded with why is the owner on the sideline with
a clipboard and a headset? And then I learned reading
that article that she's been doing this for years. Just
now people are noticing because now she's the general managing
general partner of the team, not just her dad's just
the daughter the owner. And after reading the piece, I thought, well,

(58:24):
she's a terrific owner. She's exactly what an owner should
be doing, which is to understand everything that goes in
putting a team together so that you can help make
good decisions. Anyway, the Internet perception of her was, you know,
somehow right, the painting the picture of what she think?
Who does she think she is being on the sideline

(58:44):
type of thing. After reading the article, You're like, this
is totally opposite of the perception being painted. This is
happening a lot. You know, I look at how quickly
the perception of Maroow Crystobaul is indebted. You know, he's
had a couple of high profile questionable calls on when

(59:05):
it comes to sort of clock management right. That Georgia
Tech game for Miami fans is infamous. There's a couple
of games that Oregon fans will remind you of when
he was coach of Oregon. But you know what we
forget why is in he Why is there's a reason
he's at these major programs. He does know what he's doing. Okay,
he made a couple of mistakes in moments where everybody's watching,

(59:28):
and it can sort of create a perception. But guess
what he also is doing is building a program. He
does lean into his strength, which is identifying offensive line talent,
and he's built the program and the image that he
said he was going to do. Is he a little
small c conservative when it comes to on the offensive
side of the ball, for my tasted times, it is.

(59:53):
But is it working well? Results, scoreboard, record, point out,
all all of them. And if he ends up, you
know he's already this idea that he can't win a
big game. Well, does winning in the College Football Playoff
at Kyle Field qualifies a big game? Does winning in
the Cotton Bowl against the number two ranked team in

(01:00:15):
the country considered a big game? And now if he
loses to Ole Miss as a favorite. Are we going
to say, Wow, Miami's terrible as a favorite, They're only
good as an underdog. Well, that might be a you know,
they're a small part of me nervous that Miami's the favorite. Now,
when I liked being in this underdog role where we
were the ace. The the sort of anti acc bias

(01:00:36):
of every of betters and of the punditry on ESPN
was we had all kicked in, you know now that
we kicked the you know, because the win over Ohio
State wasn't a fluke, right. We beat them up, We
out physicaled them, and they thought they were going to
out physical everybody else and they couldn't. Let's see what

(01:00:57):
happens when we're matched up against you know, another SEC team.
We'll see and we'll see if we can get past
that and we and we end up against either Oregon
or Indiana. But by the way, I uh, here's a
question about the Indiana Alabama game. Indiana looked like Alabama,

(01:01:21):
and Alabama looked like you know, Alabama reminded me of
Miami two thousand and five. So Miami was still considered
you know, it only been a couple of years removed
from the National Title Game. They'd sort of only had
one loss away from being in the three title game,
and so there was just you know, they were still
one of the powers, and we ended up facing off

(01:01:42):
and in one of these disappointment matchups with LSU and
the Peach Bowl and LSU boat raced US forty two
to three. Players started in fighting amongst themselves. It was
just a disaster. I think at that point Coker fired
all of his assistants. Because Coker wasn't gonna get fired
right away. He was being given, you know, some grace
since he led the team to back to back championship games.

(01:02:05):
But it was the beginning of the end. I fear
this for Calin de bore with what happened. It wasn't
that they lost to Indiana, it's how they lost. They
just didn't look like they physically belonged on the field,
and how did just like that's what happened when Miami.
It wasn't that Miami lost, ale issue was how they lost.
And let's just say that in two years of Kurt

(01:02:28):
Signetti as the next head coach of the University of Alabama,
I won't be surprised and I do not accept the
premise that Signetti wouldn't take the job. But what I
saw the Knicks. If you're looking for a Nick Saban
like frankly, I gotta give crystaball credit. He looks. I mean,

(01:02:51):
Miami didn't have a single accepted penalty. That's how that's
Nick Saban esque. That was never Miami's reputation over the years.
Now I got handed to those SEC officials. They were
SEC officials doing the Miami Ohio state game. Boy did
they let everybody play. There were a couple of hits
that I swear Miami would have been flagged down if
they were a CC officials. It just had been a given,

(01:03:15):
and Miami doesn't get flagged. They sort of quote let
him play. And if there was a baton passing moment,
there's this video if you haven't seen it, that's going
around Carnel Tait. It basically short arms a throw from
saying because he was about to get hit, and it
looked like he was afraid to get hit. And that
was I remember when they showed the replay. I saw

(01:03:35):
it and I even remarked in the room, huh, boy,
look at how afraid they are of getting Hiti. Miami
is certainly making them uncomfortable looking back. Boy, that's the
that feels like the symbolic moment that the baton was
passed back to Miami and here they come. Because I

(01:03:57):
promise you this, this physicality that Miami's bringing back isn't
a one year phenomenon. It's it's I think, going to
be the DNA. It's certainly Mario Cristobal's DNA. So the
question I have is will we will ask will the
big time athletes still want to play in a small

(01:04:17):
c conservative offense. That's the only concern I might have.
But this day and age, winning Trump's everything, and if
we're winning, people want to be a part of a
winning culture. But anyway, just be careful of perceptions. Right,
we sit here and we allow the Internet to fuel
perceptions of certain individuals, certain people, certain resumes when and

(01:04:43):
then when the when it doesn't, when when they don't
play to the internet type, we think, oh, well, there
must be something wrong with the other team. When you
know it is we probably were over zealous in the
characters in the caricature that was being created. Uh. I've
participated in that over zealousness at times, and I've gotten
because we as a fanatic fan short for fanatic. I've

(01:05:07):
certainly had my strong opinions about how certain things went
with Miami, but let's just say this is this is
always what I expected, and this is what the Miami
fan base is about, which is we expect to be
contenders for national titles hard stop. Nothing else matters, and
you can say, well, go win an ACC title. We've
never cared about conference titles because we're still in I

(01:05:28):
still view us as an independent who's been a mercenary
for these conferences. We joined a conference because of the
other sports. We never wanted to join conferences, but we
did it out of scheduling purposes. It isn't a matter.
It's what conference gives Miami the best shot at competing
for a national title and or what system works, and
so ultimately, if Miami is operating on the level that

(01:05:54):
they're operating on this year for the foreseeable future, you know,
as long as we're contending and win one out of
every three or four, you're going to have a satisfied
fan base. I'd like to think we won't lose it
the way we're already seeing our friends at Ohio State
lose it over Ryan Day I mean, what more does

(01:06:17):
he have to do to keep his seat from warming
up too much in the next year if he somehow
loses another game or two before getting back to a
title game. But look, we'll see, I am it is tough.
It is interesting to me that I heard Rees Davis
say this playoff rematches that take place in the playoffs

(01:06:42):
from the regular season. The only time where the same
team won twice was a miss over tu Lane this year,
so every other rematch has gone the other way. Not
the best omen And I do worry Indiana is getting
so many flowers, excuse me, roses thrown their way right now?

(01:07:02):
Is this just like Miami's getting a bunch of stuff
thrown their way. I'm nervous about Miami being a favorite.
If I were an Indiana fan, I'd be nervous about
suddenly Indiana being such a heavy favorite. So we'll see.
It's going to be. It's a fun final four. And
how about the fact that all four cultural centers of

(01:07:23):
America are represented. Miami is very much an East coast
Northeast five school, oh Miss as deep south as you
get Indiana, as midwest as you can get in Oregon,
the west coast This is what makes the college foo
ball so great, right, and the fact that the final
four worked out this way despite the attempts of the

(01:07:43):
conference conference commissioners to screw this up. Don't screw this up, guys.
If we can produce a system, ultimately the conferences should
be secondary. If this is going to be what our
system is, and we should go from there, and we
can improve scheduling and all of these things, but this

(01:08:04):
result should ultimately be what we get every time, which
is some geographic diversity and sort of spreading the wealth
a little bit. And that's the dirty little secret about Nil. Right,
Pre Nil, we only had a lot of Alabama, a
lot of Clemson, a little bit of Georgia, and not

(01:08:24):
much else. Right, what has Nil done? Look, there's still
the haves and the have nots, but there's now more
halves than we've ever had before. And isn't that. People
in Bloomington, Indiana are pretty excited about this. People in Eugene,
Oregon are pretty excited about this. People in Oxford, Mississippi

(01:08:45):
are pretty excited about this. And yes, those of us
in Miami and Coral Gables are extraordinary excited about this.
So anyway, enjoy the next two games

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Chuck’s Commentary - What If 9/11 Never Happened? + College Football Playoff Reaction

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Chuck’s Commentary - What If 9/11 Never Happened? + College Football Playoff Reaction