September 3, 2025 • 12 mins
This intrigued me. I don't necessarily share the idea that America is about to enter (or has entered) a "golden age," but I am interested in what the Heritage Foundation wants to learn about what you think about our nation. I spoke with Genevieve Wood, a Heritage Foundation spokesperson (she was outstanding). Check it out.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Good morning, ruminators. Welcome Wednesday, September third, on the Morning
Show with Preston scottis Ose. I am Preston. Great to
be with you, Show five four hundred and forty four
and we are joined this hour by Genevieve Wood. She's
with a heritage foundation. She serves as a counselor spokesperson.
She was a founding team member of The Daily Signal.
(00:26):
We have used pieces from the Daily Signal over the
years and she joins us this morning to talk about
Shape the Future. It's a billboard campaign. Genevieve tell us
about the genesis of this idea, this campaign.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Well, good morning, Prestin, thank you very much for having
us on and talking about the campaign. Yet, we are
running this in about eight different states, a lot in
the Midwest and also in Florida. And the goal is,
too is really twofold. One is we believe that America
is on the cusp of a golden age. And if
you look at the billboards, they're related to Campaig. They're
all positive messaging things like America needs more of this,
(01:04):
and it has pictures of family or America pass it
on and really patriotic feelings about it. But there's also
the Shape the Future dot com website that mentioned on
the billboards, and we want people to go there and
take a survey and tell us one are they optimistic too,
what issues matter most to them? And three what we
(01:25):
need to do to make sure the next two hundred
and fifty years of this country are even better than
the past two hundred and fifty years. And you know
the Heritage Foundation, the Daily Signal. We're based in DC,
the Imperial City, by the way, much cleaner and safer
than it used to be to come visit. But you know,
we want to represent Americans across the country and so
(01:46):
we don't believe that we have all the answers just
sitting in Washington. We want to hear from the American
people and that's what we're trying to achieve with this campaign.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
You said something that might give me a clue to
the answer. But the why now is Is it because
we're at that two fifty mark and we're going to
be celebrating our two hundred and fiftieth anniversary in a
little less than a year.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
That's certainly part of it, But it's also because we
are at a particular point in our history where we still,
even though we have a lot of challenges, we haven't
gone over the cliff. We have the opportunity to make
you know, you saw it with securing the border when
President Trump came in to office in January. It took
about what two months to get the border really under control.
(02:29):
After we've been told there's really nothing we can do.
Don't believe what you're actually seeing. It just been enforcing
certain laws. What it shows is if you have the
right policies, the right things can happen. So we're at
a point where we have a president, we have a
slim majority in Congress of conservatives who are willing to
do the right things, first and foremost, secure the border,
(02:50):
but also also first and foremost putting families first and
looking at policies are best for the American family. So
you have to take the we have sees the opportunities
if you will, that you have, and we believe right
now we have the opportunities to get the right policies
in place to keep America going the right direction.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Genevieve, I don't know if if you were told anything
about our relationship here on this radio program with the Heritage,
but we have had a very long relationship with the
Heritage Foundation. I'm a former vocational pastor, so I approach
this through the lens and through the perspective of my
faith in Christ, and I have a little bit of
(03:29):
a different view than what a lot of these billboards
are sharing. And so I'm just I'm curious, what is
once you gather and aggregate the information that you hope
to get from people taking the survey, visiting the website
shapethefuture dot com, what is the hope? Is the hope
to get to kind of create some more policy positions
(03:51):
on different issues. What are you hoping to gain out
of this?
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Well, what we hope to gain is, like I said,
two things. One is passing on a positive message to
give people encouragement, but two to gain from the public.
What are the issues that keep you up at night?
Are the ones that get you up in the morning?
I think people can be hopeful for the future but
also concerned about things at the same at the same time,
and helping us get a sense of where people are. Okay,
(04:20):
you have to you have to start there, right And
so it's not we're not going to change our principles
or change policies per se, but Knowing which ones are
on top of mind for folks helps us do a
better job of communicating not just with them, but the
people who pass the laws that affect all of us.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Shapethefuture dot com. The idea is to plant some positive
seeds by way of Billboard. America's best days are ahead
of us. Don't bet against the US. Abundance is more
than material in God, we still trust Don's early life
is ever faithful. The list goes on and on. Genevieve,
why the states that were chosen? I mean, Florida has
(04:59):
had a massive swing from being sort of kind of
purple ish to now solid. You would you could argue
the single most conservative state in the Union. And then
states in the Midwest, Why not California, New York, and Illinois.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Well, there are some, as you probably know, in twenty
twenty six coming up, there's gonna be some interesting political
races happening midterm elections, and some really key Senate races
will be happening, particularly in the Midwest, places like Michigan, Pennsylvania,
for example, Ohio, and so knowing what folks in those
places think can help us talk to them. We're not
(05:36):
a political organization, but we can do a better job
of saying, here are the policies that are that shape
your life and shape your children's future. Think about those
when you go into the election, when you go into
the voting boost. So that's one of the reasons for
those key places. But also places like Florida very rich
demographically in terms of all kinds of different you know,
folks who live there, different backgrounds, a younger state by
(05:57):
and large, and so having that kind of demography is
really helpful when you're pulling it in results like this.
And I was gonna mention Press. I mean when you
go to the survey, and again you don't have to
see a billboard to go to the survey. It's called
Shapethefuture dot com. You know. For example, some of the
questions that we ask are we asked, how would you
describe yourself politically? We ask them to approve or disapprove
(06:20):
of President Trump's performance, But then we say, you know,
are you hopeful for America's future? We ask can America
survive without a religious revival? So we're trying to get
into some pretty deep questions to get a real sense
of what people think not only the problems are, but
what the answers are I'm curious.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
The question on President Trump to me is a conundrum.
If the question is simply do you approve or disapprove?
I don't know that I can answer that because there's
so many things I approve of. But there are a
lot of things. For example, the decision to as just
one example, the decision to not tackle the debt, the
decision to engage in ownership of private companies with US
(07:02):
taxpayer dollars. Those are very troubling. How does a guy
like me answer a question like.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
That, well, and you can it's not disapproved or disapprove it.
Do you strongly approve, do you approve? Do you have
no real opinion? You disapproved, you strongly disapprove. Sure you've
got some variation there, But we also have some open
ended questions. Okay, we can say, and you know, in
your mind, what's the biggest obstacle to America having you
(07:29):
going into a real golden age, And you could write
in that the debts are real problem. That's a huge obstacle,
and you'd be absolutely right. So there's an opportunity not
just to click boxes, but to give true your feedback.
On top of the questions that we actually asked, all right, pull.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Us behind the curtain. You guys have done this surveying.
How long is the surveying going to last?
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Well, the campaign is going to be up for eight
weeks and we're only in the beginning of week two,
so we don't have a lot of data coming in
just yet. But the campaign stuff will be it for
eight weeks, and then at that point we'll have a
sense of how much, you know, what we were able
to pull in, whether we need to extend, do we
need to go to other places?
Speaker 1 (08:09):
So, once you get this data, how does it get
pulled together analyzed? And then what happens as a result
of it.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Well, and first happening you will come in, we'll be
able to, like I said, we ask a lot of
questions like what is you know, your backgrounds? We have
a sense of like what did more women think about this?
What did more men think about this? What do different
age groups give us when it comes to these answers.
Then taking a look at that and matching up with
the policies that we were working on internally at Heritage
with what the people have told us they say these
(08:40):
are the most important ones to us, and then sorting
through state by state, how do we talk about these
more effectively in these individual states. But it just really
helps inform our work and like I said, the way
we talk to those who are elected officials and make
the laws we all live by.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
So hopefully you plan to have a paper, a kind
of set of suggestions. What do you hope to have
put together by when.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Well, the goal in some cases would be we can
start using this immediately really going into into the next year,
we're the midterms, where there's going to be more, hopefully
a renewal of talk about policies that affect the family,
that affect our communities that are not just Washington based,
but in our communities based. And we can say to
elected officials we meet with, you know, here's the survey
(09:31):
that we did in this particular state among this particular group,
and here's what people are telling us, and it's something
that you ought to listen to. And again, depending on
the material that comes in, we may decide to extend
a campaign, take it to other places, but ultimately is
to take the feedback and make sure that people who
are making the decisions know about it. I don't think
(09:52):
we'll be doing like a white background paper on it.
But we can use that information as our analysts right
about family policy, about tax policy, right about immigration and
border policy. They can take some of the questions that
people come send in and say, you know what, we
need to answer this in our papers, or maybe the
daily signal says, you know what, we need to write
(10:12):
more op as and pieces that address the questions that
people are telling us are most important to them.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Last question, Jennevie even thanks so much for giving me
just another minute or two extra. I'm curious. I know
that generally speaking, Republicans, people on the right side of
the aisle, moderates, conservatives are listening, are at least open
to seeing what Heritage Foundation pushes out. Are Democrats? Are
people on the left side of the aisle even remotely
(10:40):
interested in what you have to say as a group?
Speaker 2 (10:44):
You know, they used to be a little bit more
so when you had more Democrats who were not just
so far left as they are as they are today.
But what's interesting is that you know, that's not the
way most Americans classify themselves, right, Most Americans don't classify
themselves as I'm far right, part left, or even really
in these kind of political labels, and so what we're
(11:04):
trying to do is, you know, you can go to
anybody can go to the Heritage website, but we also
put information out there that doesn't have our name on it.
It's one reason we created the Daily Signal is because
we wanted people just to be able to read the
news or read a perspective and not have it to
stamp for something that might get go say, oh, I
shouldn't read this. So we do both because we do
(11:25):
believe our ideas are for everybody. They're not just for
a certain kind of person. They're for everybody. And we
want people to have the opportunity to make the decisions
that are best for them. And thankfully the American people
are more open than some of their elected officials are.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
I appreciate you making time for us this morning, and
I'm going to push this out. I'm going to push
this out for the next few weeks and see if
we can get some responses for you.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Terrific.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Thank you, Thank you. Genevieve would with us from the
Heritage Foundation. The website Shapethefuture dot com. Go for it,
fill out the survey shape the Future dot com. You
heard er They want to hear from you, Let em
hear from you. Nineteen past the hour
Good morning, ruminators. Welcome Wednesday, September third, on the Morning
Show with Preston scottis Ose. I am Preston. Great to
be with you, Show five four hundred and forty four
and we are joined this hour by Genevieve Wood. She's
with a heritage foundation. She serves as a counselor spokesperson.
She was a founding team member of The Daily Signal.
(00:26):
We have used pieces from the Daily Signal over the
years and she joins us this morning to talk about
Shape the Future. It's a billboard campaign. Genevieve tell us
about the genesis of this idea, this campaign.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Well, good morning, Prestin, thank you very much for having
us on and talking about the campaign. Yet, we are
running this in about eight different states, a lot in
the Midwest and also in Florida. And the goal is,
too is really twofold. One is we believe that America
is on the cusp of a golden age. And if
you look at the billboards, they're related to Campaig. They're
all positive messaging things like America needs more of this,
(01:04):
and it has pictures of family or America pass it
on and really patriotic feelings about it. But there's also
the Shape the Future dot com website that mentioned on
the billboards, and we want people to go there and
take a survey and tell us one are they optimistic too,
what issues matter most to them? And three what we
(01:25):
need to do to make sure the next two hundred
and fifty years of this country are even better than
the past two hundred and fifty years. And you know
the Heritage Foundation, the Daily Signal. We're based in DC,
the Imperial City, by the way, much cleaner and safer
than it used to be to come visit. But you know,
we want to represent Americans across the country and so
(01:46):
we don't believe that we have all the answers just
sitting in Washington. We want to hear from the American
people and that's what we're trying to achieve with this campaign.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
You said something that might give me a clue to
the answer. But the why now is Is it because
we're at that two fifty mark and we're going to
be celebrating our two hundred and fiftieth anniversary in a
little less than a year.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
That's certainly part of it, But it's also because we
are at a particular point in our history where we still,
even though we have a lot of challenges, we haven't
gone over the cliff. We have the opportunity to make
you know, you saw it with securing the border when
President Trump came in to office in January. It took
about what two months to get the border really under control.
(02:29):
After we've been told there's really nothing we can do.
Don't believe what you're actually seeing. It just been enforcing
certain laws. What it shows is if you have the
right policies, the right things can happen. So we're at
a point where we have a president, we have a
slim majority in Congress of conservatives who are willing to
do the right things, first and foremost, secure the border,
(02:50):
but also also first and foremost putting families first and
looking at policies are best for the American family. So
you have to take the we have sees the opportunities
if you will, that you have, and we believe right
now we have the opportunities to get the right policies
in place to keep America going the right direction.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Genevieve, I don't know if if you were told anything
about our relationship here on this radio program with the Heritage,
but we have had a very long relationship with the
Heritage Foundation. I'm a former vocational pastor, so I approach
this through the lens and through the perspective of my
faith in Christ, and I have a little bit of
(03:29):
a different view than what a lot of these billboards
are sharing. And so I'm just I'm curious, what is
once you gather and aggregate the information that you hope
to get from people taking the survey, visiting the website
shapethefuture dot com, what is the hope? Is the hope
to get to kind of create some more policy positions
(03:51):
on different issues. What are you hoping to gain out
of this?
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Well, what we hope to gain is, like I said,
two things. One is passing on a positive message to
give people encouragement, but two to gain from the public.
What are the issues that keep you up at night?
Are the ones that get you up in the morning?
I think people can be hopeful for the future but
also concerned about things at the same at the same time,
and helping us get a sense of where people are. Okay,
(04:20):
you have to you have to start there, right And
so it's not we're not going to change our principles
or change policies per se, but Knowing which ones are
on top of mind for folks helps us do a
better job of communicating not just with them, but the
people who pass the laws that affect all of us.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Shapethefuture dot com. The idea is to plant some positive
seeds by way of Billboard. America's best days are ahead
of us. Don't bet against the US. Abundance is more
than material in God, we still trust Don's early life
is ever faithful. The list goes on and on. Genevieve,
why the states that were chosen? I mean, Florida has
(04:59):
had a massive swing from being sort of kind of
purple ish to now solid. You would you could argue
the single most conservative state in the Union. And then
states in the Midwest, Why not California, New York, and Illinois.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Well, there are some, as you probably know, in twenty
twenty six coming up, there's gonna be some interesting political
races happening midterm elections, and some really key Senate races
will be happening, particularly in the Midwest, places like Michigan, Pennsylvania,
for example, Ohio, and so knowing what folks in those
places think can help us talk to them. We're not
(05:36):
a political organization, but we can do a better job
of saying, here are the policies that are that shape
your life and shape your children's future. Think about those
when you go into the election, when you go into
the voting boost. So that's one of the reasons for
those key places. But also places like Florida very rich
demographically in terms of all kinds of different you know,
folks who live there, different backgrounds, a younger state by
(05:57):
and large, and so having that kind of demography is
really helpful when you're pulling it in results like this.
And I was gonna mention Press. I mean when you
go to the survey, and again you don't have to
see a billboard to go to the survey. It's called
Shapethefuture dot com. You know. For example, some of the
questions that we ask are we asked, how would you
describe yourself politically? We ask them to approve or disapprove
(06:20):
of President Trump's performance, But then we say, you know,
are you hopeful for America's future? We ask can America
survive without a religious revival? So we're trying to get
into some pretty deep questions to get a real sense
of what people think not only the problems are, but
what the answers are I'm curious.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
The question on President Trump to me is a conundrum.
If the question is simply do you approve or disapprove?
I don't know that I can answer that because there's
so many things I approve of. But there are a
lot of things. For example, the decision to as just
one example, the decision to not tackle the debt, the
decision to engage in ownership of private companies with US
(07:02):
taxpayer dollars. Those are very troubling. How does a guy
like me answer a question like.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
That, well, and you can it's not disapproved or disapprove it.
Do you strongly approve, do you approve? Do you have
no real opinion? You disapproved, you strongly disapprove. Sure you've
got some variation there, But we also have some open
ended questions. Okay, we can say, and you know, in
your mind, what's the biggest obstacle to America having you
(07:29):
going into a real golden age, And you could write
in that the debts are real problem. That's a huge obstacle,
and you'd be absolutely right. So there's an opportunity not
just to click boxes, but to give true your feedback.
On top of the questions that we actually asked, all right, pull.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Us behind the curtain. You guys have done this surveying.
How long is the surveying going to last?
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Well, the campaign is going to be up for eight
weeks and we're only in the beginning of week two,
so we don't have a lot of data coming in
just yet. But the campaign stuff will be it for
eight weeks, and then at that point we'll have a
sense of how much, you know, what we were able
to pull in, whether we need to extend, do we
need to go to other places?
Speaker 1 (08:09):
So, once you get this data, how does it get
pulled together analyzed? And then what happens as a result
of it.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Well, and first happening you will come in, we'll be
able to, like I said, we ask a lot of
questions like what is you know, your backgrounds? We have
a sense of like what did more women think about this?
What did more men think about this? What do different
age groups give us when it comes to these answers.
Then taking a look at that and matching up with
the policies that we were working on internally at Heritage
with what the people have told us they say these
(08:40):
are the most important ones to us, and then sorting
through state by state, how do we talk about these
more effectively in these individual states. But it just really
helps inform our work and like I said, the way
we talk to those who are elected officials and make
the laws we all live by.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
So hopefully you plan to have a paper, a kind
of set of suggestions. What do you hope to have
put together by when.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Well, the goal in some cases would be we can
start using this immediately really going into into the next year,
we're the midterms, where there's going to be more, hopefully
a renewal of talk about policies that affect the family,
that affect our communities that are not just Washington based,
but in our communities based. And we can say to
elected officials we meet with, you know, here's the survey
(09:31):
that we did in this particular state among this particular group,
and here's what people are telling us, and it's something
that you ought to listen to. And again, depending on
the material that comes in, we may decide to extend
a campaign, take it to other places, but ultimately is
to take the feedback and make sure that people who
are making the decisions know about it. I don't think
(09:52):
we'll be doing like a white background paper on it.
But we can use that information as our analysts right
about family policy, about tax policy, right about immigration and
border policy. They can take some of the questions that
people come send in and say, you know what, we
need to answer this in our papers, or maybe the
daily signal says, you know what, we need to write
(10:12):
more op as and pieces that address the questions that
people are telling us are most important to them.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Last question, Jennevie even thanks so much for giving me
just another minute or two extra. I'm curious. I know
that generally speaking, Republicans, people on the right side of
the aisle, moderates, conservatives are listening, are at least open
to seeing what Heritage Foundation pushes out. Are Democrats? Are
people on the left side of the aisle even remotely
(10:40):
interested in what you have to say as a group?
Speaker 2 (10:44):
You know, they used to be a little bit more
so when you had more Democrats who were not just
so far left as they are as they are today.
But what's interesting is that you know, that's not the
way most Americans classify themselves, right, Most Americans don't classify
themselves as I'm far right, part left, or even really
in these kind of political labels, and so what we're
(11:04):
trying to do is, you know, you can go to
anybody can go to the Heritage website, but we also
put information out there that doesn't have our name on it.
It's one reason we created the Daily Signal is because
we wanted people just to be able to read the
news or read a perspective and not have it to
stamp for something that might get go say, oh, I
shouldn't read this. So we do both because we do
(11:25):
believe our ideas are for everybody. They're not just for
a certain kind of person. They're for everybody. And we
want people to have the opportunity to make the decisions
that are best for them. And thankfully the American people
are more open than some of their elected officials are.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
I appreciate you making time for us this morning, and
I'm going to push this out. I'm going to push
this out for the next few weeks and see if
we can get some responses for you.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Terrific.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Thank you, Thank you. Genevieve would with us from the
Heritage Foundation. The website Shapethefuture dot com. Go for it,
fill out the survey shape the Future dot com. You
heard er They want to hear from you, Let em
hear from you. Nineteen past the hour
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