April 1, 2025 • 29 mins
On this special episode of the Liberty + Leadership Podcast, recorded live at the Annual TFAS Conference in Naples, Florida, Roger welcomes Dan Proft. Proft is co-host of the morning drive-time radio talk show Chicago’s Morning Answer and a 1993 TFAS alumnus.
They discuss, Proft's successful career in radio, his experience as a TFAS student and his observations on the first months of the Trump administration and the role of the executive branch. Plus, they take a look at the changing tides in the media landscape, the political dynamics in Illinois and Proft’s advice to young people on the importance of intellectual curiosity.
Prior to his career in radio, Proft worked on numerous political campaigns and served in various leadership capacities in state and municipal government. He also was a candidate for Illinois governor in 2010.
The Liberty + Leadership Podcast is hosted by TFAS president Roger Ream and produced by Podville Media. If you have a comment or question for the show, please email us at podcast@TFAS.org. To support TFAS and its mission, please visit TFAS.org/support.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Today we have a special episode of the Liberty
and Leadership podcast recordedlive at our TFAS annual
conference in Naples, florida.
In this conversation I sat downwith TFAS alumnus Dan Proft and
we discussed his career inradio, his time as a TFAS
student and his thoughts on thefirst months of the Trump
(00:21):
administration.
Stay tuned for more episodesfeaturing powerful conversations
with incredible speakers wholed sessions at our conference
in Naples.
Welcome to the Liberty andLeadership Podcast a
conversation with TFAS alumni,faculty and friends who are
making an impact.
(00:42):
Today.
I'm your host, roger Reed.
I'm so pleased today to haveDan Proft with us.
Dan is a radio talk show host onChicago's Morning Answer.
That's a morning drive timeshow and I've had the pleasure
of being on it with his co-host,amy Jacobson.
It's a great show.
You can get it in Chicago or onthe internet, and Dan is
(01:04):
someone I like to refer to as aposter child for TFAS because of
the success he's had in hiscareer.
He's run for governor ofIllinois, he earned his
bachelor's degree atNorthwestern University, went to
Chicago Loyola Law School andhe's truly an entrepreneur and a
great individual.
He attended our program in 1993.
But I thought I'd start, dan,with just a little bit of your
(01:26):
background.
I wondered first of all, how doyou end up getting into radio?
Speaker 2 (01:30):
I sort of fell into it.
I didn't do the comms programat TFAS, I did comparative and
political systems, and so Ithought when I was an undergrad
maybe I'd go work in DC, I'd gowork for the Cato Institute or
some other think tank.
I was sort of policy orientedand then my first gig out of
college was running alegislative race, and then I
worked at the state level inpolitics for a lot of years.
(01:51):
Before I ran for office Istarted doing like analysis work
.
I got introduced to a verypopular morning show in Chicago
called the Don Wayne Roma Show,which was on WLS, which is, of
course, like a flagship stationin the Midwest.
They had their program morningdrive there for 30 years, and so
I started doing analyst workand some other fun little bits
with them and it sort of was onething that led to the other and
(02:14):
then I did weekly commentariesfor them and then I started
doing some guest hosting fillingin.
And then when I ran for officeafter I lost, the program
director at WLS wanted to usethe weekends to build out a farm
team for future talent and sohe was trying different
combinations and he put me onSaturdays with a guy who was a
longtime broadcaster, actuallysports broadcaster in Chicago,
(02:37):
named Bruce Wolf, who was on theFox Chicago station doing
sports, and he liked thecombination and so we went from
Saturdays to Saturdays andSundays and then, before there
was a change in ownership at WLS, they didn't like the guy that
they had nine to 11 midday sothey blew him out of his
contract and put us in.
We did that for two years andthen a couple years into it,
after we had been doing themidday for two years, don Wade
(02:59):
unfortunately got sick.
He got brain cancer, so we werefilling in and then ultimately
they decided Don and Roma, theywere married, they were a couple
, they decided they were goingto retire and so they put us
into the morning drive slot.
We did that for another twoyears and there was an
opportunity to go to AM560,which is the Salem station in
Chicago.
Salem is the company thatsyndicates like Dennis, prager
(03:20):
and Hannity and others, and so Itook that opportunity because
it just gave me more of a blankslate and more control, and I've
been there for going on adecade.
So it's one of those thingslike I'm sure everybody
experiences in life you thoughtyou were going to do one thing,
maybe in a particular sector,and you end up in that sector,
but doing something verydifferent than you envision, and
(03:41):
I just took it as going throughdoors that opened and just I
was having fun with it.
So just sort of seeing where wego.
And it's been almost 15 yearsnow.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
I remember a number of years ago we met for coffee
in Chicago and you told me alittle bit about your story
growing up and having beenadopted.
Did you remind all of us?
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Yeah, so I mean I was born April 29th 1972, and I was
adopted when I was three daysold, and this was something I
would talk about a lot inpro-life circles.
So I was adopted eight monthsbefore the Roe v Wade decision,
and so, you know, had thedecision come a little bit
earlier, who knows?
I don't know what my birthmother would have done, and then
(04:24):
the world would havepotentially been deprived of me,
and that's obviously a world noone wants to live in.
So that informed my view too.
I mean, it's informed by myfaith, but it's also just
informed from just the thinkingabout that very personal level
and the practicality of it andthen saying, well, you know,
gosh, the idea that we're takingaway these opportunities for
who knows what kind of peoplethat can make, who knows what
(04:46):
kind of contributions to oursociety and our country, it just
was something that always stuckwith me growing up is like, not
only the loving decision thatmy birth mother made, but what
my parents did and how theysacrificed for me, and just how
both protecting unborn life aswell as adoption itself are such
loving things to do.
(05:07):
And that's, I think, theposition most of us want to be
on in society is the position oflove.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
I also wanted to ask you maybe one more question
about your KFAS experience.
You took two courses while youwere in Washington, had an
internship Impactful on yourlife.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
It was.
I mean, first of all, it's likeyou know, there's certain
academics, like coaches you meetover the course of your life,
where you say like that wasreally something, that was an
experience to be with thatprofessor or teacher for a
semester or a year.
And George, george Vixens yeah,george was one of those guys
you know and I had started toget into a couple of years early
, free market economists and theAustrian School of Economics
(05:47):
and it was like he jumped offthe pages of a von Mises book
and he was right in front of theclass at Georgetown teaching us
, and so he was cool because hewas one of those guys, like
Milton Friedman, who madeeconomics very accessible and
very tangible and veryinteresting.
I mean, I was interested in it,but it wasn't just sort of
theoretical, there was a lot ofapplication of the theory.
(06:08):
That, I think, brought out moreof the importance and the
dynamism of that field of study.
So that, and then you know, andI hadn't spent any time in DC,
you know, as a kid who's stillan undergrad, and so to spend
six weeks in DC, meet all thepeople from around the country,
different schools, many of whomI kept in touch with for a long
(06:29):
time a couple I still do now.
It was just a cool experiencebecause obviously there's a lot
of bright people that pursuedprofessions in a multitude of
disciplines and it was just alot to take in and a lot of
experience in a relatively shortamount of time.
And, interestingly, after theTFAS program that summer I went
to the World LibertarianConvention in Tallinn, estonia.
So then it was like immediateapplication of some of what we
(06:52):
had talked about in thecomparative political and
economic systems and then seeingit in real time, you know, in a
place like Estonia that wasfour years removed from the wall
falling.
Yeah, yeah, it was cool.
The timing of it worked out,the experience was great and it
was definitely formative.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Yeah, Estonia is a fascinating place.
We have a scholarship programthat brings an Estonian to our
program every summer from there,and I've been over there to
help establish it.
It's a wonderful place.
The politics are reallyinteresting.
Yeah, and George Vixens wasfrom Latvia.
He had that experience to sharewith students.
Well, let's fast forward tocurrent events.
What are your initialobservations after six weeks?
(07:29):
Is it of the Trumpadministration kind of top line
thoughts and observations?
Speaker 2 (07:34):
It's been pretty fun, I got to say I've been smiling
a lot more during morning drivethan I have the previous four
years.
I mean, I can't say I'mterribly surprised about much,
maybe a little bit about some ofthe expressions that sort of
his Monroe Doctrine 2.0 havetaken.
I didn't maybe expect he wouldbe as aggressive, with Greenland
(07:54):
and the Panama Canal out of thegate as he has been A little
bit of a surprise.
But generally speaking, I'm notsurprised because I mean he's
like a Seth Rainer golf course.
Everything's right out in frontof you the stuff that he says
he's going to do during acampaign.
That's what he does, or he setsout to do.
In fact, rusty Reno, who's theeditor of First Things, who
wasn't necessarily a Trump fan,particularly during his first
(08:17):
term, but he said you know it'sinteresting, I don't know that
Trump is the best person that'sever been president of the
United States, just in terms ofa character perspective.
But by the measure of someone'scharacter, particularly a
politician, do you do or attemptto do exactly what you said you
were going to do.
He is the most honest presidentof my lifetime by that standard
(08:39):
and that's a pretty goodstandard for politicians across
the board and that's only beenamplified in 2.0.
After his exile for four yearsand all that fell him and many
of his supporters, I'm notreally surprised by anything.
I think he is consistent withwhat he did largely in his first
term.
He is doing, or attempting todo, the very things that he said
(09:01):
he would do as a candidate,which is what we should expect,
and maybe he's doing it a littlebit faster pace this go around
as opposed to his first term,because he knows he's on a clock
.
But it's not surprising.
But it is enjoyable to see notjust that he is doing what he
said he would do, but also thathe is bringing a reckoning.
That is necessary, that isoverdue, sort of this common
(09:24):
sense counter-revolution that hetouched upon during his remarks
at that joint session ofCongress.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Do you worry at all that by doing so much through
executive orders and theexecutive branch that needs to
be done because we have so muchred ink and so much
over-regulation, but that eitherit'll be too easily undone in
four years or that he's bringingtoo much power into the
executive branch?
Speaker 2 (09:52):
I don't know that.
There's an example where I meanthere's things he's suggested
you know, I want to endbirthright citizenship but he
hasn't actually said birthrightcitizenship is over, because
that's beyond his power, andthis is something that confuses
the left.
You can propose something togenerate a conversation, focus
people's attention, but he's notsaying for example, like a past
(10:13):
president said, the SupremeCourt tried to stop me, but they
didn't stop me, Joe Bidentalking about student loan debt
forgiveness.
So he hasn't done that.
So I don't think there's aconcentration.
I think there's areestablishment of the executive
branch vis-a-vis the judicialbranch and, to some extent, the
legislative branch, orrebalancing of these co-equal
branches of power.
(10:33):
I would say, though, to yourpoint about it can't just be
executive orders.
You know, House and SenateRepublicans are going to have to
codify a lot of this into lawfor it to have a staying effect.
But one of the things thatTrump has done by pushing as
hard as he had with executiveorders, is he's putting pressure
on members of Congress,particularly in the House, to
live up to theirresponsibilities, both in terms
(10:53):
of spend as well as in terms ofoversight that they maybe
haven't.
It's easy to speechify.
It's tough to do the detailedwork of lawmaking, and now
there's pressure on thelegislative branch to do just
that.
So I don't think there's beenoverreaches that are anything
more than rhetorical at thispoint.
But I do agree that Congress isgoing to need to statuify some
(11:16):
of what has been done byexecutive order.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Yeah, one thing I really appreciate is the
executive orders and the actionshe's taken that are directed at
gaining control of theadministrative state, which is
part of the executive branch andhe's supposed to.
You know, he's the executiveoverseer and they've had so much
independence, they've beendoing so much on their own and
he's reestablishing, with thehelp of some court decisions,
the right to fire members ofthat branch.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Well, that, Chevron decision, so that you know the
Supreme Court, chevron decisionlast term and now.
This provides him more latitude, and his cabinet secretary's
more latitude, to pursue some ofthe internal reforms that are
required to bring theadministrative state.
I mean we talk about this allthe time it's sort of a de facto
fourth branch of government,but it's not supposed to be, and
(12:03):
this is something that the Dogeboys and the president are
addressing and his cabinetsecretaries too.
I mean some are very aggressive.
Lee Zeldin at EPA is veryaggressive.
He should be.
This is what he said we weregoing to do.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
This is what people voted for him to do, and this is
what he's doing yeah, makinggovernment employees work five
days a week, for instance.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Yeah, I mean the whole, like every time a
probationary federal employeeloses their job.
I mean it's a national storyand emails are system-wide
controversies.
You have to respond to an emailthat someone sent about what
you did or what you're doing orwhat you hope to do.
I mean I think of people in theprivate sector.
Look at the histrionics comingfrom the government sector over
(12:41):
some of this stuff and they'relike you know.
Yeah, I mean I don't likeresponding to my boss and doing
weekly reports or checking in orgiving my vision statement of
what I hope to accomplish thisquarter or this fiscal year
either, but I know there's apink slip on the other end of it
if I don't.
So I think it just furthercodifies into people's mind how
entitled and out of touch thispermanent bureaucracy in DC is.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Let's shift a little bit over to your profession in
the media.
I'm seeing encouraging signs ofchange that may impact the
legacy media eventually, but oneimportant change the president
made was opening up the pressbriefing and not just having the
legacy media there, but lettingpodcast hosts and conservative
(13:26):
press have more access to theWhite House.
And you have thoughts aboutthat.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
The media landscape has been changing for a long
time.
There are podcasts and onlineoutlets that have more consumers
than the legacy dailies, thanmost of the shows on CNN and
MSNBC, for that matter.
They completely had a sort ofoutsized influence.
I think it's great to introducenew voices into the press room,
to be able to ask the presssecretary questions, just to
give them the standing that saysbasically look, you know, some
(13:57):
of these podcasters andrepresentatives of new media
organizations are just as on theball or more have just as
incisive questions, are comingat these stories from different
angles.
So it sort of enriches theconversation and expands the
parameters of debate.
So I think that's excellent.
I think it's long overdue, andthe whole AP business too.
I mean you know there's noconstitutional right for you to
(14:18):
be a member of the Washingtonpress room, so I mean that again
is sort of this entitlementmentality that legacy media has
as well.
That I think you know nobody isrunning around going to die on
a hill over sort of AP's access.
You're a news organization,nobody's stopping you from being
a news organization, but youdon't get the privileges you
(14:38):
think you deserve codified byone administration to the next,
that's all.
So deal with it.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Well, particularly for those of us who live in the
Washington DC area, it wasrefreshing to have Jeff Bezos
announce that his paper in thefuture is going to be focused on
personal liberty and freemarkets.
The opinion editor there said Idon't want to do that and
resigned.
So he's doing a search now fora new opinion editor.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Yeah, what a tell.
That was David Shipley, who's aDC press corps reptile New
Republic, new York times.
I mean it's like we're going toorient this to free minds and
free markets.
I'm out, right.
Well, what does that tell youabout the groupthink and the DC
press corps?
I mean, come on, and it's notlike basis would say exclusively
, like you can't have theKeynesians write some piece
(15:22):
about how every dollargovernment spends as a positive
multiplier.
But he's just saying like we'regoing to orient this to not
only where some of the zeitgeistis, but maybe what some of my
views are like in terms of how Ibecame the second richest man
on the planet.
I mean, it just sort of makessense.
Oh and, by the way, the productthat you're putting out, I'm
underwriting at a loss.
So you know it's within mydiscretion.
(15:43):
If this is going to be abusiness, that it'd be a little
bit more successful.
The only thing I would say aboutBezos and that pivot, there's
two things.
One, it could just be, you know, sort of the rent seeker.
Taking this angle of rentseeking, like it may not be an
authentic sort of epiphany.
It's just like I need to betteralign with where the zeitgeist
is right now, including who's inthe White House and who
(16:05):
controls Congress.
And the other thing is I don'twant him or anybody to think I
have to align with the powersthat be and then realign if the
powers that be change justbecause they're the powers that
be, because then you don'treally have an independent press
and you don't have independentthought and you start to narrow
those parameters of debate.
As a free minds, free marketskind of guy, I want the debate
(16:27):
to be as expansive as possible.
There should be virtually nocensorship, except when speech
becomes behavior, and theSupreme Court's precedents are
very clear on this.
This is the only way you reallybattle test ideas.
I mean, you have to bepersuasive, you have to be able
to persuade people to your wayof thinking on something, and in
this country and the West ingeneral has gotten over the last
(16:48):
couple of generations prettyfar afield from that.
It's been a little scaryactually.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
We have a program at the Wall Street Journal, the
Joseph Rago Fellowship, and wehave three of our Rago fellows
who work there now full-time andtwo that are currently on
fellowships there.
Paul Gigo, the editor, whospoke at a dinner we had in New
York on Monday.
He mentioned in an editorialthere about the changes at the
Post.
He said it's great to have awingman and then he added that
(17:14):
you know, except no substitutes,we're the real deal at the Wall
Street Journal.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
But the Washington Post has a long way to go to get
to where the Wall StreetJournal is.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Yeah, the good news is their publisher there, Will
Lewis, came from the Wall StreetJournal and was Paul's boss
there, and so I'm hopeful thatit's real.
And I think the mistake JeffBezos made is when he bought the
paper, he said but I'm notgoing to have any involvement in
the editorial policy, it's allindependent.
And he may have just after awhile realized that you know, I
own this paper.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Well, I mean, it's actually an interesting dynamic
in legacy media generally,because we saw this happen in
Chicago at the Tribune, wherethe newsroom, which are full of,
like you know, medill, educatedcommunists in places like the
Chicago Tribune.
They just took over the paper.
I mean they, you know they gota guild and there's whatever
wall of separation they'resupposed to be there isn't, and
(18:01):
they just sort of browbeat theeditorial page people into, you
know, aligning with the anglesof their news reporting
storytelling probably moreaccurate.
So you lose not only thateditorial independence, you lose
any sort of their newsreporting storytelling probably
more accurate.
So you lose not only thateditorial independence, you lose
any sort of intellectualdiversity on those editorial
pages.
The Chicago Tribune that usedto feature the Mike Roykos and
(18:21):
the John Casses, I mean it'sindistinguishable from the
communist worker, and so maybeBezos learned a hard lesson.
You can't just turn a newspaperover to the newsroom and let
them dictate terms to theseother important departments
within the papers.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Now what's going on in Illinois?
We've read stories that a thirdof the counties or more there
want to secede and join Indiana.
Your former leader of yourhouse has just been convicted.
Mike Madigan, Our alum whoserved as minority leader in the
states, and Dan McConkie hasshared stories about the
difficulty of changing things,about the Democrats, all in
(18:57):
lockstep with Madigan.
Is there any hope for Illinois?
Because we know about Chicagoas well and that seems hopeless.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
You know, Chicago has been part of Illinois since the
beginning, so we can't justblame Chicago's existence there.
We have won races and we've hadstatewide office holders, while
Chicago has also been a part ofIllinois.
So there's a little bit of acrutch that Republicans use in
Illinois and other states thatare dominated by the other party
.
Look, I mean with respect toIndiana.
I've asked governors of Indianagoing back to Mitch Daniels to
(19:26):
please.
A third of the counties havepassed resolutions at the county
level to leave the state.
(19:47):
And now the Indiana statelegislature has engaged and said
yeah, we're open minded totaking you.
It's a crazy thing because itrequires the approval of both
the Illinois legislature and theIndiana legislature and
Congress to do that, to havecounties secede.
But it would make Indiana moreRepublican, which is something
that the dominant party thereprobably likes.
It would make Illinois moreleft, which is probably
something the incumbent.
So I mean it's a crazy thing,but right now it's in the
(20:11):
interest of the respectiveparties in the two states to do
it with Republicans in controlof Congress.
I mean, crazier things havehappened, but of course it's an
indictment.
I mean Illinois leads thenation out of migration for the
last decade, more so than WestVirginia, and, with all due
respect, illinois has more goingfor it than West Virginia, I
mean just even in terms of whereit's located and the natural
(20:31):
resources it has and so forth.
So it's just an indictment of abipartisan political class that
turned the state into a bigkleptocracy.
You know, brandon Johnson isnot the only one with a gift
closet in Illinois.
But you know, is there hope?
I would say there's hope inthis sense and you saw it a
little bit this past week withthe testimony from the sanctuary
(20:51):
city mayors Boston, new York,denver, of course, chicago and
sort of Eric Adams.
You know his like slow,methodical move away from some
of these policies in an electionyear Somewhere this is my
prediction some big blue city,which is basically every city
with more than 250,000 people inthis country, some big blue
(21:12):
city, or some big perceived deepblue state.
There's going to be a shock tothe system, deep blue state.
There's going to be a shock tothe system.
Somebody is going to win amayor's race in a place like New
York or Chicago in the nextcycle or two, or at the
gubernatorial level, in a statelike I don't know, maryland
maybe although I know theincumbent's somewhat popular or
(21:33):
Illinois, california, even youknow if Kamala's their nominee,
maybe Something's going tohappen because of what you're
hearing from those members ofthe Democrat Party that are
saying we have to pivot, we haveto worry more about classrooms
as opposed to bathrooms, whichyou heard Rahm Emanuel say this
week.
I don't want to talk about boysand girls sports anymore.
(21:55):
We have to recognize that bluecity governance is a catastrophe
from a public safetyperspective, from a tax burden
perspective and that's from aneconomic vitality perspective.
So somebody is going to shootthe gap in one of these big
cities or big states in the nextcycle or two and really send a
shockwave through the system.
Because until that happens, Istill think the dominant
(22:19):
perspective on the left is thatKamala lost because of racism
and misogyny.
We don't really have to changevery much.
I don't really want to changevery much.
That's where the critical massin that party is.
They're going to have to take abeating at the ballot box in a
place they don't expect, and Ithink that's going to happen.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
You ran for governor and I was curious about what
that experience was like andmaybe what lessons you learned
from that.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
I learned yeah, don't be a conservative reform guy
and run for governor in Illinois.
Basically, I had run campaignsfor a long time so I had a
pretty good idea of what runningwould look like and feel like
what I would like about it, whatI wouldn't, what would happen.
And you know it pretty muchheld to form.
You know, one of the thingsthat happens for people who
(23:05):
haven't run for office, which isalways interesting because it's
different for every candidate,but it's the same dynamic the
people you think are going to beheroes for you, some of them
just like disappear and donothing, and the people that you
didn't expect anything of areheroes.
So it's really interesting.
It's a very interestingsociological experiment to run
for public office, just in thenature of the relationships you
have with people and what youthink about those relationships
(23:28):
before becoming a candidate andwhat you think about them with
different people in differentways after.
So that was something that wasreally interesting.
But I think you run for officeif you have a point other than
wanting to wear sash or wantingto get a pension or wanting to
get status or something, if youreally have a policy point that
you want to drive as alegislator or an executive, and
(23:51):
that's why I ran.
I saw a party in my party inIllinois, the Republican Party,
as feckless, cowardly,ineffective, bordering on
irrelevant.
And this is only a couple ofcycles removed at the time from
having the governorship for thebetter part of three decades.
So it's amazing how quicklythings can crater when you lose
(24:12):
your way, and that's whathappened to the Republican Party
and I thought in 2010, this wasan opportunity Obama's midterm
elections, obamacare reallynegatively impacting his
popularity and the rise of theTea Party.
You sort of could see thisgathering storm, which did
arrive throughout most of thecountry.
But the thing about it wasinteresting is my hook when I
(24:32):
ran for governor was Illinoisisn't broken, it's fixed.
Because, what politicians alwayssay our politics is broken, the
state is broken, our federalgovernment is broken.
It's not broken, it's doingexactly what they set it up to
do.
It's like this is serving theirinterests very specifically.
So if you don't understand thatthe people in charge have the
(24:54):
system set up in a way thatbenefits them, and probably to
the exclusion of benefiting you,then you don't understand
what's happening and so youdon't understand what the
solution is.
And so I mean this was aboutthe same time Angelo Cotevilla
wrote his ruling class essaythat gained such traction is
because there was this thinghappening and there was more and
more of a realization that thefix was in.
(25:15):
So I was a little ahead of thelearning curve.
I'd like to think, and theIllinois electorate was well
behind the learning curve, stillis.
But I think that the time I ran,I had a point.
I had a point about my party, Ihad a point about the state of
Illinois conversation toreorient government at every
(25:38):
level away from centralization,to shrink the size of government
at every level and increase thesize of the citizen at every
level, and I wanted to be a partof it.
And you look around and you saylike, well, this guy has a
title, but I mean he's a doofus,so why should I defer to him?
And that was my attitude andthat's why I think we need to
have more people at thatattitude.
We need more people that don't,you know, use public office as
(26:00):
a stepping stone to the nextpublic office.
They can come from outside thesystem with different areas of
expertise and different areas ofsuccess and jump right in.
If anything, what you've seenover the last couple of decades
is you should not be intimidatedby the talent that is in public
office right now.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
I like to tell young people who want to get involved
in politics and run for officethat they should view that as a
means to an end, not the end inand of itself, and that
dovetails on what you just said.
We're recording this before alive audience and we have about
a dozen of our students here.
What advice would you offer toyoung people today who are eager
to make a difference in theworld and uncertain about what
(26:39):
the future holds?
Speaker 2 (26:41):
So what I would say to young people read, not just X
, I mean like read, read realbooks, like read, like real
reading.
Yeah, don't just consumepodcasts and Except this one.
Well, don't just don'texclusively yeah, not excluding
them but read the Western canons, read Russell Kirk and you read
Jeremy Bentham and you readBill Buckley.
(27:03):
I mean, it's such a simplething, but like, you have a base
of knowledge, because so muchof this opinion that Bandy's
about on social media is sort offact free.
It's echo chambery.
You know some of the words, butyou don't really know where
they come from.
You know some of the lyrics,but you sort of can't hear the
music.
You know sort of out of tone.
(27:24):
And the only way you get that,like for anything, you have to
know what you're talking about.
We have people and I'm talkingabout now in my realm, like in
conservative politics who havewritten more books than they've
read, and all you have to do is,like read one of their books.
You know, and I'm not going toname names because I want to get
no better, not, but it'sobvious and they're not really
(27:46):
advancing the flag from theirplatforms when they're doing
that.
We should be introducing youngpeople to all these great
thinkers, because if you startreading, it forces you to be
intellectually curious.
But you should beintellectually curious, you
should be aggressive, but thereshould be a knowledge base from
which you're operating.
And I don't just mean politicaltomes, I don't just mean
economists and philosophers, Imean the great you know.
(28:09):
I mean like read Brideshead'sRevisited right, read Evelyn
Waugh's Ouvra and other greatauthors.
Nathaniel Hawthorne,shakespeare, obviously
especially since he's beendrummed out of the colleges now
some kids probably never evenheard of him.
That's the only way to be areal thought leader.
Or if you want to be next levelthought leader, you may be able
to get a podcast, you may beable to get a show on a cable
news channel.
But I mean, if you really wantto be an impactful thought
leader and you want to beaggressive and you want people
(28:32):
to respect your opinion, thenyou need to be an originalist
and that requires intellectualcuriosity and putting the work
in.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Well, dan.
Thank you very much for beingwith us this afternoon.
Thanks for listening to theLiberty and Leadership Podcast
with Dan Proff.
Thank you for listening to theLiberty and Leadership Podcast.
If you have a comment orquestion, please drop us an
email at podcast at tfasorg, andbe sure to subscribe to the
show on your favorite podcastapp and leave a five-star review
(29:02):
.
Liberty and Leadership isproduced at Podville Media.
I'm your host, roger Ream, anduntil next time, show courage in
things, large and small.
Today we have a special episode of the Liberty
and Leadership podcast recordedlive at our TFAS annual
conference in Naples, florida.
In this conversation I sat downwith TFAS alumnus Dan Proft and
we discussed his career inradio, his time as a TFAS
student and his thoughts on thefirst months of the Trump
(00:21):
administration.
Stay tuned for more episodesfeaturing powerful conversations
with incredible speakers wholed sessions at our conference
in Naples.
Welcome to the Liberty andLeadership Podcast a
conversation with TFAS alumni,faculty and friends who are
making an impact.
(00:42):
Today.
I'm your host, roger Reed.
I'm so pleased today to haveDan Proft with us.
Dan is a radio talk show host onChicago's Morning Answer.
That's a morning drive timeshow and I've had the pleasure
of being on it with his co-host,amy Jacobson.
It's a great show.
You can get it in Chicago or onthe internet, and Dan is
(01:04):
someone I like to refer to as aposter child for TFAS because of
the success he's had in hiscareer.
He's run for governor ofIllinois, he earned his
bachelor's degree atNorthwestern University, went to
Chicago Loyola Law School andhe's truly an entrepreneur and a
great individual.
He attended our program in 1993.
But I thought I'd start, dan,with just a little bit of your
(01:26):
background.
I wondered first of all, how doyou end up getting into radio?
Speaker 2 (01:30):
I sort of fell into it.
I didn't do the comms programat TFAS, I did comparative and
political systems, and so Ithought when I was an undergrad
maybe I'd go work in DC, I'd gowork for the Cato Institute or
some other think tank.
I was sort of policy orientedand then my first gig out of
college was running alegislative race, and then I
worked at the state level inpolitics for a lot of years.
(01:51):
Before I ran for office Istarted doing like analysis work
.
I got introduced to a verypopular morning show in Chicago
called the Don Wayne Roma Show,which was on WLS, which is, of
course, like a flagship stationin the Midwest.
They had their program morningdrive there for 30 years, and so
I started doing analyst workand some other fun little bits
with them and it sort of was onething that led to the other and
(02:14):
then I did weekly commentariesfor them and then I started
doing some guest hosting fillingin.
And then when I ran for officeafter I lost, the program
director at WLS wanted to usethe weekends to build out a farm
team for future talent and sohe was trying different
combinations and he put me onSaturdays with a guy who was a
longtime broadcaster, actuallysports broadcaster in Chicago,
(02:37):
named Bruce Wolf, who was on theFox Chicago station doing
sports, and he liked thecombination and so we went from
Saturdays to Saturdays andSundays and then, before there
was a change in ownership at WLS, they didn't like the guy that
they had nine to 11 midday sothey blew him out of his
contract and put us in.
We did that for two years andthen a couple years into it,
after we had been doing themidday for two years, don Wade
(02:59):
unfortunately got sick.
He got brain cancer, so we werefilling in and then ultimately
they decided Don and Roma, theywere married, they were a couple
, they decided they were goingto retire and so they put us
into the morning drive slot.
We did that for another twoyears and there was an
opportunity to go to AM560,which is the Salem station in
Chicago.
Salem is the company thatsyndicates like Dennis, prager
(03:20):
and Hannity and others, and so Itook that opportunity because
it just gave me more of a blankslate and more control, and I've
been there for going on adecade.
So it's one of those thingslike I'm sure everybody
experiences in life you thoughtyou were going to do one thing,
maybe in a particular sector,and you end up in that sector,
but doing something verydifferent than you envision, and
(03:41):
I just took it as going throughdoors that opened and just I
was having fun with it.
So just sort of seeing where wego.
And it's been almost 15 yearsnow.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
I remember a number of years ago we met for coffee
in Chicago and you told me alittle bit about your story
growing up and having beenadopted.
Did you remind all of us?
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Yeah, so I mean I was born April 29th 1972, and I was
adopted when I was three daysold, and this was something I
would talk about a lot inpro-life circles.
So I was adopted eight monthsbefore the Roe v Wade decision,
and so, you know, had thedecision come a little bit
earlier, who knows?
I don't know what my birthmother would have done, and then
(04:24):
the world would havepotentially been deprived of me,
and that's obviously a world noone wants to live in.
So that informed my view too.
I mean, it's informed by myfaith, but it's also just
informed from just the thinkingabout that very personal level
and the practicality of it andthen saying, well, you know,
gosh, the idea that we're takingaway these opportunities for
who knows what kind of peoplethat can make, who knows what
(04:46):
kind of contributions to oursociety and our country, it just
was something that always stuckwith me growing up is like, not
only the loving decision thatmy birth mother made, but what
my parents did and how theysacrificed for me, and just how
both protecting unborn life aswell as adoption itself are such
loving things to do.
(05:07):
And that's, I think, theposition most of us want to be
on in society is the position oflove.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
I also wanted to ask you maybe one more question
about your KFAS experience.
You took two courses while youwere in Washington, had an
internship Impactful on yourlife.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
It was.
I mean, first of all, it's likeyou know, there's certain
academics, like coaches you meetover the course of your life,
where you say like that wasreally something, that was an
experience to be with thatprofessor or teacher for a
semester or a year.
And George, george Vixens yeah,george was one of those guys
you know and I had started toget into a couple of years early
, free market economists and theAustrian School of Economics
(05:47):
and it was like he jumped offthe pages of a von Mises book
and he was right in front of theclass at Georgetown teaching us
, and so he was cool because hewas one of those guys, like
Milton Friedman, who madeeconomics very accessible and
very tangible and veryinteresting.
I mean, I was interested in it,but it wasn't just sort of
theoretical, there was a lot ofapplication of the theory.
(06:08):
That, I think, brought out moreof the importance and the
dynamism of that field of study.
So that, and then you know, andI hadn't spent any time in DC,
you know, as a kid who's stillan undergrad, and so to spend
six weeks in DC, meet all thepeople from around the country,
different schools, many of whomI kept in touch with for a long
(06:29):
time a couple I still do now.
It was just a cool experiencebecause obviously there's a lot
of bright people that pursuedprofessions in a multitude of
disciplines and it was just alot to take in and a lot of
experience in a relatively shortamount of time.
And, interestingly, after theTFAS program that summer I went
to the World LibertarianConvention in Tallinn, estonia.
So then it was like immediateapplication of some of what we
(06:52):
had talked about in thecomparative political and
economic systems and then seeingit in real time, you know, in a
place like Estonia that wasfour years removed from the wall
falling.
Yeah, yeah, it was cool.
The timing of it worked out,the experience was great and it
was definitely formative.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Yeah, Estonia is a fascinating place.
We have a scholarship programthat brings an Estonian to our
program every summer from there,and I've been over there to
help establish it.
It's a wonderful place.
The politics are reallyinteresting.
Yeah, and George Vixens wasfrom Latvia.
He had that experience to sharewith students.
Well, let's fast forward tocurrent events.
What are your initialobservations after six weeks?
(07:29):
Is it of the Trumpadministration kind of top line
thoughts and observations?
Speaker 2 (07:34):
It's been pretty fun, I got to say I've been smiling
a lot more during morning drivethan I have the previous four
years.
I mean, I can't say I'mterribly surprised about much,
maybe a little bit about some ofthe expressions that sort of
his Monroe Doctrine 2.0 havetaken.
I didn't maybe expect he wouldbe as aggressive, with Greenland
(07:54):
and the Panama Canal out of thegate as he has been A little
bit of a surprise.
But generally speaking, I'm notsurprised because I mean he's
like a Seth Rainer golf course.
Everything's right out in frontof you the stuff that he says
he's going to do during acampaign.
That's what he does, or he setsout to do.
In fact, rusty Reno, who's theeditor of First Things, who
wasn't necessarily a Trump fan,particularly during his first
(08:17):
term, but he said you know it'sinteresting, I don't know that
Trump is the best person that'sever been president of the
United States, just in terms ofa character perspective.
But by the measure of someone'scharacter, particularly a
politician, do you do or attemptto do exactly what you said you
were going to do.
He is the most honest presidentof my lifetime by that standard
(08:39):
and that's a pretty goodstandard for politicians across
the board and that's only beenamplified in 2.0.
After his exile for four yearsand all that fell him and many
of his supporters, I'm notreally surprised by anything.
I think he is consistent withwhat he did largely in his first
term.
He is doing, or attempting todo, the very things that he said
(09:01):
he would do as a candidate,which is what we should expect,
and maybe he's doing it a littlebit faster pace this go around
as opposed to his first term,because he knows he's on a clock
.
But it's not surprising.
But it is enjoyable to see notjust that he is doing what he
said he would do, but also thathe is bringing a reckoning.
That is necessary, that isoverdue, sort of this common
(09:24):
sense counter-revolution that hetouched upon during his remarks
at that joint session ofCongress.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Do you worry at all that by doing so much through
executive orders and theexecutive branch that needs to
be done because we have so muchred ink and so much
over-regulation, but that eitherit'll be too easily undone in
four years or that he's bringingtoo much power into the
executive branch?
Speaker 2 (09:52):
I don't know that.
There's an example where I meanthere's things he's suggested
you know, I want to endbirthright citizenship but he
hasn't actually said birthrightcitizenship is over, because
that's beyond his power, andthis is something that confuses
the left.
You can propose something togenerate a conversation, focus
people's attention, but he's notsaying for example, like a past
(10:13):
president said, the SupremeCourt tried to stop me, but they
didn't stop me, Joe Bidentalking about student loan debt
forgiveness.
So he hasn't done that.
So I don't think there's aconcentration.
I think there's areestablishment of the executive
branch vis-a-vis the judicialbranch and, to some extent, the
legislative branch, orrebalancing of these co-equal
branches of power.
(10:33):
I would say, though, to yourpoint about it can't just be
executive orders.
You know, House and SenateRepublicans are going to have to
codify a lot of this into lawfor it to have a staying effect.
But one of the things thatTrump has done by pushing as
hard as he had with executiveorders, is he's putting pressure
on members of Congress,particularly in the House, to
live up to theirresponsibilities, both in terms
(10:53):
of spend as well as in terms ofoversight that they maybe
haven't.
It's easy to speechify.
It's tough to do the detailedwork of lawmaking, and now
there's pressure on thelegislative branch to do just
that.
So I don't think there's beenoverreaches that are anything
more than rhetorical at thispoint.
But I do agree that Congress isgoing to need to statuify some
(11:16):
of what has been done byexecutive order.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Yeah, one thing I really appreciate is the
executive orders and the actionshe's taken that are directed at
gaining control of theadministrative state, which is
part of the executive branch andhe's supposed to.
You know, he's the executiveoverseer and they've had so much
independence, they've beendoing so much on their own and
he's reestablishing, with thehelp of some court decisions,
the right to fire members ofthat branch.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Well, that, Chevron decision, so that you know the
Supreme Court, chevron decisionlast term and now.
This provides him more latitude, and his cabinet secretary's
more latitude, to pursue some ofthe internal reforms that are
required to bring theadministrative state.
I mean we talk about this allthe time it's sort of a de facto
fourth branch of government,but it's not supposed to be, and
(12:03):
this is something that the Dogeboys and the president are
addressing and his cabinetsecretaries too.
I mean some are very aggressive.
Lee Zeldin at EPA is veryaggressive.
He should be.
This is what he said we weregoing to do.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
This is what people voted for him to do, and this is
what he's doing yeah, makinggovernment employees work five
days a week, for instance.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Yeah, I mean the whole, like every time a
probationary federal employeeloses their job.
I mean it's a national storyand emails are system-wide
controversies.
You have to respond to an emailthat someone sent about what
you did or what you're doing orwhat you hope to do.
I mean I think of people in theprivate sector.
Look at the histrionics comingfrom the government sector over
(12:41):
some of this stuff and they'relike you know.
Yeah, I mean I don't likeresponding to my boss and doing
weekly reports or checking in orgiving my vision statement of
what I hope to accomplish thisquarter or this fiscal year
either, but I know there's apink slip on the other end of it
if I don't.
So I think it just furthercodifies into people's mind how
entitled and out of touch thispermanent bureaucracy in DC is.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Let's shift a little bit over to your profession in
the media.
I'm seeing encouraging signs ofchange that may impact the
legacy media eventually, but oneimportant change the president
made was opening up the pressbriefing and not just having the
legacy media there, but lettingpodcast hosts and conservative
(13:26):
press have more access to theWhite House.
And you have thoughts aboutthat.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
The media landscape has been changing for a long
time.
There are podcasts and onlineoutlets that have more consumers
than the legacy dailies, thanmost of the shows on CNN and
MSNBC, for that matter.
They completely had a sort ofoutsized influence.
I think it's great to introducenew voices into the press room,
to be able to ask the presssecretary questions, just to
give them the standing that saysbasically look, you know, some
(13:57):
of these podcasters andrepresentatives of new media
organizations are just as on theball or more have just as
incisive questions, are comingat these stories from different
angles.
So it sort of enriches theconversation and expands the
parameters of debate.
So I think that's excellent.
I think it's long overdue, andthe whole AP business too.
I mean you know there's noconstitutional right for you to
(14:18):
be a member of the Washingtonpress room, so I mean that again
is sort of this entitlementmentality that legacy media has
as well.
That I think you know nobody isrunning around going to die on
a hill over sort of AP's access.
You're a news organization,nobody's stopping you from being
a news organization, but youdon't get the privileges you
(14:38):
think you deserve codified byone administration to the next,
that's all.
So deal with it.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Well, particularly for those of us who live in the
Washington DC area, it wasrefreshing to have Jeff Bezos
announce that his paper in thefuture is going to be focused on
personal liberty and freemarkets.
The opinion editor there said Idon't want to do that and
resigned.
So he's doing a search now fora new opinion editor.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Yeah, what a tell.
That was David Shipley, who's aDC press corps reptile New
Republic, new York times.
I mean it's like we're going toorient this to free minds and
free markets.
I'm out, right.
Well, what does that tell youabout the groupthink and the DC
press corps?
I mean, come on, and it's notlike basis would say exclusively
, like you can't have theKeynesians write some piece
(15:22):
about how every dollargovernment spends as a positive
multiplier.
But he's just saying like we'regoing to orient this to not
only where some of the zeitgeistis, but maybe what some of my
views are like in terms of how Ibecame the second richest man
on the planet.
I mean, it just sort of makessense.
Oh and, by the way, the productthat you're putting out, I'm
underwriting at a loss.
So you know it's within mydiscretion.
(15:43):
If this is going to be abusiness, that it'd be a little
bit more successful.
The only thing I would say aboutBezos and that pivot, there's
two things.
One, it could just be, you know, sort of the rent seeker.
Taking this angle of rentseeking, like it may not be an
authentic sort of epiphany.
It's just like I need to betteralign with where the zeitgeist
is right now, including who's inthe White House and who
(16:05):
controls Congress.
And the other thing is I don'twant him or anybody to think I
have to align with the powersthat be and then realign if the
powers that be change justbecause they're the powers that
be, because then you don'treally have an independent press
and you don't have independentthought and you start to narrow
those parameters of debate.
As a free minds, free marketskind of guy, I want the debate
(16:27):
to be as expansive as possible.
There should be virtually nocensorship, except when speech
becomes behavior, and theSupreme Court's precedents are
very clear on this.
This is the only way you reallybattle test ideas.
I mean, you have to bepersuasive, you have to be able
to persuade people to your wayof thinking on something, and in
this country and the West ingeneral has gotten over the last
(16:48):
couple of generations prettyfar afield from that.
It's been a little scaryactually.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
We have a program at the Wall Street Journal, the
Joseph Rago Fellowship, and wehave three of our Rago fellows
who work there now full-time andtwo that are currently on
fellowships there.
Paul Gigo, the editor, whospoke at a dinner we had in New
York on Monday.
He mentioned in an editorialthere about the changes at the
Post.
He said it's great to have awingman and then he added that
(17:14):
you know, except no substitutes,we're the real deal at the Wall
Street Journal.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
But the Washington Post has a long way to go to get
to where the Wall StreetJournal is.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Yeah, the good news is their publisher there, Will
Lewis, came from the Wall StreetJournal and was Paul's boss
there, and so I'm hopeful thatit's real.
And I think the mistake JeffBezos made is when he bought the
paper, he said but I'm notgoing to have any involvement in
the editorial policy, it's allindependent.
And he may have just after awhile realized that you know, I
own this paper.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Well, I mean, it's actually an interesting dynamic
in legacy media generally,because we saw this happen in
Chicago at the Tribune, wherethe newsroom, which are full of,
like you know, medill, educatedcommunists in places like the
Chicago Tribune.
They just took over the paper.
I mean they, you know they gota guild and there's whatever
wall of separation they'resupposed to be there isn't, and
(18:01):
they just sort of browbeat theeditorial page people into, you
know, aligning with the anglesof their news reporting
storytelling probably moreaccurate.
So you lose not only thateditorial independence, you lose
any sort of their newsreporting storytelling probably
more accurate.
So you lose not only thateditorial independence, you lose
any sort of intellectualdiversity on those editorial
pages.
The Chicago Tribune that usedto feature the Mike Roykos and
(18:21):
the John Casses, I mean it'sindistinguishable from the
communist worker, and so maybeBezos learned a hard lesson.
You can't just turn a newspaperover to the newsroom and let
them dictate terms to theseother important departments
within the papers.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Now what's going on in Illinois?
We've read stories that a thirdof the counties or more there
want to secede and join Indiana.
Your former leader of yourhouse has just been convicted.
Mike Madigan, Our alum whoserved as minority leader in the
states, and Dan McConkie hasshared stories about the
difficulty of changing things,about the Democrats, all in
(18:57):
lockstep with Madigan.
Is there any hope for Illinois?
Because we know about Chicagoas well and that seems hopeless.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
You know, Chicago has been part of Illinois since the
beginning, so we can't justblame Chicago's existence there.
We have won races and we've hadstatewide office holders, while
Chicago has also been a part ofIllinois.
So there's a little bit of acrutch that Republicans use in
Illinois and other states thatare dominated by the other party
.
Look, I mean with respect toIndiana.
I've asked governors of Indianagoing back to Mitch Daniels to
(19:26):
please.
A third of the counties havepassed resolutions at the county
level to leave the state.
(19:47):
And now the Indiana statelegislature has engaged and said
yeah, we're open minded totaking you.
It's a crazy thing because itrequires the approval of both
the Illinois legislature and theIndiana legislature and
Congress to do that, to havecounties secede.
But it would make Indiana moreRepublican, which is something
that the dominant party thereprobably likes.
It would make Illinois moreleft, which is probably
something the incumbent.
So I mean it's a crazy thing,but right now it's in the
(20:11):
interest of the respectiveparties in the two states to do
it with Republicans in controlof Congress.
I mean, crazier things havehappened, but of course it's an
indictment.
I mean Illinois leads thenation out of migration for the
last decade, more so than WestVirginia, and, with all due
respect, illinois has more goingfor it than West Virginia, I
mean just even in terms of whereit's located and the natural
(20:31):
resources it has and so forth.
So it's just an indictment of abipartisan political class that
turned the state into a bigkleptocracy.
You know, brandon Johnson isnot the only one with a gift
closet in Illinois.
But you know, is there hope?
I would say there's hope inthis sense and you saw it a
little bit this past week withthe testimony from the sanctuary
(20:51):
city mayors Boston, new York,denver, of course, chicago and
sort of Eric Adams.
You know his like slow,methodical move away from some
of these policies in an electionyear Somewhere this is my
prediction some big blue city,which is basically every city
with more than 250,000 people inthis country, some big blue
(21:12):
city, or some big perceived deepblue state.
There's going to be a shock tothe system, deep blue state.
There's going to be a shock tothe system.
Somebody is going to win amayor's race in a place like New
York or Chicago in the nextcycle or two, or at the
gubernatorial level, in a statelike I don't know, maryland
maybe although I know theincumbent's somewhat popular or
(21:33):
Illinois, california, even youknow if Kamala's their nominee,
maybe Something's going tohappen because of what you're
hearing from those members ofthe Democrat Party that are
saying we have to pivot, we haveto worry more about classrooms
as opposed to bathrooms, whichyou heard Rahm Emanuel say this
week.
I don't want to talk about boysand girls sports anymore.
(21:55):
We have to recognize that bluecity governance is a catastrophe
from a public safetyperspective, from a tax burden
perspective and that's from aneconomic vitality perspective.
So somebody is going to shootthe gap in one of these big
cities or big states in the nextcycle or two and really send a
shockwave through the system.
Because until that happens, Istill think the dominant
(22:19):
perspective on the left is thatKamala lost because of racism
and misogyny.
We don't really have to changevery much.
I don't really want to changevery much.
That's where the critical massin that party is.
They're going to have to take abeating at the ballot box in a
place they don't expect, and Ithink that's going to happen.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
You ran for governor and I was curious about what
that experience was like andmaybe what lessons you learned
from that.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
I learned yeah, don't be a conservative reform guy
and run for governor in Illinois.
Basically, I had run campaignsfor a long time so I had a
pretty good idea of what runningwould look like and feel like
what I would like about it, whatI wouldn't, what would happen.
And you know it pretty muchheld to form.
You know, one of the thingsthat happens for people who
(23:05):
haven't run for office, which isalways interesting because it's
different for every candidate,but it's the same dynamic the
people you think are going to beheroes for you, some of them
just like disappear and donothing, and the people that you
didn't expect anything of areheroes.
So it's really interesting.
It's a very interestingsociological experiment to run
for public office, just in thenature of the relationships you
have with people and what youthink about those relationships
(23:28):
before becoming a candidate andwhat you think about them with
different people in differentways after.
So that was something that wasreally interesting.
But I think you run for officeif you have a point other than
wanting to wear sash or wantingto get a pension or wanting to
get status or something, if youreally have a policy point that
you want to drive as alegislator or an executive, and
(23:51):
that's why I ran.
I saw a party in my party inIllinois, the Republican Party,
as feckless, cowardly,ineffective, bordering on
irrelevant.
And this is only a couple ofcycles removed at the time from
having the governorship for thebetter part of three decades.
So it's amazing how quicklythings can crater when you lose
(24:12):
your way, and that's whathappened to the Republican Party
and I thought in 2010, this wasan opportunity Obama's midterm
elections, obamacare reallynegatively impacting his
popularity and the rise of theTea Party.
You sort of could see thisgathering storm, which did
arrive throughout most of thecountry.
But the thing about it wasinteresting is my hook when I
(24:32):
ran for governor was Illinoisisn't broken, it's fixed.
Because, what politicians alwayssay our politics is broken, the
state is broken, our federalgovernment is broken.
It's not broken, it's doingexactly what they set it up to
do.
It's like this is serving theirinterests very specifically.
So if you don't understand thatthe people in charge have the
(24:54):
system set up in a way thatbenefits them, and probably to
the exclusion of benefiting you,then you don't understand
what's happening and so youdon't understand what the
solution is.
And so I mean this was aboutthe same time Angelo Cotevilla
wrote his ruling class essaythat gained such traction is
because there was this thinghappening and there was more and
more of a realization that thefix was in.
(25:15):
So I was a little ahead of thelearning curve.
I'd like to think, and theIllinois electorate was well
behind the learning curve, stillis.
But I think that the time I ran,I had a point.
I had a point about my party, Ihad a point about the state of
Illinois conversation toreorient government at every
(25:38):
level away from centralization,to shrink the size of government
at every level and increase thesize of the citizen at every
level, and I wanted to be a partof it.
And you look around and you saylike, well, this guy has a
title, but I mean he's a doofus,so why should I defer to him?
And that was my attitude andthat's why I think we need to
have more people at thatattitude.
We need more people that don't,you know, use public office as
(26:00):
a stepping stone to the nextpublic office.
They can come from outside thesystem with different areas of
expertise and different areas ofsuccess and jump right in.
If anything, what you've seenover the last couple of decades
is you should not be intimidatedby the talent that is in public
office right now.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
I like to tell young people who want to get involved
in politics and run for officethat they should view that as a
means to an end, not the end inand of itself, and that
dovetails on what you just said.
We're recording this before alive audience and we have about
a dozen of our students here.
What advice would you offer toyoung people today who are eager
to make a difference in theworld and uncertain about what
(26:39):
the future holds?
Speaker 2 (26:41):
So what I would say to young people read, not just X
, I mean like read, read realbooks, like read, like real
reading.
Yeah, don't just consumepodcasts and Except this one.
Well, don't just don'texclusively yeah, not excluding
them but read the Western canons, read Russell Kirk and you read
Jeremy Bentham and you readBill Buckley.
(27:03):
I mean, it's such a simplething, but like, you have a base
of knowledge, because so muchof this opinion that Bandy's
about on social media is sort offact free.
It's echo chambery.
You know some of the words, butyou don't really know where
they come from.
You know some of the lyrics,but you sort of can't hear the
music.
You know sort of out of tone.
(27:24):
And the only way you get that,like for anything, you have to
know what you're talking about.
We have people and I'm talkingabout now in my realm, like in
conservative politics who havewritten more books than they've
read, and all you have to do is,like read one of their books.
You know, and I'm not going toname names because I want to get
no better, not, but it'sobvious and they're not really
(27:46):
advancing the flag from theirplatforms when they're doing
that.
We should be introducing youngpeople to all these great
thinkers, because if you startreading, it forces you to be
intellectually curious.
But you should beintellectually curious, you
should be aggressive, but thereshould be a knowledge base from
which you're operating.
And I don't just mean politicaltomes, I don't just mean
economists and philosophers, Imean the great you know.
(28:09):
I mean like read Brideshead'sRevisited right, read Evelyn
Waugh's Ouvra and other greatauthors.
Nathaniel Hawthorne,shakespeare, obviously
especially since he's beendrummed out of the colleges now
some kids probably never evenheard of him.
That's the only way to be areal thought leader.
Or if you want to be next levelthought leader, you may be able
to get a podcast, you may beable to get a show on a cable
news channel.
But I mean, if you really wantto be an impactful thought
leader and you want to beaggressive and you want people
(28:32):
to respect your opinion, thenyou need to be an originalist
and that requires intellectualcuriosity and putting the work
in.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Well, dan.
Thank you very much for beingwith us this afternoon.
Thanks for listening to theLiberty and Leadership Podcast
with Dan Proff.
Thank you for listening to theLiberty and Leadership Podcast.
If you have a comment orquestion, please drop us an
email at podcast at tfasorg, andbe sure to subscribe to the
show on your favorite podcastapp and leave a five-star review
(29:02):
.
Liberty and Leadership isproduced at Podville Media.
I'm your host, roger Ream, anduntil next time, show courage in
things, large and small.
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