Join the Hoover Book Club for engaging discussions with leading authors on the hottest policy issues of the day. Hoover scholars explore the latest books that delve into some of the most vexing policy issues facing the United States and the world. Find out what makes these authors tick and how they think we should approach our most difficult challenges.
In our latest installment, watch a discussion between Bill Whalen, the Virginia Hobbs Carpenter Distinguished Policy Fellow in Journalism and Morris P. Fiorina, a senior fellow and author of the recently released Hoover Institution Press book Who Governs? Emergency Powers in the Time of COVID on Tuesday, March 7, 2023 at 10:00 am PT/ 1:00pm ET.
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>> Bill Whalen (00:07):
Hello, I'm Bill Whelan,
I'm the Hoover Institution's VirginiaHobbes Carpenter distinguished policy
fellow in journalism.
I'd like to welcome you backto the Hoover Book Club,
where we bring Hoover fellows and friendstogether to discuss their latest writings.
Our guest today is Morris Fiorina, MorrisFiorina, or Mo Fiorina to us, friends,
is a senior fellow atthe Hoover Institution and
the Wendt family professor of politicalscience at Stanford University.
(00:27):
His research focuses on elections andpublic opinion,
with particular attention to the qualityof representation, that is, how well
the positions of elected officialsreflect the preferences of the public.
He joins us today to discussa new book he's edited,
it's titled who governs emergencypowers in the time of COVID, Mo,
congratulations on the book, andthanks for joining the book club today.
>> Morris Fiorina (00:46):
Thank you, Bill, happy to be here.
>> Bill Whalen (00:48):
Well, thank you for joining us again, so
let's talk about the book,and let's begin this way.
This book is a departure for you,
I'm not gonna say how manyyears you've been teaching.
I think we can talk in groups of decades,more so than years, my friend.
But this is a departure for you, thisis not something you have done, is it?
>> Morris Fiorina (01:05):
That's absolutely right, and I will speak in terms of years.
I've been a professor for 51 years, andthis is something that has never looked
into before, it's very differentfrom anything I've done before.
>> Bill Whalen (01:17):
Okay, and let's describe exactly what the book is,
I would point out to thosewho haven't read it yet.
If you want to read about the pros andcons of various COVID policies, lockdowns,
vaccines, the merits of governmentspending, this is not the book for you.
This is not, go check out Scott Atlas orJay Bhattachary or Hoover colleagues who
go down that line and they talkabout the pros and cons of policies.
(01:38):
What Mo has done is he's brought togetherpolitical scientists and researchers and
legal scholars to discuss what COVIDpolicies have met in terms of governing,
and Mo, what sparked the idea forthis book?
>> Morris Fiorina (01:49):
What sparked it was that if you go back almost three years to
the day, I believe was March 16,three years ago.
>> Bill Whalen (01:55):
Yep.
>> Morris Fiorina (01:56):
It's a normal day at the office, and
then suddenly the word comes throughfrom Stanford, shut down your computers,
close up your offices, and go home.
And there was some milling around inthe halls, and so there's some joking.
Well, surely Hoover fellows are essentialworkers, they couldn't really mean we
should go home, but in fact, we were told,yes, you should all go home.
(02:17):
And over the next couple of days,as I just observed what was going on,
that the local economy hadbeen totally shut down,
constitutional rights such as assembly andfreedom of religion had been suspended.
And I thought this was all pretty amazing,and this had all been done under
(02:38):
the authority of county officialswho were appointed, not elected.
And their actions were authorizedby pre existing statutes and
constitutional provisionsgiving them this authority.
So I sat down, I wrote an email to Condy,our director, and just noted
that there were just real implicationshere for democratic governance,
(02:59):
which is one of the three pillars onwhich the Hoover institution stands.
And somebody ought to be on this.
Now, anybody who knows me knows whenI write something like that, I mean,
somebody else at Hoover ought to be onthis because I was born without any kind
of organizational genes whatsoever.
But Hannity didn't know that, and she justwrote back and said, you're right, Mo,
(03:20):
why don't you get on it andwe'll support you?
And I didn't wanna disappoint the boss, soeven though I've never done anything like
this study, I thought,okay, I'll take a look.
And the first thing an academic does,obviously, is go get the data.
So I asked around,I wanted to find a website or
a big reference book about allthese state emergency powers.
And I learned fairly quickly there wasn'tany such thing, and at that point,
(03:44):
I thought, well,this project's not gonna go anywhere, and
here's where just a fortunateaccident made the project possible.
I live in Portola Valley,which is in San Mateo county, and
our restrictions were just notquite as severe as most of our,
as in Santa Clara county,where most of our colleagues live.
And so I would invite colleagues to comeup and go for walks in the countryside and
(04:06):
sit on our deck and have wine and cheese,all socially distanced, of course, but
this is how we kept in touch fora better part of a year.
And one day I was walking with Bruce Kane,who is the director of the Lane center for
the Study of the American west.
And I mentioned, he asked me what Iwas doing, and I mentioned, well,
I'd started to do this, butit wasn't going anywhere.
There was just no data, andBruce said, well, wait a minute,
(04:28):
he said he had already hired interns.
His center had hired interns whom theynormally put in state agencies, and
now everything was remote.
So he was committed to support thesestudents for the summer and didn't have
anything to do with anything for themto do, and he said, you can have them.
And so here was a subsidy fromanother unit of Stanford to the Hoover
institution.
I have a graduate research assistant, wewere working on gun control at the time,
(04:53):
and so we pivoted, and my assistant puttogether this team of undergraduates who
began the arduous task of readingall the state constitutions.
And then we learned quickly that mostof the provisions are in statutes,
they're enabling statutes,not constitutions.
So tracking down andreading all the statutes and
putting the together a database.
So you wanna know, and this is up on theHoover website now, if you wanna know what
(05:18):
Arkansas can do or what California can do,etc, then we can tell you.
And so we, at that point,I started looking around for other people.
I felt at times like, you've seen the oldmagnificent seven movie with Yul brynner,
goes around picking up other gunfighters,doesn't have anything to pay them with,
doesn't anything to offerhe just picks them.
(05:38):
I had a magnificent nine that I justapproached people who I'd heard about or
read about, andas would you do a paper on this subject.
And this group of fine scholars, in somecases, graduate students, in other cases,
fine scholars, andyounger scholars, older scholars.
They just contributed a reallynice set of essays, I think,
which really cover the ground,everything from the historical and
(06:01):
philosophical background of emergencypowers to how they were actually
implemented in states like Texas andCalifornia.
I approached at one point we didn'thave any lawyers, and so I approached
again after asking around the Brennancenter at NYU, and the director there,
Lisa Gottwine, was really just above andbeyond the call of duty.
(06:21):
She gave us a advanced law studentto keep track of all the court
cases arising from the exerciseof emergency powers.
And Victoria Ochev just put together areally nice essay, and again, a database,
if you wanna know, all the court cases andwhat they were about, this,
too, was up on the Hoover website.
And so in the end,I think this book is a starting point,
(06:43):
that the large part of the emergencyis running its course.
But surely there will beothers in the future, and
there are a lot of questions are goingto be asked now about what we did and
who should have done it and so forth,and was it right in a democracy?
And so I think in all kinds of publicpolicy courses, law school courses,
political science courses, etc.
(07:05):
And just for the concerned layperson, thisbook sort of lays on a lot of the issues
and could start a conversation thatI think we really need to have.
>> Bill Whalen (07:14):
It would also say, for the layperson out there, it's just very easy
to read, these essays are just very, verywell spelled out, Mo, they're not thick.
They're not written forpeople with an IQ of 180 or higher,
it's very easy to digest.
So at the heart of this book, Mo, is thequestion of who has legitimate authority
to take action duringperiods of emergency.
(07:34):
And I would note, you began by sayingthat California is approaching its three
year anniversary of the lockdown.
This debate continues eventhough California ended its
state of emergency forCOVID at the end of February.
We have a colleague, Michael McConnell,we have colleagues, John Kogan and
John Taylor.
They filed an amicus brief and two casesbefore the Supreme Court right now, Mo.
(07:55):
Which have to do with what the Bidenadministration's using, justifying.
Student loan forgiveness last yearby tapping into the Heroes act.
The Heroes act wasa product of the 911 era,
which allows the secretary of educationto cancel student loan repayments during,
quote, a war or other militaryoperation or national emergency.
(08:15):
And so what McConnell andKogan and Taylor are saying,
is this really a proper use ofemergency powers, if you will?
So this question is gonnacontinue with this.
Even though we're getting through Coviditself, even though we're getting through
these various state emergencies,federal emergencies,
we're still going to be wrestlingwith this issue about who exactly
has power during times of emergency forthe foreseeable future, I think.
>> Morris Fiorina (08:35):
Yes, I think you're absolutely right.
>> Bill Whalen (08:37):
Okay, so let's get into the book itself Mo.
So it's divided into three parts.
One, state emergency powers, two,emergency powers in practice, three,
response to the exerciseof emergency powers.
How did you decide those three topics?
>> Morris Fiorina (08:52):
I think it's pretty natural, really, that, as I said,
my inclination as an academic is,first, what's the lay of the land?
What did the data actually show?
And so the first several chaptersjust fell into place naturally.
And also my friend John Fairjohn,who contributed a legal chapter.
And then we heard about, we knew DD Kuowas doing a study of California.
(09:15):
And we have a Hoover fellow, David Liao,who's headquartered in Texas.
And so it's pretty natural to sortof contrast a deep blue state and
a deep red, not so much a deep red state,but a red state, clearly,
on how they approached the subject.
And then there was obviously a lot ofpublicity about public opinion and
again, a lot of maybe not quiteas much about court cases, but
(09:36):
clearly a great deal washappening in the judicial system.
And it's actually very interesting.
I think one of the things that comesout of the chapter on the courts is,
and maybe I'm getting ahead ofmyself here on too much specificity,
but we often hear criticismstoday about activist judges.
(09:56):
And the judges are not just interpreting,they're making the law.
Well, here was almost the exact oppositesituation where increasingly the judges,
the judiciary, began to rein inadministrators, that they began to
question whether administratorsactually had the authority to act,
to do the things they were doing.
Was there real, was real evidence?
(10:19):
Los Angeles judge sort of led the way,saying, I want to see the evidence for
what you're doing has any impact.
And like Victoria in the essay, sort ofbegins to call for strict scrutiny, that
these are really basically life and deathpowers are being exercised by officials.
And the judges really ought to treatthem in the same way as they treat
fundamental questions of free speech,free expression and so forth.
(10:42):
And not just the rational basis,does the administrator,
does the bureaucracy havesort of a rational basis.
But in fact, really, given theimplications for personal liberties and
so forth, judges should be exercisinga more, how much more strict
scrutiny of administrative decisions,bureaucratic decisions.
>> Bill Whalen (11:03):
Right, now you co authored an essay with Cameron Dehart,
I believe Mo she is a Stanford PhDin political science.
And in the essay, you two point outthat this is a reminder that America is
a republic and the republic consists ofstates, and states have various rules of
how emergencies are declared andextended and ultimately rescinded.
Is this a good system, Mo?
>> Morris Fiorina (11:25):
I basically beg off questions like that because it's
the system we have andit's not going anywhere.
I mean, this belongs in the samecategory as the Senate.
>> Bill Whalen (11:38):
Yeah. >> Morris Fiorina
is malported.
Well, it is, but we're not gonnachange it, so the point is,
in contrast to other countries,of course, like Britain, France.
I remember we were in a zoom everyweek with European colleagues and
we keep of what's going on over there andthe way France carried out this,
(11:59):
you can just have one central order.
It's the same across the entire nation.
And that's just totally differentfrom the way things we do in the US.
And one of the things actually we foundout very quickly was that emergency
powers are nearly mostly sortof located in the states.
And the federal government actuallyhas very little in the way of
(12:19):
specific emergency power authority.
And so this just has historically beensomething exercised by the states.
Now, granted, it's typically been morenatural disasters and so forth and
not so much, in California, we continuallyhave these medfly infestation,
earthquakes, floods, etc.
And that's more typical of what emergencypowers have been aimed for in the past,
(12:41):
the federal government was about the onlyones worried about insurrection and
foreign invasion.
So it's mostly a state levelthing we're talking about, and
that's the system we have, andwe're not gonna leave it anytime soon.
So whether it's good, bad,all I know is it's different.
And through your research, Mo, have you found,
is there a good definition for emergency?
(13:02):
Have the states reached any sort ofconsensus to what actually constitutes
an honest to goodness emergency?
>> Morris Fiorina (13:07):
No- >> Bill Whalen
California in a minute where we're gonnasee how this is really widely expanded.
But when you look at the 50 states,is there a pattern?
Not really.
I mean, an emergency is inthe eye of the beholder.
>> Bill Whalen (13:18):
Yes. >> Morris Fiorina
in the case of COVID early on there wewere being deluged with information, but,
I mean, millions were all gonna die.
And I think everybody sort oftook a cue early on and said,
yes, all the states very quicklydeclared states of emergency.
But then things began to sort ofdisentangle fairly quickly after that as
(13:39):
the infections began to spread andso forth, spread more in some areas,
less in some areas, and we began tolearn a little more about the disease.
But one of the concerns raised by judges,phosphors and
others is simply that executives,boy, this looks really sort of
attractive that I can go here in emergencyand don't have to worry about all
(14:02):
these interfering legislators andothers, that I can just do what I want.
And so there is that,let's just say that the incentives for
executives to declareemergencies are clearly there.
And so we depend to some extenton the personalities and
the personal values of the executives andthe coalitions that put them in office.
(14:26):
Right, now let's look at California for a second,
where you and I live.
So back in October, Governor Newsomannounced that he was going to put an end
to the state's Covid, emergency.
But then he put some distance into it.
He said it's gonna endat the end of February.
And people said, wait a second.
Why are you waiting till February?
He said, where'd the effect move?
Well, we got to wait andsee what happens between now and February.
(14:46):
So the declaration continued.
Newsom's interesting in this regard.
He does a lot of thingswith great fanfare.
He's very adept at getting attention,social media and so forth, to the point
where he's now talked about as a potentialnational candidate sometimes Mo,
he does things without so much fanfare.
And here's a good example.
On the last day in January, GovernorNewsom signed a proclamation ending
(15:08):
26 open states of emergency inCalifornia dating back to 2017.
Let me repeat that,26 open states of emergency.
Mo, we're talking fires, winter storms.
Monkeypox was on the list.
Can you argue that Californiamaybe takes this to the extreme?
>> Morris Fiorina (15:29):
Well, I mean, if you're in favor of limited government, as I think
I am, you probably do have a tendencyto judge things in that direction.
>> Bill Whalen (15:38):
Yeah. >> Morris Fiorina
I'm sure this strikes you.
You've been here much longer than I have.
California is really up there,
and it turns out the number of waysto stop anything from happening.
Yes. >> Morris Fiorina
you can really understand how, especiallywhen something really does appear to be
an emergency, like, say,fires and so forth.
(15:58):
Well, there's different.
Categories here.
I mean, one of the reasons you declareemergencies on things like fires,
earthquakes is to get money.
You just want the federal money tocome flowing in as fast as you can.
And there's also, by the way,
very strong evidence in the politicalscience literature that governors
profit from very quick infusionsof money during emergencies.
That even if you don't get the moneyto declare an emergency and ask for it,
(16:23):
has an electoral payoff.
But I think California,it's just very hard to do anything.
And so I can really understand howa governor can just be tempted to say,
I'm going to declare an emergency andbe done with this.
I'll be able to do somethingrather than try to fight it
through the legislature andall the court seats, etc.
I think California had a rather unique distinction.
(16:44):
Beginning of the year, Mo, we alreadywere under a drought emergency, and
then it rained like nobody's business andthe governor declared a flood emergency.
So at the same time, [LAUGH] we wereboth dry as dust but also flooded.
>> Morris Fiorina (16:57):
Yes, exactly.
>> Bill Whalen (16:57):
Okay, so are any good government groups Mo looking at state
powers and looking at the questionof emergency authority?
I'm looking at, for example, the nationalconference of state legislators,
which at all times love to examinehow states go about their practices.
>> Morris Fiorina (17:13):
I have not been aware of any, I did give a Zoom presentation
like this to an organization ofstate legislative employees.
But other than that, I mean,when I wrote the polarization books,
I was immediately contacted by allsorts of good government groups
wanting me to sign on and sort ofwanting advice, be on the board, etc.
(17:36):
Nothing like that has happenedwith the emergency powers book.
Now, of course, it's really only been outfor a month, so we might, I mean, it's
bad in a way that these kinds of questionsare just not as sexy as sort of electoral.
They're philosophical,they're legal, and I don't think
they grab the popular imaginationquite as much we have seen as we do.
(18:02):
We point out in chapter eight quite a bitof pushback on the part of legislatures.
And I'm sure when this all broke,
most state legislators had noidea that these powers existed.
I think they've just never been used inour lifetime, these kind of lockdowns and
sort of things we're talking about here.
And sothere has been quite a bit of pushback.
(18:22):
And we talk about all the successful ones,mostly in the chapter eight.
And so I think the database is sortof updated some from what it was
originally when we compiledit in the summer of 2020.
>> Bill Whalen (18:37):
Well, Mo, it may seem academic,
it may seem wonky, butI would argue to the contrary that
actually there are real worldramifications for what goes on here.
And California and Texas a good example.
So let's go to the second part ofthe book, which is emergency powers and
practice.
And you have chapters in which talk aboutCalifornia's approach to public health
authority and Texas's approachto public health authority.
(18:58):
And no surprise,I hope everybody's sitting down.
California andTexas go about this a little differently.
Let's begin with the Golden State orCalifornia here.
What's interesting about California,I find Mo is for
as much grief as Gavin Newsom got duringthe course of COVID restrictions.
He ultimately was the subject of a recallelection in November of 2021 that failed.
(19:21):
He actually was hands offin at least one regard.
If you look at COVID, they're leftto county health officers, and
these are people who, A, are unelected andB, aren't necessarily scientists.
I would point you, for example,to Los Angeles County, Barbara Ferrer,
who is the chief healthofficer of Los Angeles county.
She's doctor Ferrer, but she has adoctorate, well, a PhD in social welfare.
(19:43):
She is not an MD by any means.
Anyway, I mention this because I thinkthis feeds into something which you were
alluding to earlier about the sort ofarbitrary nature of the COVID lockdowns
in California.
You live in San Mateo County.
I live in Santa Clara county,which is next door.
I'm in Palo Alto.
I get my hair cut in San Mateo county.
So I would have to hop in my car,put on my mask, and
(20:05):
then once I'd cross the county line,the mask would come off.
And so for a wonderful hour,I wouldn't have to wear my mask.
But then after I got my haircut,get back in my car, go back home,
put on my mask again, andat a certain point, people kind of wonder.
This is a strange existence, isn't it?
So California, how did California Mo getin the situation where he had unelected
officials making these policy decisions?
(20:26):
It would seem to me thisis why you elect people.
>> Morris Fiorina (20:28):
Yeah, I don't know what the original idea, but yeah,
we certainly saw, I mean,the difference between San Mateo and
Santa Clara could have beena case study in and of itself.
I already mentioned this earlier,
that our San Mateo county justwas much less restrictive.
Stanford sports were affected in this waythat the football team we pointed out in
the book was not allowed to practicein Santa Clara county on campus.
(20:52):
So they would get on buses and bus up toWoodside High School in San Mateo county.
Now it's unclear what health benefitscould have been served by [LAUGH] packing
these guys into buses, moving them,coming back like that.
Same thing with the Stanfordwomen's basketball team.
They were on the road for,I mean, their whole season was.
>> Bill Whalen (21:08):
They didn't play a home game, they played down in Santa Cruz.
They played games down in Santa Cruz.
>> Morris Fiorina (21:13):
Yeah, and the San Jose state football team,
which hadn't had a ball game in ages,just said, screw it.
And they go out on the plane and
went to their ball game in defiance ofthe county health officer's orders.
Yeah, the orders left a lot of discretionto the county health officers.
And as you say, Santa Cruz county healthofficer was very strict on things.
(21:36):
Also enforcement.
That another thing we find out, and again,
not having done this kindof work in my whole life.
It was sort of a shock to realize that inabout 2000 of the nation's 3000 counties,
sheriffs are the principallaw enforcement officer.
We think of all the policedepartments in big cities and
that's the way it is but in most counties,the sheriff is the top person.
(22:00):
And a whole lot of sheriffs just said,not enforcing this, they are elected.
That's the important thing.
And so the pressures they wereunder were very different and
the incentives they faced werevery different from the incentives
faced by county health officers.
>> Bill Whalen (22:13):
Right, well, one of the challenges there, Mo,
is just the practicality of howto carry out the enforcement.
And California is notorious fordoing this.
I would point you, for example,to our hands free driving laws.
This was put into law by a lawmaker namedJoe Simitian, who is from Palo Alto.
These parts,it makes all the sense in the world.
What the law says is that if Mo Fiorinais driving down the highway, he can't be
looking at his device and playingwith the device while he's driving.
(22:35):
He's going to have an accident.
Well, the only problem with thatlaw is what makes common sense,
how do you enforce it?
I remember I would randomly walk up and
down streets in Palo Alto during rush hourand just kind of look into people's cars,
not being too much of a creep, butjust looking at people's cars.
Everybody had their head downlooking at their device and
they'd start inching forwardlooking at the device.
The point is, Mo, you didn't have cops inevery corner, citing people with tickets.
(22:56):
You just can't enforce these.
And so this is one of the problems thatCalifornia ran into in terms of how to
actually enforce or not.
But let's shift now and look at Texas,where we had a different covert response.
This was Governor Abbott andcity and county officials.
So how did Texas differ from California?
>> Morris Fiorina (23:10):
Well, Texas differs in,
this was interesting that the countyjudge, I'd never heard of that before,
is the principal officialin most Texas counties.
And they have enormous power.
And so the Texas group just went toconsiderable length talking about this,
the way things are done andenforced in Texas.
(23:30):
And it was highly decentralized thatthey had a great deal of variation as
opposed to, say,like Houston, Austin, etc,
as compared to a lot ofthe outlying regions and so forth.
And so, I mean,
the state is geographicallyvery large like California is.
But the governor didn't sort of imposethe same kinds of uniformity in Texas that
(23:52):
Governor Newsom imposed in California.
>> Bill Whalen (23:56):
Right, very well.
I think one thing which I foundinteresting reading the book And
the part on Texas, you saw a dichotomyamong public officials, Mo, for example,
lieutenant governor, he wasted no timegoing on Fox News and trashing lockdowns.
He played to very much a red meataudience, at the same time, though,
in Texas, you had big city mayors who werelistening to science and health officers.
So did you find this surprising to seethis sort of dichotomy, if you will, and
(24:18):
how these officials approach their jobs?
>> Morris Fiorina (24:21):
No, [LAUGH] I think I'm not surprised by much of anything in
American politics anymore.
Yeah, they don't run ona ticket in Texas either, so
the guy has an independent power base.
So, no, I mean, one of the,
one of the interesting things aboutdoing this project is my research,
and research in most politicalsciences is nationally focused.
(24:42):
And so to realize the incredible variationthat goes on in the American states, and
we always talk, there's the oldsaying about how the states and
the laboratories of democracy.
We really ought to be studyingstate politics more just to see how
institutional arrangements work ondifferently that we tend to think of.
Just the national patternis the only pattern, but
there's actually 50 other patternsof legislatures, executives and
(25:05):
judiciaries, and it turns out in theiractual operation, they vary enormously.
>> Bill Whalen (25:10):
Yeah, this seems to me to have been one of the problems
once we got deep into the COVID crisis,
you had a lot of politicians engagingin what I'd call performative politics.
This is a conservative going on Fox News,a liberal going on MSNBC, and
basically just kinda saying whatthe echo chamber wants to hear.
I don't remember too many Daniels and
the Lions end moments where a politicianof one stripe went on a network
(25:32):
of a different audience and actually triedto explain what he or she was doing.
>> Morris Fiorina (25:37):
I think that is largely true,
there were a few cases of where I thinkMike DeWine in Ohio was pretty good.
He was, I mean, he, andin most cases where we saw state conflict,
it was between a republican governor anddemocratic legislature or a democratic.
(25:57):
There are actually only a couple of those,mostly a democratic governor,
republican legislature.
DeWine was actually facing republicanlegislature being republican, yet
he still had a lot of conflicts.
And he tried to explain exactly why hewas doing the things he was doing, and
one of the things it brings out ispeople have different constituencies.
(26:18):
And when you think aboutpeople in legislatures,
they respond to local districts.
Some of them are being hammeredeconomically, others are in big city
minority neighborhoods wherethe virus is running wild.
And then the governor, meanwhile,is the governor of the entire state and
has a much more state outlook.
And I think we saw, and when you look atdemocratic governors, their constituency
(26:39):
is public sector workers who are workingremotely and not being laid off.
In most cases, republican governorsare facing constituencies of
private business and who are beinghammered by the COVID shutdowns.
And so I think we saw a lot of justhow different politicians responded to
different electoral coalitionsduring the pandemic.
>> Bill Whalen (27:02):
Right now, somebody who did do a lot of media and
showed up on all sorts of circleswas Doctor Anthony Fauci.
But again, here we're getting backto the premise of the book, and
maybe one of the lessons we learned here,Doctor Fauci was, at the end of the day,
an authority on this topic,but also an elected official.
And you can argue the morethat Fauci was on television,
the more it probably raised questions andminds of some people.
(27:23):
Why is he the one on TV talking andis he the one making the decisions,
should he be the person in charge here?
>> Morris Fiorina (27:30):
Yeah, I think the really, if someone asked me, what is
the fundamental question of the book,as the title says, just who governance.
[INAUDIBLE].
Who makes the decisions?
And I get at this specifically inthe last chapter that I wrote,
that these decisions have beendelegated to specialists.
And the problem with specialists,and I included myself among them,
(27:53):
is we have tunnel vision,that we tend to think in terms of
the categories we're trained in andwhat we focus on.
And so just take another example, if wewere to ask people, social scientists,
about income inequality, well,the economists will talk about
globalization andreturns to skills and automation, etc.
And you go to the political scientists tosay, yeah, well, there's all that, but
(28:16):
there's also a progressive taxation, and
there's policies that createa more generous safety net.
And you are the sociologist, andthey say, yeah, there's all that, but
there's also assorted mattings and allthese various sociological factors they
point out we tend to see the worldthrough our own specialized lenses,
and public health officials are trainedto see the world through public health.
Doctor Fauci and these other officialsmay be the greatest neurologists and
(28:39):
epidemiologists in the world, butthey are not specialists in economics,
they are not experts in mental health,they are not experts in education.
There are just all sorts of other thingsthat are implicated in what they're doing.
And the way the emergencypowers have been structured and
the way they're carried out simplygives short shrift all of these other
(28:59):
considerations by placing them in thehands of a certain occupational specialty.
So I really think that if I could do if Iwere czar of the country, the one thing I
would do is change the emergency power,the ability to impose them,
to ensure that a sort ofa broader committee of some sort,
it couldn't just bea county health officer.
There would have to be some input frompeople representing other committees.
(29:23):
I point out to, okay, put an economist onthe committee, put a childhood education
specialist on the committee,put a psychologist on the committee.
>> Bill Whalen (29:32):
Right. >> Morris Fiorina
all these things are coming outnow that people realize a whole
lot of things were suffered underthe lockdown period and so forth.
Teachers, my wife is a retired teacher,my daughter in law is a teacher, and
the kids lost a year of socialization.
Then my daughter in law saysthe second graders are actually first
(29:52):
graders in terms of theirsocial maturity and so forth,
that basically therewere real costs done and
these were not factored into the waythe lockdowns were carried out.
So I would like to seea more representative body,
even though we realize thereare things have to happen quickly.
Things have to, a lot of ordinarypolitics has to be transcended.
(30:15):
But nevertheless, I would like to see justa little more input, a lot more input,
actually, into making thesekinds of huge decisions.
That's a great point, Mo, and
a word that comes tomind is accountability.
So back when you would havefirst been teaching, America and
the world were sayinggoodbye to Harry Truman.
Harry Truman had a veryinteresting post presidency, and
it's kind of worth mentioninggiven Jimmy Carter's situation.
(30:39):
Truman left office,he was very unpopular when he left office,
he kept a very low profilein his post presidency.
And then in the early 1970s,coinciding with his passing,
the country fell inlove with Harry Truman.
There wasthe James Whitmore Plague of Hell,
Harry, there wasthe David McCullough book, and
suddenly we had a wave ofnostalgia with regard to Truman.
It coincided with Watergate,and whereas Watergate raised
(31:01):
questions about trust in government,here is honest Harry Truman,
who of course, had the sign on hisdesk saying, the buck stops here.
And this to me most seems one of theproblems with America's experiment with
COVID lockdowns and COVID policy.
It's the question at the end ofthe day is where does the buck stop?
>> Morris Fiorina (31:15):
I agree completely, and I think in my lifetime,
accountability in general inthe United States, federal state,
local city, has diminished, andin part because, you don't want to
look back too fondly on days ofcorruption and spoil system and so forth.
But there used to be somebodyresponsible at the top,
(31:36):
there used to be a mayor responsible foreverything that happened in the city or
the county, democratic chairman orrepublican chair.
Now we have zoning boards,recreation boards,
preservation boards, etc,and who's responsible?
So nothing happens with homelessness,for example, or
nothing happens with some otherlocal issue, and who do the voters.
(32:00):
Fully responsible.
There's simply so many municipal,it's really obvious, I think.
But in the country as a whole, dividedgovernment, do we hold a republican
president, democratic house,who is responsible, or vice versa?
And I just think accountability inthe country has gotten more and
more difficult for voters to impose.
(32:20):
And that is critical thatpoliticians have to know
they're going to be held accountable.
And right now they can, and it's notthey're lying about being not accountable,
there is just so much diffusionof authority that in most cases,
no one politician can be heldaccountable legitimately.
But I think it's a sad situation to be in.
>> Bill Whalen (32:39):
One thing I enjoyed about the book, Mo, statistics, lots and
lots of statistics, lots andlots of poll numbers.
You actually backed up thingswith scientific proof.
Let's talk about a coupleof poll numbers here.
First of all,I found a rather interesting dichotomy.
You pointed out in the book that whenasked about whether COVID was a major
threat to the population, Democrats,about 85% of Democrats said it was.
(33:02):
Only 46% of Republicans thought it was a,quote, major threat to the population.
But then when you pose the questiondifferently, Mo, and you ask,
is COVID an economic threat?
The two sides come together.
They pretty much seethe world the same on that.
So how would you explain that differencewhere on the one hand you don't see it
a threat to the population, butyou see it a threat to the economy?
>> Morris Fiorina (33:21):
I think probably just because they made a different trade off
that I mentioned a few moments ago,the parties have different bases, and
Republicans tend to bea more private sector party.
Democrats tend to be a morepublic sector party, and
arguably the economic costs,I don't think it was arguable.
(33:42):
I think it's true that the economiccosts of the lockdowns were heavier on
the private sector than theywere in the public sector.
Basically, government kept right onworking, the workers just went home.
The expression came out the laptop class.
>> Bill Whalen (33:54):
Yes. >> Morris Fiorina
the people who could go right on working,us in the universities,
people in government, in nonprofits,etc, kept going right on working.
It was inconvenient,it was lonely but nevertheless,
our paychecks didn't go down.
Whereas in the real economy, people wentout of business, restaurants went under,
companies went under, and a lot of moneywas pumped into the economy, of course.
(34:17):
But nevertheless,
the immediate economic costs weremuch heavier on the private sector.
And so it's not surprising thatRepublicans should have made
a difference trade off,
because they were seeing the economic costto a greater extent than Democrats were.
These are tendencies, of course, I'm notsaying every Democrat, every Republican,
but just clear statistical tendencies.
Another polling stat that caught my eye, Mo, school closings.
(34:40):
At the beginning of the pandemic,both Democrats and
Republicans were largely infavor of school closings.
I think it was 95% Democrats and85% Republicans.
Then you point out within a year, 66% ofDemocrats still support school closing,
but the republican sidehas now collapsed to 25%.
>> Morris Fiorina (34:58):
Yeah, this was a case, really,
where we heard a whole lotabout trust to science.
>> Bill Whalen (35:04):
Yes. >> Morris Fiorina
then we saw the limits of that whenwe ran into school closings because
the teachers unions inthe big cities stopped it.
And it got to the point, we discussedthis in some detail in the essay, but
you had the New York Times andthe San Francisco Chronicle calling for
the reopening of the schools andthe liberal outlets of all sorts.
(35:25):
And schools were open in Europe,school, private schools were open,
charter schools were open.
And yet the biggest cityschool systems were closed.
And this was clearly an exampleof political power and
doesn't surprise people, I think,
although I think the strength ofthe unions perhaps did surprise people.
And I think there's a long term cost.
(35:46):
As you know,the public school population has declined.
Right.
>> Morris Fiorina (35:52):
Catholic schools in many cases are on the ropes economically.
And suddenly there's this clamoring forpeople to get into
Catholic schools because they're open,and they're educating people.
And so, I mean, I think there wasa real long term cost that the teachers
unions paid not only their reputation,but to their membership over this.
But that's probably the biggest example,I think,
(36:14):
of in the pandemic about sort ofthe limits of science versus politics.
>> Bill Whalen (36:19):
And then finally, Mo,
can you address the correlationbetween political identities and
COVID restrictions?
>> Morris Fiorina (36:23):
Yeah, I mean, it's really complicated, I think that,
as I mentioned, if you think of yourself,Republicans are more individualistic.
Sort of the idea, I'll makedecisions that affect me on my own.
And I think Democrats tendto be more communitarian.
They tend to think not just me, buthow do my actions affect others as well?
(36:46):
Again, these are juststatistical tendencies,
not talking about every Democrat,every Republican.
And I think Republicans believemore in limited government.
I think Democrats believe inusing government to do things.
I think all these things sort ofcompile and Republicans are older.
One of the interesting thingswas a lot of older people,
(37:07):
including myself among them,never got that frightened.
And I think one of the reasons waswe've been through these things before.
We were college seniors,my age group when the Hong Kong flu ripped
through the United States, I actuallywasn't aware of it until I read about
it in connection with COVID thatthere was a major flu epidemic.
(37:27):
My senior year of college.
>> Bill Whalen (37:29):
1957. >> Morris Fiorina
do you remember anything about this?
She said, no, there was really, andI think the notion that there was another
one when we were 11 years old, I believeI forget which one that was called, but
I think older generations have actuallybeen through a lot of scares like this.
Not just scares, but actual pandemicsmore than younger people have.
(37:51):
We've raised a young generation that hasreally come grown up in a remarkably
nice time without major wars, withouthuge depressions until very recently.
And I think probably foryounger, and again,
Democrats tend to skew younger,Republicans tend to skew older.
I think there was just a sense of,okay, this happens every now and then,
we'll get through it.
(38:12):
Whereas for younger people,it was a more serious and a newer kind of,
we went through polio,we went through all these.
My first hospital stay didn't havepenicillin yet was strep throat.
And so I just think there wasa perspective on the part of the older
generation that we were concerned, butit didn't sort of strike us as deeply.
(38:35):
And so we add all these things together,I think.
And it turns out that people witha liberal or a democratic identity
were more likely to sort of bewilling to make more trade offs,
more sacrifices to stay safe than,I think, some of the older,
more republican, more conservativeelements of the population.
(38:56):
I'd like to see your colleagues, Dave Brady and Doug Rivers,
do some polling on this Mo,
because one area about this that interestsme is your generation, my generation, too.
Now I'm getting up in age two, how we getinformation, where we go for news, and
how we process things.
I don't think you're the kind ofperson who's walking around staring at
your phone all day andrefreshing Twitter every 30 seconds.
(39:17):
In other words, kind of sort ofreacting to constant outrage and
constant things written in caps andthings like that.
And maybe this is part ofthe problem we saw during COVID
that we started a point of national unity,but things quickly kind of fell apart,
in part because people turned to therather familiar sources for news, which
did their best to sort of confuse and chumthe waters and just drive people apart.
>> Morris Fiorina (39:39):
Yeah, I think that's true.
And one of the interesting thingsthat emerged pretty early,
I forget who did this study, but theAmerican media was much more negative in
its coverage of COVIDthan the European media.
The expression I used was they managedto find the dark lining in every silver
cloud, that there was never good news Anygood news was always counterbalanced.
(40:01):
But, however,that there was something bad about this,
whereas the Europeans were much morelikely to trumpet the efficacy of
vaccines andhow things were getting better, etc.
And that was across the board thatthe media, the legacy media in particular.
So I suppose if youignored the legacy media,
you were probably lesslikely to be frightened or
(40:23):
less likely to be concerned,again, relatively speaking,
than people who sort of were in the NewYork Times and MSNBC, etc, all the time.
>> Bill Whalen (40:34):
All right, so let me read you mo, a passage from the last essay.
The title of it is Covid restrictions anddemocratic governance.
This will sound familiarbecause you wrote this.
And here's what you wrote, and I quote,
no large scale society operatesunder unanimity rules.
Consequently, in real world democracy,some interests win and
some lose in normal policy making.
But at a minimum,
democracy demands that all significantinterests have a chance to be heard.
(40:56):
To have a seat at the table, theexperience of the COVID pandemic raises
questions about whetherthis has been the case.
Now, you mentioned a few minutes ago thatit'd be nice to put together some sort of
committee tribunal, if you will,to investigate things.
My question, Mo, is your confidence ingovernment actually exploring what we're
gonna do the next time this happens?
Because we can agree, I think,
that pandemics like this are not a matterof if, but a when down the road.
(41:19):
I look at Washington right now,Mo, and what do I see?
I see House Republicans have launcheda probe into the origins of the virus.
They will interview Anthony Fauci andultimately try to sully his reputation.
There will certainly be investigationsinto how Covid relief money was spent
and so forth.
But what I noticed missing from this, Mo,
is any kind of federal commission,any kind of good government
(41:40):
commission that's really looking intothe question of not just who governs,
but how we can govern better, how we cando a better job during an emergency?
>> Morris Fiorina (41:49):
Yeah, I think the partisan polarization at the federal level
is so deep now that I think that's thelast place we can look to for progress.
And I think it will have to come fromorganizations like No Labels, Third Way,
some of the good government groupsthat have come up in the past.
Unfortunately, as I said, they'vetended to be more concerned with things
(42:12):
like campaign finance, ranked choicevoting, primary reform, things like that.
I mean, the unfortunate thingabout human behavior is as
the pandemic recedes,attention is gonna decline.
And I fear that this might alljust become a historical footnote
until the next time it comes andI can't do anything about that.
(42:37):
All I can do is write andsay, here are my concerns and
hope that somebody picks up on it.
But what happened during the week whenthey went to look at respirator equipment,
they found it had been packed away forso long that it all deteriorated.
That I think the concern, the attentionis just going to sort of dry up and
(42:57):
go away unless we getanother one really quickly.
>> Bill Whalen (43:02):
Let's close by talking about a topic which you get
asked a lot about, andthat is polarization.
I hope you've rested up, because we'renow entering a presidential cycle.
And you, Dr. Fiorina, are in for 18 to 20months of questions about how polarized
did our society, is this electionthe most polarized, blah, blah, blah?
Two questions for you, number one, really,
to what extent is the Americanelectric polarized?
(43:24):
But secondly, Mo,
what has the COVID experiencedone with regard to polarization?
>> Morris Fiorina (43:30):
Okay, yeah, this is a good opportunity to make a clarification
that I've been trying to make for20 years without a lot of success.
>> Bill Whalen (43:37):
Yes. >> Morris Fiorina
that is the electorate is not anymore polarized today than it was in
Jimmy Carter's era in terms ofthe extremity of people's opinions.
Right. >> Morris Fiorina
opinion, looks the same.
It's just a big U-shaped,big bell shaped distribution.
You look at the ideologicalidentification just the same.
(43:58):
40% of the country says,I'm a moderate on the middle of the rotor.
You look at partisanship, 75% of thecountry during the Eisenhower year said,
I'm a Democrat or Republican.
It's only 60%.
Today, it's 40% won't even admitthey have a party affiliation.
What has changed, and
what I keep trying to make is sorting thatwithin that constant overall electorate,
(44:18):
the electorate is sorted outideologically and policy-wise.
So that in a simple way to expressit is there used to be a lot of
Joe Manchin Democrats inthe Democratic Party.
And starting in the 80s,that just sort of began to weaken and
then really acceleratingin the last 15 years or so.
There used to be a lot of ArnoldSchwarzenegger, Christine Todd Whitman,
(44:39):
Rudy Giuliani type Republicans.
And again, they have gradually beenweeded out both by replacement,
that just dying off in younger peoplegoing into the other party, and
by conversion, but mostly replacement.
And so the fact is we nowhave party polarization.
We have, the Democrats andRepublicans are more distinct and
(44:59):
more conflictual than it haveever really been in our history,
but there's still 40% of the country ormore standing on the sidelines.
And actually, more than that,because the really polarized people,
the ones you see on Fox News,the ones you see writing the letters,
the ones you see on Twitter, forexample, there's something crazy.
I wrote a paper recently onthe whole social media thing.
(45:20):
But Twitter is something like 6% ofthe adult public in the United States
accounts for 99% of all the politicaltweets and retweets on Twitter.
Right. >> Morris Fiorina
you think those 6% are?
They are the wingnuts of the electorateand one of the interesting study
found that reporters take their viewof public opinion from Twitter.
(45:42):
They're all on Twitter.
And so the people who write about politicsin the US are hopelessly [LAUGH] sort of
uninformed about what the Americanelectorate actually looks like,
American electorate as a whole.
And so we do have,
at the elite level, this tremendouslyparty polarized electorate,
which is why what you're talkingabout in Washington is the way it is.
(46:03):
But at the mass level, that phases up.
If somebody made me czar again,I could take issues like abortion and
gay rights and so forth and
design a referendum that would get60% of the country in support of it.
It would not please either the 10% ofextreme liberals or the 10% of extreme
conservatives that most people in themiddle could say, I can live with that.
(46:25):
And that's the case with a whole lotof issues in the country today, but
the political system doesn't offerthose choices to the public.
You get things that are too democratic ortoo republican, and then in a midterm
election, people say, I didn't vote forthat, and they should fit the other way.
And so of ping ponging back andforth from election to election.
And then finally, Mo, Covid's role in all of this and
the lockdowns and COVID policy,
(46:46):
what comes to mind is just America'sproblems with institutions.
We seem to be having a vast institutionalcrisis in this country, and
add government to the list.
>> Morris Fiorina (46:56):
Unfortunately, yes.
>> Bill Whalen (46:57):
So, lessons takeaways from this.
>> Morris Fiorina (47:01):
[LAUGH] If you've ever noticed, every academic book or article
tends to end with a weak concludingchapter or a weak concluding section.
And the reason is, editors and
publishers won't let you getaway with just the analysis.
They say we got to end on a high note.
>> Bill Whalen (47:17):
Yes. >> Morris Fiorina
something positive to say,something positive to takeaway.
And typically, we don't have any, which isthe case with me that all I know is that
something that can't go on forever won't,in the words of some old economist.
And so this too shall pass.
I don't know when,how it comes about, but we will.
(47:38):
We have muddled through somany worst periods in our history.
Another problem with not teaching historyin schools anymore is people don't realize
what a troubled, violent history theUnited States has had from the beginning.
Again, partly because welived through a remarkably,
I called it one point,a holiday from history.
(48:00):
For a period, and that's not normal.
And even if you justgrew up in the sixties,
you know that things canbe worse than they are now.
And so this will pass,we'll get out of it somehow.
I don't know how or when, butI am confident my children and
my grandchildren will continue onin the United States of America.
(48:21):
Here's how you please your publisher and
leave things on a hopeful note.
End the book by saying, I'll have moreto say about this in my next book,
which does lead to our final question.
Mo, what are you working on these days,and
what can we be expecting from you out ofthe Hoover institution in the near future?
What are you working on?
>> Morris Fiorina (48:37):
Social media.
I just became the tendency onthe part of political scientists,
anytime they hear a big claim is to say,yeah, yeah, what's the evidence for that?
As I looked into all the talk aboutFacebook destroyed democracy, and
we should censor Twitter andall these things, I thought,
(48:57):
what's the real evidence for that?
So I did a deep dive in the literature,not on what journalists are talking about,
echo chambers and so forth, butwhat are people actually doing online?
And it turns out there's a largeliterature in computer science and
other areas which studies actual tweets,and
I just cited a few tweets andposts and everything.
And it turns out that just as I'vepointed out how few people actually read
(49:22):
the New York Times or listen to Fox Newsor so forth, it turns out when you get
to social media, it's even smaller,that it's typically the case that on any
site like Facebook, any platformlike Facebook or Twitter or Google,
that it's 3% to 5% of the adult populationthat is doing anything political at all.
So this is just sort of the latest playpenfor the political junkies to frolic in.
(49:47):
And echo chambers,they don't exist, for example.
It's just the evidence forthose is totally negative.
The evidence for social mediapolarizing people, it's not there.
In fact, the evidence suggeststhat polarized people
go to social media if the causality runsthe other way, that they need their fix of
red meat every morning likethe rest of us need our coffee.
(50:07):
And so I wrote a long paper on that,
which was circulated to someof the big names in the field.
And I think we're gonna do a conferenceat Hoover next year on this.
Chris Dauer is interested in doing this,where we bring together sort of a number
of the big names whowrite papers on this and
have a real discussion on the problemsthat social media present for democracy.
(50:29):
I'm not talking about childhood,adolescent mental health and so forth.
That's a different question.
But is social media a threat to democracy?
And I think we're going to try to bringtogether a group of people and critics and
young people and get them working on this.
This is a big subject.
It's just getting bigger.
And before we go jumping in at the federallevel on various kinds of censorship and
(50:52):
so forth,we don't really know what kind of problem,
the contrary is the problemwe're dealing with.
So that's my sort of next, probablytwo years, now, I'm gonna 'll retire.
>> Bill Whalen (51:01):
I think that's a great topic, Mo, and here's the thought.
Why don't you get a group of nine, anothermagnificent nine, to ride together again,
and why don't you put togethera series of essays on that, and
you can come back on the book club.
>> Morris Fiorina (51:12):
We might do that.
Thank you.
>> Bill Whalen (51:14):
Okay, Mo Fiorina, thanks for dropping by the book club today.
And congratulations on yetanother terrific book.
The title of it, Who Governs EmergencyPowers in the Time of COVID.
It's published by Hoover Press,which you can find by going to hoover.org.
While on hoover.org, by the way,I strongly encourage you to sign up for
the Hoover Daily Report,delivers the best work of Mo Fiorina and
his colleagues to your inbox each andevery workday.
(51:35):
For the Hoover Institution,I'm Bill Whalen.
We'll be back soon with anotherinstallment of the Hoover Book club.
Until then, take care.
Thanks for watching.
Hello, I'm Bill Whelan,
I'm the Hoover Institution's VirginiaHobbes Carpenter distinguished policy
fellow in journalism.
I'd like to welcome you backto the Hoover Book Club,
where we bring Hoover fellows and friendstogether to discuss their latest writings.
Our guest today is Morris Fiorina, MorrisFiorina, or Mo Fiorina to us, friends,
is a senior fellow atthe Hoover Institution and
the Wendt family professor of politicalscience at Stanford University.
(00:27):
His research focuses on elections andpublic opinion,
with particular attention to the qualityof representation, that is, how well
the positions of elected officialsreflect the preferences of the public.
He joins us today to discussa new book he's edited,
it's titled who governs emergencypowers in the time of COVID, Mo,
congratulations on the book, andthanks for joining the book club today.
>> Morris Fiorina (00:46):
Thank you, Bill, happy to be here.
>> Bill Whalen (00:48):
Well, thank you for joining us again, so
let's talk about the book,and let's begin this way.
This book is a departure for you,
I'm not gonna say how manyyears you've been teaching.
I think we can talk in groups of decades,more so than years, my friend.
But this is a departure for you, thisis not something you have done, is it?
>> Morris Fiorina (01:05):
That's absolutely right, and I will speak in terms of years.
I've been a professor for 51 years, andthis is something that has never looked
into before, it's very differentfrom anything I've done before.
>> Bill Whalen (01:17):
Okay, and let's describe exactly what the book is,
I would point out to thosewho haven't read it yet.
If you want to read about the pros andcons of various COVID policies, lockdowns,
vaccines, the merits of governmentspending, this is not the book for you.
This is not, go check out Scott Atlas orJay Bhattachary or Hoover colleagues who
go down that line and they talkabout the pros and cons of policies.
(01:38):
What Mo has done is he's brought togetherpolitical scientists and researchers and
legal scholars to discuss what COVIDpolicies have met in terms of governing,
and Mo, what sparked the idea forthis book?
>> Morris Fiorina (01:49):
What sparked it was that if you go back almost three years to
the day, I believe was March 16,three years ago.
>> Bill Whalen (01:55):
Yep.
>> Morris Fiorina (01:56):
It's a normal day at the office, and
then suddenly the word comes throughfrom Stanford, shut down your computers,
close up your offices, and go home.
And there was some milling around inthe halls, and so there's some joking.
Well, surely Hoover fellows are essentialworkers, they couldn't really mean we
should go home, but in fact, we were told,yes, you should all go home.
(02:17):
And over the next couple of days,as I just observed what was going on,
that the local economy hadbeen totally shut down,
constitutional rights such as assembly andfreedom of religion had been suspended.
And I thought this was all pretty amazing,and this had all been done under
(02:38):
the authority of county officialswho were appointed, not elected.
And their actions were authorizedby pre existing statutes and
constitutional provisionsgiving them this authority.
So I sat down, I wrote an email to Condy,our director, and just noted
that there were just real implicationshere for democratic governance,
(02:59):
which is one of the three pillars onwhich the Hoover institution stands.
And somebody ought to be on this.
Now, anybody who knows me knows whenI write something like that, I mean,
somebody else at Hoover ought to be onthis because I was born without any kind
of organizational genes whatsoever.
But Hannity didn't know that, and she justwrote back and said, you're right, Mo,
(03:20):
why don't you get on it andwe'll support you?
And I didn't wanna disappoint the boss, soeven though I've never done anything like
this study, I thought,okay, I'll take a look.
And the first thing an academic does,obviously, is go get the data.
So I asked around,I wanted to find a website or
a big reference book about allthese state emergency powers.
And I learned fairly quickly there wasn'tany such thing, and at that point,
(03:44):
I thought, well,this project's not gonna go anywhere, and
here's where just a fortunateaccident made the project possible.
I live in Portola Valley,which is in San Mateo county, and
our restrictions were just notquite as severe as most of our,
as in Santa Clara county,where most of our colleagues live.
And so I would invite colleagues to comeup and go for walks in the countryside and
(04:06):
sit on our deck and have wine and cheese,all socially distanced, of course, but
this is how we kept in touch fora better part of a year.
And one day I was walking with Bruce Kane,who is the director of the Lane center for
the Study of the American west.
And I mentioned, he asked me what Iwas doing, and I mentioned, well,
I'd started to do this, butit wasn't going anywhere.
There was just no data, andBruce said, well, wait a minute,
(04:28):
he said he had already hired interns.
His center had hired interns whom theynormally put in state agencies, and
now everything was remote.
So he was committed to support thesestudents for the summer and didn't have
anything to do with anything for themto do, and he said, you can have them.
And so here was a subsidy fromanother unit of Stanford to the Hoover
institution.
I have a graduate research assistant, wewere working on gun control at the time,
(04:53):
and so we pivoted, and my assistant puttogether this team of undergraduates who
began the arduous task of readingall the state constitutions.
And then we learned quickly that mostof the provisions are in statutes,
they're enabling statutes,not constitutions.
So tracking down andreading all the statutes and
putting the together a database.
So you wanna know, and this is up on theHoover website now, if you wanna know what
(05:18):
Arkansas can do or what California can do,etc, then we can tell you.
And so we, at that point,I started looking around for other people.
I felt at times like, you've seen the oldmagnificent seven movie with Yul brynner,
goes around picking up other gunfighters,doesn't have anything to pay them with,
doesn't anything to offerhe just picks them.
(05:38):
I had a magnificent nine that I justapproached people who I'd heard about or
read about, andas would you do a paper on this subject.
And this group of fine scholars, in somecases, graduate students, in other cases,
fine scholars, andyounger scholars, older scholars.
They just contributed a reallynice set of essays, I think,
which really cover the ground,everything from the historical and
(06:01):
philosophical background of emergencypowers to how they were actually
implemented in states like Texas andCalifornia.
I approached at one point we didn'thave any lawyers, and so I approached
again after asking around the Brennancenter at NYU, and the director there,
Lisa Gottwine, was really just above andbeyond the call of duty.
(06:21):
She gave us a advanced law studentto keep track of all the court
cases arising from the exerciseof emergency powers.
And Victoria Ochev just put together areally nice essay, and again, a database,
if you wanna know, all the court cases andwhat they were about, this,
too, was up on the Hoover website.
And so in the end,I think this book is a starting point,
(06:43):
that the large part of the emergencyis running its course.
But surely there will beothers in the future, and
there are a lot of questions are goingto be asked now about what we did and
who should have done it and so forth,and was it right in a democracy?
And so I think in all kinds of publicpolicy courses, law school courses,
political science courses, etc.
(07:05):
And just for the concerned layperson, thisbook sort of lays on a lot of the issues
and could start a conversation thatI think we really need to have.
>> Bill Whalen (07:14):
It would also say, for the layperson out there, it's just very easy
to read, these essays are just very, verywell spelled out, Mo, they're not thick.
They're not written forpeople with an IQ of 180 or higher,
it's very easy to digest.
So at the heart of this book, Mo, is thequestion of who has legitimate authority
to take action duringperiods of emergency.
(07:34):
And I would note, you began by sayingthat California is approaching its three
year anniversary of the lockdown.
This debate continues eventhough California ended its
state of emergency forCOVID at the end of February.
We have a colleague, Michael McConnell,we have colleagues, John Kogan and
John Taylor.
They filed an amicus brief and two casesbefore the Supreme Court right now, Mo.
(07:55):
Which have to do with what the Bidenadministration's using, justifying.
Student loan forgiveness last yearby tapping into the Heroes act.
The Heroes act wasa product of the 911 era,
which allows the secretary of educationto cancel student loan repayments during,
quote, a war or other militaryoperation or national emergency.
(08:15):
And so what McConnell andKogan and Taylor are saying,
is this really a proper use ofemergency powers, if you will?
So this question is gonnacontinue with this.
Even though we're getting through Coviditself, even though we're getting through
these various state emergencies,federal emergencies,
we're still going to be wrestlingwith this issue about who exactly
has power during times of emergency forthe foreseeable future, I think.
>> Morris Fiorina (08:35):
Yes, I think you're absolutely right.
>> Bill Whalen (08:37):
Okay, so let's get into the book itself Mo.
So it's divided into three parts.
One, state emergency powers, two,emergency powers in practice, three,
response to the exerciseof emergency powers.
How did you decide those three topics?
>> Morris Fiorina (08:52):
I think it's pretty natural, really, that, as I said,
my inclination as an academic is,first, what's the lay of the land?
What did the data actually show?
And so the first several chaptersjust fell into place naturally.
And also my friend John Fairjohn,who contributed a legal chapter.
And then we heard about, we knew DD Kuowas doing a study of California.
(09:15):
And we have a Hoover fellow, David Liao,who's headquartered in Texas.
And so it's pretty natural to sortof contrast a deep blue state and
a deep red, not so much a deep red state,but a red state, clearly,
on how they approached the subject.
And then there was obviously a lot ofpublicity about public opinion and
again, a lot of maybe not quiteas much about court cases, but
(09:36):
clearly a great deal washappening in the judicial system.
And it's actually very interesting.
I think one of the things that comesout of the chapter on the courts is,
and maybe I'm getting ahead ofmyself here on too much specificity,
but we often hear criticismstoday about activist judges.
(09:56):
And the judges are not just interpreting,they're making the law.
Well, here was almost the exact oppositesituation where increasingly the judges,
the judiciary, began to rein inadministrators, that they began to
question whether administratorsactually had the authority to act,
to do the things they were doing.
Was there real, was real evidence?
(10:19):
Los Angeles judge sort of led the way,saying, I want to see the evidence for
what you're doing has any impact.
And like Victoria in the essay, sort ofbegins to call for strict scrutiny, that
these are really basically life and deathpowers are being exercised by officials.
And the judges really ought to treatthem in the same way as they treat
fundamental questions of free speech,free expression and so forth.
(10:42):
And not just the rational basis,does the administrator,
does the bureaucracy havesort of a rational basis.
But in fact, really, given theimplications for personal liberties and
so forth, judges should be exercisinga more, how much more strict
scrutiny of administrative decisions,bureaucratic decisions.
>> Bill Whalen (11:03):
Right, now you co authored an essay with Cameron Dehart,
I believe Mo she is a Stanford PhDin political science.
And in the essay, you two point outthat this is a reminder that America is
a republic and the republic consists ofstates, and states have various rules of
how emergencies are declared andextended and ultimately rescinded.
Is this a good system, Mo?
>> Morris Fiorina (11:25):
I basically beg off questions like that because it's
the system we have andit's not going anywhere.
I mean, this belongs in the samecategory as the Senate.
>> Bill Whalen (11:38):
Yeah. >> Morris Fiorina
is malported.
Well, it is, but we're not gonnachange it, so the point is,
in contrast to other countries,of course, like Britain, France.
I remember we were in a zoom everyweek with European colleagues and
we keep of what's going on over there andthe way France carried out this,
(11:59):
you can just have one central order.
It's the same across the entire nation.
And that's just totally differentfrom the way things we do in the US.
And one of the things actually we foundout very quickly was that emergency
powers are nearly mostly sortof located in the states.
And the federal government actuallyhas very little in the way of
(12:19):
specific emergency power authority.
And so this just has historically beensomething exercised by the states.
Now, granted, it's typically been morenatural disasters and so forth and
not so much, in California, we continuallyhave these medfly infestation,
earthquakes, floods, etc.
And that's more typical of what emergencypowers have been aimed for in the past,
(12:41):
the federal government was about the onlyones worried about insurrection and
foreign invasion.
So it's mostly a state levelthing we're talking about, and
that's the system we have, andwe're not gonna leave it anytime soon.
So whether it's good, bad,all I know is it's different.
And through your research, Mo, have you found,
is there a good definition for emergency?
(13:02):
Have the states reached any sort ofconsensus to what actually constitutes
an honest to goodness emergency?
>> Morris Fiorina (13:07):
No- >> Bill Whalen
California in a minute where we're gonnasee how this is really widely expanded.
But when you look at the 50 states,is there a pattern?
Not really.
I mean, an emergency is inthe eye of the beholder.
>> Bill Whalen (13:18):
Yes. >> Morris Fiorina
in the case of COVID early on there wewere being deluged with information, but,
I mean, millions were all gonna die.
And I think everybody sort oftook a cue early on and said,
yes, all the states very quicklydeclared states of emergency.
But then things began to sort ofdisentangle fairly quickly after that as
(13:39):
the infections began to spread andso forth, spread more in some areas,
less in some areas, and we began tolearn a little more about the disease.
But one of the concerns raised by judges,phosphors and
others is simply that executives,boy, this looks really sort of
attractive that I can go here in emergencyand don't have to worry about all
(14:02):
these interfering legislators andothers, that I can just do what I want.
And so there is that,let's just say that the incentives for
executives to declareemergencies are clearly there.
And so we depend to some extenton the personalities and
the personal values of the executives andthe coalitions that put them in office.
(14:26):
Right, now let's look at California for a second,
where you and I live.
So back in October, Governor Newsomannounced that he was going to put an end
to the state's Covid, emergency.
But then he put some distance into it.
He said it's gonna endat the end of February.
And people said, wait a second.
Why are you waiting till February?
He said, where'd the effect move?
Well, we got to wait andsee what happens between now and February.
(14:46):
So the declaration continued.
Newsom's interesting in this regard.
He does a lot of thingswith great fanfare.
He's very adept at getting attention,social media and so forth, to the point
where he's now talked about as a potentialnational candidate sometimes Mo,
he does things without so much fanfare.
And here's a good example.
On the last day in January, GovernorNewsom signed a proclamation ending
(15:08):
26 open states of emergency inCalifornia dating back to 2017.
Let me repeat that,26 open states of emergency.
Mo, we're talking fires, winter storms.
Monkeypox was on the list.
Can you argue that Californiamaybe takes this to the extreme?
>> Morris Fiorina (15:29):
Well, I mean, if you're in favor of limited government, as I think
I am, you probably do have a tendencyto judge things in that direction.
>> Bill Whalen (15:38):
Yeah. >> Morris Fiorina
I'm sure this strikes you.
You've been here much longer than I have.
California is really up there,
and it turns out the number of waysto stop anything from happening.
Yes. >> Morris Fiorina
you can really understand how, especiallywhen something really does appear to be
an emergency, like, say,fires and so forth.
(15:58):
Well, there's different.
Categories here.
I mean, one of the reasons you declareemergencies on things like fires,
earthquakes is to get money.
You just want the federal money tocome flowing in as fast as you can.
And there's also, by the way,
very strong evidence in the politicalscience literature that governors
profit from very quick infusionsof money during emergencies.
That even if you don't get the moneyto declare an emergency and ask for it,
(16:23):
has an electoral payoff.
But I think California,it's just very hard to do anything.
And so I can really understand howa governor can just be tempted to say,
I'm going to declare an emergency andbe done with this.
I'll be able to do somethingrather than try to fight it
through the legislature andall the court seats, etc.
I think California had a rather unique distinction.
(16:44):
Beginning of the year, Mo, we alreadywere under a drought emergency, and
then it rained like nobody's business andthe governor declared a flood emergency.
So at the same time, [LAUGH] we wereboth dry as dust but also flooded.
>> Morris Fiorina (16:57):
Yes, exactly.
>> Bill Whalen (16:57):
Okay, so are any good government groups Mo looking at state
powers and looking at the questionof emergency authority?
I'm looking at, for example, the nationalconference of state legislators,
which at all times love to examinehow states go about their practices.
>> Morris Fiorina (17:13):
I have not been aware of any, I did give a Zoom presentation
like this to an organization ofstate legislative employees.
But other than that, I mean,when I wrote the polarization books,
I was immediately contacted by allsorts of good government groups
wanting me to sign on and sort ofwanting advice, be on the board, etc.
(17:36):
Nothing like that has happenedwith the emergency powers book.
Now, of course, it's really only been outfor a month, so we might, I mean, it's
bad in a way that these kinds of questionsare just not as sexy as sort of electoral.
They're philosophical,they're legal, and I don't think
they grab the popular imaginationquite as much we have seen as we do.
(18:02):
We point out in chapter eight quite a bitof pushback on the part of legislatures.
And I'm sure when this all broke,
most state legislators had noidea that these powers existed.
I think they've just never been used inour lifetime, these kind of lockdowns and
sort of things we're talking about here.
And sothere has been quite a bit of pushback.
(18:22):
And we talk about all the successful ones,mostly in the chapter eight.
And so I think the database is sortof updated some from what it was
originally when we compiledit in the summer of 2020.
>> Bill Whalen (18:37):
Well, Mo, it may seem academic,
it may seem wonky, butI would argue to the contrary that
actually there are real worldramifications for what goes on here.
And California and Texas a good example.
So let's go to the second part ofthe book, which is emergency powers and
practice.
And you have chapters in which talk aboutCalifornia's approach to public health
authority and Texas's approachto public health authority.
(18:58):
And no surprise,I hope everybody's sitting down.
California andTexas go about this a little differently.
Let's begin with the Golden State orCalifornia here.
What's interesting about California,I find Mo is for
as much grief as Gavin Newsom got duringthe course of COVID restrictions.
He ultimately was the subject of a recallelection in November of 2021 that failed.
(19:21):
He actually was hands offin at least one regard.
If you look at COVID, they're leftto county health officers, and
these are people who, A, are unelected andB, aren't necessarily scientists.
I would point you, for example,to Los Angeles County, Barbara Ferrer,
who is the chief healthofficer of Los Angeles county.
She's doctor Ferrer, but she has adoctorate, well, a PhD in social welfare.
(19:43):
She is not an MD by any means.
Anyway, I mention this because I thinkthis feeds into something which you were
alluding to earlier about the sort ofarbitrary nature of the COVID lockdowns
in California.
You live in San Mateo County.
I live in Santa Clara county,which is next door.
I'm in Palo Alto.
I get my hair cut in San Mateo county.
So I would have to hop in my car,put on my mask, and
(20:05):
then once I'd cross the county line,the mask would come off.
And so for a wonderful hour,I wouldn't have to wear my mask.
But then after I got my haircut,get back in my car, go back home,
put on my mask again, andat a certain point, people kind of wonder.
This is a strange existence, isn't it?
So California, how did California Mo getin the situation where he had unelected
officials making these policy decisions?
(20:26):
It would seem to me thisis why you elect people.
>> Morris Fiorina (20:28):
Yeah, I don't know what the original idea, but yeah,
we certainly saw, I mean,the difference between San Mateo and
Santa Clara could have beena case study in and of itself.
I already mentioned this earlier,
that our San Mateo county justwas much less restrictive.
Stanford sports were affected in this waythat the football team we pointed out in
the book was not allowed to practicein Santa Clara county on campus.
(20:52):
So they would get on buses and bus up toWoodside High School in San Mateo county.
Now it's unclear what health benefitscould have been served by [LAUGH] packing
these guys into buses, moving them,coming back like that.
Same thing with the Stanfordwomen's basketball team.
They were on the road for,I mean, their whole season was.
>> Bill Whalen (21:08):
They didn't play a home game, they played down in Santa Cruz.
They played games down in Santa Cruz.
>> Morris Fiorina (21:13):
Yeah, and the San Jose state football team,
which hadn't had a ball game in ages,just said, screw it.
And they go out on the plane and
went to their ball game in defiance ofthe county health officer's orders.
Yeah, the orders left a lot of discretionto the county health officers.
And as you say, Santa Cruz county healthofficer was very strict on things.
(21:36):
Also enforcement.
That another thing we find out, and again,
not having done this kindof work in my whole life.
It was sort of a shock to realize that inabout 2000 of the nation's 3000 counties,
sheriffs are the principallaw enforcement officer.
We think of all the policedepartments in big cities and
that's the way it is but in most counties,the sheriff is the top person.
(22:00):
And a whole lot of sheriffs just said,not enforcing this, they are elected.
That's the important thing.
And so the pressures they wereunder were very different and
the incentives they faced werevery different from the incentives
faced by county health officers.
>> Bill Whalen (22:13):
Right, well, one of the challenges there, Mo,
is just the practicality of howto carry out the enforcement.
And California is notorious fordoing this.
I would point you, for example,to our hands free driving laws.
This was put into law by a lawmaker namedJoe Simitian, who is from Palo Alto.
These parts,it makes all the sense in the world.
What the law says is that if Mo Fiorinais driving down the highway, he can't be
looking at his device and playingwith the device while he's driving.
(22:35):
He's going to have an accident.
Well, the only problem with thatlaw is what makes common sense,
how do you enforce it?
I remember I would randomly walk up and
down streets in Palo Alto during rush hourand just kind of look into people's cars,
not being too much of a creep, butjust looking at people's cars.
Everybody had their head downlooking at their device and
they'd start inching forwardlooking at the device.
The point is, Mo, you didn't have cops inevery corner, citing people with tickets.
(22:56):
You just can't enforce these.
And so this is one of the problems thatCalifornia ran into in terms of how to
actually enforce or not.
But let's shift now and look at Texas,where we had a different covert response.
This was Governor Abbott andcity and county officials.
So how did Texas differ from California?
>> Morris Fiorina (23:10):
Well, Texas differs in,
this was interesting that the countyjudge, I'd never heard of that before,
is the principal officialin most Texas counties.
And they have enormous power.
And so the Texas group just went toconsiderable length talking about this,
the way things are done andenforced in Texas.
(23:30):
And it was highly decentralized thatthey had a great deal of variation as
opposed to, say,like Houston, Austin, etc,
as compared to a lot ofthe outlying regions and so forth.
And so, I mean,
the state is geographicallyvery large like California is.
But the governor didn't sort of imposethe same kinds of uniformity in Texas that
(23:52):
Governor Newsom imposed in California.
>> Bill Whalen (23:56):
Right, very well.
I think one thing which I foundinteresting reading the book And
the part on Texas, you saw a dichotomyamong public officials, Mo, for example,
lieutenant governor, he wasted no timegoing on Fox News and trashing lockdowns.
He played to very much a red meataudience, at the same time, though,
in Texas, you had big city mayors who werelistening to science and health officers.
So did you find this surprising to seethis sort of dichotomy, if you will, and
(24:18):
how these officials approach their jobs?
>> Morris Fiorina (24:21):
No, [LAUGH] I think I'm not surprised by much of anything in
American politics anymore.
Yeah, they don't run ona ticket in Texas either, so
the guy has an independent power base.
So, no, I mean, one of the,
one of the interesting things aboutdoing this project is my research,
and research in most politicalsciences is nationally focused.
(24:42):
And so to realize the incredible variationthat goes on in the American states, and
we always talk, there's the oldsaying about how the states and
the laboratories of democracy.
We really ought to be studyingstate politics more just to see how
institutional arrangements work ondifferently that we tend to think of.
Just the national patternis the only pattern, but
there's actually 50 other patternsof legislatures, executives and
(25:05):
judiciaries, and it turns out in theiractual operation, they vary enormously.
>> Bill Whalen (25:10):
Yeah, this seems to me to have been one of the problems
once we got deep into the COVID crisis,
you had a lot of politicians engagingin what I'd call performative politics.
This is a conservative going on Fox News,a liberal going on MSNBC, and
basically just kinda saying whatthe echo chamber wants to hear.
I don't remember too many Daniels and
the Lions end moments where a politicianof one stripe went on a network
(25:32):
of a different audience and actually triedto explain what he or she was doing.
>> Morris Fiorina (25:37):
I think that is largely true,
there were a few cases of where I thinkMike DeWine in Ohio was pretty good.
He was, I mean, he, andin most cases where we saw state conflict,
it was between a republican governor anddemocratic legislature or a democratic.
(25:57):
There are actually only a couple of those,mostly a democratic governor,
republican legislature.
DeWine was actually facing republicanlegislature being republican, yet
he still had a lot of conflicts.
And he tried to explain exactly why hewas doing the things he was doing, and
one of the things it brings out ispeople have different constituencies.
(26:18):
And when you think aboutpeople in legislatures,
they respond to local districts.
Some of them are being hammeredeconomically, others are in big city
minority neighborhoods wherethe virus is running wild.
And then the governor, meanwhile,is the governor of the entire state and
has a much more state outlook.
And I think we saw, and when you look atdemocratic governors, their constituency
(26:39):
is public sector workers who are workingremotely and not being laid off.
In most cases, republican governorsare facing constituencies of
private business and who are beinghammered by the COVID shutdowns.
And so I think we saw a lot of justhow different politicians responded to
different electoral coalitionsduring the pandemic.
>> Bill Whalen (27:02):
Right now, somebody who did do a lot of media and
showed up on all sorts of circleswas Doctor Anthony Fauci.
But again, here we're getting backto the premise of the book, and
maybe one of the lessons we learned here,Doctor Fauci was, at the end of the day,
an authority on this topic,but also an elected official.
And you can argue the morethat Fauci was on television,
the more it probably raised questions andminds of some people.
(27:23):
Why is he the one on TV talking andis he the one making the decisions,
should he be the person in charge here?
>> Morris Fiorina (27:30):
Yeah, I think the really, if someone asked me, what is
the fundamental question of the book,as the title says, just who governance.
[INAUDIBLE].
Who makes the decisions?
And I get at this specifically inthe last chapter that I wrote,
that these decisions have beendelegated to specialists.
And the problem with specialists,and I included myself among them,
(27:53):
is we have tunnel vision,that we tend to think in terms of
the categories we're trained in andwhat we focus on.
And so just take another example, if wewere to ask people, social scientists,
about income inequality, well,the economists will talk about
globalization andreturns to skills and automation, etc.
And you go to the political scientists tosay, yeah, well, there's all that, but
(28:16):
there's also a progressive taxation, and
there's policies that createa more generous safety net.
And you are the sociologist, andthey say, yeah, there's all that, but
there's also assorted mattings and allthese various sociological factors they
point out we tend to see the worldthrough our own specialized lenses,
and public health officials are trainedto see the world through public health.
Doctor Fauci and these other officialsmay be the greatest neurologists and
(28:39):
epidemiologists in the world, butthey are not specialists in economics,
they are not experts in mental health,they are not experts in education.
There are just all sorts of other thingsthat are implicated in what they're doing.
And the way the emergencypowers have been structured and
the way they're carried out simplygives short shrift all of these other
(28:59):
considerations by placing them in thehands of a certain occupational specialty.
So I really think that if I could do if Iwere czar of the country, the one thing I
would do is change the emergency power,the ability to impose them,
to ensure that a sort ofa broader committee of some sort,
it couldn't just bea county health officer.
There would have to be some input frompeople representing other committees.
(29:23):
I point out to, okay, put an economist onthe committee, put a childhood education
specialist on the committee,put a psychologist on the committee.
>> Bill Whalen (29:32):
Right. >> Morris Fiorina
all these things are coming outnow that people realize a whole
lot of things were suffered underthe lockdown period and so forth.
Teachers, my wife is a retired teacher,my daughter in law is a teacher, and
the kids lost a year of socialization.
Then my daughter in law saysthe second graders are actually first
(29:52):
graders in terms of theirsocial maturity and so forth,
that basically therewere real costs done and
these were not factored into the waythe lockdowns were carried out.
So I would like to seea more representative body,
even though we realize thereare things have to happen quickly.
Things have to, a lot of ordinarypolitics has to be transcended.
(30:15):
But nevertheless, I would like to see justa little more input, a lot more input,
actually, into making thesekinds of huge decisions.
That's a great point, Mo, and
a word that comes tomind is accountability.
So back when you would havefirst been teaching, America and
the world were sayinggoodbye to Harry Truman.
Harry Truman had a veryinteresting post presidency, and
it's kind of worth mentioninggiven Jimmy Carter's situation.
(30:39):
Truman left office,he was very unpopular when he left office,
he kept a very low profilein his post presidency.
And then in the early 1970s,coinciding with his passing,
the country fell inlove with Harry Truman.
There wasthe James Whitmore Plague of Hell,
Harry, there wasthe David McCullough book, and
suddenly we had a wave ofnostalgia with regard to Truman.
It coincided with Watergate,and whereas Watergate raised
(31:01):
questions about trust in government,here is honest Harry Truman,
who of course, had the sign on hisdesk saying, the buck stops here.
And this to me most seems one of theproblems with America's experiment with
COVID lockdowns and COVID policy.
It's the question at the end ofthe day is where does the buck stop?
>> Morris Fiorina (31:15):
I agree completely, and I think in my lifetime,
accountability in general inthe United States, federal state,
local city, has diminished, andin part because, you don't want to
look back too fondly on days ofcorruption and spoil system and so forth.
But there used to be somebodyresponsible at the top,
(31:36):
there used to be a mayor responsible foreverything that happened in the city or
the county, democratic chairman orrepublican chair.
Now we have zoning boards,recreation boards,
preservation boards, etc,and who's responsible?
So nothing happens with homelessness,for example, or
nothing happens with some otherlocal issue, and who do the voters.
(32:00):
Fully responsible.
There's simply so many municipal,it's really obvious, I think.
But in the country as a whole, dividedgovernment, do we hold a republican
president, democratic house,who is responsible, or vice versa?
And I just think accountability inthe country has gotten more and
more difficult for voters to impose.
(32:20):
And that is critical thatpoliticians have to know
they're going to be held accountable.
And right now they can, and it's notthey're lying about being not accountable,
there is just so much diffusionof authority that in most cases,
no one politician can be heldaccountable legitimately.
But I think it's a sad situation to be in.
>> Bill Whalen (32:39):
One thing I enjoyed about the book, Mo, statistics, lots and
lots of statistics, lots andlots of poll numbers.
You actually backed up thingswith scientific proof.
Let's talk about a coupleof poll numbers here.
First of all,I found a rather interesting dichotomy.
You pointed out in the book that whenasked about whether COVID was a major
threat to the population, Democrats,about 85% of Democrats said it was.
(33:02):
Only 46% of Republicans thought it was a,quote, major threat to the population.
But then when you pose the questiondifferently, Mo, and you ask,
is COVID an economic threat?
The two sides come together.
They pretty much seethe world the same on that.
So how would you explain that differencewhere on the one hand you don't see it
a threat to the population, butyou see it a threat to the economy?
>> Morris Fiorina (33:21):
I think probably just because they made a different trade off
that I mentioned a few moments ago,the parties have different bases, and
Republicans tend to bea more private sector party.
Democrats tend to be a morepublic sector party, and
arguably the economic costs,I don't think it was arguable.
(33:42):
I think it's true that the economiccosts of the lockdowns were heavier on
the private sector than theywere in the public sector.
Basically, government kept right onworking, the workers just went home.
The expression came out the laptop class.
>> Bill Whalen (33:54):
Yes. >> Morris Fiorina
the people who could go right on working,us in the universities,
people in government, in nonprofits,etc, kept going right on working.
It was inconvenient,it was lonely but nevertheless,
our paychecks didn't go down.
Whereas in the real economy, people wentout of business, restaurants went under,
companies went under, and a lot of moneywas pumped into the economy, of course.
(34:17):
But nevertheless,
the immediate economic costs weremuch heavier on the private sector.
And so it's not surprising thatRepublicans should have made
a difference trade off,
because they were seeing the economic costto a greater extent than Democrats were.
These are tendencies, of course, I'm notsaying every Democrat, every Republican,
but just clear statistical tendencies.
Another polling stat that caught my eye, Mo, school closings.
(34:40):
At the beginning of the pandemic,both Democrats and
Republicans were largely infavor of school closings.
I think it was 95% Democrats and85% Republicans.
Then you point out within a year, 66% ofDemocrats still support school closing,
but the republican sidehas now collapsed to 25%.
>> Morris Fiorina (34:58):
Yeah, this was a case, really,
where we heard a whole lotabout trust to science.
>> Bill Whalen (35:04):
Yes. >> Morris Fiorina
then we saw the limits of that whenwe ran into school closings because
the teachers unions inthe big cities stopped it.
And it got to the point, we discussedthis in some detail in the essay, but
you had the New York Times andthe San Francisco Chronicle calling for
the reopening of the schools andthe liberal outlets of all sorts.
(35:25):
And schools were open in Europe,school, private schools were open,
charter schools were open.
And yet the biggest cityschool systems were closed.
And this was clearly an exampleof political power and
doesn't surprise people, I think,
although I think the strength ofthe unions perhaps did surprise people.
And I think there's a long term cost.
(35:46):
As you know,the public school population has declined.
Right.
>> Morris Fiorina (35:52):
Catholic schools in many cases are on the ropes economically.
And suddenly there's this clamoring forpeople to get into
Catholic schools because they're open,and they're educating people.
And so, I mean, I think there wasa real long term cost that the teachers
unions paid not only their reputation,but to their membership over this.
But that's probably the biggest example,I think,
(36:14):
of in the pandemic about sort ofthe limits of science versus politics.
>> Bill Whalen (36:19):
And then finally, Mo,
can you address the correlationbetween political identities and
COVID restrictions?
>> Morris Fiorina (36:23):
Yeah, I mean, it's really complicated, I think that,
as I mentioned, if you think of yourself,Republicans are more individualistic.
Sort of the idea, I'll makedecisions that affect me on my own.
And I think Democrats tendto be more communitarian.
They tend to think not just me, buthow do my actions affect others as well?
(36:46):
Again, these are juststatistical tendencies,
not talking about every Democrat,every Republican.
And I think Republicans believemore in limited government.
I think Democrats believe inusing government to do things.
I think all these things sort ofcompile and Republicans are older.
One of the interesting thingswas a lot of older people,
(37:07):
including myself among them,never got that frightened.
And I think one of the reasons waswe've been through these things before.
We were college seniors,my age group when the Hong Kong flu ripped
through the United States, I actuallywasn't aware of it until I read about
it in connection with COVID thatthere was a major flu epidemic.
(37:27):
My senior year of college.
>> Bill Whalen (37:29):
1957. >> Morris Fiorina
do you remember anything about this?
She said, no, there was really, andI think the notion that there was another
one when we were 11 years old, I believeI forget which one that was called, but
I think older generations have actuallybeen through a lot of scares like this.
Not just scares, but actual pandemicsmore than younger people have.
(37:51):
We've raised a young generation that hasreally come grown up in a remarkably
nice time without major wars, withouthuge depressions until very recently.
And I think probably foryounger, and again,
Democrats tend to skew younger,Republicans tend to skew older.
I think there was just a sense of,okay, this happens every now and then,
we'll get through it.
(38:12):
Whereas for younger people,it was a more serious and a newer kind of,
we went through polio,we went through all these.
My first hospital stay didn't havepenicillin yet was strep throat.
And so I just think there wasa perspective on the part of the older
generation that we were concerned, butit didn't sort of strike us as deeply.
(38:35):
And so we add all these things together,I think.
And it turns out that people witha liberal or a democratic identity
were more likely to sort of bewilling to make more trade offs,
more sacrifices to stay safe than,I think, some of the older,
more republican, more conservativeelements of the population.
(38:56):
I'd like to see your colleagues, Dave Brady and Doug Rivers,
do some polling on this Mo,
because one area about this that interestsme is your generation, my generation, too.
Now I'm getting up in age two, how we getinformation, where we go for news, and
how we process things.
I don't think you're the kind ofperson who's walking around staring at
your phone all day andrefreshing Twitter every 30 seconds.
(39:17):
In other words, kind of sort ofreacting to constant outrage and
constant things written in caps andthings like that.
And maybe this is part ofthe problem we saw during COVID
that we started a point of national unity,but things quickly kind of fell apart,
in part because people turned to therather familiar sources for news, which
did their best to sort of confuse and chumthe waters and just drive people apart.
>> Morris Fiorina (39:39):
Yeah, I think that's true.
And one of the interesting thingsthat emerged pretty early,
I forget who did this study, but theAmerican media was much more negative in
its coverage of COVIDthan the European media.
The expression I used was they managedto find the dark lining in every silver
cloud, that there was never good news Anygood news was always counterbalanced.
(40:01):
But, however,that there was something bad about this,
whereas the Europeans were much morelikely to trumpet the efficacy of
vaccines andhow things were getting better, etc.
And that was across the board thatthe media, the legacy media in particular.
So I suppose if youignored the legacy media,
you were probably lesslikely to be frightened or
(40:23):
less likely to be concerned,again, relatively speaking,
than people who sort of were in the NewYork Times and MSNBC, etc, all the time.
>> Bill Whalen (40:34):
All right, so let me read you mo, a passage from the last essay.
The title of it is Covid restrictions anddemocratic governance.
This will sound familiarbecause you wrote this.
And here's what you wrote, and I quote,
no large scale society operatesunder unanimity rules.
Consequently, in real world democracy,some interests win and
some lose in normal policy making.
But at a minimum,
democracy demands that all significantinterests have a chance to be heard.
(40:56):
To have a seat at the table, theexperience of the COVID pandemic raises
questions about whetherthis has been the case.
Now, you mentioned a few minutes ago thatit'd be nice to put together some sort of
committee tribunal, if you will,to investigate things.
My question, Mo, is your confidence ingovernment actually exploring what we're
gonna do the next time this happens?
Because we can agree, I think,
that pandemics like this are not a matterof if, but a when down the road.
(41:19):
I look at Washington right now,Mo, and what do I see?
I see House Republicans have launcheda probe into the origins of the virus.
They will interview Anthony Fauci andultimately try to sully his reputation.
There will certainly be investigationsinto how Covid relief money was spent
and so forth.
But what I noticed missing from this, Mo,
is any kind of federal commission,any kind of good government
(41:40):
commission that's really looking intothe question of not just who governs,
but how we can govern better, how we cando a better job during an emergency?
>> Morris Fiorina (41:49):
Yeah, I think the partisan polarization at the federal level
is so deep now that I think that's thelast place we can look to for progress.
And I think it will have to come fromorganizations like No Labels, Third Way,
some of the good government groupsthat have come up in the past.
Unfortunately, as I said, they'vetended to be more concerned with things
(42:12):
like campaign finance, ranked choicevoting, primary reform, things like that.
I mean, the unfortunate thingabout human behavior is as
the pandemic recedes,attention is gonna decline.
And I fear that this might alljust become a historical footnote
until the next time it comes andI can't do anything about that.
(42:37):
All I can do is write andsay, here are my concerns and
hope that somebody picks up on it.
But what happened during the week whenthey went to look at respirator equipment,
they found it had been packed away forso long that it all deteriorated.
That I think the concern, the attentionis just going to sort of dry up and
(42:57):
go away unless we getanother one really quickly.
>> Bill Whalen (43:02):
Let's close by talking about a topic which you get
asked a lot about, andthat is polarization.
I hope you've rested up, because we'renow entering a presidential cycle.
And you, Dr. Fiorina, are in for 18 to 20months of questions about how polarized
did our society, is this electionthe most polarized, blah, blah, blah?
Two questions for you, number one, really,
to what extent is the Americanelectric polarized?
(43:24):
But secondly, Mo,
what has the COVID experiencedone with regard to polarization?
>> Morris Fiorina (43:30):
Okay, yeah, this is a good opportunity to make a clarification
that I've been trying to make for20 years without a lot of success.
>> Bill Whalen (43:37):
Yes. >> Morris Fiorina
that is the electorate is not anymore polarized today than it was in
Jimmy Carter's era in terms ofthe extremity of people's opinions.
Right. >> Morris Fiorina
opinion, looks the same.
It's just a big U-shaped,big bell shaped distribution.
You look at the ideologicalidentification just the same.
(43:58):
40% of the country says,I'm a moderate on the middle of the rotor.
You look at partisanship, 75% of thecountry during the Eisenhower year said,
I'm a Democrat or Republican.
It's only 60%.
Today, it's 40% won't even admitthey have a party affiliation.
What has changed, and
what I keep trying to make is sorting thatwithin that constant overall electorate,
(44:18):
the electorate is sorted outideologically and policy-wise.
So that in a simple way to expressit is there used to be a lot of
Joe Manchin Democrats inthe Democratic Party.
And starting in the 80s,that just sort of began to weaken and
then really acceleratingin the last 15 years or so.
There used to be a lot of ArnoldSchwarzenegger, Christine Todd Whitman,
(44:39):
Rudy Giuliani type Republicans.
And again, they have gradually beenweeded out both by replacement,
that just dying off in younger peoplegoing into the other party, and
by conversion, but mostly replacement.
And so the fact is we nowhave party polarization.
We have, the Democrats andRepublicans are more distinct and
(44:59):
more conflictual than it haveever really been in our history,
but there's still 40% of the country ormore standing on the sidelines.
And actually, more than that,because the really polarized people,
the ones you see on Fox News,the ones you see writing the letters,
the ones you see on Twitter, forexample, there's something crazy.
I wrote a paper recently onthe whole social media thing.
(45:20):
But Twitter is something like 6% ofthe adult public in the United States
accounts for 99% of all the politicaltweets and retweets on Twitter.
Right. >> Morris Fiorina
you think those 6% are?
They are the wingnuts of the electorateand one of the interesting study
found that reporters take their viewof public opinion from Twitter.
(45:42):
They're all on Twitter.
And so the people who write about politicsin the US are hopelessly [LAUGH] sort of
uninformed about what the Americanelectorate actually looks like,
American electorate as a whole.
And so we do have,
at the elite level, this tremendouslyparty polarized electorate,
which is why what you're talkingabout in Washington is the way it is.
(46:03):
But at the mass level, that phases up.
If somebody made me czar again,I could take issues like abortion and
gay rights and so forth and
design a referendum that would get60% of the country in support of it.
It would not please either the 10% ofextreme liberals or the 10% of extreme
conservatives that most people in themiddle could say, I can live with that.
(46:25):
And that's the case with a whole lotof issues in the country today, but
the political system doesn't offerthose choices to the public.
You get things that are too democratic ortoo republican, and then in a midterm
election, people say, I didn't vote forthat, and they should fit the other way.
And so of ping ponging back andforth from election to election.
And then finally, Mo, Covid's role in all of this and
the lockdowns and COVID policy,
(46:46):
what comes to mind is just America'sproblems with institutions.
We seem to be having a vast institutionalcrisis in this country, and
add government to the list.
>> Morris Fiorina (46:56):
Unfortunately, yes.
>> Bill Whalen (46:57):
So, lessons takeaways from this.
>> Morris Fiorina (47:01):
[LAUGH] If you've ever noticed, every academic book or article
tends to end with a weak concludingchapter or a weak concluding section.
And the reason is, editors and
publishers won't let you getaway with just the analysis.
They say we got to end on a high note.
>> Bill Whalen (47:17):
Yes. >> Morris Fiorina
something positive to say,something positive to takeaway.
And typically, we don't have any, which isthe case with me that all I know is that
something that can't go on forever won't,in the words of some old economist.
And so this too shall pass.
I don't know when,how it comes about, but we will.
(47:38):
We have muddled through somany worst periods in our history.
Another problem with not teaching historyin schools anymore is people don't realize
what a troubled, violent history theUnited States has had from the beginning.
Again, partly because welived through a remarkably,
I called it one point,a holiday from history.
(48:00):
For a period, and that's not normal.
And even if you justgrew up in the sixties,
you know that things canbe worse than they are now.
And so this will pass,we'll get out of it somehow.
I don't know how or when, butI am confident my children and
my grandchildren will continue onin the United States of America.
(48:21):
Here's how you please your publisher and
leave things on a hopeful note.
End the book by saying, I'll have moreto say about this in my next book,
which does lead to our final question.
Mo, what are you working on these days,and
what can we be expecting from you out ofthe Hoover institution in the near future?
What are you working on?
>> Morris Fiorina (48:37):
Social media.
I just became the tendency onthe part of political scientists,
anytime they hear a big claim is to say,yeah, yeah, what's the evidence for that?
As I looked into all the talk aboutFacebook destroyed democracy, and
we should censor Twitter andall these things, I thought,
(48:57):
what's the real evidence for that?
So I did a deep dive in the literature,not on what journalists are talking about,
echo chambers and so forth, butwhat are people actually doing online?
And it turns out there's a largeliterature in computer science and
other areas which studies actual tweets,and
I just cited a few tweets andposts and everything.
And it turns out that just as I'vepointed out how few people actually read
(49:22):
the New York Times or listen to Fox Newsor so forth, it turns out when you get
to social media, it's even smaller,that it's typically the case that on any
site like Facebook, any platformlike Facebook or Twitter or Google,
that it's 3% to 5% of the adult populationthat is doing anything political at all.
So this is just sort of the latest playpenfor the political junkies to frolic in.
(49:47):
And echo chambers,they don't exist, for example.
It's just the evidence forthose is totally negative.
The evidence for social mediapolarizing people, it's not there.
In fact, the evidence suggeststhat polarized people
go to social media if the causality runsthe other way, that they need their fix of
red meat every morning likethe rest of us need our coffee.
(50:07):
And so I wrote a long paper on that,
which was circulated to someof the big names in the field.
And I think we're gonna do a conferenceat Hoover next year on this.
Chris Dauer is interested in doing this,where we bring together sort of a number
of the big names whowrite papers on this and
have a real discussion on the problemsthat social media present for democracy.
(50:29):
I'm not talking about childhood,adolescent mental health and so forth.
That's a different question.
But is social media a threat to democracy?
And I think we're going to try to bringtogether a group of people and critics and
young people and get them working on this.
This is a big subject.
It's just getting bigger.
And before we go jumping in at the federallevel on various kinds of censorship and
(50:52):
so forth,we don't really know what kind of problem,
the contrary is the problemwe're dealing with.
So that's my sort of next, probablytwo years, now, I'm gonna 'll retire.
>> Bill Whalen (51:01):
I think that's a great topic, Mo, and here's the thought.
Why don't you get a group of nine, anothermagnificent nine, to ride together again,
and why don't you put togethera series of essays on that, and
you can come back on the book club.
>> Morris Fiorina (51:12):
We might do that.
Thank you.
>> Bill Whalen (51:14):
Okay, Mo Fiorina, thanks for dropping by the book club today.
And congratulations on yetanother terrific book.
The title of it, Who Governs EmergencyPowers in the Time of COVID.
It's published by Hoover Press,which you can find by going to hoover.org.
While on hoover.org, by the way,I strongly encourage you to sign up for
the Hoover Daily Report,delivers the best work of Mo Fiorina and
his colleagues to your inbox each andevery workday.
(51:35):
For the Hoover Institution,I'm Bill Whalen.
We'll be back soon with anotherinstallment of the Hoover Book club.
Until then, take care.
Thanks for watching.
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