The Long Game

One of the foundational books of my adult life is “Amusing Ourselves to Death” by Neil Postman. It helped me see the ways in which the modern world was driven by entertainment more than information, as we transitioned from an word-based society to an image-based society with the advent of television. The modern equivalent to Postman’s book, in my opinion, is Nicholas Carr’s “ The Shallows .” Writt...

Next Monday, the CEO’s of four of the most dominant and important technology companies in the world will testify to Congress:  Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sundar Pichai, and Apple’s Tim Cook will all appear before the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on anti-trust, commercial and administrative law.  My guest today is the congressman who is going to chair and...

Rick Hasen is professor of law and political science at UC-Irvine and author of “Election Meltdown.” Rick is two things that make him worth your time. First, he knows more about elections than almost anyone I know of. He updates his “ Election Law blog ” daily with the latest developments, and he has written two books on elections and election law. The most recent one, “Election Meltdown” came out...

Tom Ridge is the former governor of Pennsylvania, from 1995 to 2001, and went on to become the first ever head of the Department of Homeland Security, which was created by President George W. Bush after the 9/11 attacks.  In March, Ridge and a former Democratic Governor, Jennifer Granholm of Michigan, formed a group called Vote Safe , which is pushing to expand access to voting by mail. Every stat...

Sen. Tim Scott, R-SC, is the only black Republican in the U.S. Senate. When he was elected in 2012, he was only the 7th African-American senator in the nation’s history. Scott has been quite vocal on many sides of the George Floyd killing. He’s called on Minneapolis to charge all four officers, he’s called the killing of Floyd a murder, and he’s spoken out publicly about systemic racism in the pas...

Francis Collins is the director of the National Institutes of Health, which is the primary U.S. government agency responsible for biomedical and public health research. It’s a giant agency, with 20,000 employees, including 6,000 research scientists, and a $39 billion budget. And this job makes him a crucial figure at this particular moment. He is leading the hunt in America for a vaccine solution...

Terry Mattingly, founder of GetReligion.org and a nationally syndicated religious columnist, talks about the ways in which conspiracy theories like Qanon are merging with conservative white evangelical subculture. The Atlantic piece on Qanon is here , and Terry's responses are here , here and here . Outro music: "Working On a Dream" by Bruce Springsteen Support this show http://supporter.acast.com...

Tim Miller worked in Republican politics for many years but over the last few years he's become more of a writer. One of his latest pieces at The Bulwark is titled, " Taking #Obamagate Seriously: President Trump's Bonkers Theory Explaine d." Tim is a veteran political communicator with a good feel for how information flow moves in the modern media environment, and he believes that you can't let ha...

Marc Elias is leading 32 current lawsuits in 16 states to try to push for more expansive voting rights, and since the coronavirus, his workload has gone way up. We go deep on the debate over vote-by-mail, and ballot collection, aka ballot harvesting. Elias is chair of the Political Law practice at Perkins Coie. He was the top lawyer on Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign and has years of...

“When I was young, it was so simple. I thought God was good. I thought God rewarded those who obey the rules. I thought my good news was accessible to everyone if only they had the ears to listen. I thought my country was a place where hard work was rewarded on a level playing field, no matter where you came from …" D.L. Mayfield's penetrating book, " The Myth of the American Dream ," examines the...

Jonathan Karl is chief Washington and White House correspondent for ABC News. His new book is “ Front Row at the Trump Show .”  Jonathan writes in his book that Trump’s attack on “fake news” are “fake” is that Trump actually loves the press, because it is both a vehicle and a villain for him. It gives him a stage on which to act, to play out the Trump show. And as he plays out this soap opera, Jon...

Adam White is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a law professor at George Mason University. He wrote about how we are focusing too much on the president's role in responding to the coronavirus pandemic and that led into a discussion of how the only thing the president -- and the national press -- should really be talking about is doing the things that will help the countr...

Republicans are hammering Democrats for not automatically approving another $250 billion for the Paycheck Protection Program, a fund set up to help small businesses avoid going out of business. The fund received $350 billion a few weeks ago, but has already run out of money. Sen. Ben Cardin, D-MD, helped craft the program with Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. Cardin explains why he and other Democrats are...

Congress authorized $350 billion for the Paycheck Protection Program in its coronavirus rescue package that was passed two weeks ago. Any company with 500 employees or fewer can get a loan of up to $10 million and that loan will be forgiven as long as 75% of the money goes toward keeping employees on payroll. The loans are financed by the U.S. government, but are conducted through private sector b...

The question of who’s to blame for the mess we’re in with coronavirus is not a fun one. It’s clear that the U.S. response has been pretty terrible on a number of fronts: the testing component has been a disaster, as has the lack of preparation regarding medical equipment, from personal protecting gear to ventilators. And then there’s the president, who’s public statements have mostly been erratic....

I talked with Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who has been leading the push with Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota to send at least $2 billion to states to help them get ready for a fall election conducted during a second wave of infections. He called the $400 million in last week’s rescue package a good start but said he’s going to be pushing for much more in the next bill that Congress passes t...

I talk with Yuval Levin about his article in the Atlantic about how to come back from the pandemic shutdown we are currently in. He writes: “Along with making the hard pause bearable, we also need to enable a soft return toward normalcy, starting soon. That return will be slow and gradual; it will look different in different places, and it will mean living with the virus, not putting it behind us....

Lee Saunders is the head of one of the country’s largest unions, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. He talks about why union membership has steadily gone down for decades, how an adverse ruling at the Supreme Court rejuvenated his union, and what it takes to lead a large organization effectively. He also talks about the Democratic National Committee process to change...

Addisu Demissie ran Cory Booker’s presidential campaign and has an expert resume in Democratic campaigns. Right now he's an undecided voter in California. We talked about what's going to happen in the California primary on March 3, how the South Carolina result will impact Super Tuesday, and what happens to Bernie going forward. We also talked about Addisu's thoughts about why Booker's campaign co...

Joe Biden’s last stand will be in South Carolina, where he is still expected to retain support from a large number of African-American voters despite his poor showings so far in Iowa and New Hampshire. Black voters make up about 60% of the Democratic primary vote in South Carolina. If Biden can perform well in Nevada, and then win South Carolina — both of those things being tall orders — that may...

Carl Hulse is chief Washington correspondent for the New York Times and has been writing about Congress for the Times for three decades. He knows the US Capitol better than almost anyone. He’s also the author of " Confirmation Bias: Inside Washington's War Over the Supreme Court, from Scalia's Death to Justice Kavanaugh ." Carl interviewed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday, and of...

Lee Drutman is author of “ Breaking the Two Party Doom Loop : The Case for Multi-party Democracy in America.” He says introducing ranked choice voting would make it more likely that other political parties would emerge beyond just the two we have now. Drutman's book argued for abolishing party primaries as well, and for using ranked choice voting to elect members of Congress as well. Drutman is a...

Yuval Levin is director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute and Editor in Chief of National Affairs magazine. This is our third conversation on this podcast, and comes as Levin is releasing his third book, " A Time to Build ." "We lack the grammar and vocabulary to talk about what is breaking down, and so cannot even begin to do something about it....

Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center , a contributing writer for The Atlantic Magazine , a law professor at George Washington University, and the author of Conversations With RBG: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Life, Love, Liberty, and Law. I spoke with Rosen about what we can expect from Chief Justice John Roberts as he presides over the Senate impeachment tr...

Bob Inglis was leading the charge 20 years ago to impeach President Bill Clinton. Inglis was an up and coming Republican congressman from South Carolina, and a self-described bomb-thrower. A few years ago, Inglis asked to meet Clinton at his offices in Harlem. He walked into that meeting and asked Clinton's forgiveness. This is a conversation about how that transformation came about, and about wha...