MAX BOOT: THE CORROSION OF CONSERVATISM

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They can have him back.

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hi everyone welcome to today's program at the Commonwealth Club my name is Marissa Lagos and I am a politics reporter for KQED and co-host of our show political breakdown and I am pleased to be your moderator for today's program with me on stage is max boot columnist for The Washington Post senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in the author of a recent book the corrosion of conservatism why I left the right max is about New York Times bestselling author and is widely acclaim for his work in foreign policy and national security in this recent book he describes his journey leaving the Republican Party spurred by his disapproval of President Trump max offers a unique perspective on his old party and analyzes how conservative became what it is today we are excited to have him here with us today to discuss the book ladies and gentlemen please join me in welcoming max boot to the Commonwealth Club so there's as always probably 65 things that's happened in the last 24 hours that we should discuss but I want to start by going back to your childhood because your book starts that way and and you talk about your own journey becoming and then I guess unbecoming a conservative and you talked about and I heard you say recently that your family's emigration from the Soviet Union made you blindly pro-american for much of your life can you talk about what that why that is and then what's changed happy to do that I mean first let me just say thank you to the Commonwealth Club this is actually my second time here this year because this is my second book of the year and it's it's oh if I keep getting invited to the Commonwealth Club I'll keep writing books so it's it's a pleasure to be back and thanks to Marisa for hosting this you know a lot of my political identity is rooted in my personal identity which I write about in the book something I haven't really discussed much in the past but indeed as as you mentioned I emigrated here with my mother and grandmother in 1976 age six coming from Moscow to Southern California quite a vast difference in in quality of life and and and everything else and you know the I was eager to assimilate and you know so eager in fact that I actually don't speak Russian anymore I wanted to learn English and I wanted to become an American and part of that was also becoming a conservative and I was certainly attracted to the Republican Party of the 1980s because it was so unapologetically anti-communist I thrilled when Ronald Reagan spoke up for American values called out the evil empires said mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall and he he had a real kind of moral clarity which which was which was very attractive to me and he really in speaking up for for America and what we believe in and and that that has been the faith that has really defined my life I'm not although I'm you know Jewish by background I had my bar mitzvah and at the Wilshire Boulevard temple I've never been all that religious and I think I'm a little bit like John McCain somebody that I revered and and had the privilege to advise that you know Americanism has really been my religion my faith in America as this great country that takes in people like me and and so many others and allows us to become Americans in a way that's almost impossible in you are else in the world and so that's part of the reason why I am so incredibly outraged and offended by Donald Trump because right before our eyes I feel like he is defining redefining the nature of America and he is championing this kind of blood and soil chauvinistic conservatism that we have not seen a lot of in this country outside of you know a few folks like George Wallace and a few others but he I really feel like he is championing white identity at the expense of minorities at the expense of immigrants I mean the way he is vilifying and demonizing Latino immigrants and this caravan of refugees from Central America it's just disgraceful but one of the byproducts of this is that AI can no longer be a Republican I find it hard to be associated with the mainstream conservative movement which has become basically a bunch of Trump apologists but see it's also causing me to reassess this perhaps blind faith that I had in America and realize what probably a lot of other people realized a lot earlier than I did that well it's still a great country there are also some there's also you know a lot of things that we have to overcome and be ashamed about and it's not just in the ancient past it's right here and now and we see that and certainly the rise of the Trump phenomenon has alerted me to the extent to which racism and xenophobia and misogyny all these things yes maybe they're not as bad as I used to be but they're still pretty bad and these are still issues that we have to grapple with in a way that I would have never imagined when I was a you know a naive young conservative columnist at the University of California at Berkeley and the in the early 1990s so much to unpack that it's funny one thing that surprised me I actually have a subhead all the ways you're not conservative just things that I was reading through the book and listening to your talks before that there are I mean you've never been very socially conservative but I think can you talk a little bit more about you know if you've kind of become woken away right around things like the me2 movement and police brutality right and why do you think that that has changed for you is is it is that tied to Trump like did you need that sort of counter to open your eyes to these things I really did I mean it wasn't it's not a hundred percent Trump I mean there's also other phenomena like the me2 movement that I've you know certainly has awakened me to the extent of this atrocious behavior by so many men something that I suspect women were pretty familiar with and that I was pretty oblivious to also just the spread of these videotapes showing police brutality against minorities especially against african-americans against something that African Americans have known about and talked about a long time and people like me just we're not listening and now I am but I think the biggest spur for that reawakening is is the Trump phenomenon because for years I heard liberals castigating Republicans for pandering to racism and I never believed it I said you know hey I'm not a racist my friends aren't racist what terrible slur and then it went from being a dog whistle to a wolf whistle and in in Donald Trump was just so blatant and appealing to white prejudice that even I couldn't denied any more I mean I was truly shocked from the very beginning of his candidacy when he came down that damn escalator at Trump Tower and started attacking Mexicans as rapists and murderers I mean I cannot believe that a mainstream politician can say something like that in America and not just that he said it but that he was rewarded politically for saying it and that really made me think oh my goodness how on earth can my compatriots in the Republican Party be supporting somebody who is so blatant in his prejudice and bigotry and that really made me realize that that bigotry and Prejudice have in fact been a big part of the Republican Party's appeal again not news probably to a lot of people in this room but I was so deep in my ideological bunkers so so cut off and in this kind of tribal identity as a Republican and a conservative I refuse to see in the past or was obvious to a lot of other people and now I can't deny it so we're talking about two groups here sort of the Republican base which is elected Trump and continued to support him in large numbers and then the sort of establishment and I want to talk about the establishment but I was curious like what you see the roots of this end because I mean you talked about him awakening something but that means that it was there to begin with I know in your book you make a tie that I noticed Paul Krugman just made in a column and I know you tried to hire him at the wall street but he made a similar point to you which is basically saying that you know after the 2016 election we talked a lot about this is about economic anxiety and it seems like you're saying that it's actually more about racial resentment and economic anxiety I mean where do you think the roots of that lie and is and the establishment the Republican Party is sort of partly to blame at all absolutely the the Republican establishment is a lot to be to answer for and more all more every day I look I don't think that you know you something as as complex and as powerful as the Trump phenomenon it can't be explained by any one factor I think there's multiple factors I think the economic anxiety is certainly part of it and I think I was blind to that you know cut off in not in this case not in my conservative Republican bubble but in my New York bubble you know living in a pretty prosperous blue state and you know not visiting you know the the Rust Belt not visiting Pennsylvania and Wisconsin so not not really aware of the extent to which the changes in the global economy have hit those areas so hard and that is that is pain and pain and resentment that Donald Trump has figured out how to mobilize very effectively but at the end of the day I mean if you look at the studies of Trump voting patterns the poorest people are not the ones who are voting for Trump they are voting for Hillary Clinton the the number one factor I believe behind the Trump phenomenon is white anxiety and white resentment of the changing face of America I think the reason why you have Donald Trump is because we are on our way in the 2040s to becoming a majority minority nation something that where California already leads the way and there are a lot of older white people who are very unhappy about the state of affairs and and their resentment is stoked by Fox News and Breitbart and all these other Rush Limbaugh all these other Tribune's of the right and they see something very threatening about what's going on and and you know I think again organizations like Fox News are basically monetizing this fear and resentment they're taking and stoking it taking an advantage of it making a lot of money I mean you know people like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity are making tens of millions of dollars a year appealing to the worst angels of our nature it's it's truly shocking and in the case of Donald Trump he's figured out how to take advantage of that resentment not so much for monetary gain but for political gain and that is you know what he's doing right now and you're seeing it ramped up to the nth degree right now because they're not you know Republicans are not running in in the November election based on the tax cuts our economy they're really running based on fear-mongering and you know demonizing again this this poor group of Central American refugees making it sound as if there's some kind of invading horde that's going to rape and pillage white America like not to mention the dog whistle about Middle Easterners right yeah with unknown Middle Easterners just Trump just make stuff up and I mean this is just they a very dangerous game that they are playing and you're seeing it this week with this terrorist campaign all these bombs mail to all of Donald Trump's targets right I mean this is you know I was just writing last week that I feel like the social fabric is in danger of tearing oh there could be violence in the streets I think we're moving to that and I think Donald Trump is doing it deliberately for a political gain he wants to provoke a reaction from the left he wants to mobilize his his his followers and he's doing it with the most deranged and extreme partisanship I think America has has ever seen I mean he is denouncing Democrats for being literally for being evil literally for being traitors for wanting to open the borders to rapists and murderers for being aligned with them as 13 for wanting to turn America into Venezuela he failed socialist dictatorship he's calling the media the enemy of the people I mean we are not used to this kind of rhetoric in America I mean we always our partisanship but this is beyond partisanship I mean this is into the realm of authoritarian language that that dictators use around the world to mobilize their followers and this is just a very very dangerous thing to do which I think he's doing very cynically to for a political gain well that gets me to something I'm curious about which is like how much are we all sort of part of this breakdown in your mind you wrote in your book that you know early early in the 2016 campaign that trumps lack of restraint caused me to loosen my own restraints I felt reading it though that you were not maybe as pessimistic as some on the left about the sort of future of our democratic experiment but maybe not because it was said and and one of the things that hit me was you talking about how he's not full-blown fascist or dictator but a garden-variety strongman I guess my question would be then what so far it does seem to some extent like the courts and and the First Amendment and you know journalism and and our institutions have held up in a lot of ways are you worried about that ability to continue given things like you know the threats of violence that we're saying I am concerned about what happens if especially if Republicans were to win in this election if they were to hold on to the House and Senate I think that would basically be seen as a license by Trump and his minions to do more of what they're doing to ramp it up I mean I would imagine that within hours of the election results Trump would probably be getting rid of most of the leadership of the Department of Justice trying to get rid of mauler trying to stop the investigation of his own campaign probably you know announcing heinous new measures against undocumented immigrants so I think this would be a a terrible signal to sin and I think it would be a truly dangerous signal for our democracy now I don't you know I don't think that Trump is actually going to succeed in he's not going to destroy our democracy he's not going to destroy fascism he's not going to impose fascism but I think those are his tendencies I mean as I say in the book I see a lot of commonality between him and a lot of strongmen we've seen throughout history not I you know I don't compare him to somebody like Hitler who was uniquely evil but I do compare him to folks like you know Mussolini Peron Chavez a lot of people with just authoritarian personalities no tolerance for dissent a desire to stigmatize minorities for for their own political gain the difference of course is that Trump is not operating you know in in 1920s Italy or 1950s Argentine or 2000 Venezuela he's operating in the US of A which is one of the oldest and most durable constitutional republics in the world so we have very strong checks and balances to to maintain our democracy and I think we will but nevertheless what he's doing is you know he is corroding the democracy undermining it and he's certainly alienating his his supporters from mainstream truth and and mains and kind of basic Democratic civility and practice well I want to talk about the Republican Party which you left I believe the day after the 2016 election dude we registered as an independent welcome thank you I want to know where you see this sort of start of this in the sense of do you blame you know the approach Newt Gingrich took in the 90s in terms of wedge issues and sort of you know what some people see is the beginning of this tribalism I've seen other folks especially on the left but you know draw a line between that and then Mitch McConnell was saying on day one our goal is to basically stop everything Obama does and of course ending with the Supreme Court nomination I mean how much of the sort of mainstream do you think is to blame for not just Trump of the sort of situation we see ourselves in when it comes to this you know tribalism I think is the word we use the most often well in the book I trace it back even further than that to the very origins of the conservative movement and Donald Trump's success and hijacking conservatism has made Miriam what is American conservatism all about anyway and so redoing things I'd never done before like actually reading Barry Goldwater's book the conscience of a conservative reading Phyllis Schlafly book a choice not an echo and what I find in there is to paraphrase an echo of trumpism essentially that there was a lot of this stuff floating around in the 50s and in 60s I mean if you read descriptions of the 1964 Republican convention which occurred right here in this city there were a lot of moderate Republicans including folks like Henry Kissinger and Jackie Robinson and others who are terrified by the vehemence of the Goldwater supporters I'm very very much the same kind of reaction that I have today watching watching Trump rallies and if you read for example Phyllis laughy's best-selling book a choice not an echo I mean it is full of the craziest conspiracy mongering where she says you know why are Republicans losing presidential elections it never occurs to her because maybe the Democrats have a more attractive candidate or the Republicans are pushing a platform that isn't very popular whatever no her answer is that there's a small group of Finance ears in New York who have hijacked the Republican Party and are basically in league with the Soviet Union and want to destroy the Republican Party so as to facilitate communism in America I mean this is as crazy as it sounds but this was a best-selling it sold millions of copies in the sixties and seventies and Phyllis Schlafly rose to prominence opposing e ra in the 1970s so there's a lot of this craziness about the very origins of the modern conservative movement but I don't want to say that this is entirely defined the totality of conservatism because I think there's also been much more high-minded and principled conservatism in an office most in fact pretty much all Republican presidents up until now have been much more moderate than their campaign rhetoric would suggest including Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush and others so the way I put it is that basically before you have this kind of crazy fringe and then a conservative mainstream but now Trump has taken the craziness from the fringe and put it right into the center of the party and unfortunately most Republicans are happy to go along with that so how do you define conservatism as you viewed it before you left the right so to speak well it's it's an amorphous term and everybody has their definition to me it what it basically what conservatism is about is a dedication to limited government economic opportunity rather than guaranteed economic outcomes a commitment to American global leadership standing up for the principles upon which our country is founded life liberty and the pursuit of happiness being very inclusive being pro-immigration being very realistic and making policy assessments based on looking at the evidence rather than having an opera or a ideological commitment and I saw a lot of those tendencies in the Republican Party when I was growing up in the 1980s and even into the nineties but not so much anymore and to go back to your earlier question I think you know the trends that goddess the Trump have really you can really see him coming at a focus in the 1990s with Newt Gingrich the creation of Fox News which I think has been one of the most disastrous developments in modern American to history and then you had Sarah pale and then you had the Tea Party so all these things have moved the Republican Party further and further to the right and away from the kind of conservatism that I believe in and into essentially white nationalism is what it amounts to and this is you know I wish I could say this is not conservatism but it is conservatism it's a different kind of conservatism it's the kind that they've always had in Europe in this country it's the kind of conservatism associated with folks like Joe McCarthy George Wallace John Calhoun back in the 19th century there is this Pat Buchanan more recently there is this kin alternative conservative tradition which I find to be pernicious and dangerous but that is the one that the Donald Trump represents you mentioned earlier that you would advise Senator McCain do you think he regretted the Sarah Palin decision well he said he did yeah I mean in his last book published a few months before he died he in fact said he regretted it he wished he had chosen Joe Lieberman yeah so it seems like there's been a trade-off made by many folks in the Republican establishment who some of whom used to be your friends and I know you talked about the fact that you've lost friends that for all of you know the problems with Trump it's worth it to get conservative judges you know judges and justices for example to get the tax cut policy that they wanted those are different issues but I guess to start with on the judges issue like how do you view that and you know as somebody who is conservative how do you view the recent Kavanagh hearing some we can talk about the sexual harassment allegations but more just like is he in line with what you see as the conservative justice and is there any argument you can see for sort of the trade-offs that's been made well I can see how Republicans convinced themselves that the trade-off is worth it from my mind it's not a close call it's not worth it I've changed my mind and some of these issues I actually wrote a book about the legal system in the late 1990s in which I appeared it kind of mindlessly a lot of this Republican conservative ideology about the need for original intent in judging and the dangers of activist judges and so forth and I've rethought about a lot that in recent years and really realized that Republicans don't really care about the rule of law they don't really care about original intent they're a lot like the Democrats that they attack they just want policy outcomes out of the judiciary and in the case of the rule of law I mean it's kind of laughable that Republicans are saying you know we need conservative justices to uphold the rule of law when they're looking for those appointments from Donald Trump somebody who is mounting the most full-throated assault on the rule of law in American history and who was actively committing obstruction of justice in plain sight I mean I was in terms of Brett Kavanaugh what I wrote it that when he was nominated as this guy is more conservative than I am I would be more comfortable with somebody in the in the manner of Anthony Kennedy or Sandra Day O'Connor kind of a very centrist justice but I thought he was very well-qualified and I said hey I may disagree with this guy but I think he should be confirmed because he meets the basic qualification tests now I changed changed my mind after the hearing because hey I don't think there was ever a full and fair investigation made of dr. Ford's charges against them but B I was also just shaken by his performance at this at the second hearing where okay I get that you know if he feels like he was wrongly accused that he has a right to be outraged but I feel like he went beyond that into cartas and name-calling and conspiracy mongering and charging this was all payback for the Clintons that to me does not reveal a judicious temperament and and I think he is you know the fact that he's now on the court is going to undermine the legitimacy in the nonpartisan aura that the Supreme Court needs to have in order to to function effectively all right one more question on this and then we can move on but I just one of the things that has been most sort of shocking to me is the religious rights sort of blind support of Trump and I assume it's tied in some ways to these this issue of judges and roe v wade and some of these like social issues but I don't know have you had any conversations that has shed light on that with people that you know because it's it just seems so antithetical to what they have talked about in the past right it's it's it's confounding because I'm out what it basically comes down to us they are hoping that Trump will appoint judges who will outlaw abortion who outlaw gay marriage basically legislate their social agenda from the bench and in return for that they are willing to turn a blind eye to the flagrant immorality or maybe a morality of this president I mean it's mind-blowing to me I mean I'm old enough to remember the the Clinton impeachment in the 1990s and what conservatives and Republicans were saying about Bill Clinton I mean I have have a copy and have been rereading Bill Bennett's book the death of outrage which came out I think in 1998 where he was thundering on that it doesn't matter that the economy is going great it doesn't matter that Bill Clinton is is successful on a policy level he is demeaning our nation he's destroying our moral fiber he is dragging us down we can't have this this so-and-so as our chief executive and then I think wait a second people like Bill Bennett and all these other and all these evangelicals now they support somebody who is 10 times worse than Bill Clinton I mean Bill Clinton was a choir boy compared to Donald Trump I mean what would they be saying if a Democrat were caught breaking campaign finance laws to pay off a Playboy Playmate in a porn star I mean can you imagine the kind of meltdown they would be having on Fox News but because it's Donald Trump they turn a blind eye to anything any kind of transgression you could possibly imagine and they're basically subordinating their religious beliefs to their political agenda I mean there's a handful of evangelicals folks like Pete Waner and my curse and I think I've been very eloquent in denouncing what their fellow evangelicals white evangelicals are doing but to me I mean I'm not of that community but this is not I don't think this is their finest hour can imagine if it had been Barack Obama doing it of course I mean let's remember like in the days of President Obama he was considered a scandal that he wore a tan suit or put his feet up on the desk in the Oval Office I mean or didn't wear a flag pen once I think was just the stuff that people were outraged about by by Obama and the things that they're not outraged about Trump is just shows you how cynical and partisan all this is will you talk about how youth you know you've viewed politics as about ideas versus party I was very naive and partisanship is a sort of laziness in a way because there's this pressure to conform I mean are you are you hopeful that you left the party so maybe that answers the question that Republicans could swing this back in the other direction I think the only way that Republicans will swing it back is if they see that following the Trump approach is not going to be a formula for political success and that's why as somebody who was a lifelong Republican and is now an independent not a Democrat nevertheless not merging everybody to go out there and vote and work for Democrats in the midterm election because I think it's essential to elect Democrats not only to get a check and balance on Donald Trump something that Republicans have shown they will not do but frankly it's essential to vote for Democrats to save the Republican Party from itself because if they are rewarded politically for what they are doing now you're going to have more of this it's going to get worse the racism xenophobia misogyny all the rest of it is going to be amped up to the nth degree by 2020 the attacks on minority groups and undocumented immigrants that's not going to be get much much worse the obstruction of justice it's all going to get much much worse you know I basically included that Republican officeholders have no principles they just have poll numbers but if the poll numbers change and all of a sudden they see that following Trump over the cliff is not necessarily a winning strategy I think a lot of them are cynical enough to to reverse course but first you got to convince them that they're not going to get ahead doing this and sadly pretty much the entire Republican Party at this point has bought into the Trump approach the answer is an audience question I just got which was do you see any current Republicans in Congress organizing to counter the Trump agenda it seems like most of them just decided to resign yeah I mean the ones who are unhappy with what's going on are leaving and in part because or a large part because they couldn't win reelection like Jeff Flake for example there's this not been much of a pushback now my hope is that there will still be some Republican who will be brave enough to take on Trump in 2020 and I think there is the chance for somebody to do reasonably well in a state like New Hampshire John Kasich something like that I mean it's going to be a suicide mission they're not going to take away the nomination from from Trump but nevertheless a real challenge or it could do some real damage to Trump I think in the way that for example from the other side Pat Buchanan did real damage to President Bush in 1992 yeah I got a I got a audience question and then I want to piggyback on something I wanted to ask you about which is how can we be called a democracy when almost 3 million voters were disenfranchised I guess that's an allusion to the electoral college but I wanted to ask you more broadly about the idea of voting rights and and the thought had become way before Trump a seeming strategy of the Republican Party in a lot of places to you know actively promote policies that primarily would result in people of color having a harder time voting and we're seeing this in Georgia right now allegations of it and then of course there's gerrymandering which both parties have right it entered into and often made deals in state houses around but I mean do you see that what's your view of that do you see that as cynical do you think it's it has anything to do with how successful Republicans have been in the house and in state houses I mean I think that is certainly a Republican strategy which were sitting now in Georgia and some other places which certainly contributes to their electoral success but there are a lot of other factors at play as well including redistricting and including just the very basic nature of our political system which gives a massive advantage to small states with very little population which is why you know you keep having Republican presidents who are winning a minority of the popular vote and you know Trump losing the popular vote to Clinton by almost 3 million people and basically becoming president because he won 80,000 votes in three states I mean that is a source of frustration and it's you know it's baked into our our political system but of course you know the population imbalance is much greater today than it was in 1789 when you look at the number of people who live in blue states versus red states it's it's a huge disparity which is why Kratz can win so many popular votes and still lose the lose the presidency and so you know you basically have you know justices being put on the Supreme Court by a small minority of the population I mean that is that is very frustrating but I honestly don't know what the solution is because you know to change the Constitution you got to get the the small states on board and why would they ever vote to basically deny themselves power right well let's talk about the election you wanna make some bets here I went out of the political betting business when I was sure that a Donald Trump would not win the Republican nomination and be that he would not win the presidency so at this point all bets are off I'm with you but I mean how how 12 days out do you think it looks for Democrats and and you know what I mean to me it seems like the common wisdom and the asterisk being with the common wisdom 12 days out from 2016 was that Hillary Clinton would be president but is that Democrats are in a fairly strong position around the house and not so good in the Senate yeah I mean I don't have any reason to challenge that that conventional wisdom but I just would you know urge people not to be complacent about that as I think a lot of people were complacent about Hillary Clinton in 2016 what do you think a Democratic House I mean besides the obvious investigations but like what would that do in DC to this presidency even if the Republicans keep this on it well I mean if you think that we have bitter partisan warfare right now you ain't seen nothing yet because it's going to get ramped up dramatically especially if and when Muller delivers his report and if you know imagine what happens if he does find serious wrongdoing on the part of of the president I mean I don't think that Democrats are eager necessarily to rush into impeachment as the first order of business because they're afraid it's not going to be popular but you know I and I think that's proper I think they should wait for the mullah report but but you know if Muller does find serious misconduct collusion obstruction of justice and quite possibly also financial fraud on the part of the president at that point I think Democrats are obligated a by their constitutional duties and be by their base to move articles of impeachment and that will not be hard to do in the house of the Democrat silent majority but obviously it's going to be Armageddon in the Senate and it going to be very probably impossible to remove him because you're not going to get 67 votes but you know remember how bitter the the partisan battle was over the Clinton impeachment it would be much more bitter today because Bill Clinton had some scruples Donald Trump does not so he will use every tool in his in his toolkit mobilized his most rabid supporters to defeat any kind of impeachment and there's a real risk which I think a lot of Democrats are afraid of that it'll backfire it will make it's he will be able to paint the Democrats as trying to subvert the wall of the people and then you know use a failed impeachment just as Bill Clinton did to essentially rebound in popularity and a Donald Trump's case that Donald Trump's case that could mean winning re-election in 2020 so with that in mind I mean who who do you see or what type of candidate do you see as the biggest threat to Trump in 2020 I think a moderate and boring white guy basically is probably the most politically potent alternative to trump somebody who can essentially weaned away some of those very anxious and resentful white voters that he mobilized in industrial states so effectively you know maybe paired with a with a person of color as as the vice president I mean this is why I think a lot of people there's a lot of speculation like a Biden Harris ticket for example could be a successful and moderate I he's pretty moderate yeah I mean it's certainly more so I would say than a Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren I mean look for my I mean from my perspective I would say the Democrats have a once-in-a-generation or even maybe even more than that opportunity here to rely on American politics in the way that it was realigned in the 1930s and in the 1960s when the parties fundamentally changed and I think there are a lot of centrist and a lot of Republicans former Republicans who are unhappy with this Trump uh fight Republican party I mean remember the largest political party in America are the independents about 42% of the electorate compared to about 29% Democrats 27% Republicans so there's a lot of people who are not affiliated with a party right now and are looking for an alternative so I think if the Democrats can move to the center and nominate somebody who was pretty centrist and moderate and not threatening I think there is a chance to pick up a huge block of support and basically crush the Republican Party and leave them you know basically with their FoxNews base and very little else but you know my fear of the Democrats is what Abba Eban said about the Palestinians and they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity and so my fear is that instead they will go far to the left because progressive activists are so fired up by Trump and understandably so but my concern is that they will then nominate somebody like Senator Warren or senator or senator Sanders who is going to thrill the base but could wind up easily losing to Donald Trump and will turn off a lot of middle-of-the-road voters and I think that would be a disaster not just for the Democratic Party but for America because I think we really need a a centrist party in this country and at the moment that's that's a position that remains to be filled I wonder hearing you talk about this if there is an opening for a new political party I mean it seems for so long we've sort of rolled our eyes at that but as you've mentioned you know and no party preference voters have grown exponentially even in deep blue states like California and I think you know you hit on something there's a new poll out today here about where they looked at some of these congressional races and you know independents are really the ones in play in in this quest to flip the house for Democrats and they don't have a great view of either party so is that I mean is that an opportunity or is absolutely I mean I feel like we're kind of trapped in this two-party duopoly because of the way our system is structured and that's the way we've we've done it you know we haven't had a new party arise since the 1850s we're just we kind of go along but more and more the population is not happy if that's that as cool and you've seen you know you've seen it some evidence of that at the ballot box I mean remember in in 1992 how well Ross Perot did I mean he got about 20% on the vote even though he left the race in the middle and he was a pretty squirrelly character I mean but even look at you know Donald Trump I mean he's not a hardcore Republican he has no real history of the Republican Party he was basically an independent who came in and took over the Republican Party and theoretically an independent could come in and take over the Democratic Party - I mean in the book what I suggest is that it's a moonshot it's truly a long shot but I would love to see an American macron somebody like Makran in France who runs as a centrist not affiliate with either the two major parties and I think there is a chance maybe it's an outside chance but there is a chance for somebody like that if that person is credible well-funded charismatic somebody like that could win especially if the choices on offer are you know Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump I think that leaves a lot of room in the middle I gotta ask this would president Pence be worse well that's a great question no I would say no I mean I disagree with Mike Pence on many issues but I don't think he is personally unhinged and erratic and the way that Donald Trump is I mean that's the the real danger with Trump is not just how extremist views are but just that he is personally so unfit for office whereas pence I think in many ways is a right-wing extremist but he's kind of a boring personality type he's not incendiary in the way that that Donald Trump is I mean the the the really pernicious thing is that people like Mike Pence have remoulded themselves to basically become many Me's of Donald Trump I don't think that's that's where they started out but that's the effect that Donald Trump is having on the party well let's talk a little bit about foreign affairs that's your area of expertise and there has been a lot going on I want to ask about your Washington Post colleague Jamal khashoggi and the Trump administration's reaction and this is another story that's been changing by the day I think the Saudis today acknowledged this was premeditated right if yeah if it's Wednesday it must be a new story exactly I mean what have you made of this yeah I'm on book tour given everything we've discussed so far I mean is there anything that surprises you about the way the president has responded well sadly no I mean I'm disappointed but not surprised I mean if you look at Donald Trump he is more outraged genuinely outraged by Canadian milk tariffs than he is by the murder and dismemberment of this journalist Jamal hisagi who wrote for the same newspaper that I write for the Washington Post I mean he is a president utterly devoid of a moral compass he basically worships dictators I mean he thinks that Putin is great he's strong he will not criticize him he says he's in love with Kim jong-un who was one of the worst dictators on the planet he is basically given a Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of of Saudi Arabia MBS a blank check to do whatever he wants I mean remember this is not the first outrage from NBS last year NBS kidnapped the prime minister of Lebanon this year he kicked out the Canadian ambassador because Canada dared to criticize Saudi human rights abuses they're also carrying out this horrific war in Yemen which is killing so many innocent people their embargoing cutters so they've done these Saudis have done a lot of bad things and I think as they've done these things with no pushback from President Trump and as they listen to President Trump refer to the media as the enemy of the people I'm sure MB has thought hey great I can just kill this pesky journalist who dares to criticize me and America won't care and I think that's basically the message are getting from Trump is he really does not care that much I think the oh the one surprise here I think maybe for NBS and Trump is that a lot of people in America do care and there has been a lot of blowback in Congress but basically I don't think there's going to be any real consequences for Saudi Arabia unless Congress takes action which is possible because they could for example very easily cut off US arms for the Saudi war in Yemen do you I mean that's so interestingly that you think that message is why they did it because it has seemed even for a regime that has done all the things you just said just so blatant and obviously you know it happened in Turkey and there's no love lost there but they have their own problematic leader I would say I mean is this something you it sounds like you don't think we would have seen this under another administration that they would not have dared to do something well I mean it's hard to know and I don't want to you know I don't want to put the blame directly on Trump because obviously the actual culprits who did this the Saudis I mean they are the criminals here and I you know obviously there have been a lot of dictatorships that have done a lot of bad thing as long before Donald Trump came into office but I do feel like as I wrote not too long ago Trump is basically given every dictator on the planet a license to kill fairly secure there's not going to be any real American reaction because he his is I believe the most immoral u.s. foreign policy ever and it's really all about the bottom line which is why he gets exercised about countries that have a chaid surplus of the United States but doesn't really care about countries that go out and murder dissidents I mean for example the way that Putin has done in in the UK I want to talk about Russia I didn't want to ask about just one of the things that has surprised me the most has been maybe it shouldn't but this campaign among right-wing media to try to discredit it that is so disgusting there is so much disgusting filth on the right these days it's hard to know where to start I mean also just in in the last day or so when you know you had this terrorist campaign against people like the Clintons and President Obama and CNN and so forth and the immediate reaction of so many on the right is it's a false flag operation it's the Democrats who are responsible or you know they see a caravan of Central American refugees it's George Soros ie it's the Jews who are responsible and you see the same kind of filth with with Jamal hisagi saying well you know he's really a member of the Muslim Brotherhood he's an Islamic terrorist sympathizer so basically he deserved what was coming and who cares I mean this is so outrageous so lacking in humanity III just words fail me here yeah well I'm sure you have some thoughts on Russia and our presidents like love affair maybe we could call it with radomir Putin right I mean one of the things that I find interesting is the argument you hear a lot from Republicans and the administration is don't pay any mind to what the president saying look at our policies and we just pulled out of this you know arms treaty what I mean what's your reaction to that framing of this that you know words don't matter actions do basically well I think words do matter when they come from the president of the United States they do send a strong signal for good or for help in terms of Russia policy I would say the best way to characterize the administration is inconsistent and confusing and and all over the place because they certainly have done some things to get tough with Russia like sending lethal arms to Ukraine imposing some sanctions but remember those sanctions who were really imposed by Congress with overwhelming bipartisan majorities Trump was opposed but he had to sign the bill because it was going to get passed anyway and some of his aides have certainly been eager to to hold Putin's feet to the fire but then you know you've seen the reporting when Donald Trump finds out for example that he signed off on a mass expulsion of Russian diplomats in retaliation for the Russian attempt to poison a dissident in the UK he then gets outraged he didn't realize that he signed off on this mass yes so you basically have several different Russia policies you have the one of the Trump aids or by-and-large hardliners on Russia and you have Trump himself who had the most embarrassing and obsequious performance in front of laud Amir Putin at Helsinki such that you had people very credible people like John Brennan the former CIA director openly questioning whether Trump has been compromised by Putin because it's hard to explain the way that he founds all over Putin in any other manner so the administration itself has been has been inconsistent they've done some some good things on Russia some bad things but Trump himself never says one bad word about Putin which is pretty striking because he has bad words about pretty much everybody else I have several questions from the audience about the tariffs and kind of their impact on our economy and the world supply chain do you I guess to sort of frame this as a question to start do you think that that could have a political impact on this president success well absolutely I mean look at what's happening in the stock market it's down for the years down since the Republicans passed their big tax cut package and the huge fan of yes III was not a huge fan of it and and the tariffs are just beginning to bite because Trump just imposed like 250 billion dollars worth of tariffs and Chinese goods and those are just now starting to affect the bottom line and so the Wall Street Journal just had a story I think today or yesterday saying that on about a third of the earnings calls for us and P 500 companies about a third of them referred to the impact or the tariffs and a lot of companies are suffering massive hits I mean I think Ford Motor Company has said they're they're losing a billion dollars because of the tariffs so that's rippling through the economy I think that's contributing to the downturn in the stock market and you know Trump doesn't quite know how to respond I was fascinating this Wall Street Journal interview where he actually denied that he had imposed any tariffs I mean he is living in some kind of alternative reality yeah it's so interesting to me too because the places where those tariffs are hitting the hardest in a lot of ways are where his base to win in 2016 I mean which is why that you know they're imposing these tariffs farmers are getting hit and now they're spending like ten billion dollars to bail out farmers maybe instead of spending this taxpayer money to subsidize the farmers maybe just skip the tariffs and just let the farmers sell their goods how about that yeah well let's talk about the tax cut a little because it seems like that was what Republicans had anticipated running on it seems like you know that was a big part of some of the donors coming over to Trump side in 2016 absolutely we're looking at a deficit I mean yeah it's bigger than ever yeah no I mean I think this is kind of an indication of how the Republican Party has really been stuck in outdated Dogma and basically ever since Reagan's 1981 tax Republicans of a every time they get into power they think that the answer to everything is a tax cut well I think the Reagan eighty one tax cut actually made sense because we were in a very deep recession and you want to stimulate the economy but when Trump took over we were not in a recession we were in a booming economy and so what he's basically doing is he's adding a sugar high to an already strong economy at the risk of massive fiscal consequences down the road they're roughly doubling the deficits that he inherited from President Obama we're gonna have trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see and it's I mean if you just go back and look at the quotes from people like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan one the when the federal debt level was much lower they were saying this is unsustainable it's gonna threaten the future of our democracy we can't live with these federal debt levels and now the debt is much higher and getting higher all the time and there's suddenly fallen silent the debt doesn't matter to them fiscal responsibility doesn't matter to them again I'm still somebody who believes in in fiscal responsibility which is why I can't support this one of many reasons I can't support this Republican party you brought up Paul Ryan I mean what is the deal with that I mean because he did seem like you know Mitch McConnell I think likes winning right that seems to be his but Paul Ryan at least until Trump was a true fiscal conservative I thought he was - I mean he's been a colossal disappointment I mean I look at exactly as you did I mean I'm not disappointed Mitch McConnell because I think he's basically cynical and has no ideology between accruing political aside from accruing political power so I'm not surprised by Mitch McConnell but Paul Ryan always pretended to be a different beast and he spoke about himself as a Jack Kemp bleeding heart Republican he said that you know the debt level was unsustainable we needed to reform entitlement spending which was a brave thing for a politician to say and so I I was really supportive of Paul Ryan I thought he was the future of the Republican Party and he broke my heart because you know his legacy is going to be higher debt it's going to be staying silent while the president engages in the most flagrant you know race-baiting and and and minority bashing Paul Ryan just you know pretends he doesn't listen to what Trent Donald Trump says you know it's there he's one of a number of people who have really deeply disappointed me about this Republican Party I know I noticed in that New York Times profile of him he he's always saying oh I what did the president say but then he was like reading tweets to the reporter so he might have some twitter now so it's very selective hearing loss on his part I have a question from the audience asking can you explain the climate denialism among otherwise educated informed politicians when I wanted to talk about climate change more broadly but I guess maybe you could just start with where you stand on the issue well I mean I think climate change is a real problem I mean just look at the rising temperature is that all the the record number of hurricanes I mean clearly this is an issue that we need to confront and it's staggering to me that Republicans basically are denying reality but you know this is part of this larger trend where I think Republicans have pulled further and further away from reality I mean when if they if they think based on some random comment from Donald Trump that you know that there's Middle Eastern terrorists in the Central American Caravan and it's all being funded by George Soros and it's not that surprising that they think that global warming is a Chinese hoax but this is a very dangerous position for one of our two major parties to adopt because they are basically irrational illogical and denying basically accepted scientific facts in favor of whatever political fiction Fox News is peddling at that moment so you know climate denialism I think is just part of the larger Republican war on reality what you're seeing at the moment I mean what should the conservative approach to it be what would be the free-market sort of approach well I mean I'm not an expert on on climate change but I think you know a carbon tax as a solution that a lot of economists think makes a lot of sense and that's something that would I think would make sense certainly you know pulling out of the Paris climate Accord is going the wrong way I mean I you know I think a conservative approach would acknowledge that there you have to wait economic cost and benefits but you can't simply ignore the reality of climate change or just pretend that if if we do nothing everything will be okay it's not that's I mean that's that's not a tenable position it doesn't seem like it's one though that the Democrats have done a very good job of running on or sort of figuring out a messaging strategy I mean let me tell you something that the host of a major television talk show that many of you are familiar with what he told me I'm not going to name the the host but this host said to me you know we can't we can't talk about global warming because it's a ratings loser people don't care they don't tune in we don't get eyeballs by talking about climate change I mean that's that's a very realpolitik reaction Wow I think people are just depressed by it probably but you can imagine that the rest of the news lifting you talked earlier you mentioned the president's sort of on one hand law and order approach to say immigration but then he's had you know this massive fight with the intelligence community the FBI in particular and it just seems and of course the attacks on the judiciary I'm curious like where you think that has landed in the general public and and the risks you see well it is pretty rich that the Republican Party which claims to be the party of law and order the party of supporting law enforcement is now mounting the most outrageous and unprecedented assault on America's premier law enforcement agency the FBI I mean this is so shameful and led by folks like Devon Nunez they're basically making obstruction of justice a core platform of the Republican Party I'd this is something I never thought I would live to see the day frankly I mean they're they're you know turning robert muller this republican career prosecutor universally respected until this probe they're turning him into some kind of caricature claiming that he is a hand made of the democrats that that bob muller is somehow he democratic operative and pretending that the FBI is idiot logically opposed to Donald Trump I mean let's get real here okay the FBI is primarily made up of middle-aged cops okay middle-aged cops are not ideologically opposed to Donald Trump okay if anything I'm sure they would be predisposed to favor him if you are not in fact mounting unrelenting assault on their objectivity and independence which is what he is doing and the fact that they have that the Republican Party is going along with this I think is is one of the most outrageous things that has happened in the Trump era well there's also like an interesting split within law enforcement because you see I think on the local level you know these smaller agencies endorsing him going to these rallies you know the joropo oh pardon preemptive pardon I mean is there any not pre-emptive Sheriff Joe was actually convicted he was convicted and there's a nut is there enough there's another case that there's a question as whether that could be a preventive well I actually wanted to ask you are a journalist that's how you started your career you know I guess I'm still a journalist of a sort since I am a Washington Post column yes I wonder how you grade the work on the news side that papers like the New York Times and the post are doing whoo that you know the president has so vociferously attacked well to put it into and to move you reviewer terms to thumbs up I think the press is really doing an outstanding job that's one of the silver linings of the Trump era I think it is given a you know a fresh burst of life and purpose to the major media organizations and I think the post and the times have really been at the forefront of holding Trump to account bringing the truth out and you just think about how many jaw-dropping stories have emerged I mean just this week The Times had that fabulous piece and how Donald Trump is using his cell phone to have it's unsecure conversations that are being eavesdropped on by the Chinese this is after you know he made the Hillary Clinton email server one of his core campaign issues and then you know just about a month ago the times had this another fantastic expose about how Donald Trump and his family are basically guilty of a massive long-term tax fraud which seems to have you know faded out of public consciousness but it's worth remembering the post you know has has had many fabulous exposes as well I you know I don't know where this country would be without him and I think it's it's it's telling the kind of animus that Donald Trump has against the news media even today you know a day after CNN received a letter bomb he's still attacking the news media you know still saying that basically the the the violence in the country and and the incivility it's all the media's fault because they dare to criticize him in essence and you know the media is certainly not going to stop doing its job and thank goodness that they're there do you think there's any political eggs to the tax issue political eggs just I mean you know Donald Trump refused to release his tax yeah well not occasion right right no I mean this is one of these many things that just seems to drop down the memory hole I mean we we also seem to forget the fact that you know in in mid-august Michael Cole and Trump's lawyer pleaded guilty to eight felonies and implicated Donald Trump and two of those so you basically have an unindicted co-conspirator as president of the United States and we forget because there's so many outrages that take precedence and I think part of it is because you know it depress those of us in the media we are subject to some extent to chasing you know whatever story comes up that day and every day there's like ten new outrages from the White House that you wind up writing about so it's hard to keep a consistent focus on the really big outrage that came out last month or or last year and that's where I think it would be very helpful if you did have Democrats and control at least of the house because that they start to hold hearings if they start to subpoena documents if they start to do investigations that in turn will drive the news cycle it won't be just Trump's crazy tweets yeah how would you grade your former Wall Street Journal editorial page they they have been fairly pro Trump on a lot of things yeah I think dismaying Lee so I'm not I mean I think the journal is still a great newspaper especially with the reporting that's done by the news side but I've been dismayed to see the extent to which the editorial page has has wound up endorsing somebody who is opposed to so many other views I mean Mon tariffs and on so many other issues its kind of I mean mind-boggling actually on the economic stuff it would be mind-boggling if it weren't for the fact that the whole Republican Party is is pretty much in the same position it's it's it's it's very dismaying we're in California and in the book you draw a parallel to Pete Wilson the second to last Republican governor if you want to call on our switch singer Republican and you talk about something that I have actually been thinking about a lot since the election which is what Pete Wilson's kind of anti-immigrant stances and and prop 185 184 wondering if I've did too the GOP here that that was sort of the beginning at the end are are you at all hopeful that this is sort of happening on the national level with Trump I think it's inevitable because I mean basically what you had in California was in the 1990s Pete Wilson turned the Republican Party into the anti-immigrant party and of course the demographics of California have shifted so quickly and you have such a large Latino and Asian population that that is not a winning long term strategy and so I think the Republican Party in California has really been decimated by what P Wilson did in the 1990s and I think it's inevitable that you're gonna have something somewhere happen at the national level it's a question of time because you know by 2040 this country is going to be a majority minority in country and you know under those conditions being the party of white resistance is not going to be a successful political ploy the problem is you know a lot on an awful lot of things can happen between now and twenty forty and in the meantime unfortunately young people who are very anti Trump in minorities who are very anti Trump tend to vote at much lower rates then grumpy old white people who turn out very heavily and so that is what Trump is banking on basically squeezing every last bit of juice out of the white vote to hold on to power that was a surprisingly successful strategy in 2016 and and it could be a successful strategy in 2020 I just don't think it's gonna be a successful strategy in 2050 yeah we have time for about one more question and this is a little far afield but an audience member asks do you see a need to get money out of Elections perhaps such as the British system and if you do do you think there's any chance of it well hard to have any chance of it given where the Supreme Court stands on equating campaign donations with with free speech which is certainly a questionable judgment but you know I would not necessarily say that money is the root of all evil in politics because I mean if you saw the way the Donald Trump ran for office he he did not spend as much money as as Hillary Clinton spent he got a mass of free media he figured out how to basically take advantage of press coverage to get his message across so ironically even though Trump is a plutocrat his campaign actually showed that it's possible to beat money in politics that's not just because you have a lot of money doesn't mean you're going to necessarily be successful but I mean I think that is something we do need to look at is it's the corrupting influence of money but you know I is that yeah I don't think you're given where the Supreme Court stands ideologically you're not gonna have a lot of success with that so you know I don't think it's you know again it's not what's really keeping Trump in in power is not necessarily the money of a Sheldon Adelson or something like that although it certainly helps but I think fundamentally it's his skills as a demagogue and his ability to whip up his his base which he does not need a lot of money to do and so Democrats need to figure out how to counter that not with an effective message instead of just you know grousing about money in politics because in fact I think in this election cycle Democrats I I suspect are either going to outspend Republicans or being pretty close parity so you know if Democrats lose in in a couple of weeks time it's not going to be because they were outspent all right well thank you max boot columnist for the wash Chintan posts for joining us today thank you we'd like we'd like to remind the audience here that pre signed copies of the corrosion of conservatism are available for purchase in the back of the room I am really a goose and this meeting of the Commonwealth Club the place you're in the place where you're in the know is now adjourned

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Channel: Commonwealth Club of California

Views: 41,973

Rating: 4.3355265 out of 5

Keywords: MAX BOOT, THE CORROSION OF CONSERVATISM, Republican Party, politics, The Washington Post, Commonwealth Club, San Francisco

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Length: 65min 25sec (3925 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 26 2018