Trump and America in Crisis | George Will | Tom Switzer

now the scenes across the United States they've been profoundly disturbing heavenly so much so that we at CIS decided to change the subject of today's event from is capitalism in crisis to America in crisis first the tragic death of George Floyd an african-american man at the knee of a Minneapolis police officer then the nationwide protests across America and then the wanton violence looting flying across many American cities all alongside the unfolding crisis of coronavirus so what does all this tell us about American politics it's an election year this year what does it tell us about American public policy and America's place in the world well I can't think of a more distinguished scholar to address these issues then George F will is a Pulitzer Prize winning columnist nationally syndicated across the United States at the Washington Post George has been a regular fixture on a leading American political television shows for many decades he's the author of several influential books including most recently the conservative Sensibility now George was scheduled to deliver the annual CIS keynote lecture this week in Sydney and Melbourne but of course the Cova 19 virus and that interrupted plans I should stress that George Will has been writing a biweekly column in The Washington Post since 1974 1974 that was the year that Richard Nixon resigned over Watergate Gough Whitlam was Australia's prime minister and the West was gripped by economic stagflation now according to legend when George Will was hired as a columnist in 1974 he asked William F Buckley Jr the founder of National Review magazine that conscience of American conservatism the patron saint of American conservatism he asked him how will I ever write two columns a week Bill Buckley replied George it'll be easy at least two things a week will annoy you and you'll be able to write about them and with that it's a great pleasure to welcome George will hi there George how are you actually bill said that to me in 1973 he hired me and when he hired me as his magazine national reviews first Washington correspondent so I'm actually this is my 47th year call oh my goodness well I'm 48 so you've been doing this for about as long as I've been alive now we'll get to Trump in a moment but I was gonna say yeah you must be annoyed enough times over the last few years you found it pretty easy to write new to newspaper columns actually and for a while i was doing five every two weeks because i had the back page of newsweek every other week yes I don't believe there's ever been a day that I didn't have four or five things I wanted to write about I've always carried in my wallet dude a little card with topics I want to get to and the card is full enough after the fist we stopped at nothing happened for the next month I'd be all set well let's talk about the big issue of the week in that of course is the protests and the violence across so many many American cities including Washington DC these are dark days but we've been here before and you to remember the rights and the mayhem in the late 1960s after the assassination of Martin Luther King what do you think distinguishes 2020 from 1968 George the big differences were not at war overseas the assassination of Martin Luther King was the middle of three terrible blunders to the country the first in February was the Tet Offensive that punctured the American sense that progress was being made in Vietnam then in April came the assassination of Martin Luther King and then in June came the assassination of Robert Kennedy who probably otherwise would have been the Democratic presidential nomination the difference today is a we're not at war not fighting a ground war of attrition on the mainland of Asia with a conscript army which divided the country terribly second the politics in 1968 were more we're healthier than they are today in the sense that the relations between the two parties particularly in Congress were not as acrimonious as they are today today the parties are at daggers drawn there's no compromise they're stalemate and in that sense I think people have a sense that a kind of dyspeptic spirit throughout Washington not everyone agrees some people like Daniel Henninger another Pulitzer Prize winning columnist at The Wall Street Journal he's written today that this is actually worse than 1968 and I want to read out what he says and get your response he says it's evident from the coverage that most of the demonstrators were born after 1990 by then Lyndon Johnson's Great Society welfare programs had been in place for 25 years now it's 55 years annual budget appropriations totaling multiple trillions of dollars on Medicaid food stamps welfare public housing grant subsidies federal aid to public schools they've produced what so hinges point is that it's actually got worse because the Great Society welfare programs have actually made a bad situation worse how would you respond to Daniel Henninger George I think many of the Great Society programs did make matters worse but the more important fact is they didn't make things better in 1968 we still have the assumption that was at the heart of American social policy was that all social problems could be cured by economic growth that in the words of President Kennedy a rising tide raises all boats but in 1965 Pat Moynihan later a great Senator at that time a 38 year old social scientist in Lyndon Johnson's Labor Department published his report on the crisis of the Negro family in which he said 23 point seven percent of african-american children are born up to unmarried mothers and that the family which has always been the primary transmitter of social capital the habits mores customs dispositions necessary to prosper in a free society the family was disintegrating in the african-american community and that as long as that was the case government programs would be powerless to reverse what he called frankly the tangle of pathologies in the ghetto well today 72 percent of all African American children are born out of wedlock majority of mothers under 30 of all races colors and creeds in the United States are not living with the fathers of their children 40% of all first births are out of wedlock so we have a general disintegration of families that is much worse in the african-american community and that accounts for the intergenerational transmission of poverty but to be sure though there has been impressive growth of a black middle-class since the 1960s correct quite certainly not just a growth of the middle class but the coming of a large number of african-americans into first the undergraduate colleges all across the country and the professional schools business medicine and legal as well there is a segment left behind the segment left behind is all the more bitter because they have now gone 50 more than half a century after the problems were supposed to be solved but the fact is you're quite right that there is a large and steadily growing african-american middle class and we should also remember as you watch on television the scenes of disorder that riots are telegenic peace isn't and West vast swath of the North American cotton and it's quite peaceful tonight I assure you yeah and I should stress also that interracial marriage which is a key indicator of harmony that has been increasing significantly since the 60s now of course one sign of progress was the election of a black president and that was Barack Obama but this work George he came out and he was among others who say that quote systemic police racism is a reality does the recent killing of George Floyd does that demonstrate widespread racial bias not among police I do not believe that obviously there are but there are problems of racist police officers but they're a tiny minority what it really demonstrates and no one runs to quite say this out loud is the power of the police unions the particular officer has been charged with second-degree murder in that case whose bee was on the man's throat for eight minutes and 48 seconds that man had had 17 prior complaints about his police behavior the sum total of his punishment for 17 complaints was a1 suspension of 40 hours now it just is the case that the police unions in the United States are so strong that they can protect police from accountability so that is something that has to be addressed and as I think a more proximate cause of problems than systemic racism ok well now let's turn to the president Donald Trump in one of your Washington Post columns this week you said the following quote this low-rent lear raging on his Twitter Heath has proven that the phrase malignant buffoon is not an oxymoron tell us more strong letter to follow yes mr. Trump has a rock-solid base and it's in the low 40% of the electorate nothing he can do will shake it but the amazing thing is that the man who lost the popular vote by three million votes has done nothing in three years and four months to expand beyond his base his his strategy for winning 270 electoral votes frankly eludes me and I think the chances are small and getting smaller that he will do so I said a long time ago the problem with mr. Trump isn't that he doesn't know this or that and the problem isn't even that he doesn't know that he doesn't know this or that rather the problem is that he doesn't know what it is to know things he doesn't have a sense of mastery of any subject if any anything that would give him confidence in just one small example two years ago the an anniversary came up and the government was honoring Frederick Douglas the great african-american leader of the night century the president was asked about this and he said yeah Frederick Douglass is doing very well Frederick Douglas died 125 years ago he's not doing very well but that's the sense that the president it seems constantly at see constantly untethered from that what you would think would be important information but in fairness George one can agree with a lot of what you're saying and still say that many people including yourself wrote Donald Trump off time and again throughout 2015 and 2016 and he did cause a huge shock in November of 2016 when he defeated Hillary Clinton without winning the popular vote I was shocked and Donald Trump was shocked the assembly staff said spent the day before the election briefing the press on why they lost it was a shocking of them but I think it's important to understand this never before in American history had we had two candidates enter the fall election season with higher disapproval than approval ratings never before the only other candidate we've never had a major party nominee to enter the fall with higher disapproval than approval was Barry Goldwater in 1964 I mentioned him affectionately because I voted for it but we had an unusually unpalatable choice in 19 in 2016 and the American people not unreasonably having been seen Hillary Clinton as a public figure since 1992 chose the devil they didn't know quite so well I think the chances of them re-upping saying gosh let's have four more years of this is a slight but Georgia some pundits say that Trump could use the nick Sounion tactic of linking all this disorder and mayhem to the Democrats and remember chaos in 1968 drove a lot of people away from Hubert Humphrey and the Democrats to Richard Nixon question could trump use the looting and the violence especially if they get worse over this long hot summer could trump use this too great effect in November I don't expect that to occur the long hot summer of these disorders these disorders tend to burn themselves out that said if it would were to go on into the fall it would make the political system so volatile that what you suggest would happen would happen that people would turn to trump but here's the difference in 1968 in 1968 Democrats that were control of the House of Representatives Democrats controlled the Senate Democrats controlled the presidency and so Nixon as the outsider said vote for me and I will end the chaos in 2020 Donald Trump is the chaos Donald Trump is in power Donald Trump relishes division Donald Trump relishes name-calling and picking fights and a sort of chest-thumping his idea of manliness provoking his adversaries so it's going to be very hard for him as an incumbent as a celebrant in a way of of chaos to fulfill the Nixon role of 1968 but George one thing that does clearly distinguish 2020 from 1968 it's not just the racial crisis it's also a health crisis but also an economic crisis now in a recent column in The Washington Post you cited research from the Becker Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago this is named after the Nobel laureates Milton Friedman and Gary Becker past guests here at CIS and the research that you cited shows that the recovery from the pandemics economic damage will be protracted and perhaps made more so by some of the government's welfare programs that the US Congress has put in place can't this make the next few months even more toxic and destabilizing George will it can indeed the hopeful prognosis is that we'll have that what they call a v-shaped recovering steep decline sharp bounce back up the fear is that we'll have a w-shaped recovery there to bounce it'll begin to recover come the autumn just when the flu season is impending the normal flu will have another slump and it'll look like a W no one knows we do know this and this was in the Becker Friedman report that I cited it is very clear that in their rush to do something and I can certainly sympathize with that Congress put together the Paycheck Protection Act in which they have increased unemployment benefits to a de Groot to a level that makes it an economical for a large number of people to go back to work they would have to take a pay cut and they also require businesses to hire back people who they may not have a use for anymore so the they've built-in incentives for economic and efficiencies that are bound to suppress productivity going into the future yeah well you originally scheduled to speak at cos this week to give our John beneath and lecture to talk about that means the fact that neither candidate neither the Democrats nor the Republicans championing the kind of classical liberal beliefs that's Institute's the s represent Kate up with 2dos our think tank in Washington the Institute for Economic Affairs in London it's amazing because you think about 24 years ago a Democratic President Bill Clinton declared the era of big government is over and look where we are today how do you account for that I account for the fact that there are fewer people who speak the way you and I do that the fact is there is a great uninformed nostalgia for the New Deal for example not many people who say if only we could have another new deal now to get us out of this not many of them know the following there was a huge contraction in the middle of the New Deal in 1937 it's called the recession within the depression few of them know that the fundamental purpose of the New Deal is to cure unemployment and it wasn't until nine eighteen forty and forty one when the United States began to gear up for worked for with military spending to be the arsenal of democracy it wasn't until then that unemployment came below fourteen percent it was fourteen percent when Pearl Harbor was attack so the New Deal by its own standards failed Morgenthau Roosevelt's Treasury Secretary said to him in nineteen forty we've spent all of this money and we have failed now those of us knew and I and others who think free markets are the answer know that one of the problems was that capital went on strike during the New Deal business just gave up trying to anticipate the future given the regulatory fidgets of Roosevelt and his brain stressed and it prolonged a depression a depression that was not nearly so severe and nearly so protracted in other developed countries and and that brings me to today I mean you've written about how many Republicans Young Republicans say Marco Rubio the senator from Florida who was a presidential candidate in 2016 he's talked about a common good capitalism and the question here is and this is what you were going to address in part during your John beneath and lecture in Sydney and Melbourne this week why is it that these young Republicans are more inclined to indict capitalism for America's problems than to defend it well they have focused on the fact and it's undeniable that capitalist dynamism as frictions and has casualties creative destruction to use the phrase of Joseph Schumpeter creative destruction is a very creative but it is destruction and people are dislocated and mounted it today we have a foreign power to blame for this some people think that is the so-called China shock although America has boomed not only since the globalization of the North American Free Trade Agreement it has boomed since China entered the debute the world trade organization the question is not does capitalism create dislocations that could call for us to to ameliorate the injury suffered by people the question is do you want to throw the baby out with the bath you want to take measures that that take the creativity out of creative destruction I think not I think the most alarming development today not just in the United States but particularly in the United States is what I call the great flinch Americans may be saying to themselves it's just too wearying it's just too dangerous just to anxiety creating to have globalization and free trade Bill Clinton to his great credit when he fought the majority of his party to pass the north american free trade agreement said and i quote him protectionism is just a word for giving up and i don't think the american people are going to do that i think the american people still remain skeptical of protectionism well i think on behalf of all of our CIA supporters we do agree entirely with that george now in your column this week you called out for a clearing out of those Republican congressional enablers of Donald Trump we've got one question here already says blaze Joseph from Sydney he's actually a colleague of mine here at sea is George and he says quote before Trump Republicans and Democrats alike oversaw an economy that left behind millions of Americans massive increases in government debt was the cost thousands of innocent lives and trillions of wasted tax dollars question why should any self-respecting conservative voter in America now listen to anything any member of the Republican political establishment ever says again and Sue also from Sydney asks wasn't the establishment status quo pre Trump unsustainable fair questions well I'm I question for Sue whether the establishment so-called existed that may be a noun that denotes nothing anymore time well seriously once upon a time there was a Republican establishment they had a newspaper the New York Herald Tribune it died and 1966 they had a bank the Chase Manhattan Bank run by the Rockefellers they had the business elite in the United States that died I have to tell you in 1964 in the Cow Palace in San Francisco when my man Goldwater got elected against all the forces of the Republican establishment so the Republican establishment was pretty much an empty husk long ago and certainly was by this time we have so democratized the nominating process for president and the presidential nomination is all that the party's existing basically to bestow that the the gatekeepers so-called and the bosses some of us long for smoke-filled rooms where we could take this back people whose job is to win elections but I know a lost cause when I see when I've backed and not with them well Barry Goldwater certainly was in 1964 is a huge landslide I think yeah Lee yeah he only carried six states but I like to think he actually wasn't that election it just took 16 years to count okay let's turn to our next question and it's Steven Loosli he's a former Labor Party senator and president of the Australian Labor Party how left-of-centre party he down under George and he is for what it's worth one of Australia's leading political historians of the United States so what he says quote the Republican Party currently appears to have assumed the status of a cult embracing Donald Trump post Trump Stephen Lewis Lee asks will it continue to be so or is it more likely to resume its posture of being internationally focused in other words will allies again be valued and will treaties again form part of the core of American interests abroad George will i I think that post Trump the party will revert to its internationalist instincts your historian is quite right the Republican Party is more United today behind Donald Trump than it has ever been since it was founded in whisk in 1854 really even more so during the Reagan era Oh let me let me tell you this at the 500 day mark of the Reagan presidency he had the support of 77% of Republicans it's a 500 day mark of the Trump presidency he had the support of 87 percent of the pub well that's partly because a number of Republicans and you're talking to one have left the party button in 1912 Teddy Roosevelt former Republican president wanting to become president again challenged the incumbent Republican president William Howard Taft and the party split conservatives against progressive Republicans that split was replicated in the 1940s - Tom Dewey governor of New York liberal Republicans against the Robert Taft the president's son Senate report from senator from Ohio it was replicated again in the 1960s the Goldwater conservative Republicans against the Nelson Rockefeller New York liberal Republicans no more there is no dissent from Donald Trump in the Republican Party because Republicans are terrified of their base they're frightened of their own voters they saw what happened to senator corker of Tennessee senator flake of Arizona congressman Sanford of South Carolina those three got crosswise with the president he unleashed one or two tweets and they disappeared yeah that hasn't stopped some senators like Mitt Romney from criticizing the president to be sure pretty muted criticism pretty muted a okay now what does this mean George for foreign policy though because Stevens other question was really will the Republican if the Republican Party as you say is now captured by Trump whose instincts are America first nativism why are you so confident that the Republican Party post Trump will be more internationalists and Reaganite if you like well the the pandemic itself is calling people's attention to the fact that we need international cooperation to have effective policies viruses are not perspectives of borders the United States economy is woven into the world so extraordinarily complex supply chains our national security and military affairs from the South China Sea to the Middle East depends on the supportive of allies not the least of which is Australia so I have no doubt whatever okay particularly if the next president is as I expect him to be a Joe Biden a former chairman and a longtime member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee mm-hmm yeah I think you've written a column that he could handle China better than anyone else in the current context is that right well it is he has said that President Xi is a thug now it'll be tough for even Donald Trump to get rhetorically to the right of that now on this question about American staying power in the world particularly in the asia-pacific I host a radio national program at the ABC which is the equivalent of NPR in the United States and a lot of my listeners tell me that this week if America can't police its neighborhoods very well how on earth can America police the asia-pacific region in the face of a rising China how would you respond that's a very fair question during the Cold War which began early in 1947-48 the Berlin Blockade the aid to Turkey and all the rest late forties till the mid 60s the United States had its arguments of course but the United States and foreign policy was completely United now that unity was shattered over Vietnam but in swaras dealing with the Soviet Union there was remarkable unity right up until the Berlin Wall came down in 89 then the Soviet Union disappeared in 91 today is very different because the American people do not agree on much of anything there are two hostile snarling camps and that will that has to spill over into foreign policy so whoever asked you that question pointed to the great unanswerable question so far is can the American people pull up their socks stiffen their sinews summon up the blood and face outward in some unified way I think they can but it's only a guess well escape with foreign policy we've got a question here from Karen in Melbourne and she asked well she says that Australia like the United States is now deeply concerned about the rising threat of China indeed experts and pundits are talking about a China threat and a new cold war these are Kirstie's what these are Karen's words what is amazing about all this is that Australia and the United States pursued policies throughout much of the past three decades that helped China economically and become a threat to America's position in East Asia wasn't this a remarkably foolish policy that's one question but also this one for you George isn't Trump correct astride to slow down China's economic growth and contain it militarily fair points we we would probably flinch from the word containment at this point even though we are as Henry Kissinger has said in the foothills of a new Cold War but I think in answer to your question or I'd say this I do not think it was a mistake to bring China into the world trade in system in the hope that in the hope that this would bring with it a kind of cultural change in China Frank me from Nixon's trip to China in 1972 until very recently nations around the world and both parties in the United States made a wager and the wager was this which was an economic growth would bring with it market forces laws adjudication courts a kind of civilizing effect of capitalism which I profound they believed in we made this wager and the world lost that wager because China has said we want the results of market forces we want the results of access to international trade we want this access to national capital but our most important value is regime stability what the people who made this wager neglected to recognize was that this is first and foremost and always at Leninist party state and they will sacrifice anything to regime stability it is a little bit too late to say that we don't want China to rise China has risen so the question is we have to have a robust naval presence in the South China Sea we have to have allies from Australia and South Korea and India and Vietnam and all the rest China is strong but China is not omnipotent and the United States has its problems but it also has enormous reserves of strength and extremely valuable allies in Asia so it seems we Kissinger said we're in the foothills of the Cold War let's hope we don't scale the peak a recently George I interviewed a John Mishima and casual marble Bonnie here at CIS and they both although they express themselves in different ways they lamented the fact that two out of the five u.s. treaty Ally so obviously Australia Japan South Korea but also the Philippines and Thailand the Philippines and Thailand in the trump era are moving away from the American strategic orbit moving closer to Beijing doesn't that worry you sure it does and it seems to me that when allies looked at the United States and see never mind the disorders those will go away but when they see a president who disdains allies who've used diplomacy as a zero-sum game my gain has to be your loss who questions the entire apparatus of the post second world war world order they're obviously nervous and they are right to be nervous but the cure for one bad election is a better election and my my guess is ones coming okay I'm Brett Lee he the former president of the Australian to George and he just asked a question do you expect that this sino American security and economic competition will become more intense regardless of who wins in November I think it I I would say I hope it becomes more intense because I don't think we're conducting that with proper intensity and with the proper long-range view but do it I think there's zero chance that this goes away that that's not a particularly bleak view of the future great powers of maneuver before it has been well said it seems to me that we're in a position somewhat similar to the position the world was in when Germany was a rising robust power and the challenge was to integrate Germany into those into the game of Nations peacefully that failed notably and ruined the 20th century but I don't think I'm not a fatalist about this that doesn't have need to happen with China yeah next question Anthony a day and he's based in Melbourne a longtime supporter of cis thanks for tuning in Anthony he says to you George you've described Trump in very critical terms no argument there how would you describe Arden and what would you expect from a Biden administration bearing in mind Biden was elected to the Senate when Richard Nixon was president he's been a vice president under Barack Obama but he has been in the wilderness over the last three years your thoughts on Joe Biden George my thought on Biden is this right now from his basement where he like the rest of us that is confined by the pandemic he is making a lot of overtures to the parties left and an attempt to unite the party but Joe Biden knows this the left did all in its power to defeat him for the nomination and failed that the democratic party showed that it's it's vital center is in the center the democratic party showed that the victories at 1:00 and 2018 when a recaptured the House of Representatives for one not by militant progressives but by moderate Democrats so I think when it comes time to govern a Biden administration would be a more centrist than he is currently sounding he also will tell us something about his vice presidential nominee because mr. Biden is all but said he's a transitional figure he will be 78 I believe on Inauguration Day 20th of January 2021 so people will be watching more carefully than they usually do the selection of a running mate but Barton's very gaffe prone and as you will know the Washington definition of a gaffe is when a politician inadvertently tells the truth he makes a lot of gaffes tours to what extent are you worried about that I think he makes so many gaps that that he's he's protected by profusion that they come so fast that they now become part of his character and the people's over that's just by being by let me tell you find your story in 19 2008 when he's running for vice-president with Barack Obama the great financial crisis hits Lehman Brothers disappears everything melts down vice presidents or candidate Biden thought president george w bush was not giving good enough leadership and he said the following this is well when the stock market crashed in october 1929 president roosevelt wrong went on television wasn't any television wasn't any president this is just fighting being Biden I I don't think people are going to be swayed by that now George just returning to our earlier subject about the toxic polarization and the political dysfunction in Washington Robert Gates who served with distinction in both Republican and Democratic administrations he was a defense secretary under george w bush as well as brock obama former CIA director now in 2014 he was asked what is the greatest national security threat that the United States faces and his response was quote the two square miles that encompasses the Capitol building the legislature and the White House the presidency well Jesus that will in 2014 well before Trump came on the scene things have got a lot worse since then it is and mike mullen a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has said this was before the pandemic knocked the economy sideways said the biggest national security threat to the United States was the net was the budget deficit running trillion-dollar deficit annual deficit at full employment at two percent economic growth something's going to be crowded out and it's after me the 350 ship Navy that the navy says it's means it's apt to be the new hypersonic weapons and the new unmanned weapons and artificial intelligence all of these things are going to be crowded out by the welfare state spending so Gates is Right Mullen is right it's an open question whether democracies particularly once they opt for a welfare state once the democracies say that they we exist to give something like cradle to grave security once this exists in an aging society in which the rat was rapidly growing portion of the population is the elderly and the most devoted voters are the elderly it remains to be seen whether this poses a systemic national security problem not just in the United States look at the naiton take contributions in terms of percent of GDP by our NATO members not I think one one maybe two of them are fulfilling their NATO obligations well george owen harry's the australian conservative intellectual whom you knew in washington when he was the founding editor of the national interest in the 1980s and 1990s several years ago he gave a keynote address here at CIS and he made the point that since the mid 19th century the united states has faced three grave crises obviously the civil war in the mid to late 1860's and the Great Depression in the 1930s and of course all that unrest and upheaval in the mid to late 1960s and early 1970s and he made the point that every time the critics gave America the kiss of death essentially mouth-to-mouth resuscitation America bounces back with tremendous force many people are not so sure today how do you respond no one ever got rich betting against the United States remember nineteen seventy nine remember Jimmy Carter's floundering remember Jimmy Carter saying that he had radically misunderstood the Soviet Union after the invaded Afghanistan remember the misery index that you got by adding the unemployment rate in the inflation rate and it was over twenty percent I've said before the one solution to a bad elections a good election we had the 1980 election Ronald Reagan came in and said at our present moment he said the problem the problem is the government he got out of the way we deregulated suddenly natural gases and abundance this was even before fracking United States today for all its problems as a net exporter of energy the United States has enormous reserves of entrepreneurialship an educated and industrious population reasonable labor markets seven of the probably the top ten or twelve great research universities in the world the sinews of national strength have not changed well it's encouraging to know you're still very optimistic despite all the doom and gloom about America particularly in the last week or so what about energy you mentioned Jimmy Carter and the energy crisis in the late 1970s one of the big public policy issues in the Western in the world in the last few decades but particularly in more recent times has been a question of manmade climate change and to what extent it's leading to catastrophic global warming Australian politics over the last few years George has been really ridden by this debate over climate change and we don't have a policy in place where we price carbon emissions to what extent do you think that climate change is a serious public policy threat to the world and to and how difficult it is for countries to come together to put him illegally bonding verifiable and enforceable policies to slash emissions legally binding and enforceable policies do not of course describe the Paris Accords which were to be filed under gesture politics I tend to be one of those who says the following the debate about climate change must begin with this assertion of course the climate is plagued changing it never is not changing I grew up in central Illinois which few millennia ago is covered by the sheet of ice the climate changes the question is the extent to which and it is clearly some extent human activity is contributing to this and the aquestion ethics question as to what extent can we have great confidence our own models of climate change the answer is somewhat but not an enormous amount of change the third question is what is what is better to make ameliorative measures to live with climate change or to sacrifice productivity and to sacrifice economic growth in the interests of fighting climate change remember this we have now experienced the great enrichment to use Deidre McCluskey's phrase for what capitalism has accomplished in the last 220 years in my lifetime I'm 79 years old in my lifetime the percentage of the world living in severe poverty that is subsistence level poverty has gone from 50% to 9% and that is the result of market forces and individual initiative and private property and all the things that your Center stands for yeah and I don't want to we don't want to slay the Golden Goose yeah in a misguided panic over climate change which although real does not promise to be so far as I can tell in any plausible model catastrophic and as a footnote to your sound observations is worth pointing out that US emissions and recently at least well actually more so now during the pandemic but I've been coming down u.s. emissions have been coming down and it's primarily because of that technological innovation you refer to like fracking correct absolutely right fracking did that by fracking gave us enough natural gas to completely replace coal in our electric electric power generation and I must say this I will take seriously more seriously some of the worries of the most worried climate change people when they say ok we will now endorse a nuclear power a nuclear power is a complete win for the for the environment and for people to say on the one hand we're terrified that the Cataclysm is impending climate change but we won't even consider nuclear power I begin to wonder how serious they are well how on earth then do we get a international agreement that's legally binding enforceable and verifiable because obviously Kyoto didn't work because it didn't include the developing countries like China and India Copenhagen blew up in smoke in 2009 and Paris as you say is not really binding so what does the will do I am very skeptical of this because what you'll do when you get a hundred and sixty or seventy nations together is you're going to have divisions north and south and east and west and you're going to have the problem of kleptocracy that is people are going to be saying what we want is an enormous transfer of wealth from one group of Nations to another group of Nations justified by worries about climate change but only tangentially related to actually addressing climate change okay now it's just stress also George to keep you on the spot here Joe Biden I understand is toeing the lefts line against fracking so that might well hurt him in some of those states like Pennsylvania but here's a question from Lee Lee Dixon she asks what's the difference between Biden being Biden gaff nonsense and Trump's Twitter nonsense George well Biden's being Biden is funny and humorous and fodder for stand-up ian's Trump and his is picking his pugilistic tweets goes to the very core sness of our civic culture and goes to deepening the divisions just as general mattis said in his denunciation of Trump yesterday that it makes him the first president to set out to divide the country Joe Biden brings us together and laughter yes and we should stress that general mattis of course was president Trump's defense secretary early on James Phillips he's a board member here at CIS George he says that for American politics to be more driven by competition for the same Center do more House seats need to become literally contestable and is there a real prospect of less gerrymandering George it's an excellent question that if there will be less gerrymandering it will not come from the Supreme Court which last year made very clear that it is not going to find constitutional infirmities in the practice of gerrymandering therefore it's up to the states and the states can do whatever they want under the Constitution to have the electoral systems they want some states like Iowa have said we're going to give to a panel of retired judges the job of drawing districts without reference to partisan advantage other states can do this any state can do it but I wouldn't hold your breath because the party disadvantaged by gerrymandering it eventually comes into power and it wants to disadvantage right back well let's return back to public policy and I love that Austrian economist expression this is Joseph Schumpeter capitalism being like a creative destruction on a you use that we've got a question here from Gordon are there any policies that you believe go a long way to reducing anxiety and uncertainty the global capitalism can bring while mostly preserving the benefits of our dynamic free market economy and he asked you this George if conservatives had to pick one or two policies they could live with to make the system more sustainable and palatable what might they be George well I'd start with trying to learn what we can learn from the better apprenticeship program such as those in Germany I would find a way to end the American assumption that every child is going to school beyond high school ought to go to a four-year degree granting college instead more people ought to go into the trades and into the vocational training of community colleges the United States has let's say a sufficient supply of graduates of four-year colleges who majored in gender studies and Cinema Studies we need more lawyer we need more welders than we do lawyers in other words we need to reform the educational system to make it mesh with the needs of the economy then we need to make health insurance portable to end the job lock that makes people who get their health insurance from their employers reluctant to move remember when the dustbowl and the depression simultaneously hit Oklahoma in the 1930s when John Steinbeck wrote his great novel The Grapes of Wrath about it about the Jones family the Jones family packed up its belongings in its old four jalopy and drove west where they found employment in the aerospace industries in California in the shipyards of California in the second world war we need in other words plans and policies that will help Americans become mobile again to go where the jobs are the jobs are not coming back to the steel valleys of Monongahela River in Pennsylvania they're just not we know George John Howard who was our prime minister from early 96 to late 2007 he's a regular guest here at cis and about two years ago he told me here at sea is similar points to the ones you just made now we've got another question here from Antony Carr great to see Antony because he comes to virtually all our events if the virus is not happening and we host of at least once every fortnight greater great to have your company here today Anthony he makes the point George guided by the establishment the US has repeatedly fought wars that are won militarily but lost subsequently question is this the repeated failure that has turned the Republican base against the establishment George well it's unquestionably our involvement in endless and indecisive Wars has I want to say destroyed but has damaged the reputation of what for the second time tonight will call for the question mark over at the Republican establishment the American frustration with involvement overseas began with Korea which was where the slogan was were supposed to die for a tie Vietnam was the great catastrophe of the second half of the 20th century for the United States the swift and a septic victory in the first Gulf War gave the American people the false impression that with new smart weapons guided munitions and all the rest wars were now going to be quick and tidy in a unipolar world dominated by the United States I happen to believe that almost as bad as the invasion of Vietnam was the invasion of Iraq because it it was undertaken in part to keyword us of the Vietnam syndrome and I have to think the Vietnam syndrome was an inoculation not a disease but there's no question that our four involvements have been overly militarized Bob Gates you quoted just a moment ago has a new article I think it's in foreign affairs just out in the last few days on exactly the over militarization of our of our foreign policy which entails the neglect of all the various forms of soft power that we can let's start to wrap things up George and I know she referred to daniel patrick moynihan earlier on the advisor to President Richard Nixon of course he was a Harvard academic he went on to become a democratic senator he's also a prominent neoconservative intellectual and he famously talked about defining a deviancy down and you say that now defines American politics well his old boss Richard Nixon a lot of people don't know this but in July 1971 this is what he told journalists I think of what happened to Greece and Rome and you see what is left only the pillars what has happened of course is that the great civilizations of the past as I become wealthy as I have lost their will to live to improve they then have become subject to decadence that eventually destroys that civilization Nixon concluded the u.s. is now reaching that period see some of our critics George would say Richard Nixon was right half a century later cheer us up ashell Richard Nixon said that he was in a car driving down Pennsylvania and Independence Avenue one of the other I forgotten which and he drove by the National Archives which had the pillars out in front and he was musing on pillars and rather like Gibbon sitting on the capital line Hill where he got his idea to write the decline and fall of the Roman Empire Nixon was also channeling his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger he was a friend of mine that greatly admire a great man but Henry Kissinger has brought to America and has seen it as his job to infect America if you will with the kind of European pessimism Henry Kissinger came from a continent strewn with ruins and he thought the American people have an insufficient sense of tragedy well perhaps but as I said earlier in our discussion no one got rich betting against the American people and they've the American people have an normos recuperative capacities as they've shown over and over again and will again in coming years well it is very good note to conclude George thank you so much for being with us you have pillar of the American political a conservative movement for decades as I said you've been writing a column since 1973 74 47 years extraordinary you've never been to Australia but we will bring you out next year presuming that the crisis has passed I want to leave you with this you've been critical of Donald Trump as has been very clear during this broadcast on CNN this week Chris Casilla he made the point that dismiss will as a disaffected old-timer as many trumpets too but remember too that he is someone who was a conservative long before the age of Donald Trump well I might cast my first presidential vote for Barry Goldwater I had my first job in journalism for as bill Buckley's choice to be his first wash at the National Review editor I think my conservative credentials are in pretty good order well George you've been a pillar of the American political movement for more than four decades here at CIS can I say on behalf of my colleagues and friends and supporters and for those of you tuning in thank you so much for being with us and we hope to see you here next year thank you good luck to the Saturday such think-tanks are extremely valuable and I look forward to seeing all of you in Sydney and Melbourne next year you [Music]

Channel: Centre for Independent Studies

Views: 438,822

Keywords: Centre for Independent Studies, CIS, AusPol, Australian politics, Tom Switzer, On Liberty, Classical Liberalism, trump, biden, crisis, cnbc, cnn, washinton post, conservative, george f will, nixon, clinton, obama, bush, presidential election, election 2020, republican, democratic, united states, china, George, Will, Washington DC, America, Trump critic, US, conservative sensability

Id: GmRuq5D-hwk

Length: 57min 15sec (3435 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 08 2020