Welcome back to the New Thinkery. I'm David Barren with me as always is my old friend Greg McPrayer. How are you doing Greg? How can I just be your friend David?
What do I got to be your old friend? Well because listeners want to show understand just how old you are and Yeah, you know, it's always good to kind of remind them. Good to see you David. Good.
How old are you Greg? 74 that's good. That's good and Alex. How are you?
Good. I'm 38. You're 38. So today's February 10th in your daughter Penelope Your first child should be born any day now.
That's true. Yeah, are you fearful? No, I'm happy my way is having some stomach spasms today So we have to record the podcast we better get going. I mean we might we might have those persefony not Penelope, but Okay, but anyway, but yeah, she's not strict orders to hold it in right?
Because we have a great guest listeners every listen I almost don't need to introduce him but it's a Steve Hayward and I think any young and old conservative and conservative intellectual knows Steve's work period his Two volume age of Reagan is a wonderful wonderful book He recently wrote patriotism is not enough and this is for a political theory crowd Which was the kind of unfortunate tension between two old friends Harry Jaffa and Walter Burns where Hayward argues that these arguments helped Redefine American conservatism number of books on leadership is one called greatness Reagan Churchill the making of extraordinary leaders In on and on he is working on a book on M stanton Evans and before we started recording I had to be reminded I really don't know who he is and and Steve said that was shameful as somebody that he's to be in journalism So welcome Steve. Can you tell me a little bit about Evans and where where your book will be published and when well sure? Well, thanks David and by the way, I should say starting off that I think your podcast is a bit of false advertising because you called the new Thinkery I thought ah good I'm gonna get the perspective of a bunch of young guys But every time I listen in the subject matter is always the old thinkery You know Shakespeare and Xenophon and that's right. I keep thinking okay, so that's actually kind of fun to see young guys who like the old stuff that makes me feel like maybe there's the generation gap anyway But actually one of the reasons I'm writing biography of Stan Evans who was my first mentor out of colleges that he is being forgotten already Even though he only died about six years ago been retired for a while of course But he was a key figure in the modern conservative movement that took shape starting in the 1950s And he was one of the journalist take and thought leaders of the conservative movement And so I tell his story I think it's important for us to keep alive the memory and lessons of our heroes He by the way for since a lot of your audience are political theorists although he was a working journalist his whole life he did write a book in the mid 90s called the theme is freedom and kind of a not title perhaps and it was a very It's fantastic synthetic account of what you might call American conservatism including his own take on the Declaration of Independence That's quite original and unique I think And it's really a very good book that holds up very well and then on the other hand He wrote some serious history books, especially about espionage his second to last book is called black listed by history And it's a defense of Joseph McCarthy Stand by the way was a very funny guy I want forever obviously in the middle of writing a book You're always like that, but he used to say I didn't he just the liberals He'd say I didn't agree with what McCarthy was trying to do, but I sure admired his methods Yeah, I don't mind my father.
Oh, he says stuff like you know, give him a fair trial and hang him It's wonderful that you're preserving his memory I'll just say that if you're ever worried about that for yourself Don't trust it to David Barr we spent all this time going over your credentials and he left out half of them, right? Well, sorry Go ahead go ahead That's visiting scholar at UC Berkeley because you see Steve as a tough outer exterior as a hard-charging conservative But but inside he he's nice enough to teach up Berkeley as a a benefaction to our liberal friends Well, usually describe myself as an inmate at Berkeley because you know that's you and John you you and John you he's the guy You got me there actually him and Jack Sittron is retired now, but they both said come on This is getting out of hand at Berkeley. It's so crazy. Can we find it bring another conservative in and so they're credit They said yeah, it sounds like a good idea.
It's very simple. It's had speed bumps along the way But it's been fun. I like I like console assignments. I like fighting surrounded Yeah, gosh, I'm it's you've you've worked at both Ashland University and the University of Colorado where Alex is and where I am So we we've got that's kind of neat too.
We've all been you ever visiting scholar at the Claremont Institute? Well, I went there for Grad was going I write right right so yes All three of us, you know, it's interesting really quick just about stand Evans up when I was at the weekly standard Fred Barnes You buy everybody Novax autobiography. Yeah, because he wanted to remind us or He wanted to recall I guess not remind us because we didn't really understand what what good journalism is what journalism used to be And are you saying Evan? I mean, I'm is Stan part of the same same old school as as Novak Yeah, they were good friends of course and by the way, I mean Robert Novax writing partner was Roland Evans no relation right now I was about to ask right no relation at all that Stan was big friends with Robert Novak But he also knew Michael Novak and Stan and Michael Novak would joke.
Maybe we should do a call together We could be the new Evans and Novak very different people Yeah, very much so in fact a stand new Fred Barnes pretty well and have Fred come in and speak to the journalism students as a regular thing every semester and Yeah, Stan emphasized facts, you know nobody cares about your opinions He'd say you can have an opinion that was fine But your opinions should be informed by facts and then above all economic literacy I mean what drove him more out of his mind than anything else I think was the sheer economic illiteracy of so much media coverage of just about everything That's good And so you know his courses were partly remedial education and economics He's studied briefly with Ludwig von Mises out of when he graduated from Yale in the 50s But then he chased off in a journalistic career real fast and didn't finish. Yeah, that's interesting So what are we talking about today guys? I mean we we've been dying season and old finish away way before we get to that Can I ask a question by a graphic question? Yeah, Steve you tell us about your own education like who were your teachers and Your main influence is what first got you interested in politics or history or political commentary Okay, well, this could be a This is important.
We want actually for all of our big political. Yeah, yes. Yeah, okay I can tell it that's a happy long story It is true that my political education began in the first grade when very gold water lost in the landslide and I couldn't understand that because everybody in my neighborhood was for gold water The Republican neighborhood and that's my first thought in the first grade gee the rest of the world must be different than my neighborhood And why is that so okay? I joke that it's not a joke that I was a conservative by the chromosomal level I was always conservative I started reading national review in the eighth grade, which is postrous Wow only because I you know I sort of like writing as a kid and I saw this Buckley guy on TV But I don't understand what he's talking about because he sounds interesting and different and so And and then college I was a student journalist as editor of my college paper at Lewis and Clark College in Oregon Which for a long time I started calling Lewinsky in Clark College because that's where she went, but yeah And I was fortunate enough at Lewis and Clark to take a political philosophy from James Holton who was the sister of chapter The Strauss cropsy reader, but you know everybody's Bible, right?
And he just died last week actually at the age of 90 Sad news. Yeah, and anyway, it was through him I got a more serious interest in political philosophy even though I'd read National Review and a lot of the people there You know those days they was to print a lot of conservative political philosophers And I'd heard of Harry Jaffa as an undergraduate and read him a national review and it was there I decided I didn't decide right away. I got a college in 1980 right at the time of Reagan was elected I did come back to Washington where I wasn't intern for Stan Evans I thought I wanted to be a journalist and then after a year of living in Washington and you know I make this brief digression about Washington wanting to strut me about Washington when I was 22 years old is that the place was Run by 22 year olds. I guess that's true on Capitol Hill, right?
And I thought that was probably very bad both for the country and for myself And I thought I think the smart thing to do to be to get the heck out of Washington I never really had Potomac fever even though I ended up living here for 15 years but in total But I decided to go to graduate school and I thought about a lot of places I decided to go to Claremont because it was close to home and I saw it had a critical mass of really great conservative professors And I thought give it a try so that's how I ended up at Claremont and then studying with Jaffa and Bill Allen and Harold rude and and a whole lot of other folks What was your dissertation on? I actually wrote it on progressive era historiography. This is a little tricky story that it's not that interesting I ended up doing it through the history department long backstory of that That's now irrelevant, but I did do as a lot of conservative graduate students did in government in the 80s I did do a lot of work on constitutionalism with Leonard Levy in the history department famous old new deal liberal Who used to love having a conservative students in his classes because he would admit over a few drinks They were better students and they took material seriously the history students and was very friendly to all of us And he wasn't that I mean a new deal liberal today of course is a reactionary in the current post-modern college environment and Anyway, he he was fantastic as an instructor and and for his knowledge of the Constitution and constitutional history So I end up doing work through sort of joint degree history and politics through the history department It's very strange sounding it was and like I say, there's more of that story, but it's not that interesting That's good. You know whenever we ask people about the good old days when they were in graduate school So many of their academic recollections involved this interdisciplinary stuff So even though you know, there are very few programs like the committee on social thought it's like everybody we talked to was cross-lifting And now it's all specialized.
It's kind of sad Yeah, I think political sciences has been largely ruined in a lot of places and I think a lot of disciplines I think now I become so specialized I think that the the R1 University model the research university has unfortunately infected the private liberal arts colleges that used to not Emphasize the narrow specialization and the publisher parish mentality now They all do it's very hard to tell the difference between a faculty member would say Oberlin or Kenyan and someone that Colorado or Michigan or Berkeley They all operate in same mode and I think I Think the yeah the intellectual world is much the worst for that. So are you saying if I understand you correctly see Alex and Greg are part of the problem Well, well, no, I mean now well first of all, you know At actual university actually does try to integrate history and politics together on purpose in small places one reason But it's their disposition and then I know a bit about I don't know if you've ever talked about the Herps program Alex where you are at the Boulder But it has an interesting origin and is separate from the regular humanities department Which I think is kind of interesting and I have lots of thoughts about that that may or may not be accurate But it's kind of a little node of the older mode of thinking about liberal arts inside an R1 university. Yeah, thank you very much for Correcting as we often have to do David's abject ignorance Everything but you know, I mean, it's it's wonderful It is a kind of interdisciplinary department with people from all sorts of backgrounds and small seminars sort of core tech stuff focus So we escaped some of the sins of larger academia about which David is I think correct Yeah, well Alex you count as a success every engineering student you turn away from the department into philosophy I mean That's always the dangers that if a student starts to enjoy the subject matter they have to go somewhere else So you can't repeat students really but We're not here to talk about me. We're here to talk about executive power, right?
Yeah, yeah, and you know you look Persian Alex you are Persian so this executive power thing is kind of he's descended from executives on both sides of the family That's true. That's true. That's right. Yeah, so it's wonderful.
So but Alex what are we talking about today? Wait, I want to just make clear that great things Ayatollahs and Shah's live in different. No, no It's like a Romeo and Juliet kind of thing they got they got no no that Iran had Shah's and I told don't I like that You're feigning ignorance here like there was a shop you're not half French and half Yeah, that's the part wasn't it anyway? Alex sounds like you have all the bases covered unless the Germans come after salt again We're talking about today all executive power and I think sort of the varieties of executive power You know, this is a kind of president's day episode and I think it's it's interesting We sort of agreed to read chapter one of Harvey Mansfield's team in the Prince on the ambivalence of executive power Which is such a wonderful book But one of the things I really like about that is that he shows how easy it is for executives It to be effective while not seeming effective and to be ineffective while seeming effective and how the office can manipulate the man and then the man Can manipulate the office so I thought maybe that was a sort of interesting sort of general starting point and somebody who has thought a lot about Obviously various executives that maybe you could bring some of your stories to bear see Yeah, I can try, you know, I'm I think I suggested we might look at taming the prince as an interesting and different way of For president's day and also fits you guys pretty well I think I'm a little rusty on the book because I haven't read it for a long time or reread much of it Although I have taught it a couple times and even that's instead of years ago now One of the things I like about the book for people not read it is it's just how different it is from Any other book on the presidency you can think of I mean most courses on the presidency in a political science or History department they'll read quote unquote classic like Richard new stat or some of the other famous presidential scholars And they're perfectly fine.
I mean they start on the surface right as we as a what we are want to do They're perfectly fine and you know superficial analysis I can't remember if it's new stat or one of the other presidential gurus it goes through eight different types of presidents and there's Yeah, it's new stat. I have four bad dreams about that from grad school. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly It's sure you can say oh, you know Eisenhower was this or was passive aggressive I forget the type of I don't care they really are boring fundamentally and your man's field book is much more interesting Because it doesn't again like so many things that he does or persons who think and write like him He's not writing just about executive power and a narrow sense of you know the legal dimensions and the powers of the office and how you run for Office or all those things. It's really a deeper meditation about the nature of politics Which is that you know the law can't provide for every contingency law needs to be enforced who does that?
and and Of course people like to say can be obscure and accessible okay, there's some truth to that on the other hand he is so he does I think draw any thoughtful person into the problem of you know we make all these demands on our presidents You know Barack Obama's gonna heal our souls right and then We get mad when the president is too powerful or abuse his executive power right and people aren't thinking thoughtfully about the deeper issues of Constitutional power anyway the book you know he starts off with antiquity You don't actually get to the American president for three or four hundred pages right which I think is very interesting And even though I don't remember how he ends it you know I know that man's field is an admirer of Franklin Roosevelt for example not for particular things if you asked to Harvey What about XYZ and ABC of new deal policies you probably say oh, yeah, they were probably all stupid and counterproductive That's to miss the point about how Roosevelt can see the office and operate in an office Oh, sorry go on that's all right. That's anyway. That's my way of saying I'm rambling now and I should probably stop and let you That's good in so since you write about Leadership and therefore executive power by default These are Reagan to right. Yeah, we're in a presence.
Yeah, right And I've read always said it's difficult to get any reading done once you hit the Oval Office They're just too many so like yeah Obama in Bush may say well, I read you know, you know, 20 books a month I'm like, yeah, great They have their end of the year and so it's like really hard unless they're totally asleep at the wheel Which sometimes they are as residents to believe they can get that in so assuming that some of these presidents were good readers prior to assuming office In your studies are you aware of any any of them that it's studied executive power and how to wield it in a theoretical way? In a serious way for becoming president. I don't think so although there is one Yeah, it's generally true that you're too busy as president to read anything at all or anything seriously The one possible exception of that is a makes on like a surprise. It was Richard Nixon So there's a story to a true story.
It's not just a made-up story by that a senator who's the senator that a woman books Moynihan What is that great book by Hess on? Hess last name Hess on the Moynihan Nixon relation? Yeah, I haven't read that I should read that because I really sure it's an It's important person, but it's a story corroborated by many people that you know Nixon got interested in fascinated Moynihan Otherwise liberal democrats who had in the mid 60s saying we're making a mess of things and we should you know We should actually make common cause with conservatives on some issues when the great society was coming apart So Nixon got interested in him and then when Nixon got elected he decided to meet Moynihan and then liked him and said Why don't you be my domestic policy advisor? There's a great documentary about this where he goes home and tells his wife who's absolutely furious because she's a loyal liberal democrat and anyway Very bookish guy.
He's he writes and he's really long notes, right? Oh, yeah He's like yeah, these long intellectual memos with famous quotes and yeah But put out not my has to spit out by getting Weissman five or six years ago And he also wrote man was the spiro hagnew and they were I don't say they were bad And I was boy said Agnew was looking can't win you're outgunned by the liberals in the media And so this attack on the left you're making is not gonna work I think was mistaken of him to say that anyway He told Nixon I think Nixon asked him you know, which I read and he gave a list of ten books and sell a little bit like wishing Obama I think Nixon went and read them all or read most of them But the one that attracted attention to most was the Robert Blake biography of Dizarelli and you know What do you know about Dizarelli? Well, he was one of those Tory reformers in the 19th century that wanted to broaden the base of the Tory party to the working classes in England Or the middle classes at least run the franchise and I think Yeah, Nixon says to him. I've read them all let's talk about this Rayleigh And I think quite clearly Nixon thought that he was going to be the modern Israeli for the Republican Party in the post New Deal Coming out of the records of the great society America And that's why you know Nixon proposed a whole bunch of pretty liberal ideas This is actually been writing about now because Stan Evans figured into the story the family assistance plan Nixon proposes in 1969 This is long forgotten now with one little contemporary footnote or two really and that was a guaranteed annual income Milton Freeman had proposed a negative income tax way back in the late 50s But no free money said get rid of all the welfare programs and just have a negative income tax a guaranteed annual income I'm the face of that out is people that work and which is always a tricky thing And so Nixon proposes this in 1969 and two things happen a hardcore conservatives hate the idea Ronald Reagan among them and one reason they hated was not just the principle of wealth orism that they didn't like But it was going to centralize welfare in Washington instead of leaving it with the states It's always a part of a hybrid thing and they all said Stan Evans what columns on this Reagan talked about this a lot and wrote about this saying Look once you put welfare in the hands of Washington DC The pressure is always going to be to increase the benefits and they'll be a runaway welfare state And then ironically people on the left hated it because it wasn't a big enough redistribution of wealth And so you got a left-right coalition that finally killed it It took three or four years, but they killed the thing and I know a very smart guy I don't slightly very smart guy took a fairly senior post in the health and was it H health and human services under Obama And he said to me one day seven or eight years ago He said the single biggest mistake the American left made in domestic policy was opposing Nixon's family assistance plan in 1969 And we want to say if we if that had happened you never would have had the welfare reform and happened under President Clinton's on ultimately happened in the 1990s right had real work requirements and time limits and other things And that's because you still had states had the ability to run and run the program So you could do it better anyway Next we want to be this sort of liberal conservative reformer in some some weird sense You know he proposed a child care benefit and all kinds of stuff that drove conservatives out their mind So David asked this question about a president to read and I think in the background is the question of So it makes it seems to be the exception that proves the rule that somehow the office consumes you Which is I think an interesting theme in Mansfield's analysis But maybe maybe you could talk a little bit about what you think about the relationship between the man in the office Any interesting examples or thoughts you have on that because it does seem like in a way your approach and your style can and how you utilize this power can become Incredibly freeing exercise power but can also become somewhat constraining, right?
Yeah, you know, I've never thought that is a really great question and you know you're probably another book idea of the 50 I already have because you can point to other presidents who did have I'm not sure you say fully formed views because it's a little bit Like the battle plan, you know your contact with the real world and with the office may change it as you go along But so Franklin Roosevelt I've often wondered about the fact that he had been secretary of the Navy under Wilson and as I understand it He read the famous Thayer Mayhand Classic on British Sea Power in history. Is that still worth a meeting? Yes, it is. I just taught it a couple years ago.
It's why the hell did you teach that great guy? No, I don't mean to I mean seriously Was a course on international relations theory and I was contrasting it with mere shimmers of primacy of land power I think yeah And you know I'd be curious to find out if it's possible to find out whether that in how that might have influenced Roosevelt's thinking going forward Maybe not at all, but there was some of your read thoughtful serious books that really do his earlier job Calvin Coolidge as we know was You know the classics well and Greek and Latin well Harry Truman our only modern president who didn't have a college degree And nonetheless was very well sort of self educated knew the Bible well But also knew a lot of the classics well and you know He could lay out a map of the Mediterranean there in the late 40s and you're trying to figure out NATO and problem with Greece And what's the Soviet Union doing and then also Iran trying to chase the Russians out of Iran and he give you a synoptic account Going back to you know the Punelet Wars And so there's a guy who was clearly influenced by his own reading and thinking that he comes into office And you know people thought Harry who write it was my parents I remember being shocked money wins and turns out to be pretty good on a lot of those questions And you have guys like Lincoln who's who's education? It's like it's interesting if you marry this in your mind You can say oh I see exactly how you know But this Euclid on the one hand and Shakespeare on the other and it turns out that's a nice little recipe for understanding political power And then but then the negative corollary right would be Woodrow Wilson right the story example of that yeah The learning the learning president right well, maybe the the compare and contrast Lesson there is I think you'd say this about Lincoln wouldn't we is that he didn't know a lot of books But he knew a few really good ones really well And that didn't say this a long time and that you know We could we could digress it But if you want Alex on you know a criticism that's made of st. John's and great books programs is as you read too many books Oh the direct studies program at Yale I've had students there tell me that they think reading Dozoyevsky's Brothers Caramatsal in one week just doesn't really work very well Well, you know right yeah, we think the week on the Brothers Caramatsal in the direct studies program And that's not even that's not even like a day per brother.
Oh, right I mean, so you're linking his study of a person in debt from reading a few books over and over again really well You know Euclid Shakespeare in the Bible and it goes through three maybe a couple others and Wilson is I mean the one of my many rants about Wilson and I could go on a long time on that is He's this fusion of Hegel and Burke, right? So he mangles Burke pretty badly and he was so fascinated with Hegel He tried to learn German so he could read him in German I don't think he gets much better in German than he is in translation, but that's one man's opinion Well, that's why we had to strip his name off of Princeton. You know, so you really deserved it for exactly what you're bringing up Yeah Okay, so I don't want to stick to the book too much We have all kinds of questions for you But one question that I actually just thought taming the prince in the fall in a class here in our masters program for sources of the American regime And I taught it for just the overall thesis that the American Constitution Like takes this thing a prince or a king even a tyrant man's field I was shocked by how often Mansfield uses the word tyrant in the book and sort of brings the brings the tyrant into the fold Into constitutional government sort of the tyrannical up I remember this right mansfield I apologize I'm messing it up But that means so thanks that tyranny is sort of an essential aspect of government and that and that block Hobbes even James Madison They knew this and so so they had they took they took me as strangers if you bring it in as it's still tyrannical I guess not but they took this element brought it in and by institutionalizing it by making a constitutional Defanged it to some degree, but can occasionally let it off the leash So I guess I don't really have a question except if you want to speak a little about prerogative or about executive power or the good and bad use of in our lifetime or in American history when it presents down a good job With us a bad job of this. Yeah, right.
How do you how do you think about these things and make judgments about them? Right. Yeah, I mean it does I mean one of the many parts I take away from it is the importance of the chaperon for rocket even lock I think it's chapter 14 Yeah, I think that if I were gonna do a rears digest summary of taming the prince I think I would just take the parts on that chapter and then run with a little bit So but also I think you've raised an important point that he likes to use the word tyrant because we don't take tyranny in tyrant seriously enough these days Well, occasionally someone's a dictator and authoritarian and you know fascist and all the crazy stuff that was said about Trump But the point about I try to say sort of it didn't do it very well But there are I think locked with this best in the chapter on property if there are circumstances I'm paraphrasing here For which no law can provide you know, you can write a statute I try to explain contemporary students You can write a statute 500 pages long you think covers everything and there'll still be a circumstance where it doesn't work Or you get a perverse result like when Gulliver has to urinate on the on fire Well the example that you know one of the examples I don't know if Mansfield uses this is you know Thomas Jefferson wrote about this in his letter to I forget who but it was You know when George Washington had ordered cannons to fire on a farmhouse that the British were hiding behind He's he was throwing someone's private property and putting civilians in danger So how do we judge these things and I like to use with students real-world examples? And I think this is why Mansfield admired Roosevelt and anything of other examples is some You know in the run up to World War II we have an isolationist country We have a Congress that's not sympathetic to vigorous retirement or restoring the draft even in 1940 I think the draft 41 the draft passes by like 10 votes in the house.
It was very close But what's he doing? He's doing everything he can to help the British and and hinder the Germans and a lot of things he's doing are in violations of statutes like the neutrality act and Strictly speaking you might say he deserved to be impeached with that These are impeachable offenses and again strictly speaking if you just go by you know pick my numbers Maybe that's right on the other hand I think most sensible people say thank goodness he did at least he had us prepared as much as we were and with a Disposition as forward as it could be I mean one thing you learned only in recent years I know from students of public opinion polling is Roosevelt was very quietly consulting George Gallop who's just starting modern polling in late 30s No idea. Oh, this isn't either and and and he was actually sneaking Gallop and his posters in unannounced You know to the basement or something I don't know and the question he was asking him was it was the state of American public opinion how far can I go? How should I how should I best explain this to carry the people?
Oh man? Right? There's somebody who understands his constraints understands what needs to be done and you know what so or another example is the aspect of tyranny is The is you know even a well, let me start from the top which is I sometimes ask students or citizens whoever Why is it that every country has an executive? There have been various attempts to have an executive that's a council a state of Pennsylvania under 1776 Constitution that only lasted five years a slow and broken to the presidency which was not a real country at the bank next chocolate watch I think we're real family high-not-school Yeah, right, okay, right you can say something so but you know nobody governs by a council for reasons that Hamilton explains and federalist right And but even that you take the British cabinet system where the prime minister is supposed to be first among equals It really even the prime minister is the dominant person and the story I love to tell students part because it's a great story But part of it illustrates this point is it's the scene that's dramatized in the Churchill movie that came out a couple years ago dark a darkest hour even a little bit but okay, and If you've seen the movie or know the story It's when the war cabinet wants to open negotiations with the Germans in May of 1940 Churchill hasn't even been in office for three weeks And he puts it down the rebellion He doesn't have a very forceful way and I'm gonna go through the whole story here The the movie gets the basic story right with adding on a bunch of stuff.
It's not historical, but okay Nobody knew that story till the 1980s. It was something that's by a different martin Gilbert stumbled across and documents that had been declassified under Britain's four year rule So Churchill himself missed told the story in his own memoirs because he didn't want to embarrass all these people But essentially it's when he gave a famous choking on our own blood speech He comes into the full cabinet and says we must decline negotiations because you know We can't trust Hitler. He'll take our fleet. It'll be the beginning of the end It's a slippery slope to doom and that's when he says I know that every one of you here will tear me down from my chair If we thought for one minute that I would negotiate with Hitler says if this is gonna end But and with only when each one of us lies choking his own blood on the floor And so that the movie gets this right There's a huge tear from the whole cabinet about 40 people and see we've done he isolated his opponents who are very senior You know Lord Halifax and Chamberlain was still in the war cabinet and they were pushing him hard on this and threatening to bring him down already So, you know and then you know the work gets out to the house that oh, yeah, we're not gonna do this and That was the kind of Churchill's Machiavellian moment in the right sense of a Machiavellian moment, right?
There's a wolf on this there though, and I think you also say thank God he did right by the way He took no chances within the month. He said Halifax off to Washington to be ambassador So I'm gonna need you in Washington You know to be too important. I need somebody good over there And the other guy who was a problem was the Sam Hore who he sent off to be ambassador to Portugal So there's you know another use of executive power that adds up and but the point is I've rambling again. Sorry at some point There's a line between I don't know what you'd say You know the way we think of somebody is just a magistrate or administrator and someone who is willful and indeed to a critic You'd say tyrannical, but those are not there's not bright lines One small follow up on that question.
I don't know if this is taking us too far field But I've often wondered I was talking to David. You probably know David Foster from your time here But yeah, we were talking once and I forget what exactly was the incident that brought it up But it was a sort of people were really admiring a single individual He saw this during Trump's administration you saw during Obama's administration people sort of put a little on to that one single person And we got to ask and he said why do you think it is? I said I don't know and he suggested I think it was him not me that suggested There's actually people have a strong and archetypal tendency like there's a strong pervasive human desire for there to be monitors in In other words, the Republican sentiment is not a common or widespread natural human inclination that has to be cultivated some degree And so the danger of the temptation or even why you have to have this executive It's all wrapped up in the same thing right like you have to have them because you need it for emergencies But also perhaps because people want someone like that or I don't know is that Fifty states of gray Greg. I mean The family should forgive you.
I don't know what you're trying at Greg. Yeah. Yeah, we all want to be beat a little I think you know that is a Machiavelli actually I think he talks about this mince will talk about this you have the executive even the term is kind of Meaning you're you're just executing the orders of another body it implies your secondary Right? Yeah, it's sort of even the term is you're a secondary status exactly right?
And in a way if you're a kind of tyrant you can kind of put yourself for is I'm executing the laws and I have this Willfulness but an intelligent willfulness is actually somewhat so like taking the Churchill example, right? He puts himself forward as on the side of this group It's actually quite smart tactic where he's he's subtly playing the politics everybody thinks he's just representing their views but he's actually sort of you know affecting a shift in and I think about this how many Presidents who are ineffective who get wrapped up in their own sort of or of power and how many really affected presidents look like they're Not doing anything. I think it's a great example of that where he seems like an old kind of funny daddy But he's actually quite smart when he's operating politically. Yeah, we're eyes and hours and even more Vivid example that I think yeah, I mean you think about I don't know if man's good does this or not But I think of it this way you think about executor for an estate, right?
What does that person do it just executes the terms of a will or trust document and usually that's pretty straightforward Sometimes it may be a problem various kinds but other times there might be this kind of problem. You have an estate the will is old You learn that the benefactors are children who have drug problems or alcohol problems And if you give them the money, you know, it's gonna happen there is gonna kill them, right? So what do you do when you're executive there? Well, I'm not quite sure But that's a point where you don't just carry out the terms literally as as prescribed in the black and white law You try and figure out some work around so that because you know that the will intention of the person who Wasn't to provide the means for their own benefactor own beneficiaries destruction, right?
I think this does happen now and then and I think a lot about this But I think most people of means usually have some clauses in their Wills that allowed executors some leeway and circumstances like that. Okay now transfer that to the political world. You have the same kind of problem We have you know constitutional terms that are well My favorite one to think about always with students is the president's the commander-in-chief But Congress has the power to declare war and to raise armies and navies And so there's there's a place of You know ambiguity about where the power actually lies, right? If Congress Approves no it's supposed to know though that there's no army in being there's no navy president can the order the commander-in-chief, there's nothing to command, right?
And so there's a You know we've been fighting about this for a long time with things like the War Powers Act which intends to For almost surely unconstitutional, but every president has followed it so far as it's a past in the 70s Anyway, sorry again. I'm rambling here. I don't know what it is right now So you were talking about the executive or will and then the executor of I mean maybe this this gets back to your earlier point when you were talking about Where the unconstitutional but you kind of measure where people are actually going to approve or disapprove Ability to flex the laws a bit. I find that a massively interesting question because one of the things I'm answer talks about is the idea of A calcitrance that there are people who just say no to the law even if it's good, right?
But they say no to a punishment even if it's if it's good right and therefore they say yes to what's effectively bad a President should be able to take the pulse whether it's by gallop or since they've gotten less reliable apparently Or it's by or it's by other means understanding where the sentiment the no saying and the yes saying that might be Unpredictable and even irrational against their own interests being able to do that is an effective way to actually utilize the power of the office Yeah, I think the most successful presidents are the ones who Yeah, never mind consulting polls because they are even when they were quote unquote good in a certain way they're always defective I think the best the president should have a good sense for where where opinion is and where opinion is likely to move Depending on what the government does and what the leaders do You know the actually just way and sometimes ascribe it to students This is an original formula of mine I think which is the trick to being a successful candidate and then successful president is And this gets back to Greg's question Which I now came back to me about the people want to be ruled to restate it that way. I think the answer is yes in the American context, I think people want to Have a president they can look up to they want to put the president on a pedestal But they want to look on that president at eye level because we are a small d democratic country and so the trick is To be a successful candidate successful president You want to be able to inhabit the pedestal but not ever give the sense that you're looking down on people American people don't like to be looked down on by their political leaders that you want to be ruled I think I think that's a somewhat universal factor of human life But Americans don't want to be looked down upon while they're being ruled and I think by the way that contributes to people Unsuccessful candidates, especially Democrats like Al Gore and John Kerry I just think about what those guys come across as right Obama was an exception to that and I think for the obvious reason Excuse me. We wanted a black president and he was cool and different and but even he you know Again, this is normal political science. You know here's something right with a policeman He's the first he's the first and only president ever reelected with fewer votes than his initial election President who reelected always added their votes and that's an interesting story He lost support which shows that even he you know his arrogance and you know elitism I think cost him a bit.
This is counter to your saying that Republicans have done a better job generally of presenting themselves as the every man Well, yeah, I'm me not well. Yes, exactly. Yeah, Ron. He's another case of somebody who doesn't come across well You could have any time a president's gonna lose votes.
You ought to be able to beat him That's what Reagan does with Carter and Yeah, and Bill Clinton Bill Clinton fits the model somebody's bubba right? I mean, yeah down really well It's not universally true But you know you think back to what I think is one of the most damaging comments a candidate ever made was Adley Stevenson and one of those years 52 or 56 and a woman runs up to and says oh Governor Stevenson every thinking American is voting for you and his answer was yes, ma'am, but I need a majority That's a perfect encapsulation of the way liberals regard our citizens, right? I was just pointing out that I think that that's Impersuaded that that could be right, but I'm just it's intriguing because it's paradoxically the Democratic Party has been the much more every man party You know the last four years so accepted Yeah, and yeah, it was a really good job. It's just by being really blue blood Yeah, and so it's weird that the party of the blue collard comes off as being elitist whereas the party of the elites typically right has Come on has done a better job of coming off is every minute.
It's really a Democrat's have better PR Yeah, yeah, but look at I mean look at Trump. I mean no matter what you think about Trump is it's amazing the The kind of people kind of you know the millions of people who thrilled to the guy who on paper would make any You know Manhattan Manhattan real estate guy was this you know playboy and all the rest that didn't make any sense on paper There's a comedian who once did a bit about Trump and he said he's what a poor man thinks a rich man She was what poor man would want to do if you became rich and I'm thinking about him and Clinton one thing They had a common was McDonald's right, right? And you have that picture right of Trump when he's I forget what the occasion was but he's just got arm Championships it was football Alex it was a game that men play That's a really cool photo. Yeah.
Oh, yeah, my favorite ones. Where is Taco Bowl? Yeah, so like before we transition to lightning round questions. See what's your favorite favorite book on this theme?
Classic let's say cuz I know there's so many or whatever and then after that maybe there's a better question What's your favorite presidential story? Yeah? Oh boy, that's uh, I got so many of them How's that a better question Alex and that's like insanely broad question anecdote? Let me do it in reverse order children children children, okay, okay, I want David Clarifies question for me a little bit.
I all right one of my favorite. Let's see Well, here's one that I liked us because it shows you what Reagan was like, you know, if you ever get a chance and you guys are None of you're in California anymore. I Someday when the world gets back to normal, maybe it will fix up a trip and I'll get you guys up to the Reagan ranch I'm more to say don't make promises like that. That would be amazing.
I mean, you know, I know the young American foundation people that own it and You do a whole episode on Reagan. Oh, yeah, anyway, it's fascinating to visit the place and I bet it several times and Once with Andy Breitbarn actually 10 years ago or so anyway, you know, the TV networks put up on a Mountain four five miles away one of those super long telephoto lens cameras that they used to use for the Apollo launches from Cape and April because they want to look at Reagan writing his horses out by his house and this really offended Nancy Reagan one time she came out and unfolded sign It was one of her drug signs saying just say no and they finally talked about that we're gonna take in the camera down saying come on People this is ridiculous invasion of privacy and so forth, but Reagan one day said I got I know what I'm gonna do these guys I'm gonna well, I'm gonna fall off my horse and pretend that had a heart attack. Oh my god Right, you know, they had to talk him out of it, right? I mean somebody I'm a good guy call up somebody, but they talked about it.
They said look, Mr. President I know you'd like to prank the media, but you know the stock market will crash who be days getting over all this and Berlin yeah, it's I mean there is an update while they're quickness, you know that ranch was a security problem the secret service had these trailers they put it up on the hill and I think it's during the transition in 1980 and they hear a gunshot go off and oh the secret service guys go Absolutely out of their mind they go running down the hill their guns drawn and there's Reagan with his rifle the gun smoking because he'd been shooting at a coyote I guess I probably should told you I was gonna do that should not say Mr. President how many guns do you have we have to take him from you? I'm sorry anyway, oh man, but there's lots of great Calvin cool stories and others But David your question was what one book did you mean?
Yeah, like, you know an education of Cyrus or something? Oh, yeah, I'm a big fan of education of Cyrus You know what I'm tempted to recommend it's not really about the presidency or directly on executive power But I'm a big fan of Churchill's essay collection thoughts and adventures. Oh, yeah, yeah And in particular I think there are two at least two in there that jump out for really close study one is Consistency in politics, right? Right directly on some of these questions.
That's a riff off of of Burke, right? Yes, right a very good one too and then the other essay in there at Mass Effect's in Modern Times Which really describes the challenge of you know a modern world but of modern government and science and technology I agree did an episode on that we did an episode on that's a wonderful lesson. Oh, yeah, it's a wonderful lesson to it I've got several of you guys have to say is in my you know my phone I just I'm not driving anywhere anymore and I used to listen to podcasts on my drive, right? So when I listen, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that's a great.
That's a great well next time you're writing a book Just listen you type it out. You'll get a public It's easy, but what about a classic? I know you have all these mirror of princes genre that's a Machiavelli's Found inspiration in and is a part of that kind of history But anything weird like a disraly autobiography or just off the beaten path Well, it's not only off the well. It isn't it isn't Churchill's moral burrow is Strauss was right about it when he said he is I found that book so tough going Okay, do it again.
I mean, okay, okay I read a second time before I got the threat of it better too, but it really is a remarkable book and okay almost no one reads it I bring it into I teach a class on statesmanship I have a Berkeley a couple of times a seminar and I bring it in to mostly frightened students So I'm not gonna make you read this But then I'll spend an hour going through some parts of it and reading some of the key passages and explaining it to them And this is remedial education really but it's fun and so well. Thank you. Thank you Yeah, should we go to lightning round John? Yeah, yeah, he's a book to get back to so all right.
Yeah, exactly not like us Yeah, I like David Barr. He's just got a bunch of ice cream to get back to Lie actually all right. I've got a couple of presidential questions still and then just some lightning round questions All right, so a graduate student who is interested in the presidency give me a couple of books that he or she should read oh Boy I'm actually fond of this book by a guy at the Cato Institute. So it's libertarian and sort of anti executive power I'm like guys name and the title is terrible.
We can find it. We can put it in your show notes. It'll come to me after we're done I'm sure well, but it's it's a book that's not really about the inflation of executive power It's a common theme But the fact that there's been this you might say reciprocal problem of the American people demand more and more presidents to be miracle workers And that in turn causes our presidential candidates to promise to be miracle workers And that's just causes a downward spiral of realistic politics. It's not like the cult of the presidency.
Yes, that's it. Yeah, yeah Yeah, I'm a gene healy. Yeah, yeah, the cult of the presidency. Yeah, I like that book.
I think that's a good Okay, it's not perfect. It's very different from Mansfield. Obviously, but I think it's a useful Way to get people to think about realistic expectations Don't don't seek the salvation of your soul through politics right wasn't that what Max Weber said in politics as a vocation? Yeah, all right Another question What single change to the presidency would you advocate you mentioned the War Powers Act?
Is that what you do or you think of one other thing you would make? Ah, yeah, that's good, Rick. No, you mean that one change? Yeah, yeah, I know you're gonna put him on this spot You mean like a formal change in the institutional legal yeah Constitutional formal whatever you think I think the I'll do a broader answer that may not satisfy your question entirely I think a Contemporary president would be well advised to emulate the Calvin Coolidge model of less is more in other words I think a president today would be more effective if he spoke less Just talk less don't show up every day in an odd way I've been joking that if Joe Biden governs from his basement the way he campaigned He might succeed in the ordinary sense of having a presidency that maintains public support and and is you know I doubt that'll be possible anymore, but you know Calvin Coolidge I say you know the little joke about Coolidge, which is not true.
He was not silent Cal He just didn't speak a lot, but what he did speak was one of those famous thing I bet I said my dinner guests about I could make you say more than three words and you lose Probably not I think we say that they go back to presidents with beer. It's what suited his ambitions Okay, um, who's the funniest president? Yeah, that's probably you know a tie between imagine a funny Lincoln could have been a feet governor normal times I think yeah, uh Reagan was pretty darn funny. Um, Kennedy actually had some real wit to him.
Okay. Um after that I'm not sure I think it falls off after those three He didn't go be jay. It was LBJ funny with his friends and personal librarians. He always got a funny rush kicker.
Sorry from yeah, I Gave that's okay. He'll believe it. Yeah, I think he probably was in that sort of cowboy crude way in a locker room humor Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. I got all the recordings, right?
I mean my favorite you want to leave this I mean you didn't say I think this was recorded in public I think he said maybe not he said the UN couldn't pour piss out of a boot if you printed the instructions on the heel All right, um, who is your favorite thinker of all time? Oh boy, that's very hard I'm half tempted to say cs Lewis because of his extraordinary breath Great and by the way, you're going a long time about this but so I won't accept to say I did find you guys may know this I did find in one of those transcripts of a 1962 class by Leo Strauss on Rousseau He's going along and he says obviously it's a really good book by this English guy named cs Lewis called the abolition of man It's a great attack on world. I highly recommend it just a short little statement, but well, how's the new of the book? And approved of what I think is maybe Lewis's best book in some ways the abolition of man You guys must know that book how we should do an episode on that.
Yeah, you should it's uh, it's only 75 pages long That holds up really well And I've often thought that if Lewis had you know, they were roughly contemporary if Lewis had been interested in political philosophy He'd have stumbled across Strauss and would have blown his mind as the kids used to say in all the right ways That's my next question is what's your favorite work of literature? Yeah, that's a good question. Uh, I'll probably have to run with just Shakespeare generally I know that's fair. Yeah.
All right. Steve have you ever had any nicknames? No, wait, I had one I think I had one on the cross-country team in high school. I don't remember what it was flash.
No What was your best time? Do you remember that? Yeah, I did 4 29 in the mile and 947 for two miles Oh, that's that's fast. Yeah, you know, I was sort of okay I was really good at that.
I'll just take that for the record if you couldn't deduce that's what Goodness gracious. I never broke five minutes. I was right there on the cusp on yeah Um favorite place you've ever visited. I might go with australia only because I visited there longer than any place else I spent two months there once about 35 years ago with my dad who'd been there in world war two So it was fun to go back and that's right.
We just had a leisure trip with the whole darn country I really loved it. I didn't want to come home. You know most trips you like where you are But you're looking forward to coming home and there I could have stayed another two months really what'd you like about it? Uh, it reminded me a little bit of the american west with not quite so much cactus A lot of wide open spaces that people are fun.
They remind me of california a lot parts of it look like california So it's near the accident just grading to me. You know, I we have a lot of listeners in australia. Alex, please Yeah, i think you can be listeners. I can't be talkers.
That's always We're gonna have to bleep that out when we edit the australian version of the podcast next week Uh, all right best politician in your lifetime. Yeah, that's gotta be raking. I think okay. I mean clinton's very talented and but he's not required to so Oh, yeah, fair enough.
Um, what was your first car? I had a 1962 chevy nova nice before doors again You know straight six-cylinder engine I fiddled with a carburetor andlessly because that's what you did as a teenager back in those days when you had Corn readers. Yeah, and when teenagers did stuff like that. Right.
Oh, I changed my own oil. You know, like yeah What is your favorite fast food restaurant? Uh being a california that's in and out there's that's your answer. Yeah, you should tell your shirt Oh, yeah, i'm wearing a popeye shirt right now.
Oh, very funny Uh, what do you think you would have done if you had not become a professor or an academic? Ah professional pro Professional beach volleyball player. Is that right? No, I actually don't have any talent for you.
No, I mean, I'm not tall enough I'm not tall enough. I don't know. Maybe you're really talented. No, no, you need to have a you know It all is an NBA style jump to be able to do that But I like the you know, if you I was taking that as a wide open question if you be anything in life.
Oh, yeah, sure. Oh, great No, of course, I was taking it because working dishes are fantastic. You know, you get the beer you get curls you make these money You know, that's that's why I would say doesn't sound so bad. It doesn't sound so bad.
Do you have any pets? I have a dog Yeah, what's its name? Lady, which is a dumb name, but that was a name from the shelter is a restaurant. Okay, so yeah, right kids picked her out But that's good dog.
It's a some combination. I can't even get it described. It's a month. Yeah, yeah, that's nice We got we've got we've adopted our dog series.
That's right. That's all I got for lightning round guys David you want to take us out? Well, thank you so much for joining us. Yeah A lot of fun.
We'd love to have you back. Yeah, we'd love to plug to plug your book and of course anytime to talk about raken or church For sure. Thanks for everything Steve. I sincerely do appreciate it.
This was a fun episode. Yeah