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Frustration with New Dealism Retreads
Marshall, after your episode with Peter Leydan I've become convinced that we need to shift towards pragmatic progressivism as a country. However, I was thoroughly unmoved by Tomasky's messaging. I feel like there is an 'old progressive' guard that are hard to distinguish from New Dealers. I don't think we can look to past solutions as a way to solve modern problems. Also, I think we're in a moment where things are shifting away from centralization and people will be weary of a massive fed gov't controlling things from Washington. I don't know where the next FDR will come from, but my money is outside of government. My bet is they will be of a movement that comes from disruptive cultures, such as tech, including crypto and DeFi. Regardless of where, the answer can't be institutionalize in old and outdated models. My money is on an ideology that further decentralizes power and economic prosperity. I think our big lesson learned in the 20th century was that no one person, party, institution, etc., can be trusted with power. At some point their power is used to their benefit at the expense of everyone else. Was curious what your thoughts are about the current progressive movement.
RE: Diagnosing Bushes midlife transformation
At around 33:45 in your Darman interview, (a fantastic one by the way) you mention the two ways in which we can reflect on W’s transformation. To paraphrase, by sheer force of will, you can bottom out and still make something grand of yourself, or to contrast, it’s about his certainty. IF (and it’s a huge ‘if’ that radically changed politics as we know it today) the Iraq war was the grand success that was envisioned, wouldn’t we be making the more favorable argument for Bush even though it’s more likely that both reflections on his mid-life crisis are true?
Queen Elizabeth/ Gorbachev
The media coverage of Queen Elizabeth has been wall to wall at least on TV and some news radio stations (bbc obviously and npr), but I can’t help but wonder how important of a role she played in world history. Of course, weekly visits w the (15?) prime ministers probably had some influence, but in terms of actual power she seems to have been quite restrained. She may have kept the empire together longer w some of her visits and tried to hold countries in the commonwealth, but I am an amateur on British Empire history. How important was her role over her reign? In contrast, I saw very little coverage of Gorbachev, who at this point is a tragic figure with where Russia and some former soviet republics are today. In my view Gorbachev had a much more important role with his relative restraint on cracking down during dissolution of the soviet union even though it was not his intention to end to soviet union. Thoughts on these assertions and compare/contrast due to close timing of deaths? Thanks
Personal Backgrounds influence on views
Feel free of course to skip this if you don’t want to be too open, but how do you think each of your backgrounds influence/inform your political views. This is an identity politics question which might piss off a lot of listeners, but to a point I think it helps give context. This of course doesn’t have to be limited to identity(class/race/gender/religious or lack thereof), but could be where you grew up in the country and educational experience.