wallach, good friend of the

washington post yuval levin of the american enterprise institute target. you've probably noticed this breaking points. the realignment has been a lot of discourse around america, democracy being threat. i want to take that idea seriously though. i am in a way that i think recognizes that there's been like an overproduction towards one very specific direction to the arguments that you've all i'd love to kind of start you just what is your of like the health the state or this language for yourself like vapid but that's kind of how it's kind of discourse right how do you feel the state of american democracy? well, thank you. first of all, for the for the opportunity and for this very

interesting event. i think that it sense to worry about the condition of the american republic. i don't think that it would be right to panic about the state of american and i think the difference between worry panic is a very important distinction for us to draw now in our politics. it's become impossible for us to take any issue seriously without panicking about it right. so we can't talk about it. we can't talk the environment unless we persuade ourselves. people are going to be drowning in the streets of. manhattan, we can't talk about the budget unless we persuade ourselves that we're on the verge of some kind of debt crisis. and i think we almost can't get ourselves to talk about american constitutionalism unless we persuade ourselves that the whole system is about to fall. you know, democracy dies in darkness no fence, fence an you know, i think it's it actually makes it very difficult to think about these questions if insist

on behaving in this kind of a of of panicked way. so let me make the case worrying and not panicking i'm jewish worry is a way of life. it's a way of of of exhibiting strength and taking seriously worry has to start understanding your own strength. and then from understanding the ways in which you face challenges. in one sense, american democracy is in a very strong place. we it's easier to vote than it's ever been in america. there is much less fraud in our elections. and there would have been in almost any other time you could have looked at and looked in on them in the history of the united states voted rates are very, very high is easily the highest period sustained voter turnout that had in our history all of these are reasons to think that american democracy is in a strong place. i think where we face problems that we ought to be worrying about is when we when we show contempt for the legitimacy of

our institutions, when we treat system as not worthy of our regard and respect, and when we in a kind of passing way say it's it's illegitimate, contemptible, i think you do find that the way that some people on the right, including donald trump, of course, have talked about election results. i think you find it in the way that some people on the left talk about the core institutions of our constitutional system, the senate and the electoral college, but also the courts, the the bill of rights. these are reasons to worry and the reasons to make the case for strengthening the american republic in all of its parts, including the democratic parts. i think we should worry and we should make that case and we should act that case. but panic is not going to help. and i don't think that panic is the right response to the moment we're living through. but i do think worry is maybe that for a start. jason warrior, worrier, panic or are neither? well, first of all, it's to be with you guys. marshall and sagar are some of my oldest friends in washington.

when we all graduated from college and we're in roaming around d.c. in 2015, we all got together. and so it's great to watch the re-alignment grow and become successful. i agree with everything you've all said. i think know everybody believes in and or says that they do. and i think somebody said science is the art of proving the obvious. but there's more political, you know, empirical support for this that basically you ask people they'll say that they support democracy. that's their ideology. the lodestar of our political system, whether they're on the right or the left. but it's almost precisely ideological conviction that makes you so convinced that what the other side is doing is wrong. it's violating democracy, whether it's, you know, voter fraud or misinformation or, you know, a supreme court ruling don't like and so on and so forth. it's cast as a violation, democracy and people. so people's, you know,

definition of democracy based on the partizan circumstances. and so it's within within this one ideological frame that, as you've all said, we're of eroding institutions, the appeals to democracy used to do that. so, you know, any system of governance contains the seeds, its own undoing of its mishandle. and i think democracy is the same that's long been recognized by political philosophers. so i think, you know, we need to also focus on other, you know, political virtues, not not only democracy, because in some ways that's a self undermining proposition. when i think about and say the word democracy, it's difficult for me not to immediately hear the tinges you've all like you reference from the left and to the right at the same time, i do see a deep reluctance. i think with a lot of right leaning and right leaning institutions at the idea of expanding small d democracy.

you know, in almost an instant at any change to the vote system with the suspicion. jason, specifically of what you're talking about, like no that's going to lead to more left leaning results. how do you think that people on the right should think about small d democracy should they want more people to get involved in the political process? i personally do. and how should they think then about what the future looks like instead of just simply defending, let's say, the status of the way people vote, end a particular battleground state? i think it's a very important question. it's actually a question that that the team i'm part of has been working on for quite a bit in the last few, because i think that this is a moment when we have to see that there are reasons to think about structural change that strengthen in american democracy. and there is an instinctive reaction on the right to think these changes are just going to help the left. there's even an instinct of sense that just greater voter participation will help to lift that higher turnout to lift. that is not true. there's a lot of evidence now 70

years of evidence that that argument and confront people with it. and while they're in the room they say, okay, that's very interesting. and then they walk out and have the same attitude they had coming in is more people vote the other wins, fewer people vote, we win. i think that's a very bad attitude with which to approach voters. you're giving people the impression that you don't want them to, that you want to exclude them from the system. sometimes it's more than an impression. let's be frank. there are real efforts to exclude people from voting. i think those are a terrible mistake and it's also just not the case that more voters means more democrats winning more elections. one of the things it's going to take for republicans to come terms with the changing nature of the electoral coalitions in our politics now is to recognize they actually could be more popular. they think if they try to win votes, imagine that and if they appeal to a broader segment of the of the electorate then the people who are already dying go

and vote for them on election day. i think to just to see that, republicans have to overcome a certain kind of reluctance to think about the democratic as serving them put it this right now the left dominates every except those to which you have to get elected. and that should suggest people on the right that the institutions of american democracy can actually work our favor in some very important ways. i think that does mean being much more to more voter participation. i think it also means thinking about changes or experiment with the election systems in ways that treat the problems by the primary system as real challenges to american governance. the move to primaries in both parties the 1970s was a terrible mistake that has left our politics populated with people who have no business being in politics, who have no interests doing the jobs they're elected to, who basically run on a platform of saying, i will never do this job and we have to think differently about we're populating these institutions.

so if you had asked me even ten years ago, what do i think about ranked choice voting, i would say that's a gimmick that'll get more democrats elected. i don't really think that way anymore i think have to think about things like ranked choice voting primaries in particular. we have to think about ways to experiment with the system to overcome material mistake made by reformers years ago that has left us with a politics that's just less functional than it could be and to to get to a better more to a to a more functional system, we've got to be open to thinking about the ways in which institutions create incentives that, then create political realities. and to change incentives, you've got to change structure. jason, what do you think of the reformist. year 2023? i'm a little more skeptical. mean depending on what reforms were we're talking about. i think i agree with yuval that we should experiment. and frankly, you know, our states are should be allowed to

experiment. you know, we talk about first past the post and single member congressional districts. there's nothing stopping states from adopting, you know, different forms of representation. their state legislatures, like they had in the early 19th century, except probably some federal laws like the voting act. but the federal government could allow states of more experimentation. and i just think, you know all of our states have the exact same structure, almost the exact same electoral system, one with a unicameral legislature here, but they all use single member districts, you know, that could be experimented with. and the states should do more experimentation. we're seeing some experimentation with ranked choice voting now in alaska and other places in maine. i think what i would say about, you know, i don't love mail in voting for very long periods because i think you one function of an election isn't to get people to participate in it, but to build legitimacy in in the process. and i think people sort doing it

in the same way, at the same helps to build respect for the outcome. and i think, you know, there's some that the mail in voting creates an incentive for mobilization rather than persuasion. you know how many people can you recruit to, you know, vote in the ahead of the election and you want, you know, people being persuaded and thinking up the time of the election. so you know, we have to think carefully about what these reforms. but i'm very open to experimental action. you've all just to dig in to that. and i think this an important point, though, the pushback. yeah, i hear from the primary defenders is yeah. but in the 1970s, it was run by party like and before that and you go back, i mean, you know, even direct election senators, relatively recent phenomenon in the history of the republic. so when we think about reforms, how we think about reforms that are more democratic and not more elite driven because that was

kind of, as i understand it, one of the reformer impulses for the primary in the first place was to get away from, quote unquote, smoke filled back rooms. so, look, i think our system seeks a balance between, an elite power and popular power. and i think that is the right thing to seek. it's not the that the more power you have, the the system government. there are advantages obviously to more democratic power. there are also advantages to elite power and the american constitutional recognizes that you need some way to strike a dynamic balance. these two they move back and forth. i think that the the impulse behind the move to primaries was misguided. it was the sense that if you only put more power in the hands of a broader populace, you'll end up with a more responsive politics. but what you actually end up with is politics that's responsive to the people who have the time and the intense inclination to spend a lot of

energy being engaged in politics. and that is not a broad swath. the american population, i think that we have unquestionably ended up with a representative politics, a result of the primary system less, representative of the population at large, more representative of the most intensely engaged fringes of both parties. and that's not good for the country. i think we have to be willing to say that the the amount of democracy need is not infinity. there is an answer to the question how much of this do we want and how much of that do we? and we've got to think in terms are realistic about human and the character of democratic. and so, you know we can't go back to the pre primary system. we can't go back because just as a again being realistic what politician is going to say to his voters. well, actually you people are the problem and we need to pull power back to a place where less of a say in whether i get to be a and that's what i think about ways of forward from what that

wrecking is the need for this balance and so you know, one kind of appeal of ranked choice voting is it says we want somebody who is going to be capable of being a lot of second choice. right why is that? because what we're doing here populating a set of political institutions and what happens in those institutions is bargaining and compromise accommodation, especially if you're talking about congress. that's the job right? you don't want to do that. you should seek another. there are a lot of job opportunities, capable people in the united states economy. you really shouldn't run for congress if you don't actually want to be involved in work at the moment. got a system with incentives that drive a lot of people don't want to be led to run for congress. we've just got to think practically about how to change that. and that's not all about that's not all about more to the people. i think there does have to be a balance here that lets us be governed. well but also in a way that is responsive. public pressures. i was speaking with two younger listeners of the realignment

last night and they brought up the episode of shadi hamid, where we are talking about shadi point that, we can't keep acting as if every single election our lifetime is the most important lecture a lifetime that really resonated with them because they said like on a college campus that is a helpful mentality to bring in some of the culture war debates but taking a step back, i have a hard time resonating with that argument because looking at the past elections, you look at the world where hillary clinton wins in 2016 versus trump. and those are just like way different. same thing goes for 2020. and barring you know, the status quo continuing 2024 would be similar. so how do the two of you think about this dynamic, of how do we not over escalate our national politics right at a turning the temperature level? we'll also recognize that now i think there actually are a couple of where choosing is here. how do we balance? jason, you could go first. well, i think you can't tell in advance. elections are going to be the most important you have to consider that they all may feel that way but may not turn out

that way. the other thing is, you know, unlike unlike in a a you asked me about reforms, unlike in, you know, a parliamentary system and proportional that some people prefer in other countries where you really are giving the government entirely one party in the united states, you do that you don't have to do that in election. we used to do it less. we used to give one chamber of congress, congress, to one party, the presidency to another and so on. and then meanwhile, the the courts sort of persist in sort of like averaging of which party has been in power over time. but yeah, i mean, it's certainly good mobilizer to say that every election is the most important and and i think that, you know, you know, there's something to be said for the fact that the presidency has grown and the government has grown. so control the government is a higher stakes proposition. and so we would need some sort of reforms to pare that back, you know, starting with putting more power in congress which is i know something you've all has

worked on. you know, we have institutions, the filibuster, which are intended to prevent dramatic change. those are trying to be exploded, you know, by partizans. and i at some point will be. but i guess i don't have a good answer because, you know, people do have a point. elections are very important. so i guess this gets back for me to the distinction between, panic and worry. i don't think it makes to panic about presidential elections. they do matter. but in our system, there's a lot of back and forth, there are also a lot of restraints on power so that the president is at any given time only matters so much, i would say. i mean, it's true. the presidency grown in in in stature and power. but i think that presidents biden and trump are probably the weakest presidents of my lifetime. and the reasons for that are very different between the two of them. but neither one of them has really dominated the the the the the work of our government in a personal way that the powers of

the president suggest are possible. we're seeing a kind of diminishment of the presidency. unfortunately, we're not seeing a rise of congress to fill that vacuum. we're seeing a vacuum. there are lot of ways in which in the biden years, the running on autopilot, now it's running in the wrong direction because the autopilot points left when you look at the federal bureaucracy. but how much of what's going on is really joe biden's personal priority? how different would have been if you another democrat who got an elected in that really how fundamentally different would it be if looking at the answers not not at all, but it is an answer that suggests that we're not living in a moment when the when every presidential election has to be thought of as a life or death question for the american republic. when you think of it that way, you justify making stupid decisions. and i think is very important to see that we do not face a situation in which we should suspend all the laws of rationality because we've got to make this one decision

correctly. we've got to think in a broader prospect of about the condition of our government. we do have a mixed a mixed result from an election. now we've got a republican house. we've got a democratic senate. we've got a very weak democratic president. and, you know, i think that's better than unified government in the wrong hands. elections matter. i i've i spent life working in politics. i think elections matter lot. i wish they mattered less to the life of the average. i'd love to vote for who says they'll make the matter. i guess it's unlikely but the idea that this next election is the most important of your lifetime or that it's really ultimately all that matters and you should suspend your other powers of judgment to make sure that this one thing goes well. i don't think that's the right way to think about our politics. and i don't that it ends up being justified by the results of the last two elections. one of the things you're getting out there in talking about the federal bureaucracy is the anti nature of kind of autopilot and

about, you know, even president obama once famously described the presidency as ship captain who's really only able to turn a supertanker two degrees one way or two degrees the other way and kind of hope in 30 years that you go somewhere and you know this was at one point, allegedly one of the most powerful people in the entire world. the caller or the counter to that, as you say, is to try and have congress consume more power. but in our current system, you have legislators. you don't i'm not particularly interested in being legislators more interested in doing what we're doing here. podcasters of them aren't particularly good at it. so how do you know? it's a bit of a catch 22. the power resides in the federal bureaucracy, the response to that is, well, then we should get rid of the federal or enact more power on that. but we don't have appear to have legislators that are capable of doing that. so how do you think that that compromise system, how will it work itself out in the next decade or so? i think the question, when you face a vicious cycle, that is where can you break in? not where is the problem biggest, but where can actually

do something about it and? those are not the same question. so me the answer is really that we have to think about how to change incentives that confront members of congress so that they have more of a reason to do their job a big part of the reason why the bureaucracy is as powerful as it is, is that congress has stepped back, withdrawn from using its power and given that power over to the federal bureaucracy that doesn't have to be the case. members of congress have power to change this. no one else does. and so where we have to focus and to help their ambition be channeled into actual legislative work by changing the way, the congress works by changing things about our election system. i think that's the place to focus? not because that's a silver bullet, but because that's where it's actually imaginable that you could change the kinds of incentives that drive the rest of the system in the direction it's been going. i'm curious if all and then jason cut in, please. what? think about then the weakening the speaker or how generally like the.

i love it. look, i think what happened in in the fight over the speakership was great it wasn't perfect. there were a lot of bad things about it and embarrassing things. but you know, life is full of embarrassing moments. what you've got now is evidence of the possibility, decentralization of power in the house. i think a big part of the reason why members don't care about legislating is that they're not actually permitted to do any. what they do in the committees actually doesn't matter. so they're not stupid for treating it. it doesn't matter. changing, allowing it to matter more, some more power to the committee system. empowering intraparty groups within the two parties that allow for internal diversity, i think is a great way to try to think about how to strengthen congress. so on the whole, i think what's happened here has been a good thing for congress. jason well, if too many congress are podcasters, i'm waiting for the end jedi for i hear that virginia there's a contested seat in 2024. better? no, i agree with yuval.

i didn't have a have a problem with it. i didn't care really who the who the speaker was. and insofar as the committees are stronger, that's 100% better thing. it sort of shows, you know, how it is to think about this in terms of democracy, more democracy, because committees are kind of anti-democratic. they're based on seniority positions on them, are not, you know, elected they're doled out by the speaker versus, you know, the speaker who's elected, you know, also partly based seniority. it depends which state in may help. if he's in a safer seat, it may, you know. so thinking about it is more democratic or less democratic. that's another example of it's better to think about it as what's a better structure for this institution. i mean, i think one of the themes of this is it's not about more democracy or less democracy. it's where do we need more democracy? where do we need less democracy. we probably don't, you know, a popular vote over interest rates we but probably do want more democratic accountability seems to me over things like the tech companies decisions or over

parts of the administrative state. so it's really a question of where we focusing, you know, more popular energy versus more elite power. and i think we have the balance wrong is that the thing? i think the closing for the two of you is to bring up what kevin roberts brought up when i interviewed him an or so ago. just the the question of like the conservative movement needing to answer like what time it is. so from any personal perspective on the of your ends, i'm curious at what time is it like, you know the year 2023. hmm what time is it? i mean, do think there's an element, you know, among conservative or maybe even right question and that's an answer to well, i mean, i think if you if you look at like something like the senate race in indiana with jim banks and mitch. mitch daniels, you know, there's a sense republican voters. i do think, that we can't do politics the way that we did in the nineties and 2000 when there

was more sort of overlap between parties and in the information age. and it was just sort of a model where compromise was more possible. and i think, you know, voters just fundamentally want to see their politicians, you know, really represent their views unashamedly. and so i think, you know, what conservatives are getting at when they say, you know, we need new, new leadership that's focused on this. and i think there's something something to that given the new circumstances, you part of it is just our leadership class is very old, you know, younger people have a better sense, i think, of the direction of the country and the needs. i guess i would i would with the question just a little bit. i'm a conservative. and so i actually don't think what time is it is the right question to ask because it's always to help. a rising generation be formed into better human beings and on citizenship in a serious way. that's always what time it is. the question is what does that mean right now?

what of challenges stand in the way of our doing now? i think it's a lot easier at this moment to see what's different this time than to see what's the same about this time. and for that reason, we should think about some of the durable problems face sustaining the balance of our system of government, helping it function well is a constant problem. and the fact that we get of it, we get bored of it is not a reason to stop thinking about it, not an excuse to say, well, let's put that aside. that's an old question and let's think about some new questions. i don't think we're going to do a good job of thinking about new questions of thinking about the kinds challenges we have to face now that are distinct and different if we're not doing the basic work of allowing the american constitutional system to reflect ideals of the american republic in a way that enables us govern ourselves well, so that basic work always has to be done. and i think we as conservatives should never forget about it, should never put it aside, because now it should never think, well, in this moment we

can't worry about the system and the process that's precisely when we do have worry about them and it's a reason for change. it's not a reason for doing things in the same way. i don't think that we should take the ends of the sentences that republicans were uttering in the 1980s as though they are dogma. our sentences do need to end differently now because we're facing different problems. they need to start in the same way. they need to start by saying challenge is to govern this country. well, that another generation can be prosperous and free and therefore the challenges we now face with with tech, with all kinds of problems, cultural challenges that weren't the same 50 years ago, do us to think differently, but to achieve same ends and we should not forget that is the case. that's to me that's ultimately what makes a conservative. well said. thank you for us today. thanks, guys. appreciate. thank.