Was founded in 1951 and in 2019, they began the first bookstore selling. This allows us to keep over 100,000 books on our shelves and work with likeminded true owners at the University Chicago to ensure events like these. This is motivated by a Washington Post columnist covering notional politics. Joining the Washington Post in 2010. During the 15 years at times, she wrote more than three dozen stories. She helped time of the Congressional Correspondent and white house correspondent. Serving on the board of institute of politics at the university of chicago and the university of texas in business school. Good evening. Thank you so much for being with us tonight. The only thing that makes me sad about this is that i cant actually be at the university of chicago, which is the place i dearly love but i think our conversation tonight is going to be very interesting speaking to them about their fascinating and very provocative new book. Introducing them, and what you read this to make sure i dont screw it up. The professor in american politics at the university of chicago and director of the center for effective government he cohosts the podcast, not another politics. The William Bennet monroe professor clinical scientists, stanford and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and this is the second book the two of them have been together the fact that they are still friends may be the most remarkable thing of all. Thank you so much for engaging with us in this conversation. I thought a good place to start would be to agree on the definition of the terms of what we are talking about tonight here. What exactly is populism . How do you define it . Why is it that you believe it is a threat and corrosive of democratic norms . Ill take that on. The language, i think it is normally associated with standing up for the little guy and the disadvantaged. Something liberals would think is a very good thing but this is not the way scholars typically use the term based on experience. Scholars, it means something very different with different for william and for me. At the heart of the Populism Movement is the voice that they represent the real people of a nation. Socially conservative christian people. They have a corrupt illegitimate system at its core, populism is the people against the system. In expressing their rage, they almost invariably embrace a believer who expresses the rage takes on the system but attacking institutions, it norms, established leaders and who can get things done on their own. This is why populism is so dangerous. Its not just in the system, it arises within a democratic system. It is an attack on democracy itself led by strongman peter. I thought one of the interesting points you make early on in the book that i never thought of before is that not every authoritarian leader is at the head of the movement, is an authoritarian leader. The populist comes in and says look, the regime democratic regime is legitimate, a uses the most sweeping language movement. He says i stand apart from the wreckage. I am not of that mess so what you should be doing is inventing hopes and aspirations in me and thats where the strongman comes forward. The strongman says i will deliver the system has failed you. The hallmark is my willingness to step over and around that system. In this White Christian americ american, true americans so it is these strands that run through populism that are deeply troubling. We of course, are in a populist moment in our own history. A friend of mine of the wall street journal has a new book out also describes a moment where he bannon who later becomes a key political advisor to donald trump, meet donald trump for the first time, he tries to talk him into running for president in 2012 and says he cant run on these old ideas, you have to run as a populist and trump said thats what i am, i am a popular artist and bannon realizes yes, that is exactly how trump sees it, it is all about him. You say in the book we have had other populist moment in our history, somewhat around the time of andrew jackson, the progressive era, the beginning of the 20th century to some degree during the Great Depression but we had a government sort of capable of dealing with these citizen passions. Could you walk us through our own countrys history with populism . I can take a stab at it. One of the main things in my book is that populism is an expression of dissatisfaction in modern times with globalization and technological changes and other modernizations but, our government has been ineffective in dealing with these problems and that is why there is a populist rage against the system, a system that doesnt work for them. This kind of thing has happened before so around 100 years ago, this country went through social change, industrialization, immigration and organization that led to real turmoil and weve had a government completely incapable of handling it and it led to the Progressive Movement, which is the most powerful movement in our nations history and what they did was reform our institutions to make our government more effective. It didnt make it super effective, just more effective and they gave us a president ially led Administrative State that did a much better job with those problems and that diffused will could have been a major populist revolt at the time. The Great Depression was another one of those critical junctures in American History where capitalism fails, our government had failed and there were populists ready to take advantage of that and blame democracy along came fdr and the new deal and all of these programs to deal with the problems of the country and that really diffused the populist vets. Here we are again, 2020. We have problems that have resulted from the huge disruptions in our government is not dealing with them and if we dont find a way like the progressives did and the new deal, to deal with these problems in a more effective w way, we will not be able to diffuse populism and it will be a real threat to our democracy. If i could add one thing, the key thing that distinguishes this moment from the previous two is that populism is broken through, it has taken hold of the apparatus of government and using the powers of government in order to continue in anger and disaffection, to use the powers of government to undo the government within. The challenge is presented to us is profound, not just because populism comes from the failures of government to meet modern challenges because it is seeped into the government itself and weve got to find a way to extricate it and rehabilitate our government if we will stay moving forward. One of the corollaries of populism is intolerance of other points of view, minority points of view, isnt that also one of the dangers . Cant coexist with pluralism. For short you see that. Attacks on democracy look like, delegitimizing branches of government, telling the press the enemy of the people, refusing to concede any merit for liberal opponents, calling for the rest of ones political opponents, this is not the stuff of robust meaningful literal dialogue but we can bridge differences, come together and figure out how to solve our problems. Rather, its feeling anger, increasing division and crippling our ability to come together. Hollowing out our democracy, not enriching. Sorry, this is not uniquely american phenomenon, could you talk about how this is actually something happening in many parts of the world right now. The disruptions that have occurred due to globalization and technological change in immigration our worldwide disruptions especially in the west. They have led to backlashes in countries all across western europe and scandinavia and the uk. Their economic i people who have lost jobs due to the howling out of manufacturing and defending of jobs overseas and developing nations but its also cultural. There is a cultural backlash to these other people coming in immigration and creating diversity within countries that have not been diverse. These are White Christians, distinct cultures and suddenly there are all of these immigrants coming in and where you see this search search and populism in europe, 2015 16 in, large numbers of immigrants coming in from africa and middle east and the european nations didnt handle it very well and because they didnt handle them well, many people were threatened, they were culturally threatened which led to a surge of popularity, populism and europe and its very dangerous. European nations have sort of gotten together on immigration and the populist parties are not surging anymore in europe so i think right now, its less dangerous in europe than they are here because our government is much less effective than their government and we have not gotten a handle on it. You guys talk about two things. You think to sorts of forces are driving this problem in the u. S. And making it practically impossible to deal with. One is our deep Political Polarization and the other is the functioning of our government and i would like to pull those things apart. Lets start by talking about the politics, the political divisi division, the fact that we have two Political Parties you say used to be, im talking about recent history, were very heterogeneous, liberal republicans, conservative democrats and that is not the case anymore so how has that contributed to a system where executives have become all powerful and congress has become completely impotent . Or am i overstating that . You put in place a number of things. There is polarization, that is for sure. Parties are divided in ways we were not divided a halfcentury ago. A theme of our book though, the failure of government to solve problems is embedded in the institutions and has a polarization. Whats significant when we think about, and not talked about enough for recognize enough, we think about the threat of populism to our democracy, in addition to having two parties to disagree with one another, we have one party that is the primary vehicle will populist itself so the remaking of the Republican Party for being a party of limited government and smaller taxes and deregulation in to being from the vehicle by which trump, and we can expect future populist to cling to vast powers and undermine the efficacy of our government and hollow out the administrator state is deeply problematic so it isnt just, this is another thing. We look back to what distinguishes this moment from mike when Woodrow Wilson took office in 1916 where you saw an effort by president , president offer progressive response to the threat of populism in addition to it, you have problems in breaking through and grabbing full and one major party that has capitulated to populism and it is deeply problematic with think about our ability to productively constructively move forward and make our democracy and improve. If i could add to that, i think the Republican Party has been transformed. This is not your grandfathers Republican Party. It just isnt. The Republican Party is much more extreme ideologically than it ever has been and its no longer in the business of solving the nations social problems. In the business of cutting taxes, getting government out of peoples lives, making government as small as possible and as a result, it simply is not going to deal with these things and it thrives on being anti system party that when the system fails and behaves ineffectively and the republican stands up and says we told you so, we are the anti system party, this is a system that doesnt work. The other thing is that republicans, because of the demo graphics moving against them, no. Democracy does not work for th them. The more people that vote, the more it is for them. There more minorities. Year after year, less educated white people, smaller and smaller percentage of the electorate so looking forward, republicans know the only way they can win elections is to suppress the vote and engage in other means of undemocratic. So the dynamics here are not good for our democracy and they are coming from the Republican Party. We hate to say that, social scientists want to say we hate democrats or republicans but the fact is, the transformative change is happening here linked to populism happen within the Republican Party. As a vehicle for this threat to democracy. We are also describing trump is him so donald trump is not going to be around forever. Hell either be around until january or until january 2025. The tropism continue to exist after donald trump is gone . Yes. For at least two reasons. The first is that there are, if he loses in 2020, even if he steps back and sees the power and biden assumes the white house, we can expect him to continue to rail against the system and tens of millions of people support him will reward those who follow in his wake which points toward the foundational reason why trumpism reads populism will persist, the problems they froze up are not going to go away. Theyre not going to slow it down and suddenly have a Manufacturing Base redirected and population slows and the destruction to our economy are not going to suddenly settle down. As long as we have a government to meet those challenges, there is going to be a base of people who will be angry and you will not just skeptically but will respond to it with real anger and they will reward politically anybody who steps up in the way trump has and calls out the system and behaves as trump has. Connection between an effective government and populism. Something we want to call attention to. As long as we have a government that fails to solve problems in the problems modernity kicks up will persist the foundations will be there, if not for trump and his successors to rise to power. Speaking of successors, you look out today, because there are people already elbowing each other for 2024. Who can you see on the scene today as sort of the legacy of tropism who are sort of waiting to pick up his mantle . Well, you could say his immediate family, john junior or tv personalities and say Tucker Carson will step forward and say ill be the one. There are plenty of officials were not just standing quietly beside trump but going out of their way to support him. I think what is really important though for us to recognize we are trying to do in the book, capture attention to Structural Forces in the way. In 2014, nobody would have thought trump is going to be the one. Bill rise to power and be our next president so its hard for us to say, place bets on who is going to be placing him. As long as these forces are in play, the ground will be laid for somebody is charismatic, and outsider, who has the ambition and is willing to play rather populist playbook to rise to power. Who that is, we dont know so i think we can expect it to continue to be a powerful force in our politics and a threat to our democracy going toward. The prerequisites populism are in play. Ill just add one thing, there is a continuing battle going on between populace and the party and establishments, orthodox numbers. They want to take it back so many of the people in the Republican Party, they are not real populace. In willing to suck up to trump in every possible way but mainly conservatives, orthodox, republican service. Ted cruz and paul rand rand paul, excuse me. Many others are real populace so i think there is a battle going on and i dont think it is entirely clear that lets say donald trump loses big in the election, trying to take it back the problem we will have is that there is a populist base to the Republican Party and they are off the charts enthusiastic about populism and willing to punish people and they will have to fight against that. This is part of the transformation will take place over a period of time and we will have to see how it plays out. One of the big things in your book, i think it is one that is very provocative because a lot of people would think it is not only provocative, practically blasphemous is the fact that one of the problems here is our constitution which we all have grown up learning to revere, our Founding Fathers were men of great wisdom newton and you say they have built a system that is not equipped to deal, they lived in an isolated society, not these inter selected global one that we are living in today. Could you talk about that a bit in and how you think the constitution needs to be retooled to deal with modern society. It is a great surprise. I think there is all this reference, or used to before the institution treating it like the bible, something we should bow before and read deeply and learn from and not something that we should reimagine, rewrite. Is pretty nice but go ahead. Sure but this was a system of government written 235, 240 years ago by fewer than 4 million farmers that 700,000 were slaves and men were the only people who participated in politics and they didnt expect the government to do much and they built a government but couldnt do very much by design so it may have met their expectations for what the government ought to be in the business problem solving, recognizing the particular challenges but not the government capable of meeting kinds of challenges we face today. This was the initial recognition that led to the Progressive Movement where in 100 years in the nations history where they said we have inherited what in order to meet the challenges of industrializations . Are you kidding me . They tried to build a modern democracy, and Administrative State where expertise would be rewarded and president ially led Administrative State. The problems our country faces increase manifold and complexity and size so to say the institution we have inherited this basic structure remains intact basically, the institutions we now need in order to meet modern challenges, it seems eminently straightforward but why would we expect it to work for us today when it was written so many years ago . What we call for in the book is a deep rebuilding and reimagining, focusing on the president in parti