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Who will save America? - Alex Castellanos
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For many voters, the upcoming US election isn’t really about the border, or the deficit, or guns, or healthcare, or abortion. As many pundits have now suggested, it’s about the vibes. It raises an unsettling question: does policy even matter anymore? Is the spin more important than the substance?
There’s no one better to answer that question than the Chairman and Co-Founder of Purple Strategies, a bipartisan public affairs firm, Alex Castellanos. Alex is one of the America’s best known and most successful media consultants and strategists. He has served as media consultant to seven U.S. Presidential campaigns, and has been credited with the discovery of the “political soccer mum” and called the father of the attack ad.
Follow Will Kingston and Fire at Will on social media here.
Read The Spectator Australia here.
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Transcript
Introduction to Fire at Will Podcast
00:00:19
Speaker
G'day and welcome to Fire at Will, a safe space for dangerous conversations. I'm Will Kingston. If for some reason you are not already following the show on a streaming service, you can find us everywhere from Spotify to Apple Podcasts to YouTube. If you like what you hear here, please consider giving us a glowing five star review. If you don't like what you hear here, please forget I said anything.
US Election: Vibes Over Policies
00:00:45
Speaker
For many, perhaps most voters, the upcoming US election isn't really about the border, or the deficit, or guns, or healthcare, or abortion. As many pundits have now suggested, it's about the vibes. That feeling of unbridled joy supporting Kamala Harris, or that sense of pride knowing that your vote will help make America great again. It raises an unsettling question for politics nerds like myself.
Guest Introduction: Alex Castellanos
00:01:12
Speaker
Does policy even matter anymore? Is the spin more important than the substance? There's no one better to help me answer that question than the chairman and co-founder of Purple Strategies, a bipartisan public affairs firm, Alex Castellanos. Alex is one of America's best known and most successful media consultants and strategists. He has served as media consultant to seven US presidential campaigns and has been credited with the discovery of the political soccer mom and called the father of the attack ad.
Cuban Roots and Humor with Alex
00:01:42
Speaker
Alex, welcome to fire at will good to be with you. Yeah, the father of the attack ad and creator of soccer mom. I have an interesting family. Of course, when it comes to your family, you're from Cuba. Initially, I was saying off here, you are the first guest I've had who came on to onto the air with a cigar in their mouth. so it's it's It's created a wonderful vibe to use that word for for the interview. I try to save as many cigars from communism as I can. I think that's a very, very noble ambition. Let's start with that question I posed in the introduction, Alex.
Optimism in Presidential Campaigns
00:02:12
Speaker
How much of this election will be down to the vibes in inverted commas relative to policy substance? You know, I think ah to understand the vibe, it's not just about ah joy and happiness, though
00:02:28
Speaker
Uh, the American presidents who've always been considered modern presidents, our greatest leaders have always been optimist, you know, from ah FDR and the new deal, JFK and the new frontier, Ronald Reagan. And we have a rendezvous with destiny, even Obama hope and change. And yes, we can. And even Trump make America great again. The successful presidents have always had a.
00:02:58
Speaker
You can call it a vibe, I guess, but have always helped us look over the horizon and see something better for us there. And Harris is doing a good job at that. Now she's also doing that to remain warm and vague and fuzzy and not actually have to say anything. Look, they are determinedly trying to be the empty vessel.
Harris vs. Trump: Positioning and Strategy
00:03:23
Speaker
onto which America can project its hopes and dreams, whatever they are. She's the classic politician who says, you know, I know some of my friends are on this side of the issue. Some of my friends are on the other side of the issue. I stand with my friends. So she is trying to remain deliberately vague just to be an alternative to Trump, seems to be enough for them. She just wants to be the door out of the room for voters who think that Trump's strength may be admirable, but is also dangerous and reckless. I think that insight around optimism was a very interesting one. As the father of the attack ad, you know better than most that negative politics can be very successful.
Balancing Negativity with Positive Vision
00:04:10
Speaker
Oh yeah. Now you feel about balancing those two things.
00:04:12
Speaker
Well, it's it's like a football game here, at least American football. You have to have ah offense and defense. There's no reason you can't run your campaign, but also run your opponents. And ah you know your candidates are empty vessels oftentimes at the beginning of the campaign. They will be filled with perceptions, how we understand them by the end. And and there's no reason you can't not only pour those perceptions into your candidate's glass, are you going to let your opponent define themselves and fill their glass with perception? so But the hardest thing in politics is not to do negatives. It's to lead, it's to provide a vision, it's to lift people's eyes over the horizon and say, follow me, I'm gonna take you there. Because that's the hardest thing in life, right? It's how do you create the future
00:05:10
Speaker
that you want to build for yourself and your family and community and country. That's leadership and it's really hard and rare and exceptional.
Global Lack of Optimistic Leaders
00:05:21
Speaker
We'll zone back into the American context in just a moment, but that explanation I think is is very poignant and it gets me thinking about the global context. So I'm in London at the moment and I look at someone like Keir Starmer who is so joyless and negative and pessimistic and the antithesis of everything you've just said. yeah And similarly, I look to Canada, I look to Australia, look to a lot of Europe.
00:05:47
Speaker
Feels to me like there aren't as many leaders around the world who can present that statesmanlike, optimistic, visionary view of the future as perhaps there once were. Am I looking through rose-tinted glasses at the past, or do you think that we are do seeing a dearth of that type of talent globally? I think we are because our politics, certainly in the US, and I think you're right around the world, were we've run out of script. we Here in the US, I think is ah an example that you can see elsewhere, a global phenomenon. But here you see two old political parties ah that are so exhausted and vapid and hollow that an outsider named Donald Trump
Critique of US Political Parties
00:06:35
Speaker
crushed both of them.
00:06:37
Speaker
like that. I mean, he's a, he's a Hailey's Comet. He's a once in a generation phenomenon, but still we have the, our two industrial age parties, damn cigar, our two industrial age parties, ah the Democrats, the party of the machine, the assembly line, you know, the industrial revolution. Hey, we can, we don't have to make cars one at a time. That was great at the age of the machine.
00:07:06
Speaker
And then we had the Republican Party, which is the party of anti-big government, anti-communism, the Reagan Party, but never actually figured out how to take its principles to lead, to govern. We were the party ah became the party of no. And I think what's happened now is we're no longer in the industrial age. We're no longer in the age of the machine. We're in a connected world.
00:07:35
Speaker
And if you look around, every big, dumb, slow, mechanical institution has either changed, evolved, or died. And ah the Democratic Party here, the Starmer Party, is still selling manual typewriters, right? Machines just, oh, you've got a problem, we can fix that, we'll build a bigger assembly line. And the Republican Party is still the anti-everything party.
00:08:03
Speaker
And so and we are joyless. We are
Visionary Leadership and Political Failures
00:08:07
Speaker
negative. We are without, you know, as it says in the good book, without a vision, the people perish. But you don't have to look far to see what the future could be. Look what is working. Look at what you and I are doing now. Look at the way things that are well governed are governed.
00:08:27
Speaker
where where innovation is, where people are building electric cars and talking about taking us to the moon and Mars and beyond. you know there is a There is something better that these two exhausted, dying political parties could reflect. Somebody's gonna come along. I thought it would have been Barack Obama. I thought he had the chance, the youth, the optimism.
00:08:56
Speaker
the hope and change. I thought he could have said, wait a minute, we've been doing the things the old way too long. We don't have to govern ourselves top down politically, artificially, mechanically. It's a better way. We can have more and better government. We can govern ourselves bottom up organically, naturally, and and do things the way the world actually works today. He was not that guy. Somebody will be.
00:09:25
Speaker
cape that thought around the future and how there could be potential revitalization in the back of your mind. We will get back there towards the end, so we end on a positive note. But to start, I want to dig more into the the slightly more ah pessimistic state of affairs today. Let's look at the two combatants. You said that at the start of a campaign, you have the opportunity to define your opponent and something which I think has been frustrating for many on the right is so far it doesn't appear that Trump has been able to successfully define Harris, despite I think having a lot of material potentially to work with. Do you think that's fair? And if so, why do you think he's struggling? um I think he's done a good job, but as yet incomplete job of defining Harris. He is not just running against her. He's running against the mainstream media and they are
00:10:22
Speaker
wrapping warm, fuzzy blankets around her and making her a safe choice. A survey came out from Fox News yesterday that says people, she is still undefined as far as where she stands on issues. People don't know. She's
Harris' Vague Positioning: Strength or Weakness?
00:10:38
Speaker
changed her positions on everything in, oh, the last 10 minutes. But people are big have begun to see her enough to think that, well, maybe she would care about the middle class.
00:10:51
Speaker
Oh, wait, maybe she would be the kind of candidate who cares about people like me. Oh, she says she'll protect our freedoms, freedoms being defined as the as the right to take an unborn baby's life. But people are beginning to get a sense of her, not of her policies.
00:11:13
Speaker
And so far the vague strategy from the from the Obama campaign, who that's really who's running this thing, is and they're they're the best, they're pros. It seems to be working. Trump has made headway into finding her as dangerously liberal, but you know the way you beat a candidate like Harris, who is not just by saying they're dangerously liberal,
00:11:39
Speaker
When that candidate moves to the middle, they know they're out of the mainstream, right? They're trying to move to the middle. No, i'm i'm I used to be against fracking. Now I'm for fracking. What the frack? I used to be for higher taxes. Now I'm going to cut your taxes. I used to be for an open border. Whoops. I think i think ah tougher borders are great. When that candidate evolves in such a politically convenient way, that's when you've got them, because that's when they've cut their Faustian deal, when they have traded whatever they have believed for their life for political power. And that's you say that's just more of what we have now, politics, political opportunism. So you get her as a liberal who lies,
00:12:29
Speaker
and who's not authentic, who can't be trusted. And that's the, I think the step the people, the Trump campaign has to complete to defeat her. ah Because that's the illness from which politics all around the globe suffers. And it leads to incredible harm. Harris says she cares about people, really?
00:12:54
Speaker
Did she, when she left the border open and let gangs and fentanyl come here and destroy human lives, did she care about people when she undermined the police and and brought crime to to our front doors?
00:13:11
Speaker
ah Did she care about people? No, she cared about getting you know political power because that's why she's traded her soul, sold her soul on everything. I'm surprised that Trump people haven't been more effective in defining her. I mean, we're talking about six, seven states and almost unlimited money to do that job, but they seem to have had a hard time getting their hands around her because she's a fresh face on old ideas.
00:13:42
Speaker
And that's the sound, ancient, outdated, discarded ideas. you know she's She is socialism reborn, not exhausted. And that makes it hard for them. Let's go a bit more granular then, could be because you said the battlefield is quite defined at six or seven key states. Now, if you're running the Trump campaign, what are you practically doing to go about making or achieving that goal of defining her in the way that
State Focus: Pennsylvania and Georgia Strategy
00:14:13
Speaker
you want to define her. What are the tactics? I think ah you know TV is not nearly as effective as it used to be. The world is fragmented. ah so Now campaigns are not
00:14:29
Speaker
about advertising their pointillism. They're putting a lot of dots to make one giant canvas that defines who she is. So you have to do it all. And in her case, um I think you go into maybe even less than six states. You go into Pennsylvania, you go into Georgia, you make sure you have, I think Trump will be fine in North Carolina.
00:14:58
Speaker
But those two states, and maybe a place like Arizona to be sure you have that, and you begin to create that painting. She's a lifelong woman of the left. She has changed on everything now to get your vote. She says she cares about you, but everything she's done and believed has helped destroy.
00:15:28
Speaker
everything around you, and there's a pile of human bodies around her feet that what she's believed has done, and now she's telling you she's someone else. I think you do that. You have to do it on social media. You have to go on to every podcast you can. You know, Trump did something interesting. Two days ago now, he went on Fox News late night show, Gutfeld.
00:15:56
Speaker
We saw a human being, Donald Trump, who's, by the way, I've met the man, he's the most charming individual you've ever met. If you're in a room with him, you'd love him, love to have dinner with him. He was funny. He was self-aware. He says, look, if I didn't endorse people who'd previously attacked me, I wouldn't have anybody to endorse. He was delightful. Trump gets to the 50 yard line with strength.
00:16:22
Speaker
In an uncertain world that's falling apart in America and declined, people want him. He's the hand grenade under, under the old establishment's door. His voters love him for that. But to get across the 50 yard line, you have to go from the male side of the spectrum, the R side, the Republican side to the female side. And that's, you have to do that with Carrie. She's destroyed a lot of people and doesn't seem to give a damn about it.
00:16:49
Speaker
And you have to see him as a human being across the 50 yard line. She has to do the opposite in these key States. She gets to the 50 yard line by saying Trump is a cold fish. Doesn't care about any human being except himself, but to get across the 50 yard line, she has to demonstrate strength. She has to, oh, I'm the tough prosecutor from California. I'll enforce the border now. So though if this is a gender gap election strength for the male side.
00:17:20
Speaker
the heart on the female side. you know As Jordan Peterson said, men care more about things, women care more about people. And that's this campaign, I think in a nutshell. I think that's where she's vulnerable. If she cares so ah so much about people, why are so many millions of people in this country hurting right now? Is it too late to put a more human face on Trump though? Is he already, have people already made their minds up about who he is and what they what they think he is? You know, it it may be with a lot of folks, but I'll say this.
Trump's Potential for Humanizing Shift
00:17:58
Speaker
in the world of communications we have today, it's almost in some ways never too late. And those already established perceptions can be the source of tremendously powerful drama. It's the reverse and reveal at the end of the movie. Oh my God, you mean the The evil villain I thought was the going to destroy us all is actually our hero and going to save us. If you do it right, no, I don't think it's too late. I think he can do it. I think it can create a moment that can transform things. She has a moment coming up, by the way, and it's going to that could win her the election. So far, she's missed every single opportunity to explain her
00:18:45
Speaker
transmorgification. Who is this person who shows up and and has more Trump than Trump in some of her policies? How did this happen? she could ah She could have done it when she announced. She could have done it in the debate. She could have done it in her, quote, first interview. The idea that a candidate would have like one interview is incredible. She has not yet gone for the American people and and explained why she now holds diametrically opposed views to everything she's believed her entire life. She's not even bothered. She could. She could say, hey, I've been vice president for three years. The country's changed. The world has changed. You know what? I've learned some things. ah And and on my party, you've told me our my party has moved out of the mainstream. Okay, gotcha. We're going to lead everybody in this country to a better. That's not hard.
00:19:40
Speaker
She could do that. I think she's got one thing left. She could do that with that. I'm watching for, and that is when does she throw Biden under the bus? When does she demonstrate that strength and says, you know, Joe's great. I love him. We've done a lot of great things together, but let me tell you something. I disagree with him. It almost doesn't matter what it is.
00:20:03
Speaker
But if she does that, that can, you know her her campaign for the female side of the spectrum, she could add strength with that and reassure people maybe she is strong enough to do this job. She had a ah interview with ABC about a week ago and she was asked that question and I think she fell back on the, well, I'm a woman of colour and I think that was about it. So that's not probably going to cut it, I would have thought.
00:20:31
Speaker
I think you're exactly right. You know, if she is, there's a reason they're hiding her. And it's the same reason they hid her before she became the nominee. Nobody liked her. Nobody thought she was up for this job. She is. The reason they can fill this empty vessel is because it's empty.
Harris' Debate Performance: Authenticity Concerns
00:20:54
Speaker
There's not a lot of, they're there and they You know, we keep thinking, okay, they prepared her for the debate and did a brilliant job, by the way. She won that debate. She did a great job. She was beautifully prepared. She she had an index card in her head for all the questions. It may have helped that she knew all the questions in advance, but but she was wellp pre but when she gets outside of the scripted moment,
00:21:22
Speaker
And you know, the reason we have debates, the reason we have these gladiatorial contest is because we know a president is going to face some unimaginable threat that could jeopardize not only the nation, but the world. How are they going to react in that moment? So we test them in this barbaric ritual in this debate where we put them in there with the lions media and with another gladiator, how do they react?
00:21:48
Speaker
And they prepared her for that. But when you can't do a local press interview, Not good. This is this is something that I am struggling with. And I've got down on my notes here just next to Harris. Am I missing something? So from what I can see, I've really encountered someone who is so poor at being able to communicate off the top of their head, not just in politics, possibly in any sphere of public life. She is yeah hopeless. And yet she is now incredibly close to the most powerful position in the world.
00:22:25
Speaker
Am I underestimate? Am I not seeing something? If not, what does it say about the American political apparatus that someone who is so limited can get this close to being the president of the United States? Yeah. Well, yeah, I think it says several things.
Diversity and Leadership in Politics
00:22:40
Speaker
First of all, I think you're dead on the money. Democrats were trying to get rid of Kamala Harris before Biden collapsed.
00:22:50
Speaker
because she was his insurance policy in a way. They were having a hard time getting rid of him because that meant they'd have to run her. She's a product of a diversity hire, right? They had to bring her on the ticket. The Democratic Party is a coalition of aggrieved identity groups, and this is the deal they had to cut.
00:23:14
Speaker
You know, what it says about our politics is that when both parties are failing to lead, to offer a vision, to under to be able to explain to us how government should work, how why freedom is even more important in a connected world than it has ever been in the industrial world or any world we've been in, when when neither party can do that,
00:23:40
Speaker
Politics becomes not about ideas and principles and policy, it becomes just about power. What do you want? I'll sell it to you. And that produces a very corrupt government. I mean, politics is how we govern our governors. And right now, our politics is failing us and corrupt because our government is hollow and corrupt and has not moved into the future. so that makes And this is what we get. Good people don't run. If you've done anything interesting in your life, if you've been a business person, if you've if you come from any interesting world where you've had some success and some failures and overcome it and learned and grown, you're almost disqualified immediately.
00:24:33
Speaker
Right? You can't run. They'll destroy you, your family, and kill your dog. ah if But if you've led a- Or eat eat your dog as the yeah as the modern case, maybe. Yes. By the way, that's a problem because one of the rules of politics is if you're going to accuse someone of eating your dog or cat, you need to know the cat's name. You need to be able to cite the specific. This man ate fluffy.
00:24:59
Speaker
If you can't cite Fluffy, don't do that. But anyway, back to our story. if I think that hollowness that we have is a product of is what's leading us to have good and interesting and successful people. It's what's driving them away from politics. And we now The best we can do as a Starmer is mediocrity, is boring. It's depressing picture, isn't it? It's interesting you said Starmer at the end there because everything you said, I think, applies to the Anglosphere as opposed to just just the US. These are systemic problems across Western political systems.
00:25:41
Speaker
Let's go though to art to to Trump. I like that. You've got to be able to say to tell the cat's name if you're going to say the cat's been eaten. But it goes to to Trump's discipline, right? And we've been saying for 10 years, imagine if you could have the Trump charisma, but he just had a bit more discipline. yeah And the debate was a really interesting moment because everyone knew what the Democrat strategy was. Everyone knew they were going to try and distract him. They were going to try and bait him.
00:26:06
Speaker
He knew it was coming and yet there is something in him. As soon as they did it, he takes the bait. He just can't stop himself. This is a ah choose your own adventure question, but help me understand the Trump psychology. Don't we understand it or doesn't he? You know, here's, i've I've met the man a few times and here's what I understand him to be. I think he is the reptilian brain.
00:26:36
Speaker
the oldest and most primitive part of our brain not the prefrontal cortex, not the emotional
Trump's Instinctual Appeal and Disruption
00:26:42
Speaker
brain. the I think he is the most primitive part of our brain, which is concerned with the good stuff, sex, sustenance, and survival. He reacts instinctively. not even He doesn't have an emotional filter or an intellectual filter. So he sees everything either as a threat,
00:27:05
Speaker
or something to to feed, fight, or fornicate. Those are the only options. And when she, the one of the things you tell a candidate preparing for a debate, whatever the last thing is, they say, don't react to that.
00:27:23
Speaker
That's their bait. What is our strategy? what is What are the three things you want to accomplish, that you want to leave the world understanding? What are the three headlines you'd write? Trump is the, you know, he's the, I tell folks, have you so have you seen the Lost World, the Steven Spielberg movie where, you know, the the dinosaurs are cloned and at the end,
00:27:49
Speaker
The park falls apart. The world is in chaos. Sounds familiar? And the kids are trying to get away. But the raptors, evil, slimy raptors, are are trying to eat them until at the last moment the T-Rex comes along to eat the raptors. And meanwhile, the kids go, oh, thank God. And that's their moment to get away. But they'd better run quick.
00:28:12
Speaker
Because once the T-Rex eats his raptors, we know what's next. That's Trump. There is no other side of the coin with him. He is that. And so... Well, you know, that's not entirely true. I'd say this. Personally, he is just as charming a human being, and as if we were saying, self-aware and funny.
00:28:40
Speaker
It's just that when he goes into warrior mode, he cannot help himself. He is not the future of the Republican Party. He cannot be. He is a stopgap, a temporary defense, a hand grenade under our adversary's door. Our country sees our political elite as such a threat that they think this is the only thing that can stop him. And all Trump's debilities his recklessness, his impetuousness, his is lack of a filter. those are not Those are not reasons that his supporters don't vote for him. They're the reasons they support him. The more he does crazy stuff, the more his supporters say, yeah, that's what we need.
00:29:31
Speaker
nothing else can stand up to to them. And what a commentary that is on how America looks at its political leadership, frankly, of both parties.
00:29:43
Speaker
That comment, Trump is not the future of the Republican party, raises a very interesting question of what is. So let me put forward a few options you've got. We can spend another hour on that anytime. Let's try for the abridged version. There is either, I suppose, the option of Margot with a new front man, someone like a JD Vance, or Trumpism with a new front man. There is a return to Country Club, Reaganite, conservatism.
00:30:10
Speaker
or there's something else. Yes. What does the future look like in your eyes? Well, if the past were the future, we wouldn't have changed at all. We'd still be the establishment party here of Mitch McConnell, our Senate leader. You know, Americans, Republicans thought their party was so there had become part of the of the establishment that Republicans were elected to change. Right.
00:30:39
Speaker
That's why the most unpopular politician in America is Mitch McConnell, the representative of that old establishment Republican party because his own party, not just Democrats hate him, but the Republican party is a populist party now with conservative tinges and many Americans can't see a difference between our establishment led Republican party and the Democrat establishment led Republican party. So there's no going back to that. Is Trump the future? Well, the party is certainly going to be more populous, more bottom up. But that's true of about every institution in the world, whether whether you're a corporation or ah
00:31:32
Speaker
social institution, it's just, you know, because we've all got these, right? We are now as powerful and as informed as any human beings ever been any time on the planet or more so. Why should those people up above me rule me when I know as much or more as they, and when I can speak as powerfully as they, and when they're more of us than them? So it's going to be a more populist, both parties are.
00:32:03
Speaker
But Trump is not that guy.
Future Leadership Beyond Trump
00:32:05
Speaker
Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist from Stanford. who we've ah we've We've had him on the show a couple of times. Oh my God. I love that man. yeah He talks about Trump as the tragic hero ah that we see in so many of our stories ah from the classic Greek myths to Western movies like Shane.
00:32:30
Speaker
You know, the cattlemen in a little town hire a a killer with a black hat to kill the little farmers who are fencing in the range. So the little farmers, they can't compete with a killer. They hire their own in a white hat. And that gives, the because he precisely because he can do the the unacceptable things that must be done and they can't do for themselves.
00:33:00
Speaker
But at the end of the day, the guy in the white hat is a killer too, and he can't stay. He is the tragic hero. And the very reason he's needed is the reason he at the end is destroyed. That's Trump. He is not the future. He is, he is a tonic that will restore your health in a moment of crisis. It'll protect you from disease, but he is not something to lead you into the future. What will?
00:33:30
Speaker
Somebody's going to come along from Silicon Valley. Somebody like an Elon Musk, somebody is going to come across and say, I'm glad, say it's a Republican, and he's going to look at their Democratic opponent and say, look, I'm glad, Mr. Democrat, that you, you want to help people and you want to grow the economy and you want to fix education in our healthcare care system. I just have one question for you. Why do you want to do it the old way?
00:33:57
Speaker
Why do you want to do it top down politically and artificially from Washington? That's so yesterday. it's It doesn't work. It had its day. We're done. Look around. Look at the way the world works now. Why don't we grow the economy bottom up naturally and organically? Why don't we take our tax money and and the seeds of growth and put it back in your local economy?
00:34:21
Speaker
where you live and work and breathe and innovate and and let's grow the economy bottom up. Why don't we have an open healthcare care system where people can make decisions where the information lives, you and your doctor, not top down politicians colluding with insurance company. Why don't we have an open education system?
00:34:40
Speaker
Where parents can choose what's best for their kids. If you're rich in this country, if you're Barack Obama, you get to choose the best school for your kids. Shouldn't everybody? Let's let the money follow the child. Not the child follow the money. The world's changed. Somebody's going to come along and it's not going to be a mix of the old establishment Republican party and the new angry pessimistic, I hate everything that Arnold Trump party.
00:35:10
Speaker
Somebody's going to come along with, that understands we are in a different era. Here's an interesting thing. Look at comedy. All of a sudden conservatives, outsiders, right? We're laughing at the establishment and it's not us. Whoa, wait a minute. It's them.
Hope Amid Systemic Political Challenges
00:35:35
Speaker
That's where the future is. Something's changing. So I think it's a good time, despite our the painful ugliness of our politics today, something's beginning to happen out there. It's an inspiring message. A more cynical man than myself would respond by saying that the The bloated administrative state or deep state, if you like, the slightly more conspiratorial term is now so powerful in DC and in America that things will truck along much as they have in the past because there is a vested interest on the behalf of the people in that machine to keep it the way that it is. Could an Elon Musk or someone like that actually break through the administrative layer that is maintaining the status quo?
00:36:24
Speaker
I have dark nights too, where I wonder if it's too late. And in the bottom of my heart, there's a little pool of tears because I wonder if all hope is lost. But then somebody comes along, you know, we're resilient in the lost world. What is it? Jeff Goldblum says, life will find a way. I i do believe that at some point, you know, transitions now, transformations,
00:36:53
Speaker
don't often happen gradually. We wake up one morning and and everything has changed. So I think we see so much failure all around and so much human damage that I think there's hope. I do wonder if we have become so soft that We have decided part, especially younger people, you know, everything is a 30 minute sitcom. We demand a happy answer at the very end. We don't want to do the hard work required to build a healthy, productive society. It doesn't happen by itself. We have to do that. We can't hire political mercenaries to do our caring for us. It has never worked, but it sure is an easy thing to sell politically. If you spend more
00:37:49
Speaker
We'll care more about other people for you. And yeah, I wonder about that. But you know, some young kid will jump on a grenade for his buddies in Afghanistan. some And it's just an ordinary person.
00:38:08
Speaker
It goes against every evolutionary instinct you would have thought. They'll do something noble because it's so important for us to be part of something big and social. wherere We're social creatures. And so I think that instinct is still within us. ah sure We're about to find out. I want to just let that just hang there for people to to ponder because I think it's an interesting thought. So I'll i'll do that. and And in the meantime, pivot slightly to the media who you have mentioned.
Media Bias and Emerging Voices
00:38:37
Speaker
I'm not going to get any awards for pointing out that there is a systemic bias within most of the mainstream media establishment. And it was on full display in the debate the other day, which was was facilitated poorly. I think even most people, even on the left, would would acknowledge that it was prejudiced in how it was done. Is it time for the right?
00:38:57
Speaker
and the conservative side of politics in the US to take a thermal line, potentially through boycotts of things like debates or to refuse to engage in much of the legacy media until they take on the more traditional role of a journalist, just to hold powerful people accountable and not to be part of the activist class, which they increasingly see their role as being. I think it is. I think you're right about that. You know, the media, so much of the media now is not involved in any kind of reporting or general journalism, it's part of it's a political party and it needs to be called out for that. I do think the media used to be anti-establishment, right? Because that's where media heroism comes from. Standing up to the man, right? The every newspaper
00:39:51
Speaker
has a slogan, you know, with democracy dar dies in darkness. They're the crusaders. How can you be in a pro-establishment crusader? So I think much like comedy has recognized that their future is not in being part of the establishment. I think there's hope that journalism, that the media,
00:40:15
Speaker
has to recognize that soon, too. What's happening to the media, though, is they're another dying institution, right? The big megalith of of you know New York Times, very few of them have an economic model that works now.
00:40:30
Speaker
Right. Uh, there being everybody, everybody with a laptop and a cell phone is a journalist. So they're hanging onto their dying model as long as they can, but that doesn't mean it's going to last long. So I do think something is will change there. You know, we were watching the other, when waltz was being picked for VP, I was on a zoom, something that Mark Halperin does here called two-way where.
00:41:00
Speaker
We have two, we get on a Zoom and it's just regular people and journalists and political people. And we all talk to each other. And while we were doing that, some kid in Minnesota with a cell phone was watching Waltz's front lawn. Hey, they're black SUVs here. He might be the guy.
00:41:20
Speaker
The disruption that's coming for the old establishment news media, it's already well underway, but I think they're paying a price for their, for clinging to their last shreds of yesterday's power. And on the individual, if that's the the institutional level, the individual journalist level,
00:41:45
Speaker
who I think again once took great pride in sticking it to the man. The fact that now so many of them are comfortable aligning with the establishment, is is that just because they like to be invited to the DC cocktail parties, or is it is there something deeper at play here? Of course, as they want to be invited to cocktail parties. Look, I've been an outsider all my life. I've desperately worked to to achieve establishment status. I've tried so hard to make it and get invited to the cocktail parties, and just when I get there, damn it, they become old yesterday and unpopular.
00:42:20
Speaker
My timing is so off. But yeah yeah, who doesn't, right? Again, Jordan Peterson, hierarchies of power. There are hierarchies of merit. And then what do you do if you can't compete in that? What if you can't earn your way to the top because you actually earn it? Well, you create a different hierarchy.
00:42:44
Speaker
where you declare your moral superiority and try to tear down the other one. You don't have to create anything. All you have to do is destroy. All you have to do is is say, I'm more noble. And that's the hierarchy I think we see on the other side. And ultimately, it doesn't help anybody, right? it's It's an old idea trying to retain undeserved power. I think this is interesting how elements of the right have noticed or fully aware that the institutional capture across a range of areas by the left is so complete.
Right-Wing Cultural Institutions
00:43:24
Speaker
They've been so successful that now new institutions are being built anew. So in culture, you have people like you know the guys at the Daily Wire who are now in the movie making business. In yeah education, you have the University of Austin who are now basically saying,
00:43:38
Speaker
It's too late for many of these traditional universities. And so now we need to build a new. There is something happening there across a range of different areas to say that, well, we need to create new institutions to basically act as a counterweight.
00:43:51
Speaker
I think that's right. yeah you know The Babylon Bee, a little outfit in Tennessee that is is, again, speaking truth to power in hilarious ways. I do think the revolt is underway. Will it be powerful enough to overcome the inertia i of a very comfortable society?
00:44:17
Speaker
you know what empires decline Not because they fail but because they succeed success is uniformly fatal right if you fail you You in an open society you get to pick yourself back up and try again and we do and we get better but when you succeed you become a captive of your success and you Get fat and happy and are we too fat and happy now? well, maybe
00:44:49
Speaker
Maybe if Harris is elected, she'll fix that. Let me take advantage of that little line. Is America an empire and decline? And then if so, is that decline terminal?
Reflections on America's Decline and Hope
00:44:59
Speaker
I came here to the United States in 1961 from Cuba. My parents had 11 bucks, a suitcase, two kids. They left the front door unlocked Mercedes in the garage and came here with nothing because God They saw what freedom could produce and what what they hoped that we could be. I can't give up on that though at times. and It's really hard. We're in decline at the moment. I think that is certainly true.
00:45:38
Speaker
An old Senator I knew for years says, you don't give freedom away all at once. It's like a, it's like baloney. You give it away a slice at a time and one day you have none. And I think we've gone very, we've become very comfortable compromising ourselves. You know, that's why nobody cares about the debt, right? Why does healthcare care cost so much? Because somebody else pays for it.
00:46:08
Speaker
It's a rational response. Hey, if the debt's going to be paid by someone else, why should I care? It's not an irrational response. We've set up a system with perverse incentives. And we've done that willfully and happily. So we can the government we've made government a machine that allows each of us to take more from each other than any of us have.
00:46:37
Speaker
Those incentives needs to be disruptive, disrupted somehow. The way you do it though is not punishing people and asking them to sacrifice. It never works. The way you do it is you say, follow me, lift your eyes over the horizon. There's a better place. Why are you choosing less? Elon Musk is saying we can go to Mars. Comedy is saying those people have had it. They're dumb.
00:47:08
Speaker
You weaken the way you do it. I mean, imagine the scary things people have done, right? You leave the comfort of the old world for a new frontier. Who does that? That's craziness. And we've done it all the time throughout human history. Into the darkness, we have gone. Why do we do those things?
00:47:33
Speaker
When it's seemingly at at its worst, because somebody says, no, no, no, like it's going to be better for you and your kids. Come on. I thought, you know, we've had presidents who do that. We just, we were talking about them, right? I thought Obama, my wife took away my absentee ballot because she thought me, a hardcore freedom loving conservative could vote for this guy who was saying hope and change. I thought he meant it.
00:48:00
Speaker
change from the establishment, not change a higher level of collectivist control. Somebody come will come along. Somebody will come along because the market will demand it. The opportunity is so great. The the riches. I mean, look what's around us.
Conclusion: Thanks to Alex Castellanos
00:48:20
Speaker
AI, oh my God, we're going to be that smart. And it's not that they're going to be that smart, it's that all of us are.
00:48:30
Speaker
I do think, I can't give up hope. We have done stupider, crazier, more hopeful things before. Alex, you are not just one of the most insightful analysts on American politics and and media. I think you are one of the great philosophers on modern America. This has been such a such pleasure. Thank you for coming on the show.
00:48:51
Speaker
Thank you, and I'll only do it anytime you ask. You've made me think and you've allowed me the privilege of doing that. That's rare. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode of Far at Will. If you enjoyed the show, why not consider a subscription to The Spectator Australia. The magazine is home to wonderful writing, and insightful analysis and unrivalled books and arts reviews. A subscription gets you all of the content from the British edition of the magazine, as well as the best Australian political commentary
00:49:24
Speaker
Subscribe today for just $2 a week for a year. No, I'm not joking. $2 a week for an entire year. A link is in the show notes. so