YouSaid · the spoken record

George Will

lines on the record: 69
first: 2019-09-23
most recent: 2019-09-23
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“And I also have to say in 47 years, I can't remember a bad experience that he's had or that I've at least seen him have interacting with people in the community. Americans are pretty nice people.”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've never seen John angry in 47 years. I've seen him sad. I've seen him happy. I've seen him perplexed. Never seen him angry I don't know what it is.”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“John is 47, a Down syndrome child. He was born in 1972. And the hospital geneticist is a Georgetown Hospital came in. He was a Jesuit priest. He said, the first question you have to decide is, are you going to take him home? And I said, yeah, we kind of thought that's what parents did with their children, took him home and raised him and get on with life. But it was perfectly normal in 1972 to institutionalize Down syndrome children. At that time, and one of the reasons why at that time the life expectancy of Down syndrome children was 20 years. John's 47. He works in the Washington Nationals Clubhouse. He gets up in the morning, goes to a major league ballpark. He has a better job than I've got. So he's doing just fine.”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right now, Fox is quite unique. It makes Republicans a little bit lazy, I think, because they can short path right into the mind of the party. You wind up in these intellectual silos that produce throughout the country confirmation bias. Everyone's getting just what they want to hear and just what it makes them comfortable to hear. And it is not healthy.”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's Fox News Studios. North Capitol Street, they're right opposite the Capitol. So Republicans can walk across the street and talk to their base anytime they want. It's an amazing thing. MSNBC is a little bit the same way.”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, they didn't want me back, and they were right. They said, you don't belong here, and I don't, because they're an organ of the current administration, and that's just. I can't do that. But no hard feelings. I mean”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Superb professional politician. I'm just watching her as like watching. Marvis Scale plays shortstop. That's high praise right there. That's right”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I am making a political judgment. A, there would be a huge mistake, a benefit to Donald Trump. But beyond that, I think the American people would say it's disproportionate somehow. Overturning an American presidential election is a big deal. And I think the Democrats are making a colossal mistake doing this.”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I think I don't want them to move forward because I want the man to leave. It seems to me that they're apt to make the kind of mistake that Republicans made with Bill Clinton in 1998. We have an election right over the horizon. You want to get rid of Trump. The cure for a bad election is a better election Intelligent people of goodwill can and do disagree about whether a high crime and misdemeanor fits that impeachment language from the Constitution, fits the ghastliness of this fella. I think impeachment can be a prophylactic act, not an act to punish someone for deeds done, but a prophylactic act to protect the country from future injury. And I think every day this man is president, he injures the country. I got that. But I think impeachment So you're making a”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Shiloh and Tietam, Fredericksburg, one of the arguably the worst year in American history. Congress still passed not only the Moral Act, but the Homestead Act. Which was our first immigration bill Because we didn't have enough immigrants. They said, please come to America, go to work, work the land, we'll sell it to you cheap. Was think of that? I'm just doing that.”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The point is what Lincoln and Clay and others said was we build the transcontinental railroad and we build under Eisenhower good Republican president, the interstate highway system, in order to facilitate individual striving and upward mobility of individuals. It's the individualism of conservatism that I think is in jeopardy, partly because, and you will find this in my book and you will not leave here without a copy where I take exception to Elizabeth Warren said at first and then Barack Obama said it campaigning in Roanoke, Virginia in 2012. If you build that, you didn't really build it. Because society sort of did it. And there's part of the point”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I know These were Absolutely. Lincoln's first, when he was a state legislator, what he was obsessed with were railroads and canals in Illinois. His hero, his Beau ideal of a statesman, he called him when he died, was Henry Clay, whose American system was all about what we call infrastructure, and they called internal improvements.”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And make it even more actively involved in the allocation of wealth and opportunity. She's got that exactly wrong. What you need to do is get the government more away from the allocation of wealth and opportunity. Let markets do it. Keep markets functioning well. They have to be policed. I got all that. But markets are better at this and less prone to corruption than governments are.”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure, they do. I'm not conservatives. I'm not against antitrust laws, for example. They're not against laws against fraud, insider trading, and all the rest. What bothers me about people like Elizabeth Warren, she's got a firm grip on half a point. Her point is she says, look at this government. There's a reason why five of the ten richest counties on a per capita wealth basis are in the Washington area. Trillions of dollars slosh through this town She says the government is the plaything of intense organized, compact, confident, articulate, well-lawyered interest groups. She's right. Then she says, so what we need to do is make this government bigger.”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Our progressive friends, Elizabeth Warren particularly, Elizabeth has a plan for everything. I've got a plan for that. Well, you know, the old axiom, if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. Because society's complex societies cannot be planned. That's what Hayek called the fatal conceit that government can do what markets can do. Markets are only information generating devices. And no government can marshal this kind of information.”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That wasn't one of his concerns Tell me about it. A vaulting ambition for government. That's the basic difference today. Conservatives believe that The turmoil of an uncontrolled dynamic market society is healthy and good and serves us well. Someone once said that the story of the Bible reduced to one sentence is God created man and woman and promptly lost control of events. And conservatives say, good, we like that. Locker control is what we want. We want turmoil. We want an unfocused future. We want the messiness of freedom. Whereas...”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That government in this definition is inherently limited by its protect is securing rights, and that a turbulent free society, a market society, restless entrepreneurial people is the best protector of freedom and the best producer of prosperity. Now, Woodrow Wilson comes along and says, not true. That was all very well once when there were only 4 million Americans living within 20 miles of Atlantic tidewater on the east fringe of this continent. Now, said Wilson, we need a strong central government to organize this nation that's now united by steel rails and copper wires. And by the way, there is no stable human nature. We are just creatures who acquire a particular kind of culture, whatever culture we're situated in, and therefore government has”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, conservatism, I think American political argument is an argument between two Princetonians. James Madison of the class of 1771 and Woodrow Wilson of the class of 1879. Madison said. Natural rights are real because human nature is fixed. Natural rights are the rights essential to the flourishing of the human individual. And they are best protected by a government that can secure those rights. That's the most important word in the Declaration of Independence. Conservatives think all men are created equal, endowed by the created with certain inalienable rights in governments are instituted to secure those rights, first come rights, then comes government.”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've just published an intimidatingly thick book called The Conservative Sensibility. It's about 565 pages of all my thoughts on this. But I will distill it for you.”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know if people have been speculating about this syndrome from someone who had an alcoholic father who knows. But that was Ronald Rea”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not his image at all, and he didn't care about his image. He said that people worry about that. He used his preternatural friendliness, affability, and limitless store of stories and jokes to keep people at a distance. He had one frown and he married her. Everyone else, I'm not saying he was unfriendly, he was fabulously friendly, but friends, people he let in close to him, one of them was Nancy.”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How reflective he was. People didn't really understand this until Martin Anderson and his wife produced The Reagan letters. And people said, well, this is an interesting guy. He'd written so many of his own radio scripts when he was between governor and presidential candidate. He'd thought these things through. I remember once talking to Nancy Reagan when he'd just left Washington, gone back to California, and I got an advanced copy of the Bound Galleys of David McCullough's biography of Truman. And I said to Nancy Reagan that I just got this. She says, oh yeah, Ronnie's reading it already. He was an avid reader.”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, norms are unwritten, which means they're written on the hearts of people. They're written in the manners that people have, who are just brought up to be just as your grandmother taught you to be well behaved. People are taught to be well-behaved as citizens. Well, no one's teaching that anymore. In fact, the president is teaching the opposite. He's saying, this is how you talk to one another in America.”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The president. I get you. Look, Quite clearly, institutions have hurt themselves. Congress did not have to marginalize itself by opting out of all the difficult decisions and giving too much discretion to presidents of both parties. And Congresses under both parties have done this. Some of our institutions, including the FBI, have not been led by optimum leaders. But that happens in politics. That happens in a democracy. Things go badly. They're messy. You're right, you can't constantly say that this is normal. This is to be expected. That's what's different, and that's what's most dangerous.”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You and I are talking in my office in Georgetown. Yeah. Behind you on a desk is a picture of my best friend, Senator Pat Moynihan of New York. You walked into this little townhouse in Georgetown, passed a bust of Henry Jackson, Scoop Jackson, Democrat from Washington, Great Cold War Democrat who was one of my mentors when I came to work on the Senate staff. It was that way in the past. It can be that way again. So it can be easy.”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Trouble is, and it's an old saying that some people are in politics because they want to do something, another's going to be something. We now have an almost entirely Republican Party composed of people who want to be something. They're honorable exceptions. Senator Portman, Senator Toomey, serious people who are serious, among other things, about the damage Congress has done in delegating to presidents of both parties discretion that can be and now is being abused. I mean Mr. Trump says imported steel from Canada is a national security threat well somewhere.”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Terrified I do not know why they want to be senators. They fight like tigers, campaign, raise money, lose sleep, lose weight, to become senators. Why? They don't do anything. They don't vote on anything. As I said a moment ago, the government was on automatic pilot now under continuing resolutions. What are they here for?”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you get crosswise with this guy as he's producing a homogenized Republican Party, which of course he had no interest in for most of his adult life,”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hostility too. I mean, people say they don't like Democrats and they're not quite sure why, but they know they don't. And Democrats will say, we don't like Republicans, we're not quite sure why, but we don't. And there are lots of stereotypes and cartoonish presentations of both sides. But with regard to Mr. Trump, first of all, it is fear. That is one tweet can ruin you.”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is. I said earlier in our conversation I went over the history of divisions within the Republican Party. The Republican Party today is more united than it has been since the McKinley era. And that's too bad because it's united around all the wrong things and around personality, which is not good politics. That's a 500-day mark of Reagan's presidency. He had the support of 77% of Republicans. 500-day mark of the Trump presidency had the support of 87% of Republicans. And today it's probably 90-some, in part because a number of Republicans like me”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Partly because of that and partly because of the Washington real estate market, people don't bring their families. There's not as much socializing across the aisle. It all feeds together into this. I think it would be a very good idea if they changed the schedule of Congress so that people were here longer and did more work. We're going to run the government forever on continuing resolutions. What's the point? Of course, then what's the point of having a congress for that matter? I was talking with Senator Bennett of Colorado, one Presidential candidates, he told them the other day that 40% of his time in the Senate, the government's been under a continuing resolution.”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do. Not in a hurry. But one of the things I have learned in my comprehensive recoil against the modern presidency is the enormous tone-setting power of a president. We see it now in the destructiveness of the current president. And it's going to take a long time to undo this damage. You can't ring a bell. You can't unsay the things he has made common and normal in our discourse. But the fact that he has been so destructive, so quickly Does I think have a good side, which means maybe you can go the other way just as quickly. If someone would come in and say, deep breath America, calm down, as Lincoln said at the end of his first inaugural, we are not enemies, we must not be enemies. I think things could be changed in a hurry. There's a problem here. And that is, Congress today is a Tuesday through Thursday operation.”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I called him before he was nominated and I said, you're going to get nominated and you're going to win. And it would be nice to try and revive certain civilities here that used to be in Washington where people would fight during the day and then have dinner together in the evening. And he said he'd do it. So he did and it didn't exactly diffuse Washington. But it was a nice attempt.”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he said the governor is coming back for his first trip to Washington after the election. Would you give a party for him? So I did. And so we became good friends. He came to my house, I think, six times for dinner as president.”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“After he won, I got a call about a week after the victory from Bill Casey, who'd been his campaign manager wants to be CIA director.”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But then I got to know Ronald Reagan. Became an ardent supporter, got in a world of trouble for helping him prepare for his one debate he had with Jimmy Carter.”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A time for choosing 1964, yeah. I knew Baker and I'd come here through the Senate and admired him as a senator. I was a little bit worried about Ronald Reagan's age. Which is kind of interesting now. Yes, he was a kid, actually. Exactly.”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think the laws, I say, was probably the best law Congress ever passed, the Voting Rights Act. I mean, it just changed the country like that, changed Trump Thurman like that all of a sudden. He says, whoop, I got new voters. I'm not as alarmed by the ending of the pre-clearance provisions as some people are.”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't object to that court decision because it was still using by now about 50-year-old data. Whereas the South has been transformed in the last 50 years, look at South Carolina, a state where I have a vacation home. Largest BMW plant in the world is in South Carolina. Vovo plants and three or four tire plants. It's an industrial state now with enormous prosperity. No state, I think, has changed more and more for the better than South Carolina, but it's not untypical of the South. So it seems to me. Using ancient data to continue a stigma against the southern states was just a mistake. Now that does not mean that there isn't gerrymandering, voter suppression, and all the rest. I think that goes on. I think it goes on not just in the South.”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I agree with that, but I would not let that the real picture, which is America is so much better today than it was 50 years ago than it does when we had these debates about public accommodations. The Pickwick restaurant in Georgia and the Freedom Rides and all that. Turn on on a Saturday on SEC football game Mississippi against Alabama. The head referee is apt to be an African American, bossing everyone around in the most sacred thing that the South knows, which is college football. Unthinkable. I mean, it wasn't until what, about 1966 that Bear Bryant got an African-American player in Alabama. Now the, just look at the change in the country. phenomenally good.”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it was just made for Nixon to come along, and Republicans won, what, four of the next five and five of the next seven presidential elections.”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very good. Anyway, well, there was no liberal legislative majority in Congress between 38 and 64. Barry Goldwater produced the next liberal legislative majority. The anti-Goldwater landslide was so severe that it swept in this enormous number that enabled Lyndon Johnson to do whatever he wanted to do, and he wanted to do a lot. He knew exactly what he wanted to do to complete the New Deal project. Lyndon Johnson's the only president we've had who spent almost his entire adult life in Washington. And he knew how to do this. But he overreached. And by 1966, there was a blowback. And the great society... In bad odor, people saying people get to raise serious questions about the actual competence and proper scope of government”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No. Have to go back to, I mean, you're quite right to focus on the mid 60s. But it began in 1938 in the election after Roosevelt had tried to pack the Supreme Court. And there was such a blowback among Democrats against the president that Roosevelt lost his liberal legislative majority in Congress. Between 1938 and 1938.”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I mean, he led the integration of the Arizona National Guard, the Goldwater Department Store was a leader in civil rights and Phoenix and all the rest.”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and the public accommodation section of the 64-actor, probably certainly the voting rights act, the noblest act by Congress, certainly in my lifetime, and arguably ever Goldwater's vote against it was a mistake But no one who knew Barry thought it was because of racial feelings.”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, David, they started earlier. They started in 56 when Eisenhower ran much stronger than people thought. He carried some upper South states. So the movement was there eight years before Goldwater.”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The political scientists 50 years ago said, Wouldn't it be great if we could just sort our parties out ideologically the way the Europeans have? Well, we've done it. And is everybody happy? I don't think so.”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I came to Washington six years later, the Senate contained Republican senators case of New Jersey, Percy of Illinois, Jabbits of New York, Keating of New York, Brook of Massachusetts, an enormous spectrum. And on the Democratic side, the Senate was run by McClellan of Arkansas. Richard Russell from Window, Georgia, Conservative Southern Democrats.”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Vehicle, but that was a Nixon really wasn't interested in domestic policy. I think he said Kennedy had an exchange once where I think Kennedy said to him who gives an expletive what the minimum wage is. They would other things on their mind. I cast my first presidential vote for Barry Goldwater, and I've often said that he didn't lose. It just took 16 years to count the votes. The Republican Party had been divided first in 1912 when Teddy Roosevelt challenged his friend and the incumbent president then, William Howard Taft. It was divided again in the 1940s. The Dewey Republicans against the Taft Republicans. In the 1960s, the Goldwater rights against the Rockefeller types. Goldwater's constructive loss captured the Republican Party and began to make it an ideological party.”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm right back where I started. In 1973, the Spiro Agnew, the vice president of Nixon, had been running around the country complaining about the bias in the media. And at that point, his big grievance was there weren't enough conservative columnists on the nation's op-ed pages. So the post said, ha, we will market George Will as someone who will support Nixon. So just as I'm starting this career and just as the post is going to do that, I messed it all up by not supporting Nixon. And here I am 40-some years later.”
2019-09-23 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 348 — George Will · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source