YouSaid · the spoken record

Michael Gerson

lines on the record: 70
first: 2018-02-26
most recent: 2018-02-26
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

“But that's the nature of polarization is that both sides have a good case, not that they have a bad case. You get into a cycle where each side does have problems. And it's very hard to say stop this far and no further. And that's what we're going to need to do. We're going to need institutionalists to push back against this completely utilitarian approach to politics. People that say institutions matter, processes matter.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. People can't know time to read things. So that's not a functioning process, but it's a good example of what you're talking about because some of those norms were, in my view, were violated by Senator Reed. And then when a republican comes in, it's very hard to undo things. And they go further”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right now, the practice is to fill the amendment tree so no one can make any amendments, big bills are written in the majority leader's office. They don't really, you know, the committees are not as relevant as they once were”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it's been reflected In the Senate, in particular under Democrats and Republicans with the death of regular order Where I talk to a lot of senators who were very frustrated, the process by which”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I don't dispute that the transformation of the Republican Party happened faster. It is more conservative than the Democratic Party is liberal. The Democratic Party. But it's moved in the same direction.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“National level, we don't have a center-right party. I hope that people like you prevail that we don't get into a situation where we don't have a center-left party in America either. In reaction to this by going The Jeremy Corbyn route. Yes. Okay. And that would widen this gap of polarization even further than it is now. If really you would just have a nativist right-wing populist party and a quasi-socialist party in the Bernie Sanders kind of mode, I think that would be really bad for American politics. We need center-right and center-left leaders to emerge. And that the models weather.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's like we're going to take over everything and do exactly what we wish. And you see elements of that on the left and you see elements of that on the right. And that is not the way governing is usually done, particularly in a system where you can't really win at all. We've come to the point where traditional democratic virtues Such as compromise and moderation. These are the virtues that the founders praised as positive things have become epithets. Their accusations, you're compromised, you're moderate. And that, I think, is a problem. I mean, one of my fears right now is we no longer effectively have a center-right political party in America right now at the national level, at the state level is different.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. And, you know, that doesn't mean that Trump can't win the next election, but it means over time. Republicans are going to have to take into account the nature of our country and have to find ways to appeal to all its people. And that's the noble part of running for president is to say I'm going to represent everybody, not turn people against one another. And I think we're going to see that again. I think Republicans are going to be forced to it in a certain way over time. But I think it could be a very rough road in the next few years.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“40 years from now, there's no Republican future in being the party of white men. Yeah. I mean, there's going to have to be something different. There is an actuary.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, winning parties don't reform themselves. Republicans are going to have to lose in order to come to an ideological crisis and say that some elements of this appeal are not going to work in the long run. And we're an evenly divided country in many ways. We've proven that in a variety of very close elections in America.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'm optimistic in the long run. I look at my party that I've been associated with, and optimism comes hard at this moment”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are signs of social health in our society. I mean, the checks are checking, the balances are balancing, all that is true. But then you have movement like Me Too, which is profoundly influential Movement. The only problem that we have is that we're not going to get any leadership from the executive on these set of issues. But that doesn't mean that we're not going to get leadership on these issues. It emerges in different places and different forms. That's the sign of a healthy society”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I agree with that. You get the sense, I get the sense that President Trump is squandering an inheritance that he doesn't value. He doesn't even know it's valuable, that respect for the office and the norms that surround the presidency. It's a powerful office. A lot of things the president doesn't do he doesn't do because of norms, not because of laws. And once those are violated and the institution is revealed as a smaller, narrower institution, there's a real damage to that. And I felt the same way. I mean, one thing that the Trump administration has done has been to make clear that we shared more in our politics in the past than we thought we shared at the time. Yes.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I agree. I mean, that is the strategy, the conscious strategy, I believe, on the part of the president, is to prepare the ground that if there's a hostile report, that he can say it's fake news. And he and his allies can say it's fake news. I hope that doesn't succeed. Now, you know, if it's a relatively weak report, then it's different circumstances.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is a case where I think it's possible that a 400-page Mueller report that has damning new information on every aspect of corruption collusion and obstruction could turn a national consensus in ways.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, exactly. And this isn't something relatively new, not new in American history, but new in modern American history.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think that partisan media has played a huge role in all this. Media where the goal is not to inform, but to incite, not to provide information, but”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is, and it relates to the polarization point. I mean, we live in a landslide country. We have every election as a landslide election. It's just different places, a different landslide. Where if you're in a red district, it's a red landslide. And if your blue district, it's a blue landslide. There are very few places where you're not a lot of purple out there. Right, exactly. And so everyone around you is holding the same views.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Eventually, I think it's going to be very important for rank and file Republicans to show some sense on this. Yeah, but, you know”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I'm not sure I know enough right now. I have a lot of respect for Senator Corker and the role that he. Place on the hill. But it's hard to expect at some level politicians to buck broad political trends. It's hard. I know.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean, the problem is not that the thing that causes disillusionment for me and a lot of other people is not evil people in politics. It's good people that do the wrong things. That's what's most disturbing.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Putin. Putin, yeah. No, that's beyond belief. And the thing that disturbs me, as I've written recently, is not that Trump would try to delegitimize or undermine the institution of the FBI. That's his mode of operation. He wants to undermine any institution that can hold him to account. I mean, it's a dangerous thing. But the way that Republicans and Republican leaders have provided cover for that is shocking to me. I mean, I know a lot of these men. It's deeply disappointing.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the huge opportunity cost of a broken politics is that we can't address these issues. If you have to do something about skills or you have to do something about rural problems or you have to do something about opioids or whatever, when you have a broken politics, it becomes very hard to address that set of issues. So that is a real danger.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's the real danger of all of these trends. Polarization is a problem and motivated reasoning is a problem. But the destination of all this is dehumanization.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he found he uses various measures, social scientific measures of dehumanization, the way you view other groups. And he found over the course of a single year when the government was demonizing Roma and building a fence and making this a big issue, that the level of dehumanization in Hungarian society doubled in a single year. I mean, that's what leadership can do. When you take the dark side of any country, because that exists, you know, it exists in human nature. But when you incite it as a tool, what you're ending up with is not just tribalism, but dehumanization. You're ending up with saying that some people are worthless.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I completely agree with that, but you do see how leadership can make that worse. I have a friend Emily, who is a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania. He studies dehumanization and has done a serious amount of work in Hungary.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we went from having at the national level a Republican who wanted to come up with a bipartisan solution to someone who used it as an organizing political principle, the resentment against Muslims and migrants and refugees as a way to organize resentment. And in fact, that's the way Trump views politics as a systematic organization of resentment.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. And temporary worker program of some kind to fill needs, economic needs in our country. All those elements, but it was, you know, he was a weakened president by that point because of Iraq. And the right led the opposition to that, kind of the ideological right. And so we were seeing it at that point. There are deep roots to this, but it kind of points to the role of leadership. I mean, you know, there are facts about our society that are not necessarily. Things that we would prefer. But leaders can incite it. Or they can try to channel things into productive ways. Say, yeah, we're concerned about the border, but we need to solve this problem, it's this problem and this problem.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a tough question because it was emerging. During our term. I mean, when the president pursued comprehensive immigration reform in his second term, there was a revolt in the conservative media. Fox was pounding the immigration issue every day in the time that Bush was trying to pursue comprehensive reform. And I'm told by members of Congress that Talk radio and other people were getting advice from consultants that this is good business I mean, there is a business aspect. Partisan media And, you know, this was seen as an issue that sold. And so, you know, we were trying to do what a lot of people who want to come to some kind of compromise end up similar to what we were proposing, something that had to do with... A tough path to penalties for those.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Agree with that. I mean, these global health issues have been a refuge from the bitterness of our politics, a safe harbor for a lot of people. It's one reason I've stayed involved with them with the one campaign. Bono's organization where I I'm an advisor there because it's a refreshing alternative to so much of the bitterness of American politics.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Since the Marshall Plan in many ways And that was an issue where Republicans and Democrats really did come together. I mean, from the time we announced that in the 2003 State of the Union, it was about four months until it went, it became law. And it had the support of the most senior Republican and Democratic leaders. Our partners on a lot of both PEPFAR and then the reauthorization of PEPFAR were John Kerry and Joe Biden. They were deeply involved in this set of issues.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, we did. I saw him at the end and it was kids in college don't have this experience now, but people did back then of watching friends die of AIDS, which was a horrible wasting death. And when we got to the White House about 10 years later, We were seeing a cresting wave of death across Sub-Saharan Africa that was beyond belief, you know, maybe 30 million people with HIV virus and maybe 50,000 people on treatment. It was threatening the stability of whole societies. And that was a case where I know a lot of people have strong opinions about George W. Bush, but When it became clear that we could do something rigorous and effective on this issue, he was the biggest supporter of that. And then that was continued through the Obama administration and expanded in important ways. And so, you know, whenever...”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was something, not to go into too much detail, but my roommate and best friend at Wheaton College. After we kind of went to different parts of the country and he stopped returning my phone calls and I thought he just had a new life or whatever. And he turned out to have AIDS. He died in 1993 Just a year or two before the drugs were arriving, that the combination of drugs.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Agree with that, and I think Catholics do this a little better. They essentially say, Look, if you're pro-life, you can't dehumanize migrants. If you're against euthanasia, you have to be for health care for families. I mean, there's some kind of a consistency. Not that all Catholics believe those, all those things, but there is a kind of, if then, if you're pro-life, then you have to be honor the dignity of every life. And I think that's very important. I, for example, I mean, I think one of the greatest pro-life achievements of the last 20 years was what was done on PEPFAR and the... President's emergency plan for AIDS relief. I mean, saving millions of lives.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or the most basic beliefs about the world. And yeah, the justification is we have to vote for someone who's pro-life no matter who they are or what they do. In a lot of people's minds, that's the justification. But Roy Moore would have come to Washington and deeply discredited the pro-life cause again and again by the way he argues, the way that he put forward issues. It's very short-sighted to say, to use that as the only standard for a public official, a single issue. And I am actually pro-life. But I think that that would have been, that vote was an easy vote. Because I think more would have deeply discredited that cause as he had already.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's really hard to process because there are Christians than just evangelicals there. Evangelicals did support about 80%. African American Christians supported his opponent 95%. It's almost as though they lived in entirely different worlds, even though they share the same faith in the world.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On some religious liberty kind of issues. But so all that is psychologically understandable. But that's not the purpose of, from my perspective, of Christians in public life is to seek the benefit of their themselves and their own institutions, like there's some interest group. That's a fundamental betrayal of what I think a Christian social ethic, which is really... As I was defining it earlier, I'm not a Catholic, but it involves solidarity with the poor, and it involves subsidiarity, respect for these mediating institutions in our common life. And it involves the pursuit of the common good. That to me, it is a fundamental betrayal of Christian doctrine to say that our goal in the world is to Seek our own benefit. I mean, that is really deeply inconsistent with the gospel.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he talks about losers, and that could hardly be less consistent with Christian teaching, which actually says that vulnerable matter most to some extent. And yeah, I think it's an odd... Odd cultural moment where this movement that has stood for the character of public leaders when it came to Bill Clinton, all of a sudden that doesn't matter at all when it seems to be politically beneficial. And they're acting in a lot of ways, just like an interest group, like other interest groups. This guy's going to help me. He's made a series of promises. And, you know, he's fulfilled them. He actually has been pretty faithful to the promises that he made.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I agree with that, and it's not just style and not just the obvious moral issues, but this is a guy that has a set of values that say this strong count more than the weak and the wealthy count more than the poor.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I find it disturbing not just for the public realm, but for religion itself. I mean, the danger of that type of approach and rhetoric is both to the public square and to faithful communities, that this is a distortion of their primary mission. So yeah, I think it's a serious problem. It is rooted in a history. You know, Donald Trump has taken advantage of a large chip on the shoulder of the evangelical community. They feel disrespected by kind of the cultural heights of our society. And he essentially said...”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you do have to have a little historical perspective. Things like the Catholic Protestant divide in America was one of the deepest divides in our history. There were anti-Catholic riots in a variety of places where people were killed. You had political parties that had anti-Catholic planks. So we don't have a great history on some of these issues, particularly on that Catholic Protestant divide, that's better to some extent than it has been in American history. And politics weirdly, without going into a lot of detail, conservative politics contributed to that unity. You would see pro-life rallies in the 1980s with people from Liberty University and with Knights of Columbus. And they had never done anything together before. They were deeply divided. And so you do have, it's not all a bad story.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look at, for example, the role of Catholic education in inner-city settings. This is now these used to be run, they were created for Polish refugees, not refugees, but immigrant immigrants or ethnic groups, ethnic Catholic groups. A lot of them are now run for the benefit of non-members. African American kids that don't, they're not Catholic. And that is a very useful social purpose that we need to. Honor, it seems to me.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's not all that controversial. But there's a lot of distrust on both sides. There are plenty of religious institutions that don't want anything to do with government because they think it comes with strings and that they're going to come under the influence of government. And so they're very wary. And then you have people that wary about the role of faith-based institutions in our society. But you look at great cities. These ideas weren't invented by George W. Bush. I mean, you know, you look at the way that social services are provided in New Orleans or they're provided in Philadelphia or they're provided in Boston and a lot of them are done through private and religious institutions. That's what we do it.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a perfectly legitimate concern, but it's not a particularly controversial one in a certain way. A lot of those rules were clarified and promulgated during the Clinton administration. It wasn't during the Bush administration. You could do certain things and you can't do certain things. You don't have to take the cross down from the wall, but you can't use the government money for proselytization and kind of the central religious purposes. You can use it to provide social services, essentially.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's like saying Churches should take over Medicaid. It's absurd. I mean, there are things government does scale and it collects resources and it does things that private institutions can't do. But I think if you objectively look at the things like on addiction treatment and you look at the way that private and religious institutions approach that, it can be very, very effective. And that, you know, under that circumstance, it would make sense to have a role of government that gets them the resources they need to do things they do well.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The appropriate role is to seek the common good And that's not common unless it includes the most vulnerable members of society. But those needs are often best met through institutions that mediate between individuals and the state, families and neighborhood institutions and community groups and religious organizations and the whole thing. I'm a Burkean in that sense. I think that that's where the health of a society is determined by the health of its civic structure. And government should play a role in consciously, not in undermining or replacing those type of institutions, but finding ways to strengthen them when possible, particularly in communities where they're decimated, where they don't work as well.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's absolutely. And you know, when we put forward the details of a compassion conservative agenda so that you actually want to. put a significant amount of money into promoting the work of private and religious institutions and the provision of social services or whatever or voucherizing addiction treatment or a lot of different things that we wanted to do. We found that the biggest opposition that we had was not from Democrats. It was from Republicans on the Hill. I had seen, having spent some time in a religious nonprofit, that they have comparative advantages. They actually do things that government bureaucracies can't do. And of course, there are things government bureaucracies do that private and religious institutions can't do. Let me ask you about”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, exactly. And so they were prepared and ready. And I don't think that's impossible. We always think our moment is permanent. political atmospheres can change and we've seen that.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He actually used the phrase a different kind of Republican. That was the way we branded ourselves in the primaries. And that was, you know, I think people, Republicans after eight years of Clinton were, I think, ready to win again. But I mean, we get to it later, but ultimately parties don't change if they're winning. They change when they lose. And the Republican Party had been losing at the presidential level in 2000 by the year 2000.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“President Bush and talking about compassion and conservatism. And the party was prepared at that point to essentially Allow Bush to have general election messages even in his primary process. And they were tired of losing and they were ready for a center-right governing vision.”
2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source