YouSaid · the spoken record

Ron Brownstein

lines on the record
71
first
2016-10-17
most recent
2016-10-17
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

  1. “Squandered the deficit. Right, it was huge. It was huge. Squandered the deficit. I don't blame, look, if you believe that you have a message that you want to take to the country and the only way to change the parameters of the possible is, in fact, to run and bring that message to the country, I think you can't object to that. I mean, because otherwise the third parties would neverwise, you know, if you think about the early 60s when Nader emerged, it was a moment of kind of maximum overlap of the parties, right? And so, and you had on the left, you had Michael Harrington, Rachel Carson, Ralph Nader, voices like that saying this consensus doesn't work. And on the right, you had Barry Goldwater and Phyllis Schlaffley saying this consensus doesn't work. So there's a place for those voices, but in 2000, I thought the part that he got wrong was misguided, was going the next step and saying, look, it doesn't matter which one of these guys you elect, they're the same.”

    2016-10-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 88 - Ron Brownstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “In 2000 And made the argument, which I thought was, you know, and look, I mean, he correctly said as the third party candidate, it's not your responsibility to worry about who is going to win. But I think where he went wrong in that campaign was arguing that gore and bush would be interchangeable as president because that was not intellectually honest.”

    2016-10-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 88 - Ron Brownstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “The Corvair. Yeah, unsafe at any speed, wrote the book, and then extended that to really create the idea of kind of an outside check on all the regulatory agencies, the idea that it should not only be the regulated industries that are trying to influence all the agencies that were created in the 70s, the EPA and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the older ones like the FDA. So trying to create an institutional voice and was really effective at that, I think kind of struggled more in kind of extending that tactical issue by issue into kind of a broader political vision that makes sense.”

    2016-10-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 88 - Ron Brownstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “So he was very much as he is now kind of a person with just intense commitment and blinders. I mean, he kind of, you know.”

    2016-10-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 88 - Ron Brownstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Right out of college, and we got a lot of them finished. I wrote a couple, co-authored a couple. One was Reagan's ruling class, which profiled the top 100 people in the Reagan administration. And when I finished that, that almost killed me. It was a big project at 22. Fascinating, though, to interview Paul Nitzi and Richard Pearl and all of these figures. That's why I love the Americans. I feel like I'm watching my youth come back to life Casper Weinberger we interviewed. William Casey, you know, and it was really something. And then I went to work for National Journal. Originally, they put me on kind of a regulatory beat.”

    2016-10-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 88 - Ron Brownstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Consumer organization, he went down and became effectively Nader's chief of staff and hired me right out of college to do that. And I essentially I was brought in. There were all of these projects and kind of the aftermath of the Nader's Raiders, book projects that have been started and never finished. And I was basically hired to either finish them myself or to hire other people and edit them. So at 21, I was supervising a staff and editing books.”

    2016-10-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 88 - Ron Brownstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “A friend of mine, and really, you know, like the way the life works, I went to SUNY, St. University of New York, Binghamton, and there was the person who ran the PERG in New York, the public interest research group, these state organizations.”

    2016-10-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 88 - Ron Brownstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Yes. Yeah, that was interesting. I was working at the National Journal magazine in the early 1980s, which was a weekly magazine in DC nonpartisan that really focused intently on governing, right? That's what it was. And I used to say its logo should be more than”

    2016-10-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 88 - Ron Brownstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “In the 60s Feels as it's being stolen from that they're being told that they are the majority, it's a center right country, all of these kind of truisms, and that somehow the only reason you're not in power is because the public is being deceived or Democrats are importing a new electorate or they're voter fraud. You know, and in fact, there are a kind of underlying demographic, cultural, and economic changes that have provided a lasting advantage to Democrats at the presidential level, if not at the congressional level, that the party has to adjust to sooner or later. Their party, the Republican, the Republican Party has to adjust to. And Fox and much of the other conservative media, Rush Limbaugh, are out there telling them the opposite. They don't have to change anything. In fact, they can double down. And it's going to be the same fight that they had after 2012 when Mitt Romney won a higher share of white voters and Ronald Reagan did in 1980 and lost by 5 million votes. And the initial impulse was, hey, we got to change. And then it became no. And in fact, doubled down.”

    2016-10-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 88 - Ron Brownstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Absolutely. I have felt for a number of years that just contrary to what it believes, the Fox News channel is an asset for Democrats, for example, because Fox basically tells the Republican base every day, you are a majority and power is being stolen from you by varying methods, you know, either Obama bamboozle the country or Democrats or voter fraud. And it basically says you don't have to change anything. You are the majority. It's just being stolen from you when the evidence, I think, is very different.”

    2016-10-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 88 - Ron Brownstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “And there are good things about that. The idea of democratizing of the discussion and information, but the cacophony is real and there really isn't much ability to separate what matters from what's not. And there is this circular effect of just things emerging somewhere, going into social media, going onto cable, print, you know, and the reality is that for all of that velocity, for all of that activity, The underlying stability of something like this election is real. I mean, there's kind of a disconnect between the conversation and the consequences.”

    2016-10-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 88 - Ron Brownstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “The challenge is that with the exception of the big epical scoop which The internet doesn't really reward reporting. It rewards kind of attitude and take and snark and perspective at the positive end. It's perspective and take at the uncharitable end. It's kind of snark and voice. But in any case, it rewards voice more than it rewards reporting, except at the extreme end. If you have a big revelation, a lot of people will read it online. But kind of the bread and butter of the internet is not the reported story that mattered to the LA Times when I was”

    2016-10-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 88 - Ron Brownstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “For the Washington Post shown that there's still a tremendous, and I believe the video was the most concurrently viewed newspaper, possibly video, the Donald Trump video that they posted was the most concurrently viewed newspaper story ever.”

    2016-10-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 88 - Ron Brownstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Life. It does well. Brilliant in print, it's powerful. And certainly what David Fahrenhold has done this year on the investigative report.”

    2016-10-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 88 - Ron Brownstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “And knocked on doors. I mean, David Broder was knocking on doors after he was David Broder in Capital Letters. I mean, literally, you know, and it was very different. I mean, I think, you know, we are providing more information than ever before, but not necessarily more understanding. And just the velocity that is now required in the economic models for everybody. And I think what's really admirable is that the great newspapers, at least, New York Times, the Washington Post, have tried to separate that pressure from allowing people, at least on the print side, to produce spend time in a community and really the incredible story you probably read in the Washington Post of the Trump supporter in small town Pennsylvania and all the conspiracy theories she believed. I mean, that was incredible. And the good news is that stuff does well on the internet. I mean, once you finish it, it also has a dual...”

    2016-10-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 88 - Ron Brownstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “And it's also the front row seat at history is real, and it isn't always having a seat on Air Force One. The one image in my mind, above all, for some reason, it struck me so much, it was the 1994 campaign, the Republican landslide. I was in Tennessee writing about the twin races where Fred Thompson got elected, and I think Fris got elected. And I think it was for Frisk. I went to a clogging festival in late October dancing somewhere outside of Nashville. The trees were beautiful. The day was beautiful. And I was thinking, there is no way in hell I would ever be here, if not for this job. I would not see this part of America. And, you know, that was true every day, especially in the old days, I hate to say it, when you got more time to do stuff.”

    2016-10-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 88 - Ron Brownstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “You have to live within your head, and journalism you get to go out and be part of it is sort of like the difference of like fungoing a ball 300 feet or hitting a fastball that's coming in 100 miles. You're getting some help from the, you're getting some momentum from the other side. So I found that really compelling. And once I got to college, I never looked back. I had no, I never for a moment thought I would do anything else.”

    2016-10-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 88 - Ron Brownstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “You know, I like the immediacy of it, and it also felt more connected. I think writing fiction just felt very lonely because there was something you were doing totally on your own. And journalism is this interesting hybrid of you're out in the world and then you're back trying to process it, right? You know yourself. But it constantly refreshes you by being out in the world. I mean, by talking to people. And I felt like a novelist, you know, I mean, obviously, you know, I never got far enough to know whether I would have been a novelist. But that was like you were lifting it all yourself.”

    2016-10-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 88 - Ron Brownstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “I cited English literature, and even in high school, I was writing stories like fiction and submitting them to 17 or Cosmo or whatever. But there was a journalism professor who was like, hey, why don't you, you know, you write pretty well. Why don't you go to work on the paper, the school paper? And I really like that. And then when I got to college, I went to work on the paper. What did you like about it?”

    2016-10-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 88 - Ron Brownstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Can at my head and cut my ear in half, and while I was getting my ears sewn up, my mother got hired by the doctor. I hope she thanked you. Yeah, you took one for the team. I went to public schools in Queens and State University of New York. And, you know, it's funny, when I was in high school, originally I thought I was going to be. Where'd you go to high school? Benjamin Cardoza in Queens. And I wanted to be, I always knew I wanted to be a writer, but I thought I was going to be, you know, Faitzgerald.”

    2016-10-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 88 - Ron Brownstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Yeah, I grew up in Bayside, Queens. My dad was an electrician. My mom was mostly home and then was a receptionist for a doctor. She got the job when someone in my sixth grade swung a”

    2016-10-17 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 88 - Ron Brownstein · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source