YouSaid · the spoken record

Steve Inskeep

lines on the record: 60
first: 2023-10-12
most recent: 2023-10-12
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

“No, I mean, he would mock people. I mean, there was a guy when he was a younger man, he wrote a newspaper article that mocked a man so severely. The guy eventually challenged him to a duel. There's more to the story than that, but it started with a newspaper article. He could get a dig in, but when he was at his best, as he nearly always was in his later career, he would only do that for a purpose. He would have his own strategic purpose in mind when he spoke out at all.”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That I try to emulate myself when I'm on social media. I will sometimes respond to someone's angry remark or in my view and temperate remark or just harsh, ridiculous attack. But if I respond, I'm not just there to call them an asshole. I will respond in a way that gets out a message that I think is valuable for them to hear and also for the other people who will read that conversation. I will say something about me, something about NPR, something about the story that we're covering that I will take the opportunity of that conflict to send out. And that is a thing that I learned from studying Lincoln.”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I have some thoughts about that. I think that we would probably let a lot of trolls pass without comment. One of the things that I realized in studying Lincoln that I had not before was that although he's eloquent with his words, he also used a lot of silences. In fact, he would even be silent to the point of being almost deceptive with his allies about what his plans and intentions were, and he did not often answer attacks unless he saw a purpose in it for him. And that's something...”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I guess you'd have to ask if public media could do that, could they make it that kind of really broad marketplace of ideas or would people find that just way too controversial? I don't know.”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know what do you think the odds are of that happening in the United States, given our politics at the moment? Well, so there we go. So maybe we should talk about a thing that's practical. But I don't know. I mean, if there were a public media organization that wanted to start a social media platform, I guess they could try it and it would just be in the marketplace and we would find out if it would succeed. I mean, the thing that made Twitter a success to the extent that it was and maybe still is a success. I mean, I guess it's still there in any case, was that it was the clash of all kinds of people, that you could be not famous in suddenly talking to someone who was famous, that you could be wildly to the left and be watching the thoughts and ideas of somebody wildly to the right. In fact, that actually turned out to be like what made it a depressing site for a lot of people.”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think we learned something about Elon Musk from the fact that he did that, it was, I guess, a little annoying, but there are periodic controversies about the news organization that I work for, as would be the case at any news organization that I work for. I feel like I've been around long enough that I've been through a few of these things. Yeah.”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Many people see a tweet not that many of them necessarily click on links. It is rather inefficient as deliverable. And as a result, Twitter then gets advertising revenue from people looking at Twitter, but the news organization doesn't get any advertising revenue for people clicking through to the story. And I think there's probably something to that business case.”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But in any case. So I'm still there because I believe in talking to lots of different kinds of people and communicating with lots of different kinds of people. NPR made its decision partly for the safety of its correspondence overseas. And I think this is a real argument when you're a journalist and you travel overseas, as I have done, you want to make sure that people understand and treat you as a journalist and not some kind of government spy because when they think you're a spy, it massively increases your risk of being detained perhaps in a very, very bad way. It's a real thing. But there was another reason that they gave for dropping off of Twitter, which I found particularly interesting. And it was essentially the business case for not spending NPR's time on Twitter. They argued we're not getting any return on investment for the time that we spend posting all these stories on Twitter because of the how”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure, well, I find it interesting, it's not something that I did personally. I'm still on Twitter, and NPR left us as employees free to do what we wanted to do, and I'm still there. I think I still find you there if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, I never promised to get off.”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Abroad, and they come home and continue listening when they're on a base at home or when they are retired. You go out into red states, rural red states, and you find farmers and people in rural communities who do a lot of driving and they're listening to their NPR affiliates in their home states. It's their communities listening to the radio and getting informed on the world, which really matters to a rural state because they're selling their products around the world. NPR is not just New York or whatever headquarters of a news organization. They're based in hundreds of community stations across the country, and that's every kind of state because it's all the states. And that is why every kind of person listening.”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“These are NPR internal studies. Years ago, it was about one third, one-third, one-third. I think if I went and got the information more recently, we would find that it's probably more liberals and fewer conservatives and a lot of people middle of the road. But I am confident that of the, I don't know, 50-some million people who use NPR routinely, that you would find many millions in all of those categories. And I'm even happy if you've got time to tell you anecdotally why I think that would be the case. Sure. I for years I've covered wars. I've covered the Pentagon. I've run into a lot of U.S. military people who, as a group, are more likely to lean conservative than not. And they're also interested in the world. And NPR covers the world, which a lot of news organizations don't, or they do it in a very shallow way. And they get interested in NPR while they're abroad. And it's often accessible.”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“NPR asks listeners not exactly about their partisan affiliation, but do you identify as conservative, liberal, middle-of-the-road? And there are very large percentages in all of those categories. I think in recent years with more of the polarization of media, there are probably more liberals than conservatives self-identified. And yet we have millions of all kinds of listeners. And as someone who's worked for NRPR.”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That I have to tell, and then I kind of mediate that story, and my news organization, I go back and forth with an editor who has a bunch of experiences and ideas. And maybe multiple editors and a producer and any number of other people. And then it gets mediated again because we put it on the radio and it needs to be exactly at certain length. Sure. And so my point is that the funding is not the sole influence or even necessarily a big one.”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is that pure and ideal? I don't know. But we could raise the same question about the advertisers of any given podcast or of the New York Times. How do they, and how does the desire to please those advertisers shape the news coverage? I think the starting point is that we're all imperfect. We're all struggling with that. And we all kind of come from a point of view. There is this ideal that I think was never true and is definitely outdated of like purely objective reporting just the facts. I think it was once called the voice from nowhere. You know, like there's just a voice telling you the facts. And I don't think that's like a real thing. Like, you know, I'm a guy from Indiana. I have a particular education. I have a particular set of experiences. I've interviewed thousands of people around the world and I bring all that to the story.”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I certainly hope not. I mean, there's an entire thing that we could go through about the public funding. Local public radio stations are started in communities across the country. They get the largest single source of funding from just listeners who call in on these pledge drives. And they also get a small percentage of government funding, which helps for various things that they do. NPR then sells them programming. So NPR, I think, is pretty well insulated from like some congressional appropriation or whatever. Yeah, they've tried over the different.”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's one of those questions that I would almost want to be more specific with an individual when people are asked about the media. I think that the world is really complicated. Stories are really complicated. And we collectively have incentives to simplify them and make them a little more alarming and make them fly a little bit more and get more clicks and more eyeballs. So we probably deserve a little bit of the skepticism. And I think, again, like laying out your case every single time is one limited answer to that very big problem. I wouldn't say it's the entire answer. I also think that people's views evolve over time. And I think that happens with voters a little bit too. We assume that everybody has dug in.”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think that might be the beginning of a conversation because that's part of what we're wrestling with, isn't it? Like what on earth is it going to look like if any of these trials really begin on time?”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I would want to interview him in the way that I interview a lot of difficult people or people who are controversial. I might actually begin with a tactical question. I might begin just by asking, how do you plan to juggle your various trials with your presidential campaign? Just tell me how that's going to work. On a day by day basis, do you think that there'll be days that you're in court and then that evening you go out to a rally? Do you think you'll schedule the... Rallies to be convenient to the courts? Do you intend to show up for your trialistics?”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We were on the phone. He called in. We had agreed to talk for 15 minutes. And he made a number of statements that were untrue. And I had an obligation talking with him in an interview that was going to be broadcast as an interview to correct the record a number of times. And then slightly less than 10 minutes in, he'd had enough and hung up. That was a challenging experience, although we did learn a little bit about his state of mind, his attitude and state of mind. It'd be worth talking with Trump again, I suppose, sometime.”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let me think about that for a minute because it was a frustrating interview. It was illuminating in a way until he hung up.”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Indicted right yeah. I mean, we don't know what a jury is going to find. We don't know if he's going to remember to ask for a jury. We don't know a lot of things about how these trials were unfold. And we can cover them relentlessly and fairly, fairly to everyone involved, including the defendant, while also being honest and very, very frank about the facts that we know from our own reporting and our own eyewitness accounts.”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Don't know how to get him convicted. Really? How does it get them off the hook? Because we're still saying what we know. What we know is he tried to overturn his election defeat. And we even know how he did indicted.”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Want the news organization that I work for anyway to be saying Trump allegedly tried to overturn the election. He tried to overturn his defeat, although I will give, Grant will find out if that is found to be as a legal matter, a violation of some particular federal law. That's what I mean by specificity. If we can just be more exact, a lot of these problems go away.”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I want to go for a different term if I can specific. And I'm thinking specifically about Trump's trials. We have this tradition in the country, and it is a legal tradition that people are innocent until proven guilty. And Trump now stands accused of violating various federal and state laws. And so he has a presumption of innocence in court. I would even accept that he has a presumption of innocence among the public. I mean, I can't say for sure how a jury is going to find on all of these scores of counts and whether they're going to find he violated the law here or here or here. That is a legal matter. But as a matter of fact, we don't have to pretend we're not sure if he tried to overthrow the government. We don't have to pretend we're not sure if he tried to overturn an election that he obviously lost because he did that in the open, in front of everybody. There are recordings, there are videos. Everyone witnessed it. Thousands of election officials from both political parties testified to the results of the election.”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Conundrums of that moment was that the Republicans realized if we let the South back in, their representatives will be voting and in combination they would be Democrats almost exclusively in combination with Northern Democrats they might end up in charge of the country. And that caused an awful lot of struggle and debate. So I'm not even too surprised there would be that kind of danger. I grant that everything here is like on a different level and very weird and yet these are things that Americans have struggled with before.”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Ran and won the presidency post war. Hey, you know, Kara, I mean, there was a danger of that happening after the Civil War. The Republican Party, this anti-slavery party, got to dominate the country and the government when 11 southern states said we're out of here and they took their representatives out of Congress. And when the war ended, one of the great...”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We talked about 2024, and I didn't even talk about the trials. I literally don't understand how this is supposed to work, that there are really going to be trials in March, and another one waiting for later in March and another one in May and another one not even scheduled. And this is absolutely the same time that they're supposed to be presidential primaries. I have no idea how that part is supposed to work. The only thing that would give me hope that we will even get through that is that our systems have held together up to now. And I suppose it seems unlikely to...”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Similarity with Lincoln Cast this image as a man of the people, as an ordinary man of the people, and people did feel and even today feel that he is a relatable person, even though he's in many ways really quite mysterious.”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I would say that Trump can be said to resemble Lincoln not in his political style, but in his innovative and creative use of the media. Lincoln. Was not very active on Twitter or X, as they now call it, and yet he was someone who wrote apparently hundreds of newspaper articles as a younger politician. They would typically be unsigned. They were occasionally satirical. They were often partisan, but they were getting his view out of the world. He worked the media really hard. His friend-in-law partner, William Herndon, said of him that Lincoln never overlooked a newspaper man who had an opportunity to say a good or bad thing about him, which does remind me actually a little bit of Trump, who made himself extremely accessible to the media. That was his rise in the world, his cultivation of the media was at least, if not more important than whatever success he managed to gin up in business and in Trump's connection to the people who support him, there is something of a”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Power and because history moved in a certain way, it became a radical position. It led to the South objecting, seeing the threat that this moderate position posed starting a war for the preservation of slavery, which allowed Lincoln to destroy slavery, just strike a death blow against slavery. So you have Biden and in no way am I saying, you know, Biden is on Lincoln's level. I mean, other people can judge, but he is matching in some cases relatively moderate rhetoric with really large legislation that is a lot of what progressives say they want and very upsetting to a lot of conservatives in the first couple of years when they had control of Congress, they passed a lot of stuff. They did a lot of progressive things, even though his rhetoric, his rhetorical and political approach is not necessarily”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that, well, I think that he wants to win. I think that he is of a different generation. He has a particular style of politics that he prefers, which has been justified to the extent that he has won a hard-fought presidential election. Well, let me draw a comparison here, if you don't mind. Lincoln was a person who in his political approach to slavery could be described as a moderate, as not all that radical. The solutions that he proposed for slavery before the Civil War were not that radical, because he acknowledged that the constitution and the structure of the country at that time made it almost impossible to destroy in the states that practiced it. So he said, let's contain it. Let's limit its spread. That sounded like a squishy kind of moderate position, but because it got him into”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, okay. Well, Biden has been almost explicit about the comparison to Lincoln, which is not surprising since he was Obama's vice president, and Obama invited the comparisons to Lincoln by opening his campaign at the old Illinois state capitol where Lincoln once worked back in 2008 and obviously is the first black president. He has this connection to Lincoln. Biden's politics, though, and I'm not going to say that he succeeds necessarily, but Biden's effort as a politician is to do a little bit of what I'm describing Lincoln doing, getting people under the tent for as much business as you can get done, regardless of whether you agree or disagree on everything.”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or even five or six or seven years ago, and they would need to persuade people in those suburbs that they're not too extreme, that they can get something done, that they're not solely about chaos, as McCarthy alleged, that a faction of his party was. And so each party... Can expect that its fate will be determined by its success in building a broader coalition. How's that for an innovative but somehow on topic?”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, let's think about that first. I kind of avoid reporting on the future, so I may be a little evasive here. We presume that we know both nominees. And I'll name two. One I've already alluded to Democrats are in grave danger of losing the United States Senate and what they need to keep a majority in the United States Senate is to win several most, almost all of about six red states that voted for Donald Trump or that are somewhat divided and purple, states ranging from West Virginia to Arizona, which is turning blue but not all the way. And they need to prevail in the majority of those races, which is going to be a lot of work. Republicans have their own version of that challenge. And never mind what the polls say, the polls right now show Trump and Biden reasonably close. Anybody could win. And I would agree that if those two guys are the nominees, I wouldn't, you know, want to forecast for sure that anybody would win. But Republicans have had massive erosion of their vote in suburbs that were Republican a generation ago.”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I'm not saying we can't have another civil war. I just don't see it right now. I don't see something like slavery that would cut between us so cleanly that the Red States would peel off from the blue states or that you would have Marjorie Taylor Green's national divorce or that the blue dots of cities would go to war against the countryside. But I want to emphasize that doesn't mean there's not going to be political violence because political violence has very often been with us. It was with us on January 6th. That was a new event to try to disrupt an election in that exact way. But especially in times of social change, there has been a lot of terrorism of different kinds or even state-sponsored attacks on people in different parts of the country.”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Millions of illegal votes to end slavery. Like where have we heard that kind of theory before of connecting immigration with illegal voting? It's amazing to me that the kind of rhetorical tropes persist.”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It doesn't feel like the same time, but the resonances to me are amazing. As you may notice flipping through here, I gave a kind of title to each kind of person who came to meet with Abraham Lincoln. There is an activist. There's a conspiracy theorist. And I suppose one of the reasons that I did that, not to be too obvious, is that I feel that I have seen similar kinds of people today. We are operating within the same basic republic, although of course there have been changes and amendments, but the basic separation of powers, Congress, President, Supreme Court, all the same as they were then, divisions between state and federal government, all the same, and human nature is the same. And so when I read, for example, the paranoid conspiracy theories of Duff Green, it sounds really familiar. The enemy, the anti-slavery people, are bringing in immigrants to cast”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For a lot of people, I mean, there are a lot of issues we discuss that don't really touch a lot of the people who get fired up and end up voting one way or another. And the long view gives you a little more patience, I think, with some of these things.”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would be happy if you joke on my part. It was very mean when I meant it. I understand. I understand. Noted as a joke. I'd be happy if he reads the book. I'd be happy if anybody reads the book. But I guess I am aiming at people who are interested in history and interested in taking the long view, which is a thing that I think Lincoln did and that I at least try to do. It gives me a little better perspective and at least a little more confidence about our unsettled world when I think a hundred years back or 150 years back and I would hope that it gives me some idea of which things are important and which are not. I mean, that's one of the reasons that I say that some of our divisions are surface. They're media creations, their memes, they're not really about anything.”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, clearly, nobody has figured this one out, so I don't know that I am here except that if we are going to stay in a democratic system, I mean, the winning side needs to assemble a majority. And if you're a Democrat who wants to govern the country, that forces you to think in certain ways. Like you need to be reaching out to red states in some manner. And I don't necessarily mean change your positions, but somehow you need to have more of a purchase in red states so that you don't have the disadvantage that Democrats have in the Electoral College and in the United States Senate. If you are a Republican, you would need to think about the way that you ran the last election. Kevin McCarthy would not have been unseated by a relative handful of his colleagues had Republicans run a different campaign and had a more normal result for the party out of power in the midterm election.”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's immoral to just say it's like weak and naive. I mean, I guess that's the Matt Gates view. Like, why are you dealing with these Democrats? You're betraying my side and you're being weak”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I totally agree with that, and I actually think that a lot of the answer to that in journalism is to be really, really specific. Make sure that you really know the story. The Republicans and Democrats are not alike. They each have their own foibles and failings and each have their own strengths and so forth. And we need to be really specific and honest about that. And that doesn't mean we have to proclaim that this guy is evil and this person is 100% good. We just have to be really frank about it. You said that it's natural to try to get along. I would agree with that. There is a kind of human tendency, but there is another tendency that I think is really evident today, which is to say that it is horrifying and immoral to talk with someone who is wrong from your lights on a particular issue. And there's a tendency, even if you don't.”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and like let's even for the purposes of argument, suppose that Matt Gates is correct substantively. This is just for the purposes of this question. And I'm not even sure what his substantive position is, to be honest with you, but let's just suppose that that were the case. Yeah, let's say there's one lawmaker who is right about everything. The way that democracy works just is not that one person governs everything and dictates to the other people from whatever position. There is a point at which this is democratic and normal and within our traditions and checks and balances and filibusters and everything else we do. There is another point beyond which it ceases to be democracy at all and someone is placed.”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Go along with that kind of compromise, and so ultimately there was a war, which was started by the South. He did not always make a deal with the other side. And I would not pretend now that we can always make a deal with the other side, nor are we supposed to in a democracy, we're supposed to disagree. What we need if we want to improve the country is not everyone to agree with us, but for a majority, a governing majority agree.”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Didn't quite work out that way. Well, Trump is wanting to win an election, I suppose. He wants something that's going to appeal to people. And I mean, he was pro-choice once upon a time if memory serves. So, I mean, he's kind of frank about what he wants out of that transaction. But you made the remark about the Civil War, which I think is very perceptive and very important to talk about. Reaching over to the other side doesn't mean giving up your principles. There was a line beyond which Lincoln could not and would not go. He was asked by a slave owner. This is one of the 16 meetings. He was urged by a slave owner that he'd known for years named Duff Green, this newspaper man and propagandist, urged to accept a compromise with the South. And the compromise was they would enshrine slavery in the Constitution forever, along with a number of other things. And Lincoln talked to the guy, but ultimately he and his party could not.”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's kind of dark, but also it's kind of obvious if you think about it. And it realized that he needed to appeal to their interests. And he talks about their interests in his letters and speeches way more than more higher moral concepts, even though he hoped to harness people's self-interest behind a moral cause. He realized that he needed to talk with them about it. Like when you share an interest with someone, you may have a basis for collaboration”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Since it was calculated, this was a revelation to me. This is a thing that I did not understand, even though I grew up in Indiana where he spent a lot of his youth and I always read about Lincoln and have had books of his speeches around the house and so forth. I hadn't really thought through like how did he motivate people? What did he think about people? And he told his friend and law partner William Herndon that he believed that people were motivated by self-interest.”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you're thinking the way that Lincoln did, consider or be open to the possibility that people on your side might find coalitions with voters who believe differently than you on eight or nine out of ten issues, but on the one or two you can work together.”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, I mean, you know, McCarthy just lost his job for a bipartisan vote. And, you know, we don't even need to label that the right thing. It was just like the normal thing to pass legislation to keep the government open. And McCarthy lost his job over that. So there's clearly a different point of view that is widespread, that working with somebody on the other side is a really bad idea. I just want to underline a distinction. This is the distinction that I think people draw. I don't think that we have to stand up and cheer if someone works across the aisle to pass something that is bad, you know, to pass terrible legislation or to approve some disaster or to discriminate against some part of the population or any number of things. But you might”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Kind of boasted at some point that in his early career in the 1970s he had dealt with segregationists in the United States Senate and he had occasionally gotten things done. And he was fiercely criticized by some in his own party for bragging about that sort of thing. Why would you associate with these people? And if you're going to get something done, you may need that vote. And that's a thing that Lincoln did. He was even reaching out to literal slave owners, befriending them, working with them when he became president and the Civil War came, started by the South over slavery, he tried to persuade some slave states and slave owners to stay in the Union, and he succeeded drawing on some of his own personal relationships with slave owners.”
2023-10-12 · On with Kara Swisher · The Politics of Disagreement with Steve Inskeep · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT