Jason Hartman talks with Peter Wehner, author of Wealth and Justice: The Morality of Democratic Capitalism and Vice President & Senior Fellow at the Ethics & Public Policy Center, about what attacks are currently being done against democratic capitalism and what we can do about them as a society. The two also explore the potential ramifications for capitalism being done by President Trump.
Investor 0:00
The reason I invest in real estate is because I was previously doing it a 401k and put my money there. And doing other, you know, traditional retirement plans that just doesn’t work didn’t work for us for 1015 years that we were doing it and was looking for something different. So I was doing a lot of research and listened a lot of podcasts. And found real estate is being a much better avenue for creating wealth and creating cash flow. Our first investment property actually happened by accident because of not being able to sell a previously owned house that we had, and moving out of that that area. So it turned out to be a really good thing for us. So after that, that made me really interested. The first intentional investment property that we purchased was in Florida. I found the cre wealth show and Jason, by him being a guest on another podcast that I had been listening to. It was about creating passive income. And he was a guest on that show and as impressed with his his knowledge. So from there, I made my way to his podcast right now. We have a total of 10 properties, we decided to go all in. I mean, we’ve been doing 401k and other traditional retirement plans and investments that most people are comfortable with, with really terrible results for lots of years. So I was okay, so we actually liquidated, everything we had in our 401k is paid the penalty on all of that, and are doing much much better with real estate and very happy about it. But I think it just comes down to being comfortable with the education. So I felt like we there’s plenty of information out there about real estate, there’s lots of people with great track records. And so I think if you follow a path of success, that it’s a lot easier to replicate and duplicate. So I felt like I was following other people’s paths of success, so I felt comfortable.
Announcer 1:42
Welcome to the creating wealth show with Jason Hartman. You’re about to learn a new slant on investing some exciting techniques and fresh new approaches to the world’s most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine self made multi millionaire who’s actually been there and done it. He’s a successful investor, lender, developer and entrepreneur who’s owned properties in 11 states had hundreds of tenants and been involved in thousands of real estate transactions. This program will help you follow in Jason’s footsteps on the road to your financial independence day. You really can do it. And now here’s your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution for real estate investors.
Jason Hartman 2:32
Welcome to Episode 1285 1285. Thanks for joining me today. We are going to talk about wealth and democratic capitalism with our guests today. I think you’ll enjoy this interview, and I just want to remind you, be sure to get your contest entries in at Jason Hartman comm slash contest Jason hartman.com slash contest that ends on Monday. Today, and we will announce winners are being contact with winners shortly after that. It’s a great exercise. Tell us about how you are becoming an empowered investor. Tell us about your five year plan, whatever you want, you’ve got a lot of latitude on this contest. So it should be a really easy one. Just make a quick video and share that with us. And you can win some great prizes, great prizes. And of course, we’ve got our profits and paradise event coming up in Orlando. Join us for that you can check out more at Jason Hartman live.com that’s Jason Hartman live.com for the tickets to the event for for the contest, chasing armanda comm slash contest, and let’s dive in and enjoy this interview about wealth and democratic capitalism. It’s my pleasure to welcome Pete Waner to the show. He’s a senior fellow at the ethics and Public Policy Center contributing editor at the Atlantic and contributing op ed columnist for The New York Times. He’s former director of the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives and was Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush, and speech writer for the Reagan administration. He’s the author of wealth and justice, the morality of democratic capitalism, and the new book, the death of politics, how to heal our frayed Republic after Trump. Pete, welcome. How are you? I’m doing well. Thanks for having me on. Good, good. It’s good to have you the morality of democratic capitalism. Very interesting. Is it the most moral system?
Peter Wehner 4:35
Yeah, I think it is the most moral system for variety reasons. I think democratic capitalism is done more than any other system economic system to raise people out of poverty and given people in all walks of life and throughout the world, and the best chance to live lives of dignity and prosperity and to promote human flourishing and it’s got an unparalleled achievement in my mind, just in terms of the morality of the case, that doesn’t mean that capitalism isn’t flawless that it doesn’t have problems. It doesn’t need to be refined from time to time, but as an economic system, I don’t think there’s any question. I’m a great defender of capitalism.
Jason Hartman 5:11
Yeah, I would agree now, just make a distinction for us. Instead of just saying capitalism, interestingly, you call it democratic capitalism. Is there a non democratic capitalism? I mean, what’s the distinction or comparison there?
Peter Wehner 5:23
Well, you can’t have countries like China was moving toward capitalism, well, prior to about a decade ago enough, and what is politically authoritarian but more economically open. So you can have systems of government that that are capitalistic and unnecessarily democratic. So the the political and the economic are tied in but yeah, as a general matter, free societies are free all the way through political and economic, and they tend to flourish the most when there’s the most amount of freedom.
Jason Hartman 5:50
Yeah, no, no question about it. Now. You know, it’s interesting capitalism, whether it’s moral or not people, I guess they could argue that or whether it’s the most more Maybe is the better way to look at it. But it’s certainly very natural, isn’t it? You know, even in communist countries or formerly communist countries, for example, when I was in Romania once, and I’m been to Cuba as well, so that’s pretty interesting. I heard the stories from our tour guide, for example, in Romania, how, you know, people would wait in line for shoes, they’d wait in line for everything. And then, by the time you got to your turn to get your shoes, your allotment of shoes, you know, they didn’t have your size, right? So they would trade them with each other. And there was all this underground capitalism. It’s just so natural, right? What do you say about that?
Peter Wehner 6:35
I think you’re right. And I co authored this book with Arthur Brooks, who’s president of the American Enterprise Institute. And what Arthur and I did at the beginning of the book was actually to make the case for human nature in capitalism. And the argument is that whether it’s a political or economic system, whether it succeeds or not depends on whether it has the right understanding of human nature. That was one of the great gifts that the founders had, which is they set up a system of government which in my opinion, Had a correct understanding of human nature. And I think capitalism does as well for the reasons that, that you mentioned, you believe in self interest. And there is a desire to get ahead and to have rewards for work. And when you try and tamp that down or suffocated, or do it, it doesn’t work because human nature doesn’t change really. Yeah, finds other ways to express itself, you can certainly mitigate, but you have you have a black market and people will will trade for the shoes that they want. I think capitalism works in large part because it has a basically correct view of human nature and is designed to take advantage of that.
Jason Hartman 7:34
Right. And you know, if you want more contemporary evidence of this, simply look at any city with rent control, and how people trade on the black or the gray market. They will artificially maintain leases on properties they don’t even want anything to do with anymore, and then they’ll rent them out. They’ll sublet them to their friends without telling the landlord right because then the rent won’t adjust. So yeah, capitalism is just such a complete natural phenomenon. And you know, you’re right, that’s a good way to look at it, it correctly accounts for human nature. You know, I guess you can’t quite make the argument that everything in human nature is moral Can you know, cuz we do a lot of things that aren’t necessarily moral. So you couldn’t make the argument in that direction. Because without some structure of society, you know, there’s like the saying goes, you know, we need government cuz we’re not all angels. Right?
Peter Wehner 8:28
Right. And that was that was Madison in federalist men were angels. We wouldn’t need government, but they’re not. So we do. You’re quite right. I mean, I think the success here is when you take into account human nature, and in my view, and I think history confirms this, as well as probably our own daily experience, human nature is mixed is vice and virtue we’re capable of acts of depravity and nobility. And what we have to do to be a successful society, whether political, economic or otherwise, is to try and accentuate the positives and to mitigate the negatives and create system that encourages those things. If you do that, you can get a pretty good society and hope and opportunity. And if you do it wrong, you can get the opposite. And if you do it really wrong, then you can get catastrophe.
Jason Hartman 9:10
So it’s amazing that, you know, with this knowledge that we have modern liberals, like Bernie Sanders and AOC, and all the rest of them, who are espousing a system that has failed at every time in history and every place on earth. And they always sort of pick out the Scandinavian example. But those countries are highly capitalist countries. Yes, they’re rich because of capitalism, so they can afford big social programs, right? They just don’t understand the way things really work. And what they’re really recommending is an immoral system because the opposite of the morality of capitalism is the immorality of socialism. And it’s ugly, big brother communism. But it’s so amazing that anyone who’s looked at it would, I think, agree with what I’m about to say that the most famous and Arguably successful economist that ever lived is Karl Marx. Yeah. How can that be? And and how is it that people are trying to repeat this failed experiment today?
Peter Wehner 10:11
Yeah, it’s interesting question if is marks the most famous, the most successful, the most consequential,
Jason Hartman 10:17
most consequential is a better word. But I’m using success in the sense that his ideas spread the most. They were the most widely adopted. No question. Right, right.
Peter Wehner 10:27
Yeah. I mean, arguably, Adam Smith, who was also more philosopher,
Jason Hartman 10:30
because Adam Smith was right, Karl Marx was just more popular. Yeah.
Peter Wehner 10:36
I know. I think that’s right. And I do think that if you look at the trends and trajectories over the last 50 years, fortunately, Adam Smith was on the ascendancy and Marx was was on the descendancy but I take your point marks had tremendous influence, and there was a tremendous human cost to what he did well, like 150 million
Jason Hartman 10:54
deaths, but you know, yeah, my
Peter Wehner 10:56
it’s complicated because Marx himself was not you know, he was not stolen Surely economic system but but I grant the point I’m not Mr. He was
Jason Hartman 11:03
not he was on our Stalin but
Peter Wehner 11:06
but his ideas had pernicious effects and they allowed for systems of government to arise. Look at this is this is one of the challenges right it which is the bad ideas have consequences just like good ideas and sometimes people adopt that ideas because they forget why good ideas are what defending which is. You know, when Arthur Brooks and I wrote this book, we did it in part because we were anticipating and attenuation in the beliefs and commitments to capitalism. And I think since we wrote it, those concerns have accelerated and amplified and I think you’re quite right Bernie Sanders, and AOC and others are a perfect example I remember and you may well to which is if you refer to a democrat 15 2025 years ago as a socialist, they would have considered those fighting words they slander today how they word on their sleeve, yeah, they wear it on their sleeve, and Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat. He’s he is what he refers to as a democratic socialist. The point you made about the Scandinavian countries is important because they refer to themselves as social But they are capitalist though they have a large welfare state. But as you said, the reason that they are able to afford that kind of welfare state is is precisely because they’ve been successful with capitalism and where you see socialism at its most pernicious and suffocating countries like Venezuela, and you mentioned Cuba and elsewhere. There’s human costs, and there’s a human devastation. And I think that the task that we have people who are defenders of capitalism, is to make the case for capitalism in a deep sense, I wonder, and I’m curious whether you agree with this or not, whether a lot of us just took for granted that capitalism was a given and we stopped making the arguments for what for defending it and why it was not only economically good but morally good. And that happens sometimes you don’t pay attention to the virtues that require Attention. Attention must be paid as Willy loman said and Death of a Salesman and I am worried that I mean, I’m you’re more familiar with this than I but the public opinion polls that we see that shows that socialism and commitment and dedication especially Amazon, the rise and support for capitalism is diminishing. And that’s an area of concern we have to attend to it.
Jason Hartman 13:05
It’s pretty interesting. You know, when we talk about the morality of capitalism, and we talked, you know, from this moral perspective, I had steve forbes on the show a while back, and he did a book on how and I don’t remember the name of his book. But in it, he talks about how the, you know, when people promote the idea of big government, which is really socialism or communism, it’s just a matter of degree. Government wins so often, or the idea of bigger government, let’s just expand, expand, expand, because government somehow has this moral high ground. And it’s weird how that is. I mean, why does the government granted the government controls the court system, it’s the arbiter of fairness, which is crazy to me that there should be public employee unions when the government is paying them and they’re paid from taxpayer that just seems like a total conflict of interest. But the government somehow maintains this moral high ground, you know, compared to what compared to the Free Market compared to having more choices, it’s better to have government. I mean, why, you know, it’s just a weird belief system we have, isn’t it?
Peter Wehner 14:06
Yeah, you know, it’s interesting. It’s interesting question actually a lot to unpack faith and confidence in government is far, far lower now than it was decades ago. So if you go in the 50s, early 1960s, really at the dawn of the Great Society, right, I think the public opinion polls show that 70% of the public thought had total competence or competence most of the time and what government would do now it’s in the 20s. And one could argue that one of the reasons it’s gone from such a high point to a low point is because Lyndon Johnson got through a lot of what he wanted to and government got larger and right, the more things that government is done, and the more activities it’s gotten involved with, the less competence there’s been in it. I do think that On the flip side, this is you know, we have to acknowledge this which is for a lot of people government has done good even if you go back to social security and the entitlement programs, the GI Bill, air water, our environment getting cleaner, I mean government police Down the street. And of course, this depends on his late state, local or or national. But people do trust government to keep them safe and government has been effective. And sometimes it’s effective in ways that we just don’t really think about. But there is a point at which government tries to do too much. And there are things that are intrinsic to large government that just makes it ineffective. Peter Schiff track shack is written a book on why government fails a very interesting analysis. I talked about it in the book that I wrote the death of politics, why that has happened. So what you need any government because we can’t have anarchy and human beings need it, and government is more effective sometimes then than other times. And there’s an interesting, you know, in the book of the politics, let me say I’m a person as you can tell who was philosophically and programmatically in favor of limited government and not the concentration of power. But we’ve had some success in government programs, not because we reduce the size of government but because we change the incentives of government One example of that would be welfare reform. And then t 90s. That was pushed through by Republicans in the House, Bill Clinton ended up signing it into law that didn’t make the welfare system last. What it did is credited incentives and said, Look, if you’re on welfare, and you’re able body did you have to work after a certain period of time, otherwise you get off cut off from where there was actually a lot of loopholes in that the signal and out you had a 60% drop in the number of welfare caseload. And in addition to that, those people that were still on welfare, you know, did better. And you have things like the earned income tax credit, which actually helped alleviate poverty, and some of the great success we’ve had in the drop in crime. That hasn’t been because governments gotten smaller. It’s because people have gotten smarter in the application of government.
Jason Hartman 16:44
Yeah, yeah. That’s it’s interesting stuff. Well, you brought up Clinton. Let’s bring it up to more present day than that. And let’s let’s talk about our current administration, and the death of politics. What do you mean when you say that ethnic politics that the discourse has died or What do you mean?
Peter Wehner 17:01
My concern is that a lot of the best of the American tradition in politics is dying, not simply because of Donald Trump. I think a lot of the trends that concern me predate him, but I think he’s accelerated many of the worst ones. But today politics is as contentious, angry, tribalistic and dehumanizing is just about any time that I can remember having been in politics. And there’s more and more sense that people not being able to have conversations with each other that they can disagree with each other respectfully, and that people feel like they don’t have opponents but that their enemies. And I actually worried too, that there’s been a devaluation of ideas on the conservative side. I’m really a product a child of the reagan revolution. I remember how central deep philosophical ideas thinkers, books were at that time Reagan was one of it’s too much to say was a disciple of Milton Friedman, but Freeman obviously had a huge impact on him and Hyatt did as well. And there were books from Charles Maria losing ground on welfare and closing of the American mind by Alan bloom. And in the judicial philosophy people like Antonin Scalia. And I worry that I think George Will said the other day that ideas on the conservative side on the Republican side at least have been crowded out by a kind of cult of personality with Donald Trump. I will say that my book is a kind of alarm bell on the night because I do have those concerns.
Jason Hartman 18:18
Okay, so question for you, though. I always like to ask compared to what I mean, Obama had a cult of personality Clinton medical to personality. I wouldn’t say either the bushes really did. But you know, maybe you can disagree with me. But yeah, Obama had raving fans that, you know, were lost if you ask me, but
Peter Wehner 18:36
look, I think Obama more than Clinton, Clinton had supporters Obama did have something like that. I remember and I wrote about it actually, I was not a fan of brock obama, though you read my writings over the years during his administration, I was quite critical of him, including some of those ads, which really did have a kind of cold light feel to to them, but I think that what we’re seeing with Donald Trump and and the ride is at least matched by that maybe worse than that and Some of it, I must say, is a feeling of dispirited and troubled by it in a way that I probably wouldn’t have been with with Obama democrats because I’ve been a lifelong republican and conservative. And seeing the kind of enthusiastic support that Donald Trump has, is something that’s worrisome to me. I’m perfectly willing to grant Trump credit for certain policy achievements, and which ones talk to us about those just for today, probably at the top of the list, his judicial appointments, I think have been very, very good. I think his deregulation policies have been good. I think his support for spending on defense is has been good. I have concerns about his policies do he’s protectionist, and I’m free trader. He doesn’t make the argument at all for limited government. He’s taken the form of entitlement programs, which I think is essential. He’s basically taking that off the table. And when he ran in 2016, he was one candidate who said he would not attempt to reform entitlement even though the Republican Party under Paul Ryan had really made entitlement reform and really made progress on on that
Jason Hartman 19:58
so I gotta ask you about that. I mean, this is the one that gets all the news. What about the Mexican border?
Peter Wehner 20:02
The Mexican border situation? I guess I have somewhat mixed feelings on it. I think there’s a problem at the border. I actually think that Trump’s policies have had the reverse effect of making things worse, not better. Conservatives believe in the law of unintended consequences. I think all of the talk and focus on a on a wall is is over done. I certainly believe in security. But look, I think Donald Trump’s his great failing in my estimation isn’t a policy though. Again, I think he’s made some mistakes. I do worry about the protectionism because I think getting into trade wars back to what we’re talking about originally, capitalism and economic prosperity.
Jason Hartman 20:35
I’d love to unpack that one. But I don’t think there’s time it’s a big subject.
Peter Wehner 20:38
So go ahead. But my real concern about Donald Trump I’d say is several fold. Number one is I think he is psychologically and emotionally not equipped to be president. I’ve had lots of conversations with Republicans, including people on Capitol Hill who’ve dealt with him and he is not a well man. He is extremely volatile and the stories that I’ve heard privately combined with what we publicly are alarming. And I think if you take a person with that kind of personality and given the power of the presidency, I think that’s dangerous. So here’s
Jason Hartman 21:05
here’s the thing. Maybe in his defense, though, you know, he’s a lot more maybe this isn’t the best word. But, you know, I really want to say transparent, you know, the fact that he tweets and that he’s sort of like, you know, where he stands. He’s very plain spoken. Maybe a lot of other presidents were really volatile like that, too. But it was behind the scenes. You just didn’t know it. You didn’t see it. This guy is out in the open. I mean, he’s a different kind of character, that’s for sure.
Peter Wehner 21:33
Yeah, that’s not so much yet. I mean, people have flashes of anger, Bill Clinton had flashes of anger, lots of people have flashes of anger, and you’ve had presidents who have been imperfect. What I’m talking about is a person who I think has a disordered personality. I think he has narcissistic personality disorder. He’s a person without empathy. His ignorance is just stunning. I mean, you could go through issue after issue, again, including with people who have dealt with Him and who were public supporters of his were shocking. I think he’s a person These corrupt the other thing that it really worries me and it may or may not worry you or others but it is that this is a person who is engaged not just in an assault on truth but an all out effort to annihilate truth that categories of truth and falsity. He is a person who is promiscuously, dishonest, and not just dishonest in the normal quote unquote, way. But he attacks categories demonstrably truths. And I think that that is very, very damaging for a free Republic. What do you mean by that? What do you mean by that? Well, it will. I’ll give you just one example. You could choose lots of examples. But what let’s take the beginning of his presidency and yesterday, right? Take two examples. And they’re they’re probably 1500 examples in between the dawn of his presidency, there was this big argument that he got into about the size of the inaugural crown. Now you may say, look, what it’s not a big deal. It isn’t really a big deal, who had a bigger inaugural crowd was a big deal to Donald Trump. And if this was the debate about whether brock obama had more people at the inauguration than he did the public was that there was photographic evidence that Obama had more people. There were Park Service numbers that showed that there was no question. We knew that brock obama has had a larger crowd. What did Donald Trump do? He insisted his was larger. He sounded I was press secretary, on the weekend, normally in a presidency, given the date that the inauguration was you would have sent out on Monday. And they went out and they said that the truth is that we had a larger crowd and they kept repeating and in his report and his supporters did, but his
Jason Hartman 23:28
whole angle is that look, you know, the fake news media is attacking him all the time, which they are, nobody can disagree with that. Maybe it’s deserved. Okay, you can argue that but you can’t argue that they’re not attacking him. And they do spin things against him. I mean, it is. It’s amazing. I just see it over and over. It’s it’s during the campaign, everything. You know, I open up my Business Insider app on my phone. It’s like every article is negative. They just hate him. Like seething hatred, right? Yeah. Now, let’s unpack that.
Peter Wehner 24:00
is an important point. Okay,
Jason Hartman 24:01
so he’s fighting that. But my point is, though, just to finish the point is he’s fighting back against that, right.
Peter Wehner 24:06
Ron Reagan fought back. Lots of President Reagan
Jason Hartman 24:08
was like he was likable. Trump is not likable like that.
Peter Wehner 24:11
Well, number one Reagan was if you go back and read contemporaneously with the left with the liberals with the press said about Reagan at the time when he gave the evil empire speech, that’s romanticizing history.
Jason Hartman 24:22
Yeah. But he knew how to reach across the aisle. He was friends with Tip O’Neill. I mean, you know,
Peter Wehner 24:26
well, Reagan was like, Well, yeah, I mean, I wouldn’t fight too much to defend Trump because what Trump is doing, I understand your point, Trump is infinitely less likable than Reagan. My point is that you can defend yourself without being a pathological liar. If the argument is if you’re being criticized that it’s completely fine, to be a pathological liar to lie morning, noon and night on things large and small, personal and professional. I just don’t agree with that. I don’t think that’s ethically right. I don’t think it’s good for our politics.
Jason Hartman 24:55
Don’t you remember slick Willy? I mean, Bill Clinton couldn’t tell the truth if his life depended on it.
Peter Wehner 25:02
Critical asleep. Yeah. Okay, these grounds Let me tell you what bothers me. Many of the same people that took a two by four upside the head to Bill Clinton because he was unethical. And was
Jason Hartman 25:13
Trump a palace. Is that what you’re
Peter Wehner 25:14
saying? I don’t know. It’s more than that. They do more than give him a pass and they defend it. They actively defend him and particularly his religious supporters, evangelical Christians. Now, that’s the hypocrisy, whatever criticisms one can have in my views, and that’s fine. You can’t accuse me of being hypocritical. And if you compare Trump’s lies to Clinton’s lies, I mean, we’re talking Major Leaguer versus a minor leaguer. Oh, they’re different times to you know, I agree. Listen, I wouldn’t trust Trump, you know, in the sense i don’t i think he does lie. Certainly. I think they all do though. I don’t know. No, no, no,
Jason Hartman 25:44
every Clinton is like a biggest liar. Ever. The Clintons are
Peter Wehner 25:48
so corrupt. Look, I’m not a defender of Hillary Clinton or Bill Clinton. I criticize them. Donald Trump is objectively in a category all his own. You can go through in my book, I document them the number of lies that he tells me They’re their lies that are unnecessary. He just told a lie yesterday in his interview with George Stephanopoulos. It’s an unnecessary lie. What was the lie? Well, there were several lies. One of them was on the polling data. They said that he’s behind in a number of states. He said there are no polls that show that they actually do have the polls. His people on his campaign released a reporters with the bulls were he kept insisting when Stephanopoulos talk to him about the Mahler report he quoted from the Muller report. And he asked Trump if he’d read the malla report he said he had and he kept insisting something that wasn’t true. The Washington Post keeps a chart of this of lies and misrepresentations. You may argue with some of them, but most of them are accurate. I’ve looked at them. There are 10,000 of them over the course of roughly 850 900 days, that comes out to about 12 a day. You have the president united states doing lie after lie after lie day after day after day, that affects a civic and a political culture and conservatives once cared about that, and they should care about it again. And then on top of that, Trump dehumanizes his opponents in it to agree he mocks people handicaps he mocks prisoners of war he mocks women for I tell you mama Obama did that to remember
Jason Hartman 27:06
Tony was on The Tonight Show and his you know Special Olympics comment
Peter Wehner 27:10
let me make a couple of points about that which is and I find this with Trump supporters which is every time that you press them on a point it’s what about Islam it’s they did this to know
Jason Hartman 27:18
I get it two wrongs don’t make a right I got it I understand
Peter Wehner 27:21
it’s more than that though. Okay. Whatever complaints you have about brock obama and again you can check my writings on him is critical with him when I believe he is in a different category if you think that brock obama dehumanized his opponents like Donald Trump, and then you’re all no no Obama
Jason Hartman 27:36
did not Obama had his flaws, but they were like a different set of lights. I you know, he was also Obama was very diplomatic and cool and right. You know, we I mean, we know what he was like, Okay.
Peter Wehner 27:48
Yeah. And I disagree with his policies, and I criticize them. I’m just saying and I understand people who disagree with me, but my argument my argument in the book, my argument since the book and and for the book, is that Donald Trump is doing A lot of damage I I’ll tell you what I would settle for I understand the argument of people like you. Some of you voted for Trump, conservatives, Christians, evangelicals, who say they voted that it was worth voting for Trump over over Clinton, I get that argument. I’ve never begrudge that. I just always lesser of two evils argument, you know, yeah, but but what I would appreciate, and I think would show more integrity is whether the people who voted for him would, at least from time to time, call him out and say, when you transgress these moral and civic lines, that it’s wrong, and I think that’s really a
Jason Hartman 28:31
problem. I’ve got a question for you. And we got to wrap it up, because we’re way past time. The death of politics. That’s the name of your book, right? Is it all Trump is all about Trump? I mean, that’s what we’ve been talking about. Anyone else guilty in this? Yeah.
Peter Wehner 28:46
You know, the the book itself is not primarily about Trump, okay. There are seven chapters, solo of them. He doesn’t appear at all, he makes some appearances in them. They just turned out that our conversation was focused on Trump. But I have a chapter on what politics is. So I talked about Locke, Aristotle and Lincoln. And it’s a story. It’s about ideas. It’s about compromise, civility and moderation. It makes the argument of what the proper role of faith and politics is it talks about why words matter. But it’s a book of stories. It’s a story about my own life and politics. But mostly it’s a story about the history of America, the Constitutional Convention and and Lincoln. And ultimately, although our conversation didn’t reflect it, it’s a book for hope, because I think what we have to do is we have to push back against the corrosive cynicism and fatalism that says, there’s nothing we can do that politics is irredeemably broken. And we just throw up our hands and give up on it because my argument is that politics is too important to give up on politics is finally and fundamentally about justice. We’ve had harder times in this country, certainly than we’re facing now. And we have it within our capacity to write wonderful news stories, wonderful new chapters in the American story, and I think we can do it and I try and pursue practically in the book, how you can do it. So ultimately, I care about politics. That’s why I wrote the book. And I did my best to show I think it’s worth defending and promoting for its good and for the good of the country.
Jason Hartman 30:07
Good stuff. Pete,
Peter Wehner 30:08
give out your website. Actually, if you go to ethics and Public Policy Center, that is where I work. I’m a senior fellow and that has that has my work. And then if you’re interested in articles, you can Google my name in the New York Times or my name in the Atlantic.
Jason Hartman 30:19
Excellent P. Wayne, or thanks for joining us.
Peter Wehner 30:21
Thanks so much. I enjoyed it. Appreciate it.
Jason Hartman 30:25
Thank you so much for listening. Please be sure to subscribe so that you don’t miss any episodes. Be sure to check out the show’s specific website and our general website Hartman. Mediacom for appropriate disclaimers and Terms of Service. Remember that guest opinions are their own. And if you require specific legal or tax advice, or advice and any other specialized area, please consult an appropriate professional. And we also very much appreciate you reviewing the show. Please go to iTunes or Stitcher Radio or whatever platform you’re using and write a review for the show. We would very much appreciate that and be sure to make it official and subscribe so you do not miss any episodes. We look forward to seeing you on the next episode.