Background Image

...

You Have A Country That Is 20 Percent Liberal, 40 Percent Conservative. You Have A Country Where Maybe 22 Percent Have Faith In Government. If You're A Liberal, It's Just Going To Be Tough. And You Should Just Expect That. And It's Tough For People On The Right, Too, Because They Don't Get What They Want Either If You're, Say, A Libertarian. So, You Have Got The Country Sort Of Against You. And, Nevertheless, You Have A President.

-David Brooks

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

You Have A Country

David Brooks

...

You Have A Country That Is 20 Percent Liberal, 40 Percent Conservative. You Have A Country Where Maybe 22 Percent Have Faith In Government. If You're A Liberal, It's Just Going To Be Tough. And You Should Just Expect That. And It's Tough For People On The Right, Too, Because They Don't Get What They Want Either If You're, Say, A Libertarian. So, You Have Got The Country Sort Of Against You. And, Nevertheless, You Have A President.

Views: 3

Topic

More From David Brooks

I Don't Think The Palestinians Are In This Position They're In, Divided With Hamas And The P.a., Unwilling To Allow - Or Recognize Israel As A Jewish State.

I've Observed A Few Things About The Few Really Great People I've Had A Chance To Meet And Cover...they Need To Be Around People. You And I Require Sleep. They Require People.

Funny Graduation

Marital Happiness Is Far More Important Than Anything Else In Determining Personal Well-being.

I Think The Twenty-first Century Happened, Basically. That This Century Started On 9/11. And Basically, It's Been A Century Of Counter Reaction To Globalization And The Meritocracy. And A Good Century For 72 Nations Have Gotten More Authoritarian. We've Had Brexit. We Have Le Pen Rising In France. We've Just Got A Lot Of These Types All Around The World. And The People Who Are Suffering From Globalization And The Meritocracy Are Saying, "no More. You Know, We Get A Voice Too."

If I Were Donald Trump, I Would Definitely Not Pick Mitt Romney Because It's Very Easy For Mitt Romney To Have Have A Separate Foreign Policy Operatus In The State Department That Would Run A Dissenting Foreign Policy From The White House Foreign Policy. There, I Think The Populist America-first Foreign Policy Of Donald Trump Does Run Against A Potential Rival.

The Rich Don't Exploit The Poor, They Just Out-compete Them.

Israel Is A Country Of Six Million People. They Need The U.s. It Used To Be Bipartisan On Israeli Politics. You Never Messed With That Relationship. The Fact That [ Benjamin] Netanyahu Is Willing To Do That, I Thought Would Horrify Voters More Than It Turned Out It Did.

My Colleague Ross Douthat Wrote That Any Time You Give Donald Trump The Benefit Of The Doubt, He Always Lets You Down.

Benefit Of The Doubt

People Want Reality That Tells Them How Right They Are All The Time.

It's Important For Presidents To Emotionally Connect, With The Country In Times Of Crisis, But Also With People In Washington. If You Can't Emotionally Connect - And [barack] Obama Is Not The Greatest, But He Can At Least Do It - Then People Won't Be With You When The Times Are Hard.

Since 2005, A Majority Of Americans, According To The Gallup Poll, Have Said It Was Wrong And A Mistake To Go Into Iraq.

It's Very Hard To Find An Evangelical Person Under 45, Let Alone On Some Of The Christian College Campuses, Who Has Any Tolerance For Donald Trump.

America Has An Important Role To Play As The World Leader In Creating A Global Order, Free Trade, Free Waterways, Free Commerce, Free Movement Of People. That Happens Because Of U.s. Military Might.

Populists Hate Journalists, They Hate Teachers, They Hate Lawyers, But They Tend To Like Rich People. There's Something Deeply Consistent.

I Think The Barack Obama Position And The Majority Position Of American Jews And A Lot Of Americans Is A Two-state Solution Between Israel And Palestine. Settlements Get In The Way Of That. If They're Not Stopped Soon, There Is No Prospect For That Type Of Solution.

The Daily Activity That Contributes Most To Happiness Is Having Dinner With Friends. The Daily Activity That Detracts Most From Happiness Is Commuting. Eat More. Commute Less.

Daily Activities

Donald Trump Just Needs The Ego Fed All The Time.

You Have A Country That Is 20 Percent Liberal, 40 Percent Conservative. You Have A Country Where Maybe 22 Percent Have Faith In Government. If You're A Liberal, It's Just Going To Be Tough. And You Should Just Expect That. And It's Tough For People On The Right, Too, Because They Don't Get What They Want Either If You're, Say, A Libertarian. So, You Have Got The Country Sort Of Against You. And, Nevertheless, You Have A President.

I Think As We Interpret Him And Frankly As The World Learns To Interpret Donald Trump, Are These Just Words That Are Enigmatic Things Floating On Air Or Are They Actually Shifts In Policy And Will They Change Moment By Moment, Day By Day Without Any Underlying Connection To The Actual Stuff Of Governance? I Don't Know.

When A President Speaks That Usually Means A Lot.

There Are No Free And Democratic And Wealthy Countries In The World That Have Us Rate Of Gun Violence. We Have To Worry About Loners And Alienated People. We Have To Do Better On Mental Health.

I Wasn't Born With A Tie Or With Mark Shields Stapled To My Left Hip. I Have Another Life.

Often, I Go And See Films Where I Can See The Beats Coming. So, If I Read Something Where I Don't See The Beats Coming And It Takes Me Somewhere Unexpected, That's A Great Thing To Build Upon.

The Moral Foundation Of The Society, The Way We Interact With Each Other Is More Fundamental Than The Supreme Court.

I've Argued That Trump's Biggest Success In His First 100 Days Was To Keep The Russia Story At Bay, Toss Out Whatever It Takes To Push The Story Back, Including Those False Charges That Obama Had His Wires Tapped.

Whatever It Takes

If You're A Soldier Or Marine In An Arab Country, Islam Is The Solution. And You Need To Show Respect.

I'm Beginning To Think [ted] Cruz Had A Good Convention, That If [donald] Trump Goes Down, Cruz Is Pretty Well Positioned To Be The Republican Major Figure In Four, Six Or Even Within Two Years.

I Think Trump's Attention Span Is Super Low. I Don't Think He Has The Expertise To Actually Run A Foreign Policy.

It's Almost Inherent, But I'm A Massive Stanley Kubrick Fan. I'm A Big Admirer Of What Guys Like Christopher Nolan Have Been Able To Do. For Me, To Be Able To Try To Make Big Films That Reach A Lot Of People, And That Hopefully Have Something To Say, Is A Lofty Goal, But That's My Goal.

If Donald Trump Is Just Tweeting About A Union Guy, Then He's Just Being The Bully We Have Seen. But If He Uses The Power Of The Presidency To Back Up Some Of Those Tweets And He's Really, Really Coming Down With A Hammer On People He Doesn't Like Using The Power Of The Presidency, Then We're Seeing Something Very New And Very Different.

You Have To Have A Plan, Or Else You're Just Creating A Recipe For Chaos.

Nonetheless, So Whether It's Unconstitutional Or Not [for Judges To Overruling Presidents], I Leave To Others.

Unconstitutional

As A Director, I Like Trying To Unlock The Subtext Of The Scene And Try To Put The Camera In A Place That Helps That.

I Think The Democrats Are Right To Protest, But I Don't Think Jeff Sessions Is So Far Out Of The Range Of Normalcy That He Shouldn't Be Confirmed.

You Have Got To Have Two Things In Education Reform. You Have Got To Have Some Flexibility, So People Can Figure Out What To Do. But You Also Have To Have Accountable, Basically What The Common Core Standards Were, Some Sort Of Set Of National Standards, So We Can Measure.

People Used To Complain That Selling A President Was Like Selling A Bar Of Soap. But When You Buy Soap, At Least You Get The Soap. In This Campaign, You Just Get Two Guys Telling You They Really Value Cleanliness.

Who Could Have Predicted This, That The Presidency Is Kind Of A Hard Job? Nobody Knew That. I Also Like The Fact That Trump Is A Detail-oriented Person. I Find His Interviews Amazing. He's Actually Kind Of Remarkably Candid.

The Republican Party Has Become An Ethnic Nationalist Party.

Republican Party

If You Go In A Confirmation Process, You're Going To Be Asked About The Embarrassing Or Stupid Things You Said. You Should Have A View.

That Is The Job Of The Catholic Church, To Be A Balance To The Materialistic Drives Of Our Culture And Of Economy.

If You Grow Up In A Home Where Actions Don't Lead To Predictable Consequences, You Don't Develop Strategies To Control Your Impulses.

Most Poor People In America Are White. The Family Breakdown Issue Is An Issue That Crosses All Sorts Of Racial Lines. High School Dropout Issues. But Because Of The Flow Of Events Which Involve The Racial Component, We've Sometimes Confused Racial Issues With Other Issues Which Are Trans-racial.

When You're In Governance, You Understand The Limitations And The Complexities Of Governance.

We Live In A Culture That Encourages Us To Be Big About Ourselves, And I Think The Starting Point Of Trying To Build Inner Goodness Is To Be A Little Bit Smaller About Yourself.

Britain Is Blessed With A Functioning Political Culture. It Is Dominated By People Who Live In London And Who Have Often Known Each Other Since Prep School. This Makes It Gossipy And Often Incestuous.

I Really Think Of [donald] Trump Erratic. I Think That Was The Big Message That Came Out. The Positive Agenda For Hillary [clinton] Was A Little Less Vibrant.

I'm A Pundit. I'm, Like, Paid To Be A Narcissistic Blowhard And Be In Front Of The Camera.

There Are Plenty Of Team Players In Government Who Do Whatever The Leader Says. There Are Too Few Difficult Members, Who Have Complicated Minds, Unusual Perspectives, The Toughness To Withstand The Party-line Barrages And A Practical Interest In Producing Results.

There Has Never Been Evidence That People From These [banned] Countries Are Disproportionately Likely To Commit Terrorist Acts. We Have Sent Chaos To The Airports. We Have Offended The World. We Have Derailed The Administration. We Have Done It In Such An Incompetent Way, The Administration Has, That People With Perfectly Legal Residence Have Been Widely Inconvenienced.

I Have Come To Think We Have To Treat Donald Trump's Tweets Like Snapchat. It's Just Something That Is Going To Go Away. And It Flies Out Of Some Region Of His Brain And It Goes Out Into The Ether. And Usually It's On The Realm Of Media.

If It's All Win-loss, Then You Do Whatever You Can To Win And To Make Money And To Beat The Deal.

The Idea That When You Correct A Fact, You Erase That Fact From People's Memories Is The Reverse Of The Truth. When You Correct A Fact, What You Do Is You Further Lodge That Fact Into People's Minds, And They Remember The Error.

Most Poverty And Suffering - Whether In A Country, A Family Or A Person - Flows From Disorganization. A Stable Social Order Is An Artificial Accomplishment, The Result Of An Accumulation Of Habits, Hectoring, Moral Stricture And Physical Coercion. Once Order Is Dissolved, It Takes Hard Measures To Restore It

Those Cultural Wars, Sexual Revolution Issues Are Fading From The Scene, And The Coming Generation Has Basically Settled Them.

I Don't Blame The Democrats For Fighting. They Have Got A Very Energized Base. And There Is A Lot To Complain About A Lot Of These Nominees. But I Think, If You Are Actually Going To Turn Someone Down From A President's [donald Trump] Own Cabinet, It Better Be A Lot More Egregious Than The Cases We Have Seen.

The Effectiveness Of A Group Of People Is Not Determined By Their Iq But By How Well They Communicate.

I Have Seen [betsy Devos] Present A Few Times. I Don't Really Know Her. But I Have Seen Her Present On Education Policy, And She's Not A Stupid Person.

The Teachers Union May Not Like Betsy Devos, But She's Clearly Within The Range Of Republican Policy-makers.

Politics Is Based On Social Identity, And So, Again, There Is Going To Be Differences Between Rural And Urban And Between Left And Right.

The Gun Becomes This Psychological Totem, This Thing Of Who I Am. And It's Almost As If Using The Gun Is Going To Be The Thing That's Going To Be My Expression Of How I Make A Difference In The World.

I Generally Think Debates Within A Party Should Not Be Treated As A Scandal. They Should Be Treated As A Sign Of Strength, To Be Honest.

I Think The Voters Who Voted For Donald Trump Certainly Are Willing To Tolerate A Lot Of Ugliness, But Maybe, If You're In Desperate Circumstances, Or You Think America Is Deeply In Trouble, You're Willing To Tolerate That Without Necessarily Liking It.

Civility Is The Natural State For People Who Know How Limited Their Own Individual Powers Are And Know, Too, That They Need The Conversation.

Individual Power

We Know The 65-point Policy Points, To The Extent That They Exist, But Is Hillary Clinton Willing To Be Vulnerable, Is She Willing To Be Funny, Is She Willing To Be Both Authoritative, But Also Real? And So Less What She Says Than The Emotional Tone She Sets. It Takes A Lot Of Confidence To Be A Vulnerable Speaker On This Stage. And Sometimes She Hasn't Always Projected The Confidence It Takes To Be In Some Ways Weak. But That's What I Think People Were Looking For, That Moment Of Human Connection.

When You Talk About The Problem Of Illegal Immigration, People Are Angry And Polarized. When You Talk About The Answers, The Debate Gets A Little Different.

It's Hard For Parents Just To Measure Schools.

Sometime Over The Past Generation We Became Less Likely To Object To Something Because It Is Immoral And More Likely To Object To Something Because It Is Unhealthy Or Unsafe. So Smoking Is Now A Worse Evil Than Six Of The Ten Commandments, And The Word Sinful Is Most Commonly Associated With Chocolate.

The Three People Who Are Most Often Talked About With Hillary Clinton, Whether It's Tim Kaine Or Vilsack Or Cory Booker, They Are Three Extremely Nice People.

Republicans Are Living In A Hermetically Sealed Republican Universe, Just As Democrats Are. And So They're Responding To Their Own Universe, Even If It Leads To Electoral Downfall.

For The Democrats, They're Trying To Avoid Having The Sanders-clinton Debate Over And Over Again. But, To Some Degree, They're Sentenced To That Debate. Clinton Is Much More Embracing Of The Global Economy And The International World Order. Sanders And Warren Are Much Less So. And They Have Got To Figure Out Which Side The Party Is On, If They're Going To Have A Clear Message. I Think This Is Probably One You Probably Can't Straddle.

People Tend To Marry People With Similar-width Noses, Eyes Similarly Apart, With Complementary Immune Systems.

The Ugliness Can Sometimes Be Super Ugly, But Also A Warning Sign Of Something Down Below.

Your Dvd Collection Is Organized, And So Is Your Walk-in Closet. Your Car Is Clean And Vacuumed, Your Frequently Dialed Numbers Are Programmed Into Your Cordless Phone, Your Telephone Plan Is Suited To Your Needs, And Your Various Gizmos Interact Without Conflict. Your Spouse Is Athletic, Your Kids Are Bright, Your Job Is Rewarding, Your Promotions Are Inevitable, Everywhere You Need To Be Comes With Its Own Accessible Parking. You Look Great In Casual Slacks.

There Is The English Language And Then There's The Trump Language.

English Language

I Would Have Swapped Out Donald Trump's Frontal Cortex For Somebody Else's For A Little More Self-control.

The Brain Is Not The Mind. It Is Probably Impossible To Look At A Map Of Brain Activity And Predict Or Even Understand The Emotions, Reactions, Hopes And Desires Of The Mind.

Liberals Lost Touch With Working-class Americans Because They Never Had To Have A Conversation About Values With Those Voters; They Could Just Rely On The Courts To Impose Their Views.

We Have Rapidly Increasing Technology, Which Is Making Life Very Good For People Who Are Good At Using Words, And Not So Good For People Who Are Not Good At Using Words.

Donald Trump Is Sort Of An Orwellian Figure, An Authoritarian Figure Who Is Twisting Words In An Orwellian Manner, "1984," To Exercise Power And Control People's Minds, Or Is He A 5-year-old Who Has An Ego That Needs To Be Fed, And The Universe Has To Warp Around His Ego Needs So He Can Feel Good About Himself, And Everybody Has To Produce Photos To Make The Monarch Feel Like He's Made Of Gold.

One Of The Things I Think About With Donald Trump Is What Are His Words Actually Attached To? With Trump, I'm Not Sure The Words Have Roots. They Are Emanations Of His Psyche, But Has He Thought It Through? Is There An Argument, Is There A Policy Implication?

The Question Is Whether Donald Trump Recognizes That Vladimir Putin Is A Bad Guy. And I Guess There's No Indication That He Regards Putin As In Any Way A Bad Guy.

Donald Trump Is This Whirling Dervish Of Chaos. He Picked A Fight With Mexico. Germany Is Not Far Behind. He Will Pick A Fight With Them. He Will Pick A Fight With China, Which Would Be Truly Cataclysmic.

It’s Not That Egypt Doesn’t Have A Recipe For A Democratic Transition. It Seems To Lack Even The Basic Mental Ingredients.

I Think Actually In Any Party It's A Sign Of General Health To Have Different Views, And Especially On The Subject Of Trade.

I Think, From A Progressive Point Of View, To Have A Democratic Congress And A Democratic White House, And To Have Spent The Time On Obamacare, Which Had Real Benefits, 20 Million Insured, But Not On Inequality, Was A Major Cost To The Democratic Party, Costing Them Their Majorities, But Also A Bit Of A Cost To The Country, Because It Didn't Address The Fundamental Issues That Led To Donald Trump And That Led To A Lot Of Unhappiness, Just The Continued Widening Inequality.

... Trash Talk ... Washington Floats On A River Of Aspersion.

Donald Trump Didn't Emerge From The Orthodoxy Of The Republican Party. And So There's Going To Be Bigger Differences Than Normal.

Putin's An Egomaniac, So There Are Two Ways He Can Process His Ego Mania. He Can Say, "oh, I Stood Up To The U.s.," Or, "hey, I'm Essential To The World Order."

One Of The Things Capitalism Does Is, It Does Enhance And Exacerbate The Sin Of Pride, Making Yourself, The Material World The Center Of Your Universe, Instead Of God's Will.

We Are Primarily The Products Of Thinking That Happens Below The Level Of Awareness.

Most People Don't Form A Self And Then Lead A Life. They Are Called By A Problem, And The Self Is Constructed Gradually By Their Calling.

Donald Trump Appalls Me. I Won't Be Shy About That.

I Wouldn't Say Philosophy And Theology Are Dead. Brain Science Doesn't Invent New Philosophies But It Helps Remind Us Which Of Our Existing Philosophies Are More True.

Friendship Allows You To See Your Own Life But With A Second Sympathetic Self.

I Do Think Economic And Social Anxiety Is The Number One Issue. And I'm Pretty Confident Hillary Clinton Will Be Really Riding That Train Pretty Hard.

With The Case Of [mike] Pence, Giving A Little Aurora Of Likability To A Candidate, A Lead Candidate Who's A Little Lacking In That Department.

The Core Threat To Democracy Is Not In The White House, It's The [bush] Haters Themselves.

There Will Just Always Be A Distance Between You And The People Around You. Now, [hillary Clinton] Can Clearly Emotionally Connect With Her Intimates Within The Zone Of Trust. It's Just The Wall Outside The Zone Of Trust Is So Impermeable.

There Is A Virtue In Shamelessness.

When Your Institution Is Under Threat, You Feel You Have A Lot Of Hostility, You Feel Things Are Slipping Away, You Have Got Internal Problems, There's A Tendency To Turn Inward And To Focus On Yourselves.

Fundamentalism Is Still On The March.

I'm Thankful That We Live In A Crassly Commercial, Polarized Culture, So Media Jackals Like Me Have A Lot Of Work To Do.

Emotion Is The Foundation Of Reason.

I Learned I'm Not A Science Writer. I'm Not Very Good At Describing How Something Is Happening. I Try To Describe "so What?"

[betsy Devos] Is Quite A Smart Person, Capable, Pretty Sophisticated In Subtle Thought. And So To Me, That Puts Her In The Realm Of Policy. But We're In A Climate Where, As Today, She Tries To Visit A School, And She Can't Even Do That Because Protesters Are Blocking That.

You Figure Out, What Is The Crucial Issue Facing The Country Right Now? And For Trump, It Was That The Global Economy And The International World Order Were Failing Regular People.

Of Course I Don't Know What's Going On In That Meeting On In The Mind Of Donald Trump. But I Do Know One Of The Things President Barack Obama Was Struck By Was How Much Time He Spent On Cyber-security As President. And One Of The Things He Said Was That, In The Years Ahead, The Next President Will Be Spending Even More Time. And Cyber-security Isn't A Thing That Goes Away After This Election. It's A Constant Flow.

I Do Think Donald Trump Is A Fundamentally Unstabilizing Force And That The People Who Swore To Uphold The Constitution Are Going To Have To Take Some Measures At Some Point.

For The Republican Convention, I Think Of Trump's Speech And Sort Of The Darkness, The Fear Of Crime, The Need For A Strong Arm Really, And So That One Core Theme.

Obamacare Is Woven Into The Fabric Of Health Care. It's Very Hard To Just Rip It Out, As Donald Trump Sort Of Acknowledged With The Wall Street Journal.

People Who Give Money In Large Amount In Politics Are Basically Not Altruistic. They Have Some Issue. They Have Some Interest. It May Be World Peace. It May Be Preserving Carried Interest. But It's Not Altruistic.

Through American History, We Have Had Populist Movements That Often, Often, Often Have This Ugly Racial Element. But, Often, There Are Warning Signs Of Some Deeper Social And Economic Problem.

If I Had To Fault President [barack] Obama, I Would Say That Sometimes Governs Like A Visitor From A Morally Superior Civilization.

I Do Not Believe That Anything Like What Donald Trump Just Proposed Is Going To Get Through Congress. Those Deductions Have A Lot Of Defenders. The Idea That They're Going To Completely Explode The Deficit Is Just A Party Killer For The Republican Parties.

The North Korean Regime Is Extremely Fiery, Extremely Insecure, Sometimes Hysterical. And When You're Around Somebody Who's Screaming And Unstable, The Last Thing You Want To Do Is Add To The Instability With Your Own Unstable, Hysterical Rhetoric.

The Legitimacy Of A War Is Not Established By How It Is Organized But By What It Achieves.

When You Get A Big Crisis, Everyone Wants Somebody With Some Experience And Some Credibility.

If You Know That Most Processing Is Below The Level Of Awareness, You Learn The Value Of Sleep. You're Brain Is Working On The Problem Anyway.

As For Multimillionaires [in Donald Trump's Administration], A Lot Of Us Hope To Be A Multimillionaire Some Day. Again, Spotty Records, But It Seems To Be Not Without The Range.

Maybe You're Willing To Tolerate A Lot Of Bigotry From Donald Trump If You Say, Just Change Things, Just Change Things.

We Still Are America Though. We're Still A Country That Is A Country Of Social Mobility. We're Still A Country Of Immigrants. We're Still A Country With Common Ancestors. And Reviving The Civics Of America And The Idea That We're Going To Be United, At Least Not Right Now, But In Some Common Future, And Talking In That Hopeful Way That Martin Luther King Did, That Abraham Lincoln Did, Seems To Me That's The Way.

If You Thought Donald Trump Was Going To Be Swallowed Up By The Conventional Republican Party Or By Washington, You Were Wrong.

Bragging About What A Good Deal You Got Is One Of The Many Great Art Forms That My People, The Jews, Have Introduced To American Culture.

Barack Obama Won Such A Big Electoral Mandate Because A Lot Of People Thought He Was - Transcended Partisan And Ideological Barriers And Was Going To Put Aside The Old Debates. So, He Was Able To Get A Lot Of Moderates And A Lot Of Independents.

If We Are Going To Stop Wars On This Earth, We Are Going To Have To Make War On Hunger Our Number One Priority.

Certainly, The Country Can't Have Two Presidents At Once, So The Tradition Has Been To Hang Back If You're The President-elect And Wait For Your Time In Office. [donald] Trump Is Not A Hang-back Kind Of Guy.

On The [betsy] Devos Case, I Agree That The Gun - Her Gun Position Is Kind Of Weird, Kind Of Crazy, But I Do Think She Does Know About Public Schools.

Donald Trump Tried To Set Up This Debate Where It Was Going To Be Globalists Vs. Nationalists, And The Republicans Were Going To Be The Nationalists. But, If Anything, The Democrats Looked More Patriotic And More Nationalist At The End Of These Two.

Democrats In Environmental Agencies Tend To Be More Sensitive To Environmental Harm. And Republicans Tend To Be More Sensitive To Business Harm.

President Obama Was The First President Not To Abide By The Limits In The General Election.

Our Emotions Tell Us What To Value. They're Like A Little Gps System: Go That Way. Don't Go That Way.

Stairway To Wisdom”) David Brooks Detailed The Needed Ingredients To Gaining A Deep Understanding Of A Social Problem, Beginning With The Data And Moving On To First-hand Accounts. The Highest Rung On His Stairway, Though, Went Beyond Those: “empathy Opens You Up To Absorb The Good And The Bad. Love Impels You Not Just To Observe But To Seek Union—to Think As Another Thinks And Feel As Another Feels.

A Lot Of People Think Barack Obama Should Have Responded To The Russian Hacking Of The U.s. Elections Weeks Ago, Months Ago. So These Happened On His Watch. There's Nothing Wrong With Him Dealing With It.

Pain Now Is Better Than Pain Deferred.

I'm Not A Kicker And A Screamer.

When You're Running For President You Have To Take Some Risks And You've Got To Show People Something Fresh And You've Got To Stay Interesting.

I Came To The Conclusion Is That We Have A Very Shallow View Of Human Nature In The Policy World. We're Really Good At Talking About Material Things, Really Bad At Talking About Emotions, Really Good At Stuff We Can Count, Really Bad At The Deeper Stuff That Actually Drives Behavior.

I Think There Are Two Basic Approaches You Can Use For Campaign Finance. One Is Complete Openness, Everybody Knows Absolutely Everything, But No Limits. But You Let People Decide.the Other Is Just Have A National Public System.

The People Who Really Have Character Make Deep, Unshakable Connections To Something Outside Themselves.

It's Just A Lot Safer To Be An Incumbent. So I Think They Have Used The Campaign Finance Reforms. They Have Passed Laws That Will Help Themselves Stay In Office. And I Think That's One Of The Flaws That We Do Have In The System.

I Generally Think The President [donald Trump] Should Get His Cabinet Picks, Unless They're Egregiously Out Of The Range, Either Ethically Or Intellectually Out Of The Range Of What's Acceptable.

I'm Of Course Nostalgic For Barack Obama All Of A Sudden.

The Madman Theory Is That You Can Be A Successful Deterrer If You - If They Think You Could Be Crazy. And So I Think It Can Be Very Effective, So Long As You're Not Actually Crazy.

[donald Trump] Has Shifted - President [barack] Obama Has Shifted American Policy In A Much More Critical Way In Israel With The Settlements Than The Previous Presidents.

The Idea That A Big Country Is Going To Go Out And Send Troops Into Some Country To Take Their Resources, And Then The Rest Of The World Is Going To Somehow Trust Us Is Just A Ridiculous Notion.

Donald Trump's Ego Is Like A Comet The Size Of Jupiter Just Traveling Through The Solar System, And We All Have To Be Affected By Its Gravitational Pull.

Empathy Makes You More Aware Of Other People's Suffering, But It's Not Clear It Actually Motivates You To Take Moral Action Or Prevents You From Taking Immoral Action.

When You Cover Politics, You Realize That Knowing How To Talk About Character Matters More And More. The Way We Hold Ideas Is More Important Than The Ideas.

Populists Love Rich People. They Just Hate Professionals.

[betsy Devos] Does Care About Charter Schools, Which Are Public Schools. She Does Care About Choice, Which Is A Perfectly Legitimate Thing To Care About. It's Because It's The One Issue Where The Democratic Donor Base Was Really Energized, Which Was The Teacher Unions.

The More People Doubt Their Own Beliefs The More, Paradoxically, They Are Inclined To Proselytize In Favor Of Them.

I Want To Make Big Films. That's Always Been My Ambition.

If You Do Something Really Cognitively Demanding, Like Buying Furniture, It Turns Out Buying Furniture Is One Of The Most Difficult Things We Do. Go Into A Furniture Store And Look At A Sofa.

Some Children Lack Tools To See Their Course In The World In Far-sighted Ways. Just Introducing School Vouchers Won't Change That. You Have To Have Nurse-home Partnerships, Early Childhood Education, Mentoring Programs And So On. People Learn From People They Love.

I Think Americans Expect Optimism In Their Leadership. The Most Popular And Effective Leaders, Whether It Was Bill Clinton Or Ronald Reagan Or Jack Kennedy, Brought To It A Sense Of Optimism And Possibility.

Two Terrible Behaviors Don't Make A Good Behavior.

The Reason The Betsy Devos Case Was The Centerpiece Case For The Democrats Wasn't About Her Weakness As A Knowledgeable Person On Education Policy.

Knowledgeable Person

I Expect [donald] Trump To Do What He's Done Very Successfully, Which Is, Whether You Like Him Or Not, He Will Be The Dominant Player .

We Live In A Culture Of A Big Me. We're Encouraged - We Raise Our Kids To Think How Great They Are, Where We Have To Market Ourselves To Get Through Life. We're In Social Media, Where We Broadcast Highlight - Highlight Reels Of Our Own Lives On Facebook.

The Drugs Are Just Growing All Around The Country, And So, It All Feeds Into Problems That Are Not Just Urban, But Are Just Spread Throughout The Country.

Charter Schools Are Public Schools. They're Paid For Publicly And They're Part Of The Public System. They Just Have A More Independent Structure.

To Explain The Unknown By The Known Is A Logical Procedure; To Explain The Known By The Unknown Is A Form Of Theological Lunacy.

I Just Think, Realistically, There's A Lot Of Room Outside The Trump Populist Right And The Bernie-sanders-elizabeth-warren Populist Left. There Are A Lot Of Us Who Believe In Open Trade, Open Borders, A Dynamic Forward-looking Economy, Not A Nostalgic Economy, But Do Want To Provide A Significant Level Of Social Service Or Sort Of Economic Milton Friedman Foreign Policy, Ronald Reagan Domestic Policy, Franklin Roosevelt. And There's A Lot Of Room In The Center.

In My View, Success Is Earned Externally By Being Better Than Other People. But Character, That Sort Of Unfakeable Goodness, Is Earned By Being Better Than You Used To Be. And It's About Self-confrontation.

The Things That Make Them Similar - Their Machismo, Their Expansionary Braggadocio - Is Going To Turn Them I Think Into Bitter And Dangerous Enemies. We Will Look Back On This Moment Where We Thought Vladimir Putin And Donald Trump Were Sort Of Close As A Moment Of Bitter Irony, When They Get Into A Schoolyard Display Against Each Other, Amping Up Each Other's Worst Tendencies And Putting The Two Countries In Some Sort Of Scary Position.

No Matter Where You Are On Politics, I Think It Is Wonderful To See Candidates Funding Campaigns Not By Talking To A Very Small Number Of Very Rich People, But By Reaching Out To A Very Large Number Of Citizens.

Almost Every Successful Person Begins With Two Beliefs: The Future Can Be Better Than The Present, And I Have The Power To Make It So.

With A Normal President Like President [barack] Obama, He Says A Word, And That's Because There Has Been Some Thought That He's Done And There Had Been Policy Papers And There's Been Aides And There's Been Advisers And Then There Is A Connection To An Actual Set Of Policies. And So, The Words Like Have Roots Into Actual Stuff.

The Idea That Russia Felt Emboldened And Apparently Fearless To Go Into Our Election And Manipulate Our Own Election Process, Whether Successfully Or Not, Is A Sign That They Are Outside The Norms Of Normal Society.

Election Process

Benjamin Netanyahu Is A Fascinating Figure.we Say Nixonian About A Lot Of People. He Really Is Nixonian. He's Brilliant. He's Very Isolated And Insular.

Students Are Too Busy Jumping Through The Next Hurdle In The Résumé Race To Figure Out What They Really Want. They Are Too Frantic Tasting Everything On The Smorgasbord To Have Life-altering Encounters. They Have A Terror Of Closing Off Options. They Have Been Inculcated With A Lust For Prestige And A Fear Of Doing Things That May Put Their Status At Risk.

Donald Trump's World View Is That It's A Dangerous, Miserable Place, People Are Out To Get Him, And He Needs To Strike Them First.

We Are A Democratic, Egalitarian People Who Spend Our Days Desperately Trying To Climb Over Each Other.

I'm Not The Most Emotionally Attuned Guy In The World. My Wife Says That Me Writing About Emotion Is Like Gandhi Writing About Gluttony.

It's Always Dangerous To Overinterpret What Donald Trump Says At Any One Moment.

[donald Trump] Will Be The One On Offense. He Will Be The One Serving Volleys, And It May Be Some Weird Stuff About The Russians, But He Will Be Controlling Things A Little More Than He Probably Did Over The Last Two Weeks.

I Can't Imagine That Being In The Trump Cabinet Will Be A Very Important Job. I Do Think This Will Be A White House-run Administration With A Teeny-tiny Group Of People Surrounding Him, Including His Family Maybe.

Russia Has A Very Sophisticated, Advanced Attack On U.s. Businesses And U.s. Government And U.s. Institutions. And It's Not Like Donald Trump Is Going To Be Walking Away From This. He Will Be Spending A Lot Of Time On It, If He's Any Sort Of Normal President.

Even In This Nuclear Thing, [ Donald Trump] Says We Should Be Stronger And Expand. What Does That Mean? So, What Is Concrete In What He's Saying?

Tim Kaine Has Been Obviously A Governor. He's Been A Senator. He's One Of The Smartest Rising Stars In The Democratic Party. He Is Very Plausible As Someone Who Could Sit In And Be President.

Betsy Devos Is Not The Most Informed Person On Education Policy, But I Have Seen Her Present A Few Times, And She Presents As A Pretty Respectable, Intelligent Person Who Has Cared Passionately About Education And Cares About Charter Schools.

I Certainly Hear A Lot Of People Say That Donald Trump Not Only Incited Some Bad Things. He Also Exposed Some Things. He Exposed Pain In America That A Lot Of Us Didn't Have The Full Extent Of, Some Of The Divisions And Chasms In The Country.

What's Sort Of Remarkable Is That, Especially In The Israel And The Russia Cases, You Have Got A U.s. Citizen, Donald Trump, Siding With A Foreign Leader Against The U.s. President. There Is A Reason Why President-elects Have Tried To Remain Mute During Their Transitional Periods, Relatively, Because You Just Don't Want To Be For Somebody - Some Other Country Against Your Own Government, And Especially When You're About To Take The Helm Of That Government.

I Think Barack Obama's Foreign Policy Will Be Regarded More Failure Than Success.

People Who Don't Like Trump Really Don't Like Trump. And I Guess I'm Among Them.

There Was This Famous Clash Of Civilization Thesis From Samuel Huntington, A Political Theorist. And The Idea Was That Western Civilization Is At War With Islam And Maybe Some Of The Other Civilizations Around The World. And I Don't Agree With That. But I Do Think There Is Such A Thing As Western Civilization. I Think It Starts With The Greeks And The Romans. Then It Goes Through The Enlightenment - Or The Reformation, The Enlightenment. It Goes Through The Scientific Age. And It Somewhat Defines Some Of The Cultures And Mores Of Europe And North America And Some Other Countries.

Politics Really Is A Team Sport. You Really Have To Work The Whole System To Get Somewhere Down The Road.

Labor-rich Manufacturing Doesn't Exist Anymore. Manufacturing Jobs Are White-collar, Silicon Valley Programmers Or Highly-skilled Technicians. They Are Not Going To Employ Lots Of People.

A Heroic Moral Victory For The New York Mets. It May Be The Only Kind Of Victory We're Achieving This Season, But He Set A Good Example For Professional Athletes And The Rest Of Us.

People Generally Overestimate How Distinct Their Lives Are, So The Commonalities Seemed To Them Like A Series Of Miracles.

The Policies Of The Democratic Party Have Always Been In Cultural Consonance With The Culture Of The Working Class. And, Somehow, They Missed That.

The Roots Of Great Innovation Are Never Just In The Technology Itself. They Are Always In The Wider Historical Context. They Require New Ways Of Seeing. As Einstein Put It, 'the Significant Problems We Face Cannot Be Solved At The Same Level Of Thinking We Were At When We Created Them.'

Trade Has Suddenly Become Massively Unpopular. I Think That's Massively Unjust. I Think Free Trade Has Been Wonderful For America On Balance.

People Have Been Raised In A Morality That Says, "if It Feels All Right For You, It's Probably Ok."

I Do Think Hillary Clinton Should Have Pivoted And Say, I Am Change, I Am Change, Because People Do Want Some Change.

The Government Is Supposed To Provide A Level Playing Field Where People Can Compete Fairly. It's Not Supposed To Cut Deals With One Company Or Another To Do So.

If Done Correctly, These Techniques Can Allow The Bobo Pilgrim To Have 6 Unforgettable Moments A Morning, 2 Rapturous Experiences Over Lunch, 1,5 Profound Insights In The Afternoon (on Average), And .667 Life-altering Epiphanies After Each Sunset.

Clearly, Politics Is A Team Sport. Trump Is Not So Much Of A Team Player.

It's Hard To Imagine A Party That Is Not Corrupted By Hatred.

When You're Running For President, You're A Guest In The Living Room For Four Years. And If People Don't Think You're Going To Be Around The Living Room As A Pleasant Experience, They're Not Going To Vote For You Even If They Agree With You.

Trending Author

James Longstreet

Johannes Kepler

Category