Robert Doar on Think Tanks and Scholarship

What does it actually mean to run a think tank, to create harmony within an office building full of idea-confident folk? Some have called the think tank a monastery, some have called it an academic social club, and some have even called it a policy incubator. What truly is it and how on earth do you lead one? 

Leading a think tank is a multifaceted job, because you have your own scholarship to do too. Today, I’m excited to welcome the president of AEI, Robert Doar, to the podcast for a similarly multifaceted conversation. Doar talks to us about his work on poverty and, more recently, the Nixon impeachment, as well as his job as the president of AEI. Stay with us till the end to hear us talking about our favorite books!


Want to explore more?

• Daniel Rothschild on Liberalism and Think Tanks, a Great Antidote podcast.
• Yesim  Sayin on the DC Life and Policy, a Great Antidote podcast. 
• Undivide Us: Ben Klutsey on Exploring and Confronting Polarization, a Great Antidote podcast.
• Max Borders, Can We Have Welfare Without the Threat of Violence? at Econlib.
• Richard Gunderman, Joy in Economics...And Tolstoy? at Econlib.

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Transcript

Juliette Sellgren 

Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition. Hi, I'm Juliette Sellgren and this is my podcast, the Great Antidote named for Adam Smith, brought to you by Liberty Fund. To learn more, visit www.AdamSmithWorks.org. Welcome back. Today on July 17th, 2024, we're going to be getting at the heart of an institution that I really respect- the think tank in particular. I'm excited to talk to Robert Doar, the president of the American Enterprise Institute or AEI, a specific think tank that I adore. He worked for George Pataki, am I pronouncing that right?

Robert Doar 

That's correct.

Juliette Sellgren 

And then Michael Bloomberg of New York in Social Services, so for the government. And then he came to AEI as a scholar working on welfare reform, various things. And then for the past five years, he's been the president of AEI. We're going to be looking at questions like what does it mean to be outside of academia? What is it like to be the president of such an inter realm institution? How does the think tank interact with current events? All that and more to come. Welcome to the podcast.

Robert Doar (1.27)

I'm glad to be here, Juliette, I really appreciate it, and I really love the fact that you said that you adored AEI. We don't often hear that word used for us and we appreciate it greatly. There's much to adore about AEI.

Juliette Sellgren 

And we will get into that. But first, what is the most important thing that people my age or my generation should know that we don't?

Robert Doar (1.52)

Well, I worry that there's quite a lot that you don't know that I wish you did know. When I was thinking about you did give me a little hint that you might ask me that question. And so I was thinking about it and I said, well, have you seen On the Waterfront? Have you seen Shane? Have you seen Roman Holiday? Do you know these great movies of our past? Unfortunately in America, what's your answer on those three? Have you seen any of them?

Juliette Sellgren 

No, but they're going on the list right now.

Robert Doar (2.21)

Okay. Do you believe in America? Do you know why you should believe in America? Do you know the difference between a pure democracy, which we're not, and a republic, which we are? And it was true for me when I was your age too. So I want to be fair, there's so much to learn out there and about our country and about our history and about each other, and people who are 21 or 22 or 19 or whatever age you are, have a lot to learn as they did when I was that age as well. But I would want you to put a more attitude. I think there's so much more to celebrate about life than our popular culture tells us.

Juliette Sellgren (3.14)

It's funny for being a popular culture that we all share. It tends to be kind of whiny. So are there moments in your life where this became apparent to you- that not only the subject you were learning about, but the fact that you were learning and that learning in general was important? Were there moments when that became?

Robert Doar (3.37)

Yes. When I got my first job in government working for Governor George Pataki in 1995, I went to Princeton. I thought I was a pretty smart person. I had done well in school and I read newspapers and kept up to date and came from a lovely family and read lots of books. But in order to be a good administrator or good leader in a government agency or in any enterprise, you got to know the facts. You got to study up. You got to start clean and learn from the beginning and get the basics down. And I was put in charge of a fairly technical government agency, the Child Support Enforcement program in New York State. And I loved the fact that I was having to learn and that I didn't come at it thinking I knew it all. And by forcing myself to talk to everybody and read everything, I acquired a lot of knowledge that I didn't have before.

And also I was desperate for it because I really want to do a good job. And so when you're tasked with a challenge to accomplish an end with a team, that's when you really read the instruction book and you really dig it out and go at it paragraph by paragraph because if you miss something, you'll do something wrong and you'll fail and you don't want to fail. So if your question was, was there ever a time when the value of learning was really clear to me, and one way in which I did the learning was that in New York State, we're in New York state, we were the home of Franklin Roosevelt and Nelson Rockefeller and we had all kinds of smart people and we were the Empire State. And New Yorkers have a tendency to think they know it all and that they do things better than anybody else.

And what I learned when I was a state official was that I learned the most when I left New York and find out what North Carolina was doing and what Wisconsin was doing and what Iowa was- all kinds of places. And breaking out of that arrogant perception that no place like New York and we are the best really made me much better at my job because it turned out that the challenges that were being faced in those other print solutions that I was able to copy and bring back to the State House in Albany and apply to the project I had in front of me.

Juliette Sellgren (6.11)

That's funny that you put it like that because I returned from Europe cavorting with my friends from school, and we were there for a month. We went to so many different countries, more countries than I've ever been to in my whole life. And I realized that I like the American way, but it…

Robert Doar 

Keep going. I completely understand that and I get that, but that's a sad story about Europe.

Juliette Sellgren 

Yeah, that is the sad story about Europe especially because Europe in a lot of ways gave birth to what we have today here or I guess a reaction to it. 

Robert Doar (6.57)

So it’s a long story about the influence of the British and European values and enlightenment on the United States, and there's a lot of truth to that. But one of the great things about the history of America is we created a new world. I love the reference to the North American continent as the new world, and we had that opportunity. There's the great lines from Gatsby where about the sort of man holding its breath in awe at the first glimpse of the new world.

Juliette Sellgren (7.32)

I love that. I also think it must be different because when I go to Europe, I see things that we luckily don't have or that we're fighting against in certain ways economically and otherwise. Whereas going to North Carolina from New York and coming from a tradition of a state that is so well welfare oriented relative to other states and working in that space, I don't know, was it shocking?

Robert Doar (8.09)

Well, you're raising very good core conservative-free market-libertarian values. New York State's government was bigger than anyone else, and yet our outcomes for people who struggle were worse than many, many other states. And so the classic statistic, which is still true, probably more true, is that we spend two or three times what anybody else did per capita on public health insurance. And yet our outcomes and our quality of our healthcare was way below what the lesser government approaches were. I've just come from reviewing a paper which is going to show that opportunity upward mobility for low income and low income black children especially is greater in places like Texas than it is in places like Washington DC. And yet the popular culture perception would be that, oh no, it's better to be poor and black in Washington DC than it is to be poor and black in Texas. But the fact is that's really not true. Housing is less expensive. There's more employment opportunities, schools are better. How could that be? And according to popular culture, only the Democrats know how to help and lead people that struggle or are racial or ethnic minorities, and that's clearly not true.

Juliette Sellgren 

So how did your experience working for government lead you to AEI?

Robert Doar (9.42)

Well, so I joined the Pataki administration at a really interesting time in American social policy history because that was right when President Clinton and New Gingrich, governor Pataki, mayor Giuliani in New York City, governor Thompson in Wisconsin, governor Engler in Michigan, and many others were deciding to significantly change our welfare cash assistance or our cash welfare system in the United States from one that provided aid without any expectation that someone go to work or make some effort to one that conditioned the aid on effort, on work, on participating in activities that would lead to work. And that was a big change. We had a kind of entitlement rights-based welfare system previous after the Clinton Welfare performed Bill and after Governor Pataki was elected and Mayor Giuliani was elected, we put in place a much more stringent set of welfare policies that said to people, we will help you, but you need to make some efforts and if you don't, we will terminate your benefits.

And that was a tremendous change for an entire system, entire state. And I was very involved in that. And there was some uncertainty, Juliette, that this would work. Congressman Lewis famously said that welfare reform was going to lead to children and mothers and children being caught in the gutter of America. And it turned out that imposing those requirements led to people complying with those requirements. It wasn't so much that we took people by their hands and got them a job. It was that they said, oh, if those are the rules, I can do that. And they had much more potential, much greater work incentive. And when they saw that they went to work and things got better. And there's a whole lot of literature on all kinds of outcomes for the lowest income Americans improving in the late nineties and two thousands and even up till today in this new welfare reform period.

And so when you have that kind of practical experience implementing at a large scale New York State and New York City values that come from, and actually did come from scholars who were at a I that makes you very attractive to a i and they say, Hey, wait a minute, here's somebody that doesn't, not only thinks about it and writes about it, but he's done it. And why don't we have someone like that around here who can tell us what it was really like on the front lines? And so when I came to Washington, I had that sometimes you're in a conversation with somebody who's a PhD at Harvard, Yale or Princeton or University of Ohio or wherever, and they're looking at it from a very academic perspective. They're valuing data sets, they're putting out very fancy papers, but they've never actually run the food stamp program or provided, conducted an interview with a food stamp applicant or recipient of public health insurance or cash.

And when I could join the conversation and say, I've read all your papers, but I've also done this and seen it in action, that gave my work and my positions on various issues a little greater credibility. Now obviously we applied all of the disciplines that are expected of an AEI scholar, but it isn't a question I had certain everybody has their own advantages. Juliette, you'll find out in life and you want to maximize those. For me, in the public discussion of social services and public assistance, my advantage was that I had been an administrator of the largest local department of social services in the country and I had actually run programs that provided more a to more people than pretty much anybody else in the national discussion. And that's what made me valuable to AEI. And that's why I had such a nice time as a scholar those first five years.

Juliette Sellgren (14.02)

I like that thought of everyone has their advantages. Not only is it very comparative advantage, but it kind of captures the idea that it's not just an economic thing, it's an economic thing because it's a life thing. And I think we get the direction of that wrong a lot of the time. So I really like how you put that. My next question, I'm maybe prefacing it with what I think part of the answer is, but I would like to hear your take on it.

Robert Doar 

That's okay. I'd like to hear what you think that's good.

Juliette Sellgren 

I see the think tank as, I mean maybe I also said this at the beginning of the interview as this uniquely positioned institution that is kind of between the public and the academics intersection of all of these groups trying to work together and kind of more or less trying to work towards the same thing. And it seems as though your work also uniquely positioned you like a think tank to do that. And so how did you become the president of AEI and is it that…

Robert Doar (15.16)

Well, I'm really glad you say that we are at the intersection because that puts us, it makes me sound like people have to go through us to get to their outcomes. And that's actually not true. We are a little bit on the sideline. We're not in government, we're not in our views and our positions and our reports and our data into the discussion. We have to hustle. We have to get using, continuing the metaphor of an intersection. We have to get our signs up and we got to get our marketing materials ready and we got to make sure people see us and see what we do. And that's what we do. And so we're a participant in the national discussion and we can either participate aggressively and every day and on a broad range of issues. And I vary in the discussion and in the fight on a daily basis.

So that leads to how I became president, the board and the leadership here and the supporters of AEI wanted a president who would be that kind of leader who would be not esoteric, not ivory tower, but really focused on how can we take the work our scholars do and have it have impact on the public discussion in Congress at the White House in the state houses. And I'm good at that. That's what they chose me and that does make us a little different. We're much more in the world. We're not an ivory tower. Some places choose to be at ivory tower and that's a very nice thing and you can produce wonderful work there, but it's not what our board and our leadership wanted us to be. It's not how I would want to lead AEI. And so I think that's why I was chosen.

The other thing, Juliette, you're going to learn in life is that you can know a lot and you can think a lot and you can be an amazing writer and communicator and researcher, but there is a certain specific skill of management of how do you come into the building as a leader and set an example, pull people together, manage disagreements, manage personnel, make promotions, make demotions lead the culture and spirit of a community. That is a workplace. And that's a special skill. I think I'm pretty good at it and I like it. I like doing that. Some other people don't. But I told the board and I've exhibited those qualities when I was in New York that I was prepared to do them here. And that's another reason why I am the president- because I care about leading in a way that establishes a strong culture and that strong culture, if it's established correctly, can lead to even better outcomes by the scholars in the building and by their staff that's helping them. And I think we've done that, but we'll have to talk about, we'll have to see what the test of time shows.

Juliette Sellgren (18.23)

I like this idea because people, ideas mean nothing. Action means nothing, is not even possible without people. The people who came before, the people who are doing it now, the people who will be affected by it. And so if there's not a thought towards those people, then you can't really get anywhere. So I really appreciate this. What is your role? I mean you described it maybe at a high level, but what does your role entail and was there anything unexpected or that you took on that look like

Robert Doar (19.07)

The president of AEI has to do a lot of things. One of the things we have to do is raise money. So I'm on the road pitching and telling people about how great our scholars’ work is and how impactful it is, and that requires me to master their work in a way that I can communicate well to people that might support us with financial contributions. We're a not-for-profit, so we rely on the generosity of our friends. And so that's one thing I knew that going in that's clearly a clear, obvious part of the job up. I hire people and that's a really important skill to pick good people and bring them. I brought Yuval Levin to AEI. I brought Adam White to AEI, I brought Matt Continenti to AEI. I brought Kori Schake to AEI. I brought roots [?]. 

Juliette Sellgren 

That’s a good lineup.

Robert Doar (19.55)

So I brought a lot of wonderful people and I also nurture and support the people that were already here so they're happy and appreciate being here and are more productive. So that's a big part of what I do as the president. I don't really evaluate the individual work that closely. That's done more by the various respective research coordinators or deans of the various departments. But I do keep an eye on it, and I watch out for problems with quality or issues that cause us concerns that we protect our reputation. I report to the board and manage all the sort of operations of the building and the institute, and I also am expected to participate in the public debate in my own way. Now I have a particular expertise on poverty policy, and so I write for the Wall Street Journal or she's concerning public policy affecting low-income Americans.

And that's important. An AEI president should also participate in his or her discipline that keeps you sharp and keeps you in the discussion. Occasionally I'll comment on issues broader than that by going on the road and speaking about what the broad issues our country faces and why our scholars work is so important. So I do that. The last thing that I do that I didn't really appreciate as much and that I like doing, but it was a little bit of a surprise, is we do do a lot of convenings and gatherings of our supporters and of leading political figures for day or two day long conferences. And at those, I've got a very discerning population who've been to a lot of things and they've been entertained and educated by wonderful entertainers and educators and care deeply about our country and want to discuss and gather in a community where those discussions can be had at a very high level, AEI sophisticated level.

And that sort of circus leader, three leader putting on a show. I feel sometimes like I'm at Ed Sullivan again, you probably don't know who Ed Sullivan is, but I've got to put on a show every year where I make people be stimulated and thrilled by the discussion. And that requires recruiting people and finding people who are saying really interesting things that are new so that people can feel like they came to this gathering and had a great time. Now, I've spent too much time on this topic, but the point is is that that task is actually kind of tricky, and I had never done that before and I've done it pretty well since I've come here. But it is a challenge.

Juliette Sellgren 

It does sound like a challenge because it's like being a host, but a large scale host.

Robert Doar

Yes, I'm a big host. That's exactly right.

Juliette Sellgren 

It's good. Hosting is fun. Hosting is how you build a community, among other things.

Robert Doar 

That's right.

Juliette Sellgren 

It's how you become an institution.

Robert Doar 

That's right.

Juliette Sellgren (23.12)

I seriously, I mean, I said earlier that I adore AEI because AEI has just provided so much for me and honestly for young life in DC. I know a lot of people my age because of AEI, and I've learned a lot of things because of AEI. And it's more than just a building, although the building's really beautiful. It's this idea of what it means to be together. So you're very good at hosting and coordinating hosts. 

Robert Doar (23.45)

I would say I'm really glad you said that because AEI, and people do not understand this, AEI is a very young place. Our core workers are our research assistants who are just out of college and work for two or three years for scholars. We have a lot of them, and they come from all over the country and are really wonderful. And they join this community, and we do a lot to make sure that there is a community of gatherings and meals and parties so that they get to know each other, they learn from each other, and we give them opportunities to learn and do right and think in a way that the scholars are also learning and writing and thinking. And then we also have a big group of interns, and we have a big group of college kids who affiliate with us either through being part of a club that we nurture on their campus or through our summer honors program where we have 400 or 500 kids every summer come and take classes with AEI scholars.

And so when you're in our building on any given day, it's full with people that are between 19 and 28. And I love that. And I also believe Juliette, that the people that I'm getting to know in those age groups are going to lead America. And in fact, I've seen it already. People that have been young people here are now big shot editors of publications or clerks to Supreme Court justices or major aids over in the Senate. And there'll be more than that in future years. And AEI takes that responsibility of exciting people about ideas and about America very seriously. And we don't do it as a sidelight, we do it as a core function because states requires our people to be smart and public minded and thoughtful and deep in a way that we don't often appreciate. It is in order to be a self-governing country with the system we have, we need our people to be good at discerning what's good public policy and what's bad public policy.

And so we want to contribute to that. One of the sad things about I think the last 25 years is that some of our institutions of higher learning have failed in that regard. And that's why we're so happy that there's been a change in that, I think, and universities are getting better and taking those responsibilities more seriously. And our scholars, including Ben and Jenna's story and others are helping to lead universities to take that responsibility more seriously, to teach a love of country and an appreciation for diverse viewpoints and a knowledge of diverse viewpoints so that people can be better citizens. And we think that's one of our biggest tasks as a country, and we do it here at AEI and we're also trying to help colleges and universities do it better on their campuses.

Juliette Sellgren (26.57)

Do you think that spending time in an office that is well, chockfull of young eager learners and honestly youthful scholars who are also eager learners, do you think that that gives kind of an insight into how hopeful just we as a country are and how to get out of that? Because education is really important, but are we over blowing it? Is my generation totally screwed up and we're going to totally screw everything else up, or is that, I don't know, people seem freaked out about the state of the world right now.

Robert Doar (27.41)

Here's what I think about that. I think your generation is a lot better than we give it credit for. I'm more optimistic or more hopeful than your typical grouchy conservative or grouchy progressive. On the other hand, you're not as good as I'd like you to be. And so yes, I think participating in a community like ours helps you be better, as I've just said. But I guess the fear, Juliette, is that people like you and me and we'll hang out in our little communities here at AEI or other think tanks that care about these issues and we won't know what's really going on out in America. And so I think that's an important ingredient to this is we can certainly enjoy the community we've created, but we've got to recognize that the purpose is to take what we've learned in a community like this and bring it to broader communities outside of Washington, outside of our little bubbles on university campuses.

And I often say to young people like you that if you're looking at your future and you care about domestic policy, I don't know that Washington's really the best place for you to be. I think you should go out and work in state and local government or work in state and local communities. In some ways you'll have greater responsibility faster. You'll get leadership role faster, you'll have a bigger impact faster. And you actually also will be getting out of the sort of northeast bubble or coastal bubble that is sometimes a problem or urban bubble for people not really realizing what's happening in a large chunk of America.

Juliette Sellgren (29.29)

I know that typically I count as someone in these sorts of bubbles in the think tank bubble, in the scholarly academic bubble, in the urban bubble. I guess Charlottesville is kind of a hippie bubble too. But I was wondering if you could educate me on a sort of thing in practice of sending our ideas out. I heard from a little birdie that you are working on a project related to impeachment. And to be totally honest, I don't know anything about the relationship and the history of impeachment in the United States because our education in history ends at the Second World War, that sort of thing.

Robert Doar (30.20)

Sure, you are a curious person and you've traveled and you're getting outside of your bubble as much as you can. I didn't mean to be saying that was a, but I don't think you took it that way. But with regard to the work on the impeachment document that I'm working on…So impeachment is a part of our Constitution. It's described in Article two of the Constitution. It's what happens if a President and also applies to federal judges, does things that are viewed as worthy of having them be removed from office. And so the term, the technical term is for high crimes and misdemeanors, and that's a kind of old term that's hard to, you need to do some studying to understand what the founders meant by that. And I'll get to that in a minute. The history of impeachment in the United States is very rare.

We've impeached, I would say impeached and removed from office maybe, I don't know, 40 judges in the history of the United States. We've never impeached and removed a president. There have been four impeachment proceedings begun against presidents. The first was Andrew Johnson, and that led to the votes of impeachment in the House of Representatives. But in order to be removed, you need two thirds of vote in the Senate. And so Andrew Johnson, who was the successor to Abraham Lincoln, was acquitted in the Senate and they didn't achieve the two thirds vote. And at that time, the practice of impeachment was discredited because it was thought later that the grounds for impeachment were weak, that he was the victim of kind of a bullying tactic by the radical Republicans. And so that sort of lay dormant for a long time until the presidency of Richard Nixon, and he was reelected in 1972 with an overwhelming majority won 49 states.

But his White House and he himself were found to be involved in a lot of activities that undermined the rights of individuals in the United States in a variety of ways and obstructed the proper proceeding of a criminal prosecution in a way that was born perjury that was considered problematic. No one wanted a president who'd done those sorts of things or appeared to have done those sorts of things. And over the course of nine months, a committee in the House of Representatives, the House Judiciary Committee conducted an inquiry into the facts and evidence concerning President Nixon's presidency. And at the end of that period, and in Washington, nine months is a long time, and they went behind closed doors. They took witnesses, they gathered information, they voted by pretty strong bipartisan vote, Republicans and Democrats, the President Nixon should be impeached and removed from office. And then more evidence came out as a result of a case involving tape recordings in his White House that confirmed what the impeachment Inquiries team had said and what the Judiciary Committee had found.

And President Nixon rather than facing sure impeachment and removal, resigned. Again, that was an example of a presidential impeachment process that was viewed as being well executed and positive for the country. I often say that if the Republicans and the country hadn't handled that well, Ronald Reagan would not have been elected only four years later after the presidency of Jimmy Carter because people would've been so turned off by Republican's refusal to face up to it. And we moved on then during the presidency of Bill Clinton, he was impeached, but the vote and Senate failed by a pretty wide margin. President Trump impeachment proceedings were brought against him twice. Also not bipartisan, not done in a way that garnered the support of the vast majority of Americans. And he was acquitted in the Senate both times. And what I think that story shows is that impeachment is tricky.

It's hard to do well, but the key has to be that you conduct the inquiry or you conduct the proceedings in such a way that, and you develop the evidence that's so strong that you garner the support of the vast majority of the American people because it needs bipartisan support to succeed. But more importantly, what you're doing is overturning the result of an election. President Nixon was elected with I think 72% of the vote. He won 49 states in 1972, and Congress was ready to impeach him less than two years later. So that was a dramatic action. And if you're going to take that dramatic action, that turning over and upsetting the results of an election, you better do it right and you better have the facts right, and you better be earning the support of your political opponents because you're going to need to do it in a bipartisan way.

And that both the Clinton and the Trump impeachments didn't do that and therefore they failed and were, in my judgment, problematic while the Nixon impeachment did. And so what I'm working on is a description of what happened during the Nixon impeachment, and it's not well known because it's not the sort of thing you want to dance on someone's grave over. And again, stories of positive exercises of political responsibility often aren't told. But in this case, the House History Committee led by Chairman Rodino and the Republicans and Democrats on that committee did the right thing. That's a very short, abbreviated history of a complicated subject.

Juliette Sellgren 

I didn't know there were so many of them.

Robert Doar (36.26)

Well, those are presidential impeachments and those are the 1, 2, 3, 4. There's only been four of those. But there's also the judicial impeachments are also rare, but they do happen and they happen when judges behave in a way that is deemed to be violation of their oath of office to faithfully executed. It's a sad thing. No one likes impeachment because you're basically saying that a person you gave great trust to and had great hope and faith that they would uphold that trust have failed you. And so we don't want them to be very many.

Juliette Sellgren 

Well, I'm curious, what do you think are some of the key differences in how it used to be conducted and how, I don't know, do we treat it differently? Do we think about it as more of a, I don't know, I'm thinking about maybe the Trump case. It seems divisive, almost, even… Oh, it's very divisive. It's very divisive. Is it always?

Robert Doar (37.39)

No, never. Remember, we went through 200 years of American history to 1976 and there had only been two. So it, it's a rare thing and it should be a rare thing. The fact that we've had two in the most recent period, three Clinton and two Trumps has something to do with the particular circumstances of those two presidencies. Let's be clear. But they also have something to do with the hyperpolarization and animosity that the two sides are feeling toward each other, where differences of opinions are not differences of opinion. Their moral challenges, and you've all event and others have pointed out to people that our disagreements are not all fundamental and so significant that we have to get it in our mind that the other side is the enemy, the other side is not the enemy. They are our fellow Americans and they see particular issue different than we do.

And our task is to reason with them and discuss with them and to bring out the facts in a way that might persuade some of them or all of them to see it a different way. But when we turn politics into a blood sport where the other side is the enemy, then you're going to lead to a very divisive political environment in Capitol Hill and in Congress. And that's not helpful. Thankfully, Juliette, we have states and localities where this problem of hyperpolarization has begun to crop up, but by and large, this kind hatred between the parties doesn't really exist. And so there's lots of governors that govern their states in a way that is viewed as reasonable and respected by even their strongest public opponents and political opponents. And that's what we need to get back to as a country, and that will take leadership and will take having people that bring us together, not divide us.

Juliette Sellgren (39.49)

I think you beautifully brought us back to the community and the education and all those things which are so important and actually fight polarization by making us better people. How much of it, I mean, obviously in our system we elect people in the House and the Senate, which means that from the democratic angle, the people are more involved than they otherwise would be. Still a republic, but maybe more than pre-17th amendment. How does thinking about this as a citizen of the United States, would it change who we elect or what we want? I'm trying to think of how, other than just going through the motions of thinking through an issue, how everyday Americans can kind of think about this and realize that the revoking of trust is, it's a sword to be wielded wisely.

Robert Doar (41.09)

Well, I don't know. I mean, I think that when you asked how can, we don't actually, this is where I'm a little bit different from some people. I know a lot of politicians, I know a lot of members of the House of Representatives. I know a lot of Senators, I know a lot of governors, and I know the people in the country and I've gotten a sense of them and the entity that I think is the most, I want to be careful with the phrase to blame, but the most responsible for the hyper-partisanship that we have in my judgment is more are our popular culture and our media that there's a legitimate, I'm not saying it's illegitimate, but there's a profit motive that drives their desire to make things more flagrant, more clicks, more watches, more viewers, more readers, more fame that leads them to take advantage of this. Now, politicians do mimic that because they see that as well, that they'll get more attention on tv. They'll give more attention in the grassroots political fundraising if they say the most blatant thing. But the media doesn't help in this regard, and the social media doesn't help in this regard. And our culture from Hollywood doesn't help in this regard. We don't so much of what you learn as a young person. And so funny that I started this conversation by asking you if you'd seen On the Waterfront, Shane, or Roman Holiday- three absolutely spectacular movies of the 1950s. On the Waterfront- it might've been made it in the 1940s.

And those movies aren't just interesting stories and they also inculcate certain cultural values. And I just don't often see that as much in what comes out of Hollywood and our popular culture now. And I hate to sound like a grumpy old man, but I am a big consumer of that. I do watch TV and I go to the movies and I keep an eye on those things. And what I see a lot of is less literary, less deep, more violent, more sort of cultural stereotypes and more anti-American. And you're Juliette, you grew up around that. Maybe that would make you and your generation more cynical and more disenchanted and less believing in the values that we like to uphold here at AEI. Well, I don't think that's the politician's fault. I think that's our culture's fault.

Juliette Sellgren (44.34)

Yeah, it's just that then the political realm becomes the playing field, which I guess how can you blame that?

Robert Doar 

I mean, let me ask you a question, Juliette, what is your favorite work of fiction, of any kind movie, book, novel? What's your favorite work of fiction?

Juliette Sellgren 

I would have to say Anna Karenina by Leo Tol story.

Robert Doar 

Okay, that's very good. That's good. That's good. I thought you and I was going to see what you were going to say Potter. What did you think?

Juliette Sellgren 

Harry Potter?

Robert Doar 

Maybe those are your generation. I don't know.

Juliette Sellgren 

Those aren’t bad.

Robert Doar 

Aren't bad. I'm not saying they're bad, but I wondered. Yeah, that's an interesting choice.

Juliette Sellgren (45.19)

Yeah, I mean, I belong to a group of readers within our generation, which I think is maybe less popular than it used to be with phones and Netflix and all. I enjoy a good movie, but the books are kind of where it's at. Have you ever thought of, I guess this is kind of hard because how do you pump not just money but investment in this sort of thing without it feeling manufactured, but what if the Think Tank had a film division?

Robert Doar (46.04)

Actually, people have come to me and said to me that they were film producers and they're devoted to producing film movies that celebrate positive American values or celebrate Faith. And I've written about them and encouraged them. It's not something we do, but it's not a bad idea. I mean, there is a documentary filmmaking company, Kite and Key based in New York that's making beautiful documentaries about difficult issues in a really wonderful way and that are nonpartisan for sure, and in my opinion, properly even handed in their approach that is very educational and very solid. It doesn't tilt one way or the other. And that's a filmmaking company. I like them quite a lot. It's a movie a few years ago called Spitfire Grill starring Ellen Bernstein, who was one of the great actresses of all time, and that was the movie that was explicitly made with a Christian theme that's very subtle. It's a beautiful movie and very interesting and exciting and compelling. And so there are people that do that, and I wish we could do more. Wish there was more of it.

Juliette Sellgren 

Maybe there will be, just by us speaking…

Robert Doar 

Maybe.

Juliette Sellgren 

What is your favorite work?

Robert Doar 

My favorite work Total? You're reversing the question back on me.

Juliette Sellgren 

Yes.

Robert Doar (47.57)

Oh, well that's a good one. I have to think about that. I'm a big fan of Wallace Stegner who wrote a book called Angle of Repose. He's the great novelist of the west, although he was bigger and more important than that. I love that novel. I'm big, big fan of Willa, so My Antonia is a beautiful, maybe the greatest novel of the 20th century American novel. I've had a little bit of a romance with Edith Warden lately, and so I read Age of Innocence and House of Mirth, and I like F Scott Fitzgerald, I like Great Gatsby, and I like the novel he made about Dick Diver, wrote about Dick Diver, which Tender is the Night. It's a beautiful novel. So those are some of my favorite works. I'm a big reader of fiction, Juliette. So you've tapped into something and I don't often talk about at a I, but

Juliette Sellgren 

Ah, well you should. How else are we going to get people to read these things? Yeah, that's right.

Robert Doar 

Yeah that’s right. I'm sure you'll find wrote a book called Tom Lake, which is I like a lot.

Juliette Sellgren 

I'm writing down everything you say here. There you go. I'm planning on meeting up with Amazon later to purchase all of this stuff. That's good. Alright, well I have one last question for you, but thank you for all the recommendations and all the wisdom.

Robert Doar 

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to pontificate in this way. Thank you.

Juliette Sellgren 

Of course, of course. Maybe we can do it again sometime.

Robert Doar 

Anytime. Juliette.

Juliette Sellgren 

Edith Wharton Fan Club! what is one thing you believed at one time in your life that you later changed your position on and why?

Robert Doar 

So unlike you who were born in the libertarian conservative world, maybe that's not true, but I suspect that's true of you.

Juliette Sellgren 

Yeah, that's true.

Robert Doar (50.06)

I grew up in much more liberal progressive environment in New York City and surrounded by liberals and progressives. And so when I was in college and when I was your age, I had a much greater faith and belief in the power and ability of government to solve difficult problems that were of a social nature or an economic nature. And reading and knowledge has led me to realize that that's a false hope, that relying too much on government and putting too much emphasis on government interventions can often do more harm than good. And so a big turning point in my life was reading Losing Ground by Charles Murray, which depicted the ways in which the anti-poverty efforts of the Johnson Administration and the Progressive left had actually led to no or no progress and maybe going backwards for poor families in the United States, especially black families. And Mickey Cows wrote report articles along those lines for the New Republic. And there were other scholars, Larry Mead and others that wrote about it, and I really learned from them. And that changed my view of the proper role of government in helping people that struggle. But again, I'm a convert. I wasn't born into this conservative world. I came to it by learning.

Juliette Sellgren 

Once again, I'd like to thank my guests for their time and insight. I'd also like to thank you for listening to the Great Antidote Podcast. It means a lot. The Great Antidote is sound engineered by Rich Goyette. If you have any questions, any guests or topic recommendations, please feel free to reach out to me at Great antidote@libertyfund.org. Thank you.