{"id":1668,"date":"2026-07-29T17:14:51","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T17:14:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=1668"},"modified":"2026-07-29T17:14:51","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T17:14:51","slug":"the-political-fight-that-could-decide-2028","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=1668","title":{"rendered":"The Political Fight That Could Decide 2028"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube<\/em><\/p>\n

In this week\u2019s episode of The David Frum Show<\/em>, The Atlantic<\/em>\u2019s David Frum opens with his reaction to President Trump\u2019s latest round of tariffs and explains why he believes they are weakening America\u2019s economy and its alliances.<\/p>\n

Read more Photos: Kayaking in the Los Angeles River<\/a><\/p>\n

Then, David is joined by his Atlantic<\/em> colleague Jonathan Chait for a wide-ranging discussion on the White House Correspondents\u2019 Dinner, whether presidents should be funny, the growing attacks on Barack Obama\u2019s legacy, and the battle in Michigan between moderates and the progressive left that could shape the Democratic Party\u2019s future.<\/p>\n

Finally, David closes the show with a discussion of Eric Cline\u2019s 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed<\/em> and the Bronze Age collapse.<\/p>\n

The following is a transcript of the episode:<\/em><\/p>\n

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David Frum: <\/strong>You are kind of an immoderate centrist. You\u2019re ready to\u2014you have centrist views, but you\u2019re ready to brawl. But do you see, as you look at the Democratic Party, that there\u2019s something about the moderate\u2014they will not fight back? And therefore, they\u2019re abdicating by default to people who are going to end up empowering Trump. And whoever Trump\u2019s successor is, probably J. D. Vance, and all that J. D. Vance means for the future of American democracy.<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> Absolutely. Look, it\u2019s, it\u2019s an old problem, right? The definition of a liberal<\/em> is someone who\u2019s too broad-minded to take his own side in an argument. This has been something that liberals have noticed about ourselves and have been complaining about ourselves, without doing anything to change, for generations.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

[Music]<\/strong><\/p>\n

David Frum:<\/strong> Welcome to The David Frum Show.<\/em> I\u2019m David Frum, a staff writer at The Atlantic. <\/em>My guest this week will be my Atlantic<\/em> colleague Jonathan Chait, and we\u2019ll be talking about Obama\u2019s legacy and what it means for the future of American politics. The book this week will be 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed<\/em> by Eric Cline, a study of the end of the Bronze Age.<\/p>\n

But before either my dialogue with Jonathan Chait or the book discussion, some opening thoughts on the most recent rounds of tariff announcements by President Trump. Last Friday, President Trump announced his latest tariffs to go into effect. He targeted 60 economies. I say \u201c60 economies,\u201d because one of the 60 targeted was Taiwan, which is not regarded by the United States as a country but only as an economy. So, 60 economies including Taiwan; 59 countries plus Taiwan.<\/p>\n

The ostensible basis of this new round of tariff increases was to combat forced labor. President Trump used a provision in American law that allows the president power to impose tariffs on countries that use forced or slave labor, and he said: That\u2019s it. In order to fight forced or slave labor, these 60 economies, including Taiwan, are going to be targeted by a new round of tariff increases.<\/em><\/p>\n

The grounds given for the tariffs are not really very plausible. There is no or barely any factual showing that all of these 60 were engaged in some way in forced labor. The United States, after all, is not completely clean on this question either, and there\u2019s no graduation of the tariff to the alleged cause. There\u2019s no saying: Such-and-such country has more forced labor or more openness to forced labor, such-and-such has less; therefore they have different tariff rates.<\/em> No. It\u2019s just\u2014we accuse these 60 economies, we target them with tariffs, and we\u2019re doing this even though our own hands are not clean. The United States economy is open in many ways to forced labor.<\/p>\n

Pretty obviously, what is going on here is that Trump is looking for some legal basis to reinstate the tariffs that he has had struck down in the past. President Trump originally used an emergency economic authority from the 1970s. The Supreme Court told him he couldn\u2019t do it. Then he fell back on a temporary provision that allowed him to impose tariffs for a period of time, I think 150 days, and that time has run out. So now he\u2019s looking for what he can get.<\/p>\n

As the president returns again and again and again to imposing tariffs on the world, a question has to be asked: What on earth could any Trump supporter imagine the president is possibly doing that is, in any way, in the American national interest? The emotional basis, the argumentative basis, the intellectual basis for tariffs is that we are supposedly reindustrializing the United States. But since Donald Trump has become president, manufacturing jobs in the United States have declined by the tens of thousands, probably somewhere between 80,000 and 100,000 net manufacturing jobs fewer as I record in the summer of 2026 than when Donald Trump became president at the beginning of 2025.<\/p>\n

Because other sectors other employment sectors are continuing to grow, especially health care, this loss of a net 100,000 manufacturing jobs means that manufacturing as a share of nonfarm payrolls has now dipped below 8 percent, which is the lowest level that manufacturing has had in American employment since figures began. Maybe it was lower in 1776 than it is now, but since good figures began, this is the lowest. It\u2019s a record. So obviously, it\u2019s not working. And it\u2019s not just jobs that are being lost. Manufacturing output and manufacturing investment also seem to be in decline. This is a little harder to calculate because there\u2019s a huge capital-investment boom going on because of artificial-intelligence data centers. A lot of money is being committed to these data centers, and the question is: To what extent does this get counted as manufacturing investment and whatnot? But private economists who have tried to separate out seem to be in some kind of agreement that, at best, manufacturing investment is flat in the Trump year and a half, maybe down a little bit, because of the problem of the Trump tariffs.<\/p>\n

The thing I wish I could pound into the head of tariff supporters is that every tariffed item is not only a product that you sell to consumers; it\u2019s also an input into something else. When you impose tariffs on goods, you make not just things more expensive for American consumers\u2014you make things more expensive for the American companies that buy those things and put them into other things. It\u2019s a house-that-Jack-built problem. Every time you make an input more expensive, you make the ultimate product more expensive and make the final American product that much less competitive on world markets. And the result is: You can\u2019t compete, so you sell less, so you invest less, so you employ less.<\/p>\n

A large part of the attraction of tariffs to Donald Trump seems to be that they appeal to his desire for dominance. His perception of the world is divided into subjects and into enemies, and if you\u2019re not a subject, then you\u2019re an enemy. And if you\u2019re an enemy, then there are no rules. And if you\u2019re a subject, for that matter, there aren\u2019t any rules either. That everything is an expression of will and ego, and all economics is a matter of I win, you lose, and if I don\u2019t feel I\u2019m winning, then I must be losing.<\/em><\/p>\n

This has become the signature political and economic philosophy of an entire political party under Donald Trump. The party that used to stand for markets and enterprise, the Republican Party, the party of Reagan and Romney. We\u2019re on a bad track here, and these latest tariffs mark another bad milestone on that bad track. We need to get off this, and we need to start creating in freedom and with rules.<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean that we pretend that China is not a problem. China is a problem, and there\u2019s forced labor in China. And China is a rule-breaker and steals intellectual property. You need a China-specific solution to the problem of trade, not a solution that destroys the whole apparatus of trade with all of America\u2019s friends and, increasingly, former friends.<\/p>\n

The United States is now bound in a grinding and frustrating war with Iran. It needs all the friends it can get. The idea that it is waging economic aggression on all of its partners and then acting baffled and befuddled that these partners don\u2019t help out on the Iran problem\u2014a war that the United States started and that it did not have to start and that now it can\u2019t get out of\u2014that just, again, seems to be another bad milestone on another bad path.<\/p>\n

The way out of all of America\u2019s problems\u2014it\u2019s not the whole solution, but it\u2019s the beginning of a solution\u2014is to return to the path of free and fair trade with friendly-minded nations, bracketing China as a special problem, and otherwise dropping tariffs to the lowest rates possible and returning to the days when the United States negotiated agreements with its friends to trade in freedom and prosperity with mutual benefit and understanding that true trade makes all those who participate in it better off.<\/p>\n

And now my dialogue with Jonathan Chait.<\/p>\n

[Music]<\/strong><\/p>\n

Frum: <\/strong>Jonathan Chait has dedicated 30 years as one of this country\u2019s sharpest, wittiest, and most ornery advocates for liberalism, first at The New Republic, <\/em>then at New York <\/em>magazine, <\/em>and since 2024 at The Atlantic.<\/em> It\u2019s a remarkable career made more impressive by the fact that journalism was always his second choice of avocation, adopted only after the involuntary abandonment of his true ambition: head coach of the University of Michigan football team.<\/p>\n

Jonathan Chait is the author of Audacity: How Barack Obama Defied His Critics and Created a Legacy That Will Prevail.<\/em> And Jonathan is a continuing reminder that liberalism doesn\u2019t have to be apologetic or bashful about itself. Jonathan, welcome to The David Frum Show.<\/em><\/p>\n

Jonathan Chait:<\/strong> Thank you, David.<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> Okay, so we have a number of things to talk about today. I want to start\u2014I know this is a topic that\u2019s maybe a little more interesting to me than to you\u2014but to start by looking back at the White House Correspondents\u2019 Dinner that was recorded on Saturday night, just a few days before you and I record. This has always been a kind of troublesome event from a point of view of Washington journalism. There are big advantages to being close to politicians, and big hazards as well. So I know you worked at the glory days of The New Republic<\/em> when there was a lot of intimacy between The New Republic <\/em>and the politicians it liked. How do you think about events like the White House Correspondents\u2019 Dinner? And do you think about them differently in the age of Trump from the way you thought about them before?<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> I was always very skeptical of these events. I went to one to see what it was like, but I felt like if you go to more than one, then you\u2019re no longer going anthropologically; you\u2019re actually part of the thing. And I didn\u2019t want to be part of the thing, because I think it\u2019s a little bit gross. Part of it, just mechanically, is journalistic outlets using themselves as intermediaries for their advertisers to give them access to politicians and to celebrities. The celebrities come because they get some cachet for being at the White House Correspondents\u2019 Dinner. The politicians get access to donors and to celebrities and to journalists. And I feel like it\u2019s cozy for everyone, but I don\u2019t think it\u2019s really good for the journalism profession at all, and never has been.<\/p>\n

In the Trump era, people have started to question it more than they have, but I feel like The New York Times <\/em>was correct 20-some years ago to pull out of the event, and I wish everyone else would too.<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> Trump has changed the ritual in one very noticeable way\u2014which was, in the past, the president\u2019s speech always followed a strict form. Which was a series of gentle jibes at the press, somewhat tougher jibes at himself, occasional jibes at political opponents. That was handled with extreme care. Obama did them more than others, but that was always a little dangerous to do because it sort of violated the treaty of the evening. Followed, of course, by the moment at the end where the politician switches from humor to seriousness and pays tribute to the important role of the press, and everyone likes hearing him say it, whatever the politician may think in the recesses of the politician\u2019s heart.<\/p>\n

Trump just goes on pure aggression, pure attack. And that may make it easier for journalists to disavow or disconnect themselves from something that was troublesome before.<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> I think that\u2019s right. What was the most revealing joke he made was actually a decent joke, at least on paper. His delivery was horrible, because he can\u2019t deliver written text. But he made a joke about how he\u2019s basically taken control of CBS News, how he effectuated regime change there and installed Bari Weiss. And that\u2019s actually pretty chilling, right? I mean, that\u2019s the [Viktor] Orb\u00e1n playbook that we were all warning about in action, and he\u2019s just boasting about it to the faces of the journalists.<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> It\u2019s also, by the way, self-defeating in a way that Trump\u2019s speeches are often not very strategic. But if it were true that Bari Weiss was the person you had installed at CBS, that is the last joke in the world that a president should make, because it only detracts from the effectiveness of your supposed ally. Which I, again, I don\u2019t think she is. But if she were, it detracts from your effectiveness. It undercuts her. It puts her in an untenable situation. Why would you say such a thing? Trump doesn\u2019t seem always to think those things through<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> Well, he doesn\u2019t think them through. But I think at some level he\u2019s acting from some instinct to dominate and to make everyone acknowledge the domination, right? He doesn\u2019t work with any subtlety. He actually has to tell people what he\u2019s done and force them to wear the hat on their head.<\/p>\n

We may not want to go down this path of debating what\u2019s happened at CBS, but I think it\u2019s pretty clear that Trump believes he has done this at CBS. Now, whether Bari Weiss thinks that\u2019s what she\u2019s doing is a different question.<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> I think you make a very shrewd point. Which is that Trump, even when he would do better to allow dignity to people whom he thinks of as allies\u2014he can\u2019t do it. He has to humiliate; he has to dominate. He has to actually take his friend\u2019s head and dump it in the bucket of shit, and pull the friend\u2019s head out again and say, See, my friend is now covered in shit thanks to me. That\u2019s the kind of guy I am, and this is the kind of low-grade character my friend is.<\/em><\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> That\u2019s right. That\u2019s right. I mean, bending the knee is a metaphor people often use, but there\u2019s a visual strikingness to it, right? I mean, an actual sign of submission is what he requires of people who submit to him.<\/p>\n

David Frum:<\/strong> Now, let me pivot here to the Barack Obama first White House correspondent dinners, and then his presidency. When I wrote speeches for President [George] W. Bush, I occasionally tried to introduce jokes into them. I have this especially vivid memory of writing a joke that\u2014I\u2019m now going to forget what the joke is, unfortunately. But I remember thinking it was quite good, and putting it into a speech, and having the joke be struck by [senior adviser] Karl Rove personally. And when I went to Karl Rove to complain and say the joke was funny, Rove said\u2014and I thought this was very wise\u2014he said, The joke was funny. That\u2019s why I killed it. It was too funny. Presidents shouldn\u2019t be that funny.<\/em><\/p>\n

And one of the things that was very striking when Obama spoke at the White House Correspondents\u2019 Dinner was he was that funny. He said the thing you couldn\u2019t believe a president had said. They were often hilarious, but often sometimes too funny. Did you have qualms about that?<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> No, I don\u2019t. I think there\u2019s a belief that some people have that humor and insight and dignity are in tension with each other, and I\u2019ve just never thought that. I\u2019ve always thought of humor as an aspect of intelligence. When someone can say something funny, to me that\u2019s a sign that they have some insight that they\u2019re able to express into the world. And I\u2019ve never objected to any figure of any persuasion being funny. [Senator] Ted Cruz, with whom I disagree on almost everything, can often be very, very funny, and I appreciate that about him. I think we need more of it.<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> Well, let me quote the Obama joke that made me most uncomfortable, but that was very funny.<\/p>\n

So I believe this was the White House Correspondents\u2019 Dinner just after he had been reelected in 2012, and he was taking a bit of a victory lap, and he mentioned that one particular donor, I think it was Sheldon Adelson, had spent the then-astonishing sum of $100 million to defeat him. And Obama, sort of exulting that it hadn\u2019t worked, said: If he felt that strongly about it, why didn\u2019t he just offer the $100 million to me and ask me to leave politics altogether? I\u2019m not saying I would\u2019ve done it, but I would\u2019ve thought about it.<\/em> And that was really funny, but it\u2019s\u2014<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> It\u2019s a great joke.<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> It\u2019s a great joke, but why is it a great joke? So, there\u2019s a theory that humor is how we adjust discomfort. It\u2019s how we deal with the taboo and discuss the taboo in a way that\u2019s socially acceptable.<\/p>\n

And so the taboo there is, yeah, politicians could<\/em> bribe rich people. We\u2019ve reached a degree of wealth in American society where a rich man could say: You know, I don\u2019t like your views. Here\u2019s $10 million. Go to an island. I want you never to be heard from again.<\/em> And there are politicians who might say, Satchel full of money, airplane ticket in hand, off I go.<\/em> And when you joke about it, you remind people of that reality. Which we all know, but it\u2019s a little uncomfortable to face.<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> Or that we\u2019re still banning bribery\u2014at the time, we were still banning bribery. We no longer are banning bribery anymore. But you can spend $100 million. So there\u2019s this last barrier against a rich man\u2019s influence that we can\u2019t cross. So he can go all this way, but he can\u2019t just take the most direct possible route to his ambition.<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> So you wrote this book about Obama at the very end of the Obama presidency. Trump came to office. You attracted a lot of attack for the book, because how could you say Obama was effective when he was immediately followed by Trump? You spent a lot of the 2010s defending Obama from critics on the right who said he was a communist and a Kenyan, or a Kenyan communist, or a communist Kenyan. Now the attacks seem to come from the left. I know you\u2019re not a person of tender sensibility, but how do you deal with this?<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> You know, it is interesting, and I have reflected on this, because I would say 75 to 80 percent of the argument I make in the book is against those critics on the right, and maybe 20 percent is against the criticisms of the left. And there were criticisms from the left of Obama at the time, but they were just much, much less important.<\/p>\n

And what\u2019s interesting in retrospect, as you sort of indicated, is that the conservative critiques have mostly been forgotten, dropped altogether. They\u2019ve just moved on to other things to anger them at the moment. Whereas the left-wing criticisms have survived. They\u2019ve just been repeated over and over again and have established themselves as kind of official histories of that era and are widely believed, even if they weren\u2019t widely believed at the time. And it\u2019s really been fascinating, and I don\u2019t quite have a full handle on how that happened other than just the sheer power of repetition at the time.<\/p>\n

In other words, to listen to people talk about Obama now, you would think that Obama was just leaving on the table all these left-wing victories he could have been taking because he was just such a neoliberal shill. That he, out of cussedness, just hated Medicare for All and loved Wall Street.<\/p>\n

But at the time, he was seen as a socialist. And it wasn\u2019t just by the Republican Party. The mainstream media was portraying him as a radical. Let me just give you one example\u2014and there are many examples of this\u2014but the kind of official history we have now of the stimulus is that Obama held down the size of the stimulus because he didn\u2019t want to spend more money on stimulus, because he was worried about the deficit. The truth is that Obama, rightly or wrongly, was trying a strategy to get the maximum stimulus sum he thought he could get out of Congress. And Obama was being seen at the time as being completely irresponsible in pursuing stimulus. The New York Times<\/em> was treating the deficit as the big crisis and the economic crisis as a secondary problem. It was treating his attempt to stimulate the economy in the face of these deficits as perverse. It was basically running stories saying: We are looking at $100 trillion dollar deficits down the road, and nonetheless, Barack Obama wants to spend even more money.<\/em> Which is such a hard sell. That was the mainstream narrative that he was fighting against, and the whole context in which he was operating has been completely forgotten.<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> Well, we were there. And it is true that Obama\u2019s first job as president was saving the banking system and the larger American free-enterprise economy. And maybe he didn\u2019t love that job, but that was the job that history gave him, and that\u2019s what he did.<\/p>\n

I have a very unusual view on this, which is I actually think that the period from October 2008 to March of 2009\u2014the Bush-Obama transition\u2014is actually one of the finest hours in the history of U.S. government and the finest hours in the history of the presidency. And a remarkable testimony to two men of different backgrounds working together on a common enterprise in ways that were very generous.<\/p>\n

And the one I think about the most was one of the questions that George W. Bush faced in the fall of 2008 was: Should he save General Motors or not? And there were two obvious choices. One was save General Motors, and do it, and then your predecessor would have to live with it. And the other was, kill General Motors, and then your predecessor would have to live with it. And Bush instead made the decision, save them for 90 days, or prob\u2014well, I would forget the exact number of days, but save them for enough of a period that your successor would have full autonomy to decide for himself whether to save General Motors or not. And indeed, we didn\u2019t have a Great Depression, and we didn\u2019t have the collapse of democratic systems all over the world, and we didn\u2019t have a collapse of world communism, er, world capitalism. We didn\u2019t have global communism. I think of those as good things.<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> And do you remember the phrase that conservatives applied to the bailout of GM? Gangster. Gangster government<\/em> was the most common one. Gangster government. This was them indicating that he had gone beyond\u2014they\u2019d already called him a socialist. Now he had gone so far beyond socialism they needed an even viler epithet to describe what he was doing. That these dangerous methods he would use to leverage control of the private sector and basically put us on the road toward communism and improper uses of government power.<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> I remember very vividly a conversation I had sometime in the spring of 2009 with a group of young, I think they were Koch fellows or some kind of group funded by conservative projects. And I was much more in the conservative world in those days than I am now, although well on my way out because of this. I remember talking to this group of four or five young people, and they were explaining that if it had been up to them, they would\u2019ve allowed the banks to liquidate themselves.<\/p>\n

So I said, Let\u2019s play that out.<\/em> And I walked them through\u2014I won\u2019t take time here to do it\u2014but, what happens if you allow a bank liquidation? And that means all kinds of people who had good assets suddenly find they don\u2019t have liquidity sufficient to cover their assets. So even though the assets are perfectly fine, they have to be liquidated hastily to raise capital. And you have this accelerating crisis through the whole economy, which is the story of 1931, \u201933. But I played it out for them in very vivid terms. And I remember one of them, as I described this nightmare scenario, getting quite ashen and saying: Well, I guess it\u2019s a good thing we weren\u2019t in power then, because our ideas wouldn\u2019t have worked in an emergency.<\/em><\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> Right.<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> Well, if your ideas don\u2019t work in an emergency\u2014all the ideas work in nonemergency. (Laughs<\/em>.) Everything works when it\u2019s not an emergency. The test of your ideas: Does it work when it is<\/em> an emergency?<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> No; I\u2019ve always been taken by that comment because what it\u2019s saying is that our ideas are just a theological commitment. More of an aspiration and not something that you can actually trust to work in the real world. But nonetheless, that we should be guided by them for theological reasons and not for practical ones.<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> One of the legacies of that Obama experience was\u2014so the Obama stimulus was about $800 billion, if I remember correctly. About half of it in the form of immediate cash relief and about half of it in the form of spending, which was a big number at the time.<\/p>\n

In the Democratic world, that experience was remembered as: Obama didn\u2019t do enough<\/em>. And so Biden, who was confronting not a deflationary crisis the way Obama was, but an inflationary crisis, he spent much more and ran even bigger deficits\u2014well, maybe they weren\u2019t bigger deficits to the economy, because the government\u2019s revenue hadn\u2019t collapsed as much. But he ran very big deficits. And of course, this time the voices of conventional wisdom were correct; that Biden was spending too much, and he had overlearned the Obama experience that Obama had handled successfully and Biden handled less successfully.<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> Obama understood that he needed to stimulate the economy more. I mean, as soon as he got the stimulus, he tried to get more stimulus. He got every dollar he could get out of Congress. You could make an argument that he could have gotten more if he tried different methods, but he was trying to get\u2014he understood, first of all, the recession was deeper than they grasped at the time they passed the stimulus. So they calculated the size of the hole, and they figured out, Okay, so how close to filling up the hole can we get?<\/em> And then it turns out the hole was even deeper than they thought. So then, they immediately were trying to get more money, and they did get more money. They got more tax credits; they pulled out more stimulus here and there. But they did not get enough stimulus, and the recovery was too slow. And that was the main lesson, that they needed to not repeat that mistake. But the problem is they just erred in the opposite direction under Biden.<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> So the left theory of the Obama presidency is: Obama didn\u2019t do enough, and therefore the working class got mad, and they voted for Trump, and it\u2019s Obama\u2019s fault.<\/em><\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> I mean, you can explain Trump\u2019s victory through normal political arguments. You don\u2019t need to summon this crisis of capitalism that produced Trump. It\u2019s hard to win a third consecutive term for any party.<\/p>\n

Hillary Clinton was a less talented politician than Obama. She was challenged from the left by Bernie Sanders, and her response to that challenge was for herself to move leftward still. So the candidate who ran in 2016 under difficult conditions for any candidate was not running as Obama\u2019s third term. But she was running significantly to the left of Obama\u2019s third term with less political skills.<\/p>\n

Obama left office with a 60 percent approval rating. Obama, had he been able to run for president for a third time, would\u2019ve wiped the floor with Donald Trump. There\u2019s just no reason to believe that Donald Trump was a repudiation of Obama, who was and is very popular, and far more popular than Trump.<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> I have a really brain-dead theory of what happened that ignores all the personalities and so on.<\/p>\n

Which: This is my theory of how Obama led to Trump. The economy returns to precrisis levels of output and employment in 2014. Pre the crisis of 2007, \u201908. So we\u2019re back at 2014 to where we were in 2007, although the growth trajectory is lower. At that point, respectable opinion says: Right; Obama\u2019s been running these big deficits. This could lead to inflation if unchecked. Now is the time for the Federal Reserve to tighten interest rates.<\/em> And that was not a crazy decision. That\u2019s a very conventional, normal decision. The crisis is over. I mean, we\u2019re back to where we were. Tighten now.<\/p>\n

And it turns out the economy was still, in 2014, not healthy yet. And when you tightened in 2014, instead of saying, Okay, the growth continues,<\/em> as it did when you tightened in the middle \u201980s, instead what happened is: The employment growth slows. And so you have very not-recessionary conditions in 2015, 2016, but disappointing conditions. People do not feel continuing improvement, and they weren\u2019t just grateful to be pulled from the sea to the shore. They wanted to resume the normal, you know, trajectory from the shore. And that didn\u2019t happen. And so the incumbent party lost, and then the Federal Reserve recognized its mistake, loosened in 2016, and the economy accelerated in 2017, 2018, 2019. We had three good years before the COVID pandemic.<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> Right. They thought we were at capacity. There was a debate about: Are we at capacity? Are we about to hit the point of accelerating inflation in 2014?<\/em> And we weren\u2019t, and we found that out in Trump\u2019s first term that there was actually plenty of slack left in the labor market, plenty of room to grow.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re right. That was an important moment. And that could well have made the difference, because the 2016 election was so close. Just a little bit more growth in those last two [years] could have made the difference. A lot of things could have made the difference.<\/p>\n

But I would just point out in the overall macro-situation, Obama was popular. Obama\u2019s popularity was not the problem. I mean, if he was even more popular, it would\u2019ve helped more, but he was overall popular.<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> Now in 2026, we have this attack on Obama from the left. He\u2019s now become quite a demon figure. And explain to me\u2014what is the left case in 2026 against Obama? Why is Obama now bad?<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> Well, the main thing that they will say that Obama did badly was bailing out the banks in 2008. Obama\u2019s 2008 bank bailout\u2014<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> 2009. 2009.<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> No, no, no; 2008. Now, of course, the bank bailout did<\/em> occur in 2008.<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> But Obama did not become president \u2019til 2009. But when I point this out, people will never believe me. I\u2019ve been pointing this out for 15 years, and no one will believe me. So I think I just have to accept that I\u2019m wrong, and that Barack Obama actually was president in 2008, and he\u2019s therefore responsible for the bank bailout that occurred in 2008.<\/p>\n

Frum: <\/strong>I think the bank bailout was good. And whoever was president in 2008\u2014which turns out to be maybe a more difficult question than \u2026 I\u2019m sorry to have interrupted you, because I thought it was an easy question. But as you say\u2014as with the question, Who was president in 2020?\u2014<\/em>it turns out to be quite hard.<\/p>\n

Read more Rural America\u2019s Maternal-Health Crisis Is About to Get Much Worse<\/a><\/p>\n

Chait: <\/strong>Yes. (Chuckles<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

Frum: <\/strong>So leaving aside the mysterious question of who was president in 2008, why is it, if you\u2019re the left and you love [President] Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who saved the banks, why do you hate whoever was president in 2008, who saved the banks?<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> Yeah. I\u2019ve brought up this point many times. It\u2019s very hard for me. I want to faithfully reproduce their criticisms; I don\u2019t want to just be battling straw men. But it\u2019s very hard for me on this point, because I feel like so little sense can be drawn from the criticisms they make. Like I said, the No. 1 point they make is the bank bailout. That\u2019s by far the most common critique they make of Obama. The second most common they make is failing to jail anyone for the crimes of the financial crisis.<\/p>\n

What actually happened was, [the Obama administration] looked at it and said: Well, they didn\u2019t commit any crimes. The problem is all this stuff was legal, so we need to change the laws.<\/em> And so they passed the Dodd-Frank financial reforms, which were the strongest regulations of Wall Street since the 1930s. At the time, those reforms were celebrated by progressives. If you ask any of the progressive experts in financial regulation, they will say that\u2019s a very powerful law; a set of reforms that were formative. It looked at all the problems of the financial crisis, really regulated all of them. It also created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But [critics] blame Obama for not imprisoning anyone for activity that was only subsequently made illegal. So again, I\u2019m sort of attacking arguments that sound like straw men, but these really are the most common attacks made on Obama.<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> Go, take a step beyond the attacks. Because often when people say things, they are applying imperfect words to deep feelings. Okay, so maybe they don\u2019t have good rationalizations, but where does it come from? What is the mentality that says, I revere Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but I hate Barack Obama<\/em>? Where does that mood come from? Where does, where does Bernie Sanders-ism, what is the emotional need that it meets?<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> I think there was significant difference between Obama and the organized progressive movement. Do you remember when Obama\u2019s spokesman derided the professional left? That was a somewhat notorious comment, but it really did capture a hostile relationship between the organized progressive movement and the Obama administration. And he thought that these organized progressive lobbies were unrealistic, didn\u2019t have good ideas, and he had better ideas for messaging and for policy strategy. So they were always on the outs with him, and they resented that.<\/p>\n

Biden, by contrast, was so deeply enmeshed with the progressive movement\u2014the \u201cprofessional left,\u201d as they were called under the Obama era\u2014that it was almost impossible to draw any distance between them at all. Biden did whatever they wanted. And so even though Biden had dramatically less legislative success, the progressive movement really celebrated Biden\u2019s administration all the way \u2019til the end, when they decided that now Gaza was the only thing that mattered, and Gaza was the reason that he was a failure. But really, up until that moment they were celebrating Biden as the heir to Roosevelt. Biden as the progressive hero, and Obama as the sad, weak appendage to the Reagan era.<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> Is there something going on, too, that if you\u2019re on the real left that you regard Trump as not the worst possible outcome? Because if you\u2019re on the real left, Trump is obviously\u2014it isn\u2019t that they like him, but they know the working class, they will sooner or later see through the folly of Trump.<\/p>\n

So all we have to do is eliminate the false messiahs and then give them our true messiah, and then they will see through the right and turn to the true messiah. And in fact, an interval of right-wing government maybe\u2014or a Trump government, whether you call it right wing\u2014is a necessary step in the process. Just as Hitler led to the triumph of communism in Germany, so\u2014not to compare Trump to Hitler\u2014but this is the thinking. The far right gets its turn; then we get our turn. We just need to exclude the middle, and then we win.<\/em><\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> This was also the thinking of the communist left in Weimar Germany, right? They saw Hitler\u2019s constituency as their own constituency. They really thought that there was this fluidity between the far left and the far right. I don\u2019t think that was correct at all.<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> But at the intellectual level, there\u2019s something to that. I mean, we all know people, and we could name them if we wanted to, who do seem to move very easily between far left and far right. And these are people who are very well educated, who care a lot about politics, care a lot about ideas. You\u2019ll hear them say: I\u2019m a progressive, but I feel at home when I talk to these ultra-MAGA people. We both hate bankers, we both hate Ukraine, we both hate Israel. We have so much in common.<\/em> And they think, and that must apply at the voting level, where people vote for reasons that are less ideological.<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> That\u2019s right. It\u2019s the same error. And that\u2019s why in some level, you\u2019re right that Trump\u2019s election filled them with hope. That they really saw this proletarian uprising that they\u2019ve been longing for but were dejected that was not happening, finally glimmers of it happening. Because you could see elements of Trump\u2019s populist rhetoric as reflecting their own. So I think you\u2019re spot on on that observation.<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> So how much of your life do you spend defending the Obama legacy to people who want to detract it, from the left?<\/p>\n

Jonathan Chait:<\/strong> Too much. Too much. I\u2019m planning to write something maybe early next year. I\u2019ve gotta just put it all in one place. But It\u2019s gotten to the point where I have this alternate history that only I and a handful of deranged lunatics are aware of. And we\u2019re living in an alternate universe in which everyone else has settled on a completely different interpretation of what happened during those years.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019ve gotta just put it all in one place, I think.<\/p>\n

Frum: <\/strong>Well, let me ask you about your native Michigan now, because these issues are being played out in real time. Why is the Michigan Senate race, in your view\u2014so much attention was focused on Maine. Now Maine is fading from the center of the discourse. The camera is swiveling to Michigan. Why is that Senate race so important?<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> There\u2019s a Democratic Senate primary. Abdul El-Sayed is the left-wing candidate. Haley Stevens is sort of the mainstream center-left candidate. They\u2019re both\u2014<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> And is there an incumbent senator in Michigan?<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> No. Gary Peters is the incumbent Democrat who\u2019s retiring, so there\u2019s an open seat.<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> How competitive a state is Michigan?<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> It\u2019s a slightly blue state, although Trump won it in 2024 and in 2016. So it\u2019s very close at the presidential level. Democrats have usually won the Senate races and have usually won the gubernatorial races most of the time, but Donald Trump did win it a couple times. And it\u2019s close enough that the Democrats could lose a Senate seat even in a wave year if they really screw things up. And they seem to at least be putting that possibility on the table.<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> So now there\u2019s an open Democratic nomination. There is a Republican candidate who\u2019s competed before, who\u2019s a strong candidate, who\u2019s not a loony at all.<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> Right.<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> And the Democrats will soon vote to choose one of two candidates. So tell us about the two Democratic choices.<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> There\u2019s Haley Stevens, who\u2019s a kind of center-left traditional Democrat. Who would basically\u2014if you took all the Democrats who have won Senate races in Michigan in the last 30 years and put them in a blender and poured them out, you know, you would get Haley Stevens. She\u2019s just an amalgamation of the traditional center-left Democratic Party in the state of Michigan.<\/p>\n

Abdul El-Sayed is very left wing for the Democratic Party. He would be the most left-wing Democrat in the Senate, I think even to the left of Bernie Sanders. He would be as far left maybe as people like [U.S. Representatives] Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib. He\u2019s just across-the-board left on every issue, and has really emphasized opposition to Israel as a campaign theme. But he\u2019s trying to do what [former Senate candidate] Graham Platner seemed to be on the road to doing in Maine. But I think he\u2019s even doing it in a more confident, ideologically confident fashion. And he said that if he wins the primary and wins the general election, he is going to start carrying out purges of other Democrats who he thinks can be beaten in primaries.<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> And he seems to be a less psychologically troubled person than Graham Platner. And although this is maybe invidious to say, probably more intelligent than Graham Platner.<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> I actually have come to question some of his political judgment recently. I feel like he\u2019s played this shrewdly but aggressively, really pushing up against the edge of how much he can get away with. But I feel like recently, it\u2019s like a gambler who\u2019s on a winning streak and is just overplaying his hands.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll give you an example. Gretchen Whitmer endorsed Haley Stevens over the weekend.<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> Gretchen Whitmer is the governor.<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> The popular<\/em> governor of the state of Michigan. Popular with Democrats and popular with voters on the whole. If you\u2019re El-Sayed, you just want to just take your lump and walk away from it, right? You want to minimize the impact of this. This is not going to be a good story for you. The only question is how much attention it\u2019s going to get.<\/p>\n

But then he goes and attacks Gretchen Whitmer. He takes a shot at her management of the roads, which was one of her original campaign slogans, just fixing the roads<\/em>, and says the roads haven\u2019t been fixed. So now you\u2019ve given every reporter covering this race a license to extend the story and write about El-Sayed\u2019s vendetta against Whitmer, and you\u2019ve invited Whitmer to weigh into the race once again on Stevens\u2019s behalf. And her approval rating among Democrats, I think, is 88 percent. So you have a tiny number of Democrats who agree with El-Sayed that Gretchen Whitmer is a corporate sellout, which he also thinks and has been saying. But the vast majority love her.<\/p>\n

So he\u2019s managed to skate by without really bringing to the surface the degree to which he rejects the entire Democratic Party and its entire philosophy. And he\u2019s trying to get a lot of loyal Democrats to his side, who just want someone who will fight harder against the Republicans and don\u2019t fully understand the ideological extremism that he is bringing to the table.<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> Why is this a story outside Michigan? So Democrats may be about to nominate someone who\u2019s more to the left and has a high level of personal aggression and really, really, really hates Israel. And that\u2019s issue No. 1 for him, how much he hates Israel. So suppose he wins. Why is this a story outside Michigan?<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> His plan is he will then become the leader of the left. And he said this, and a lot of other leftists have said this, that he will become their standard-bearer. Bernie Sanders is getting old now. And if [El-Sayed] can win, he will prove something that they\u2019ve never been able to demonstrate before\u2014that a left-wing candidate can win in a purple state. You\u2019ve had DSA candidates winning in New York City. You have Bernie Sanders up in Vermont, which is a little bit idiosyncratic. And you have some other House candidates, you have some mayors, but you\u2019ve never had anyone in a purple state winning on a platform this far left. And while El-Sayed is not in the DSA, he is supported by the DSA and he is aligned with the positions of a lot of DSA candidates. So that will completely change the perception of what is electable within the Democratic Party.<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> One of the things that matters outside Michigan is the left has probably given away the Maine Senate seat. Susan Collins looks like, at this point, if you had had to guess, she\u2019d probably survive even in Maine, a mostly blue state, even in\u2014<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> I\u2019m not sure I agree. It\u2019s a chance. There\u2019s a chance. It\u2019s at risk.<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> But something that should\u2019ve been an easy pickup is now very contested.<\/p>\n

Michigan is also very\u2014again, as you say, a blue state, but one that does elect Republicans\u2014also could be at risk. Is there any way to a Democratic Senate majority without both Maine and Michigan?<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> No. No, I don\u2019t think there is. And the truth is, if you want to think about it from a politically sophisticated perspective, Michigan should have been an easy, easy hold, right? In a blue wave, off-year election, a state that almost always elects Democrats to the Senate\u2014not by huge margins, but pretty reliably by three or four points\u2014should have been an easy hold. And the outcome that I think a lot of moderates are afraid of is that El-Sayed runs, say, four points behind the national Democratic Party. Underperforms due to his extremism, but still gets in because it\u2019s such a huge wave. And then the left turns around and says, See? This shows that our agenda is popular, and we need to implement it everywhere all the time.<\/em><\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> And so then the Democrats lose in 2028 to J. D. Vance and his program of Orb\u00e1nism in the English language.<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> Right. This is going to become the main proof point that\u2019s being used in this interfactional war within the Democratic Party. So if El-Sayed wins, it will be the proof point that the Democratic Party needs to run as far as it can to the left, and that will not impair their ability to win the election in 2028. And I think actually is going to be quite important in terms of the presidential outcome in 2028. In fact, it might even be El-Sayed himself, because they are so enthusiastic about his candidacy. He could, like Obama, [who] went from a first-year senator to presidential candidate, El-Sayed could easily be on that trajectory. That\u2019s how powerful he\u2019s become within the movement so quickly.<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> Well, you know, people worry about the loss of consensus in American life and the polarization. But if you have an \u201cEl-Sayed versus J. D. Vance\u201d ticket in 2028, at least we can have a consensus about the danger of the Jews. That would be\u2014<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> (Laughs<\/em>.) That\u2019s right.<\/p>\n

Frum: <\/strong>America could be united. The two parties could agree on something.<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> Right. And then Bloomberg will run a third-party race and get 2 percent, all Jewish vote.<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> So what\u2019s at stake here is not just the 2026 outcome but the 2028 outcome as well.<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> I think that\u2019s correct; yeah. Yeah, so it\u2019s tremendously consequential.<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> So I\u2019m gonna ask you a somewhat personal question, and forgive me if I overstep here. But one of the reasons why Republican moderates lost first to the Tea Party and then to Trump\u2014and there was very little resistance to the Tea Party; there was a lot of resistance to Trump, but it was overwhelmed\u2014was that people of moderate views understandably have moderate personalities. They don\u2019t like conflict. They don\u2019t like trouble. They always believe in compromise, that you can work things out.<\/p>\n

And so you get these kinds of soft\u2014you have moderate ideas backed by soft personalities. Fred Siegel\u2014who is a great urbanist, used to be at the Manhattan Institute\u2014had this praise of Rudy Giuliani. And whatever you think of Rudy Giuliani personally, this is, I think, a great phrase. He described Giuliani as \u201can immoderate centrist.\u201d Which is: He had centrist views, but he was just, he was full of aggression.<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> Which eventually won out over the centrism.<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> Yeah. So that I think you\u2019ve\u2014this is the part that I was going to put you in. I mean, you are kind of an immoderate centrist. You\u2019re ready to\u2014you have centrist views, but you\u2019re ready to brawl.<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> Pugilistic.<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> But do you see, as you look at the Democratic Party, that there\u2019s something about the moderate\u2014they will not fight back? And therefore, they\u2019re abdicating by default to people who are going to end up empowering Trump. And whoever Trump\u2019s successor is, probably J. D. Vance, and all that J. D. Vance means for the future of American democracy.<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> Absolutely. Look, it\u2019s, it\u2019s an old problem, right? The definition of a liberal<\/em> is someone who\u2019s too broad-minded to take his own side in an argument. This has been something that liberals have noticed about ourselves and have been complaining about ourselves, without doing anything to change, for generations.<\/p>\n

You know, you can find historical exceptions. Sometimes we point to the post\u2013World War II moves by Arthur Schlesinger and Walter Reuther to form Americans for Democratic Action, to exclude the communists, to keep the communists out of the New Deal coalition. And to fight for civil rights and fight for the New Deal values.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s maybe more the exception than the rule in some ways. I mean, there really is something inherent to liberalism, that\u2019s necessary to liberalism. Which is an openness to critique\u2014to not want to become so confident in yourself that you shut out all challenges, right? So I think there is a strength to that quality of liberalism that allows us to be supple, to change our positions with new facts. And I think has made liberalism enduring.<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> Where is Obama in all of this? It\u2019s his legacy that is under attack. Both institutionally, but also quite personally. Will he stand up for himself in an argument? Why doesn\u2019t he make himself heard? In a lot of these states, if the choice is Bernie Sanders versus random local Democratic official, Bernie Sanders may win. If it\u2019s Bernie Sanders versus Obama, we know how that fight goes. Is it because he\u2019s an ex-president and doesn\u2019t want to return to the muck and mire of politics? Where is he?<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> I think he\u2019s calculated that he can have the most influence by operating behind the scenes. And you\u2019ll notice that the Bernie people absolutely despise Obama, specifically not just for his presidency, but for his role in 2020, right? When you had this sudden coordination of the non-Bernie opposition. The Bernie Sanders strategy in 2020 was to win the Democratic nomination with under 50 percent, by just having his opponents stay divided all the way through the convention. And he would never have to win a Democratic Party majority, and he could get the nomination anyway. And then all of a sudden, just everyone realized they couldn\u2019t win and dropped out and endorsed Biden. And Obama played a role there, and they hate him for that.<\/p>\n

So Obama will take an active role, but he doesn\u2019t want to play this factional leadership role that Bernie Sanders plays, where he goes into every contested primary and endorses the most left-wing candidate. I think he\u2019s calculated that will reduce his ability to influence people across the party. That will just make him a much more narrow factional figure. That doesn\u2019t seem like a crazy calculation to me. I can\u2019t say for sure it\u2019s right, though.<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> I\u2019m reading, this summer, Kai Bird\u2019s new biography of Roy Cohn, which is\u2014<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> Oh, so am I.<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> Oh, okay. so if you\u2019re reading the book, you\u2019ll know what I mean. And one of the anecdotes that Bird tells in this book is how President Eisenhower kept coming up with very convincing, very ingenious, plausible arguments for not taking on [Senator] Joe McCarthy directly.<\/p>\n

And the first time he says it, and the second time he says it, you think, You make a point.<\/em> The third and fourth time, you begin to think: You\u2019re just unwilling\u2014possibly you\u2019re scared, but you\u2019re unwilling to take the risk. And actually you\u2019re not acting for good statesmanlike motives. You\u2019re acting for self-preservationist and maybe unworthy motives.<\/em> When McCarthy starts to attack the Army and to attack Eisenhower\u2019s friends\u2014not just George Marshall, whom he attacked in \u201952\u2014but he attacks John J. McCloy in \u201953 and \u201954. And Eisenhower keeps trying to do things indirectly and has some success. Partly because McCarthy is a desperate alcoholic and becoming very sick. But if McCarthy had not been a desperate alcoholic, it\u2019s not clear that Eisenhower\u2019s methods would\u2019ve worked so well, and he just was making things easy for himself. And I wonder whether with all the subtlety and ingenuity you attribute to Barack Obama, whether he\u2019s also just trying to make things easy for himself.<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> You might be right. I\u2019m trying to explain what I think his calculation is. I can\u2019t say for sure that the alternative course of action wouldn\u2019t work, that if he really was willing to fight back and defend his legacy. You know, he does do it in bits and pieces. But he really has allowed the left to win this argument about his legacy, and he hasn\u2019t put up much of a fight.<\/p>\n

I mean, I was making the point during his presidency that his support for education reform, which was really something he cherished, began to disintegrate when the teachers\u2019 unions and the left fought back against it, and he just kind of let them do it. And he didn\u2019t defend it, and by the time Hillary Clinton came along, it was really no longer viable ground or defended in the Democratic Party. So I think you\u2019re right that there is this passivity.<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> When you say, That\u2019s what he thinks will work<\/em>. One of my rules of politics is, in fact, none of us know what, what will work. We are always guessing, and we\u2019re usually looking in the mirror and projecting our own wishes. We\u2019re very poor judges of what will work.<\/p>\n

But we can be very good judges of what\u2019s the right thing to do. And we also can be, if we really look inward\u2014we know when our reluctance to take a risky action is prompted by truly a prudential calculation. And when there\u2019s just a certain element of, Oh, it\u2019ll be a lot of trouble, a lot of hardship. It\u2019ll be easier for me if I take the softer course. And now I will talk, persuade myself, well\u2014the softer course is also the smart decision.<\/em> But we never know what the smart decision is. We only know what the right decision is.<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> I can\u2019t improve on that.<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> Wow. Well, that\u2019s very collegial. (Laughs<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

Jonathan Chait, thank you so much. I\u2019ve got to pocket the rare Chait positive review and put it into my pocket.<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> Thank you. I\u2019ll find something to criticize you. Don\u2019t worry. (Laughs<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> Okay. I know. (Laughs<\/em>.) Thanks so much for joining me today.<\/p>\n

Chait:<\/strong> Thank you, David.<\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> Bye-bye.<\/p>\n

[Music<\/em>]<\/strong><\/p>\n

Frum:<\/strong> Thanks so much to Jonathan Chait for joining me today on The David Frum Show.<\/em> As I mentioned at the top of the program, my book this week is a work of history\u20141177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed<\/em>, by Eric Cline. Published in 2014 by Princeton University Press.<\/p>\n

Now, I have not yet seen The Odyssey.<\/em> I may be alone on my block. It sounds wonderful, and I\u2019m keen to get to it. But one of the things that I am remarking with admiration is that as people have gone to see The Odyssey,<\/em> they have become fascinated by this question of the transition from one period of civilization to another. A character, I think it\u2019s Odysseus himself, says in the movie, \u201cOur age of bronze is collapsing.\u201d Which is maybe a little on the nose for movie dialogue, but is right.<\/p>\n

The Odyssey<\/em> is a story set in the Bronze Age, written in the Iron Age, measured by which metal was the predominant metal that went into weapons of war and other kinds of tools. And there was a big collapse in between the two. And Eric Cline\u2019s book 1177: The Year Civilization Collapsed<\/em> is a study of the collapse and an attempt to explain why it happened.<\/p>\n

As I understand, and again, I haven\u2019t seen the movie, but the great theme of Christopher Nolan\u2019s Odyssey<\/em> is that this collapse is, first and foremost, a moral collapse. One civilization has had the kind of life energy seep out of it and is giving way to a new and successor civilization that will be guided by different rules and different values.<\/p>\n

And indeed, there really was, across the eastern Mediterranean, a remarkable collapse around the year 1177 B.C. The Hittite Empire\u2014which was the superpower of the time based in what is now southern Turkey\u2014that vanished entirely, and its capital disappeared. Across the Mediterranean, city-states vanished. The Minoan civilization vanished. The New Kingdom in Egypt didn\u2019t quite vanish, but it lost a lot of its military power and never again exerted the kind of power over the region that it had before about the year 1200. Mycenaean Greece, which is where the the characters in The Iliad<\/em> and The Odyssey<\/em> supposedly come from, that civilization utterly collapsed. It even lost the ability to read and to write for hundreds of years, only to reemerge later as an Iron Age civilization. And so it is, through up and down the Levant, into the islands, Cyprus.<\/p>\n

So what happened? Eric Cline tries to give us an answer. But the key thing to keep in mind, as to the background that enabled all this is that bronze, which is the weapon that the heroes of The Iliad<\/em> and The Odyssey <\/em>used for, the metal that they used for their weapons. And that was the main form of armor and tools.<\/p>\n

Bronze is a compound of copper and tin. So copper was relatively abundant in the Mediterranean world. There were copper mines in Cyprus and in other places. But tin was scarce in that part of the world and had to be brought to be united with the copper from very far-flung places\u2014as far as Cornwall in Great Britain and Afghanistan in the center of Asia.<\/p>\n

So when you\u2019re committed to bronze, you\u2019re committed to very global trade routes. And because the trade routes are so extended, you build large states. Because you have large states, you need ways to manage the states, including organized religion and reading and writing and some kind of numbering system. How do you keep track of how much tin has moved from Afghanistan to Babylonia, and when it moved, and who moved it? You need some form of writing. And you need a bureaucracy. You need comparably sophisticated and elaborated states.<\/p>\n

Something happened around the year 1177 [B.C.E.], and Cline makes a good case that it\u2019s a compound of ecological effects. Droughts and earthquakes that weakened the states, ended their ability to import tin, reduced the availability of the bronze alloy made from copper and tin, and set these states reeling backward and made them militarily vulnerable to invaders and small bands that otherwise they would\u2019ve just brushed off with superior strength.<\/p>\n

Through the Bronze Age, people knew about iron. But iron was a more difficult material to work. In particular, it required a lot of heat. And it just seemed that bronze\u2014which was easier to work with and had a lot of prestige attached to it\u2014that that was the natural metal of choice. But once the bronze is no longer available because the tin has become hard to get, people are forced back to figure out ways to work with the iron. And once they do so, they find that iron is a dramatically superior weapon of war. Makes sharper, stronger swords, spears, and arrowheads. And so iron replaces it, and the world never looks backward to bronze. Bronze is from then on used primarily for statuary and art, because it remains a prestige material, but it\u2019s not a workable material.<\/p>\n

But the Cline story is one of environmental change leading to material innovation, not a story of moral decay. It wasn\u2019t that people somehow lost faith in themselves and therefore turned away from bronze, and then found a new faith and therefore turned to iron. They had very practical problems. Now, I don\u2019t want to dispute the importance to art of telling stories about moral decay and moral regeneration. But as we\u2019re trying to understand why civilizations actually change, I mean, morality surely plays a part in it. Anyone watching the crisis of American democracy right now has to face that the greatness of a society and the ebb of greatness can be attributed to moral defects in that society.<\/p>\n

But we also need to pay a lot of attention to ecological changes that force change upon society, and to the material responses to environmental change. Because while we\u2019re not doing a great job in 21st-century America to adapting to our moral challenges, we\u2019re doing an even worse job of adapting to climate changes. And if climate is what felled the Hittites, and as other historians will tell us, if climate is what felled the Romans, and if climate is what, as other historians again tell, felled the Ming Empire and led to the rise of new civilizations in China\u2014then climate, if we don\u2019t pay attention to it, it could be the falling of us.<\/p>\n

So as we enjoy the movie, as we absorb its powerful moral lessons, we also need to keep our eye on the material world, the world of climate and weather. Maybe we can\u2019t control it, but we\u2019d best learn to adapt to it. Because if we don\u2019t, it will be the end of us.<\/p>\n

Thanks so much for watching The David Frum Show<\/em> this week. I hope you will share the program and like it on whatever platform you use. As ever, if you\u2019re minded to support the program, the best way to do so is by subscribing to The Atlantic<\/em> and support all of my colleagues, including my colleague Jonathan Chait. See you next week on The David Frum Show.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more Independence Day<\/a><\/p>\n

Bye-bye.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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