Voice over 1: From CurtCo Media.
Bill Curtis: This is a show about what drives conservatives, what motivates
Bill Curtis: liberals, and how we might be able to talk to
Bill Curtis: each other, reach each other with mutual respect and understanding
Bill Curtis: that can lead to a better, more productive society. This
Bill Curtis: is Politics: Meet Me in the Middle. I'm Bill Curtis. (
Bill Curtis: singing) Did you know that studies have shown that the
Bill Curtis: vast majority of people don't feel heard? Voters don't feel
Bill Curtis: heard, women don't feel heard, men don't feel heard, and
Bill Curtis: people of color don't feel heard, and cops don't feel
Bill Curtis: heard either. That's because, frankly, we're not very good at
Bill Curtis: listening to each other. Listening takes skill and a lot
Bill Curtis: of mental processing. Talking? Not so much. Now, why would
Bill Curtis: we invite two very famous and talented writers onto Meet
Bill Curtis: Me in the Middle? Billy Ray and Gregg Hurwitz will
Bill Curtis: be addressing the heart and the mission of this podcast:
Bill Curtis: how we can talk to each other and really hear
Bill Curtis: people with differing political views. Now, in full disclosure, Billy
Bill Curtis: and Gregg will show us how they're doing it to
Bill Curtis: help Democrats get elected, but I'll be here to ensure
Bill Curtis: that we listen to both sides, and so will Ed.
Bill Curtis: Let's introduce our panel. Firstly, as usual, our co- host
Bill Curtis: Pulitzer prize- winning historian, bestselling author, worldwide lecturer, and the
Bill Curtis: widely quoted socially distant and Zoomed in authority of everything
Bill Curtis: historical and constitutional, Ed Larson. Nice to see you, Ed.
Greg Hurwitz: Thank you so much, and I'm excited to have these
Greg Hurwitz: two guests today. Wow.
Bill Curtis: Also, Zooming in, Jane Albrecht. She's an international trade attorney
Bill Curtis: who represented US interest to high- level government officials all
Bill Curtis: over the world. She's been involved with several US presidential
Bill Curtis: campaigns and, in full disclosure, she's president of the Malibu
Bill Curtis: Democratic Club. Nice to see you again, even remotely, Jane.
Jane Albrecht: Always good to be here, and I'm thrilled to have Billy and Gregg
Jane Albrecht: here today too.
Bill Curtis: Now for our special guests. Billy Ray is probably best
Bill Curtis: known for writing the Oscar- nominated screenplay for Captain Phillips,
Bill Curtis: and he won the Writers Guild Award, as well. He's
Bill Curtis: written and sometimes directed films, including The Hunger Games, Richard
Bill Curtis: Jewell, he was directed by Clint Eastwood, Flight Plan with
Bill Curtis: Jodie Foster, and many more. He's also the writer and
Bill Curtis: director of The Comey Rule, based on James Comey's book:
Bill Curtis: A Higher Loyalty. It'll be on Showtime in September. We
Bill Curtis: also like him because he's a Dodger fan. Gregg Hurwitz
Bill Curtis: is the New York Times internationally bestselling author of 22
Bill Curtis: thrillers, including the Orphan X series. His novels have won
Bill Curtis: numerous literary awards, and he's been published in 32 languages.
Bill Curtis: He publishes academic articles on Shakespeare, and he's taught or
Bill Curtis: lectured at USC, UCLA, and Harvard. In the course of
Bill Curtis: researching his thrillers, he swims with sharks, he sneaks onto
Bill Curtis: demolition ranges with Navy seals, and he's gone even undercover into mind-
Bill Curtis: control cults. Gregg's editorial pieces have appeared in the Wall
Bill Curtis: Street Journal, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, and now finally
Bill Curtis: he's on Politics: Meet Me in the Middle. Gregg and
Bill Curtis: Billy have worked together pro bono on political races since
Bill Curtis: 2016. They've helped candidates with messaging, speeches, debate prep. Focusing
Bill Curtis: on Democrats? Yes, but it's about how to make arguments
Bill Curtis: that our Republican friends may actually respect. They've also written
Bill Curtis: and produced many political ads. As a matter of fact,
Bill Curtis: there's one I really want you to see, so we're
Bill Curtis: going to place it on our website that features the
Bill Curtis: Shining City on a Hill speech by Ronald Reagan. You
Bill Curtis: simply must see it and you'll understand what really moves
Bill Curtis: us. Today you'll see that these guys are truly impassioned.
Bill Curtis: Billy Ray and Gregg Hurwitz, welcome to both of you,
Bill Curtis: and thanks for joining us.
Billy Ray: Thank you.
Greg Hurwitz: Thank you.
Bill Curtis: You guys have also talked about how we're not so
Bill Curtis: good at listening anymore, and for your political messaging, you
Bill Curtis: two have made communicating an art. Can you tell us
Bill Curtis: about that?
Greg Hurwitz: Well, one of the things that I think is really important
Greg Hurwitz: that we've boiled a lot of this down to is
Greg Hurwitz: understanding the different value structures and ways that conservatives versus
Greg Hurwitz: liberals take in and hear information, in terms of Big
Greg Hurwitz: Five personality theory. A lot of people are more familiar
Greg Hurwitz: with Myers Briggs, which is the cliff notes to Big
Greg Hurwitz: Five personality theory. There's different traits structures. Liberals tend to...
Greg Hurwitz: higher in certain traits like openness and empathy, and we
Greg Hurwitz: tend to communicate through those. Whereas conservatives tend to communicate
Greg Hurwitz: or tend to have a value structure that prefers high conscientiousness
Greg Hurwitz: as a value set. Both of these are absolutely essential
Greg Hurwitz: value sets. One of the things where we find polarization,
Greg Hurwitz: is when people only communicate in the language and through
Greg Hurwitz: the value set of their own listeners or people who
Greg Hurwitz: are likeminded. We have a breakdown of discourse that happens
Greg Hurwitz: in the middle of good faith, enlightenment discourse, people only
Greg Hurwitz: communicate among themselves in their own language, and their values,
Greg Hurwitz: which drives the left further left, and the right for
Greg Hurwitz: the right until what we have is black and white
Greg Hurwitz: thinking and the denigration of anyone who doesn't think like us.
Bill Curtis: What should they do instead?
Billy Ray: I'll give you an example, thinking of high empathy, high
Billy Ray: openness arguments. Democrats tend to be higher in those things.
Billy Ray: They communicate in that language, as Gregg said. A classic
Billy Ray: Democrat argument is, " Don't you care about Jimmy Kimmel's kid?"
Billy Ray: To which Republicans say, " I care about Jimmy Kimmel's kid,
Billy Ray: but I can't take care of everybody's kid." It's not
Billy Ray: that they lack empathy. It's that in a hierarchy of
Billy Ray: values, it falls below conscientiousness. What you have to do
Billy Ray: as a Democrat, we believe, is make arguments that are
Billy Ray: not high empathy arguments, but are arguments that are actually
Billy Ray: designed to reach who cares about the robustness of the
Billy Ray: community as a whole. These personality traits are fixed. You
Billy Ray: can't go up to an introvert and turn him into
Billy Ray: an extrovert. By the same token, it does not help
Billy Ray: a Democrat to go up to a Republican and say, " Why can't you be
Billy Ray: more empathetic like me? I'm a better person than you
Billy Ray: are because I have higher empathy." It's important to note
Billy Ray: that high conscientiousness, which conservatives score so well in codes
Billy Ray: for better health, a longer lifespan, more stable marriages, and
Billy Ray: better careers. While Democrats are condescending to Republicans saying, " Why
Billy Ray: can't you be more like us?" Publicans are saying, we're
Billy Ray: fine. Over here with our longer lifespan and our better
Billy Ray: careers and our better marriages.
Bill Curtis: You've done an analysis to understand the driving psychology behind
Bill Curtis: conservatives and Democrats, right?
Billy Ray: I think under everything in a conservative voter, the thing
Billy Ray: that unites them politically is a fear of chaos. If
Billy Ray: you go back and look at every argument that Republican
Billy Ray: candidates make, classically, the subtext of it is always, " Democrats
Billy Ray: will bring chaos." It's why Ted Cruz is out there
Billy Ray: right now tweeting that all Democrats are anarchists and [inaudible 00:07:07]. It's
Billy Ray: why Mike Pence is out there saying, " Joe Biden wants
Billy Ray: to defund the police," when he knows that not to
Billy Ray: be true because he's trying to paint a picture that
Billy Ray: Democrats will create less safety. It's why the Willie Horton
Billy Ray: ad worked. It's always the attack that Republicans make. What
Billy Ray: we try to talk to democratic candidates about, they have
Billy Ray: to attack the fear of chaos that makes a Republican,
Billy Ray: a Republican, and they have to paint themselves accurately, I
Billy Ray: believe, as the antidote to chaos.
Bill Curtis: You defined it as conscientiousness, which you said paired to
Bill Curtis: orderliness and industriousness. Doesn't our society need those attributes, at
Bill Curtis: least for some people to be their driving psychology?
Greg Hurwitz: Absolutely. It's the job of conservatives to make sure that
Greg Hurwitz: we're moving slowly and not throwing out the baby with
Greg Hurwitz: the bathwater as we start to innovate and change. That's
Greg Hurwitz: why they like to have boundaries around gender, around countries.
Greg Hurwitz: It's the job of liberals to say, " Okay, granted we
Greg Hurwitz: need to have boundaries around a country. We need to have
Greg Hurwitz: an immigration system that obeys the law, but if we
Greg Hurwitz: make a wall that is too impenetrable, then new ideas
Greg Hurwitz: and people won't get in and will stagnate and die."
Greg Hurwitz: The good- faith discussion about the ways that those two
Greg Hurwitz: value sets need to work in operation for the betterment
Greg Hurwitz: of society are when society functions the best.
Bill Curtis: Gregg, the other day, you were talking about how conscientiousness
Bill Curtis: results in better marriages, better finances, better health, longer lifespan.
Bill Curtis: What's wrong with that?
Greg Hurwitz: Nothing's wrong with that at all. It's wonderful, but we
Greg Hurwitz: also need risk- takers, right?
Bill Curtis: That leads to chaos, right? Risk- takers.
Greg Hurwitz: No, not if it's in balance. Look, the left and
Greg Hurwitz: the right get off course in predictable ways. We see
Greg Hurwitz: what happens. It's (inaudible) tasks, it's infighting, and it's
Greg Hurwitz: a constant cannibalization of their own side. It's a very
Greg Hurwitz: predictable manner. There's a reason why a lot of the "
Greg Hurwitz: cancel culture" has emerged from the left. Whereas when the
Greg Hurwitz: right gets off course, it tends to feel more like
Greg Hurwitz: authoritarianism and a different set of values. Either side on
Greg Hurwitz: their own can get off course. It can get out
Greg Hurwitz: of whack. What we need to do is to try
Greg Hurwitz: to have the conversation in the middle where we actually
Greg Hurwitz: are complementing each other in the values that we are
Greg Hurwitz: proposing and having good sense management between the two poles.
Greg Hurwitz: We've completely lost that over the last four years.
Billy Ray: Just to circle back to what your original question was,
Billy Ray: which was, " Do risk takers create chaos?" No, they don't.
Billy Ray: I'll give you an example. I-
Ed Larson: Maybe not create, but they risk chaos.
Greg Hurwitz: Yeah.
Billy Ray: Okay. The question is, " How do you define chaos?" In
Billy Ray: other words, the Republican argument against something like-
Ed Larson: Anything I can't control.
Greg Hurwitz: Okay. Wait a minute. The Republican argument against gay marriage
Greg Hurwitz: for 10 years was, " It will destroy the institution of
Greg Hurwitz: marriage." The idea was if you allow gay people to
Greg Hurwitz: marry that somehow heterosexual marriage won't count anymore. That was
Greg Hurwitz: a very serious argument that conservatives made over and over
Greg Hurwitz: and over again, completely wrong, and has now been proven to
Greg Hurwitz: be wrong. There is no version of Republicans going back
Greg Hurwitz: and saying, " You know what? We overreacted on that one."
Greg Hurwitz: Instead, they're going to double down and they're going to say, "
Greg Hurwitz: Oh, Democrats want to take all your guns away. Democrats
Greg Hurwitz: believe in eight and half month abortions." It's all the
Greg Hurwitz: same argument. It's selling this idea that Democrats equal chaos.
Greg Hurwitz: What we have found is that in the era of
Greg Hurwitz: Donald Trump, the opposite is true.
Jane Albrecht: The other thing it's important to remember is that while
Jane Albrecht: these can be dominant characteristics, it's not like one side
Jane Albrecht: has only high conscientiousness and the other side only has
Jane Albrecht: empathy. There's a mix of both traits in both sides.
Jane Albrecht: It's just which is dominant.
Greg Hurwitz: That's right. In fact, Jane, that's an excellent point. There
Greg Hurwitz: is a staggering amount of agreement in America right now.
Greg Hurwitz: We believe hard work and innovation should be rewarded. We
Greg Hurwitz: think everyone should play by the same rules. We believe
Greg Hurwitz: in opportunity. We believe in a baseline of medical care.
Greg Hurwitz: We just have different views of how to do it.
Greg Hurwitz: We believe in preserving fields and streams and oceans. We're
Greg Hurwitz: in massive agreement, conservatives, and liberals alike. If you remove
Greg Hurwitz: social media, which basically thrives on descent, discord, and dopamine
Greg Hurwitz: hits of outrage and virtue signaling. We have the mainstream
Greg Hurwitz: media, which outrage and adrenaline equals eyeballs. You have lobbyists
Greg Hurwitz: who, if we ever figured out that the percent of
Greg Hurwitz: Americans who favor a bill has literally 0% impact on
Greg Hurwitz: whether the bill will pass. They are all about having
Greg Hurwitz: us be separated all the time. Politicians, when they go
Greg Hurwitz: to raise money, have to paint all of these differences. To
Greg Hurwitz: Jane's point, of course, conservatives have empathy. Of course, liberals
Greg Hurwitz: have high conscientiousness or Billy Ray wouldn't have written 5,
Greg Hurwitz: 000 screenplays by his 21st birthday. These are all traits,
Greg Hurwitz: and these differences are very small if we can figure
Greg Hurwitz: out how to not let them be toxically magnified, and
Greg Hurwitz: then just start to believe this matrix- like web of
Greg Hurwitz: polarization, that we have unwittingly plugged ourselves into all the time.
Ed Larson: There are certain issues that have been magnified by one
Ed Larson: side or the other because they are wedge issues. Issues
Ed Larson: like abortion and abortion rights. Issues like guns and gun
Ed Larson: control. Those issues have come so much to dominate the
Ed Larson: discourse and to drive this wedge between us. Those are
Ed Larson: big issues this time. I mean, Trump ran on some
Ed Larson: of those and equally at the gut level, the Democrats
Ed Larson: have run on those same issues from the other side. They
Ed Larson: shouldn't be so fundamental, but they have become voting issues
Ed Larson: for so many people.
Bill Curtis: Ed, I think the reality is that a lot of
Bill Curtis: the issues you just mentioned really are exploding because of
Bill Curtis: the extremes that Gregg was talking about before. Let's take
Bill Curtis: guns, for example. Most conservatives think that it's okay to
Bill Curtis: have some regulation for guns. It's the extremes that don't
Bill Curtis: want any regulation at all so that we should be
Bill Curtis: able to go purchase a small nuclear weapon if we
Bill Curtis: so choose.
Ed Larson: I don't know. I talked to a lot of people
Ed Larson: on these issues. You talk about abortion, that's just so
Ed Larson: important to them, and they care deeply on that issue.
Jane Albrecht: Let me make an observation. What you're talking about Ed, is
Jane Albrecht: the culture war issues. The reason they've been picked particularly
Jane Albrecht: by the Republicans is that they completely feed into the
Jane Albrecht: fear versus the openness. They play very well for that purpose.
Greg Hurwitz: Well, I want to agree with something that Ed said.
Greg Hurwitz: I think the two issues where we have fundamental core
Greg Hurwitz: differences are on abortion and are on the rights of
Greg Hurwitz: the LGBTQ versus the rights of religious leader. I think
Greg Hurwitz: those are two fundamental and core issues. If there can
Greg Hurwitz: be a conversation that is not depicting the other side
Greg Hurwitz: as being either hatefully misogynistic or murderous, but an understanding
Greg Hurwitz: that we come down on very different sides of an
Greg Hurwitz: issue of freedom versus religious value sets, and we can
Greg Hurwitz: talk about them in ways that are humanizing. I do
Greg Hurwitz: think there's a lot of ground to be picked up.
Greg Hurwitz: Often some of the most conservative folks about the issue
Greg Hurwitz: of abortion and pro- life, aren't comfortable necessarily with government-
Greg Hurwitz: mandated pregnancies, for instance. There's nuts and bolts issues that
Greg Hurwitz: I think there can be good- faith discussion about how
Greg Hurwitz: freedom and libertarian values interfere and where they begin and
Greg Hurwitz: end, as long as we are vilifying of one another.
Billy Ray: I would add quickly to that, Ed. Gregg and I
Billy Ray: have worked with... I think it's 31 first time candidates
Billy Ray: running for house or Senate, and then another 30 or
Billy Ray: 40 that are actually current members in the house or
Billy Ray: Senate, all on the Democrat side, about messaging. Not one
Billy Ray: of those Democrat candidates has ever said to me, " The
Billy Ray: most important thing to me is to take people's guns
Billy Ray: away." Not one. Yet you look at Donald Trump who
Billy Ray: is sitting on the tarmac in Ohio saying, " Biden's going
Billy Ray: to hurt God and Biden's going to hurt guns. He's
Billy Ray: going to take your guns away." It is a panic
Billy Ray: button issue for Republican candidates. It is not an aggressive
Billy Ray: agenda for Democrats, and it never has been. That's one where
Billy Ray: the messaging is getting in the way of where we
Billy Ray: actually agree.
Bill Curtis: Interesting. Well, we'll be right back with Billy Ray and
Bill Curtis: Gregg Hurwitz in just a minute. ( singing)
voice over 2: On medicine, we're still practicing. Join Dr. Steven Taback and
voice over 2: Bill Curtis for real conversations with the medical professionals who
voice over 2: have their finger on the pulse of healthcare in the
voice over 2: modern world. Available on all your favorite podcasting platforms. Produced
voice over 2: by CurtCo Media. ( singing)
Bill Curtis: We're back with Billy Ray and Gregg Hurwitz. Gregg, before
Bill Curtis: the break, you were talking about polarizing issues. Now you've
Bill Curtis: discussed an analogy where political positioning can be compared to
Bill Curtis: cults. Can you explain that?
Greg Hurwitz: Yeah. I wrote a thriller early in my career about mind-
Greg Hurwitz: control cults. There's certain key ventures that you see or
Greg Hurwitz: key actions in cults. You can see this in large
Greg Hurwitz: cults like North Korea or in specific or smaller cults.
Greg Hurwitz: One of the first things is that they aim to inoculate
Greg Hurwitz: people to outside information. You do that from displacing them
Greg Hurwitz: from family and friends. The cult leaders are a step
Greg Hurwitz: ahead, so they say to their members, " Look, your friends
Greg Hurwitz: and family aren't going to understand you. In fact, they're
Greg Hurwitz: going to be so jealous and so envious about the
Greg Hurwitz: progress that you made here, that they're going to even
Greg Hurwitz: call us a cult," right? There's a strong inoculating effect
Greg Hurwitz: against any information. As we're talking to people, one of
Greg Hurwitz: the things that we have to realize, and this is
Greg Hurwitz: something I've been thinking a lot about, is we can't
Greg Hurwitz: go right at Trump, and we can't go right at
Greg Hurwitz: them in terms of insulting him. If you just say
Greg Hurwitz: he's a cult leader, he's a hypocrite, he's an idiot,
Greg Hurwitz: he conned you. Then people start to feel terrible about
Greg Hurwitz: themselves, and what they find is that they will claim
Greg Hurwitz: to their ideology and their beliefs more. What you do
Greg Hurwitz: is you try and open up a sliver of cognitive
Greg Hurwitz: dissonance within them. That Reagan ad that you saw and
Greg Hurwitz: liked very much is what I was doing. Is to
Greg Hurwitz: paint the difference to good faith conservatives to say, " Here's
Greg Hurwitz: how your party has moved, in my estimation." The conversations
Greg Hurwitz: we're having now. We're having conversations about class injustice, about
Greg Hurwitz: race, about police forces we would never be having in
Greg Hurwitz: year three and a half of a Hillary Clinton presidency.
Greg Hurwitz: We just wouldn't. It would be a very similar trajectory.
Greg Hurwitz: That's the same trajectory that saw no real wage growth
Greg Hurwitz: for working- class people for 40 years. I don't know
Greg Hurwitz: if I'm quite ready to commit to this, but in
Greg Hurwitz: a lot of ways, I wonder maybe America did in
Greg Hurwitz: fact choose the right poison in 2016 of those people
Greg Hurwitz: who felt not seen or heard or represented in the
Greg Hurwitz: ballot. He gave voice to a lot of things that
Greg Hurwitz: Americans knew for years. The game is rigged. The elites
Greg Hurwitz: are condescending and sanctimonious. Politicians don't care about you as
Greg Hurwitz: much as they care about corporations.
Bill Curtis: You said the Democrats had lost the communication with their base.
Greg Hurwitz: Right. Maybe he's the imperfect messenger who was dropped in
Greg Hurwitz: the middle of this with his, what I think are
Greg Hurwitz: base instincts and divisiveness and lack of care and competence
Greg Hurwitz: and lack of care of anyone but himself, to give
Greg Hurwitz: us an opportunity to really look in the face a
Greg Hurwitz: lot of the divisions that we've taken our eye off.
Greg Hurwitz: As much as Billy and I did all those years
Greg Hurwitz: that we didn't do very much in politics.
Bill Curtis: You say that, but is he the guy, then, to
Bill Curtis: take it forward from here and fix it?
Billy Ray: One of the ways that I think about it, Bill, is the person that you
Billy Ray: would pay to do demolition on a building is not
Billy Ray: the architect who's going to build up from that emptiness.
Billy Ray: They're not the same skillset. We've just had the demolition
Billy Ray: for four years, but that's not the person that you
Billy Ray: would want to rebuild things. We talked to candidates all
Billy Ray: the time about saying to Trump voters, " I get what
Billy Ray: was fun and what was funny about Donald Trump in
Billy Ray: 2016. I get that it was funny to watch him
Billy Ray: on the Libs." The fact is the democratic party had
Billy Ray: lost touch a little bit. I understand why it was
Billy Ray: appealing to look at somebody who was saying, " I'm going
Billy Ray: to blow the whole damn thing up." I get that.
Billy Ray: Here's the issue. Now it's four years later, he did
Billy Ray: blow the whole damn thing up, and we are facing
Billy Ray: a problem in COVID that only a federal government can
Billy Ray: solve. We don't have one. Don't get sucked into the
Billy Ray: argument about big government versus small government. This is about effective,
Billy Ray: competent, robust government. We don't have one. He got it
Billy Ray: out of there. That's why you're worried to death about
Billy Ray: your mom in the nursing home. That's why your 15- year-
Billy Ray: old kid just did spring quarter on your couch. That's
Billy Ray: why you and your husband both lost your jobs because
Billy Ray: there are certain things that only a federal government is
Billy Ray: big enough to stop. We don't have a federal government that's competent
Billy Ray: to do it.
Bill Curtis: Ed, come on in.
Ed Larson: I agree with the points that Gregg and Billy had
Ed Larson: been making just now. He ran on those issues, but
Ed Larson: he also ran on some positive issues. He ran that
Ed Larson: he would change the Supreme Court. I know a lot
Ed Larson: of people who voted for him because they thought he'd
Ed Larson: get new Supreme Court nominees, which he's delivered on. He
Ed Larson: ran on, " Build a wall," and he sort of built it.
Ed Larson: He certainly has grown a lot of muscle and weight
Ed Larson: into stopping immigration.
Billy Ray: I'm sorry. He ran on four promises. " I will bring
Billy Ray: back manufacturing. Your healthcare will get better and cheaper. Mexico
Billy Ray: will pay for the wall, and I will drain the
Billy Ray: swamp." He had a Republican House and a Republican Senate and
Billy Ray: went oh for four on those promises, which means either
Billy Ray: they were not good ideas or he is not an
Billy Ray: effective leader.
Ed Larson: Sorry, but I think he also ran on build a
Ed Larson: wall, on closing off immigration. He ran on less regulation
Ed Larson: to unleash business. The Supreme court was a huge issue,
Ed Larson: appointing new judges to the Supreme court. Of course, he
Ed Larson: had the recent death of Scalia to play on, and he
Ed Larson: ran against China. I think he ran on those issues,
Ed Larson: and people think he delivered on them.
Greg Hurwitz: I'd like to just jump in with Ed, to talk about something that actually
Greg Hurwitz: just happened now on the podcast in real time because
Greg Hurwitz: this is always interesting. Ed raised a couple of points
Greg Hurwitz: about things that Trump delivered on, and he was pretty
Greg Hurwitz: quickly shut down. It doesn't cost us anything to concede
Greg Hurwitz: ground when it is correct. China and the trade arrangements
Greg Hurwitz: with China, we're not bueno. If you talk to CEOs
Greg Hurwitz: in Silicon Valley, that was not a good arrangement. Trump
Greg Hurwitz: called it out, and he tackled it. He did promise
Greg Hurwitz: the Supreme court, and he delivered the Supreme court. There
Greg Hurwitz: are a few things that he did, and it accrues
Greg Hurwitz: to our validity and grasp of reality if we can
Greg Hurwitz: agree and concede in certain areas where he did do
Greg Hurwitz: things. For me, I think what's very important is, is
Greg Hurwitz: we can't fall in love with our politicians any more
Greg Hurwitz: than we can hate them. Hating Trump, to me, is
Greg Hurwitz: an exercise in futility. Pretending that Joe Biden also is
Greg Hurwitz: Nelson Mandela and Robert Kennedy rolled into one is additionally
Greg Hurwitz: something I don't think is important. I think the most
Greg Hurwitz: important way that we can talk to people is to
Greg Hurwitz: join on the aspects that are correct and not turn
Greg Hurwitz: it into that every speck of Trump is vile. We
Greg Hurwitz: can all have different opinions about where that falls and
Greg Hurwitz: that every aspect of what we're advocating is positive. The
Greg Hurwitz: point of a democracy is that nobody gets everything that
Greg Hurwitz: they want. That we all agree, imperfectly, that through our
Greg Hurwitz: different skillsets and through our different structures and values that
Greg Hurwitz: we all wrangle, and fight and we move very slowly
Greg Hurwitz: and imperfectly towards the light.
Bill Curtis: Billy getting back to the premise of the show, how
Bill Curtis: is it that we communicate with the never Democrat, the
Bill Curtis: friends that we have that we want to have a
Bill Curtis: conversation with, and get them to feel that Biden will
Bill Curtis: not be the chaos president?
Billy Ray: The very first thing that I would say to Republican
Billy Ray: friends, and I do have them, is I don't like
Billy Ray: chaos. I like order. I like stability. I like security.
Billy Ray: I like safety. I like things that are dependable. I
Billy Ray: can't live my life if I don't have those things.
Billy Ray: As I look around me right now, I see an
Billy Ray: economy in freefall. I see a virus not being checked.
Billy Ray: I see patients lining up in parking lots because they
Billy Ray: don't have enough ICU beds to get in. I see
Billy Ray: people questioning whether or not an election is going to
Billy Ray: take place. I see a post office under attack. I
Billy Ray: see chaos. In every respect of American life, I see
Billy Ray: chaos. That is not what people were signing up for
Billy Ray: when they signed up four years ago to support Donald
Billy Ray: Trump. There were 62 million Americans who did. You have to
Billy Ray: honor that. You have to acknowledge that. When I look
Billy Ray: at what Joe Biden is talking about, it is about
Billy Ray: restoring stability. The build's been knocked down to the ground.
Billy Ray: Who's going to build it back up again, better than
Billy Ray: it was before? I believe Joe Biden gives us the
Billy Ray: basis of that.
Bill Curtis: You have advised dozens of candidates, but you guys don't
Bill Curtis: accept any money for what you do, which in our
Bill Curtis: society is somewhat rare. Can you explain that to me?
Billy Ray: I would never ever take money for this. I consider
Billy Ray: that this a service to my country. I'm terrified by
Billy Ray: what's happening to our democracy. I find that to be
Billy Ray: a much bigger issue than guns or anything else. I'm
Billy Ray: talking about the fundamental ideals of what makes America, America.
Billy Ray: They've never been more under threat. I see a country
Billy Ray: in which 30 or 40% of Americans don't seem to
Billy Ray: care that foreign governments want to influence American elections. That's
Billy Ray: a real problem for me. I would not accept money
Billy Ray: to try to turn that aircraft carrier around.
Greg Hurwitz: One of the things that we remarked at times is
Greg Hurwitz: that we ask for no money, no credit, and no
Greg Hurwitz: permission. If you don't need those three things, you can
Greg Hurwitz: pretty much move the world. Billy and I have been spending 10, 12
Greg Hurwitz: hours a day, some days pro bono, 1518. The minute
Greg Hurwitz: that I start to take money and make money, the
Greg Hurwitz: minute that somebody is going to employ me, I have
Greg Hurwitz: a different responsibility set. I have to listen to it. I
Greg Hurwitz: don't just mean that they're going to tell me something
Greg Hurwitz: that's crassly corrupt. I mean, " Do I shave 5% off my
Greg Hurwitz: opinion to make it work with somebody because I'm reliant
Greg Hurwitz: on them?" There's all these ways that corruption comes into
Greg Hurwitz: play. If we are fortunate enough to win, the number
Greg Hurwitz: one thing that I want is that we can get
Greg Hurwitz: corporatism out of politics and out of the American economy to
Greg Hurwitz: whatever extent makes sense.
Bill Curtis: The other day you said that to persuade people you
Bill Curtis: need humility, and the liberals haven't been very good at
Bill Curtis: that. What do you mean?
Billy Ray: Gregg and I are both storytellers. When Hillary ran in 2016,
Billy Ray: I thought there was a great lack of humility in
Billy Ray: that she never told her story. Say what you want about
Billy Ray: Donald Trump, he told the story. His story was, " This
Billy Ray: country should be run like a business. I'm a businessman.
Billy Ray: I alone can fix it." That's a story, right? People
Billy Ray: were ready to buy into that story. Hillary, I think,
Billy Ray: kept approaching it from a point of view of, " This
Billy Ray: guy is such an asshole, there's no way you're going
Billy Ray: to vote for him. I just don't believe for a
Billy Ray: second you're going to vote for this guy, and therefore,
Billy Ray: I'm just going to show up and tell you, I'm
Billy Ray: Hillary Clinton, and you got to check the box." There
Billy Ray: was a lack of humility there too. You have to
Billy Ray: engage people on an emotional level in both screenwriting and
Billy Ray: in politics. These are intellectual exercises that are designed to
Billy Ray: elicit an emotional response. I think she lost sight of
Billy Ray: that, and I think we, as a party, lost sight of that.
Greg Hurwitz: We're in a marriage right now. Let's take the metaphor
Greg Hurwitz: into the personal. The country went 51%, 49% in the popular
Greg Hurwitz: vote for Hillary. We're split. We're married. We're not going
Greg Hurwitz: to get rid of anybody. We don't get to get
Greg Hurwitz: rid of Kansas or Virginia or Florida or Alabama, so
Greg Hurwitz: what do we want to do about it? When you
Greg Hurwitz: have an argument within a marriage or with a best
Greg Hurwitz: friend or with your kid, one of the traits that's
Greg Hurwitz: absolutely essential is humility and is owning your piece no
Greg Hurwitz: matter how small it is. Even if you can come
Greg Hurwitz: back and go, " You know what? I'm absolutely furious about
Greg Hurwitz: this blowup that we had." This 5%, I'm going to
Greg Hurwitz: own. Or this 90%. Here's the piece for me. That's always
Greg Hurwitz: the way that we can start to loosen things up.
Greg Hurwitz: We better wake up and figure out that we don't
Greg Hurwitz: have all the answers. I'd love nothing more than a
Greg Hurwitz: competent, good- faith Republican and conservative movement backed by moral
Greg Hurwitz: upstanding people who actually adhere to free- market capitalist and
Greg Hurwitz: conservative values to have respectable discourse with, to figure out
Greg Hurwitz: our respective blind spots to move the country forward. I
Greg Hurwitz: would love that.
Bill Curtis: As we close, I'm going to steal the last word
Bill Curtis: because I think we'll all disagree on some issues, we
Bill Curtis: agree on a remarkable number of them. One thing that we
Bill Curtis: can all here agree with is that we all want
Bill Curtis: to return to fundamental decency as Americans. Billy Ray and
Bill Curtis: Gregg Hurwitz, thank you so much for joining us today.
Bill Curtis: This has been a spectacular conversation as we expected coming
Bill Curtis: in. Jane Albrecht and Ed Larson, thank you too. Billy
Bill Curtis: and Gregg, how can people find you? How do they
Bill Curtis: follow you?
Greg Hurwitz: They can find Billy on CBS. What's the night that's
Greg Hurwitz: got the Comey Rule?
Billy Ray: There's a mini- series that I made called the Comey
Billy Ray: Rules, an adaptation of James Comey's book. It airs on
Billy Ray: Showtime September 27th and 28th. I look forward to the
Billy Ray: robust conversations that I think will follow.
Bill Curtis: Well, that should be interesting.
Greg Hurwitz: I'm on social media. Most of more of my social
Greg Hurwitz: media is about the thrillers that I write. I do
Greg Hurwitz: talk a bit about politics. I'm also over at Thinkspot.
Greg Hurwitz: It's a website designed for thinking that's unplugged and out
Greg Hurwitz: of the box. I'm over there a bit on occasion
Greg Hurwitz: with stuff that's more political, and I'm publishing op- eds
Greg Hurwitz: primarily to talk across the aisle at The Bulwark quite
Greg Hurwitz: a bit.
Bill Curtis: Excellent. Ed, if someone wants to follow you, you've had
Bill Curtis: quite a few articles published lately, how do they find you?
Ed Larson: Use Google and look them up. I've quite a few in the
Ed Larson: Hill, some in the Atlantic, recently. Of course, for my
Ed Larson: books, both the new edition of Summer For The Gods,
Ed Larson: with the new afterward and Franklin & Washington, which was out
Ed Larson: earlier this year. Those can be got at your neighborhood
Ed Larson: bookstore or your library.
Bill Curtis: Okay. Jane, if someone wants to get ahold of you
Bill Curtis: at the Malibu Democratic Club, how do they do it?
Jane Albrecht: It's going to be a busy fall. It's at www. malibudemocraticclub. org.
Bill Curtis: Billy Ray and Gregg Hurwitz, thank you so much for
Bill Curtis: joining us, and thanks for joining us on Politics: Meet
Bill Curtis: Me in the Middle. We'll see you next week. If
Bill Curtis: you like what you hear, please tell your friends, and
Bill Curtis: please leave a comment. Yes, we'd appreciate it if you
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Bill Curtis: you listen to your favorite podcast. This episode was produced
Bill Curtis: and edited by AJ Mosley and Mike Thomas, and it
Bill Curtis: was audio mastered by Michael Kennedy. The theme music for
Bill Curtis: Politics: Meet Me in the Middle was composed and performed
Bill Curtis: by Celleste and Eric Dick. Thanks for listening. ( singing).
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