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We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created.
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As a member of Congress, I get to have a lot of really interesting people in the office, experts on what they're talking about.
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This is the podcast for insights into the issues.
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China, bioterrorism, Medicare for all, in depth discussions, breaking it down into simple terms. We hold.
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We hold. We hold these truths. We hold these truths. With Dan Crenshaw, the eagle has landed.
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Hey all, welcome back. Hold these Truths, the best podcast ever. And today's guest is HW Brands. He's one of America's most acclaimed historians and the author of more than 30 books. 30, that's a lot of books on figures that range from Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, Ulysses Grant and many others. And as we approach America's 250th, there are very few people better equipped to help us understand the founding, the the presidency, political polarization, and how we got here, what history can teach us about the challenges facing the country today. So, Professor Brands, what? Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining us.
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Delighted to be with you.
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B
Maybe we can just start with that very general question as we approach 250. I mean, is, is, is there a unitary theory on how we got here, historically speaking?
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Well, I mean, it'll sound like a flip answer, but we got here one year, one election, one decade at a time. But that, that's actually important way of looking at it because at the time of the founding, nobody was thinking 250 years ahead. Nobody was thinking a hundred years ahead. In fact, if we start with the Declaration of Independence, the war for American independence had already begun and nobody knew how the war was going to turn out. There was a great hope, of course, that it would turn out with an independent country, but there was no guarantee that that was the case. Both parties to the war, both the British and the Americans, they expected that the war would be short. There would be. Each side would sort of demonstrate its purpose and the other side would back down. The war went on very much longer than anybody thought. So that alone indicated that this was a bigger deal and a harder undertaking than people had thought. They'd gotten into the first national government of the United States under the Articles of Confederation didn't last long at all. It was ratified by the continental Congress in 1781, and it was overthrown in 1787 by the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. So the people who wrote the Constitution, the second Constitution, they were hoping they'd get a longer run than that six year period. They were thinking, boy, if we could do this for a couple of decades, maybe. I think they would be astonished, actually, if they came back today and saw that we were. They would be very gratified. And I don't think they'd be enormously surprised to know that we're still here, the country is still here, and that it's still a republic. All that, that was a touch and go thing because at the end of the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin, who is the oldest of the delegates, was approached by a woman who lived in Philadelphia. And she said, Dr. Franklin, what have you given us after all this work during the summer? And he said, a republic, madam, if you can keep it. So the question was, they've given us this new country, this new country under this new system where people are responsible for governing themselves. This was a big deal. It was exceedingly rare in history that people had governed themselves. They'd always been governed by somebody else. That's why you had kings and that's why you had czars and emperors and people like that. The idea that people could govern themselves, it was quite a radical undertaking. And there was no guarantee it was going to work out. In fact, for the first hundred years of America's independent existence, odds are that it wouldn't. And in fact, most other countries around the world were hoping that it would not, because it seemed like a terrible idea to the monarchs of Europe. If this idea catches on, what's going to become of us? So Americans, we managed to get through. We have had crises after conflict after controversy. But the one thing that the founding generation kept always in mind, and it's really important, I think, for us to keep it in mind again today, is that this thing that we've got, this republic is indeed an ongoing experiment in self government. It's an experiment that could fail at any time. It can never succeed definitively because if it lasts 250 years, it might collapse in the 251st year. All we can do is keep pushing the enterprise forward. And so the most important responsibility of every generation is essentially the response that Franklin was looking for. A republic, if you can keep it. For us, it's a republic if we can keep it and hand it off to the next generation. So if there is a lesson out of this, the lesson comes in two parts. One is that it's always a challenge. There has never been a moment when Americans have rested easily with self government. There's always been somebody complaining about something. It has always seen that there was a crisis brewing or on the horizon. But we've always managed to make our way through. And we've managed to make our way through because people, when push finally came to shove, they said it is more important to keep the system going, to keep this experiment going than to insist on some short term gain. Short term gain that might erode the whole system.
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B
So, I mean, a couple things come to mind as you go through that about keeping a republic. I mean, one of our big questions and divisions is what that republic is and what, what the principles even are that define that republic. That's not really agreed upon. So it's, you know, it's hard to keep the, it's hard to keep the republic when there's fights over what it even means.
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Yes, and that's one of the, and
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then, and then, and then fights. And then the second thing, and before I want you to get to, is the, you know, this, this increasing distrust of institutions. Yeah, we, I agree with you. We, we. It has gone decade by decade and stress test by stress test and you might say we've gotten stronger. You, you could argue both ways, I suppose, but for the most part, I mean, we're, we're in a pretty good position. We're still the place everyone wants to be in the world. So I don't think we should complain too much. Stress tests have generally made us stronger. But, and yet that is people, you know, if you just ask them a very, you know, casual, casually asked people, what do you think of government institutions? They'll have a very reactionary answer. Not very thoughtful, not, not well thought out, but just a negative one for sure. Yeah, I can, you know, I know that just from being in the, in the, in the world. I mean, how do we, how do we figure out these questions? This is what a Constitution is.
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It's worth saying that that goes way back. George Washington himself was disgusted with the direction that American politics and the American system of governments is going. That's why he left office after two terms. It's often thought that he left office to set a good example for his successors so that they wouldn't overstay their welcome. But the real reason he left, he wanted to leave after one term. But his supporter, Thomas Jefferson on the one hand and Alexander Hamilton on the other, talked him into staying for another term. But he was so fed up by the nature of partisan politics that he could not wait to get out of town. So this feeling that the government isn't working, that people are putting personal and party self interest above the interests of the nation as a whole, that's been with us forever. We've argued and argued. Now, one of the sources of dive in.
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What was George Washington upset with? Right, because politics back then was so different than it is now. So it's hard for us to understand that.
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Yes and no. It was different for George Washington because George Washington had no political ambition to speak of. He was a soldier. He considered himself a soldier. He was a pretty good soldier. He commanded the Continental army to victory, and he brought independence for the United States of America. And when the war ended, he thought that his public service was done. He handed his commission back over to the Continental Congress, and he went home to Mount Vernon, figuring that he would live a private life for the rest of his years. But then trouble brewed within this new government. The sense of responsibility that had held the states together during the war with Britain largely evaporated when the war was over. And so as much as each state, which in those days, they each all considered themselves sovereign one to the other, nobody could tell. New York couldn't tell New Jersey what to do, New Jersey couldn't tell Pennsylvania what to do, anything like that. And so during the war, they were able to act sort of like, well, a wartime alliance where you have to get along, because if you don't, you're going to lose the war and you'll all be crushed. But after the war is over, what's the point? You're going to seek out what's best for your state, even if it's not good for the country as a whole. And so that's why there was a Constitutional Convention, because the country seemed to be falling apart. And George Washington basically came out of retirement. He was talked out of retirement by James Madison. He said, general. General Washington, we need you. You're the great hero of the country. Your name on the masthead of this convention will give it a great deal more credibility than it would have otherwise. So he agreed to do it, and he initially resisted Madison's pleas. But when a rebellion broke out in western Pennsylvania among Revolutionary War veterans who felt the tax burden and they were being foreclosed upon by their creditors and they took up arms again, he said, this is what we fought the war for. So he decided to put his name back into politics. And anyway, so at the end of the Constitutional Convention, he was implored by Madison and Hamilton, everybody else, you got to be the first president, because again, you're the biggest name. You're the one everybody looks up to. And if you say that this new government is worth your participation in, then other people say, well, it's worth supporting so he reluctantly went ahead and did it. Now it's important that he essentially had the presidency handed to him. He didn't have to campaign. He's the only president to be in that position. And so his attitude toward politics was very different from what his successor's attitude had to be. And for Washington, he had reached the pinnacle of success. He was the great general, and he had a wonderful reputation for that. And that's what he valued. He knew that by going into politics, he would put his reputation at risk, but he felt that it was his civic duty, but he did it out of a sense of obligation. This is for the good of the country. And here's the thing. He expected the people that he worked with in government to do the same thing. Now, that was a little bit shortsighted, partly because, I mean, it reflected the fact that Washington was not a politician. He didn't understand me through personal experience, he didn't understand how politics worked, but also because for him, the presidency was a victory lap for every other president. It was the apex of their career. So his successor was John Adams. And John Adams would not be remembered, if any, anywhere near as well as he is if not for the fact that he became president. Thomas Jefferson became president. So all of his successors, they were still climbing the political ladder, and they did the stuff you have to do to climb the ladder. They couldn't, or at least they didn't think they could act simply on civic virtue. And. But even if they had, they had different ideas of what the national interest was. And so Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, the two leading forces within Washington's administration, they were both sincere men, they were both ambitious men.
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And remind us, what positions did they hold in.
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Alexander Hamilton was secretary of the treasurer, and he was really Washington's closest advisor. Thomas Jefferson was secretary of state, which was sort of a senior position in the cabinet. But he was not quite as close to Washington as Hamilton was. And the two had very different philosophies of government. Hamilton thought that government ought to be stronger, government ought to be bigger, government ought to be more powerful. And between the states and the federal government, the feds ought to have primacy. Jefferson was just the opposite. He distrusted bigger government. He thought that government, when smaller, was better. He thought that in a debate between the feds and the states, the states ought to go first, and Washington generally sided with Hamilton. But it's from these two views of Hamilton and Jefferson that the first political parties formed, and Hamilton headed the Federalist Party, and Jefferson headed the Republican party, and Washington in fact, nobody should have been surprised that parties formed. Because if you live in a free country, free society, where people are able to speak their minds and develop different views, and in a free political system where you get to vote your conscience and your mind, people are going to line up in alliance with whoever they want. And on a typical vote, whether you vote for this bill or against it, you're going to get a either vote, yes or no. So you're going to get these two political parties. And that's exactly what happened. But Washington. Washington thought that the partisan spirit was getting the better of civic spirit. And he watched Hamilton's Federalists, he looked at Jefferson's Republicans, and he concluded they were often doing stuff simply for the good of their parties rather than for the good of the country. Now, again, they wouldn't have said that. They would have said it's. It's a fact of American history. It's not just American history that nobody considers himself a partisan. It's those other people who are partisans. I simply have the interests of the country. All right, so it began.
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We see. We see it today. I see it today. It's something I tell people all the time. You know, I. I'm like, don't. I don't think everyone should be so obsessive about the division in the country that I'm like, that's politics. I get. I know it's. You struggle to believe this, but there is a chance that other people just disagree. Fundamentally, I got a very basic level with, like, the role of government and what policy makes sense and what doesn't. And that's okay. That's. That's kind of the point of politics is that disagreement without warfare.
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That's exactly right. And you see it again and again in American history. And it's fundamentally, it's over the same issue. Do you trust government to do the right thing or do you distrust government? And if you distrust the government, you can want a smaller government. And in Washington's day, that was Jefferson's party, which ironically, was the party that was going to evolve into the modern Democratic Party, which the Democratic Party today professes to be more comfortable with government.
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And just to simplify this real quick to simplify it, because I asked in my original question was, you know, what were the politics of that time? So a couple of things. Maybe it was the Federalist versus the anti Federalists, but, you know, that debate had been leading up to the Constitution. Right? I mean, that's precisely the Federalist. You know, we. We don't really talk about the anti Federalist papers. We talk about the Federalist Papers because they won.
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Yeah.
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And so the Federalist ideals won out. Hamilton won out. But. But Jefferson was still kind of hanging on to that Anti Federalist.
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Yeah.
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Or would he have considered an anti Federalist?
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Well, so they were called anti Federalists at the time of the debate over the Constitution. Once the Constitution is approved, then the anti Federalists become the Jeffersonian Republicans. Basically the same group of people with the same philosophy, but they're no longer just. They don't want to be labeled simply negatively anti Federalist, and they want to have a positive identity of their own. And in fact, the Federalists had a vogue during the first two decades, assuming, sorry, the first two terms. First decade of the American nuke. American government. So Washington did not consider himself a member of either party, but he leaned Federalist. And so the policies of the federal government during the two Washington terms and the term of John Adams, they looked Federalist. They were comfortable with bigger government. And so Hamilton proposed, and Congress accepted the idea of a national bank, the bank of the United States. This is one of the big issues. Jefferson disliked the idea of a national bank, which would seem to have a monopoly on the finances of the country, and he thought that was a bad idea. But the Federalists, they had their moment only through the 1790s. Jefferson won the election of 1800. And so things shift in the direction of. Let's be more skeptical of the central government. Although one of the things that Jefferson did was to demonstrate something that presidents often demonstrate. Whatever they say before they get elected, once they're actually in office, they turn out to be more comfortable with the exercise of power than they sometimes profess to be when they didn't exercise power themselves. So Jefferson. Jefferson was. He believed in a smaller government than Washington had, but he did a few things. He purchased Louisiana. That was a big deal. But one of the things that Jefferson did was Jefferson was a master party politician. So he understood how to organize a party and how to reinforce the victory of 1800 with another victory in 1804. In fact, Jefferson's party won every election through the 1820s. And so it was the first really effective party machine. And the Jeffersonians, their critics said they're putting the interest of party ahead of the interest of the republic, but they believe they were putting the interest of the country first. And the way you get it done in politics is line up with people who believe the same thing you do.
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What do you think about the difference between President Jefferson and the younger gentleman who wrote the or mostly wrote the Declaration of Independence, which of course is what we're celebrating. Right. The 250th is over. 1776, Declaration of Independence.
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Yeah.
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Founding spiritual ideals.
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Exactly. So it's a critical note that Jefferson was much younger when he wrote the Declaration of independence. That was 1776. He doesn't become president until 1801. So 25 years later. And in the interim, Jefferson had been a member of the Continental Congress, he had been Governor of New Jersey, he'd been Secretary of State, so he'd had a lot of political seasoning and he was just much better at politics. When he wrote the Declaration of Events, he was known as a good writer. That was the main thing. And he was a Virginian. And that was crucial because in 1776 a lot of people, including the British, thought that the American Revolution had been a put up job by those people living in Boston. And if somehow they could conquer New England, then the rest of America would fall into line. And so John Adams, a New Englander, a Massachusetts man himself, said, it's got to be a Virginian to write the Declaration of Independence. We have to let the world know that Virginia, Virginia, which was the biggest of the colonies and the states, is behind all this. So we'll get a Virginia man to write the Declaration of Independence and we'll get a Virginia guy to head up the Continental Army. And that was Washington.
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B
Maybe. I know we're jumping back and forth, but you know, sickness. 1776. And again, in the spirit of the 250th and really attempting to answer that question of like what is the republic that we're trying to keep? Because there's this. I mean, in modern day politics, we're always debating what the founders would have said about X, Y and Z.
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Okay.
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And then I think, I think on something that's clear, but there's many things that it's not clear or that there were simply divisions on. So we, if we, if we aggregate the Founding, even though it's, you know, spans over a decade, if we aggregate the Founding and the Declaration and the finalization of the Constitution, you know, how, how do we best describe and most accurately describe what the principles of that, that republic was that Benjamin Franklin said we should keep?
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Okay, the first thing is, the most important thing is they all believed in Republican government, Little R. Republican, by which they meant a political system where political authority rests upon the people. Now, once you've said that, there was a difference of opinion as to how those people are going to exercise that political authority. Everybody believed in republicanism, but they had different understandings of what republicanism meant. So Hamilton and his Federalists, they thought that ordinary folks ought to defer to the people who were more educated, the people who had more experience, the people who had more money. Jefferson had greater faith in ordinary people. Hamilton had a lot of faith in city folks. Jefferson rested his faith on farmers. And he thought that the farmers were going to be basically the bedrock of the American republic. And so you get that difference of opinion. But they all believed that they didn't want a monarch. To them, if you asked them, what, what is a republic? They would really say, it's not a monarchy. It's something where the people are responsible for this. So that's what they would have agreed on. But then beyond that, and they would have agreed that it was a great thing that they were no longer part of the British Empire. And this actually is one of the things that caused some of the founders to be really disappointed when parties emerged in the United States because they had thought that parties were associated with the corrupt politics of the British Empire. And if we could somehow cut loose of the British Empire, we wouldn't have party politics. The term they used originally for party was faction, because factions were these things. These group of people would have their own interests separate from the interests of the country. But they. It really only took a year or two or a session of Congress to understand that, no, in a free society, people are going to have different opinions. And if you let them have different opinions and vote their minds, you're going to get differences, you're going to get parties.
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B
Do you think they saw parties or factions as more like regional and or industrial interests? I mean, I could read that. I could see how they could reason their way to that. Like, okay, the farmers are going to think this, the Virginians might think this. But what they could not have reasoned their way to is like, wait, why is there. Why are there effectively always two forms of government or two forms of party politics emerging? Was that sort of their confusion?
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They would have reasoned that they're going to be two sides to any question, because again, when it's a yes or no vote. Exactly, exactly. So you're going to line up that way. And in fact, that's still the case. You can get multiple parties, but you have to basically write the rules so that you get proportional representation. Otherwise every. Each side is going to try to get 50% plus one vote. So. So they.
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B
And also moving back, important to note this 50% plus one, you know, definition of pure democracy they use the term Republican for, for a reason. And I think that's lost on people too, and even, even amongst modern day Republicans on, on how to describe that difference, because you're, you're electing your Republican representatives through Democratic means. So it's, it's, it's not obvious to people, the nuance there.
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A
Yeah. But it is fair to say that we'll go back to Jefferson and the authoring of the Declaration of Independence. So the five key words are all men are created equal. And once that has been nailed to the masthead of the United States, of this new republic, it's something that each generation of Americans feels obliged to live up to in one way or another. Because Washington didn't buy into the idea that all men are created equal in any politically operational sense. He expected that people would defer, ordinary people would defer to their betters, defer to people like him. But very quickly, that didn't work in politics anymore. And so by the 1820s, the idea that ordinary people should actually exercise political power was something that had taken hold. And that's not something that the founders appreciated. That's not something that they understood was going to happen. So the political culture is different a generation after the founding, and it continues to evolve. So if the framers came back today, what would they think? Would they say, okay, yeah, you're still doing this stuff. I think they would appreciate that times had changed. And it's really interesting that the founding generation is often most enthusiastically embraced by people today who call themselves conservatives. That's just the way it goes. But the founding generation was anything but conservative. They were revolutionaries, for heaven's sake. They didn't just want to change government. They want to throw government out and start all over again. They tried once and they didn't like that. So they overthrew that and tried again. So they realized they were up to something brand new. But the thing is, and this is an important point, we Americans have always been arguing about something in politics. And if so, if you took a snapshot in the 1790s and the 1820s and the 1860s, you pick your time and you'd see Congress, Congress would be up in arms and they would say, you guys don't know anything. Vote this way. But the thing is that the things we've been arguing about, the issues have changed. So we actually have made Progress. In the 1790s, it was perfectly acceptable to say, I don't think ordinary people have responsibility and the intelligence to make political decisions. You couldn't say that after the 1820s. After the 1820s, you have to say, the ordinary American is the greatest person on earth. And, you know, we're going to do whatever they say. You had to by the 1820s, you had to demonstrate that you had a common touch if you wanted to get elected. George Washington had no common touch, and nobody expected it of him. We argued about slavery in the middle of the 19th century. We argued about whether states could leave the Union. We resolved those issues.
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B
Yeah, we solved them kind of through the way we ended up making up our government. And would you agree with this sort of philosophy that the side that said, look, the common man should have a say in government? I mean, that's effectively the House of Representatives. Right. This sort of. This sort of national body. It's elected every two years. It's. It's very much subject to the passions of the people. And when the founders said passion, they didn't mean it in a positive way.
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A
Right.
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B
The way we do now. And, and, you know, it's. Yeah, I see it every day. And then the Senate was supposed to be this, the. The body of elitism that, that, that, I guess whatever we call the federalist side or whatever we call them wanted that more elitist side of the equation. Wanted. And was that effectively the compromise between.
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A
It was. But that even that changed when in the early 20th century, the Senate shifted from being chosen by the state legislatures to certainly did direct election. And so the thing is, our political system has grown more and more democratic, small dudes and egalitarian over time. So we have greater expectations that ordinary people are really the bedrock of our republic than was the case in the 1790s. In we've debated over what the responsibilities of the federal government should be regarding individuals. In the 1930s, when the Social Security bill was presented to Congress, it was perfectly respectable to say, wait, that's not the responsibility of federal government. But that debate was held and the side that says, yeah, the federal government should be responsible for that aspect of individual life, that side one. And so today, nobody says we ought to get rid of Social Security. I mean, nobody who's serious and taken seriously in politics. In the 1960s, Medicare was a huge deal. What socialized medicine, for heaven's sakes? Well, Medicare is one of the most popular programs in the federal government. So we do make progress. We're always arguing about something, but that's in the nature of politics. In a free society, the two sides argue. That's what the two sides do. That's how you say, let's get rid of those incumbents because they're doing something wrong. And here's what I would do, if you like me. So there's never been a time when Congress has been a place where everybody pats each other on bag and says, great work, great work. No, no. They've been pointing the finger at each other and saying, you're doing terrible stuff and it just comes with the territory.
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B
Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, we do pass a lot of, they're not super significant bills over, over very controversial issues, but the vast majority of our bills are indeed very bipartisan.
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A
Yeah.
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B
So it's always good to tell people that, just so they know that is
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A
crucial, because what gets the attention in any generation is the stuff that people are arguing about. That's, you know, why it gets attention. But there's a lot of stuff, it's very constructive that's going on during the 19th century when if you read the history books, you think they're spending all their time arguing about slavery and states rights, but in fact, they were building a highway system, they were building a canal system, they were building railroads, they were building the modern United States. And that's a huge undertaking and a vast success story. But it's the stuff that people argue about that gets all the attention, I would say, is the same thing is true today.
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B
Yeah. And we argue again about the meaning of the Republic. And I would fully agree with your assessment that our, our societies become more democratic and the Senate elections being a really key factor in that. You know, and if you get rid of the filibuster in the Senate, which isn't even, that's not, you know, they could just vote that away. Right, right. That's, that's not a constitutional rule. That's just a Senate tradition. If you got rid of that, it would be very hard to distinguish between this republic that we built and a, and a pure mob democracy or a parliamentary system where, you know, majority really takes all. I mean, yeah, I'm always, I'm always, I'm always surprised when I'll go to visit other governments. Parliaments say, let's say the UK and like our, our fellow committees on, say, intelligence or whatever, and they have no budget control. There's no true checks and balances there. It is, winner takes all.
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A
Right.
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B
And, you know, the republic, I guess, as we define it, and maybe I think what modern conservatives say we're conserving because, yeah, we're not exactly, we're not revolutionaries. Some recently seem to be, but we're trying to conserve something. And I would say that conserving the founding principles of at least we believe that Republic is this system of democratic representation, but with checks and balances and very defined powers for state federal government and breaching that is getting us closer and closer to this egalitarian populist society. And I guess a major question people have and always have is would the Founders be surprised we got there?
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A
Well, one of the things I'm sure the founders would be surprised about is how much authority Congress has delegated or abdicated to the presidents, to the executive. And so presidents really certainly going back to FDR, going to World War II and the early Cold War, Congress has delegated one thing or another after a president giving him emergency powers to do this or that. The whole idea of the Constitution was based on the idea that the three separate branches would each be very jealous of their power and Congress would not cede authority to the executive and the executive wouldn't give anything to the Congress and the Supreme Court would check them both. And so I think they'd be very surprised at the often unchecked power the executive branch has in, in our system. And they say, what happened to Congress? We thought members of Congress would hold on to their power.
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B
Yeah, that's certainly, it's often a complaint. Congress could easily take it back, but Congress would have to act as one voice in order to do it. And again, this gets back to, you know, we, one thing it surprises me that the surprise, the founders were surprised about parties because you know, just taking a look at history, I, I see it, I, I see it as impossible not to create parties. I mean you sure, you have all these factions with different interests, but eventually to gain political power you have to, you have to combine your faction in order to get a majority, in order to win. And so you could reason your way every single time to two sides. And, and sometimes people say no, Dan, it's not, we have a two party system. We need more parties. And I'm like, every country ever has two parties. And they're like no, no, no, no, no, they don't. I said, yeah, I understand that there's labels for parties and there's, it could be a dozen parties pick your country. But in the end there's a opposition party and a party in power. Right? That's always what it is. And it's generally along what we would in modern day times consider a, a liberal conservative spectrum. And which, which does date back to the, you know, it's a question of role of government and it, it does date back to the founding, even though we didn't use the words liberal, conservative or left and right. You know, it was still about the. Fundamentally about the role of government and whether, whether, you know, a mob demo, 51% could tell the other 49% what to do, or whether you needed to protect basic rights and let people fail or achieve within that system. And that's the best government can do. And you shouldn't try to create the utopia. Right, because the more you try to create the utopia, the more people you have to control and eventually kill.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And we've seen that go too far in plenty of times too. So I think that's a fundamental debate. And it was funny because the fact founders understood so much about civics and history. So to see some. So to see people. Them be surprised that parties emerge is surprising to me.
- [33:42]
A
Yeah, well, one thing about it too, is that James Madison, for example, in Federalist 10, argued that this new constitution would limit the influence of. He called them factions because with a big country, there might be a faction in a single state, but they wouldn't be able to take over the whole thing. So he's making the case that factions are bad. And this new constitution will limit the power of factions within two years. So the Constitution is ratified, it goes into effect within two years. He's taking a different view. And the different view is that factions are inevitable. And so now we have to figure out how to. How to live with them. And so he's kind of thrown in the philosophical towel on this one, acknowledging that the parties are with us. One thing that's. That really is going on at the same time as the emergence of parties in the United States, and which really gives a warning to people in the United States is the French Revolution. And the French Revolution is devolving into the reign of terror. And so that gives an idea of how bad politics can be if you really push these ideas. If, as you say, you aim for the utopia instead of just getting the best we can under the circumstances.
- [34:53]
B
I mean, like true revolution, we say our founders are revolutionaries, but they were building upon, you know, ideas. Right? They were, they were building upon a British system of government. They just, they were, they felt they were oppressed by a British system of government that was not. Not. But that system of government wasn't all bad for the British. Right. It was bad for the Americans. So they built upon that. They built upon other ideas. The French were just like, let's start from zero and just go nuts.
- [35:21]
A
Yeah. Compared to the French Revolution, the American Revolution was really just a fight for home rule. Americans wanted to govern themselves. They didn't really object to the way the British system worked, except that they didn't want to be told by the British how to run American affairs. They wanted Americans to decide. But when they came up with the Senate and the House of Representatives, like the House of Commons and the House of Lords in Parliament, and the President was going to be analogous to the constitutional monarch of Britain and so on. So there were a lot of connections there and there were a lot of people in America who thought Britain had a pretty good thing going. It's just that they tried to make us do what they want to do.
- [35:57]
B
So there's that part. Yeah.
- [35:59]
A
So, you know, it's. There's everybody's learning as they go along. And, and in fact, one of the things about the Constitution is compared to constitutions of. Well, in fact, I live in Texas, we know from Texas, you know, how long a Texas constitution is. The Texas Constitution is hundreds of pages long, you know, compared to which the US Constitution is just a pamphlet. And so generation after generation of members of Congress and of justice on the Supreme Court, they work out what this Constitution actually means. And it was one of the geniuses of the Constitution that it didn't try to specify everything, which is why we keep debating, well, what exactly does the Constitution say? And, you know, some of the extrapolations, you know, are kind of obvious. So the president is commander in chief of the army. Does that apply to an Air Force? Well, there wasn't an air Force back then, but there would be an air Force. And yeah, okay, that makes sense. We'll go along with that. Does it authorize the creation of the Federal Reserve? Well, that's something people did have to debate over because there were banks back then and the Constitution doesn't say you can create a bank. So we argue about stuff they would consider that's entirely appropriate. They believed in self government and I think they would have been surprised. I think they really would have been surprised if they came back today and saw that we were still working with the same Constitution they wrote. Thomas Jefferson thought that laws ought to sunset out after a generation and that if you want it, you got to pass it again. He believed that self government meant each generation governs itself and isn't governed by previous generations. So it's.
- [37:34]
B
That's interesting.
- [37:35]
A
It's probably unworkable because you can't the wheel all the time. But they didn't have by any means the kind of deference to past generation that some people express today.
- [37:49]
B
Yeah, well, that's interesting. That Jefferson would think, I mean, I would, I would disagree with them. Of course, it's totally unworkable. And also there's, you know, again, part of, part of having a conservative mindset is, is this belief that, that, that wisdom is aggregated over time and you know, you know, just start over every, every, every few years. And look, that, that is a very, to me, that's a very modern day progressive ideology. Like we, we, we, we've got some problems with institutions, so we got to throw them all out and start over and progressive slash disguising that kind of stuff.
- [38:25]
A
Now actually, Jefferson in this particular letter was, it was kind of a thought experiment. He was, he was arguing against this idea that something gets passed and we have to live with it forever. Say, you know, we got to reconsider this. And he, in fact, when he was in office, he didn't say, okay, well, these laws go out of existence, let's pass.
- [38:42]
B
No, like you said, it's different when they're, like you said, it's different when they're in power.
- [38:46]
A
Yeah, inertia does.
- [38:48]
B
Yeah. And so we've jumped around and then, you know, going back to the, the idea of institutions. And I think one of my original questions is, you know, these institutions have gotten more complicated. They're harder to understand. And I'm not sure where we go from here because, look, I don't need a poll to tell me that. Again, if I ask your regular American casually, what do you think of government institutions, they're going to have some kind of negative reaction. Is that fair? I don't know. I do know this. Our society is a hell of a lot more complicated than it was back then. I don't know if they would have anticipated the, how complicated our executive bureaucracies would have gotten. I don't know if they'd be surprised by that, because I would. They'd be surprised that technology has moved to where it is and like the society itself is more complicated. I don't know. And you know, I also would say that people now, even in modern times, I don't think realize how complicated their own society is. They just, they didn't live within it. Right. And so there's this constant sense of frustration because people get frustrated about things they don't quite understand. Like why is this institution even there? Why is there this office of that and this? And why don't I know? How come it's not simpler?
- [40:03]
A
Right?
- [40:04]
B
And you know, like, I don't know. I, I don't. It's. These things were built over time. And I think when people don't quite understand, this maybe gets to the importance of civic education. When people don't understand stuff, they really have a tendency to want to throw it out without ever asking where it came from in the first place. I just, I don't, I, I don't, I find that I, that that inclination to be a little dangerous. Curious what your thoughts are and also your thoughts on how since you've been teaching this stuff for quite a while, have we, has our civics education improved over time or not? And maybe also I wonder what it's like compared to the founding era.
- [40:46]
A
Well, I say something, I'll say something about founding era. It's important to bear in mind that the population, the entire United States at the time of the founding was about the same as the population of Houston today. And so the idea that the same government that they created then would fit a continental republic with a population of 350 million people, you know, so that would have been mind boggling to them. They probably would have had grave reservations that you could stretch the framework that they had designed then to what we've got today. So there's that. Another thing is when I say that Alexander Hamilton believed in a bigger government. He believed in a bigger government than existed in 1789. Well, the federal government in 1789 was over minuscule. So you know, there were four cabinet departments and each one had, you know, a handful of people and there was no vast executive branch. So would Hamilton have thought that bigger government today was in order? Well, the government today is 100 times the size it was back then. He might have decided that twice as big as then was appropriate and anything beyond that was too much. So it's really hard to know what they would make of us. They certainly didn't have in mind an industrialized post industrial society. They didn't. What they would have looked to was each generation write the laws you need to make this republic work. They put in the section of the Constitution about amending the Constitution. I think they would have been surprised and probably disappointed at how seldom the Constitution has been amended because they put it in there for a reason. And the first 10amendments, they were done just right away. They're the Bill of Rights. And the other one just came very slowly. So they firmly believed that people have enough imagination, they have enough civic spirit that they can design and redesign the government to suit their needs. And they would hope that we could do that too. They would have acknowledged it doesn't come easily. They would, they're they were realistic enough to know that it's easy to make changes at the beginning when there aren't vested interests, when people haven't built their expectations on something. The more, the longer something exists, the harder it is to change because somebody likes that thing. So.
- [43:19]
B
Well, that's, that gets back to your. When you're talking about Social Security and Medicare, these, these overwhelmingly popular programs, of course they're popular because it's, you've got a large, got a large population of seniors that make sure that everyone knows through their vote and their voice that these programs are popular. And nobody wants to talk about the math equations that are, that fail to keep these programs going and screw my generation. But that's a policy issue I've addressed plenty of times on this podcast. You know it. And I guess maybe they would be surprised at how again, what I would call populism is crept in. Because populism to me is effectively just, it's telling people what they want to hear. Hey, if you elect me, I can get you this. And it's costless. Right. Either I'm charging somebody else who should, you know, they shouldn't have that money in the first place, or it's just, you know, it's, we're just going to give it to you. It's. It's costless. People, people stop, stop believing in trade offs.
- [44:20]
A
Yeah.
- [44:20]
B
And that's a, that is a massive problem in civic education when people cease to understand that all policies are about trade offs.
- [44:28]
A
Right. Yeah. I would say that is something that students, I teach at the University of Texas, students have to be reminded of. They have to be introduced to that. Now it's a, it's not just students. Everybody has to be reminded that you can't get everything you want. There's, as you say, everything comes with trade offs. If you can have this, you can't have that. And, you know, the United States has been at the center of the world economy long enough that until now we've been able to borrow as much money as we need. But that's probably not going to last forever. I think, I think the fiscal side, the whole question of the federal debt would probably have alarmed. I mean, it probably would have astonished the founders. Say, when you can do this and people will continue to lend money, that just.
- [45:14]
B
We're very lucky. There's a lot of debate too, on war powers recently, executive action. Of course, Jefferson himself took on the Barbary pirates across the world. So what would they say about what has been a bipartisan president belief that they have the power to engage in, you know, what people might look at as declaring a war, which is clearly in the power of Congress.
- [45:46]
A
Yeah. So they would have said that as we founders, we put the war power in the hands of Congress for a reason, because you're asking a country to go to war. So the country's representatives ought to be the one to make the decision. However, after Adams and after Jefferson, they would have realized it's really tempting for the executive to take action without going to Congress. So John Adams basically runs an undeclared war against France, a so called quasi war as a naval war. And as you point out, Jefferson sent the Navy and the Marines against the Barbary pirates. And Congress didn't declare war there. But, but those were small actions. Until the 1940s, if there was really going to be a big war, Congress always was consulted and presidents would feel, you know, how can I get Congress to go along? When James Madison asked for a declaration of war against Britain in 1812, he really laid out the case. This is why we need a war. When James Pollock wanted to go to war with Mexico in the 1840s, he laid out point by point by point and they all acknowledged that Congress is the one that has to make the decision. Even when Franklin Roosevelt asked for a declaration of war after Pearl harbor, it was clear that Congress was going to do it. But still he took the time and he made the point of going to Congress because a declaration by Congress has much more authority than just an executive action. So. But we've given up on that. So presidents can send American troops into battle and almost nobody thinks anything of it. It's gonna, I mean, Congress could, Congress could bring that power back. All it would have to do is say, we're not going to fund your war.
- [47:18]
B
Right. Right.
- [47:20]
A
You don't get any money for it, then you can't fight it.
- [47:22]
B
Right. And sometimes inaction is a form of action. You know, it's, it's a form of consent, I would say. But. And we've changed what, what it is to declare war. We have authorized use of military force. So that, that's, that's a, to me, that's a very, it's the same thing. I'm not really sure I see a difference. Legally speaking, politically speaking, it's Congress giving the authority to take that action. And then, you know, but yeah, in recent decades, obviously what we're doing in Iran. So that's interesting. I wonder if it would. There's, there's the obvious answer, which is of course, every, every military Action is more. It, it has more political weight behind it. If Congress is also voting for it, but does that make it technically illegal? And I think that's just, that's debated. Yeah.
- [48:14]
A
And, but there's another sort of fundamental operational aspect to it. Before the 1940s, the United States did not have a permanent army. In being between wars, the army went home. And so if the United States was going to go to war, an army had to be raised. And so you had to recruit people and you had to get people to sign on to the whole idea of the war. And if you have a debate in Congress, the members of Congress have to debate and have to go back to their districts and explain why they did it. You get more popular buy in. But since World War II, the United States never really demobilized after World War II. So presidents have always had this Army, Navy, Air Force at hand, and they can launch something without even asking Congress for money, at least at first.
- [48:56]
B
First.
- [48:56]
A
So it's, it's really too tempting. And presidents haven't been able to resist the temptation.
- [49:02]
B
No, no. And it's again, it's, it's, it's unclear whether that's technically illegal and unconstitutional or, or not. And, and the argument I would point to again is if Congress can stop it, it's, it's not like many other Western countries that, that we, you know, I would identify with. Their governments are actually vastly different without the same checks and balances. But inaction is indeed a form of action. So that's foreign policy that they, you know, may have been hard for them to foresee a lot of this. You think they could have possibly foreseen, like the tech revolution that we're in and the speed with which information and misinformation flows. You know, would they have, would they have thought, wow, people have the power of the entire knowledge of the world and history in their pocket at all times. What a revolution for, for civic society. And I think the opposite, of course, happened.
- [49:59]
A
Yeah.
- [49:59]
B
What do you say? Would that even be on their minds?
- [50:02]
A
That particular aspect would have surprised them because it would have surprised anybody who lived before 30 years ago. But a couple of things. One is that they wouldn't have been surprised at the idea that different organs of the media would take sides politically. In fact, when the parties were formed in the 1790s, each had their own newspapers.
- [50:23]
B
Right. This is normal. For a long time it was, it
- [50:26]
A
was in fact, you know, somebody who grew up, you know, like in the middle and second half of the 20th century, like me, and gets Used to the idea that, well, there are these three television networks, and they sort of play it down the middle because they got the. This fairness doctrine and all this stuff. That was the unusual thing in American history. Usually you chose your paper, you chose your radio station according to your beliefs. So there was that part of it. But the idea of a technical revolution, that part they might have appreciated, at least to some degree, because there was a critical thing that occurs in the 1790s when Washington is president. A guy named Eli Whitney invents the cotton gin and what the cotton gin was to absolutely revolutionize southern agriculture. Because cotton gin finally made it profitable to grow cotton through the South. It was very possible to think that slavery was dying out at the time the Constitution was debated and ratified. It had already essentially become uneconomical in Virginia because the cash crop was tobacco, and tobacco wears out soil. And Virginians were thinking, let's just get rid of slavery the way that the northern states have. But then comes cotton. And because of this technological change, this new invention that allows the seeds to be pulled out of the cotton effectively, and cotton becomes this boom crop. And without cotton, the politics, the settlement of the south would have been entirely. The settlement of taxes would have been very different. And that was the result of this technological change. So I think they would have appreciated the fact that technology can change and have all these ramifications downstream.
- [52:01]
B
Yeah. But foresee it. I wonder. I wonder what they would have thought of, just like the instantaneous nature of the transfer of information, the ability to access information, and what I would think is a counterintuitive effect that that has had. You know, I mean, like, that's when I asked you, have your. Have your students gotten smarter in civics or less smart or less educated in civics or more educated, you know, however
- [52:24]
A
we want to put it, less educated in civics than before. High schools have pretty much abandoned teaching civics. They teach social studies. But it doesn't. I mean, it's not the nuts and bolts of how the government works, how it's supposed to work. Students are probably less well educated in history overall. And I can't explain that. I mean, some of that has to do with social studies. Some of it has to do with just other demands on students.
- [52:50]
B
Time.
- [52:51]
A
So there's that part of it. On the other hand, I mean, I teach at the University of Texas, and UT is getting harder and harder to get into, so we get just the very top students. So these are really bright students. I will say that a lot of them grow up kind of disillusioned with politics because it's been a long time since politics was inspiring and had inspiring figures. One of the things you get from teaching college students is you realize, first of all, how young they are, but how. How quickly. Well, they. They forget stuff they never knew. So my students today barely remember Barack Obama as president. And so, you know, they.
- [53:35]
B
So they make sense. I was like 10 years ago and you're. Yeah. Maybe 12.
- [53:40]
A
I mean, or exactly.
- [53:41]
B
Maybe eight.
- [53:42]
A
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And so one of the things that does happen in American history is periodically there come these charismatic figures that really inspire people to go on to other things. So for. I mean, Kennedy was a little bit. I was pretty young when Kennedy was president before people a little bit older than me. John Kennedy really inspired the generation of people say, you know, government can really do good stuff. And Ronald Reagan did much the same thing for Republicans, and Barack Obama to. For some degree did for Democrats. And I'm certainly not going to say that the age of charismatic figures is over there. They're rare. And maybe it's a little bit harder. Maybe it's a little bit harder for them to get the traction that they had. If people knew everything about John Kennedy, the shine would have been sort of come off some of his reputation. So it's probably harder today. And in military history, there are moments when the offensive side has the advantage. Then there are other eras when the defensive side has the advantage. During World War II, the defense had the advantage and was a static. Or During World War II, it was the offensive. I think of the same thing sort of in politics and communication. So we live at a time now when everybody's got a mega megaphone and everybody can. One person can start something that can have huge ramifications. So if you are a public figure, you know, you got to look all the way around all the time, you know, who's coming at me and from where. In the days when you had to have a newspaper to tell the story, that was a bigger deal and so you could keep secrets and you could. It. It's harder, I think, for people to make that decision to go into politics because they know it's really hard on reputations. It's really hard on family. It's really hard on people.
- [55:32]
B
Oh, it's absolutely. Hell, yeah. And a couple of things pop out of that. I mean, yeah, the divisions, I think politically speaking, are probably same as ever. They're just nastier, and it's gotten way nastier. And I think that's a product of social media to A large, to a large extent, you know, I think I, I do think some policies that I think there's, there's a Republican reaction to Democrat policies that I think have objectively gone way further than the Bill Clinton area, like so much further that there's a, and you know, there's a, there's an emotional reaction to that. Now I don't have that emotional reaction, which is why I said like, well damn, no Dan, you gotta fight fire with fire. And I said, when's the last time you put out a fire with fire? That doesn't make any sense. Water. But that's besides the point. So, you know, it's hard for me to look at social media and that sort of horizontal information landscape that we now see and see anything good come from it because yeah, somehow kids are coming more disillusioned and more divided. I didn't go to college thinking about politics. That's a newer thing that happened in 2010's era for whatever reason. And I think social media has a lot to do with that. The entire news of the world is just constantly put in front of you. And kids and adults lack the intellectual frameworks and experience to contextualize that information. And that's a new thing. Our brains just can't. Like you pointed this out, you're hitting I'm guys apologian as a public player getting hit from all sides. And well, so is every person in a way, not personally like I am, but like they still get the information from everywhere as opposed to like one thing. And you know, you've got to be pretty mature and thoughtful to like to deal, to deal with that. And I don't think we're dealing with it very well. Right. And I wonder, you know, I don't think our founders could have even like imagined having that kind of informational landscape. I don't know. Right, right.
- [57:40]
A
And yeah, I think in any given generation there are certain qualities that are selected for. And so those guys were very erudite. They could give complicated speeches and write complicated essays in support of this. That's not something that's a big deal
- [58:00]
B
today that's not valued now. I mean it would be read by academics and. But back then it was somehow read. So do you think people were just more. What do you think of the population back then? Because I mean, yeah, most papers are very dense. That's dense writing. You're right.
- [58:12]
A
They were like there weren't alternatives. So there's so many distractions today. And you know, if you'd read a newspaper in those days, and you'd get a 2,000 word essay by Alexander Hamilton and why they Constitution ought to be ratified. That's something that you did, you know,
- [58:27]
B
because it was like the, it's like the, there's not much else to read.
- [58:29]
A
There's nothing on tv, There are no movies, you know, there's no social media. This is what you do. And it's why, for example, the Lincoln Douglas debates of the 1850s, they went on for hours and hours. This was the entertainment of the day. And so people would travel for miles and miles. This is what they did. I mean, it's, you know, just like.
- [58:47]
B
That's an interesting point.
- [58:48]
A
Tolstoy's novels, you know, they go on and on and on because, you know, there was nothing else to do if you wanted to have an entertainment. So you could do 70 hours or however long it takes to, to read War and Peace. You know, things happen a lot faster.
- [59:04]
B
Yeah. And, you know, maybe my last question there is, you know, how we, how we, how we maintain the Republic for another 250 years if, if we've decided throughout this conversation that we have maintained it the last 250 years. And I think, I think, I think the answer is generally yes. With it, with a couple, you know, hiccups. And it seems like we both agree. I, I don't think the constitutional amendment to change how the Senate gets voted in was a good idea at all. Right, right. It was just there was a good reason they made it the way they made it. And, you know, we're, we're slowly but surely we're entering this bicameral system where there's hardly a difference between the House and the Senate. Just, just, I mean, by, by. And I mean that like, like spiritually still. I get like the personalities of both.
- [59:44]
A
Yeah.
- [59:45]
B
But moving on in the next 250 years, you know, like, how do you keep it? I always. I'll give my answer. I'd like to hear yours. Because I've been asked this and I say, look, one, one might be some gratitude. You know, there's too much of a tendency these days in a time when I think we've had it better than really any other times. I think there's a lot of objective realities that we should be appreciative of. So some gratitude for past wisdom that has aggregated over time to get us where we're at. That's like first. And part of having gratitude is also learning about the things that have piled up on top of each other to create the imperfect. But still Pretty decent and better than most places system that we have. And then I would also say use that gratitude to also engage in an intellectual form of nuance and slow down our thinking and slow down our attachment to political parties at an early age so that we have time to gain experiences and be able to, to absorb information that comes out our way from, from, from all directions and more thoughtfully than engage in civics. Like people are like, how do I get involved, Daniel? I'm like, don't. You are. You know what, go get a normal job and be happy for a while and then let politics come to you naturally. Like, I didn't, I wasn't, I didn't get political until late 20s, early 30s. That was a good life. You know, I was just, I just cared about being a seal. That was it. You know, I certainly, I was certainly wired a certain way, for sure. I knew that. But I wasn't really emotional about it. And I tell kids all the time, once you have emotionally attached yourself something, look, I can debunk whatever you think. I promise you I can. Whatever the opinion is, I can argue both sides of it. And you'll get mad. And you shouldn't have to get mad. It should be okay to not know at your age, right? And so, you know, that's what I would tell people too. And I think, you know, slowing down a little bit, contextualizing information, learning to critically think, like learning to. This is a real problem. We're getting our news from podcasts and podcasters and influencers who have no accountability to anything. They will report something with a single source. Somebody told me, hey, and you know, I'm just saying, somebody told me. And this stuff spreads like wildfire. People have to learn to be able to analyze that and call BS when necessary or just, or slow down their thinking a little bit. And I think with that, we keep the, you know, we'll have another good 250 years, among other things. What do you think?
- [62:09]
A
Yeah, I would add one thing, and that is don't take the system for granted because it's really tempting to think, well, it's been going 250 years. We can sort of beat it up, we can ignore it, we can abuse it, and it'll keep going. No, it won't. And so each generation has to realize, and this is what the challenge I put to my students. So I teach a course on American history that goes from pre colonial times to the present. And at the beginning of the course they say, well, the reason you're taking this course is because you were about to become part of this ongoing experiment in self government. And we get to the end of the course and the last thing I tell them is, okay, so this experiment's 250 years old and now we're handing it off to you and your generation. And I say don't screw it up. And that's the basic advice I would give. It sounds pretty negative, but it's still, you know, this thing has been going on. And so bear in mind that it kept going because each generation finally decided as much as they yelled at each other, as much as they disagreed, it's more important to keep the thing going than is to gain some temporary advantage that okay, in short term it'll pay off, but it'll have long term negative consequences. So keep in mind that this thing is bigger than any party, it's bigger than any individual, it's bigger than any moment. And if you bear that in mind, don't take it for granted, then I think we have a chance to make another 250.
- [63:22]
B
Yeah, I agree with that because you know, everything we just said, it all, it all feeds back to one basic theme which is some sense of gratitude and gratitude for the last 250 years. Gratitude for what I think was a remarkably written declaration. He was a good writer, sure, but he was also a well educated writer, Jefferson, and he wrote some things in Declaration that I think are worth mentioning as we close this out. You mentioned it before, this idea that all men are created equal, well that had recurring effects throughout our history. We weren't living up to it, but we kept trying. And we had to go back to that initial founding principle to be able to make the arguments against slavery and for civil rights. And this idea that the government derives its power from the consent of the governed, that's a fundamental idea. And the next fundamental idea is that there's God given rights and life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. Is this ideal of negative rights, not positive rights. And this is where I think we'll continue to have that debate forever as where Social Security and Medicare come into play. Those are positive rights. I have a right to this. You don't have a right to somebody else's money or labor. That's a service, but it's not a right. And we get those words confused. And so we'll continue to debate these things, but I think having gratitude for those basic principles that I think they weren't law. The Constitution of course told us how to govern, but I thought the Declaration told us why, why we have a government. I think why we have a country. And gratitude for that, I think, is how we keep it for another 250.
- [65:03]
A
Yep.
- [65:04]
B
Last words to you, Professor.
- [65:08]
A
I appreciate what we got. Remember that this thing didn't happen on its own. People had to make it happen. So it's up to us to keep it happening.
- [65:17]
B
And you're doing. You're doing the God's work there, teaching.
- [65:21]
A
Well, thank you, YouTube.
- [65:25]
B
Yeah. Thank you so much. All right. We'll end it there. And, yeah, really appreciate it. And appreciate your flexibility.
- [65:31]
A
Great.
- [65:31]
B
And love the. Love the civics conversation. Have a good.
- [65:35]
A
Okay.
- [65:35]
B
I'll look you up next time I'm in Austin. Thanks for posing.
- [65:38]
A
Excellent. Okay, bye.
- [65:39]
B
Bye. Bye.