← The Focus Group Podcast
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- [00:00]
A
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- [00:30]
B
One of the things I really hate is when people are saying, like, I have no regrets. And I'm like, well, how can you go through life with not having regrets? Because regrets is where you learn all the good stuff. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the focus group podcast. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bulwark, and this week we're going to talk about character. We're going to have kind of a big picture episode and wrestle with some things that I have been thinking about a lot. Part of it is because not sure the voters care about character anymore. I have a chapter in my book called Character Doesn't Count. It's a lament from for what I hear from the voters because I think whether they admit it or not, people are a lot more willing to brush off serious character flaws than they used to be. For instance, 23% of Americans in a 2024 Gallup poll said that they could vote for a convicted felon who. Who they otherwise agreed with. But in a much bigger poll called the 2024 presidential election, about 50% of Americans did vote for a convicted felon named Donald Trump. And in 2026, Republicans have nominated Ken Paxton for Senate in Texas and Democrats nominated Graham Platner in Maine until he dropped out last week. So I want to dig into how we got here with someone of very high character, David French, opinion columnist at the New York Times and co host of the legal podcast Advisory Opinions at the Dispatch. David, thank you for being here.
- [02:01]
C
Sarah, it's always so great to see you.
- [02:03]
B
So, guys, full disclosure. David and I are friends and have known each other for many years. But more importantly for this conversation, I want you to know that David, for me, is a true moral load star. Like, I read everything he writes and, and take it incredibly seriously as I evaluate my own feelings on things. David, now is the point at which you can say that I am the same for you, that.
- [02:30]
C
Absolutely, Sarah, absolutely. No, that's so kind of you to say. I really appreciate that. And it's funny that we're Having this conversation now, 10 years in to an era where I would have thought the era would have settled the argument.
- [02:45]
B
Yeah.
- [02:46]
C
If that makes sense.
- [02:47]
B
Does make sense in the sense that I think what you're saying is we know that. That voters don't care as much about character because probably the worst character person occupies the highest office in our land.
- [03:00]
C
Yeah. I would put it this way. There's been determinative events that have unfolded. One, do American voters really care about character? No. Number two, does character really matter? Yes. And so it's sort of the perfect storm of the worst of both worlds, just as it appears that it's kind of sinking into the political zeitgeist that who are these prissy people who are caring about character so much is exactly the time when I think the consequences of not caring about character have become more and more plain.
- [03:34]
B
Yeah. Okay. That's a great way to say this, and I think you'll. You'll validate me here. When I was coming up in the conservative movement, it was run by people like you. Like, I followed you and Jonah Goldberg and, you know, a lot of the folks at the Dispatch and Bill Crystal. And I can't overstate how much character counting.
- [03:53]
C
Yeah.
- [03:53]
B
In the wake of the Clinton years was the thing that animated and held together the conservative movement. So as I was a young conservative, the character mattered thing was everywhere, and it was, like, central to what the movement was about.
- [04:09]
C
Yes, yes, that's very true. And part of this was, I think, legitimate role modeling from some of the leaders of the conservative movement at the time. And part of it was negative polarization, as Bill Clinton, quite frankly. So. And we learned maybe that the negative polarization part of it was a bit bigger, Sarah, than the genuine commitment part. I mean, this is, you know, when you're looking back, and the time when I kind of kind of came of age as a conservative was when, you know, Peggy Noonan wrote of the time.
- [04:38]
B
Peggy Noonan. When character was king.
- [04:40]
C
When character was king. Exactly. And, you know, when you look at the context, you might sound strange for a bunch of conservatives to say. We were really centering our movement around character because we were coming of age right after Richard Nixon, when Republicans were not exactly known for that commitment to character, although some did break ranks and essentially force him out of office. I was trying to explain it to younger. Some younger Republicans, like, why. Why did character become so big? I said, let's put this in context. We were rolling out of 12 years of Reagan and Georgia, H.W. bush, and I know a lot of Democrats to this day have a lot of beef with Ronald Reagan. But Reagan's administration was an administration that really had revived sort of the American spirit. Reagan himself really put forward an image, and I believe a reality of somebody who truly cared about this, dealt fairly with his opponents, was an honest person. Now we have the Iran Contra, obviously, scandal that arose towards the end of his term. But even if you look at that, he took much more responsibility for the things that went wrong than contemporary presidents do. Then we rolled into George H.W. bush, a person of the. Not just sort of this glittering resume of public service. I mean, he's a shot down over the Pacific, rescued by a submarine, one of the youngest aviators in the Navy, a person of, you know, sort of consummate diplomatic skill. Kill a person without controversy or scandal. And you had this for 12 years. For 12 years. And conservatives could look at that and point at that, and you could disagree with them on policy. But the idea that these men were corrupt. No, no, you could disagree again, you could disagree, but corrupt, indecent? No, not at all. They. They often went out of their way in that sort of head of state responsibility that presidents have, not just head of the executive branch to really try to be include in their rhetoric, all of Americans. And, and I'm not going to say it was an ideal time, but there was a lot of idealism. And then here comes Bill Clinton. And Bill Clinton is a very different figure. He is kind of a quasi populist southern politician, you know, sort of a guy always coloring outside the lines and a sort of a God of rakish personality. And immediately you have all of these scandals around women. And so for conservatives, it was not just our ideas are better, but look, our politicians are better too. Here comes Bill Clinton. He was impeached. He had an affair in the Oval Office. And so it's no surprise that by 2011, this was the. The core group of the Republican party, the core constituency. White evangelicals were by far the community most likely to say that character really, really mattered in leaders. And it was part of this context. It was both a genuine commitment and negative polarization against Bill Clinton.
- [07:47]
B
I actually go into this quite in depth in my book around my own political journey, because I'm born in 1980, right? And so my first 12 years of life are Reagan to H.W. and then I get to Clinton right, around 12 to 18, right? For his last two years. So I'm 18 at the time at which he's having an affair with a woman, not much, or a girl. Not much older than I am. Came of age at this.
- [08:14]
D
Of.
- [08:14]
B
Of sort of those Bill Clinton scandals and was repulsed by them. And also sort of. I think I was too young, though, to notice the hypocrisy of, like, a Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh and like some of the big vocal types around character counts who were getting married many, many times leaving women at their dying bedsides just doing. Just being sort of. And being sort of awful. Like they were sort of riding the wave of the polarization and sort of manipulating the character counts for their own political benefits. So I think I was too young at that point to sort of see some of that color. I wasn't too young, though, because the focus was on Bill Clinton, to see what I saw as the hypocrisy of sort of the feminist movement defending Bill Clinton. And so these things were in the mix. And then I was never a W fan, but I was a big John McCain fan in part because I found his service deeply inspiring. Like, his whole story about the Hanoi Hilton and not being so, like, this is my college years and like, this is why I ended up identifying as a Republican. And the character count stuff really drew me in at a time when I could just see it in. In what was a kind of black and white young moral universe. Something that spoke to me very specifically.
- [09:29]
C
Yeah, I agree with that completely. And where you were too young to sort of see some of the complexities, I was too partisan. I was old enough. You know, I was born in 69. So when Reagan is sworn in, I'm almost 12 years old. And so this was my real, first real presidency of my life. Because, you know, Carter, when you're 8 to 12, I mean, I was a nerd, but I wasn't such a big nerd that by 10, I had strong political opinions. But definitely during the Reagan presidency, and I became very Republican, without question. And here's this thing that happens to your brain when you get very partisan, and that is when you see misconduct on the other side, you think, yep, yep, that's what they're like. That's what they're like. And then when you see bad misconduct on your own side, you go, well, I mean, I don't like it, but every orchard has a few bad apples, right? When nobody's perfect, no movement is perfect. And what you're totally unconscious of is there's countless millions of Americans on the other side of you saying exactly the same thing in reverse.
- [10:35]
B
That's right. And I also this. The character doesn't count. Chapter, like really tries to get at this phenomenon, the way we tend to wear rose colored glasses for our allies. And I don't know what the opposite of a rose colored glass is.
- [10:49]
C
When I was growing up, we called them manure colored glasses.
- [10:52]
E
Sure.
- [10:52]
B
Okay, there you go. People get the point.
- [10:55]
D
Yeah.
- [10:56]
B
But this brings us to where our relationship began was really around being some of the conservatives that opposed Trump, despite the fact that, you know, I followed you and my colleague Mona Charon and a lot of people when I was a young conservative, but I was also sort of either coming out or sort of wrestling with being gay. And I, a lot of you guys were very opposed to gay marriage. And the gay marriage opposition also had like a tail end of the character counts thing because it was kind of related to being either evangelical or otherwise faith based. And you know, how we have a well ordered society. And I, like took all of that stuff seriously. Like, I read it all, I disagreed with it, but I took it seriously.
- [11:37]
C
Right, right.
- [11:39]
B
And one of the things that has been interesting me is that the people that I think I take the most seriously now are some of the people who I think have taken some of the most principled stances across the board, even if I don't agree with them. Like, you guys have a moral framework that you stand by and that kept Trump away from you. Right. You stood against Trump. And so even though there are things you and I disagree with, I have appreciated the moral commitment that you have brought to Trump because I watched just about everybody else I knew who brought the character, doesn't the character count stuff to me abandon it.
- [12:19]
C
Yeah, well, you know, Sarah, there's a really interesting phenomenon that I think we all deal with. And that sort of is all we're all going to face at some point in our lives. And that point we're going to reach a point where values that we hold conflict. And then what, which value proves to be superior or what self concept that we have will conflict with reality and then does our self concept survive that? So I'll give you a good example. CS Lewis, the British Christian theologian, writer, the guy who did Chronicles of Narnia, mere Christianity, all of that. He wrote, courage is the form of every virtue at its testing point. And so essentially he says, courage is just not one virtue, it's the form of every virtue at its testing point. You might think of yourself as brave until you face physical danger. Then you, you're going to know, are you really? You might think of yourself as honest until dishonesty carries a real cost. And Dishonesty appears expedient, then you're going to know about your honesty. And you can do this on virtue after virtue, kindness, patience, all of these things. Really don't know. Do you possess the virtue until it's tested? I'm singling, you know, my fellow white evangelicals out because we were the most outspoken. In 1980, 1998, when Bill Clinton. The Clinton scandal broke. The Southern Baptist Convention did a resolution on moral character in politicians. I've quoted this so many times in pieces that I can remember some of the key language, which is includes tolerance of serious wrong, sears the conscience of a culture, spawns unrestrained lawlessness, and surely will result in God's judgment. This is 1998. I was like, yep, that sounds right to me. You know, the fish rots from the head, you know. And so I happily signed on. I remember having a conversation. Conversation, one of the infinity. And Sarah, I'm sure you've had these as well, these arguments with, with Democrats over Bill Clinton, the sort of people who still are like, this was different. That was a witch hunt. That was wrong. And I was arguing, doing the 1, you know, 1 millionth conversation about Bill Clinton. And one of the. One of the guys I was talking to very shrewdly flipped it back on me and was just like, basically, I'm not believing. I don't believe you guys.
- [14:42]
F
I don't.
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C
I just don't believe you that if there was a presidency that was going to be brought down by your political opponents over personal scandal, you would not do it. And I remember thinking, as he said it, I was initially sort of indignant, and then I had an, you know, I had enough doubt to sort of say, well, you know what? Yeah, there was Nixon in 1974. I was five. I had no idea what was going on. Right.
- [15:05]
B
Yeah.
- [15:06]
C
But so in my awareness, we've never had the choice. Like, that's never been. We've never faced a real consequence for upholding a character standard. Could we do it? And so when Trump rose, at first I thought this was going to be very easy, just super easy, because he was so over the top. He was so crass. He was so obviously, I mean, we knew about his infidelity. The guy bragged about it. You know, for years and years and years, we knew his profile. And this is even before we knew about the sexual harassment claims and sexual assault claims and things like this. I didn't even think the rise of Donald Trump was a test in any meaningful way because he was so outside, beyond the pale that I Didn't think that he would catch hold at all. And that's on me. That's on me. I didn't see that. Now I look back and I realize how much of the opposition to Bill Clinton was negative polarization versus, like, genuine core moral conviction.
- [16:09]
B
I want to bring the voters into this because I just want to sort of highlight what we're talking about.
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G
Yeah.
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B
And then I want to come back because I want to specifically get into what I think are one of these tension points where two firmly held convictions conflict and how we grapple with that, because that is really at the core of the thing that I've been struggling with, that I want to talk through with you. But I also, sometimes people are like, how can you have gotten 20 minutes into this podcast and not let me listen to some voters? And so I want to be mindful of that.
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C
And so it's my fault, Sarah. I was filibustering.
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B
No, no, no. This is. I have been waiting for this conversation. I want to start with some swing voters.
- [16:50]
D
Okay.
- [16:51]
B
These are Biden to Trump voters that we talked to just this week. And even though these folks voted for Donald Trump, they're not necessarily prone to the just, you know, but he fights rationalizations that you hear from MAGA corners of the right. But we asked how they would evalu political candidate they agreed with who had a serious character flaw, like cheating on their spouse or a felony conviction. And let's listen to how they talked about that.
- [17:15]
G
Some guy cheats on his wife like 20 years ago. It's still bad, of course, but it's like, okay, maybe, you know, you could give yourself the benefit of the doubt when voting for him. If you want to vote for him, it's like, oh, well, maybe he's grown. Maybe he's learned, you know what I mean? Whereas, I mean, if he's got like an active investigation going for like a domestic abuse, it's like that or something along those lines. It's like you can't really, really. That benefit of the doubt of sorts is almost lost when it's currently active or very recent, you know what I mean?
- [17:45]
H
Pretty willing to look the other way on a lot of it. Everybody has personal life, and I think when you're in that position, it gets exploited pretty big. So there's always another side of the story. As long as, to me, as long as they're doing the job correctly, that's what I'm going to care about the most. And they're not, you know, riling up the country and making it divisive to each other, that's a separate issue. But if they have a personal life going on that I can look the other way for the most part.
- [18:14]
F
Exactly what Christy said. I agree. There's some things that I feel okay. Like if they, if they did this, they're accused of it. It's like I, you know, I don't know, maybe I'm second guessing, like who you are as a person or what you've done or what you're capable of doing. But I don't know. Some things, if they're personal, I mean, like having an affair, I can't really. Like, you wouldn't get. I don't know. I don't know how some jobs are, but I know most jobs wouldn't fire you for having an affair. And then. But some jobs might. So I don't know. But I think a majority of jobs, they wouldn't fire you for having an affair. So there's some things that you kind of have to just write off.
- [18:49]
E
I guess it would depend on the context of whatever they've been accused of or they did in their past. I'm a pretty good judge of character as well. So I would, you know, base the context, you know, everything around, evolving around that and how I know if, if they would do the job. Well, I'm not going to just judge someone like, you know, Olivia Christie said, for being human. You know, we're all human, we all make mistakes. But as long as they have, like the best interest of the people and they, they're there to do their job and get it done right, then I don't really see a problem with different types of scenarios like that.
- [19:28]
I
We're all flawed. You can't, you know, be a judgment, a lot of this stuff. And again, it all depends on what the offense is, what they've done. I mean, and a lot of people, you know, they learn a lot from mistakes. So I'm not saying go out and make mistakes to become more seasoned, but, you know, if you're looking at someone's track record just for them to be elected, that to me is wrong.
- [19:59]
G
I'm wondering how y' all weighed things like that in your voting decisions in 2024.
- [20:06]
H
That didn't really affect my decision very much. I think a lot of stuff comes out always right before the election on anybody who's running. So bigger issues than that for me.
- [20:20]
B
So this is just the group we did this week, but I gotta say that's pretty much where people are. I want to put this as a question on some Level. There's a part of me that thinks there's something good about voters and human beings understanding human frailty.
- [20:38]
C
Yes.
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B
And understanding that people are imperfect and that a person's misjudgment or some way that they've wronged or sinned or however you want to put it, isn't their whole thing. Isn't the whole. Isn't the whole of them. And so on one hand, I can sort of hear it. On the other hand, there's a part of me that wonders why it no longer. You can no longer find a whole lot of people that says, well, if they make this judgment, this kind of judgment in their personal life, you know, that's going to translate to their professional life and therefore, like, if they're a liar in their private life, are they a liar in their public life? I make the argument in the book that this is a really complicated stew for people, that they, they are more tolerant of human frailty, but they also want somebody with real civic virtue, but their personal virtue, for whatever reason, is just less important to people than it used to be. Do you think that assessment sounds right to you?
- [21:33]
C
I do think it sounds right. And I think part of it is a result of, you know, people. A lot of people live. Have lived kind of messy and complicated lives themselves.
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B
Right, right.
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C
And so in that circumstance, they would want to be in a position where they were given grace that. Where they weren't defined by the worst moments of their lives. I mean, who among us wants to be defined by the worst moments of their life? I know I don't.
- [21:56]
B
Same.
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C
We do have this, and which I think is a. Actually a good, humble realization that people are imperfect. That I have zero problem with that at all. There were several comments there that I liked. Like one is, what's the distance in time?
- [22:12]
E
Yeah.
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C
Because, you know, if somebody had an affair 20 years ago, let's say it almost wrecked their marriage, but they pulled through and they've built something really wonderful in the 20 years since. Sarah, I'm sure this is the case with you. Some of the greatest people I've ever known in my life have histories of addiction.
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B
Totally.
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C
There's something about the 12 step process and that recovery process that builds people into something just beautifully, beautifully virtuous. I'm not kidding. Like some of those moving stories, best people are people who've had some of the worst pasts. So I think that that is an absolutely valid, humble thing to say that people are imperfect. We're going to screw up. Now. Here's the other One that I thought was really interesting. Would they have been fired for it? Which is a very interesting question where the answer is different depending on sort of who you are and what your position of trust is. Like, let's say you're working in a factory or you're working at a firm and you're an associate, a law firm, and your fellow associate has an affair. Well, they're not fired for that unless it's pulling in the office in some way, right? Or, you know, you have somebody who is working in a factory and they have an affair with another worker on the floor. That happens all the time. People aren't fired for that. It can maybe cause some tension or whatever, but they would be fired for whatever tension that occurs, not the affair. But then the higher you get into the sort of the world of leadership and public trust, the equation really does start to change. Because it's not just that a leader of a large institution has sort of like a nuts and bolts version of competence. In other words, are you meeting profitability benchmarks? They're also leaders of people. They are setting an example, they're setting a tone. And when somebody becomes a leader, it is antithetical to their leadership ability in many ways. If they break and violate in while their leaders or. Or in their rise to leadership, if they break and violate very basic moral rules. And you know, in one of these. Adultery is one of those things that even with sort of the, you know, the changing sexual mores through the sexual revolution, adultery has remained like people don't like it and people don't like adulterers. You know, now somebody from again, years and years in the past, and they've built something, they can be forgiving. But if somebody is perceived as an adulterer, if they. They don't like them, there is something about that that turns people against them as human beings often. And in that circumstance, it becomes very difficult to lead people. It just. If you're not seen as an admirable person, it becomes very difficult to lead. And this is so common in corporate America, it's so common in the military. But in politics, Sarah, we've started to almost carve that out a bit.
- [24:59]
B
And I was going to say there's a big caveat coming here because there's gotta be.
- [25:03]
C
Because in politics, what we've done is we've essentially said that almost like winning is more important than character. It's a weird thought process. It's almost like the stakes are too high for character. That's the way it was all put to Me about Trump, I mean, you can stand on character, but if he loses, we lose America. And I have exactly the reverse. When the stakes grow higher, the need for character grows greater, not lesser. And we're taking politics and we're treating it different than we treat military leadership, then we treat corporate leadership, then we treat leadership in a family, then we treat leadership in civic associations. We're just taking it and creating the special thing that says, well, but for politics, somehow it's too important there. It's just too important for character. And to me, that's just getting exactly backwards.
- [25:56]
B
We're at the inflection point now where I really want to get into this tension, because you. You wrote in a piece just on this, and you said about Graham Platner, in fact, if we can redefine aggression as courage and instability as authenticity, then, voila, vice becomes virtue. And you linked to a piece of mine where I talk about Maine Democrats being taken with Graham Platner.
- [26:21]
I
Yeah.
- [26:22]
B
So this is the point I want to hash out. I want to take something you just said about knowing people who've struggled with addiction or knowing people who've struggled with just about anything that has tested them in a way, and you could say it can be affairs, it can be something they did in their personal life, or like, they made a really bad choice and that they had suffered consequences for that choice. You know, they went to jail for a period of time or whatever. They come out on the other side of it having learned a bunch of things. Right.
- [26:49]
H
We.
- [26:49]
B
I think we know a lot of people like this where, like, there's a redemption arc, where that arc leads to maybe better character than the average person, because that character, that. That they built character. Right. They were tested, yes.
- [27:01]
H
They.
- [27:02]
B
They did a bad thing. They learned. They learned. Sometimes I. One of the things I really is when people are saying, like, I have no regrets, and I'm like, well, how can you go through life with not having regrets? Because regrets is where you learn all the good stuff. Right?
- [27:12]
C
Like, you.
- [27:13]
B
You should regret things because you want there to be, like, a moral line. You're like, yeah, I missed it, and I regret it. And this is how I learned the lesson to get back there.
- [27:21]
H
Right.
- [27:21]
B
Okay. I say all this to say I also never got on board with Graham Platner. Anybody who listens to me in the podcast universe knows that I was the one who was like, oh, I just.
- [27:32]
C
You were so unjustly attacked over this, by the way. Like, you, David, so unjust attacked.
- [27:38]
B
I was.
- [27:38]
C
You were. It was. And it was all. I mean, you were very. You had disagreements with your colleagues, which is fine. You know, quite public ones.
- [27:45]
B
There's just. This makes me crazy. I'm like, there's only thousands of hours of podcasts of this, guys. And also, I took the heat from our listeners over not getting on board with Platinum when I've got to take heat then from the other side, being like, but you were all in on Platner. I'm like, I really wasn't. So a lot of evidence to that effect, but I did grapple, and. And I think that. And it's because of the tension points. So there was a period of time where before the. The two stories came out later, where we have both Graham Platner, the three women accusing him, the first story was, like, toxic, horrible behavior, but the second one was rape. And the delta between those two things for voters was real. After the first story, I was like, I believe Lindsey Fifield, even though I just, like, I know who she is from Twitter, and I disagree with her. And clearly he knew about his tattoo then. And, like, that's disqualifying because he's lying about that. Which, by the way, was always one of my things with Bill Clinton. It wasn't just the affair. He stood in front of the American people and lied about all of it.
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C
Yeah, absolutely.
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B
Which was, to me, the big disqualifying thing. However, there was a point before that where he was trying to build an arc, a narrative arc of redemption. And I was like, I'm staying open to the narrative arc, and a lot of that. And this is why the first New York Times story was really enough for me, because it. What it said was he didn't change.
- [29:10]
J
Right.
- [29:10]
B
It's one thing to say I. I think. I do think that we should normalize, especially as social media. And, like, you got a rap sheet now. Everybody. Everybody's got one. And you don't want to hold people accountable for things they said in their 20s, when they're now in their 40s and they've gotten married and they've had kids and they've lived a lot of life, and they're like, hey, I'm a different person now. I want to let people be different people. And if they apologize, which is something I desperately want to normalize in politics, that's all good to me. I think what became clear was that he was lying about the redemption arc, which was the end of it. But before you knew that, you were out on Graham Platner.
- [29:49]
C
Yeah.
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B
And. And. And I'm. I'm interested because in the piece, I wasn't sure whether you were, like, annoyed with my piece.
- [29:56]
C
I was annoyed with Maine Democrats, sure.
- [29:58]
D
Yeah.
- [29:59]
B
Because I do try to get people to be like, there's what Sarah thinks and then there's what voters think.
- [30:03]
H
And I'm just saying.
- [30:03]
C
Yeah, no, I totally understood the distinction. Yeah.
- [30:06]
B
I want to wrestle with this idea because you kind of have been very dismissive of, like, why would anybody need to grapple with this when he's obviously bad and Susan Collins is like, this just this moderate, nice lady from Maine. And that second part I don't buy. I genuinely don't. And I. But tell me first why you were out on him from the beginning, despite thinking that that character arc could. Could have happened or that redemption arc
- [30:28]
C
could have happened, didn't believe him. I mean, I just didn't believe him. So, look, I mean, I've served in the military. I've been around a bunch of guys who get tattoos. Okay. And here's the one thing that you got to know is that the idea that a guy carries around a totenkoff tattoo for 20 years and is like, I did. I. I had no cl. What? I. some point, I literally, I just thought, this is an IQ test. I mean, not really. I'm not being that condescending, but the idea that this guy had just discovered what his ink was and to his horror, then covers it up right as he's running for Senate was so gobsmackingly implausible. I was shocked anyone believed it. And, I mean, I've been around soldiers with tattoos all the time, and they can name them all. Like, this is the final score of my last high school football game. This is my mom's name in Chinese characters. That one guy I served with had a barcode on the back of his neck. I was like, why do you have a barcode? Well, that's so the medics can scan me if I'm injured. I'm going to get my blood type. And I was like, they don't carry around barcode scanners. But anyway, the. You know, there this sort of intensity about a guy's ink. Like, it's no guys know what's putting on their body. And then to. Okay, maybe he's super drunk one day. So maybe he's just super, super drunk and he gets a tattoo and he looks down and goes, how'd that happen? Well, the next question is going to be, what is that? Oh, my Lord. Okay. And so I didn't believe it. And then the other thing that really enhanced. It was. I don't know about you, Sarah, but I have been around, just as I've been around some of the greatest human beings, like people in recovery, who are some of the best people I've ever known, that I. They are genuinely better people because they have walked through this fire and they have emerged. And I'm in awe of them, quite frankly. But, you know, you've met another type, too, and they're always, always coming through it. They're always getting out of it. And I looked at a lot of these, you know, the recency of a lot of the posting. This was not a situation where we had a guy with a track record of stability after serious instability. People are projecting, I hope, like, a lot of the stuff that he had posted was really pretty recent. And so before I'm going to put somebody in a position of power and trust, like a US Senator, I'm wanting more of a track record than. Well, very recently, I was saying vile, unstable things that really betray an unstable mind. It's not just the content of what he said, it's the fact that somebody's doing this betrays an unstable mind. And with the facial implausibility of the Nazi tattoo, I was, at that point I thought, there are many more shoes that are going to drop. We just don't know what they are. But this is as predictable as the night following the day that these shoes are going to drop. And I a. I was in D.C. last week and somebody came up to me and said, how did you know? And I said, I don't know about your experience, but how many really good people have you known had. Had Nazi tattoos for 20 years? Not many.
- [33:50]
B
I'm just only going to push back on this ever so slightly because I mostly agree, with the exception of his story, it's like the beginning of the Big Short where they were like, how did we know? And he's like, I looked. And like, you'd clearly looked very carefully at the time.
- [34:04]
E
Whatever.
- [34:05]
B
I think it took me a little in the beginning. I'm going to take it from the other side, which is I do not want Susan Collins to be the senator for Maine. And primarily because Susan Collins votes with Donald Trump 95% of the time. I know she voted for him for impeachment, but she has since sort of reversed her behavior. She did vote against confirming some of the Cabinet picks, but, you know, she. She confirmed rfk and she confirmed Kristi Noem. This is what I wanna lay out for you. The thing about Platner, ultimately, that happened for me was that it threw into tension my two of my greatest beliefs. One is that character matters a great deal. And the other one is that Donald Trump should not be given a majority in Congress. I have this section in the book where I talk about an old boss of mine and he used to do this thing where he would say, well, what would you do if your life depended on it? And it was always in the case of something nominal like, like get a CEO on the phone or something. And you'd be like, well, the person's not answering my calls. And he'd be like, okay, well, what would you do if your life depended on it? And he what didn't mean he was going to murder me if I didn't figure it out. What he meant was, think about this differently. Like, what if the stakes were super, super high? What would you do? And for me it's like, okay, well, if I take myself seriously that Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy, that he is leading, like an authoritarian. What. All the things I know you and I sort of agree on. I would vote for a tin can over the Republican in order to keep Donald Trump from having a governing majority, to slow him down in any way that I could, if I take myself seriously and how dangerous I think Donald Trump is. But then I didn't get a tin can. I got a tin can with a Nazi tattoo and a bunch of terrible Reddit posts who turned out to get accused of sexual assault and rape. So not a tin can. Tin cans, nice and neutral. And so when those two things got thrown into tension, I basically was like, I stood there looking at it, trying to figure out which one of my firmly held beliefs was the superseding one.
- [36:06]
C
We have a huge Venn diagram overlap there. Huge. Because I very, very much believe in character and because I very, very much believe in character, I believe Donald Trump is a incredible threat to the health and well being of this country. And I think that's been borne out. Like, I think the character critique of Trump is now sinking in with almost everyone but the sort of core MAGA base at this point. So I'm willing. And Sarah, it was not easy for me to vote for Kamala Harris over, over third party. That was not easy because I've been a lifelong and I still am a lifelong pro life advocate.
- [36:41]
I
That is true.
- [36:42]
B
This is a slight difference between you and I. I had zero. I was like, enthusiastic, let me do whatever I can to help energy.
- [36:48]
C
So I had real. And like, I, I agonized over that. But I believed because of the combination of the way in which Donald Trump had changed the issue set towards rule of law, our international alliances, that Kamala Harris was on the right side of enough issues to where I thought that she was not just not Trump, but many of her policies were going to be actually better than Trump. And so especially regarding NATO and Ukraine and the rule of law, and January 6, etcetera, very big things with Maine. Here's my issue, Sarah, and this is something that really drives me up the wall, is that you will have a situation where you say, I agree with you. I don't want Trump to have a governing majority. I don't want him to have that. But then if you're saying, it's so freaking imperative that we stop Donald Trump, that our candidate to do that has the Nazi tattoo, has the Reddit posts, has this, has this, has this, has this, and I'm like, you're not serious. You're not serious. What you are is an ideologue. Because this guy, this guy, he's really appealing to you because he's very anti Israel. He's really appealing to you because he's super, you know, he's super aggressive in his policy positions, and that's what's appealing to you. And so what you're doing is you're asking me to support a guy who's miles, or at least be okay with a guy who's miles to the left of Kamala Harris, that she ran in 2024, who has acres more scandals. I mean, just monumentally more scandals. And then when I say what you turn around and have the audacity to say to me, I thought you wanted to stop Donald Trump. Will physician heal thyself? Because what you're doing here is you're making the classic mistake that I've seen people on the left make since the beginning of Trump, which is he's so unpopular and he's so bad that maybe this is our opportunity to get into office. Somebody who in different circumstances, in different times, wouldn't make it in. And you push the envelope to the left, and you push the envelope to the left, and I'm so over that, Sarah. I think it is a destructive way of doing politics. And also, by the way, they were sticking with him through the physical, the. The allegation of, of that very physical, like putting on his girlfriend in a room, keeping her locked in her, or keeping her secured in her, like that is totally unacceptable. And if you're going to overlook that, I'm sorry, but you're part of the problem. You're part of the problem because that what is downstream from that is monumental misconduct coming in office. And, and so the fact that it's monumental misconduct coming out of a senator is more manageable than coming out of a president. But you weren't serious. And I'm not talking about your rank and file average Mainer who didn't know everything about Graham Platner. I'm talking about the people who put this guy forward and then dogpiled anyone online who disagreed.
- [39:55]
D
Yeah.
- [39:55]
B
As a recipient of much of that dog piling, I certainly agree that the far left seems to have seized an opportunity, although they've seized one that the center left is leaving wide open for them by not taking Trump on and not being able to sort of meet the moment. And so, like, I guess I really am sitting at the intersection of a bunch of these things and trying to figure out when it comes to Trump, I have such a clear idea. And when it comes to, but like, I sort of think with the far left, I'm like, okay, you're making a policy decision. And I, I, it's not that I am. I don't care about policy at all, but it's like, if Graham Platner wants Medicare for all, I don't care. Like, is that, is that what I think should be, that should be done about health care?
- [40:45]
G
No.
- [40:45]
B
But I understand why voters go for it. I do think people should be putting out affirmative. Health care is a huge issue for voters. I listen to it all the time. They're desperate for better health care. And so I'm like, people, somebody should put forward plans that are actually going to help people when it comes to healthcare. So I understand why people would vote for him for that. And like, that just, to me, isn't the thing that would derail it.
- [41:06]
C
Yeah, well, it's not the thing that derails it. It's the thing that empowered him. So in other words, they were saying they would not have put up with the same stuff from the governor of Maine. Yeah, they wouldn't have. Why did they put up with it for him? Because of Medicare for All. Because of, you know, he, he'll use all the rhetoric around genocide because of all of that. And, and so the way I put it in my piece is when somebody matches your ideology, that's when you get very gracious with them. Like, because if they match your ideology, well, then they're a good person and whatever else is out around there, well, everybody's got flaws. But if they don't match your ideology and you See the flaws. Well, that's just confirmation what we already knew from your ideology, that you're a bad person. Your ideology doesn't, in the absence of actual malice, like fascists, Maoists, etc, your ideology doesn't make you good or bad person. Your actions are much more likely to make you a good or bad person than your health care solution.
- [42:02]
B
But we do have fascist. I'm like, this is the one thing, okay, when I say, like, what would you do if your life depended on, like, if democracy depends on it, what do you do?
- [42:11]
C
You don't vote for part of the same problem.
- [42:13]
B
Well, yeah, I, So I say this all the time. I'm like, it's the Nietzschean, be, be, beware that when you stare into the abyss, the abyss doesn't look back at you. Or that's a, that's close to it. But it's like when you're fighting a monster, be aware, be careful you don't become the monster. Is an admonition that I hold as my own lodestar for how I think about politics. But this is also up against if democracy depends on stopping Donald Trump, and I believe that it does. Now, again, I never supported Graham Platner, and I'm glad he's out. I kind of want to put it to you. Isn't that a real conundrum? You say it's like kind of like anybody above room temperature, but I don't know, I could see how you could say that guy got a drunk tattoo, didn't really know what it was. And then the, the real thing was he later realized it and treated it like a joke or something not serious. Like, oh, my God, I did this terrible thing. I should take this off. And instead was like, look at this dumb thing I did. And I love being edgy and transgressive. That's right. Yeah, exactly.
- [43:17]
C
So I think we have to back up and say, why. Why is it that we want to stop Donald Trump? Why have you and I spent a lot of years of our lives and taken an awful lot of slings and arrows to say no, no, including voting, you know, allying with people who are well to our left, voting with people who are well to our left. Like, we have moved, you know, we have made a billion good faith efforts to try to bring people together to stop Donald Trump. So then the question becomes, what about him is so bad? Okay, like, if you want, really want to stop him. And I put it as character, a combination of character and policy. But I would put it even more character over policy because it is his character right now that is leading him to run roughshod over the Constitution. He has created this cult of personality. All of this is downstream from his character. If he had decent character and bad policies, he'd be much more checkable. You know, if you have. You would go, for example, to Congress and ask for permission to declare war against Iran. You wouldn't just go to war against Iran, you know, and there are these kinds of things. So if I'm looking at the problem with the guy's character and bad policy, the answer to the guy is not more bad character and from my view, also bad policy. And so if you're in that situation, I had a little tweet because I'd written something about James Talarico down in Texas, who is, again, a guy well, to my left, but I appreciate him infinitely more than Graham Platner. And I wrote a. I did a little. I wrote about that, and I did a tweet that said against Paxton, against Platner. And here's the thing, you know, when I'm looking at it, people say, well, we can't please Democrats. Can't please you. Yes. It's actually remarkably easy to please me in this moment. Democrats. It's so shockingly easy. Yeah, Normie. Democrats with decent character against Donald Trump. I'm okay with that, even though I will disagree with you and fight with you over many issues if and when you get into office. That's how bad I think Donald Trump is. But don't come at me with extremists, with bad character, and then try to guilt me into anything. All you're doing when you do that is you tell me that you're not learning the lessons of this moment and that your answer to Trump is something remarkably similar to Trump. And that's no answer at all.
- [45:39]
B
I was wondering if I was going to have, like, some big moment of clarity as I'm listening to you. I'm with you. But I sort of don't begrudge the voters for saying Democrats have this real feeling. I write about this in the book, too. And this is all over the focus groups from Dems, where they're like, you know, when Michelle Obama said, when they go low, we go high, I cheered. I was for that. I wanted to be like that. But I don't feel like that anymore because we're losing doing that. And also, I have watched Republicans, because it's not just about Trump. It's about Herschel Walker, and it's about election denialism. It's about trying to overturn an election.
- [46:21]
C
I mean, Ken Paxton, for crying out loud.
- [46:23]
B
Well, so this is, you know, I might as well get to some sound because I got the Ken Paxton stuff, because obviously that was going to be in there. But I guess it's, it's. They're like, how much do I have to tolerate the other side not playing by the rules, while I have to like, why is it just Democrats? And I feel sympathy for that perspective. I genuinely feel some sympathy for it, even if I personally can't get there. We talked to some Republicans in Texas back in February about Ken Paxton's personal baggage. That baggage being cheating on his wife, getting impeached and a couple felony indictments, all before he won a Republican runoff by nearly 30 points in May. To a normie. Yeah, a normie Republican. But let's listen to how these voters talked about him.
- [47:01]
C
If our political purity test is, didn't cheat on your wife.
- [47:05]
J
And we, but most.
- [47:06]
I
But we all support Trump, I mean,
- [47:08]
C
that's going to be a.
- [47:09]
I
That's going to be a tough,
- [47:13]
C
tough position to defend.
- [47:15]
J
I feel like I'm pretty convinced I'm going to vote for Ken Paxton. All politicians, really, they're going to tell you what you, what you want to hear, so you'll vote for them and then proceed to do whatever they want to in the first place once they get into office. Now, my rationale for Ken Paxton is, you know, off and on, I've kept track of what he's doing so far in his current position.
- [47:42]
D
If I was voting for. On deacons for our church, definitely Ken Paxton wouldn't be part of it, would not have my vote. But my understanding, I don't remember because it's been about a year ago, his political trials were kind of brought to an end. I thought a conclusion, and I thought he took some sort of a plea that just kind of settled things because they couldn't prove whatever the, the, they weren't fraud charges, but, but the graft or whatever it was. I'm not voting for his, his pious character. I would be voting for whether politically I thought he would represent us. And that sounds kind of a sad state of affairs. I'm a Christian, and I absolutely believe that we are responsible for our lives and whether we sin or not. But I just, I think if we looked at any, any place in the Senate, who's going with who, that's just not my business.
- [48:44]
B
I want to sort of end with this grappling. Platner dropped out. He was forced out. Yeah, I think forced out. Right he's gone. And so like Democrats. And this is true of Joe Biden and his age, too. So it's sort of of they do the right thing at the last possible minute. They, like, eventually get there, which I still find superior.
- [49:05]
C
It's infinitely superior at all.
- [49:08]
B
In the case of Paxton, is there any hope for Republicans? I just feel like Trump has changed people's idea of how they evaluate character so significantly on the Republican side, and it is causing Democrats to kind of ask this question of, like, why should we have to when they don't? And, like, like, it's a spiral downward into a bad place. And like, I guess listening to these voters who vote for Ken Paxton, many of them are evangelicals. They are people who specifically state faith. And because I'm a Christian and then say, and so I'll vote for the really bad guy.
- [49:41]
C
You know what made me so sad about that, Sarah? And just listening to that, the feeling I have is sadness. And I'll tell you why. When the woman said, I'm voting for a politician and not the deacon of our church, here's a truth. The politician is more influential over the church than the deacon. I think that's the easiest statement to make. It's the most. It's one of the most obviously true statements you'll ever make about politics, is Donald Trump has changed the culture of the evangelical church more than the church has changed the culture. I mean, changed Donald Trump.
- [50:13]
F
Yeah.
- [50:13]
C
And this was predicted. Evangelicals knew this clearly in 1998. They knew it when it was an opposing politician. And so what's sad is that very answer is a sign of the theological power of a politician, because she would not have said that. I would bet almost any sum of money she would not have said that in 1998 about Bill Clinton. She just wouldn't have said it. She would have gone to the barricades over his lying, over his exploitation, and she would have been right to. And so this is what makes me sad is what we are watching here is by abandoning character in public officials, that doesn't get. That's not compartmentalized. You don't get to abandon character in, like, this one discrete area, especially an area so important is politics, especially when politics. Sarato, many people is now becoming more like religion. So, for example, you know, parents are more likely to want kids to marry someone of a different religion than if a different political party nowadays. And so that's how powerful politicians are over our culture. And that's a scary thing to say. But on the Republican side, I have seen it happen. You know, you and I both know we've been in this together for a very long time. And you have been a rock in this for a very long time. You know, we started off, you were singing, saying nice things about me. It's my turn to end by saying nice things about you. You've been a Rock for 10 years. You have been, you have been courageous, you have been consistent, you have been transparent, you have been humble in the way that you wrestle with these questions and everything. And what's so sad to me is that that is a contrarian spirit of the age, that being consistent is a contrarian spirit. And what is actually happening is we have allowed these politicians to influence our culture to such an extent that now, at least on the Republican side of the House, the politicians have more influence over the Christian church than any pastor I know of in America. Donald Trump has more influence over the church than any pastor I know of in America. And you know that. Thank God for Pope Leo so that we have a countervailing religious force in this country and in this world that is can that is speaking in opposition to the religious influence of Donald Trump. But he is the religiously influential person to the evangelical church in America. And that is so sad.
- [52:51]
B
Well, David, you are one of the most influential people to me. And so even when we disagree, I like, I always want to know what you think because I know it's going to be serious and I know it's going to be born out of love for people and for this country, which we share. Thanks so much. I gotta let you go. I could do this for another hour, but you're a busy man.
- [53:15]
E
We gotta go.
- [53:16]
C
Joe Rogan link Sometime, Sarah, sometime. We gotta do that sometime.
- [53:19]
B
We could do it. We could do it. I got so much more voters talking about their mealy mouthed opinions on character. I will leave everybody with this, I think is going to be very important for us to get out of this moment to elect somebody of good character in 2028, because I think if we end up with a person of bad character again, we're going to have a very difficult time recovering as a country. Leadership matters a great deal. DAV French, thank you so much for coming on the focus group podcast. Thanks to all of you for listening to another episode of the focus group podcast. We'll be back next week with more focus groups and promise we'll have more voters next time. Thanks very much. Bye, guys.