← The Realignment
The Realignment
586 | Oliver Libby: Strong Floor, No Ceiling - A Radical Moderate's Case for Reigniting the American Dream
00:59:09
Oliver Libby, civic investor and author of Strong Floor, No Ceiling: Building a New Foundation for the American Dream, joins The Realignment. Marshall and Oliver discuss his post-2024 Strong Floor, No Ceiling framework: a strong floor below which Americans shouldn't fall (healthcare, education, work, housing, opportunity), and no ceiling on aspiration and growth (with rules), why Americans are giving up on the American dream, what a successful national service program would look like (and why previous versions failed to meet their promise), how wealth and power stress the social contract, and why an alternative to MAGA hasn't arrived yet.
Loading summary
Transcript44 lines
- [00:00]
A
Marshall here. Welcome back to the Realignment Ever since Donald Trump decisively won the 2024 election, there have been immediate calls for some sort of alternative to the politics of maga that wasn't just the politics of norms or a rehashing of the status quo. Now that we are more than a year out from his victory, though, the question has shifted from what's the alternative? To why hasn't there been a clear one yet? For my pov, any alternative isn't about exactly being perfectly catchy, as ready for the debate stage as Magger was, but is instead, at least right now, able to ground people in the moment and how they need to respond to the culture, the economy, and the actual feelings Americans have right now, AKA an objective or destination or a worldview. Maga, like it or hate it, accomplishes exactly that. The other thing I'll add is the reason why there has not been any alternative yet is that all of the different actors and institutions within left liberal politics, including the Democratic Party, have become overly fixated on putting wins on the boards for their own individual factions instead of building something comprehensive. My note on factionalism is that yes, you have moderates and you have centrists. There are Blue Dogs, there are never Trumpers, there are leftists, There are DSA people, but not any single one of these factions is actually able to get 50 plus one votes on the board during a primary election or a general election themselves. Therefore, everyone is actually going to have to work together to come up with something comprehensive. Conservatism, even its MAGA variant, has been able to achieve this through the idea of fusionism. Ever since REAGAN in the 80s, you've had a combination of the priorities of fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, and foreign policy conservatives formed into something once again that's fusionist and comprehensive. Not everyone gets every single thing that they want, but there is enough there that people feel confident that their interests and broader perspective will be served by victory. Any efforts moving forward and any efforts towards an alternative need to focus and center on the idea of building something comprehensive rather than short sighted factionalist thinking. Today's guest, civic entrepreneur Oliver Libby doesn't claim that he has all the answers, but his new book, Strong Floor, no Ceiling Building a New foundation for the American Dream, is his attempt to contribute to the conversation. And it should be noted, people in power are listening. Democratic leader in the House Hakim Jeffries recently referred to his language around Strong Floor, no Ceiling, and others, including New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Congressman and California gubernatorial Eric Swalwell have also used the term as well. Strong floor, no ceiling from a vision worldview perspective basically says there's going to be a strong floor for the American people that enables them to pursue and be stabilized in the American Dream. No ceiling is also his centrist articulation of the idea that you don't have to be anti growth, you don't have to be anti wealth creation. Now that is obviously not going to make everyone happy, especially the left. But I, I think if you actually read the book, and it's a very good book, very useful one that Oliver's been working on since 2018, you'll find that in his individual actual proposals, there's plenty for people to take away from. So I've really enjoyed this conversation. I'm someone who's trying to think about what alternatives look like. So it was great to speak with someone from that camp and perspective as well. Hope you all enjoy the conversation. Oliver Libby, welcome to the realignment.
- [03:43]
B
Well, thanks very much, Marshall. I'm very glad to be here.
- [03:46]
A
Yeah, super excited to chat with you both about your new book, Strong 4 no Ceilings. But the bigger questions you get into the American Dream, why it doesn't feel like there are any alternatives to the status quo right now, and all that other great stuff. But how about you just kick things off by introducing yourself because you've got a really interesting background that's going to cut into what you've actually come to on your journey to get to this answer.
- [04:09]
B
Well, I appreciate that and you're absolutely right. I mean, actually part of what I hope makes this book work is that I am an unexpected source of it. I'm someone who spent my life kind of between all the different sectors of American life. I grew up as the son and grandson of doctors and scientists. And I've always had this deep respect for inquiry and knowledge and science. I had no personal aptitude for it, though you would not want me doing scientific research. But there was this other thread in the family. My grandfathers had both fought in World War II, my great great uncle as well. And so I grew up really fascinated with military history and national. And so when I got to college, I expressed an interest in studying that. And my university was not as interested in undergrads following that pursuit. But I fell in with a group of professors who really wanted to nurture that. And one of them, it seems, had reached out to the US Intelligence community and the CIA. I was very fortunate to be brought in as a college student into a program they had there. And I spent in and out of there about three years. And it was a really formative experience. Marshall, you know, a taste of the federal government, the, the really good mission oriented work there. Ultimately, for a variety of reasons, came to New York and worked in the private sector as a consultant for a few years just to learn the engine of the economy. I actually thought I would go right back into public service. And ultimately life presented a different set of options. And during the 08 financial crisis, I created two organizations. One is a large nonprofit that helps college kids launch socially responsible startups all around the world, literally all across America, you know, about a hundred countries as well. And then a venture firm that invests in things that are good for people, for the country. And that's what I've been up to for the last 17 years. So you might think of me as a kind of a cross sector person and someone from whose perch I think you could see something like strong floor and assuming come to bear.
- [06:01]
A
Yeah. And to clarify, in terms of the CIA, so this was during like the 911 period, right?
- [06:08]
B
Yeah, I was in there for just under a year when 911 happened. It changed obviously the character of everything we were working on. And let me see, America's public servants at their finest. I mean, I still wouldn't be able to tell you what party my colleagues voted for, but everyone stepped up to defend the country.
- [06:26]
A
Yeah. And one of the things you write about in the book is national service and civic engagement and something that's interesting. So I'm 33, so I was young enough that I remember the 911 moment. And obviously something we're experiencing right now, you're experiencing this too, is that during that moment a lot of folks who wouldn't normally have been driven to join the military or go into the intelligence community joined up because that was just a very obvious moment to serve during that period of national unity. So you have Senator Elissa Slotkin, you obviously have the incoming governor of Virginia, Abigail Spanberger. They served in the CIA. There's a lot of Democrats actually served in the CIA. And something that younger zoomers, because our politics are more cynical right now don't really understand is just that like when they hear CIA, they hear spooks, they hear conspiracy, they hear the 2020s iteration of that. And since you write about and think about national service, I think it's pretty easy to understand that the opportunity for national service to mean something and be something of growth would have been in that post 911 moment what kind of went wrong. That exposes that gap there where this can just be seen cynically.
- [07:39]
B
A couple of different threads in a very important question. Marshall. I think number one for me, national service isn't just about the military and national security, although it's a really important part, but it's, it's about mixing our society back up again. We have sorted ourselves politically and otherwise decisively in this country. You know, the Big Sort is a great book on that. Ezra Klein's why We're Polarized is a great book on that. And it is my belief that while I certainly would never recommend we go to war, we do look at what about the great generation made it great. And part of it was that society gave a full body effort to combating first fascism and then communism. And after 911 we had a chance to do that. And I remember so vividly because I'm 44, you know, George W. Bush asking the nation to go shopping to make sure the economy stayed vibrant. And actually you're right, there are a lot of folks who enlisted, but so few compared to the full body effort that you found when we were the arsenal of democracy. And that's a national tragedy. And that was from the top. I mean, we had the opportunity to craft. You know, we were kind of looking for ourselves as a nation in the 90s, you know, the communism had gone away, we'd won. You know, Francis Fukuyama is talking about the end of history. Maybe we just got there and it's all good. That's never true. And I kind of sensed that at the time. But then what is the great work we want to ask our people to be about? And we've had that in a lot of American history, Great society, New Deal, arsenal of democracy, whatever you want to call it, and we don't. I would challenge any of your listeners to tell me what that great work is today. And if we don't mix ourselves up as a society and do things like the military teaching together, you know, Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, that sort of mixed, you know, nation where we get to be, you know, cheap by jowl, side by side with people from that we might not have otherwise met, then how can we connect with a great national work?
- [09:25]
A
So here's my hot take. I actually think that late stage national service kind of sucks, right? So what I mean by that is the reason why we're drawn to the military as this example is that it seems like the military is just the only example of civic minded country first engagement that actually has tangibility and seriousness to it. So for example, military think of Porter Psi, people's loss on J.D. vance. J.D. vance is sort of a mediocre high school student who is sort of lost, enlists in the Marine Corps, gets an education out of it, goes to Ohio State, then goes to Yale, then becomes a venture capitalist and now is the Vice President of the United States. There are so many different stories like that. When, if we look at the national service programs that sort of emerged during the 1990s that really come from this sort of, how do we. In the center, it's very Bill Clinton, Al Gore, how do we give people this sense of purpose? No offense to AmeriCorps and a lot of those different groups, no offense to the Climate Conservation Corps, which the Biden administration pursued. None of those things have a, I think, been particularly effective at a greater societal level. There are obviously going to be very individually specific cases where I'm sure AmeriCorps volunteers have done really important work, but they just don't mean something the way the Civilian Conservation Corps, like the Civilian Conservation Corps, literally trained like a generation of officer and future enlisted people in leadership. During the 1930s, it built timberline Lodge in Oregon, where I grew up. It did so many obvious things like think of how excited people were about the Peace corps in the 1960s meant something. But when I just hear national service invoked in the 2000s, 2000s and 2000s, I just see a lot of like lame center left, like nonprofit type stuff that doesn't mean anything. So how does this actually mean something in a way that should get people excited?
- [11:18]
B
Because, because you have to tie it to meaning something up front. I mean, just throwing a Climate Conservation Corps out there and saying, there's something else we're going to do. That's not what this should be about. This should be about a, first and foremost, what I call an American service experience. And I think it's growing actually, you know, it's kind of on the way. On the wax again, right? More and more people are talking about this sort of thing. But if you make it about a national service program and make the goals clear, hey, we're, we're trying to get the American people back together again to reconnect them to our civicness pretty early in their lives. And then you say, look, there's a few tracks, right? You can build stuff here in America, you can build stuff overseas, you can be in the military, which I grant you, absolutely. It can be very formative and effective. You can go teach, you can go work in local government, or you can build infrastructure. Those are the six I Identified, by the way, it's not gospel. Right. Like, my point is that that all flows from the idea of a service experience that remixes a society and reconnects us to being citizens in a way that we just don't have now. And then the things you're doing flow from that. I don't disagree with you, but I think we have to. It's a lofty idea, but it's an important one. We believe in things as a country, and when we do that, we do really amazing things.
- [12:27]
A
Yeah. And I guess I'd be curious to get your understanding because you identify yourself as a radical moderate, and there are a lot of people who are on the center. So, for example, Richard Haass, who was the president of the Council for Foreign Relations, came on the show a few years back and, like, national service was his, like, big idea. Why do you think maybe this is asking you to sort of psychoanalyze people? But I just want to understand sort of like the moderate crew. Why is national service just, like, recurring features and how people in your campus are coming to addressing the big problems? I just. It's just a noticeable trend. And I'm not saying it's superficial. It just seems to be like, the big thing. I'm curious why you think that is.
- [13:06]
B
You know, Marshall, I've never been asked that question before, and it's a great one. I'm not just saying that because when you do stuff like write a book, you hear a lot of the same question a bunch. It's critically important because I am very sick of moderates being viewed as milquetoast or boring. And if you read Strong Floor, no Ceiling, what you'll find is there's a lot of pretty radical policy from either side mashed together into kind of sensible aims. But one of the big things is if you want to make practical, actionable policy exciting, people have to believe in the thing you're doing. And look, let me just say, like, my book and my life has not been about defending the institutions that are passed. We have been largely failed by those institutions. And there is no bones about that. Right. Since Watergate in Vietnam. We have. And it goes back to one of your earlier questions, too, Marshall. Like, we have. We've been assaulting what it means to believe in, like, all of the institutions in America. Right. I mean, at one point, the military after Vietnam, certainly government, Congress, business, you know, I mean, our great brands, like consumer brands, are some of the highest rated things people still believe in this country, and even that's under attack. So if you wanted radical moderation to work. You would have to connect people to believing in the country again. And national service is a pathway to doing that. Which is why I think it's so resonant with people who believe in a kind of more muscular centrist policy.
- [14:28]
A
Yeah. And I think to the point of why people in the center? Because I think centrism, one of its big problems. Well, it's a strength and it's a weakness. So the strength is that it's like a disposition, it's a personality. So I think I have a centrist, moderate personality. I don't like everyone arguing with each other. I don't want, if we're sort of, and this is the experience of being in any sort of democrat or left liberal space. When I see all these people who are arguing with each other, socialists and centrists and progressives and center left people, I don't like how everyone's arguing. I want everyone to say, okay, well, what are we actually going to do together? I think if you're a centrist, you sort of have that inclination. So that's why national service with its focus on that would be a natural starting point. But I think the weakness point is that that isn't an ideology. Right. The problem is you then struggle to translate that into something greater that's going to resonate with people. And I think if we identify why you've had effective programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps or the Peace Corps, the arsenal of democracy run up to World War II is that they didn't start from the position of we're so divided, we need to work together. They started by focusing on an actual problem. So obviously now we say the Civilian Conservation Corps was this moment of national service and engagement. What it really was is there were hordes and hordes and hordes of unemployed people and they needed something to do. The Peace Corps. The problem was, oh, hey, we're in a Cold War competition with the Soviet Union and we have all this talent that we should find ways to deploy across the world to achieve something, on and on and on and on and on. So I think my starting point for a national service program would work. Maybe in the back of our minds we have the idea that we should work together and the upper class should mix with the lower classes and everyone should be together. That should be in the back of our mind. But the actual starting point should be, hey, actually the entry level grad pipeline or the I, you know, I'm a smart, you know, interested person in high school, but I'm not That excited about college. There's just a gap right there that people in both categories are missing. So like the 22 to 25 year old or an 18 year old who doesn't want to go to college, what are things that people in those categories can do that would help the country and provide them with direction? They could then shunt them off into something greater that offers them something. So like, I start with that as the problem, not the like did we not really get together part of the problem. So I think the real important starting point from the perspective of your book, and we'll get to the what strong floor no ceiling means in a second though, is just noting the fact that only 27% of Americans believe in the American dream. Why is that? And I think answering that should be the key to everything we do moving forward.
- [17:04]
B
It is the greatest national security threat and there are a lot of national security threats. And by the way, I love what you said before, Marshall. Like, I think if we're looking for problems to solve and motivate people, like we're in an era where there's lots of problems. I remember, actually, my friends are going to kill me for saying this, but I remember we were just before 9 11, a bunch of us were freshmen in school and we all got together and we actually said to each other over a dinner that we hoped that there would be serious problems for us to address in the future. You know, not, not that we're wishing for problems, but like, what would we be able to tackle that was meaningful? And now I think back and I'm like, oh my God, there's so much to tackle. And so, you know, a national service, everything we're talking about in strong flow, no ceiling there is ample. There's ample need to attack it. And look, the American dream is whether you grow up in a religion or you were born here or came here or whatever it is the thing that you probably most associate with being American being in the American story. It's the American dream. It's this idea that if you work hard, you play by the rules, that you ought to be able to improve your lot maybe substantially and leave your kids better off than you. And more than any 911 or Pearl harbor or any external threat, because we're resilient to that. And we've shown that as a country. It is the decay of that central. That that decay is why people are so angry and frustrated, and rightly so, because you know what? The numbers are clear. It is hard, if not impossible to live that dream out for Most Americans. And if we do not address that, then. Then this country is not long for this world. And that would be a tragedy because this is the greatest country. But, you know, I talk about this a lot, Marshall. If we just assume we'll continue to be great, the American exceptionalism with no criticism, then we will fail because we continuously need to earn the work that the prior generations have put in. And so reinvigorating the American dream, that's not just something nice to have, that's essential for our national security.
- [18:55]
A
Yeah. And I gotta say, and this is why I appreciate you just noting the American dream point in a lot of your press hits it. Just one of my big frustration with fellow liberals is when they sort of say to themselves, like, how could Donald Trump win? How could populism win? When it's just like the second you see that 27% statistic, it should be pretty obvious why the message of Make America Great Again would resonate with people, why people wouldn't be bought into the status quo, into different institutions. And my critique of so many of the pre2024 counters to Trump counters to populism. A lot of people sort of identified in the center that you're a part of is that they just did not start with reckoning with that fact. They sort of started with this idea of, like, you know what? Like, our essential program is Make America 2014 Again. Donald Trump came in in 2016, and then Hillary ran a bad campaign. There was Russian election interference. The constitutional system is set up so that you could lose the popular vote and still become president. That was the problem. If we just got back to the track we were on, things would work out, but that just isn't my understanding of things. So I'd just be curious, what is your understanding of how we got to the point where Trump could win once, lose, and then despite all of the factors that caused him to lose the second time, still being in play, then win again. Like, what's your understanding of what's happened in the country?
- [20:13]
B
You know, it's interesting. I. I've been asked a lot why I don't seem angrier. And my wife always laughs because I'm angry about a lot of things. And no party has a monopoly on anger. There's a lot to be angry about. But if we govern angry, we're not going to get anywhere. Right. Because governing angry is about ripping things down, not being thoughtful. And like, I am a policy nerd, I like to think about the ways to improve people's lives. That said, you know, People throw a lot of the baby out with the bathwater with President Trump. And obviously I've made no secret of the fact that I find much of his presidency very disturbing. But there are things to learn, and one of the most important things is that the narrative matters. And the Biden administration had some very clear legislative wins, but of the sort that don't play out for a very long time. I mean, the CHIPS act, we're not going to see chip fabs in this country for a decade. The bipartisan infrastructure bills similarly. And by the way, I don't know if you remember the Recovery act, but like every, every, you know, bulldozer that was on the side of the street had, like, brought to you by the Recovery act. And that only showed up a little bit at the end of the Biden administration. So, you know, you can do all the passing of bills and have, like, a legendary presidency from a legislative perspective and never get any credit for it and not improve lives immediately enough to get credit. And, and then you get Donald Trump again, because, by the way, Donald Trump was right about a lot of his prison life should be more affordable for people. You shouldn't have to work to try and unlock the American dream, which feels so hopeless. And a lot of folks that I know, I bet you heard the same thing said, well, why would someone ever vote for Donald Trump? He's like a grenade of the system. And my response was, right, that's exactly what he is. And, and by the way, we ought to learn about that and understand it. But like I said, you have to understand the anger. You have to empathize with the anger. You can even be angry. But if we govern angry, we're not going to solve any problems for any people and make things better.
- [22:03]
A
Yeah, and I think that's a great answer to how the sort of centrist, moderate Persona that I think you and I share, how we should respond to post2024, because I'm just not an angry person the way that you described it. I'm not going to. I get angry, but I'm not going to. I pride myself on seeing things and then behaving rationally and not screaming about them. But I think too many centrist and moderates in the sort of post2016 space combined that lack of anger with a lack of recognition of why other people are angry. And that, though, has to be the sort of needle to thread in that case. So I think to be curious about this, so let's get to the actual slogan, which I think, interestingly enough so as you've said, strong Nerf, strong floor, no ceiling. Your book has been the seven year project you actually came up with. Strong floor, no ceiling is a slogan in 2018, towards the start of the project. What does strong floor, no ceiling mean?
- [23:03]
B
Strong floor, no ceiling is the engine by which you reignite the American dream. And it's interesting because they're often thought of. First of all, it's funny, a lot of folks are out there saying this sounds tested and consulting. Y it may. It's certainly not that. I sat down and wrote a LinkedIn piece in 2018 because I believed in that way of thinking. And it became this book over seven years and actually waited to publish it because I didn't want to just randomly publish a book for no reason. It has to be useful. But we need to be trying to figure out what the clarion call is for this radical center. And no one had done it. So that's why the book came out. Now, what does it mean? An America with a strong floor. No ceiling means there should be a strong floor below which we don't let our fellow Americans fall. And by the way, that is neither Republican nor Democratic idea. We as a country have always tried to take care of our neighbors, tried to be charitable. There's different ways we've done it. But the strong floor, you shouldn't fall below it. The planks of it are ones we know. Healthcare, education, access to jobs, work, housing, justice, opportunity. Right? And those planks ought to be planks you can stand on to reach into the middle class or beyond. Because there ought to be no ceiling to what you can aspire to achieve in this country as long as you play by the rules that you pay your taxes and you work hard. And you know, I like to say no ceiling doesn't mean no rules. But honestly, like this from the conservatives perspective is tantamount to an investment in our country. We ought to want the economy to have access to a consumer oriented, educated, healthy population. That's good. The vibrant middle class. But then from the strong floor perspective, looking up at the sea, people don't want a handout. They want to know that if they're working hard, they can make money. They can leave their kids better off. And by the way, if they invent something great, that they could become very wealthy, pay your taxes, play by the rules, but that'll be okay. And I'll leave you with this. You can't have one without the other. If you just do strong floor like many people on the far left wanted to do, you won't be able to pay for it, and you'll run the country into the ground. If you just do no ceiling, then we'll have income inequality that will result eventually in the breakdown of society. You need them happening together to create that middle class that is so uniquely American and makes the country actually work. And the American dream actually worked.
- [25:14]
A
So to understand your income inequality point, though, I think the issue is you could have a strong floor and you could have no ceiling, but that still would result in plenty of income inequality, right? Given the fact that Elon Musk, for example, basically, let me put it this way. I think what the far left gets at directionally that I have come to understand and resonate with is the idea that, let's say the strong floor is the equivalent of a combination of your salary, your benefits, the opportunities you have 100k a year. Let's just say if you have that all together, and then obviously you want to have people growing and still experiencing other things, that's the floor. But Elon Musk is still on the path to becoming a trillionaire. And when you factor in the fact that Elon is incredibly engaged in politics and Elon obviously is staffing Doge and getting all these people on the ground and financing the Trump campaign, how does not just like income inequality, but also the political inequality that stems from that fit into this?
- [26:21]
B
Look, I am a firm believer that we have enough in this country that everyone should have enough, but that doesn't mean everyone needs to have the same. That said, one of the things that makes me really angry about Elon Musk's story is Elon has forgotten his major partner in his entrepreneurial success. Don't take anything away from how hard it is to create the companies that he has created and how meaningful those companies really are for society. But he's always had a partner. SpaceX's largest customer is the American taxpayer. A third partner in every Tesla ever sold is the American taxpayer. And you. I do strain to see how Elon's current story falls within the rubric of no ceiling. If you play by the rules and pay your fair share, if you can become that wealthy, your fair share ought to be a lot of. And by the way, I don't want to speak about the boardroom politics of Tesla, but I am interested to know how someone with that kind of pay package can also spend as much time doing things that aren't that company. I have questions about the playing by the rules part with Elon. So, look, I think ultimately, again, like Democratic Party and Particularly it's far left to spend a lot of time vilifying wealth because it's bad. And that is not correct in my mind. But how wealth interacts with society is really important. And we've always had income inequality in our country. The question is, how bad do we want to let it be? And how free reign do we let people with wealth have on playing outside the rules and then actually writing the wolves. Right. That's not good. But again, the idea of amassing wealth, if you create something valuable for the country, that shouldn't be something that we just hate intrinsically.
- [27:57]
A
Yeah. And I think you got to where I sort of part ways of James Talarico, who's a Texas state senator who's running for office. He did it big, went very viral on Elon's X platform where he was talking about how there shouldn't be someone who's a trillionaire attacking Elon Musk over that. And I think where that in a weird way may resonate with populist America right now, but I think speaks to or but I think doesn't resonate with America's longer term history, is the idea that, look, if you build Tesla and you build SpaceX and you do all these things, you know what, I don't particularly care if you make a bunch of money, you have to pay your taxes. But like, it's not inherently a problem that he is that wealthy, especially at a philosophical level at a certain point, like if a trillionaire is bad, like why is a billionaire not bad? Why is a millionaire not bad? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I think the problem with Elon is the implicit and explicit violations of the social contract that he's enacted with that wealth. So, for example, him being that wealthy and spending as much money as he did on the Trump campaign in ways that clearly benefit and give him more political power over every other individual in a one person, one vote society. A situation where now that he's dialed back from politics, this is less of an issue. But when he is then taking that wealth and saying, I'm going to finance massive primary and general election campaigns against any Republican who doesn't stand with my vision, what Trump should be doing, that's the violation of the social contract. So I'd just be curious, what do you think then the obligations are on the wealthy in this situation? Obligation is also a little different than law too.
- [29:40]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there should be laws, right? I mean, the campaign spending thing is in chapter two of the book, it's one of My conditions, precedent. I think it'd be hard to do anything proactively good in this country if we can. If Elon can flood the political markets with money the way he has, that's not good. But. But, you know, it's funny, I. At the risk of being reductive, Marshall, like, I think of sports or I'm a sports fan, and, you know, if you watch Monday Night Football, it's more than faintly ridiculous to think that the players should police themselves. You want the players to play as hard as they can to even kind of push the rules a little bit. Right. Could they get away with a little holding there and stop that drive? And then it's up to the refs and the lines on the field and the goal post to set the rules. Now, you also don't want that game to be six hours of refs yelling at each other and only 45 minutes of play. Right? So there's a Goldilocks amount of regulation and rules you want in the NFL just as you want in society. So, look, first of all, history does not need my approval. We know what happens when income inequality goes wild. At the center of this whole thing is, I think, way fewer people have a problem with a trillionaire. If the vast bulk of American society is healthy and feels good about their prospects and their kids prospects. The problem here is we've left everybody else behind and that income inequality, I mean, there's a whole bunch of stats in the book about, you know, real wage growth versus CEOs. And then, of course, the. The captains of industry. And that's the place we have a problem. It's not just looking up at the wealthiest people. It's where's everybody else? And we have forgotten everybody else. And so the strong floor is really, again, these things have to live together.
- [31:10]
A
I think one of the misinterpretations of your work that's gone viral over and stop me if you think this is a misinterpretation, but my take on this is after your book came out, pretty notably, congratulations for you, genuinely, a bunch of Democratic leaders started using your phrase. So you know Representative Eric Swalwell, who's running for governor in California, New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and then Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries all use the strong floor, no ceiling rhetoric. And one of the dunks on this that came from sort of like lefty critics that really sort of came from the critique you offered earlier. Like, it sounds like it's like a management consultant speak was that you were trying to say that this was a MAGA alternative. Like, that this is like the phrase that you should be chanting at the rallies, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And given the fact that you came up with this phrase in 2018, I don't quite think that's what your aim was with this phrase. And I think we need to judge phrases by their intention. But just like, let me give you. Let's hear your perspective. What is the purpose of Strong Floor, no ceiling? Is it a MAGA alternative? Is it there for the audiences in rallies? Like, what is your understanding of what you're trying to do with it?
- [32:26]
B
Look, I don't think Donald Trump tested maga, and I certainly didn't test strong for a no ceiling. I have not created hats with SFMC on them. You know, if someone wants to do that, great. I don't know, Marshall. Like, to me, and maybe it's when you live with something that you wrote for a while, you want to believe people are going to like it. I could certainly see people really keying in at a very popular level on this idea, like strong floor, no ceiling, like that. That's something I actually could hear someone, you know, say podium. But if I'm wrong about it, that's okay. It doesn't need to be the phrase that wins the day for America. But I want to start the conversation because I've asked every audience that I've been in front of in any format about this book other than make America great again, what are the three, four, five letter plans that are the motivating idea for. Let's call it centrist politics. And if you know it, Marshall, I want to hear it. No one has been able to come up with something. So if it's not Strong Floor, no ceiling, no problem. Like, if Blue Sky World wants to come up with a better idea, more power. But right now, I hear nothing. And you know what we cannot do as centrists and people on the center left like me is we cannot just retreat to the idea that this is a big tent and everyone's going to come up with their local answer. That does not work in a national context. We need people to understand what we're about, and it cannot just be that we're not about what those guys are doing. So is it a make America great again? I don't know. Let people decide. Right. But I think we ought to start the conversations. What is the overarching message that relights the American dream? Because we don't have it yet.
- [33:59]
A
Yeah. And this is where I can praise and really defend why both the process that you generated strong floor ceiling and why it's just actually important. Because this is what I think people, not just the people who are critics on Twitter or Blue sky, but people who just sort of don't really talk to policymakers. You talk to policymakers, I talk about policymakers. The big problem, and people will admit this privately, is that after 2024, not just if you're a centrist, not just if you're center right or center left, a lot of people, unless you are usually like a left progressive populist. Because that's the sort of. Because the problem if you're a right populist is that you own what Trump's doing. So you're like, well, I actually don't like this thing and I wouldn't do it this way. So you're sort of hobbled. But the left progressive populace of the Zoron variety are the strongest right now. From the like, okay, what do we need to do? Like, what's the plan? What I've encountered is that everyone else to their right, once again, from the center left all the way to sort of even the far right, is that they actually don't know what to think right now. If you ask them, okay, what do we do? They draw up blanks. So I think it's just so important that you have just a framework of strong floor, no ceiling if you're someone on the center, so that you could actually look at the world like it's sort of a worldview. Right. This is what I've talked about in previous episodes. Strong, strong for no ceiling is a worldview, and it's also just an objective. I don't know if you saw this, but a few weeks ago, because you've been following debates in the Democratic Party, welcome, which is a really great organization. They host. Welcome Fest, is sort of the main centrist Democratic gathering. They put out this report which was titled Deciding to Win. And in Deciding to Win, they did a bunch of polling and they listed, like, here and this is in the report. We talked about this on the podcast. They have 20 different popular policies that Democrats should run on. And I've seen this presented in public settings. And the sort of idea is like, look at these 20 ideas and pick some of these 20 ideas and, like, run on them. And the problem I have when I read and see that presentation of it is there are a bunch of 20 popular ideas. So some of the 20. It's actually a really fascinating exercise. So I'm not critiquing the exercise. So, for example, no tax on tips. That is just like incredibly, incredibly, incredibly popular. You know what's also pretty popular? Ending refugee admission. Here's the thing, and this is the problem, fusing polling as your sort of framework for deciding what to do and where to go next. Poll just came out today showing that given the backlash to ice, refugee admissions are popular again. So, like, super, super, super complicated to sort of say, I'm going to pick the five or six things that are popular. However, if you look at those 20 things and if you just had in the back of your mind, okay, Oliver's framework of strong 4 no ceiling is a great framework for addressing how people don't feel like the American dream is working. What are five or six things that refle goal my values and would help me articulate and put meat on those bones? So, like, I just see so many centrists. Not I, I see too many centrists saying, here are the polls run on the popular thing. Not saying, hey, you're a centrist, you believe in the strong floor, no ceiling. Here are five or six poll tested viable values reflecting ideas that you can make tangible for people. So I just want to praise your work because I, I don't. I, I wish that. I wish you're light. Critics, like, people don't. People aren't really beefing of you personal. Just wish your critics understood that that is the context that your work is coming out into and why it's so essential. Let me put it this way. The problem is not that centrists can't hold massive rallies or people are chanting strong floor, no ceiling. The problem is centrists don't even have an objective in the first place.
- [37:34]
B
Well, first of all, thank you. That's very kind. And you're right about, well, all that. I believe there are a couple of things that come out of that that I wanted to highlight. The first is there. There are two predominant criticisms I've seen out there. And look, no one's immune. Right? I kind of knew that this wouldn't be universally popular. Nothing in politics ever is. But, yeah, you read, you read the comments and you're like, oh, man, all right. And there's a bunch of people out there who are like, dunking on strong floor, no ceiling. It's a parking lot or a fish tank, whatever. Cleverly done. Thank you.
- [38:03]
A
Quick thing. Whoever who, like, you know, we could dug on critics whoever said strong for no ceiling is a fish tank, they get that is the best ever. Just like immediate, like critical, but ultimately like fair. Critique I've ever heard.
- [38:16]
B
Totally. I had the smile. Right. It's true. And, you know, no, no slogan is perfect. Right. You know, and. And there's a lot in that group about, like, there should be a ceiling. Okay, well, we should discuss my version of that is no ceiling doesn't mean no rules, as I said before, and we should talk about what those rules are. But fine. I'll get back to that in a second. The other, you know, kind of comment out there is like, all right, this sounds good, but, like, what's underneath it? And my point is there's 75, 000 words, 350 pages, and even that could have done a thousand pages. No one would read it. Right. But at the end of the day, I don't care so much that people read 75,000 words that they hear the four. And then if they want to know more about it, there's a whole book. Right. And it's as wonky as you could possibly want it to be while hopefully still being accessible. And I hope that that works, because I really did want there to be meat on the bones, and it's there to be seen. The other quick thing I'll say is it's interesting. We on the center left have often been out branded by the right, and this goes back to the times of Frank Luntz and all that. You know, the words are important. And you don't hear someone sitting there being like, well, make America great again, but not from this era, and not great in these ways. And like, they don't waste any time on that. Make America great again. And if you have a problem with the slogan, and many people do, you're not understanding what it means, which is basically a mirror in which people can see what they want to see. If. If a former Romney Finance Committee person and Nick Fuentes can be for the same thing, then it's got to be pretty flexible. Strong point of ceiling is just to your point, it's a worldview. It's saying there ought to be a floor, but you ought to be able to strive and get more for you and your family, which is about as fundamentally American as anything can be. And the last thing I'll say on this is, honestly, if I were sitting there with Donald Trump or Zoran Mandani, I'd want to have a conversation about this. But actually, in a lot of ways, they ought to agree with strong floor, no ceiling, too. They both ran on stuff like that.
- [39:57]
A
Yeah. And it's not as if Zoron is run on confiscatory wealth taxes that would end the existence of billionaires in New York City. He wants there to be progressive, even socialist levels of taxation. But, like, once again, you can have a. You could have, like the, you know, 90% tax rates and then technically still not have that. That actually isn't a ceiling. Like, that's one of the rules. That's one of the dynamics.
- [40:19]
B
Like, whatever.
- [40:20]
A
But I think there's, like, a lot, like, to your point, there's a lot you can do with it. And I think people should, like, understand things accordingly. And once again, I think what I'm looking for and why I wanted to highlight your work is I'm just looking for any phrase, idea, worldview, sentence that will just help people who are associated with the status quo. So the people who work at venture capital firms, the people, let me put it this way, and I'm sure you feel this way, too. I look at my life and I'm just like, dude, you are one of the winners of the 1990s. Think of all the books that have been written. In so many ways, the story of the 1990s is, wow, America wreck really didn't work out. Turned out that college was a scam. Turned out the American dream was dead. Well, you know what? I'm actually living that. I'm verbal. I get to host a podcast. I get to work from home thanks to the Internet. I get to work at D.C. think tanks. Like, Like, I'm just a winner in that sense of the terms. And just given the work that I do on populism, I just get that that story is not normal. I'm the exception at a generation. Well, not a total exception, but, like, my story is not going to resonate with a lot of people who are a part of my generation. So, like, I've just done, to your point, a seven years work on this. I've done seven years of work just understanding that. And I just think that what's so helpful about it is that you could be a venture capitalist, say to yourself, because I've heard people say this, why are people going for Trump? Take the term strong floor, no ceiling, and say to yourself, you know, is a high school degree in our society really a strong floor? No. Is a college degree that is incredibly overinflated, cost wise. But then, even if you pursue the. Take the step, I think of the people who took the step. Think of the people who didn't do what I did. Right? So I, it's, it's funny, to your point about saying you didn't do Math and science. Like I very arrogantly, this is one of those things where I was incorrect at the time, but I was actually correct. I did not pay attention in AP stats my senior year in high school when everyone was like, Marshall, you need to pay attention. I was like, yeah, I'm not going to make my money based on my ability to do math. So sorry, I don't really care. It would have given me more me more work ethic to actually like do the problems anyways. But that's a separate issue for my future child to be, you know, worked through and everything. But the point being there were people in my cohort who took the opposite advice who said, actually they're right. We will learn to code, we will pursue stem. This is the future. There is a New York Times and Wall Street Journal article every single week saying there's a massive entry level jobs gap for people who took STEM and engineering computer science degrees. If they went to college, they paid the bills and then they don't have jobs for them. That's not a strong floor. So just if you just have that mentality, you could just read that article and not just say befuddledly, oh no, like what do we do? You actually have just like a starting point. So I'd just be curious, like just looking throughout your life like where are places that you see this lack of floor that at a bare minimum we should be able to as a society to be able to write a story and do something useful with.
- [43:15]
B
Yeah, it's in so many places. But look, I mean it's funny, when I did the first draft of the book, it was like all policy and I had a couple of very treasured friends read the book and say, you know, you ought to put some more of you and your family story. And they're not for self aggrandizement but because you have to be human and they have to tell people. Why the heck did you write this? I mean I could have written a book about like investing in startups and whatever, five people would buy it and cool. I wanted to do this because it's deeply connected to my family. And you know the story in there of how my grandparents came to the US barely escaping the Nazis. Everyone who didn't get out was in grave danger, many of them died in the Holocaust. And yet my family brought their talents to America. There are two Nobel Prizes, a hospital and a lot of pride in being American. And I don't think any party, any viewpoint owns American patriotism, the American dream. I don't believe that I think I love this country tremendously. It's why I'm choosing to put this book out there. It certainly doesn't help my career per se, but it's something I feel was important. And frankly, I waited seven years because I was hoping somebody else would do it. But I see the need for a strong floor everywhere, because as an investor, I think of it as an investment. Right. Like I said, we ought to want there to be a healthy, educated society that has money to spend on things. And by the way, if you're Marilech Mandani or you're President Trump and you want to give out checks or you want to give out free groceries and bus rides, something has to pay for that, and people have to be going somewhere to do something. And so, you know, my grandfather sat me down. So the meandering answer, sorry, Marshall, but my grandfather sent me down when I was, I've rented.
- [44:57]
A
This is your show. You can do whatever you want.
- [44:59]
B
Appreciate it. You know, when, when I, because I, I was, I was interested in public service, you know, from when I was four years old, right. And my grandfather sat me down after I left, the Federal government was 23 years old, and. And he said, what do you want to do? And I said, oh, they might get the politics somehow. And he said, but why would you do that? You know nothing. Me, bright kid, you have good whatever. But. But you don't know anything yet. I mean, you haven't built anything. You haven't hired anybody. You haven't, you know, had to deal with childcare. You haven't gotten real sick. You, you have not interacted with the problems people are going to bring to you. Go figure some stuff out. Build something. And so I have had the great privilege with some amazing partners of building organizations that have longevity, that have invested, that have created jobs where we've had crises, where we've had difficult times. The last four years in venture capital have been very challenging for a lot of folks, actually. And it's a real threat to the innovation economy in this country that is the engine of employment for so many. And so having done that, I now feel like I have this perch from which I can write this book. But the strong floor is critical. It does not matter how great the economy is if the vast amount of our population is destitute on the side of the street, not taking part.
- [46:03]
A
Yeah. And I think, given. I really appreciate and love that you noted the point of you were waiting sort of over the course of seven years for someone to sort of come out with an alternative. I'd be really curious to hear your understanding of why no alternative came about. My quick bit before I hear your answer is my understanding of why there hasn't been an alternative. And this is why we should actually talk about our bios. So why like, I'm center left now, but I spent my 2000 and tens in new right circles. That's why JD Vance was the first guest on this podcast before JD was a senator or vice president. And what the New Right taught me is to think ideologically. So not to say, oh, I'm a Republican and what does the Republican Party need to do to win, but to say, what do we believe and how are we going to make that thing appear in the real world? And I think the real weak point in the Democratic Party and especially in the center to center left, is that people don't tend to think ideologically. So like, you know your article, your team sent this, but this is really preface like a lot of the sort of resonance that Strog for no. Has picked up with things has been this idea that, man, it's been a year since the 2024 election and there really just hasn't been some big broad Democratic thing. And my answer to that is the reason why is that most of the work, especially in the center, has just been focused on the Democratic Party. It's been why is the Democratic Party's brand weak? What positions do we need to hold? How do we restructure the DNC to do this, this, this or that? And that is just during periods of transition, not just like economically, but politically and culturally. It's actually just really essential that you be able to actually think from a worldview and ideology perspective. So just like just if so, and if you think too about this seven year period, what happened in 2020, a bunch of people focused on, you know, the sort of policy. So like, let's have huge Remember how many Democratic Party debates in the primary were about like my specific version of single payer health care versus your specific version of universal health care. When Joe Biden, you know, sort of what I would say is was his last act of like genuine political talent. Just read the vibe was like, actually I don't think America's looking for a policy fight. They're just sort of exhausted by the first Trump administration and I'm going say things are going to be normal again. That was a very good 2020 pitch. That was not a good pitch or process for saying, yeah, but the country isn't working again, how do things actually need to Change for it to work again. And political parties and incumbent politicians are just not good at doing that type of work. So I would just be curious, like, that's sort of. So I'd love to hear your response to, like, why I think there hasn't been any alternative, but then also, like, why you think through your experience there hasn't been any alternative.
- [48:49]
B
The honest. I mean, I think all that's very valid. Marshall. I don't know. I mean, I'm kind of surprised, right? I mean, I'm surprised the next person. I think there's a lot of different threads that could contribute to that. I think part of it is what we talked about. You know, center left Democratic Party kind of leadership tends to not want to think in reductive, kind of silly branding terms. And I encourage them to do so. You know, Donald Trump is a masterful brander. And he was like I said, make America rating is not a perfect slogan. There was a piece that I actually said, and make America great again is so great and strong for no ceiling, you know, is. Is not good. People want to be angry and we need to tack into the anger. I'm sorry, I don't think that's actually true. If you want to win a social media battle and it's critically important. I'm not, you know, I'm not throwing that away. But, but yeah, you can be angry, you can be hysterical. But if you want voters to come out in their tens of millions to support an ideology or a set of solutions, they have to believe in it. And fundamentally, people are just so sick of being angry and being told that what the other guys are doing is terrible. I, I believe. And if I'm wrong about this, then, then it's very sad, right? I could be wrong and sad at the same time, but I want to believe that people want to believe in something and they want to believe that they have some agency in their lives. If they get a little bit of a hand, right? Just a, just opportunity, just those planks of the strong floor. And then, then they can, then they can lift themselves up and do all the very American things we've talked about, right? This, this ought. Why that isn't something that's come out. Why there hasn't been a robust, you know, messaging strategy, conversation. I don't know. Also, look, our party's leadership, we've not had the kind of, I mean, by the way, dangerous, right? But we've not had the kind of central branding that the Republicans have had for the last 10 years because we don't have a dumb time and with, you know, so that's, that's an issue as well.
- [50:39]
A
One, and here's my thing. I do want to push back on use of the term branding because I actually, I understand you and I are political civilians, so we could talk about branding. And it doesn't have any particular consequence, but I actually think branding takes you very quickly towards focus groups, very quickly towards message testing and then following the poll because to your point, you were surprised. I'm not surprised. Because once again, I see people who see a 2024 election and they work professionally in D.C. and their reaction is not, oh, man, the status quo is not working. What would it look like to fix the status quo? Let's just start there and then we could, like, generate real answers and then we could perm. Make them perfect and message testy. Because the thing about Make America Great Again, so like a. Have to, you know, be a political nerd and know, like Ronald Reagan said, make America great Again. So Donald Trump did not personally invent the phrase. But from Donald Trump's perspective, Make America Great Again is the culmination of 40 years of his career in business, entertainment, culture and politics. Right? Like when Donald Trump is on the couch with Oprah in 1986, when he was thinking of running for president in 1988, he was talking about how the D.C. elite was selling us out vis a vis Japan and they were incompetent and he was a businessman and he knows how to do deals and these politicians don't have to do deals. That is a underlying message and narrative that makes sense to people that then you could put forward into the year 2015 and replace Japan with China. So there was an actual thing there. So my problem is you could never have come up with Make America Great Again or frankly, any real slogan that mattered if you were a Republican who wasn't Trump, because you actually did not have the 30 or 40 years of just living and just talking and living and being. And the center needs to attract people who. Let me put it this way, the person who I want the senator to attract is not someone who has the perfect brand tested phrasing. It's a person who has lived over the past 2015 or even 10 years and could say, like, oh, yeah, let's say I invested in a coding academy and I pretty quickly saw that while we were doing pretty well initially, actually, there was a real gap between the narrative of everyone's going to be a coder and the fact that actually in these programs, we weren't actually Hiring former coal miners who were going to lose their jobs and actually work there. So that made me start thinking, wait, wait, does the system actually work? That's the person I'm looking for, not the brander.
- [53:11]
B
Look. Fully agreed. And, and I think you're right. You know, we fall into the language of our, of our work. But Strong Fl. No Ceiling for me is authentic. I, I kind of.
- [53:20]
A
That's why I gave you the praise in the middle of the episode, Dawn.
- [53:22]
B
I appreciate that. But, you know, it just kind of came to me on LinkedIn. I'm writing it down. Then people started, you know, texting me saying, hey, that was. I believe that that, that works pretty well. One of my favorites, favorite stories in all this is I was in a UPS store actually sending out a bunch of books, and the guy behind the counter at the UPS store wanted to talk about the book because he noticed I had a bunch of them and my picture was on the back and, and ultimately ended up actually buying the book right there. And, you know, but that meant more to me than any. I mean, it's great to see elected officials take up the call. Fantastic. But that to me was like, ah, we're onto something here. And, and it goes back to something you said mid episode, Marshall, which is there. We don't just want to focus group react and scientifically come to a message. In fact, it would be wrong. And I did not do that. For those who are wondering out there, who've said it sounds tested, it's not. I have not done a single poll. We will probably do some in the future to figure out if it's working or not, but that is not how this thing came to be. At the end of the day, though, leadership has never been about reacting and being led along by the pollster. Right. And that's where leadership goes to kind of die, to be honest with you. But leadership is about saying, this is what we should believe as a country. And I want you to invite you to believe that with me. And I want to make the argument. If I don't land the argument, then I don't deserve to have the phrase I don't deserve to have people's attention. And it can go away. Right. But, but I want to make the argument that, you know, one last thing. Sorry. There was a, there was a criticism that was leveled at strong floor, no ceiling, basically saying like, the Democrats should want this, but they haven't actually done it. And as I read that, I thought to myself, was there like a really good deal when the New Deal was proposed. Was society always already great during the Great Society, or was the message that we wanted society to be great, that we wanted a new deal because the current deal wasn't working for people? So when people say, like, strong flow, no ceiling, that's not what's happening right now. Yeah, I know. That's why we need it to happen.
- [55:15]
A
No, and so three things as we close out. So one, you're talking about a destination, right? The destination is in America where there is a strong.4, and there's no ceiling. And to people who think this message is inadequate, you know, we could just look at some basic polling and say most Americans don't feel like there is. If people think this is weak tea, at a bare minimum, you and I would both agree if we talk to people, they would say, that is not the way things are right now. So maybe we could be more ambitious. But, like, at a minimum, this is not where we are right now. Therefore, you pointed us in a destination that would be an improvement on the status quo. So that, that is like, incredibly important. And I want more destination, vision style, worldview driven thinking like this. Two, to your point, around polling, and this is such a great quote, and I wish I'd written it down properly. I do lots of audible books, so I don't always get the quote right, but the quote is essentially some 20th century leader, I think they were British saying, polls don't tell me what to do, they tell me how to accomplish what I want to accomplish. Right? So to your point, the poll that matters here is 27% of Americans think. Only 27% of Americans think the American dream is real. Okay? So if we're talking about a destination we want to get to, getting to that destination is going to require us putting the meat on the bones, having the ideas, having the personalities, having the party, having the candidates who could convince the rest of the American people who don't feel like this is going to work, that there's something there for them, right? Like there's something that speaks to those people. So, like, that is the use of polling, not just sort of like, pick the popular thing and run on that. And then three, and this is just like the main advantage that like very ideological, left populist and right populists have over the center. They are strong and they believe in something that gives you a dynamism and a charisma that you do not have if you are polling centered. Right? Like, Zoron knows what he believes and he says what he believes. Trump knows what he believes, says he was going to believe Zorin was polling at 1% of the polls. He said what he said and then he won. That's what strength looks like, that's what dominance looks like. So that's why I'm just so frustrated and I'll let you close this out out just by the center and I do not understand why this is happening. Putting forth the message in the New York Times and all the profiles that we're telling Democrats to follow the polls. That is the opposite of what if I'm a voter who's just sort of like and Democrats seem like they're weak and that we know what they're doing and Trump pisses me off but at least he knows what he's doing. At least he's a take charge leader. I don't understand why very serious, very highly paid political professionals are broadcasting out to that voter. Our people don't know what time it is, don't have any ideas and don't know what's popular. So we're going to tell them what actually is popular. That just doesn't make very much sense to me and is the opposite of what we should really do. So once again I think it's so important that you just sat down in front of your LinkedIn compose sheet and wrote your thing and that is just so important. That is what I do not see an icentris doing. So close us out however you want to give.
- [58:12]
B
I appreciate it. Look, I mean all I can ask for is that people hear about this, they think about it and I could not agree with you more that I want to stop reacting. I want to stop being angry about everything I read in the press. I, I, I want to understand where all that comes from. I want to recognize that people are, are struggling and then I want to say where I want to go. And I think we could do a hell of a lot worse than in America with a strong floor and no ceiling. Reignite the American dream and give people something to work for in in and the planks to stand on while they do it. And to me that's something I believe in. That's something that's very, very authentic to my life. It's how I've tried to live my life and how I want to leave this country for my kids. So you know what? I commend everybody out there, if you like any of what you heard, try it out, talk to people about this. And by the way, if it's from a stage or if it's over a coffee, America with strong floor, no ceiling try it out. I think it's going to work.
- [59:04]
A
Oliver, thank you for joining me on the realignment.
- [59:07]
B
Marshall, thanks so much.