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- [00:06]
A
Welcome back, everybody, to what really Matters. I'm Jeremy Stern with you in Los Angeles. I'm here, as always, with Walter Russell Mead of tablet, the Wall Street Journal, Hudson Institute, and the Hamilton center at the University of Florida. Let's start with this week's news. First story of the week. A decline in the number of babies being born and a boom in private school vouchers and homeschooling have combined to create an enrollment crisis for public education in America. The threat is so great that some school districts are trying something that would have once seemed unthinkable. According to the New York Times, school systems in Orlando, Newark, Memphis, and dozens of other cities and towns have hired consultants who aggressively woo parents to convince them to enroll their children in local public schools, which lost two thirds of enrollment between 2019 and 2023. Low fertility rates mean that the number of children in the US Is starting to shrink. At the same time, policymakers have introduced more competition than ever. Robust charter school systems, tax money for homeschooling, and expansive private school vouchers. Even public schools in Florida, one of only a handful of states with a growing population of children, are facing significant declines in traditional public school enrollment. Walter, is this news or fo news?
- [01:21]
B
It's news, and while it's mixed, it's good news mostly. I would say the worst news in there was that the first response of a lot of public school systems to competition is to hire a bunch of expensive consultants. You know, I could suggest some other steps they want to take, like, you know, improving the instructional quality of their programs. You know, a few little concepts like that. But introducing competition into schooling has been a major goal of reformers for decades, and rightly so. We don't want to turn schooling into some kind of bizarre, bizarre, bizarre. Different kids need different things. They flourish better in different kinds of atmospheres. Different parents are looking for different things. And why there has to be a one size fits all schooling approach to me, just makes little or no sense. Then when you have, on top of that, in some places, sort of public sector unions who have imposed a kind of a rigidity along with the actual school department's rigidity. You have dysfunctional institutions often staffed with unhappy people. It's just not the best environment for children. And so this is, you know, it's a sign the logjam may be breaking. And that would be one of the best things, I think, that could happen for American education.
- [02:49]
A
I visited Alpha School recently in Austin, Texas, as this school that has their students use these AI apps to do learning for the first two hours of the school day and the other four hours they get to be in workshops and learn life skills and stuff like that. But they talk pretty explicitly about bringing an end to the factory model classroom, the industrial era classroom of the last 200 years. For those of us who grew up in it, it's kind of unthinkable that there would be a version of school that doesn't include a teacher in front of a classroom. But with AI and all the other technological developments, do you see that as being a kind of, you know, medium or long term consequence of a lot of this is just kind of school as we know it may become something different?
- [03:29]
B
Well, I think school as we know it is going to become something different because what people need to know is going to change. You know, Henry Ford was once, I think, on some competence trial. You know, it's like his kids or something thought he was incompetent. And so the, you know, the plaintiff's attorney is asking these questions, you know, who was the ninth president of the United States? And Ford just wasn't able to answer a number of these. But he finally said to the lawyer, he says, excuse me, sir, if I say something here for $100 a day, which, let me tell you, is trivial to me, I can hire a professor who can give me every single one of the answers you just asked for. It would be a stupid use of my time to sit around and memorize these facts. I'm not suggesting Henry Ford is a role model for anybody, but it is definitely the case that what people need to know is changing, and therefore the way they need to learn it is changing. I am not a huge enthusiast for locking kids in rooms with AI tutors like, you know, pigeons in Skinner boxes or something like that. I actually think there is something human in humanistic education. And a lot of what kids learn in school is not actually academic facts. It's socialization. And that's the kind of thing you need to learn from people. You're in very bad shape if you're learning it from machines. So I do think the nature of education is going to change. The structures are going to change. I'm not quite sure that the future is Dr. Robot teaching our kids.
- [05:13]
A
All right, our second story. Benjamin Netanyahu gave a rare press conference to foreign media on Sunday at which he laid out Israel's plans for the continuation of its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip and sought to dispel the, quote, global campaign of lies about Israel's conduct. He later gave a second Lengthy press conference to local media at which he said he wanted to end the war in Gaza as soon as possible, but that his plan to expand the conflict and capture Gaza City was the only way to secure the release of all 50 hostages still held in the Strip. Days after his cabinet approved a new major offensive in Gaza City to root out Hamas forces, the Premier denied that Israel intends to occupy Gaza. Describing his five point post war vision for the Strip, Netanyahu said, quote, gaza will be demilitarized. Israel will have overriding security responsibility. A security zone will be established on Gaza's border with Israel to prevent future terrorist incursions, and a civilian administration will be established in Gaza that will seek to live in peace with Israel. Close quote. Walter, is this news or faux news?
- [06:18]
B
I hate to say it, but it's kind of faux newsy to me. And that, you know, is there anybody who didn't think that this was Bibi's approach to the conflict? Were there any shocking surprises there? Oh, gosh, he doesn't want to administer Gaza when the war is over and, oh gosh, he doesn't want Hamas to do it and he doesn't want the PA to do it. He wants all the hostages home. I'm stunned, really. You know, I think again, he, these are his goals. Will he achieve his goals? That's always been the question. And he's been extremely successful at being able to pursue the policies he wants in the face of near universal global opposition, except actually quietly from a number of Arab states and from a very large proportion of his own population. And his coalition is continuing to fracture. And yet in spite of all this, he's continued. However, in spite of all this continuation, he hasn't actually settled the issues yet. This is by far and away the longest era of conflict that Israel has faced since independence. And it does seem that while Hamas has seriously weakened as a military force, at the same time it seems to be able to do a pretty good job of shooting anybody who tries to give humanitarian aid in, in Gaza, not under Hamas auspices, etc. So, you know, what do we mean when we say that Hamas has been degraded? It has not been made to disappear. It's very, very hard to wipe out a guerrilla movement by, you know, an armed incursion here. So will occupying Gaza City bring Bibi closer to his goals? I can't tell you. I'm not sure that he knows. But on the other hand, the people keep acting as if there's some really simple alternative. If Bibi would just be nice, do X whatever the Hostages would come home, the wars would end, blah, blah, blah. I wish it were that simple. I think, in a sense that this is simply a concentrated form of a problem that Israel has been dealing with since the 1948 war, which is, as we've said before on this podcast, it wins wars, but it can't establish the kind of peace that it wants. I don't see any sign that that basic dynamic has changed, at least in Gaza.
- [08:55]
A
All right, final story of the week. Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices are expected to pay The United States 15% of the money they take in from selling artificial intelligence chips to China as part of a highly unusual financial arrangement with the Trump administration. The deal, according to the New York Times, comes a month after Nvidia received permission to sell a version of its AI chip to China. While the Trump administration publicly said a month ago that it was giving the green light to Nvidia to sell to China, it did not actually issue the licenses made making those AI chips sales possible. On Wednesday, Jensen Huang, Nvidia's CEO, met with President Trump at the White House and agreed to give the federal government a 15% cut, essentially making the federal government a partner in Nvidia's business in China. The Commerce Department began granting licenses for AI chip sales two days later. Walter, is this news or faux news?
- [09:49]
B
Well, it's weird, and we are in a new era, and I think one thing we can be certain of is should deals like this proliferate across the American economy, at some point, the country's going to wake up to one of the greatest scandals, maybe since creating Mobilier in the 19th century or Teapot Dome. I won't say it'll be under this administration. It could be under another. But we are basically introducing a massive source of temptation into the functioning of the federal government. And sooner or later, probably sooner, somebody is going to fall for it or try to exploit it. Is it good policy? The difficulty here is Trump wants to create a cloud of uncertainty around his China policy, just as he does his Russia policy. This is straight from Art of the Deal. You don't want the people that you're bargaining with to fully understand what your intentions are. That's leverage they have with you. And so. Right. You know, what we saw a few months ago was Trump buttering up Russia left and right while turning the screws on Iran. Now that Iran has been, to some degree, kind of boxed in, he's turning the screws to some degree on Russia and buttering up China. Okay, so is this chip deal part of some kind of keep China from backing Russia to the hilt as he's negotiating with Putin because he then thinks he can turn to China with Russia kind of aligned in some way? Is it some other calculation? Is it a purely commercial idea? Is it just that Nvidia spoke to him in a language he understands? I cannot tell you and I don't think in the present sort of, let's just say uncertain state of the news business is going to be. It's going to be easy for anybody to know what's really going on. So news that the government is moving further away from the kinds of established principles in how government and business regulate their affairs with one. Another question mark, as to what it means in terms of China policy, Is it smart or isn't it smart? You know, I hate saying all this, you know, where our listeners can hear, but honestly, I doubt there are 25 people in the world who really know exactly what's on and what's not on those chips and what it means and does not mean that those and some other product aren't being offered. What the view is of the actual state of US China AI competition, not simply generically, but on anything that these particular chips have anything to do with. All right, those are. You're seeing people opine all over the Internet, you know, on all on these very technical topics. And as far as I can tell, well over 99% of the commentary isn't grounded in the facts. I just am going to try to avoid adding to the uninformed but authoritative sounding commentary on this.
- [13:14]
A
When you've talked on the podcast before and obviously written a lot about the Hamiltonian tradition in American foreign policy, which involves to some degree a strong relationship between the federal government and big business and the government kind of helping promote American business abroad. Would this Nvidia deal fit in that kind of Hamiltonian tradition? Or is this kind of more in the Trumpian tradition that wouldn't read well to others?
- [13:39]
B
That would entirely depend on what you know on some of these questions that I've just said that I don't know the answer to. But more broadly, what we can say is that something we've talked about on the podcast before, the growing tie up between Silicon Valley and tech on the one side and the United States government on another is deepening day by day. This relationship is sometimes antagonistic, sometimes supportive. But every single day the government feels the importance of the tech business and the information processing industry more deeply. And every day that industry feels a greater need to influence the decisions and the thinking of the American state, but also a certain alignment of its interests with the American state. And this, I think, is going to drive a lot of changes in the country. I'll just take one. We've talked about how Ivy League education has gone from being patriotic to being neutral to being maybe anti patriotic in some cases. Silicon Valley isn't going to want to software or any other employees who don't feel some kind of sense of patriotism and loyalty to the United States because of this relationship. And that, I think is going to feed a lot of cultural change in the country.
- [15:16]
A
All right, that does it for the news this week. Let's have the big conversation. So over the last six to seven months on the podcast, Walter, since Trump's inauguration, a handful of times you've suggested some parallels between the circumstances or the instincts or the strategies of Donald Trump and Napoleon Bonaparte. This week you wrote about some of those similarities when it comes to diplomacy, alliance policy, deal making and breaking, and also, of course, Russia. So take us through this comparison that you find helpful for making sense of what Trump is doing and also the dangers that may lie ahead for him.
- [16:02]
B
All right. Well, you know, I don't know whose heads will explode the most with this comparison. You know, I can see from here I can hear the heads popping in France as people compare Napoleon Bonaparte and Donald Trump. But, you know, I think a lot of Trump supporters and Trump opponents aren't going to like this either. Yet it seems compelling to me. Again, there, you know, there are tremendous differences between them. Napoleon was terrible at golf, just to take one, you know, poor guy. I don't think there was a single good golf course in France during Napoleon's life. So let's not get carried away with these comparisons by any means. But Napoleon and Trump both had political gifts that were above, you know, substantially above what most of their opponents possessed. So they were kind of, they were, they've been able to see around corners. People can argue, you know, does Trump think it all out or is this does he just play by instinct? But he basically has destroyed the old Republican establishment. He's broken the old Democratic Party establishments, the two most powerful political families in the country, really. Three, Obama, Clinton and Bush are all shadows of their former selves at this time. And yet people could still call him stupid. It's interesting that the people, he has handed them their heads on a platter. Talk about how stupid he is from those decapitated heads. And Trump has destroyed the left as well as destroyed the right. And this was kind of what Napoleon needed to do he needed to break the French Revolution, the Jacobin, he comes onto the scene actually as a loyal Jacobin general, but he realizes that that way lies madness. And also that he can't have supreme power in that configuration. And in the same way, since he unfortunately was not one of the members of the house of Bourbon royal family, the royalists were no good to him. And so he comes up with his own. He becomes the program of Bonapartism. It is Napoleon's charisma, Napoleon's unique insight and vision. And so there are a lot of people who, if Napoleon says England is the enemy and England's the enemy, and then he says Russia's the enemy, Russia's the enemy, that Napoleon becomes the kind of standard. And Trump, obviously, in maga world, where he says, maga is me, I invented maga, I am maga, that's the kind of authority Trump is trying to assert in his meeting, too. And just as Napoleon combined elements of the left and the right, and both the left and the right hated the way he did it. And they both said, he's completely wrecked our ideas and he's traduced our ideas, but he understood the need to sort of offer a bit of both for his political movement. And you can see a lot of the same things in the way Trump proceeds. Then what they both did was they achieved sort of unprecedented authority in their own country. So Napoleon didn't have to worry about the National Assembly. He didn't have to worry about political parties. You know, ridiculous stuff. Get out of my way. You know, I. You know, if the constitution is in the way, let's have a different constitution. And while Trump has not had that kind of achievement, he's certainly, you know, trade policy run by Congress. Excuse me, World Trade Organization established by treaty. Excuse me. So Trump is able to just barrel through. And some people will say it's a good thing, some people will say it's a bad thing. But both of them broke the mold of domestic politics as they found it. And then what both of them did was they take the show on the road because they both see a connection between international glory, global glory, and the kind of appeal and charisma that and enthusiasm that bolsters their power at home. You know, Napoleon. Now, big difference between them is obviously that Napoleon is a famous general and Trump, as some of his opponents would say, had bone spurs. They did both go graduate from military academies, but for Napoleon, the army was the chosen instrument of his power, and war was the path to glory. For Trump. He wants to be the peacemaker more than a warlord. But Trump's ambition to bestride the world as a colossus is the same ambition that Napoleon had. Anytime there's a peace agreement somewhere around the world, Trump wants that thing signed in the White House with him present. And he wants both sides to say, thank you, Mr. Trump. You and you alone have brought the peace. You know, every issue needs to be settled by him. I wrote in my column that in the old days, the Chinese emperors wanted the representatives of foreign barbarians to come to the, you know, celestial kingdom and perform ritual kowtows of submission and, you know, and demonstrate, in a sense, shore up their authority at home by demonstrating, you know, their magnificent power abroad. And so Trump is, to the extent that he can, Trump turns foreign relations into this kind of performance. So all of that strikes me as, well, different in mode. And I think Napoleon, you know, certainly had a. A deeper impact on Europe than Trump so far has had on either the United States or Europe. You know, there. There are a lot of other differences that we're not getting into between Napoleon and Trump. These similarities are analytically interesting enough to just sort of make the comparison worth thinking about.
- [22:21]
A
One final question. I know it's a tough one to answer in a few minutes, but, you know, since 2016, I think, you know, a lot of people, the. The Obamas, the Clintons, the Bushes, many other people besides, have been waiting for some sort of Bourbon restoration that, you know, after Trump himself leaves the scene or dies, then America will go back to some version of what it was, you know, 2015 and before. I know we have a lot of Trump administration left, but at this point, would you expect, once Trump does leave the scene, for American politics to be changed in a substantive way kind of forever because of what he's done in the last 12 years, or would you expect some sort of restoration to be feasible?
- [23:09]
B
Well, after Napoleon, France had a restoration. Then it had. They overthrew that king and brought in a different king, overthrew that king, had a republic, then they had a Napoleonic restoration with Napoleon iii, then another republic. So it kind of went back and forth. I would say that Trump has always struck me as less cause than effect of the changes in America that deep. Cultural changes, demographic changes, economic changes, social changes are sweeping through the country, and at some point, these were bound to break out of the old molds. The river was going to overflow the banks, and Trump kind of came along. Extremely talented guy, fantastic instinct for power, unbelievably capable as a kind of political improvisational artist. Performer can still, after 10 years, command greater ratings and love him or hate him, you watch him and you're transfixed by him. So Trump is not a non entity in that way in terms of American history. And things would have happened differently had he not been here, but something would have happened. The country is not the country of 1995, 85 or even 2015. What it's going to be, nobody knows. That's part of what makes life interesting is that tomorrow is another day and different things will be happening. So I don't, I think, you know, the idea that Chelsea Clinton would run, you know, as would be the Democratic nominee in 2028, I think is unlikely. I doubt the Bush family will contribute the nominee. I think the neoconservative movement has more or less disappeared not as an intellectual project, but as a sort of political energizing political force in the Republican Party. I think the, this sort of, you know, Rahm Emanuel, you know, they're not, not giving it up. The centrist Democrats. They're, they're still there, but they're really going to be in a big fight with, with this sort of, you know, more quote, progressive and I do put that in quotes, opponents in places like New York. So I don't think we're go, we're not going back. But there's, I guess one other thing worth saying is there are two trends in American life and American politics that drive a lot of what we see. On the one hand, each new generation lives in a social and technical reality that is more different from that of past generations. So, you know, digital natives live in a different universe than folks like me. So the sense of each generation having, you know, not necessarily they're not polar opposite differences. And there's a lot of obviously diversity within every, every generation, but a set of common experiences and assumptions that defined them as a group. And then at the same time, because we're, we're living longer and living more active lives longer, the old guard is hanging on longer. You know, a lot of people are sort of complaining about how we boomers or just, you know what, you're still here. And that's, that's not simply a nasty characteristic that we boomers have decided to, and you know, we're not hanging out, speak out of spite, but we're doing what I think any generation, we're hanging on because we can. In my father's and grandfather's generation, between smoking and heart attacks, a lot of professionals were dropping in their early to middle 60s or I think Franklin Roosevelt was under 70 when he died, died of things that today, I assume, would be pretty easily treatable. So you've got older generations who are not only sort of just living longer in terms of the calendar, but are exercising more, getting better treatment. And so they're using all of our nasty little tricks that we've learned and the accumulated experience using it, we would like to think for the public good, but certainly from a perspective that's shaped by, you know, experiences that are just not the same as, say, my students at the, at the University of Florida. So there's that. That's going to create a kind of an instability in the political fabric. It's going to make things like ideology much more difficult to act as unifying forces across the full political field. When you have these sort of horizontal generational strata cutting in different ways, as well as lines of class, race, economic position, and so on in others, it's going to be a real kaleidoscope and the kind of political talent that it's going to take to understand this crazy, complicated picture and then figure out how do you achieve a path to power, how do you integrate that with the cultural and ideological things? Where do you build bridges, where do you create chasms? What are the policy proposals that work? What is the mood music that needs to be played? All of these things is going to take political intelligence that is actually more like Donald Trump's than like George H.W. bush, which I'm not necessarily saying is a good thing for the country. I want to kind of make that clear. But we are going to need a new kind of politics and a new kind of politician. So in that sense, I wouldn't say that Trump is this earth shattering figure and because of his massive impact, nothing will ever be the same. But nothing will ever be the same. And a lot of the politicians that we're going to have in the future are going to be people who've learned some very important lessons from Donald Trump.
- [29:44]
A
All right, that does it for the big conversation. Let's end on the tip of the week. Another listener request this week, Walter, this time from Devin Devon in California, who saw your column on the decline and fall of NGOs last week and asked, quote, is there an NGO you know well or work with that you think is still doing great, effective work work?
- [30:14]
B
You know, I think some of the disaster relief nos that have stuck close to their mandate are doing pretty well. You know, I think often the better nos are ones you don't hear about. You know, one of the classic signs of an NGO going wrong is they hire like, you know, really, you know, really savvy communications people and start filling your inbox and your, and your mailbox with spam and you know, generally sort of cavorting on, on stage to try to raise money. And so the chances are the more, the more an NGO or nonprofit is in your face, the less good it is and the less good it's it, it's doing, I think locally based NGOs. I mean, you know, there are a lot of, of church and community organizations that are running day care centers or that's, you know, closer to the sort of Toquevillian idea of the, the NGO sector as sort of just the community going about doing its own business in its own way. The closer to that ideal you are, I think that more health there is in the sector, the more it has become a kind of an ideological hot house. And again, especially when you have foundations that sort of are where the staff is possessed of a kind of narrow focus, political vision. And you can find that, believe me, on both the right and the left. I think these days in the foundation sector, generally the worst foundations and the most sort of entitled entrenchments are on the left. But it's not a purely left problem by any means. And what they end up doing is they are, they end up sort of subsidizing people just like them to sort of repeat their mantras and you know, it just becomes this kind of universe that's cut off from any real contact. And, and, and often, I mean, I won't say it never does any good, but very often it does a lot less good than it thinks it does.
- [32:32]
A
All right, there you have it. Thanks to our producers Josh Cross and Quinn Waller, thanks to Andrew Wilson at Hudson and my co host Walter Russell Mead. I'm Jeremy Stern. We'll see you next week and until then, please go rate and review us. This helps other people find the show. Sat.