Conversations with Bill Kristol

How should the U.S. and others in the West respond to Putin’s war on Ukraine? What dangers and opportunities might we face in the days and weeks ahead? How might the war reshape geopolitics? Less than a week into Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, much remains unknown. To help us get a better sense of where things might go, we are joined by Eric Edelman, former ambassador to Turkey and Finland and undersecretary of Defense. Edelman and Kristol consider where things stand—the impressive Ukrainian resistance, Putin’s difficulties, and the response from Europe, the US, and other allies. Edelman argues it is imperative that the West continue to support the Ukrainian resistance to ensure that Putin does not succeed in destroying Ukraine. Looking more broadly, Edelman and Kristol consider what dangers and opportunities may follow from a geopolitical event which already is causing major shifts in how countries in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere view their geopolitical position.

What is driving Vladimir Putin? What wider ramifications might follow from the war? Why should the fate of Ukraine concern us all? To discuss these questions, we are joined by Anne Applebaum, a leading historian and commentator on Ukraine, Russia, and Eastern Europe. As she argues, Vladimir Putin’s fear that Ukraine had been advancing toward democracy lies at the root of the conflict. Drawing on her deep knowledge of the region and its history, Applebaum presents a bracing account of the origins of the war and its possible consequences.

Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address is considered one of history's most compelling examples of political rhetoric. In this Conversation, Diana Schaub, a preeminent scholar of American political thought and author of His Greatest Speeches: How Lincoln Moved the Nation, argues that while Lincoln’s Second Inaugural deserves its reputation, often its true character has not been appreciated. Over the course of her line-by-line interpretation of the dialogue, Schaub draws out some remarkable, counterintuitive, and little-appreciated aspects of Lincoln’s March 1865 address. Schaub and Kristol pay particular attention to the theological-political themes, and how the magnificent and subtle rhetoric of the speech presses the nation toward racial reconciliation and a politics of true moderation and greater humanity.

In his recent book Betrayal, ABC News chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl writes: We now live in a nation where a large part of the population does not trust our elections. There are many reasons for this, but none greater than Donald Trump and the lies he told about the 2020 election. Based on extensive interviews with Donald Trump, key members of the Trump administration, and other prominent figures in the Trump orbit, Karl shows how the former president tried to undermine the 2020 election at every turn. In this Conversation, Karl shares new details from his reporting about how Trump laid the groundwork for questioning the results of the election in the months leading up to it, and how he responded to the results on election night. And he shows how Trump, after the election, was single-mindedly (if not always systematically) devoted to overturning the results—culminating in his effort to pressure Mike Pence to disregard the results of the Electoral College. Bill Kristol and Karl also discuss why it’s important to understand Trump’s actions in 2020 for the sake of a healthier politics going forward.

A professor of linguistics at Columbia University and author of the recent book Woke Racism, John McWhorter has been an outspoken critic of woke politics. The appeal to wokeness, he argues, presents a simplistic view of race and attempts to discredit any contrary points of view about ideas and policies. According to McWhorter, the woke end up having disproportionate power simply because of what social media allows them to do to people. He argues that we should stand up to them—and focus on developing policies that can help people rather than shutting down debate.

Where do things stand with Covid-19? How has the emergence of the Omicron variant changed the situation? What can we expect in the short term and throughout 2022? To discuss these questions, we are joined again by Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health. While noting that much still remains unknown about the Omicron variant, Jha suggests that the United States likely will be in for a challenging few months: We have a lot of data that Omicron is going to spread very rapidly. But that doesn’t answer the question as to whether it’s more contagious inherently, or is it evading our immune response. It’s probably a combination of both. There is now pretty clear data that our vaccines will be pushed to the wall on this. The good news, according to Jha, is our vaccines—especially taken with booster doses—likely will maintain strong protection against hospitalization and serious illness. The bad news is there still are a relatively large number of unvaccinated Americans who are particularly vulnerable. While explaining the situation, Jha also shares his perspective on the public policy and public health choices we have faced in recent months. Jha reflects on what he views as significant failures of the government, particularly the pace of the rollout of boosters and rapid tests. Finally, Jha and Kristol discuss possible paths forward in 2022 and what data we should keep our eyes on from the UK and the rest of the globe.

In a recent essay, Shep Melnick, a distinguished scholar of American politics at Boston College, writes: Few federal laws have achieved their initial objective more completely than Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. Yet today Title IX is more controversial than ever before. The story of its evolution is a cautionary tale about how good intentions and broadly shared goals can become distorted over time by aggressive cultural combat, and how hard it can be to reverse the damage. In this Conversation, and expounding on themes addressed in his book The Transformation of Title IX: Regulating Gender Equality in Education, Melnick traces the transformation of Title IX from 1972 until the present. Conceived as an initiative that would prevent sex discrimination on campus, Title IX, as Melnick explains, became a catchall source for rules and regulations in higher education regarding sexual assault, sexual harassment, and offensive speech. Melnick argues that the Obama administration's heavy-handed approach to Title IX enforcement created serious threats to due process and free speech on campus. Melnick praises the more recent efforts of the Department of Education in the Trump administration to roll back some of these problematic guidelines. Finally, he considers why the Biden administration—and universities and colleges—are hesitant to return to the Obama-era policies.

Why have the costs of basic goods and services been increasing in recent months? Will shortages in stores and delays in orders for durable goods persist—and what is the meaning of the often invoked supply-chain issues? What public policies might help ameliorate the situation? In this Conversation, Scott Lincicome, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, considers the dynamics of the economy during the pandemic—the fiscal stimulus, accommodative monetary policy, dislocations in the global supply chain—and considers possible paths forward beyond the Covid era. He points to container ships backed up in our major ports as an example of how a sclerotic regulatory framework can worsen a serious problem and increase our vulnerability to a threat like supply shocks. Lincicome recommends modernizing infrastructure via automation, increasing our workforce via immigration, and improving our resilience via deregulation.

In recent years, immigration has become a major flashpoint in our politics. Our increasingly rancorous quarrels often serve to obscure rather than clarify policy choices, and make it more difficult to achieve sound policies. As a result, even as attention is given to problems at the border, surprisingly little attention is paid to reforming our broken immigration system. In this Conversation, Linda Chavez, a longtime analyst of immigration and immigration policy, explains that our outdated laws are urgently in need of repair. Chavez points out key areas where the nation as a whole would benefit from new policies, and discusses the obstacles to legislating or implementing them. In particular, President Trump campaigned on immigration restriction and pressed federal agencies to curb immigration in various ways, policies that candidate Biden opposed—but to this point the Biden administration mostly has avoided coming to grips with many aspects of the immigration issue. As a result, important questions like the status of those who were brought to the US as children (DACA), backlogs, delays, unused slots for green cards, problems at the border, and other issues remain unresolved. Chavez outlines an approach to immigration that rejects any idea of open borders but recognizes the value of immigration to the long-term success of the United States—and encourages a streamlining of the immigration process that is beneficial for the economy, good for Americans, and good for immigrants.

But since my intent is to write something useful to whoever understands it, it has appeared to me more fitting to go directly to the effectual truth of the thing than to the imagination of it. — Niccolo Machiavelli, in Chapter 15 of The Prince. According to Harvey Mansfield, these lines including the phrase effectual truth—a term invented by Machiavelli—are central to Machiavelli’s founding of the revolution in philosophy, science, and politics that we call modernity. In this Conversation—our 200th episode!—our first and most frequent guest Harvey Mansfield returns to the program to discuss his recent work on Machiavelli, and presents an incisive and provocative account of some of the more challenging and too-little-understood aspects of Machiavelli’s teaching. In particular, Mansfield draws out the world-historical significance of Machiavelli’s discovery or invention of the effectual truth and shows why Machiavelli can justly be called the founder of modernity. This Conversation has also been added to the Harvey Mansfield site on Contemporary Thinkers and the Machiavelli site on Great Thinkers.