 Hi, good afternoon. Welcome to The Future of Democracy, a show about the trends, ideas, and disruptions changing the face of our democracy. I'm your host, Sam Gill. And this show is, you can think of it as kind of the op-ed page of our democracy. It's where we break down and go into greater depth on some of the most challenging, even fractious issues confronting our country. And there certainly are plenty of those right now. We find ourselves, as a country, not only in the midst of multiple serious crises around COVID-19 and the knock-on economic effects of the pandemic, but we're also seeing how a once-in-a-generation cataclysm is exacerbating long-term crises around race, around economic opportunity, around inequality, just to name a few. And as a result of this, we not only face conflicts about what to do, we face perhaps the deepest divides we've seen in a generation about the right philosophy to even guide what to do. Part of that was evident during what we should call election week. So my guest today leads one of the major think tanks in the country, the American Enterprise Institute. His organization has always been and is at the forefront of both immediate crises and challenges confronting our country and long-term questions and what they mean about basic ideas that should animate the American project going forward. So we're going to cover a lot and get right into it. So please join me in welcoming to the show Robert Dorf from AEI. Hi, how are you? Hi, Sam. How are you? Good. Good to have you. Nice to be here. Thanks for having me. So I think we should just dive right into it because I know American Enterprise Institute is expert in so many of the critical domains. We're trying to enter a presidential transition where at least we're in a period in which there's going to be a new executive in the White House. We're facing compounding crises due to coronavirus. It's a health crisis. It's a fiscal crisis. It's a social crisis. For at American Enterprise Institute and led by your scholars, what are some of the kind of key top steps that you all are advocating we need to take as a country? Well, I think we're very concerned about the economic hardships caused by the virus and by the implications of the virus and the slowdown in the economy. Most of our economic scholars have advocated strongly for another round of some sort of fiscal effort, reasonably priced, targeted, appropriate, but large, because the effects of the virus and what we need to do to stay safe during this difficult time are pretty hard on the economy and pretty hard on working people and especially hard on people who work in the areas of the economy that are at the lower wage scale, an area where I pay a lot of attention to, because helping people move up and out of poverty is what I've devoted my life to. So we think that the Congress and the Senate and the House and the President, either the current president or the President-elect, need to pretty quickly do one more fiscal stimulus to shore up our economy during this difficult time. So we've got, you know, the facts around the question of a fiscal stimulus are pretty stark. We've got people are going to be coming off pandemic unemployment assistance pretty soon. That clock is ticking. It seems to me, I mean, you're more expert, it seems to me there's, if not a wide consensus, some consensus that sort of monetary policy, Federal Reserve policy, is pretty much exhausted what it's going to be able to do. And that's really more about supporting capital markets than it is, as you point out, about people at the lower end of the income scale who are trying to make rent or put food on the table. Interestingly, a lot of the discussion right now about fiscal policy has not been dominated by what targeted might mean or what the price tag is. It's really been dominated by the political dimension. Will, can, a Biden administration and a Senate, which has a good chance, will remain in Republican hands, be able to get something done. You guys are focused on the ideas, but as someone sitting in Washington... Yeah, I'm not so sure that you're right about that. I think it has been about the price tag. I mean, I think that's been a big ingredient to it. And the political dynamic had to do with who thought they were going to win the election and who was holding out for a better deal after the election. Senator McConnell came out pretty much the second day after election day and said, I'm ready to start talking about doing a package now. So there's something that they all can agree on doing. And I think that the situation is so serious that they ought to just do it and do what they can get done and then talk about doing more later if that's necessary. But the amounts they're talking about in any other year would be so large that they're unprecedented. And yet all of a sudden, we need to do twice what would be an unprecedented number. And I think that's hindering our ability to get what needs to be done now. So again, I ran social services programs in New York State, in New York City. I know what that kind of spending can do to shore up people when they're in a crisis. And one trillion is a lot. We could certainly use it now. So I was hoping that with the election being over that we could get back to the business of governing. I think it's unfortunate that the Trump administration has been obdurate in beginning to begin the plan, the important work of governing that needs to get done. And I wish that they would stop that and get to work. But I think the Republican Senate, if it's a Republican Senate or the Senate, is eager to do something. And I think that the members of the House are eager to do things. And what do you see as being really critical in whatever gets done? Well, I think you have to do something to help people either stay employed or maintain income while they're searching for jobs and we wait for the economy to come back. If we, especially in the hospitality, tourism and travel industry, those are big components of our economy. And they're not everything. But they are, they do involve a lot of people who work pretty close to the edge. And I think that that's what I think those industries in that area needs to be focused on. I think there needs to be something done with regard to states. But you have to be careful there because some states are in fine shape and other states are in very bad shape. Some states have managed their fiscal situations really well. And some have not. But there's a deal to be made there. And I would say in general, long-time advocates of employment and wage protection programs that are more prevalent in Europe's social democracies have certainly seized on this crisis as to them kind of exhibit A for why we ought to have some of those systems. What do you make of the calls for not only providing assistance, but sort of revamping the way we provide that kind of assistance? Well, I'm actually, I don't support that. I think that this is a situation that's very unusual. Someone referred to this sort of a hundred year event and to then make significant long-term irredeemable changes to our safety net system system that I've worked in for many years based on an emergency, I think would be a bad mistake and it'll be very hard to undo. I believe in a safety net system that promotes work. I think that getting people into employment helps them raise their income, but it also gives them the dignity of earning their own wages. And it also helps them in other ways and qualities of their life. It makes their family stronger. It makes their health better. And I think that one of the downsides of some of the ideas that you talk about is that it tends to disincentivize work. And so if we were to do something now, an emergency that we're lock in a kind of permanent income or guaranteed income, regardless of whether someone makes an attempt to work or go to work, I think that would be a big mistake. We had something like that in the old welfare system and it did great damage to families and communities in the places that I came from in New York City, but all across the country. I believe in a system that says your first effort is to see if we can help you get a job. If you get a job and wages aren't enough, we'll support those wages with wage supplement. And we do that a lot in the United States, but we're not going to give you a guaranteed income regardless of what you do. I think that would be a mistake. But what do you, I mean, right now we're letting people get laid off and then providing unemployment assistance. And what we've done is juice the employment assistance. What about the argument that we should just pay employers even more to keep people, we've done some of that, but to really focus on keeping people employed, even if a work's in there. Well, Sam, the PPP was in part created by economists at AEI. I mean, Glenn Hubbard and Michael Strain really was their idea. They wrote the original paper, they proposed it, they talked to congressman about it. It did provide enormous relief to businesses so that they could keep people employed. It has some downsides. It's new. Anytime you try to do something that's that new and that unusual, that fast, you're going to have to make mistakes. But I think all in all, it was successful. But it is, I think, running out of money. And I think that the idea that the goal is to keep someone employed, not just to replace their income is a good idea and fundamentally strong idea because once they lose jobs and are out of work for an extended period of time, it's just much harder to get them back into work. And so I support those. My personal opinion is I support those. And our scholars have written about it. So, you know, what I kind of philosophical question I wanted to ask you given your deep experience in social, you've run major social policy and human services systems, you designed and ran them during a period in the 90s where I think the valorization of work became, did become the ascendant orienting value on the left and the right around social policies or through welfare reform of the 90s and onward. And we're sort of in an interesting crisis point. It strikes me on both the right and the left around the opportunity argument. On the right, you see sort of this surging populism among some portions of the right, really born of sort of economic dislocation, despair, social immobility in addition to economic stagnation. And on the left, there has just been sort of a groundswell of attention to and focus on inequality, over say, inclusive growth, which had really been a more dominant paradigm for about 10 years. And our discussion around race in particular, I think over the summer, really highlighted this, that this is really about even inequity, even inequality is sort of the wrong word. And I'm interested how you assess those, these more recent contours of the conversation about economic opportunity. Well, first of all, I'm impressed by the experience of 2018 and 2019 and the way in which the American people appear in working class communities to have responded to that progress. A very tight labor market, combined with a safety net system that rewards work with various transfers and benefits to make work pay, led to the lowest child poverty rates for all Americans and lowest poverty rates for African Americans and Hispanics and, and rising wages in a tight labor market. So I thought my view has always been to help people get above that, that very low line of the poverty line, get people up to a start and get them into work. That's better than the other, the alternative. And we ever good at that. What we're not so good at as a country is helping people move up from there. And that's what we're trying to readdress some of our work in our poverty studies program with the advent edition of Scott Winship. He's very focused on mobility. How do we help? It's one thing to get people above the poverty line, but they're still struggling. And they'd like to flourish more. They'd like to have higher income. They'd like to have more skills. And I think that we have to really focus on that next step challenge, helping people move up through their life through the acquisition of skills, the continuation of work. And by there, they moved safely in the middle class and then no longer in need of various systems, various social benefits that reward low wage work. So that's what I think is the big challenge. Now, when it comes to race, I think that, and again, I think this was partly reflected in the way in which the voters voted. I think that there's a feeling that we can overemphasize race as the issue in low income families, even with the difficulties that happened over the summer. There was a reaction to that too. And in my experience, and we have a scholar Ian Rowe, who wrote a wonderful piece in the Wall Street Journal about the importance of personal agency. Race does not determine one's outcome. And a lot of the rhetoric that came out during the summer was that race did determine people's outcomes. And I just don't think that's true. And I also don't think it's helpful to low income kids and low income families to be told that by virtue of their race, they're going to be held back for sure in America. I don't believe it's true. And I also don't think it's helpful to tell them that. But so put aside how we perform that argument, which I think is distinct and important, and especially in a moment like this where there's no microscopic cultural dialogue, it's all sort of macroscopic. I guess I just want to home in on this though, because I think it strikes me in the discussion about inequity, particularly with regard to race, there's two kinds of moral arguments coming together. One you address, which is the mobility argument, which is the question is, is the American idea really open to everybody? And I think one of the argument that race determines your outcome is you could, it'll actually just take it as a reflection that it just empirically doesn't seem to be open to everyone according to this consistent pattern. But there's a second argument, which is that there's something about the gap that should trouble us. If the gap about whether it's wealth or income or mobility consistently seems to favor one set of people as a result of, with race as the proxy for whatever the socioeconomic factors are, and then there's another group of people that again, on average, seem to be at a lower end of the gap. And everyone may be above some sufficiency line, but that gap seems to be morally troubling to us increasingly. And I'm curious again how you think about this. Well, I want to just credit you for describing the first dilemma correctly. There is a distinction between opportunity and mobility and equity and outcomes. We're for opportunity and equality before the law, but we can't guarantee equal outcomes and the civil rights movement and the effort to move our country should never have been interpreted as being that being the goal, that we don't distribute people equally across the income spectrum by race, by law or by fiat. We can't do that. With regard to the gaps, they're worth noting and they're worth studying and evaluating and working on to close, but they aren't necessarily only about race. They could be about family. They could be about neighborhoods. It could be about schools. They could be about economic opportunity in those communities. And I just think that I happen to have done a lot of work in efforts to promote the benefits of two parents actively involved in children's lives there from the day one. And this is a problem for African Americans and for whites and for Hispanics as well. But it's an issue that does contribute to people not reaching their full potential. So I just again, I acknowledge the gaps and I recognize them as troubling and disturbing. I understand why people react to them when outcomes are different by different races, but I don't think it's necessarily about race. I think it could be about neighborhoods as Raj Chetty has shown or about family formation. It could be about quality of schools that children are exposed to could be about the extent to which there's early learning or good programs for parenting for families. So I just worry about an excessive obsession about race. Given that, how do you see either your work or American Enterprise Institute participating in a conversation right now that is elevating race in different and more forceful ways than at least the recent past? What do you see as the role of your institution? Well, I'm sort of unusual. I'm an anomaly. I came from being a practitioner in government in social services as a welfare administrator in New York City and New York State. I came here five years ago to set up a poverty studies program and then due to a lot of some changes, I became the president. My job is to get our scholars in the discussion and to recruit the most thoughtful, the most empirically solid researchers on these topics and have them engage in the discussion in an open, constructive, positive way with people who disagree with us. The left and the right, there are a lot of disagreements within the right. We do that all the time. I help to edit along with my friends at the Brookings Institution along a jointly written book on poverty and opportunity and how to improve it. We are in Congress. We are talking to people in the administration on ideas on how we can address these issues. We've been long proponents of things like the earned income tax credit which raises incomes for people at the bottom. I've worked on issues concerning food stamp benefits and Medicaid and we have an expert who was an expert in child care, the provision of child care in the United States. We engage in that discussion all the time. The thing is, Sam, I want you to feel good about what you do and what this show is about. Ideas do matter. It actually has an effect. People are listening. It's not always the thing that's covered on the nightly news when people are yelling at each other back and forth about some extravagant thing. Little by little, policy changes do occur. Governing does matter. Legislation does get passed. People's lives are changed. My view is, having been at this for a while, is that that's a good thing to devote your life to because it does lead to positive results. That's what we do. We do it in foreign policy. We do it in domestic policy. We do it in economics. We do it on issues concerning social, cultural, and constitutional studies as well. That's actually a great segue, I think, to a bigger picture question I wanted to ask you, which is sort of a long-winded version of do they matter. We're in a moment where John Meacham said something along these lines that I agreed with, which is, American politics were dominated by a dialogue that had some parameters that were well known from about the 30s to the 80s that we then have kept going, really about what does democratic capitalism mean? Where do you restrain it? Where do you unleash it? There's been a pendulum that has sort of swung in the developed world. It really feels like the last four years on the right and the left have been a big departure from that dialogue. It's still there, but it's not the only conversant discussant in the room anymore. Those aren't the only two people in the room. Just on the thinking about the right, thinking about conservatism as a philosophy, what's your view about what's next given what I just would not consider President Trump to be a conservative in that mold at all? He's not. He's a populist, and on four big issues he'd really upset the apple cart of institutional conservatism. One is on entitlements. He had really no interest in making any effort to constrain the growth of entitlements or look out for long-term deficits or the debt. Second is on immigration. We tend to be more open to free markets, free people, the free flow of labor. He took a very strong and negative approach to that. Trade is a big one. We're for free trade. He's not as much and was willing to really impose tariffs on both adversaries like China and friends like Mexico and Canada. Then when it comes to the role of America in the world, even this week, he's sort of unilaterally, I think, rashly insisting on the withdrawal of troops from engagements that may be preserving the peace and protecting American interests around the world, but he's against that. He's popular. Let's not forget that. He tapped into something that a lot of Americans respect and like and appreciate it and felt was wrong with our kind of elite from the ivory tower view of these issues. I think we learned a lesson. What I think needs to happen among conservatives is we need to work these things out. We need to find a way to see what President Trump challenged us with that's worth keeping and that is a viable, important adjustment to our worldview, but also cast aside those things that are clearly not helpful and will be in the long term not helpful to the future of the United States. I think that's what we're about to do and are going to have to do, whether it's at AEI or other places, with emerging leaders in the Republican Party. It's going to be an interesting period for us to see who carries the day, who makes the best argument, who wins the support of the body of the electorate. We've got some work to be done. There's no question about it. Conservatism classically thought of, just as you say, has been challenged and has been knocked on its heels. Some of it is worth preserving, I believe very strongly, but some deserves a little bit of adjustment. My job is to be a AEI's job is to be a place where people can come together and talk these things out in a civil way and see if we can come to some resolution. I think you've raised the governing coalition question that's more political. What is an example in that latter category of a place in conservatism where you think there is an opportunity for fruitful rethinking about what is the idea as opposed to just reestablishing the case for the idea? Well, I think in one area is in trade. I think that President Trump, when it comes to certain kinds of absolute commitments to free trade, which are where I begin, pointed out to us that sometimes in a global world, that can have very negative impacts on Americans. We ought not to be deaf to that. We ought to recognize that maybe we could transition. We need to address. We need to recognize. We also need to make sure we're not being taken advantage of by foreign trading partners. I think that's definitely an area that's not going I don't know that we'll go back to where we were on that topic. That's been done and pretty solidified. And the Democrats, of course, are not going to back off that either. So that's a good one. That would be the one that I think is most prevalent. In areas like entitlement, I think we need to do something about the cost of our government. I want us to get back to some sensibleness about what we can afford and with regard to our commitments. And in immigration is another, I think, as again, coming from a city of immigrants, New York City is, you know, when I left was 45% foreign born, which I know not quite Miami, but it's a great place to live. And I loved it. And I think immigrants really saved and re-energized the city. But I think that open borders that leads to a influx of labor that puts pressure on wages at the bottom is something we ought to think about carefully and be conscious of. And so those are two areas where, you know, the sort of big hearted free markets, what does it matter? Freedom always wins is still true, but we ought to be thinking about the consequences in the short term to vulnerable populations. Well, so we could do a show on each one of those. So I would, I'd like to ask you kind of a personal question is a fun question. I believe your father was John Doar, the Kennedy civil rights official. And, you know, I sort of think about the moment we're in and he were witness to and was a part of two really defining periods in American history. One, just for our listeners, as the top DOJ official on civil rights, I mean, I believe he was dramatic. He stayed in James Meredith's dorm room when they integrated the university. So just unbelievable frontline presence and then helped to lead the legal team during Nixon's impeachment in a way that has been, you know, I think appropriately lionized historically is just with the utmost integrity. And we're in this moment of extreme echoes of both of those periods this summer. And you've seen, obviously acts of acts and expressions of dissatisfaction, but acts of great heroism over this summer about race and what we need to talk about on race. And then of course, we went through an incredibly rancorous national conversation and process around cronyism and corruption in the Trump administration. And, you know, I know it's always unfair to sort of what would he say, but just, you know, having grown up with him lived with him lived through that yourself. What what reflection do you have having been having having been a part of that through him on on the present moment, what you think those moments can tell us about today? Well, thank you, Sam, for saying those nice things about dad. And he did do great public service for our country. He started in the Eisenhower administration. President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy liked him and they kept him. And then he worked for President Johnson as well. And he he was a great leader in the civil rights movement from the Justice Department. And and then in the impeachment inquiry, he served for Peter Rodino as the special counsel in the impeachment inquiry into the conduct of President Nixon that led to three articles of impeachment being voted on by bipartisan majorities and his designing of the case contributed to that result significantly. I think he would I would point out that he was he was a strong fighter for voting rights and civil rights in the south and a strong enforcer of the law when it came to violence against civil rights workers and others who were being intimidated and attacked. He also was, you know, a law enforcement officer. So he would he wouldn't he not a supporter of violent disturbances and this violence that's taken place from all sides. But but but it would disturb him and would upset him. And he would think that that was doing damage to the cause of equality and equal justice under law. And so I think he'd be a little concerned about that. He would also believe and say that we've made progress. I think some of the rhetoric about systemic racism and America's no better than it's ever been would have upset him. He believed that progress had been made and has been made. And the election of President Obama was an example of that. And of course, hundreds of examples of public officials winning elections all across the country who are African Americans. So he would be a little discouraged by that. But he would also recognize that these are hard battles and we're not done and we've still got more work to be done. And he would say that he was he was not a he was he was tough, but he wasn't mean. He wasn't a fighter in the way that some of the people in the public dialogue are now that would upset him. He was a person who believed in the facts and then taking your case to the court and proving it fact by fact by fact. And that's why I wrote that he that I think he would have thought that the deliberation concerning President Trump back when his impeachment was considered, he would have thought that moved too quickly that the case had not been really successfully made so that the overwhelming majority of Americans would agree. And their Republican representatives, the party of the guy being impeached agree that something's really serious like impeachment need to take place. Now, I would like to say one last thing. This business of what's happening with regard to the voting and elections. This would really upset him because he know he knew how to how to build a voting case. And you had to have the facts. You had to prove it. You couldn't just say it. And you certainly couldn't say it when the whole country is looking to you to respect the result of an election and and follow the tradition of toleration of the opposition in a peaceful and appropriate transfer of power. So that would, you know, you you can hear what people are saying. But when you look at the specific cases in each of these instances, there's nothing there. Or if there is, it's very little. It's not enough to upset the outcome and to have people assert that they've proven really debilitating and and and faith crushing offenses of upsetting and and and turning an election without facts, he would feel very offended by. So, you know, I'm hoping we get through this and that the courts deal with these cases and that we can have as we've had every presidency since Washington, a a a appropriate toleration of opposition, gracious transfer of authority to a new president. But if dad were around this this last chapter of the Trump administration would be offensive to him. Well, we'll try to get most of those adjectives to apply to the eventual to the eventual transition can't can't guarantee them all. But you can follow Robert on Twitter at Robert door. You can follow the American Enterprise Institute on Twitter at AI Robert. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it very much. Folks, as as you know, we've been changing our schedule. So just keep an eye on kf.org or hashtag nightlife. You can also follow at the Sam Gill on Twitter for information about future future episodes. As a reminder, as always, this episode will be up on the website later and this episode and every episode is available on demand at kf.org slash fb show. You can also subscribe to the future of democracy podcast on Apple, Google, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts, email us at fbshow at cap.org or again, reach out to me on Twitter at the Sam Gill. There's a two question survey on your screen. If you're watching live, please take it. And as always, we will say goodbye to the music of Miami singer songwriter Nick County. You can follow him on Spotify until next time. Thanks so much and stay safe.