 We're talking about global connections and we're talking today about comparative cultures and the effects and the leadership that emerges in comparative culture, quality of leadership in comparative cultures. Comparative politics, comparative political systems actually, let me, let me clarify a little bit. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. You're right. Sometimes a culture can be less than a country and sometimes a culture can be more than a country. But Jay, it's great to reconnect, of course, to continue our ongoing dialogue, offer some perspective, in this case globally from outside of the U.S., but also informed about what's happening in the U.S. and elsewhere. What I wanted to share today was a brief snapshot of what I'm calling the comparative politics of basically coronavirus. What I mean by that is what is it about political systems that might tell us, now, let me begin by broadly saying we can generally identify two broad systems of government, authoritarian regimes, different types, many variations, and democratic regimes of many variations as well. But broadly speaking, right, democracies and non-democracies. Now, within the democracies of the world, we also have a broad difference, often either parliamentary and presidential, for many Europeans tend to be parliamentary systems. But more than that, I think what we see, some good examples are more centralized political systems where it's more cohesive and maybe a country like France or Japan, where it's very tightly controlled and very deeply connected to every part versus federal systems. As you know, here in the U.S. and the United States, we have a federal system that divides power. But we used to, Carlos, it's not clear what we have right now. It's a federal system that's in a mess, of course, and with tendencies towards authoritarianism. But more generally, what we mean by federal is you have a division between the national government in Washington and the states, the subunits. And the federal systems, there are less, but they are usually larger countries like Germany, like Brazil, Canada, and the U.S. and Australia. So you have a very important role for the states or the provinces. And there's a division of power, more clear. That's different from Japan or France, where a very centralized power in the central government. Now, again, it's important to underscore either any of these options. It doesn't tell you enough about how they might respond to this. We have very good examples of successful federal systems like Germany, perhaps, that have responded quite almost like the textbook definition of a response. We have to maybe talk for a moment about Germany. Angela Merkel, of course, the chancellor, she is the leader of the country, the head of state. But she does not have the power to make the individual states like Bavaria or, you know, different regions. They have governors who obviously have considerable power, but she can, as a leader, she can bring them together. She can coordinate. She has been a very clear voice of both reason. She is herself a scientist by training. And so she brings a very much an appreciation of a scientific approach. That may be unique in this sense. And I just want to add a thought here is that she is a good leader. She is a great leader. And the reason they listen to her is not necessarily because they have to, but because she's persuasive and rational. Yes, yes. And so you cannot have, in my view, let me throw this at you, you cannot have a functioning federalism unless you have the people who will establish relationships. If you have a poor leader at the top or poor relationships, such as we have in this country right now, federalism doesn't work very well. That's right. And I think, you know, just to follow on Angela Merkel, as you may recall a few months ago, I mean, we were talking about the end of her days. She was losing a lot of power and credibility. Some of the might be right wing parties are gaining. She's been there a very long time now, frankly, frankly 15 years, and she has been really the leader of Europe. She's the dean of all the heads of state. Now this crisis, I think it's fair to say at this point, it has helped gain her tremendous legitimacy and support, very high credibility. She has managed to be a voice, again, of reason, of calm, and letting the science drive it. And Germany, again, underscores an example where it is a textbook definition of a response to a pandemic. Now, they have to begin with a robust healthcare system already in place. They began very early, a strategy of mass testing, but this key point that we've just made reference, they have a trusted and effective political leadership. They may not agree with her, they may not like her, but she has been able to be a voice of very, you know, commanding a lot of, well, just credibility, but I would go back. Can we start for a moment? Yeah, yeah. I must say, although I have followed her achievements, I haven't followed her style. What is it about her style that makes her trusted? What is it about her, you know, day to day functioning, the way she deals with people, calls them, writes them, talks to them, that makes her so persuasive and so trusted? Do you know enough to say? Well, I can offer some, yes. I mean, she, on one hand, she's a very low key and quiet. I mean, she's not charismatic, she's not energetic and dynamic. So she has this certain calm demeanor about her. I mean, one thing they obviously don't, you know, if you see her, she walks into the room and she's famous for holding her hands together, but she has this presence about her that is very, I don't know, almost reassuring and it's a combination of she is an expert, she's smart, she's knowledgeable, but she also has a certain, almost like a motherly part of her, you know, very, I wouldn't say warm and friendly, but she's definitely got, and maybe at the end of the day, what she has is an ability to balance her role as a political leader, but also giving a deferring power to the subunits, which are the, you know, they call them London, they are the states. And one example of in the state of Bavaria, the southern part of Germany, they have a leader there who has been quite a law and order, very tough for himself, but he's a paternalistic guy who is extraordinarily popular. And I think his name is Markus Schoder, and he is the Bavarian governor. But just as an example, I mean, she defers to him, so he takes care of the region that he's in, but she brings this, and I think it's partly her expertise. She's got a very scientific approach as a, as a herself. I have three things out of that. Yeah. One is, I guess she's rational, she's scientific, not so emotional. She doesn't have a narcissistic, you know, approach to thing. That's one thing. Two is she respects people in general, respects everyone. I mean, look, look at the respect she gave to the migrants, even at the expense of her own political campaign, that was respect for humanity. Okay. And the third thing, and I've, you know, I've seen this in my life and I'm sure you have in yours. The most successful people are the ones that do not profile you, that talk to you as a human being, a one person, a special person, and they have a special relationship with everyone that's different. That's, that's, that's tailored to that person. That's the ultimate amount of respect if you do that. So I think so. I think those are good points. And here again, she defers to the local authority of the governors. So she, in some ways, as a leader, she sets the broad pattern, the major policy, and she allows them to then implement it and to do it as they see fit. And so the individual governors are quite powerful in Germany. Now, we're seeing it play out in the US, but in a different way, the absence of leadership, the confusion and basically, well, the lack of any national leadership of any federal leadership, we have seen instead, individual governors that have taken up that slack and they've become, you know, more visible, more important. Look at Andrew Cuomo, look at NUSM in California and others. So they have filled a void in a different way. But going back to the political system, again, that alone doesn't explain it. You need leaders that have, of course, effective and credibility of the life. Then you have a contrast, let's say, authoritarian regimes. They have certain benefits to mobilize, you know, resources to control information, but also the other side is they can also be very much suppressing information. And often they don't have full credibility, especially in these days when we have access to more sources of information, it gets harder to control it. So on the one hand, authoritarian systems can be helpful to mobilize this. I think another interesting angle is to look at both Germany, but not just Germany, South Korea, which we've seen as a good example. Again, these are two countries that are products of enlightened post-war American leadership. I mean, after World War Two, the U.S. helped those countries transition to stable democracies over time, you know, a little slower for South Korea. But today they are clearly good examples of countries that have in the past been closely supported and allied by the U.S. Today the U.S. has alienated them and sort of is no longer, they're not looking to the U.S. for leadership, they're doing it on their own. And so it's, you know, just an interesting contrast. A moment on the tragedy of that, you know, in both of those cases, I think that's true. And Japan, too, would have to be in there in that category. You know, they we gave them, you know, the time of the Marshall Plan and the time of American, you know, American influence after the war. We were really good at, you know, setting up a world order where we respected these other countries and we gave them, you know, on a very charitable basis, may I say, a lot of our ideas it wasn't only intended for control, it was intended to actually benefit them. Sometimes at our expense and we set up a number of governments around the world that are that have incorporated our concepts, our ethics, our morality into the systems. So when you say that Germany is a good system in part, that's due to the time of the Marshall Plan in the early fifties. When you say that Japan and South Korea, the same thing, that's, you know, that's partly at least, at least partly, maybe substantially partly due to what we gave them. And that gave us and until recently gave us a tremendous amount of political capital and influence, you know, because we we were part of the foundation of their system and everybody knew it. Now, when you turn your back, when this president turns his back on them, we are squandering that capital and not only temporarily but permanently. We're turning our back on the history of it and we're losing, you know, enormous leverage that we have had. That's just my comment on what you said. No, absolutely. And, you know, you see it reflected also in generational differences. The older generation who remember the Cold War, who remember the, you know, understand the history of the post war, where the US helped those countries establish their variations of liberal democracy. They're obviously they've tailored them to their own particularities. But today we have a reality where in the absence of any American leadership, what you have in the world is a sadness and a disbelief, especially from Europe. They are, I mean, in shock and disbelief that there is a total absence of American leadership and they're no longer looking to the US. It's clear that they have decided and make, you know, basically realize they have to look to themselves and look to others. And if you look at it from other places in the developing world, in Africa and Latin America, increasingly they are looking to China as the new global power that is, you know, carrying out its own soft power. Now, we can see it as we do in the US, sometimes more cynically. It's an authoritarian regime. It's not democratic as we think of it. But the reality is that they are winning. They are winning the hearts and minds of particularly many in the developing world, both because as we speak now, they are bringing supplies and providing support to some of these places. I think I shared with you before in Mexico, for example, they already received a number of shipments of medical equipment from China. The US has kind of bungled it and trumped, rather than doing it as a soft power or as a humanitarian gesture, for him, it's all about transactions and maybe squeezing Mexico for other things and trying to sell them at a cost, medical equipment that, ironically, is sometimes manufactured in Mexico and resold to the Mexican government at the US profit. Which makes it would make people hate him. And one big question I want to pose to you, and this is a hard one, I think, is that people in other countries judge us or judge each other, the other countries by the quality of the leader. So if you say after three and a half, almost four years of Trump to go to somebody and say a country in Europe, you say, what do you think of the United States? And they say, he's a buffoon. And therefore, the country is a buffoon because they elected him. Whatever their system is, they let him stay there. He represents them and the action he takes is on their behalf. So you can say that the guy in the street, you know, in any major city, take Honolulu, you know, who is a good person, who thinks globally, who wants to care for everybody in the world, who has that the Marshall Plan kind of mentality. You know, that may not matter so much anymore when you have a jerk running the country who has alienated all of Europe, you know, and they cannot feel the same way about the US as they used to, even though they may know on an intellectual level that you and me, we care about the world. You and me are, you know, global, global people and we want everyone to do well. But they don't see the country that way anymore. Am I right about this? Well, yeah, there's a lot of that. Now, I would add to that, though, for people who have a contact and know, let's say, Americans or who have traveled or interacted, often they are able to distinguish a difference between that leader. But that's not the reality for most people. For many, they just have the image of this leader defining the nation. And so if all they see is Trump and policies that are, you know, very antagonistic or confrontational, they will have an image of the US that reflects that, of course. But what I go back to is that those who maybe know the country better, who have come to study, who have traveled or who have American friends, often they can distinguish a little bit better. I guess that's true of all of us. You know, people are often maybe bigots or races because they don't really know other people from different cultures, you know, even in our own, you know, immediate environment. Until you actually break that down on a human to human level, people to people level, you often will paint and make generalizations. But I think it's fair to say that with Trump, yeah, he has given a very bad image to the US. The other is that it's a puzzle and me as an educator to try to explain how does somebody who is so unpopular and who has policies that are very, very aggressive, how does he continue to have support from a pretty substantial percentage of the population? It's not that easy. I mean, you know, it's a it's a puzzle that you have to explain in many different ways, but that is also a remarkable puzzle for many people. How can they continue to support him when he is doing policies that are hurting different people or just very mean in their I can't. I can't explain that. I try as you know, I try to explain that why there's so many people that went 40 percent plus in the country enough, maybe even get reelected who still support him no matter what the Michigan is and I do not. I cannot. I come up with possibilities. I come up with a combination of possibilities, but I still cannot accept the explanation that I give myself. Yeah. And what's worse about it is I do not. I cannot draw a line from where we are now to where we're going to be. It's completely unknown. What's going to happen? That's right. It's right. And again, you know, some of it is reflected in the polarization where we have a population that is looking at different information. People who we know, let's say, are told from from data and research that if their only source of information is Fox News, they are going to be skeptical of this whole virus thing. They're the people who are out there now protesting to open the economy. They don't care. Well, you don't care about the virus, but guess what? Your actions are going to affect me and my family and my friends. And so unless you have good information, I think increasingly we have a world where people are just going to hear what reinforces their biases. We don't have a world as you can recall, you know, a generation ago where most of us looked at the same information. We had fewer sources, but there was a common, I don't know, a common narrative that we could all evaluate today. We're so divided in what we read and or even if we do, because a lot of people are simply not particularly well informed. And I mean, that's a sad reality, too. I think, as you know, I educate a lot of different people, whether they're Mexican elites or in Europe, when I lecture there. And it is astonishing the level of, you know, limited history and knowledge of the world that Americans have, even basic geography so that there's often a relative ignorance. It's sad to say, and it's a sensitive topic to say that, you know, the average American is not particularly informed about the world. No, that reminds me of Jay Leno used to call it Jaywalking. Yes, show, and he would approach people in the street and it would ask him really fundamental questions like who's the vice president? Today, it's Jimmy Kimmel, one of the comedians of the late shows who does the same thing. You just go out on the street and ask people to identify or find Russia on a map or anything like that. It's quite sad, I think. We don't have basic knowledge of civics, of culture, of history. And unfortunately, you know, the same victim we hear, you know, if you don't understand your past, you know, you're going to be forced to repeat it. And, you know. So that, you know, evokes a combination of factors that I want to throw at you. You know, you say political system, but a political system has many ramifications. It's not just the Constitution or the lack. It's not just the Congress or a lack. It's not just the president or the courts. It's more than that. A political system is some of the some of the institutions that the political system has spawned or protects or doesn't protect. One of them would be the media. How is the media functioning in one of these comparative systems? You're talking about, in other words, public education is, you know, in other words, you could turn a whole country on its head with bad media or bad public education where people get ignorant. And then you have ignorant people, essentially, you know, either tolerating or running the government. So where does that fit, Carlos? Because does it play out in the countries that we're comparing today? Oh, absolutely. And maybe very oversimplified, but broadly speaking, countries that are more open and democratic will tend to have a more open press. They have a variety of opinions. And the role of the media is one of a effective watchdog. It holds the government accountable. When you don't have that, when you have the tendency towards authoritarian or autocratic leaders, you get to have more of this control of information. So when we talk about Trump eroding some of the democratic norms and values, his attacks on the media are precisely that. Suddenly, he repeats and calls into question media. And then by repeating it, people began to have skepticism about it. And not only that, by attacking the media, again, it's not giving it its role. And so the media is a critical component of any democratic open society. And it's one that both the government needs to learn how to serve and the government needs it, but it needs it to help explain its policies, to help convey its message. When you have antagonism as we have today in the U.S., suddenly it erodes trust and confidence both in the government, but also in the media. So we all lose. And that, again, in autocratic authoritarian systems, the media is clearly co-opted or captured or otherwise controlled and suppressed by government. And that is clearly anti-democratic. Well, let me offer an analysis that you and I can make. Let's take one country that we know has done pretty well in coronavirus. I don't know what country you would pick. South Korea, that's what I said. Okay, and then take one that hasn't done all that well. And that would be the U.S. We've done worse than really any major country. And so what I want to ask you is, does that reflect the quality of the systems? The political systems in those places, is it true to your model of a better political system can deal with a crisis in a better way than a political system, which is dysfunctional, can deal with a crisis? You know, I want to say a quick answer to that is that it's not enough. The political system is important and helps us understand how it works, but it's not sufficient because if you have two countries with the same system, one has very weak and poor leadership, it's going to flounder, it's going to fail. And yet when we look at the success stories, it is a combination of the system. Let's say South Korea, it is today a liberal democracy, one that the U.S. helped to nurture and support. But there are other elements, and this is where it gets more controversial. For some people, for example, culture that we mentioned at the beginning. For some, it's difficult to measure. It doesn't explain enough. And yet the reality is that in a lot of East Asian societies, you have a culture that is more differential to authority. People are more likely to obey the rules and when the government says we're doing this, they don't question it. Obviously, the U.S. has a long tradition of dissent and protest, and that today is working in the ugly way against it. But it's also in response to the government that is floundering mixed messages, the president announces this policy, and then he supports the criticism of that same policy, you have mixed signals. So I just, I think I want to say that the political system alone is not sufficient to tell us whether a country is going to manage or not. Authoritarian systems can be very good, but so can democratic. Look at New Zealand. Again, another of these small states, but a very effective leader, all the sort of all the right things put together. And maybe before I forget, I think we've talked about political systems, but something that is clearly remarkable now that we have seen is the very strong role of female world leaders. Some of the places where we have seen the best responses are, whether it's Germany with Angela Merkel, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, and basically these are women who are voices of reason, who are, you know, reason in the midst of chaos. And this is in sharp contrast to the bombastic rhetoric of several very prominent male leaders, you know, whether it's Trump or the leader of Brazil, who's also taken a lot of criticism. And so I think it's interesting that, you know, we have clearly not just the political system, but the role of women leaders has been. It was an article recently about it on jurisdictions which have done better. And it seems like there's a clear demarcation. The jurisdiction is that where the political leader is a woman have done better than the ones, you know, and that goes for states also, a number of governors. And for that matter, cities, women do well in the modern, you know, political comparison. But I wanted to ask you one more thing, and that may help us in our little quest today. It's the social fabric, namely that people believe that they're engaged together, you know, with common goals and common values. And when they believe that they are together in something, we keep hearing in, you know, on the media, we keep hearing this, but, you know, every time I hear it, I say, it's really true we're in this together. Maybe we like to be in this together, but in fact, we're not in this together. But a country, a jurisdiction that is in it together, really in it together, where everybody cares about the benefit of his fellow man and woman, where everybody cares about the country, the state, the city, and want everyone he knows or she knows to survive and do well. That's a better place. That's a place that's better capable of dealing with a crisis. Do you agree? Oh, absolutely. And again, it reflects those are both social norms and values. Sometimes it can be reflected as part of the culture. You can think of some Scandinavian countries, like actually interesting contrast, Denmark and Sweden, very similar on many levels, but Sweden has taken this different approach, a lot more relaxed, but they still, nevertheless, they have considerable social cohesion. People understand, you know, their role and they're going to, you know, go abide by it. And here again, I think what you have, even in the U.S., even though we have this chaos and poor leadership at the top level, I want to suggest that at some of the local community levels, you are seeing some, you know, more effective responses at the local level. You know, some municipalities and cities, maybe certain states, but they are filling a void that is at the higher national level. But ultimately, yeah, I think this is where you need effective leadership to bring us to understand what are the shared values? What are the shared purpose? You know, what do we have to do as a collective society? And if you don't have that, then you have the divisions that we see very clearly in the U.S. and other places. You know, a country, another one that, again, it hasn't been in the news too much, but Nicaragua. For the last month, the leader has been missing, Daniel Ortega, who is the, you know, basically the autocratic leader, came to power 40 years ago and then he was voted out. He's been back, but he, I think, kind of shows us the dangerous combination, not only an autocratic leader who's kind of been missing in action, but a very weak healthcare system, a very poor country, and that combination has been lethal. I would contrast that, and again, obviously poor countries, developing countries, like we talked about in our previous show, have real challenges. They're dealing with a different reality. But you have examples, like in the southern state of India of Kerala, where they have a long history of very good healthcare, even as a poor developing country, very, you know, and they've been a good success story of doing all the tracing and ensuring, you know, testing, even in the midst of poverty and inequality. So it's not enough to just be rich. If you've got good leadership and a good healthcare system, even in a developing country, you can manage this much better than you might otherwise. So, I mean, yeah, a lot of this is clearly, leadership does matter, and it helps to mobilize and organize society. And when you don't have that, we've got the kind of chaos we see now in the U.S. Well, worse yet, you have people who sow chaos. I mean, look at Putin, look at the, you know, Internet Research Agency and the measures that he took for the 2016 election to help Trump get into office, dividing people, dividing a community, creating two groups in the same community with different advocacies to try to divide the crowd. Why? Because it's in the general notion going back to the KGB is you're better off if your adversary is divided. Because that, you know, it makes your adversary dysfunctional. And so I think he has achieved that. I also think, is it interesting, that Trump has achieved that. He is dividing us. He's dividing the governor's one from the other, the state's one from the other, the racial group's one from the other. I mean, it's like, you could go through three and a half years and find that everything he has done intended or, you know, preply intended has divided us. So if you have a divided nation, a divided political system, if you will, that tears the fabric. And I think that's where we are, Carlos, don't you think? Absolutely, no, I couldn't agree more. And I think, you know, again, we see it as you've suggested, very evident. And with Trump receiving a lot of criticism, rather than address it and confront it, it's finding other scapegoats. Now the agenda is going to be blame China for everything. And there's certainly reason to critique and analyze and see what did China do wrong or right. But it's also a way of deflecting from, you know, somehow what's happening here. But this divide and conquer that you described is very common. Again, it's a more autocratic tendency to try to confuse the, you know, the population rather than what a real, maybe more effective leader would do, bring them together. And you know, a shared value, a shared common goal and why we're doing this. So that a real leader who wants to confront, let's say the protests would have to say, look, I feel your pain. I understand it. But here's why we need to do it, rather than instead Trump, he announces a policy that says we have to stay locked down. But he also thinks that those people are responsible and they're, you know, they have it. Well, you're sending mixed signals. You're creating more division. That doesn't help. More chaos. So here we are, Carlos. You and me, we were talking about this. I think the way we're pointing here is true. But the fact is that there's a certain unraveling going on. And it's being exacerbated by a government who isn't doing anything to, you know, handle anything useful. To handle, Jefferson said, let's all make ourselves useful. A government who hasn't really been able to deal with a more even immediate threat, existential threat, namely coronavirus. So here at the end of our show, we only have a minute left. What are your thoughts about what the individual human being in this country or in another country? What should that individual human being do to do his part, to make himself useful, you know, to save his system, to save the values that he cherishes? You know, and I think we're seeing little nuggets of this here and there in this crisis. People are suddenly, for the first time, getting to reach out and learn and know their neighbors or they're carrying out their own individual acts of kindness and support. And we need more of that. If we're not getting that, let's say, signal from our top leadership, get it from your own immediate neighborhood, from your neighbors and sort of, as individuals, I think we have to move away from the focus of the macro, maybe the national, and come back home, come to your own neighborhood, your own community. Because in the end, that's where we're going to solve the problem. And hopefully, if there's a glimmer of hope in the future that we can learn that, you know, people have good hearts and want to, you know, do good for their neighbors, that's where we need to probably focus. So it's more, instead of the thinking global, it's acting locally and getting to know your communities in a better way. Hopefully, if there's some good that comes out of this, we will see a lot of that. We realize that we're all in this boat together. And somehow, I don't think everybody is doing that. These protesters are selfish. They're thinking about their own individual narrow interest. We need to realize this is a problem that's affecting us all, and we have to look out for the others. So just the final thoughts. Rebuilding, rebuilding our social fabric. Thank you so much, Carlos. I always enjoy these discussions with you, and I look forward to the next one. In the meantime, I would like you to, you know, take appropriate steps to stay safe. And immediately after the show, I hope that you will wash your hands. Thank you, Aloha. Namaste. Namaste. Yeah, take care. Take care, adios.