 We are once again with another edition of Patience on the News, and I'm delighted tonight to have as our guest Senator Richard Bennett, Main State Senator Rick Bennett, well-known to everybody. He's been around for a while, a very smart guy, a guy I happen to admire, and I'm very pleased he's here. Rick, welcome. Thank you so much, Harold. It's a great pleasure to be with you as ever. Thank you. See, mutual admiration society. I was just telling Rick that having a career as a semi-politician with the Democrats and being very active in Democratic politics over the last nearly 60 years, I have my problems with the extremes of my party, the people that don't want to compromise, that want it their way or no way, and I said to him, I like him because he's a Republican, he's on the other side, and he and I can talk. We can talk. We can. I think good things happen when people do that. I think really politics and politics today, we need to remember what Abe Lincoln said in a different context, time to think anew and act anew, our country needs it. But it's hard, and you're up there, you're in the legislature, and you see it every day. I do. I've been outspoken on a few issues. People may have remembered that over the last year or so since I got back in office after a long hiatus, because I think the usual dogmas are just not working anymore for main people or for people across the country, probably across the world. We need to break down these barriers that we've created. I think when we do that and we start talking with each other as human beings, we find that we have a lot in common, a lot of the same concerns, a lot of the same aspirations and hopes, and actually I think we can find solutions together. You think we can, but we don't. We tend not to. You know, sadly, I took a long break from being back in the office. When were you first in the legislature? So I was first elected as a young man back when I was 27 years old, 26. I was in the main house, 1990 to 94, ran for Congress, narrowly lost in 94. Still in the throes of politics, I got elected to the state Senate and served from 1996 to 2004, had the honor of serving as president of the Senate when we had the unique tie in the Senate where we had an equal number of Republicans and Democrats, one independent. You shared the back and forth? We did. Mike Mishew, later congressman, candidate for governor, was the head of the Democratic caucus. I was the head of the Republican caucus at the time. And we did something that nobody expected, which was to get along and find common ground and create a power sharing arrangement where all senators were treated equally. We all had the same amount of information. We all had an equal voice in the process. And it worked out really well for a couple of years. Is that the only time it's been like that? The only time in main history that we could find, yeah. This happened otherwise with mixed results in other jurisdictions, other states. But then in 2004, I got out of politics, elective office, still an active citizen in ways, but focused on building businesses in Maine and also raising my kids who were quite young at the time. And now in 2020 decided I'd stop yelling at the television and get back involved and won election anew to the state senate in western Maine. You also have a distinction of being an expert, national expert on shareholder rights and things of that sort, and corporate governance, correct? That's right. I've had the honor of working in that field for a quarter century or more now, working with Bob Monks, Sr., who has long time been a business partner of mine, and Nell Minow, who are the real leaders in the field. Is Nell Minow, she's from Chicago? Originally, yes. And was her father the famous Newt Minow? Absolutely. And Newt Minow was JFK's FCC commissioner. He was the fellow who declared that television is a vast wasteland. And in fact, a little known fact, Gilligan's Island creator called the ship, the SS Minow, although it's spelled differently, in honor of Newton Minow for him declaring that television is a vast wasteland. Oh, that's interesting. So you work closely with Nell Minow? I still do. And with Bob Monks, we have a firm that helps shareholders and particularly institutional investors like public pension funds use the power that they have as owners in the capital markets to put companies in a better direction so that they serve their shareholders better, their stakeholders better. Before that, we had several other enterprises that we worked on together in this area, a data company. And earlier than that, the first activist investment firm in the country that was doing things like Bill Ackerman and Carl Icon are doing now regularly. We were doing it back in the 1990s successfully. Taking positions in American corporations in order to force them into a policy direction? Exactly. Be a catalyst for change. Many times, these companies were going off the rails and shareholders were suffering. And rather than have, you know, raiders, corporate raiders come in and leverage the company up and then install their own management and then sell it off back to the public market years later all making money on every step of the way, our theory was, well, why not have the owners who are often long-term investors like public pension funds and others, why don't they benefit from this? Why can't agents for them do that service and keep that value accretion to the shareholders? So, we did that successfully for about 10 years. We sold that company, started the data company, always trying to be on the cutting edge. And that data company, by the way, one of the things I love about Maine is all, as you see, there are so many of these little enterprises. And our company was about 60 people based here in Portland called the Corporate Library. Nobody had a clue what we did. We weren't members of the Chamber of Commerce because we had no customers in Maine, but we were doing world-class work here in Portland, Maine, paying good wages, assembling data, putting together risk analytics and selling it to the biggest investors and other stakeholders in the country and the world. And we ran that company successfully. I was a CEO for a period of time and eventually sold that company, too. But I think there's connective tissue between the work of accountability and power that goes on in the corporate world and the work I try to do as a public servant as well. Yeah, and your company really was world-class. I mean, it was known throughout the world. Yeah. We had the biggest director and officer insurance companies, the credit rating agencies, the largest investors in the world, search firms, law firms. We're all interested in our analytics. And what we would do differently is that traditional financial analysis of companies only explains so much about the risks and performance expectations of a company. We all know that. In fact, I saw a statistic recently that said that the valuation of a public company is only explained about 9% by what you see in the books. So you have another 91% that is its intellectual capital. It's the team of talent that people have brought together, the way they govern themselves and hold themselves to account for their performance and compensation, and all of those sorts of things. So we would delve into that and try to find out, well, what is it about the way this board is constructed, a board of directors? Are they actually doing the job? Are they holding management's feet to the fire? Are they paying the CEO his bonus even though he didn't earn it? Those sorts of things which get to the heart of power in corporations. And then we would provide investors and others the tools to use that information, that sort of non-financial information in a way that would add value to their work. And as it turns out, it's spawned this whole category which is now called ESG, Environmental Social Governance, which some people may have heard of because it's been in the news a lot recently, where this non-financial information is very important to every stakeholder in the company to learn how does a company treat its employees? How is it looking at its upstream sourcing, for example? We hear about a fire in a factory in Bangladesh, and they would turn out to be making sweatshirts for Nike. And what was Nike's responsibility in making sure that the people in their supply shops in other countries actually were being protected and being served well? So those are the sorts of issues that we would get into. And it does have, as we see in the news every day, it has a big impact on a company's value because reputation and brand is a key part of a way any company is valued these days. And that can be turned on a dime if people aren't careful about putting reality in real ethics and values behind their stated values. I mean, actually making it real. So we just step back a little and say, okay, this guy, this is interesting. You grew up in Maine. I did. I was a student at Yarmouth Public Schools. My dad was an industrial arts teacher. Both my parents come from rural Oxford County. My mom was worked as a retail sales clerk, eventually retiring from LL Bean. My dad was an apprentice cabinet maker for F.O. Bailey Company, which made cabinets then, didn't sell real estate. And then he wanted to be an industrial arts teacher. So he went to Gorham State Teachers College, and he was the first in our family to complete college. Eventually he went on and got his master's in science and education and a PhD in resource planning and conservation and has gone on to be a university professor and a naturalist and writer of Note in Maine. Still working in books. I just reviewed one of his books that he asked me to look at this past week and he's got more in the pipeline. So, yeah, I'm a Mainer. Went to the public schools and... Yarmouth High School? I graduated from Yarmouth High School, yes. Now, let me just stop you there. You went to Yarmouth High School, then you went to Harvard. Right. Now, I subscribed to a historian's blog that get every day Heather Cox Richardson. Do you know who she is? I've heard the name. She went to Yarmouth, but then she left and went to Phillips, Exeter, and then to Harvard. Got her PhD at Harvard. She's a history professor at Boston College. But she has a blog and she infuses current events, what's happening every day. She infuses it into a historical context. It is good. And I'm going to send you a copy of it. I made a note here while you were talking. Yeah, but she's really good. But she grew up in Yarmouth and went to Harvard. Okay, so then you went to Harvard and what did you major in? I majored in government. That's what you wanted to major in? Well, I was very interested in politics and government from a young age. You did model state legislature, boy state, and all that sort of thing. But, you know, in retrospect, I think I would have preferred to major in something a little bit more esoteric like the classics. Why the classics? Well, I think we can learn a lot by looking at the people of antiquity and the way they govern themselves, the issues they dealt with. There's a lot of reflections back into our current times. It's just interesting stuff, you know. It seems like another world, but it was very much a human world full of people who had structures and systems, not unlike our own in form. In fact, you know, the founding fathers created our constitutional form of government by looking retrospectively at the way Athens and Rome were governed. So I think it's interesting to reflect on the people of the time and the decisions they made and how they worked out, how they didn't, and see if there are any reflections back to our current time. So, you're a Republican. Yes. Life's long. Yes, indeed. I've been the Republican leader of the main state senate, in the main state senate now, a well-known leader, run for governor, congress as a Republican. I have maybe a bias. I like to think it's not a bias. It's just facts, because sometimes facts count. Not often enough, Harold. Not often enough. And in your studies, you've paid a lot of attention to facts. You think facts are important. I do, and I try my best, but we're all imperfect vessels. That's true. That's true. But do you think that Donald Trump won the election and it was stolen from him? I think he won. You mean the reelection in 2020? In 2020. Oh, no. He lost that election. Do you think that the government has a role to play in trying to get people to get vaccinated to try to stop a pandemic? I do think the government has played a big role in making the vaccines available. I don't favor mandates on vaccines. I think people need to be convinced to put something in their body. I think the human body is a sovereign territory. And I think there was a little bit too much heavy handedness in that. We disagree a little bit, because I remember growing up when polio was a scourge. In every school, they give you polio vaccine. When I was a kid, which was a long time ago in the 1940s in elementary school, every kid lined up and got a smallpox vaccination. And it was all right. And we got rid of smallpox and we got rid of polio. And it was good for society. And none of us ever suffered permanent psychological harm by getting a little pin print up here. I was in the Navy. And no one said when we got inducted and went through the physical. And they were giving you jabs on both arms. No one ever said, wait, wait. I'm a sovereign human being. I get the right to make my own decisions. Don't put that in there. Well, I think when you go to the Navy, you've given up some of your sovereignty. Well, I think when you're a citizen, you give up some of it too. Anyway, so what your party is a different party than it was when you first went to the legislature in 1990? Yes. And I think both parties are different in some what subtle ways, but important ways too. Clearly, the world is more polarized. I thought it was kind of polarized back then, but it's gotten worse. Social media has amplified the differences. We have now, in addition, we have whole industries of political consultants who make vast amounts of money, not by solving problems, but by keeping the battle alive. Keeping people at each other's throats, keeping the issues alive. And so all of which is, I think, created a really unfortunate and somewhat toxic environment for trying to do the public's work and policymaking. So things have changed a lot since the 1990s. I was in Washington in the 1960s when it was truly bipartisan. There was a third party, which was Southern Democrats. And they were basically segregationists. They didn't want the clock to move ahead. And they believed in preserving segregation, and that was the thrust. And so I tell people today, in the Congress, pretty much in those days, pretty much every white supremacist was a Democrat. Today, pretty much every white supremacist in the Congress is a Republican. And it's a fact. It's a fact. It's an interesting statistic. I looked this up. You go on Wikipedia, you pick any county in America, put it in and ask Wikipedia about the county. They will give you the history of presidential voting in that county. So if you pick Neshoba County, Mississippi, which was the real core of clan work in Mississippi, you'll find that Adley Stevenson, the left-leaning liberal Democrat who ran in 52 and 56 against Eisenhower, got 70% of the vote in Neshoba County, automatic for Democrats. Same thing if you pick Dallas County, which is where Somalia, Alabama is. Same thing. Roosevelt. All of the Truman, except for Truman, the Dixie Crats ran in 48, so he didn't do well. But otherwise, take the 50s. Adley Stevenson dominated those elections. In 60, Kennedy carried those southern counties. Four years later, we had a Democratic president running in the Democratic South who was a southern Democrat himself, a powerful southern Democrat. He got 10% in those counties, 15% in those counties. Because of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Correct. Just because of that. And Johnson himself said to Moyers, when Moyers reported to him that the second, the Voting Rights Act was, excuse me, the first one, the Public Accommodations Act was passed. He said, Mr. President, you've changed this country. And he said, and he was, Moyers was amazed because he wasn't happy. He was happy, but he said, Bill, we've just turned the South over to the Republican Party for my lifetime and yours. They just took over where the Democrats were. Just a switch. So a lot of people say, oh, you know, don't call me from the South even. Don't call me a racist. Well, when they were Democrats, they were racist. Now the Republicans, they're not racist. So those are just facts. So anyway, I'm not asking to comment on that, but this division and so it changed. Do you think it changed with Newt Gingrich's elevation in Washington or the method of politics, the method of legislating? I think that, you know, this change was manifested in various people on both parties over time. And certainly the Newt Gingrich firebrand style of leadership was emblematic of it. But I think these changes are just about individual people. Yeah. In fact, these leaders, as I like to say, political leaders often don't really lead. They just find which way the group is heading and they get out in front of them. So I think that when you see people emerge in politics, it's saying something about our society and the people that constitute it and what their aspirations are, what their needs are. And it's now very easy to segment society. So smaller groups, I think there used to be a push to sort of come together, whether it's in the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, into a tent because you all needed each other in order to win the elections. Now it's more of a free-for-all. You get these small groups that try to gain, you know, willing to just like leave the party entirely and often do if they're not satisfied. But you have the parties become these really unhappy concatenations of interest groups that don't necessarily nest neatly together. I mean, a lot of these issues don't need to go together. And so, you know, I really think it's ripe for a breakdown because I don't think it makes logical sense. But at the same time, you have the ability of people to reach each other through direct information and find people of like mind. So much easier with social media. And so you can see these groups, it's breaking down the traditional institutions all across the landscape and not just politically, but business is breaking down. You've got, you know, all the traditional industries and institutions I should say are being subject to re-evaluation and they're being held accountable in different ways. And you know, that's in universities, it's in the media. There's so much lack of trust about the traditional institutions and that's leading to this breakdown. Are we going to reassemble into some more different organizational form as a society in the information age? I don't know. But these times are very volatile and I think underlying this is you see questioning about our constitutional form of government even and aspects of it, what's working, what isn't. And all these things are, you know, deeply troubling at some level because I think we're closer to chaos than people will credit us often. And we're seeing it, you know, traditionally, you know, you wouldn't think that Russia would invade Ukraine. It's just sort of unthinkable. I mean, there hasn't been a war of this scale in Europe. You know, the Balkans were awful in the 90s, but this is like a superpower invading a neighbor over NATO. And, you know, we thought that we were beyond all of that and we're not. You see volatility in pricing and inflationary urges. We all thought that inflation was a thing of the past. It's coming back. So I think, you know, it's easy to get sort of comfortable and happy in thinking, oh, we've entered a new age and then we're reminded by the worst parts of human nature that maybe we're heaven. Maybe we're still the same old people after all. David Brooks had a column in mid-February in the New York Times which is, to me, one of the best columns I've ever read. And he said, you know, he's a conservative basically, but not a Trumper, but a conservative. And he said in the early 1990s he was a reporter for the Wall Street Journal in Europe and all kinds of good things are happening. The Berlin Wall came down. The Soviet Union dissolved. Oslo made great progress for Middle East peace and there was German reunification and democracy was spreading across the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. And now it's all changed. What happened, he says, we have an authoritarian strong man in Russia invading his neighbor. Increasingly authoritarian China waging genocide on its people, threatening Taiwan, cyber attacks undermining world order, democracy and retreat worldwide, this populace across the West undermining nations from within. What happened, says Brooks. And he says, I've been reading about James Madison recently. He said, Brooks. And he says, and of course we all know Madison was the political engineer who constructed the United States Constitution, which is the only thing that's held us together. And we came apart. Just as you said, we think it can't happen here. In the 1850s, people were at each other's throats in this country over one issue, slavery. Those who wanted to preserve the enslavement of other human beings and those who wanted to abolish it. Imagine, we came apart at the seams. It ended. The union split. It can happen again. It can happen again. Passions, all about human passions. Yeah, yeah. And of course that was a defect. In the Constitution, the founding fathers knew that, that they were papering over this schism. The slavery schism. It was a matter of time for it to emerge in some fashion. And like most people, they probably thought, well, maybe in a few decades it will take care of itself. And it did with hundreds of thousands of live lives. 750,000 Americans, basically boys, killed. Gone. In the United States. It wasn't the Russians fault. It wasn't the Chinese fault. It was unable to govern ourselves. It wasn't that long ago. It wasn't that long ago. So this is serious stuff. Yeah, I worry about the tendency of people to demonize each other and make moral judgments. You can have a political disagreement, but I get concerned, particularly when I hear people make moral judgments they're political adversaries. Because once you start thinking yourself morally superior, it justifies all sorts of horrible things. And I hear that creeping up more. I used to, when I was party chair, I would go out and talk to groups. And back then, as always, the Republican party was looking at each other with lots of internal disagreements. So I would always end with my remarks by saying, I just want to say there's much more that unites us as Republicans than divides us. And everybody thought, yeah, that's good. And then I'd go on to my next statement, which is much thinner, I'd say, in fact, I would say that there's much more that unites us as Republicans and Democrats as Americans than divides us. We need to remember that. And I remember, you start to hear people say, oh, I don't agree with that. They're the enemy, that kind of thing. And I've heard similar things from some folks on the other side that there's this notion that we're not worthy people. We're making judgments about each other's character, their moral character. You can do that, but you've got to remember we're all human beings. That's the slippery slope right there is when you start demonizing each other. And we're beginning to do that. We need to stop it. Well, we do demonize each other. That is absolutely correct. Madison, incidentally, had an interesting approach. He was a persuasive guy, and he was the architect of the United States Constitution. He had to get people to agree to things. And he had to deal with states' rights were the most important thing, the 13 colonies. They each had their own legislatures, and they didn't want much to do with the federal government. They wanted a weak federal government and a strong state government. He had his troubles piecing this puzzle and putting it all together, but he had a view that he would never attack anybody personally. He would never condemn a person because of their views. He would appeal to their conscience. He would appeal to their conscience. So anyway, it's a very interesting problem we have. You have in the Republican Party many good people that want to be president and so forth, but you have one person who dominates. It dominates. Why can't... Or maybe you don't have an answer to this. But why can't some of those other people, Republicans who want to be president, why can't they get a foothold because one person is so popular? Perhaps the most popular in his party of anybody since Franklin Roosevelt was so popular in the Democratic Party. I think that we're going to see competition over the next couple of years for leadership, and that's a good thing. You know, there are some governors of states that are making themselves known. I think that Donald Trump has clearly a huge following. I see it when I speak to Republican groups. I think here in Maine, there are people, I think it's a subset, that think that he won the election. I think, you know, he's been successful in conveying that to some people. But I do think this issue with respect to his treatment of Russia and now the unmasking, as if he needed to be unmasked, but the unmasking of Vladimir Putin and who he is and what his regime means are not only world stability and the safety of neighboring countries, but also for the people of Russia. I think all of that is something which is going to force a re-evaluation of Donald Trump. And I think there will be Republican leaders that come out and present themselves with, you know, to try to assume the mantle of leadership and be the Republican presidential nominee in 2024. Very unhappy. You know, I served on the National Committee and was really unhappy to see the RNC take the position they did a couple months ago where they intervened in Lynn Cheney's primary and, you know, I don't think it's the role of party leaders to tell Republican members, their members of their party how they should vote on anything. I've never felt that way. I think that, you know, leadership involves service and following people and getting direction. And I think that was just wrong-headed and they essentially made themselves, as we entered the 2024 cycle for election, you know, they took a position for Donald Trump with that action. I thought that was really unfortunate. It is unfortunate, but they firmly support. I mean, the party establishment firmly supports Donald Trump. And you suggest that maybe Putin and how he's been unmasked will have some deleterious effect on the popularity of Donald Trump in the Republican Party. But Tucker Carlson, see, Tucker Carlson in your district, do your district go up to Brian Pond? It does not, but Brian Pond is where my mom comes from. So, and I have a nice cottage on the same lake that Tucker has. Do you know Tucker Carlson? I've met him and ran into him in the local corner store there. He's a Putin defender, too. And I think he's a Putin, he may be a Putin defender because Trump is. But how does that hurt Trump? I don't know how it hurts him. I mean... I think that, you know, we live in a continuum and events happen and people rise and they fall and movements come and go. And I've actually given up political prognostication because it's a fool's errand these days. I really don't know where we're heading. But again, I try not to focus on personality and I try to focus more on policy, direction of our country. I think there's so much distraction about personality. You know, there's nobody that wants everybody to be talking about Donald Trump more than Donald Trump. No question about that. He's good at that. And, you know, there's a lot of people that make loads of money on both sides of the aisle talking incessantly about Donald Trump. I prefer to focus my energies on issues that I think are really important to main people. And that's why I've taken some positions that people scratch their heads and say, like, you know, that isn't a very conventional Republican position. But I think it's time that we, as I said, think anew and act anew. You know, it's a shortcut to sort of put somebody in a bucket about being pro-Trump or anti-Trump. What we should be doing is just thinking about where we want to go as a people and what's the best path to get us there on a whole host of policy issues. Energy, education, you know, transportation, the environment. There's so many cross currents that I think people need to focus on. And it's easy just to, like, get caught up in the personality of the moment. Meanwhile, you know, the house is burning. It's pretty bad. I've been involved in a ballot measure and you've supported it. And I appreciate that. Protect main elections. You know, we... I'm thinking about Russia when I say this because Russia has spent an ungodly amount of money in... In fact, I have the number here. They've spent $182 million in recent years influencing policy in the U.S., laying the groundwork for their invasion of Ukraine. There are so many foreign actors that are getting access to our very open political system here through money, through loopholes in campaign spending law that we need to close so that elections can be about Maynard's interests, about American's interests, not susceptible to foreign influence. And so I put a bill in the legislature that got broad bipartisan support, actually enacted, to stop foreign meddling in our referendum campaigns, which is totally legal in Maine. It's not in many other states. The FEC, the Federal Elections Commission, just said that they don't have any authority over this. You mean that foreign governments, foreigners can put as much money as they want in a Maine... Foreign corporations, but also foreign governments. Yeah. And the most recent example of that and the reason the governor vetoed the bill, I think, was that she tied it up with the ongoing question of the CMP Corridor, which was supported, or I should say that the question of the ballot was opposed by Hydro-Quebec, who is a Crown corporation, owned 100% by the province of Quebec, Canada, a foreign government. They spent $22 million, and unprecedented some, in trying to influence that election. My bill didn't deal with that. It was forward-looking. But I think the governor was concerned about, you know, signing the bill in the context of that campaign. So, she vetoed it. We failed an override by one vote. We're now sending it out to the voters where we're collecting signatures. We're over halfway there now to put it on the ballot. Along with that, we have part of the bill, which calls upon Maine's congressional delegation to overturn Citizens United, because we need to stop this... We need to make elections equal for citizens. And when you treat corporations as a citizen, you know, the citizen of Exxon Mobil is gonna outgun a resident of Freiburg, Maine, any day of the week. So, we need to deal with this chronic and deep and serious problem of money in politics. And so, we need to tackle that. It should be a bipartisan approach, like we're doing... We did in the Maine Legislature... You say it should be a bipartisan approach from the money in politics. Yes. But it doesn't seem to be. I think it is. I mean, I think, first of all, the problem is clearly with both sides. I mean, everybody's taking money from... Well, everybody wants money, but the lefties would like to... I mean, I was on the National Governing Board of Common Cause for nine years in Washington, and they pressed hard on this issue of money in politics. But I do know, for a fact, not you. You're on the Common Cause side. You know, maybe you're against money and a lot of money in politics and influencing public policy. So, but in Washington, there's a lot of leading Republicans that are against it. That's why it's so hard to overturn legislatively Citizens United. Not only that, but we had McCain Fine Goal, which was struck down. We had... I mean, even our two moderate Republican senators voted against the bill that would overturn Citizens United. So, it's hard. I'm not saying that Republicans are bad because of that. I'm saying, you're a Republican, you're good, because you're a physician I agree with. Well... But it is... I don't know how we convince them. It's okay to regulate this. Yeah. There is a strong current of, you know, thinking what... or just distrusting any sort of regulation on the Republican side. And it's not a... sometimes it's not a bad inclination, but I think on some of these big issues, I think Republicans get played by powerful interests. Yeah. I've come out... Another issue is kind of radical for Republican in some ways, but over a long period of study, I've come out in favor of a consumer-owned utility to replace our investor-owned utility, CMP Inversant. Most people don't know that CMP Inversant are owned by foreign investors versus the old Bangor Hydro is actually owned by a foreign government, the city of Calgary, Canada. Yeah. CMP is owned ultimately by Ibadrola, who is a Spanish conglomerate, which in turn, the two largest owners of Ibadrola are the governments of Norway, not Norway, Maine, Norway, the country, and Qatar. And, you know, I think people have lost a lot with globalization and I think people are realizing that and they're all for free markets. But the issue is that they're losing power, they're losing the right to self-determination. And it's not getting the job done. When you have natural monopolies like our electric utilities owned by foreign actors, it doesn't work. And we've seen the results. Let me back to, you know, personalities. The problem is that much of human history is about individual personalities, much of human history. And democracy a little less, but because it is government by the people, ostensibly, Brooks, back to David Brooks in his column in mid-February. I want your comment on this. Brooks says many of America's founders were fervent believers in liberal democracy, not the liberal, where Republicans say, you lives, that's not what the liberal were talking about. Classical democracy. And they were fervent believers in liberal democracy up to a point. They had profound respect for individual virtue, but also for individual frailty, personality. Personality can be virtuous or it can be frail. Samuel Adams said, ambitions and lust for power are predominant passions in the breasts of most men. You've been in politics for a long time. You've met a lot of politicians. You don't disagree with that. I do not disagree with that. I don't think anybody would. Patrick Henry admitted to feelings of dread when he contemplated the depravity of human nature. One delegate to the Constitutional Convention said that the people lack information and are constantly liable to be misled. Liable to be misled. Our founders, said Brooks, were aware that majorities are easily led by demagogues. So you're aware of these issues and problems and the public to be aware of them, right? They've been a problem in human history for millennia. And they are always, and we need to create institutions that will account for these issues of human nature. And the guardrails that Madison and the people who designed the Constitution checks and balances, our guardrails for making sure that power is diffused a little, it has nothing to do with the nature of people, leaders who get power, like Putin. And I say, like demagogues, we've had one, more than one in our human history, in our country's history, that you build these guardrails in order to check passion and prejudice. But Madison said, and he learned this from his mentor who was the president of Princeton at the time he was there, Madison has a lot of big role to play in terms of conscience, in terms of what's right and wrong, in terms of governing passions that get out of control. Religion, government can't do it all. So he said, one guy said, Madison and his cohorts designed a Constitution but it was a Constitution for fallen people. In other words, these people could get out of control. Do you agree with that, that things could get out of control? I know how much my faith helps guide me and hopefully better my judgment, increase my tolerance, my love of other people. The way I interact with them, I try to live up to the standards of my faith. I'm a Christian who is a member, my wife and I, of the Congressional Church up in South Paris. I like the Congressional Church because it's founded on the line in Matthew that if two or more gather my name, I am there. So the sense is that you belong to the liberal church. The sense is that it's not hierarchical. The power of the church is based on two people coming together. So a congregation is the ultimate source. But it's accepting of people who are different than you. It's based on love. It's based on the commandment of Jesus to love thy neighbor as thyself. I think whether you adopt that faith or not, this is a sentiment which is carried through in many of the world's major religions. So I agree, regardless of your faith family, I think thinking about the bigger picture is always helpful. Brooks addressed what you just addressed. You had to react to this. Brooks says Madison and his colleagues designed a series of checks and balances which they hoped would protect against abuses of political power. But, says Brooks, the founders recognized that a much more important set of civic practices would mold people to be capable of being self-governing citizens. Churches mold people to be capable of being self-governing. Churches were meant to teach virtue. Leaders were to receive classical education. You said you often wished that you had received classical education. Leaders were to receive classical education so they might understand human virtue and vice and the fragility of democracy. Patriotic rituals were observed to instill shared love of country. I think the guy's right on myself. So you've talked about yourself and you fit into what he's talking about. Well, I don't know how to react to that except that I do think that I think there's a lot of shared perspective. As I said, you know, a lot of what you're talking about there are shared by many Americans. We kind of lose sight of that. The majority for sure. And we are governed by these fleeting passions, often fleeting. I get issues that like stir me up for a while, sometimes it's days on end, sometimes it's years on end, and sometimes it's a few seconds. And I think we just need to balance ourselves and remember what is important and remind ourselves that we're all in this journey together. This is a shared experience and we need to be respectful of each other. We need to give each other elbow room. We need to tolerate differences. We need to listen to each other. We shouldn't believe everything we read on social media. We should give people the benefit of the doubt. Very, very good advice. And I want to finish what Brooks said because I think I'd be interested in your comment because I think it fits with what you just said. He said, he went on. He talked about the churches. He talked about the patriotic rituals, which were important. He said newspapers and magazines were there to create a well-informed citizenry. Etiquette rules, etiquette rules and democratic manners were adopted. And it's true, they became part of our fabric, a way of governing with certain rules, unwritten rules about how you behave as a politician to encourage social equality and mutual respect. That's what you're talking about. And then he says, this is a little bit of a downer, over the past few generations that hopeful but sober view of human nature has faded. Narcissism, he says, it's all about me. Human beings think they should be unshackled from restraint. But you're talking about the importance of restraint. Yeah, I agree with that. I think that we should all be restrained. And I do think it is a common courtesy. I mean, like treat people like you want to be treated. It's golden rule stuff. I mean, it's not very complicated. And it's easy to get away from. All of the passions are tugging people away from that these days. And I do think that we've lost the moorings on keeping there. And we just need to find the way to keep the balance, keep the moorings. And politics is no different from a lot of other places here. I mean, professions have lost much of their integrity. We saw through the recent corporate events, for example, that the legal profession and the accounting profession, they were called professions because it was something that you professed. There were responsibilities involved with it. It wasn't just transactional. And I think one of the expressions commercially for what you're talking about is the increasing transactional nature of people. They're looking out and trying to get the best deal. They're trying to get, you can't win without somebody else losing. That sort of thing. And it's a problem across the spectrum, not just in politics. You can't win without somebody else losing. I think you've hit on something, Rick. The problem is we think it's a zero-sum game. People think it's a... If that person gets ahead, I'm bound to lose. I think that's part of the race problem. If you're trying to help these people get ahead, that must mean that I'm going to lose. I'm going to lose status. I'm going to lose my position in life. I don't know how we get over that zero-sum game business, but your advice is good advice. Yeah, it's distressing because I think the whole American project is based on the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. When we start thinking that there's only one pie and we need to grab our piece of it and that we can't create a bigger pie by working together, living together, recreating together, and engaging in society together, that's a real foundational problem. That's a great place to end this program. I really appreciate you being here. Harold, it's always wonderful to talk with you. Thank you very much.