 Bingo. We're back. 12 o'clock, rock. I'm here with John Wahey, former governor of the state of Hawaii, on Community Matters. And we're going to talk about something that happened last Thursday. Because last Thursday, Think Tech had its 2016, what do I call it, Think Tech United, our annual holiday gathering at Laniakea. And we had a fabulous speaker namely John Wahey talking about changes in politics. And we thought it would be really interesting and nice if John could, you know, tell us more about that now here on Community Matters. You want an in-depth look. So this is where we get to look up the, you know, what are you, what are you saying, look in the back of all of these things. But the back story. The back story. The thing about it, John, is that you were, you have been, you know, involved in it or observing it for many years, decades, a lifetime, a career anyway. And you have, you know, as time goes by, you become what I call emeritus. Well, as I get older, you know. A gubernatorial emeritus. If you fold in enough elections, you probably learn how to vote by the time it's over. Yeah, I got it, yeah. So this was, this is really a very interesting talk you gave on Thursday. You know, we talked about it, you know, changes in politics, but you went, you went into national politics, local politics, and essentially the factors that make all these things change, and they came up with a recommendation, and I want to talk about all of that now. Sure. So let's see if we can capitalize how you saw, since what, the 70s, I guess, how you saw national politics changing. Well, it's basically an ebb and flow. I mean, in any discussion of politics we start off by saying there's a right and there's a left. But, and there is, and there are all kinds of descriptions that you can give to define that. But what's interesting is watching the groups of people or organizations shift across the spectrum, that yesterday, yesterday's right-wingers, conservatives, maybe tomorrow's radicals, and more likely the other way around. Yesterday's radicals or left-wingers end up being conservative, and we talked about things like the labor movement that started out, civil rights. You know, with the civil rights movement in Hawaii, which is pretty much left, you know, it was left-wing, and it was the churches that led the way. Well, and great things were accomplished. Those same churches, and by the way, they were opposed by other churches that read the same doctrine and came up and said people shouldn't have rights, you see what I'm saying? But, and then after that movement goes through, they get united against whether or not we should, the women should have choice because of their doctrine. And all of a sudden that puts the, the religious community, or at least a segment of it, on the right side of the political spectrum. So there's all these things going on, and the real trick, if you're going to be a practitioner, is sensing that and relating to that, and beginning to understand that, and learning to talk to the various people. You know, it's the difference between Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton. And let's take the issue of abortion, for example. 1996, Bill Clinton speaking, accepting the nomination Democratic Party, National Convention, and he talks about abortion because it's, it's a tightrope at that point, you know? And he talks about how it, and he says that he makes this statement that abortion should not only be legal and safe, it ought to be rare. Rare. Rare. Rare. You mentioned that, yes. And we are going to couple it, our movement of making it safe and legal with an adoption program. You see, he is talking, he understands his constituency. In 2016, you know, Hillary's running, and the word rare is not even mentioned. And so what does that mean? That means, essentially, what happened in the past election is 70% of all evangelicals voted against her, not for Trump, actively against her, because they saw a future that had no part for them. Whereas those same evangelicals, the majority, actually, wasn't, you know, a huge majority, but it was more than 50% voted for Bill Clinton. Yeah. Now what, what happened? What happened? You know, I think what happens is sometimes some people, you know, get so tied up in the issues that they forget that these are people that they're talking to. And so, you know, and there are, in that particular case, there was actually a discussion. Why, why, why, why do you dislike the wife so much more than the husband, Bill and Hillary? Well, because there seems to be no room for us. So what is the room? You know, where is all of this? And if you're going to be in politics, that's the point, if you're going to be in politics, you need to understand these forces at play and come up and say, okay, I believe that where I stand, this group is somebody who ought to support me and that group ought to be supporting me. You know, it's not simply saying, boy, you know, I prayed last night and I got divinely anointed, so I'm going to run for office. It's a little bit more than that. I mean, it used to be like that, by the way, that you got anointed. That's called a divine right of kings. You know, you were born... Over the good old days. Yeah. And you know, there's something to be said for it, you know. We Hawaiians, you know, sort of believe in the blood, too. But you know, this strikes me that this kind of ebb and flow, you know, the sine curve of politics, the sine curve of the elect or the sine curve of humanity in any given at all, it's always like that. It's always been like that. Maybe different duration, different interval, but it's always going to happen something like that. Well, it's interesting that, you know, what's fascinating to me is not only looking at the country in Hawaii and usually, you know, Hawaii becomes extremely relevant when you start, but the planet, I mean, the whole world on one level is caught up in this idea of fundamentalism and religious, this religious phenomenon making a comeback. That is so different from just say 30 years ago when the trend was secularization, secularization. Camel Auditorc creates a new country out of the Ottoman Empire that's secular and it becomes the showcase for Middle Eastern democracy. And now in that very country, you're dealing with the same forces that we may be dealing with in America where there is this revival of fundamentalism and springing back, challenging that flow. That's happened. You go to Thailand, Thailand, you know, it was a, not too long ago, his name was Tusken, Tusken. This big time business guy gets elected, okay? And strangely enough, that person, Tusken, not only did he get elected as the champion of the poor people, okay? It turns out he got impeached. Now, how much of this analogy can it be applied to the United States? It's maybe, you know, moving along. But the same kind of discussions we are now having about Donald Trump's business interests occurred in Thailand just in the last decade. And you see that right across the whole planet that these things are no longer isolated little cases. You know, like when I was sitting in the sixth grade and people would say, that only happens in Russia. That only happens there. No, it's happening in America. It's happening right here. Now we're having these discussions and we'll see. We'll see how all of this turns out. What it suggests is that, you know, if you're going to run for office, if you're going to be a political official, you have to know where we are on the sine curve. Yeah, you have to know... If you're going to deal with people, then you ought to know a little bit about them. You know, you're going to... And that's the thing. And see, this is the great... If one explanation and the list left, right, the dichotomy is, oftentimes people... We say that the left loves people in general. And the right can't stand them in general, but likes them, loves them as individuals. Okay. You know? So you can take some of these fanatical crazies that, you know, want to cut every program that's out there to help human beings. And they may be the greatest philanthropists around. You know, it's this dichotomy of how things work. And, you know, it's kind of interesting to actually listen to people and hear what they're saying, what they truly stand for. I think the Republicans in Hawaii missed their chance within the lingual. And I'll give you a specific example of what I think is that they're supposed to be on the Democratic side traditionally. We have a fascination with government. We love government. Government can fix anything. You know, Franklin Delano Roosevelt taught us anything. He taught us that. You see? And this is where we come from. On the other side, the Republican side, it didn't work well for Herbert Hoover, but the idea of individualism becomes important. Private sector initiatives and so forth. And minimal government. Minimal government, yeah. But now I am the governor. Let's say I'm the new, heaven forbid, elected Republican governor of Hawaii. Now, if that is my philosophy and I'm speaking to these things, you know, it's not... My problem is I can talk about limited government and the rest, but I still have all these problems that people are facing of homelessness, of this and that, of the social network. How do I take care of that within the context of what I believe? Well, I think the first thing I would have done if I was the Republican governor is emphasize nonprofits. Go out there and begin to tell people, you know what nonprofits appear to be better suited to, you know, carry out the delivery of services. So why should we, every time, why should we treat nonprofits as simply demonstrations instead of the actual service delivery? You know, so meanwhile, we're building the bureaucracy over and over again to do things we don't need to do. Well, to do things, well, the problem is, and that is one problem of building the bureaucracy, is that it may start off very needed, absolutely critical, but as time goes on, it may not be because the world changes, different ways of doing things, but we're stuck with the framework because, oh, after all, those are human beings holding those positions and so forth. We can't fire them, we can't make them go away. And so you can't, you don't have the flexibility. But a Republican governor can make a great speech about just what I just said and carry a message. You see, the key to relating to the groups is understanding your own message. Yes. And a lot of times, people give brilliant speeches, but they don't know what they're talking about. They don't really understand what that means in the real world. Gotta connect, you know, and how does that connect? Yeah. And so, you know, and that's what Linda blew. I mean, she blew it. No, even the idea, and even if you want to go cutting edge, go cutting edge, you know, go out there, stand for something, look at it. What is good for, what is true in Hawaii? Now, we've got the issue of gay marriages, for example. You know, what does that mean? Now, I got my constituency, there's a hardcore religious right, the churches and so forth. They're opposed to it. But it's interesting that the young in those evangelical churches that may be adamantly opposed to abortion see that as murder, are kind of like, hey, give the guys a break. You know, scientific evidence shows, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And at least we can, we know that within that constituency there is a group, a group of constituencies who might start to say it's okay. It's okay, and it's true. And so, you're dealing with these issues in a way that, now, okay, let's go explain it. Let me explain why this is important. How this helps, and how that fits my philosophy. It fits my philosophy because I don't believe government should be in anybody's bed. Right, connected up. Yeah. Let's take a short break. That's from a governor, John Wahey, here on Community Matters. We're talking about a talk he gave last Thursday at our think-tech holiday gathering at Laniakea. How politics have changed. And now, when we come back from this break, we're going to talk more about the state politics. Yes. And how they can affect the national politics. We'll be right back. Hi. I'm Donna Blanchard. I'm the host of Center Stage here on Think-Tech. This show is so very dear to my heart. We talk with artists of various different ill care about the process that they go through for their art. So we talk about what they're doing, why they are doing it, how they do it. And it's a show that is inspiring. This is what I hear from people all the time. And a show that will teach you something, sometimes something about yourself. I hope you'll join us. The show is Center Stage. It's on Think-Tech every Wednesday at 2 o'clock. We'll see you then. Hi. I'm Ethan Allen, host of Lakeable Science on Think-Tech Hawaii. I hope you'll join me each Friday afternoon as we explore the amazing world of science. We bring on interesting guests, scientists from all walks of life, from all walks of science to talk about the work they do, why they do it, and moreover why it's interesting to you. What the science really means to your life, its impacts on you, how it's shaping the world around you, and why you should care about it. I do hope to join you every Friday at 2 p.m. for Lakeable Science. We're back. We're live. I'm Jay Fidel here on Think-Tech Community Matters with John Wahey, a former governor of the state of Hawaii, about how politics have changed nationally and locally. So in the break, we talked about change, being the operative term here, and that people change. The world changed. Well, the one constant in life is change. Yes. That is absolute. It's going to happen. But it may not be... Change may be more like a wave, you know, like this, then contrast. In other words, I think there's a kind of condition in life. And in politics, to sort of go to the middle, go to the middle, eventually, you know, go to the middle, make it work. Yeah. And in Hawaii... Yeah, let's talk about Hawaii. But how have, you know, you're talking about national politics and the national ebb and flow, or global. I mean, you know, you've talked about that too. But what about locally? We are not the same because we are an island, we have different parameters. Well, let's see. This is the interesting thing, and maybe I wasn't clear, but the point I was trying to make was there appears to be a bubble in Hawaii, in the sense that we used to call it many different things. We refer to it as the lag time. If something happens on the mainland, there's going to be a lag time. It's going to be five, ten years before we begin to see some aspect of the current in Hawaii. Or like now, you know, we have this great... We had a big revolution, in a sense, political revolution going on in the country, at least vis-a-vis values. You know, there was a challenge of values on the national election. And yet in Hawaii, we did the predictable thing. 67% voted for Hillary Clinton, but... And so people used to look at that as a kind of a negative, that Hawaii was backwards. What I was suggesting was that maybe we're not backwards, maybe what's happening on the continent may be incompatible with how we live. How do you mean? And because what the changes that may be occurring up there may be coming from a different source. And when you look at it in terms of political terms, I mean, first of all, the background, the ambiance of being on the continent is, first of all, space. You know, space. You've got a lot of space. So if you don't like your neighbor, there's really possible you may never have to deal with them your entire life. Whereas in Hawaii, in terms of space, it's limited. So there's no way you can avoid dealing with anybody sooner or later that has to happen. And resources, infinite resources, at least when the United States began, infinite resources on the American continent, it's just fantastic. We created a phenomenal nation built on our resource. Well, in Hawaii, resources are limited again unless you want to create something out of water. You know, it's just here. And so your attitude and the way that you condition yourself by living here is guided by that. Has to be. And the other, I'll give you another example. Whenever, when immigrants came to America, the idea was, look, if you don't like the city, I mean, go west, young man. There's space. There's new lands. There's opportunities. In Hawaii, that's the end of the world. This was the most remote spot in, well, maybe East Island, you know, remote spot in the whole world. And there's no west to go to. So you got here. It's a different paradigm. It's a whole different paradigm. And you can see that reflected in the sense of government. And when it came to government them, America was founded on the idea of limiting the king's power. So the Bill of Rights was very important. And it was, thou shall not, thou shall not, thou shall not. And in a sense, the whole western civilization was based on the idea of limiting authority because of the history. Now, you get to Hawaii and you have authority. It's a hierarchy. But it's also conditioned not on limitation but on a kind of stewardship, a trusty ship. In fact, when the first constitution was drafted up for the kingdom of Hawaii, the native population actually signed a petition opposing it because they didn't like the thou shall not. They didn't like the limitations. What they wanted was, they said, you know, the problem with all these, you cannot do these things, is you never covered everything. You never told us what you have to do. What you can do, yeah. And what you are responsible for doing, which is what they were looking for. They were looking for what, you know, so it's not a matter of keeping government out of my hair and keeping it limited as possible. It's a matter of if I got a plan of tarot, who's going to be responsible for making sure I got water? You know? There's a lot of wisdom in that. Well, that's the context of a culture and the context of a culture. And the other one, which is major in a sort of a geopolitical sense was that, whether we like to admit it or not, the America's constitution is written by people who are slaves. So there were compromises about the human condition. Whereas in Hawaii, the constitution, and this is not just about Hawaiians doing this. I mean, we got these missionaries, the most puritanical in the American continent, coming down from New England to Hawaii to teach us, you know, the system and the religion. Those guys were adamantly anti-slavery, adamantly. I mean, whatever other criticism you can make about them, one thing you've got to give them credit for is they're anti-slavery. They were the abolitionists. And so they created their contribution to this cultural ambience was that, that every human being, no human being should be owned by somebody else and the like. So to the extent that anybody who was in any kind of servitude, didn't have to be just slavery, stepped on the soil of this island, they were free. They were instantly free. It was a very democratic notion. A leveling notion. It was. It was. And, you know, and the like. So here you have two separate cultural melews. Melews, if you think about it. And for years, because of the expansion of the continental point of view, those ideas have been coming to Hawaii. Now, what I would suggest they were... You made a recommendation. This is really important. Right. What is happening today is that the world is getting smaller. The American continent may in fact be in reality now an island. And the planet may be in fact. So what that means is it ought to be going the other way. And I believe that this is what Kennedy meant in 1963 when he said that Hawaii was everything that we are and everything that we ought to be. It was bringing these concepts of a limited space, all tied up in the, we call it aloha. And how you live in this kind of environment is wrapped in this system of aloha. That is what the United States may mean. This is what maybe what our mission is to serve the rest of the continent. How do we effectuate that mission? Well, I think first of all that we effectuated by how we participate, by how we actually... I think the first step in effectuating that mission is to live it here. You know, get out of this thing about how we got to follow the latest trend. And say the latest trend going this way is we're not going to have that nonsense. You know, we're not going to put up with those types of divisions. We are in fact going to bring something more special. Now, for a long time we have been trying to, like, you know, decide what one of those things are. And we used to think that, well, okay, it's our diversity. We really can't claim that, you know. Because, like I said, Seattle, San Francisco, they're all so diverse. Yeah, it's fantastic. You know, maybe we say about racial relationships. Yeah, we may not be perfect, but we do know how to live, at least without any kind of riots going on. You know, the funny thing, John, is that Tim Vandevere, the chair of the Democratic Party, was sitting in this chair a few weeks ago, made the same recommendation. He said that we had something here that we could and should give at least a Democratic Party on the mainland to help it restore itself. Well, we need to take the meds. And by the way, we used to. Okay, this is where I'm actually leading up to. Make your point, because we have to. Well, first of all, the Hawaiians believe that the islands changed you. And that's the basis of all of this. But it used to be that every governor speaking in any forum on the mainland from Hawaii would use this kind of language and would talk about the need and the whole idea of sending a canoe around the world. The message of that was, take care of the place that you are, because this is island planet. You know, so we may, and it's more than just taking care of plants and animals. It's taking care of human beings and how we can live in the future. But people need to express it, talk it and believe it. That's how you do it. Thank you, John. John Hawaii, former governor of the state of Hawaii, who gave a great speech and gave us insight, perhaps more today than he did on Thursday. Thank you so much. I appreciate your invitation.