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Richard Helppie
Before we talk about the elections, just a couple of things on the culture wars where [we have] the very touchy and very delicate issue of trans-activism and where the electorate is divided around this. Look, let me just stipulate that there are people, everyday, that are born with indeterminate genitalia or have both male and female characteristics and such. And as they develop, their secondary sex characteristics may develop as something other than that assigned at birth. And I think no one has an issue with those folks being treated well and so forth.
Robert Greenfield
I just answered a question today; the NEA and their birthing parent. You know this one, right? (Rich Helppie: Right.) I feel that what we clearly have is a bridge too far on the left of trying to...when you're trying to pander to or to accommodate every splinter group, what happens is that we lose sight of our true mission, such as an education. To me, in the United States - because through my wife and other associations, I've done a lot of international education in so many different countries - this country is actually less focused on education in the educational sphere than almost any country that I know. (Rich Helppie: Amen.) It has so many other agendas. That is a perfect example to me, when you start talking about you can't say the word "mother," it's a "birthing parent," right? So who are we talking about? The few transgender men who still have some physical capability on the female side in order to get pregnant and non-binary. Non-binary is nothing more than a personal choice; you're not even saying you're not male, you're not female, you just don't want to say. So we're going to change the entire system so we can't say that there are mothers anymore and now they are birthing parents? What happens to somebody that has adopted a kid? You're no longer the mother, you're what? The adoptive parent? This kind of focus on this type of thing means that we're not focusing on our central mission for our kids, which is broad-based education; that they are learning and learning and learning. Then as they get older, they can specialize; whether it's a trade, medicine, so on and so forth, you can specialize. But I believe honestly, what we're doing is we're moving away from what keeps the United States on top. We cannot win at anything if we're sitting there and arguing constantly about the transgender rights of a few athletes, which by the way, now several organizations have come out and said they have a disproportionate advantage so they can't be in the Olympics. Well, you think the Olympics, of course they want to be inclusive. So they're saying, well, men who are now women, they have too much testosterone, so we're not going to allow them to compete in certain areas. What does that say to you? It seems to me that the whole transgender rights issue has been blown out of proportion. And as you said really well, yes, of course, we want to have that kind of support. But hormone therapy at 12 - I'm on the left side of the spectrum and I don't agree with that.
Richard Helppie
This is one of the things that we're dealing with here, that this is obviously very touchy, very personal. I've actually known people who were born male, but as they entered puberty began to develop breasts. One young woman I knew said she had to leave school because the boys were becoming attractive to her, although she was male from birth. So that does happen and we do need to have compassion there. But when I listen to the...here's the argument the way I understand it, a trans-activist person will say, well, the body and the mind don't agree so we're not going to change the mind, we're going to change the body. We're going to administer drugs to stop the body from doing what it would naturally do. Somehow that's finding your real self, by first stopping what your body wants to do. Then we're going to administer more drugs to make your body do something it naturally wouldn't do. And then the things that we can't overcome with pharmaceuticals, now we're going to use surgery. By the way, if you raise the question and say that's a problem, now you're a bigot. I've watched kids very dear to me go through phases of what clothes they want to wear and who they think they are. The best line I heard, someone said, yeah, when I was eight, I wanted to be a dinosaur but nobody was fitting me with scales and a tail. I think we need to be smart about this and we need to be compassionate. The place for kindergarteners to learn is not about various genders and identities and genitalia, they should be learning the building blocks of mathematics, they should be learning how to speak - in this country - Spanish and they should be learning how to speak a little bit of Mandarin too, so that we can join the rest of the world and join this hemisphere. And, of course, the grounding in the English language and a full history and so forth. You've probably seen the news reports that a woman that still had her male genitalia was put in a woman's prison in New Jersey and impregnated two other inmates; nobody can look at that and say that's not a problem. And if the line doesn't get drawn someplace, when your daughter goes to college and is assigned a roommate, and the roommate says well, I identify as a female but is still very much physically a male, then what? We've got to think this through; it's always something that comes out...look, I got a lot of vitriol...I don't want to call it hate mail, but people that weren't happy about suggesting that we can maybe get to energy sources that aren't going to put CO2 into the air. So if we keep this part in, I'm sure you can [crosstalk].
Robert Greenfield
I just want to make the last comment on here - my line is drawn on - up to the age of consent I don't think that we should be paying for transgender therapies or things like that. My problem is - I'm like you - for a certain age, I don't think kids can make an informed choice until they are a bit older. (Rich Helppie: We should be kind to everybody.) If they want to make that choice, once they become an adult, God bless them, that's up to them. But there is a lot of fluidity when we're teenagers. There were people trying different [things]...some people were bisexual for a while, then now they're hetero, so on and so forth. But there's a very different thing than taking drugs, as you noted, to start changing your body, which in most cases is permanent. I'm not so sure a 12 year old or a 13 year old is ready to make that life choice; that choice can be made later on. Anyway, that's my feeling about it. I also feel that it takes us away from, as you've said, what is our purpose in the schools. In particular, I don't like the schools having to be the battleground for all of these issues when really...I think it depends basically, on how you look at schools. I don't look at schools as being the place that we dump all of our problems, then try to solve our problems in the schools. I don't think that's the right approach. I think the appropriate approach is that we need to focus on learning, inclusivity, all the things that you say, but not trying to make it into the culture and social mores.
Richard Helppie
Indeed, and we need to equip young people to become productive adults. I never knew anything about the personal life of my teachers because I just didn't care, they were there to teach me to read and to behave myself, and they were successful in half of that, [laughter] so I was grateful for that. And just on kind of another cultural issue, we had a great guest on recently, Adam Coleman, who's written and spoken a lot about fatherlessness and the correlation between young people getting offline.
Robert Greenfield
I saw that. That was an excellent episode.
Richard Helppie
He's really blunt, and I would just say I have a personal issue with men that don't raise their children. One of my brothers-in-law had saying in his hallway that I've always liked and it said the best thing a man can do for his children is to love their mother, and try to raise your kids and get them launched. I've seen strong women come from great relationships with their fathers; they've got a man in their life, they've got somebody that can speak to them, that can be there for them. And same way with young men; knowing I'd have to answer to my father was a great deterrent. So can we make the idea of having a mother and father popular again? Or is it really popular, but we're just again, being misled by media and politics?
Robert Greenfield
My personal feeling is that for the majority of the Americans, or anywhere else in the world, of being a mother and father is very popular. I think it's really good. I think that there have been a number of social and legal policies where fathers had been separated from their children and I don't think that we have done a very good job at repairing that. We have done some - less incarceration - that's a huge part. There's also a whole series of regulatory things, if the father is present, then people lose certain benefits and on and on. So I think that, to answer your question, I think that we need to - if the Republicans are very serious about being pro-life - they need to also be pro-fatherhood, they need to be pro-family, these kinds of things, and they need to put measures behind that. If they're going to have babies, it's not just well, you've got to take care of them. No, there's got to be a complete change in attitude, from a societal attitude, to more to what you're talking about. I'm the same way, no different than you; like my father, you don't talk back to your mom, you don't do this, you don't do that. There were a lot of "don'ts." But on the other hand, I taught that to my son; you don't disrespect your sister, definitely not your mom, these kinds of things. Now, if you do that intergenerationally, you get kids that are much more refined, inclusive; they're much more successful, because they accept women more into the workplace, their lives as executives. They don't just say, oh, it's got to be a man otherwise I don't respect. There are a lot of really fantastic things that come from that. And there are tens of millions - I don't know, 100 million - people in this country that believe in that but we don't actually talk about that as a society. So - and I'm sorry to say - I don't think the Democrats are going to do this.
Richard Helppie
We've had two things that we could do that we're not doing. First of all, child tax credit, that's wildly popular. Use the tax system to say, look, if you're raising a child, we know you need extra resources. Great. I'm all for that. Also, maybe that time we're spending teaching various fringe theories, we maybe spend time teaching someone how to be a good parent, how to be a good mother and father. So [use] the tax system, use the education system. That's all going to come down to elections and the media. We've got the midterms coming up, in fact, the primaries for Michigan are tomorrow. We're recording this on August 1. Really interesting. Any take on the primaries, on the midterm? Again, I grant it that you're coming from Australia, by Singapore, by Budapest, by Toronto, by Detroit.
Robert Greenfield
I think that history is a good lesson here. Definitely the Democrats have a major problem; they'd have a major problem even if they had a wildly popular president. Obama was popular and he had the worst midterm results in, I don't know, 50 years. Partly, the Democrats are not very good at tooting their own horn. When they do something right they are continuing always, let's go farther. They don't know when to stop. So I think the Democrats have a PR image problem on top of the fact that the party in power always has a problem. That's one thing. I think on the right hand side there have been some movements, such as the end of Roe v. Wade, that give the Democrats some hope. I'm happy to see less culture wars right now. I'm hoping that...I think the Democrats are making a massive mistake to back any kind of Trumpian candidates in order to get their guy in, because the Trump guys are too extreme; so therefore, they will get elected even if they're not that strong. I think that this is a really bad idea. I honestly believe right now that the politics in the United States are not toxic, they're more silly, right? (Rich Helppie: Yeah.) When you have Trump trying to figure out which one of nine candidates in Michigan he's going to back in one day; it's this guy and that guy, I think is really nice...[crosstalk].
Richard Helppie
Here's Trump's thing, again, it's all about Trump and Trump's brand. What he's been doing in congressional races, senate races, and governor races - and here in state of Michigan with the Michigan primary - he looks and he sees who the likely winner is going to be. Then he says, I'm really looking at them hard and he offers his endorsement. Then, within minutes, there are ads up with the candidate and Trump, and Trump's actually bigger and more in the foreground. And I'm like, wait a minute, how did they produce that ad that fast? How come Trump's so prominent? How come it's on all these channels? Now, I don't know this as a fact but I'm kind of connecting the dots and I can see oh, all right, I'm going to offer you my endorsement but here's what you're going to do. You're going to go up on TV with this, and I'm going to be prominent here and whatever. It's all back down to, its Trump then Trump's in (Robert Greenfield: Fundraising.) Yeah. And Trump's going to be able to say look at all these candidates I endorsed that won, I'm still a big player. What I've advised the Republicans to do; dump Trump, just have a little backbone and say, you're a losing candidate. Go away and we're going to go on about our business here.
Robert Greenfield
I'm going to ask you a question about that in just a second. But first, I want to answer your other question. I think that the Democrats are going to lose the House. I don't think it's going to be a landslide. I think it would be about a 20, 25 seat majority, by the Republicans, which is about a 30 to 40 swing. So I think that will be the case. But I do think that the Democrats have enough decent candidates that they're going to get a 51-49 in the Senate. That's my view. I think that there are a couple candidates; Tim Ryan's running better. Again, he runs in the middle, better than anybody expected. Trump, JD Vance; that's not necessarily a good thing. Of course, the core guys love him but the other people are like, the guy's a little bit too extreme in certain ways. So I think what's going to happen here is, if the Democrats run to the middle, I think that they can possibly hold the Senate, I'm predicting 51-49. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. And I think a 25 to 30 majority for the Republicans in the congressional side. What do you think?
Richard Helppie
What I think is very simple, we should all be happy that the government is balanced that way, and that they would maybe be working for us. But I think some of the vote is going to come down to, you're a reasonable Democrat, but you're going to do what Nancy Pelosi tells you to [otherwise] you're not going to get campaign cash and you're not going to get on good committees; similarly, Kevin McCarthy on the Republican side. So if we were not in this really, pre-civil war, partisan battle, great: 51-49 either way, 20 seats here, 20 seats there, either way. My district got re-districted. I was aligned with geography to my west, where it was a very conservative Republican, basically a so-called "safe" seat. Now it's more re-aligned to the east, and it's got a middle of the road Democrat. I think that Debbie Dingell seems like a reasonable person, absent the fact that we're in this partisan war. She'd be a great person to be an independent. (Robert Greenfield: She needs to retire.) [Laughter] Well, no, she's not that old, I don't think, and then actually, the Republican candidate is quite good, too. So we'll see what happens.
Robert Greenfield
I think though, that gives too...when there's been non-gerrymandered type of approach, like Michigan, I thought that was a really good approach. When you have extreme gerrymandering, that, of course, changes things significantly; this is not the place to talk about it. But I just think the results are the results and I think that is going to be the case. Now I want to ask you the big question. Will the Republican party dump Trump? Will that be gradual? Will that be just a groundswell of a DeSantis, who is the clear front runner right now, or what do you think is going to happen?
Richard Helppie
Well, I don't know if they will, because the Republicans' ability to self-destruct is legendary. They need to and it seems like they want Trump to go away, but they don't want to have to actually do anything about it. Ron DeSantis has proven to be a great governor in Florida. Everything they throw at him, every smear that they do, he just beats it back like, well, here's what the data says. DeSantis is a candidate. Mike Pence, who is a quiet guy; I've had a chance to meet him a couple times, he's got experience as a governor. He's got experience in the House. I think you're going to find, at the end of the day, Mike Pence was the adult in the room. When Trump was careening and bouncing off walls and ordering Diet Cokes it was Mike Pence that was calming things down. They've been talking about Mitt Romney again. Of course, Romney is hated by the extreme end of the party. Mitt Romney was a capable governor, is a good businessman. He did a great job with the Olympics, he could actually manage things. Nikki Haley, great governor in South Carolina, got her international credentials furnished as ambassador to the United Nations. One time she was crossways with Trump and Trump said, well, she's confused. Nikki Haley was out that afternoon saying no, I'm not confused. I know what my job is and what my role is. So I think there is another great candidate there. I think that the Republicans are not necessarily a Ron DeSantis party. I think they've got people there. And I also often pondered on what will the Democrats do? Joe Manchin, he's a centrist Democrat and he speaks very articulately; he probably be a very strong candidate. Now, here's the question to both parties. Will the primary system allow us to get good candidates? Because the primary system for both parties is hideous. At least the Democrats are smart enough to tell everybody, go away, here's who we're going to pick. And everybody...Buttigieg, you're going to get to be Transportation Secretary, now leave. The Republicans self-destructed and allowed Donald Trump to get an early toehold with 22% of the vote. But the last thing I want to say is this; for both the Democrats and the Republicans, there's this populist urge that says our government isn't doing what we need it to do. It doesn't feel like our government, it feels like the government of power mongers and lobbyists. It's being aided and abetted by a media system that keeps stoking that. My proof point is this; if that populist urge could bring someone as unqualified as Donald Trump to the Oval Office, couldn't some reasonable person or party tap into that and actually start getting some change?
Robert Greenfield
My answer to that is, I don't know if you know, but there's a new party called the Forward Party.
Richard Helppie
Yep. Yes. (Robert Greenfield: Which, let's not talk about that.) Andrew Yang.
Robert Greenfield
That'll last about ten minutes. But on the Democratic side - Democratic Party side - they do not have the line-up that the Republicans do. If you really winnow through pretty fast in terms of people who are actually successful, it comes down to people like Gavin Newsom; hated by a lot of people, most populous state. But if you want to also, on the flip side, say on the other end, I don't believe that Kamala Harris is electable. She didn't make it even to the first round last time. So the Democrats have not really got a lot of centrist candidates that would be broadly appealing. You mentioned about Biden being in his basement; Biden was not elected because he was Biden. He was like the safe choice that everybody said, we kind of know this guy and we don't want Trump. (Rich Helppie: I agree.) When the Democrats come up with a candidate, they're going to have to have way better than that next time. My personal prediction is, and I've heard some great combinations; I think DeSantis has the inside track. Also he looks kind of like a regular guy. He's got a little bit of a ruddy complexion, and he, as you say, he stands up and he takes the blows, and he pushes right back. He always surrounds himself with a coterie of people so that he's got, kind of like, some experts around him. That's an impressive approach. I think some of the other candidates that you're talking about, I understand Mike Pence - my sister lives in Indiana; there are people in Indiana [who feel] that he was too extreme on the right side but now that Supreme Court is already over there - Mike Pence is not that far to the right and he was an adult in the room. It would be interesting to see Mike Pence as a candidate. I think that DeSantis would be more successful as a candidate, primarily because it's another generation. He's also a veteran that was successful in the military, again, he's a strong guy. He kind of is like Adam Kinzinger, but a little bit more gravitas.
Richard Helppie
So DeSantis at the top of the ticket; top two candidates for vice president?
Robert Greenfield
Well, if you threw in there, Nikki Haley, then you're going to win, because then you've got yourself a woman of color. You've got DeSantis, who protects the Christian part of this because Nikki Haley is a Sikh after all, right? I don't think Nikki Haley can win, because ultimately the evangelical, they cannot support a non-Christian at the top; enough of them would not be there; but as a number two. DeSantis is young, the chances of him having a problem with his health in office is minimal unless somebody took him out or something like that. And I think Nikki Haley is a great number two. Kristi Noem, absolutely no, nobody gets elected from South Dakota. I think that the other thing with, as you said, she's burnished her credentials - Nikki Haley - along the way. So I think that is a clear winning combination.
Richard Helppie
Tim Scott, maybe. As we're nearing the end of our time, Robert, real quick, on the Democrat ticket for 2024, if you have a view, and then anything that we didn't cover today that you'd like to make sure we talk about.
Robert Greenfield
My personal feeling is that the Democrats need a white male at the top in order to keep the large part of the vote. I'm not being racial about it. Joe Biden got 61% of the white vote, and those people vote, so I think Gavin Newsom, who is photogenic, or if you could find somebody else. I like Joe Manchin, but I think the progressives would just vilify him and they would walk out on him. They won't walk out on Gavin Newsom. So I think Gavin Newsom at the top. I think, a woman - a white woman - as a number two could be Gretchen. I don't think Gretchen has got the (Rich Helppie: God forbid.) Well, I'm just throwing her name out there. It needs to be, I think, a governor. There's not that many...
Richard Helppie
You don't have Cuomo; he's not the mix here anyplace.
Robert Greenfield
I don't think Cuomo can be in the mix. And the reason why, not because he's not smart enough, it's just that he has pissed off too many people.
Richard Helppie
I may write...there's one race that I may be vocal about. One race that I feel strongly about is Michigan Governor. I just want to put it like this; I think that the current governor we've got has to go. Really it's about ethics and leadership; when you're giving 10 million people directives and you ignore them yourself...I know people who had elderly relatives die in nursing homes, couldn't visit them, died without a hug, last eight months of their life. We were told not to go to Florida because everyone down there's dying; it was a lie but we were told that by our governor and we were told don't travel. This governor [then] travels to Florida to visit her elderly father when the only answer was, I'm sorry, Dad, I've just told 10 million people they can't do this. Then it goes on and on, where you couldn't buy tomato seeds and so forth. But this governor needs to go. She can't run on her track record and the ethics have been horrible.
Robert Greenfield
I think she's an intellectual lightweight also, personally, I really do. I think she has a great background, her family's great background, but she's not at that level. But anyway...and I understand what you're saying, since I don't live here, and that type of...Boris Johnson was kicked out, as you know, Prime Minister in England for this kind of thing.
Richard Helppie
For bad hair though, right. [Laughter.]
Robert Greenfield
Terrible hair. But just about any subject that we have not covered, this is my chance to be able to say to everyone in the United States and beyond; actually, I think we are stabilized even though people feel that we are not. I think that Biden has been a stabilizing force with NATO, with various cooperation around the world. Biden is clearly a transitory, transitional president. I don't want him to run again. I think that it's easy to pick on anybody; whether we picked on Trump walking up the stairs and couldn't hold the glass or Biden, whatever thing he's doing. The fact is these guys are in their 70s. Biden's about to be 80. That can't happen in the future. The flip side is, and we didn't talk about economics, but I don't think the US economy is in bad shape at all. They did pump too much money in, it did cause inflation, Fed realizes that. I think that they [are] dialing it back to three quarters; three quarters, I think that we are definitely okay. If you look around the world, there's no economy that is more dynamic than the US economy, every single person I know outside the United States - other than the Chinese, by the way - they all say, never count the US out. The US has got the best tools, and we have the global reserve currency. (Rich Helppie: Indeed.) Bitcoin is not going to blow us away. I think that my statement to everybody here is that things are not that bad at all. I think that I would love to see a moderate movement away from what some of the left is doing, which is way too much money thrown into the economy; it was a bad idea. I think we should be more issue focused which has actually happened, whether it was infrastructure, or CHIPS, or even a Family Leave Act or something like that. I think we do better that than the cornucopia of X trillion dollars. So my take-away message is - and thank you very much for inviting me - I think it's important for me to say to everybody, Richard Helppie, and his off-sider here, videographer [producer] Brian Kruger, do a service to this country, and they constantly bring on terrific guests, which is a little bit to the right for me, but that's okay, and we remain fans. I want to thank you for inviting me.
Richard Helppie
Great. Thank you, Robert. We've been on The Common Bridge today with one of our favorite guests, Robert Greenfield, who's traveled literally halfway around the world to be on The Common Bridge. The Common Bridge, of course, is at substack.com, where you will find our columns, you'll find video, you'll find podcast access, our magazine, and more. So please join us there; go to substack.com, put The Common Bridge in your search engine. For those of you that like to listen, we are on every podcast outlet. Of course, the transcripts of the podcasts are available at substack.com - be a paid subscriber or a free subscriber - on YouTube TV and of course, at Mission Control Radio on your RadioGarden app. With our guest, Robert Greenfield, this is Rich Helppie signing off on The Common Bridge.
Transcribed by Cynthia Silveri
Dialog and Deference; From The End of The World To Your Town, Part 2