Bill Kristol on holding the center

Dialogues with Richard Reeves

What should sensible Republicans do now? That’s the question Bill Kristol has been wrestling with since the nomination of Donald Trump - and it’s not going away. A veteran of Republican politics, scholarship and journalism, Bill’s view is that for the foreseeable future, the Republican party at a national level seems like a lost cause. The best hope is to build new spaces in the political center, and work with moderate Democrats, like Joe Biden, to actually, you know, govern the country, keep democracy safe, and all that good stuff. But Biden’s performance so far gives cause for concern. We talk about Bill’s own journey from working as a teen for Patrick Moynihan to the H.W. Bush White House and beyond; what Liz Cheney will likely have to do next; the warped politics of the Covid vaccination campaign; the bungled exit from Afghanistan and troubling signs of more isolationist thinking on both sides of the aisle; and the best and worst plausible scenarios for U.S. politics over the next three years.

Bill Kristol

William Kristol is editor-at-large of The Bulwark, having been a founder of The Weekly Standard, and is a regular guest on leading political commentary shows. Read his Bulwark columns here. He also has his own podcast, Conversations with Bill Kristol. From 1985 to 1993, Kristol served as chief of staff to Education Secretary William Bennett in the Reagan Administration and as chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle in the George H. W. Bush administration. Before coming to Washington, Kristol taught politics at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University.

Bill tweets from twitter.com/billkristol.

Kristolisms

I referred to a few of Bill’s Bulwark columns in particular:

American Conservatism, b. 1955, d. 2020?

A Tale of Three Possible Outcomes

Springtime for Moderate Democrats

The Birth of the Biden Doctrine?

Also Mentioned

• Michael Oakeshott, in his essay "On Being Conservative" (1956), wrote that: "To be conservative ... is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss."
• Bill mentioned the rise of “affective polarization”. This paper is a good place to start on that topic.
• I mentioned Arthur Brooks on when our opponents become our enemies. See his oped here.

The Dialogues Team

Creator: Richard Reeves

Artwork: George Vaughan Thomas

Tech Support: Cameron Hauver-Reeves

Music: "Remember" by Bencoolen (thanks for the permission, guys!)