This episode features the address Steve Hayward delivered this week to the Friends of Ronald Reagan at the California Club in Los Angeles, reflecting back on how Reagan weathered two tough mid-term elections and what lessons it might hold for Trump and Republicans this November. Dennis Quaid, who has signed recently to star as Reagan in an upcoming biopic, was in the audience... Source
Between the incessant controversy about Russia hacking our elections, and the recent recommendation of several U.S. science academies that we return to paper ballots, we thought it was high time to devote an episode to cyber-security issues. And we have just the person for the topic: “Lucretia,” Power Line’s International Woman of Mystery. In addition to being an expert on the Constitution... Source...
With two more weeks of primary election results to pick over, Steve Hayward checks in with Henry Olsen to see how things look. Florida increasingly appears to be the most interesting battleground state, with very competitive races for both governor and U.S. Senator. Henry also puts down his political polling data and puts on his Bill James hat to look ahead to the baseball playoff season starting... Source...
After receiving a query from a young person about why the U.S. didn’t aim for victory in Vietnam, Steve Hayward decided to put the question to Mackubin T. Owens, a Marine Corps veteran of Vietnam and long time professor of strategic studies at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. Mac has also written for National Review, the New York Post, and numerous other publications... Source
Will the November election produce a (Democratic) blue wave or a (Republican) red tide? Pre-election opinion polls this year seem more volatile than ever, and beyond the horse-race aspect, there are lots of problems with opinion polling in the age of cell phones and the internet. Steve Hayward sat down with Karlyn Bowman, public opinion specialist at AEI and author of recent article on “ Is... Source
Steve Hayward, just back from a regional meeting of the National Association of Scholars, sits down with Warren Treadgold, author of brand new book, The University We Need, which offers a bold idea: because colleges and universities are so far gone and likely unfixable, the time has come to found a brand new elite university that not only departs from the dreary orthodoxy of campus leftism... Source
In this very special episode, Steve Hayward uses some unaired material from a long interview with the late Peter Schramm of the Ashbrook Center. Peter passed away in August 2015, and left a legacy of brilliant and inspirational teaching to a generation of students at Ashland University. This Hungarian immigrant is best known from his lecture and essay on how he became an American, “Born American... Source...
If a thuggish regime fell in the forest and the New York Times didn’t report it, did it make a sound? This week Steve Hayward talks with Kelly Jane Torrance of the Weekly Standard about what is going on in Iran, where the Trump Administration’s heavy pressure may be straining the regime to the breaking point. But the mainstream U.S. media seem to be ignoring the tidings of increasing unrest and... Source
Steve Hayward and his pseudonymous mystery guest “Lucretia” return for the second half of their conversation about the meaning and interpretation of the 14th Amendment. Building on last week’s analysis of the “equal protection clause,” this episode goes on to the other three important clauses in Section 1—the “citizenship clause,” the “privileges and immunities clause,” and the “due process clause. Source
This month marks the 150th anniversary of the enactment of the 14th Amendment, which has been abused perhaps more than any other part of the Constitution. Steve Hayward welcomes back to the show the pseudonymous mystery guest from last week, “Professor X,” who knows more about the 14th Amendment than the Power Line crew has forgotten. In this first of a two-part series, Steve and “Prof. Source
With the ascent of “democratic socialism” in the Democratic party and a Supreme Court confirmation fight commencing this week, Steve Hayward checks in for the latest on how this may play out in the midterm election with Henry Olsen, and also introduces us to a new special, anonymous (and soon to be regular) mystery guest, “Professor X.” She teaches at a major public university, and argues that we... Source
Steve Hayward talks with two proud Yale bulldog alumni—James Kirchick of the Brookings Institution and Jeremy Carl of the Hoover Institution, about the mess in higher education and the mess at our border. It’s a coin flip between which is the bigger mess today—immigration or college campus madness, and maybe there is a connecting thread. But stick around, we have a side dish of energy policy... Source
What could the cult-camp classic “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” have to do with the electricity grid? A lot, as it turns out, and Steve Hayward ponders this gonzo crossover topic with three experts on energy policy, Lynne Kiesling of Purdue University, author Robert Bryce, and author/activist Tisha Schuller. Not only does this episode feature killer garden produce, but it also has Steve Martin... Source...
Steve Hayward is joined this week by Power Line’s own John Hinderaker and Power Line’s eminence grise behind the curtain, Joe Malchow, to dissect the key takeaways of the Inspector General’s findings about the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton. The second half of this episode features Henry Olsen with his latest “surf report” about where the Democrats’ “blue wave” stands at the moment. Source...
This week’s episode offers a conversation between Steve Hayward and Charles Copeland, president of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute ( ISI) about the crisis of the university, especially Steve’s favorite theme that universities are slowly committing intellectual suicide. This discussion took place at the recent Western Conservative Summit in Denver. Source
Steve Hayward talks this week with author Michael Walsh about his new book, The Fiery Angel: Art, Culture, Sex, Politics, and the Struggle for the Soul of the West. Walsh has encyclopedic knowledge of high culture from Homer to Rocky IV, with detours to opera, novels, fine art, and classical music along the way, revealing deep layers of political and cultural meaning and explaining why the... Source
Steve Hayward caught up with the noted author Matt Ridley and energy entrepreneur Chris Wright in a hotel lobby in Denver last week, and decided to make a podcast of it! Matt Ridley (nowadays Lord Ridley!) is the author of many fine books, including The Rational Optimist and The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge. Ridley is one of the leading “lukewarmers”—the band of people who believe... Source
Steve Hayward sits down with Rebecca Heinrichs of the Hudson Institute to survey the scene with regard to defense spending, middle defense, what Russia and China are up to, how the North Korea talks may go, and why Trump, like Mark Twain’s comment on Wagner’s music, is better than he looks when it comes to foreign and defense policy. Special shout out to Peter Schramm, our mutual teacher and... Source
Steve Hayward and John Hinderaker interviewed Michael Anton, former senior staffer at Trump’s National Security Council and author of the controversial “ Flight 93 Election” article from September 2016, at the Ricochet Podcast Summit in Washington. Anton revisited the infamous article, shared his insights about Trump’s political character, and also regaled the live audience with a great tale of... Source
This week Steve Hayward talks with . . . Steve Hayward! Well, not exactly. This special edition of the Power Line show features a keynote lecture Steve delivered at Arizona State University back in February on “The Suicide of the University.” Maybe coming next as a book and feature film. Source
Who can make the connection between an obscure and bizarre British kids TV show and contemporary U.S. political analysis? The Power Line Show, that’s who! “Henry, were helping Henry and were telling Henry everything we know, Henry, were helping Henry, but we’ve still got a long long way too go!”—is the refrain of “Helping Henry,” but in this episode, Henry Olsen of the Ethics and Public Policy... Source
The controversies surrounding free speech and academic freedom opened a new front last week with the execrable comments about the late First Lady Barbara Bush from Fresno State University professor Randa Jarrar. Steve Hayward talks here with Keith Whittington of Princeton University, author of a new book, “Speak Freely: Why Universities Must Defend Free Speech.” But as Whittington is also a... Source
Steven Teles of Johns Hopkins University is a rare liberal who writes with great perception and fairness about conservatism and conservative ideas. In this episode, Steve Hayward talks with Teles about his fine new book (co-authored with Brink Lindsay) “The Captured Economy,” and also about liberalism, intellectual history, and especially about the need for more conservatives in higher education. Source
Claremont Institute fellow Joseph Tartakovsky is out this week with a fascinating new book that illuminates the Constitution with a unique approach: “The Lives of the Constitution” explores the meaning of our central political document through the stories of ten important figures in the story—some familiar, like Alexander Hamilton, but some less well known, like James Wilson and Stephen Field. Source
Steve Hayward talks with Ed Whelan, president of of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, author of “Bench Memos” on National Review Online, and co-editor of “Scalia Speaks: Reflections on Law, Faith, and a Live Well Lived.” In addition to recalling the rich legacy of Justice Scalia, Steve and Ed talk about the problems of jurisprudence today, and in this season of new controversy over the 2nd... Source
In this very special episode, Steve Hayward gets an origin story out of Charles Murray, surveying the sweep of his life from childhood in Iowa through Harvard, the Peace Corps in Asia, and evaluating social programs in the 1970s where his growing doubts and misgivings started him on the road to his many pathbreaking books. Along the way, Steve and Charles also talk about NASA and the Apollo... Source
In our regular bi-weekly checkup with Henry Olsen, the Obi-Wan Kenobi of election analysts, Steve Hayward and Henry cover the fallout from the special election in House district 18 in Pennsylvania, how the tariff issue might play out, what to expect in the aftermath of the recent chaotic Italian election, plus a look ahead to November, including some of the key governor’s races like Bruce Rauner... Source
We decided to transcend the recent International Women’s Day by declaring our own American Women’s Day with Julie Ponzi and Julie Kelly, stalwarts of AmericanGreatness. Steve Hayward draws out their views on how to come to grips with Trump, why the culture wars are more important in the short run than the budget deficit, and who they hope the Democrats will be foolish enough to nominate in 2020. Source
In this short episode, Steve Hayward shares his recent short lecture at Claremont McKenna College on the campus threats to free speech, analyzing the pincer movement of the wholesale postmodernist rejection of the liberal tradition and recent social science that purports to establish that speech constitutes literal violence. If either of these attacks take firm hold, the liberal tradition is over... Source
Steve Hayward catches up with Henry Olsen in London, ahead of the upcoming general election in Italy where populist parties are expected to do well, and where German politics remain in disarray because of the populist eruption in their last general election. Meanwhile, Brexit continues to be a non-stop agony for British PM Theresa May, while the best performing government in western Europe right... Source
