Let's welcome to the Armstrong and Getty Show. Long Hea Chen. He's a candidate for California State Controller for one thing, but we've been having him on for years. David and Diane Stephy fellow in American Public Policy Studies at the Hoover Institution, the director of Domestic Policy Studies at Stanford University, which is pretty impressive. Along he welcomed to the Armstrong and Getty Show once again. It's good to be back
with you, guys. Thanks. Not about the details of the Hunter Biden thing, but don't you don't you think the um, if there ever was a bloom on the rose, the bloom is off the rows of the whole Joe Biden brings us back to normalcy. Grown ups are in charge. No more craziness. That's gone, right, Yeah, I mean I think there's two reasons why it's gone, guys. Number one is because of Biden's own, uh, you know, kind of
his own behavior in office. Just in terms of what we're seeing from him as somebody who, um, you know, sometimes it looks like it's unclear whether he understands exactly what the nature of the challenges and whether it's because he just doesn't pay much attention or because you know, for whatever reason it might be, it does feel a little bit like sometimes he doesn't grasp the gravity of the situation on. Give you an example when he off
handedly says that Vladimir Putin's got to go. Uh, you know, it means something when an American president says that. It's not just a throwaway comment, and so you have to wonder, you know, Joe, what's part of I think what made Joe Biden appealing at some point in his career was that he kind of just said what came to mind. But that's not really something that in this situation, I think,
you know, serves him all that well. But the second reason why the bloom is off the Rose guys, is because of just the policy decisions that he's made and the various things that he has said about you know what it is that uh, you know, we have to do with respect to all sorts of different issues, right, massive economic stimulus that's resulting in big time inflation. Uh, you know, various things we're seeing in domestic policy that
really are far left of center. When it comes to what we expected, you know, we expected a moderate We got a far left progressive, and so I think for those reasons, people are kind of saying, Hi, this wasn't exactly what we expected. Yeah, yeah, absolutely true. And I wanted to get into policy since that's your wheelhouse. Uh, is there anything that would launch Well? I did see us up pull the other day that had immigration as
the third biggest priority of American voters. It was inflation economy, which are so close to the same for one and two, and then the border. It gets so little coverage in the news. It's hard for me to know how much people care. I suppose you see these numbers from time to time. Is the border on people's minds because we're we're hearing from all kinds of different fronts that it's the worst it's been in decades? Yeah, I think, Jack, there's a There's two different things there too as well.
Number one is how much the media covers it or doesn't cover it. I think if the media wanted to cover it, they could have a story about what's happening on the border of the lack of of kind of efforts to to secure our southern border. You would probably see that, you know, pretty often. The other thing I think is that immigration is kind of a um as an issue. Interestingly enough, it tends to correlate with the
state of the economy. So when the state of the economy is perceived to be unsteady for whatever reason, immigration tends to rise an issue as well, because people directly relate uh you know, let's say, for example, competition for labor supply with the state of the economy, and if the economy is relatively weak or let's just say precariously, there's the labor market is pretty strong right now. Anyone
who largely wants a job can probably find one. But the problem is when you've got inflation running at levels it's running at, people have a little bit of uncertainty about the economy and about where it's headed. Some people think we're actually headed for recession, and if that's the case, then immigration becomes a more salient issue. So Jack, I think what you're seeing is people express that concern about immigration in part because of some unsteadiness we're seeing in
the economic numbers. And as you said, one and two, issues one and two are the economy and inflation, So we know where people's heads are at. The Republicans will take back the House, and that's not that surprising historically in recent cycles, that's just the way it works, um And there are extra reasons that's going to be true
this time around. But as far as the presidency, and I'm operating on the assumption Joe Biden is not going to be the anominee in one way or another, is there a chance for some sort of political reset of some sort where we get because Biden wasn't elected for any normal reason. He was elected because not Trump and then Hillary and and and Trump were the two most own popular candidates in our nation's history. So is there a chance for some sort of I don't know, normal
like presidential election. I don't know, you know. I part of me wants to wish we could get back to that, you know, where where we actually had debates over things like tax policy or what would happen in terms of our policy around the world. I wonder if that um trains left the station on the nature of our politics. Wow, that's a guy like you, A serious guy like you, and and an optimistic guy. I haven't talked to you for several years now to say that, I find that
pretty striking. So well, it's it's a function I think of who ends up running right and uh and and who ends up being sort of involved in the contest. I think if it's you know that there's a certain category of politician whom if they ran for president, and both sides kind of had nominees of that ilk, you
could see things going back. But the problem is, I think as you think about, you know, who the leading contenders might be on either side, I have great doubt that you would see that, you know, sort of retro kind of campaign. I think in some ways we're moving
into a new era. And by the way, it's not just because of the candidates, it's because of how people consume media now, right, And if you think about social media, social media has accelerated the way and the nature of every news cycle, and it's so much easier for stories to to catch on like wildfire than it was in the day and age when you had some major television networks and you had some big newspapers and that was about it. So it's not just because of the candidates
that things have changed. It's also just because of the nature of the consumption of media and how stories kind of do or don't take off. Do you mean that train has less left the station? For now or like permanently, because I mean if I don't know, I don't know. I mean, I I wish I could say it's for now, but some of these trends are are not going away anytime soon, right, I mean, do we see ourselves moving away from a social media world? I don't know, do
we see ourselves? You know, candidates increasingly need to say and do things that are, you know, sort of attention grabbing in this era where people have very very short attention spans, and so that adds to the likelihood that you're gonna get candidates encouraged to run for these high offices who are, you know, kind of more sensationalistic. I mean, I you know, in my own campaign, I I really
try not to go there, you know. I try to be reasonable and talk about the reasons why we need better accountability for state spending in California and at the sexiest issues. But for my kind of an office in this kind of a campaign, I can do that. But I know the pressures that are on friends and colleagues who are running for other kinds of offices, and you know, all the pressure, in my view is in the wrong directions in terms of the kind of issue that they
need to engage in a win. I guarantee you would raise more money today. You would raise more money a day than you've raised in any day if you said, you know who's a war criminal Joe Biden is a war criminal. That would be retweeted I don't know how many thousand times, and you'd raise the most money of your career. Yeah. Unfortunately, my my tweet about the disability insurance scandal did not quite ah make the make the top ten list today. So no, you're you're absolutely right.
I think that there is a definite desire and an intention sometimes that politicians feel in need to just say wacky stuff because it's it does get a lot of attention, you know. And that's not that's not the kind of politics that I grew up in, but it is the nature of our politics today and it is what drives um, you know, uh sort of engagement and and the end
of the day, that's what politicians want. They want engagement. Yeah. Well, I've been a listener reading a lot of Sarah Isger of The Dispatch has been writing about this a lot, that the changes in Yeah, and she she's been great on this. The campaign finance reform that we thought would make politics better have made it worse. And uh, having having more small donations from people who just want to see you say something crazy on Twitter or a cable
news show has not taken us the right direction. No, I agree. I agree. It's too bad. It's really too bad. Any chance that changes, any chance we go back to some people are calling for the return of the smoke filled rooms. You don't let the parties decide candidates and that sort of thing. Well that you know that that wasn't so great either, right, because it wasn't the kind
of process that we would hope, you know. I think in America we would pride ourselves on transparency, on processes where you understand kind of who comes out of it and and and public voices can be heard and considered. I do think if we had stronger political party and that may sound strange because but the kinds of parties, you know, the party at labels identifications are strong, But
the institutions of the political parties aren't strong anymore. No, no, no, it's whoever whoever gets the nomination, all of a sudden you adopt their policies. That's not the way it's supposed to work. And it used to be that the party stood for things and and candidates kind of you know, would either adhere to that or not. But nowadays you don't have that strength of association of the party anymore.
If you had a stronger political party mechanism, stronger Democratic and Republican parties that might have more control, for example, over presidential primary processes, you wouldn't have these long drawn out primary fights that you know. Unfortunately many times end up devolving into who can be the most liberal, who can be the most most conservative, And I don't think that generates presidential candidates at the end of the day who are going to govern from from the middle out.
And I think ultimately that's probably what we need as a country to get back to the kind of normalcy you're talking about. Lanhe Chen knows what he's talking about for all kinds of different reasons, including being involved at the highest levels of major campaigns, and he's a candidate for California State Controller. You were endorsed by the Chronicle, Is that right? I wasn't endorsed by the Chronicle. I
had there was a column we read from. Yeah, it was an opinion writer He basically said, hey, listen, one position where you need where you need a watchdog. You know, in government in California is a controller, and that's why you probably want to think about electing a Republican. So as I like to say, Jack, we need a we need a watchdog in this office, not a lap dog. There you go. That's pretty often, too often we've had that.
That's pretty awesome when somebody in the chronicle San Francisco Chronicle says, this is a Republican you need long each and hey, thanks for your time today, appreciate it. That's the most interesting thing I've heard today. A serious guy like that, who doesn't say crazy stuff, just you know, for fun. That train has left the station of us having serious discussions. Wow, Armstrong one podcast, Jack. This is roughly the equivalent of carrying around two honored in twenty
four slices of Bacon in your Body. Well wait, wait a minute, regular, what bacon ways of majurement that we all use? The Armstrong and Getting podcast. Here it on the I Heart app wherever you listen to podcasts.