The Armstrong and Getty Show vice president who died. Yes, we're still on the air bound. So much for tuning in. I wish we could have done this together, and it's gotten a one more smoothly. But but I'm grateful we're able to connect virtually. Man, that is a long pause.
Uh So we are lucky enough that not only is Lonnie Chin great to talk about every week with politics and all kinds of different stuff, but one of his areas of expertise is he's worked on a couple of presidential campaigns, and I want to know what he thinks of this one. Lonie Chen is with the Hoover Institution Stanford University. In fact, he heads up their public policy department there and joins us, Now, Lonnie, how are you, sir?
Are we on yet? I don't. I don't know if you watched any or all of the Joe Biden town hall, But is his whole campaign is floundering as it seems? Or am I overstating it or what's your take on it? Well? Look, I mean I think it's tough. On the one hand, right, you can't break through at a campaign when you have a pandemic that's occupying everyone's attention. That having been said, you've got to get your you've got to get good swings in when you're at the plate, and these swings
they're taking are like massive whish. Well, here's what here's what I don't get. I don't get with the Democrats ever, on the problem of audio visual because every creative person in America that there are people that make gazillions of dollars a year making motion pictures, who would volunteer their time to Democratic candidate to beat Trump. Why don't they hire one of them to get the microphone right for Hillary Clinton or the camp or the lighting right for
Joe Biden. Why don't they do that? Well, it's an amazing thing. I mean you you guys mentioned sort of presidential campaigns and how this usually works. I mean, it is generally the case that before you do an event involving the candidate like this, you you will have tested it. You will have made sure the candidate understands exactly when they're supposed to come out, what it's gonna look like.
And yes, accidents do happen. I don't want to make it sound like everything perfect, but usually you've got the technology down and you've got an exact run of show. And the fact that this happened, I mean, it is either the case that Biden is just out of it or his campaign is committing malpractice one of those two things, and neither is good. Would it be reasonable to assume people were being screamed at at the end of that thing? Oh? Yes, unquestionably, unquestionably.
I mean this is not the first town hall they've done, by the way, which has been you know, kind of kind of weird or had elements of it that that, you know, indicate that that was not well planned. Four. So this is not the first time it's happened. This was just probably the most extreme example of it. But we are in May of an election year. Uh, these guys need to get their act together pretty quickly because
these are the kinds of unforestaers. I mean, if you're gonna beat an incumbent president, you need to be firing at all cylinders. I don't care how you know how much people think stuff does Trump Trump does is unpopular. At the end of the day, it's hard to beat an incumbent president, and these guys are not going to be able to do it with this. You know, two cents show they're running now well, especially if your argument is competence, steadfast leadership, preparedness, and the one thing you
must avoid is the appearance of being dottering. I mean that was over four anyway, Lani Chen David and Diane Stephy research fellow whoever institution? Uh, Jack, do you have another politics question? Because I really want to get onto the civil liberties thing with lan He who is the
director of Domestic Policies Studies that stands. This period is to me one of the real turning points in UM looking at executive power, specifically governor's executive power and as opposed to local control and UH and states of emergency and that sort of thing. What's what's your take briefly
on what's happening. Yes, governors have a tremendous amount of power, and actually even more than that, you know, pretty much all of the authorities that are dealing with these public health matters, even the local county health authorities may have a tremendous amount of ability to essentially effectuate whatever policy they want. There's no real UH mechanism for appeal. There's no real mechanism for someone to come in and to
check them. It is the expansion of executive power in a way that we haven't seen, I think in a long time. And we always knew that executive power was at its zenis was at its height when there is a state of emergency. There's a lot of research that shows that. But what we're seeing in places like California, in Michigan else Square, where people are are starting to get a little bit frustrated with these governors are doing, is that governors really are exercising a scope and amount
of power that we've not seen recently. So there's good reason to be concerned about not just what that means for now, but what it means for going forward as we try and deal with the the after effects of the peak of this virus. Right, you mentioned civil liberties. One issue is how much authority are we going to give governors, for example, to track our movements, to track where we're going, who we've interacted with, what that looks like.
These are very real and very important questions. Well, you're a lawyer, and lawyers often look at just you know, what's legal and what's not legal, but how about what you can pull off? I just wonder if you reach a point where people just say sorry, we ain't listening anymore. We just ain't gonna listen to you anymore. And then what are you doing? And you know, how far do you want to push so you don't end up at
that breaking point? Well, that's a great question. I think we're getting pretty close to that in some parts of California, and certainly in some parts of California where it's pretty clear people you can maintain social distance because they've got uh, you know, just a lot more a lot more land than they do in a place like downtown San Francisco, let's say, for example, and they're saying, look, why should we abide by the same restrictions that everybody else is
abided by? And in terms of how it gets enforced, the answer is, you know, will governors actually go to the extent of calling on state troopers or in California, the Highway patrol to enforce their dictates? And and are the how are the police going to feel about that? You know, I think it's an interesting question. We haven't gotten there yet, and I hope we don't, But it's an interesting question about how people react and respond when the state really uses its power to enforce what it wants.
We have Elon Musk saying we're reopening the Tesla plant in the defiance of Alameda Counties. Dictates that we've received emails on he from multiple peace officers saying there is no way I'm going to kick kids off a player for instance, there say that we have no cases in this part of the country. Um, there's no risk I'm being called and told to bust. You know, fourteen year olds who are skateboarding not gonna do it. So that
is a that's a pretty significant breakdown of authority. It is and and and we're but the problem is we're putting these peace officers, were putting these these people who are laying their lives on the line to protect us every day, we're putting them in an awful position. Lan he I'm afraid we've got to end there. I missed the time. Que We've got about fifteen seconds left with lan he Chen of the whoever institution, Stanford University. Hey, we sure appreciate the time as always great to do
with the things. If this thing comes back strong in the fall and they try to clamp down again, I don't know if people are gonna listen and well, they've blown their credibility in a lot of cases. Yeah, well that's why you've got to be so careful with that. With the empower, are strong and