Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. This is a joy in incredibly well timed. Fourteen years ago, got a Macunda at Yale. Now wrote a book called Indispensable. Sounds like a song like, sounds like, you know, not something Taylor Swift would do, but you know, Nancy Wilson, I can see it's some wonderful New York cabare eight years ago. Indispensable When Leaders Really Matter? Chapter one, hunting the high impact Leader, What did God's Name happen? Well?
When the book came out? One of the at the end, the book came out, as you said in twenty twelve, I said, you want to avoid people who have psychological and personality disorders like narcissism, a history of bad management, failures, out of the mainstream ideologies, and inherited wealth. That was twenty twelve. And then my editor a few years later emailed me and he said, do you think people misunderstood what we were trying to say?
But Sarah, it is in the president with great respect for the grind second term, even his supporters are exhausted.
Yeah, this is this is Donald Trump unchained and we're seeing that in ways that are I think Matt Iglesias had a really good framing this week a few days ago that it's worth golaying out that every president drops in the opendon polls over time because they take political capital and they spend it on things that they want to achieve. And usually that is policy, right, that is for Barack Obama, it was Obamacare, and then you know
the second term that was there's foreign policy achievements. Usually you take political capital and you burn it to achieve policy. This administration seems to be burning it for corruption. Right, that's what you have to call the Reparations Fund, whatever this is, And that's like, that's telling you where their priorities are and their numbers are going down and reflecting that.
Where the Democrats it seems like, boy, if I'm a Democrat strategist, this is it doesn't get any better than this yet, I'm not seeing any message coming out of the Democrats, and the and the midterms are like a cup of coffee away here.
The traditional formation of the Democratic Party is the circular firing squad, and they're you know, they're living not to tradition right now. You're seeing in Maine with Graham Platner's race, where you know, they had a as good as a fifty to fifty shot at taking the Senate back. And now who knows. And so I think this is there are a few compounded things here, right. So one is
the institutional party just doesn't have any power anymore. None of them wanted Platner to be the nominee in Maine, none of them, Right, everybody lined up behind Janet Mills collapsed nothing, got nothing, She couldn't even make the primary. And then at the same time, the party base tends to fall in love with people who send signifiers as opposed to having sort of real concrete like this is
someone who's actually got to deliver for us. This get with Platner, who knows, you know, obviously, But I mean Fetterman is the classic example. Fetterman was run was you know the party left is that there are the people who picked Fetterman, and when he was elected he went to the exact opposite direction.
Is there a room for centrist lawmakers in either party these days?
Sure? Less and less, but it's there. And you're starting, I think to see in some places people who are trying to understand that the big divide is not among Democrats, is not people who want to move left or left or you know right that I think that's a misnomer. What you're seeing is what democratic the base really wants is people who are fighting right. They're just they're tired of losing, and it's not about left or right to
large chunks of the base. So Seth Molton is doing, you know, surprisingly well charge of challenging Ed Markey in Massachusetts. I mean, like conflict. Seth and I went to college together, so I'm biased, but like you know, you know, he made the ballot like that, the chance of that you see, you're seeing across the you know, in a lot of different places people you know Mickey Ryl, like people who weren't coming out as we're on the left there we want to fight.
Got a Macunda with us. You get a huge response when Professor mccund is on with this. So I got two books indispensable and even better picking presidents. He said, let me ask like a John Stewart question. I mean, if you were on with John Stewart, I'm sure it
has something like this. Can you envision is one of the four or five people I know qualified that we're going to have a photographic image of the White House three years, five years, eight years from now with an actual rose garden, a east wing at least it's a putty green, you know, whatever on there. They'll replace that construction, they'll move out the UFC and all that, and they'll take out the two flagpoles that look like a gas
station opening. Do you envision a repair of the White House imagery?
We have I do because the rage in the Democratic Party base at what's happened is it's difficult to express. So you know, very close friend of mine, former Republican governor, and I just standing him a few days ago. I don't think you understand how angry people in the Democratic Party are that they feel betrayed at a very deep level.
Right.
You know, you may not have liked George W. Bush as a president, but you thought he was on your side this, you know, every day with Trump and especially I think this fund, this Reparation's fund of one point eight billion dollars of taxpayer money going to apparently January sixth, attackers that there will be any Democratic president is going to have to engage in those kind of symbolic acts of tearing down of everything Trump did because the base will not accept not doing it.
Is there a united or out there for this country?
Do you think.
That is not the way that the activated base of the Democratic Party wants to go? But he is, I think the way a lot of Americans want to go. And you could imagine an Andy Bisheer type figure, or you know, this is the name I'm hearing a lot recently which I would not even six months ago, would
have said, no way, John. Assof people are talking about him a lot, and you know, he gives a remarkably good speech of people who are Southerners, you know, have sort of figured out how to be able to appeal to people who aren't on the activist base.
I'm begging redo indispensables. You can pop it off in your free time. Got amacoda definitive at Yale University, or I'm picking our presidents