Interview Only w/ Gene Sperling - What Biden Got Right & The Fight For Economic Dignity

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croyissants for life. Come on when you go to wildgrain dot com slash podcast to start your subscription today. That's thirty dollars off your first box and free croissants for life when you visit wildgrain dot com, slash podcast, or simply use the promo code podcast at checkout. This is a sponsor I absolutely embrace, so use that code. So my guest today is a man who's quite literally been in the room where it happens on and off for over three decades of American economic He is the only

person to serve as a director of the National Economic Council under two different presidents, Bill Clint and Barack Obama, and most recently served as the White House coordinator for the American Rescue Plan for President Biden. I'll ask him what he did as a child staffer for Jimmy Carter's presidency. So she's worked for every Democratic presidency in my adult lifetime. It is Gene Sperling, and what I have him on today is actually he's got a new gig these days.

He's the founder and executive director of what is dubbed the Economic Dignity Lab at Georgetown's McCourt School of Public Policy. Look, Gene is a think tanker who's actually been a practical government's servant as well. Sometimes you get your think tankers who throw out white papers and ideas, and you get your government servants who take those white paper and ideas well.

Jean's kind of been on both sides of it and is one of the few people I know that while he's wonky, he also understands campaign politics and that is a unique breed of individual because it's not an easy thing to find. And you know, he's got the quirky

sense of humor like I like I do, and like I like. So, mister Sperlin, good to see.

to Southern cal in the road. And so when people ask me where I'm from, it's ann Arbor. When they ask me where I've worked, it's Washington, d C. So it's very hard for me to kind of acknowledge that I just happened to be here. But the story was is that when I got done with Clinton, I'd gotten to know some of the people on the TV show West Wing. I really dug in. I worked on a really good story and I sent it in and they

asked me to do an interview. I went out to LA and it just happened to be Hey, where Aaron Sorkin couldn't meet with me because he had a little legal trouble in an airport. But they set up a meeting for me with all the writers in the commissary. It's very exciting. You walk in. There's guys from Er walking around.

and what the heck? We got married. We've been together twenty five years, so I've been you know, I've been a bicoastal you know, spouse, and that means we've probably lived about a third of the time in DC, a third of the time in Santa Monica and a third of the time, including the entire Biden White House, I commuted back and forth every single week, even more than a California member of Congress.

the car and just cry sometimes. But this last time, thanks to zoom and other things I didn't have, you know, you could kind of be half there, half here. And my daughter was sixteen seventeen and eighteen, and everybody knows at sixteen seventeen and eighteen. They're not dying for you to be there in their face every single night. So if that part was okay.

but I always found him more unrealistic than realistic. And what I always hated was when people say, why can't it be done like it was on West Wing? And I'm like, because west Wing was never you know, and

I've had this argument. I've actually I got arguments a wrong word, a strong word, A debate with mister Sorkin where because he did it with Newsroom too, where he's creating a utopia of what could be if you had a year to prepare for every news cycle, for instance in Newsroom, or you had five years of historical context to then figure out how to have done it. So and perhaps I'm like too jaded because I'm old hotline guy.

there are privileged to be there, really are there to do good for the world, but they're in a very highly toxic and political environment. And so I think the way that West Wing is more realistic than some of the other you know, Scandal and other shows out there, is that those shows tend to show people who are only there to self deal to corrupt things. And I think what the West Wing did show was a group of people who were trying to do something idealistic, but

they're in a very very political environment. And if you're not political political and you don't deal with those issues you don't do well. I think what makes me sad a little bit is I spent a long time telling people that that's the way white Houses really were. I'm not quite so sure that the West Wing is an accurate perception of the current White House.

really enjoyed that. I enjoyed the other shows too. I just used to not like when people would kind of think that that was more realistic than the West Wing.

and help people's lives or fight for justice. I think it's a positive thing and it's still pretty influential on a lot of college campuses around the country.

job displacement is going to drive political debates fear of AI job displacement over the next decade. Whether it hits is another story. Right, there's the fear of it and then there's the actual fear is going to drive a lot of political particularly in twenty twenty eight. So I want to get to that. But before we get to that,

what's the state of the economy. What do you look at on a week to week basis to give your bit to what touchstones do you look at to determine whether this is a good economy, a bad economy, or a shaky economy.

is a little bit of a tricky time. I think that what you were looking for after the kind of worst of the post pandemic supply chain shocks and global inflation was you were looking for what everybody called the soft landing, and what that meant was that we would be able to return to more of a normal, stable economy. So the Biden economy had amazing job growth, incredibly low unemployment,

but there was also high inflation. And you know, people will fight forever, people like myself will say it was global, it was every where. It didn't wasn't really a factor of Biden policies. But whatever you thought the cause was, people wanted to see that soft landing. So what's interesting is that you've had pretty close to what people hope for.

So when you had high inflation, you can remember that Larry Summers famously said, Oh, the only way you're going to bring this down is to have ten percent unemployment or two years of seven and a half percent unemployment or five years of six percent. Well that didn't happen. So the good news was that we've been able to so far avoid a you know, avoid caming inflation inflation only in a Paul Voker sense of well, I was.

suddenly it's sort of like kinking a hose and then I'm kicking it and a surge of product and a surge of money, and a surge of this. You know, as fast as it went up is as fast as it went down. The fact that it didn't take ten percent interest rates and it didn't take ten percent unemployment. Is that now confirmation for you that this was global and ninety five percent COVID?

But you know, I do think that for a lot of people, I cited an article Mark Zandy from Moody's, Peter orzag Our, former O and B director, and others who definitely feel that the fact that this came down without engineering a recession was evidence that this was overall globally inspired, pandemic related supply shot chain that said people will still debate the American rescue plan, and I don't think there's I think politically you'll hear Republicans now say,

oh my god, everything that happened you know bad was due to Joe biden American Rescue Plant. That's clearly not true. Clearly, the American Rescue Plan had some very good effects in making US the leader and growth in the G seven, lower, unemployment less scarring long term negative impacts. But people will

debate the inflation impact, and I think that the reasonable debate says, hey, maybe it led to inflation here being a point or a point half higher than it would have been, but it had these good parts. And I'd say the people who are most critical would say, no, it's more like three points higher. But I think you and I both know that in twenty twenty two, after Putin invaded Ukraine, you know, inflation almost everywhere in the world was seven eight nine percent, regardless of whether people

had done a major fiscal stimulus. And you also saw every head of state did poorly everywhere in the world.

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code toodcast. Don't forget that code. That's get sold dot Com promo code toodcast for thirty percent off fifty years from now. In an economics class, that might look at a couple of case studies about what you do in a in an economic crisis. Either one that's directly about the economy, like what we had with the housing crisis and the Great Recession, or something like COVID which sort of impacted the global economy. One of the things that my simple hot take has always been, we had two

choices with COVID. We either had inflation or recession, and

if we didn't throw money, If we had handled COVID the way we'd handled the housing crisis, which is to be fiscally a bit small sea conservative about how much money we threw at the issue, we probably prevent inflation, but we might have had a massive recession. The less I've always felt is if that COVID, coming just within a decade of the Great Recession, sort of got everybody thinking, hey, we better if we're not sure, throw a little bit

more money at it. Let's not underfund, let's overfund. Do you think fifty years from now, That's how we'll look at those two events. And it's sort of when it comes to government intervention, the economic crisis, the Great Recession will always be seen as an example of government not doing enough, and COVID will be seeing as an example

of when government does a little too much. I know I'm being very I'm asking for a black and white hot take on something that be incredibly it's generally speaking, I've.

by President Obama as someone there. I just think you couldn't get it, couldn't get to politically.

also a sense in two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine that if you were wrong, maybe you could come back and get more. And I think one of the lessons that was learned there was, hey, you may only get one shot, so you might go bigger because you may not get another shot. Two is the insurance policy. Other things might happen, like who would have predicted Putin was going to invade Ukraine. As you remember, in the financial crisis, there was the Greece in eure a financial crisis.

So another argument is put a little extra because there might be unknowns that are going to slow you down even more. One lesson I really think we learned well was that when you don't do enough right away, there's a lot of long term suffering that takes place, long

term unemployment, young people who couldn't get into the job market for four or five years. Economists actually have a phrase that makes sense. They call it scarring, and it's right. What it means is they didn't These people didn't just suffer for a year or two. Their lifetime earnings were changed. Their rates of divorce and alcoholism and suicide or deaths

of despair were changed. So one good lesson learned was that in this financial crisis you had a lot of strength right away and so you didn't get the long term unemployment. We had a policy that actually prevented millions of people from being evicted. So I think on the whole the argument will be that the American Rescue Plan did properly learn the lessons. The counter will be, well, but maybe you overlearned by doing a little bit too much.

And that's the people who will argue that the American Rescue Plan, even if it wasn't the cause of all the inflation or even most of inflation, kind of added to it. And that's where I think you will continue to have the debates where people like myself will say,

and probably Jared Bernstein would say, and Peter orzagnersay, didn't have that much, but my friend Jason Furman would say, you know, you should have done a bit more. I do think what will happen going forward, Chuck, from now on is that I do think you had an entire generation of people who had never seen significant inflation. And so I'm not.

and we could finally get into a house exactly. That was a big deal.

little bit, or do the balance more. Yes, because they've now lived through a world where they saw President Biden do what you and I would have predicted would have been a winning hand going into twenty four, which was inflation coming down under three percent, record low unemployment, and

all of those things were dwarfed by people's unhappiness with everyday prices that they went to the grocery store and saw and that is both a politic that's an economic lesson, but it's also going to be a political lesson for I think a generation.

dump him. Forward. Look at the end of the day, right, you know, whip inflation now that terrible you know slogan he had wi n win Whip inflation Now that didn't work. And then Carter you know, one because of it and then immediately lost because of it. So the point is is that it was a reminder that the American public just focuses on what's in front of them, not what not always what what was, it's what is, and inflation is one of those what is or the other.

seventies and gas lines and I mean, my those are bright memories for me, right, but I think what.

You can't name one incumbent head of state in the post pandemic period that did very well, not a single one. And so you know, I think I think it's an unusual combination of inflation all the strains of the pandemic, but it's kind of you know, one thing you can't do is say if only Joe Biden had done like incumbent x or Y had done. There are no ones. So that again does suggest that the kind of unhappiness

of people dealing with everyday price is going higher. And it's what makes things so puzzling about President Trump is that he now has seen all these things happen. He's learned this lesson. He's got the benefit of hindsight, and this is a point people never make, but they need to when he comes in. Not only is inflation a little under three percent, every major forecaster in the country is projecting it's going down to two percent. So I think a lot of people on like the Bien Economic team,

are like, boy, bad luck for us. Our soft landing is on its way, and it's going to land because of the hard work we did.

So That's why I've said before. You know, when they say it's the Biden economy, I say, no, it's the self inflicted wound economy. You could have just done nothing and coasted on the Biden economy. You've gone out of your way to keep inflation not just higher, but in a lot of those everyday products. That makes people so unhappy.

has been greatly exaggerated. It's as if like President Biden didn't care about affordability. Of course he was running, you know, He was the one who did the prescription drugs, you know, bring down prescription drugs and key things. He was the one focusing on lowering electricity and energy prices. Our whole we had a major childcare initiative, which, even as you saw with may Or Mundami, one of the key issues. So I think people are wrong to think there wasn't

affordability focus. I think what it really came down to, and maybe where I sometimes had a little bit of a different view, was that I did get my political upbringing with Bill Clinton. And Bill Clinton was known as

the feel you're paying guy, and there's truth to that. Bill Clinton told me in my first few months in the White House when I was writing the statements from him, he said, never write a statement that wouldn't seem right to somebody in one of the thirty worst economic counties. That so, in other words, stay connected and touched first. I think what happened with Biden was there was a conflict between that and the saying, hey, if you don't put forward your best foot, nobody would so wrong.

that there's a chunk of Democrats who think, hey, the lesson to learn from Trump is bullshit, like he does.

aren't you bragging if the president doesn't do that? So I will say, but I will agree that I think we could have maybe focused more on first, you know, connect, Hey,

we're not happy prices are up. Explain to people that we're doing everything we can explain why we want to pass. But start more from the basis of a little bit of Clintonian feel your pain. But I don't think that should be confused with the idea that Joe Biden wasn't out there fighting for a child tax credit, which gave people a few thousand dollars more in their pocket, fighting

for lower healthcare costs. I think criticisms of like, you know, I think people who want to show their new and change oriented are going to probably pick some holes at Biden alum in the primaries. That's kind of basic politics. But I think in the end people will have a time chance to say what they could do and what they could and the truth was, Joe Biden had the tiniest of margins. So like on a Biparson infrastructure bill.

going to take a lot of shots at each other. I tend to like and know most of the people that people are talking about, So I'm looking at people I basically admire and I'm kind of like sitting back and kind of watching like I'm Chuck Todd, wanting to see who's good, who's effective.

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You're one of the few people who understands economists speak and sort of Americans speak, right, which is why I think you've been a popular staffer to bring in for presidents, because you're just you're not just thinking like an economist and a data guy, but sort of you're able to fuse it with sort of realistic, realistic policy that you can sell. Right. There's one thing about proposing policy, but it's policy you can actually sell to the public. I

think the pitchforks are being sharpened. There's definitely distrust and

anger at sort of corporate America generally and the biggest companies specifically AI. Job displacement's probably going to fuel this even more it is. Is it inevitable that just becomes just some sort of anger driven political movement, or is there a chance for somebody to, you know, for this not to end up down that road, Like I think it's we're inevitably going to go there. We're gonna have

to have this moment that we end up there. Maybe it's a little bit like the first part of the twentieth century, but there really is sort of almost a revolt against some of these folks here because of the frustrations, and it will be this sort of white collar blue collar a mix. But maybe I'm wrong, and maybe AI is more like what you know, computers in everyday life turned into increased productivity and all boats rows.

So of course I run into people who feel like, oh my god, everything we need does has to sound kind of quote centrist or practical, and then other side who are saying no, every single thing needs to be populist anger, I don't know that the world looks like that.

I would say that to me, You've got to do maybe two things together, which is one, you do need to be an optimist about people's lives. You do need to show that you want to see more people meet the American dream, not just tread water, but get ahead and maybe own a house, have a little nest stake for their retirement. You need that optimism and positive view. And I do think that presidents who've done well have

done that and so. But on the other hand, I don't think you can hold back when there's clear economic injustice. I don't know that Americans are, you know, have a I'm against you know, business or corporate America. I think they understand that that's where a lot of jobs and growth come. But they are against when they think the

system is rigged, or when a bottom line that affects a chosen few is doing is more important than your lives and your struggle. So I think you need to I think what we need is to have a degree of optimism that we are the ones who can be good for the economy. We are the ones that can help you get ahead, and that doesn't mean being down

on everybody who's a major job creator. But on the other hand, people don't believe people who believe in markets and capitalism, which I think is most Americans still believe that the ultimate purpose of what they do is not big bonuses for the CEO or just extracting profits for shareholders. They think, as I've written about in my book in the past and now, they think that the ultimate goal, rightly is does it benefit typical people? Does it provide

economic dignity? And so when they see people doing things that are just about extracting profits from them, when they see a kind of economic policy that is not geared towards creating more jobs, good jobs, jobs with dignity, jobs with respect, then they're going to be angry. And I think it is okay to tap into that anger. And I think it is okay to say I believe in our American market based system, but the goal of that market based system is ultimately the well being and economic

dignity of working families. And if you have a system

that is rigged to benefit just the few and not typical American families, then yeah, you should be anger angry about that, and nobody running for president in the Democratic side should be hesitant in pressing that anger. And I won't just I'll take a second just to start on the AI if you want. But it's also a good

example of that, you know. I mean, if you listen to people now, you might think, if you're listening to the White House, that well, AI is just going to happen, and maybe it's going to hurt a lot of jobs, and we should preempt states from trying to regulate it in any way, or make sure people have protections of privacy or against abusive surveillance, or to make sure that we're dealing with job dislocation. And the response comes by no, no, no, we have to rush, rush, rush to get more GDP

and greater growth. And I think they will lose people because people will ask the question I've said, but what's the ultimate point if why would we have a policy that's not good for jobs, it's not good for the

typical family. And I think that it's not maybe the front and center issue now, but I think it will be, and I think it will be part of that bigger picture, which is what is the ultimate goal of our economy, and if people think it's just to have some enormous wealth and five or six AI companies and we'll just deal with the effect on job loss and income loss as an after effect. People are going to be angry.

They're going to be rightly angry. And I think people going in twenty eight will do better not to be

like they're head in the sand about AI or the good things it could do. But people who are going to say, front and center, my goal is you your job, whether your children can be as well off as you are. And when I'm thinking about AI, I'm thinking that about how we shape it to serve average people. Technology is not destiny. Democracy determines our destiny.

era of the nineties, the free trade era of the nineties, right, And I remember one of the central promises on NAFTA was, you know, when when if factories went away, there'd be there was always you know, there was going to be money there for retraining and job displacement. And the money was there and there was retraining, but it turned out that didn't take right. There were weren't a lot, There weren't as many people interested in some of the retraining

opportunities that were offered. I don't and I'm curious what lessons you take away from that as you think about developing Frank what I assume will potentially be a policy that next a new president may may be influenced by I sort of how to manage this displacement. The displacement's going to happen. And you know, I'm I'm I am you know, I'm a capitalist. You know, I think we just want capitalism with a little bit of guardrails. And in every technology, right, this has been true of the

media business, and it's true of really anything. Right, you get a new technology, there's immediately fragmentation. Maybe you get a thousand startups, and then eventually you get consolidation, and then a new technology comes and the cycle can begin all over again. Globalization, in some ways right, the idea of free trade, which of course the upside was there's not a fruit you can't get any any month of the year in America now, which was not true when you and I were growing up. It was not true

in the eighties and nineties. But that's what free trade has done right in many ways, And that's just it's I always use I like to use produce because it's the simplest example of what free trade has meant. Like you realize that you know, you're you get to eat certain fruits year round now and back in the day you couldn't. But there was certainly right that. Arguably, the the seeds of the Trump victories of sixteen and twenty four were planted with the globalization and free trade movement

of the nineties. So what policies do you now wish

where it implemented better than and what parallels do you see as you think about what AI job displacement and what benefits are necessary to ease that pain.

get that. We didn't get healthcare, and then we didn't even get to propose our universal training proposal because we lost the Congress for all six years, both houses. So I don't think that we ever got to test out what that we ever got to test out what truly having a robust safety net would be like, I don't think it ever got to be put in place in the way that it might have if Democrats had controlled

both houses for four or six years. So one, I don't think we ever tested two, which is very relevant is that globalization turned out to be much more dramatic than anybody would have thought at the times. And then you had eight years of a Republican administration that wasn't

really willing to adjust to that or do anything. So I guess i'd say number one, we still have just huge holes in what I think of as an economic dignity net of making sure people are working or doing their best or living lives of economic dignity even in moments of disruption. And I think what globalization showed is that even the there were lots of benefits to the Internet era. And look, it wasn't just trade agreements, it was the Internet, it was globalization. It was just a

smaller world, even though there were benefits to that. You can't have an economy where you say, hey, for sixty

or seventy percent of you, this is nice because you're getting lower prices and mode choices, but there's like a portion of you that are watching your community spiral down. You're losing your hopes, your dreams, you're watching your father or grandfather become an alcoholic. And so one of the things that I talked about with economic dignity is you have got to have policies that aren't just good for

GDP or don't just lower prices for some people. Generally, you have to have policies where everybody feels they're not being left behind. And you know, I wouldn't put as much blame on anything Bill Clinton did, but I would

say that the accumulation of policies over twenty thirty years did not put in place the type of job creation focused protections, checks on abuse of corporate power that were necessary to make sure everyone has economic dignity for all. So where AI becomes relevant is that globalization was a bigger shock than we might the people might have known, and the holes in our safety net or our insurance of economic dignity for all became more painful. I think

that's how you should look at AI. I don't think AI is just another technology. I think AI is likely to have a greater impact on job disruption and a greater impact on maybe even the reduction of the amount of jobs in the private sector than we've seen before. And so now is the time to me not to sit back and watch and just say, oh my god, tens of millions of jobs are being lost, or react by just having a UBI program that writes checks to people.

Now is the time to start shaping, to make shaping our economy, and to me, I talked about three things and what I wrote as an Economic Dignity Coumpact for AI. One, let's create more dignified jobs where we know we need more, which are helping families with disability, helping people come out of prison, helping people with addiction, helping people coach more people on their healthcare. There may be twenty million missing jobs there that could employ people, have a tighter labor market,

and deal with a lot of dislocation. That's number one. We have the power to do that. We also have the power to create tax incentives and subsidies that encourage a company to augment use AI to augment jobs supplosed to displace jobs or to redeploy people. We control our economic policy. We should be doing that now. Secondly, going to the point I talked about, let's create an economic dignity floor for everyone, so that if there is a

worse disruption than we thought, unlike what happened in communities and globalization, now we're going to have programs that focus on jobs, on helping people find new jobs, of making sure you still have health insurance. And then the third issue, which is going to be the toughest than the one that hits us, is what are those overall policies that

help people move to the next job. I just believe that we are a country where we care about work, we care about contribution, we care about purpose and potential. And what I don't like is that everybody's kind of you know, you've got a White House that's just saying go as fast as you can and geez if it causes lots of disruption, kind of too bad, that that can't be our policy. Our policy going forward must be

AI is going to happen. You can't stop it all, but you can have policies that shape to make sure that it is serving the American people. What is the point of an economy having high growth and high productivity growth if it creates unhappiness for a large portion of the economy. That's the focus I want to do in my Economic Dignity lab is to focus on our goal. What is our ultimate goal? Every day? It's not higher

GDP and productivity growth that makes people unhappy. It's higher growth and productivity growth that leads to more opportunity, more dignity, more upward mobility for more Americans.

think there's two things you have to worry about. One, when you don't have true competition, you know, I mean Adam Smith was not writing about a market economy where you know, for big AI or big tech companies controlled everything. It was about how to have competition and why competition would through some form of process he said invisible hand, I'll say a little more notable hand. Make sure that it's benefiting everybody. So one when is that working? The

other way? Now, I know a lot of people aren't always happy with everything Lena Khan did, but I'm more of a fan of hers, and I think that what she did and looking at big Tech and Amazon, was to look and say, in reality, are these large companies suppressing competition and hurting people or are they actually encouraging it? So you should have that test. And then the second

test is a democracy test. If the size and power of companies mean that they are disproportionately determining our policies as opposed to our democratic processes based on what's best for people. Then I think that's the problem.

real problem. I think what's a little more concerning on the AI front, though, is the idea that there could be four or five or six companies that actually are almost determining the structure of the economy, not just benefiting their company at the expense of some higher prices for other people, which is itself very problematic, but where it

looks like they're determining policy. And I do see sometimes when I look at the White House, you know, I do wonder our six or seven companies contributing whispering in the ear. Are you seeing companies, you know, whether it's crypto or AI or other places, actually part of deals that are actually benefiting in a more corrupt way individuals

associated with the administration. That is very concerning. Now, look, some of the heads of these big AI companies have notably gone out and said, we need to think about what's best for the country. But the fact is that when I still look at what's happening every day, it looks like rush fast, hygien growth, high wealth, get things built as quickly as possible, and those discussions about what's best for jobs or people or the economic dignity of

people is being lost. And my prediction is going to what you said at the beginning, is if people don't start talking about how to shape AI so that it is benefiting everyone, they're going to get a backlash that that might be even harsher than is desired.

criminal part of the Justice Department on you. I think that, you know, I think what you've seen more recently is really the most unattractive thing I think I've seen in my political life, which is that the most well off people and the most well off companies are the first ones to take a knee and to and to do

whatever this administration wants. So as much as I agree that we need to be concerned about the lobbying and political power of major companies and are determining the path on AI, in this situation, it's a little bit like the White House kind of invited it, you know, a little bit of give money.

line or there's going to be consequences. They may not have liked our climate policy, they may have disagreed with some anti trust policy, but the notion of you contribute and get in line, or you will face consequences. Was just not part of the bid. No Harris administration.

there at the Rose Bawl when they beat Alabama. I think that was kind of like you said, your whole life, if we ever won an national championship outright like that, I won't ask for anything more. I feel like I have to honor that for a few more years.

Biden administration. I got invited to go over and be the dinner speaker at one of their whole dinners and hang out with him and them, and so oh, he will always be thankful for Jim Harbaugh for that. You know.

seems like he's genuinely like your typical Midwestern independent. There's a little bit of you don't quite know where he's coming down.

It's very clear his wife is very pro life and he's respected. That is the other hand. The real highlight of my you know, one of the highlights of my time in the Bide administration was I was speaking to the Legal Service Legal services, you know, the people who represent the poor, and as they brought, knowing my background, they brought Jim Harbaugh on to introduce me. Why because Jim Harbaugh has been a huge advocate of legal services for the poor and is actually on the National Advisory Board.

So yeah, he's a little more complicated, and I think a lot of Americans are a little more complicated and exactly that way.