Episode description
🤑 CHIP IN TO OUR PATREON https://www.patreon.com/ARationalFear📨 SUBSCRIBE TO OUR EMAIL LIST: http://www.arationalfear.com/Recorded at our homes over Zoom — pumped through the RØDECaster™ Pro — into your ears.
(former deputy National Security Advisor to Obama, Pod Save The World) shares with Lewis and I his thoughts on around the world, how populations can the, and a great anecdote about how when seeking global consensus onBen Rhodes COVID19’s threat to democracystill protest during lockdown, climate crisisObama became frustrated with Tony Abbott
Foreign policy politics can seem tricky to navigate and easy to dismiss as too hard, but Ben frames everything around a set of core values that brings clarity to foreign policy decisions.
We’re lucky to have him thinking about the world — and we’re thrilled have him on A Rational Fear.
THANKS TO:The Obama Foundation, Jacob Round and Ben Rhodes.
00:00 - Introduction01:45 - Start Interview02:50 - Disinfectant 03:50 - Emergency powers eroding democracy around the world05:20 - How are people still managing to protest in HK?06:50 - Who does crisis better liberal democracies or authoritarian regimes?11:30 - Oversight to powers15:25 - Trump's reaction to the corona crisis26:30 - Hope for the USA31:00 - Distracted from the Climate Crisis33:45 - Obama's thoughts on Tony Abbott37:45 - Joining Cameo like Sean Spicer & Scaramucci40:13 - Credits
TRANSCRIPT BELOW BY A.I.
Dan Ilic 0:31All right, a very special irrational fear event with Ben Rhodes, former deputy national security adviser to the Obama administration and co host of crooked media's pod save the world. Ben, thank you so much for joining us on A Rational Fear.
Ben Rhodes 2:15Good to be here, Dan. What I'd rather be
Dan Ilic 2:18other than talking to people all around the world from podcast den, I assume you have a podcast den.
Ben Rhodes 2:25I do. I'm I have to build like a pillow fort. to tape. I'm actually doing a different podcast now too. That requires better audio. They tell me so I've just surround myself with pillows and comforters but I'm not doing that for you, dad. I'm sorry.
Dan Ilic 2:42That's okay. You know, I'd rather see your face.
Ben Rhodes 2:45Yeah.
Dan Ilic 2:47Ben, I know you're writing a book on authoritarianism right now. So kind of while the whole world is in enforced lockdown. I thought there's never been a better time to talk about the power and erosion of democratic norms. Lots of fun.
Ben Rhodes 3:01Yeah, it's a great topic.
Dan Ilic 3:03Now in this chat, I think we've covered quite a bit of territory in the half an hour we've got with you the risk that COVID-19 poses to democracy around the world how people in robust liberal democracies can not only protect their institutions, but also support those around the world who live under more authoritarian regimes, and how the USA can overcome its federal leadership vacuum. So these are big, big topics, big topics, you know, you're you're gonna big brain and that's why that's why you're here. That's why you do what you do.
Ben Rhodes 3:30I'll try, I'll see. We'll see what your listeners think. Now, the
Dan Ilic 3:35first question is when it comes to choosing a disinfectant to inject. What do you prefer, bleach or dental?
Ben Rhodes 3:44Well, you know, the United States has tried for a very long time to best we can set a good example for the rest of the world and, and now I think we, you know, tried a new territory with this innovative treatment of inhaling deadly disinfectants. You know, I'm a Lysol wipes person myself. wipes are harder because you have to choose. But a less face to say for all your listeners don't take this as seriously as some of Donald Trump's followers tonight,
Dan Ilic 4:13you're trying to believe what you're trying to say is you're being sarcastic.
Ben Rhodes 4:16Yes, exactly, exactly. As he now tells us he was.
Dan Ilic 4:22Well, you know, we've seen countries around the world like Poland and Hungary effectively kind of dismantle democratic processes under the guise of Coronavirus and emergency powers. Do you think that this is starting a trend for other states who are eyeing off, you know, all burned and polled?
Ben Rhodes 4:38Yeah, I mean, you mentioned this book I'm working on part of the point of that book is that all these people, for the last decade or more have been learning from one another? Viktor Orban Donald Trump, Modi in India, bolson arrow in Brazil, Xi Jinping in China, Putin, of course. So they already kind of learned from one another and it's not unusual that in a crisis, an authoritarian Might take take more power for themselves. And as usual, or bonds kind of been at the vanguard of this, the Hungarian Prime Minister for the last decade, and he was among the first to essentially grant himself dictatorial powers early in this crisis, and we're seeing some people follow suit in Poland. Modi's certainly acted in dictatorial ways recently to begin with, and that could be expanding now. So it's the Chinese, even in Hong Kong, in the last couple weeks have been cracking down arresting protesters. So I think, you know, unfortunately, we should anticipate in the next, you know, few weeks and months, a movement by some of these leaders to take and hold even more power than they already have.
Dan Ilic 5:47With Hong Kong. It's certainly something we've been because it happens in Asia, which is kind of out words we kind of pay attention to Hong Kong quite a lot and the part two pro democracy protests there over the last few weeks. Shocking, sending ripples through Australian media anyway, very amazing, amazing photos and pictures through Australian media. So we're really paying attention to it. How is that kind of movement going now and Coronavirus? And how are people still managing to protest?
Ben Rhodes 6:17Well, you know, they were continuing to protest physically for as long as they could I follow this closely. I went to Hong Kong in December, met with a lot of protesters. I've stayed in touch with some of them. But right now, frankly, it's hard. I think if you talk to them, one of the things that they are hoping will sustain this movement they built is one of the innovative things that they've done is there's an entire culture around this movement. So it's not just street protest, its songs, its means its artwork. It's a kind of virtual community. It's kind of endless telegram threads. So I think their hope is that the oxygen of this culture will sustain them. There's important legislative elections in Hong Kong later this year in the fall, that I know has been a focus of the movement for some time. And this will be a test, Dan but one thing I'd say to people when we start on the kind of pessimistic note of what these leaders are doing in some places, including in Hong Kong, you know, the reality too is there's going to be massive economic fallout from this and it's gonna blow back. So while the first phase of this Coronavirus, reality politically might be more power for the authoritarian authoritarians, I think the second phase when we get six months to a year out, maybe that pendulum swinging back hard against some of these folks who are in power and and that may happen in Hong Kong when people can get back out in the street, there may be a pent up nature to what we see happen. Hmm.
Dan Ilic 7:47Who do you think is doing a better in terms of handling the crisis liberal democracies or authoritarian regimes? This is kind of like questions. It seems to me a kind of a mix like I particularly when you're looking at balsa narrow And Trump and these folks who have authoritarian tendencies just don't seem to think COVID is a real deal.
Ben Rhodes 8:08Yeah, well, we've been, you know, the baseline for what not to do in the United States. But, you know, the funny thing is, when you look at it, it's really it doesn't split the on democratic and authoritarian lines. You know, people have been trying to make that kind of judgement. The reality is, it splits them with other government is competent or not. And, you know, South Korea and Germany are democratic countries, with long standing democratic norms, institutions, and they've handled this quite well as unsurprisingly. So a lot of the Scandinavian countries, not Sweden, but the rest of them. Whereas, you know, other democracies, United States, Brazil that you mentioned, I think the kingdom have not handled it particularly well. And similarly with authoritarian countries, you know, China, really mishandled it out of the gate. In part because of their authoritarian nature, which led to people not reporting the truth up the chain led the people at the top to not want to come clean and precious time was missed at the beginning, then you saw a very, you know, I think effective response once they got their act together. So, you know, it's it's mixed in. And I think what that tells you is it's not in this type of crisis. It's not necessarily always can be determined by the system that you need. If you're a democracy, you need to elect competent people, as well as having a democracy.
Dan Ilic 9:34But let's not let's not beat around the bush, there are some very competent or authoritarian regimes out there.
Ben Rhodes 9:39Yeah, yeah. I mean, well, there's, you know, Singapore, right is always kind of the gold standard for competent, at least semi authoritarian regimes. And yeah, they've been quite effective, although they've had some challenges recently. Yeah. So I mean, I think, look, the problems in the United States you know, have to do with The fact that we have a one major political party that's gone kind of nuts over the course last decade, and Donald Trump is the reaction to that really was the result of the end result of that. And that's, you know, that's that's what explains our response.
Dan Ilic 10:15And when you were in the driver's seat under Obama, how tempting is it to, you know, throw out a few rights in order to get your policies enacted? when you're when you're in that? Yeah,
Ben Rhodes 10:24I mean, it's a good question. Um, you know, what was interesting about that, Dan, is that we inherited a lot of policies that in you know, I think went pretty far in terms of trading away certain rights for counterterrorism purposes. Patriot Act service, mass surveillance, in particular, the stuff that came out in the Snowden revelations, this kind of massive post 911 infrastructure, and we ended up spending a lot of time kind of trying to figure out how much of that to keep versus how much of that to try to scale back in terms of government power. You know, what's frustrating you we had a pandemic, or we had an outbreak of Ebola that didn't become a pandemic. And you know, there wasn't really any. The key to that response, which was quite well, you know, didn't really have to do with taking away people's rights at all. I think in this one, the most interesting questions have to do with what happens when societies kind of resume economic activity, and you start using technology like South Korea and Taiwan have been using technology to track who's sick and who's not, and maybe even to take people's temperature, that kind of thing. And, you know, that that makes a lot of sense in terms of tracking and a disease. You know, whether you want the government to know where you are at all times and what your help is, is a different thing. So my hope is, is that those kinds of powers are taken by governments if they're temporary, that they're it's, it's made clear at the outset that this is a temporary measure put in place just for this emergency.
Dan Ilic 12:09Yeah. When I first emailed you about doing this, we were looking at, kind of on we're looking at kind of power structure in Australia, which wouldn't have any checks and balances for this this crisis. So I was like, gonna get on the phone to Ben see what Yeah, but since then, is a senate oversight committee to our national Corona response, which is, which is good, which is kind of standard in this country.
Ben Rhodes 12:34Yeah, yeah. No, I mean that but I think that's the key thing is just to make sure somebody's looking over somebody's shoulder at all times.
Dan Ilic 12:42It's kind of interesting, like Parliament for Australia anyways, kind of is out of school until August 1. In the meantime, this is National COVID-19 commission that's been formed to manage a crisis made up of a board whose experience is pretty much based around minerals, mining energy. One guy who is like the chair of the csro, but I wouldn't call him a doctor because he's not a doctor. And so what does that say about Australia reservation that their, that their national kind of board that's kind of responding to this while parliament is not in session?
Ben Rhodes 13:18Well, you know, it's Yeah, you know, what's funny about that is is you learn kind of who is the actual power structure in your country when the bottom falls out, in a way, you know? So what that tells me is like, those are the people who actually have the power in Australia, in the same way that the United States, frankly, when we've had crises, bankers, you know, banks, major corporations are often the people who seem to suddenly have a lot of power to determine what happens, you know, we just, you know, a few weeks ago passes $2 trillion bill to essentially try to bail out, you know, the economy. And first of all, you wonder, where do we get this $2 trillion from But then yeah, I mean, I think the the impulse of the republican party as with the, the financial crisis in 2008, when when george bush was in office, the first impulse was to bail out these big corporations and to bail out banks. And, you know, kind of the Democrats in the House had to be like, Hey, what about actual small businesses are and workers who've been laid off? But yeah, I think Yeah, so for Australia, its its energy, interest mining interest, right? who've kind of been the power behind the strings is certainly in the Conservative Party. Just like in the in the United States, we find the heads of major corporations and banks are the people who end up seeming to be making these key decisions when we hit these crises. Then
Lewis Hobba 14:44when we sort of Australia is looking at America's handling of this at the moment it like, I mean, doesn't it looks like a bit of a mess. When America is America bother looking at Australia like we spend so much time looking at you. Do you look at does anyone even notice what we're doing? Is that something that's on anyone's mind?
Ben Rhodes 15:01I mean, you know, here Yeah, I mean, it basically, I think the United States looks at, you know, what we tend to do is look at a mix of different countries who seem to represent different regions, right. You know, so you always have a few European countries you're looking at, then you always have kind of South Korea and Japan and East Asia and then you do you look at Australia, and then around Indonesia and India. I don't suggest there's like a lot of time spent. It's usually just like, what are the metrics of how many tests people have done and how many cases there are and is somebody doing something in particular that seems to be working or not, you know, and in that case, I think
Dan Ilic 15:37Tom Hanks getting Coronavirus um, Hanks getting Coronavirus on the Gold Coast was a really high point for the world looking at Australia's COVID response
Lewis Hobba 15:46Yeah, if we kill Hanks will never forgive us. And yeah,
Dan Ilic 15:50I act his attitude to Vegemite was really set the set the scales.
Ben Rhodes 15:54I think we're all wondering just what what the hell was Tom Hanks doing in Australia in the first place? Like we had no idea. You know, I mean, there's America's treasure right? It's great for the Elvis movie. Well, yeah, maybe that was the point. But the thing is, is that like Australia I think has not you know, distinguished itself for either having a particularly exceptional response or particularly bad response and so therefore, it hasn't gotten the same attention as a bunch of other countries in the US we excel in the middle that's Australia you excel you're right in the middle which by the way, I would trade to be in the middle of
the middle looks pretty good from the bottom.
Dan Ilic 16:30Well, Ben, let you know. Your Lewis did say the US does look like a bit of a mess. So my question is, how much of this is Obama's fault?
Ben Rhodes 16:39Well, if you listen to Trump, all of it would be I you know, this has been the most frustrating time for me as you can imagine, but I mean, mainly because we got this massive scare in 2014 with a bola and that ended up okay. You know, we had to mobilise the US military sent to West Africa. Were to send 10s of thousands of health care workers and lots of supplies there. But we also learned a lot from that. So we tried to having been scared. Okay, what does the government need? We need an office in the White House to coordinate this we, we created an actual playbook. What do you do if there's a pandemic, we develop these tools so you can develop and produce healthcare equipment, if you needed to an emergency, we had all these international protocols. And what's been so frustrating is all that stuff was kind of wrapped in a bow and handed off to Trump. They clearly just scrapped, totally ignored. And so they went in, you know, if they'd literally just opened a drawer and found, you know, the playbook that we left for the pandemic and some of the things in that playbook, they would have been producing testing, and ventilators and masks and other things throughout February instead of falling so far behind but but because they have such a disdain for anything Obama did and for government itself, they just completely ignored that right and that was also
Dan Ilic 17:58there isn't. There's so many vacant places in public service in America that is still yet to be kind of filled or people aren't wanting to take charge.
Lewis Hobba 18:08Yeah, administrator.
Ben Rhodes 18:09Yeah, to me, it's kind of the price of chaos, you know, like so we were when when we were in the transition, right, the period of time after the election, Obama's own office, we actually did an exercise a cabinet level. So the senior most people in the government exercise on what happens if there's a new kind of flu pandemic. So basically, exactly the scenario, so that each of the people in these key positions would be able to inhabit the experience of making those initial decisions. And the reality is, even if they were paying attention, which at the time, it didn't seem like they really were. Almost none of those people are there, right? Because Trump goes through these people like one one a year. So the chaos of that kind of turnover, and the kind of disdain for government which means that lots of these positions go unfilled. And the idea that we don't really listen to experts to begin with, you know, we're paying the price for that. Now, it's kind of the, if you have a president who, who doesn't like his predecessor, who doesn't like science, who doesn't like government experts and doesn't feel positions, a pandemic is basically the worst possible thing that can happen. Because that's when you need government. That's when you need experts. That's when you need to learn from your predecessors. And so this is of all the things that could hit Trump, this is probably the worst possible one that he was designed for, beyond his expertise and disinfected. And
Lewis Hobba 19:37you were talking before about the different things that might happen as a response to this particularly in authoritarian regimes. But in America, like there is such a belief in in some parts of America about small government getting rid of government, for the government, like it's a government position. Do you think now that we're looking at this, wishing that there was a functional government in governments around the world We all sort of have this desire now for just a functioning bureaucrat. The government. Yeah. Just to any government that works. Do you think that's gonna happen in America at all? I think there'll be a wish for that to come back.
Ben Rhodes 20:11I mean, certainly, among part of America, I mean, there's been this kind of, gosh, 30 year war against government from the, from the Republican Party of the right wing of the Republican Party, you know, dating all the way back to Ronald Reagan. Really, small government. You know, one of America's most famous conservative activists famously said he wanted to make government small enough that you could drown it in the bathtub. Not a nice image, of course, but and now I really do you know, I feel like we're seeing kind of the price of that because, you know, what, what, what do you mean when you're saying you're cutting but government? Well, you're cutting budgets for things like the centres for disease control, you're cutting funding for the National Institute of Health. You're cutting funding for the things that you need as a backstop, and effective crisis, I think in the our election, you know, is going to kind of play out on the terms you've described. And since that, look, Joe Biden is not the most charismatic, young new face. But what he is, is someone who offers the stability of like, well, this guy knows what government does, and he'll hire the smart people. And, you know, there's a theory of elections in the US that we tend to elect the opposite of the person who went before you know, so you had Bill Clinton fall by George W. Bush fell by Barack Obama fall by Donald Trump so that that does seem to be like people turn to something different. That's Biden. That's a wildly even like, that's a crazy oscillating pendulum that's just think about it, but at some point, I'm getting whiplash and thinking about it and but I think by the Congress by an offer is therefore is not youth in, you know, inspiration. But it is like, okay, just someone who will, frankly the idea of government, just being You know, boring is appealing now, you know, we, let's just get people in there who know what they're doing. We don't think about it every day and we don't live a psychodrama on Twitter every day. We have a president who just hires the right people, makes the key decisions, you know, tries to lower the temperature of the power politics and get things done. And there's a hunger for that.
Dan Ilic 22:23And then finally, the pendulum can swing again and the republicans will have in 2024 Kanye West, right?
Ben Rhodes 22:28Yeah.
Lewis Hobba 22:30Yeah, you did Australia. We always talked about like the pod test for our latest like it's, we always like someone want to have a beer at the pub with. And that's pretty much what we did in the last election. And now I think a lot of people are just going I don't need a person to have a beer with not only am I not allowed to go to the pub to have a beer. I just want a nerd who's read the books.
Ben Rhodes 22:49Yeah, but and I could never figure that out because I certainly didn't want to have a beer with Tony Abbott Gus.
Dan Ilic 22:57I think no one in his party. What are they doing?
Ben Rhodes 23:00Yeah, I just gonna just gonna put that out there.
Yeah, no, I we have to get back on the beer thing here too, you know, not that I predict when I have a beer with Donald Trump but uh, you know, sometimes that's not the thing you're looking for in your prime minister,
Dan Ilic 23:15when I was when I was looking for a photo today, they're kind of put on the web post that we're talking with you I found all these great ones of you behind the behind the White House podium. And I thought well, how Trump has done so much damage to brand USA. And, and that visual identity does it concern you that you have so many photos of you on the White House briefing room podium? Well, yeah, yeah, I feel bad brand.
Ben Rhodes 23:44I gotta tell you, it's so funny to, to think back the first time I had to give a briefing in the White House, that kind of iconic White House podium. I was really nervous. And actually, I'd later figured out that I were different colours. socks that day.
Thankfully escaped notice
Lewis Hobba 24:04problem in contrast to the substitute?
Ben Rhodes 24:08Yeah, that's about as dramatic as it got. But I mean, it's true for the entire pregnancy. Like, there was such a, you know, I grew up I watched the West Wing, like, these places were kind of, you know, we don't have loyalty here. I'm like, you guys. So, the, the, the White House, the presidency is kind of like this mixture of the seat of government, but also like the, you know, the, the seat of the state. And one of the most, you know, depressing things has been watching all of those settings can be debased and degraded, you know, just by Trump, but but but these, you know, kind of mix of grifters and competence and ideologues around him. And so yeah, it is kind of jarring. I spent so much time in this kind of small spaces and to see, you know, Trump up there talking about, you know, sunlight, curing diseases and and, you know, taking disinfectant and the rest of it, it does feel like it kind of bases the whole institution. And I'm curious if Trump is defeated, or if he ever is no longer present, which I presume will happen at some point. Whether that kind of reverts back and people once again, think about the American presidency that way and think about those settings that way, or whether he's kind of permanently done some damage.
Lewis Hobba 25:22It's you think, sorry, I was gonna say, is there any part of you that watches what the White House does now and thinks, God, I didn't realise you could get away with that. And that's something that you would have you had gone Oh, we should have just done that. We didn't realise we could be ourselves.
Ben Rhodes 25:38Yes. Yeah. There's two levels to that. I mean, one is Yeah, like I used to, you know, I was in charge of our communications on foreign policy now security. So that meant, you know, I was kind of the final person to look at any statement they went out or obviously a presidential speech, and you would act on the nerves you would feel about what you know, getting if there was a typo in there, you know, I mean,
Dan Ilic 26:00like, Man, I've read your book and you you actually you, you manage to Trent translate your anxiety or communicate about rocking every little bit of word. I was so nervous reading your book about so you when you're writing speeches and communications with fat Ben really fucking cares shit.
Ben Rhodes 26:21Well you know, contrast is like
Dan Ilic 26:22fucking Trump's get up there riffing. It's like, yeah,
Ben Rhodes 26:25yeah, no, that's right. And so, you know, and look, I mean, I'm glad that we cared and I think
Dan Ilic 26:32the world class is really glad that you checked.
Ben Rhodes 26:34One, I think I think people cared about what Obama said, because they figured that he was very careful about what he said. But it is amazing to look back and think about the, the precise care we took about words, and that's obviously totally gone. But there is something I will say that like, you know, I'm not, I'm not crediting Trump with this. But but the you know, sometimes I Do you think you, you impose kind of limits on what you mean, in the second Obama term? For instance, we started to kind of let it rip a little bit more, you know, the opening to Cuba. Yeah. You know, the, obviously the Iran nuclear agreement, you know, Paris accord, things that were seen as politically very risky. We just did them, you know, and you started to realise, you know, on Cuba friends, which, which I worked on, the only reason you'd be like, Well, why do we have this crazy Cuba policy? And people just say, well, you don't you don't touch that, you know, that's politically, you know, toxic, you know, and it's like, well, why not? You know, so there is there is something healthy about being willing to break from convention. But, but to this extreme, taking it to this extreme is not healthy.
Dan Ilic 27:49Well, let me ask you this. How, how do you have hope at this point for America and for overcoming this federal leadership vacuum like heading into disarray? And Saison
Ben Rhodes 28:02I mean, I think that
it's hard not to be pretty dark about where we are right now.
I, I did think look, you know, obviously, this is the worst possible way for this to be playing out in terms of the loss of life and the economic damage. And what's happening is, you know, we're seeing the result of electing someone who just shouldn't be president who just doesn't have any skills required to do that, who kind of represents some of the worst impulses of America in terms of hubris and narcissism and belligerence? I think my only hope is, you know, as we were talking about earlier, that this is kind of gonna wake enough people up to the fact that we got to just get our stuff together. You know, I mean, America's Got a not only do we have to elect someone different in this election, but I mean, we Got to cut it out here, you know, with the indulgence of this kind of right wing populism that is infected us, like a lot of other places, with the disdain for government and expertise. You know, we are the richest country in the world with the most resources in the world. And we have basically the worst response to this pandemic of anybody in the world, if you just look at the cases, and the deaths and the spread of this thing, certainly among the advanced economies. And so my hope in a way is that, as with the whole Trump presidency, that this is waking people up and that this will mobilise people, and that people understand that this government matters that the national cohesion matters. And that, frankly, we, if you indulge conspiracy theory and kind of toxic kind of right wing media, you end up with a guy standing at a podium talking about disinfectants, you know,
Dan Ilic 29:53is it any kind of sense from people who worked on the Affordable Care Act that they've got a sweet level of shouting froideur right now?
Ben Rhodes 30:00Yeah, I mean, well, yeah, that that's the thing actually that, you know, the weird thing about the United States is a lot of the debates you know, are moving from my my, obviously political perspective, are moving even further to the left, even while Donald Trump is in office. So the Affordable Care Act that was seen as as kind of radical takeover of the healthcare system by government 10 years ago, is now seen as this pretty centre centrist middle of the road plan. And and, and I think that will mean that, you know, if Joe Biden's elected This is this will grow into even more of a moral more of a generous healthcare system than we had before. So I yeah, I think I think a lot of things Obama was trying to do, where he got some of it done, not all of it done, as difficult as the Trump years hard to see him try to take, you know, like an axe to it. I actually am somewhat optimistic that 1015 years from now we'll look back and realise that okay, all that stuff. Obama started ended up getting done. It just had this kind of major detour under Trump.
Lewis Hobba 31:04And is there any discussion at all about what might happen with the elections in the states if people are still in lockdown? And like we've been talking about people becoming authoritarian regimes? Is there any chance he delays the election or puts it off?
Ben Rhodes 31:21No, he can't really do it. Because under our system, the state's
administer elections in Congress, I think Congress would have to support him and putting off the election, because it's also mandated in federal law that had happened on that particular day. So I think the debate the United States is turning to male voting, whether people are going to be able to vote by mail in the election. Trump has resisted that because like republicans always resist things that allow people to vote in the United States. It's actually peculiar to me that they are because, frankly, in hopefully they're not listening to this podcast, but the the secret is that older people tend to vote for republicans and voting by mail might be helpful to them. My view is that everybody in this country should have the option to vote by mail. I don't care whether that means they're more likely to vote Democrat or Republican. And I do think you'll see. I think that's where this will end up. I think, I think, you know, the vast majority of states will have, if not universal vote by mail certainly make it much easier for people to request mail in ballots and, and we may have an election where there's not nearly as much in person voting, but a lot more voting in the mail.
Dan Ilic 32:41And while we wrap up here, I just kind of want to have a quick chat about climate change at sea. It feels like this crisis is just distracting us all from the biggest crisis possible. Particularly for Australians, like over Christmas, we had these incredible bushfires that ripped through large swathes of the country, even when We met Ben back in KL flying out to KL looking out the window, seeing for four hours, just smoke in over the continent was just incredible. And at that point in time, I think Australians were more conscious of the climate crisis than ever before. What our governments missing at this point in time to be able to pivot towards a climate crisis front heading heading out of this crisis to this current COVID crisis, do you think?
Ben Rhodes 33:32Well, I'll tell you what worries me. What worries me is that we're going to go into this kind of deep recession everywhere. And what is going to be tempting for a lot of countries, particularly the large developing countries, like China, and India, is when they're trying to jumpstart the economy again, saying, well, let's, let's put aside these plans to shift to renewable energies because it's a lot cheaper to just You know, fire up the coal fired power plants and get energy moving that way, you know. And so you could see kind of short term economic stimulus measures that turned back to coal and dirty forms of energy in ways that are damaging, obviously to even the minimal ambition of what was in the Paris accords. You because what's necessary, I mean, that what we should learn from this pandemic, right? Is what was so frustrating this country is here is a this pandemic is this disease is spreading. The scientists are telling us this is going to happen. If you'd listened to the scientist, you would have done certain things right away. And we didn't do them. And so therefore, a lot of people are getting killed. And it really is a miniature analogy for climate change, like the scientists are telling us this is going to happen. We can even see it starting to happen in Australia, and what you need to do, you really need to wholesale change your entire makeups of your economies. You know, like, we can't You know, there's no other way to do this guys, you know, there's no, there's no third option here between transitioning from fossil fuels to different forms of energy. And you can do that in stages. And you can do that in ways to cushion the blow for certain industries. But that's what's really going to be required here. And, and I think, I hope well, we've just lived through kind of once again tells us that like, ignoring scientists are telling you something bad is gonna happen is ultimately gonna cost you a lot more in the long run than then taking action right away. And this is the debate, you know, that we had. Well, first, we had partners and Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard. But these are the debates we had certainly with with with Abbott,
when when Obama was
Dan Ilic 35:46so tell me, let's go deep on that for a second. With Abbott, what kind of conversations were you having with him and his partners?
Ben Rhodes 35:55Well, what was so frustrating with that, and look, I mean, it's no secret Obama You know, Tony Abbott was far from his favourite leader to begin with.
Lewis Hobba 36:03Ours either, for the record.
Ben Rhodes 36:05Yeah. And, you know,
what was frustrating with Abbott? You know, is he was kind of very sure of himself without really knowing what he's talking about. And no, I remember Obama rarely and he actually got on well was the centre right politicians and you know, Uncle Merkel and David Cameron. So it's not like he couldn't work with someone, you know, who is on the right side, you know, the right end of the spectrum, not the right side. And, but I'll tell you the anecdote that really drove this home to me is that, you know, we were, you know, we came to Australia, I believe, yes, right after we reached the bilateral agreement with China, in 2014. That became kind of the basis of Paris accord. And we were trying to get Australia just do some minimal stuff, you know, you know, ambitious, or even not that ambitious, just a target of emissions. We're done. Or some funding for developing countries to develop, you know, clean energy. And Abbott was just kind of tone deaf on this thing. And, and Obama remember gave a speech before the G 20. in Brisbane, where, you know, we had like a paragraph about climate change written into the speech, and Obama got to that paragraph. And he just went way off the text, and was just basically blasting the Abbott government in ways that he almost never did on foreign soil and pointing out the Great Barrier Reef disappearing. And that an Abbott was upset. You know, this was like, you know, he was supposed to be this big stage for him hosting the G 20. But it's like, Well, look, if you want to host the G 20. Like you got to step up and be an international leader. And we've got everybody else kind of rallying around this effort to get to an ambitious climate agreement the next year in Paris, and Abbott was really one of the last holdouts dragging his feet you know, and no coincidence. You know who his key political supporters are? We mentioned people in the mining and energy industries. no coincidence. Rupert Murdoch media in Australia, also very friendly to those industries and, and so it wasn't hard to put that together. Why that guy was dragging his feet.
Dan Ilic 38:17It might surprise you. I don't know if you know this, but probably the thing that sealed the deal for Australians and Abbott was when he was Prime Minister and he wants to he wanted to instigate. So you know, we talked about all the climate policies or the retrograde kind of policies are around that kind of stuff. But the thing that really turned Australians against Abbott was when he wanted to institute knights and dames a new award system where he would create an Australian system of knighting people and gaming people, and the first knighthood he gave was to Prince Philip.
Ben Rhodes 38:49Oh, well,
I didn't I did not know that. I will tell you that whenever we were really annoyed with Tony Abbott. We would watch the video of that speech by Julia Gillard.
Yeah, well, that speech got watched a lot.
Let me put it that way.
Lewis Hobba 39:07You know when, when when all the video. So when all those handwashing videos were coming out at the start and they were like, you need to wash your hands for at least 20 seconds and people were giving me like songs like wash it for the length of happy birthday. There are a lot of people who are going you just need to wash your hands for the length of Julia Gillard misogyny speech. Nice.
Dan Ilic 39:27Yeah, well, seven minutes. Exactly. Well, Ben, thanks for joining us on irrational fear. It's a real privilege to have you.
Ben Rhodes 39:37Yeah. Good talking you guys.
Dan Ilic 39:38And I've got a question. Have you ever thought about joining cameo because some of your predecessors like Sean Spicer and Anthony Scaramucci are both on there?
Ben Rhodes 39:47Yeah, I you know, what a surprise that there's a pipeline from the Trump administration to reality tell.
Dan Ilic 39:56Let's have a list. Let's have a listen to a lot of them. Here's Sean Spicer.
Sean Spicer 40:00Guys, it's Sean Spicer this month on cameo I'm donating all the proceeds to the yellow ribbon fund. It's an organisation that supports our nation's caregivers to the our wounded service members. So think about that video. Happy birthday, St. Patrick's Day. Daylight Savings Time. do well on the primaries, if you're a presidential candidate, Lent, that's always a good one. You name it. There's so many good reasons to send a shout out video to the person that you care about. Maybe a complete stranger. So when you want to ask them in a date doesn't matter. It's for a great cause. Think about it. Consider Thanks a lot.
Dan Ilic 40:34I would love a daylight savings dog from bed.
Lewis Hobba 40:37Yeah. Oh, yeah. Eating as well. Getting chillin spice awesome on a date for you. That's a no, that's a hard No.
Ben Rhodes 40:44Yeah, no, that's, uh, you know, there's Trump used to say this. When he was running, we're not sending our best. And I think I think that's been manifest in the, in the appointments he's made.
Dan Ilic 40:57Yeah, how much do you think Sean Spicer costs Ben? How much to pay for 32nd message from Sean Spicer?
Ben Rhodes 41:05You know, I would pay someone to not send me.
Lewis Hobba 41:10Haven't you paid enough?
Dan Ilic 41:12charging 160 pounds. So 300 Australian dollars for a message, Scaramucci however, is a quite a bit less. He's only 40 pounds, but I guess he was in his office for about three hours. So
Ben Rhodes 41:26yeah, it's like 11 day. No, no, nobody. I mean, all these guys are kind of grifters, right. That guy's somehow cashed in on 11 days in the job
Anthony Scaramucci 41:34Hey it's the mooch I'm super excited to be on cameo. So you know what? I'll talk about anything as you guys know. So look me up. Dial me in and tell me what you want me to say to you. I'm looking forward to it.
Lewis Hobba 41:50Oh, wow. It's just the people who are too stupid to write a book.
Ben Rhodes 41:53Yeah, yeah. put that one in the time capsule.
Dan Ilic 41:56Ben, thank you so much for joining us in irrational fear. Hopefully we can catch up with you again and Six months time so we can chat again.
Ben Rhodes 42:03Yeah, hopefully we'll have different President.
Dan Ilic 42:07Thank you so much thicker. Say bye bye
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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