Jonathan Alter, MSNBC analyst, co-host, Sirius XM Alter Family Politics, Daily Beast columnist and the author of His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life (Simon & Schuster, 2020), offers his analysis as listeners respond to the first debate between Pres. Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden.MSNBCoffers his analysis as listeners respond to the first debate between Pres. Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden.
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Brian: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Well, we were going to do what you normally expect of us after a presidential debate, compare the candidate statements on important policy items, and we will do that. If you were to just read a transcript of the debate, you could find a few examples of that. Those comparisons do matter a lot, and we'll get to some.
We also have to be real about what happened there in Cleveland last night. The biggest thing wasn't even policy. Trump kept saying he was the law and order president, Biden isn't for law and order. Then, the President of the United States again declined when asked simply and directly by the moderator, Chris Wallace of Fox News, "Are you willing tonight to condemn white supremacists and militia groups, and to say that they need to stand down and not add to the violence in a number of these cities as we saw in Kenosha and as we've seen in Portland?" That was Chris Wallace's question. The president replied like this.
President Trump: I would say almost everything I see is from the left-wing, not from the right-wing. [crosstalk]
Chris Wallace: What are you saying?
President Trump: I'm willing to do anything. I want to see peace.
Chris Wallace: Well, then do it, sir.
Joe Biden: Say it. Do it. Say it.
President Trump: Do you want to call them-- What do you want to call them? Give me a name. Give me a name.
Chris Wallace: White supremacist- [crosstalk]
President Trump: Go ahead. Who would you like me to condemn?
Chris Wallace: White supremacists and right-wing militia.
President Trump: Proud Boys, stand back and stand by. I'll tell you what, somebody's got to do something about Antifa and the left because this is not a right-wing problem.
Brian: And on they went. Joe Biden then asserted that Trump's own FBI Director Christopher Wray said, "Antifa is an ideology, not a group, and that white supremacist violence is the number one source of domestic terrorism in the United States today." Trump said, "You've got to be kidding me." Let's fact-check. Here is FBI Director Christopher Wray, remember, appointed by Trump after he fired Jim Comey, testifying before Congress just last month on Antifa.
Christopher Wray: We look at Antifa as more of an ideology or a movement than an organization.
Brian: On white supremacist violence.
Christopher Wray: Within the domestic terrorism bucket category as a whole, racially motivated violence extremism is, I think, the biggest bucket within that larger group. Within the racially motivated violent extremist bucket, people subscribing to some kind of white supremacist type ideology is certainly the biggest chunk of that.
Brian: We don't need The Washington Post and its Pinocchios or any of that to fact-check the president, Christopher Wray, his own FBI Director, did it in advance. We will start there as we welcome our first guest today, Jonathan Alter, author of three New York Times bestsellers, including very relevant to this morning, The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies. Well, the center was holding in 2013 anyway when that book came out. Talk about the idea of the center holding.
Maybe you also know Jonathan's book, The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope. He is an NBC News and MSNBC political analyst. He has a brand new book just out yesterday, relevant in its own way, called His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life. We'll get to that. Hi, Jonathan. Congrats on the book, and welcome back to WNYC.
Jonathan: Thanks, Brian. Great to be here.
Brian: Listeners, I don't even know what to ask. Anything you want to say about last night's debates, the lines are open at 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280. Obviously, we'll play more clips. Was anyone dissuaded from voting last night, listeners? There are plenty of people who were just disgusted with the whole system. We'll get Jonathan's take on this, but to me, that was part of Trump's strategy.
It's true with negative campaigning, in general, negative campaigning is not always just to hurt the other guy, it's sometimes just to turn people off from the process and to have them convince themselves not to vote, which would theoretically hurt the other guy. We have plenty of listeners who are pretty disgusted with politics in general. Anybody dissuaded, not dissuaded from voting last night? Did Trump succeed in that way?
Listeners, did you watch the whole thing? I see the ratings declined as it went on. Maybe that always happens in debate, but some media are making a point of noting that today the ratings declined as it went on. Did you walk away? Was that symbolic of anything? Did you learn anything about anything? Will you watch the other debates? Do you think- because some people are saying that Biden should refuse to debate again after all that interrupting that broke the rules, or whatever you want to say or ask Jonathan Alter, 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280. Jonathan, you had a virtual book event this morning, and I was struck by the way you invited people to it. You tweeted, "Looking to take a mental shower of decency this morning?" Is that what you wanted after last night?
Jonathan: Yes. I think one of the reasons a lot of people stopped watching the debate is they had to take a shower. It was so toxic. The question is, what now? Clearly, Biden will continue to debate, he's already announced that, but our democracy is in peril. This is not a flashing yellow light, it's code red. He indicated when he said to the Proud Boys, which is a violent white nationalist organization, "standby". That's like saying to stormtroopers, "Standby to take the election and the law in your own hands."
When he says he will not abide by the election returns, believe him. This is the thing about autocrats and dictators, really, one of the main lessons of history, which is if somebody says they want to kill you or hurt you or prevent you from exercising your rights, believe that person. He lies about everything except this. He knows he's very unlikely to win the election in a legitimate sense, so he's going to try to steal it. Nothing could be clearer.
Brian: I want to come back to that a little later. I don't want to lose the Proud Boys moment because I think it's also so central to democracy and just decency in this country. I don't know if you saw this Jonathan, or listeners, but the Proud Boys, a group as you described them, and also, the cause itself, Western chauvinist, made it, what Trump said last night, into a logo and shoulder patches already, that phrase "stand down and stand by". The leader of the group tweeted, "That's my president. Standing by, sir." There's not much ambiguity left after that, is there?
Jonathan: There really isn't. This reminds me-- I try to think of the historical analogies, and what happened last night was completely unprecedented in terms of presidential debates and American politics, more broadly. There are a couple of interesting precedents that came to mind. The first is George Wallace in 1963 saying, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." Then, he stood in the schoolhouse door to prevent integration, threw down the gauntlet. This is what Trump has done. He is a racist president. There's no point in mincing words, and that's something the American public is going to have to deal with.
Now, here's where the more optimistic part of me comes in, and that's the second historical analogy, and that's from 1954 when they held the Army-McCarthy hearings. When Senator Joseph McCarthy who was like Trump, a demagogue, who now we can't really imagine how anybody ever liked him, which by the way, will happen with Trump, eventually, when he started beating up on this innocent young lawyer accusing him wrongly of being a communist, a senior lawyer named Joseph Welch interjected, "Have you no decency, sir? At long last, have you no sense of decency?"
I think the vast majority of Americans last night were Joseph Welch. We were all Joseph Welch. We've had it. We understand that this man has no decency and is a rotten human being. Those who don't, are good Germans. They're people who will follow their fascistic leader wherever he goes, and then, later on, will try to explain to their family why in the great moral test of their generation, they failed. That's anybody, Brian, who is going to planning to vote for Donald Trump. They are out of rationalizations. "Oh, he's good for my 401(k). Oh, he's good for my--" [crosstalk]
Brian: That's 40%-- Jonathan, that's 40% of America more or less, at least.
Jonathan: It's a very large number of people, and that is what is the most disheartening part of this whole thing. We'd known who Trump is. This is about the American people and how they'll respond. To the people who are opposed to Trump, I would say this, it's time to stop wringing your hands and start ringing those call tools that they have to call and get out to vote in battleground states and you can do that from any place in the United States because the only way to prevent a true constitutional crisis, that will make our earlier constitutional crisis look minor by comparison, is a big unambiguous victory for Joe Biden. If it's a close election this country is in a lot of trouble.
Brian: I hope the White House Press Corps and other media don't miss the big obvious gaping hole there in Trump's rhetoric. I'm not sure everybody's going to focus on this as this but I feel like people should in addition to whatever else they focus on, he keeps calling himself the law and order candidate and the law and order president, but then, he is encouraging or refusing to discourage white supremacist groups, militia organizations from bringing weapons into the streets. How does that make you the law and order president? Chris Wallace also challenged Biden in this area on the left-wing violence in Portland, which is real, but it again winds up with a spotlight on Trump's strategy toward groups like the Proud Boys. Listen.
Chris Wallace: You had never called for the leaders in Portland and in Oregon to call and bring in the National Guard and knock off a 100 days of riots.
Joe Biden: They can, in fact, take care of it if he just stay out of the way.
President Trump: Oh, really? Oh, really?
Chris Wallace: No, wait. I asked him a question.
President Trump: I sent in the US Marshalls to get the killer of a young man in the middle of the street. They shot him, and for three days-
Chris Wallace: President Trump. President Trump, that's an interruption.
President Trump: - Portland didn’t do anything. I sent in the US Marshals, they took care of business.
Chris Wallace: Go ahead, sir.
Joe Biden: By the way, his own former spokesperson said, “Riots and chaos and violence help his cause.” That’s what this is all about.
President Trump: I don’t know who said that.
Joe Biden: I do.
President Trump: Who?
Joe Biden: Kellyanne Conway.
President Trump: I don't think she said.
Joe Biden: She said that.
Brian: Want to fact-check, folks, on that? Here's Kellyanne Conway on Fox and Friends last month.
Kellyanne Conway: That the more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better days for the very clear choice on who's best on public safety and law and order.
Brian: Not much ambiguity there. Jonathan, your reaction?
Jonathan: Well, he's the chaos candidate, and that's what he always does, is he just drops a big stink bomb into any situation he's in. Now that really the burden for those of us who want to protect American democracy-- Make no mistake, this is the most important election since 1864 when if Abraham Lincoln had lost to General McClellan, the Democrat the United States would have ceased to exist. There would have been negotiated settlement with the Confederacy and we wouldn't have had a union. That's how serious this is. It's not just Trump that has to be beaten. The Republican Party has to be taught a lesson that there are certain guardrails in our democracy that are precious.
The burden on the Democrats and on the left, in particular, is not to hand Trump any tools, any weapons, any excuses. The demonstrators in Portland should take a break. If they want to go back and demonstrate in late November or December, have had it. Right now, everybody needs to focus and join-arms on task one, which is removing this wretched human being from the presidency and mop up the stain on our democracy. Anything else is a distraction.
Honestly, Brian, I include this big march on Washington that they're planning in a couple of weeks. To me, that's just a waste of time. Organizing that march, okay fine. What are you doing? All of that energy should be going into calling undecided voters, getting out the democratic vote so every person votes early in states where they can vote early. I'm not so sure that people should use mail-in ballots because, in states where there is no early voting and you have a choice between an absentee mail and ballot and voting on Election Day, I would encourage people to put a mask on and vote on Election Day because, right now, it looks like there will be more Republicans voting on Election Day itself and that could give Trump an excuse to declare victory and sow chaos.
It's really important. It is extraordinarily critical right now that people not do things that distract, in the next five weeks, from job one, not just for Democrats, not just for liberals, not just for people who don't like Donald Trump, but for our country. When I listen to myself, Brian, I'm normally a pretty calm guy. I wrote a book called The Centre Holds. Well, the center didn't hold. Now, we have to piece it back together again, and we have an opportunity. As Trump said last night, elections do have consequences. A big Democratic victory will allow us to renew ourselves. Americans are great at that. Repair the breach in 2021, and we can do that.
Brian: To your point about voting at the polls, was this exchange, which starts with the moderator, Chris Wallace.
Chris Wallace: Will you urge your supporters to stay calm during this extended period not to engage in any civil unrest? Will you pledge tonight that you will not declare victory until the election has been independently certified? President Trump, you go first.
President Trump: I'm urging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully because that's what has to happen.
Brian: What did you make of that?
Jonathan: He won't say the most elemental thing in a democracy, which is to respect the election returns. He won't say it. Doesn't matter how many times he's asked, he won't say it. He is acting in a deeply un-American fashion. It doesn't matter how often he hugs the flag. Everything about his attitude right now is contrary to what our country is about. Elections are our most central small-d democratic institution, and we fight for them all over the world.
Jimmy Carter monitors elections in more than 100 countries because that is the key to having freedom. He is basically saying he's just going to have his Proud Boys or his other people in there trying to challenge all of the Democratic voters they can to try to suppress the vote so that he can eke out a victory, and he must be stopped from doing that. Unfortunately, poll watchers in most states tend to be seniors and they are more vulnerable to COVID, so younger people need to step up.
You can't be a poll watcher in a state you don't live in, but you should tell your friends in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida, Arizona, as well as- there's some other states that are now battleground states. People should volunteer to be poll watchers. Instead of organizing marches and shouting outside Portland City Hall or whatever they're doing, they need to use the internet to save our democracy, so that they can demonstrate next year. If the Democrats don't win this election, there won't be any demonstrating before too long. Anybody who thinks that is alarmist has not been paying attention.
Brian: With Jonathan Alter, author of books on FDR, Obama, and now, Jimmy Carter, Wendy in Stanford, you're on WNYC. Hi, Wendy, thank you for calling in.
Wendy: Hi, thank you. I appreciate the conversation. It makes a lot of sense and it all resonates, and I think it's absolutely true. My observation was something that it's going to sound snobby, but here it goes. I realized listening to how vile Trump was last night that the reason he keeps hammering on Hunter Biden, even though there's zero evidence and been disproven time and again, is because he's trying to push Hunter Biden back into using, so overdoses, in order to distract Joe Biden. That's got to be the most vile, cynical thing possible, but it also, to me, distracts 100%. It's one of those things that-- I don't know why else he would be doing this at this point.
Brian: How do you think Biden did standing up to that, in your opinion, Wendy?
Wendy: Actually, I thought that was his best moment because it really resonated with a lot of people, and I talk to the reality, sadly, of a lot of families in this country and a lot of people. I thought it was great. I've talked to a lot of friends, though, who said, "Oh, he walked into it. Why did he open the door?" I thought, first of all, Trump had already been trashing Hunter Biden earlier in the debate so it's not like you really open anything up. I think a lot of people I talked to seem to find it weak of him to have, I guess, admitted the addiction of the family and the problems in the family, and that's what they were responding to and saying he opened it up. To me, I thought it was a very compelling moment of decency.
Brian: Wendy, thank you very much. Jonathan, do you want to comment on that?
Jonathan: I'm not sure about Trump's motivation in trying to get an overdose, but I completely agree with Wendy on that being a very important and positive moment for Biden. It showed humanity and decency. It connected to a lot of people and it put his son's problems in their proper context. On top of that, Donald Trump, I feel like he doesn't even have a thimbleful of empathy or-- Not just common courtesy and compassion, but there's something of the sociopath in him.
This man's son had died after serving in Iraq. Trump could have said, "Look, we all know, Beau Biden, was a great man who served his country well, and we all grieve for your tragic loss, Vice President Biden, but I want to focus here tonight on your other son, Hunter Biden, who is engaged in some questionable business deals." That would have been within the bounds of American politics, but that's not what Trump does because he truly doesn't care about anybody except himself and his own money.
On the money point, I think if you're looking at what caused this last night or what took it up from 100 on the dial to 300 on the dial, when you didn't think the dial could go any higher, is the New York Times tax story. I know just from personal experience that many years ago, 20, 30 years ago, I was in a documentary about Trump as a New York developer. I said on camera that he wasn't nearly as rich as he said he was, he wasn't even close to being the wealthiest real estate developer in New York City, and he threatened to sue me. He eventually, like in some of the other cases, dropped it.
What makes him crazy, is when it's pointed out that, A, he is not that wealthy. He owes between $300-$400 million. That came out on his taxes. The bill is due in the next four years. On top of everything else, another reason not to reelect him is that he will scour the world for corrupt deals to pay back his creditors. He knows that paying $750 in taxes is not a good look five weeks from the election. To the extent that Trump was completely out of control and over the top, I think The New York Times story might have had something to do with it. Also, Biden was laughing in his face. I thought Biden-
Brian: Right.
Jonathan: - did extraordinarily well. There's this sense, "Oh, Biden wasn't very good." No. He didn't just clear the bar and not drool, which Trump was setting expectations foolishly low. He didn't just clear the bar, he recognized how to deal with Trump, which is to laugh in his face and call him a clown, and then, say, "Oh, I'm sorry. I meant to say, a person." He gets the jab in without seeming over the top. Kudos to Joe Biden.
Brian: For people who didn't watch the debate, NPR did a little mash-up of some of the crosstalk. This is like 30 seconds.
President Trump: [crosstalk]
Joe Biden: Folks, do you have any idea what this clown is doing?
President Trump: Why didn’t you do it over the last 25 years?
Joe Biden: Because you weren’t president and screwing things up
President Trump: No, no, no. You were a Senator and by the way-- [crosstalk]
Joe Biden: You’re the worst president America has ever had. Come on.
President Trump: Either the lowest or almost the lowest in your class. Don’t ever use the word smart with me. Don’t ever use that word.
Joe Biden: Oh, give me a break.
President Trump: Because you know what?
Joe Biden: The question is--
President Trump: Supreme Court Justice. Radical left.
Joe Biden: Will you shut up, man?
President Trump: Listen, who is on your list, Joe?
Brian: [laughs] You can laugh at it or you can cry or both at the same time. Jonathan, a question that I know one of my friends asked me is, did Biden do the right thing seeming to-- Did he descend to Trump's level by calling him a clown and telling him to shut up, or was that strategy that may have worked in some way?
Jonathan: Well, I don't know if it was strategy but, "Will you shut up, man?" is already a T-shirt, and I thought it was good that he said it. It's impossible to descend to Trump's level. First of all, every time you think Trump has touched bottom, he crushes through the floor. It's a contradiction in terms to say that any person has descended to Trump's level, so, no, and I don't think the audience got that impression. The instant polls that were done, it showed that Biden overwhelmingly won the debate.
In a normal year, that would be great, "Oh, this candidate won. This candidate lost. Okay, let's go on to the next debate." That's not what this is about this is a, unfortunately, it's a street fight for democracy. It really is about running up the score because if the score is close, we lose. Trump has been very upfront that he wants Amy Coney Barrett on the court so she can cast the deciding vote if a disputed election goes to the Supreme Court. While nominating her is constitutional, it's hypocritical, grossly hypocritical, and sleazy, but it is constitutional. What is not constitutional would be for her to rule on an election that is already underway.
The focus of the Democrats, in her hearings, should be on forcing her to reverse her position and recuse herself or no confirmation, and to put pressure on Mitt Romney, and they just need one other because they already have Collins and Murkowski, who don't want this appointment before the election. One other Republican, Romney and one other, to say, "I can only vote for confirmation if the nominee recuses herself from any decision having to do with this election."
I think it's extraordinarily important that that debate now move in that direction. Everybody knows she'll vote to reverse Roe v. Wade. You don't have to beat that drum. On health care, I think Biden was good at the beginning of the debate in explaining that the Supreme Court is poised to take your protection from pre-existing condition, discrimination of pre-existing conditions, and that if Trump wins and you have diabetes, he's throwing you to the wolves. It's no more complicated than that.
Brian: Our next segment--
Jonathan: He's throwing you to the wolves if you have diabetes.
Brian: Let me just say, to our listeners, that our next segment is with Dahlia Lithwick from Slate, who covers the Supreme Court for them, going to be a specific focus on the Supreme Court as an issue in last night's debate. That's coming up. Let's take another phone call for Jonathan Alter. Joan in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Joan, thank you for calling in.
John: Thank you for taking my call. Yes, I watched the debate. If there are any other debates, I don't know if it can be done, but close one mic. Let the moderator talk to the one person for the two minutes with the other mic not working, and then, put them on, so one person can speak. I also feel very strongly-- I don't hold only Trump accountable for this whole fiasco because when he was elected, I thought maybe the Republicans in the Senate would keep him under control. I didn't think they would be lapdogs and go to him first and the country last.
Brian: Joan, thank you very much. One more for this segment. Tracy in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hello, Tracy.
Tracy: Hi. Vote, vote, vote. I really thought that Biden did very well. I'm going to turn off the radio now. Biden did a great job. I like that idea of turning off one mic. I'm looking forward to the vice president debate, the VP debate. There were great questions by the moderator, especially about white supremacists. We never got to the environment. There's a movie called Kiss The Ground, which talks about regenerative agriculture to sequester carbon. It ends plowing up the earth and it ends pesticides, and Monsanto has been successfully sued for glyphosates, causes miscarriages, cancer. We have to end fossil fuel, which never got discussed either because we keep putting blankets the earth was CO2, which causes--
Brian: Tracy, just for the record, they did talk somewhat about global warming yesterday and fossil fuels, in particular. For your information and everybody's information, on Thursday, we're planning segments, specifically, on Trump, Biden, and global warming. That's coming up on Thursday as a focus in our 30 Issues in 30 days: Presidential Election Series, but they did have a discreet section last night as well on the specific issue of climate change.
Jonathan, to the previous caller's point about turning off a microphone, Chris Wallace, he was a stalwart last night in trying to enforce equal time and trying to put specific issue-oriented questions to both sides. I was surprised that they set it up in the way that they did with a lot of open debate structured into it, rather than you get two minutes for a first reply, then, you get a minute for a response, et cetera, as they often do because they must've known what was going to happen.
Jonathan: I don't know about that. I actually think that they should cancel the next two debates. We've heard enough. We know that he never changes, and we have nothing else to learn from this process about their position on the issues. He will roll over the other moderators. Chris Wallace is the toughest of the three of them. I think they should have the vice presidential debate and call it a day, but they won't do that. At a minimum, they need to cut the mic of the person, in the two minutes, who is not speaking.
I was glad that Chris Wallace got to climate change, but it reinforced for me the stakes of this election. It's not just democracy that's on the line, it's the planet that's on the line, on a ballot. To me, one of the saddest, most tragic things that I learned in researching my book about Jimmy Carter is that he planned in a second term, if he had been reelected in 1980, to begin to address climate change, which was then called carbon pollution.
It was known mostly to scientists, but Carter himself had gotten report and was planning to take action on it in the early 1980s. Imagine where we would be if Jimmy Carter had been reelected in 1980 over Ronald Reagan, in a much better place. The reason I mentioned that, beyond wanting to plug my book, is that these elections-- For people who say, "Oh, it doesn't matter. They're all the same. I hate politics," they need to get a grip. These elections touch our lives in so many ways, often, in ways that we don't think about and don't have time in our busy days to really understand but--
Brian: Two quick things before you go-
Jonathan: Go ahead, sorry.
Brian: - as we are already over time. One is, my impulse is to disagree with you about canceling the next two presidential debates because there's nothing more to be learned and think that that would be Biden or the Presidential Debate Commission taking Trump's bait to walk away from another institution of our democracy.
Jonathan: Yes. Look, I think you're probably right. They can settle for just cutting the mics. They can't set up a situation where they make no changes, and they can't wait for the Republicans to agree to the Commission on Presidential Debates' changes. They just need to unilaterally say, "We're cutting the mics," because one side has broken the rules and flouted the commission. If they don't exercise their authority and get control of these next two debates, then, that's really bad for the institution of presidential debates, means they've been hijacked. It's very important that the commission now reassert itself and not wait for the lawyers from the two parties to agree.
Brian: Finally, in your new book, which is His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life, which just came out yesterday, you write that you chose to tell Carter's life story at this time because it might help light our way back to some sense of decency, accountability, and seriousness in our politics. What do you think he could as opposed to being seen as a relic of another time?
Jonathan: What could he do now you're saying?
Brian: No, not what could he do in his 90s, but I guess you do, what your intent of this book was, in part, as you put it in that quote that I read, rather than just having Jimmy Carter written off as a relic of another time in terms of its relevance to right now.
Jonathan: Oh, okay. Basically, I spent five years on this book on and off, and it was like a vacation from Trump because I was reading about a flawed but very decent, smart, visionary president, who made decisions that weren't about getting reelected but what was going to be good for the country in the long run. He introduced alternative energy and he doubled-- He protected 100 million acres in Alaska, doubling the size of the National Park Service, signed 14 major environmental bills, brought a peace between Israel and Egypt.
I could go on with the list of his accomplishments, but the main point is it was refreshing for me because even though Carter got swamped by events and was politically inept in many ways, he showed that this country can produce serious, smart, far-sighted people to make a whole series of small changes, which by the way, the press ignored at the time, but they were extraordinarily important. They relate even to craft breweries. They weren't legal before Jimmy Carter, it's hard to believe. The beer you drank, that's just a tiny example.
Utilities right now are shifting, as Biden mentioned last night. They're shifting away from fossil fuel. Before the Public Utility Regulation Act that Carter signed, they couldn't do that. They couldn't use any renewable energy, alternative energy, in their utilities. There are literally dozens of things like that that Jimmy Carter got accomplished, but mostly, it was comfort food for the body politic for me, because I was able to experience that we can be a good people, we can be a decent people. That's where I hope readers will take from my book. It's a pleasant ride through a dark time in the 1970s, but not nearly as dark as today.
Brian: Comfort food with the craft beer president as the chaser. His very His Very Best is the title of the book, subtitled Jimmy Carter, a Life, just came out yesterday from Jonathan Alter, whose previous books you may know about Obama and FDR. Jonathan, thanks for doing such a bracing post-debate segment with us.
Jonathan: Thanks, Brian.
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