In this episode of The Future of Liberty, Governor Mitch Daniels sits down with longtime strategist and writer David Keene for a wide-ranging conversation on the evolution of the conservative movement. From his early mentorship under Frank Meyer and work with Barry Goldwater to leading the American Conservative Union and the NRA, Keene reflects on fusionism, ideological shifts within the GOP, the rise of populism, cultural realignment, and the importance of civic virtue.
In this episode of The Future of Liberty, Governor Mitch Daniels sits down with longtime strategist and writer David Keene for a wide-ranging conversation on the evolution of the conservative movement. From his early mentorship under Frank Meyer and work with Barry Goldwater to leading the American Conservative Union and the NRA, Keene reflects on fusionism, ideological shifts within the GOP, the rise of populism, cultural realignment, and the importance of civic virtue.
Intro (00:00:02):
Welcome to the Future of Liberty, a project of Liberty Fund hosted by Mitch Daniels.
Mitch Daniels (00:00:17):
Greetings everyone and welcome to the latest edition of The Future of Liberty Podcast, a production of the Liberty Fund here in Indianapolis, Indiana. An organization devoted for 60 years to the protection and the promotion of the freedoms we cherish as Americans. And today's guest is someone I've looked forward to avidly joining us for one of these conversations. David Keene is unique in my judgment for several reasons- among the great figures who have championed the values and principles that we are gathered to discuss today. He's deeply steeped in the thought, the literature, the philosophy of what we think of as conservative thought, but he's also been a skilled, practical politician, sought after and active in campaigns of people who sought to advance those principles. His experience in conservative thought and politics spans almost the entire post-war era. He is known as we're about to discuss almost every one of consequence in that movement. He led the American Conservative Union for 27 years, something like that. The original conservative organization formed way back in the fifties or sixties. And then finally, David, very unusually, has maintained through that whole extraordinary career, personal respect and friendships with people across the spectrum, including those with whom we might disagree the most strenuously. So really nobody will have on this set of programs, I think has more to offer, more to say than my friend David Keene. Thanks for coming.
David Keene (00:02:11):
Well, I've heard some of your guests and they've got more to offer on a lot of things than I do, but I'm happy to be here.
Mitch Daniels (00:02:16):
Let's, let's just test that thesis. David, you have, I don't think it's a stretch to say you have walked with legends. In other words, you have named people that were actual mentors, people you had a chance to know you probably as a very young person then maybe when they were already legends. But talk about, for instance, Frank Meyer.
David Keene (00:02:40):
Well, when I was, people don't remember now, but at the beginning, the conservative movement didn't consist of very many people. And Bill Buckley at National Review and the Bill Buckley, the National Review crowd, were trying to shape and build a movement. And there were so few of us then that we all had mentors. So my mentor was Frank Meyer, who was, for those who remember him, Frank was not only the architect of Fusion, which brought the various economic national defense and social conservatives together. He used to say, we don't agree on everything, but we ought to fight it out in the White House rather than out here. Frank was also the highest ranking American communist to defense to defect, and he lived on a mountaintop at Woodstock, New York next to Bob Dylan, and they became great buddies over the fence. So Dylan would critique Myers book reviews and Meyer would critique his lyrics. So he was quite a character, but he was my political mentor. And when he had defected from the communists right after this hit Hitler Stalin Pact, they were serious in those days. There was a contract out on it. So he took to sleeping with a pillow next to his bed at his farm in Woodstock and working during the day. And as a young conservative, I'd be called out there every once in a while. I'd have to fly to New York, take a bus to Woodstock, and they'd pick me up. His wife would, right as he was getting up. And then he'd rang me all night and he was famous for calling you at two o'clock in the morning and asking what you'd done to save freedom that day. He was quite a character.
(00:04:27):
And as I say, I had two mentors, really, three, I guess you'd say. Frank Meyer from National Review. Walter Judd, who was a congressman from Minnesota and was almost Nixon's vice presidential pick in 1960, had been a missionary in China. Actually during the long march of the Communist had saved Joe and LAI's life because he had been a medical missionary in China. And Joe and Ly had come down with something. And so the communist crossed the lines and went to Dr. Judd and said, you have to come out. And he went into these caves where they're hiding and treated Joe and la. I said, you, Dr, you could have let that one slip. He said, well, we take an oath.
Mitch Daniels (00:05:12):
It's reminiscent of the, lately recently deceased terrorist in Israel who the Israelis saved, whose life they saved.
David Keene (00:05:22):
That's what a doctor is supposed to do. But those days, I was in many ways, I guess typical of the people that were at the beginning of the modern conservative movement. My father spent most of his life as a union organizer. My mother was the five term president of the, I don't even know if they have these anymore, but the Women's Auxiliary of the United Auto Workers, which was a very left-wing operation. My first political experience was in the 1960 Wisconsin primary passing out literature for John Kennedy in the primary there as a kid. And by 1964, I quit college for a semester to campaign for Barry Goldwater. So the shift took place pretty quickly in those days.
Mitch Daniels (00:06:08):
Was there an epiphany? Can you think of a moment or an event? You didn't have the Nazi Soviet Pact to wake you.
David Keene (00:06:17):
But if you talk to conservatives of that era, many of them were influenced by [Friedrich] Hayek and by The Road to Serfdom. I was influenced by a different book. My high school library had purchased a book of The Constitution of Liberty, which is another book that Hayek wrote, and they thought it was a book about the Constitution, which it wasn't. And so the librarian, they weren't going to put it on the shelves. And so she knew I liked to read stuff and she said, Dave, would you like this book? And that was the formative book of my early thinking. I still have the book that she gave me. And so I can claim Hayek too, but with a different work.
Mitch Daniels (00:06:58):
Well, the nation owes a real debt to that librarian, whoever she was because of what it all led to. So David, there's enough, you have enough stories alone and enough history here to fill 12 hours. We only have one. So I'm going to.
David Keene (00:07:15):
I won’t filibuster.
Mitch Daniels (00:07:16):
Well, feel free. So you just talked about 1960 being a turning point for you. Was Richard Nixon a conservative by your definition? In what ways was he or wasn't he?
David Keene (00:07:31):
Well, he was anti-communist, and of course he made his bones in the Republican Party during that whole period with his case and all of these things as he was perhaps during that era, once he became president, was maybe the most liberal operational president that we had. He was not a conservative. We had in the White House in those days. And I was in the Nixon White House working for Vice President Agnew, but Nixon had something. This tells you the strength of the conservative movement we had in the White House, something they called the committee of six, which was to be the people that liaisoned with conservatives, never had six members because they never had six people in the White House. And Bill Tim.
Mitch Daniels (00:08:21):
And six was an aspirational number. That's right.
David Keene (00:08:24):
Well, this tells you what this really sums up Nixon politically better than anybody else. It is a story. But Bill Timmons, who was the congressional liaison from Tennessee, he was the chairman of the Committee of six, and the political director was Harry Dent. And if you've probably met Harry, Harry was an enthusiast about whatever he did. So having a meeting one day in Bill's office and Harry was late and he comes rushing into the meeting and is always excited about something. He said, I was with the old man President Nixon on the Sequoia last night. We had drinks. And I've got to tell you something guys. He is one of us and he's a conservative. And Timon said to him, Harry, sit down and be quiet. That was after working hours. So the private Nixon was a conservative, but operationally he was not.
Mitch Daniels (00:09:20):
Yeah, well, he was practical. If nothing else, he was that at least as it's hard to second guess him. Look when.
David Keene (00:09:27):
You, well, he was so smart and did many good things and some not so good things, but he was a conservative after work.
Mitch Daniels (00:09:43):
Correct me if I misstate the history, but I believe that during your leadership, your long-term leadership of the ACU, the organization voted to endorse Pat Buchanan.
David Keene (00:09:56):
Well, they did.
Mitch Daniels (00:09:59):
I'm talking about 92 now.
David Keene (00:10:01):
Yeah, right. I thought that was a mistake, but it was in the New Hampshire primary, and Pat was a good. Pat, actually, Pat Buchanan brought me
(00:10:09):
To Washington during the Nixon years. I came to Washington. I was the chairman of Young Americans for Freedom. This was during the Vietnam War, and Nixon decided, Pat got me a meeting with the president. I was 23 years old. And so we had a meeting in the Oval Office at 45 minute meeting, and unbeknownst to me there had been a big fight about whether some right wing nut should be allowed to meet with the president. And in typical Nixonian fashion, he said, I'll have the meeting. I won't put it on the schedule. Which as you know, is absolutely the worst possible thing you could do. And it went on and on. It was Pat and Nixon, and I won't go into the language of the details of Nixon was trying to be one of the boys that day, but then afterwards Pat said, the vice president's looking for somebody, would you be willing to interview with him? So I went up there and he hired me. That's how I got to Washington. So Pat was a good friend, bright guy, really good guy.
Mitch Daniels (00:11:04):
Impossible, not to like,
David Keene (00:11:07):
Oh no.
Mitch Daniels (00:11:07):
We're going to talk later about how rare it is these days for people who might not.
David Keene (00:11:12):
Yes, we live in a different world than we moved in back then.
Mitch Daniels (00:11:14):
But Pat Buchanan is someone who was personally, I think liked by folks who completely disagreed with him. I sat next to him for three years in another administration, an incredibly engaging guy, but so here's my question. Was Pat Buchanan all those years ago a precursor or a forerunner of the Republican Party that or the dominant strain, let's say in the Republican party today, or are those two phenomena disconnected?
David Keene (00:11:47):
They're not totally disconnected because in many ways he was echoing the sort of cultural that that's much more prevalent in the party today than it was then. It's interesting because in the years that I ran the ACU and the Conservative Political Action Conference, we each year took a survey of the people that were attending and it got attention because there was a straw poll, but that's not why we took it. We were asking questions to find out what was their base belief. And it broke down. As we talked earlier about fusionism, it broke down into economic conservatives, defense, anti-communist conservatives at the time. And what we then called traditional conservatives would be social conservatives
(00:12:33):
And the issues that dominated the news changed over time. Sometimes it was like abortion or this or that and taxes or that. But all through those years, economic conservatism was the major strain. It was always in first place. And then defense and the social issues were in that rank and it never changed. The superficial storms could change what these people were talking about and what issues they were engaging in for political reasons change, but their basic beliefs didn't in that whole time. I am not sure that they've changed that much since then. The party, the Republican party and the conservative movement has gone through many adjustments over that period of time. We talk now or critics talk about how populism is something bad and new Reagan was populist. I mean, that's part of what conservatism was. Buckley had famously said he'd rather be governed by the first thousand people in the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard. That's a populous kind of sentiment. But Pat brought those issues to the fore more than a lot of others had and really does provide some sort of a bridge there.
Mitch Daniels (00:13:59):
Some have suggested over time that those who were advocates of unfettered economic, let's say free market economics, were not sensitive enough to the effects it can have that economic dynamism can have on communities and on culture. And in a way, I think Pat sensed and was giving early expression to that.
David Keene (00:14:30):
Because Pat was a native of Washington, his foreign policy, he lived, he lived on an Irish block, and if you were Italian or black or whatever, you didn't go on that block and he looked at the world the same way and you got along with other people but had your own tribe basically. But that's all been sort of put in and mixed in to the movement. And we've gone through various changes and you have to adjust to the people that are constituents. We see this today. One of the problems in today's politics is that the two parties over the course of the last decade and a half have switched constituencies.
Mitch Daniels (00:15:24):
It's an amazing thing, isn't it? You and I can can't think of a counterpart to it other than the switch of the south back in the late sixties and seventies.
David Keene (00:15:37):
If you traced the Republican party, you go back to when I was a kid growing up in the Midwest, and you two, if you wanted to be influential, you had to do your sort of apprenticeship with the guys at the country club that ran the companies, the managers and all this. Then the Goldwater election took place and all of a sudden the guy that ran the factory wasn't as important as the guy that ran the cleaning establishment down in the corner. It shifted not just geographically, but it shifted in terms of demographically of the kinds of people that dominated the party. And boy, they fought that. I mean, every club that's ever existed, political or nonpolitical fights change. It's just the way it is.
(00:16:16):
So then we had, when the evangelicals came in, you remember they described Pat Robertson's followers. One of the national committeemen said it was like visiting the bar scene in Star Wars. Those people, and what happens each time is some of 'em get socialized, some of 'em go home. So by the time they came along, the people running the party were those Goldwater people that the oldest establishment had fought. And I remember in 1976 when I worked with Reagan, I ran the south for him. And his challenge against Jerry Ford, one of my best friends on the national committee was the National Committee Men from New Mexico. And in those states that year we were able to run over everybody because the states where you have to be careful in the states where you have no choice in the states that you're going to win regardless. And in those states things get dangerous. And I said to him one night, I said, there's nothing I can do about it. It's not my area, but they're going to drive you right out of there and toss you off the national committee. And he looked at me and he said, I know that he said, what took 'em so long? I came here in 1964 by throwing the other guys off, and that just goes on, and then they become part of it When Reagan ran, and I worked for Reagan in 1976, and then I worked for Bush in 1980.
(00:17:34):
And so the Bush had me meet with these people that were northeastern bush people. It turned out most of 'em were more conservative than Reagan, but Reagan was from the west and he wore brown suits and he didn't go to Harvard, and so therefore he was objectionable. And a lot of times, and Pat was onto this, I think a lot of times it's culture and not ideology that drives these things. It's when they come into sync that it becomes powerful.
Mitch Daniels (00:18:01):
I think this is a east coast or a coastal perception, but as they saw the transition you're talking about and the rise, the sudden switch of people who they had assumed were sort of habitual Democrats suddenly showing up in the Republican party. They thought it was economic dislocation, free trade and all this business, which clearly there were.
David Keene (00:18:24):
Some of that you'd asked about. The Charles Murray said once that free trade, for example, has delivered all the benefits in a macro sense that we knew it would. I mean it obviously works and it obviously builds economic wealth and it makes all the boats rise and all that he said, but we didn't think about the micro effects. We treated it like it was a paper. And I think there was some of that, and not just conservatives, but people tend to think this is my idea and it'll work.
Mitch Daniels (00:19:00):
Average is obscure.
David Keene (00:19:01):
Yeah, right. Although I think it's overstated these days. I mean, I remember when I was young and went to Washington and then I'd come home to my little town in Wisconsin. That was a big shot in Washington in my own mind. So I was making good money and doing this in working like we did in Washington 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And I'd come home and my younger brother worked at General Motors and he made a third as much money, he had a better house than I did a new car, and he only spent eight hours a day worrying about things. And I thought, what's wrong with this picture? Well, if you go across the country today, you get the picture mostly from eastern elites or western elites that these people must be, they're just in terrible shape because they don't want to go to Harvard. They don't want to be hedge fund managers. They're down there really suffering in these little towns because all they do is they have barbecues on weekends and hang out and clinging to their guns and go to church. That's what they want mean. One of the things is that they have, it's not that their values are worse, they're different. And I forget her name, wrote a book recently. She toured small towns and she said they're not as bad shape. Sure, they have drug problems in these towns just like they do in big cities and all that. But in fact, these people are largely pretty happy. They like the fact that they can hang out with their family and do all these things.
Mitch Daniels (00:20:28):
Yeah, what a surprise. No, I mean, it's been described as it anthropological dig when somebody from New York ventures out into the promises.
David Keene (00:20:40):
I mean after the 2016 election, they actually sent safaris out. See, what are these people?
Mitch Daniels (00:20:46):
I think that's the misconception. I think the economic, it surely is a factor and it surely has propelled some of this, but I think it was distinctly second to the defensive reaction to cultural aggression that said explicitly and just oozed from the pores of people who dominate the airwaves and other places
David Keene (00:21:08):
Because visiting their inferiors.
Mitch Daniels (00:21:09):
Yes, that your values are inferior. They're not just different, they're inferior. And I think finally that's probably what has been the number one sort of source of energy.
David Keene (00:21:20):
Part of it is all of this, the change in the parties began in the sixties and it began as the McGovern wing of the Democratic party began to take over, and they had been able to count on factory workers. Now we're talking mostly the Northeast and the upper Midwest. And the pollster at that time called these people peripheral urban ethnics. What they meant were Polish, Italian Catholic, Irish Democrats who started to leak away and they were leaving and voting Republican, not because of the economics, but because they found the new Democratic party sort of culturally obnoxious.
(00:22:03):
Now, the Republicans were happy to get those votes, but they didn't do anything for 'em. Fortunately for the Republicans, the Democrats kept getting more culturally obnoxious, so they continued to vote Republicans by 2016 when Trump was elected, they were out there still having to vote Republican, but thinking nobody really cared about him because nobody listened to 'em. The Republicans accepted their votes. The Democrats had decided that they were deplorable and they decided to break the furniture. So they elected Donald Trump nominated and elected him. And what's got the Democrats now so shocked that the same thing is happening in the Hispanic and black community. It starts as a trickle. I live and my wife live in Prince George's County, Maryland and Prince George's County, Maryland. They advertise themselves as the highest per capita income majority black county in America. That's because each couple has government jobs, so they make a lot of money. They're not liberals, and the younger ones are starting to drift away, and that that's thrown panic into the party. It happened to 'em once before they lost the white working class, and they're losing these folks for the same reason for years. And people were telling us that Hispanic voters should be Republican because of their cultural values, religious work ethic and all that. We never attracted any of 'em.
(00:23:32):
It wasn't until the Biden administration came along and they looked at it and said, oh my God, we can't vote for those people. The challenge that both parties have, and the Democrats have done a better job of it with, I think it is the losing hand, but they've done a better job because they really identify with their new constituency and are run by it. The Republican party is coming to grips with what do we do? We don't want to give up our values. We don't want to appeal to these former Democrats by ourselves becoming what they ran away from. So you have to take your values and you have to see how they relate to the constituency and want to appeal to. And I think that's what's going on right now. I mean, you've got people.
Mitch Daniels (00:24:17):
My sense is yes. My sense is that watching freedom from the bleachers here where I sit and have now for quite a while, is that the Republican party is rubbing its eyes. Many of them, they're thrilled that suddenly these voters really, they haven't earned their votes.
David Keene (00:24:35):
No, that's my point.
Mitch Daniels (00:24:36):
They've been driven into their ranks. Exactly. And now
David Keene (00:24:38):
Exactly. And how do you keep.
Mitch Daniels (00:24:39):
Cultural Disdain. Yeah. So if Frank Meyer were here today, could he fashion a new sort of fusionism?
David Keene (00:24:45):
Yeah.
Mitch Daniels (00:24:46):
I think what I see is Republican Party, some of its leaders, they don't know what to do with these folks.
David Keene (00:24:51):
Different groups, and he always found that there was overlap. That's what we always found. If you look at the old conservative movement, the libertarians and social conservatives, you found out, and that's what I had designed CPAC for originally, is that they overlap and the sweet spots where they overlap, and then you get 'em to work on that. And as I say, then they can argue about their differences when they are in power. So I think what's going on is natural. What's more dangerous from the standpoint of the country and the society is the way the country, the civic fabric of the society is deteriorated. And that's happened for reasons that go beyond politics. But we live in a different world than we lived in back then.
Mitch Daniels (00:25:37):
We do. Well, maybe we'll come back to that. I just want to ask you, we're having this conversation two weeks to the day before we'll know, or maybe we'll know, maybe we'll not, but anyway, from the election that we'll decide a lot about the next four years. So just go ahead and speculate, David, if he wins, what's most likely to happen and if she wins?
David Keene (00:26:06):
Well, he's mostly bluster. He's not as different when he was governing as different as other Republican presidents. But he talked a lot. The difference today, and this is partly the fact that he and his White House didn't have much discipline, but every White House is a mess. As you know, you've been in, everybody's trying to kill each other and roll 'em out onto Executive Avenue and take their jobs and fight for the time with the President and all that. But in the old days, they did it in the dark. Now, every misstep is a huge national story, which fuels all kinds of things and makes it more difficult, frankly, to governor or to run an executive department. But so he is not the radical that he's pictured as, I mean, there's some things that you can like or dislike about him. I don't think he's done anything to upgrade the level of conversations.
Mitch Daniels (00:27:12):
Well, we can agree on that. No, I mean for all his flaws. I mean, the idea which we'll hear if he should happen to win that, oh God, the darkness, the dark ages are about to fall and dictator it's nonsense. I mean, he was stymied.
David Keene (00:27:28):
Well, I was, as you know, I'm a civil libertarian in many ways, and I was part of a cross ideological bipartisan group back after 9/11. I was very critical of some of the things that the Bush administration was doing, and the Democrats were very happy that I sided with 'em. And I remember at one meeting I said, now I'm siding with you because what they're doing is wrong. Now when the next administration comes along and does more, because these things are always ratchet, they never go back. Are you going to stand up and criticize? And a New York Times reporter who said he thought that was partisan dribble called me up and he said, you were right. Now all the things that you thought were evil, they think is good, that they thought was evil. And that's part of the problem. And what you've got is this. You've got a situation in which both parties, they're not a hundred percent wrong, but both parties see the other party as an existential threat to everything.
(00:28:32):
And that justifies in your mind things that you wouldn't do. You can't even be nice to him. We used to, we were talking about getting along. A mutual friend of ours, Ken Bode, who was a journalist and prior to that was a McGovern organizer and all this. He and I ran a poker game for many years in Washington, and we had some simple rules. There were seven players, three of them had to be Republicans, three of them had to be Democrats, and one could be a reporter. And they all had to either have worked in or covered a presidential campaign to participate. And over the years, you'd know most of the names of the people that played in this. And then it just sort of petered out after eight or nine years. And I was talking to one of the old players a couple of years ago, and he said, we couldn't do that today. He said, because you couldn't get those seven people or people like them to sit at a table and be civil to each other. And that's the problem. You remember Lynn Ger, who was indicted by a special prosecutor, and I was one of the co-sponsors of a fundraiser for his defense.
Mitch Daniels (00:29:42):
That was one of the contributors. Yeah.
David Keene (00:29:44):
And the two of the other co-sponsors, there were four of us, were Sam Donaldson and Jack White, who was the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Imagine that today for somebody on either party. And I remember Sam said, isn't it just like Washington? There's so many people here that belong in jail, and they get the wrong one. But I thought that Jack White's comment was best. He said, when you're on the outside and you read this all superficially, you think that Washington and the country is divided between Democrats and Republicans and conservatives and liberals. He said, that's not it. It's divided between us and them. And Lynn's one of us. And you couldn't say that today. I mean, things have changed. And my friends were Republicans and Democrats, journalists and others. We didn't break it down by ideology. We agreed to disagree, and we agreed on things that we could agree on. And in that sense, it was a much more pleasant place to be than it's today
Mitch Daniels (00:30:48):
Is the Republican party and conservative and conservative thought better off if Harris wins or worse off?
David Keene (00:31:00):
Well, we have to worry about the country.
Mitch Daniels (00:31:03):
I specifically didn't ask about the country. That's too easy a question.
David Keene (00:31:07):
I don't think it matters because if Trump wins, then everybody's looking to the future and he'll either fall.
Mitch Daniels (00:31:16):
Instant lame duck.
David Keene (00:31:17):
Yes. As you know from the day one, one of the problems, particularly with young people who haven't thought these things through, is that they're attracted to individuals. You had the Reagan Republicans, the Gingrich, all these conservatives, and a lot of 'em hadn't thought through it. Now you've got the Trump conservatives. Well, the next guy's going to be different. And so those base values come to the fore. Trump likes to talk, for example, tariffs is one thing. Well, remember the steel tariffs, the steel quotas under, there aren't that many people that are pure.
(00:31:59):
And most of them aren't in public office. Trump talked a good game, but he didn't if you were a protectionist, but he wasn't the great protectionists that everybody thought he was. So they've adopted that rhetoric because it's his rhetoric. But that's going to change. And I think that what's going to happen is that as these new people come into the party, the party and conservatives have to think about how to appeal them. You remember Jack Kemp and supply side economics and his tax cut and everything. That was not a new proposal. All he did was phrase it differently to appeal to a different constituency. And it caught fire. And I'm not saying it's all just pr, but I am saying that you have to be able to communicate and talk to the people whose support you want. And if you've got a real movement, one of the problems that we have today is, as I say, the lack of civic discourse on the one hand and tolerance of the others.
(00:32:56):
I mean, in a republic or a democracy or to work, you have to be willing to accept that you can win or lose. And you have to be able to believe that it's not an existential end if it's in fact the end of the world that justifies different things. And we've had the end of the world dozens of times, and it turns out the world goes on and we survive and things straighten themselves out. So you have to have that. But we also don't have a sense of history or any kind of things to, it's like everybody shows up new and we're busy relearning lessons that we should have learned from 50 years ago or a hundred years ago. I wrote a column once about the fact that Trump is sui generous. We've never had this. I said, have you ever heard of Teddy Roosevelt? Teddy Roosevelt was Donald Trump. I mean, he was thin skinned. He ran as an independent because the fellow that's Taft, the fellow, he chosen his chosen successor, insulted him in his mind in a letter. And then he decided that he had to destroy this. He claimed that he had to run as an independent because the Republicans stole all the votes in the, it was the very same thing. We survived that.
Mitch Daniels (00:34:13):
Well, up to a point, Teddy Roosevelt read two books a day and wrote books.
David Keene (00:34:17):
Well, yeah, but he's different.
Mitch Daniels (00:34:17):
But there's a political appeal. But I understand.
David Keene (00:34:19):
And his view was that if the Supreme Court disagreed with you, you should be able to have a publicized to tell him to go, we're going to do it your way. And I said, Teddy was a hero in many ways and a great president, but he wasn't your next door neighbor. And Andrew Jackson was not somebody you wanted as your next door neighbor. So we survive all that and things come back, but you have to have some understanding of where you got there and not just say, it's not just for power. I recommend young conservatives. I like him to read Hayak. I also like him to read a book that Daniel Yergin wrote years ago called Commanding Heights. And he makes the point in there that successful political movements begin with ideas, not with politicals. He made the point that this goes back to Hayek. He said the most important publishing decision of the mid 20th century was the decision by the Reader's Digest to publish the road to serfdom. And he said that was the most influential thing that anybody did, and that was the most influential book he said, because there was this actor out in California who became a conservative, had been a liberal democrat from the road to sdo, and there was an undergraduate in London who carried it in her purse and grew up to be Margaret Thatcher. What more do you really need?
(00:35:51):
And whether it's a left wing or a right wing movement, it begins as ideas and then it morphs into something political if those ideas have appeal. And then it lives a natural life. And that's what conservatives going through. All of a sudden, everyone becomes, if they win. You remember after Reagan was one, I remember that George Bush's brother was going to run against Lowell weer because they lived next door to each other and didn't like each other. And he called me up and he said, Dave, I need your help because as a conservative, we have to do that. And I said, Prescott, you're not a conservative. You've never been one. He said, oh, we're all conservatives now that Reagan's been elected. I said, Prescott, you're a Republican. Ask me for advice as a Republican and I'll give it to you, but let's realize what we are. But that's one of our weaknesses, the personification and the forget. You don't have to know what the ideas are because the leader says what the ideas are.
Mitch Daniels (00:36:54):
I think that's really central. And I suppose regardless the outcome, two weeks from today, the question in front of the country will be, is this a cult of personality or can someone fashion, which I don't think is evident yet, the fusion or the set of ideas and principles that hold this newly emergent coalition together.
David Keene (00:37:27):
Yeah, you need both. You need to have somebody. And this is what the Buckley people and all these people did with the early conservatism or the modern conservative, and they bound it all together. It was there. And then along came the leaders, the Reagan, obviously Goldwater before that,
(00:37:46):
And they popularized it. And you sort of need both. But if you've got one without the other, if you've got the greatest ideas in the world, and nobody, I ran for office once and lost, and it was very early, and Ronald Reagan did some commercials for me, and I said that the voters at that time thought we were both nuts. The voters learned that maybe they were wrong the first time, but you can have the greatest ideas in the world if nobody's going to buy 'em, and it's not going to get you very far. Or if you've got a leader who doesn't have any ideas, and we've had some of those, that doesn't get you very far. But ultimately, if you have faith in your ideas that they're going to work and the world has a way of coming around, and it's amazing how fast two things are amazing. It's how fast things can go to hell, and it's how fast they can recover.
Mitch Daniels (00:38:40):
But I'm with you what's essential. Certainly if you want to move, if it is going to be movement that moves the country, it has to have a core of ideas, then someone will prove the best person for giving expression to those ideas. That's ordinary. Doesn't work the other way around. You've mentioned him a couple times and he became harder and harder to predict, I thought later on, but what do you think Barry Goldwater would say about our current situation if he were here today?
David Keene (00:39:12):
He'd be beside himself. Of course. He was quite a character, and he was really, when I talk about real conservatives, Goldwater people, he stood up when there wasn't any conservative movement and he created it. I mean, then he was interested. We talked earlier about two of my favorite people, and they were very similar, were Barry Goldwater and Eugene McCarthy.
(00:39:41):
They both were essentially hoisted up to lead a movement they didn't want to lead. And then both of 'em got mad about it when anybody else tried to lead it. So they both became cynical. Goldwater was a libertarian conservative, and that brought him into direct conflict with a lot of the social conservatives and others. He was an anti-communist and a libertarian. So he had the difference between Barry and some of the others. He wasn't political in the sense that he was going to just go along and get along. No, and McCarthy, who I thought was he and I had a great relationship up to when he died. They were in many ways the same guy. Of course, now, Goldwater never supported Reagan. He supported Ford over Reagan because he sort of back in the back of his mind, resented the fact that this guy came along and took it all from him, even though he didn't want to lead it. And then he sort resented Reagan from that point on, McCarthy was cynical enough. He resented all of them, but I think the two of 'em, if they'd lived next to each other, would've gotten along pretty well.
Mitch Daniels (00:40:57):
So David, I pointed out that you're one of the few people who can talk with equal authority and eloquence about both the most practical politics, but also some of the philosophical questions. I just want to ask you a couple of those while we have a few minutes left. Many of the founders, in many sense, have asserted that religion, religious faith, is a prerequisite to democracy as we practice it. And if that's so, first of all, do you think that's so, if that's so, how much cause for concern should we have that religious practice, religious church attendance, every measure has dropped pretty sharply in the last 20 years.
David Keene (00:41:40):
I think we should be very concerned about it, whether you're religious or a churchgoing person in the traditional sense, I mean, the founders pinned it on religion. What they were saying was, in order to be a free people, you have to have basic values. And if you don't have that, there's no reason for anything to hold together. And the deterioration of those values can be calculated by looking at the deterioration of religion is important in people's lives. Hayek was a libertarian. He believed that it was necessary for people to be free to have that grounding in values. And that's missing in many ways. It's not taught, it's not absorbed.
Mitch Daniels (00:42:31):
To some extent, it's antithesis is taught.
David Keene (00:42:33):
That's exactly right. I mean, the foundation of a society in the first instance is the individual, the family, and the social institutions that make it up. And if you've got those, those are all ameliorating kinds of things that take away the conflict that can exist. And they make a civil society possible, take 'em away. And you've got a bunch of people that have no reason not to attack each other. I mean, it just doesn't work. And we see that, and it's why the people who want to remake man want to get rid of all those things. That's always been a goal of those folks who think that they can make the communist, and not just the communist, but others. You have to beat people into being what you want. And the problem with that is that they might beat you into being with. So you've got to have that. I think that's vitally important. And I'm not a doctrinaire, churchgoing, religious conservative, but without that, the rest of it doesn't make a lot of sense.
Mitch Daniels (00:43:39):
Yeah. Another, in the long list of leadership capacities, you've had you head of the NRA, the National Rifle Association for a good stretch. It's in the news a lot these days. You'll know this quote, I actually didn't until somebody gave me a little book of Jefferson's quotes, not the other day. I love this one came new to me. He said, the beauty of the second Amendment is it will not be needed until they try to take it from you.
David Keene (00:44:06):
That's exactly right.
Mitch Daniels (00:44:08):
Which is interesting to me in a couple ways, including he, who did he mean by they?
David Keene (00:44:13):
He meant.
Mitch Daniels (00:44:13):
Yeah.
David Keene (00:44:15):
I think we know. Well, the last national politician, you would think from the discussions, now you've got the growth in gun ownership is because of fear of crime and dissolution of all that. But the last national politician to argue the original reason for the Second Amendment was not to protect hunting and all of this. It was in case the government went wrong. It was Hubert Humphrey. And he said, that's why we have the Second Amendment, because they might try to do that.
Mitch Daniels (00:44:46):
So how do you assess the health of the Second Amendment right now?
David Keene (00:44:50):
Well, I think there's two things. On the one hand, at the political top political level, there's sort of an unprecedented attempt to try and restrict Second Amendment rights at the popular level. Support for the Second Amendment is broader than it's ever been. There was just a study that showed that now 30 some percent of people who identify themselves as progressives or liberals have a gun. 10 years ago, only 20% of 'em did.
(00:45:29):
40% of new gun owners are women and minorities and all that. Those people didn't buy firearms before. And at the NRA, what we've always assumed is that there are many ways the importance of all of that. I was asked some years ago to speak to the A CLU convention because they wanted to emulate the NRA. And I said, the difference is that you have a lot of people who rightly believe in the First Amendment. One, you have to stick to that core and not break it because that's why they're there. But secondly, the difference is that the NRA is a family. I mean, people came up through as kids competitive shooters. They were hunters. They learned their safety courses, they did all that. And so they're really bound to it. And I go around the country or did when I was president and still do when I can and speak to thank these people. And I say the reason the Second Amendment lives is because it's not ink on parchment. It's because millions and millions of Americans benefit and live with it. I mean, you're a Midwestern. I mean, back in the day, as they say in Wisconsin, half the factories closed on the opening day of the deer seasons. There's no reason to try and force people to come and do something. When they were off deer hunting. When I was a kid in school in Wisconsin, I could take my shotgun to school and put it in the locker and then go out and shoot pheasants on the way home. I mean, we live in a different society.
Mitch Daniels (00:47:08):
We have some service clubs. I'm thinking of Rotary Clubs up in Northern Indiana. I saw more than one. The big annual fundraiser is they sell flowers on first day of hunting season, so all the guys can take 'em home to mom and head for the woods.
David Keene (00:47:28):
If you can think back at the history of the NRA was formed in 1871 by Union Generals because the North was recruiting people from the newly industrialized cities of the Northeast for the Union Army. Many of those soldiers never fired a gun until they got into battle because they came from Europe where there was no firearms traditions. And the saying then was that a Confederate soldier who was rural was the equivalent of three union infantrymen. Unfortunately for the South, the North had five, but among the first presidents of the NRA where Ulysses S Grant and Phil Sheridan Union Generals who believed that America was losing its firearms tradition because of all these urban people, and we had to bring more of them in. And that's been the fight ever since between urban and rural, not as much as it was 20 years ago. So, well, I think ultimately, if one side on any of these issues gets the upper hand and can close out everything on the other side, they can win it. But I don't think that's going to happen. I mean, the voters ultimately make the decision. And on the Second Amendment, I'm convinced that the voters are not going to accept that sort of thing. And the hunting and firearms tradition in Stalinist days in the Soviet Union, they disarmed the cities, but Russia has a big hunting tradition, maybe second only. They didn't disarm those people out in the rest of the Soviet Union. Even Stalin was able to figure out that you wouldn't send the US marshals to Idaho, and you just have to accept that this is part of the culture of the United States and always has been. We try to, in the schools, we blotted out. When you and I were in school, we knew why those people confronted each other at the Concord Bridge because the British was coming for the ammo so that they couldn't defend themselves. They don't teach that part of it anymore
Mitch Daniels (00:49:39):
Or much else about that time. A couple last questions. Once again, you're uniquely suited to comment on 'em, political media. You've been a friend and certainly a source and a frequent interlocutor with political media over a span of time. It's very, very different today.
David Keene (00:50:04):
Oh yeah.
Mitch Daniels (00:50:04):
Talk about both the organs of news media that we now deal with and the individuals who make 'em up.
David Keene (00:50:14):
It's a whole nother hour.
Mitch Daniels (00:50:15):
Yeah, I recognize.
David Keene (00:50:15):
Or longer, but when the parties broke down for a period, if you wanted to run for president, the first thing you had to do was you had to go to an explicit number of dinner parties in Washington to convince journalists that you were worth mentioning. And they played it, and they liked that, obviously. But in those days, the press, the media has always been biased. But even the most biased reporter claimed he wasn't, or she wasn't that tried.
Mitch Daniels (00:50:48):
It might occasionally want to demonstrate that.
David Keene (00:50:51):
But they tried to demonstrate that. And if you were in, I never had a leak or a confidence that was in 40 years that was broken, partly because the only people you had to be careful of were some local reporter who would kill his grandmother to get to the Washington Bureau. But once they were in Washington, they had to have a symbiotic relationship. And that's something a lot of politicians don't understand
(00:51:18):
Is they need you and you need them. And there's no reason to be fighting about it. And the only rule I had was you never lie to 'em. And if you don't lie to them, they never, today, you can't do that. A producer called me maybe a year ago and I forget what the issue is, but we're now in all these cultural wars and everything. And he said, Dave, he said, I need some guidance on this story I'm doing. Could we sit down and have coffee and you could tell me? And I said, if this were 15 years ago, I'd do that. I said, but I'm not going to do that now because nobody can be trusted anymore. And there was a pause and he said, you're right about that. He said, we'll get together for a drink after it's over. But that's the fact. I mean, can't today you've got this journalists at war. I mean, the journalists are, I mean, they've always been partisan journalists and columns in that, but most of them, in my experience, for hardworking people who may have disagreed with you, I had a very good friend who you may remember who was Eric Engberg with CBS,
(00:52:32):
Who was, he was a fishing buddy of mine, and he was a cut and dried liberal because he'd only lived in that bubble. And I'd take him fishing, we'd go fishing all the time, and I'd pick out some issue and I'd talk to him and talk to him. And then at some point, this light would go off and he'd say, oh my God, there's another side. I mean, he wasn't vicious. He wasn't mean. He was that way because that's all he knew. And that's all. And now of course, it's not just journalists, but we live in neighborhoods. One of the reasons that Republicans think Democrats steal elections and Democrats think Republicans steal elections is neither of 'em have ever met anybody that voted. They live in, they live in gated communities of one sort or another. And all their neighbors think just the way they did. In the old days, it wasn't like that. And I really think that the media has a problem. The recent poll, I think it was either Gallup or Pew, has the media with less credibility than Congress. Do you know how hard you have to work to get your credibility lower than that of the Congress? And it's hard to see how they come back. But there's been this deterioration in any kind of values. I mean, the people that I knew, the political journalists that I knew for all these years and worked with, they'd be appalled by most of these people today. I'm sure there are good reporters out there, but they don't dominate. And I mean,
Mitch Daniels (00:54:02):
Some of it can be explained. I'm not, I don't want to say excused, but explained by the change in the business model and in the incentives that they had some of it.
David Keene (00:54:12):
Yeah, that's one of the things in part, we lived in a period when the press objectivity, the history of, it's interesting because the early press during the Adams and Jefferson, very partisan, vicious stuff, all of the papers, or not all of 'em, were owned by partisans and presidents were out getting guys to dump on the other one. And God knows the things they said. I mean, makes,
Mitch Daniels (00:54:41):
Jefferson was the master of that.
David Keene (00:54:42):
Right? Makes today's discourse seem actually civilized. Then when the things developed and all of a sudden newspapers became the conveyor belt for advertising, and it was the advertisers who said, we don't want to be advertising in this polemical rag. We want you to be on box.
Mitch Daniels (00:55:05):
Maybe the broadest possible audience with all kinds of people in it. Exactly. So we, Walter Kronkite's audience had every kind of person in it.
David Keene (00:55:11):
And that what led to the objective press. Then you had the thing that destroyed the newspaper business was Craigslist because the most profitable part of any newspaper was the classifieds. You don't think about that, but they were gone.
(00:55:28):
And then all of a sudden you had these papers that were couldn't convert to the new technology and stuff. And a journalistic corporate mindset is next to the law enforcement, maybe the hardest one to change. So you had papers that just couldn't adjust, and the only ones that were being successful were ones who picked out a boutique audience. Now, you could target in the New York Times, which was losing money, was only being bailed out by this Mexican billionaire was one of 'em. And then the Washington Post existed because of a college that you bought when you were at Purdue. And then when the Obama administration went after those colleges, they decided, we better sell this paper because we can't make any money.
(00:56:18):
So you had to pick out a boutique audience. I was as, as the last five years of my working career, I was the commentary editor for the Washington Times, and I was the fellow who was editor of the Tennesseean and the first John Sehal or the first editor of us today. I had gone down to see him. He was a good friend, and he thought I was coming for advice. I wasn't. But he said, your paper can survive because you have a boutique audience. Unless you screw that up and drive the conservatives away, they'll continue to cry. He said, the New York Times can exist as the newspaper because there are people that think they have to have it on Sunday morning with their muffins. He said, but most papers don't have it. And the Times was losing money and decided to become basically the spokesman for progressive America. So when the Trump thing ended, things got bad. So then they converted to racism and they actually had meetings with us. We have to do this because once you've developed a boutique audience, that's the audience you have to satisfy.
Mitch Daniels (00:57:26):
You got to feed 'em things that ratify their point of view. Exactly. Now that's where we are, and people still self-select into journalism who come in with a bias, but the business model you just so accurately described, I think sort of cements that in place. Well, David, if we had another hour, it'd be probably more interesting than this one. This has been fantastic as I expected it to be. But I got to ask you one last question. I like to end all these conversations with the same question. In 2050, will the United States of America be more or less free than today?
David Keene (00:58:05):
I think we'll be, I'm an optimist, and I think that if we can come to grips, first of all with the technology so that it can't be turned on us, that that's step one. And then the second step is that our politicians, regardless of party, have to come to grips with the fact that we're on the edge of fiscal disaster. I think I said earlier though, it's amazing how bad things can get and how they can get better pretty quickly. And I think things can get better, and I think they will. And I think that the politicians of both parties, whoever they are, somebody we don't know
(00:58:45):
Is going to say, we have to fix this. And that's, I remember when George Bush W Bush made an attempt to come to grips with entitlements on his second campaign. And one of my good friends, as you'll recall, was Conrad Burns, a senator from Montana, Montana. He'd been a former cattle auctioneer, and he was flying on Air Force One, and he said to Bush, Mr. President, you know why that plan of yours is not going to work? Bush said, why is that? And he said, well, Mr. President, you've got that piddling little ranch down there in Texas. And he said, let's say you're down there and somebody knocks on your ranch door and says, I've been looking at your barn, and unless you do something, it's going to collapse in 17 years, but I can fix it a lot cheaper right now, and your barn will be fine. He said, Mr. President, you're going to throw 'em right off the ranch. He said, Americans don't fix things until the roof falls in. But fortunately, and this is where Conrad didn't continue, Americans, when the roof falls in, somehow managed to fix things.
Mitch Daniels (00:59:51):
Well, we may have to again, but I join you in your optimism because I don't know one other way to look at the world.
David Keene (00:59:56):
We have to live here.
Mitch Daniels (00:59:57):
Yeah. Well, David Keene, thank you so much for this hour. Thank you more than that for a lifetime of just unparalleled leadership, intellectual, and in the most practical of ways on behalf of principles that we hold dear. So on behalf of Liberty Fund, thanks for being here. Thanks having me. And press on
Outro (01:00:20):
And thanks for what you do. The future of Liberty has been brought to you by Liberty Fund, a private educational foundation dedicated to encouraging discussions of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.