Can America Cope?
TALKING POLITICS
Catherine Carr
4.7 • 2.5K Ratings
🗓️ 9 April 2020
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
David, Helen and Gary Gerstle discuss the impact of the pandemic on the fundamentals of American politics. What have we discovered about the strengths and weaknesses of the federal system? Are the states capable of learning from each other? What part will the Supreme Court play? And can the Democrats really persist with Biden? Plus we ask who has the 'police power' and what it means to use it.
Talking Points:
In the US, the experience of this crisis differs significantly from state to state.
- For the first 100 years of US history, the power to address epidemics was exclusively in the hands of the states.
- In the second half of the 20th century, the federal government acquired more power, including the power to deal with epidemics.
- The National Public Health Service Act of 1944 vested the US government with the right to impose a national quarantine. (This power has never been utilized.)
- But in the last 30 years, Republicans have been attacking federal power as illegitimate.
- In this moment of crisis, governors have been thrown back on their own resources. This has led to chaos and inefficiency.
Political polarization is playing a role in how states respond to the crisis.
- The states that have been most resistant to implementing shelter in place measures all have Republican governors.
- There is also the question of where people are getting their news.
- Outcomes are going to vary by state.
Capability is another big question.
- Individual states can’t handle this alone, but the systematic hollowing out of the central state means that the government doesn’t have the capacity that it used to.
What are the politics of this?
- Will it help or hurt Trump’s chances of reelection?
- A federal response will require bipartisan cooperation.
- One area of potential bipartisan consensus is China and the revitalization of domestic manufacturing.
- Biden is now the presumptive Democratic nominee.
Mentioned in this Episode:
- The Fifth Risk, by Michael Lewis
- Our podcast with Michael Lewis
- Our podcast on Super Tuesday and Biden’s comeback
- And our podcast with Gary after the Iowa Caucus
- Gary's writing, including his book 'Liberty and Coercion' http://www.garygerstle.com/liberty-and-coercion/
Further Learning:
- More on inequalities in death rates in the States
- 538 on the weaknesses in the American social safety net
- More on the Wisconsin primary
And as ever, recommended reading curated by our friends at the LRB can be found here:
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, my name is David Ronsman and this is Talking Politics. In today's episode, we're |
| 0:08.4 | going to be talking about the United States and asking one of the fundamental political |
| 0:13.2 | questions. Has this crisis revealed new divisions in American politics? Or is there a new unity? |
| 0:23.5 | Talking politics is brought to you in partnership with the London Review of Books, Europe's |
| 0:27.6 | Leading Magazine of Culture and Ideas. Improve the quality of your solitude with a subscription |
| 0:34.2 | to the LRB. They'll send you exceptional analysis of the politics, economics, sociology and |
| 0:41.5 | science behind the crisis and reportage from around the world. But also, gloriously unrelated, |
| 0:48.9 | richly immersive distraction from the world's best authors and critics, writing about history |
| 0:54.1 | and philosophy, art and technology, fiction and poetry. Just go to lrb.me slash talk and get |
| 1:02.8 | your first 12 issues for just 12 pounds. That's lrb.me slash talk. |
| 1:13.0 | I am, as usual, in my house in Cambridge. Helen Thompson, Professor of Political Economy, |
| 1:18.6 | is as usual in her house in London. Hi Helen. Hi David. And it's great that we also have |
| 1:25.9 | our regular commentator on American Affairs Gary Gerstle, Professor of American History. |
| 1:31.2 | He's Professor American History in Cambridge, but he's not in Cambridge UK. Hi Gary, |
| 1:35.5 | do you want to tell us where you are? I am in what I like to call Newt Cambridge, since it's |
| 1:40.5 | considerably younger than the old Cambridge that being in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I have a flat |
| 1:45.6 | and I'm in my flat, 23 hours a day going out for one hour of my constitutional every day for a walk |
| 1:53.2 | and every day out in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is like Christmas morning because |
| 1:59.0 | there's no one there. And I am arguing with my kids who think that I'm too much of a boomer, |
| 2:04.6 | going out too much, even though I'm all going to the grocery store once a week. We are safe, |
| 2:09.4 | but worried about the circumstances. So they don't want you even taking your daily constitutional? |
| 2:14.9 | They don't want me taking my daily constitutional and they don't want me entering a grocery store at all. |
... |
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