George Packer, Adam Davidson, and Jill Lepore on Short-Term Thinking in America
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 26 November 2018
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
George Packer talks with David Remnick about how a political feedback loop has driven the Republican Party into a policy of climate-change denial, despite the almost universal scientific consensus. Adam Davidson contrasts climate change with the 2008 financial crisis when an emergency situation forced politicians to confront a problem head-on. And Jill Lepore reflects on why our democracy isn’t well built for long-term planning: elected officials with limited terms have no incentive to ask citizens to make sacrifices. Looking back at some moments of large-scale change, Lepore argues that we shouldn’t expect elected officials to lead us; change must come from all quarters.
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| 1:12.2 | This is the Politics and More podcast. I'm David Remnick. |
| 1:17.1 | George Packer is the author of the book The Unwinding. He's thought as deeply about America |
| 1:21.9 | and why we find ourselves divided so sharply as anyone writing today. |
| 1:35.2 | So, George, you've spent a lot of time thinking about reporting on, writing about the 2008-2009 financial crisis. |
| 1:42.1 | What is the link between that epical event, the financial crisis, and the Trump presidency? |
| 2:01.9 | I think it's a fairly straight line because the financial crisis destroyed large numbers of middle class people's faith in government, in banks, in the housing market, in their retirement funds, in job security, all the things that were like the basis of middle class security were gone almost overnight for a lot of Americans. And it |
| 2:09.1 | created a sense of what do I have to do to have a good life here? I thought I was doing |
| 2:16.3 | everything right and it's all been taken away. Who took it away from me? |
| 2:19.3 | George, one of the things we're looking at is the connections between the financial crisis and climate change. |
| 2:26.3 | Climate change is one of the irreversible aspects of the Trump presidency. He pulled us out of the Paris Accord. |
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