Populism, Polarization, and Threats to Western Democracy: Rory Stewart

Let's Find Common Ground

USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future

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5 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 12 October 2023

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Rory Stewart walked across Afghanistan, was an elected politician, served as a senior British government minister, and was a visiting fellow at Yale University. Today he is the host of a highly successful podcast— "The Rest Is Politics"— and outgoing president and advisor of the global anti-poverty charity, GiveDirectly. By any measure, he is a man of many parts. In our podcast, Stewart raises the alarm about threats to democracy in Europe and the U.S., explains his detailed understanding of common ground, and discusses the stark difference between skills needed to win political office and what's needed to govern well. We ask him about the parallels between U.S. and U.K. politics, the threats to democracy from populism, and how other elected politicians overseas view America's current political division and dysfunction. "The U.S. public square really looks incredibly divided," Rory Stewart tells us. We also discuss his outspoken new memoir about his years in the U.K. Parliament and government, "How Not To Be a Politician."

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm going to throw five numbers at you and three letters as well and
0:06.9	Then you're going to repeat the back to me, okay? Yep, I've got my pen
0:12.1	five three
0:13.8	five five five and then the letter is CGC
0:18.7	That's on you way of fundraising, right? Ah good memory. I think they call it text to donate and it's a new way to raise money
0:28.2	for common ground committee
0:30.2	Which makes these podcasts that are free for everyone to listen to
0:34.7	Text five three five five five on your phone and then type the letters CGC into the message
0:41.7	Common ground committee relies on fundraising to do its work
0:45.5	Text five three five five five and then the letter CGC
0:50.4	And now our show and also our new theme music
0:57.7	This is let's find common ground. I'm Ashley Muntite and I'm Richard Davies
1:16.0	We're about to have a fascinating and I think far-reaching conversation with a man who walked across
1:22.0	Afghanistan was a top British politician and is now a podcaster
1:27.8	Rory Stewart spoke to us from London
1:31.6	How does our public square look from the UK where you are?
1:36.0	The the US public square
1:38.6	Really looks incredibly divided. We saw a version of this in Brexit
1:43.3	So that was pretty disperting but in the US it sometimes feels as though
1:49.1	It has some of the elements of a civil war
1:52.2	In our interview recorded late last month. We asked Rory Stewart about polarization
1:58.0	populism and what he learned about aid programmers that are supposed to live people out of poverty
	...

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