The New Rules of Politics: Introduction

The Politics Guys

Michael Baranowski

News, Politics

4.4 • 783 Ratings

🗓️ 10 March 2026

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this preview of the midweek supporters' exclusive show, Mike and Michael introduce The New Rules of Politics, a new series aimed at explaining modern American politics through incentives, institutions, and systemic dynamics rather than personalities. Mike argues that many traditional ways of interpreting politics no longer work because the broader environment—especially technology, media, and political rules—has changed faster than the institutions governing politics can adapt. The conversation explores how structural factors such as low-turnout primaries, the nationalization of politics, changes in media business models, and the growing influence of money in campaigns shape who succeeds in politics and how they behave once in office. They also discuss declining public trust in institutions, the possibility that figures like Donald Trump are products of modern political incentives rather than unique anomalies, and the difficulty of meaningful constitutional or institutional reform in an era of deep polarization. The Politics Guys on Facebook | X Listener support helps make The Politics Guys possible. You can support us or change your level of support at patreon.com/politicsguys or politicsguys.com/support. On Venmo, we’re @PoliticsGuys. The Politics Guys is part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts that examines what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Atheists, agnostics, long-haired, weirdos, short-haired widows, vandal, hooligans. I love the government, hug the government, hug the government, love, the government, hug the government, love, the government, love the government, love the government, love the government, love the government, love the government, love. An emeritus professor at North Kentucky University. I'm joined today by political scientist Michael Levy. Hey, Michael.
0:22.3	Hey, Mike.
0:23.0	How are you doing?
0:23.7	Good.
0:24.1	And, you know, I'll make North Kentucky University. I'm joined today by political scientist Michael Levy. Hey, Michael.
0:22.4	Hey, Mike. How are you doing? Good. And, you know, I'm excited about this because, well, it's the first
0:27.8	episode in what we both hope will be a multi-part series on the new rules of politics. And so today,
0:35.7	introductory episodes, who knows how this is going to go, but
0:38.5	basically what we hope to do today is sort of lay out the groundwork. And then from this point on,
0:44.7	we'll sort of discuss each one of the rules I propose in a fair amount of detail. And so by way
0:51.9	of introduction, I guess I should start by someone. Why are we doing this?
0:55.7	The main reason is over the years, I felt like I've almost unconsciously put together a way of looking at American politics that I have found to be really useful.
1:08.4	But I've never kind of tried to articulate it as its own thing.
1:12.3	It kind of reminds me my dad was a carpenter for like 50 plus years, and I worked for him here
1:18.9	and there, and I picked up a few things here and there, but there's a lot that I never did
1:22.3	because he never just sort of sat me down and said, here are the 38 things that I do.
1:26.5	That would be crazy, right?
1:28.0	But I felt like I had something that I hope is of some value to pass on. And what I mean by rules is not like the rules of a game, football monopoly, what have you.
1:39.3	But sort of the things that I see as the most important, I guess you call them, frames to apply to politics, to kind of best understand how we get the politicians, why we get the politicians, why we get the policies that we end up with.
1:56.5	And I think that makes this different from most political analysis, which typically focuses on, well, personalities.
2:03.9	I'm not saying the personalities are unimportant, but what I believe very strongly is that environments,
2:11.2	institutions, legal structures, these are the things that are behind these personalities that give us
	...

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