And the Hi, I'm Bill Crystal.

I'm Bill Crystal.

Welcome to Conversations.

I'm very pleased to be joined today by my friend Bill Galston,

Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, author of many important works

on subjects ranging from Kant to American public opinion and public policy, and a fellow,

I feel we have some kinship since apart from knowing each other for a long time

we're both academics you more serious one than I who made it to Washington with

for the good or of the country or not.

Anyway, welcome, great to have you.

Good to be here, Bill.

Thanks, Bill.

And it's a week after the election of 2016,

and let's just begin by talking about its significance to the degree we can detect it now and I guess we do have the returns

So some of what we can really think about and so

You're a political scientist. What's the sort of political science headline from the from the results?

I find it difficult to look at the U.S. election results without looking at the same time to the Western democracies as a whole.

Because I see this election as very much of a piece with the Brexit vote in the UK, with the rise of populist anti-globilization,

anti-trade, anti-immigrant States in Europe.

I confess I'm astounded that that movement in the United States was strong enough to put Mr. Trump over the top in the Electoral College, but it was not

obscure to me. As a matter of fact I started writing about this two years ago that a

populist wave was building and I think we are we are part of that and it's it's pretty

...