Political Conventions: At This Point, What’s The Point?

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Hello, everybody. Welcome once again to the weekly show my My name is Jon Stewart.
I will be your host for the next, it could be 40 minutes, could be 50 minutes. We don't know the optimum amount of time for the listener to complete the episode, but who the hell knows.
We are here, as always, with our tremendous producers, Brittany Mamedovic, Lauren Walker. And this is convention week.
We are dominated spiritually, intellectually, emotionally by the Democratic convention and the storylines coming back. And the storyline appears to be Democrats are taking cocaine and they are fired up.
Hell yeah. Little John is there.

Little,

little,

little John.

Yeah.

Is there making the roll call actually interesting,

which never happens.

It's fun.

Have you all been,

been watching the coverage of it and,

and the speeches and,

and locked in.

I'm watching it.

Well,

I'm balancing Emily in Paris and the DNC right now. So I'm doing clips.
Clips of both? Clips of Emily in Paris? Or full episodes Emily in Paris, clips of the convention? She's spark noting Emily in Paris. Yeah.
Now that is, I'm going to be completely honest here. I don't know what that is.
I mean, I know that it's a show, but I don't actually know. I assume it's about this woman, Emily, and where she lives.
It's Paris. All right, fair enough.
Okay. So I nailed it.
That's all you need to know. You've got the whole gist, honestly.
Yeah. Which one at this point, Brittany, has had more drama? Which one has had more intrigue? Which one seems to be hitting its stride? Is it Emily or is it the Democratic Convention? It's the Democratic National Convention, honestly.
Although Emily is balancing two guys right now, so there's like a scandal happening, but it's the DNC for sure. That's also, if I may say so, that's Paris for you.
I mean, is there anybody in Paris who is not juggling some form of sexual liaisons between different people? No one that I know. Now we are, this is, we're talking on Wednesday, obviously.
I thought Monday night was funereal to a certain extent. There was a real, I mean, it was the expectation of all the comment, you know, the commentators who were like, it's the sad goodbye.
Yeah, it was definitely a different vibe on Monday. And I really couldn't stay up.
I've really impressed that everyone else did, but Biden spoke pretty late. Can I tell you the sad truth, Lauren? Yeah.
I went to bed before Biden. That's what I'm saying.
Yeah. I went to bed before Biden.
Yeah. That is how I judge my life now.
Do I think I'm going to bed before or after Biden? All right. We are going to do, it's all, we've got a great convention show for you with history, journalism.
We're going to get to it. But before we do, I need to take care of a small little bit of business.

This is our last show for the next couple of weeks.

It's our summer break.

We're gone for two weeks.

Vacay.

Vacay.

Brittany is going to be Brittany in Paris.

She's going to go.

And she's going to juggle three to four paramours.

Obviously.

Obviously.

And then we come back Friday the 13th. Spooky scary.
That's not good. But all right, let's do it that way anyway.
And as always, at the end of the program, we will be taking your comments and answering those to the best of our ability. So please keep those coming.
But let's get to the convention coverage, for God's sakes. And I'll see you guys in a little bit.
Joining us for our mega convention discussion, Zolan Kano-Youngs, White House correspondent with the New York Times and a CNN political analyst. And Jill Lepore, professor of history and law at Harvard.
The university, not the one you've heard about, not Harvard. A staff writer at the New Yorker.
Yeah, the New Yorker. Jill is crushing it.
An author of a bunch of books, including most recently, The Deadline. Zolan, I'm going to start with you.
You are in Chicago right now. Yes.
Zolan, obviously these are generally infomercial-ish, but the energy from the Democratic Party seems to be vibrating off the screen. I don't know what it's feel like in Chicago, but it has that feeling of a prisoner on death row who was dead man walking, who was heading down that Green Mile, whatever analogy, and the governor calls at the last minute.
And there is a joy and a relief that seems palpable. So is that what you're sensing on the ground there? Yeah, I think that's right.
I mean, I've been covering the White House now since President Biden came into office. And that required going to a lot of his events, right? And when you compare crowd sizes and just sort of the energy, this is the most energetic that I've seen the party sort of in this Biden era.
Particularly, I mean, Monday was interesting, right? Because it wasn't, I would think, the usual sort of vibe of a convention. It wasn't as celebratory or forward-looking.
It was almost more of a swan song. It was more of a bidding farewell to the president.

Yes. But then yesterday, right, you have the Obamas there.
And I was in the stadium when Michelle Obama took the stage, the former first lady. Boy, are they a talented couple of orators.
I thought President Obama got it right when he said something along the lines of, you know, who goes after Michelle Obama? I got to tell you. Who makes that decision? Most people that I talked to, voters were saying she was the highlight sort of of the night.
And I mean, it was hard to hear at times, you know, the speakers as well. Because the crowd was just, they were bonkers.
Going nuts, going nuts. And it's actually one of the main questions I have now moving forward is, is this excitement sort of exclusively tied to the candidate of Vice President Harris, or is it exclusively about the change? Is it about something new, the switch on the ballot? Because look, the thing that I would hear for the past three years was you would hear from voters sort of that lack of faith in the system because the two candidates quite literally represented something that just happened.
It represented the past. Oh, the 78 years old and 82 years old.
I mean, that's right. That's right.
81 turning 82. And now you're seeing a sense of optimism, not just around a candidate that may represent something different, but also a candidate that they feel can effectively deliver some lines against the former president and actually have a chance to beat him.
Right. And we'll get to this with Jill.
You know, anytime you're watching a television program and there's a plot twist, one that you didn't see coming, this is, you know, and certain plot twists, a little negative. You know, you're watching a television program and there's a plot twist one that you didn't see coming this is you know and and certain plot twists a little negative you know you talk about red wedding you know you're watching a game of thrones and all of a sudden everybody's killed there but then there's other plot twists where you're just thinking oh my god they had a baby you know there's there's there's that excitement and and and jill let's get to you because i think you have a much broader overview of this.
These are now television shows. These are no longer political conventions.
And I'd love for you to give us a little bit of a sense of how this thing has evolved. Political conventions were weeks long.
They were more like, when you think of conventions in a political sense, the constitutional convention, a gathering of the leaders and the elites for however negative or positive you want to view that who are going to sit and they're going to grind the philosophy of our governing principles as we are going forward. And now over those years, it's evolved into the kind of convention, like a timeshare convention, like a gathering of people who sell Lipitor and they're just there to celebrate the product that they have had developed.
And they are going to shout and hold signs and wear funny hats. And they're not actually going to do anything other than that spectacle.
And is that the transformation that we've seen? Yes. I think the Lipitor convention might have better hats.
Now I'm trying to picture that. Sure.
Yeah. And I just want to add one thing about this week before kind of jumping back in time, because one of the things I think maybe hasn't been talked about as much with the excitement, is it the novelty? Is it the change? Is you're asking, John, or is it the candidate herself? I think one of the things that's important about this Democratic convention is it really is a party convention and not a dynastic activity.
So if it was a dynasty, it would be Michelle who was the candidate, right? That's an alternative Democratic reality. Thinking about Hillary Clinton in 2016, right? She comes on, she's Bill's wife, right? A very important politician and accomplished person in many ways, but that was a dynastic anointment in the way that the Jeb Bush candidacy was meant to be a dynastic anointment that same year in 2016.
And people were, it was grim, right? I went to both those conventions in 2016. Those

are the only times I've ever been. But it was just entirely grim from top to bottom, both conventions for different reasons.
Trump, because he toppled the dynasty. Clinton, because the Sanders people were like, this is a dynasty.
This isn't a party anymore. So what was so, for me, exciting to watch, you know, Michelle Obama last night.
I mean, also, she's just badass.

Like, she's so great.

But that, it's not Joe Biden who selflessly, like, gave up the presidency.

It's Michelle Obama.

Like, no one's pointed.

She could have walked right into that nomination.

Wow, she could have.

She still could.

No one gives her credit for that.

Like, the dignity that she talked about. Yeah.
And she, you know, she kept talking about the presidency has a certain amount of dignity to it. Yeah.
That's her, right? Like, she's the one. People in the party have been dying to get her.
And she's like, you know what? Not everybody wants power. Like, that's not what I want.
I think she was also, you could tell, though, she was wounded by the treatment that the Obama family, not just the president, but the entire family.

She was really wounded by the, if we're being honest, disgusting treatment, which continues to this day of the Obama family and just the vile attacks, like not policy, not anything other than just vile, conspiratorial, personal, disturbing, you know, and then you have Trump, you know, yesterday, I've got a lot of respect for the Obamas. Bullshit.
I don't know. You know, that's the same with like, no abortion, this, I had nothing to do with this.
And it's a great thing. Like it's him saying it doesn't make it true.
He was the leader of an absolute torrent and river of slime. And I imagine for her, she thought, we've given our pound of flesh to this endeavor.
And I don't want any part of that anymore. Right.
True. But I mean, Hillary Clinton had been through Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky.
And she was like, you know what? I want the power. I want to, I want to, I deserve this.
That's a great point. I'm entitled to this nomination.
So I don't know. I just, I just kind of want to take a moment to say, I just know that that just deserves kind of recognition.
And as you say, like, it was a great television moment. She's, you know, she's an amazing speaker.
She's incredible just to watch, right? Just like the physical presence. How about that line though? The affirmative action of an inherited wealth.
Boy, that might be the line of the convention. Yeah.
But so I didn't mean to skirt your question because I'm a historian. I'm supposed to be talking about history, but- But that's fabulous.
I thank you for it because I think that's a really interesting point that I have not heard talked about, which is, I mean, honestly, if Michelle Obama had gone out there last night and said, hey, you know what? I know we all settled on Kamala, but I think I'm going to do this. I do think the crowd might've been like, okay, we're fine with that.
But to to address the idea of how this has developed over time from how we view a convention, the Constitutional Convention as kind of an intellectual and philosophical exercise, which is what the political conventions I think have been, to an infomercial convention of an industry celebrating its own greatness.

How's that happened over time?

Yeah, so... an infomercial convention of an industry celebrating its own greatness.
How has that happened over time? Yeah. So one thing to remember is conventions are not constitutional.
They're extra constitutional. They're just an invention of the party system.
Also, the party system is not constitutional. It's just an invention of people who thought it would be a useful way to organize themselves.
And the founders didn't want it. They thought that the executive would battle the judicial, would battle the congressional.
They didn't think there'd be parties in any of this. Yeah.
And the party system actually screws up the balance of power in federalism the way the Constitution has described it. So the conventions, the first convention is 1831.
So it is a very ancient thing, but it was an attempt to kind of deal with the problem of the electoral college. Like you could write all of American history as an attempt to deal with the problem of the electoral college, which was just, admit it, a mistake.
Like it was a bad idea. It was a bad compromise.
It's a crazy way to elect a president. And all basically done for slavery.
All really done for, yeah, for slavery. Because the slave states didn't have people that counted as people.
They'd have no power. And in a direct national vote, right.
They would have lost to New England. Right.
So they're like, oh, we have this idea. Let's have it be proportionate to our representation of Congress, where we get the two senators.
And then also we get the three-fifths clause. And so then all the presidents are going to be from Virginia.
Oh, this is great.

So people in the North are like, this is bad.

They tried to abolish the electoral college.

It requires a constitutional amendment.

Still hasn't been done.

So they decided, okay, well, we'll nominate our candidates. Once they kind of formed parties, we'll have the party caucus in Congress nominate the candidates.

So this was the legislative caucus. They would get together in this secret meeting, like a secret cabal.
Yes. The smoke-filled room.
And members of Congress would be like, oh, you know who we, we're going to nominate Jon Stewart this year. He's going to be- Wait, what? And then the people wouldn't even vote for the candidate.
The people are voting. People aren't even voting for the delegates at the time.

Right.

The electoral college delegates were elected by the state legislatures.

So the only reason this even worked was because people weren't used to voting.

Like they were used to having a king.

So anything seemed better.

Right.

I guess.

Everything seemed like a privilege.

We do vote for our state legislators and then they vote for these delegates and the delegates choose a nominee that was chosen by members of Congress, but that's okay. But then that wasn't okay, right? Right.
Like as the country became democratized- That had to go to a vote as well. Yeah.
So then there's this kind of big campaign to get rid of like what its enemies call King Caucus because basically it's a vestige of monarchy. So how are the parties going to decide who the nominee is? They're like, oh, we'll use it with a convention.
Because a convention, so there were conventions. In the 19th century, people had conventions for everything.
You were interested in women's rights, you're interested in temperance, you're interested in anti-slavery, you're interested in a new religion, you're interested in new speculation in the West. You just have a convention because you're not going to call someone on the phone.
You're not going to Instagram them. You're going to have to go somewhere, get together, sit in a room, get to know one another, share your views.
And cut out some time for it. Cut out some time for it out some time for it.
Weeks. Weeks.
Weeks. So for everything, like in a political convention came to be how people understood the sovereignty of the people.
Like it was the visual embodiment of like, it's not voting. So I'm like voting was a whole other crazy story behind voting.
But conventions were like, we do actually decide how we govern. So there were like 200 state constitutional conventions in the first couple of hundred years of the country because the states were like, you know what we should do? We should have a convention, rewrite our state constitution.
Right. Also because it's fun.
It seems very fun. There's musicians there.
Little John was there last night. Little John was there.
Little John. Yeah.
He was at the, yeah.

I think they had some banjos.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

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All right, we're back. This gets to kind of the idea that the conventions have in themselves.
There's not a lot that isn't scripted that goes on there. But what really seems salient here is the symbiosis between the media machine and the political machine coming together for this, you know, four-year, it's the Olympics for the media, political, industrial complex.
And it seems like this is all thrown for you guys. It's the correspondence dinner writ large in this, in a four year orgy of celebration of this symbiotic relationship.
I get what you're saying there. Yeah, there's a certain sort of mutual benefit, right, by the outlets that are going to be covering this constantly.
And obviously the political machine that wants to have a made-for-TV spectacle, right? I mean, look, when it comes to journalism and sort of the news value, the story sort of of this convention, I think we were reporting on, the real reporting was going on sort of the past two months, right? Or really the past, you know, you could go even beyond that. And that's talking to voters and seeing if they were frustrated with who was on the top of the ballot.
That's trying to dig into President Biden's low poll numbers. It was trying to figure out was there infighting in the Democratic Party.
That being said, I also think there's something to this because walking in there yesterday, walking past protesters that are protesting what's happening in Gaza, and being able to sort of talk to those folks and sort of remind the public, hey, this party is still going to have some issues moving forward in the campaign. Walking inside and getting on record sort of the values that this party is saying that it's going to stand for.
There's not too much policy discussion in this thing, but hearing what they are emphasizing, the economy, sort of investing in the middle class, not a lot of talk of foreign policy, not too much talk of immigration. That's stuff that I'm going to keep in my mind.
And I think we should put out there for readers and viewers. Sure.
And then there's that old adage, and maybe this is a cliche, but like, of sort of documenting the first draft of history. I mean, we keep going back to the first lady's speech, but I was talking with some voters after who were saying, look, we can recall the Obamas always going high rather than going low.
And for them to be there in their seats as a black woman who many find to be a hero was almost sounding the alarm for what's to come potentially for the vice president, for someone trying to be the first black woman and first, the first black woman to be president, almost defending her in that way. I think that deserves coverage.
Oh, it absolutely deserves coverage. I guess my question would be, is this the first draft of history or does the relationship between the media and these political parties create a skewed first draft of history? You're, you know, one is, is obviously the convention is a strategic placement on what their values are and what they think they're going to emphasize and what they're not going to.

And then as you watch, there is more coverage with less news than I think I've ever seen. And that's been the progression my whole life.
You know, you've watched the coverage increase, the news decrease, and how much of this is the media creating a first draft of history off of a play that was written by a political party and feeling the need to comment in real time. I can't tell you, the conventional wisdom that comes out of here is not a lot of policy.
Well, who lot of policy sure they do a pro forma platform you saw the republican convention they basically took whatever platform they have and trump just took words out of it right a because he's a pamphlet guy and b he doesn't want to be on record with anything real because he thinks that will open him up to criticism so i guess guess my point is, is this the first draft of history,

or is this a mask that the media is helping to build?

No, I think it's a good question.

I don't think you can look at this convention sort of in isolation, right?

If we, in our coverage, were sort of covering this as the entirety of the campaign and sort of everything that these two candidates represent, then yeah, I mean, that would not be giving our readers the full story here. But, you know, if we also had report, I, sometimes I like when I'm, when I'm facing these questions and like, say we go to a speech and it's a political stump speech and you have people saying, hey, are you just following the rat race or are you actually following the issues that matter? I like to like say, look, you know, I may be here covering this, talking to people, talking to voters, talking to different elected officials, but that doesn't mean that I wasn't in Chicago, you know, a year ago covering lead pipe removal, President Biden's policy and trying to dig into the impact of that policy.
That doesn't mean we don't have colleagues in DC right now that are leading investigations into these parties to actually assess impact. In some ways, the difference between print and television, you know, print is a really different animal and it allows you a context and a perspective that you can't have.
But I do want to ask Jill, you know, is this then Schrodinger's convention, sort of this idea that television has fundamentally formed and changed the way these things take place because they didn't want to be exposed. That television originally, you know, it goes back to Nixon and Kennedy, the first televised debate where Nixon's like, makeup? I don't need makeup.
I'll look great. You know, the medium originally exposed politics.
Now, politics has found a way to expose media. And is that the kind of arc that has happened over these years that television has been the dominant media form? Yeah, I think that's fair to say.
I think it is kind of hydraulic in the way that you describe it, right? It's like an engine that's moving. There are parts that are moving together.
Right. I think it does predate television though, and it has to do with larger changes in, maybe I would go to the age of radio in the 1920s.

Okay.

Because for- I think it does predate television, though, and it has to do with larger changes in, maybe I would go to the age of radio in the 1920s. Okay.
Because first of all, you have broadcasting. Second of all, it's the age of the birth of mass advertising, right? Modern commercial advertising, where you begin to see political candidates marketed, hawked directly to voters as political products.
with, you know, The first campaign consulting company was founded in 1933 in California Campaigns, Inc. Really? Yeah.
And it's a former ad company, right? They're like the madmen of the 1930s. Wow.
But you see then that, so it's 1932, FDR becomes the first nominee to actually go to the convention. Before that, it would be considered completely inappropriate for a candidate to go.
Wait, so the candidates wouldn't, when they got nominated, they wouldn't come on and say, I accept your nomination. No.
Also, because John, it was a decision. It was actually a deliberative convention where people were making a decision.

So they wouldn't even know.

No.

So you wouldn't go and stump for votes.

There would be various people there making deals, swindling.

There's a whole lot of shenanigans and political skullduggery.

But it was actually a lot going on. And even the platform deliberations were real deliberations.
Were they reported on? No, because it was actually a working convention. People were getting together who hadn't seen one another.
They're not on the phone all the time. They don't share the same national news culture.
I'm from Mississippi. Here's how I think the party needs to be moving.
You're from Connecticut. You want to do this.
How are we going to make a deal here? Was there an honesty there that disappeared as soon as people started listening? I don't think so. No, I think there was a lot of dishonesty, right? All right, good.
So fundamentally, politics hasn't changed. Yeah, it's just like the people that got to go do that are going to, you know, those people that want to sit in that room and be like, hey, man, you know, I've got, you know.
The room where it happens. I got a tariff, you know, on your cotton, if you, whatever, like, yeah, those people.
So they'd be there, but they would do their thing. And the candidates, like, some of them had never even been mentioned before the convention, right? This is the dark horse really is a dark horse.
People, no one's even heard of these people. And there would be these schemes like, oh, they're just great scenes.
I think in 1860, when Lincoln became the nominee, I think Lincoln wasn't voted maybe till the sixth ballot. I can't remember.
But what Lincoln supporters did, they sold up fake tickets for admission to the convention. And they gave them out to people who are Lincoln supporters.
And they sent them in like an hour early before the hall was supposed to even open. So they filled to the rafters the place with Lincoln supporters.
So when they got to that ballot, when they were going to finally nominate Lincoln, because you have to hold back your dark horse. You don't bring him in.
You let everybody like waste all their votes and get all worked up about this person, the other person that's doomed, doomed, doomed. Then you bring in your guy and the people are like, Lincoln, Lincoln.
I guess he has a lot of support, this Lincoln guy. Wait, but he's Honest Abe.
How could Honest Abe do something like that? See, that's why you can't go.

That's why you can't go.

Because there's so much sneaky Machiavellian stuff going on behind scenes.

You don't go.

You're told the next day you've been nominated.

The cynicism, Jill.

I'm so honored.

So FDR, though.

FDR was an awesome radio guy. He's like the Michelle Obama of the radio, right? So he, as governor of New York, he had been great on the radio.
And he knew he was great on the radio. And he knew the power of radio.
He had a sense of that as a medium that would transform politics because, you know, it said that Reagan would always just skip over Congress and directly appeal to the people. This was his big maneuver.
Well, that was FDR's maneuver. FDR was like, you know what? I had a problem with the Supreme Court.
I'm going to have this difficult Congress. I got all these like Southern conservatives.
I'm going to have a big problem. I'm going to go to the people.
I'm going to get my mandate from the people. In some ways, that's Trump's trick.
That's the magic that keeps him. That was Trump Twitter, 2015 Twitter.
Yeah. It kind of went from radio to Reagan was the master of television, and Trump is the master of that new media, of social media and podcasts and all those things.
And it's interesting how different politicians have found a way to exploit this new way of communicating. In terms of new media and how that has changed sort of how politicians and probably both parties value or sort of feel the need to help out kind of traditional media.
I mean, there's a whole lounge for content creators and influencers at the Democratic National Convention right now. This White House in particular, I know, feels that they can sort of get their narrative and their story out through TikTok, you know, influencers and Instagram influencers.
State of the Union speech, Biden's State of the Union speech. You know, he had many influencers at the White House as well to basically get his message out at that time.
I'm seeing that at this DNC as well. This is almost a next level, no longer just the White House and sort of the political teams using social media, but actually bringing in young influencers who, quite frankly, maybe are not going to be asking sort of the same tough questions or looking for accountability, but are getting their message out.
Two questions. One is, you know, are they paid by the campaigns to do this thing? And the second question is, have you seen, you know, anytime you introduce a new and powerful medium, as we talked about, like that Nixon-Kennedy moment on the debates, there is also always the potential for, holy shit, you don't know how this works, do you? Like in that sense of, I don't know if you remember right after the Super Bowl, President Biden had an opportunity to do an interview before the Super Bowl that would be seen by tens of millions of people.
It's an incredible opportunity, especially in an election year, and chose instead to jump on and release

a TikTok.

Yeah.

Where he was like Grandpa Joe behind the scenes talking about chocolate chip cookies.

And quite frankly, I thought it was disastrous.

I think many people agreed with you in the party as well.

Well, let me answer the first one.

In terms of getting paid, I do not believe that the influencers that are working for

the campaign, I believe that's on a volunteer basis, but I don't know in the totality. Although at a minimum, they indirectly profit, right? No question.
Oh, oh. I mean, you're getting more followers, you're getting more clout.
You're at the White House. It's branding.
It's branding. Some of these, I mean, some of these, you know, TikTokers, I mean, good for them, have been, you know, in spaces of the White House that many of us haven't been in, you know, in the press corps, right? And do have millions of followers on both sides.

And by the way, like for the White House, like for their political strategy, they're thinking,

hey, we're struggling with young voters. You know, we're struggling to reach, you know,

a constituency base that maybe, frankly, maybe don't read the New York Times every day, right?

So I get where they're coming from in terms of PR and getting their message out. I guess

I'll see you next time. Maybe, frankly, maybe don't read the New York Times every day.
Right. So I get where they're coming from in terms of PR and getting their message out.

I guess I would hope that there's still folks in the White House that also realize it's not just a matter of sort of getting your message out, but also having some stress tests

happening.

Yeah.

And some tough questioning.

Yeah.

Yes.

And also, what do they care about politically and what can you do?

Yeah.

All right.

We got to hold it right there. We'll be right back.
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All right, we're back. You know, it reminds me of when, you know, when these television debates also started to get more sophisticated with the 24 hours.
And CNN would do the CNN-MTV debate as opposed to the CNN-Wall Street Journal debate or the CNN-New York Times debate. And all the candidates would have to show up in turtlenecks.
Because you know, man, if you're talking to the kids, they don't want to see a necktie because you're the man in the establishment. But if you wear a turtleneck, they'd be like, I like the cut of this guy's jib.
This is a direct shot, I feel like, at me who wears turtlenecks at every TV appearance during the winter. That is never so much.
And my mom and aunt are always texting me saying, wear a tie, but it's all good. Not at all.
We'll see more high tops and turtlenecks in the future with political coverage. That's what I'm talking about.
That's like when JFK didn't wear a hat at his inauguration. People were like, man, you have to wear the top hat.
He was like, no, it's a new day. The torch has been passed to a new generation that allow heat to escape through their scalp.
But look, I do think you're right too, that like going back to the Super Bowl interview, I was talking to allies of the president at the time that were like, hey, if you just simplify this, the president passed a lot domestically. He did a lot in terms of legislative achievements, semiconductor investments, the Inflation Reduction Act, investments in climate.
But people were not registering it. And I think that's partly because some of these projects take a while.
But it's also the message. And it's the messenger, right? And that Super Bowl interview, you have the chance to reach millions of people.
I mean, how many people are watching the Super Bowl at that time? And you could introduce them into some of these things that you've done. In a thoughtful forum where you can expound on certain things and analyze it, not a 30-second.
I don't know if TikTok is the best platform to talk about semiconductor investment and how investing in semiconductors will allow you to compete against China moving forward and establish independence for a future pandemic when we have supply chain issues. It's the opposite of a convention.
It lacks context. And not everything should be in a bite-sized form.
That goes for the coverage we do. That goes for social media influencers as well.
So there was, just to underscore your question about TV, there really was a kind of TikTok moment in 1952, which was also the last time any convention vote went to the second ballot. Like it was the last time there was a decision made at a convention.
Was this at the Republican at the Eisenhower convention or is this at the Democratic convention? No, this was at the Democratic convention. But the reason 52 is important is it's the first televised election, right? It's the first television campaign ads, and it's the first election night that is on television.
48, they did it on television, but they just did a visual radio broadcast. What was the penetration at that point with television in 1952? By 1952, it's like 80% of Americans have TVs.
It's really overnight. And Eisenhower agrees.
This ad company convinces the Eisenhower campaign to appear in television ads.

And he makes this series of ads. You've probably seen them.
They're called Eisenhower Answers America. And so he went to the studio in Times Square, and he just read off cue cards, these answers to questions.
Right. And then they brought in people who were wandering around Times Square and had them read cue cards and ask questions.
and they would be like, General Eisenhower,

I'm a veteran of the Second World War and my taxes are too high. And then it would say, Eisenhower, answer.
So these 30 second spots. Right.
If they did that today, it would be the guy dressed as Elmo and he would wander in. Yes, it would be like Elmo would come in and say, the Cookie Monster gets all the best snacks.
President Eisenhower. But it was incredibly effective.
But Adlai Stevenson, who was running against him, who's the egghead intellectual. Yeah.
He calls him the Corn Flakes candidate. He tries to say, like, you're the TikTok candidate.
Like, what have you done to America? You have reduced political discourse to 30-second ad spots made by Madison Avenue charlatans.

This is no – so this is when Stevenson starts saying what we need to do is have a debate.

And it's actually Stevenson who makes possible presidential debating, which doesn't then happen until 1960.

But it's Stevenson's rejection of the TV ad spot, which is – he totally loses.

And if you've ever seen – He not only loses, loses twice. Loses twice, but you have to- It doesn't figure it out in 56 either.
You have to watch Stevenson's ad. He makes this ad called The Man from Libertyville.
He decides finally, his campaign's like, dude, governor, you gotta make a TV ad. So he makes this ad called The Man from Libertyville.
It's unbelievably, I try to imagine the worst thing you could do on TikTok that you would try to explain carbon tax, whatever. Right.
So he has – The cameras come into his study in his house in Illinois. Oh, my God.
It's lined with books, and he's talking about books and the importance of books. And then the camera pans back to see the boom and the cameras and all the cables.
And he says, see, it looks like I'm in your room, in your living room talking to you because I'm on this screen. But in fact, this is all fake because there are cameras here and I'm just performing, telling you something.
He tries to lift, you know, whatever, crash through the whatever. He went meta.
The people. He went totally meta.
The television was, and he went meta. People were like, where's that little Eisenhower answers America guy? I like that guy.
It just doesn't, you can't. I don't like the guy who's like, you're all living in a Potemkin village.
This is a facade. You're all being lied to.
You're Truman on The Truman Show. Oh my God.

It's actually very, I found it very moving.

It's very moving that he's like- In retrospect.

Okay, that's fair.

Not in the moment, for God's sakes.

Not moving the political needle, as we would say.

Right, right.

I find this all fascinating.

Zolan, maybe you can talk to this.

The touchstone is 1968 for what these modern conventions were going to look like and how they could go awry. Nixon does the law and order convention, and we're going to get this country back on the right track, the hippies and the love movement, all that's nonsense.
The Democrats go to Chicago and it's a shit show and it's being televised.

And that becomes the touchstone for what not to do. I can't tell you how many people when they heard the Democrats were going to be in Chicago this year were like, oh, that's a great idea.
They're going to be, you know, how much of that is an overriding principle of how they've put this thing together on the ground, Zolan? I would say it was actually more sort of a news story kind of leading up to this of, oh, what might happen? And also, it actually leads to a question that we've been asking, too, of it seemed like there was more concern there when it was still a convention that was going to celebrate a president that has overseen the policy that many of the protesters here, you know, are here for. Right.
Right. That is there have been protests outside.
But I'll be honest with you. I mean, maybe it's sort of the police response.
There is some distance from the arena, but it has not been. I had heard comparisons to 1968 and sort of concern around chaos and different, you know, was this going to break out into sort of any sort of violent acts or rioting? It just really hasn't been the case thus far.
Let me tell you something. I believe much more damaging to the Democrats than the 68 convention with the riots was the 96 convention where the Clintons did the Macarena on stage for the entire convention.
That video has been making the rounds around here. Has it really? Yes, it has.
That may be the most damning piece of tape ever. I blame Eisenhower.
Eisenhower. What an arc from Macarena and some of the lack of rhythm being displayed there to, you know, yesterday.
Lil Jon doing that. When you had Not Like Us playing, when the California delegation, you know, was introduced.
But no, that video, particularly on Monday when Hillary Clinton came out to speak, some people around me were wondering and they were like, you know, they would be so brave if they just put the song on right now. If they just jumped in, did the Macarena and got the hell out of town.
Jill, do you think the convention now, what, you know, in terms of kind of the next iteration, it's gone from two weeks of real policy grinding to this four-day spectacle where the networks have kind of abdicated, they'll do an hour a night. Uh, it really is kind of a celebration of influencers and cable news and, and their relationship, uh, to it.
Where do you see the evolution of it going? Does this become a vestigial tale of our political process? I think it really is just a rally, right? Even just, you know, the roll call this year was, I mean, it's always a determined roll call.

But this year is entirely pro forma. And so it's fine.
I'm sure for the parties, look, it's great to get free television for a week long political rally.

That's really all that it is. And I'm sure it really energizes people who are there.

I do think reporters learn a lot about the state of the party and there's a lot that's good about it.

But what is bad about it is the lack of a willingness to trust people to deliberate about their own political fates in groups together anymore. So that conventioning is something that has completely died out of American political practice, and it's a really important democratic behavior.
So, for instance, we have not had a state constitutional convention since 1986. Because people just, you know, there are a lot of states that have regular, every 10 years, or sometimes it's 15, the state has to, people have to vote on a referendum.
Do you want to have a constitutional convention? People just keep voting no, because they don't trust one another. So, the reason that we don't have deliberation at the conventions anymore is because the party doesn't trust the delegates to decide.
The primers can't be informed by funding and polling and the modern political corruption, honestly. And the conventions can't be controlled.
It's an uncontrollable situation. That's what 68 sort of revealed, right? So like, all right, so we can't control it.
Let's just make it like a media spectacle. And in a way, that's fine for what the party maybe wants.
What it's bad for is democracy. Because if we can't gather as citizens to together decide, you know, you watch like, remember in the pandemic, there were all those YouTube videos of like Zoom meetings of like school committees where people are just like crap to one another.
And you're like, these people are monsters. And people get up there and you hear about the book banning school board meetings and like the PTA meetings or the town council.
And people can't actually get together and like even just decide, are we going to, you know, add a new track field to our high school? Which, by the way, again, getting back to Schrodinger's school board meeting, I think that's also a function of virality. That's a function of an algorithmic system that incentivizes shitty behavior.
And so they know those are going to be. So, and we'll end here because I want to ask you guys sort of a final question.
You know, power abhors a vacuum. Is that the phrase? What fills that space? You know, in the same way that as legislators get more involved in fundraising and all these other things, lobbyists fill the law writing space.
They go in there and do that. In the absence of deliberative, democratic, populist processes, isn't that space then naturally filled by think tanks? These, you know, Project 2025 from the Heritage, whatever the, you know, progressive or democratic analog to that would be, don't those constitutional conventions get abdicated to these much more political funded organizations that have a real desire to push society in one way or the other that are much more opaque, but are laying out really detailed blueprints for how our government will operate and change.
As you can see, it's that kind of thing that got that most recent Chevron decision that made it almost impossible for government agencies to regulate anything. And you've seen the effect of that in Texas, where the FTC is now not allowed to say you can't put non-compete clauses in people's work contracts.
So my point is, we're going to get those scaffoldings of American democracy. We're just not going to know where it's coming from anymore.
Would you say that's the future of all this? I mean, look, I think that's any time that, whether it's a convention or anything else you're talking to, that you're taking sort of power away from the people and reducing sort of what this democracy is supposed to be about, then it's going to make the electorate feel as if they don't have a voice and that they actually don't have a say in democracy. And I have no doubt that there are people that are watching events like this, seeing that it's already been built up and it's already been scripted by folks that they will never meet, that they feel that they maybe have no idea how they are living, and are saying, well, wait a minute, is actually this political system working for me? If this whole thing is constructed by the Washington insiders, do I actually have a voice in this space? And I think that is a growing concern for voters across the country.
At the same time, I have to go kind of devil's advocate here. And again, this is my first convention that I've covered, but I've encountered, you know, the, the, the woman that was, that was in the civil rights movement and have watched each of these cycles and is still hitting, you know, the, the floor of the convention because she believes in this system.
And she believes that, Hey, if I, you know, show up and I talk to as many members of Congress here, like my voice will be heard. I'm not saying that that's the majority.
I'm not trying to put an overly positive spin on this in any means. But I do think that events like this also still lend themselves to that uncommitted voter from Michigan or uncommitted delegate who is talking to every member of Congress, to that woman I just described who's been protesting for years.
There is still, I think, a belief here that this represents a semblance of having your voice heard. The unfortunate thing is I do think that that might be becoming the minority here.
Well, it's sort of this idea that, you know, yes, this is a cynical, scripted infomercial and infinitely better than the alternative, which is on there. Jill, what do you think? Well, I think you're right in that.
I mean, sure, there've always been people that have policy ideas and push them out there. The technology they can use to push them out there anonymizes them and maximizes contempt for their political opponents.
So unless we have some kind of regulation around how we communicate through social media, that is only going to get worse. But I do, to try to have an optimistic view here, I would say that one of the things that strikes me about the Democratic ticket is that both Tim Walz and Kamala Harris are public servants.
And especially thinking about, I mean, what is the one place where people still gather together, talk about ideas, disagree with one another, is actually the K-12 classroom. And if Wallace could usher in an era of young people committed to public school teaching, which is the most important job in this country or any other, this would really change how people are trained up in the art of being a democratic citizen.
And I think Harris has some of that credibility too, has devoted her life to working for the government. I think until people can really see that you actually have to be willing to get out, go sit in a room with other people, hang out with them, listen to them, learn from them, share your views, then we can kind of claw back control over what are those policy ideas that go up to people who actually control the levels of power.
You know, I wonder, this is an incredibly dopey idea, which is why I'm going to end with it. But there is a certain idea that you have to perform that for people, for them to understand it.
Because the truth is, classrooms now the latest in terms of the culture war casualties. And so any idea of teaching citizenship will to one side be considered indoctrination and to the other side be considered.
But I wonder sort of in the way that you get those model UNs, I wonder if there is a value in performing citizenship conventionally to demonstrate what that looks like for people. Because look, I'm 61.
I can barely remember the idea of political conventions as exercises in any kind of intellectual policymaking or those things. But I wonder if just as a project,

why not recreate the idea of what we want to see civically and at least put it on as a fucking show to demonstrate what that even looks like? Because like, Jill, when you tell me those examples of history, they're revelatory, but they are completely foreign to my understanding. And so I, you know, thank you for it.
And Zolan, thank you very much for giving us sort of that on the floor perspective, which also coming through the television isn't necessarily correct. So, but I very much appreciate you guys taking the time.

Zolan Kano-Youngs, White House correspondent,

New York Times and CNN political analyst,

Jill Lepore, professor of history and law at Harvard,

which by the way, after this conversation,

I consider myself now a graduate of that institution

from having talked to her.

Staff writer at the New Yorker,

author of most recently, The Deadline.

Guys, thank you so much. What a fabulous conversation on this.
And I really appreciate both your time. Thanks so much, Sean.
Thank you. Appreciate it.
Thanks so much. Thank you.
Thank you guys. All right, guys, here's the thing.
I want a historian for every conversation I ever have. The amount of knowledge, first of all, Zolan's great, but Jill, when she dropped an Adelaide Stevenson television studio anecdote, that might be my favorite story I've heard in the entirety of doing this podcast is Adelaide Stevenson breaking the fourth wall when people don't even know what fucking television is yet.
Yeah. Just breaking the fourth wall and going, this is all a lie.
That was so interesting. I really wish I had her as a professor.
Right? So good. I would have had her as a professor if I had been smart enough to go to Harvard, but I was not.
What do we got from the viewers, the listeners? What are we dealing with this week? The listeners have provided us some questions that we'd like to ask you. I will start with, please, can we have our political figures wear the same fire retardant suits with sponsors on them like NASCAR racers? That's a fucking fabulous idea.
Yeah. To have them suited up with all the lobbyist money? Correct.
Imagine how that would look visually though, with them all standing next to each other. It would look like television noise.
Everything would moray, but what a fabulous way to humiliate all of them. Even the most pristine and populist and independent of all of our, to just see, you know, Pfizer and Airbus and Raytheon and all of it.
And however much money they give be the larger- Is the size of the patch? Be like a word cloud. You'd have to do it like a Twitter word cloud where like NRA would be in giant letters on there.
AstraZeneca, you know, you get, you get a few of them that are just too big and they run on hyphenated. They'd have to wear extra.
Some of them would have to wear extra clothing just to be able to contain. You'd see people with giant top hats that would just have to have more names on there.
You have a train. It's like a Pfizer train.
Can I tell you something? I don't know where this came from. Who said this? Sold.
That idea is sold and should be instituted. Every single politician should have to wear that race suit with all their

lobby money on it. Or what else we got? All right, next step.
This is actually something

we've talked about before and hoping to talk about on the pod at some point. But is it inflation or

is it corporate greed that's being allowed by using inflation as an excuse? Yeah, and this is

big right now. Both Trump and Harris have been putting out their plans for inflation.
Well, first of all, let's just say how the news media fumbles the bag in any conversation on inflation. Kamala Harris is instituting price controls.
She said, gouging, anti-gouging, almost state, including, by the way, fucking Texas, the leader of free men everywhere, the liberty state where you go to be your own American has a fucking anti-gouging law. Everybody does because there is an idea that in a crisis, when corporations jack up prices, that should be illegal.
And everybody has that. So the idea that they don't understand this idea of creating or enforcing in the same way that you would want to enforce anti-monopolist laws, anti-gouging laws is somehow communist.
Well, then Texas is communist. Texas is a communist state.
If they don't allow oil and water producers to jack up energy and water prices in a crisis. That's not the American way.
So fuck all of those news organizations for being so ignorant of what's actually being talked about. It's so unbelievably annoying.
Nobody thinks inflation isn't anything other than a very complex interplay between supply and demand and all kinds of other things. But there should be no question that corporations take advantage of opportunities to reset pricing in difficult times and are much faster to set the price here than they are to bring it back down when those pressures ease.
And I'm so tired of the nonsense that somehow there's nothing we can do about that because that's capital. Capitalism is a wonderful system for generating wealth, but it has destructive collateral damage that everybody knows.

And yet we act like doing anything about it in any way is somehow communism.

Fuck this place.

Mic drop.

I'm sorry.

I got upset about that.

I should know.

I guess along that note, what brings you joy, John? Nothing! I mean, honestly, like, okay, you've got, oh, the price of certain commodities has gone up 10%, but somehow the price of it when it gets to you has gone up 200%. Yeah.
How does that happen? And yet the profit margin of that company hasn't taken a hit in the slightest or has even increased during a time of crisis to the point where you're on your earnings calls bragging about how you're killing it. So I get the idea of like supply, demand, doing the different things.

But if you're telling me that, you know, consolidation of industries and corporate pushing of profit margin doesn't have something to do with the inflationary moment that we're living in, blow me. That's my, you know what? That's my new, what brings, wait, what was the other question? What brings me joy? Yeah.
Doggy kisses. Aww.
No, a lot of things bring me joy. I think, what brings you guys joy? I would like to hear this.
I like my plants. Okay.
It's a replacement for having a pet. I can't have a pet.
So I get plants. And whenever there's a hole in my heart, I get another plant.
And now I'm overrun with them. But I will say I really like watching them grow.
And it is a bit meditative to repot and to- Right. So you enjoy, there's a certain zen to the whole process.
Forgetting about the fact that visually the final product is lovely and calming. I could see that.
I could see gardening being a very meditative and wonderful. I don't know that I'd have the patience for it.
Brittany, what about you? What brings me joy? Yeah. Joy, Brittany.
I mean, most recently eating chicken fingers and screaming Taylor Swift lyrics at the Aaron's tour. Can I tell you, if you just cut that off before the screaming at the Taylor Swift Aaron's tour, I would say, boy, are you in luck because chicken fingers may be one of the most easily obtained items.
And you can get those in almost every drive-through you go through. I think almost anywhere.
Very exciting. Oh, and by the way, our next podcast app, just to remind everybody, Friday, September 13th, no podcast next two weeks.
Summer break, people, where Brittany will be off filling to her heart's content, the chicken fingers of joy. While plants bloom in Lauren's heart.
I want to thank everybody as always lead producer, Lauren Walker, producer, Brittany Mamedovic, video editor and engineer, Rob Vitola, audio editor and engineer, Nicole Boyce, researcher, associate producer, Jillian Spear and our executive producers, Chris McShane, Miss Katie Gray. Thanks a lot,

guys. And we will see you in a couple of weeks.
Bye-bye. Socials? Oh, socials.
Sorry, Brittany.

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