2022 U.S. Midterm Elections, With Daniel Silverberg and Christopher Tuttle

LINDSAY:

Welcome to The President's Inbox, a CFR podcast about the foreign policy challenges facing the United States. I'm Jim Lindsay, director of Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. This week's topic is the 2022 U.S. midterm elections

 

With me to discuss what the results of the recent congressional elections mean for U.S. foreign policy, are Daniel Silverberg and Chris Tuttle. Daniel is a managing director at Capstone, a global strategy firm, where he co-leads their national security team. He's also an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. Before joining Capstone, Daniel was national security advisor to Democratic House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and the majority counsel to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Chris is a senior fellow and director of the Renewing American Initiative here at CFR. Like Daniel, Chris has worked on the Hill. Before his current stint here at the Council, Chris served as the policy director of the majority staff of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, under the chairman Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee. Earlier in his career, Chris served as chief of staff and senior policy advisor to Representative Mark Green, a Republican lawmaker from Wisconsin. Chris is the author of a piece recently published on cfr.org titled, "What the Midterm Elections Mean for U.S. Foreign Policy." Daniel. Chris, thanks for joining me.

 

SILVERBERG:

Thank you. It's an honor.

 

TUTTLE:

Thanks Jim. It's great to be here.

 

LINDSAY:

What I'd like to do, if we can, is start with the big picture. We are two weeks out from the election, Democrats have held onto control of the Senate. The results of the December 6th runoff in Georgia will determine whether the Democrats will have an outright majority or will need to continue to rely on Vice President Kamala Harris to cast tie breaking votes. On the other side of Capitol Hill, Republicans have regained control of the House, meaning that we're going to have a new speaker. Now the outcome of five races have yet to be decided as we're chatting here today, so the precise size of the Republican edge in the House is yet to be determined, but we do know that the margin of control is relatively small, comparatively speaking. And so with this as our backdrop, let me ask you the big question, how much did the midterm elections change U.S. foreign policy? And Daniel, I will go to you first.

 

SILVERBERG:

Sure. And first, I really am honored to be here. Thank you. I should have mentioned in my bio that I am a proud lifetime member of CFR as well. So it's particularly meaningful to be able to do this podcast.

 

LINDSAY:

And we're delighted to have you as a member.

 

SILVERBERG:

Thank you. Thank you. I actually think that the midterms were consequential for foreign policy, but in ways that a lot of people did not expect or predict. First, I think the fact that the midterms occurred in a relatively seamless and uneventful fashion, sent a very strong signal to the world that American democracy remains alive and well. And that was not to be taken for granted, given that I think, as President Biden said, there was a perception that democracy itself was on the ballot here and from the turbulence of the 2020 election in January 6th. So one, I think it sent a very strong foreign policy signal that the election occurred as relatively flawless of fashion as it did. Where I think people misinterpreted what the midterms mean, is one, in the China context and two, in the Ukraine context.

 

In the China context, I think there is a perception that because Republicans are going to take over the House, that there's going to be a massive shift on U.S.-China policy and congressional dynamics as a part of that policy. There's no diplomat in chief, Congress's authority in foreign policy is somewhat ambiguous. But that said, Congress obviously plays a role and I think there's a perception before the midterms that with a Republican takeover, there's going to be a massive shift on China. I don't think that's the case. I think that you're going to see a lot of Republican congressional delegations to Taiwan, to Asian partners. You're going to see China related provisions going into bills. But because Republicans are not going to be able to move legislation, given the close margins in the House, and given that Democrats held the Senate, it means a lot of what we are hearing on China, I don't think is going to manifest itself in legislation. So bottom line, I think that there's going to be little more of the status quo, a continuing shift towards an anti-China sentiment, but one that is not going to be primarily congressional driven.

 

The second point on Ukraine, look, I think Leader McCarthy probably wishes that he could take that statement back, regarding not giving Ukraine a blank check. I think that that sent a negative signal to Russia, that U.S. support in Congress and in the executive branch might not be as unified as it seems today. But practically, I think that that comment got blown way out of proportion. I think that Leader McCarthy was actually making a good government statement that no country should be getting a blank check, and in many ways, for policy and political reasons, not much is going to change on Ukraine.

 

LINDSAY:

Okay. I want to drill down Daniel, on some of those particulars, but before we do that, I want to bring Chris into the conversation and give him a chance to address that same macro question about how much the midterm elections have changed U.S. foreign policy.

 

TUTTLE:

Yeah. In general, I'm in agreement with Daniel, despite our differences of parties, I'm right there with him in terms of what this election meant, first and foremost, with the sort of signal to the world that we are able to have free and fair and relatively non-problematic elections. And you actually saw a delegation of U.S. lawmakers making this point recently in Halifax on one of the first congressional delegation trips.

 

LINDSAY:

This is for the Halifax International Security Forum?

 

TUTTLE:

That's correct. And you saw lawmakers from both parties making that point to world leaders, that we're back essentially and 2020 election and the aftermath was a blip. So I think that's first. Second on China, I agree with Daniel. I would just say that some caution is required here because there is such bipartisan agreement when it comes to China policy, that sometimes when there is such bipartisan agreement, cooler heads do not necessarily prevail and we push ourselves further and further into maybe a confrontational posture that may in fact be counterproductive longer term. And then on Ukraine, I would say that in general I'm in agreement with Daniel, but we should not ignore the fact that there is a slow burn going on within some sectors of the Republican party. I actually don't think it's going to be the type of slow burn that sort of breaks out into a fire and you start losing more and more Republicans when it comes to Ukraine assistance.

 

I think that there are significant checks against that, whether it's sort of the larger, more powerful committee chairs that the Republicans are going to have in the House, and most of the rank and file when it comes to Ukraine are fully on board, not to mention the fact that the American people are still fully on board. But I think there is a slow burn going on that's worth having a look at, and I think you will see some controls put on some of the Ukraine assistance that's going forward. You already saw a resolution of inquiry by Marjorie Taylor Greene, asking for a full accounting of all the Ukraine spending. Not clear if she's going to get that or not, at least we'll see. But I think you will see more and more sort of checks and accounting of how the money's being spent, where it's going, that kind of thing. But in general, by and large, I'm in agreement with Daniel.

 

LINDSAY:

Well, Chris, let me draw you out on that issue of how the new Republican majority is going to function once it takes control of the House in January. Again, to me the critical thing here is a very narrow margin, and when you have very narrow margins, small groups of people can get outsized leverage because you need their votes to carry legislation at the end of the day. Democrats saw this beginning in January of 2021, where control of the Senate was by a thread, and people like Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Senator Krysten Sinema of Arizona, became pivotal because the caucus overall, Democratic caucus could go only as far as those members were willing to go. On a number of occasions, they weren't willing to go very far, to the consternation of the White House.

 

You're likely to have, I would think, something similar for Republicans starting in January in the House. But in this case, the people who will be objecting aren't, as was the case with Senator Manchin, Senator Sinema near the middle of the political spectrum. These are going to be people like Marjorie Taylor Greene who are quite proudly on the margins of the political spectrum. So that leads to the question, how will Speaker McCarthy, and maybe I shouldn't presume he's going to be speaker, but if he or whoever becomes House speaker, going to be able to govern what could be an unruly House Republican caucus?

 

TUTTLE:

It's going to be an enormous challenge for the speaker, but it's not quite the same as it would be in the Senate. And Daniel knows this, having worked for Majority Leader Hoyer for as many years as he did, the House is a majoritarian institution and the speaker has quite a bit of power, it's not quite like the Senate. And on things like Ukraine, that we discussed, even if there were going to be that type of slow burn, you still have a sizable reservoir of Democratic votes that you can rely on when it comes to Ukraine. The question is whether it crosses that threshold, where there's something colloquially called the Hastert Rule, where a majority of the majority has to favor a piece of legislation before it will move.

 

LINDSAY:

So if you don't get a majority of the House Republican Caucus, they're not going to move that piece of legislation, even if it could win a majority vote on the floor?

 

TUTTLE:

That's correct. Now Kevin McCarthy is likely, I think, in most cases, to abide by the Hastert Rule. It's a question about how he's going to govern, how he's going to manage his caucus. But I think it would be really problematic for him not to continue to abide by the Hastert Rule. But in order to get there, in order to get to the point where it might be problematic for something like Ukraine, you would need a wholesale erosion of support for Ukraine assistance. The most recent sort of bellwether vote that you can look to, was a vote on a supplemental appropriations package for Ukraine back in May, and I think you had fifty-seven Republicans who voted against that.

 

LINDSAY:

But a number of them said they didn't vote against it on substantive grounds. They were concerned about the process by which the bill was moved or the lack of safeguards, correct?

 

TUTTLE:

That's right. It was that plus a misprioritization. They may have said Ukraine assistance is a priority, but it's three or four steps down. But you've got a long way to go before you don't have a majority of the Republican conference voting in favor of something, an assistance package for Ukraine. So bottom line is it is going to be a very difficult and challenging task to manage, and you're starting to see some of this with Kevin McCarthy having thirty-one members of the conference vote against him in the race for speaker and ongoing negotiations now with folks like the Freedom Caucus and even some of the moderate, for rule changes and that kind of thing, we'll see where he comes out and what kinds of agreements he needs to strike. The Freedom Caucus has been pushing for a less speaker centric House, so that they've got more control of things called the steering committee, for example, which selects committee assignments, of the rules committee, which determines what ends up on the House floor and how it's considered, that kind of thing.

 

So that remains to be seen where Kevin McCarthy's going to come out on that. In the end, it's going to be very challenging on lots of different, primarily domestic pieces of legislation, for him to cobble together what he needs in order to govern.

 

LINDSAY:

Daniel, I want to come back to you because the turnover in control of the House is also being felt on the democratic side. Number one, you're moving from being a majority to the minority, which is, I think, a much more constraining position to be in. We're also seeing a turnover in the leadership of House Democrats. Can you tell us a little bit about what this change is going to be like? Hakeem Jeffries is widely expected to become the democratic minority leader in the House. Help us sort of understand what the changing of the guard, so to speak, means for the Democrats in the House.

 

SILVERBERG:

Jim, I think that this is one of the most underappreciated aspects of the midterm election fallout and implications for foreign policy. That on, not just on the democratic side, but I would argue for Congress writ large, we are losing two of the most consequential internationalists in the U.S. Congress, who have been there for decades.

 

 

LINDSAY:

By whom, you mean Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer?

 

SILVERBERG:

Pelosi and Hoyer, exactly. And these are individuals who, there's been a lot written about their legislative prowess, their ability to do everything from count votes, to fundraise, to cajole members to get the necessary policy results. But what hasn't been talked about is that these are two members who, at their core, were international human rights activists who traveled the world meeting with dissidents and with transatlantic allies. And especially over the last four years, or at least four years during Donald Trump, of when our partners were looking for some level of normalcy in Washington, they were turning to Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, and so that leaves a huge vacuum.

 

I happen to be highly optimistic. I've worked with Mr. Jeffries, Katherine Clark, Pete Aguilar, the three leaders who are taking over. They are fantastic. And so I don't have much palpitation about there's going to be a crisis within the Democratic party, I don't think so, I think these are going to be great leaders. But it takes time to build up both the credibility and just the experience of being that kind of activist foreign policy leader. And that's what I think we will, at least on the Democratic side, miss most palpably.

 

LINDSAY:

Daniel, should I make anything of the fact that Mr. Jeffries recently said that he hasn't spoken much with the presumed next speaker, Kevin McCarthy, that he has a much better relationship with his number two, Steve Scalise. Does that matter in terms of how well the House functions, that the leaders on the two sides get along?

 

SILVERBERG:

I think both of those presumptions are correct. One, I would not read very much into the fact that they have not spoken. And two, of course it would be great for the two top leaders to have a productive working relationship. On the first one, I don't read much into it because I view that as that's appropriate for the hierarchy, that the head of the Democratic caucus would not have much reason to be speaking to Speaker Pelosi's counterpart on the Republican side. So there hasn't been much of an opportunity for them to engage. And they're also both, to their credit, I think not being presumptive that they are assuming these positions until they're actually voted in. So I don't read very much on their lack of a relationship to this point.

 

But no question, ideally they will have, when I say a healthy working relationship, it means the way things used to work twenty, thirty years ago in the House, that you go out, you say your talking points, you do what you need to do to fight for your caucus and fight for your members, particularly your vulnerable frontliners and freshman members, and then you go behind closed doors and you hash out a deal. And where I am concerned, picking up Chris's point, is I don't know how much negotiating space Mr. McCarthy is going to have, given what I view as frankly is the chaos within the Republican party nationally. And I think that makes a working relationship difficult, when one member just doesn't have a lot of room to cut deals.

 

TUTTLE:

And I would also just add to that, Jim, that when it comes to the personal relationship question, there's also an important tone and rhetoric and American political polarization question in that. If you have two leaders of the two parties in the House, for example, who are friendly behind closed doors, they go out and they say their talking points, they're willing to go as far as, "I think Hakeem Jeffries has terrible judgment," but doesn't get into the sort of rhetorical pejoratives that we've been seeing in recent years, that are becoming more and more pervasive and more and more problematic in terms of driving some of the American political polarization where you're questioning the character of the other side.

 

LINDSAY:

It's getting much more personal.

 

TUTTLE:

It is getting much more personal. And if we can get back onto a track where there are actual, if not friendships, but close associations where there are certain ground rules where you know you have to look this person in the eye the next day, I think that that can be helpful when there is that sort of relationship between leaders.

 

SILVERBERG:

I would add one thing, Jim, that going back to your question of what's the significance of this slim majority for Mr. McCarthy. On the Democratic side, we kind of been dealing with this dynamic for twelve years now, where you have a group of members, first in the Tea Party and then the Freedom Caucus, who many would argue have an agenda that is focused on reducing government, stopping the trains from moving on time, not having Congress function as it usually does, and as a result, have very little at stake with the standard legislative process. And what that's meant over the last decade is that both leaders on each side of the aisle have to be cognizant of how do you manage that dynamic? It actually, perversely makes me kind of an optimist in this scenario because if you know that you're going to have forty, fifty members who are not going to vote for what everyone else would consider must pass legislation, it means you got to be working with the other side.

 

Now it creates all kinds of churn on the Democratic side of do we want to be responsible actors and support legislation that is far from ideal, to make sure that the system functions. And it's tough to make that determination in the abstract without seeing the specifics of the legislation. But I can tell you, between 2011 and 2018, Democratic leadership was faced with that conundrum a number of times, and I would say most of the time favored responsibility over immediate political fortunes. So I do think that there's opportunity here for cooperation.

 

LINDSAY:

I want to stipulate it's very clear that there are divisions within the Republican party over domestic issues, over foreign policy issues. Conversely, there are also divisions within Democratic caucus that were evident over the past two years and part of Speaker Pelosi's job was to try to make the progressive Democrats in moderate Democrats come together.

 

SILVERBERG:

Never. It is always a happy family. Everyone's getting along.

 

LINDSAY:

I'm sure when Speaker Pelosi writes her memoir, she may indicate that there were moments in which the family wasn't entirely happy. But I want to go back to this issue, this relative optimism you both have. It may be the case that U.S. policy on China or Ukraine may not change very much, but one of the things neither of you has spoken about is the role of investigations. And there has been a lot of talk certainly by members of the Freedom Caucus that they intend to use investigations to put the Democrats on the defensive, to put the Biden Administration on the defensive. Again, to go back to Marjorie Taylor Greene, she did a series of interviews with Robert Draper of the New York Times, became a piece in the New York Times magazine, and she said to Draper, let me quote her here, "There's going to be a lot of investigations." Topics at the top are the symbolic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the situation at the U.S. southern border, potentially investigations about Hunter Biden and his financial dealings.

 

Chris, isn't that going to really poison the well in DC? And more than that, damage, the soft power that you've mentioned the United States has regained because the elections went relatively smoothly, we didn't have people refusing to concede and things like that?

 

TUTTLE:

It depends on how they're conducted and I think that the way that we're sort of trending on the Republican side is that they are going to be conducted about as you would expect and they will poison the well. I think that one, the Republican leadership made a mistake by being, just right out of the gate, following the winning of the majority, by talking about the investigations which the majority of American voters don't view as a priority item. So I think that that's a problem right out of the gate, but it speaks to a broader problem in terms of what the priorities are going to be over the next couple of years. I think that there are perfectly legitimate questions that are worthy of investigation, such as the Afghanistan withdrawal, such as one of the things that's been talked about is a look back on how COVID was handled and that kind of thing.

 

But it depends on how they're conducted. But right now my concern for sort of the Republican party is that they will poison the well and that they will do things in such a way that are problematic, not just for sort of the effectiveness of their governance as leaders of the House, but also are politically so fraught and conducted in such a way that makes them look over politicized and makes Republicans look like they are focusing on the wrong thing at the wrong time. When people are struggling through inflation, when people are struggling through what may be the onset of a deep recession, if you talk to some economists, that Washington is once again mired in politics that don't really count to people when it comes to what really matters, that they will appear out of touch.

 

LINDSAY:

So Daniel, let me ask you about that, just given what Chris has said. How should Democrats or how will Democrats think about these investigations? Obviously the House is a majoritarian institution, when you're in the minority, you don't control committee agendas, things like that. Should Democrats, in some sense, essentially say, if Chris's predictions about where Republicans are headed, correct, say to the Republicans, be my guest, have these hearings because we think they're going to be down to your disadvantage?

 

SILVERBERG:

I don't think anyone is, on the Democratic side, particularly enthusiastic for these hearings and investigations to take place, for all of the reasons Chris described. I think there's concerns that they poisoned the well, they're not focused on the issues that members actually get elected on and they're not going to be helpful in tackling issues like inflation, U.S. energy policy, dealing with China, what have you. I think the question that Democrats I have to think are asking themselves, is to what extent do they want to participate in these hearings? Do they want to be in the room for them or boycott, especially the ones that are going to be highly politically fraught, are going to involve what the chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee is promised is going to focus on the president's family.

 

And if I had to predict, my sense is yes, Democrats have learned the lesson that it's far more powerful and useful to be in the room playing defense, than to be out of it. And I think that that was certainly a lesson from the January 6th hearings, that actually being in the room and looking at these key issues and playing defense where necessary, is far more effective than staying out of it.

 

LINDSAY:

In the case of the January 6th committee, a minority leader, Kevin McCarthy ended up deciding that no Republicans would serve on the committee, at least none that he appointed, because of the refusal of the Democrats, to allow him to appoint certain people who might have a conflict of interest given their involvement in January 6th. At least that's how I understood it.

 

SILVERBERG:

Yes.

 

LINDSAY:

So let me then ask this question. We've been focusing a lot on the House, we haven't talked about the Senate, but the Senate obviously also matters. How significant is it, Daniel, that the Democrats retain control, but beyond that, how significant will it be if they do get that 51st Senator after the end of the Georgia runoff?

 

SILVERBERG:

It's a great question. If the elation among Democrats, I think, fades into the reality that Democrats actually lost the House and a lot of my former colleagues are now having to look for jobs and change offices, I think the fact that Democrats held the Senate, the national message that sends the international message, just the ability for the Senate to work with President Biden, I think it's significant. Is it more significant if there's one more seat? I'm not sure, I, obviously as a former Democratic staffer, would like to see a certain outcome, but I'm not sure in terms of the institutional dynamics, how much it will change things. But then again, I liked your original comment, saying the Senate also matters, which is so rare for a House person to hear that the Senate is actually having to show its relevance.

 

LINDSAY:

Well, I write about Congress for a living and so I have to show respect for both of the chambers that I spent much my professional career thinking about.

 

SILVERBERG:

Fair enough. Yeah, I would just add one other thing, Jim, that we didn't talk about, which is we've been focused in the conversation so far about the elements of dysfunction, certainly within the Republican party, I think you were correct to point out that Democrats are not always on the same page either. But in terms of the optimism that, Chris, I don't want to speak for you here, but I feel comfortable that I think you would agree with me on this, that there is still a very healthy bipartisan, dare I say, almost hawkish, let's call it centrist majority within both parties. And I feel like this is something that is underestimated amidst the heated rhetoric of campaigns. On the democratic side, I know I feel very confident because you can see who's been returned to Congress, it's the centrist who are ruling the day and members like Elissa Slotkin, who are communicating and just kind of setting the tone on foreign policy and-

 

LINDSAY:

Democrat from Michigan in the House.

 

SILVERBERG:

Who won in a majority Republican district. And so this notion that the Democrats are going full progressive and isolationist, it doesn't comport with who is actually showing up in Congress, who's been elected. And I am confident that the same dynamic exists on the Republican side. It might be more chaotic, given the legacy that President Trump has left and the issues and chaos he continues to sow. But if you poll a majority of House Republican members on issues like Ukraine and the transatlantic relationship and NATO, you're going to get a pretty consistent answer. And so I think it's really important not to allow the fringes in the House, many of whom might be given a platform and a voice through these investigations, but not to allow them to define what the congressional foreign policy outlook looks like.

 

LINDSAY:

Though I think it's very tempting for people in the media business to focus on the people in the fringes because they tend to have the loudest voices and they make writing articles and doing video clips a lot easier than many of those people in the Senate. But Chris, I want to ask you again, when you spend time in the Senate, does it matter whether there are 51 versus 50 seats, in terms of things like how the committees are organized? I know certainly for the White House, one of the things they're very excited about, in terms of holding the Senate, is it will be much easier to get nominations through than it might have been if there had been a Republican take over the Senate as well.

 

TUTTLE:

Yeah, no, that's certainly the case. When it comes to the Senate, I would point out that one of the big advantages that we're dealing with right now, if you are the Democrats, is that you can actually set aside some of the nomination fights that you might spend the entire lame duck session focused on judicial nominations, because you need to get those through prior to the onset of the new Congress and a Republican Senate coming in. As far as committee structures go, yeah, it does make a difference, 51 versus 50 seats, where right now the committees are evenly split. So if you've got a nomination or a piece of legislation coming before the committee and the committee votes on party lines, that legislation does not move forward if you have an even split, that can't move forward to the floor, same with nominations. Whereas if you have just that narrow majority, you have a majority of the seats on a Senate committee, you can actually move many more things to the floor. So that 51/49 split is a lot better than 50/50.

 

LINDSAY:

Let me ask you another question. I'm sort of struck by the fact that we've talked about the potential for dysfunction in the House, just given the challenges of trying to get the Republican caucus to agree on certain issues where there are some very loud voices who may want to go in a different way. Now I know in the Senate, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who was hoping to go back to being Senate majority leader, that's not the case. But in this current setup where the House may be difficult or have challenges in delivering results in terms of getting legislation done, there are things that Congress has to get done. Does Mitch McConnell, in some ways, become more powerful, given his potential ability to fashion packages that might be appealing to House Republicans and that makes him more valuable to the White House?

 

TUTTLE:

It's a good question. I think he does become more valuable. I think that you will see some of the things where Mitch McConnell might be willing to make some deals, to the extent that any Senate minority leader can, given the way that the Senate is structured, but to make deals because he doesn't want the House having to deal with it, for example, because he knows it's going to be kind of a mess over there. So if you look at, for example, right now we're heading toward a moment where we're going to pass the debt ceiling, there's going to need to be a debt ceiling increase for funds that have already been obligated. And right now they're looking at probably sometime in the June to fall timeframe when we're actually going to hit that, we're about $200 billion below the $31.4 trillion debt ceiling. But over on the House side, there's a lot of talk about potentially holding that debt ceiling increase up, in exchange for doing things like making social security a discretionary spending program.

 

LINDSAY:

So we're going to relive 2011?

 

TUTTLE:

We may relive 2011, but that gives Mitch McConnell, who will rightly see that as problematic politically, as he heads into a 2024 Senate election cycle, that actually looks not so bad for Republicans to not have an enormous blow up over the debt ceiling, which in my recollection, has never accrued to Republicans benefits. Mostly because I think when the American people read a story about spending, they have a hard time believing that the Democrats want to spend less, for example. Now that doesn't really strike at the issue of the debt ceiling, but that's sort of the general imprimatur that sits over the debt ceiling negotiations. So that's one example where I think yes, he does have more power.

 

LINDSAY:

I want to close by asking a question that runs against the tenor of all the questions I've raised so far, because I tend to focus on how things might go wrong. But I'm curious, Daniel, as you sort of look at the next two years, do you see any ways in which Congress might surprise us, either in terms of getting legislation passed that might not otherwise pass or acting in ways that sort of lessen the potential for politicization and polarization?

 

SILVERBERG:

You mean is the Messiah going to come in the next two years?

 

LINDSAY:

Well, I don't want to put it in that fashion, but again, is there any potential good news story one could tell, whereby things actually work reasonably well? I mean, I remember a time in which the two parties could disagree, but the disagreements were within boundaries. There wasn't as much, to go back to what Chris said earlier, personal venomous attacks against one another. Are there any chances we could maybe recover a little bit of that, I'll call it collegiality, willingness to find middle ground, compromise, or are we just not there yet?

 

SILVERBERG:

At risk of sounding naive, I do think that there are potential areas like that and I think that they will be driven by heroic developments that we see abroad that will inspire our members in Congress to work together. And what do I mean by that? What we're seeing every day in Ukraine, it's extraordinary. And I think that Ukraine, I mean it's such a raw situation where you have ... you don't very often get to see the world in black and white of good and evil. And in this instance, you are seeing people day to day act in such heroic ways that I think that that is going to give members on both sides of the aisle, an opportunity to express their own democratic optimism, passion, find opportunities for cooperation.

 

Now, is it going to happen on C-SPAN day to day? Probably not, but I think it will happen. And you'll see it in the context of, where Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer distinguish themselves, meeting dissidents around the world, supporting democracy promotion, giving succor to people and to countries like Israel, like human rights activists pushing back in China. They will help members heal, in some ways. And again, I know that sounds a little crazy, but I've seen it in person, where you get members on a congressional delegation who are meeting with someone who embodies American values and is willing to spend their life in prison in order to push back on autocracy. That has a pretty significant impact on those members, and I'd like to think that there will be more moments like that that could help the dynamic in Congress.

 

LINDSAY:

So Chris, I have to ask you, do you see any good news stories out there, any silver lining in our current sense of darkness on the American political scene?

 

TUTTLE:

Well, I think two things. First, on the legislative side, the sort of lockstep feelings of skepticism toward China are not necessarily always direct. And you saw this in things like the CHIPS bill, and Republicans traditionally not fans of industrial policy-

 

LINDSAY:

That's government intervening in the market to try to decide who's going to win, who's going to develop.

 

TUTTLE:

Exactly. You see actually some cooperation on that front, and I think you're probably going to see more when it comes to re-shoring and friend-shoring, in other words, bringing manufacturing back to the United States and also sourcing from countries that sort of we have a better relationship with. So I think that those are some avenues where you're going to see sort of knock on effects from the feelings about China.

 

The other thing I think there's reason for optimism on is these elections, and you can see it playing out right now, are sort of an inflection point for the Republican party, not necessarily ideologically but tonally. And you see already Trump does not have nearly the traction he has had in previous years, with sort of the Republican leadership and he's seen as sort of, in many cases, a weakened three time loser. And I think that that actually is reason for some optimism, that if, with responsible leadership, Republicans are not necessarily running scared from Donald Trump, but are actually able to govern without wondering what Trump is going to tweet tomorrow, and then they have to put up with base voters who are angry with them, that that's reason for a great deal of optimism.

 

It is very early in that, we still have to go through a presidential campaign where Donald Trump is going to be apparently on the ballot and we still are going to be going through a mess of probably tough primaries and losing some general elections as this all shakes out over the next many years. But I think that that's a reason for optimism.

 

LINDSAY:

I will note on that point though, Chris, that Donald Trump may get his Twitter account back. So Republican leadership may face some challenges that it had hoped it had behind it.

 

TUTTLE:

Yes, the question is whether or not that's going to get the kind of purchase it has in recent years. And I think that the Republican party, and this may be optimistic, is beginning to turn away and look for new options.

 

LINDSAY:

On that note, I'll close up The President's Inbox for this week. My guests have been Daniel Silverberg, a managing director and co-leader of the national security team at Capstone. And Chris Tuttle, a senior fellow and director of the Renewing America Initiative here at CFR. Daniel and Chris, thank you very much for joining me.

 

SILVERBERG:

Thank you.

 

TUTTLE:

Thanks, Jim.

 

LINDSAY:

Please subscribe to The President's Inbox at Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify, wherever you listen, and leave us a review, we love the feedback. You can find the articles mentioned in this episode, as well as a transcript of our conversation on the podcast page for The President's Inbox on cfr.org. As always, opinions expressed on The President's Inbox are solely those of the host or our guests, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. Today's episode was produced by Ester Fang, with Senior Podcast Producer Gabrielle Sierra. Special thanks go to Michelle Kurilla for her assistance. This is Jim Lindsay, thanks for listening.