America’s Unhappy Choice
New Thinking for a New World - a Tallberg Foundation Podcast
09/26/24
•37m
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Once again, Americans are getting ready for a presidential election that is widely described as the most important in their lifetimes. That may or may not be true, but two things are certain: the two candidates, former President Trump and current Vice President Harris, are about as different as different could be, and many Americans wish they had other choices.
But they don’t; either Trump or Harris will be elected in November. With a little more than five weeks left to campaign (although early voting has already started in some states) both candidates are desperately trying to break what the pollsters insist is more or less a tie, both in the national polls and in the so-called swing states whose Electoral College votes will in effect select the winner.
How are the candidates trying to persuade voters who haven’t already made up their minds? How do they ensure that their core voters actually cast ballots, in a country where the highest turnout since 1990 saw 1/3 of registered voters decline to vote in the equally tight 2020 Biden/Trump contest? What do voters see in the candidates that attract or repel them?
Scott Miller, an accomplished political and corporate consultant based in the swing state of Georgia, has some answers or at least some well-informed intuitions. Scott, with a long history of advising successful (as well as the other kind) both Republican and Democrat candidates in national and state elections, continues to be a close observer of American politics; he is one of the “go-to” gurus of U.S. elections.
What do you think? Who would you vote for and why?
Previous Episode
A New Iran?
September 12, 2024
•36m
During the summer, Iranians elected a new president: Masoud Pezeshkian, a cardiac surgeon, who is considered to be a political reformer. His victory surprised at least many foreign observers who are skeptical about all things Iranian, not the least that anyone could win an election against so-called hardliners. But Pezeshkian did exactly that.
Did he win in spite of or with the support of Iran’s Supreme Leader and of the powerful Iranian Revolutionary Guards? Can he cope with the profound challenges facing his country, domestically and internationally? Does he have the needed room to maneuver to reduce the crushing Western sanctions that make life so difficult for ordinary Iranians? What does “reformer” even mean in the complicated Iranian context?
The best answers to those questions should probably come from an Iranian. Hossein Mousavian, a scholar and author at Princeton University, was a long-serving Iranian diplomat who worked on his country’s nuclear negotiations with the West, among other assignments. Listen as he describes the new President and assesses the possibility for new directions in Iran’s trajectory.
Tell us what you think: should the West restart negotiations with Iran over its nuclear arms policies and reduce or even eliminate sanctions?
Next Episode
Seeking Safe Passage
October 24, 2024
•39m
Two hundred and fifty years ago the Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote, "Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn." He obviously wasn't talking about the tragedy of modern mass migration, but he could have been. Today thousands, indeed, millions of people are being driven from their homes by war, natural disasters, climate change, pestilence, poverty, or sometimes just a search for better opportunities. What could be more human? And what could be more inhuman than overcrowded camps, drownings, forced returns, desert dumps and other indignities that too often meet them?
It seems that much more effort goes into trying to stop or reverse the migrations than in either creating legal pathways to safe movement or addressing the root causes that compel people to flee in the first place. In light of the politics around migration in Europe and the United States, but also in important destination countries in the Global South, it is easy to imagine that the challenges facing would-be migrants will inevitably worsen. The resulting tragedies are becoming so commonplace that they seem to go mostly unnoticed.
Mostly is the keyword. There are legions of people who not only notice but are also looking for solutions. Today’s guest on New Thinking for a New World, Sasha Chanoff, founded RefugePoint, an organization dedicated to creating solutions for refugees in extreme danger. Listen as he explains some of his ideas that could change the future for migrants everywhere.
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