Stephen S: I'm now going to open this to questions from the audience. If you please could keep your questions brief and to the point, and please no lectures or statements. All right, there is somebody, Adam, who has two microphones, so we'll start here, okay.

Speaker 2: Thank you. I was fascinated by Nicholas's references to two pieces, [Vimar 00:00:46] republic and the psychological state of our president. I've been thinking for some time that he can't take criticism, and he's waiting for people to complain and start doing activist things, which they've already done in Washington, so he can declare martial law. I'd like to know how many people on the panel believe that that is a possibility for us in the near future.

Stephen S: Anybody like to take that question?

Ellen F: I wish I could say that I think that that's outlandish, but I don't, I don't think that's outlandish, and I'm very sorry to make such a statement. I think that the implications of, I think that for anybody who has studied the 20th century, the rise of Fascism and the dynamics of dictatorships and how authoritarian societies have worked, that there is reason for concern. I would say that what happened the other day, in which this idea that there will now be an investigation of the voter fraud, what do we take away from that when you have ... This is a classic move on the part of dictators to consolidate power, which is to essentially cast doubt on the very means of electoral politics.

I saw Michael Moore the other day saying that Trump was certainly being a poor winner, that he won the election after all, we could theoretically move on. I don't want to overstate the case, I believe in the republic, I believe in the strength of American democratic institutions, but these are very alarming developments, I think, and the attack on the media and this thing that happened with Bannon calling this New York Times reporter to rail against even criticism, which is really kind of what they do and what we depend upon them to do, there should be a lively conversation about it. You know, I don't think it's outlandish to raise the point.

Julian Zelizer: I'm not convinced it's about to happen, I think it is unfortunate that you can have that conversation and not in hysterical fashion say, "Well, it could be on the table." I do think early on, these are just executive orders, but he is making some pretty serious moves. If anyone wanted to discount what was going to happen, they shouldn't. The voting fraud, you know what that's about is a 10 to 15 year old campaign to restrict voting that has been taking place now in many states, based on claims of voter fraud, he has now elevated this to the presidential level, and he's clearly going to move forward with that. The refugee policy is now on the table, and much more, and the attack on the press, I do think it's serious, in some ways, could be more serious than Nixon and more serious than how some other presidents have evaded the press.

I think this is a frontal assault on this institution, even if flawed, that is

essential. I think there is reason to be concerned, whether you're democrat or a republican, about how the institutions will withstand what he is trying to do, and how far he will go in trying to assert his power. I'm a believer still, maybe I'm naïve, in our democratic institutions.

Nicholas W: It reminds me that people always say that, "Martial law is to law what martial music is to music," and that is certainly true. There are two things, one would be to impose martial law, which I don't think is likely. On the other hand, a military coup is slightly more likely than that. Well, in a weird way, I think that Mattis and so on probably will be sitting on him as he's reaching out for the button, I mean you know there is a sort of military coup, I mean we were one admiral short of a [hunter 00:05:30] at one stage, when he was assembling his cabinet. I think much more serious though is the setting up of an as-if-impartial inquiry and [blow me 00:05:42] if when it comes to voting methods, when it'll be worked out that actually everybody needs an ID in order to vote. It'll be basic snipping away of the rights at the other end of people being able to vote, and it's the same with the press.

There won't be any dramatic changes in the press, but there will be in the way that say, the White House correspondents are arranged. It was telling, for instance on Monday, in the very first press conference, the first five names that Spencer called out were all right-wing people. They will dilute it, they will diminish the press, they will have fewer opportunities. I think it was three months between the press conferences of Donald Trump, that's a common thing too. He was talking about changing libel laws, well that's very difficult when you have the first amendment, thank goodness, but it doesn't mean that there aren't other things that he will do in order to try to trim the sails of any news organization that he finds, which is all of us actually, that he finds irritating. It doesn't suit him.

Stephen S: Yes, here in the front row.

Speaker 6: Just to take that point further, how far does he have to go in terms of getting rid of all precedent, principles, rights, before the republican party will do anything to [inaudible 00:07:08]? Past any morality aside, how far does it, will they ever stand up to him?

Nicholas W: That's why I think they'll probably end up sitting on him, rather than ... They'll sit on him, they will allow him to be the stooge, the figurehead, but they will take his phone away so he can't tweet, and they'll keep him a prisoner in the White House. I generally mean, I think that there are institutional ways of actually smothering somebody who is out of control.

Speaker 6: So you think that they would do that.

Nicholas W: Yeah, but it doesn't mean that they would get rid of him.

Ellen F: I think that that's a very good question that you have posed, a very good

question. One of the people I wrote at length about in my book was Margaret J. Smith, who was really the conscience of the republican party during the McCarthy era, who really very courageously stood up to McCarthy, notably so, and early in the process. The question about, "What will it take?", obviously at the moment, what our new president is doing is fulfilling a long-held agenda that republican conservatives are behind. As long as he's doing that, whatever antics that the leadership isn't enthusiastic about will be tolerated, I suspect. I'm not sure that he is, president Trump will be as easy to control, however, ultimately, as some republican leaders think, but I think this could go a very long way before we hear from anyone in the republican party.

Julian Zelizer: I think it's got to be two things. One will be if his actions move into a place, not on policy but on the use of power, that finally creates some kind of principle division, even with just some republicans, it would be a more principled event happening. The second goes back to the basic part of Congress, the electoral self-interest is really powerful, and members of Congress do care about getting re-elected. Right now, president Trump isn't a threat to them. In fact, it's a great opportunity, and everything he's sending to them is this wishlist they have been waiting for, but if that changes, if they start to sense that there could be a disruption electorally of the republican majority, I think that could change the situation.

I mean, that's the bad thing about members of Congress and the great thing, they have an eye on the district, they have an eye on their states and their voters, and that's ultimately going to be the kind of battle place. From the left side, there's a document that's circulating called "Indivisible", and a lot of reporters wrote on it, I don't know if people have seen it. It was a Google Document by a group of ex-democratic staffers who are now doing other things, and they all were on Capitol Hill during the year of the Tea Party, and they watched the Tea Party cause all kinds of chaos for president Obama. Their major argument is that opponents of Trump have to use those tactics, locally-based tactics to get into the heads of members of Congress if they're ever going to put pressure on president Trump or stop him.

Their argument is it's that electoral self-interest that's really the key vulnerability in the long run of stopping the administration. I don't know if that will happen, but I think those are the two ways in which I could imagine that playing out. But right now it's not going to happen, I think the republicans are celebrating right now.

Stephen S: Yes, in the [car 00:11:25].

Speaker 7: I think that everyone can hear me, but I want to bring up the issue of elitism, and the law school that Hillary Clinton went to, Yale Law, they had a professor who told the author of Hillbilly Elegy, he was surprised that Yale Law School would admit someone who went to Ohio State University. President Trump talked about the forgotten Americans during his inaugural address, and in the Las Vegas campaign, he said, "I love the uneducated." You now have a

situation where elite New York and elite California, and then followed up by that, Hillary Clinton made that famous statement about a basket of deplorables, that half of the voters for Trump.

Speaker 8: They were.

Speaker 7: Well, you may call them a basket of deplorables, you can say that.

Stephen S: Let's get to the question.

Speaker 7: I will get to the question, will the democratic party be able to succeed if it has contempt for the people between Las Vegas and Pittsburgh who the author of Hillbilly Elegy represents?

Julian Zelizer: I mean, I don't agree with the premise, I don't think the democratic party has contempt for people who aren't living in the coasts, or for middle class Americans. I mean, right now the lineup of the Trump administration is anything but populist. You are bringing Wall Street to the cabinet, which that's not a critical thing, but it's not non-elitist, that's the wrong way to present how Trump is lining up. If you look at public policy in the last 30 years, it's pretty clear that democratic public policy tends to benefit middle class and working class Americans much more than Reagan-esque republican policies, which tend to be regressive, they tend to be skewed to the top.

Reagan wasn't hiding that, he said, "That's a better set of policies," but it certainly wasn't less elitist than where the democrats were. The democrats do very well, it's not as if Trump secured all of middle and working class America, it's just not the case. That's just not what happened in this election, he got some of them, he got them in some communities. I think the democratic party is more complex than that. I think that that's an argument that's made about the party, it's not actually a reflection of where the party is, who votes for the party, or the arguments that circulate. I think the republicans, you can argue the republicans are elitist too just as easily, it's not very hard to make that argument. Just look at the policies that are going to come out in the next week, I think that would confirm it.

Stephen S: Any other thoughts?

Nicholas W: Yeah, Franklin Roosevelt was always accused of being a traitor to his own class for having led the United States out of the Great Depression, and also the two great tyrannies really of the 20th centuries, one is the financial inadequacy of the 30's, and the other was the rise of Fascism in Europe. I don't think that Mr. Trump can honestly say that he's not elitist. I mean, someone who inherits that amount of money, however they ... I mean, you know I see you don't believe any of this maybe, I don't know, but elitism very often has been thrown around quite a lot since Trump's been on the scene. Actually, what does it genuinely mean?

I would jolly well hope that the top of the army is full of elite people, I would hope the top of banks are full of elite people, who have actually educated themselves and actually got to the top, that's the way that society is structured. If you purely mean the sort of inverted snobbery against people who are comfortably well off, then that's not the basis of any philosophy that I know.

Stephen S: Way back, there's a hand at the very back raised by a woman there.

Speaker 9: First of all, Trump was born into wealth and privilege and has spent his whole life just showing contempt for the common man. I challenge that man to show one thing that Trump ever did in his whole horrible life that ever uplifted the income of working class people like myself. Second of all, you overestimate Trump's appeal. His appeal came from white supremacists who are angry that this country is becoming a majority minority country. Hillary's average voter made under $50,000 a year, his made $75,000, he got the votes of the people who earned over $100,000 a year, and if it wasn't for Comey intervening 11 days before the election, she would be in the White House today, and with the help of Putin and Assange. Therefore, I think she was a good-

Stephen S: What's your question?

Speaker 9: The question is, I think you are denigrating ... I'm making a comment, you are denigrating Hillary, and you're overestimating Trump's appeal, which is just limited to angry white men who are angry that white people are losing their power.

Julian Zelizer: Okay, okay. Your question is, "Is Trump's appeal overrated?" Yeah look, I think the argument that it's overrated, that's an empirical question. It wasn't a landslide election.

Ellen F: Hardly.

Julian Zelizer: He lost the popular vote, he won by a small part of the vote, there were all these anomalies, very strange things happened, from Russian fake news to Comey's dual letter at the same time he didn't release anything about this other investigation that was going on. He comes into office with the lowest approval ratings of any president since we've tracked it, so it's not hard to make that case. I agree that a lot of his appeal was that. I think it's more than that, I do think there are others who liked him for different reasons, whether it was some of these economic arguments that we've been talking about, whether it's revulsion and anger about Washington in general and how Washington works, or whether it's a media-fascinated obsession with the antihero politician that you can't take your eyes off that some people liked, and sexism is a big factor in the electorate as well.

There's a lot of reasons beyond that, although I agree that that was a lot of how the campaign was built. Yes, this is not a mandate election. It's wrong to

say, "America believes in Trump because of this." This was not that kind of election, but it doesn't mean he can't be incredibly influential right now, and I think the alignment of political forces is pretty good, given he has both branches.

Stephen S: Any other comments?

Ellen F: I agree generally with this point. Again, I come back to the fact that I think that Trump in some ways really is [sui-generous 00:19:11]. It is remarkable that this man with basically no political experience and no military background marched into the White House in this campaign, it's incredible, this has not happened before. The search for historical precedence to explain it is a barren one, in my view. I do think that in some sense, that there was a way in which he was sort of like the id of the viewer, who he was saying things that people would think but never say, because they had been socialized. Sort of like, I remember Freud and civilization and its discontents explain this process, how we come to be people who don't say these things, but here's someone who says things that people are thinking, very boldly.

One of those things he was saying was, "What are you doing with our money? Why can't you get things done? Why does our country seem to be 'losing' on these important economic issues? Why has our influence seemed to have declined internationally?" He had an answer for that that was persuasive to some of the public. We have to think about that, he came through a remarkable route into the American presidency, and is going to change this institution, if he lasts in it, we'll see.

Nicholas W: But it is very difficult to do it twice. He has a pool of political capital which is at the top 44, and we were talking about it earlier, maybe at bottom 37. That is diminishing by the week, he's only got two years before he's got midterms. It's difficult to be an outsider if you're the president, you are now the president, and so you can't do that trick twice. Also, I don't know about you, but Trump fatigue is setting in pretty heavily, as much as I have a dark secret because I enjoy watching it, but for all the wrong reasons. The other thing is, now he owns everything, Obamacare is now Trumpcare. Obamacare was horrible, Trumpcare will be just as horrible, because it will effectively be Obamacare.

All the things he changes, he will own. He will own the trade war with China, he will own not invading the islands in the South China Sea, every single thing, he now owns. I can't believe that he's going to get them all right in a row, in which case he's going to be a very unpopular guy by the time he needs to be re-elected. That's why actually a fresh face of the democratic party, whoever it is ... I remember I was once talking to a guy, Kenneth Clark, who was a cabinet minister in Thatcher's government, and I was speculating about who should follow Thatcher. I said, "Who should follow Mrs. Thatcher?", and he said, "No, I couldn't possibly talk about that." I said, "But just for argument, let's just say she walked out of Downing Street and a number nine bus knocked her over. Who would be the leader of the conservative party?" He said, "Why, the bus

driver, of course."

Julian Zelizer: If I could just jump in, I mean there are parts of Trump that are unique, the going from zero experience to president in politics, or him as a person, but it's very easy for me to imagine a polished version of Donald Trump in terms of the policies that he's pushing, most of them, and even his approach to politics, being the republican nominee again. It's just from writing and following the Tea Party, and how the Tea Party's changing Congress. It's worth just going back and reading about that, or reading about the birther movement in 2011, how that became legitimate.

You see a lot of this, for me, rooted in this era of the GOP. As he rolled out his policies, the ones that really mattered, there were lots of things he said, but a lot of them were not novel. The immigration was where he started this campaign, that was the first thing he said in the speech, and there has been a hard line faction in the republican party that has been growing in strength since the 1990's. George W. Bush was frustrated when he dealt with the House republicans on this issue, and that is the first issue he picks up. Again, climate change and his vehement opposition to the idea that climate change is real, these are not all ... He has the same policy package that's floating in Capitol Hill, you know he wants to make Medicaid into a block grant, which is a really significant issue that no one's talking about.

It would essentially end Medicaid, because the whole point of Medicaid is a guarantee to the medically indigent, and now more people, you'll have that healthcare. You turn it into a block grant, that's gone. That's been also, that's a Paul Ryan, that's one of his things he's been floating for awhile. Then back again to this kind of, "I'll do anything," style, this really resonates with watching where a lot of Tea Party republicans were, and so on and so on, the kind of Islamophobia, a lot of this you can see. I think there's a way in which you can imagine that Trump is the trajectory of the party right now, unless the party does something different. Trump is unique, I wouldn't discount that, but their route to this-

Ellen F: The policies are not unique, the policies are very much as you state, what has been laid out for quite a number of years now, but the fact that somebody came in and basically flattened that field of people who, many of whom ascribe to the same views, and they all went down like bowling pins in front of this guy. That's something that needs explanation, I absolutely agree with the implications of it all.

Stephen S: But I should say that Trump has different views on Social Security, on Medicare-

Ellen F: We'll see.

Stephen S: We'll see, I'm afraid, but these are things that made him a little different in terms of a republican candidate, but as you say, we'll see. I'm sorry, yes, right

there.

Speaker 10: Trump's turn to populism in context of his previous more modern and perhaps liberal background sharpened dramatically and notably when Bannon and his benefactor Mercer got into his orbit. Are they manipulating him?

Stephen S: Are they manipulating, Bannon and Mercer manipulating Trump?

Speaker 10: Yes.

Stephen S: Okay, that's the question.

Nicholas W: Not much yet, I don't think. It doesn't mean that won't happen, but I can't see there's too much of them, I think he's making all the running right now, and everybody's standing around. You can see them in the moving pictures, they're sort of wondering at what stage they need to intervene I think, actually. I mean, this is very very early in the administration, mind you, but if you think that the four principal advisors, only one of which can be the principal advisor is Jared Kushner, Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, and Reince Priebus, now they are all fighting their own corner for their own influence, and they're leaking like crazy already, so it's not a very happy ship. If they could only agree together, I would guess they could try to manipulate him, but there's no evidence of it so far.

What I'm imagining down the line is the people like General Mattis will actually draw a line and say, "I don't need to do this, and I'm going to walk unless you stop doing whatever you're doing." Russia policy, there are four different Russia policies, I mean somebody's got to decide eventually.

Speaker 11: As someone who's near and dear to you I suppose, I would ask the question to the historians: The 30 year cycle of [Arthur Schlesinger 00:28:03] seems to me to come in play, that perhaps we have gone too far in one direction under Obama. There was this sense in the country of, "We need to do something," and Trump captured that. What's your reaction to that, that the 30 year cycle is something that plays into what took place here?

Stephen S: I might say that that cycle is not totally solid, I mean it has certain gyrations to it, but go ahead.

Julian Zelizer: Right, I mean it's not totally solid, and president Bush was president, so you had a republican president, you had a republican Congress during much of president Obama's time, which I think clearly pushed politics to the right. President Obama, I don't see him as a far left ... If there is a cycle, he didn't push it all the way to the left, and he couldn't. He couldn't, with the republicans on Capitol Hill. I don't know, I mean there's obviously a reaction to Obama, and there's a reaction to ACA and some of the more liberal parts of the policy, but I'm not convinced this is just a back and forth, back and forth. I think he was building on parts that were already quite strong in American

politics in the last few years. I think these were very much part of our polity already.

Ellen F: I'm not a believer in the cycles theory of history, but in some ways this reminds me more of the 1920's and the battle between modernism and anti-modernism. The United States appeared to be moving in a certain direction towards modernism, a more cosmopolitan, diverse, tolerant society, there were powerful forces against that, religious fundamentalism, the reinvigoration of the Ku Klux Klan, I mean any number of, the xenophobia of the period. We know horribly what followed in the 1930's, the great depression, the second World War. I think that in some sense, if you see them as strides, I do, that had been made over the last years of the Obama administration, it's such an abrupt reversal of these things that I do not think that it is predictive of the very long term, but a lot can get done in the shorter term that takes a long time to undo, even if the pendulum swings back into the middle.

You know, Martin Luther King liked to quote, paraphrase Theodore Parker, that the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice. I believe that to be true. Extremists, American history shows, tend to overreach, and so I suspect that to the extent the extremism is driving the car, that that will correct itself, but I wouldn't underestimate what could happen in the way in which people's lives could be profoundly affected in the shorter term.

Stephen S: Yes.

Speaker 12: Do you all think that our finest journalists and our finest news organizations should just try to present the most objective fact, or try to educate people?

Julian Zelizer: Well, I mean they're not mutually exclusive, and I don't think objective journalism means not looking for the truth, that's exactly what it means. It's not that you just have to say, "This person said that, and this person said this," good journalism looks for what the facts are, what's true, what's going on, what's going on behind the scenes. They look at what's fact and what's fiction, and they all people on it in their writing. I think it would be a big mistake, frankly, if reporters are goaded in some ways by the administration into turning into anti-Trump journalism. Meaning, there's fair investigation, but I could imagine journalists get so angry and so frustrated that they in some ways fulfill exactly what he's saying about them.

That would be the danger, but I think you can have objective, hard-hitting investigative journalism if anyone will pay for it, but that's the problem, no one's paying for it right now.

Speaker 12: But there's facts I'm talking about, it doesn't have to be a-

Julian Zelizer: It's hard, it's hard.

Speaker 12: The day to day stuff?

Julian Zelizer: You can do that, so you can write on voter fraud. Now in the last few days, there's been a lot of rebuttals that voter fraud was an issue, that it cost him the election. Journalists had been writing that, the Times had their two falsehood and lie headlines, which was a little controversial, whether you use the word "lie" if you can't prove that that was the intention. I think journalists are moving that way, and it could be ironically, this stimulates a good era in journalism. Look, that's what Nixon did in the 1970's, and journalism's been having all these problems in the last decade or so, maybe this is a turning point, but we're going to need good journalism for sure, to cover what's going on, and everyone should want that. It doesn't mean your anti-Trump to want good coverage of how politics is unfolding.

Nicholas W: Two things, I think that first of all, all journalists have to stick together and defend the morality of journalism, and that means that Trump must not be allowed to pick off people, which he will try to do in the White House. It means that if somebody won't be given a question to ask, somebody else has to ask it on their behalf. They actually have to be collegial and they have to work together. Now, if you ever worked in one of those political lobbies, you know that everybody's amazingly cutthroat all the time. On the other hand, there's also a sort of easy way to do it, which is that everybody shares everything, both things happen simultaneously in political journalism, so I hope they do things.

As for the poverty of journalism, broadcasting companies made an enormous amount of money out of the rise of Mr. Trump, they effectively sold us Mr. Trump on our money, that's how they made money. If CNN is pleading somehow that it doesn't have enough money to do good journalism, then they just have to go back and give themselves a little less profits, because my goodness, in the last 18 months they've made enough money out of Mr. Trump and us to be able to afford a few decent reporters, instead of getting some kid off the street who only knows how to blog.

Ellen F: The challenges I think that print journalists face today in this new era of the web-based technologies, and having to constantly update, and the amount of time and money available to the newspapers to send reporters off to do an in-depth story, and do it for months at a time, that era seems to be over. I took from your question the rather porous lines that now exist between commentary and reportage, because I never would imagine that looking for the facts and educating the public would be seen as antithetical, but it is the case that what we now have, given cable news and the 24-hour seven day a week news cycle, is that the reporters who we see on television are commentators, these are very very porous lines now.

It does make one long for the old days, with the hard-hitting news story that was deeply researched, and facts that one would hope would speak for themselves, but the attention span of the average person, and this universe of

social media with tweets, the anonymity that is used in the commentary and blogs, if people had to sign their names to these things that they're writing as comments on the web, it would be a different world. I have great sympathy with the issue that you're raising, and no answers to the dilemma.

Stephen S: I would mention one exception, which is the Washington Post, which has been bought by Jeff Bezos. I've talked to the Post reporters, he's poured plenty of his money into that.

Ellen F: They are doing an amazing job, yeah.

Stephen S: They've done a lot of good investigative work.

Ellen F: They have.

Stephen S: That is the one sterling exception.

Ellen F: There's a lot of good journalism going on, but there is this phenomenon that the [interlocketer 00:37:28] points to, I think.

Stephen S: Okay, yes there, right-

Speaker 13: There are many checks on innovations by Congress, [inaudible 00:37:39] lots of institutions that deal with that. I want to talk about foreign policy and just ask you, the panel, to comment on what, if any, institutional checks do you think exist in the real world with respect to Trump foreign policy, the role of Mattis, the role of secretary of state, or on the other hand, the role of the national security advisor? Are they going to be forces of restraint? How are they going to interact going forward?

Julian Zelizer: That's a big question, that's the million-dollar question certainly, for many people. It's one area where I think the concern is greatest, not because of a specific policy, but the erratic nature of how he responds to things, and the way he's already handling foreign policy through tweets, and what happens if you have a military confrontation that grows out of that? There are restraints, I mean you would have to hope that the people he has appointed will have the force and the gravitas in a room to persuade him not to make a bad move. Some people believe though that the person closest to him, Mike Flynn, will push him in the wrong direction, so that's a source of concern. The national security advisor can easily circumvent the secretary of defense and the secretary of state, we've seen that happen, we saw that happen under Nixon.

Domestic pressures are still relevant to the administration from any power Congress would choose to wield, from the power of the purse to the power of investigation to more, if they choose to use it. I'm dubious though right now, they're going to cause that many problems, and ultimately, the restraint has to be him, either for rational, thoughtful reasons, or because it's too much to deal with or too much of a mess that he doesn't want to make for himself, not

for the republic that he doesn't get into an intervention. I must say, I don't know exactly where the checks come from, those are just a few, there's more, but there's not as many. We've seen much more cerebral and experienced and constrained presidents in both parties get in really messy situations, so it's not silly to imagine that happening again right now, and maybe even worse.

Ellen F: There seems to be a core sort of contradiction in the Trump approach to this. On the one hand, these vectors that move towards isolationism and the severing of ties between the United States and its traditional allies or people that we have supported, our role in the international system. Then on the other hand, a quite bellicose point of view that we are going to wipe ISIS off the face of the Earth and once and for all, end this problem of terrorism. These things, to me, one highly interventionist-sounding vector, and then this isolationist notion, and how they will be held in equipoise, and how whether one will tilt, are we going to swing wildly between one or the other? It seems to me that this may be the point at which the Constitutional crisis could occur, if some of these folks that he has brought in like Mattis, feel that he is not entirely reliable as the chief of state in handling these matters.

There are individuals that some see as a possible source of restraint on this bellicose rhetoric and potential action, and we'll have to see how those figures behave, if the gap between the president and his advisors widens rather than closes.

Julian Zelizer: A lot of the communities he did well with in places like Michigan are communities where a lot of the professional army has drawn forces, and there are many families who have now been through many tours because of Afghanistan and Iraq, and they are war weary, I do think that. I mean, I think it's a mix between hyper-patriotism, but they are war weary, they have felt the costs of the war. I don't know how much of an eye he'll have on this issue, on his electorate that he clearly identifies with, but he could hear it from voters if he starts to make moves in a dangerous direction. I don't know if that will be quick enough, but I think that's one other potential issue he could face, and certainly his advisors would be cognizant of that.

Stephen S: In fact, I think one of the reasons why Obama didn't go into Syria is because he knew that he couldn't get either Congressional support or the support of the voters, but whether that has anything to do with the way Trump thinks is another thing.

Nicholas W: Yeah, institutionally, we've got lots of things to look forward to. The first G8 Summit, the first NATO summit, then there's the Putin-Trump summit, I mean there are extraordinary things, and each one of them will give us more evidence about whether actually he can be constrained by any outside force. He might actually be egged on, I mean he was talking about Putin, saying, "Well, I've never met him, and I might get on with him, but then I might get on with him. If I don't get on with him, you know he's an enemy, all hell will be to pay." It'll be very interesting to see how he deals with it.

Now for the most part, and it's been true in the history of the United States, the president always considers that they have free range to do anything they like in the world, which actually led in the post-war period to a number of awkwardnesses, such as in Vietnam, but also in the Iraq war. When you have a large number of international people who are saying, "You just can't do this," it'll be very interesting. If you get to a NATO summit where everybody is saying, "You're handling," whatever it is, "In the wrong direction," it'll be very interesting to know whether he has the humility to actually respect people who have actually done the job for a long time, and actually know even more about the world than he thinks he does.

Stephen S: Yes.

Speaker 14: Thank you, so [Davos 00:44:33] I think just wrapped up, and I've been reading nothing but a lot of criticism, or at least second guessing of kind of its tendencies to be navel-gazing. I guess my question is, does the panel see any constructive role of the private sector in engaging jobs, economics in a constructive manner across US, and I guess across the world, given that its previous attempts for self-assessment has been largely incorrect?

Nicholas W: Goodness, that's a very broad question.

Ellen F: The economists, I'm assuming.

Nicholas W: Yeah, sorry. This is actually relatively new, isn't it? To go back to crony capitalism, which is what we've got now, which is a very bad way of creating jobs or saving American jobs. We know he's a busy person, but I'm not sure that every day, if he saves 1,000 jobs as he did with the Carrier company, by hectoring and bullying CEO's, he's only going to save a very small number of jobs. Is the private sector going to do everything as it is duty-bound to do to maximize its profits? You would imagine that they would, in which case you might get bullied by the president one day, but it'll just mean you will make a decision not even to start a factory in whatever it is, you'll just set it up somewhere else.

We have reached a stage, and it goes hand in hand with globalization, that private companies now, very often have more sway than many many countries. That's always been the case, but now it's even more extreme, and they actually are in a pretty strong position if they wanted to, to stand up against Mr. Trump, or at least to help guide him in a more rational direction, but too early to tell, with so many of the questions tonight. It's a little too early to tell exactly where the trajectory is in terms of ... I mean, he should be paying attention to businessmen, after all he boasts about being a sublime businessman, "Believe you me," you know. You'd imagine that he might be interested in hearing, you know Tillerson is an interesting example too, he actually chose someone who ran a huge global business, and people like that I guess should be able to lean on the president and take him aside and mention

things to him, but on their own bat?

No, I would have thought they will try to resist globalization at every turn, and if that means losing the location of your headquarters in the United States, people will do it. I mean, there's enough companies already drifted out in the last 10 years.

Stephen S: I think we have enough time for about two more questions, so yes.

Speaker 15: For those of us who are [inaudible 00:47:16], turnout is everything. Have you studied exactly what happened at GOTV, and the effects of the campaign mechanics on the result?

Stephen S: I'm not sure what ... Can you explain what GOTV is?

Speaker 15: Get Out the Vote, the four day period immediately before the election, which was a period that we expected would ensure a win for Hillary.

Stephen S: Did the parties have a Get Out the Vote approach, or not?

Ellen F: Yeah, sure they did. I don't think that the turnout was appreciably ... There could have been a little bit better turnout in some, from the little that I have read about this, and probably less than you have, that there was a better turnout for Obama in some places where Clinton was expected to do a little bit better, but it wasn't dramatically so. This really came down to a few states, and it was a small margin in those places, so this is a very complex question, but I think the democratic party was working hard at that, and a lot of voters did turn out. You know obviously in these last few weeks, something dramatically changed, it seemed.

Nicholas W: Mr. Comey, maybe, twice.

Ellen F: Yeah, well the role of that is not, I think, trivial.

Julian Zelizer: I mean, I've heard the criticism, I have no idea. My instinct is the turnout for the democratic party, the machine was better than most people think, especially given the popular vote. I have heard the criticism also from democrats, not republicans, that it wasn't quite as passionate and robust as Trump's was, from things like lawn signs to the way rallies were being put together and handled in some of these states, to some depressed turnouts still from that Obama coalition in these states that would have flipped it in the other direction, but honestly this is just reading people rather than studying that, so I don't know what the answer is, but I'm sure the democrats are looking carefully to figure that out.

Speaker 15: [inaudible 00:49:54].

Julian Zelizer: Well, that would be a problem.

Nicholas W: Well, I hope the numbers are crunched properly, because at the moment we're relying mostly on exit polling, which doesn't take into-

Ellen F: They will be.

Nicholas W: They will be, it'll be crunched together, but at the moment, there's a figure being banded around that one in three Hispanics voted for Trump. Well, on the day, they might have, but there were so many Hispanics who voted early because they got out by the GOTV democratic operation that actually the real figure is more like 18%. It's probably still to high for people like us to appreciate. All of those figures will come out in the end, it will be very interesting to see.

Ellen F: There's no question that Obama's appearance in New Hampshire, I teach at the University of New Hampshire, and he came to UNH in the last days of the campaign, made a difference in the state of New Hampshire. That made a difference in that, it didn't make a difference in the outcome ultimately, but it did make a difference in the state of New Hampshire.

Stephen S: Last question, yes, this woman right here.

Speaker 16: Yes, there's these three variables that affected the campaign. One was just addressed very briefly by Professor Fitzpatrick, we have the hacking, Russian hacking, we have the possibility of Trump being involved in it, or there's other ways, and then we have Comey. Okay, so how is the impact of those three factors, and maybe more important is, how do you think the investigations on all three, which have been in doubt, where do you think they will go, given the power of Trump?

Julian Zelizer: You want to start?

Speaker 16: If he can curtail it, or whatever.

Ellen F: I'm not optimistic about where they're going to go, and I think there's a lot that we don't know. I think that there's a lot that we don't know, which is why I gave my little parable at the beginning of this whole panel, that it's going to take quite a bit of time for this whole picture to fill in. I'm going to leave it at that, and Julian-

Julian Zelizer: Look, it's clear that certainly the Comey letter had an effect, it's not really a question it depressed her support in states like Michigan, in fact enough to lose it. I don't know the reason why Comey did it, that's going to be something for people to unpack. I'm sure the Russian intervention, we don't know if there was a connection, but the intervention itself and fake news might have had an effect. The danger for democrats in my opinion is to get so focused on that rather than the question you were asking, about what went wrong in the campaign, and what mistakes were made, and why was the campaign at a

point that that could flip it against Donald Trump, whereas she, some might say, should have had a really solid lead strong enough to withstand those kind of events from happening, or what happened with turnout, or is the party now organizing for the next election?

That's a kind of political danger in the next year, I would say, for the democrats, that's where they need to be focused, but I think they're all valid questions, they're big events that happened, and I don't know what happened with Comey and why that decision was made, and the related decision of not really talking about the other investigation, which was being circulated in journalism rooms, because I heard about it all the time, but it didn't make it into the front pages.

Ellen F: It does matter I think in the votes of some of those white women who were undecided until the later weeks of the campaign, and who I think there's pretty good data show that these voters were very sensitive to the accusations of corruption, that among these women voters. We would like to think that all voters oppose corruption, and in principle I'm sure they all do, but I think that for some of these women, more than the hint, the apparent smoking gun of misdeeds on the part of secretary Clinton being sort of affirmed at this high level, or at least opened up and given greater force at that moment did not help her with that particular demographic that was important in a few states, had some of those voters gone the other way in Pennsylvania and Florida and Michigan, that this could have made a difference in the outcome.

I think that the point that Professor [Scotchpole 00:54:54] has made in her essay about where the energy of the democratic party has to go in terms of looking at the states and rebuilding is really a more fruitful avenue, for democrats anyway, to pursue.

Stephen S: Before we close, I just want to remind you, on February 28th, Foreign Policy Association is having its next event, and it's going to be on the future of Europe. On that note, I want to thank our guests for their-

Ellen F: Assuming there will be one.

Nicholas W: Exactly.

Stephen S: Participation.