Lanhee Chen talks to A&G about reports of his interest in running for office. What does he stand for?
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Instead of our regularly scheduled Clips of the Week, which will happen in just a few minutes. We're looking forward to talking to ln Hitchen, David and Diane Stephy, fellow in American Public Policy Studies at the Hoover Institution, the director of Domestic Policy Studies at Stanford University, frequent commentator on CNN, and rumored to be running for high office. Mr Chen, how are you, sir? Hey, Joe. Good to do with you this morning. Great, It's always a pleasure to talk. So listen, we've kind of been bugging you to run for office because we think your ideas are sound and productive. Are you actually can we talk about this? Are you thinking you're running for office in cal Unicornia? I am. I am considering it seriously because you know, we've talked about a lot of these problems, Joe. I mean, I think what it comes down to is we've got some basic, very basic sort of blocking and tackling issues that we need to handle in California. We just don't seemed to be doing the basic things right. And I think bringing a sort of common sense, ideas based approach is kind of what we need. And that's why I'm looking at an office like controller, which you know, I people don't really think very much about it, maybe no very much about but has a tremendous opportunity to change things for the better. And that's why I'm looking at it. Well, let's first of all talk about what the controller does. What do they do well? The controllers actually the think of it as a chief financial officer for the state of California, the person who is in charge of overseeing the finances, how we're spending the state's money, accounting for all of that, making sure that when politicians make promises, they're held accountable for it. And unfortunately, if you look back over the last I don't know, twenty years, the controller really hasn't done any of that, you know, really hasn't held anybody responsible for anything. You know, We've got all of these different crises in our state, all these different things that are going on, and the controller probably could have made things better along the way many times and simply didn't. So, you know, I just take one basic example where there was a report that last year the controller was responsible for signing off on over three hundred billion dollars spending billion with a B but could not produce a line item list of where all that money went. Now, that's right, and I understand the other forty nine states were able to. It's a very basic thing, right, Joe. I mean, you think about your family, you think about any business, and it's like if if if you went out and said, you know, we spent a bunch of money, I actually don't know where we spent it. First of all, if you were a business owner, you'd be in jail. If if you were a family trying to budget that way, you'd be bankrupt. And yet we continue to allow the state to do these sorts of things, and nobody wants to do anything about it. So I think it's time for voters to say, you know what, enough is enough, and let's let's switch things up and have accountability for a change. Well, I would absolutely love to see that. I mean, the examples of scandal and wastefulness are legion from the defrauding of the Apartment of Unemployment. That's not the proper name, but that's what it is. Thirty perhaps forty billion dollars to the utter obscenity that is the regular train. I won't call it a bullet train because it's not going to be a bullet train. It's the suburbs of Fresno to suburbs of Bakersfield, sixty billion dollar train nobody wants. My concern is, and you can address those if you want, but my concern is California voters are so brutally unaware of the way the states being run that that you can't get their attention. Well, frankly, it's it's the job of candidates, and if I become a candidate, I'm gonna spend every day trying to help California voters understand these are the basic issues that we need to get fixed. And this is not a partisan thing, Joe. You know, I get a lot of questions a well, you know, you're you're well known to be somebody who's right of center, who's got views about fiscal conservatism. How's that going to play in California. I have not talked to a single voter, whether they're liberal or conservative or in the middle, who looks at something like you've referred to the fraud in the unemployment insurance system thirty billion dollars at least a fraud and by the way, bigger than Bernie made off, Bigger than all sorts of different frauds that we've seen, probably the biggest fraud at the governmental level, at the state governmental level and the history of our country. Nobody looks at it and says, yeah, I'd like that to continue. You know. Nobody looks at the challenges with the choo Choo train that that you've talked about, where there's all these promises made about the spending, creating jobs, creating a train. We still have a train to nowhere. I've talked to no California who thinks, hey, that's a great idea, let's continue that. So I think part of the challenge Jo, You're right is that people are really busy with their lives, and they should be. But part of the job of public officials is to raise the attention and the awareness on these issues and talk about them and say how can we fix them, as opposed to continuing to cover them up and just perpetuating the Sacramento monopoly that exists right now. Amen to that. We're talking to Alan hi Chen, who Politico listed twice on their annual list of Thinkers, do or and visionaries the top fifty in American politics. Uh thinking about running for the controller gig in California, which is essentially, as he told us, the CFO of California. You know, you're also an educator, and as an educator, i'd love to have your perspective on the story we've been talking about the last couple of days. This is high school in northern California where a passer by, a student passed by a classroom in the hallway, glanced in saw Nazi flag, went to the administration said I'm disturbed by that, and they have suspended the teacher and launched a full investigation. And and now everybody's going to pieces and afraid to talk and the rest of it. What's happening in education these days? What the hell is that? Well, you know, and I'm sorry that he was teaching World War two, specifically a senior seminar on propaganda and symbols. Yeah. Well, one of the things in general about our our system of education is that one of the I don't know, basic hallmarks of of education in the classroom is the ability of educators to um to to essentially teach based on the things that they believe are our best for the students in their classrooms. And we have this principle of local control of education, which is also very important and and and so one of the challenges we have is this concept of academic freedom, which was supposed to be core and central, particularly at the university level. I mean, that's the level I'm familiar with. It's where I where I teach. And I'll just say that the measure of academic freedom that we see in the classroom at the university level, uh, it just isn't the same as it used to be. You used to be you could present lots of different alternate points of view and say, look, you know, you, as a student get to choose. And now the idea that you would present certain points of view is for vote. You know, you you you, you will be under attack unless you present a particular point of view, a particular way of thinking about the world. And that's not academic freedom. And by the way, that's not how we strengthen the minds of young people, but the way we strengthen the minds of young people in our educational systems to say, well, here's all sorts of ideas. You figure out which ideas you believe in, and you a spouse and defend those ideas. So I'm a little worried that the concept of academic freedom is going away, and that's something that's been degraded for for many many years now. Well, and what's truly frightening is the enforcement mechanism for that is a bunch of a bunch of students who we have taught to have pathologies. We've given them pathologies, like the idea that if they are challenged or here's something they don't like, that's an offense, they've been aggrieved, there should be uh, some sort of repercussion for that, which is a bizarre idea. Yeah. I mean again, this gets back to, you know, do we punish people for expressing different points of view? Uh? You know, do we do we punish educators? Do we punish students who want to express different points of view? Now, of course, there are certain points of view that are arguably be on the bounds of uh, you know, civil and normal conversation, and we can have a conversation about how you deal with those things. But fundamentally, the concept of academic freedom means that in a marketplace of ideas, the bad ideas get defeated, the good ideas rise to the top. And that's the kind of system we want because it reflects what happens in American society. You know, we are a pluralistic place. People are allowed to express different points of view, and you know that there are very specific requirements the constitutions. That's about freedom of speech, and we need to be serious about that. And and that extends to the classroom. We want to have in the classroom freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and we allow people to debate reasonable ideas. And I think that's something unfortunately you just see less on less of these days. Lyne Channel the Hoover Institution and Stanford University on the line. In a couple of minutes we have left. Let's do a little compare and contrast between the challenges the divide, if you will, in the GOP, the Trumpers and the no More Trump and the battle going on in the Democratic Party between the Wolke crowd is personified by the squad and the mainstream Democrats. Who's got the bigger challenge or how do you see those two divides? Well, first of all, you're right, Joe, to talk about the divide on both sides of the political spectrum. There's a tendency to focus on gosh, look at the Civil War quote unquote in the Republican Party. And the point I make is, look, both sides have these divisions that are driving, uh, you know, the politics of both sides, unfortunately towards towards what I think are are more extreme positions on the on the left and certainly some of that on the right. Um. My own view on what's happening amongst conservatives and the Republican Party is I think we ought to be focused on welcoming as many people as we can into the conservative movement into the Republican Party. We should be creating a bigger tent, not a smaller one. And so what I would love to see is instead of talking about how do we make the party better by subtraction or how do we make the movement better by something action, I think we should talk about how do we make it better by addition? Uh? And I don't see that on the left, by the way, I think there is a very strong desire amongst many on the left to cancel voices that are considered more reasonable or more moderate. And I'd hate to see the same thing happen on the political right as well. Be here here, I think Hispanic America is going to be a force for conservatism within twenty years personally and Asian Americans too, by the way I think, I think, I think a lot of uh, you know, racial and ethnic minorities in this country. They want to be able to maximize their freedom, to increase their opportunity and be in a society where you know, they can raise their families peacefully and with the knowledge that we have the rule of law. And those are all basic principles. By the way that I know, I mean certainly many conservatives I know a spouse, and and so I think making the case in that way, Joe is part of the challenge, and it's it's something that I you know, take very seriously. If you do decide to run for office, let me know the maximum contribution. I'll give you a triple that. Okay, well, Michael, let it that out when this hairs. Yeah, no, no, no, I I appreciate that. Joe and Lani Chandens the David and Diane Stephie Fellow in American Public Policy Studies at the Hoover Institution, Director of Domestic Policy Studies at Stanford University. Lani, great to talk to you, have a great week. Thank you and