Senator Ron Wyden’s Hutzpah!
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Should have listened.

Good night and good luck. Hey, folks, it's Rick Wilson. Welcome back to the Lincoln Project podcast. Once again, I am your host today. I am thrilled to be joined today by Senator Ron Wyden. Ron has a new book out called It Takes Chutzpah. And I think this is one of those summaries of politics that cuts right to the core of what really needs to happen sometimes when we're working on the hardest problems and the toughest moments. Sometimes you just have to have a sense of

courage and boldness and brass and get in there and fight the good fight. So with that, Ron, I want to welcome you to the show. Thank you so, so much for coming on today. And you are one of those guys who has been around the block in Washington for a little while.

What was it that led you to write this book at this moment? What I said to myself, Rick, is that typical congressional book consists of things that I don't think are the key to the discussion. It starts usually with a lot of bragging. The person talks about all these bills and amendments and they did this and this and this.

And then it segues into a proposition that they're being urged by multitudes of people to run for president. And they sort of feign disinterest and, oh, I'm not interested in doing that because of my family. And then the third stop is essentially Trump.

you can contribute to my exploratory committee by going to any of these 27 sites and contributing. I said, what I want to do is I want to build on what I consider to be the indispensable instrument

for improving America. We say that early on in the book, which is essentially chutzpah and being bold and innovative and going up against the odds. And what I do in the book with Ron's Rules is I give examples

of where you can do it. So if you're running a Girl Scout door-to-door campaign or you're thinking about trying to go up to your boss and try to ask him for a raise or something else, you can use one of these rules and get ahead in your world. One of the things that I always admired about you is

was that while you are a, by no question, a liberal, a progressive guy, you've also worked tire and again with folks on the other side of the aisle to accomplish some pretty big things. Talk to us a little bit about why you did that and why that's important in this world. Because I think it

I think we've sort of slipped away from that in the era of Trump a little bit. And I look back on those great relationships that were had of folks like you and Senator Bennett, you and Chris Cox, Orrin Hatch and Ted Kennedy. I look back at those relationships and I think things – important things got done because

Because both parties were willing to cross the aisle. And that's one thing that you talk about in this. So give us a little bit of background on that from your career. Well, Rick, what we talk about is what I call principled bipartisanship.

And that's essentially what Chris and I did in terms of laying the groundwork for what has come to be known as the 26 words that created the internet. You know, our bill which said that, you know, for purposes of online kind of rules, the person who posts the content is accountable rather than the website or the platform. And my general sense has been that principled bipartisanship

in line with the fact that people have retreated to essentially one party or another, is not the order of the day. People claim that they're being bipartisan, but what they really are is looking for ideological trophies. And what Chris Cox and I did is said that we're going into the Wild West here. There are essentially no rules.

And we're going to find a path to really promote free speech and encourage innovative technologies and small businesses. And we took each other's good ideas. We didn't take each other's bad ideas. And that's the key for the future. I think that that's one thing that it's a great example of the way people would like Washington to work.

in their brain, they would like it to work that way. I think they've just sort of, I feel like they've often given up on that as we've gone into this different era of more authoritarianism and more partisan isolation in terms of...

who's willing to have lunch with somebody else, much less sponsor legislation. Well, let's think about some of the people that I talk about in the book, like Olympia Snowe. Olympia Snowe and I work consistently on trying to get a prescription drug benefit under Medicare. You don't see very many Olympia Snows in the Republican Party right now. And perhaps Lisa Murkowski is one of the few who is willing to be part of that. And I talked about

my relationship with her. And, you know, I trust her so much. I even had some Ellen, even ate a piece of LNG when I went up to Alaska because she told me it wasn't going to be harmful. You know, I think that, I think that one thing you say in the, in the rules is that

And this is, again, one of these things that feels like it's getting forgotten is that, you know, compromise isn't just bad idea, horse trading the bad ideas. It's trying to synthesize something better. And I do think, you know, again, it's a harder assignment these days. But I do think the example of Olympia Snow is she was always somebody who was willing to look at a broad spectrum of opinions to get to the right answer.

And you're being logical, Rick. And I continue to believe that this is what the American people, you know, are insisting on. And I think that if Trump makes a bunch of additional ridiculous, you know, promises, I'm going to be in trouble.

He already has given up on this question of doing anything about food prices. That lasted about a week until he said, "Uncle, not gonna be part of it." I think that there's gonna be a market for the kind of politics that we're talking about, which heaven forbid is based on a principled kind of approach in your ideas. - And you come out of the Jewish faith tradition. And so the Tikkun Olam and chutzpah combining together, it's a sort of a,

a direction where you've got to have that courage to do those things, to make those differences, to heal up the problems that we face in this country. And that really became

that was sort of a through line in the book. I noticed that, that, you know, your faith tradition really informs how you have looked at the, at the assignment ahead of you. And that's why I went into public service because I believe in Takuna Lum and being willing to try out, you know, fresh approaches. I mean, healthcare to me is the most important issue. If Rick and his family don't have their health, everything else goes by the board. And, you know, I've,

Consistently, you mentioned my relationship with Bob Bennett. We started off and we said, look, we think that Democrats are right that to fix healthcare, you've got to get universal coverage because if you don't, there'll be too much cost shifting and not enough cost containment. We also decided that there ought to be a private sector

Well, that's what members of Congress have in their health care. And by the way, if you want innovations into cures and the like, you've got to have a role for the private sector. So there are opportunities here to build coalitions. You just don't see as many of them today as there once were. This is a message from our sponsor, Intuit TurboTax. Taxes was getting frustrated by your forms. Now, taxes is uploading your forms with a snap and a TurboTax expert will do your taxes for you.

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So you talk about leadership by listening. And this is something that I learned a long time ago from a boss of mine who was great at having conversations with people that you later realized were about trying to lead better.

And when I was a young guy, I didn't get it as much. I think I get it more now. Talk to us about the value of listening in politics and in leadership, because I think it's an underappreciated skill these days. It is. And so many people in politics say that they're going to listen. And about 30 to 45 seconds in, they're already opening their mouth in order to say, here's what you ought to do. And I've had

More than 1,100 town hall meetings. Good Lord. 1,101 to be exact. Wow. 90 minutes. Nobody's ever done it before in my state, Rick. I was the first to do it. That's got to be a record. That's got to be a record.

I think it is, but I tell people I don't have all the answers. But what we're going to do is something that the founding fathers had in mind, which is listen and have a chance to try to find some common ground. And I think that it's an opportunity to

to really generate a different kind of a politics. I saw some of the Trump town meetings and, you know, he talked for a while and then he started playing music and it was always about him. Sure. Listen, listening is about the other, other person. We gave an example in the book about a guy that we called George who worked at the Portland international airport. And when I came in, you know, the far right radio people in, uh,

in Oregon are always saying that I'm in New York. My wife owns a bookstore. I'm not from Oregon. And George listens to me for a second and said, I know those radio nuts were wrong. He said, let me tell you a few things. And I wrap it up. After I listened to him for a while, I said, I don't know if George is going to vote for me, but he's going to walk away and he's going to say, Ron Wyden actually listened to me and tell his family I taught him a thing or two. And maybe I'll get a chance to talk to him again.

Public service. Yeah, I think that's something that a lot of people curate their town hall meetings these days. And some of my former Republican friends, most of whom are – well, all of whom are gone from the House and Senate now, or the House now at least, they told me like after touching the hot stove a couple of times of disagreeing with Trump on anything in 2017 –

They decided town hall meetings were going to get curated. They were only going to invite people that they knew would ask them easy questions or they just wouldn't do them. 1100 town meetings. And you and I remember John McCain. Sure. The master of a town hall. He loved them. He absolutely loved them. You know, one of the big issues right now that I wanted to ask you about, we are facing a very different political climate this year.

than we've ever had before. Trump is back. He's pretty shameless about the crazy stuff he wants to accomplish. And a lot of your Republican colleagues are publicly facing, saying nice things about him and trying to cooperate with him. And in private, a lot of them are very nervous. What's your take on Trump getting through some of the more radical appointments and policies that he's trying to push this year? Well,

Well, I'll take RFK because he's going to be coming to our committee. I was chairman of the Finance Committee until the last couple of weeks, but I'm concerned that he's just going to be a rubber stamp for Republican ideological crusaders.

who want to stop Medicare from negotiating lower drug prices, allowing insurance companies to sell junk and undermine Medicaid and life-saving health services. And he's made some outlandish statements about various types of healthcare. And I think that

At the end of the day, a lot of the Republicans in the Congress know that the president is talking about stuff that is way, way outside the bounds of good governance, but they're afraid to take him on. Yeah, they are afraid to take him on. That is a true fact right there. And it's...

It's not easy to watch them try to convince themselves that cowardice is the best strategy. But a lot of them are, as I tell people, there are probably only about 10 or 12 like real wackadoo types who believe really literally in Trump. But the rest of them are very afraid of that of that climate of intimidation. So in that in that regard, do Democrats have a sense of in that sense?

Rick, in that sense, I think that Democrats are much less fearful of Trump than Republicans. Oh, sure. I absolutely agree with that. And as you should be, you should not be afraid of this guy. He's, you know, we've seen bullies in our public lives before and he's the alpha bully, but he is still just basically a bully. I had a question to extend on the Senate angle for one more minute.

You and I both know Mitch McConnell, a very savvy, canny operator behind the scenes and in front of the curtain. And Mitch is on his way out of the Senate. He's now out of leadership. Is John Thune as formidable for Democrats as Mitch McConnell was?

He's very, very different. And, you know, my hope is because I've worked with him a number of times on issues on the Finance Committee and health care, for example, on trade and the like. He he's very easy to work with. And my hope is that he can get traction with his style.

in the Republican caucus to give us a chance to start moving to some opportunities for bipartisanship. I mean, the Republicans are not talking about anything that would resemble principled bipartisanship. Well, John Thune and I did that when he was a member of the Finance Committee, and it's going to be hard for him to figure out a way to advance that kind of agenda with Trump world looking for a partisan plan on

taxes and immigration and the like. But if anybody can do it in the Senate who's still around on the Republican side, Rick, John Thune is the one who has the potential. You know, I don't know John well. I've met him a few times. I know of him more. I know people who've worked for him who've told me the same thing. Somebody said to me the other day, in a world where Donald Trump was not president, John Thune would probably be...

pushing forward a lot of bipartisan legislation and doing and surprising people. But in the world of, of Trump, we're, we're in a different kind of space than that, than we would be otherwise without. I don't think there's any question that that that's right. And there, there was a close election. It was between him and Senator, Senator Cornyn. And, uh,

I didn't know how it was going to turn out. But frankly, one of the things that gave me a little bit of a ray of ray of hope is some Republicans may have voted for John Thune because they were hopeful that someone would have that kind of style that you and I are saying could be part of the path to bipartisan principle, bipartisanship down the road. Well, we've talked about the present day Senate. I want to ask you, because you talk about

learning from the legacies of other folks, as particularly when you came to the Senate and Ted Kennedy was kind of a mentor to you.

And this is something I try to do in my professional career because I've enjoyed the benefit of it in my professional career, being mentored, of learning from people who know all the secrets, know all the tricks, know how to accomplish things. Talk to us about Ted Kennedy and other people you've learned from and were mentored by as you came up in the Senate. Well, let me give you an example of what Ted did.

would do. You know, when there was a campaign going on, the Republicans held

Ted Kennedy out to essentially be the scourge of Western civilization. My goodness, if you did anything that Ted Kennedy was interested in, the Western world would depart. The second the campaign ended, the second, Rick, it was over, there was a line a mile long around Teddy Kennedy's Senate office because they knew that he always wanted to move forward to work in a bipartisan way. He had...

what he's usually called the 70-30 kind of rule. If you could agree on 70% or 60% of an issue, you just made your agreement with a bipartisan, a principled bipartisan approach, and then you went and said, we'll come back and go at it again. And there were other Democrats and Republicans, you know, who did it. Pat Moynihan helped me write a major paper.

when we were talking about taking streaming and C-SPAN global. And he was always interested in some of the work we've done on privacy and surveillance. He was a real privacy hawk. Yes, he was. People often call me the privacy hawk of the Senate. And I say Moynihan had me beat by a mile. And...

I think that Moynihan and Bennett were good examples, along with Teddy Kennedy, of trying to find opportunities to mentor people and bring people into a group. Yeah. Moynihan gave me some good advice one time that I completely ignored. And I kept working for Rudy. He was like, I don't know if this is going to end well for you. I'm like, yes, it is. Oh, should have listened.

So what are the big issues you plan to work on in the coming couple of years in the Senate? Because it strikes me that there's going to be a major push to do some really bad things under...

And I'm curious about what you're focused on right now for forward-looking things to apply these rules to. In the short term, we want to make sure that Social Security and Medicare don't get raided to pay for Trump's deficits. And then I want to deal with privacy and surveillance because the reason the privacy issue is so important now, Rick,

is when I started on this and Chris and I were writing, you know, the first kind of ground rules for the internet, there were things that technology couldn't do. So Rick Wilson and everybody else would have a measure of privacy simply because the technology couldn't get there. Now the technology

is virtually everywhere. And you probably heard when we exposed the fact that 600 Planned Parenthood sites were exposed, their geolocation data was exposed and people, yeah, were at risk. I mean, that wasn't possible when I started. And, you know, today, you know, we've got a problem with Salt Typhoon, you know, the phone records being so vulnerable. We got a problem with

FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. There was a loophole added for data centers and Trump may come in and just abuse that to the point where he tries to say anybody with a hard drive has to turn over their custodian or something to help spy for the government. I'm one of these folks that's been, from the right, deeply concerned about the degree to which privacy is a

is a commoditized and strange problem these days for most people have no ability to even understand how little privacy they have left. I think that's a very meritorious thing to push forward on because

People, if they knew it was as bad as it was, they'd be in the streets. But they feel nervous about it already, I think. Well, the data brokers are really, data is really the gold of technology today. And the big challenge, Rick, is that people say to themselves, like your listeners, they're going to say, I'm glad Ron's working on this privacy stuff, but it never really affects me because I'm not doing anything wrong.

And that is the wrong approach is that the people who are coming after your data and can make quick money selling it and ripping you off, they're not looking at whether, you know, you're doing the right thing or the wrong thing or haven't taken these precautions. They've been able to use these technologies in the most sophisticated way to harm you and your family. And that's our point. Yeah. And the fact that...

It gets out every every piece of this stuff gets out to people who are not scrupulous, who are, you know, you may think, oh, I'm signing up for this, you know, set of permissions from Facebook. But then your your data may drift elsewhere and spread widely and become commoditized and monetized in ways that are incredibly difficult to unwind.

unless you're willing to go out and spend a lot of money to do it. It is sold and resold and resold. And I can only tell you that the world of the data brokers makes the Wild West look tame. And it also, your data is being sold all over the world. So all these hostile countries are getting your information as well.

I want to say we're in a time of very intense political polarization. We're in a time of very siloed media and siloed parties.

And, you know, reading this book, I felt I liked because as you point out in the beginning, it's not your standard bid political bio. It's not the I'm running for president and here's how wonderful I am about everything. This was a this was about some real road rules to to make people more effective as politicians.

legislators, leaders, communicators, et cetera. Talk to us about which, which of the, of the 12 rules you find the most important, the centerpiece of, of your 12 rules. Well,

Well, first of all, what I hope is that this will really appeal to young people, Rick, because I even saw that, you know, Nancy and I were with the kids over the holidays and talking to some of their friends. And a lot of them in the Democratic kids are upset about things like the right to choose and the like. But kids across the political spectrum are worried about their educational opportunities, worry about the jobs, worried about they're going to get jobs.

the chance to own their first home. And, you know, there are a few rules that I like a great deal, but particularly I like playing the long game.

Because everything in today's society drives short-term judgments. You know, we get all our texts, we get all our emails, and we're concerned about responding in the next two minutes. And, you know, what I did, write the big climate package to break what Moynihan said were decades and decades of gridlock because he was involved in climate change.

was to say, I'm going to take the time to come up with some new concepts. And one of them was in the energy field, we would have technological neutrality. And I spent that time kind of studying it. I talked to people on the right. I talked to people on the left. And I said, look,

The reality is in energy, nobody knows what the big climate reducers are going to be 30 years from now. Let's encourage innovation and give people the opportunity to find these new sources. So playing the long game is probably right up at the top. I also love the unexpected, you know, moment because the unexpected, you know, moment is right now so much is kind

Kind of pre-chewed, pre-organized, you know, lack of spontaneity. I like that, you know, a lot. And finally, I went to school on a basketball scholarship, dreaming of playing in the NBA. It was 6'4". I was too small and I made up for it by being slow.

But the section where we use coaching is leading. That's really key for society today is we need people to work to find some common ground. And my old basketball coach and Bill Bradley and Adam Silver and

And I have had lots of talks about this. Well, that is the long game and the picking the right moment are really important. So I have one more Oregon specific question to ask you. I'm actually headed out to your great state for some meetings this week. I have one more interesting Oregon question to ask you. People in Eastern Oregon are talking about secession over and over again. What's the status of that? How...

serious or unserious or concerning is that whole movement? It's not going to happen in my opinion, but I think it stems from what you and I are talking about, is they don't feel listened to. And that's what I've tried to counter. Right now, we have a big debate about the Oahis,

which is Oregon's version of the Grand Canyon. Okay. And a fight going on, like the climate issue for decades and decades. I've worked with the rural Eastern Oregon congressmen to try to protect the ag way of life.

And we want to protect the tribes and we want to ensure that our wilderness is protected. We got it passed in the United States Senate because you talk about an interesting duo. John Barrasso, conservative from Wyoming, and I got a couple of bills together. We paired them at the end of December, passed it. And now we're going to pull out all the stops to get it done this year. So the reality is...

These kinds of opportunities are ones that don't happen by osmosis. John Barrasso and I worked for months and months for a package that we thought made some grazing reforms, protected wilderness and the like. And now all those people who are talking about how

The state doesn't listen to the rural areas. Have a guy, you know, who wanted to play in the NBA from southeast, you know, Portland, going out there all the time and working to come up with something that protects their agriculture way of life. And I think we can get it done. And those are the kinds of messages that make people say we're all a state and who's going to do secession. Right.

Well, folks, the book is It Takes Chutzpah by Ron Wyden. He is a U.S. senator for the great state of Oregon and an all-around great guy. And I think you will find it. I loved reading it because it was not a standard issue political biography. It was a lot more about how you get things done than about

you know, setting up for a presidential run or anything like that. But Ron, thank you so much for coming on the Lincoln Project podcast. We really appreciate you. Give your best to Nancy for me, please. And I look forward to seeing you again soon. I'll do it. Thank you, sir. We'll grab a nosh sometime soon. I'll tell Nancy. I love it. I'm here for it. All right, my friend. All right, pal. Thanks.

The Lincoln Project Podcast is a Lincoln Project production. Executive produced by Whitney Hayes, Finn Howe, and Joseph Warner-Chammy. Produced and edited by Whitney Hayes and Jeff Taylor. And good luck. Hey, everybody, if you'd like to get in touch, if you have suggestions for a guest or a show topic or just general questions, our email is podcast at lincolnproject.us. That's podcast at lincolnproject.us.