Background Briefing: July 22, 2024
How the Most Important Hire in the World Has Been Made With, Good, Bad and Ugly Consequences
We begin with the political earthquake on Sunday with President Biden stepping down and naming his Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic Presidential candidate which has resulted in a flood of donations and a universal endorsement from the DNC and Democratic House and Senate members including Nancy Pelosi. Joining us for an historical context on how the most important hire in the world has been made with good, bad and ugly consequences is Gautam Mukunda, a former Research Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership and author of Indispensable: When Leaders Really Matter, and the host of NASDAQ’s World Reimagined podcast. He was formerly a Professor at Harvard Business School and Distinguished Visiting Professor at Schwarzman College and his latest book is Picking Presidents: How to Make the Most Consequential Decision in the World.
The Vice Presidential Sweepstakes and the Importance of Swing States
Then we examine the Vice Presidential sweepstakes and the importance of swing states like Pennsylvania in Kamala Harris’s pending decision and speak with Anthea Butler, the Geraldine R. Segal Professor in American Social Thought at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of a number of books including The Rise of the New Religious Right and, most recently, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America.
A Democratic Party Reborn
Then finally we speak with Ben Burgis, the host of the Give Them an Argument podcast and YouTube channel and a philosophy instructor at Morehouse College and a columnist for Jacobin. His books include Give Them an Argument: Logic for the Left, Canceling Comedians While the World Burns: A Critique Of The Contemporary Left, and Christopher Hitchens: What He Got Right, How He Went Wrong, and Why He Still Matters. We discuss his latest article at Jacobin, “So Much for a Newly Reborn Republican Party” now that it appears the Democratic Party has been reborn.