So It Goes: Niall Ferguson on Good Books, Bad Screens, a 1968 Redux, and Hobbits

Henry Bemis: Collected works of Dickens, collected works of George Bernard Shaw. Books, books, all the books I'll need. All the books, all the books I'll ever want. Shelley, Shakespeare, Shaw. And the best thing, the very best thing of all is there's time now. There's all the time I need and all the time I want.

Henry Bemis: That's not fair, that's not fair at all. That's not fair.

Bill Whalen: Hi, I'm Bill Whalen. I'm a distinguished policy fellow here at the Hoover Institution. I'd like to welcome you back to GoodFellows, a Hoover Institution broadcast examining social, economic, political and geopolitical concerns. Actually, this is a different form of GoodFellows today.

It's what we call a mini version of GoodFellows, a mini show, because instead of our usual triumvirate of senior fellows, we have just one senior fellow for you today. And that would be the international man of history himself, the one and only Niall Ferguson. Niall is the Hoover Institution's Milbank family senior fellow.

He also spearheads the Hoover Institution's history working group and Hoover's history lab. To say the man's a prolific writer would be a vast understatement. Niall Ferguson is the author of 16 books and we look forward to number 17, which will be the second installment of his fine biography of Henry Kissinger.

Niall also shares his wisdom via opinion columns in the likes of the Daily Mail and the New York Post. I would also suggest that you turn to the free press run by the wonderful Barry Weiss to see Niall's work there. He writes frequently for them. Niall, thanks for joining us today.

Niall Ferguson: It's good to be with you on GoodFellow, singular.

Bill Whalen: GoodFellow, singular. I wanna thank you, my friend, first of all for taking over the moderating chores in July and for also at the end of that show, Niall, saying that you wanted me to come back and continue.

There's a phrase in American sports, Niall. It's called to be Wally Pipp, have you heard that phrase?

Niall Ferguson: I have not, please translate for the simple immigrant.

Bill Whalen: Okay, to be Wally Pipp refers to a baseball player named Wally Pip who was the first baseman for the New York Yankees in 1925.

Wally Pipp takes himself out of the lineup with a headache. In his place is Lou Gehrig, Lou Gehrig goes on to be the first baseman for the Yankees for the next 14 years. As for Mister Pipp, Niall, he's traded to Cincinnati and he's out of the game in about two years.

So, Niall, thank you for not wanting to take over the moderating chores full time. I don't wanna get traded to Cincinnati.

Niall Ferguson: There's no danger of that, Bill. It's just amazing to think that the events you've just described happened 99 years ago, and yet baseball is as much a fixture in American life as it was a century ago.

It's one of the few constants in an otherwise constantly fluctuating country.

Bill Whalen: Well put, would you say the same of rugby, soccer and cricket in the UK?

Niall Ferguson: Well, nothing really changes in the UK. And so there is this sense of predictable perennial activities, even as I think we once discussed on GoodFellows.

Even politics is basically the same game in which people with degrees from Oxford University take it in turns to be prime minister. By comparison, the United States is a revolutionary republic even as it approaches its 250th birthday. And as I go back and forth across the Atlantic, I'm struck by the contrast.

There is so much more in flux here than in the old country.

Bill Whalen: Well put. The reason why I was absent from GoodFellows, Niall, is because I was back in South Carolina visiting my sister and helping her take care of her four grandsons, ages five to seven. Their parents were off in Europe on a vacation, and so we decided to turn their time with us into a faux summer camp, if you will, to teach them about responsibilities and give them some chores and also let them have a lot of fun.

And, Niall, I thought about you during this because you're trying to raise two small boys in this day and age. And here's what I'm concerned about. My little grand nephews are all wonderful little kids, they're very happy. If they end up on a couch one day, Niall, talking to a psychiatrist, it will not be because they're not loved.

I mean, they're having a good childhood, but I worry about their future in this regard, Niall. It's hard for a boy to be a boy in this day and age. And it's also, I think, difficult as parents to control information going to your boy. These little kids in South Carolina, Niall, they're vidiots.

They know how to use remote controls, they're dying to get on my laptop and look at YouTube. It's a fight at all times to keep things away for them, so explain how you and Ian have raised your voice.

Niall Ferguson: Well, I have to confess to having a little experience as I have five children and the older ones are now aged from 30 to 29 to 25.

So it's really my second life. Or you could say I decided to cut out the middleman and have my own grandchildren. The thing I learned raising Felix, Freya and Lachlan was that technology, video games, iPads, iPhones, all of these things are highly addictive by design. And you're essentially letting your children have crack cocaine if you hand over these devices and don't very closely supervise and ration their use.

I have a predisposition towards the old fashioned. This is why I increasingly think of myself not as a conservative, but as a reactionary. I think boys and girls need to be outdoors a lot, and when they're outdoors, they're learning things that they can't learn in the classroom. I think that the old games are the best games, which is why I have, from the outset, introduced all my children to the things you can do with round balls of varying sizes, plus oval balls.

Swimming, which is something that I think you have to teach your children early and seriously for their own safety. Bicycling, the hardest thing about being a dad is just getting people to ride a bicycle. Getting your kids to ride a bicycle without falling over. The only way to do this is to run along behind them, holding the saddle to provide balance until they get it.

And for some reason, this just makes my back hurt more than anything I could go on. But I do think that the thing I've learned is you can't completely prohibit the addictive screens. You've got to ration them, and you've got to explain to your children why you're doing that.

Most, I think, parents in the United States make the mistake of treating their children's children. In fact, what works best is to treat your children as more grown up than they are and try to get them to understand that you're rationing the tv or the iPad for a reason.

And even if at first they're not really with you, they'll eventually get it. And so that's been my philosophy with all my kids. Although the technology has changed a lot between Felix, now 30, and Campbell, now six, it's the same fundamental problem, and it's not a problem that we had.

I mean, I'm now 60. When I was a boy growing up in Glasgow, there were three tv channels to choose from and that was about it. The public library was a place where I spent more time than, say, the cinema. And I was addicted to football. I played with the round ball, soccer, as Americans say, probably every day, several times.

And it's impossible to replicate that childhood. It's just not available today, so you have to simulate it. And I think it's really worth making the effort for the sake of children's physical as well as mental development.

Bill Whalen: Let's turn our attention to current events and I wanna talk about this presidential election in America and tied into some American political history.

For those who are not familiar with America, presidential elections, it always begins with a false narrative, Niall, that the current election is the most important election in American history. And I think as a student of history, you'd agree that maybe 1860 perhaps, is a more important election than 2024.

It is a curious election and the other constant in politics in America, Niall, is that there is always a historical parallel. Before Joe Biden dropped out of the race, we looked at 1892, the only other time when a current and former president faced off. We've looked at 1972 and the idea of a conservative Republican party versus a very progressive democratic party but you've landed on 1968.

Now, there are a lot of historical parallels with 1968, beginning with the Democrats reconvening again in Chicago for the national Convention. Niall, we might see a repeat of war protest, Vietnam protest in 68, Gaza protests in 2024. Assassination hangs over this election, as it did in 1968, Bobby Kennedy in 68 and Trump almost assassinated in 2024.

We have an incumbent vice president running on the democratic side, Niall, against someone who's run for national office before, as was true in 1968. But you wanna talk about the lessons of 68?

Niall Ferguson: Well, I'd like to promote a book in the process, which I just happen to have.

Here is The Year That Broke Politics, collusion and chaos in the presidential election, 1968 by Luke Nichter. And it's a fantastic read. And whatever you think you know about 1968 will be changed by reading this book, which shows, amongst other things. That Lyndon Johnson had very little faith in Hubert Humphrey as a candidate and indeed doubted that it would be in the best interests of himself or the United States for Humphrey to win.

So it turns out that in fact, of all people, Billy Graham as the intermediary, Johnson kind of colluded with Nixon. That Nixon would win and then Nixon would protect Johnston`s legacy. That was the deal that`s one of the surprising things. And the other, of course, is that it was really a third party candidate, George Wallace, who decided the outcome of the election by taking a significant chunk of democratic votes away from Humphrey.

And, of course, we think of Wallace as a proponent of segregation. And the kind of naive take on 68 is that, well, he's just the racist candidate. But Nichter shows that Wallace's appeal was rather broader than that. And in a way, he attracted some of the populist energy that has come to be such an important factor in american politics today.

So two takeaways, there are many, but I'll give you two. One, I strongly suspect that Joe Biden feels about the same way towards Kamala Harris as Lyndon Johnson felt towards Hubert Humphrey. Ambivalence at best about their being the successor, though I very much doubt that Joe Biden wants Donald Trump to win, there is a big difference there.

And the second point is this election could end up being decided by the third party candidates. They won't attract nearly as many votes. But if you add together RFK, Robert Kennedy, Cornel West, Jill Stein, when the margins are as close as they seem likely to be, that might actually be once again, what makes the difference.

Everybody fixates on these national polls, but of course, American elections are not really decided by the popular preference for presidential candidates. They're decided because of what happens in a handful of counties in a handful of states. Think there are lots of interesting 1968 analogies that we can play with.

The main reason why this is interesting, though, as you already said, is that this year feels as fraught as 1968 felt with that political violence in the air and assassination attempt. Of course, there were two successful assassinations in 1968, and thank God we've avoided that nightmare thus far.

Convention in Chicago, it went completely nuts for the Democrats in 68. It's hard to believe, particularly in view of recent events in the Middle east, that the energy is suddenly going to ebb away from the pro palestinian protesters. And it will be remarkable if they don't turn up in Chicago and cause the kind of disruption that the anti Vietnam left caused in 1968.

Bill Whalen: Right, we have not talked much on Goodfellas about Robert F Kennedy Junior, which is yet another 68 parallel. His father obviously, running back in that election. What do you make of his Kennedy, Niall? What do you think his appeal is? What do you think his potency is?

Niall Ferguson: Well, I would say that one of the peculiar features of American politics is that it is a two party system and that duopoly is very strictly enforced. Despite the fact that roughly a third of registered voters, neither Democrats nor Republicans, label themselves independents, but whereas the independent party, it doesn't really exist.

And so, in a way, the puzzling thing about American politics to almost any outsider is, how do you keep this duopoly going when there's such obvious demand for something else? And that something else can take very curious forms. Think back to Ross Perot, a character who played a role in two presidential elections and was a curious mixture of the pro-business and the populist.

I think the key thing here is that that appetite for something else will throw up all kinds of weirdness. And there's no doubt that Robert Kennedy has some weirdness. Weird is a word of the moment, because the Democrats are desperately trying to label Donald Trump and JD Vance as weird.

But they're not really weird the way RFK is weird. And key issues about which he feels strongly seem to me to be cranky, he's an anti-vaxxer. But there are a lot of people out there who, in the wake of 2020, have become vaccine skeptics and just skeptics generally.

Kennedy combines that cranky skepticism about, quote unquote, settled signs with the name Kennedy. So I think Americans will probably continue casting around for alternatives, and each time, the political system will throw up some quirky figure who can get enough votes to make a difference in a close election.

Bill Whalen: Now, one difference from 1968, Niall, is because Joe Biden stepped down when he did, dropped out on the race when he did. The Democrats avoided a year of having primary fights. So unlike 1968, when you had McCarthy and Humphrey and Kennedy competing in primaries, the Democrats avoided that.

It seems to me deal that one or both parties are headed to a reckoning in 2028. If Donald Trump loses in 2024, the Republicans have to decide in 2028, what do they stand for? And the same for the Democrats if Kamala Harris loses.

Niall Ferguson: That's right, the jockeying for position for 2028 has already begun.

You can tell by the fact that certain people didn't throw their hats into the ring when uncertainty reigned over the democratic nomination. And so that's because Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, has concluded it's better to wait. There was a moment of real confusion in the wake of Joe Biden's announcement that he was stepping down, in which former President Barack Obama suggested there ought to be some kind of open convention.

And that didn't last because everybody else, all the key power brokers that run the Democratic Party, decided to rally around the vice president. But I think one of the reasons that that happened was that there were really no strong contenders who were ready to take the risk of going into battle against Donald Trump with a very short time remaining and losing.

So, in a way Harris is the default candidate because Biden was revealed to be too old to run in the debate. Not that long ago now, but seems like a wild June 27th was the decisive moment. And we've now come, in a sense, full circle cuz the margin between Trump and Harris is now pretty much the same margin as there was between Trump and Biden on the eve of that debate, two percentage points.

I think there's a distinct possibility that Trump loses because the Democrats have such a well old machine that they could execute this extraordinary vault fast. So smoothly, so ruthlessly, in an amazing bait and switched. This extraordinary bait and switch was perfectly timed. So that the Republicans, in a kind of euphoric mood following Donald Trump's narrow brush with death in Pennsylvania, nominated as their vice presidential candidate JD Vance.

And Vance is somebody it's much easier for the Democrats to run against than Trump. Trump has the curious property of anti-fragility, a word I owe to Nassim Taleb. The more you attack him, the stronger he becomes. The Democrats have finally learned this, and so they're gonna direct a lot of fire against JD Vance because he doesn't look so anti-fragile.

This could work, it could also work just to have the vibe of 2008. Part of the strategy here is to rerun the 2008 election with Kamala Harris as Barack Obama, this could work. A new thing is generally preferred to an old thing in American life. That's one of the distinctive features of this Republic.

If it works and Xi wins, which one can't now rule out. That will, I think, be one of those moments in the history of a party when you have to admit that the populist thing isn't working anymore. This happened to the Democrats after William Jennings Bryan lost three presidential elections in succession, they finally decided, okay, let's try something new.

And if Trump loses, that will really be the culmination of a succession of defeats going back to the 2018 midterms. So I think you can imagine a scenario in which there has to be a radical reappraisal of the Republican party if that's the outcome. But this is back to being a coin toss.

If the Democrats have a shockingly chaotic convention, if the enthusiasm for Harris turns out essentially to be an artifact of mainstream media and social media, then what could happen is that Trump could win. And then the Democrats will find themselves looking at a kind of shattered project, just as they did in 2016.

And in that sense, one of these moments in history where you're at the fork in the road. And because it's close, unlike so many elections earlier in our lives, each of these two paths has a kind of similar probability at the moment. And you therefore have to consider two quite different futures for american politics.

And we won't really know which one it is until the early hours of November 6.

Bill Whalen: Niall, if you think of American politics as a vast exercise in drinking and turn this election into a drinking game, the phrase you do not want to have is gender gap. You will be under the table fast because you're gonna hear this a lot between now and election day in America.

Niall, gender gap, for those not familiar, refers to one's support among women versus men and a large gap between the two. We may be looking at the mother of all gender gaps in this election, Niall, if you go back to 2020. NBC News poll exit polls. Biden won female voters by 15%, lost male voters by 8 points, a 23 point gap, Niall.

But early in 2024, NBC News again doing polling. Niall, Biden led women by 10%, this is before Kamala Harris comes in. So he's already up by 10% among women. Trump leads among men by 22 points, Niall and again, this is before Kamala Harris. So let's talk about the gender gap.

There's a Fergusonian phrase we should talk about in that it's a boys versus girls election. What do you mean by that, boys versus girls?

Niall Ferguson: Well, I think this will probably be the most polarised election in terms of gender that we've ever seen, with a very substantial skew between the candidates.

That seems, at this point, pretty likely. It's worth adding, though, that's only one of a number of important skews that will be decisive. There's also an age skew. I mean, younger voters are clearly gonna break substantially for Kamala Harris and older voters for Donald Trump. Whereas the old divisions around ethnicity have diminished because Donald Trump has thus far been the most successful Republican candidate in modern times to attract.

In terms of his ability to attract African American and Hispanic voters. There are the gender variables important because it's black and Latino men who are disproportionately gravitating towards the Republican candidate. Anybody who has a model complex enough to take into account all of these cross-currents is a better man or political scientist than I am.

I suspect that to get a sense of where we're going and how this is gonna turn out. You have to step away from your own computer screen and your carefully calibrated model and head to Pennsylvania. Head to what I think of as the swing counties. There are nine counties in Pennsylvania where the margin of victory for the victorious candidate was less than 10% points, just 9.

Northampton, Pennsylvania, is the tightest of them all. It broke narrowly for Trump in 2016, narrowly for Biden in 2020, and I feel like just going there and wandering around for a bit to see what has really struck home, what's resonated with voters there. Because it may be that in the coffee shops and the bars, they're still talking about the attempt on President Trump's life and the way in which he defiantly raised his fist.

That might still be the number one topic of conversation. Or they may be talking about Momola memes and the issue of reproductive rights, which is clearly what the Democrats want to focus on. I don't know, but I sense that that's really where we have to go to get a sense of how things are gonna turn out.

Bill Whalen: Let's spend a minute, Niall, on the politics of elderly electorates. The United States electorate, Niall, is aging. In 2020, 52% of registered voters were ages 50 and older, that was up from 41% in 1996. Niall, boomers like me are not going away. Actually, you're technically a boomer, I think, you're right at the tail end of it.

You claim either generation if you want to. I think of myself as the last of the boomers, sort of- Good book, that could be book number 18, Niall.

Niall Ferguson: Like the Last of the Mohicans, only without the glamour.

Bill Whalen: Exactly, but if you look at the 22 US midterm election, Niall, about two-thirds of citizens 65 and older voted.

That's more than double the turnout for voters age 18 to 29. Let's spend a minute actually on the UK here, then come back to the US. Rishi Sunak in that election, Niall, he trots out a proposal. He wants to promise retirees a tax break, and then he also proposes a mandatory national service for 18 year olds.

An idea that doesn't play well with young people, I imagine, but probably sounds good to older voters. But that didn't work out for Mr. Sunak, did it?

Niall Ferguson: It didn't work cuz it wasn't enough to satisfy an electorate that, as in the United States, is relatively elderly by historic standards.

That stat you just mentioned, more than half the us electorate is over 50, has a pretty similar analogue in the United Kingdom. And the key here is the elderly voters want two incompatible things on both sides of the Atlantic.

Bill Whalen: Right.

Niall Ferguson: They want low inflation, they dislike inflation.

And the return of inflation on both sides of the Atlantic in 2022 made them mad at incumbents. But they also don't like immigration, and this is the other issue that gets ranked highly by all the voters. Now, this is a problem because one of the ways in which inflation has been held down in the years since the pandemic has been immigration.

If you didn't have the large scale immigration, the labor market would have been even tighter and the pressure on wages and therefore on prices would have been higher. And if I look at what befell Rishi Sunak, it's pretty clear that older voters punish the conservatives by voting for whoever candidate would win in their constituency over the conservative.

For those issues, plus, of course, the National Health Service, which is the perennial preoccupation of older people in Britain, its decline in terms of the length of waiting times has been another key issue. In the US, older voters have similar priorities. They don't like inflation, they're wary of large-scale immigration, especially the illegal variety.

And of course, you cant go near health care because that's the third rail. So I think the politics of most advanced democracies is quite similar wherever yu go. The incumbent has somehow to satisfy a constituency that's impossible to satisfy. Because if you don't have immigration, you end up with higher inflation, to put it really simply.

I'm sure if John Cochrane were here, he'd jump in and qualify my economics, but let's put it in those rough-and-ready terms. And you can't really address the fiscal problem which both the UK and the US have if you don't do something about the spiraling costs of your welfare system.

And those are driven mainly by the aging of the population and the costs of looking after people in their later years. So who can really win under these circumstances? Maybe the reality is that just all incumbents are doomed to lose in relatively elderly societies.

Bill Whalen: Niall, when you go to Texas and visit your wonderful endeavor at the University of Austin, do you ever take time to stop by and visit with Karl Rove?

I mention Mr. Rove because Mr. Rove is a William McKinley super fan. He's written a book about McKinley, he's fascinated with McKinley, and you wanna talk about McKinley too. Now, I'm curious about McKinley's tie to Trump in this regard, going back to historical parallels, Niall, or elect thereof.

William McKinley was a politician. He was a member of the House of governor before becoming elected president, whereas Donald Trump was an outsider, not a politician. McKinley famously ran the front porch campaign in 1896, where he just basically kicked back and let people come to him. That is the antithesis of Magnarelli's, Niall.

What else, William McKinley sorely was lacking in charisma, whereas Donald Trump, like him or not, you have to admit the man has charisma. But yet you suggest there is a tie between Donald Trump and William McKinley, and it comes down to one word, tariffs.

Niall Ferguson: Well, I don't suggest it, Donald Trump suggests it.

And Karl Rove, I'm sure, must have perked up his ears when he heard Donald Trump talk about McKinley in that interview that was published just after the assassination attempt by Bloomberg Businessweek. It's a fascinating interview in that we get into the inner workings of Trump's philosophy, and he has one.

And this is very clearly spelt out in the interview, in which he says tariffs are really important as a source of revenue and as a source of leverage against foreign competition. And I'm like McKinley, except that McKinley, of course, was killed by an assassin and Donald Trump survived, but in other respects, we're alike because McKinley was a tariff man.

And Trump alludes in that interview to the 1890 tariff and reminds us that the Republican tradition in the 19th century was protectionist. And tariffs were central to Republican politics right up to the 1930s, when the defeat inflicted on Herbert Hoover. And then the period in isolation or opposition during the 30s and 40s forced Republicans to rethink their views on trade and embrace free trade.

And that period of free trade from the late forties right through, really, until the advent of Donald Trump, is still not the representative sample of republican political history. So in a fascinating way, and I've made this point before, Donald Trump represents a return to 19th century politics. That style he has, the rally, the outdoor rallies, the somewhat blowhard rhetoric, the long, rambling speeches.

Trust me, speeches in the 19th century were even longer than 90 minutes. I think this was a really important indication of what Donald Trump represents. And it's important because so many people misunderstand him by using, I think, bad analogies with the Europe of the 1930s. I still feel angry every time I think about the new Republic representing Trump as Hitler on its cover just a few weeks ago.

That kind of thing has unquestionably raised the temperature and incentivized political violence in a way that's irresponsible, but it's also historically stupid. Trump's not a fascist, he's not a national socialist, he's a populist, and he's a protectionist, he's a nativist. All of Trumpism is kinda 19th century American politics.

And it was great to see Trump confirm that in the interview that he gave.

Bill Whalen: Now, Niall, Trump is not the only one playing around with tariffs. On May 14th, the Biden administration announces tariff increases on a range of imports from China, Niall. This includes steel and aluminum, semiconductors, electric vehicles, and so forth.

It's only about 4% of all chinese imports. Niall, am I so cynical as to think this is just a way to get 15 electoral votes in Michigan, or does this current administration see the value of tariffs?

Niall Ferguson: One of the most interesting things over the last three and a half years has been that the Biden administration has never really challenged what Trump did.

It's accepted the return to protectionism, the return to tariffs, and in some ways, if you look at other things, for example, sanctions, there is now a bipartisan consensus in the United States against free trade and in favor of what might be called economic warfare. Trump's reasoning for the tariffs, if you go back to that interview, had to do with currency weakness.

He argued that the Japanese and Chinese and other Asian economies had weakened their currencies to give them a competitive advantage over the United States, and that tariffs were a lever, implicitly, to force them to revalue their currencies. That's a playbook out of the 1970s and 1980s, actually. It's the kind of thing that the Nixon administration talked about and the Reagan administration talked about, when they were dealing with Japanese competition.

Quietly, without making any great song and dance about it, The Biden administration decided to stick with that after 2020, and, in fact, to stick with most of Trump's China policy. Where they changed direction was in Middle eastern policy, and that was the big discontinuity. But apart from carrying on with tariffs, there were two things they did differently.

They did not apply as much pressure to us allies as Trump had. Trump is an equal opportunity tariff imposer, he doesn't mind putting tariffs on US allies. The other difference was that they stepped up the tech war. And if you think about economic measures, the toughest economic measures imposed on China, or indeed any US competitor in the last 25 years, were imposed by the Biden administration in October 2022, when they restricted China's access to the most sophisticated semiconductors.

That went much further than anything Donald Trump did. So there's a really important continuity there that tells you Donald Trump won that argument, and he basically won an argument against free trade, and he won it so completely that the other party didn't really fight back.

Bill Whalen: I'm gonna elevate you to moderator, not moderator of GoodFellows, but something far more interesting, which would be moderator of a presidential debate between Trump and Harris.

And, Niall, what is the tariff question you would like to pose to the two of them?

Niall Ferguson: Well, I would certainly begin by asking President Trump to set out his theory of tariffs, because most economists, including our own beloved John Cochrane, think of them as essentially attacks on American consumers, whereas Trump thinks of them in a different way, that China pays the tariff.

And I would like to get him to address the question, would this not be inflationary? Would you not, in fact, be letting down the people that you've got votes from or seeking votes from precisely on the inflation issue? That would be my question to Donald Trump. My question to Kamala Harris would be, can you explain to me why the Democratic Party has not reduced the tariffs?

And if not, does that mean it accepts the logic that Donald Trump has just presented?

Bill Whalen: Well put. Niall, We have but about ten minutes left on the show. I'd like to ask you a question about what you're reading these days. Anytime I run into someone who wants to ask me what Niall Ferguson and John Cochrane, HR McMaster are up to, invariably, they wanna know what book you're reading, and you always give wonderful, eclectic answers, I remember.

Let's see, I remember you were. Let's see, you had a very offbeat one. Was it Walter Scott?

Niall Ferguson: I went from Walter Scott Mania in the early GoodFellows year in 2020. I was reading the complete works of Walter Scott, which, in a way, had been kept from me when I was a young man because people said Scott was boring.

I completed those long ago, it was the way I got through the pandemic. I'm currently reading Kurt Vonnegut, and Kurt Vonnegut's a wonderful writer. The one I'm reading currently is Cat`s Cradle.

Bill Whalen: 14 novels, three short story collections, five plays, five books of essays.

Niall Ferguson: And it's all brilliant.

So there's so much Vonnegut, and that's one of the ones that I would urge listeners to pick up. The other book I'm reading at the moment, I tend to read simultaneously, a couple of books, is Trollope's Lady Anna, which is a wonderful but rather neglected work about English society and the clashes between the classes.

Once upon a time, everything was about class. And you go right back to that world in Lady Anna, where there's a kind of loathsome, degenerate aristocrat who entirely lets down his wife by denying the legality of their marriage, leaving their daughter in limbo. But she's helped out by an artisan who's motivated partly by political radicalism.

It's all there, all of English society is there. So those are my two fictional reads. And I've just embarked only this morning on the first volume of Iain Banks`s science fiction series the Culture. Which was recommended to me by a friend who knew of my passion for science fiction reading, is, of course, to come back to where our conversation began.

Bill, the antidote to screen addiction, and the single most important thing that I've done as a father has been to try to instill a love of books in all my children by reading to them, by making books. The thing you do at bedtime without fail. I do adore communicating my love of literature to my children.

I'll always remember that moment of bliss when I read the Hobbit to a child for the first time. And that most wonderful of children's books has enthralled them all. So last, you know, summer tip for mothers and fathers, you know, get hold of a really nice edition of the Hobbit and read it aloud in a room with no technology besides a bedside lamp.

That's the way to cure, at least mitigate the addiction that your children probably suffer from.

Bill Whalen: We joke about the nickname the international man of history. Which, of course, is a wonderful play on Austin powers. Just wonderful movies but you are international. Unlike the early days of GoodFellows when we had you under lock and key, you're in your cabin in Montana.

Niall Ferguson: I'm gonna have to interrupt my contribution to shoot a woodpecker. Yeah, a woodpecker. Because right now, if you listen, you can hear it drilling a hole in the wall of my house.

Bill Whalen: Couldn't go anywhere, this is how GoodFellows started but you do travel now. When do you read, Niall?

When do you find the time to open up a book and read? Does this pass the time on airlines? Or do you just make a time every day just for half an hour an hour to read? How do you get through books?

Niall Ferguson: Always at bedtime, I read for pleasure in bed.

It's the way in which I get my mind out of the quotidian challenges of writing my own book or appearing on GoodFellows. You've got to get out of your world in order to sleep well. And beautiful thing about a book at bedtime is that it's like a portal into another world.

So I can't sleep well if I don't read for a bit. Now, sometimes if I'm very tired, the reading doesn't take very long. And I have this awful feeling that my eyes are. Closing on the third page, it helps one sleep. I think that's part of what makes me do it.

But I sometimes can just press on through fatigue if the book is gripping enough. So books by the bedside are vital part of my lifestyle. On planes, I work, in taxis, I work. I try to keep writing during the day, wherever I am. But the moment when I get into bed and I pick up my book now I have to use these.

It's really sad for the first time in my life I need glasses to read, so this is the new me. But that's been central to my life from as far back as I can remember. And it's the thing that you've got to get children to do. You've got to make them addicted to books if they're to be fully rounded as human beings.

The way I like to put it is that actually life is a simulation. It's literature that's the reality. And all of one's experiences, the good and the bad, the tragic and the ecstatic are more meaningful if there is a range of literary references that those experiences trigger. I pity people who aren't well read because they go through life without those illusions.

But the well read person is constantly reminded of Proust, of Scott, of Niall Stephenson, of William Shakespeare, and so life becomes really a wander through a library.

Bill Whalen: Niall, my doctor, my GP would take issue with your lifestyle. He has told me repeatedly, bedtime is for two things, sleep and making babies.

Niall Ferguson: I'm not going to be drawn into any discussion of that sort because it's become a political issue in the United States and we're not a political show. GoodFellow, singular, is a show for people who read in bed. Whatever they do afterwards is their own business.

Bill Whalen: Yes, well put.

Final question, Niall, have you read Slaughterhouse Five?

Niall Ferguson: I have, it's the first of Vonnegut's books that I read and it's a book I've quoted from. In fact, I think I quoted from it in my book on World War II, War of the World. It's probably his most brilliant, unforgettable book with its account of the bombing of Dresden.

But the passage that sticks with me is a passage that imagines the bombing happening in reverse. This is an astonishing bit of literary genius. And the thing that first convinced me that Vonnegut was in the top class of writers.

Bill Whalen: There is a phrase he uses over 100 times in the novel.

Niall, do you know what the phrase is?

Niall Ferguson: So it goes.

Bill Whalen: So it goes, well done. So as a historian, Niall, and you're looking at 2024 in a rather tumultuous year, we have wars in Ukraine, war in the Middle east. We have Donald Trump nearly being assassinated.

We have Joe Biden dropping out of the race. We have tumultuous elections of the likes of England and France. As a historian, Niall, do you look at this and say, wow, or do you look at all this and just say, so it goes?

Niall Ferguson: I have a friend who uses that phrase, so it goes, a lot.

And I think of her when I hear those words. No, I think for an historian, each year represents a challenge. It's the question, what is this like? We began by asking if it was like 1968, and then we noticed that democrats would like it to be 2008. But I keep wondering if maybe it'll turn out to be 1980 after all.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan's campaign was peace through strength. And if you're paying attention, Donald Trump and his foreign policy folks like Pompeo, Robert Obrien and others have started using that phrase. I'm asking myself, maybe, is it 1980 in Pennsylvania, in Wisconsin, in those swing counties? Is the election about the perception of American weakness as well as dissatisfaction with an economy that produced an inflation bout?

If thats right, then thats the right analogy. And Trump is gonna win against a candidate who is an incumbent, even if as vice president and who represents the left of the Democratic Party much more than Jimmy Carter did. So that's how I think about these problems, what's it like?

Which year is this most closely resembling? I hope it's not 1968. I hope we don't have any more political violence, that would, I think, be a disaster. And I do feel as if, as I said on an earlier show with our colleagues, the whole country dodged a bullet when that bullet missed Donald Trump's head and hit his ear.

We, I hope, will get through this election with no more of that. And if I think we can do that, we'll find out if it's 2008 or 1980. I incline towards 1980. And now I'm on the record and you can tell me I'm wrong in our first post election show in November.

Bill Whalen: We'll see. We'll certainly be talking about this between now and November, Niall, when GoodFellows comes back for a full season in September. We're closing in on 150 episodes, can you believe that?

Niall Ferguson: Yeah, that's, in cricketing terms, a pretty good innings. The question is, should we declare, as some cricketers do?

It's not usual in American sports to stop scoring when you are doing well, but in cricket, you can declare. So we, as good fellas must decide if in cricketing terms, we're going to declare or just keep on going until somebody else calls time.

Bill Whalen: Okay, Niall, we'll leave it there.

Safe travels, my friend. Please pass along our best to Ian and your wonderful kids and thanks for all you do for the Hoover Institution. We didn't talk about your work with the history working group and the history lab and so forth. Maybe in another show we'll get into that.

But California's loss has been Hoover's gain in having you at the institution, my friend.

Niall Ferguson: Thank you very much indeed, Bill. It's been a pleasure to have this conversation and I hope we do another, good fellow. Goodfellows, actually, since you're a fellow, too, soon.

Bill Whalen: Well done, Niall.

And that's it for this mini-episode of GoodFellows. We hope you enjoyed the show and as I mentioned, we will be back in September with a full slate of GoodFellows. Niall, John and HR are back in their full glory, until then, I want you all to take care. Thanks for watching.

If you have questions for the GoodFellows, send them in to us. So you go to Hoover.org/AskGoodFellows, Niall Ferguson, where can you not find him? You can find them at the New York Post indication, the Daily Mail, the Free Press, am I leaving anything out, Niall?

Niall Ferguson: I think that's about it for now.

Bill Whalen: Okay, the international man of history, truly indeed. On behalf of the Hoover Institution, my colleague, Niall Ferguson, our absent GoodFellows, John Cochrane and HR McMaster, all the wonderful people behind the scenes who make this show possible, we appreciate your participation. Thanks for watching, we'll see you soon.

Till then, take care.

Presenter: If you enjoyed this show and are interested in watching more content featuring HR McMaster, watch Battlegrounds, also available @hoover.org.