The Mailbag Show: The GoodFellows Answer Your Questions

>> Perry Como: Letters, we get letters.

>> Perry Como: We get stacks and stacks of letters.

>> Bill Whalen: It's Tuesday, December 3rd, 2024. And welcome back to GoodFellows, a Hoover Institution broadcast examining social, economic, political and geopolitical concerns. I'm Bill Whalen, I'm a Hoover Distinguished Policy Fellow, and I'll be your moderator for the course of the next hour or so.

Joining in a conversation with the stars of our show, who we jokingly refer to as the GoodFellows. And who are the Goodfellows? That would be the eminent historian Sir Niall Ferguson. The grumpy economist John Cochrane and that's the name of his blog, not an editorial comment. And former presidential national security adviser, Lt Gen. H.R. McMaster.

Niall, John and H.R are Hoover Senior Fellows. Gentlemen, very simple show for you today. We asked our loyal viewers to send in questions and boy, did they deliver. And I'd like to thank all of you who bothered to write to us. Just a reminder that the show is both international in its scope and you are a very smart audience.

So again, thank you for sending in your questions. If we don't get your question today, my apologies simply just too many questions, too little time. So on with the show and let's begin with a question from Mark in Northbrook, Illinois, who writes, quote, I am curious about what's happening in Africa.

It seems that the whole continent is being quietly overtaken by China and Russia. Africa presents a major source of potential instability because of mass migration to Europe and Islamist threats. Yet there has been very little public discussion about its role in geopolitics now and in the near future.

I would add that as we were recording, President Biden is in Angola, the first president to visit Sub-Saharan Africa in almost a decade. Niall, is it possible that a continent of about 1.4 billion people can go overlooked?

>> Niall Ferguson: Well, it's been largely overlooked since the presidency of George W Bush.

And in that period, China's involvement has only grown. Involvement in the form of direct investment as well as the deployment of significant amounts of Chinese labor, as the Chinese often bring in their own people when they're building infrastructure. I went to Zambia 10 years ago now more than 10, to make a film about this, showing that China was engaged in classic empire building in Africa.

Spent some time talking to Chinese people there as well as to Africans employed in concerns in which the Chinese had invested. And I came away thinking, boy, there are few cultural divides in the world bigger than the cultural divide between Africans and the Chinese. Talk about non meeting of minds.

I think it will be seen as a great sin of omission that American policymakers essentially stop bothering with Africa in the period after 2008. And the question Mark asked goes right to the heart of the matter. Not only have the Chinese been increasing their influence there and acquiring all kinds of assets, resources as well as harbor infrastructure.

At the same time, the Russians have been playing a very malign role. The Wagner group, which you'll remember from the Prigozhin mutiny fiasco of last year, has become a major player in multiple African states. It is not, of course, a source of stability, but rather the opposite. The number of coups in African countries has gone up in the last four years.

And we will, I think, reap a whirlwind because as Mark says, almost all the population growth in the rest of this century will come in Africa, nearly all of it. Because it's only in Africa that fertility rates are above replacement. And if climate change really is going to have impact, and we can debate that and have debated it.

It's clear that the worst impacts will in fact be in sub Saharan Africa, because it's there, that agricultural systems are most fragile, most susceptible to changes in weather. So for all these reasons, we have a growing problem. The burden will be borne by Europe more than North America, because the direction of travel for Africans trying to get out of failing states is northwards.

But I don't think that's something that we should turn away from because it has implications that extend across the Atlantic too.

>> John H Cochrane: Well, I'll jump in as the economist. I mean, the Africans certainly don't think Africa's overlooked cuz they're not overlooking it, they live there. And there's a tendency to be focused on us either the, I can't say burden anymore.

But our worry for our little geopolitical games or our worries about the climate or our worries about helping the poor little people who live there. Africa is a massively underdeveloped place. I mean, you look at GDP per capitas in the 1,000, 2,000 throughout the place versus 60,000 in the US and just a gulf.

There are some countries that are doing well that are taking on sort of the basics of what it does to start growing. There are countries that are doing badly. There are countries that are in the meaty sliding to badly, like South Africa, for example, and some that are just basket cases.

The issue for Africa is developed join the modern world, which is we all know what it takes for free markets, rule of law, basic competence in government. But we talk about these, we talk about climate in Africa when you're at $2,000 per capita and you wanna get to 60,000.

A couple percent here or there about climate is just irrelevant to what you wanna do. And for us to be harping on the climate is just so first world problems compared to what they have going.

>> Bill Whalen: Agriculture, yeah, their agriculture is sensitive, why? Cuz they're doing it by hand.

The solution to agriculture that's sensitive to climate change is not for us to buy electric vehicles. It's for them to buy tractors, and genetically modified crops and join the modern world. So that really is the big story of Africa. And the neglect is kind of in the focus on all this other stuff rather than the basics of what really matters to them, which is joining the economic growth miracle that has made us all so wealthy.

And we should stop, number one, buy what they have to sell. Sending them money, sending them solar panels, money, most of which gets stolen. That's just buy what they have to sell, show them good institutions and get out the way. It's a huge problem. It just kind of sits there so it doesn't get in the news.

>> H.R. McMaster: Yeah, I just think that you've got to look at Africa as a place that has a lot of problems associated with everything we've mentioned here. Poor governance, weak governance, the degree to which China and Russia have been able to exploit that weak governance, partnering with those who are willing to commit coups, for example, across the Maghreb and then the Vardar group using this as a sort of a profit opportunity in terms of extraction.

The degree to which the Chinese have come in there using this kind of three Cs of co-option, coercion, and concealment. But from an African perspective, as John's saying, they need infrastructure, they need investment. So, we complain about the Chinese and what they're doing is a new form of colonialism because the Chinese are actually good at intimidating people.

A lot of Africans don't wanna say that. I mean, they believe it, but don't wanna say it. But also they're like, hey, what's the alternative? Do you guys have an alternative for us? So I think what's really gonna be really important, I think for the Trump administration, I hope will resurrect a program that we tried to initiate called Prosper Africa, in which we wanted to incentivize, get off like the old aid model, right?

And incentivize investments that actually get the people their return on investments. Niall said, hey, the Chinese come in, with a Chinese bank official with a few duffel bags full of cash and to pay some people off. Get these Chinese loans then hire Chinese companies and Chinese workers who send their salaries back to China, that's not helping anybody.

And then of course, you have the kind of the extractive model associated with critical supply chains to fuel China's overcapacity in some key areas. Look at what cobalt mining has done in Congo, for example. I was just with a fantastic movie producer named Joe Munga who was visiting here yesterday and we filmed an episode of Battlegrounds.

And what his films have done is kinda captured the experience of the Congolese people. And part of that story is the degree to which it's an extremely rich country, but it's a country that is rife with violence, corruption, organized crime and these external actors who are not helping the situation.

So anyway, tremendous promise as John I think would emphasize, what is needed is free market solutions to a huge demand for infrastructure and for energy. And so if you come in and say, hey, we need all solar panels, wind turbines, electric cars, they're are just looking at you like, what are you talking about?

So what we need is a free market solution that will meet the vastly increasing energy demand and also reduce man made carbon emissions. But do it because it's an attractive economic model. The African countries do not have the resources and the American taxpayers aren't gonna pay for it for us to underwrite inefficient energy sources in Africa.

>> John H Cochrane: Although solar panels, Africa is one place where solar panels do make sense.

>> H.R. McMaster: Yeah.

>> John H Cochrane: If you're in an African village and there's no grid and there's no nothing, actually it's pretty good way to start getting on the electricity. But it just too close this one. Larry Summers tells a great story of talking to an African official who says, when you guys come here, you give us a lecture.

When the Chinese come here, they give us an airport. How about an airport, guys?

>> H.R. McMaster: I wrote about this in At War With Ourselves at the roundtable with African leaders, it's very much along those lines. And they're begging, it's like, hey, we all speak English, we don't speak Chinese.

Where are you guys? So I think a lot of it is just engagement, but really a lot of private sector engagement is what's necessary.

>> Niall Ferguson: Having been to Africa multiple times, having spent part of my childhood there. Married to an African, I think a lot about this stuff.

While I agree with everything that John and HR have said, it's extremely difficult to get the Western private sector to commit itself on a large scale to countries that have abysmally failing governance. And that problem exists in the most important African economies. It exists in South Africa and it exists in Nigeria, and these countries are barely investable because their governance is so defective.

What South Africa needs is the equivalent of Javier Milei.

>> Niall Ferguson: It needs the kinda leadership that is gonna reform an economy that cannot generate jobs for its young people, that is afflicted by corruption and inefficiency. That struggles even to provide electricity, and that's the most developed country in Sub Saharan Africa. 

So we shouldn't make it sound too easy. It's not just about letting market forces work, because market forces won't dare to go where governance is chronically defective. I can still remember the great lectures that we were given by excellent specialists in African economics about the great potential of Ethiopia.

Lectures that turned to dust when the country was afflicted by, you guessed it, another civil war. I spoke recently to an Ethiopian minister who was optimistic that the security situation had improved and told me an incredibly interesting story about the advances of Fintech. And this is the one optimistic note on which I'll end.

Technology does create some opportunities for Africa to leapfrog into the 21st century, particularly in finance and payments, where as long as there are phones, there can be basic banking and even more sophisticated forms of financial exchange. So it's not all bleak, but I think anywhere where the government in a typical African state has power, you will get dysfunction that the Chinese are prepared to look away from but our governments and our firms just can't ignore.

>> Bill Whalen: A question from Edward in Brigantine, New Jersey, who writes, what does Putin's use of thousands of North Korean troops tell us about the capacity of Russia in economic, military, and sociopolitical terms, to sustain Russia's war effort and the likelihood of a negotiated settlement that does not deliver Putin a victory?

HR you wanna take that?

>> H.R. McMaster: Okay, well, of course, the conventional wisdom these days is that Ukraine is on the ropes, and there's a lot of truth in that. I mean, they've got manpower issues, they have shortages that are critical. But I'll tell you, when I look at the Russian offensive and the degree to which Russia is really trying, I think, to gain as much of an advantage as it can prior to Donald Trump coming into office.

I don't think that their losses are sustainable, and they're taking 1,100 casualties a day. And so maybe they'll break through at some points on the front, but will they be able to sustain that offensive? Or will this be like the Nivelle offensive in 1917 or the Ludendorff offensive, which were successful in World War I in breaking through the lines, but they couldn't sustain that effort.

I mean, look at the scale on the map. So I think the time is now, really, to strengthen Ukraine as much as possible. Because if there is gonna be any kind of movement toward some kind of enduring peace, it's gonna have to be through a position of strength and convincing Vladimir Putin has been defeated.

I would also argue that now is the time to really put the screws to Russia. I'll tell you, Russia has big issues, and I'll defer to John and Niall on the economic side, but what I'm hearing is they can always sell about half of the bonds that they were trying to sell to raise.

They're sitting on a lot of cash they can't use because it's not convertible. There are huge frailties in their economy because they're spending the equivalent, almost like 38% or something of GDP equivalent on defense. They have labor shortages. There are all sorts of problems with the Russians right now.

How about what's happening to them in Syria, okay? I mean, they are bombing their equipment at the Khmeimim Air Base, and Russians are fleeing Damascus. All right, so Putin tries to look strong, but I'll tell you, I think he is the perfect combination of a bully and a coward.

And now it's time to put the screws to the Russians from an economic perspective as well as through support for Ukraine. And then maybe also create problems for them elsewhere from an economic perspective and using some other means. So I'm hoping that that's the attitude that the Trump administration will bring into this.

And to recognize, hey, if you want a favorable settlement in Ukraine, and to prevent the war there from emboldening this axis of aggressors further through the perception of some kind of victory. It's time to pull out the stops and to try to convince Putin that Putin's been defeated.

>> John H Cochrane: I'll agree, I do see signs that Russia's economy is in real trouble. Of course, World War I analogies, economies can get really, really bad before they fall apart. Russia 1917 I think got really, really bad before it fell apart, and Germany took a long time before it fell apart, but you never know where you are on that element.

Yes, I was overstaying my bounds previously and saying we've never had such an overwhelming military advantage as we, the west versus Russia has, if we choose to use it. And the same is true economically, if we chose to support Ukraine, we could support Ukraine to the Hilti. I mean, the economic strength of the United States and just Europe alone, if we wanna support Ukraine to Russia's economic strength, is just off the charts.

So, it's a question of economic will. Yes, secondary sanctions get serious about not letting them sell oil, except maybe to China, where we don't wanna get a war in there. We make stuff hard on the economic end as well as the military end, and I think Trump has got to figure that out, if you want a negotiation, you negotiate from a position of strength.

I hope that the inevitability of it finally shows up, but we'll see, Niall.

>> H.R. McMaster: Just one quick thing too, Niall, if you comment on this, I see the North Koreans coming in and now a Yemeni battalion, right? Going into Ukraine as also a sign of strain on Russia.

>> Niall Ferguson: Yes, all this illustrates, doesn't it, how anemic and insufficient the Biden-Harris administration's support for Ukraine has been at every stage over close to three years. They provided just enough weaponry for Ukraine not to lose, never enough for Ukraine to win. When I talk to my Ukrainian friends, the frustration that I hear from their side is really very striking.

The former Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba, gave a great interview to the Financial Times over the weekend, which I highly recommend everybody read. Acknowledging what he has long privately thought that the Biden-Harris strategy was a disaster for Ukraine. Not only because of the way that they restrained Ukraine from using weapons that were provided from the west, the Storm Shadow missiles, for example.

But because they did that out of fear of quote, unquote, escalation, which signified their readiness to be intimidated by Vladimir Putin's threats to use nuclear weapons. Threats which I think became a bluff the minute the Chinese said that no nukes could be used. The Chinese, after all, are key here without Chinese economic support, which increasingly includes the provision of military hardware, this would not have been a sustainable war for Putin.

The fact that the Russians have been taking such heavy casualties in their current wave of offensives. Tells you that his desperation to try to get whatever he can before Donald Trump is sworn into the White House. It is widely misunderstood in the world that Biden has been good for Ukraine and Trump would be bad.

The opposite is true, it was Biden who failed to deter Putin in 2021. And the reason the Russians are throwing bodies at the front line right now is they know that from January 20th they will be under real pressure to negotiate and enter this war, and it's not gonna be on their terms.

I think that's pretty obvious from things that have been said. I noticed the appointment of General Kellogg to a role is an important sign that the Trump administration is not about to hand Ukraine on a plate to Putin. But yeah, I think that's a great question to ask, it should make us reflect on how badly this has been managed.

And how many lives have been lost and how much destruction has been wreaked on Ukraine because of a US Administration's failure to understand the basics of deterrence.

>> Bill Whalen: Let's turn our attention to East Asia a question from Lyman in Taipei, Taiwan, and Sir Niall, I want you to answer this.

He writes, in 2024, the Taiwan real estate market is up 10%, the Taiwan stock market is up over 20% flights from Taiwan to mainland China are packed. China is Taiwan's largest trade partner, the DDP candidate was elected president, there were war games on a bimonthly basis by the chines in the area surrounding Taiwan.

But the Taiwanese people seem to yawn and keep going on about their business. Is this whole concern about Taiwan a giant nothing burger, do analysts in the US And Europe know China better somehow than the Taiwanese? Someone seems to be wrong in their analysis, who is it, Sir Niall?

>> Niall Ferguson: Well, it's not the first time in history that there has been a disconnect between popular and market perceptions and strategic realities. I wrote a paper many years ago now about the approach of war in 1914, noting that it was entirely missed by general public and by investors in all the major stock markets.

Who only really noticed that something was up when the war had more or less begun. So let's not infer from popular insouciance in Taiwan that everything is fine, because it's not. And here Matt Pottinger and others who've written on the subject are onto an extremely important point, I'm sure HR will agree with me on this, and maybe John, too.

Xi Jinping said all along that the reason that he wanted an extension of his term in office beyond the standard two terms was that he had to bring Taiwan under Beijing's control. That was supposed to be the capstone achievement, I don't think he's changed his mind about that.

Judging by the way the Chinese army and navy regularly practice action against Taiwan, including a blockade. Any kind of disruption of passenger and trade traffic in and out of Taiwan would be a huge and disruptive move by China. I don't think they're rehearsing it just for fun, I also think that they have a dangerous window of opportunity right now.

Because we, the United States, have failed to maintain a level of military capability in the region that would deter China. I talked earlier about the failures of deterrence with respect to Russia and Ukraine, I could say the same about the Middle east with respect to Iran, but it also applies to the threat posed by China to Taiwan.

Anybody who pays close attention to war games, insofar as their public, knows just how dangerous a Taiwan crisis would be. I've been talking for years about the fact that it would be like the Cuban Missile Crisis in the first Cold War, only with the roles reversed. Cuz we, the United States, would have to take the kind of naval action that Nikita Khrushchev had to take when the US imposed a quarantine on Cuba.

So while life goes on in Taiwan in a cheerful way, it was pretty cheerful in Europe in the summer of 1914, too. That should not lead those of us who think about these strategic questions to be complacent, on the contrary, we're in a very dangerous moment. Bill Burns said, I think, on two separate occasions last year, and he's the Director of Central Intelligence, so he should know that Xi Jinping has told the Chinese military to be ready for war in 2027.

This is a big issue for the incoming Trump administration, have they got it in them to re-establish deterrence before Xi Jinping is tempted to take a huge gamble that would have the potential to start World War III?

>> H.R. McMaster: Yeah, I would just say that it is an extraordinarily dangerous period, I believe, because tensions are increasing not only with China over Taiwan and more broadly across the Indo-Pacific region.

China's laying claim to the South China Sea or the direct threats against Japan which have been recent, but also because tensions are increasing with this access of aggressors more broadly. And this is what I think is really, really important, is to understand better the connections between these various conflicts in Ukraine, across the Middle East and in the Indo-Pacific.

It should be quite obvious to us now, right, as North Korean and Yemeni troops are fighting in Ukraine. But there are all sorts of other interconnected aspects of these conflicts and increasingly this competition is taking on an economic dimension as well. I believe we have just entered into an economic war, and has happened because we recognize the degree to which these axes of aggressors are relying on one another, circumventing sanctions and so forth.

But China's ability in particular to gain control of critical supply chains that it could use for coercive power. You see that with just the recent announcement of China restricting exports of gallium and germanium and antinomian, super hard metals. That's economic warfare that we're in the middle of right now.

And it was in reaction in part to some of our export restrictions. And I think what's really important in terms of the, the viewer's question, hey, is this really something to be concerned about is to look at the very concrete preparations that China's been taking. The massive buildup of their military, including an invasion force oriented to Taiwan, but especially the range of capabilities to keep the United States at bay, right?

Long range weapon systems, counter satellite, tier to layer air defense, electromagnetic warfare, swarm drone capabilities, but also the strategic capabilities they've been developing. Look at the whole vault range of cyberattacks against our infrastructure. What is that for? What are those latent capabilities in our communications infrastructure? It's to take us down if they want to.

And they're building up their strategic nuclear forces by 400%. Hey, I think it's time to be alarmed and as Niall is suggesting, ask why we have been unable to deter conflict in Ukraine, for example. And what more we must do now with a great deal of urgency, I believe, to deter these conflicts that have already cascaded from Europe and the Middle East from cascading further and including the looming crises in the Indo-Pacific.

>> John H Cochrane: Well, so let me take economics. The original question which I thought was great is why is everyone ignoring this in Taiwan? And as Niall took a historical, military, historical analogy, I'll use a financial analogy. Every financial crisis, people are in there, right up till the end. And you ask, there's a bubble on, but I think it's gonna go up a little more before it finally goes boom.

And then after the fact but we've been warning about sovereign debt. Niall and I, sovereign debt's a problem. Sovereign debt's a problem. We're like the guys with the sign saying the world's about to end and the bond traders going, yeah, yeah, yeah, and they make a ton of money.

If we'd been short all this time, we'd be poor. Eventually it's gotta blow up, and that's the way of the world. And I think also because there are many ways this could play out, that while disastrous for Taiwan's political freedom, could be not so bad for many businesses.

A blockade that ends up integrating Taiwan into China without destroying a lot of stuff, they'll lose their freedom, but they'll make a lot of money. And it's not clear exactly how much that's gonna cost them. But I really wanna challenge, this is the central thing we've been discussing on GoodFellas for over a year.

Are we with China fighting an economic war, or are we using economics to deter a war? Do we want to do stuff that hurts us but hurts them more, or do we want to show them the advantages of staying integrated with us and how much it will cost them if they go to full on economic or in military war?

And I worry that we're sliding into fighting a war which can be damaging them, but really lowers the deterrent value to them of economic ties against military aggression.

>> H.R. McMaster: Yeah, I think, John, I think that's the key question and-

>> John H Cochrane: But we're gonna keep at it too.

>> H.R. McMaster: Yeah, I mean, I keep thinking about the three criteria for using tools of economic statecraft.

One would be to impede China's ability to gain a differential advantage over us militarily. And this would involve a whole range of actions, including export controls, but just stopping kind of the transfer of critical technologies and intellectual property by combating cyber espionage, force transfer of that technology associated with kind of the joint venture approach that China takes.

The second key area would be to don't help them perfect or technologically enabled Orwellian police state with investments and so forth. And companies like Hikvision or Sense Time, and then finally don't compromise the long term viability of our own economy, right? And economic strength in exchange for short term profits, which we've done in many, many cases with false promises of access to the Chinese market or cheap manufacturing there and so forth.

And then US companies get run out of business. I mean, how many times does that have to happen,. So I think what's critical is, Xi Jinping is trying to decouple on his own terms. The generation of this kind of dual circulation economy. An effort to get an iron grip on critical supply chains so he could use them for course of purposes.

We have to combat that, I believe. And this is why I'm really grateful for your help on this economic statecraft project we're in the middle of, to keep us honest on this thing and to make the counter-arguments. Because what we're essentially trying to do, and I'm using economist terms, so please correct me, is to understand what the public good is associated from a security perspective, right?

Our own economic viability by applying these tools of economic statecraft. Not to do it capriciously, but to understand that the market is not gonna take care of us when we're dealing with a mercantilist status economic model that's been weaponized against us.

>> John H Cochrane: Well, let me just do three concrete ones before we move on and before this turns into the John and HR.

>> H.R. McMaster: We haven't done this for a while. This is good, this is good.

>> John H Cochrane: The exports, they put in some export controls on raw materials. My God, we're export controlling on high-tech. They're export controlling on raw materials. We got all the raw materials in the world. Just reform the Environmental Quality Act so we can actually dig them out of the damn ground.

We were just talking about Africa, there are raw materials all over the place in Africa. It is very, very weak of them to try to control us with raw material export. They're just exploiting our own unwillingness to offer permits. Technology, actually, wouldn't you rather that they were dependent on us for high technology, and we were the ones putting little switches in where we could make the whole thing blow up if we want to?

Decoupling has its disadvantages, and similarly trade. You keep using this word, overcapacity, which is meaningless in economics. But they are very dependent on trade. So if we cut off trade, we lose that one big bargaining chip that, hey, you guys, you invade Taiwan, you're gonna be really in trouble because trade gets cut off.

You cut it off ahead of time, and you've lost that whole bargaining chip. So those are three practical ones, and we'll keep on this big question. Is it economic warfare now or deterrence? Do we want to use economics to deter them from military warfare?

>> Bill Whalen: Let us shift from geopolitics to economics.

John, two questions roll into. One, we have a question from Genine in Melbourne, Australia, who asks, how successful has Javier Milei been in Argentina and what could the Trump administration thinking doge learn from this? And then Tim Latvia writes, John is an economist, how do you answer petitions from those on the left for the US to follow the Nordic model of social democracies?

What do they get wrong and what do they get right?

>> John H Cochrane: Boy, let's be short on this one, Milei. There's a political question, how strong is he? How is he able to get this going through Argentina? How's he gonna do in the elections to get congressional support and so forth.

But inflation is down to 2% a month. The guy is throwing out regulation after regulation. It's having the effects it should have. It is possible for this stuff to have even better effects even quicker, but that all depends on how long people think it's gonna last. So, he's doing great and I wish him well. 

The Nordic model is an interesting question. The Nordic model is not your Bernie Sanders model of socialism anymore. The Nordic countries are pretty hard hearted about incentives. They have a welfare strait and they have pretty high taxes to support the welfare state. But they are ahead of us on many freedom of doing business, rule of law, ability to start companies, sorts of measures.

They understand you gotta let the golden goose eat in order if you want to collect her eggs. Now the high taxes, there's a lot of disincentives there. People don't work that hard because they know that it's all gonna get taxed away. Their income per capita is, I don't know, I don't have the numbers like 20, 30% below ours, just like the rest of well run northern Europe.

So it's an interesting different model, but it's not a panacea either the left or the right. I'll just give you one example, Denmark. Before you get any social benefits, you have to spend down all your assets. It's pretty hard hearted? Well, if you're gonna have a welfare state, you gotta control the incentives.

They're willing to do that in ways we aren't. So it bears a look, but it's not all perfect over there.

>> Niall Ferguson: Can I just say to Genine of Melbourne that I'm hurt that you directed your question about Argentina to John and not to me. I was one of the first people in the Northern Hemisphere to say Milei was going to win the Argentine election.

I was an early adopter, indeed, many of my Argentine friends were skeptical. But as someone who began his career studying problems of hyperinflation, I knew that Argentina had crossed a threshold when inflation reached above 200% annually, then people were ready for radical solutions. And I do think Milei`s approach is a very good illustration of what can be done if you understand the work of Tom Sargent.

And it was a famous article back from the early 80s, the ends of four big inflations, in which Sargent set out his idea of a regime change in the sense of a change in the entire economic policy regime as something that is prerequisite for ending periods of very high inflation.

It's not enough just to tweak monetary policy. You have to have a fiscal approach as well, and you have to have a supply side approach too. And what's fascinating about Milie`s is if he really does understand that, and he went at the problems in the boldest way possible, fiscal tightening, which most people said would lead to his deep unpopularity, hasn't happened.

5% of GDP tightening, his popularity is as strong as it was the day he was sworn in. Real supply side changes, for example, gets rid of rent control in Buenos Aires. Bingo overnight you actually have a recovery in that sector of the economy.

>> John H Cochrane: And rents go down.

>> Niall Ferguson: And rents go down cuz supply comes on. The last thing Milie has to resolve is the legacy of exchange controls and the currency, which is really the final piece in the regime change. But he has done so much better than the pundits, particularly the fake experts on Argentina like Joe Stiglitz, predicted that we should all raise glass to Milei.

And be glad that he met with Elon Musk in Mar-a-Lago just after the election, because the Department of Government Efficiency needs to take a leaf out of Milei's book. The chainsaw that Milei wielded did not just metaphorically, but literally when he was explaining what he was gonna do to the bloated Argentine public sector.

He should lend Elon and Vivek. We need that chainsaw in Washington D.C.

>> John H Cochrane: Could I just add quickly because I didn't do a good enough job on Milei, even if he's kicked out of office tomorrow, think what we've just been through. A libertarian can get elected president in Argentina and he can stay in power with popular support for a clear program of lower taxes, low inflation, low government spending, clean up the regulation, open the borders.

This is just remarkable, this is possible. Nobody thought it was possible in Argentina. Nobody thinks it's possible in the US but what happened in Argentina can happen in the US, both good and bad.

>> Bill Whalen: So since Sunil mentioned Mar-a-Lago, HR, a question From Michael in Plymouth, Massachusetts, who asks.

I am confident that Donald Trump could not walk into a typical American high school classroom and lead an informed and engaging lesson on the Declaration, Constitution and Bill of Rights. He lacks the fundamental historical knowledge and personal humility, does that not matter?

>> H.R. McMaster: Well, it didn't matter to the people who voted for, right?

So, I mean, hey, who am I to question the American people who elected President Trump? And a president doesn't need to be an expert on all this, but he does need to have been curious about it. There's a great essay by Mark Helprin in the Claremont Review Books years ago about presidential character.

And especially, kind of the president's familiarity with obviously, our founding documents, the Constitution, but also just how to get things done. And so President Trump, on the positive side, I guess, he has been president for four years. What has he learned? I think, he had to learn something.

Some people can be skeptical. Hey, somebody that age, do they really learn? Of course people learn. And I hope what he's learned is what it takes to get things done and how important it is, for him to build a team that can work effectively together. He was not a very good organizational leader, I would say so, not going back into January 6th.

And does he really understand his Article 2, authorities and the limitations associated with them and separation of powers and so forth. He needs people around him to help him with that, like the Attorney General as a critical person, but the checks on presidential power. They're not gonna come from him, either probably cuz he wants to get it done himself.

They're gonna have to come from Article 1, and if necessary, Article 3 of the Constitution and ultimately the American people. So, hey, Donald Trump can learn, he really can. I hope what he's learned is how to be a more effective organizational leader.

>> Niall Ferguson: I think we have ample evidence already that he has learned a lot.

You couldn't think of a more stark contrast between the way the transition happened in late 2016 and the way it's happening now. It's been highly impressive, I think he's assembling an excellent team. There is a program that is very clearly spelt out. I keep telling people there are 36 videos on Trump's campaign website that tell you what this administration is gonna do.

You might as well watch them, so you're not surprised. And I agree with just about all of it, ranging from a radical return to peace through strength as our foreign policy, to a cleaning up of wokeism. And the excesses of the radical left in our educational system, to those parts of the economic program which I think are exciting and about which, Scott Besant has been speaking in a very interesting way, our future treasury secretary.

Now I know John is still very nervous about the tariffs. But I wanna try and reassure you, John, that the tariffs are a tool, they're an instrument, they're a lever. And we should think of them as a way in which Trump does geopolitics more than as a simple economic policy measure.

Sanctions have been a busted flush on Joe Biden's watch. But tariffs were a highly effective tool against China in the first Trump administration, forcing the Chinese to negotiate on trade, but more importantly I think just denting China's economic performance. If you look back to the first Trump term, what was it that slowed China down and ended that catch up that the Chinese were achieving relative to the US?

I would say the tariffs played a pretty big part in that they really have knocked the Chinese economy off course. So I'm very bullish about this new administration, I think there's lots of evidence, HR, that he really has learned from the experience of the first term. And I'm optimistic that this is gonna be one of the most consequential administrations of our lifetime.

>> John H Cochrane: I just wanna agree briefly with Naill, actually. I mean I'm an economist, so they'll take away my union card if I say tariffs aren't bad. But tariffs are actually the kinds of things proposed are relatively small damage to the US economy compared certainly to an attack on price gouging, nobody can have mergers anymore, $3 trillion down various rat holes.

>> H.R. McMaster: Destroying the energy sector.

>> John H Cochrane: Destroying the energy sector. I mean all that stuff was marginal tax rates in the 90% department, the cost of a tax is roughly proportional to the square of the tax rate, so 5% tariffs is a whole lot worse. So tariffs aren't great, there are gonna be worse things.

And you're right, you view it as a geopolitical tool, not as an economic tool, geopolitical tools cost money, so do missiles. But I wanted to get back to the original question, I think the framing of it reveals and HR's response reveals something important. We do not elect a philosopher king who we want to have beautiful ideas, and then he hands out edicts which either do or don't conform to various ideas.

We elect a CEO and politician, and politician is a noble calling. Go watch the Lincoln movie, it always impressed me of getting things done in Washington. And I don't wanna try trivialize it, but as far as the Constitution, well we got people who understand that stuff. But no, the president has to respect and understand the Constitution.

But he is putting together an effective team, not getting destroyed by the bureaucracy, keeping an eye on the strategic plan while meeting the fires you have to put out every day. Those are the talents that you need in a president, convincing people by good or bad means to do what you want them to do, those are the talents in a president.

And yes, Trump is, from what you see from a distance, he's obviously learned a lot.

>> H.R. McMaster: Just to offer one quick caveat here, though, I am concerned about the continued, I would say, across now the Biden administration with the Hunter Biden pardon, so forth. This tendency to sort of use the Department of Justice and the appointees there, I think are cause, I mean, especially FBI, cause for concern, and some of the other appointments are causes for concern.

I think President Trump has appointed some really serious, very capable people. But some others that he has appointed I think will not help him achieve what he wants to achieve because of either the continued sort of politicization rather than his intention. I think what is to reverse the politicization it's a different kind of politicization of the Justice Department.

But then also some of the nominee for DNI Tulsi Gabbard, I think also not helpful from a foreign policy perspective. So it's a mixed bag, we'll see what happens with confirmations, but I just don't wanna be all, I don't want us to be too rosy in terms of what it looks like.

Although I am optimistic about the economic policies and some of the big shifts in direction that both Niall and John, both you guys mentioned.

>> John H Cochrane: Can I ask but don't get me wrong, I also wanna say this is very important. In the big picture, we need to rein in presidential power, we need to not just take the Justice Department and do unto Biden what Biden did unto Trump.

We need to not just take the regulatory regime and subsidize these guys and not subsidize those guys. So the expansion and Trump has been surprisingly clear about a desire to expand presidential power. And at some point we gotta put these swords away and get back to checks and balances and constitutional order and that sort of thing.

So I did not wanna give the impression that I didn't think that was the major problem that we face sooner or later.

>> Bill Whalen: We have one last question that comes from Barrett in Chicago. Barrett writes, quote, we have three sons in the 7 to 10-year-old range, I'd like to instill a sense of Christian morality, honor, and patriotism in them that will help to set the foundation for the rest of their lives.

What books would you recommend as they begin to read more serious books, Sir Naill?

>> Niall Ferguson: The answer to that, and I speak as someone with two sons in the 7 to 12 range, as well as children who are now rather older than that, in their 20s, and in one case, 30.

Tolkien, first The Hobbit and then The Lord of the Rings. Now you'll find that surprising because of course Tolkien was an Englishman and doesn't explicitly write about Christianity or nationalism. But if one reads those books carefully, one realizes that the message is a universal one. The hobbits in the Shire are the ordinary little guys who are confronted by a threat from Mordor, which we know from Tolkien's letters is essentially the Soviet Union or broadly totalitarianism.

And those little guys do their duty against overwhelming odds in the face of great evil. And what's powerful about the books, both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, is what you learn about personal courage and morality from Bilbo and Frodo's experiences. There is no better introduction to those fundamentals of life that I know, and it's not surprising really, because JRR Tolkien was one of the great conservative thinkers of the 20th century.

I've often puzzled as to why people can watch the movies based on the books and not get the underlying message because to me it's very, very clear, and all my children loved Tolkien when I read it to them.

>> Bill Whalen: John, morality, honor, and patriotism.

>> John H Cochrane: Well I'll just say two things, I was always a nonfiction type and so I'm the type who read Road to Serfdom in high school and I would go down that route.

But reading books at all. So I've been shocked last week following some of my favorite people, Julia Steinberg and Chris Naden have been posting, look them up if you're curious, undergraduates don't read books anymore. People come into college never having read a book. According to Julia, undergraduates at Stanford are not required to read whole books, just little excerpts here and there, cuz all they've ever read is one little screen full of TikTok.

So just if you're in the habit of reading anything in book length form and have that. The habit I had when I was young of just whatever was around, fortunately, I grew up in a house full of books, so if I get bored, I just pick up a book and read the whole book.

So that alone will send your children off into a great new world uninhabited by most of their peers, sadly.

>> Bill Whalen: HR?

>> H.R. McMaster: Hey, I would just say, to get to John's point, anything that excites these young readers and gets them enthralled with the book and a book that they can't wait to finish.

I'm a big fan of historical fiction for that purpose because you can create the dialogue, you can make the history compelling. I'll just use one example, I mean, there are many, but I think Shaara's Killer Angels, for example, on the Battle of Gettysburg, for example. I mean, I think that could spark a tremendous interest in history and military history, but also has a lot of lessons in terms of leadership and resilience and seizing the initiative and so forth.

So yeah, I think anything that gets a young reader enthralled and has them to the point where they just don't wanna put the book down and then inculcates in them a desire to read. So we start to break this kind of trend where young people aren't spending enough time to finish a whole book and aren't able to concentrate.

This is the Jonathan Haidt point on the distracted generation.

>> Bill Whalen: None of you mentioned your own books. Niall, at what age would you expose your sons to the Niall Ferguson body of work?

>> Niall Ferguson: Well, I think Empire is a book that can certainly be read by a bright ten year old.

If they're intimidated by the book, possible to watch a younger version of me talk it through on television, because Empire was originally a six part television series.

>> Niall Ferguson: But people's appetite for new clothes had and has no such limit. So there are ways of getting younger readers into the kind of nonfiction that John was talking about there.

Thomas, our son, who's now 12, has been following in your footsteps, John, reading Hayek as well as Popper and Marx. We found in his school bag recently, I'll make him blush by saying this on air, the King James authorized version of the Bible and the Communist Manifesto, and this was I think what we call opposition research on his part.

So you can get young kids to read difficult books if you just make them understand that life is an intellectual adventure as well as the other kind of adventure. And the sooner you start engaging with the great thinkers, the better. But for younger readers, seven, the wonderful thing about Tolkien is that it's at some level a fantasy fairy tale, but it contains such great messages that you can start them really young on that.

Actually I read The Hobbit to Thomas when he was two and was amazed how much he enjoyed it.

>> Bill Whalen: Very good, I'm told we have time for one more question, so let's do it and let's make it a question about career advice. This comes from Aaron in Palo Alto, who writes, quote, I am a PhD candidate in history at Stanford and I also hold political views that are quite unwelcome in our illiberal academia.

Go figure that, Niall. To try my hand at academia despite my center-right political worldview or to try to find a different path, that's my dilemma. What advice do the GoodFellows have for a young scholar beginning a career in this environment? What do you think you would do if you were finishing up your degrees today?

>> Niall Ferguson: Ten years ago, maybe even five years ago, I'd have said don't even think about an academic career. I think things have changed. I think what's exciting is that there are new institutions springing up in the United States, predominantly in southern states that are not captured by the progressive political forces that have done so much damage to our established institutions.

 

I'm thinking not only of the University of Austin where I've been a founder, but also the Hamilton Centre to name just one of a number of new institutions. There are career paths opening up and I think that, to be honest with you, the election of Donald Trump on November 5th will give a considerable tailwind to the effort to depoliticize academic and indeed educational life in America.

So I think one just has to recognize that the career path may not lead you to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or for that matter, Stanford, in the near future. Career path may take you southwards, perhaps to Texas, perhaps to Florida, but yeah, there are now paths which I don't think were really there ten years ago.

>> Bill Whalen: And John, he writes as a historian, does this also apply to economists?

>> John H Cochrane: Yeah, so the career path is difficult these days. In part, we're in a declining industry, so there's just not that many jobs. In part, my business has become much more careerist, much more working through the notches and doing things for show rather than really caring about the ideas.

So it's difficult, I have faith like Niall that we are in moment of incipient reform, but it's still incipient. And right now, maybe five years from now, it'll be a great opening, but right now is a very difficult time. And these institutions, the new ones maybe are gonna do okay, but the old ones are gonna be under a big turmoil of reform, hopefully.

I mean, if they're not, then they're just really dead. But I do agree there are other ways to do it. I notice all the history books, I meant to put in a plug for reading history cuz there was lots of history books sitting around my house when I was young, and that's actually a great place to start, thinking about how do people make decisions?

How are people's worldviews different from other things? But there's still plenty of demand for history books, and all the reviews of the interesting history books I read, the author is independent historian. So you gotta love your work and not love your career and sort of saying career path kinda says, well, I want to get assistant professor here and postdoc there and published in this and published in that.

That's gonna be very depressing these days. But you have to find a way to love your work, and I think there's other ways, other institutions that allow you to do that. Maybe the military still hires historians who wanna know what dead white men did and who won battles and why, which is what people seem to want to read books about.

>> Bill Whalen: HR, give me the last word.

>> H.R. McMaster: Yeah, I would just say do good history and base your history on archival research, and then who's gonna take exception to it if your analysis is grounded in the evidence? And I would say, when I was in graduate school, and this of course some time ago now in the 90s, but I had a really great experience.

And I know that members of my dissertation committee did not share, I mean, nobody knew my political views, I was an active duty Army officer. But it didn't really affect their evaluation of the research and the writing that I was doing on how why Vietnam became an American war.

One of my great members of my committee was Professor Michael Hunt, who I'm sure had much different political views than I did, but it didn't matter. He was just a fantastic historian, a fantastic person, and so I I hope that our audience member here teaches too. Because I think we have to get back to teaching without trying to get your students to buy into some kind of crazy orthodoxy, just teach history and help them ask the right questions.

And consider a broad range of views and interpretations, and that's what we should all be doing in the academy.

>> John H Cochrane: I also wanted to add, don't hide. I've talked to quite a few historians, even at Stanford, of secretly conservative, libertarian non woke views. You have more friends than you think.

You need to form a club, you need to form an association disrupt the past structures of power. I'm not getting my wokeism right form the Federalist Society of Historians, get together, change things, rather than take this thing as given and say, how can I fill out the DEI statement so they don't know who I am?

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, audience, thanks again for great questions and gentlemen thank you for great answers. And with that, let's move on to the lightning round.

>> Bill Whalen: Let's try to put a little lightning into the lightning round and let's do these as quickly as we can. I have four questions, let's see if we can cover them all.

Question number one, President Biden issues a full unconditional pardon to his son Hunter, covering offenses he, quote, has committed or may have committed or taken part in between January of 2014 and December of 2024. 2014, by the way, the year that Hunter Biden joined the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.

Do you guys agree or disagree with the pardon? And John, you blogged on this on the grumpy economist. Why don't you go first?

>> John H Cochrane: Well, I just said as long as he's going to pardon Hunter, he might as well pardon Trump. And I think that would have been a grand statement of let's put this law fair behind us and try to encourage Trump not to just do unto others what they've done unto him.

The pardon itself how much more do we have to say about this? The fact of pardoning things that he wasn't even charged with leads to a grand suspicion of just what does Biden know about what he actually did that he's trying to cover up? I mean, the stench of 10% for the big guy is still out there.

And now Hunter doesn't have even Fifth Amendment protection against Tesla testifying. So I don't think it's gonna even stop things as well as Just destroying one last chance for legacy. If you pardon Trump and said, we got to stop this legacy, you go out with that smell in the air.

>> Bill Whalen: HR.

>> H.R. McMaster: Yeah, I just worry more than anything else whether it's right or wrong or whatever. Yeah, the lack of confidence in institutions and the sapping of confidence in our institutions as a result of this. And especially in consideration of the degree to which President Biden and his spokespeople had been so adamant about this isn't gonna happen.

So I just think that we're at a time now where to strengthen our country, we need to bolster our confidence in our democratic institutions and processes. And this is just kind of another body blow to that confidence.

>> Bill Whalen: Niall, does this get any traction in the UK because it seems to me your country has a lot going on politically these days.

>> Niall Ferguson: Yeah, a lot going on that somewhat distracts people from the Biden pardon. I'll simply say that if it's morning in Donald Trump's America, it's twilight in Keir Starmer's Britain, where the most basic freedoms seem to be under threat, the freedom of speech in particular. But I think anybody paying attention to American politics in the UK right now has to be struck by the just, mind blowing hypocrisy of this decision.

If there were any shreds left of Biden's reputation, they were blown away by this decision.

>> John H Cochrane: We have tit for tat, lawfare escalating. Someone's got to stop it and this is just one more tit in the tit for tat.

>> H.R. McMaster: I really worry about, I mean, look at countries that go through this, right?

So there's been news in South Korea recently about maybe martial law, maybe not martial law. That's in part because of the way that they've weaponized justice. When there's a change of government in South Korea, get your lawyer, because they're gonna come after you. I mean, so we don't want that, we can't have it, and it's just destructive and, yeah.

>> John H Cochrane: There's a huge reason we don't want it, because if you lose an election and that means you're criminally prosecuted, you lose your business, your cronies lose their business, you go to jail. You do everything in your power to not lose an election. And democracy and freedom is about the ability to lose an election.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, second question, gentlemen. The latest of Syria's long running civil war has the rebel group Hayat Tahir Al Sham seizing the city of Aleppo, which is Syria's second largest city. Whom to root for in the struggle, Niall?

>> Niall Ferguson: Well, certainly not for Al Assad, whose monstrous regime has inflicted almost uncountable misery on the Syrian people.

Anybody who understands the Syrian Civil War in all its complexity should get a PhD on the spot because there are factions within factions. I think it's one of the wars in which there really are no good guys, or at least precious few. And the thing that's interesting to me about the recent development is that it exposes the weakness of the Russian government's grand strategy.

Because part of that grand strategy was to become influential players in the Middle East again for the first time since they were run out of the region in the 1970s. The Obama administration allowed that to happen, effectively let the Russians back into the region at the time that Obama decided not to intervene in the Syrian civil war and to hand the problem of chemical weapons to Moscow terrible series of decisions.

And now, with Putin entirely preoccupied with Ukraine, his Middle East strategy is unravelling. The fall of Assad, which is to be devoutly to be hoped for, will be part of a number of events that historians will attribute to the election of Donald Trump. It's as if the Trump presidency already kind of began because the German government fell almost immediately. There is pandemonium in French politics as we speak. The South Korean president tried to get himself out of his political fix by declaring martial law, that failed even as we were having this conversation. You can feel the world shaking. And I believe there will be more such tremors, not only in the Middle East, but elsewhere, even before inauguration day.

We live in historic times, and the fall of Aleppo is just one of the many historic events that will follow from November 5th.

>> H.R. McMaster: I just say, hey, now it's time to press the advantage, the Assad regime has been weak. The Russian presence in Syria has been weak.

I think it's time for us to recognize that this mantra that Niall was highlighting earlier, of de escalation, right? An escalation management has been self defeating. I mean, look at what's happening, more broadly, we talked about the degree to which Russia is in a very difficult position, even though Ukraine's in a difficult position too.

But also consider now the collapse of the Assad regime. That could happen, it could happen, I think pretty quickly they're not getting Aleppo back. The Russians are now bombing the Dzhankoi, Crimea air base to destroy some of their equipment. They're fleeing Damascus. So I think, consider that in light of what Israel's been able to accomplish against Hamas and against, especially Hezbollah and against Hezbollah in Syria, which was one of the key proxies propping up Assad.

Now is the time to press the event. Hey, by the way, too, I mean, Israel just flew squadrons of aircraft in laps around Tehran and the Iranians couldn't do a damn thing about it. I mean, what I think is that we forget the don't part of don't take counsel of our fears.

And when we can counter as we're encountering this axis of aggressors, we are in a position of relative strength. That doesn't mean we should use military power capriciously or so. But we should stop this mantra of escalation management and recognize that there's a tremendous opportunity to seize the initiative over this axis of aggressors.

And to begin to forge an outcome consistent with the interests of the United States, Israel, our Gulf friends. And so I just think now's the time to do what we need to do, not only from a military perspective but an economic perspective as well. To take advantage of what I think is a really fundamentally shifting strategic situation for the axis of aggressors.

I think it's beginning in Syria.

>> John H Cochrane: I would just add ISIS versus Assad box on both your houses and better than none other than wins. I would add the immense sadness, the hundreds of thousands who have died in Syria while US protesters on US college campuses seem to take no notice whatsoever.

And I mean-

>> H.R. McMaster: Assads killed 600,000 John, 600,000.

>> John H Cochrane: Thank you, I didn't wanna quote a number that was wrong, 600,000 chemical warfare attacks. When Russia bombs, they don't drop leaflets or send text messages, they just kill whoever's around, it's immensely sad. It reinforces the increasing sense I get of, sort of before an earthquake, there's rumblings, there's little bits of chaos all around the world that only if you read the third and fourth pages of the newspapers do you get a sense of.

While the US sleeps between administrations, which is a very dangerous time. Israel, I'm very curious about, and maybe you guys have a comment on this, why did they have a ceasefire rather than victory here? It seems like a time when mow the grass is not a long run strategy cuz we don't want Syria going on and on like this is not a good outcome.

>> H.R. McMaster: Yeah, I'll just say quickly two things Niall, I'd like to hear what you think about it. First, the Israelis don't want to be mired in southern Lebanon perpetually, they have gained clearly the upper hand against Hezbollah. And the main thing is this ceasefire allows them to take continued military action against any effort on the part of Hezbollah to reestablish infrastructure in southern Lebanon.

So it's a ceasefire, but it is a ceasefire on terms favorable to the Israelis.

>> John H Cochrane: Why not destroy Hezbollah, end Hezbollah as a political force in Lebanon, have a Lebanon that doesn't have a Hezbollah in it, that seems like a much better deal for Israel. And I'm kind of with questions about Syria, but the same sort of thing is, do we really want a Syria divided up between armed raises as opposed to something more coherent?

>> Niall Ferguson: Well, John, Joe Biden is still president, and the Biden administration has been leaning pretty hard on Prime Minister Netanyahu for ceasefires for most of the last year. I can understand why Mr. Netanyahu decided to accept a ceasefire in Lebanon because the IDF had been sustaining much more significant casualties than in the war against Hamas.

There's no ceasefire with Iran though, and I think that's the important thing. The ultimate objective of Mr. Netanyahu and his colleagues is to inflict real damage on Iran's regime, including its nuclear program. But he can't do that really with American support until Donald Trump is president, that I think is the key background to this decision.

>> Bill Whalen: One last question, let's see how quick we can make this, I'm dipping back in the mailbag. Peter in Western Australia wrote, if you could have any guest on GoodFellows (alive or dead), who would it be and what why? And Michael in Plymouth, Massachusetts Road, who would the GoodFellows' fanboy guest be?

I'm gonna guess Niall would choose John Cleese. HR, why don't you go first?

>> H.R. McMaster: Okay, so I would, and I'm gonna grab a photo here. This is one of the guys, one of my heroes and I stayed in contact with him across many years and I'm an Eagles fan.

This is Chuck Bednarik, concrete Chuck one of the toughest guys I think, ever to play the sport. He had been a navigator or a bombardier, I can't remember which in World War II. He went to the University of Pennsylvania and then he played both ways his entire career, I don't think he really missed a game.

I mean, he was a center and a middle linebacker, and I got to meet him when I was in fourth or fifth grade and stayed in contact with him until he passed away. But yeah, I'd love to have Chuck Bednarik on GoodFellows.

>> Bill Whalen: Who did he play for in the NFL?

>> H.R. McMaster: The Eagles, the Eagles, of course. He's the guy who kinda famously ended Frank Gifford's career with that monster hit.

>> Bill Whalen: Yes.

>> H.R. McMaster: In the playoff game, 1960.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, John, pick a guest, any guest.

>> John H Cochrane: Dead or alive?

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah.

>> John H Cochrane: I have this continuing fantasy I would love to bring back one of the founding fathers, maybe Adams, maybe Franklin, and say, look at what happened here.

And then also just to listen to things that they would be amazed by and the things that they would be horrified by.

>> H.R. McMaster: Hey, Franklin, also a Philadelphian, yeah, he'd be kinda throws out my list also.

>> Bill Whalen: Keep looking. Okay, Niall, is it John Cleese or you have another choice?

>> Niall Ferguson: Well, I met John Cleese and admire him as one of the great comedians. But if I had unlimited choice, including the deceased, David Hume would be my favorite guest. Hume was, of course, one of the great philosophers of the Scottish enlightenment of the entire enlightenment, but he was also a great historian.

And I've been reading his extraordinarily good history of England, which is as funny as rich in irony as Gibbons decline the fall of the Roman Empire. And it reminds me what a fun guy Hume was. He was a famous bon viveur, a glutton who enjoyed all the pleasures of the table.

I sense that David Hume would be a tremendous addition to the GoodFellows lineup, but I only wish we could somehow bring him back, if only for an hour, from whichever paradise he currently inhabits.

>> Bill Whalen: Wouldn't it be fun to put Hume in one corner and Chuck Bednarik and the other and a couple founding fathers on the screen and have the four of them go at it for an hour?

>> Niall Ferguson: The mind boggles, it would be quite a festive meal, wouldn't it, to have them all?

>> Bill Whalen: And let's end on that festive note gentlemen, thank you for a great conversation today. A viewer's note, we'll have one more installment with GoodFellows before the year ends. We're recording just before Christmas, we'll drop right before the holiday.

Our guest is gonna be Kim Strassel, she is a Potomac Watch columnist for the Wall Street Journal, so you don't wanna miss that. So again, look for that shortly before Christmas. On behalf of the GoodFellows, Niall Ferguson, HR McMaster, John Cochrane, all of us here at the Hoover Institution, we hope you enjoyed the show.

We thank you for your continued patronage, and we look forward to seeing you again very soon. Till then, take care, thanks for watching.