[Music] - Welcome to the Aaron Harbor Show.

My special guest is Melody Barnes of the Karsh Institute, the former head of the White House Domestic Policy Council.

Melody, it's great to finally have you on the show.

- I know, I know.

What is the third or fourth time's a charm?

I'm glad to be here.

- I know.

We kept misconnecting when you were in the White House, but it was fun.

One of things I enjoyed watching your leadership of the Domestic Policy Council is it struck me that you made the council more visible in terms of your particular brand of leadership.

So, I want to start off with your take on leadership.

And what makes for great leadership in your opinion.

I know you've thought about this issue before.

- I have.

I have, and in fact, when I left the White House, I spent some time at New York University focusing on leadership.

And one of the things I would say about leadership is people often think about leaders as the person at the top, or the famous person, the charismatic person.

It's Martin Luther King, it's John F. Kennedy, it's George W. Bush, George H.W.

Bush.

And I think about leadership in a much more expansive way.

Those people certainly are leaders, but I also think about the fact that everyone who works with and surrounds that individual, those are also people exercising leadership in really important ways.

And in fact, I spent some time teaching a class in China and taught using the civil rights movement as an example of leadership.

So, yes, you have the famous Martin Luther King, but what about all the people that put together the March on Washington?

What about the people who made sure that there was something to eat and that the sandwiches didn't have mayonnaise so in the hot August sun, people weren't going to get food poisoning?

And the list goes on and on.

So, all that to say when I think about leadership, I think about individuals who are bringing their best skills, whatever they might be.

It might be behind the scenes organizing, it might be the person that helps to set the vision, but doing that in collaboration with others and moving toward that common goal, that common set of objectives so that you can accomplish that along with others who also consider those objectives to be important and in furtherance of something typically that's larger than yourself.

So, that's the way I think about leadership.

- There's certainly-- You know it's interesting when you talk about some of those aspects or elements.

There certainly are people we recognize as great leaders who were good at certain things, maybe inspiring people, maybe organizing people.

And there's probably very few leaders who were great at everything.

But if you think of some of the leaders, either historically going back or people with whom you've worked, who do you think of, and is there a particular characteristic that you thought really was outstanding?

- Sure.

It's an interesting group that comes to mind right now.

I think of President Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, someone who walked into-- Ironic that I would use that phraseology, but someone who came to leadership at one of the most challenging moments for the country, both in terms of the depression, the Great Depression, but also as the nation ultimately went to war.

And absolutely, did he make mistakes?

He did, but he also set a vision.

He surrounded himself with smart thinkers and thinkers from different disciplines, recognizing that one sector or one perspective wouldn't help solve the challenges in front of the nation.

And he did inspire and spoke very honestly to the country at a time when the challenges were daunting and people could have just wanted to pull the covers over their head and to ignore it.

But in that moment, he looked toward the challenge and inspired the American public to move with him towards the kinds of solutions that he was laying out.

And he also did big, bold things.

In some cases, he failed.

In some cases, he succeeded.

I also think about someone like a Fannie Lou Hamer, whom many people may not know about.

She didn't have a high school education.

She was a sharecropper, but she was one of the most magnificent leaders of the civil rights movement, and worked in Mississippi, was brutally beaten, but still fought for voting rights, fought for the seating of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, and did that at a time when, you know, she was also fighting with President Johnson at that moment.

Ironically, I would also put President Johnson in that category.

And he's a leader that I think the nation really struggles with for many reasons because of the Vietnam War, obviously not an example of great leadership.

And his path to the White House is one that was fraught when it comes to civil rights, and in fact, someone who actively fought against civil rights for much of his career.

But when he got to the White House, he saw that as a moment that he could do big and important things for the country, working with the civil rights movement to pass the Voting Rights Act, the civil rights of 1964, big moments, but also to put this great society vision in front of the country.

So, someone who was complicated, complex, with whom I disagree in many different areas, but at the same time, someone who saw a moment to use his power very effectively to move the country forward in ways that it hadn't moved forward for generations.

- So, you gave two really interesting examples.

I mean, FDR asking the American people to go down a path that very few wanted to go down, really challenging the American people.

Johnson in the case, certainly with civil rights, the Voting Rights Act, which related both, you know, in 64 and 65.

A lot of people were very upset about both.

These are leaders who took on a challenge knowing that a lot of people were going to be unhappy.

Do we see that today?

When you look at presidents today, especially, it strikes me that there are two things.

One, it seems like no one can admit they made a mistake anymore, or that they were wrong.

I'd like your thoughts about that.

And the other is that there seems to be an unwillingness to really challenge Americans.

It's like, you know, if we're going to do something, we'll do it.

We won't pay for it now.

We're not going to ask, you know, taxpayers to pay for a new program.

We'll borrow the money, or we won't take on a really big challenge.

So, give me your thoughts about that.

- You raise really interesting questions and issues, not only about leadership, but about policy making and politics in 21st century America.

And I think about my time in the White House and working with President Obama, who I think has many just tremendous leadership skills.

One, I distinctly remember him saying to us, and this wasn't in front of cameras, this wasn't in front of reporters, but saying to a senior staff, "Bring me the difficult decisions, and we're going to make hard choices and try to move forward.

"” He said that to us during the transition.

I remember exactly where we were.

There was a snowstorm building in Chicago.

He was president-elect, and we were staring at a significant economic challenge, and difficult decisions had to be made.

And you think about, you know, the decision with regard to the auto industry, something people scoffed at, told him not to do, but he was willing to do it.

Think about the Affordable Care Act and the battle to get that done.

And even as we had debates inside the White House, and after many, many decades of incrementalism, because it was a pitched battle, and he said to one colleague, you know, "If it were up to you, I'd first, you know, pass health care that covered your pinky, and then your ankle, and then your big toe.

This is a moment, and we've got the political capital.

We have to use it to do something that's difficult.

"” But at the same time, as you point out, particularly, I think, in a 24-7 media cycle, because we are so polarized as a nation, and even more so today than we were in 2008, 2009, as difficult as that was, it's difficult to be wrong in front of the American public.

There is very little space to make decisions, to ruminate, to have tough decisions with opponents.

Often, everything you say quickly becomes a tweet.

The 24-7 media cycle, which everything becomes breaking news, I mean, I don't know how many people pay attention now when the banner comes across the television that says breaking news, and it makes it more difficult to wrestle with very challenging decisions.

I remember one of my colleagues in the White House used to say, "You know, Mel, by the time a decision gets to us, there are no easy answers.

There are no good answers left.

"” We are left with, you know, okay to bad options for these very difficult challenges, and you always know that someone is on the other side waiting to turn that into a political tool and a weapon against you.

- That's really unfortunate.

Okay, instead of weapons, I'm giving you a magic wand.

- Oh, magic wand, okay.

- If you could change one thing about the United States, what would it be?

- I would go back to the Constitutional Convention, and I would eliminate the Three-Fifths Clause.

In other words, the vestiges and the language that put slavery into the American Constitution, into that original document, and as a result, everything that has resulted because that was there, because it was a compromise that was made, but it was a compromise that we live with today in so many different forms.

- How about in the present?

- I would, and perhaps related to that, I mean, I'm thinking about different aspects of voting, and the way we vote, and making it easier for people to participate, for access to be easier.

When we talk in the United States about patriotism, about our responsibility as citizens, and at the same time, more so than many, many other countries, we make it very, very difficult for people to participate in the electoral process.

And as a result, mixed with other things, I think that people don't necessarily believe that elections have anything to do with them.

- So, in that vein, I mean, I'm fascinated and a little disappointed.

As I've watched the evolution of voting rights and access, it seemed to be on a very continuous path of making the process easier, making it more accessible.

I did not envision that we would enter an era where different states, a different political party, in particular, would be making an effort to make it more, in some cases, substantially more difficult.

I had Mayor Turner on, Sylvester Turner on, the Mayor of Houston, and the fourth largest city in the country.

- And one of the most diverse.

- Absolutely.

And with the legislation that the Republican-controlled Texas General Assembly passed and the governor signed, there is going to be one drop box for Harris County.

I never would have envisioned that a way to vote safely, and all the data shows that drop boxes, you can monitor them with cameras, etc., would become harder.

Did you ever think that would happen?

And what's your take on that, especially when it comes to access to democracy?

And you just linked very somewhat subtly the fact that a county like Harris County is very diverse, and so you have a Republican-controlled state making it clearly much more difficult for a diverse population to vote, and doing so intentionally.

- Yeah.

One, I think if we look at voting in the United States historically, and we are a constitutional republic, though we use the language of democracy, so we elect our representatives.

And from the beginning, we haven't had direct election.

Senators were not directly chosen by population.

Voting was connected to land ownership, it was connected to race, it was connected to gender, and we have expanded that, thankfully, over generations, but voting has always been connected to power.

And what I think we are seeing play out today, even under the language of patriotism, and the language and in theory to protect ourselves from fraud, we are making it difficult for people to vote, instead of what I believe we should do, which is if we think our ideas are good, put them in the marketplace of ideas in the public square, and let's have a robust debate, ensure that people have access to information, and make and allow citizens to make choices based on the robustness and the validity of the argument that's being made.

But instead, and you not only alluded to it, you've talked about it, instead what we're doing is we are restricting people's access to the ballot to try and ensure that one side can win.

And we're doing that in the language of protecting the franchise, when in fact, there is scant evidence of fraud.

I mean, the level of fraud that all of these laws, and then new laws being made in states, in theory are designed to address, the level of fraud is so insignificant, and we have the data that shows us that.

But instead, what we're doing in a country that says that we as citizens have the responsibility to vote, is that we have made it, you know-- You look at the North Carolina laws, you look at the Texas laws, you look at laws in other places, and we are making it more and more difficult for people to exercise their rights as citizens.

I think it's-- I think it is an embarrassment, and it is a pox on our house.

- How can we change that?

- Much of voting and our decisions about voting are made at the state, at the state level.

These are issues that citizens are going to have to decide matter to them, which also means that they have to decide that their vote matters, that participating in the process matters, and observe what their elected representatives are doing, and determine whether or not they're going to elect people who are going to make the franchise more available for citizens or not.

And I think, you know, there's so many things that are mixed in this toxic stew, and disinformation and misinformation with regard to the media.

I have colleagues at the University of Virginia that have done quite a bit of work studying elections in the commonwealth of Virginia.

We find, regardless of party, people say, "I had a very good experience at my election site.

I believe that my vote has been counted.

"” But because they get so much information through a national filter and cable news on all sides, people then go and, quite frankly, the data shows more typically Republicans say, "Even in spite of my good experience, I believe there is fraud.

I believe that people are misusing their opportunity to vote.

"” And we have to address the issues of disinformation and misinformation, invigorate local journalism so that people are getting better information about what's happening in their locality to try and stave off what they are hearing that's a narrative, that again is a narrative about power, and not a narrative about the truth of what's actually happening in elections in people's hometowns.

So, there are a lot of things that we have to do and that we have to address, I think, to take on this problem.

- I think one of the things we fail to do is educate Americans about how their actual local voting systems work.

So, when someone says, "Oh, I heard a truckload of 30,000 ballots that were, you know, all marked for President Biden were delivered at midnight somewhere.

"” And what they don't understand is you can't simply make up 30,000 ballots and that you have processes where, for example, you know, in Colorado you vote at essentially a local level because the vote count occurs on a precinct basis, then it occurs on a county basis, the counties report those results, then the state aggregates them but breaks everything-- So, if someone were to try to change those numbers, there are all kinds of eyes on those numbers.

And so, it's literally impossible to do, but because people who are suspicious about what happened don't even know how the system works, they're not aware of the safeguards.

And so, one of my themes is we simply, and I've had these discussions, need to show people, okay, here's the actual process.

You have a Democratic and a Republican, you know, judge at, you know, at each location or opening ballots.

And people don't even know that, that there are so many safeguards in the system.

- I think you're right.

And this certainly goes to issues of civic education that we're working to try and make more ubiquitous, both on the K-12 level, but also post-secondary, two- and four-year institutions, and for the wider public so people understand how our election system works.

I think this also goes to the issues we were just talking about in terms of misinformation, and disinformation, and how people receive information, and how people receive news, which is a significant crisis for democracy right now because even as people are having their own experience, even if people are getting information at school, for example, when you are constantly bombarded with narratives and messages that are telling you that there's fraud, we actually have citizens that are living in different universes, parallel universes in terms of the kind of information that they're receiving and the level of education that people have about how our election system works.

- A key point you made was about civic education, and here's a few statistics.

Half of Americans are unable to name the three branches of government.

I mean, that struck me as extraordinary.

This year, 47% could name three, down from 56% just two years ago.

That's, I mean-- Right.

Civics.

- I mean, that's a huge statistical drop.

- And I think, you know, probably for you and I, we were taught these things in school.

One of the things that we're working on, and I'm working on in my work today with others as part of a larger network, is to ensure that civics and civic education is being taught in schools, but also to think about the other places where people receive information.

Museums and libraries of other civic institutions that are part of our communities, where children and adults can receive information and receive it in ways that they will trust it.

Similarly, two- and four-year institutions.

How can we make access to this kind of information possible and make it more ubiquitous?

Probably two-thirds of the American public will touch a community college.

And I know that there are a lot of community colleges that are thinking about this.

What if those were also places where people were getting more information, civics education, that they may not have received earlier in their educational experience?

It is absolutely necessary, and it's certainly something-- I work at the University of Virginia.

It's something Jefferson talked about.

To have a vibrant democracy, you have to have an educated citizenry.

- So, how about doing a series of 30-second public service announcements with a prominent Democrat, prominent Republican, talking about one aspect in a series of aspects about the Constitution or talking about just showing the three branches of government?

- It's like the Schoolhouse Rock when I was a kid.

I mean, between Conjunction Junction and I'm Just a Bill.

I mean, these are ways that kids learned about these things.

- But we need to teach adults to this.

- Right, right, right.

Well, you know, it's interesting.

Public broadcasting, and I know from talking to people at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, PBS, Virginia Public Media in Virginia, this is an area that they are really attuned to.

And I think particularly as we move closer to the semi-quincentennial, the 250th anniversary of the country, you'll see more activity on those kinds of outlets to educate people, to talk about democracy, to talk about civics.

GBH, the big public broadcast outlet based out of Boston, has been doing work both on history and creating modules for teachers and others to use, but now is starting to do the same thing for civic education.

So, we're seeing, I think, more facets of our media ecosystem that are focused on these issues and talking to both kids and to adults.

- Yeah, and I think what's fascinating to me is I think it's a nonpartisan issue.

I mean, as many Republicans, Republican leaders that I work with as Democrats and Democratic leaders all say we need to do something about civics education.

One of my guests has been big on this for a long time, Sandra Day O'Connor, when she was on the show with iCivics and all of that.

I want you to talk about two things that we really haven't touched on, the domestic policy council, your experience there.

My sense is when you led the council, you were much more visible than a lot of your predecessors and successors in focusing on different policies.

I assume President Obama was part of that reason.

- He was our leader.

- Tell me about the role of the council, your interaction with the president, and his involvement with domestic policy issues.

- Sure.

Well, the Domestic Policy Council was formed in 2023, probably about 40 plus years ago, and the idea of the council is to have a group of individuals who have policy, domestic policy expertise that are sitting in the executive branch in the White House and actively working to coordinate the domestic policy agenda across the government.

I had staff in the White House of probably 30 plus people, but I was working with the secretaries, and deputy secretaries, assistant secretaries, and others across the domestic policy departments and agencies, Department of Education, Health and Human Services, Department of Homeland Security, the list goes on.

And while so much of domestic policy is happening in departments and agencies as it should with both career and political appointees, the goal of the DPC was to focus on the issues, the core issues that were kind of the priorities for the president.

So, I worked with an office that we created focused on health reform.

A woman name Nancy M. DeParle who led that office as we were working on the Affordable Care Act.

We also worked on immigration.

We worked on issues, trying to address issues of gun violence mitigation and gun control.

So, there are a host of issues that we worked on over the three-year period that I was director of the DPC, and both engaging with those secretaries on issues and challenges that may come up through the department and ensuring that the priorities for the president were being carried out.

It was a job of a lifetime for someone who cares about and has been working on domestic policy issues for all of my career and an extraordinary opportunity to engage with Americans across the country.

I spent a significant part of my time out in communities around the country focusing on the challenges, how could we resolve them, talking to them about people, about what the president was doing, and bringing ideas back to the White House and to the president.

- All right, I've got to ask you about Karsh.

Tell me about what you're doing with the Karsh Institute.

- This is a job that is a passion job for me at this point.

After years of working in public policy and in politics in Washington, the opportunity to focus squarely on democracy.

This isn't a partisan issue.

This is foundational to who we are as a country.

The Karsh Institute was established two years ago at the University of Virginia, and our objective is to focus on the way that we can make the reality of democracy meet what our aspirations, what we say we want for ourselves.

We focus on democratic institutions and practices like voting, deliberative dialogue, and civic education as we've been discussing, access to media and trusted information, in particular the death of local journalism and trying to help reinvigorate that, and our norms and narratives about democracy.

The norms that are not policies or laws, but I think as many have seen over the past several years without those norms that allow us to come together and work together, other aspects of democracy don't work, and the narrative about who are we as Americans and what does it mean to be a multiracial, multiethnic democracy, and to ensure that everyone can participate and come to the table.

- All right, Melody, thank you so much for joining me today.

- It's been a pleasure.

Thank you so much for having me.

- You bet.

All right, that was Melody Barnes, the former director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, currently at the University of Virginia's Karsh Institute.

I'm Aaron Harber.

Thanks for watching.

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