Welcome to Politically Speaking.

I'm Elizabeth Bennion, chancellor's professor of political science and director of Community Engagement and the American Democracy Project at Indiana University, South Bend.

Frank Barry is Bloomberg opinion columnist, member of the editorial board covering national affairs and author of Back Roads and Better Angels A Journey into the Heart of American Democracy.

Frank has traveled across the country to get a closer look at the issues dividing and uniting Americans in cluding stops in communities like our own here in South Bend.

Today, we'll discuss his journey, what he learned about American democracy, and his thoughts on the national political landscape.

Frank, it's so good to have you here.

Great to be here.

Thanks for having me.

Now, I want to start by asking you what made you decide to go on this journey across the Lincoln Highway from New York to San Francisco and why in an RV?

Great questions.

I was looking for a different way into the story that everybody was talking about, which was why is America so divided?

There's been a lot of ink spilled on that question and a lot of conversations around it.

It's a really important question.

But I also wanted to explore what holds us together as a country.

And so I stumbled across the Lincoln Highway, which lots of people have never heard of, even in some communities where it runs through.

People are aware of it, but they don't know that it runs from coast to coast, from New York all the way to San Francisco.

And that was the first road to connect the country all the way from coast to coast.

And so I thought, what a what a perfect way to travel across the country, speaking with people about what holds the country together.

Using Lincoln, the president, who more than any other, held our country together during our time of deepest division.

As a guy that's kind of a North star, to lead us across these divisions as we went and channeling some of his spirit and some of that history as we traveled.

So it sounds like the idea is if we take this long historical view and realize that we somehow survived as a nation through the Civil War and beyond that, we should be able to do it again.

Well, that's definitely that's part of the idea, is that there's a lot we can learn from history and a lot we can can we?

We can learn by looking back and and recognizing that what we're going through now is not always new.

History has waves.

And a lot of what we're seeing today is something that we have seen in the past.

And so being able to ground some of these conversations in that history I think is really helpful because it does provide some broader understanding of, you know, we've been through something similar in the past.

How did we get through it?

And let's let's talk let's talk about that and what values were important to overcoming those obstacles back then.

The Civil War being the biggest one.

But lots of other issues that we're facing today are ones that we've encountered in the past.

Now, the days of your journey seem historically significant, moving from September 11th and then going and continuing through Election Day.

Can you talk a little bit about that choice?

Yeah, sure.

So we left on September 11th from New York City at Times Square where the Lincoln Highway starts.

And the idea was to channel some of the spirit of unity that the country felt in the wake of the 911 attacks.

I was living in New York at the time, and and that was a very powerful thing.

I think, that most Americans experienced the coming together after the attacks.

And so we wanted to to capture that spirit or channel it as we traveled and the idea was to get to San Francisco by Election Day, which should be a day that unites the country, but of course, has been has been dividing us.

So two bookends to the trip.

And you asked about the RV.

We were traveling during the pandemic.

This was the September of 2020.

And so we didn't want to be staying in a different hotel every night, wanted to be expensive, but too, I was going to be interviewing people and I wanted to be safe and protect their health.

And so we thought the only way to really do this would be to travel in an RV.

And so we had never RV before, had never driven an RV, barely been in an RV.

But we did a little research and we found what we decided would be the biggest RV we wanted to drive and the smallest RV we wanted to live in.

As a 25 foot classy motorhome.

And we found we're lucky to find a used one 30,000 miles and we learned as we went.

Was there any vantage to taking this particular path and doing it in an RV in terms of people opening up to you, do you think?

I think so.

I think, you know, I'm a columnist at Bloomberg, but it's different than me parachuting into a community and wanting to talk to someone.

If I'm actually on a route traveling across the country.

First of all, people love a cross-country trip.

Lots of people have done a version of a cross-country trip or they want to do a version of it.

And so there is a kind of an instant element of of interest.

And the RV also adds to that.

I think, you know, lots of people have RV.

Some people want to RV.

And so there's an element of that that makes it a little more friendly, friendlier.

I was traveling with my wife and we were not looking to speak to people about the presidential election.

We were asking them about national issues, but from their own local perspective.

So I wasn't going in and saying, Tell me whether you like Trump or Biden.

It was, tell me about the community and tell me about this issue, but not about which party you're siding with, but about how it's affecting people here.

So what did you learn?

What did people tell you when you asked them those questions about their community, about political polarize zation about their own thoughts on the current landscape?

Well, I heard a lot of frustration from people in both parties about how divided we were, which wasn't surprising.

But I do think that people in each party tend to think that their side is the one that's frustrated by the division and the other side is causing the division.

And the truth of the matter is people in both parties are really frustrated by the divisions and they aren't always sure what to do about it.

But something else I heard again and again from people was a sense that we would somehow get through it.

And I think that speaks to what you said earlier about the idea that we've been through a lot together.

And I think Americans do recognize that, and they have this faith in our ability to overcome things.

And that was an idea that kept popping up as I talked with people along the route.

So we sometimes hear in various media outlets and certainly online, there is an impending civil war.

That's not the sense that you got from the people you talked to.

No, it's not.

But there was a real concern around how bad the vitriol has been getting and how angry people are.

And people talked about losing friendships and having relationships strained over politics.

And people spoke about that with a lot of sadness.

Now, that doesn't mean that we're on the brink of, you know, half the country taking up arms against the other half.

But it does speak to a growing sense of bitterness that that leads down a very bad road.

And so we're not at we're not at the brink of civil war.

But there's reason to be concerned about the path we're on.

So you talked about the fact that history has lessons to teach us and that we can learn from the sort of thoughts of Abraham Lincoln and some of the things he did during the Civil War.

As we think about how to move forward out of these tumultuous times, these divided times today.

Can you give some examples of what lessons you drew from history as you were listening to people talk about how to move forward today?

Sure.

So there's a lot of Lincoln that's relevant to today.

And even just in terms of the way that we think about politics, the way we look at politics.

So in the 1850s, Lincoln, who was a staunch opponent of slavery, believed it to be a moral abomination, nevertheless was not an abolitionist because he feared he feared that it might divide the country, fracture the country, push the country towards civil war.

And so he looked at Southerners in the 1850s and said, we are just as they would be.

Excuse me, they are just as we would be if we were in their situation.

And it was a recognition by Lincoln that we're all shaped by our own circumstances, the places that we grew up and the values and the cultures that we grow up with affect who we are and affect our political outlet as we become adults.

And I think that just that small recognition helps to temper some of the righteousness that we tend to feel around our own political positions.

Lincoln said of of government policy, there are few things that are wholly good or wholly evil.

Almost everything is a compound of the two.

And the trick is to find out where where the weight of it lies.

Is it better?

Is it more good or is it more evil?

And I think that way of looking at politics, not black and white, but shades of gray is a very healthy thing that we can apply to all different kinds of issues.

I want to ask about slavery in particular, though, because that seems like a really powerful quote and a powerful lesson today.

But in the case of slavery.

And do I mean, are you arguing it's not wholly evil?

No.

Lincoln would say it is wholly evil, but it became a political question for him that, you know, what what the moral question is, is sometimes different from what a political question is.

So if Lincoln had been an abolitionist, he would not have been elected president.

And so there are choices that people in elected office make in terms of leadership.

And Lincoln was always trying to push the country forward, but he was trying to do it in in ways that would succeed.

And he recognized that you can't be too far ahead of public opinion.

And so even though he thought slavery was a moral abomination, he was not shouting from the rooftops that we need to abolish it.

Today, you can look back and say, that's wrong.

You should always stand up and say and push for the right thing.

But Lincoln recognized that it could permanently split the country.

His primary interest was in saving the country, and he believed that he could push towards the abolition of slavery by taking a more gradual approach.

That sounds like a lesson that you mentioned in the book, which is that of patriotic pragmatism.

I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that, what it means and how you think it could serve us today.

Yeah, patriotic pragmatism I talk about in the book is this idea of putting country over party.

Of recognizing that the other side often has a point.

That there is value in compromise that we don't need to demonize the other side all the time.

That there is good to be had in reaching across the aisle.

And that's something that's a spirit that that I think both parties ought to be able to embrace that can help move the country forward.

It's not always the most rewarding.

It's not always what gets attention online and on cable news.

But it is that that spirit, which I do think Lincoln embodied, has been so important over our history to moving us towards greater freedoms and greater rights.

Now, can you provide any examples of that in the people that you spoke to, whether here in South Bend or elsewhere along your journey?

Sure.

I spoke to a lot of a lot of people who, in fact, I was kind of seeking out people who for the most part were we're looking for those that, you know, that middle ground people who were interested in talking to the other side.

And so I, for instance, on a very difficult issue of guns, I sat down with owners of a where you go to shoot birds and and and skeet and and talk with them about whether or not there was more opportunity for some of this middle ground on gun issues.

And after meeting with them, I sat down with a state senator in Colorado who had lost his son in a in a mass shooting in the Aurora movie shooting, a movie theater shooting and put those same questions to him and came away from both of those conversations, believing that both groups, both both people wanted to wanted to move to the middle, wanted to have opportunities to adopt sensible, pragmatic policies.

But it was also around an issue of trust.

And could the other could one side trust the other and trust is so important to this idea of patriotic pragmatism and the idea of reaching across the aisle.

If you don't trust the other person on the other side of the aisle, you're not going to reach across and said you're going to demonize them because you don't believe anything good can come out of it.

And so trust is so important to politics.

Civil conversation is so important to trust.

And so one of the things I'm trying to do in the book is to to highlight how civil conversation can help build more of that trust, which can lead to more good outcomes.

Now, as we think about trust and in your reporting, where would you say we are as a country and what can be done to build more?

That's a that's a great question.

I can't say that we've advanced since 2020.

This was four years ago when I was traveling.

And today I don't think there is more trust than there was four years ago.

And in fact, there's probably less given that when I was traveling four years ago, it was before we ended up becoming the Stop the Steal movement and Trump's decision not to concede the election, which of course led up to January 6th.

And so and a whole movement grew up around believing that Trump had had won the election.

And I think that has fed feelings of mistrust on both sides.

And so this work of building trust is even more important, and it's even more difficult because of the increased increasingly polarized environment where right now Trump is mentioned in the book.

But the book really is not about Donald Trump.

Why is that important?

Correct.

I want I did not want to write a book about Donald Trump.

There are plenty of books about Trump, and I didn't want to write a book even about the 2020 campaign or about Trump and Biden or about national politics, partly because it's been done, partly because people tend to either if they if they agree with it, they're going to read it.

And if they don't agree with it, they're going to put it down.

I wanted to write a book that would challenge both parties to be a bit more introspective about their own side.

And the only way to do that was to build some of this trust that I'm talking about with the reader by vote, by challenging not just people I disagree with, but challenging people in my own party.

And so the book really steers clear of Trump.

And in fact, there's very little of Trump in the first two thirds of the book.

And then after the election, when he refuses to concede, it becomes inevitably part of the conversation.

Because in a journey that's exploring the nature of democracy here, we are actually getting a real time test on how to hold the democracy together.

Now, in terms of the media and the media's role in bringing people together into a conversation versus polarizing them and having them look at completely different sources that simply confirm what they already believe.

What is that landscape look like and how or what role would you like to see the media?

I would like to see the media do more of this, which is, you know, in-depth conversations with people who are not just spouting a particular party line.

You know, I think when you turn on a lot of news, that's that's what you get.

It's very predictable.

I find I don't really learn anything in that challenge.

And so I think there's a really important role for for media in doing more of that.

And and also, you know, trying to play down the middle more instead of catering to the far left or the far right, telling people what they want to hear.

It's a it's a hard thing to do because you risk losing audience.

People want to cancel their subscriptions and they stop watching.

And that's the nature of of running media as a business.

But it's really important.

And I was with a minister recently who who told me a good preacher steps on toes.

And I think that's true of good media, too.

You've got to you've got to be willing to step on people's toes and not just the toes on the other side.

Now, speaking of stepping on toes or perhaps trying not to step on toes, what were some other lessons you learned from the people you talk to, either through your reporting or as you traveled for the book in terms of ways that they're building bridges that might give us some tips, ideas, or hope for the future.

Yeah, well, there's a great example here in South Bend.

So when I came through South Bend, it was just before Amy Coney Barrett had been nominated to the Supreme Court.

And I met up with a woman named April Lidinsky, who some of your viewers may know she was volunteering at an abortion clinic, whole women's health here in town that happened to sit on the Lincoln Highway.

And so I talked with her about that experience.

She explained to me how difficult it was to open the clinic, how it had taken some years and faced lots of opposition.

But after it opened, she did something really unusual and she reached out to a couple of women in the pro-life movement and said, You know, why don't we try to have a conversation and why don't you come over to my home and we'll sit down and we'll talk.

And they did that.

And April was very hopeful that they would find some middle ground and be able to work together.

After the conversation, they realized there actually wasn't very much middle ground at all, but they concluded that was okay because they enjoyed the conversation and they enjoy each other's company and they decided to keep talking and out of it.

They even wrote an op ed for the South Bend Tribune in which they said this was this has been really hard work.

It takes a lot to open yourself up to this, to to have an open mind on a topic that you feel so strongly about.

But to listen to people, to engage with them has been really rewarding, too.

And what we've learned, they said, is that we've got to be able to prioritize the person over the message, the relationship, over the politics.

And I think that is so important to everything that we're really talking about today in terms of civil discourse and trust and deep polarization.

We've got to be able to see each other as individuals and to decide that the relationship that we're going to have together is more important than than any We're not going to convince each other, but we're going to respect each other because we see so many broken friendships, even family relationships that goes beyond uncomfortable Thanksgiving dinner to sometimes not talking to members of your family for years now at a time.

If you were to think about the people that you met and give some advice to viewers who might be feeling like that seems like a bridge too far.

I'm not sure that I can do that.

What would it be the advice to to people who are who have experienced these strained relationships?

Yes.

And perhaps aren't sure if they want if they want them to be able to.

Yeah.

And I know these are these are really hard and really complicated and people feel extremely strongly.

And I think one way out of a if a relationship has already been broken and is to try to to to meet and talk about something other than politics and to begin to reestablish a relationship in kind of a safe zone where you can do that.

And then from there, maybe the conversation become can become a little bit more political over time.

But people people sometimes just need to have space.

They need to have an agreement that, you know, we're going to we're going to we're not going to lose this relationship over politics.

And that's that can be hard to do.

One of the things that we see is a growing or seemingly growing divide between more urban areas and rural areas, which with folks feeling like they can't really understand each other or folks living in a different type of community, just don't respect them.

Do you see ways to bridge that divide?

And did you hear very different things or some similar things as you traveled both in big cities and very small rural communities?

Yeah, I certainly heard different things from from rural and urban people, including I mentioned, you know, and speaking to the to the owners of the of the gun sporting club, they said, you know, things are different for gun owners here than they are in the city.

They were outside of Denver and they said, why don't why should we have the same rules for gun ownership in the country as they do in the city?

And so there's there's always going to be that that that tension and those differences, bridging them is difficult.

But it does start with conversation and developing relationships and developing trust.

And part of that is, I think, you know, people in urban areas spending more time listening to people in rural areas and vice versa.

You know, it's not this is not just Democrats who need to go out to understand rural America.

I think it's, you know, that responsibility flows both ways.

Those are those are difficult challenges for for both parties, I think, to tackle.

I think it starts with a willingness and party leaders, a desire to recognize that there is political gain to be had in votes in those areas.

That's a healthy thing.

That's part of what makes democracy work.

As you you want to be able to go out and get those votes.

When a party writes off a rural area or writes off an urban area, that's when I think, you know, it starts to get really dangerous.

Now, one of the things you've said is that it's important to see shades of gray and to balance responsive ability.

I wonder if you can tell us briefly what that means.

You know, how did Lincoln do it and how can we do it today?

Sure.

So I want to tell a quick story about visiting the Arizona border with Mexico, because I think it illustrates it.

After the Lincoln Highway, we ended, we kept we kept traveling.

We went down to the border and I met with the sheriff there and he said they have a trafficking problem, drug trafficking, human trafficking.

And I went down and took a tour of the or I took a ride along over the wall and saw the wall going up.

And he said the wall helps to push that trafficking away from the town that it was that it was going up in front of.

And so it serves a purpose.

It also allows agents to have a little bit more time in trying to track down the people who are crossing and apprehend them.

But he said, but I also know a wall is not the end all and be all.

It's not the panacea.

We also need more.

We need more cameras, we need more technology, we need more staffing.

And he said we need more legal immigration, too.

And I think that that is something that we don't hear enough of from people on the right and also on the left.

We don't hear enough that there's that we have border security challenges and we need to secure the border.

But I do think that most Americans, the majority of Americans, would agree that we need both of those things.

We need to secure the border and we need to be able to let more people come here legally, because this has always been a nation of immigrants.

We we benefit from immigrants.

Our economy benefits.

Our culture benefits.

We want that.

And we haven't had a comprehensive immigration reform law in 40 years.

They've been talking about it in Washington for more than 20.

Tried to get it done recently.

Yes.

Well, even the bill that that would have passed would have mostly a border security bill.

And so we need more legal immigration.

And the fact that the sheriff recognized that to me was a reflection of the fact that most Americans recognize that we're a nation of immigrants and we need more immigrants, that the system is broken, we have to fix it.

And that's got to be part of the solution.

This is very interesting.

And both of guns and immigration, the stories you're hearing, match what we see in public opinion polls, but not in political rhetoric.

That's right.

Sounds like we the people need to start leading a little bit.

That's right.

Not in political rhetoric and also not in in our campaigns, because so many of the campaigns for Congress and even for state office get decided in the primary.

And where are the votes in the primary there and the extremes there in the most ideological voters.

And so the incentives are to run to the far ends, to the far left and the far right, and we end up with a Congress that reflects that because that's where the rewards are.

And so we've also got to be able to find new ways to incentivize centrism.

And this idea of patriotic pragmatism.

All right.

Well, thank you so much.

Unfortunately, that is all the time we have for this week's Politically Speaking.

I want to thank our guests, Frank Berry, for being here today.

I'm Elizabeth Bennion and reminding you that it takes all of us to make democracy work.

We'll see you next time.

Thank you.

All right.

Okay.

And they'll have as great and then they'll have any.