June 26 - Alternative Strategies to Stop Democrats From Losing; The Danger of Delegating Presidential Decisions to the Military; A CIA Insider on Trump's War With the Intelligence Community

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with an analysis of the daunting task ahead for the Democrats who hope to take back the House and even the Senate in 2018 and speak with George Lakoff, Professor Emeritus of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley and author of ”The All New Don’t Think of an Elephant” and “The Political Mind”. He joins us to discuss the recent Democratic defeat in the most expensive congressional race in history and offer an alternative strategy for Democrats as they try to reach out to disaffected Republican voters in potential swing districts. Facing a gerrymandered electorate with unlimited Republican money pouring in, Lakoff argues that the Democrats are doomed as long as they fail to learn from recent defeats while clinging to the vain hope Trump will self-destruct or be impeached. He urges them to stop running the same campaigns with bland candidates who continue to run on facts and figures, platforms and policies, while ignoring the political mind and the importance of values and emotions.   

Part 2

Then we examine the consequences of having a commander in chief who delegates decisions to the military as the war against ISIS in Syria and Iraq gets more complicated and potentially explosive while the security situation in Afghanistan deteriorates. Henri Barkey, the Director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars who was a member of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff on the Middle East, the Eastern Mediterranean and Intelligence, joins us to discuss that in the absence of hands-on leadership, there is a growing possibility that a clash between the U.S. and Syrian or Iranian forces could spark a wider war in Syria.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with Mel Goodman, an expert on U.S. relations with Russia who served as a senior analyst and division chief at the CIA and is the author of six books on U.S. intelligence and international security, the latest of which is “Whistleblower at the CIA: An Insider’s Account of the Politics of Intelligence”. He joins us to discuss the inner workings of the intelligence community and how corruption, intimidation and misinformation can lead to disastrous foreign interventions.