Season 01, Ep 01 January 12, 2025
Originally recorded December 06, 2024
53:03 minutes
SPEAKERS: Pete Wehner, Dayna Del Val
SUMMARY
In this episode of Brave Middle Ground, Dayna Del Val interviews Pete Wehner about the importance of moderation in politics, finding truth in polarized times and fostering meaningful conversations across ideological divides.
KEY WORDS
Brave Middle Ground, political polarization, Pete Wehner, truth and community, middle ground politics.
TRANSCRIPT
INTRO and WELCOME
Dayna Del Val 00:00
Pete, thank you so much for joining me as my first guest on Brave Middle Ground. I just have to tell you that when this idea came to me the Friday after the November election, I had that thought, and the very next thought I had was, “I wonder if Pete Wehner would join me as my first guest?” So I just cannot tell you how thrilled I am that you said yes.
Pete Wehner 00:23
Well, thank you. Thanks for inviting me. I’m delighted to be with you, and I appreciate what you’re trying to do. So it’s, it’s a particular honor to join you as your first guest.
HOW DO YOU DEFINE MIDDLE GROUND?
Dayna Del Val 00:33
Well, thank you. So, boy, the world is different since the last time you and I talked about six months ago, and yet, some of the things that mattered then, I think matter now, and perhaps matter even more. So there may be some crossover, but I think there’s also additional ground to cover. So my first question for you is, really, how do you define middle ground?
Pete Wehner 01:03
Yeah, I think about middle ground not as a policy position per se, but I think more of a disposition. I think it embodies the concept of moderation, which I think is a virtue. And I think about moderation as an attitude, a temperament, that is against extremism, that searches out the truth, which is complicated, that seeks out the opinion of others. It involves, excuse me, I’m battling a bit of a cold. It involves epistemological modesty, that is an understanding that our capacity to see truth is limited because we’re human beings.
And so I think about that kind of middle ground as an ability to seek truth together within community with people that you disagree with, in an effort not just to arrive at a solution, but to actually ascertain truth, the reality of things. And I think it’s a particularly important concept in the here and now, because I think we live at a time in which even the concept of middle ground or moderation is viewed in unfairly negative terms.
Dayna Del Val 02:52
Yeah, one of the things that really happened for me after we spoke last time was you helped me moderate. I’m not a particularly moderate person. I have fairly strong opinions, both what I believe and what I believe other people should or shouldn’t believe, and so I appreciate your defining it in this both sort of deep and broad way. Because I think, what I hope, comes of this podcast is an understanding that middle ground is not a sign of weakness. It’s not a sign of having no personal integrity or no conviction. It’s a recognition that, until and unless we live in community, we will never move forward the way that we can and should, because we’re so isolated in our own little silos. That’s a dangerous place to be,
Pete Wehner 03:54
For sure, and I think it’s temptation that we all have. You know, all of us have certain predispositions. We seek out information that affirms what we already believe. We often have strong feelings, negative feelings, against people who hold views differently than we do, particularly views that we have deep convictions about. So we all suffer from confirmation bias or motivated reasoning, and we can’t escape it.
But the question is, to what degree in good faith do we try and get beyond it? And, I think that’s what you’re trying to do with this podcast and, I actually think that it’s people who do have strong convictions, who may even lean toward the extreme side of politics and theology that most need to talk about it. So I think it’s particularly important for people who may be temperamentally toward the extreme side of things, or who have particularly strong convictions on issues, to reflect on what moderation, on what middle ground means, what it brings.
I also think that it’s important to bear in mind that it’s, it’s not simply for the sake of civility that we want middle ground and moderation. I think that’s important. But I do think that the search for truth is even a deeper part of what we are, of what we’re talking about. Because I do think that it’s in the back and forth, the yes and no, the arguments, empirical arguments, static arguments, comparison of notes that we learn.
I tell the story from CS Lewis, who wrote in Surprised By Joy about the friendship that he had with Owen Barfield, which I may have mentioned to you in the past. Barfield and Lewis were part of the literary group, the Inklings, and they were close friends. It was one of one of the first books that Lewis wrote was dedicated to Barfield, whom he called his first and greatest teacher. What was interesting is that Barfield and Lewis disagreed intensely on some theological issues, but they appreciated each other precisely because they did disagree on these issues, and they were able to have these discussions.
Lewis referred to it as going at it hammer and tong late into the night, where you could begin to feel and absorb the blows, the rhetorical blows of the other person. Not to hurt but to drive forward a certain argument. And Barfield later said about he and Lewis, he said, “Lewis and I never debated for victory. We debated for truth.” And I think that that’s an entirely different mindset. And if more of us, and here I’m speaking to myself as well, if more of us were to debate with an aim toward truth rather than victory, I think all of us would be better off.
FINDING A SHARED DEFINITION OF TRUTH
Dayna Del Val 07:29
So I wonder, how in the world do we find a shared definition of truth when we live in such seemingly polarized viewpoints? And, I mean, let’s, let’s go back to a sort of easy example, because we’ve got history to, you know, kind of buffer it. But I certainly understand that there were Southern Democrats, pre-Civil War who intellectually and perhaps even morally understood that slavery was wrong, but supported it because it supported their party, it supported their way of life, all those kinds of things, but there were certainly others who believed wholeheartedly that African Americans were two thirds human and all those pieces; that was their truth. How do we have hammer and tong, not for victory, but to reach an agreement point of truth? How do we have those conversations when we are so diametrically opposed to some things that feel very foundational?
Pete Wehner 08:45
Yeah, it’s a great question. I mean, just to take that period of time you’re talking about, just the Civil War era, there’s probably something to be learned from it, which is Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote one of the most important novels in the English-speaking world, which is Uncle Tom’s Cabin. And the reason it was such an important novel is that it humanized African Americans, blacks, to people who were not inclined to see them as human beings.
And so it used the esthetic, in this case, it used the literary to try and open up a side to people who saw things differently than she did, and differently than what is right. But she found a way to appeal to their humanity and to widen the aperture of their lenses on what it means.
I don’t know if this is apocryphal or not, but supposedly Lincoln, when he met Harriet Beecher Stowe at the White House said, “So this is the little woman who started the Great War.” Now, you know, you have to add to that when we’re talking about the Civil War, that ultimately, what ended slavery was not a novel. It was a war. And that needs to be taken into account, too, which is sometimes hopefully short. A war, you know, one side has to prevail and one side has to lose.
But I think behind your question is, what can we do, far short of war, to try and get there? I do think as well, that one of the things that ultimately, in the middle term, can help is people who live their lives aligned with truth, and communities that live their lives aligned with truth are more flourishing and more inviting communities.
And so people who live in unreality will see that as an example and be drawn to it. And as you’re drawn to communities, you listen better to people. And then sometimes I think that you know it’s, it’s in the life of a country like the life of an individual, sometimes one just needs to let time pass and hope that new dispositions kick in, I suppose.
Think about it with all the caveats that you’d want to insert in an example like this. You know, if you’re in relationship, a couple, spouse, and you’re in a heated argument or very strong emotions are being expressed. Emotions are inflamed at that point. You just have to have the wisdom and the discernment to figure out what can be said at what moment, what needs to wait. It doesn’t mean that you can’t say whatever it is you feel like you need to say, but maybe you need to say it at a different moment and let the emotions settle down.
In the United States today, I take some measure of comfort in the fact that there’s something called the exhaustive majority, which refers to people who are just tired of all the anger and the antipathy and the collisions and which are themselves, based, in part, in different epistemological models, different views of what truth is. But there’s no magic wand to this and I do think we’re in a dangerous period, not because truth hasn’t been challenged before. It’s always been challenged throughout human history, but I think given the times in which we live, given social media, given the fact that conspiracy theorists can be part of communities that in the past they weren’t able to be part of, now they’re virtual communities the spread of misinformation, disinformation. I mean, we’ve never faced this before in human history, and so that that makes this more complicated.
And the final thing I’ll say is just on an individual level, in my experience, what I found is when you connect with other people, and you stay in relationship with other people who see the world differently than you do, that at least opens up the possibility of having conversations where other people can hear you, but that’s based on trust. Because if you don’t trust another person, or you feel like you’re going to be on the receiving end of an onslaught of information and arguments, the natural reaction is to get your back up and to lash out. So I think what one needs to do is to create the environment that allows genuine discussion to happen. That doesn’t always work, but I think, to the degree something like that will work, it’s better when there’s trust in relationships.
SHOULD WE TALK ABOUT POLITICS IN OUR DAY TO DAY LIVES?
Dayna Del Val 13:37
You know that I live in North Dakota, which is notoriously conservative and seemingly moving more so. And I always say to people that I start, anytime I meet someone, I start from the supposition that they are as liberal as I am, until I’m proven wrong. And so I am consistently proven wrong pretty quickly, right? And I mean, it’s a little bit humorous, because everyone, you know, 80% of my state, is not going to agree with me.
But I also think that I was having a conversation with a friend the other day, and I made some political reference, and she said, “You know, Dayna, I just don’t talk politics.” And so I stopped, and I’ve really been reflecting on it, thinking, “Well, maybe I’m wrong to make politics such a present part of my day in and day out. I mean, I’m not a politician. I don’t have an elected office.” And then I go back to, “But I believe politics is inherent to who we are.”
And I was so thrilled when I went back to read your incredible book, The Death of Politics, to remember that probably some of why I feel this way is because of Aristotle and his definition of politics really being about community. Can you just talk a little bit about that, because I think the word politics has taken on a new meaning, and I don’t actually think it’s the way we should be thinking about it.
Pete Wehner 15:09
Yeah, I think that’s well said, and I understand where you’re coming from. I mean, I’m somebody who is in the political world, but even if I weren’t, I think for me, it would be natural to talk about politics. And by politics, I don’t mean politics necessarily in the most surface meaning, which is sort of the news of the day, or who’s up or who’s down, or this cabinet nominee or that cabinet nominee, although that’s obviously legitimate to talk about. But I think about politics in the deeper sense, which is the pursuit of justice, and how do we live more meaningful and fulfilling lives, and how does politics intersect with that? How does it influence how it? I think that it requires some measure of discernment in terms of, should one talk about politics?
And then the second thing I’d say is it depends on how one talks about politics right? In terms of the discernment, and sometimes you can tell pretty early on with an individual that a political discussion of virtually any kind is not going to be particularly fruitful. They could be angry, they could be inflamed, they could be in a position where their minds are closed, or you may be in the same position, or I may be in the same position. But I think we all know of conversations where we think this is not the wise thing to bring up at this particular moment. So we’re going to talk about whatever else we want to talk about, children, the weather, you know, favorite books, favorite movies, that kind of thing.
So I think the threshold question there is, does this have the potential to be a fruitful conversation or not? If it’s just going to be two people yelling at each other or not yelling, but feeling a lot of rage against each other, that’s not useful to anybody, so you just set it aside. Well, I’m going to have that conversation with somebody else or this person at it at a different time.
The second thing is, if you do have those conversations, I think it depends on how they take place, how they unfold, if it turns almost instantaneously into a debate, which is, you know, why did you vote for Trump? Or why did you vote for Harris? Or how could you do such a thing? Or how do you feel about voting for a person who was found liable of sexual assault, and was an insurrectionist? The odds are that that’s not going to go extremely well. It doesn’t mean, by the way, that those aren’t legitimate questions to ask. It only means that they need to be asked within a certain context.
So I think when you’re dealing with people who have views different than you, often the question is to [have] genuine curiosity and really want to listen: “Tell me about your story. Tell me how you’ve come to believe the political convictions that you hold. Tell me about your family of origin. Did you always hold these views? Have they changed over time?” I think when people feel like they’re genuinely being heard, that there is genuine curiosity on the part of others, they’ll open up more, and you’ll learn more about their journey and that will help.
The other thing that I’ve found in political conversations that are helpful, and even not in conversations, but when I think about politics and dealing with people who view things differently than I do, it is the discipline of trying to express in the most fair-minded way possible the argument the other person holds. And I’ll just give you an anecdote on that.
I taught it at Duke University for a couple of semesters, and one of the things that I did was with a group of journalists, students who were majoring in journalism, I think the editor of the Duke newspaper and a number of others, and I chose a series of issues, abortion, homosexuality and gender, Second Amendment, guns and race, affirmative action. And I was warned not to do that with the students, but I went ahead and did it anyway. And I asked each of the students to take a position, choose an issue and write the opposite of what you believe, and write a paper for me defending the opposite position which you genuinely believe. And I graded them according to how strong those papers were. And I was really quite struck by how well the students did.
At one point, I remember asking, “I just want to be clear that you don’t hold this position because it’s so persuasive.” And when we talked about it as a class afterward, I remember the conversations. There was one woman who was the representative of NARAL on the Duke campus, and she wrote a paper on the pro-life position, and she said, “It was painful for me to do.” But she also acknowledged she learned things because she had to delve into what the precepts, the suppositions, the empirical evidence the arguments of the other side were. So I think if we all did that more than we did, you can’t do that all the time, obviously, but if we were to try and express the best case for the other side, that’s helpful for us as well as for others,
SARAH PALIN AND I COULD (POSSIBLY) BE FRIENDS OR AT LEAST FRIENDLY???
Dayna Del Val 21:00
I can’t remember if I told you this, but I something on National Public Radio years ago about a woman whose children came home from school, and when she got home from work, all of the Republican yard signs were in her yard, up against the garage, and she went inside, and she said to her kids, “Where are all of these signs from?” And they said, “Well, we pulled them out because, you know, we hate Republicans.” And she realized that, of course, her children were consciously and unconsciously paying attention to the conversations she and her friends were having.
So she found the most conservative person in her network, and she asked if they could go and have lunch. And they took some topics off the table, I think abortion and some other, you know, ones that just, it’s very hard to find middle ground. But they sat down with the pure intention of saying, I know you’re not going to vote for who I vote for. I know you don’t believe a lot of what I believe, but where is our common ground?
And I remember listening to that, and it was during Sarah Palin’s vice presidency campaign, and I thought, “Okay, generally, I find Sarah Palin to be kind of a dope on a rope. But where are our commonalities?” We were, at the time, both married, we both had made a decision to keep a pregnancy that was complicated. I mean, I came up with a number of commonalities, and I have never forgotten it, because Sarah Palin and I, in theory, have nothing in common. We don’t view the world from the same direction at all, and yet I was shocked at how many things, without knowing her, I was able to produce that made me think, “Wow. Perhaps I could have a conversation with her. Perhaps she could be a friend.” I mean, that seems impossible to imagine, but what if it isn’t impossible?
Pete Wehner 23:02
Yeah, that’s a great anecdote. It’s very powerful one. I think one of the things that it underscores is that the connections that we have are often stronger than we know, and that there are so many dimensions to life, and politics isn’t the only isn’t the only one. And if you can find out what those other layers are and you know, touch them and get in sync with people about them: share your life story, stories about children, about growing up, you know, parts of the country that you lived in, the joys of life, the sufferings of life, the sorrows of life. You know, it is notable that I think for most people, there’s a there’s a natural empathy that they have, and so when people share about their lives and often the struggles of their life, that creates a connection. I don’t think that one ought to do that for a utilitarian reason, which is, “Oh, we can connect on some suffering that we’ve experienced, so I can convert this person to my political beliefs.” That’s not my point. It’s, I think, to underscore what your story is telling, which is that we’re complicated in a good way, and the capacity to create community, friendship, at least acquaintances and relationships, are maybe easier than we think, as long as we approach them in the right way. And again, I think once you establish that kind of relationship that you’re describing, it may open up the capacity to talk about some of these controversial issues. Maybe not, and if not, that’s okay, too.
Dayna Del Val 24:51
Well, I have to add, because I apologize for calling her a dope on a rope. That was silly and inappropriate, but the other thing that it did for me is I remember very clearly having a regard for her in a new way, because she did run for office. She was elected, she put herself out there in ways I always talked about doing and never have. And so again, I don’t have to like her policy to have respect for the fact that she pursued something, achieved it. It doesn’t really matter if I like the outcome or not. She attempted and pursued and achieved something I didn’t. And there’s value to finding that in someone else.
Pete Wehner 25:37
Yeah, I think that’s a good way of describing it. It’s interesting about Sarah Palin, because I’m not a fan by by any means, and I think her limitations were pretty obvious. One of the ways I think about her is that she was a person who was a reasonably well-regarded governor, not well known in Alaska, and she was picked to be vice president, and she accepted, which most of us would do. And she simply wasn’t prepared, and she was just battered because she was so limited in her abilities and skill sets and intellect to run in high public office. And I did feel for her, because she was so mocked by people. And when that happens that can turn people into hardened versions of themselves. And you know, the human mind finds capacities to defend itself, especially if you’re on the receiving end of mock, ridicule and humiliation. And I think that that drove her into more extreme directions than her life otherwise would have taken her because of what she had to go through. That doesn’t justify the views that she holds now or then. It just, I think is helps to understand, you know, how people become who they sometimes become.
Dayna Del Val 25:38
Yeah. I mean, my gosh. I remember my stepdad saying to me, we were watching something she was on, and I made some passing reference to how not intelligent I found her to be. And he said, “You know, if John McCain had reached out to you and asked if you wanted to be the Vice President, you’d have said yes, too.” When someone of that stature shines their light on you, it perhaps makes you forget your failings and think, “Well, I must be something.” How do you say no to that? She’s a very complicated person in my mind, because that radio program just forever altered the way I was so able to summarily dismiss her outright as just being something that wasn’t worth anything. And that’s just actually not true.
Pete Wehner 28:02
Yeah. Well, I mean, even in describing that, that evolution of views and deepened understanding of her says something about you, right? Which is the capacity to recalibrate your thinking, to see somebody in a more capacious way, more generous way. And you haven’t given up on your convictions, or your bottom line about her, which was she wasn’t qualified to be Vice President, and I agree with that. I think it was true then. I think it’s true now, but the fact that you were able to see her through a more human lens, that’s the kind of thing we need more broadly in our politics, and what you described is one of the ways that that happens. But it’s not easy, so it’s something that’s admirable in terms of the capacity to take a person that you may have viewed with some measure of loathsomeness and say, “Maybe it’s a little more complicated than that.”
DISCUSSING THE DEATH OF POLITICS AND CORE IDENTITY
Dayna Del Val 28:57
Well, I appreciate that. Thank you. I would love to read something from this book. So this book came out in 2019. When you and I spoke for the Humanities podcast, I certainly, I’ll just keep it about me. I certainly thought that we were moving toward a November Democratic win. We spoke before Kamala Harris was even at the top of the ticket. I mean, it was a very different time, not all that long ago, but this book certainly, I think, reads as a looking at Donald Trump in the past, not necessarily seeing him again in the future. But what makes this book so compelling, and why I continue to encourage people on every political piece of the political spectrum to read it, is that it’s actually not about, “I’m pro this. I’m anti that.” I mean, you make a very clear stance, and have been very public about your breaking from your lifetime commitment to the Republican Party, in particular, Donald Trump. But that’s not really the point of the book, from my perspective. I think it’s, how do we come back from where we were, and now, how do we come back from where we are?
So you say “The Democratic Virtue of Civility. We live in an era of growing incivility. We can see it and sense it all around us, from the rudeness we encounter while driving and shopping to social media posts and cyber bullying to cable television and talk radio to the behavior of the politicians and preeminently, the President of the United States. Incivility not only implies disrespect, discourteousness and impoliteness. It derives from the Latin word incivilis meaning “not of a citizen” To be uncivil then, is to act in ways that tend to put one at odds with what it means to be a responsible citizen. The converse is also true. Civility is central to citizenship. It is the precondition, not the product, of respect for others. When civility is stripped away, everything in life becomes a battlefield, an arena for conflict, an excuse for invective. Families, communities, our conversations and our institutions break apart. When basic civility is absent, everyday life becomes nearly intolerable” (161-62).
And then you talk about it being a misunderstood virtue that it’s often now if you are civil, it’s because you don’t have a strong opinion, or because you don’t have conviction. So we have talked on this a bit, but this so beautifully sums up what I’m trying to do with this podcast, which is to stop seeing things in black and white in these very binary ways, which is the most comfortable way I think we have become at seeing things, and to start to See the gray. So why is this so hard? Maybe that’s too big a question.
Pete Wehner 32:05
Yeah, no, it’s a good question. It’s a really good question. Why is it so hard to see grays? I think part of it is it’s harder for some individuals than others to see grays. I’m guessing that throughout your life, you’ve met people, we were just having a conversation, my wife, Cindy and I, the other day with somebody and what came up is the term black and white, so that you know “This person is a black and white thinker.” And so I think there are individuals who are temperamentally black and white thinkers; their sensibilities, their dispositions are such that, and then there are some people who see grays, who search out grays, who actually find life more vivifying and interesting because they want to search out the grays. They want to try and see things and acknowledge that truth is complicated and many-sided. And they want to search it out. So some of it, I think, is just how we’re wired.
But I also think that some of this probably comes down to core identities that we have, and we all have certain core identities. They may be faith related and theological; they may be political and partisan related. They may be regionally driven. You know, so what creates who we are and the core identities we have, family of origin and a lot of other things. Those are certain things that are fundamental to us and we all, I think, create constructs in our life, to try and make sense of life, templates. And maybe, to mix metaphors, maybe we all view life through lenses that are colored in one way or another. So none of us sees through perfectly clear lenses, and we do that because it does help make sense of our of our life, and helps give meaning.
And so the energy that you hear from that person isn’t really an abstract policy debate. It’s that that issue is tied to something that’s more central, more fundamental. And so I think some of that happens. I mean, I’m person of the Christian faith, and I’ve had countless conversations of theology with people. It’s an interest of mine, and I am temperamentally disposition somebody who has a lot of questions and thinks and rethinks and recalibrates my views. I wonder, you know, did I have this wrong in the past. Do I have it wrong now? And asks questions, “Okay, you believe this, but then how do you explain that?” Or “If you believe this, does it mean you also believe this?” Now, those kinds of conversations are ones that are fruitful to me, and I enjoy them, but I’m also careful throughout my life, in terms of the people that I have those conversations with, because I want to make sure that I have conversations with people who are comfortable in having those conversations. Because I know full well that there are some folks that if they heard my questions, that might be felt as an attack on the faith or the superstructure of their faith.
And so if I raise questions about, let’s say, a certain interpretive model of the Bible, the way that they feel that is, “Look, if you raise arguments that I can’t answer, my faith in the Bible is going to collapse, and so in turn, will my faith, and my faith is central to who I am, and it gives me peace, and it gives me comfort, and it helped me when my mom was dying, because I felt like God was there, and I don’t want to lose that.” right? And I think that if there are discussions that a person has that becomes a threat to a core identity, then you get very strong emotions that arise. I think it’s one of the reasons why, if you’ve thought in the past that you’ve had a discussion with somebody, say about, you know, gun control or something like that, and you may have had the sense that this conversation is more energized than it really needs to be, you know. So we disagree on this issue. You have your studies. I have mine. You believe this empirical data; I believe that empirical data. Let’s compare notes. Maybe we’ll find some, some measure of common ground. Maybe we won’t, but that’s okay. But those conversations often aren’t like that. It’s like there’s something else going on. And in some ways, I think the political debates, the policy debates that we have, are proxies for something deeper. And I think what that deeper thing is a core identity.
So for example, a gun control debate may be felt by a person as, “You are attacking a region of the country that I’m from.” Or maybe “I’m from rural America.” Or maybe it’s a sense that “Northeast liberals have looked down with condescension and patronizing for people who are gun owners and who grow up, even though I may have a wonderful memory of a child hunting with my dad. And my experience is different than yours, and you look down on me, because for me, a gun culture is part of the culture that I grew up in. And it doesn’t mean that I want to go and shoot a person on Fifth Avenue. And it doesn’t mean that I have no regard for human life, or that I’m in favor of mowing down people at elementary schools.”
So that’s a lot of complicated stuff that’s going on, but I do think that it explains in part, why sometimes people are sort of more black and white in their thinking, and other times it’s just arrogance. It’s just people who think, “What I see is true almost by definition. And if you don’t see the world the way I do, then you’re an idiot.” And so I think that that goes on, too. Some people are just more comfortable with complexity in life than other people. Just one other anecdote, apropos to being a Christian. There is a person that I’ve known for many years who’s a Christian, and we were having a discussion about hermeneutics, how you interpret the Bible. And at one point he said to me that he thought that 95% plus of the Bible was absolutely self-evident and essentially not open to debate and the teachings.
Dayna Del Val 39:20
Wow.
Pete Wehner 39:21
Now my response to that was, “If that’s a case, why are there hundreds or 1000s of denominations of which there are dozens of debates within those denominations about all sorts of issues? Infant baptism versus adult baptism. Of women, should they be ordained for ministry or not? You know, pre millennial, post millennium.” You could go through endless number of issues. But he came from a background, and his mindset was such, that he thought that the truths were absolutely self-evident, and there really wasn’t too much to debate. So in that case, you’re just dealing with people who are coming at the search for truth and how well we understand truth, and how confident we can be in terms of our capacity to understand all elements of truth. So I think that explains it as well.
Dayna Del Val 40:20
Wow, this core identity piece is, is kind of another one of those light bulb moments. I, of course, you’re absolutely right. I’m thinking through, you know, I mean being a lifetime Midwesterner, I certainly have experienced East Coast elitism. And I’m thinking through, why do I always feel that so deeply? And it’s because it touches this core identity of both being proud of and sometimes ashamed of being from the middle of flyover region. And you know, all the complexity of that, and it brings out a vulnerability in me, and the way I deal with that is to shut a door and get angry, or shut a door and cry because I, yeah, wow. Okay, well, this kind of turned into a therapy session. Pete, so I appreciate that.
HOW DO YOU SIT AT THE TABLE WITH FAMILY WHOSE VIEWS DON’T MATCH YOUR OWN?
My last question for you is, we’re just coming off of the major holiday season where families are together, and I know that you are from a family of people who are fairly, were at least fairly conservative. That you inherited much of your conservative beliefs from your parents. How in the world are you as someone who isn’t just sort of dipping your toe into being quite vocal about having this evolutionary thought process. How are you sitting at the Thanksgiving table with family? How are you navigating that?
Pete Wehner 41:55
Yeah, I think it’s navigating reasonably well. My immediate family, including my siblings, but also my wife and my kids, they certainly understand where I’m coming from. Their own journeys, in different ways, depending on who you’re talking about, but it’s been more or less like mine. So I’ve been fortunate in that way. I have not had my closest family relationships strained because of political differences, and I know a lot of people who have. But more extended family, I’ve certainly been on the receiving end of some measure of wrath from people and friendships that I’ve had, including very deep friendships, because I was person who was in the Republican party for my entire adult life, served in three Republican administrations. And an awful lot of those people that I was with, not all, but a lot of people that I was close to, have a very different view.
Because I’m a writer in The Atlantic, in the New York Times, so pretty visible platforms, and I’ve been pretty vocal in my criticisms of Trump, and pretty consistent in them, you know. That has created challenges. I’d say overall, I’m probably, you know, more fortunate than most in the sense that I haven’t lost a lot of relationships over this. I don’t think I’ve lost any. There has been some distancing with some people, and I’ve tried to overcome that. But some of it is just a sense of maybe that in this season of life, maybe that just has to happen.
I tell the story in in The Death of Politics, the book that I wrote in 2019, about my relationship with Joe Klein, who is a journalist. And Joe used to be at Newsweek, and he and I got to know each other in the 1990s, and we had a nice friendship. He was a center right Democrat and I was a Republican, so we had some differences, but we had a fair amount in common, and there was a friendship. And I always thought Joe was certainly was right and sort of delightful company and liked him.
And then when I was in the Bush administration, particularly the Iraq War, he turned critical in a way that I thought was both unfair and sometimes crossed the line. It was one thing to disagree with the policy. I thought he went beyond that. I was in the administration; I challenged some of what he said publicly. And we had these, these discussions, including when I left the administration, that were really pretty rough and tumble. If you go back and Google you know me and Joe Klein and the debates we had. And I felt like, at the time that I was making the arguments that were warranted and legitimate, but it didn’t really set that well with me where the relationship was, and I think Cindy knew that, and always had hoped that there could be reconciliation there, along with other relationships.
And so after some period of time, years passed, I reached out to Joe. And in my memories at first, I didn’t hear from back from him, but then I tried again, and we had a lunch at the Jefferson Hotel in downtown Washington, DC. And he was on the other side of the street as I was walking up to it, we saw each other, and we just embraced spontaneously. We had already exchanged emails, so we had connected in that way, but just physically seeing him, we embraced and we had a lovely lunch, you know, together.
So you know that to me, is a hopeful story. I guess it underscores, again, what I said earlier, which is sometimes you have to wait for the right moment for those that reconciliation to happen. And I think a person has to be ready to acknowledge that maybe that reconciliation doesn’t happen. It doesn’t mean that you have to break the friendship or certainly not hate the other person, but it may be that for a variety of reasons that you may not have full control over that those relationships are just different, and you have to accept that and try as best as you can to stay in touch with people, while knowing that the intimacy that you once had with them isn’t going to be the same.
But, you know, I do have friends for sure, who are, who are Trump supporters, and we get along fine. And there have been times like during the election, where I said, “You know, we should probably dial down our debates on politics, because I feel like we’re going round and round in circles, and I don’t think it’s particularly constructive, and it has the chance of probably hurting the relationship in ways that you know neither of us really wants. So let’s stay in touch. Let’s talk about other things and but be intentional that we’re going to kind of avoid the politics. And maybe we’ll, we’ll, we’ll come back to that at some future time.” So that’s how I’ve tried to navigate it. It’s certainly not been the most dominant part of my life. Most of my relationships that I’ve had, I maintain.
And I will also say it’s a kind of interesting journey, in the sense that I’ve made new friendships and relationships since I’ve broken with the Republican Party, with people who were, you know, Liberal Democrats for years. And we might disagree on some issues, but we agree on some pretty fundamental matters, too. But then our relationships, these new relationships aren’t based simply on politics. You then begin to learn about those people and their lives and the multi dimensionality of their lives, and all of a sudden, it’s like, well, you know, once I felt like we were, you know, we were planets apart, and then I figured out, you know, maybe we have some things in common. And then I figured out, wow, this is actually a pretty decent person. And then you kind of figure out, oh, well, maybe, you know, maybe I misjudged them in the past. Maybe that I didn’t see things the way I should have. Maybe I see them more fully now than I did then, and vice versa. And of course, then you say, Well, what about this moment in time? What about in December 2024? Maybe I’m looking at people now in a pretty harsh way, and five years or 10 years from now, I learned, well, there’s more to them than I thought at this moment, when, when the passions of politics were, you know, were particularly stoked.
WRAPPING UP
Dayna Del Val 49:08
Yeah, I hope that’s true for all of us. The thing that it reminds me of as I’m listening to you talk is the third word to the title of the podcast, which is Brave Middle Ground, because I think it does require a level of bravery to stand up, to say that you think something is right or wrong, to break from something that you’ve always been identified with and to stake a claim. In your case, to stake a claim in things that are Google-able. And you know, I mean, your words will live on long past you and history will have an opportunity to remember you because you have put your thoughts into writing. But what you’ve done so beautifully, I think, and what makes it brave is that you didn’t just think it. You did put your neck out. You did say, I think there’s something bigger that I can contribute based on my time and experience. And you did that.
So I want to thank you for doing that, because A) it got me to you, and you have been really Pete, you’ve been really instrumental in my life, in these two brief conversations that we’ve had. And I know that I can’t be the only person who, while on the other side of your typical politics, also struggling and grappling with how to get back a little bit more to the center, to not vilify the other side, but to find our shared humanity and our shared civility. So I just really want to thank you for doing it for me, for my audience, and for everyone else who I know has been given a really gentle and firm awakening because you were willing to be brave and to try to find the middle ground.
Pete Wehner 51:07
Well, that’s very generous. Thank you. It’s been a delight to be with you and that’s what you’re doing with this, with this podcast, and in your in your own life. You have convictions, but you care about the right things, and you care about decency and the humanity of other people. And even in this conversation, you shared that, and that’s going to that’s going to be a great encouragement to your listeners. And you know, all we can do is within the circumstances that we live, the communities who are part of us, to try and live with as much integrity as we can and, you know, the rest of it, how successful it is or not in the macro sense, that’s often determined by things we can’t control. But what we can control is how faithful we are to what we believe. And you’re doing that and that’s, by the way, to how a country changes when enough individuals in a self-governing country decide to pursue the right things in the right way, then that’s how countries can heal.
Dayna Del Val 52:10
It’s that beautiful Bobby Kennedy quote that you, I hear you talk about so often: the ripples that meet and create the wave. I had forgotten this, but it’s a it’s a great way for us to close: we talked, in our last conversation, about not being the corks in the water, but actually being the waves, the water, that has the potential to move. And so I just I appreciate this conversation. I appreciate you giving me your time and insight, and I hope that we can stay in touch and that you can come back on, you know, as things continue to evolve in this world, and we continue to seek to find the middle ground,
Pete Wehner 52:50
Well thanks. I consider this and what you’re doing to be a ripple of hope, so I’d be happy to be a part of it in the future. Thanks.
Dayna Del Val 52:58
Thank you, Pete. Have a fantastic day, and everyone else, we’ll talk soon.
If you enjoyed this conversation, don’t forget to subscribe to Brave Middle Ground on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or watch the video at YouTube, leave a review and share it with friends who value thoughtful dialogue.
