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Dr. Casey Burgat on the myths of American democracy

We are thrilled to be sharing a conversation today between Beth and Dr. Casey Burgat, a professor and author of the new book, We Hold These "Truths": How to Spot the Myths that are Holding America Back. Beth and Casey talk about the balance of power between the branches of government, what a reset would look like, where they would start fixing things, and — perhaps most importantly — their shared love of the Three Pines series by Louise Penny.

Thank you so much for listening! We’re currently out for a short summer break. We’ll be bringing you new episodes of Pantsuit Politics on Tuesdays and finishing up our flashback series on Fridays. We’ll have a couple of new More to Say episodes for you each week, but no Good Morning and no spicy bonus episodes. We’ll be back in your ears in real time and on our regular schedule on Monday, August 11. Until then, keep it nuanced, y’all.

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Episode Resources

• Burgat, Casey | Graduate School of Political Management | College of Professional Studies | The George Washington University

• We Hold These "Truths" | Book by Casey Burgat (Simon & Schuster)

• Crash Course (Casey’s Substack)

Show Credits

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Episode Transcript

Sarah [00:00:08] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

Beth [00:00:09] This is Beth Silvers. You're listening to Pantsuit Politics. We are on a short summer break, but are delighted to be bringing you new conversations, including today's, with Dr. Casey Burgat.

Sarah [00:00:20] Dr. Casey Burgat is a former congressional staffer turned professor of legislative affairs at George Washington University. His latest book, We Hold These "Truths": How to Spot the Myths that are Holding America Back, examines common misconceptions about American democracy and their impact on contemporary political discourse

Beth [00:00:39] Casey is so much fun to talk to. I think you're really going to love this conversation. He has a special skill of talking about structural civic issues in an accessible way. And he hangs for Outside of Politics to discuss the Louise Penny Three Pines series. So I know you're going to want to stay for that. Up next, Dr. Casey Burgat. Okay, so you have a book out with a lot of very fancy contributors, and I'm wondering how you decided to frame up what you wanted to do here. It seems to me like you set out and you looked at America and you diagnosed a specific problem and decided that you wanted try to help solve that problem through this book. I would love to hear about your diagnosis process and how you would articulate the problem you're trying to solve with this book.

Dr. Casey Burgat [00:01:37] Okay. So we're just starting with the biggest thing. Smart.

Beth [00:01:40] I like a softball to get us going, Casey. That's my MO.

Dr. Casey Burgat [00:01:43] Yeah, let's see how far we can hit this dinger here. But the impetus here is honestly years and years in the making that we see governments, we think of them as like these static beings, but they're like your children. When you see them every day, you don't see them grow. And then when you see it them after six months away, or you just have a gap in between seeing me like, oh my God, you are a different human being. And honestly, that's how, as a political scientist, as a professor, as someone who used to work on the Hill, I see all this stuff through historical lenses because we are so victimized. We are victims of the now and that we think of what is now will always forever be and it's just never that true. And the biggest misconception out there is that governments don't or can't change and that they will just stay forever the same. The impetus of this is we're on a on a scary direction. If you listen to experts, if you look at what's going on and you compare them across eras across countries, across history, we got some work to do.

[00:02:46] And one of my biggest frustrations over years and years is that I'd have conversations with people who are interested and you know better than most the hardest thing is to get people interested in this type of stuff. But even when you had conversations with people who are invested in it, we are having the wrong ones over and over and over. Like, yes, we agree that things are broken. Yes, we agree that things need to be better, but then we don't get past the misconceptions, the myths out there. And we spend so much time and energy and volume on the wrong things. And so then over the course of a couple of years, having these same conversations over and over again, like, let's put it in one place. Let's find one resource, let's put them together and try to get people who are willing to invest this time and energy in our government because it matters that much, and try to get past these garbage conversations to having ones where we can actually disagree on things where we should genuinely disagree with each other on. But at least that's about the policy, not the wrong misguided conversation. So hopefully this book is a step in the right direction of getting people to think past the easy arguments to be had, knowing that they're not going to make any difference anyway. Let's get to the stuff that really matters.

Beth [00:03:59] It was interesting reading the myths that you chose because they're all pretty structural. And I guess a myth that I have in my own mind is that nobody wants to talk about the structural. But then here are these things that people do say about politics all the time that are; they're just not the things that I want to talk about. So when you were putting this together, were you surprised by that finding that people are kind of obsessed with how everything works? They're just working on dated and filtered information.

Dr. Casey Burgat [00:04:32] Honestly, that was the point, is to talk about the institutions themselves, right? In that we think of these institutions as these non-bending far-off places in D.C. It doesn't impact my everyday life. I can't change it. Why would I show up and try to do it? But actually, to me-- and this is why the book is purposefully non-partisan-- is that the process matters even sometimes more than the outcome itself. The reason we get garbage outcomes, garbage in, garbage out. And it matters who these people are, but the institutions are subject to the people who serve in them. And so it matters not only the people who we elect, but also how they choose to operate once they're in there. Because these rules are not self-enforcing. Like if you're turning on C-Span, you're a nerd anyway. We got you. But if we're watching the news and you see, like, how can they choose to do it this way? They choose to do it this way. So that matters.

[00:05:30] Who these people are to serve in these positions, knowing that these rules are not self-enforcing. There's no umpire out there or no alarm bell saying, hey, you're doing this wrong, you have to go back and try again. And so these are institution-focused type things where the parties, the partisanship doesn't really necessarily matter, even though we filter everything through a partisanship lens now. But really, it is about the structural. If you care about the outcome, you need to care about process. There's a lot of wrong ways to do the right thing. And we see that with something like DOGE where, yeah, an entity like that should exist. But how you create it, who chooses to create it, who we choose to run it, what processes or lines of accountability we put into place, all of that matters. And if you only care about the outcome, then you are necessarily signing up for an outcome led by someone else who you fundamentally disagree with to do it against you. And that's why we see this pendulum swing back and forth where you love it if it's your guy, you hate it if it's not, and then that's when you start really yelling when you feel like you're not represented. That's because we ignore the process in between.

Beth [00:06:36] So I want to talk about the word accountability because I feel like the past 10 years or so have been an exercise in people waking up to the reality that the ultimate accountability is just us, what we check as a public. I always start this conversation with individuals by saying, look, I went to law school and when you go to law school, every single person says to you at some point, "Is this against the law?" And you end up saying, "Yes, but what that means depends. Who's going to enforce that law or how much money are you willing to spend to chase that down? Can you ever get someone to pay a judgment even if you win?" The law is a very frustrating mechanism of accountability, because everything ultimately depends on people. And I felt like a lot of your book was kind of an indictment of Congress, because it is the body that can do that ultimate accountability and has chosen not to in a lot of circumstances.

Dr. Casey Burgat [00:07:33] Yeah, 100%. So that is a perfect read. And it's not only us who give passes to people who we agree with, or that they're going after like that the ends justify the means type behavior, right? The accountability is with those who we represent. This is a representative democracy in that we're not paying attention nor do we have the power in between elections really. There's not a ton of levers of power we can pull to change how things are going. Elections really matter, and that means that the people who we who we elect, they need to serve in that office and recognize their position within a broader structure of institutions. And you're right on the money that we always say that we have three co-equal branches of government. We're taught that when we're five years old. It's an outright lie. It was never intended to be that way. One is the architect of the other two. The Congress, the first branch was one; not an accident that they put it first on purpose. But it's the architect of the other two branches, including how big it is, how many justices serve on the Supreme Court, how many lower and inferior courts, how much they get paid, and what their confirmation process is.

[00:08:39] And then you go to the executive branch where we are in a presidential system right now, more probably than we ever have. When I say politics, we think Trump. When I said government, we thing White House. And that is exactly backwards in how it's supposed to work. And the downstream effects of that is that we see no wonder he's going roughshod on everything because that's what he promised to do. And everyone, rah, rah, rah, say, yeah, go do it. And Congress has delegated powers of both parties, by the way, delegated its constitutional authorities for decades and decades and decades. And if we see any failed democracy in the past, you do not claw that back. It is incredibly difficult to do because of all these reasons we're talking about where the partisanship, those goals saying, yeah, it's my guy, though, it'll work out in the end. We just want this bill. We just want this tax cut. We just want to get through this next election cycle. And the more you rationalize those choices, someone else of the other party is going to come in and then you're going to start crying foul and it's not going to mean much anymore because you were just on the other side saying go president go.

[00:09:44] Congress is the first branch on purpose. And this book is an indictment on what they've chosen to-- they say delegate, you'll hear members of Congress say delegate their powers. What they've done is forfeit them. Outright forfeiture from the power to declare war to the power of the purse more and more here and everything in between to say nothing of their oversight prerogatives of the president of the executive branch of the court system. So we see a lot of complaining on congress's side, especially when you hear the minority. But when you hear those complaining, the alarm bells should ring in your head saying there's only so many people who can affect what those other branches are doing and it's you. It's you and your colleagues within Congress. That's how it's supposed to work. And when they give it up, it's incredibly difficult to claw back.

Beth [00:10:32] Can we talk about that in the present context? So I think the rescission's package is a pretty stark example of Congress giving this authority away. But your book also makes the argument if you're unhappy with the Supreme Court, take a look at Congress. So what kinds of things should the Congress be doing right now to have more power?

Dr. Casey Burgat [00:10:52] Boy, does that question depend on who you ask! So there's a lot of Republicans who-- and they're saying this outright, and this is the scary part to me, like they're staying the quiet part out loud is like, "We'll do what the president wants. We're waiting to hear from the president about what should be in this bill. We're waiting from the President about what rescissions he wants to enact, and then we're going to give him the stamp of approval." That is completely backwards. Completely backwards. Where the president is supposed to faithfully execute the laws passed by Congress. And one of the biggest powers they have, obviously, is the power of the purse. Where a Congress, even if it's a previous Congress, passed a law, passed an authorization, passed an appropriation where money goes to these purposes. That's how it's supposed to work. Then the president is supposed to effectively carry those out. And the rescissions package basically flicks that script and say, yeah, cool law, Congress, nice job, you passed it, but let's eliminate this. Taking an eraser to the decisions made by a previous elected and voted on bill. That's backwards. And it doesn't stop with rescissions because that's a relatively small rounding error in the federal budget. I think the DOD probably spends more on Post-it notes than it does on what this rescission package is.

Beth [00:12:02] I did the math yesterday on the most recent one. It is 0.013% of the federal budget, that $9 billion.

Dr. Casey Burgat [00:12:09] And you'll hear members of Congress say, yeah, okay, that's a small rounding error in the federal budget. But again, this goes back, the point matters here because what if it's 1%, what if its 3%, what if it's a rescission package on something that your family really relies on from insulin to healthcare? Just because it's small now and doesn't affect you now, I can't emphasize this enough, it can and it will at some point. And so, yes, this is Congress literally voting on a president saying that what Congress previously decided on is no longer valid, just because they disagree with it now. That's a dangerous slippery slope, but we see this even more explicit when we see the president, mainly through DOGE and other entities, outright impounding funds, repurposing them from what Congress delegated or appropriated and authorized in the past. So it's just tilting that balance of power even more into the White House which creates a dangerous precedent to say nothing of uncertainty in everyday people's lives about where this money is going to come into their bank accounts in any number of forms.

Beth [00:13:17] So let me make the opposite case about representative government for a second. This is the Project 2025 theory; is that the government needs to be more responsive to the president because the people speak most clearly about what they want through the president. And while I think that is completely inconsistent with the constitution and our structure of government, I'm not sure it's wrong about the reality of how people think about politics. So, I wonder what levers you think we need to pull here? Do we need change our system to say, you know what, most people just don't pay that much attention to politics. When they do, it's about the president. So maybe that is the most representative part of the system. Or do we to go about the work of saying, everybody, we're upside down here.

Dr. Casey Burgat [00:14:05] It's a good question. And so in these types of hypotheticals, I like to go to the most dangerous example and saying, all right, if you believe this now, then you're signing up for this later on. And so if you're saying, all right, we need to delegate to the president for any number of reasons. Number one, he can work faster, Congress is mirrored in gridlock, they're grandstanding, whatever. I like this guy. Any number of reasons. Then all you need to do is put yourself in a position and saying, all right, I'm fine with this now. But what if my next president, what if AOC or Bernie or Hillary or JD Vance, whoever it is down the line, you're signing up for them being more powerful, too. And if we know anything about presidents, you give a mouse a cookie, they're going to take more and more and more of that power going forward. So it won't stop now.

[00:14:53] And they're going to the signal of saying, hey, Congress has given me this authority. The American people want it. I'm going to take it. Why wouldn't I? I can move fast. I want to do what I want do by the power of the pen right now anyway. And so just put yourself in a position of someone who you fundamentally disagree with having even more power than you're willing to give the guy you agree with now. And if you're up for that, there's an argument to be had. But don't call it representative democracy. Don't call it a constitutional system. You are fundamentally upending it. Madison would be turning over in his grave if he isn't already. Call it a different government. That's a revolution over the constitutional system we say we love and that we're projecting throughout the world.

Beth [00:15:38] Is that what we're doing? Have we just had a revolution by default, a passive revolution?

Dr. Casey Burgat [00:15:44] It's a good question. Man, I don't know. And these are things where the history books will tell us, yeah, this is where the break point was. This is, of course, that they may not have seen it coming but this is the breakpoint in the constitutional system. But we've had eras of incredibly powerful and aggressive presidents before. And it always slapped back with a Congress saying, all right, homeboy, you went too far. You went way too far. And the irony here is the most powerful clawing back of powers from Congress who finally just outright and said, "This isn't our system anymore, we have to do our job," is that it's the party of the president doing the clawing back. It is the party of the President doing a clawing back. And that is the signal of signals, the shot across the bow. Think about Nixon and Watergate. He didn't resign because Democrats were doing it, it's because Republicans finally went to the White House and said, dude, you got to go. You got to go.

[00:16:36] And so have we had one? I don't know. Retrospectively, we'll have to see. But if we do have a clawing back that I think a lot of people left, right, and center will say, "Hey, the president's too powerful. I don't want to be subject to this kind of waking up on a Tuesday and wondering what the president is going to do type stuff," it's going to be the party and power. So right now it would have to be congressional Republicans. And I think that's asking a lot. If anything, we're going to too far the other way where they are saying the quiet part out loud of like I was elected on the Trump ticket. I was elected to put his policies into place, and whatever he wants to do I'm in a reactionary position. They need to recognize that they are the proactive stance in this and the president is supposed to be the secondary actor faithfully executing their laws.

Beth [00:17:23] So you wouldn't recommend all Republicans to disagree with the president just resigning. That would not be the path forward?

Dr. Casey Burgat [00:17:29] I wouldn't recommend it. Wouldn't hate it. No, not resigning. Recognize the oath you took. It is to the Constitution first. It's not to your party. It definitely is not to your president. And it just needs to have a fundamental recommitment to the system of checks and balances. And I think we need to start calling. You mentioned earlier of accountability. To me, the word shame. There's just a lack of shame out there. If you interact with these people, they know better. And that's the most frustrating part of my everyday life, is that they know better and they will go out in front of cameras, they'll go out in interviews and town halls if they're having them at all. It's not a coincidence that they're canceling them because they know. And the scary part to me is that if we get so far down this cycle of this being the new normal, (everyone says the new normal, but this is just normal now) is that we get so far with the candidates who don't know better. That they chose to be a part of the system. They chose to run in the system. They choose to see the president as the focal point of our politics. And they say it's my job as a member of Congress, an elected member of Congress, to carry out his wishes only if I agree with him.

Beth [00:18:55] And we're supposed to be insulated from one branch becoming too powerful in several ways, right? So I want to know what you think about the states as a check on the president and as a check on this passive revolution that maybe we're in the process of. What do you see happening around the states right now that gives you hope or that concerns you?

Dr. Casey Burgat [00:19:16] Yeah. Beth, this is the be all end all and I'm the biggest hypocrite out here because I live and work and live federal politics. But it's at the state like if you want to bulwark against what the federal government is trying to do, encroaching even if you love it, the state legislatures have so much more power than we ever give them credit for. They affect your everyday life way more than Washington DC does. And so, one, that's an argument to get involved at the most local of levels. Not even at state level, get involved in your county commissioners. If you care about what's happening in your schools, it's the school board. We get distracted by these red herrings within Washington DC, despite them being incredibly powerful. But at the state level this can swing both ways. And we see this on a redistricting fight right now. This is dominating the new cycles. But we've also seen glimmers of hope where you see state legislatures especially following Roe v. Wade shocked the world in extremely conservative states saying, no, this is not what we-- despite what you're hearing about mandates, despite what your hearing about justices, speaking for the 350 million of us with their rulings, the state legislatures can take proactive decisions to kind of insulate them or at least put their flag in the ground and say, this is what Coloradans believe, this is What Kansans believe. And they can take effective means of doing that.

[00:20:38] But that can also go the other way of where they can might even enact more restrictive procedures or more restrictive voting rights apparatus. So you need to pay attention. And the irony here is that while we're distracted with a lot of what's going on in DC, so few people are involved in their state level government that they can get away with things. And they can be more extreme than what their state polls would let you believe. It's a blessing and a curse. So to answer your question, they give me glimmers of hope when they stand up and say, no, we don't believe with this, even though we voted overwhelmingly for this president. Like we can take very specific actions to bulwark ourselves against that, but it can also go the other way from on any number of issues of more restrictive voting rights, more restrictive education, curriculums, all of that stuff. Like it's a blessing and a curse, which means you have to be vigilant about it. And not enough of us, including myself, are vigilant enough to pay attention to the state-level happenings.

Beth [00:21:39] It does feel, at least to me, a little bit more dynamic than at the federal level. Congress does feel like it's just been on this trajectory. And I felt myself tense up when you said if you look at the history of failed democracies, you don't claw this back. Because that is what feels like it's happening to me in Congress. The states seem to have more activity at least, and more shifts, and you can see a faster turn from states than the Congress.

Dr. Casey Burgat [00:22:09] A hundred percent. It's a good read. And that's true on who the candidates are. A lot of them have term limits that can churn through candidates. A lot of them are ambitious folks (shocker) in politics where they move up. So you can have a lot of dynamisms in the candidates and in their policies. Again, that can go both ways though where it can snap back and forth. But the reason it can be more dynamic is that these folks are incredibly accessible. They're begging to be informed by their public because they don't get national polls. They don't get to poll test this type stuff or have consultants the way that DC does, who is this inaccessible being. If you email your member of Congress, I know that's like a fad, or you call your member Congress, it is an intern-- believe me, I know them, I have them in my classrooms, who just get yelled at all day and then they put a tally mark, pro or against. This topic A, B or C. The ratio of impact on your, let's say, hour of civic duty is the smallest at the federal level. It is the biggest at the state level and especially at their local level where they will literally respond to their Gmail address of like I have a constituent-- and it's the homeboy responding to the constituent himself rather than some 18 year old staffer who doesn't know up from down tomorrow. So it can be more dynamic, but more than anything, it's more accessible. And we as citizens should use that power ratio. If we're going to spend time, let's go to where it actually matters and where we're speaking directly to the decision makers.

Beth [00:23:41] I want to talk about what kind of people should have these jobs. I was interested to see in your book you saying one of the myths is a citizen legislature. We've never had it. We're probably not going to have it. Maybe we should get right with that. Talk to me about that.

Dr. Casey Burgat [00:23:55] Yeah, this is one of my biggies in that we treat-- and we hear politicians say this despite them not... So I testified in front of the Ted Cruz's Senate committee about term limits, which is interesting. And he was obviously advocating for it. And the biggest irony up there is that all of the people advocating for it had already blew through their limit on themselves. So it is kind of do for thee but not for me type behavior. And that's one of my most frustrating things. But we have for too long treated lawmaking as like you can pick it up on a Tuesday type thing. Like it's not a professionalized thing. Where inexperience, and we saw this with presidential runs for a long time now, and Donald Trump, as he does lit this message on fire; is like this is a simple equation. Politics sucks, politicians suck, let's change the politicians, then we can change the politics. It's not true. We think of this job as something you can pick up or the more every man you are means that you can write really effective legislation. It sounds good and it means something.

[00:25:03] Like I want people to come from everywhere because the diversity of opinion really, really matters but that doesn't mean that we should think of this job as something that doesn't require an expertise like anything else. Like I want my pilots to be pilots. I want my doctors to be doctors. I don't want them changing and saying, all right, I want to try my hand at this today. Let me open up your electrical grid and see what I can do. The job of a member of Congress is incredibly-- no one's qualified, not one person is expert enough on any given issue, let alone all of them to make the decisions that they do that don't only affect us now, but the unintended consequences of 10 years, 20 years, 30 years down the line. You have to be incredibly invested in this job and you have be incredibly dedicated to this job just to have a fighting chance. And so when we see something like the one big beautiful bill pass and everyone's saying, I didn't have time to read it, let alone inform it, let alone understand it, let alone think about all of the things.

[00:26:07] A thousand page bill, you're affecting every industry on earth, every single one. And to think that we should churn over through these people or think that everyone has the knowledge or even the commitment to do it is just a fundamental misreading of where we're at in the world. And to me, I want the best, the most dedicated, the same way I want, the best teachers, the same I want to best lawyers. I think we should think about this as a professionalized industry, especially in 2025. The world's never been faster moving. It's never been more interconnected. It's never been more complicated. And to just think of this as like a part-time, yeah, let me try my hand at politics type of stuff, you're just going to get really bad, dangerous results. Or even more likely, you're going to get people who don't know better and then that power flow is going to go straight to the president or it's going to go to lobbyists who are here doing the work of legislating, just not with their name on a ballot, not being elected. You're going to get un-elected or really powerful presidencies even more so than we have now and that's a dangerous precedent to set.

Beth [00:27:10] Where do you set the professional class that supports politicians in this equation? Because it is an industry, right? It's just not the principal who is the professional in the industry.

Dr. Casey Burgat [00:27:24] Yeah. I put them very incredibly valuable. And this is another myth within the book. The big misnomer out there is that money drives everything in D.C. Money's everywhere, obviously. But what drives D. C., and we see this with members of Congress, who when they don't have it, it's information. It is literally access to information. Using the best experts in the world to inform their decision-making, to inform how they draft a piece of legislation, to inform how they oversee that legislation. And so the fact is that lobbyists grew for a lot of reasons, the interest group sector grew for a lot of reasons. But the number one is that members of Congress decision makers didn't have the information they needed to write the bills that they were expected to write, needed to write, have to write, because it has to come from Congress. You don't want lobbyist writing legislation. That's a dangerous unaccountability threshold there. And so it grew because the world got more complicated. And we needed experts in this field to inform decision makers to write this stuff. But the problem is that just like me, when I go to the doctor, whatever the doctor says, I say yes because I ain't a doctor. I don't know better.

[00:28:28] Or when I got to the car mechanic and he's like you need to fix this thing I've never heard of, I'm like, yeah, I'm sure I do. That's what members of Congress are to on almost every single industry, except the ones they care the most about. And they are dependent on those with the information and those they see as trustworthy sources of that information. And so this industry is huge and it's incredibly valuable and it is growing and growing and growing because Congress is getting less and less capable of doing the job themselves. They recognize they need this information. There's no shortage of people saying they have it and it has been poll tested and it fits their partisan identities and agendas. Here you go. To the point where they're literally drafting bills, where they'll send it to an email. A 21 year old staffer who has 12 issues on their portfolio will say, thank you so much, now I can get through my next meeting. They'll take it, copy paste, print it, they'll put it in the hopper and now we have an introduced piece of legislation. The power dynamics are backwards. But it shouldn't mean that the instinct there, the myth there is to throw out lobbyists altogether. Drain the swamp. If they're there informing the process, then let's get rid of them. You can't. And if you try to, you're going to make a dumb congress even dumber. But we need to have bigger lines of accountability and mostly transparency about who's informing who, how more is the money flowing, who's meaning about what? The transparency, the sunshine there is the disinfectant, not throwing them out, which is everyone's first instinct, including presidency of the United States.

Beth [00:30:05] What would that look like? What would a more transparent and accountable process for writing legislation mean?

Dr. Casey Burgat [00:30:11] I think we need to make it on the cloud like literally put. The Internet's an incredibly good thing. It can not only catch CEOs having an affair at Coldplay concerts, but it can also expose where information is flowing. And so I think we need to have much more transparency in the calendars, literally who they're meeting with, including at the staff level. Opensecrets.org is one of the best websites out there in terms of tracking money. But we have such outdated lobbying disclosure laws that they almost don't mean anything. Like who's lobbying on what? And then including expanding the definition of lobbying because you have to register as a lobbyist. Like you have file a form, it probably takes 19 months because the government's incredibly slow to get this done. The filing disclosures are always retrospective and then who's checking up on that? You can probably get away with all of that stuff. We need to update all of those things in real time. The internet's good. We should have really powerful programmers to make it trackable like that. But even the definition of lobbyists gets exposed all the time. Where to be a lobbyist I have to file, but to be an advisor, I don't. To be a consultant, I don't. To be senior strategic consult, I don’t. And they're doing the same job without the paperwork, which is why we see this revolving door in D.C of an incredibly well-resourced, well-powerful, well-compensated folks. But you need to make it online and you need make it real time. If we can do that with flight plans, if we can that with stock prices, just bring the same ingenuity to government, which is where a lot of people, where a lot of support for DOGE came from. Of like, expose the stuff, let me see it. And it's dumb that we don't. It was just a forfeiture of people's worst instincts.

Beth [00:31:57] As you're talking about this, I keep thinking about blockchain and how maybe the legislative process needs something like blockchain where the copy paste, you know, this is Heritage Foundation language. This came from the Center for American Progress, like whatever. But here is where this text originated and who inserted it into this bill. And you can kind of track it through.

Dr. Casey Burgat [00:32:21] Yes, 100%. Just think of Google Doc. Like when you're collaborating with people, it's available. I think the government is so outdated. The public private partnerships at the federal level are so far behind the real world. Where if I'm Congress, I'm bringing Tim Cook in, I'm bring in the really smart leaders of industry and saying, hey, let's create a nonprofit partnership here to raise the trust in our institutions. You with your engineers, go find me a way. Give me some options of how to track this stuff. You're way better at it. What Congress does is they try to do it internally, which they are so, so, so slow and bad at it. I can tell you right now. You'd be shocked at the technology that Congress is using to do its job. Just go create a partnership with Apple or Google or someone else and say, hey, let's show the American people how their Congress works, show it online in real time. And doing so, opening those doors will raise the trust in these institutions. Where the cloud, the lack of transparency just allows people to assume the worst because a lot of that is really happening.

Beth [00:33:29] Okay, so let's do the opposite argument again and see where we land, because you could also say the transparency of C-SPAN has made Congress worse.

Dr. Casey Burgat [00:33:39] For sure.

Beth [00:33:40] You could say that we get less and less done the more transparency we have because it just becomes fodder for content and activism and a lot of activisms that's motivated by something other than just what we really want for the country, what our vision is. And so I guess there's just this fundamental tension always of how much do you trust people to be able to handle how this process actually works?

Dr. Casey Burgat [00:34:08] Yeah, my nerd political science friends point to the Gingrich Revolution and the C-SPAN. Turning on cameras is kind of this turning point in not only Congress, but our politics. So why we have the confrontational politics that we do. It's because just like you said, the cameras are on, it is incredibly hard to get people to pay attention. If we know anything about any industry in America or the world, if we create conflict, attention comes next. There’re downstream effects of that. And so the question then becomes how much transparency is worth it? Because we have proven-- and this is what Watergate and the Vietnam and the Nixon era, all of that, we've proven that a lack of transparency leads to really bad decisions and really hard mechanisms of accountability. And we saw this. My best example of this is the Trump impeachment vote, both of them, but especially the January 6th one where you've had sitting members of the Senate say, if this were a blind vote, if this were a non-transparent vote, if this were a non-recorded vote, it would be 90 plus to impeach him and disqualify him from office. And yet we didn't even get close to that threshold, meaning that if they didn't have to put their names attached to it, then we would vote differently and we'd have had very different outcomes.

[00:35:24] And a lot of people take that to say, all right, make some votes private if that's what it takes. If that what it takes to get some bipartisanship where I'm not willing to be publicly bipartisan, but I'm willing to privately bipartisan. And I get that because there's incentive structures. If you are labeled bipartisan in a lot of our districts right now, that's your quickest way out of office. But to me, that's a member problem, not a process problem. If you take a different vote in private than you do in public, then get a new job. Get a new job. If you're willing to just outright forfeit your bipartisanship, if you're willing to outright forfeit what you know to be the best, right, most informed decision, get a new job. That's a member problem to me. And I know that's West Wing. I know that's naive, but I'm not willing to forfeit transparency just because you're not courageous enough to take the vote you know is the right one to take. So, to me, if your choice is between transparency and non-transparency, give me transparency every time. At least we'll know where people stand. At least we know where they're publicly going to stand, even if they're going to speak differently in private. So it's a tension for sure and it's one that we've fought forever, but I'm not willing to go back and close doors just so people can have enough courage. You don't find courage behind closed doors to me.

Beth [00:36:42] I tend to agree pretty wholeheartedly. I also am struggling in myself with whether it can be a member problem when it's this many people over this long of a time period in this many contexts. And so I have to remember that people respond to incentives and I get stuck on, okay, how do we change these incentives?

Dr. Casey Burgat [00:37:07] This is it. And this is where the people really matter. A lot of a common refrain is that members of Congress or elected officials don't represent me. And the irony here is that they do represent the people who show up, the ones who will keep them in office. And again a common reframe is they'll do anything to keep their power. They'll be anything to stay in office. But that fundamentally requires them to get enough votes to do it. If you want to see a member of Congress change their opinion on a whim, have a poll tell them that they're going to lose their next election because of this decision. Which means the power rests in the people to choose it. And so yes, it is hard to build enough people to a critical mass to change an opinion. But they cannot stay in office without getting enough votes to do it. And so your question, your point of like, is this too many people in too many contexts too often where they don't even probably know any different now? Maybe. But if you want to see them change, it is that they recognize that their job is dependent on it.

[00:38:11] If you are pissed all the time with people only responding to those who keep them in office or they'll do anything to stay in office that means that they need to do enough to satisfy enough people to do it. But then we get outside the system, this is why primary and their incentive structures really matter. This is why gerrymandering really matters. This is money and politics really matters because it just reinforces a lot of these doom loops. But get involved in primaries is my number one advice because about 15% of the people right now decide 95% of the members of Congress. That's because whoever wins in the primary is going to win that general, right? And not enough of us have enough say in the primaries to say nothing to show up in the Primaries. But that's an institutional problem. They are only responding to those they know show up and keep them in office, which means we got to change the people who decide and there's early stages of who the candidates are and who are the ones that are going to advance.

Beth [00:39:03] There is a human psychology problem at the base of all this, though. You point this out in the book. So one of the myths busted in We Hold These Truths is I vote the issues, not the party. And you explain, absolutely, people do not do that. In fact, we have lots and lots of data that shows people do not do that. We are so married to our sense of affiliation that it's hard to see past it. So it's like how can a public that votes the party, not the issues, convince their elected representatives to vote the issues, not the party.

Dr. Casey Burgat [00:39:38] I think the first point, and the reason why this chapter matters so much, is that we always think that we're not susceptible to the same things that other people are. And we just fundamentally are. We will change literal data; we will reinterpret just to support the conclusion that we already had in the first place. And politics is the most tribal amongst us. And so, to me, you have to just recognize, number one, that exists. And number two, that we're just as susceptible to that as anyone else. Maybe less so, but we're susceptible to that too. And so then you start asking questions. All right, you say you love bipartisanship, when's the last time you gave someone else of not your party your vote? When's the time you donated or volunteered for a campaign who is just simply-- do you know every single issue stance that your members have? I bet you disagree with some of them. And just recognizing those little chinks in that partisan armor can go a long way. And the second thing, which this chapter talks about is just a literal three second pause matters infinitely. Where you see a new story and then without saying, all right, does this support me or does this go against me? If it supports me, then yes, this is a perfect new story. If it goes against me, then I have to find reasons why not to believe it. And you start doing this mentally. But if you just go [exhales] then you can start thinking about it in a type of rational way.

[00:41:00] All right, what's the story about? Could it actually have a point to it that doesn't support mine? Where is it? And then you start asking different questions, different questions lead to different answers. But systemically, which I think is your point about how do we change this, it doesn't change on its own. The status quo will continue, but it gets worse. So the status quo is a misnomer in politics to the state, like the national debt. If we do nothing, it doesn't stay the same. It gets much, much worse over time, which means you have to take proactive steps to do it. And we can do this in an infinite number of ways, but I take comfort on a historical sense of like the change in our party alignments are going to fundamentally change. It won't happen day over day or even week over week, sometimes year over year, but we're going to have a realignment even if it's not called realignment. We're going to have partisan identities tested. The challenge then becomes are we so driven by our tribalistic nature in support of one party? But mostly right now it's one dude or not, then we need to have a fundamental conversation about it.

[00:42:08] And this is pushing up a boulder up a mountain where it all starts with us on individual levels, showing up where we can, having conversations, not excluding people with whom we disagree with, but asking questions genuinely to hear the answers. Not to get them in a gotcha moment of right or what aboutism. So check yourself on all of this stuff of how do you have conversations? Do you only surround yourself with people who you agree with, including online and probably especially online? Change your algorithms. If you want to see your information change, then change your algorithms and do this on a personal basis. And that's where the snowball effect can really matter. But there's no law we can pass to say you have to vote smarter. There's no law we can passed to say be nice to each other. This is a fundamental individualistic pursuit the way it has to be, right? If we want our voice to matter, then we have to make our voice matter in every single conversation, and especially if it is exhausting.

Beth [00:43:02] Yeah, I always find the individual call to action pretty clear, and I feel that way coming out of your book.

Dr. Casey Burgat [00:43:10] Do you find it unsatisfying though?

Beth [00:43:14] Yes, because it's diluted. Because I am just one of the 330 million plus people and I'm just here in my house in Kentucky doing my best. But I also trust the ripple effects of that. And I trust the system and I trust that that's the only way it can happen. And then having said all that, I'm going to ask you a totally contradictory question.

Dr. Casey Burgat [00:43:36] Perfect.

Beth [00:43:36] So if you got the Elon Musk opportunity, if you've got to be the best bud of the president of the United States-- any president, let's not confine ourselves to this one because I think you're right, Trump just sets way too much of our present context in every conversation. But a president, a person you really respect and think is there to do a great job says, "Casey, you know a lot about politics. I want you to just come in and fix things." Where would you start?

Dr. Casey Burgat [00:44:06] fix politics in terms of like how we relate to each other or get an outcome.

Beth [00:44:10] Well, I'm thinking specifically of like that Elon Musk seat where you have a limited opportunity. You can't change everything across all these United States, but you can get into the federal government and say, I've got access to some levers. Here's what I'm going to do.

Dr. Casey Burgat [00:44:25] There's a lot of reasons George Washington is so revered, but his biggest one was the fact that he gave up power willingly. That's a huge legacy build. And I think that there is a play. And I've thought about this question, honestly, in the Trump context, not to bring him up again, of like these presidents love legacy. It is a driving factor. And just like Madison taught us, ambition must be made to counteract ambition, right? Let's not pretend we're going to convince him otherwise, let's lean into that and say, “You want a legacy? Give power back to the people. Give power back to where it should belong and force Congress to perform its role in our constitutional system.” And so then it comes down to what do you want to do? Are you going to give up the executive order prerogative? No. But literally work with Congress to create a lot of huge bi-partisan avenues to change the fundamental nature of our democracy.

[00:45:25] Money in politics, should we pass a law that puts limits on it? Which ironically we already have limits on our individual contributions, but should we perform? Should I go after a constitutional amendment to basically overturn Citizens United? That would be a huge legacy play. I'm the guy who got money out of politics. That would be amazing. Am I the guy that outlawed gerrymandering once and for all? There's a legacy type play that I think we always look retrospectively at our presidents more popularly than when they served in office. I think there's just such a play to be made of returning the power to the constitutional system. But that goes absolutely counter to what president's incentive structures are that I think it's going to be really tough to make.

Beth [00:46:09] Hard to get elected on Make Congress Great Again, but that's what I need the president to do.

Dr. Casey Burgat [00:46:13] I think you can. I do, but I'm crazy. I think that there is someone to be said of just like we've gotten too far out of bounds. In fact, even just that, I'm a one-term dude who wants to set the system straight. I don't care about re-election. I don't care about my next two years. I'm going to be a lame duck after my first 100 days anyway. I think there's power in that where you are not susceptible to the next poll or the next midterm. I think there's a power in that that maybe won't pay off immediately. Definitely won't pay off, immediately. But there's a legacy play to be had of like I'm the guy who reset the system that was in desperate need of a reset.

Beth [00:46:56] Well, the book is great. It's We Hold These "Truths". We will link all of it up in the show notes. A fantastic gift for people in your life who want to know more. It's very non-partisan, so well done. Thank you for speaking with me about it.

Dr. Casey Burgat [00:47:08] Thank you anytime, Beth. Thank you.

Beth [00:47:20] So we always end our show with something Outside of Politics, and you and I share an interest in a murder mystery series from the great nation of Canada. Tell me how you got started reading The Three Pines books by Louise Penny.

Dr. Casey Burgat [00:47:35] I hate nonfiction books. I don't hate them. I just don't do them. And I recognize this as a flaw of mine. Outside of the absolute classics, I just didn't spend any time. I read all the time and it's almost always, again, a hypocrite presidential biographies. I'm addicted to that. And I have a dear, dear friend of mine who is the exact opposite of me in almost every single way. And I just want to say like what are you reading? You weirdo, you always got dragons you're talking about and love stories on different planets that I had to world build, it made no sense to me. And so I said, give me like a step in that direction. I think she's related to Gamache in her soul. And she said, start here. And I did, and I got through it. It's entertaining, the characters are great. It is the absolute opposite world I live in, even if we're not into aliens yet. And it was just satisfying. It was a comforting thing. And then there's, I don't know how many of them now, 21. And so I liked the continuation of this different mystery, but it's more about the characters and the life they built, including Ruth Zardo, who I think might be my spirit animal. So it was recommendation on me being like get me out of my space here. And she said, I got you. And I've been thankful ever since.

Beth [00:49:02] Did you start with book one and just make your way through in order?

Dr. Casey Burgat [00:49:05] Of course, because I'm not going to start at 17 then go back to one. I know that's an option, but I guess that's more revealing about who I am. But yes, you start at the beginning. You have to.

Beth [00:49:14] Well, I did not, Casey.

Dr. Casey Burgat [00:49:16] You psychopath.

Beth [00:49:17] I know. Well, I had heard about the Louise Penny series forever. I read the book that she did with Hillary Clinton that has like a Gamache reference, but he's kind of ancillary. And I thought it was interesting and good. And so I was at the library and I found one of the books. I think it was like the fourth book maybe. And I picked it up because it's impossible to check her stuff out of my library. It's always on a wait list. So I took the fourth book and I read it and I really liked it and then I thought, okay, I'm going to commit to this and I told my husband. I was like, I need you to find these books for me and buy them for me and put them on my Kindle and so he did.

Dr. Casey Burgat [00:49:52] Okay, so you at least you're not scattershotting around. You went four then through the series.

Beth [00:49:56] Then one. Correct.

Dr. Casey Burgat [00:49:57] Okay, so I take back the psycho. It's just weird.

Beth [00:49:59] I mean, it's a little psycho. It's not how I would have preferred to have done it, but I did it. I totally agree with you though. Whenever I tell people about these books, I say the dead body is just a vehicle to launch a new story and let these characters continue to develop. So you mentioned Ruth Sardo. She is a poet in this tiny little town of misfits and her poetry is really the thread that weaves all these books together I think as much as Gamache, who is the detective who's solving our mysteries.

Dr. Casey Burgat [00:50:27] A hundred percent. And again, I'm not a fan of poetry. I don't know that I've ever sat down and ever just read a poem of my own choosing. But the author is so good at just humanizing the world. And it's this comforting, again, West Wing type mentality of people can be good, that there is huge real problems that affect a lot of folks, even if we don't see it on their surface. And she just gives you a space, including the most rich a food of including ingredients I've never heard of, let alone tried. She just creates a world where we can be human and be kind. And I think the poetry is a through line, but I think just kindness is as well. And if I can channel that kindness in every single interaction, I think we definitely won't be in a worse spot.

Beth [00:51:18] It's like a raw kindness though. These people are really kind, but they're also mean and jealous.

Dr. Casey Burgat [00:51:25] Yes. They're petty and jealous. Yes, they're human. And they always return, probably led by the Gamache stability comforting factor of like we can be better. We should be better and it starts with each and every one of our individual interactions. Even if Ruth, you're crazy and you're drunk half the time and your ducks cussing at me, that's real. And there's a beauty in that, too.

Beth [00:51:50] Yeah, it's the loveliest series. You sent me a hat, which I really appreciate.

Dr. Casey Burgat [00:51:55] It's actually from the late my dear friend Bailey Weaver who she was wearing the hat and was like I know someone who will rock this too and so that's from her. It's second degree gift.

Beth [00:52:07] Well, thank you so much Bailey. I am going to now send you a book of poems because you could not hurt my feelings more than saying I've never sat down and read a book poetry. So I'm just going to see if I can change your orientation to the medium.

Dr. Casey Burgat [00:52:17] I commit to opening it.

Beth [00:52:19] I appreciate that.

Dr. Casey Burgat [00:52:20] That's as far as I'll get.

Beth [00:52:23] I'll take it out of the box. I hear you. But maybe just sitting there, it'll call it call to you sometimes.

Dr. Casey Burgat [00:52:28] Maybe.

Beth [00:52:31] Thanks again to Casey for joining us. We'll be back with you on Friday for the last of our flashback episodes and then back in real time with you the next week. Until then, have the best week available to you.