Richard Helppie's Common Bridge
The problems we have in the country are solvable, but not solvable the way we’re approaching them today, because of partisan politics. Richard Helppie, a successful entrepreneur and philanthropist seeks to find a place in the middle where common sense discussions can bridge the current great divide.
Richard Helppie's Common Bridge
Episode 42- Rich Helppie Quick Takes on Vice Presidential Picks and the Failure of the Media
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Rich goes over his analysis of the Vice Presidential candidates as well as discusses why we need to demand better from our politicians and the media.
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Speaker 2Welcome to the podcast, the common bridge with Richard helpy . Rich is a successful entrepreneur in the technology, health and finance space. He and his wife Leslie, are also philanthropists with interest in civic and artistic endeavors, but with a primary focus on medically and educationally underserved children. My name is Brian Kruger , and from time to time I'll be the moderator and host of this podcast and welcome to quick takes with rich healthy . This is an episode that we do every now and then where we just , uh , I ask rich a couple of questions just off the Mark. It's not a normal common bridge episode. So here we go. Rich , uh, welcome and glad you could be with us today. And I'm going to start out with what I'm calling in air quotes, the vice presidential , uh , run this year. Not really an appointment, but people actually campaigning for the job. Um, just as a recap from where I'm coming from. In 1944, FDR was picking his third vice presidential candidate and that was Harry as Truman . He was replacing , uh , Henry Wallace, I believe. And everybody had this idea that whoever Trump or whoever FDR picked , um , was essentially going to be , uh , it was very much expected that he could end up in the presidency seat because FDR was in such poor health. Fast forward to now and we have the president, the president , uh , candidate , uh, Joe Biden picking his running mate and for the first time everybody's campaigning for it. Um, because I have a feeling they're campaigning for the presidency. I don't think Biden's gonna last the four years. Maybe he does, but he's even said he probably won't run the second four years. So this is a very important run. So with that, I'm going to hand it off to you rich and thanks for coming in. What do you think about this vice-presidential deal?
Speaker 3Well, I thought where you were going with this was you're going to make it really easy on me. So I think the vice president picks is going to be Mike Pence because he said he incumbent president and uh, I haven't heard any rumors of Mike Pence not being on the ticket, although you know, if for whatever reason , uh , Mike Pence didn't want to go for another term. You know, there's some real good talent there. You know, Nikki Haley has got a great resume , uh , very effective governor. Um, got her, you know, international bonafides as ambassador to the UN has, has proven that she can stand up. And so she speaks her own mind. I think Nikki Haley, you know, make a great president someday, but you're , you want to know basically where are we with the, presuming that Joe Biden secures the nomination and who he might pick as his vice president. He has committed to picking a woman as a vice president. And the way look at it , it would be, this is best choice, would probably be Elizabeth Warren. And I say that because of this. So first of all, she's well known already. Uh , she runs the kind of campaign that would baffle a Donald Trump. She, if she stays out of the Trump, you know, exchange of barbs and insults and says, you know, great, thank you mr president. Now what is your plan for student debt? Here's mine. I think she has a , a chance of elevating the dialogue. The other strength that she brings is that in some respects, and I know this is casting a wide net, she's kind of viewed as a Bernie Sanders light and the Biden has not secured the supporters of Bernie Sanders. And indeed the Democrats said they were going to cancel the primary in New York state and award all the delegates to Joe Biden, which further enraged the Sanders wing and vice president Biden needs to bring that group along. And I think that Elizabeth Warren would be a credible voice in bringing that group in. So in terms of the kind of outcome that a candidate VI Biden would be looking at, I think Elizabeth Warren would be a really strong pick . His challenge is going to be that she is no wallflower, she's not going to be easily controlled, and she will create her own dynamic around that office. And if he's willing to share power like that, I think it'd be a really good pick.
Speaker 2Well , now what about Stacey Abrams and , uh, the idea that it was the African American vote that came out in South Carolina that helped propel Biden mysteriously like overnight into the presumptive nominee for the democratic party. And if she says, Hey, look, you know, the African American community brought this along, I think you should pick an African American woman. Um, do you think there's anything to that or are we reading too much into that?
Speaker 3Well, I , I'm not a person that really likes to go down the inherited identity politics pathway in that there's so much diversity of fought amongst men, amongst women, amongst African Americans, amongst Asian-Americans, amongst Hispanic Americans and such. And I think that Camila Harris or a Stacey Abrams , um , would make an interesting candidate, although I don't think either would have the resume that could stand up to the requirements of the job. Right. And nor could they pull the kind of votes in the locations that are successful Biden candidacy is going to need. I see. And so while they're interesting people and they're certainly contending for the job, I don't believe it's, it's the right formula. The other person that the vice president Biden might look at would be Amy [inaudible] . She's a great campaigner. She's a great candidate. She's , yeah , she's very, she's from the upper Midwest. Um , she grew during her presidential run. Um , she would put Wisconsin in play, possibly put Iowa in play, and you know, frankly, she's got a Midwestern appeal and that is an area of the country that the vice president would need in order to , uh , become the president. And of course she's out of the right age. So that'd be my take on where to go. All right . Which brings us though to the other female , uh , in the Midwest. Um , the one that seems to be getting the most airtime. And that's our very own governor here in Michigan. Again, an interesting conversation and I can't help but be struck by the parallels to 2008 and in 2008, there was a centrist, very old establishment candidate running who selected a young female governor as his running mate. Um , and that of course was John McCain's selection of Sarah Pailin of course. And at that time, Sarah Pailin , uh, was a governor enjoying some 87% approval rating in her state. She was hugely popular in Alaska, hugely . I had some friends living up there that said that, you know , she was beloved, she had experience in energy, she had experience in a military and a great personal story if it was allowed to be told about becoming mayor , uh , based on the encouragement of her PTA group and running for governor based on the encouragement of the citizens that she served as mayor. And then, you know, she was on the national stage and , uh, that, you know , turned out to be very bad outcome. And so you kind of fast forward here now and you have a, a very , um, establishment , uh, clearly more centrist candidate and very aged candidate in Joe Biden, also turning to a young female governor. The parallels are just stark . And so you saw the, the , the way the national news media , uh, treated Sarah Pailin and you saw the way the comedy programs treated Sarah Pailin. And the frankly lack of preparation that the McCain campaign provided Sarah Pailin. Um , I don't think you'll have those type of dynamics with governor Whitmer. Um, but my sense is that she's really not quite ready for the national stage. She's only been a governor a very short period of time under a year. Right. Do I have that? Am I remembering that right? That's right. And yeah, you know, I , I'd say let her do her job in the state of Michigan, but I don't think you're going to hear any Saturday night live skits where Tina Fey comes out as, as Gretchen Whitmer and says, I can see Canada from my house. Attribute that to the governor. Whitmer so rich, the way the media is as handling Whitmer , I mean, she's everywhere. She's on all the major news channels. She writes editorials. Um, is she at risk of being abused on national like comedy shows and such, like, like Sarah Palin was, well, clearly not being , uh, disparaged and attacked like Sarah Pailin was. Uh, but you know, frankly, she's being used right now and it's changed her tone from where she was when she began as governor. Um, she said, I don't care about the Democrats or Republicans or partisanship that we're Michiganders we get stuff done. And it's like, great, that's the way the talk and, and behave and you know, as her tagline was, fix the damn roads, which hallelujah, if anybody can figure out how to do that here , um , that, that would be great. Yeah , we are in a weird climatic band that makes it really hard to do, but I'm all for it. But I've noticed this really partisan shift and unfortunately I think that really speaks to the bigger problem. You can't be a pragmatic, get it done nonpartisan person and appeal to the party and to the news industry in these times. That's the problem. You can take good people and make them do not so good things because of the partisan divide and somebody feeling like they have to jump a hundred percent on one side or a hundred percent on the other. And look, Brian, I was talking to a friend of mine within recent days and we were talking about all the many things have gone on around the pandemic and you , we look at governor Cuomo in New York and governor Cuomo in an executive order said that the nursing homes had to take the , the , uh , infected patients and that's turned out to be a really bad move. And to the governor's credit, he has reversed that. Uh, but it did lead to some very tragic consequences. And what we have to accept is that the men and women that serve in these elected capacities are going to make mistakes. And you oftentimes in a leadership position have to make a decision based on the information that you have at that moment. And regardless of the outcome, you own it. And so, you know, I think people are familiar with what general Eisenhower wrote prior to the D day invasions. And he wrote a note that it had failed. He said all of the responsibility lies with me and Brian looked . That is one of the problems that we have with our president today and our president is not someone that had truly prepared for the full job of the presidency, does not avail himself of how to learn the full job and compounds those defects or deficiencies, if you will, with massive personal problems. And rather than saying it's my watch, I own the responsibility for the outcome of the pandemic. He says the opposite and that at every stage along this pandemic experience, it's obvious he's really concerned with how he's going to be evaluated and how his poll results might be and what his reelection chances could be. And it causes him to say really ridiculous things on a regular basis. And oftentimes what he says and what he actually does are two different things. And if you kind of erased a lot of the stuff that comes out of his mouth, you know, the administration has not been terrible during this time, but his inability to accept what a president does and how a president behaves and how president speaks is diminishing anyone's confidence in him. Right. So that kind of brings us to looking ahead in 2020 a really terrible situation that just like in 16 we had an established party candidate with a lot of baggage, with a lot of money that they had made from sources that were questionable at best, who ran a negative attack campaign behind door number one behind door number two, we have a candidate not prepared for the job, not interested in learning the job with massive personal issues and now look at what's coming up in 2020 we were not getting better choices and it's coming at a time when this pandemic has exposed a lot of the weaknesses in our country and our lack of effective government, our lack of effective factual news reporting, and really it's almost, I hope it's the pinnacle of how unprepared our government is to deal with the issues of the day. The reason we started this podcast was because it was apparent that the partisan politics, partisan politicians had become really good at attacking each other and less and less effective at dealing with healthcare, immigration, student debt. Firearms is just solving issues in general. Public health infrastructure, spending wisely with Don creating a deficit, household incomes. Okay, go down the line. And we don't have two parties competing to provide the best answer to those issues. We have parties competing to keep the other party out of power,
Speaker 2right? So whatever it takes just to beat the other party, it doesn't matter who it is, because it wouldn't be Biden if they were looking for the best candidate that they could find on the left and the right, it wouldn't be Donald Trump if they're looking for the best candidate to be the president of the United States. So they got into this thing where they're trying to beat the other side. That's all. Exactly. And so we will keep getting this kind of
Speaker 3choice and this kind of government right up until the time that we as a people reject it and say, I don't want to hear how bad the other person is. I want to know how we are going to approach environmental concerns, how we're going to approach a better education system, how we're going to approach tax fairness, and let's get those policy issues up front. And here's the interesting thing Brian. I have friends that are from way, way, way left and friends that are way, way, way right? And everybody in between. And with some exceptions, because I do have some friends that are really dug in. I can talk with folks and get them to understand that there is a way other than the dogma that they read and preach every day and say, you know what? That's not perfectly, gosh, it would be better. And guess what? Everybody's going for the same thing. We want a country there where there is security, where there's clean air and water, where people are housed, transported, fed, have medical care and the light . And what we have done now or allowed to happen is let two parties who are, have entrenched themselves, forget about all those needs. Forget about the people that elected them and only work on competing with the other one. Case in point, Joe Biden goes to an auto plant and looks an auto worker in the face and says, I don't work for you man. It's like, okay, now it's out there. You hardworking American on an assembly line, you don't count, I don't work for you. It's like kind of think you do. That's where we need to get back to. It's called public service and public servants. And we have allowed ourselves into this situation by accepting those kinds of behaviors from the political parties and we accept news media that we know is wrong. And what I would again recommend to everybody is that they take it upon themselves to sample news regularly from all sources. You know, by way of example, the situation around the recent disclosures really was only covered by Fox news and I'm waiting to see the outrage that during a time when six or seven, and I can name them, you know, James clapper, John Brennan, Susan Rice, Evelyn Farkas, Loretta Lynch, Sally Yates were testifying in front of house committees under oath that they never saw any evidence of collusion with the Russians. Never actually heard of any evidence that elected representatives were on networks saying that they had seen bang nymphos and amounts of information and hard evidence. As you heard on the interview with Ken Chatwal that , uh , it's not a crime to do that for that politician, but somebody is going to reward the guy by putting him back in office. And we're going to keep getting that as long as we keep accepting. Yeah, maybe someday we'll make it a crime
Speaker 2to get on the news and in lie, because right now there is no repercussions on that. And in fact, you get a bonus because people will listen to it, take it as the truth because they believe their media channel and then they'll vote for the person.
Speaker 3Well, it would destroy their business model, but also we need to get onto more reasoned dialogue. Uh, nobody is perfect. I don't do my job great every day. And I've learned from my successes, I've learned from my failures, I've learned from my right moves, I've learned from my mistakes, and that's the expectation we should have of our leaders. And we should also bring our cynicism, our skepticism and our questioning minds to the newscast every day . I agree . I know when I sit down and watch the news, I want to ask what's the rest of the story? What else is behind this? And perhaps if we push on those media outlets, we'll get a better product. Sounds good .
Speaker 2What were we talking about? The topic was calling you up just to get you to go off book and , and talk about what your feelings were. So rich. Um, thanks for taking time the second time today for doing a quick takes. I know you're a busy man, but , uh, I do like getting some , uh, you know, off the cuff remarks on some of today's topics, so thanks a lot.
Speaker 3All right , great. We're going to put a warning wrapper around this thing too, so we don't drive away .
Speaker 2All right , we'll do that rich, take care. Talk to you next week.
Speaker 4You have been listening to Richard healthy's common bridge podcast recording and post production provided by stunt three multimedia. All rights are reserved by Richard helpy .
Speaker 2For more information, visit Richard helpy.com .