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This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
Nia Rodgers: Hey Aughie.
John Aughenbaugh: Hello Nia. How are you?
Nia Rodgers: I'm fine. How are you?
John Aughenbaugh: I'm a little disappointed that I didn't get asked to be Vice President.
Nia Rodgers: Apparently everybody in the world was [inaudible] This is an in between episode because we're not quite in the fall yet but we're not really in the summer of SCOTUS anymore so we're going to list it under the start of the fall. The fall begins. This election season just can't get much weirder.
John Aughenbaugh: Listeners. This is one of our in the news episodes.
Nia Rodgers: Will you tell them what the question was that I asked you?
John Aughenbaugh: I'm going to get there. But listeners Nia and I have interrupted our late summer hiatus in my case I call it hibernation.
Nia Rodgers: In my case I call it the panic before fall.
John Aughenbaugh: The panic before fall. Old school government employees would refer to it as their summer furlough.
Nia Rodgers: That's right the summer furlough. I emailed Aughie a question. I said who the heck is Tim Walz? I'm not trying to be ugly but I'll be honest with you I live in Virginia and who the Governor of Minnesota is could not mean less to me. Except back when it was Jesse Ventura and I just thought that was funny. Wasn't that Minnesota?
John Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: Long line of interesting people in Minnesota.
John Aughenbaugh: The former professional wrestler Jesse "The Body."
Nia Rodgers: That's right "The Body" who was governor there I think one maybe two terms.
John Aughenbaugh: Yeah at least one term. I got to admit I tend to follow American politics quite well. But there have been a whole line of Minnesota governors that I knew less than for instance presidents of Mexico, Prime Ministers of Canada.
Nia Rodgers: It's just not a state we think of a lot in Virginia. Not that we do think badly. We don't think badly of Minnesota. Minnesota is lovely. Lots of lakes in Minnesota.
John Aughenbaugh: Is that the state with 10,000 lakes?
Nia Rodgers: I think that that's Minnesota but it could be Wisconsin. Those two states are getting mixed up quite a bit in the news lately.
John Aughenbaugh: Yes they have been.
Nia Rodgers: Poor Dr. Ingram? Unclear on where Milwaukee is which by the way is in Wisconsin not in Minnesota. But anyway we all make mistakes in fairness to her she didn't mean to say that. But anyway, let's backup briefly and say, once upon a time Joe Biden was the presumptive presidential nominee for the Democratic Party.
John Aughenbaugh: That's correct.
Nia Rodgers: Then the Democratic Party rose up as a giant unwieldy beast and started yelling about you need to retire, go away because his debate performance with his rival Donald Trump was not so great. I think we can agree it was less-than-stellar, people freaked out, and he decided he would withdraw from the campaign and Vice President Kamala Harris became the presumptive nominee and then I think she's been voted. Now as of recording they've actually done an electronic vote and she is the nominee for the Democratic side. Then she cast her eyes upon the nation and lo there were many people that she looked at to see if they would be a good vice president.
John Aughenbaugh: None of the interviewees listeners or Nia Rodgers or John Aughenbaugh.
Nia Rodgers: Right which is to her detriment because we would have been awesome. But she was looking for I believe I don't know this for fact because I've not spoken with Vice President Harris so I can't say for certain. But I believe she was looking for a white male probably from a state that would either bolster her in some way like a rural state or a mostly red state or somebody who works across the aisles or something like that and some place not California because you cannot have a president and a vice president candidate from the same state.
John Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
Nia Rodgers: So there were lots of names talked about. Then suddenly here's Tim Walz and I'm like who's Tim Walz? That's what I said to Aughie. Who is Tim Walz?
John Aughenbaugh: According to press reports nominee Harris basically narrowed her choices to three. These were Senator Mark Kelly from Arizona, Governor Josh Shapiro, from my home state of Pennsylvania, and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.
Nia Rodgers: Can I just say I was pulling for Mark Kelly?
John Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
Nia Rodgers: Former astronaut, he's a twin. He's just got some cool features.
John Aughenbaugh: He's the husband of.
Nia Rodgers: Gabby Giffords.
John Aughenbaugh: Former US representative Gabby Giffords who unfortunately her political career ended abruptly when she was shot.
Nia Rodgers: In an assassination attempt.
John Aughenbaugh: Yes. I think a lot of us who look at the Electoral College map of this year's presidential election thought that Mark Kelly might be the choice simply because Arizona is one of the battleground states.
Nia Rodgers: It's in play.
John Aughenbaugh: It's definitely in play. But to the question of who is Tim Walz? Tim Walz is 60-years-old. He was born in the fine state of Nebraska. After high school he joined the Army National Guard and he worked in manufacturing. He went to college at a small state school in Nebraska. I never had heard of this school. Chadron State College. He moved to Minnesota in 1996 in his early 30s. Before he ran for Congress he was a high school social studies teacher and an assistant football coach. I think he coached defense.
Nia Rodgers: Was he a winning football coach?
John Aughenbaugh: Eventually the team began to win. When he first got hired they had had a number of years without any victories but he was never the head coach. He was always the assistant coach. He was first elected to the House of Representatives in 2006 where he defeated a six term.
Nia Rodgers: Wait the US House of Representatives or the Minnesota House of Representatives.
John Aughenbaugh: The US House of Representatives.
Nia Rodgers: He went federal.
John Aughenbaugh: He went federal. He defeated a six term Republican incumbent. I love the name Gil Gutknecht.
Nia Rodgers: That's a very Minnesota name Gutknecht. It has German, Swedish, Finnish. It's got that whole Nordic feel to it.
John Aughenbaugh: Then Walz got re-elected.
Nia Rodgers: He beat an incumbent. That's pretty telling. It's hard to beat incumbents.
John Aughenbaugh: He got elected five more times so six terms total when he ran for governor of Minnesota in 2018 and he got re-elected in 2022.
Nia Rodgers: Lots of public service.
John Aughenbaugh: Lots of public service from his long tenure in the US National Guard, and military service is family tradition within the Walz family. I believe his dad served in the Korean War. I think one of Walz siblings also served in the military. That's who he is now.
Nia Rodgers: But don't be thinking listeners, that because he's from a rural state, or a state with lots of ruralness, I know that's not a word, but you know what I mean. Lots of rural communities, that he's moderate, or he's a rhino. No. He's very progressive in terms of his politics. His politics are not moderate, neutral, democratic politics. They are much more in the progressive end of the camp, are they not?
John Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Vice President Harris sent a very clear message with her selection of Governor Walz. The message she sent was she wanted to show up the Democratic Party base that had indicated earlier in the year when Joe Bin was the party's nominee that they might not turn out for this election.
Nia Rodgers: The people who all voted, not undecided.
John Aughenbaugh: Somebody other than. You saw this in states like Nevada, Michigan, where there were significant percentage of Democratic voters in those states primaries who were like.
Nia Rodgers: Not that guy.
John Aughenbaugh: Not that guy. The concern within the Democratic Party is we would have no chance of winning in November if our base doesn't show up, probably to the Republican Party base.
Nia Rodgers: I was going to say, that's the same worry that the Republicans have, too, is our base has to shore up because mathematically, we need those numbers.
John Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: They both need their base to show up, and then they need to win a certain amount of undecideds or people who claim to be undecided. I don't know if I believe anybody's undecided, but that is neither here nor there. I'm a little cynical about that. But both sides need their base to turn out. That's a big deal. Do we think that he can turn out the base?
John Aughenbaugh: Well, here to four. Many of his policy positions, many of his programs and policies as Minnesota governor, fit very comfortably within the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
Nia Rodgers: Like what?
John Aughenbaugh: For instance, in his second term as Minnesota governor, he has been fortunate that the state legislature is overwhelmingly democratic.
Nia Rodgers: He gets what he wants more or less.
John Aughenbaugh: He's pushed through modifications to the state tax code, which have led to increased taxes on wealthy and upper middle class Minnesotans, and has used that money for free school meals, bolstering state infrastructure, pass through some of the most rigorous gun background checks. He codified abortion rights post Dobbs versus Jackson and also push through free college tuition for low income families.
Nia Rodgers: That's pretty progressive. Those are on the more left side of the Democratic work.
John Aughenbaugh: Of the policy spectrum. Those are many of the items that you see from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
Nia Rodgers: Am I correct, though, he is a hunter, isn't he? He doesn't believe you shouldn't own guns at all. He just believes there should be background checks?
John Aughenbaugh: Yes. He rather infamously broke with the NRA when he ran for governor in 2018, where he was very critical of the NRA. In fact, for those of us not in Minnesota, probably our first, if you will, notification or notice of him, and I actually remembered in 2018, it was noteworthy.
Nia Rodgers: Didn't he give the money they gave him to charity?
John Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: He made a big deal out of giving to charity so that he could say I am not beholden to the NRA?
John Aughenbaugh: Yes, he did.
Nia Rodgers: Interesting.
John Aughenbaugh: He broke rather publicly with the NRA. Because again, here's a guy who grew up in rural Nebraska.
Nia Rodgers: The idea that he would not own a gun is simple.
John Aughenbaugh: Or that he's ever gone deer hunting, etc. Now I don't know how much deer hunting he's been doing as governor or when he became a member of Congress. But nevertheless, he is quite comfortable wearing blue jeans. Well, he's been described as looking like a suburban dad.
Nia Rodgers: He does kind of.
John Aughenbaugh: He's going bald. He's got a receding hairline. He's got a little bit of middle aged dad's sprawl, if you will.
Nia Rodgers: He wears Camo hats?
John Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: Camo baseball caps.
John Aughenbaugh: Baseball caps.
Nia Rodgers: He drives people crazy because they think he shouldn't be wearing that, even though I'm like, but that's who he is.
John Aughenbaugh: That's who he is.
Nia Rodgers: He's also very plain spoken.
John Aughenbaugh: Yes, he is.
Nia Rodgers: I think he's probably best known for calling the entire Republican Party a bunch of weirdos. Which I think is also not helpful. I also think that it's not really good to paint the entire party of your opponent as something because there's no such thing as a monolith on any of the sides. There are Democrats who are in the Democratic Party who are saying, this guy is way too progressive. He's way out there on the fringe. I'm not comfortable with how far out on the fringe he is because they think he's on the fringe. Then the people who are standing on the fringe are like, no, we're in the middle, and he's great with us. Is that true of both stats?
John Aughenbaugh: Both political parties are comprised of various caucuses or wings.
Nia Rodgers: There's a lot of wings on this bird.
John Aughenbaugh: There's a lot of wings on this bird. If it was an airplane, there's a whole bunch of engines that could crap out and the plane would still fly. That's what happens when you have, like here in the United States, only two political parties.
Nia Rodgers: Because everybody who's slightly different from the main plank has to find some place to belong.
John Aughenbaugh: That's right.
Nia Rodgers: Just as a side note for listeners, in Europe, there's like 34 parties in the electoral system in Germany, for instance. There's green left and green right and Social Democrats and the non Social Democrats and then this people and then that people, there's all these different.
John Aughenbaugh: One of my favorite anecdotes when I'm teaching voting behavior, Nia, to your point, is that earlier this century, in Italy, the Italian national government went ahead and announced that they could not keep track of all the political parties in that country because the number had had surpassed 25.
Nia Rodgers: It's funny. People think that it's normal to have a two-party system. That is actually not the norm.
John Aughenbaugh: Weren't normal.
Nia Rodgers: That's in Britain. I think are pretty much it. Like we're well of Australia.
John Aughenbaugh: Well, even Great Britain has three.
Nia Rodgers: That's true, they have.
John Aughenbaugh: As our colleague Chris Bardet shared with us back in the spring.
Nia Rodgers: They we're conservative in UK.
John Aughenbaugh: But here in the United States.
Nia Rodgers: That's not their constituent pieces, which also have parties.
John Aughenbaugh: Parties. Yes.
Nia Rodgers: It's weird that the US is we'll divide between two. Well, that's why you end up with parties that are so, forgive me for using this word casually because I don't mean it in this way, but schizophrenic in the actual sense of split definitions of things.
John Aughenbaugh: Because when somebody says, I'm a member of the Democratic Party or I'm a member of the Republican Party, you have to dig deeper.
Nia Rodgers: Right. That's not enough.
John Aughenbaugh: Me saying that I like coffee, basically covers it pretty well when you figure out that I love coffee. But if somebody says, I'm a member of the Democratic Party, you're like, are you a part of the squad with?
Nia Rodgers: Or this caucus or that caucus. You're part of the Republican Party? Are you a Log Cabin Republican? Are you, what are the people with the 2025 plan?
John Aughenbaugh: They are the deep state.
Nia Rodgers: Dave Bratz, remember him?
John Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: All of that stuff. Like which part of the party? Anyway.
John Aughenbaugh: It begs the question, Nia, why did Harris pick Walz?
Nia Rodgers: Right.
John Aughenbaugh: There are then.
Nia Rodgers: Three upsides.
John Aughenbaugh: Well, quite clearly, according to a number of media reports. Of all the VP candidates Harris interviewed or talked with, the one she got along best with was Walz. She loves his upbeat personality and his optimism and thought that was one of the things that was lacking in the Biden, if you will, campaign, which was frequently fending off criticisms of Biden as the party's nominee. We've already talked about the fact that Walz is supported by some rather not worthy progressives including and you mentioned this name a few moments ago, Bernie Sanders, the senator from Vermont.
Nia Rodgers: Hilda Burns.
John Aughenbaugh: Was one of the earliest, if you will champions of Tim Walz as Harris's VP. You mentioned something else. A lot of Democratic Party faithful love the fact that earlier this summer, Governor Walz referred to the current Republican Party as comprised of a 'bunch of widows'. I think he said it on one of the Sunday morning talk shows.
Nia Rodgers: He gave examples, which were outlandish. Because when you say something outlandish, you have to back it up with more outlandish stuff. See note Donald Trump's public speaking, as well. The more outlandish you are, the more outlandish you have to be, but whatever.
John Aughenbaugh: Minnesota is not a battleground state, but it's the state that, I think, represents quite well, the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, and Harris was sending a very clear message. Those policies and those policy preferences is what I'm going to emphasize. Because in part, she has to define herself in a very short period of time.
Nia Rodgers: Because just like I could almost have sent you an email that said, who the heck is Kamala Harris? I wouldn't have been terribly far off from the heck is Tim Walz. The other thing too is, I think I suspect and you put it in your notes, and I think you're right, that he also has some of that JD Vance Midwest rural. I came from the people and I'm from the people and I know the people thing.
John Aughenbaugh: I'm plain spoken.
Nia Rodgers: I think that in that sense, they are a counter to each other.
John Aughenbaugh: Let's face it. You and I on this podcast aren't all that comfortable referring to people who think differently than us as weirdos. But we're very familiar with a whole bunch of people who do talk that way.
Nia Rodgers: Exactly, you're right.
John Aughenbaugh: I talked with my mother earlier today.
Nia Rodgers: My mom regularly says, they're a bunch of weirdos. Like she just that too.
John Aughenbaugh: She was talking about one of our family members and just referred to them as a weirdo. She was like, mom, I don't know if that's appropriate to go ahead and discuss uncle so and so as a weirdo. She was like, he is.
Nia Rodgers: For listeners, part of that is, we will say things sometimes. But for the most part, we try not to cast aspersions on people's character directly because it's ad hominem. If you can't beat them on the actual argument, then you have to go home. But I do think there's some downsides to Tim Walz. Can I mention that I think that the main one is?
John Aughenbaugh: Go ahead.
Nia Rodgers: That I sent you a message that said, who the heck is Tim Walz?
John Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: I consider myself to not be a person totally out of touch with politics.
John Aughenbaugh: I would not consider you that.
Nia Rodgers: It felt like he sprang up like a spring dandelion. I was like, there wasn't anything there five minutes ago and now there's this guy. Who is he? If I feel that way, I suspect that probably other people will feel that way.
John Aughenbaugh: Again, I don't think Harris picked him to persuade the moderates or the undecideds in the electorate. Because he's not well known outside of Minnesota or the Midwest. Yes, he served in the House of Representatives for six terms, but it was largely inconsequential tenure.
Nia Rodgers: I guess, he's not known for any bill, there's no bills named, the something Walz Act.
John Aughenbaugh: There was no McCain Feingold. Do you know McCain Feingold?
Nia Rodgers: That's exactly what I was thinking of McCain Feingold or some of the other pieces where it's been clear that a person has really pushed.
John Aughenbaugh: A particular, if you will, piece of legislation.
Nia Rodgers: I think he had what we would call a benign service.
John Aughenbaugh: Yes. Another downside and some of our listeners, you may have already seen this in some of the media reports. He is getting questions about his military service, including whether or not he exaggerated what his last rank was before he left the National Guard.
Nia Rodgers: Because there's a weird, he completed the work to do the rank but didn't actually achieve the rank before he retired. He retired at the rank just below that. There's a weird question of, it's like when Aggie, and Aggie can speak to this as a PhD, you take all the classes, but you don't finish your dissertation.
John Aughenbaugh: Yes.
Nia Rodgers: It's not quite the same, but it's similar. But they call it ABD, all but-
John Aughenbaugh: Dissertation.
Nia Rodgers: Dissertation. It matters. It's a little, I think, disingenuous for anyone to say, well, he didn't serve in war, considering neither did any of the other candidates. Neither Trump nor JD Vance nor Kamala Harris, none of them have ever served in an active war combat setting.
John Aughenbaugh: The problem for Walz is-
Nia Rodgers: He said, a gun I carried in war, which he should not have said because didn't serve in the war.
John Aughenbaugh: Some of the people who served with him have been critical because it struck them that he resigned his commission in the National Guard two months before they were sent to Iraq.
Nia Rodgers: They were deployed to Iraq. On the one hand, a lot of people do that. A lot of people find out their unit is leaving, and they're like, no, I got a little kid at home. I'm ready to have a kid, whatever, I'm not going. He had a four-year-old, I think at the time, and they resigned their commission. But on the other hand, he was a leader. Do you hold them to a slightly different standard to a higher standard than you would a person who's not in a leadership position? I think that's something people should probably read up more on and decide for themselves. How they feel about that military service question. I don't think there's any question that he was in the the National guard. Then he was in Italy, and he did stuff in Italy. Just like there's no question, JD Vance was a reporter in a combat zone. He didn't fight, but he was in the zone. So his military service should be respected. But Siogi and I believe that all military service should be respected because we're very pro recognizing our veterans, and we admire our veterans.
John Aughenbaugh: Let's face it.
Nia Rodgers: Their fighting allows us to sit here and argue about politics. Because we're not in a situation where the government could come in here and shut down our podcast because somebody fights for that freedom. But it is something that folks should read up on and see what they think and I think it probably comes down to opinions, a lot of it.
John Aughenbaugh: How do you describe one service? We've talked about this on this podcast. In this day and age, one has to be extremely careful with how they discuss their achievements.
Nia Rodgers: The stolen dollar is a real thing.
John Aughenbaugh: It doesn't matter if it's military service or what you did in a particular job. If you exaggerate.
Nia Rodgers: You will get caught.
John Aughenbaugh: You will get caught.
Nia Rodgers: When you do, it will cost you.
John Aughenbaugh: It will cost you. Particularly when you are running for the second highest executive branch office in the United States federal government.
Nia Rodgers: What I don't understand is why the vetting didn't have an answer for this. The vettors failed because they should have had a ready answer for this particular question.
John Aughenbaugh: But the other downside, and again, this is like the flip. Depending on how you look at this, this can be viewed as a positive or negative. If you are progressive, if you are believer in government as a agent of positive change then Tim Walz is your guy. Because quite obviously, whether it was his service in the House or in particular, his tenure as Governor of Minnesota, he believes in government. He believes government can make a positive change. He believes in big government.
Nia Rodgers: You don't do something like free tuition for low income families if you don't believe in the power of government to solve problems.
John Aughenbaugh: You don't go ahead and have the state government apparatus do one of the most thorough background checks of all 50 states.
Nia Rodgers: If you don't believe they can do it right and protect people.
John Aughenbaugh: Make sure that only the most qualified can get a gun. But that may turn off key voters in battleground states.
Nia Rodgers: That's not an illegitimate thing to wrestle with. It is, what is the appropriate size for government? Should government just be huge? There are some real questions about that because the bigger it is, the more opportunity for corruption, the more opportunity for-
John Aughenbaugh: Abuse of certain civil liberties.
Nia Rodgers: Exactly. Big brother was big. There can be double, again, listeners should really think about what those things mean to them in terms of what's the appropriate size of government and who do you think can deliver? You had in your notes, and I think this is a thing for us to end on, is this very stark difference between these two sets of candidates. These two campaigns. Because the Trump, Vance campaign is very much about making government smaller, making government less invasive in some ways, and then more invasive, in other ways, it's very odd. Because no campaign is purely one thing or the other. But you get a lot more with Harris, Walz of this idea of big government and government solving problems and that thing that makes people uncomfortable in terms of how much government is too much government.
John Aughenbaugh: That's right.
Nia Rodgers: I think you're right that the difference here, they did nicely chose to make themselves very distinct for us, because the last time we talked, I was complaining that I couldn't tell the difference between one old white guy and another white guy. There wasn't a huge amount of daylight in a lot of their positions. There's some real daylight here. There's some real division.
John Aughenbaugh: Because in part Biden was running, 'save American democracy from Trump'. You weren't always entirely sure where he fell in terms of policy, and what he would do in terms of public policy and his second/last term in office. But by picking Walz, Harris is sending a very clear message.
Nia Rodgers: She's signaling progressive.
John Aughenbaugh: She's signaling to progressive voters, where your choice? If you're not comfortable with that, then you might want to give a long hard look at the Trump, Vance campaign and where they stand.
Nia Rodgers: Don't forget the third campaign.
John Aughenbaugh: Yes, Robert Kennedy's. But Nia, to your point, as we conclude this episode. Listeners, when Nia and I were younger, and then I know that.
Nia Rodgers: Dinosaurs roamed the Earth Foxborough feasibility study.
John Aughenbaugh: One of the complaints about the two main political parties in the United States was that there was very little difference between the Democrats and the Republicans.
Nia Rodgers: Doesn't matter who you vote for, because they're all the same.
John Aughenbaugh: They're all the same. To your point Nia, earlier this year, it looked like we had two.
Nia Rodgers: Still pretty similar situation.
John Aughenbaugh: Less than stellar choices, two old white dudes.
Nia Rodgers: The campaign, the parties have both verved. I like to say jug, they have jugged their campaigns such that you've get JD Vance, and now you've got Tim Walz, and that's really mixing things up. New dialogue to all. I'm looking forward to the debates. I'm hoping that you and I will be able to do in the news debate summaries because I'm excited about how they talk to each other. All four, by the way, I'm interested in the presidential debate, but I'm actually technically more interested in the Vice Presidential debate. I'm trying to be ugly to either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris. Sure they're both interesting people. But I'm digging this idea of Vance, Walz.
John Aughenbaugh: Well, particularly because, think about it, Nia. As recently as two, four years ago, they weren't even on the map, the national political map.
Nia Rodgers: Two or four years ago, they'd had a beer together. Do you know what I mean? They're not that different in some ways and yet in other ways ways boy polar opposite. It's going to be fun. It's going to be exciting. I will say, whatever the outcome of this election, this election has gotten approximately 10 billion times more interesting than it was six weeks ago. I think people before were voting against other people, and I think now they've got a more of an opportunity to vote for something. I think that'll be interesting to see how that goes.
John Aughenbaugh: I agree with you. Because, as recently as late June, I was just like, I can't believe we're doing a rehash of 2020. Now I'm just like, we're not getting any leftovers.
Nia Rodgers: We're not in Kansas anymore.
John Aughenbaugh: This is not a dog's breakfast.
Nia Rodgers: This is really exciting. It has had an effect for both parties to bring up interest. There's more money flowing into both campaigns. There's more interest flowing into campaigns. It's all very exciting.
John Aughenbaugh: But thanks, Nia, for opposing.
Nia Rodgers: I don't mean to be ugly to Tim Walz. I just I don't know who that you are. Now we know more, and we'll be back with more episodes very soon.
John Aughenbaugh: Thanks, Nia.
Nia Rodgers: Thank you.