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Michael Dunne: I'm Michael Dunne. To say that former Labor Secretary Robert Reich's resume is impressive is a gross understatement. He worked in three presidential administrations, was a special advisor to President Obama, obtained his law degree from Yale and was named one of the 10 most effective cabinet members of the century by Time magazine. The Wall Street Journal placed him sixth on its list of most influential business thinkers. So, yeah, Reich is an authority on politics, economics and the goings-on in a presidential administration. Today on the show, you'll hear from Robert Reich and gain insight as to how he sees the impact of the current administration, the state of the labor movement, and how the loyal opposition can fight back against what he sees as the growing threat of bullying authoritarianism. Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor, professor of public policy emeritus at UC Berkeley, Guardian columnist. He has his own Substack at robertreich.substack.com, and he has a new book coming out: 'Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America.' Secretary Reich, it's really an honor to talk to you. Thanks so much for spending some time with us.
Robert Reich: Well, Michael, thank you for inviting me. I appreciate it.
Dunne: You know, so much is happening in the world today, and I feel you have a great perspective. Certainly, given your experience in the Clinton administration, and through that lens looking at what's happening now, what makes an effective presidential cabinet? And jumping off that point, what do you see in the makeup of the Trump administration's Cabinet today?
Reich: Well, obviously those two questions are closely related. I was a member of Bill Clinton's cabinet. We did not always agree. In fact, several of us had very deep disagreements. I, with Bob Rubin, for example, but they weren't personal. We actually liked each other. And I think Bill Clinton created an environment in which it was safe for us to disagree. He also wanted to get different views, and that, I think, is almost the ideal. You want a group of people who respect and like one another, who don't necessarily agree, and also who have a very deep respect and loyalty to the institutions of government, to the processes of government, to the Constitution of the United States and the rule of law. I would say, in many respects, Donald Trump has the opposite kind of cabinet. I think he has a group of people who have shown very little respect for the rule of law. They have continued to usurp congressional authority. They don't seem to have much respect for the Constitution of the United States. They have done many things, as individual members of the cabinet and as parts of the Trump administration, that contravene the Constitution. And I would say overall, they are a group of people who, while they look as if they get along, I think they only get along to the extent that they are in the good graces of Donald Trump. He does not invite dissent. In fact, he wants only to hear what he wants to hear, and that's a very dangerous situation for a president of the United States or any chief executive.
Dunne: Talk about how important it is, certainly from your experience, to be able to say, 'No, Mr. President, that is not the right course of action, in my opinion or in my experience.'
Reich: Michael, I think that's absolutely critical. A president needs to hear why he might be wrong, or she eventually might be wrong. A president needs to get all sides of an opinion, all sides of views. A president needs people who are going to take apart what he wants to do and let him know where his own views are weakest. Because if a president doesn't get that, he is going to lead, or possibly lead, a country into never-ending wars, or tariffs that actually drive prices up for everybody, or a kind of police state that leaves many, many people frightened a lot of the time. I think that Donald Trump's major problem, or at least one of the major problems he has as president, has to do with a personality that doesn't want to even hear dissent, that wants to dominate all situations and have everybody else subservient to him. That is the worst kind of set of characteristics if you're going to be president.
Dunne: You are a prolific columnist with The Guardian, and fairly recently, on April 5, you had a column about three ways we can turn anti-Trump solidarity into political power. Talk about that column, because I know there are many people who feel sort of at sea about what can be done to counter what has been going on at the federal level.
Reich: Well, I encounter these people all the time. I'm rather conspicuous looking. I'm very short. People come up to me, who I don't know, and say, 'What am I going to do? What are we going to do? What can possibly be done?' And I tell them, very sincerely: Number one, do not give up, because that's what the forces of authoritarianism want us to do. They want us to give up. And if we gave up, then they'd have everything to themselves. We have got to continue to forcefully and powerfully resist what is going on. Number two, it's very, very important right now that we get ready to get out the vote for the midterm elections next November. That means we need to help people register to vote if they're not registered, and to know how to vote and where to vote. They've got to know what the state restrictions and regulations are. They've got to be able to find their way around that process. It should not be, ideally, a very complicated process, but people have got to know how to do it. They've got to know how important their votes are. Number three, it's very, very important that we maintain our vigilance so that our voting process is fair and free, and is not intruded upon by the administration or by people who don't want a free and fair election. That means if we notice anything that seems off or out of place, it's our responsibility to notify election officials, people in our own party who might be able to take action, the ACLU and others. The League of Women Voters. We've got to make sure that the vote counts, and it counts for everybody who is eligible to vote.
Dunne: What gives you hope? I ask that in terms of, obviously, there's been tremendous, sustained protests, the No Kings rallies and so on. But you've also been an insider, and you know how government works and how important institutions are. Many people are fearful about those institutions. What gives you hope?
Reich: Well, I think there are several things, Michael, that give me hope. Number one, I have a deep and abiding faith in the common sense of most Americans. If they see something that is wrong, or they understand how off track we are, Americans respond, and they respond in ways that are sensible. For example, many people I talk with say to me, 'You know, I never knew what the rule of law was. I never understood what due process meant. Now I do. I have examples of where the rule of law has been abridged and broken, where due process has been ignored. And now I'm going to fight for it.' Some other people come up to me and say, 'You know, I didn't even understand the basics of our democracy. I didn't understand this notion of three branches of government that were equal and set off against each other in the Constitution. I didn't know that Congress was Article One, the most important of the three branches. I didn't really know that the power to wage war and the power of the purse, to both collect taxes and decide how money was going to be spent, really are the provinces of Congress, not the president. I didn't understand the importance of independent regulatory agencies.' Well, I could go on and on, but it gives me hope, because so many people are now, in a very hard way, being educated about fundamental civic issues, and they're upset, and they know why they're upset. The other thing, Michael, that gives me hope is my students. Young people today are not cynical. They're skeptical, which I think they should be. That's what democracy requires: some degree of skepticism, so you don't believe everything you hear from a president or anybody else. But they're not cynical. They're hopeful. They think they still have agency, that the country can still become a place they're proud of. They feel that their generation has the capacity to make America, not great again, but good again. And every day, that inspires me.
Dunne: Well, take us inside your classroom, if you will, because, again, to an audience like you say, which isn't cynical and is ready to sort of roll up their sleeves and dig in.
Reich: Well, I tell my students, the most important way to learn is to talk to people who disagree with you. I think one of the problems in the country right now is that we're afraid of, or we dislike, people who disagree with us. We're afraid to engage them in conversations. But I tell my students that if they really do want to test their ideas, their premises, their values and their assumptions, they really do need to seek out people who disagree with them and try to find out what the weakest parts are of their assumptions, their values and their premises. And many of my students really do try to do that, and I salute them for it.
Dunne: As a professor, you are obviously seeing what is happening on college campuses, which, again, Berkeley being a sort of historical pillar of that. But there has been a lot of action around trying to silence diverse opinions. Give us your view on what college life and college thought is right now, as it comes under attack in some ways.
Reich: I think a lot of students are deeply concerned about the silencing, about the kind of attacks on freedom of speech. They are obviously also worried about the job market. They look at an economy in which jobs are not growing. In fact, if anything, they're shrinking. Artificial intelligence is potentially threatening a lot of the white-collar professions they had hoped to enter. So, there's a great deal of uncertainty. With regard to this central issue of academic freedom, I don't think there's any question: students are dedicated to maintaining the freedom of thought, the freedom of assembly, the freedom of speech, the freedom of expression. They really understand that those are the basis of any kind of educational institution and educational process. And so, if there's any threat to that coming from corporations, from the administration, from big donors, from anywhere outside, they are among the first to call it out and to demand that it not encroach on their education.
Dunne: You mentioned artificial intelligence, and I want to draw it back to obviously one of your foundational areas of expertise, the labor movement. Through the lens of what AI might impact, do you see the labor movement perhaps making more of a comeback, or has that ship sailed?
Reich: I don't think the ship has sailed, Michael, although, you know, if you look at the private-sector workforce, that's basically where most people are and how most people earn their wages. If you go back to the 1950s, my formative years, about a third of all private-sector workers in this country were unionized, and that gave them a voice. It gave them power. It gave them the countervailing power to push back against big corporations. Today, rather than a third of private-sector workers being unionized, we're down to 6%. Only 6% of private-sector workers are unionized. So today, you can't say that the labor union movement has enough power to give American workers a voice or to counterbalance the power of big corporations. It doesn't. I think there is a big, huge void there. As a result, American workers are not heard. American workers are taking it on the chin. American workers are angry. The workers I speak to all around the country are angry about what has happened to their wages, their lack of job security, and the tendency, we're seeing it all over the country, in every big corporation certainly and many smaller businesses, to place profits above people, above consumers, above workers, above the community, and really focus only on maximizing shareholder returns. I think workers understand the downside of doing that. That's why wages are stuck in the mud. That's why corporate profits are at record levels. That's why the people at the very top, the biggest investors, the CEOs, are doing so well, and everybody else is not. That void, I think, needs to be filled. It will be filled. It will either be filled by a revived labor union movement, or by something else that essentially does what labor union movements used to do.
Dunne: Your book, 'Coming Up Short,' and as you mentioned, you're a product of the baby boomer generation and your formative years were the 1950s. A lot of our audience is of your age, but a lot are younger. Talk about the baby boomer generation and the lived experiences that you've had, and how it shaped where we are, both positively and negatively.
Reich: Well, you know, it's interesting, because I was born in 1946, and so was Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. And Donald Trump was born 10 days before me in 1946. I think that my generation screwed things up, to put it bluntly, and I say so very directly in my book, 'Coming Up Short,' which is a double entendre. Obviously, I'm talking about my own lifelong stature, but also that my generation came up short. We had bequeathed to us from our parents, known as the greatest generation, a very large middle class. They won World War II. We had a country that was more united, I think, than ever before after the war and into the early 1950s. Of course, we had Joe McCarthy to contend with, but we contended with that, and we revived and reasserted democracy over McCarthyism. But my generation, I think, failed to take the promise of America and do with it what the previous generation, our parents, really thought and hoped we would. And I don't mean only George W. Bush and Bill Clinton and Donald Trump and people like me, but really the baby boomers as a whole. We are, on average, much richer than any other generation. We are, on average, pretty powerful in terms of our politics relative to other generations in America right now. But I think we have become very selfish, if a generalization is appropriate. And I think, to some extent, there is a degree of cynicism in the boomer generation that I wish was not there.
Dunne: Professor, my last question for you is this. You often point out your diminutive stature, but you have also talked for years about how that has helped you or spurred you on to stand up to bullies. And my last question for you is: Is that kind of a thought process, standing up to bullies, what we might need right now?
Reich: Well, I do think so, Michael. When I was a little boy, I did have to stand up to bullies who wanted to torment me, ridicule me and beat me up. And I think that helped me, in some way, recognize the bullying in the rest of society. The bullying of the rich toward the poor, the bullying of men toward women, the bullying of white supremacists toward Black people and Brown people. Bullying is all around us. The United States has bullied other countries for years. Donald Trump is the bully in chief. I don't think we've ever had a president who was so insistent on dominating any situation and getting submission from everybody around him. Well, I think that as a country and as a culture, democracy, and our democracy in particular, requires an understanding of, and a rejection of, bullying, and a protection of the people who are bullied, and a constraint on the powerful.
Dunne: He's Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor, professor emeritus at UC Berkeley, columnist with The Guardian. His new book is 'Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America.' Mr. Secretary, really appreciate your time. Thank you so much.
Reich: Well, thank you, Michael. I appreciate it.
Dunne: That's the show for today. All episodes of Oregon on the Record are available as a podcast at KLCC.org. Tomorrow, Sen. Ron Wyden joins us from the road to talk about the Iran war, inflation and much more. I'm Michael Dunne, host of Oregon on the Record. Thanks for listening.
