This week on The Square Circle, we discuss Joe Manchin’s sinking of the Build Back Better Act, the rise of the Omicron variant, and Vladimir Putin’s posturing on Ukraine.
Doug Bandow, Peter Roff, and James Rosen discuss these issues and more. Adam Bearne hosts.
The audio-only version is available on any podcast platform.
Transcript:
joe manchin the omicron variant and
ukraine i’m adam byrne and this is the
square circle
[Music]
hello and welcome to the square circle
i’m your host adam byrne joining us
today our libertarian and senior fellow
at the cato institute doug bandle doug
hello nice to see you adam as always and
we have conservative and newsweek
contributing editor peter roth hello
peter good to be here
and lastly but not least we have
progressive political reporter james
rosen hi james hey and i’m always good
to see you well welcome everybody
this week west virginia senator joe
manchin broke the hearts of democrats
across the country when he announced his
opposition to the build back better act
here’s the senator on fox news
i’ve always said this brett
if i can’t go home and explain it
to the people of west virginia i can’t
vote for it
and i cannot vote to continue with this
piece of legislation i just can’t
i’ve tried everything humanly possible i
can’t get there
you’re done this is this is a no
this is a no
on this legislation i have tried
everything i know to do
so doug bondo is this the end of biden’s
build back better plan or could we see
it resurrected in some other form
somewhere down the line
certainly some of the programs could be
brought back i doubt we’ll see an
omnibus bill like the one that fell
but you can imagine popular parts of
that program
might get positive votes and manchin
might vote for that of course he’s not
the only marginal voter there’s cinema
there’s hasson and others in the senate
the house is also close
but the democrats could pull something
out of this if they remember that they
have a small majority and not a an uber
majority that got them the new deal and
the great society
yeah and on that point james rosen i’ve
heard it being described as president
biden trying to pass an fdr style plan
without having an fdr style majority so
has he tripped up here bitten off more
than he can chew
yeah he has far from an fdr uh style
majority he has far from an lbj’s style
majority and um although he’s a nice
fellow he has far from fdr lbj political
skills and and
um
i think the the package was too
ambitious um
on the other hand uh mansion i think has
been
um
has not been consistent uh he’s been on
he’s been off he’s been on he’s been off
i mean the program’s been changing in
some ways this is how hugely i agree
that in our likelihood now we’re not
going to see a major major piece of
legislation with this high of a price
tag
i agree with doug
this is how legislation historically
gets made on big programs it’s on again
it’s off again it takes a long time
there’s an old saying you don’t want to
see how sausage is made uh in the
restaurant and
you don’t want to see how news gets
reported in the newsroom uh you also
don’t want to see how legislation gets
made in congress um so i i you know i
don’t know if it’s it’s always hard to
know how much of this is negotiating
ploy on any on all sides and how much of
it is for real um
but yeah the democrats have a super thin
majority uh
that you know they really have no
majority in the senate uh vice president
harris cast a tie-breaking vote and they
have a thin majority in the house
and um and president biden came in
uh you know acting like he had a big
mandate to pass sweeping legislation um
he did get one big uh covet relief bill
passed um but then he got i believe am i
right the infrastructure bill is now law
my it’s hard to find if he got the
infrastructure bill passed so those are
two big bills but this is a really
really big bill with a big price tag and
it’s hard to pass with
you know
no majority or thin majority
and peter off to james’s point there
uh some have been arguing that as
disappointed as democrats are to have
passed with no majority as james points
out the rescue plan and the
infrastructure bill which have alluded
to the past two presidents that
president biden’s actually doing pretty
well here
um
if they believe that president biden is
doing well i have a bridge in brooklyn i
would like to sell them he’s down 20
points in his approval rating
since he took into office his approval
rating is now lower than what trump’s
was consistently for most of his
presidency certainly before the pandemic
started and it’s according to gallup
poll
he has
failed to achieve
his
big government socialist
dreams
the infrastructure package passed
because republicans got behind it the
kovic relief bill passed because
republicans got behind what was
eventually
put into law
mr biden as far as capitol hill is
concerned and this is especially
surprising since he spent almost 50
years up there
has largely been a cipher
he is not the engaged negotiator that he
told us he was going to be during the
campaign
much of the detail
of the day-to-day running of the
presidency appears to be
left to the white house staff
and they’re doing they’re doing a lousy
job of it
um you know it was biden himself who
made the fdr comparison he wanted to be
like fdr and inaugurate an era of
sweeping change that fundamentally
overturns everything that happened
in government since ronald reagan became
president but it’s it is it is
clear to me
looking at
survey date that the american public
doesn’t want to go
where joe biden and his wing of the
democratic party want to take them
so doug bondo this bill is unpopular
according to peter roth and the polls
suggest that he might be right but when
you break down each component part it
seems like each individual measure seems
quite popular so why do you think
senator manchin has torpedoed this
certainly the white house are putting a
lot of pressure on him asking him to
explain why insulin is going to cost a
thousand dollars a month for someone in
west virginia rather than 35 a month
under this new plan
well part of the problem is that the
cost is presented by the administration
involved a lot of gamesmanship i mean
the cbo numbers suggest that the real
cost is higher than that that was
presented
and i think the american people are
skeptical of these kind of massive bills
that plan to transform society
if you come forward with an answer to a
specific problem you might be able to
make a convincing case
but it looks a lot more like social
engineering when people come in with a
grand name
you know massive spending levels they
talk about transformation
i think that’s the problem here is that
a lot of these are genuine problems that
need to be addressed it’s not clear that
where biden has come down is with the
best answer and you put a bill like this
together it’s hard to have serious
debate
over your specific issues i mean i think
the point that was made earlier is that
when you get transformational bills you
typically get you know back and forth
you have some mayo fights between the
parties you have very often a large
majority now you have more that goes
into it it’s very hard to do what
they’re trying to do so quickly again
with a margin in the senate in the house
it simply isn’t there he overreached
uh you know no surprise that he wanted
to and progressives desperately wanted
to push you know that very thin majority
as far as they could
but i think they have run aground here
they need to regroup i think peter is
right that the president himself hasn’t
been as engaged and that was viewed as
one of his strengths as having been a
member of capitol hill for so long that
he could do some arm twisting and some
pleading in a way that might be um
effective and we simply haven’t seen
that
so james rosen we’ll give you the last
say on this topic for this week
doug points out that
president biden might be better off just
picking a few
specific issues
and really pushing for those what do you
think from the buildback better plan
might still be resurrected
well um
you know i’m not going to pull out
specific reads and be speculative i just
want to say that
i’ve said before on this program
obamacare was opposed by every single
republican in congress at the time every
single republican
and the republicans have tried something
like 37 times to overturn it and
they’ve failed and they made the exact
same arguments that we’re hearing
tonight social engineering socialism too
expensive it’s a popular program it was
only past what 10 15 years ago and you
can go back further in time to lbj’s
attempt to pass
medicare you can go back further to
fdr’s attempt to pass social security we
really hear the same tire unoriginal
arguments that have no substance they’re
just kind of buzz words so i’ll say the
conservatives of either party have made
these kinds of arguments over and over
and over again and history keeps proving
them wrong
and i don’t know what will happen with
this bill but um
it would be bad it would be really good
if we heard substantive arguments rather
than just buzz words like social
engineering and socialism
well it looks like the popularity of the
buildback better plan we might never
find out if it ever becomes popular in
the same way the affordable care act has
but let’s move on because also this week
the omicron variant took over the delta
variant as the dominant strain of the
coronavirus here in the u.s but while
omicron is spreading quickly there is
evidence emerging that it’s not as
serious as the delta variant so peter
roth we’re seeing sporting events be
cancelled we’re seeing mass mandates
come back into place
are we overreacting here could this be a
blessing in disguise or are these
prudent measures given just how
transmissible the omicron variant is
proving to be
i think it is an overreaction absolutely
hospitalizations are up but they’re not
up like they were under delta or alpha
and the most important indicator as far
as i’m concerned
is the number of people who are dying
and
the current variation
is not nearly as lethal
as either delta or alpha the original
covet 19. this is good news people are
receiving natural immunity
by contracting
the current virus
whether it penetrates the vaccine
is not clear
some studies have suggested that
the vaccine does not protect you
others say it does but there are studies
now coming out i saw one today and i
apologize for not remembering where it’s
from
uh that says that once you have
a form of covid19
you are protected for life against
all variants at least that’s the latest
thinking
um i believe that to be the case and i
am hopeful that these that this
transmission will create the herd
immunity that should have been one of
the primary objectives
of
u.s and global
anti-pandemic efforts from the
start course from the start this virus
appeared to be much more deadly and
certainly with the delta variant than
omicron is so you think that even then
we should have let it spread in the
community
i think that a number of mistakes were
made that led to lockdowns which i
believe were a huge mistake
i think that
we tried to protect everyone
it at the alpha phase in the initial
part of kovitt 19 when in fact what we
should have been doing is figuring out
who the populations were who were
potentially most vulnerable
most severely affected
by covet 19 and done our best to isolate
them
that should have been the priority it
wasn’t and in fact in some cases as in
new york state
governor andrew
cuomo went exactly in the opposite
direction he sent covid patients into
nursing homes
to recover
where they infected the elderly and the
infirm
and they increased the number of people
who were dying from kovic 19.
can you imagine the outcry if we had
isolated fat
older people with diabetes or cancer or
heart conditions those are the
underlying conditions that make you most
vulnerable can you imagine the outcry i
mean peter you’re a political realist do
you think what you just said would have
gotten off square one seriously
isolated
older people with diabetes in these
other conditions do you think that would
have flown politically with president
trump
i think that given
the way the story unfolded
given the way the disease unfolded a
measured response and leaving aside
for a moment president trump’s ability
to be measured about anything
but a measured response
that focused on protecting the most
vulnerable in front of us
would have
prevented the lockdowns
i believe that history will show
that the lockdowns
did more
damage long-term
to the american people
to the education of our children
to the health of the economy
than the virus itself
you cannot
have an effective
anti-pandemic strategy
when the cure is worse than the disease
doug bondo let’s bring you in here it
seems like the other two gentlemen are
arguing about whether or not herd
immunity is the strategy especially now
that we have omicron uh which appears to
be less faithful i think as we saw that
in the uk anywhere between 30 and 70
percent fewer hospital admissions for
those who get omicron so is herd
immunity now a viable strategy
well there’s certainly possible good
news here which is pandemics typically
end
as the viruses mutate to become
more transmissible but less dangerous i
mean in essence you get to where we are
on the flu there are deaths from the flu
but we do have a vaccines the number of
deaths is below that of covid
so there’s a possibility here of coming
to essentially an equilibrium that we
can live with
where you have if not full herd immunity
you have good level of immunity you have
vaccines that give reasonable coverage
and those who get it we’re able to treat
and that most of them will not lose
their lives so that might get us to the
best situation we can be in
and i think that peter is right in this
sense that early on the effort should
have been focused on how do you protect
those
who are most vulnerable and exactly how
what that means and whether it’s
isolation as james points out you can
hardly lock away
everyone you know who’s vulnerable
nevertheless the notion of extra
precautions at nursing homes extra
precautions of patients people with
certain conditions as opposed to you
know those sorts of restrictions
society-wide might have been you know
more effective but we’re well past that
debate at the moment it strikes me what
we need to do now is have good analysis
and good testing to see if we are in a
position where we’re moving towards an
ending of the pandemic in the in a
classical sense then how we deal with
that
but let’s move on now because our final
topic this week we’re going to talk
about russian president vladimir putin
who made some news this week about the
standoff with the west over ukraine here
he is talking to a sky news reporter you
have said talked a lot about security
guarantees and now we’ve seen your
proposals you also say you have no
intention of invading ukraine
so will you guarantee unconditionally
that you will not invade ukraine or any
other sovereign country or does that
depend on how negotiations go
our actions will not depend on the
negotiation they will depend on the
unconditional compliance with the
russian security demands today and in
the historical context in this sense we
have made it clear that any further nato
movement to the east is unacceptable
there is nothing unclear about this
we are not deploying our missiles over
at the borders of the us no on the other
hand the us is deploying its missiles
close to our home on there on the porch
of our house
so james rosen is there some room for
negotiation here which might prevent a
conflict or is vladimir putin simply
asking for something he’s never going to
get
it’s a very tough question um i’m a
former moscow correspondent
uh to say that i’m no fan of the former
soviet union it’s an understatement i
without getting too personal i married a
uh i married a former soviet woman and
endured she and i endured an incredible
amount of harassment from the kgb and
other agencies um
i’ve had other personal experiences with
the communists i’m no fan of uh the
russia the form of this so former soviet
union or vladimir putin who i’ve met
personally who i know a lot about having
said that um
uh he and his predecessors including
including mikhail gorbachev
also for all of his openness to the west
they all said that it would be very
problematic
uh bordering and unacceptable depending
on the leader if ukraine right on
russia’s border uh ever became a member
of nato that’s the rubbing point and um
you know that’s been again across
you know decades that’s been the soviet
slash russian position
and
you know we have to ask ourselves i mean
i i’m totally against what what putin’s
been doing in ukraine um i mean i think
it’s totally outrageous but you have we
have to ask ourselves if if the russians
uh the russian government
institutionally is afraid of ukraine
being joining nato and then having nato
right not right on its border
um i mean how would we feel if we had
essentially an anti-a historically
anti-american military alliance the most
powerful in the world
right on our border up against the
mexican border up against the canadian
border
you know let’s say canada joined that
organization or mexico junior how would
we feel about that so i think um
i i i see very little chance that he’s
going to give on his negotia on his
demand that ukraine not join nato and
and then the west has a decision to make
and it’s a very tough decision
because there are arguments for ukraine
joining nato it’s a very very
complicated
fraud historically complex situation
doug bondo how do you see it should
ukraine be a nato member i mean james
points out you know what about this
border issue and i’m not a geography
major but looking at the map behind me i
think we have
latvia and estonia are nato members i
believe who are on the borders with
russia so it’s not exactly the president
they’re small tiny countries right good
point though
look i think the the reality here is
that the us
created this problem back in 2008 with
the bucharest summit where george w bush
essentially demanded he wanted both
georgia and ukraine into nato it’s not
in america’s interest to bring them in
we act as if these alliances are
charities where our view is we should
help countries out there and protect
them even if it’s not in our interest
this has never been a security interest
in the us i have a lot of feeling for
the ukrainians but they’ve been part of
the russian empire they were part of the
soviet union we never worried about
independence for them the notion that we
would be prepared to go to war with the
nuclear armed power over ukraine strikes
me as being nutty and as james pointed
out look the this the documents that
have been released showed that
essentially americans and europeans lied
to both gorbachev and yeltsin in terms
of the expansion of nato and the us is
engaged in behavior the russians have
found threatening we dismantled serbia a
long-time ally promoted revolutions in
uh yeah i mean in 2014 there was a
street push which we supported against a
pro-russian
uh you know a president
victoria nuland was in kiev caught
talking on the phone about who he wanted
to be prime minister and i think james
is absolutely right turn this around
if the the russians had been advancing
you know the warsaw pact up into central
america if the russians or soviets had
support of the coup d’etat in mexico
city if the russians had said why don’t
we have mexico join
the uh you know warsaw pact washington
would be in an utter uproar i mean
people would be freaked out we’d have a
people here talking about war
so i think putin has made it much more
difficult this is a nasty character what
he’s doing right now is not good and by
making all of this public he makes it
much harder for nato to come to an
accommodation i think this is one where
you want a private understanding you
simply say look we’re not going to bring
them in it’s not in our interest it’s
very hard for the west to back down now
but this needs to be negotiated there
the russians are serious on this this is
viewed as essential you know vital
interests it’s on their border you know
we have to take this seriously i don’t
think putin’s going to back down without
some kind of an accommodation that he
thinks he can live with
so peter roth james and doug seem to be
able to see it from russia’s perspective
at least somewhat do you share that view
i can see russia’s perspective
i worry more about america’s perspective
and i worry about
the competency of the biden foreign
policy team which i would
characterize is at best to be minus team
um this is a serious crisis it is a
serious crisis that has been brewing
ever since
united states and britain promised to
guarantee the territorial integrity of
ukraine
in exchange in a deal with the russians
and the ukrainians in exchange for the
ukrainians agreeing to surrender back to
the russians all of the nuclear
materials
and weapons that were in ukraine
we did not
uphold our promise to guarantee their
territorial integrity
um we should have acted more strongly at
that point
we are now in a situation where putin’s
not going to back down
if biden feels compelled to match putin
eye to eye
then
we could end up in a confrontation that
i don’t think either country really
wants
this would be the opportunity
for
a third-party world leader and i would
would have dominated angela merkel but
she’s no longer the german chancellor
to come forward and propose some kind of
face saving
agreement that both the united states
and the russians could accept like
russians off the border russians out of
crimea
we promise not to bring ukraine into
nato we go back to where we were status
quo
before the russians
conducted their initial incursion i
think everybody there gives a little
gets a lot walks away
and we have a clean slate that we can
start
over again
but let’s go to some questions from our
viewers slash listeners
and uh let’s uh we go to leah jenkins
who asks
do you think west virginians would
support joe manchin becoming a
republican surprised this didn’t come up
earlier who wants to take that one peter
you’re would you like to see joe manchin
in the republican party i think they
would support it i’m not sure mansion is
enamored of the idea
um
he is not
he is not a dino a democrat in name only
biden’s approval rating in west virginia
the last time i checked
was 29 percent
and mansion is i believe the only
democrat to still be in statewide office
in west virginia
which is a state the democrats owned
starting in the 1950s they had
everything there was to have
um i don’t i think that
mansion
is playing
his cards correctly
his voters are not with the biden agenda
he is opposing the biden agenda and he
is standing up for west virginia there
have been some unfortunate comments made
by
left-wing celebrities like bette midler
that have not trashed mansion so much as
they have been insults to the people of
west virginia
questioning their
family status uh their literacy
uh the number of teeth in their head
other other sort of
unkind cruel
stereotypes uh the kind of things that
would not be accepted if they were said
by a republican about
african americans or hispanics or jews
or
some of the other interest groups that
that
are such a vital part of the democrat of
the democratic voter coalition and so i
think manchin’s playing it well he’s
defending west virginia against
washington
so doug bando this is a smart move by
joe mentioned according to peter what do
you think well manchin’s in an
extraordinarily difficult position as
peter indicated he’s in a state that’s
gone very very republican
he won his last re-election by a narrow
margin
i mean the challenge for him is number
one is he’s not fully a republican
either i mean he is a conservative
democrat you know so he’s at the right
of the democratic party but he shares
some of the economic and other positions
and for him to become a republican
doesn’t protect him he likely would face
a republican primary challenge he might
lose that primary so he’s in a very
difficult spot i think that peter is
right that from manchin’s standpoint he
wants to play it that he is independent
he’s questioning the biden agenda that
while he is a democrat he’s not going to
go along with everything and he’s
complained about his treatment and i
think peter’s pointed out some of the
insults directed at west virginia
mansion’s best play here is to be able
to present this as an independent
standing up for the state of west
virginia maintaining his current party
affiliation i think
james
well i mean look you know these days
given how unpopular washington is the
establishment it goes back to jimmy
carter
who ran against the establishment uh you
know and before no matter what state
you’re from it’s it’s it’s always a
winning local strategy or statewide
strategy to be against uh washington to
be against the washington establishment
uh i think that um i i mean i agree i
think it was doug who said that he’s in
a tough position and he would face a
republican primary if he switched but i
think that i i don’t know i think it’s
getting to the point where maybe he
should think about switching to the
republican parties others before him who
were having problems with the mainstream
democrats who switched like jesse helms
like ronald reagan others have done well
i think you should consider it
and i wonder what his reward might be
from the republican party of course that
would do it virtually
it would be substantial yeah i would
virtually hand mitch mcconnell the the
gavel back mcconnell
chairmanship so that would be the first
step is that mansion would retain the
current chairmanship that he holds
and i imagine that would probably be the
minimum so um
okay well thank you all very much i know
we’re running a little tight on time now
but
i can’t miss out our favorite section
where it’s time for our guests to tell
us what they believe the most
under-reported story of the week was who
would like to go first in fact peter i
haven’t heard from you for a minute
what’s your most unreported story
um there’s another news magazine in
america in addition to newsweek
that pronounced
elon musk
as their man of the year now usually
that pronouncement is
echoed by every other media outlet
in the country
you kind of get hit in the face with it
for a week or two it’s a big deal it’s
discussed on the sunday shows it’s in
newspapers it’s people people have
arguments in print
about the choice
this year
hardly a whisper
the reason for this i think
is that mr musk has chosen to oppose
biden’s build back better
and in a heated exchange with
massachusetts senator elizabeth warren
who basically accused him of being
attacked cheating a bunch of other
things
he pointed out that he would be paying
11 billion in taxes this year
which may be the single highest tax
payment ever made by a single individual
uh and so i think that because mr musk
is not um
acceptably in
the liberal camp
among
the billionaires like soros and bezos
and buffett
his honor was just allowed to slide past
with marion noticed
okay thank you peter maybe uh an
alternate topic this week would have
been asking who our guests person of the
year would be but perhaps we’ll save it
perhaps we’ll save it for a year-end
roundup um
james rosen what’s your most
under-reported story this week
well in charlottesville where i have
been living of late home to the
university of virginia and
of course home to original home to uh
thomas jefferson our our second
president our third person
um
uh one of our founding fathers um
there’s an interesting story uh
uh
the the main statue to general lee uh
was taken down
a big
big huge statement and uh statue in
downtown charlottesville and they had a
bidding war believe it or not they had a
not bidding war they had kind of an
auction to decide who if anybody wanted
to buy that statue and
uh
a a group of uh
well-to-do and prominent
african-americans got together raised
money and had the highest bid and they
bought the statue and what they want to
do is they want to melt it down
and create a
monument
at the
african american history center well now
two of the other two people two people
or groups that did not bid are coming in
with a higher bid
and they want to buy the statue to put
it somewhere else to be determined
somewhere else in uh we don’t know where
either in charlottesville or outside of
charlottesville so
you know the the the people who uh i
don’t know if it’s the state but the
people who held the auction are gonna
have to decide money or
principle
so a battle over history there not and
not the last one doug bundle your most
under reported story of the week
well how at the this moment we all of
our rich allies around the world want
america to go to war
you know we see the uk has made a
determined effort to get us more
involved with ukraine they even hired
the foreign secretary hired a beatles
tribute band because it turns out the
blinkin likes you know the beatles when
he came to visit and the
secretary of state for uh defense ben
wallace complained that the u.s was no
longer acting like policemen of the
world we’ve got the israelis who are
desperate to have us threaten war
against iran and promise to come up with
a better deal on nuclear weapons and
we’ve got the taiwanese who of course
want us to defend them from china so the
us is finding out the dangers of you
know playing a defender of the world
that sometimes these duties come due and
the question is how many wars at once
would america be prepared to fight if
all of these obligations came due at
once
thank you very much doug and i know this
is not the most important part of the
story but i just wonder how bad that
beatles cover band was because i have
seen some sketchy ones
in my time but that is all we have time
for this week thank you to our guests
and thank you for watching or listening
to the square circle i’m adam byrne and
please subscribe to our channel or give
it five star reviews on your favorite
podcast platform but thank you very much
we’ll see you next week and merry
christmas
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