the program is about one hour. >> okay, thank you for joining us. white-collar government. i was reading a book this morning on my candle and you have worked in various blue-collar jobs before he became an assistant professor. would you like to talk about yourself and how you see your transition from working-class? and in the white-collar profession or? >> yes, i'm definitely in a textbook and white-collar job now being a professor is a lot of fun. but i don't do a lot of work with my hands. there was a time when i worked in tulsa, oklahoma. i was a cashier at the world's largest wal-mart.

worked at a catfish restaurant. and that was sort of a part of my life and i paid my way and pay my way through high school. and yes, these were part of the inspiration for the research that i do right now. so my last job were going to graduate school was in a pepsi plant and holds up. and it sort of went from nine to a phd program in political science at princeton. and it was a night and day difference. and that contrasts when i came from. that brought up the a lot of the issues and focusing on how people who have worked in labor

jobs in the service industry jobs see the world. so the question i asked is a bit about this. what about politicians from different classes and do they see the problems facing this country differently from politicians and never have had those experiences in their first job out of it was part of it. >> overtime you look at it. not of a micro data will 2008. sort of the postwar forward, it has been a steady increase over time in millionaires in the senate and the presidency and is that about right? >> yes, that is exactly right. it's a rare constant for american political life. if you look at the congress,

less than 2% of members came from working-class backgrounds and then eventually ran to the present day. the average member spent less than 2% of their career dealing with service industry jobs. and so this is one thing that really has not changed. a lot of different aspects and cable news, big money, politics, all this has happened and while all of this is happening, it is going on during the last hundred years or so. working-class people are not getting elected to political office mackey talk about the founding fathers and you mentioned andrew hamilton and his view that the merchant is probably going to be representing the worker with the

best interests at heart. it sounds like from your data in the studies you have looked at, you don't think that is the case. and so was there another founding father that you didn't mention that had have the opposite view? >> i'm glad that you found us out. and brought this up as well. so does it matter that working-class people are part of this political institution? does it matter that they have a real experience in working-class? and so yes, they weigh in in the federalist papers and the argument is one that stuck around and basically boils down to this. and they know that it is prosperity and growth in the

modern version is because of it. what's good for this is good for the country and vice versa. because we all want the same thing. and so this is part of one old school of political thoughts and there's another school of political thought as well with the anti-federalists and the founding and its light, no, we don't want the same things. if the government we set up only involves a political decision maker and they come from a white-collar profession, that will seriously till the policies they have created and make it part of it. and so this is sort of, you know, it's a long-standing debate. the reason i wanted to write this book is because these debates have been going on since

the founding and people have brought anecdotes speculation to these debates. what interested me was when i started there was not any hard evidence on this point. so we point to a white-collar profession who really cares about people. and the other side would point to a working-class candidate who understands the needs of working people. and what i want to know is that we stop looking at individual cases and look across the large samples of politicians as a whole, and many of them are calling the shots. and so i really wanted to take this debate and try to bring the best date i could do on the

question. and i think there are various bits of data you have looked at 783 lawmakers. >> that is right. >> from 1999 through 2008. and i think that you found many of those have spent their time in a blue-collar job. any talk about what defines this and then we'll talk about doesn't matter what income versus socioeconomic status. >> absolutely. one of the challenges in doing this research is that there isn't a good database. if you decide what percent of the average number is part of

it. so when i started i couldn't really find any sort of database to have this information. and so the first task for me was just too actually create that and go through with the help of research that is part of this was served in this. so 1999 through 2008 in the question i asked was what did you do for a living before you got into a political office. so for each of them we pulled together from a half-dozen different almanacs. about the jobs that they did before they got into the political office and that was a interesting product to find out all these different facts. so orrin hatch that i had always known, i knew you was i found

out that he spent eight a percentage of the time before he was a lawyer during manual labor jobs and he was a deception is doing working-class jobs to pay his way through law school. and we pulled together sort of every piece that we could find about this 783 modern members of congress and i also came across the data sets that have been compiled by other people and when trying to do in the book is really look at all of them. but used every available piece of information. and the thing is really striking to me is the same answer was given every time whether we are looking at modern surveys, called the american representation study, it was conducted in 1958.

and it's a sample of the u.s. house members may have really detailed information about what they do for a living what they thought about the issues and how they voted and what committees they were on. once i got access to that, about that in as well. and i got the same answer every single time. this was the striking thing to me was that every day, every level of government, i always got the same answer. and that is politicians really do bring a different twist that is to the political office and especially politicians who did this and the private sector. and that seems to be a major dividing line in our political institutions, they tend to be more coworker including

white-collar jobs to be less coworker and more pro-business and whether we are looking at the 1950s were the present day. >> so how do you define us as pro-worker and pro-business? >> i try to use part of this and the afl-cio, every year they rank members of congress and give them a score and they never voted the way that some wanted to. and whether you are looking at this cio score or the chamber, and score, legislators tend to be more liberal and closer to what they want, farther from what the chamber of commerce wants. they spent more of their careers in business with the private

sector and they tend to be more conservative and further from what the nfl wants and closer to what the chamber once. >> i mentioned earlier the sanchez example. and why not look at education or income level. can you talk about that? including occupation? sumac yes, i talked about this and they were the first sisters, in 2003 they became the first sisters to ever simultaneously serve in congress. what makes them an interesting case study is for you have a situation where the gender is the same and they are approximately the same age and have the same families and they grew up in the same places. and they represent us with

congressional districts in california. and so you have these politicians who look at similar and linda sanchez worked as a labor lawyer in the reddest sanchez worked in the financial sector. so the two have been, they are pretty similar than they do become a part of it. and so they are more, this is just one case as part of congress. the differences are representing

this as i look across hundreds of members of congress when i look at data from lots of different time frames. this includes all of these things that are extremely important when a politician tries to decide how to vote on a bill or part of it. so all of these things matter and there is an important difference over and above those things between a politician who has real experience in working-class jobs and a politician who doesn't. and so what is classed? this is something that the scholars and sociologists have been debating for decades. and we will probably go on debating it for a long time. the book -- i sort of say that i come down on the side of saying that the right way to think about a person's place in our society and economy is to ask

the question that people always ask at cocktail parties, which is what you do for a living. and you meet someone for the first time. and you say, what was your income last year? what was the highest degree you weren't? once your socio- economic status? and it's like, what you do. and that is essentially the research i ask. would you do before you got into congress? and i think it's interesting to know how much money they made in the process and i think it's interesting to know how much formal education they have. those things don't seem to really divide politicians awaited their previous occupations did. and it's not so much about the exact dollar amount in a politician's bank account. but what is really seeming to distinguish this and the politicians ideologically and how to think about the issues. it's not how much money they

made, but how they made it. and somebody who made it big is a law professor and wrote a successful book. and this includes someone who is just into investment banking. >> you talk about orrin hatch and the 13 situations of the time. doing something more. i think there were former public and the nine democrats. did you study them and how they voted and compared and we reached across the aisle. chuck grassley is on that list. and did you look at that quantitatively? >> yes, this is something we see

similar patterns with. and i think the message you can take away someone you can take away from. and very often he votes the way you would expect a republican from a conservative state to vote. he votes with his party and lots of conservative votes. but every now and again. senator orin hatch will reach across the aisle in ways you wouldn't expect is that he is a republican from a conservative state. for you and i were talking about this. he would reach across the aisle and 10 kennedy had an important bill to give health insurance to low-income people. and a lot of political observers struggled to make sense of the fact that orin hatch, who ordinarily votes republican and

this from a conservative state, a lot of them would struggle to make sense of why he was so sympathetic when it came to issues of health insurance. and i think you can really understand and his access to health insurance was by no means guaranteed and he understands what it's like, orrin hatch understands what it's like, to not have health insurance. and that is not by any of this. and he is a very progressive senator and that it's so important to keep in mind. there is a difference between orin hatch and if you imagine the version of him or he hadn't made his whole life and have

never had an experience. my research says that he probably wouldn't see him reaching across the aisle even during the times that he did. would probably be farther to the right than he really is. mackey talk about manual labor. how do you define the working-class? and waitresses would qualify for that. so where did the teachers -- they don't fit into manual labor. can you talk about this? >> absolutely. in the book i define working-class is doing this as part of the service industry jobs, cashier, perception is, restaurant server. and i do that for a couple different reasons. it would be interesting to break this down even further. they look different than the ones who were restaurant

servers. but there just are not enough alterations to break that down in this group. but what about teachers and social workers. and so i put those into a category of service-based professionals. so this is a professional job and this is a white-collar job. but it is also not the same as a ceo of a large corporation and i really try to break this and i try not to say let's have a one one-size-fits-all part of this, although you and i talked about the white-collar working-class and it goes a little further into the weeds and includes occupations into 10 different categories.

in the group those into three loose categories, working-class jobs and profit oriented white collar jobs. were you run a business. and you are part of a business in the third car glory i have is not for profit professions. and these are jobs where the person is doing a white-collar job and enjoy material and security than if they were doing manual labor jobs. but they do not have the ability to turn a profit for your business. the service-based professional tend to be less class working people. so the average tend to be those who are part of the job the most

progressive tend to be politicians in this includes those who did not-for-profit white-collar jobs. and they tend to be pretty similar and you kind of talked about. >> but not as liberal economically. which is surprising to me. because this is part of the working-class and it is sometimes -- this has to do with social issues and i think you talk about that in the book. >> there is of you out there that working-class people are really conservative on social issues. and this is more hype and speculation than actual

research. and in my research has focused primarily on economic issues. and whether you are looking up public data or data on how members of congress know, on economic issues and get the same answer every time, and that is that working-class people tend to have more progressive attitudes attitude from white-collar professionals, especially the white-collar professionals who are profit oriented. so with economic issues, there's a lot of hype of how there is something wrong. something in my home state that i would love in this includes the claims are made in a book when you look at the data on how ordinary americans vote on economic issues and how they

vote. it is a big difference and there are big differences between working-class people, they tend to be more progressive on working-class issues and they tend to be more more similar than working-class folks. and they tend to be more conservative on economic issues. in the book i briefly talk about the social issues that are not strictly economic issues and so in some analysis we look at how the and a healthy eye out look at this. and this is how the aclu rates as well. especially in light of all this stuff but what is the matter with kansas. and there are no meaningful issues between a member of congress from the working-class and on social issues there are

really nothing to write home about in the research i've done and working class seems to matter is when you're voting on a moral or religious issue and it's only fitting the tax rate and how generous is our social safety and that is when he sees hooked into different classes really burdening off in different directions. and we don't have the gaps are we we expected we believe there is something about that. >> and if you use the chamber ranking system and the sponsorship of bills and how intense the word is in terms of members who had a working-class background and can you just sort

of talk about what he found there? >> absolutely. many are crystal clear, and we have white-collar politicians tend to be more conservative. so what happens if we shift gears and focus on the pre-vote stages of the legislative process? a lot of people would say that that is really where the action is. it's not a floor vote. and all of them behind the savings. in the book i looked at data on three things. and how hard they work to see the past and how likely they are to succeed. and when i look at what they pursue, i find the same differences if you look at how they vote. legislators from the working-class tend to cast more pro-worker votes and introduced

bills that are more pro-workers. what is interesting is that they tend to work significantly harder and how many cosponsors and this is a rough measure of how hard they are working to pass a bill. and i found that a legislator from the working-class has introduced the bread and butter economic bill. and they approved twice as many cosponsors and legislators from the working-class are investing more energy to try to pass the kinds of economic policies that most americans really care about. and the surprise finding that chapter is that although they work twice as hard, legislators from the working-class only has about the same number of economic bills as any other

legislators. and this is the sort of disturbing factor in many have known for a long time that people from historically underrepresented groups often have a harder time moving builds forward in our legislative process. and it looks like that is what is happening to legislators from the working-class. and they have proposals that are weeded out of the legislative process at a higher rate than the proposals introduced by white-collar professionals. so they have to work twice as hard on economic bills and there are many that are introducing bills. and there are a few who gained

office in the proposals they introduce get screened out faster. so that is really kind of part of this in terms of the legislative process and they are not being heard in the first place. and they are getting filtered out at a high rate. >> talking about this, we are about to take a break. i. >> are you on the go? "after words" is available through itunes and xml. visit us click on podcast on the upper left side of the page. and listen to "after words" when you travel. >> we are back talking about white-collar government. we have talked about the

working-class and a small number of people who are now in congress, they work twice as hard, trying to get the bills passed. and when we switch a little bit and talk about the role of ideology. you have made the contrast in the book@ you have made the contrast in the book that our people out of touch from people? or are they out of step? and i think you found that they are not out of touch but out of step. can you talk about that? >> absolutely. if you look at how politicians from different classes though, they tend to be more pro-working. and you might look at that result and say, well, it is just a white-collar professional and they are out of touch. they don't know what the the facts on the ground. they don't know what it's like to be working-class person. if we just got them and educated them, they would, you know, they

would think differently and that is one story that we can tell about why politicians can't have this conservative view. we can also talk about politicians from white-collar jobs have more conservative views and working-class people tend to have a more progressive perspective on economic issues and we know that from decades of public opinion research. maybe the same thing as true for politicians. if that is the case, then just educating them about the reality is working-class people isn't going to do much. and it's not that they need to be taught how the economy works, it's just that they don't -- their view is more conservative in a view.

and this seems to be the most important for helping us and it is so different when it gets into office. the one that seems to carry much more weight is the explanation. they think different about the issues. and, you know, a member of congress has all the informational resources that they could possibly need and possibly too much information. they have lobbyists, they have their own staff, they have gao, ceos, there is no shortage of information. if a politician who had never done a blue-collar job wanted to know what it was like, they could find out in a heartbeat. and so what i find is that it's not really the case that politicians are out of touch or that they don't know what working-class people want. it's that they want something

different. in their views are more pro-business. so if you look at surveys of politicians. and occasionally people have surveyed members of the state legislators and what positions you take publicly. but what is your own view about this? if it was up to you, you think you would be more involved are less involved in the economy? and they have tested this again, it is their own views that are more pro-business or conservative. >> these lawmakers that have their opinions, they would probably call themselves pro-worker about the minimum wage and and whether it past a

certain point. and are you making this is what is good for the worker? >> i look at differences in how many habits. many are part of minimum wage and we know that the white-collar professionals tend to be less supportive. so i kind of take that as my starting point and after we see the same patterns. and we do. the message there is that this is not a book about if this is good for the economy but about whose views are represented in power. i can't tell you what the optimal minimum wages. but i can tell you that they wanted to be higher. and they are the ones running

our political institutions and that is part of what why it is so hard to raise the minimum wage. >> you talked about hypotheticals in the book you looked at this and in some of the big votes in the last decade or so and the bailout during a financial crisis to push tax cuts before that. can you talk about the banks and other institutions and the tax cuts that go along with that and we have benefited from not proportionately more? and what would've been different -- if congress was doing this according to the population? >> one of the questions i'm interested in is it matters on the margin would've politicians did these jobs.

it doesn't matter and what the final result be a part of this bill looks different? are we just talking about moving a the vote around and it doesn't really matter? is one thing that i do is to see a couple of economic policies from a list of important enactments are totally unrelated projects. so taking the list from the years 1999 and 2008, i have really good data on what members of congress did for a living. and this includes the 15 that are directly related and i said, okay. on these 15 landmark economic bills, with the outcome of the final passage have been different if congress had looked at the country as a whole?

if they had not been massively skewed in favor of the favor of white-collar professionals? that is a tough question to answer. we have never seen a congress in terms of its occupational backgrounds. but what i do see is members of congress, just like if you were to have a public opinion survey. and you would redo the individual participants of the survey. and i do the same thing with members of congress. and so lawyers are about 50 times more numerous than they are in the general public. and they get one 50th of the vote. and they get 50 votes.

and so we really wait lists and then tallied up and see what the passage would be. and what we find is the example of the 2001 bush tax cuts. a bill that didn't get a single vote from someone with real experience in the working-class. you get this that part of a theme mix of occupations as the united states. this includes several landmark policies and looking like the country as a whole. including what most people know is pretty aggressive as revisions in the federal tax code. and so they take him from that is that it is all a simulation.

and i can't tell you what class balance would have done. in this has worked to be a part of it. you cannot pass the bush tax cuts or other conservative economic policies. >> why are there so few working-class people in congress historically? >> well, i think that that is -- that's the million-dollar question. politicians are incredibly rare. i'm saying in this book but that's really important than the obvious question is it so important. so what is keeping them out and down in the first place? and that is a question where political science still has some research. and we can't say definitively what is keeping the

working-class people out of office. so i try to reveal popular explanations. so when you get one of two different types of answers? one that i hear about is there aren't many in the political office because that is what voters want. this is a democracy and of working people and getting the congress that they want, it's because they're not winning elections. this is about voters for filling things with white-collar professionals. and the argument is that there just are not very many qualified working-class people out there. and there aren't that many blue-collar workers be a successful politician. in the book i take that

seriously and look at the data. and i find that neither one really lines of what we actually know about u.s. politics. so there are few that do run for political office and they tend to do well is politicians who come from the white-collar professions and i talk about them in the book. and what merritt has done is national representative surveys or she has given them a hypothetical candidate. and the whole biography is the same, except she changes it from a white-collar professional to blue-collar worker and everything else is the same. and she finds the same thing now that i do, which is and they seem to work just fine and there doesn't seem to be this huge drop-off that you would expect. voters seem perfectly happy casting mess. but it's not that they are part

of this, it's that they aren't running in the first place. so they actually went through the top of the ballot and looked at every single politician for every office down to the general assembly and the state legislator and there was not hardly any candidates who were from a working class occupation. if the day aren't running in the first place. >> it becomes the case but are they not running because they're not qualified working-class people to throw this on the ballot? and so what we are trying to do is get this on the ballot and it's hard to know who is qualified to run for office. but we do have a sort of national or systematic data with

who is interested in who feels like they can make a difference in participating in this process? and there aren't these huge gaps between the working-class and everyone else. and the statistic that i often talk about is that if even half a percent of working-class americans had what it takes or how this qualification. if even half of them are qualified, that would be enough people to fill every seat in congress in every state legislator 40 times over with enough qualified blue-collar workers to fill a few thousand city councils and this is a big selling situation. it just does not add up. >> one thing i have heard is that the practical thing. like they are working a lot of

hours. and i guess the other thing is related to education. and they just didn't think it was something that they could do. >> so my hunch, and i will be the first to admit that you need to do more hard research on this. but my hunch is that it's not a lack of qualifications but discouraging circumstances like the high cost of running a campaign and instructions associated. my hunch and what the data shows, although it is preliminary, is that there are lots of qualified working-class people out there and they are being screened out by the practical hurdles that are really in front of anyone who wants to run for political office. in running for office is not easy for anyone who does it. but i do think that that is probably going to be a much more important part of the explanation rather than

working-class people just don't have what it takes. and i can't say definitively what is keeping them out of the political office. we can take those explanations off the table. especially if we get hung up on these ideas are working-class people are no better than voters don't like them. >> so you're saying that they are likely working harder in terms of cosponsors. and that is because they are not representative of the public at large in terms of working class versus other non-working-class people? >> yes, i think that that is one possibility.

and you know from the experiences it's really important for working-class people. if everyone around her is from the white-collar professions. and i think that that is one possible explanation. >> you also talk about a tipping point. and i thought about this analogy to women. there has been a talk about women and how there is a tipping point in so many that the committee has there were lot of women in the senate. and can you talk about this? a tipping point for the working-class. i'm not sure that they have talked about this? >> yes, this is sort of a challenge. and so in the 70s and 80s there was an early line of

research of a shortage of women in political office. and what they really found was that once you got a political mass of women in the legislature, then you started to see real policy change and they started passing this. but it wasn't just adding one female legislator, it was really strength in numbers in a kind of situation. my guess is that you will see something similar with working-class people and adding one or two might affect the public policy. it would probably affect public policy a lot more. so yes, i think that there is a strength in numbers and it's important for people in high-ranking leadership positions. because it takes time and experience. >> there are more numbers and

were you able to talking about this between the differences between the local city council and it's challenging to make direct comparisons between the congress and others. because they are fundamentally different policy making environments. and this is part of congress in the fight, okay, it really is the working-class members of congress and there are some part of this with the working-class city councils and we should see policy outcomes changing.

and that is exactly what we see. including what percentage of eight bigger budget is part of it. like you would expect, the congressional level, cities have more working-class people and they tend to spend a social safety net program and part of the exact tipping point. and even at the city level, there's a severe shortage of politicians and working-class. and i think the important

take-home is that we do see what you expect. which is when you add more working-class people to a legislature, in this case a city council, policy moves in this direction towards the outcome that working-class people are supporting. >> is there a history when there was a peak? and during the 70s? during the civil rights movement? >> okay, so this is an interesting thing. there's essentially no change at the congressional level. and finally come he can't fall off the floor. congress had no working-class people are very few working-class people in it. and every congress have less than 2% of the working-class people.

this was about 5% of the working-class. if you fast-forward through today, it's more like two or 3%. and if anyone, it'd getting harder for people to work in the political operatives. for a lot of reasons that you might expect. unions are declining, elections are getting more expensive. in the data we have below this doesn't go back very far. and if there is a trend, it is downward. it's hard for people to get an office and this is not a problem that will solve itself. it's not a phenomenon that will go away on its own. >> can you talk about this? more people are aware that they have been declining. are there other groups out there that would take on this role?

giving the example of this list, really going out there, we've heard about people from the working-class and who else would be? >> well, this is about the research. there are programs on the ground right now. some of them are designed to recruit and train and support to the working-class. the ones that i know about are all union based. and it runs a school where they identify with hundreds of working-class people to run for office. and they are graduates of over 700 elections and up to the united states legislature. and so there is sort of a model out there that works and it doesn't seem to be very expensive.

and this includes having a successful political career. the big question is can that model travel to a place where unions are not as strong as they are in new jersey. so could you have a candidate school or a labor candidate school for working-class people in a state where unions -- or they have less institutional power? and i don't see any reason why you couldn't. there are lots of progressive grassroots organizations in every state they care about working people, even about states and the legal environment, it's very hostile to unions and these are organizations that stick up for the little guy. and those are the kinds of organizations that might have the potential to take up this challenge of supporting candidates from the working-class. even in places where unions are not doing that work right now.

>> don't talk about the party in the book that you talk about controlling the party. is this -- this is almost a mantra for the democratic party to bring out people who might vote progressive? reviews that term many times. and working for the little guy and the working-class. including democratic policies. and could you just talk about this? >> absolutely. so if you look at this. let's just take the democrats out of the picture for a moment completely. let's just look at the republicans nationwide. there are differences and it is the case that you see the same thing among politicians and it's going to be a little bit less fall to the right white collar jobs and so the things that i am

describing in the book is not limited to one party. but there is a huge difference between republicans and democrats in congress. but within each party there are important differences that republicans bring. and that is going to be closer to working-class republicans than a republican who did this with white-collar jobs. and it's not that democrats are the only people that should care about this. this is a pretty important difference that both parties really have and it really involves an effects political parties. the average democrat in congress, they spent about 1% in occur during working-class jobs and the average democrat spent about 2%. so this isn't -- this is not an

issue that one party sort of pounds. >> we haven't really talked about this. and i know you've talked about it. but again, we are talking about the hispanic population that republicans need to get on board with that. but since both people are probably in this, a lot of people are in the working-class and could that be an area? i mean, how does that -- have you thought about how this would fit into working-class framework that you talk about? >> so in this book, i take race and ethnicity and gender and party seriously. but they are background characters and i am making sure that they are accounted for in a statistical work that i do. i am really focusing on the

differences between social class and that is in part because political scientists have done this to be between men and women in congress and between legislators and other races and ethnic backgrounds. so in the book what is new about this is that there's never been a study that looks at the differences between politicians from different social classes in a systematic way taking up hard data. that is why his important questions are very important. and there are so few women in congress. doesn't matter that they are as a country and a whole. these are important questions. they have got a lot of really good attention of political science and i'm trying to focus on this question that we paid

less attention to. which is does it matter that there are so few working-class people. >> okay, i think that we have just one minute left. and i just want to ask you about the tea party. this research ended in 2008. but it seems to me that there's a lot of class issues that come out with the tea party. >> i think adequately illustrate is really how difficult it is, or can be difficult to talk about class and a precise way. so it's kind of like i'm speaking on behalf of working people and i'm really conservative. it turns out he's not actually part of this, he's pretty well-off financially and he is a business owner. and so i think the challenge. i'm not an expert on the tea party. but what i do know is that lots of tea party people who speak on behalf of the working class are actually wealthy and white-collar professionals themselves. and i think it's important to keep that in mind.

and that is exactly consistent with how i find the white-collar government. the most consistent and conservative, sort of most pro-business lawmakers, they are sort of wealthy professionals in that way. >> thank you for taking the time. >> thank you so much. ..

>> the other thing we could do to test whether roosevelt made a difference or not to the way history turned out is use my counterfactual test. suppose a plausible alternative had been present not wendell willkie who was the moderate internationalist who ran against roosevelt in 1940 but suppose the republicans had nominated charles lindbergh, who was a great aviation hero who was very isolationist and quite sympathetic to germany. if you had a president lindbergh instead of a president roosevelt i think history would have turned out quite differently. i doubt that it would have made preparations that roosevelt made a and b i doubt that after japan attacked the united states that he would have