Ed Luce: belief

Transcript context

…What’s the most plausible scenarios through which Trump and/or Brexit work out for the better? I’m not saying you have to agree with it, but if you had to say, the most plausible scenarios. Trump working out for the better, I would say, is the system showing the it works, the Madisonian system showing that it works. I wouldn’t wish impeachment on anybody, but the system has to hold Trump to account. I believe there are good signs in the last few weeks and months of the system doing that ‑‑ the appointment of Mueller, the courts blocking the Muslim ban, again, repeatedly. The media is going a pretty good job of ferreting out stuff, and Congress, well, we’ll see. We’ll see, but it’s sort of limbering up, perhaps, to do a good job. I think the American system, proving it works, it might a net plus over time. Brexit, by far the best outcome is that the British do what our wise and by now more successful neighbors, the Irish, have done twice, which is twice lost a referendum on Europe, on Maastricht and on Lisbon, and twice said, “OK, now we’re going to ask you again, having thought about it.” It was a bit like round one of the French election and round two. There’s a cooling off period. The second round, the turnout shoots up, and the Irish, having thought about it, but we need a second referendum in Britain. You can not determine a country’s future like this with 52 percent of the vote. But then there is a sense of, “We’re going to keep on voting until we get this right,” and at least pro‑Brexit people will say, “Well, you’re opposing liberalism to democracy. There was a decisive result. Not by a landslide, but it was clear,” and after the result, it didn’t seem very regretted. People still seem to take some form of Brexit for granted. It’s not really being challenged openly, except by a small number of elites. Is your vision of liberalism something that ultimately comes before a democracy?…

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