Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

Since leaving his role as White House press secretary in 2017, Sean Spicer has launched a successful talk show and written a best-selling book. Now, he’s focusing on the hardened state of politics in America. In his new book, Leading America, Spicer argues that too many look at the world as a zero sum game—either you're with them 100 percent, or you're the enemy. Whether you're in politics, media, academia, or entertainment, he says it's the same story. The former White House press secretary and communications director analyzes our current political moment through the lens of politics and culture and argues that everyone can and should take a stand to uphold their rights and values.

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When COVID-19 besieged the United States, New York State emerged as the global “ground zero” for a deadly contagion that threatened the lives and livelihoods of millions. Quickly, Governor Andrew Cuomo provided the leadership to address the threat, becoming a standard-bearer of the organized response the country desperately needed. With infection rates spiking and more people dying every day, the systems and functions necessary to combat the pandemic in New York—and America—did not exist. So Cuomo undertook the impossible. He unified people to rise to the challenge and was relentless in his pursuit of scientific facts and data. He quelled fear while implementing an extraordinary plan for flattening the curve of infection. In his new book, American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic, Gov. Cuomo tells the riveting story of how he took charge in the fight against COVID-19, offering hard-won lessons in leadership and his vision for the path forward as the country continues to face the deadly pandemic. Taking readers beyond his candid daily briefings, Gov. Cuomo’s new book provides a dramatic, day-by-day account of the catastrophe as it unfolded, providing an inside look at an unprecedented historical moment. In his own voice, Gov. Cuomo chronicles the ingenuity and sacrifice required of so many to fight the pandemic, sharing the decision-making that shaped his policy as well as his frank accounting and assessment of his interactions with the federal government, the White House, and other state and local political and health officials. Please join us for an intimate discussion on Gov. Cuomo’s view of what real leadership requires: clear communication, compassion for others, and a commitment to truth-telling—no matter how frightening the facts may be. It is a program you don’t want to miss as the country continues to face a challenging fight against COVID-19.

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Over the past few decades, U.S. corporations have increased their economic and political power. Yet critics say Americans are only now awakening to the grave domestic threat this concentrated private sector power presents to our country. Open Market Institute Executive Director Barry Lynn says that monopolies today control almost every corner of the American economy with a concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few. The result, says Lynn, is also a stripping away of our liberty and freedoms to work, live and communicate how people want, instead of how companies want. Nowhere is this more clear than in the rise of online monopolists such as Google, Facebook and Amazon―designed to gather our most intimate secrets and use them to manipulate our personal and group actions. Not only have these giant corporations captured the ability to manage how we share news and ideas with one another, Lynn says they increasingly enjoy the power to shape how we move and play, and speak and think. Please join us for an important discussion of monopoly power with two people at the cutting edge of fighting back against it. Barry Lynn, head of the Open Markets Institute and longtime critic of unbounded capitalism, is the author of the new book Liberty from All Masters: The New American Autocracy vs. the Will of the People, a treatise against America’s new monopolies. Roger McNamee has emerged as one of the most articulate critics of social media companies and how their design and business models pose serious dangers to people, our economy and our society. In 2019, McNamee spoke at the Club about these issues.

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Vote by Design is an award-winning voter literacy project incubated at Stanford University’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school) that reimagines civic education and voter literacy through the lens of design. Vote by Design’s free workshop is nonpartisan, issue-agnostic and designed to provide first-time voters with what one teacher called “the driver’s test of voting” and another said it offered "lifelong skills every student should learn.” To date, Vote by Design has been offered to more than 1,000 students across the United States, from the deep red state of Montana to the deep South of Georgia and across California. One student shared, “I thought it was hopeless, but now I feel like I have a way to productively engage.” Another said, “I used to think what my parents thought, and now I think for myself." Vote by Design partnered with Citizen Film, the celebrated Bay Area documentary studio, to capture the student experience as they develop their capacity to be deliberative, informed, lifelong participants in the democratic process. Join Lisa Kay Solomon of Vote by Design and Sam Ball of Citizen Film as they premiere film clips and share insights from young voters’ dialogues with one another about what they want for their shared future. You can’t help but leave inspired and hopeful from what you learn! MLF ORGANIZER Gerald Harris NOTES MLF: Technology & Society

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Senior Counsel, Covington & Burling LLP; Author, The Silent Guns of Two Octobers: Kennedy and Khrushchev Play the Double Game

Author, Conversations With Socrates

As the Latino population grows in every region of the United States, Latinos are increasingly playing an influential role not only in presidential politics, but throughout American culture. Yet the unique racial identity of Latinos is not a new story for the country. Latinos have long influenced everything from electoral politics to popular culture‚ yet many people instinctively regard them as recent immigrants rather than a longstanding racial group. Why is this, and what does it have to do with how Americans view and identify different racial groups in the country? In her new book, Inventing Latinos‚ Laura Gómez, a leading expert on race law‚ and society at UCLA‚ illuminates the making and re-making of Latino identity that has spanned centuries‚ leaving a permanent imprint on how race operates in the United States today. Throughout her career, Professor Gómez has explored how Latinos have become recognizable as a racial group in the United States. She traces the roots of Latino identity to Spanish colonization of the New World, as well as the legacy of American imperialism in Mexico, Central America and the Spanish Caribbean in the 19th and 20th centuries. This complicated history, combined with discrimination, has always positioned Latinos as “perpetual foreigners” in the United States. Latinos, however, are pushing back more than ever on this identification and having their voices heard on these and other issues. Please join us for an important discussion on race and history, just weeks before Latinos are expected to play an influential role in the presidential election.

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No one ever could have predicted the global impact of COVID-19. The pandemic is speeding up history, but how? CNN host Fareed Zakaria will help us understand what our post-pandemic world will look like. Beyond the immediate effects, we must be prepared for political, social, technological and economic consequences that might take years to unfold. Hear more as Zakaria offers his insights on how to make sense of our changing world.

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Going into a pivotal national election, voter suppression threatens to tilt election results in states across the country and drown out the rising influence of both minority and young voters in America. After the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013, voting restrictions, predominantly engineered by Republicans, have proliferated in size and scale. Using tactics such as voter ID laws, voting precinct consolidation, gerrymandering and voter purging, the people in charge of voting at the state and federal levels have made it harder for non-white, poor and young voters to cast their ballots. We’re excited to host a discussion with individuals who have dedicated their careers to making sure everyone who wants to vote in America has the right to do so. They’ll discuss the consequences of voter suppression, what everyone can do to advocate, and the fight ahead. Ari Berman is a senior reporter for Mother Jones, covering voting rights. In addition to voting rights, his writing covers American politics and the impact of money on our electoral system. His critically acclaimed book Give Us the Ballot covers the time since the dramatic passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, the turbulent forces it unleashed, and the continuing battles over race, representation and political power. As president and executive director of the National Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (Lawyers’ Committee), Kristen Clarke leads one of the country’s most important national civil rights organizations in the pursuit of equal justice for all. In addition to voting rights, the Lawyers’ Committee seeks to promote fair housing and community development, economic justice, equal educational opportunity, criminal justice, judicial diversity and more. Prior to the Lawyers’ Committee, Clarke led the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.’s work in the areas of voting rights and election law across the country. Alex Padilla has served as California’s secretary of state since 2015, and he’s prioritized increasing voter registration and participation and strengthening voting rights. While California has the highest number of registered voters in America at more than 15 million people, the state’s population of almost 40 million means it has the second-lowest percentage of registered voters when compared to population. With initiatives like the Motor Voter Act, Padilla and his office are working to raise that number. As president of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, Michael Waldman leads the center’s initiatives on voting rights, money in politics, criminal justice reform and constitutional law. The Brennan Center is widely regarded as a leading organization on voter rights and election security, and Waldman and his team are on the forefront of the fight to vote. NOTES In partnership with the Brennan Center for Justice

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Growth in the economic prosperity of the average family in America has slowed to a crawl, especially since the deep economic pain of the COVID-19 pandemic. As corporations wake up to the urgent need for change—as evidenced by the Business Roundtable’s updated purpose of the corporation last year—business executives need tools for contributing positively to society rather than operating in a way that delivers value to some but not all. Join us as Roger Martin shares his thinking and his new book, When More is Not Better. He will discuss how America’s obsessive pursuit of economic efficiency is driving inequality, making our economy more fragile, both socially and environmentally, and damaging American’s faith in capitalism. He will discuss why we must stop viewing our economy as a machine that can be perfected with increasing levels of efficiency and instead understand it as a natural system—complex, adaptive and systemic. It is more like a rainforest than an oil refinery, he says, and it requires a fundamental balance of efficiency with resilience. Martin will explore specific actions business leaders can take to restore balance, changes to how they run their businesses, all of which have been tried and tested in other contexts. He will discuss how meaningful change actually happens in the world and provide concrete lessons and a practical model for businesses, policymakers, academics, civil society organizations and individuals who seek to transform our world for good. MLF ORGANIZER Elizabeth Carney

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