Office Hours with Karpf and Loge

Why do elephants inspire more trust than engineers, and what do chicken carcasses have to do with safer airplanes? We discuss Dave Karpf and Nina Hall’s piece on Turning Point USA and MoveOn, make the case against the Paramount merger, and ask when Peter Loge last read a book.

• How Test Engineers Decide What Counts as Good Enough | New Yorker
• Why Charlie Kirk Didn’t Build a ‘MoveOn of the Right’ | Stanford Social Innovation Review
• The MoveOn Effect | Dave Karpf

• Your political message does not matter if your target audience cannot hear it. | The Future, Now and Then
• Flying Toaster Screensaver
• Preorder: Vaporware, Inc. How Silicon Valley Sells the Future to Control the Present | Dave Karpf
• Office Hours is now on Bluesky! Give us a follow. 

On this week's episode of Office Hours, Loge is somehow still talking about bat ecologist certifications and Karpf is too busy marathon training to play D&D. They break down how Trump's $5,000 pledge to voters went viral on prediction markets and discuss the difference between moderate politics as a rhetorical style versus an actionable ideology. Also, Karpf and Loge read the pod's first AI-generated listener email!

Links:

• Trump's $5,000 checks get chilly Senate GOP reception | Axios
• The AI Tipping Point | Time
• Sex and Death in the World of Rational Defense Intellectuals | JStor
• Who Should Pace the Frontier? Not Dario Amodei | Tech Policy Press

• Preorder: Vaporware, Inc. How Silicon Valley Sells the Future to Control the Present | Dave Karpf
• Office Hours is now on Bluesky! Give us a follow. 

Office Hours is back for the semester, and just in time, because Loge is getting a little too fascinated by bat ecologists. As a record high number of Americans say that government corruption is widespread, Karpf and Loge discuss why political elites get away with bad behavior, when voters will punish them and how political actors can effectively push back. Also, our hosts respond to their first listener email!

Links

• Preorder: Vaporware, Inc. How Silicon Valley Sells the Future to Control the Present | Dave Karpf
• Office Hours is now on Bluesky! Give us a follow. 
• Historic U.K. estate used as Wayne Manor in "Batman Begins" must be surveyed for bats, officials say | CBS News
• Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread | Gallup Poll
• What MAGA fails to understand about Richard Nixon | Washington Post
• On Digital Disinformation and Democratic Myths | Media Well | Dave Karpf
• The Origins and Consequences of Affective Polarization in the United States | S. Iyengar et al

As summer ends and classes begin, Washington is offering plenty of material for a lesson in political theater: from Natalie Harp's expanding West Wing role to James Talarico turning Ken Paxton’s $1,000 pen into a campaign prop. Karpf and Loge dissect these stories, as well as why Trump's picks keep losing their primaries. They also discuss why a Peter Loge Bot is a terrible business idea, how an alien garbage can won 10,000 votes in Clacton, and their political predictions for this fall.

Links:

• C'mon, Axelrod... | The Future, Now and Then
• Mayor Mamdani Wears a Bike Helmet. Finally. | The New York Times
• It’s not just 2022. Trump has underperformed in every election. | The Washington Post
• More of Trump’s Chosen Candidates Fall in G.O.P. Primaries | The New York Times
• Count Binface receives over a quarter of votes in Clacton by-election | BBC

It's hot enough outside to make Karpf wear shorts on camera, inspiring a deluge of water metaphors. Karpf and Loge dive into the President's insistence through the Reflecting Pool debacle and the war in Iran, even as voters reward politicians focused on making government work. They also break down the latest midterm primaries, the lost DNC Autopsy chapter, and the lessons behind them: democracy is messy, local politics matter, and a good plan means nothing if you can’t execute it.

Footnotes

• GOP lawmaker gave female staffers lavish gifts of jewelry, vacations and guns, ethics report finds | CNN

• A Democratic Governor Is Set to Pick a Former Republican Running Mate | New York Times

• Montana Dem lawmakers call for Bankhead to drop out of U.S. Senate race | Daily Montanan

• Author of Democrats’ 2024 election autopsy report says chapter was left out | The Guardian

• Fifa defends Gianni Infantino and launches attack after ‘effort to undermine’ president | The Guardian

• How to Lose Billions (and Gain a Wife) in Two Days | Vanity Fair

Going outside and salads are unhealthy now, the IRS has more pretzels than staffers, so Karpf and Loge are here to discuss how degrading institutional trust landed us in this mess...and how to dig ourselves out. Also: campaign staffers betting on their own races on Kalshi raises Karpf's blood pressure, while Loge delights in the World Cup's cultural exchange.

Footnotes:

• $600,000 for a presidential pardon? Inside the growing industry of clemency lobbying | NPR
• Major Victory for Election Transparency as Arizona Disclosure Law Is Upheld | Campaign Legal Center
• The Social Security Chief Keeps Sending Staff His Daughter’s Pretzels | NOTUS

From the dud that was the Great American State Fair to a Supreme Court that barely upheld birthright citizenship, Karpf and Loge unpack what it really means to tell a positive story about being American in 2026. Plus: Trump’s FIFA red card mess, Platner’s failed Senate bid, and why actually winning the victory is the only way to keep a real American story alive.

Footnotes:

• What is the Great American State Fair like? | The Future, Now and Then⁠⁠
• Supreme Court upholds principle that almost all born on U.S. soil are American | The Washington Post⁠⁠
• How Local News Reduces Loneliness | Washington Monthly⁠⁠
• Inside the White House Campaign to Overturn a World Cup Red Card | The Wall Street Journal⁠

Happy 250th birthday, America! The Reflecting Pool is green, the country just agreed to pay $300 billion for losing a war, and Karpf and Loge are here to make sense of who's cashing in on our broken politics. They also dig into the clipping economy around the World Cup, and how much of our cross‑cultural joy is real.

Links:

• What Color is the Reflecting Pool? An Investigation | The Atlantic
• 6 people arrested in connection with alleged vandalism of the Reflecting Pool, Trump says | NBC News
• Our hero the buffoon: Contradictory and concurrent Burkean framing of Arizona governor Evan Mecham | Western Journal of Communication
  

On this episode of Office Hours, Karpf and Loge discuss the White House's UFC event and what lessons to take from Graham Platner's Senate primary victory. Also, Loge is joined by an overall-clad guest.

Episode Links:

• Semisovereign People | E. E. Schattschneider
• Pew Political Typology | Pew Research Center

This week, Karpf and Loge dissect the remains of the DNC's leaked 2024 autopsy report and lament the consultant who wrote it. They also chat about how recent GOP primary results affect the 2026 midterm elections, Arsenal, and the new Minions movie.

Episode Sources

• Read the DNC's 2024 Autopsy Report | New York Times
• Here's What I Told the DNC Autopsy | The Bulwark
• Where Things Stand in the Battleground | The Navigator
• The political polarization of health outcomes in the USA | Nature