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When host Garry Kasparov created the Renew Democracy Initiative in 2017, the founding manifesto warned that “the liberal-democratic order is under attack from within and without.” Eight years later, things have not changed for the better.
Garry is joined by Bret Stephens, a columnist for The New York Times and the principal author of that 2017 manifesto. Both Garry and Bret agree that democracy is under attack, and they envision a world where the forces of freedom are united and authoritarianism is in retreat. Together, they discuss what the future of democracy in the United States looks like, and if a change to the two-party system could be the realignment the country needs to secure freedom.
The following is a transcript of the episode:
[Music]
Garry Kasparov: Donald Trump has wasted no time in his second administration. The moves he has made are familiar to anyone who has seen a democracy give way to autocracy. Loyalists only, no matter how unqualified. A dubious claim to a mandate. A sycophantic party apparatus that, for the moment, controls both chambers of Congress. Harnessing the power of the military against its own people. I feel a great sense of urgency today, and those who want to preserve and strengthen American values and American democracy should feel it too. But how can we make sure our political system is up to the task?
From The Atlantic, this is Autocracy in America. I’m Garry Kasparov.
[Music]
Kasparov: My guest is Bret Stephens, a columnist for The New York Times. He is also the principal author of the manifesto for what would become the Renew Democracy Initiative, the organization I founded in New York in 2017.
The beginning of that document is an ideal introduction to our conversation. It reads, “The modern world is at risk of losing its way. The liberal-democratic order is under attack from within and without. The historical arc toward greater global stability, freedom, and prosperity in large parts of the world is at risk of being bent back—toward political authoritarianism, economic stagnation, ideological extremism and international disorder.”
Eight years later, we cannot say things have changed for the better. When it comes to fighting authoritarians and would-be dictators, champions of democracy must find common cause with those who share their goal of freedom—even if it means working with people with whom they disagree, as some of our listeners surely will when it comes to Bret’s views of politics and global affairs.
On the issue of securing the democracy the Founding Fathers gave us, Bret is an ally in the fight. And when we spoke in early June, he shared with me a new sense of how to win—and even a bit of optimism.
[Music]
Kasparov: Hello, Bret. Thank you very much for joining the show.
Bret Stephens: Good to see you, Garry.
Kasparov: So when did we meet the first time, Bret? It was a long, long, long time ago.
Stephens: Yes, I actually remember the occasion very vividly. You were a contributing editor—
Kasparov: For The Wall Street Journal.
Stephens: For The Wall Street Journal. And you came in for lunch with Bob Bartley. And someone walked past my cubicle and said, Hey, do you wanna have lunch with Garry Kasparov? And I jumped out of my seat. And so I remember that precisely.
Kasparov: You moved to The Wall Street Journal from The Jerusalem Post.
Stephens: Well, I had been at The Wall Street Journal, and then after 9/11, they hired me for The Jerusalem Post. I was there for nearly three years during the second Intifada and then came back to the Journal and had a very happy career until another event.
Kasparov: Exactly. I remember this. We talked about a rising star in GOP politics, Donald Trump. I remember that you were quite worried about Donald Trump after meeting him at this luncheon at The Wall Street Journal. It was the beginning of 2016. And you were full of emotions.
Stephens: Well, you know, so I had written a column in 2015, essentially comparing Donald Trump to Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. And apparently Trump was infuriated by the column. So what followed was this dance in which, at various points, he was threatening to sue the The Wall Street Journal, then he was demanding a meeting, and finally the meeting happened.
And when the meeting occurred, in fact, he was very ingratiating. You know, he gave me a big handshake. He said, Oh, you’re a killer, you’re a killer. And yet by then he was already the clear front-runner for the nomination. And what of course he did understand, perhaps much better than I, was the psychology of the conservative movement as he found it and, I think, the psychology of mass media, mass persuasion of the reality-TV show. I think if we look at it now, one plausible interpretation of everything Trump does—plausible, I don’t think it’s convincing, but plausible—is that for him, it’s just a reality-TV show. It could be Love Island, except it involves ICBMs.
Kasparov: So you were one of the staunchest Never Trumpers back in 2016, 2017. At one point you softened the edges, you know—this is the column that you wrote, “I Was Wrong About Trump Voters.” Just tell us about this journey. So from 2017 to 2024. So, is it based on your reevaluation of the whole political situation and Trump’s impact on American democracy?
Stephens: Well, you know, the first line I wrote about Trump in that 2015 column when he first came on the scene, I think the line went something like, If by now you don’t find Donald Trump appalling, you’re appalling. So it was an indictment of the voter himself or herself.
Kasparov: Back in 2015?
Stephens: In 2015. And basically my point was: If you listen to his bigotry, to the inanity of so much of what he says, and you say, Well, he’s the guy for me, well then, you know, ultimately in a democracy, it’s the voter who puts the man into office. My attitude toward Trump at the time, and I think certainly the attitude of most Democrats, was, If you like this guy, you are a bad person. And telling voters they are bad people for their likes, political likes or dislikes, is not going to win them to your cause. It’s just not. It’s bad politics. Abraham Lincoln liked to quote this proverb that a drop of honey kills more flies than a gallon of gall. And I think now you listen to a lot of Democratic leaders, and the theme that is finally emerging in the Democratic Party is: We need to listen to the Trump voter. We need to meet that Trump voter where he is. We have to stop condescending. We have to stop calling them names, because if we do, we’re simply going to strengthen the very movement that we’re seeking to defeat.
Kasparov: So it’s politics now. You think that we need a new appeal to the Trump voter, or—
Stephens: Well, two things. It’s politics as well as policy. You know, at the end of 2024, after Trump won, I wrote a follow-on column called “Done With Never Trump,” and it was widely misinterpreted. I wasn’t saying that Trump was gonna be a great president or that I had changed my mind about him. But what I was done with was a certain style of politics that became kind of typified by some of my friends—real friends, personal friends in the Never Trump movement—which was this constant, obsessive loathing of the man and his movement and everything he represents, and an assumption that if Trump has done it or said it or thought it, it’s a lie, it’s dangerous and so on. And I just thought that that style of politics was bound to fail.
But I also think this is important, you know—those of us who detest the man but also want to oppose him, effectively, have to acknowledge that now and again, he strikes on something that has real validity. I wish Democrats had taken more seriously the constant Trumpian taunts that Joe Biden was physically unfit for office, which I think now is beyond dispute. I think we, I wish we had more seriously taken the view that the border had become completely unpoliced, and you could have a sensible pro-immigrant view without essentially accepting a de facto open-border policy. And so we have to sort of rethink our approach to voters, to oppose the MAGA movement or to bring people back from the MAGA movement.
And also on some policy questions, we can adopt, you know, what I call “George Costanza politics.” George Costanza, the wonderful figure from Seinfeld, who at some point thinks that the answer to all of his problems is to do the exact opposite. I don’t know if you recall this episode or if you ever watched Seinfeld back in the ’90s?
Kasparov: I have not.
Stephens: Oh! You’re missing out on a great, a great trove of wisdom.
Kasparov: American wisdom.
Stephens: But I think a lot of people listening to this podcast will get the George Costanza, “do the opposite” reference. If Trump says there’s a problem at the border, the opposite approach is not necessarily the right one to take.
Kasparov: Agreed. But Trump’s first term was quite different from what we’re seeing now. So he’s—just starting with the choice of his vice president, Mike Pence, traditional conservative. And his first Cabinet and most of the people who served in his first administration. They belonged to the elite; you know, very traditional. There were a few exceptions that were not, you know, crucial for the decision-making process. While Trump’s second term is dominated by the 2025 Project, and it probably just aims at a fundamental change in the United States. I don’t know whether it has a global vision of overthrowing the foundation of the republic, but anything that Trump has been doing so far and everything he has been saying so far—it’s far more radical.
Stephens: Well, you know, leaving the 2025 Project to one side, the most important and most distressing change between the first and the second term is that we have a Cabinet staffed by manifestly incompetent people. I mean, with the arguable exception of the secretary of the Treasury and the secretary of state, who is a person I don’t recognize anymore. The Marco Rubio that we knew—
Kasparov: Yes, yes, yes. Is it Marco Rubio?
Stephens: Yes. It’s a line from a movie, The Marco Rubio that we knew is gone, gentlemen. He’s gone. And in place there’s this kind of ridiculous doppelganger who’s trying to find some high-flown way to reconcile what he knows is true—
Kasparov: It’s more like a zombie—
Stephens: —with what he’s required to say. But as you’re pointing out, it’s also an ideologically much more radical and in some ways ambitious project than the kind of traditional conservatism with Trumpian characteristics—you know, to kind of use a Maoist, sort-of, style slogan that the first term was, and it’s exceptionally worrisome. However, one final point. What worries me most in all of this is J. D. Vance, because I think that he is an exceptionally opportunistic and cynical character in American politics and much, much brighter than his boss.
Kasparov: And?
Stephens: And I think if the Democrats don’t get their act together, he’s going to be the next president of the United States. So, Democrats, get your act together.
Kasparov: Uh-huh. Okay, let’s talk about disagreements. You write a column with Gail Collins at the Times—
Stephens: I did.
Kasparov: —where you model a way of having arguments. So disagreeing about fundamental principles, even, without resorting to hostility or personal attacks. How did that come about?
Stephens: Gail Collins, who had been the editorial-page editor at the beginning of the century, and a longtime liberal columnist at the paper—lovely human being—approached me when I came to the Times and said, You know what—I’d like to do this thing where you and I kind of have a conversation about political topics. And would you do it? I thought, Yeah, sure. You know, why not? I thought it was kind of a courtesy to an older colleague and not central to what I was doing. And then it just took off and became this wildly popular feature, weekly feature in the Times. Our readership was incredible. There was clearly a real hunger among, you know, the silent majority of Times readers for political difference in conversation that wasn’t based on outrage, where people could like each other despite their political differences. I think that’s an untapped market in American political media.
Kasparov: Are we talking about the disagreement on fundamental principles?
Stephens: There’s no question that having at least some baseline shared values, beliefs—
Kasparov: But you do believe that you have shared values because it’s very important for us to actually find out the common ground. What is the core? What are the core values that bring together liberals and conservatives?
Stephens: Well, you know, it’s funny. It used to be when I was growing up in Mexico, but then in the United States, the difference between conservatives and liberals, I mean, was—all happened philosophically within the world of liberalism. I mean, within the model of John Locke and [Thomas] Jefferson, that kind of framed the disagreements. So that, you know, there was no difference between a [Ronald] Reagan and a [Jimmy] Carter on respect for free speech or the value of immigration. I mean, they disagreed about how many B-1 bombers we needed or, you know, whatever, or on how to address inflation. But they were policy differences within the framework of, I think, broadly shared values. We’ve moved from a world where the difference is between liberal and conservative to a world where the difference is between liberal and illiberal. Because I think the Republican party, to a great extent, has become an illiberal party, not a conservative party.
There’s an important distinction, between those two. So I was able to—I think one of the reasons the conversation with Gail succeeded is that we do share basic, you know, values. A basic sense of fairness and decency. She’s not a radical progressive, Democratic Socialist, and I’m not a MAGA Republican.
Kasparov: But is MAGA just—does it have any ideology? Because illiberal, for me, it’s more about having sheer power. So what is the ideology of MAGA that feeds Trump and Trump world?
Stephens: I think an ideology is beginning to cohere around MAGA, and it’s a concept of very old-school, reactionary European nationalism that distrusts elites, at least educated elites. Distrusts outsiders. So I mean, one of the things—I mean, it’s not surprising that a guy like J. D. Vance doesn’t simply dislike the thought of illegal immigration. He dislikes legal immigration because it’s about protecting a concept of nation that emerges from tribe identity—common ethnic, linguistic, racial characteristics.
You know, it’s what used to be called “throne and altar conservatism.” It’s not something that we haven’t seen before in politics. Religion is a big part of it, and of course with religion comes hypocrisy. But I don’t think it’s—I don’t think you can dismiss it as just a bunch of jerks having knee-jerk bullying instincts, although there’s plenty of that. There is a thought pattern to it.
Kasparov: We’ll be right back.
[Break]
Kasparov: Now, it seems to me that the old divide of the 20th century—left, right; center-right, center-left; social labor on one side, center-right conservative Christian Democrats on the other side—this politics is dead. It’s no longer relevant. We have different dividing lines. Correct?
Stephens: It’s dying. Yes.
Kasparov: It’s dying. So what is this new coalition? Because when we got together back in 2017 and started the Renew Democracy Initiative, and you were one of the co-authors of this manifesto, we talked about democracy Being surrounded or just attacked from both sides. Like, you know: siege from far left and far right. So the one side attacking the market economy, another one, the liberal democracy. But it seems to me that the antidote has not yet been worked out. What are these new dividing lines? Do we have to consider, you know, a new coalition that will drop some of the traditional disagreements and concentrate on preserving these very values that, so far, are not being shared by our opponents?
Stephens: So the thing that we don’t need is a centrist party.
Kasparov: We don’t need it.
Stephens: No. And I’ll tell you why. Because everyone defines centrism differently. And every person who’d like to be a part of a centrist movement has some red line, but it’s different from the other centrists’ red line. And so I’ve seen it in kind of small ways and in large. But it never works. Everyone wants to be reasonable. But you end up with mush.
I think what America needs is a liberal party. And I mean liberal in the Australian sense of the word or the Dutch sense of the word, which is a party that really is dedicated to the ideals of a free and open society governed by an effective rule of law. That believes in the power and the goodness of market capitalism, of free speech, of due process, of other central liberal values, but rejects and has, like, clear opponents or differences with the ideals of nationalism or the views of socialism. The problem with centrism is: It’s always trying to bid for the affection of the most dissatisfied so-called centrist. And so it doesn’t work.
Kasparov: But this liberal party, what is the political goal? I mean, the party—if it’s being formed to appeal to the voters and win elections, can you imagine this kind of party being built in the United States?
Stephens: Look, the problem that you have, it would have to be built over the wreckage of a defunct party. We have a system—
Kasparov: Defunct parties or party?
Stephens: Party. Maybe parties. But we have a system that we’re not gonna get rid of—in any plausible way, the Electoral College, politically plausible way—that favors a two-party structure. That’s just the system that we have. It has disadvantages; it also has advantages. But it means that the Republican Party could only succeed once the Whig Party had failed. So I don’t think we’re gonna be able to get a liberal party unless one of the two parties so implodes that there is a movement to create something new. But that, that will only happen once, say, the Republican Party, and it could happen, implodes. Of course, I’ve been hoping for this to happen for eight years now, and it hasn’t worked out.
But I think there’s now actually a space in the Democratic Party to create a party that says, you know, We oppose totalitarianism. We believe in old-fashioned, classic American values. And we’re against this kind of nativist, know-nothing nationalism that the Republicans represent. That’s a coherent political space.
The point is, there are elements that could create a winning coalition behind these ideas. What’s required is a charismatic major political figure. And you know, the Republicans, I hate to say this, but they found a hugely charismatic figure. He is not charismatic to my taste, but Donald Trump embodies a politics of personal charisma. Is there a Democrat who has that kind of quality that [Barack] Obama had and that [Bill] Clinton had? I think before that you’d have to go back to LBJ. That’s what remains to be seen.
Kasparov: So do you expect this American politics to go through this realignment? So, to create these new dividing lines and to make it a part of the campaign? We have the 2026 campaign, 2028 campaign. But right now, we have other challenges. There’s the onslaught by the Trump administration on some fundamental principles. So how do we go through this, you know, period of—call it instability or turmoil? How this new political balance will be created to make sure that America will not simply collapse?
Stephens: Well, I hope I’m right, but I think the basic law of politics that this country has operated under for generations still applies. I think if Trump continues to screw up—if he drives away people in his coalition through tariffs, through mismanagement, through erratic policy, if taxes don’t go down, but instead effectively go up—the Democrats are likely to at least take the House. The Senate is a little more challenging for them in 2026. You’ll get political paralysis, and if Democrats can actually coalesce around a charismatic, winning political figure, they have a reasonable chance of winning in 2028. That’s a long way away. You know, people are always saying, Oh, the Democratic Party is dead. It has, I dunno, a 37 percent approval rating. The Republican Party’s approval rating isn’t that much higher. So, you know, what’s the expression? “The only way out is through.” And we’ll get through it.
I was on a panel about a month ago in Brooklyn, and the question that was being asked quite earnestly is, like: Is Donald Trump gonna be president for life? No. Donald Trump is not gonna be president for life. He is not gonna be president for life. Well, what if he repeals the 22nd Amendment? Well, in that case, the Republicans, at a minimum, would have to win the election. Well, what if all the elections are stolen? All of this kind of nightmare scenario, I think, is anathema to—is unlikely to happen for a whole variety of reasons. But not the least of those is that our allegiance as a people to bedrock institutions and to a certain set of ideas is still pretty damn strong. We’re not the Weimar Republic; we’re not [Boris] Yeltsin’s Russia. Right? I mean, 250 years means something in this country, and I don’t think it’s all going to be washed away.
So we are going to get a restoration of some kind of balance. I think the real question that I worry about is whether the Democratic Party comes to the realization that it has to bid for voters at the center or whether it thinks that it has to become a kind of perverted mirror image of MAGA Republicanism. That is, to say, to move to its extreme left.
Kasparov: Again, I remember this. The first time, actually my first visit to America was in 1988.
Stephens: 1988?
Kasparov: 1988. Yes. And I remember the elections. So [Michael] Dukakis has been crushed by [George H. W.] Bush 41. Again, expected. So after eight years of Reagan, the country was on the rise and just the mood was so, you know, positive. And Dukakis stood no chance. And then the Democratic Party did its soul-searching and shifted from this [Walter] Mondale, Dukakis leftist policies into Bill Clinton. They found Bill Clinton. So again, all they needed is an attractive, very smart candidate also from the South, from a red state. So though Arkansas was not a red state yet, at the time. A [Democratic] governor. But it’s—I don’t feel that today we are going through the same process.
Stephens: Well, you know, the great question that Democrats have to answer is: Do they need to go through one election cycle to find their Bill Clinton, or does it have to be three, right? In the case of the 1980s, it was three. Carter was destroyed in 1980. Mondale was destroyed in ’84. Dukakis in ’88. Finally, they thought, Okay, we’re gonna have to bite the bullet and get a guy who’s a moderate Southerner, who believes in the death penalty, among other things, right? That’s what they had to do. My fear is that the Democrats will be goaded once again by the MAGA right into capitulating to their own worst instincts. And I’m afraid, but it’s a very effective tactic with the Democrats. Democrats really have to sit down and internalize the lessons of their loss last year against one of the most known and one of the most detested figures in American politics. How did you lose to this guy?
Kasparov: A second time.
Stephens: The second time, how did you lose to this guy? Because you are worse. You are worse because you sound, contrary to Tim Walz, you guys sound like the weird people. Not the Republicans. And so there’s gotta be a Democrat who understands that.
Kasparov: So moving to the left or winning—or improving to your chances to win. So what’s more important?
Stephens: You know, what is it that Niels Bohr said? A prediction is very difficult, especially about the future. So I don’t know. I don’t know. Maybe they’re gonna have to lose so badly again to J. D. Vance or Josh Hawley, or someone else that they just hate, that they’re gonna say, Okay, we’ve gotta reclaim the center. I guess the question you’re really asking is: Is the head gonna beat the heart? Right? The heart wants to beat left in the Democratic party. But the head wants to win, and the head wants an agenda that is going to serve middle America, middle-class America, middle political America. And not a class of radicals who have an idea about this country that is—
Kasparov: That brought us Donald Trump.
Stephens: That brought us Donald Trump.
Kasparov: I like to end the podcast on a more positive, forward-looking note. So let me ask you. What is the way into the future? Because both domestically and internationally, so America’s traditional values have been challenged—or have been sacrificed—for some very short-term political gains. And just we could see the political center, the reasonable people, basically being bent over by the radicalism for the left or the right. So what’s the way out? Give us just, you know, your positive vision. Will America, you know, become great again? Sorry for using this term.
Stephens: Yes. America is great and will be greater still. You know, one of the differences between a dictatorship and a democracy is that a dictatorship advertises its strength and hides its weakness. Democracies, by contrast, we advertise our weakness and hide our strength. I mean, the media is a daily digest of everything that’s going wrong with this country. You’ve never seen a New York Times headline that says “Things Slightly Better Today Than They Were Yesterday.” Although we could have run that headline—
Kasparov: Soviet-newspaper headlines, like, you know, “The Greatest Harvest Ever.”
Stephens: Yeah, exactly. But in America, we—look, we’re constantly focused on our weaknesses, and we hide our strength. There’s a pessimism paradox, which is that pessimistic people, at least if they’re not fatalists, are constantly attending to the things that are going wrong. And so they’re adjusting; they’re trimming their sails; they’re trying to find solutions to problems as they encounter them every single day. And yet, there’s huge strength in the United States. If you look at any of the major technologies that are going to be the defining technologies of the next 30 years, almost invariably it’s happening somewhere in the United States. The innovation is happening here; the copying is happening in China, right? And this was the same story in the 1970s. The 1970s was a period of deep pessimism in the United States. The Soviet Union was on the march. We were politically terribly divided and weakened at home. And yet that’s when some guy nobody had ever heard of named Steve Jobs was tinkering with a computer. And another guy nobody had ever heard of named Bill Gates was tinkering with software. Think of all the great American companies that have emerged in the last 50 years and continue to emerge, and compare that to a list of the major, say, European companies. The innovation is here; the excitement is here. Americans eventually get their heads out of their asses. It just sometimes takes a while. There’s a spirit of enterprise and irreverence and trying new things and experimentation that exists in this country like nowhere else. People still wanna come to our shores, and one day we will have the leaders who understand the still-vast untapped potential of this country, and they’re going to exploit it to its fullest. So in the long term, I’m an optimist. But I think actually it pays to be a pessimist in the short term, because it makes you more attuned to both danger and opportunity.
Kasparov: Just want to clarify—short term, midterm, long term?
Stephens: What are the timescales?
Kasparov: Exactly, timescales. So this is, we are going through a very revolutionary period in world history. We have wars; we have global conflicts. So, there’s so many challenges that we don’t know how to address. And I think that our response now, the outcome of these many battles will define the future in the next 50 years.
Stephens: Here’s the question. Are we making mistakes at a faster or slower rate than our enemies are making mistakes?
Kasparov: Who are the enemies? Are enemies within or enemies outside?
Stephens: Both. Both.
Kasparov: Both. So you are still optimistic.
Stephens: Yes. The only thing is, we’re having this conversation on a Monday, but tomorrow I might be a pessimist.
Kasparov: Okay, Bret, thank you very much.
Stephens: Pleasure, Garry. Thank you.
[Music]
Kasparov: This episode of Autocracy in America was produced by Arlene Arevalo. Our editor is Dave Shaw. Original music and mix by Rob Smierciak. Fact-checking by Ena Alvarado. Special thanks to Polina Kasparova and Mig Greengard. Claudine Ebeid is the executive producer of Atlantic audio. Andrea Valdez is our managing editor.
If you want to learn more about the work Bret and I have been doing at the Renew Democracy Initiative, I invite you to visit rdi.org and to subscribe to “The Next Move,” on Substack.
Next time on Autocracy in America:
Bill McRaven: The fact of the matter is, you want a military that will push back on orders and on positions. If you create an environment, a culture, of fear that speaking up—whether it is against a particular mission or a particular policy—is going to get you fired, then you’re gonna find yourself as a military in a very difficult position.
Kasparov: I’m Garry Kasparov. See you back here next week.
The post It’s Time for a New Two-Party System appeared first on The Atlantic.
