Juliette Sellgren 

Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition. Hi, I'm Juliette Sellgren and this is my podcast, the Great Antidote named for Adam Smith, brought to you by Liberty Fund. To learn more, visit www Adam Smith works.org. Welcome back on today, July 28th, 2023. I'm excited to welcome Lawrence Reed to talk about America's best and worst presidents, along with the characteristics that define these sorts of leaders and the important things to look for. Reed is the President emeritus of the Foundation for Economic Education and of the Mackinac, I just learned how to pronounce that Center for Public Policy. He's currently the Humphreys family senior fellow at FEE, and you should visit his website, lawrence w reed.com. We'll put that in the extras. Welcome to the podcast.

Lawrence Reed 

Hey, thank you Juliette. I appreciate your having me.

Juliette Sellgren 

So before we get started, what is the most important thing that people my age or in my generation should know that we don't?

Lawrence Reed (1.16)

Well, I thought about this because I anticipated you're asking it and what I'm about to say is perhaps not something that people your age don't know. It's that they generally and seriously underappreciated, and that is that their personal character is going to put either a floor or a ceiling over how far they can go in life. And that investing in one's personal character at the earliest possible age when you realize how important it is, is an investment that you'll never regret. And so when I talk to young audiences and have an opportunity to explain this, I tell them that the one thing for sure they will never regret late in life if they start investing in it now, would be things like their personal honesty, humility, and by humility I mean an intellectual humility, recognizing that as much as they may know, there's still a universe of knowledge out there that they don't know. And other attributes of strong character like responsibility, courage, and gratitude, investing in those things will make you a person of influence and someone who can leave the world in a better place than you found it.

Juliette Sellgren 

That's a brilliant piece of advice. I love that. Well, I guess without further ado, because this is directly relevant, let's get started. So historically, what has been the role of president? We talk about how the Presidents of the United States wear a lot of hats, but how is that different from other countries?

Lawrence Reed (3.01)

Well, in America, the president of course is the chief executive officer, but he or she is not an emperor, a dictator or an all powerful person, as in some places a person in a similar position might be. Our presidents are elected. But that position has, I think to a great degree, unfortunately evolved over the decades since our first one, George Washington, in the direction of the aggregation of more power in the hands of a president as one who believes in limited government. And the original constitution, I'm a little disturbed by that, but I'm still very happy by the fact that a president of the United States is not a monarch, not a dictator, can only serve two terms. We fixed that problem after [Franklin D.] Roosevelt and also that the people do have some say not only in who that person is, but also how long they stay in office and they can even run against them if a person wants to. So those are the things I'm still very grateful for.

Juliette Sellgren 

So I guess we'll get into this a little bit, I think, but the executive has grown. How did that happen and what do you think the role of the president should be? How has it changed in a way that you should we revert to what it was once and how would that happen maybe?

Lawrence Reed (4.39)

Well, as a believer in limited government in the Constitution, I'm one who believes that perhaps all branches of government, certainly the executive and the legislative should be curtailed, that they have exceeded their authority. And that has happened for a number of reasons. One is that the American people of recent generations are not the same American people of the first few generations in our country's history. I think in terms of our mentality, our thinking towards things like the role of government, we have changed as a people, we rely upon government for far more things than our original founders intended us to. And that's come as a result of both a philosophy that's taken root in the country, that we can have good and big government at the same time if we put the right people in charge of it. I quarrel with that strenuously, but that's a philosophy that has sort of taken root in the country.

And also we've had some serious events that have conditioned people to think that more government is the answer. Needless to say, the Great Depression is a leading contender in that category, even though it was caused by government itself. But nonetheless, it produced such catastrophic conditions that many Americans thought, well, we have to have more government, just like my teacher told me, that's perhaps another issue for another day. But those events like that World War I certainly and other events have pushed us in the direction of giving government more power than our earliest Americans ever thought it should have.

Juliette Sellgren 

Are there some traits among presidents that they all have in common, for better or for worse? I mean, I know that the role of president has kind of changed, but does it differ from person to person or by historical context? Or are there things that are true of almost every presidency of a president generally?

Lawrence Reed (6.53)

Well, until recently I used to say that every single one of them wanted to get elected, and if possible, reelected, but then there may be one exception to that, and that is James Garfield, who was elected in 1880. He was perhaps not perhaps, but most assuredly, the most reluctant presidential contender. He went to the Republican convention in 1880, intending to place a nomination, the name of another man, but he gave such a good speech that the crowd turned away from his candidate and all the others and instead started clamoring for Garfield. And he went around to the state delegations at that convention saying, stop voting for me. I don't want the job. But he was so well respected and liked that on, I think it was the 36th ballot. He got the nomination and he was sick to his stomach and left the convention at that point, but he was prevailed upon to accept the nomination, and he ran and he won actually that quality in Garfield, not really wanting the job, not lusting after it, and certainly not willing to do anything to get it is endearing to me.

But otherwise, the desire to get the office is certainly pretty common with all of them. But also by and large, with a few exceptions, these have been men who have shown some leadership abilities in one walk of life or another, if not in politics, perhaps in business or in the military or in government. You have to have some leadership qualities, I think, to ever get the job. And by that I mean leadership qualities in a positive sense, the notion of commanding the respect of people because of the example that you set, not by barking orders or using coercion, get your way. So they all had that to some degree or another, but they also had very wide ranging personalities, some not so good, and others just super admirable. So it's quite a varied lot really, the 46 presidents we've had, but maybe at least some leadership qualities would be common among them all.

Juliette Sellgren 

So I mean about Garfield briefly, is there a fine line between not necessarily wanting to be president, not lusting after it, as you said, and being a good president? I would think you should want someone who wants to lead to a certain extent. I mean, I know George Washington didn't entirely want to lead, but he still did it. So did Garfield live up to that duty almost in the same way or in a similar way, or do you think it always plays out?

Lawrence Reed (10.00)

Well, I think that Garfield had, he lived, he only served about five months because he was shot in July. He took office in March of 81, 18 81 was shot by a would-be assassin in July, lingered until he died in September. So he wasn't in office very long. But the brief time that he was, he did show some terrific qualities. I think that had he lived, he might be among the better presidents that we've had. I think he was a man of honesty and integrity in the time he had. He tried to do what he thought was right and usually it was. And he had some solid principles. And one of the things that I've learned about him that has really endeared him to me, aside from not lusting from the office, he understood money and monetary policy better than most presidents. He gave a speech when he was a member of Congress on the floor of the house, several hours long with just a stitch of notes in which he traced the monetary history of the United States and Great Britain, and came to some remarkably good conclusions, namely that whenever we have had monetary troubles like runaway inflation, bank closures and depressions and things like that, he said it was always because of some intervention by government that screwed up the money in credit supply.

And when I read that speech, I thought, holy cow, he's anticipating the great Austrian economists of the 20th century by a good half century here. That really impressed me. The man was smarter than probably most people who knew him ever gave him credit for.

Juliette Sellgren 

So I want to get back to this point, but just to satiate my curiosity, because I have to admit I don't really know a ton about Garfield. Why did he get assassinated? Does that show that someone isn't likable? I don't know.

Lawrence Reed (12.08)

Well, he was shot by a disgruntled office seeker, likely deranged. Charles Gito was his name, and Gito because he worked in Garfield's campaign, not close enough to the candidates to know him personally or vice versa. But he had it in his mind that because he worked to elect Garfield that he was entitled to some political appointment. And when Garfield was elected, Gito wrote several letters that either never made their way to the president or the president simply rejected for one reason or another, I don't know. But he didn't get the appointments and he thought he was wronged because of it. And so he decided he was going to shoot the president, and he did, I think it was at the Baltimore rail station. So very unfortunate event because as I said, I think Garfield would've proved to be a very good president.

Juliette Sellgren 

And that, I mean, kind of says something about political favors, I think, because, well, I don't know many people how many disgruntled hoping to be appointees would do that nowadays. Well, I don't know. Maybe they would, but so there's that kind of historical change, but also now at least this is my impression, and this could be wrong favors have more traction and this kind of trading, but also, I don't know, maybe Washington has been known as a place where transactional things occur all the time. So I don't know. But I guess,

Lawrence Reed

Oh, I'm sorry.

Juliette Sellgren 

Oh, no, no, no, go ahead.

Lawrence Reed (13.58)

Well, you've touched Juliette on something I mentioned earlier about the growth of the power of the government in both the executive and the legislative branches. And this is one testimony to it. The fact that the president does have today an immense amount of power he can distribute, he can offer appointments and make appointments to positions that have enormous influence over the economy and over the lives of other people. And so there are lots of people out there who would love to have power. They lust for it, and the way to get it, some of them think is to get close to those who have it and lobby them for appointments or handouts, subsidies, whatever they can get from this gargantuan government that now has all these favors to pass out. It's very corrupting not only of government itself, but of the people who seek its power.

Juliette Sellgren (14.51)

I kind of want to follow down this line, but tie it back to Garfield and I think this will tie into the greater conversation. So you mentioned in talking about him and in talking about president's generally character, and you mentioned this in your response to the first question of how important it's, so I guess how important is that to the policies or the, I don't know a better word than vibe of your administration? I know that the president himself at this point has only grown in the influence over the current administration that they preside over. But how important is character to the behavior of an administration or to the things that happen under that president?

Lawrence Reed (15.45)

I think character is very important in any position, not simply that of president of the United States. As I mentioned earlier, it either puts a floor under how far you can go or puts a ceiling over how far you can go. And it determines to a considerable extent how you act. A personal of solid character maybe can make it through four years or eight years of government and be minimally corrupted. But that's a challenge. Even those with the best of character can be brought low by the very corrupting influence of power and all the things the president is supposed to do these days. But if you've got solid character, if you're honest and you believe that truth is worth fighting for, it's a value in and of itself, it isn't simply a convenience that you can toss to the wind for personal, short-term political advantage, then you have a chance to be a great president.

And also if you're humble, you're humble enough to realize that though you may be a very important person known by just about everybody, that doesn't mean that you know what you think you might know. It doesn't mean that you know how to live the lives of 330 million other people. Doesn't mean you know how to plan an economy. Nobody does. So if a president remains humble and doesn't think that because he has this office, he's got all these magical powers and abilities, then he has a chance to be a great president. But he also has to be a good leader in the sense he has to set a good example. Because if your underlings, if staff, if the government as a whole, if the people in it come to think that hey, this is a rotten fish and it stinks from the head down, then they feel like they've got a license to misbehave. I mean, if the president at the top is misbehaving, setting a poor example, engaging in corruption, then that's like licensing the rest of the government to do same. But if you know serve in an administration that this is a president who means business, who will not tolerate corruption and malfeasance and any overbearing or unconstitutional actions, if you know he'll hold you accountable, then you're going to maybe clean up your act. So the president does set the table and how he sets it really is a function of his character.

Juliette Sellgren (18.17)

So on the one hand you have this and then the growth of the power of the executive and the amount of power you can trade for your own gain inevitably. But then also I think the Garfield example really amazingly shows something that I think I always point to Abraham Lincoln and I'm like, read the Lyceum address, it's awesome everyone read the Lyceum Address. But I think you can kind of very clearly and pretty indisputably see a shift from presidents that grappled with what the role they played was and where we can still read about Abraham Lincoln's political philosophy or Garfield's takes on monetary policy. Whereas now that's not why we would read the things that they've said or written. And I don't know. I guess the question becomes how much, why has the presidency changed from a very duty oriented, very responsible for how you carry yourself in a lot of ways, I think I can say that an intellectual president to more of a political, almost like conniving type of president, why has that shift occurred? Because I think all of these things kind of trend similarly.

Lawrence Reed (19.49)

Yeah. Lord Acton perhaps gave us the best answer to your question when he told us famously that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I don't know of any other motivation that is more destructive to a society than the lust for power. It can take the best of people and grind them up and make them corrupt and compromise their character sometimes. Totally. So that's part of the problem that and the bigger government gets incidentally, the more corrupt it becomes almost by definition, the more favors it has to pass out, the more people are going to do just about anything to either get in charge of it so they can get more for themselves or to keep it at bay because it's just all over the place. It's all over their lives. So they want to get in charge of it to get something or get it off their back.

And that tends to produce endless corruption, which then has the effect of discouraging truly good people from ever seeking office. I mean today, how many times have you heard a good person, one that you think, wow, that person would make a good president or a congressman, or whatever. How many times have you heard such good people say, but not me. Why would I want to sully my reputation and dirty my hands by getting involved in that mess? They see scumbags who are more than happy to seek power in public office. And so what you end up with if this trend isn't reversed is the worst of both worlds, big government controlled by bad people, and that's very opposite to what our founders intended. They wanted to see virtue in people, but even that they knew would have to be checked by the institutions of a limited government. And today, I think most of our founders would be appalled if they saw that what we have built on the edifice that they created is big government run by bad people.

Juliette Sellgren (22.01)

So I guess is there something structural where we didn't necessarily select for the worst or presidents that we would not like to emulate character wise? Maybe is there something that could be done at, I'm thinking kind of public choice, structural way that we elect presidents or that they're incentivized to run kind of this lusting for office? Is there a way to structurally prevent against that? Because I've recently been really challenged in the idea that we actually do need good people in government, and I do think there is merit to that, but I still really staunchly in the camp that we need to set up the institution so that even if it's not the best person, then they can't mess up so bad. Or even if it's a good person, they can't be tempted to mess up so bad because even people with great character are not absolutely flawless. So is there something that could be done?

Lawrence Reed (23.06)

Yeah, institutionally, there are some things that would be helpful in reversing these bad trends. One would be probably term limits. I think that would be helpful term limits for members of Congress. Maybe another structural institution would be repeal of the income tax because that has been an engine for the growth of government and also for people to demagogue their way to office by appealing to people's baser instinct thing at their expense. And maybe we could also undo some of the prior structural changes we made in the country that have been not helpful, that have been in the wrong direction. For instance, our founders intended the Senate in Washington to be made up of appointees from the states by state legislatures. And then the 17th Amendment came along about 110 years ago that changed that and said, no, we're going to require that senators be popularly elected in their states and take it out of the hand of the legislatures.

At the time, a lot of people said, well, we got to do this because legislatures are corrupt and they're sending their cronies to Washington. And there was some of that no question, but it's been shown by Todd Zywicki and other economists and historians that what we ended up doing with the 17th Amendment was simply transferring corruption from the legislatures to Washington. We're not getting any cleaner federal government because of that amendment, but we do get government now that imposes things on the states that might never have happened if the senators have been responsive directly to the state legislators. We get unfunded mandates, for instance, imposed upon the states by the federal government in part because senators don't pay a penalty directly for imposing on their state legislatures back home measures that the federal government wants them to carry out. So that's one example that we could undo, I think.

Juliette Sellgren (25.21)

Yeah, that's a great example. Listeners, go check out my episode with Todd Zywicki, the one and only on this very topic. It's a great one. It was from a while ago, but maybe you'll see that I've grown up a little bit, but it's still an amazing episode, so go check it out. I think kind of still along these lines, but as we get into the best and worst presidents, I want to ask about how we even go about judging a president because we do have a system of checks and balances, and so it's sometimes difficult to separate a president from things that happened under them and in their administration or historical things that mean that the role of the presidency has been different. So how should we be considering economics or their love of America or I don't know, what should we consider and are there things to be more lenient about in judgment? And are there things, obviously character is a big one, but are there things that we should really weigh heavily on when we judge a president?

Lawrence Reed (26.26)

Well, the first duty of a president that he swears the moment he is inaugurated is to uphold and defend and protect the constitution. And so that's one of the criteria by which I judge a person who holds that position. I want to know, did they do their job to uphold the constitution? Were they faithful to it or were they stretching it beyond the bounds of reason to encompass evermore powers for government? We've had both kinds of presidents in our history, but the best ones in my mind are those who said, look, my job description is the constitution and I'm going to stick to it because it's there for a reason. When we begin to cut corners, that's a slippery slope to the demise of freedom. That's my job and I'm going to do it. And I like a president who tells people, oh, sorry, as much as you may want that it's not in the Constitution.

It's not within my power to give it to you. If you want it badly enough, there's a procedure by which the constitution can be amended, and I may or may not support that, but in any event, don't ask me to do things that aren't in the Constitution. I admire that in someone because it means they put the future of the country and their oath of office above short-term political advantage and vote buying, and so much of that kind of corruption that's occurring now under our overbearing government. So that's one thing. And of course, personal honesty is another. I mean, you could have a good president who adheres to the constitution, but maybe on the side he is a personally corrupt and in various ways, and that certainly we should weigh that against him. I don't want to corrupt person, even a corrupt limited government person in office. I want somebody who's good all the way around.

So that's another thing. How they handle particular crises is usually a measure of a president's performance, both the left and the right and in between, use that as a criteria, but they differ on what they would like to see in a president. A socialist would love to see a president handle an economic crisis by bestowing new powers upon the government and telling people what to do, whereas somebody of my persuasion would say, no, I want to see a president who recognizes when government causes the problem in the first place and instead of adding to its powers will strip away the ones that cause the problem.

Juliette Sellgren (29.07)

Do you think there's a common ground, obviously, in terms of actual policy outcomes, there's kind of a very normative side of things where if you think we should have more welfare, you're going to like the president who gives more welfare versus someone who doesn't. But is there a common ground in recognizing great presidents other than necessarily that across the political spectrum?

Lawrence Reed (29.34)

I think almost everybody respects a leader, a president who says what he means and means what he says, who has principles, who isn't just all over the place for short-term political advantage. I think no matter where you are in the political spectrum is something in just about all of us that respects somebody who says, I do believe in certain things. Here are those things, and I will do the best I can to faithfully carry out those principles that I also told people I believed in during the election. I don't care for those who tell you one thing in the election and do something different once they get elected. So we respect people of principle, even if those principles aren't always ones that we personally agree with.

Juliette Sellgren 

It's a pretty good baseline, I think. Okay. Let's get into it. Who are some of the best presidents and can you give us some examples of things they've done or their character that put them up there for you?

Lawrence Reed (30.40)

Sure. I've always had difficulty in choosing one and saying that person was the best president because in a sense, you're judging all of them by slightly different criteria. Some of the big issues, like I just mentioned, personal character and honesty and so forth are universal, but they all dealt with circumstances peculiar to their time. They dealt with congresses whose makeup changes with every election. None of them were dictators, so they often had to compromise and not get all that they wanted. But among the best certainly would be the following. Grover Cleveland, he's the only president to serve two terms that were not consecutive. He was first elected in 1884, ran for reelection in 1888, and though he won the popular vote, he lost in the electoral college and then came back in 1892, ran against the man who beat him and became president a second time.

I like Grover Cleveland because he was very much a man of principle, and those principles that he believed in tend to align with mine. He was a believer in small government, low taxes, less spending. He was against the welfare state. He vetoed more bills and all the previous 21 presidents combined, he was for sound money, not inflated money. And it's just a very good man, I think all the way around on a personal level as just about as honest as the day is long. Another great one that is often overlooked because he didn't preside over a war or massive policy changes or shifts or economic crises. And that's John Tyler. He was president when the incumbent on whose ticket he ran the previous year as vice president. When that incumbent president died, that was William Henry Harrison, who died within a month of taking office. And Tyler then came into office.

And to this day when a vice president ascends to the presidency through the resignation or the death of the president, we don't have the question come up of, well, is this new guy really the president, John Tyler set that precedent because at the time, that was a big question. It was the first time anything like this happened, and some of his opponents in Congress called him his accident sea because he really didn't come to the office by choice for president of the people. But John Tyler had to grapple with the immediate issue of did he have the same powers as Harrison who was the president who died? And he made it plain that under the Constitution as he read it, and I think he was right, he was not an acting president, he was not an interim president. He was not a part-time president. He was the president just as much as Harrison had been before him. And nobody questions that today, but it was Tyler who set the tone for that. And he also, I think was a very courageous man. He actually opposed much of what Harrison stood for, and he championed sound money. He was against recharterin, a national bank. He was against subsidies for local governments and businesses and I think was right on the issues and a very good president. But the wig party turned against him, and he didn't even get renominated in 1844, but he served all but one month of a full term as president.

Juliette Sellgren (34.36)

Wow. I like that. It's making me wonder whether we should consider, and obviously presidents don't die or get shot super-duper often, but we are electing a vice president to be essentially the substitute to become the president if something happens to the current president. I never think about that because I think they come as a pair. And I wouldn't be surprised if other people thought that maybe it's just me. Maybe that's something I need to reevaluate, but I don't think so because it's kind of taught and presented as they're a pair. But do you think we kind of don't weigh the judgment on who the vice president nomination is as importantly as we should? Because it seems like in a lot of cases when this happens, it can either be great or it can be disastrous. And maybe for political reasons, like with Lincoln and his second election, you put someone who is the opposite of you for political appeal, right?

Lawrence Reed (35.42)

Yeah. Yeah. I think we should put more emphasis on who the vice president is and weigh that in our calculations. But maybe just as importantly, I wish presidential nominees and their parties, I wish they took that more seriously. I mean, the best example of them not taking it seriously is our current vice president. Frankly, she was not chosen because of any particular competence or rhetorical abilities, but she checked a few boxes. And so Joe Biden said, let's put Kamala Harris on the ticket. And now there's an awful lot of buyer's remorse about her, but you can't blame the voters if they don't put a high import on the vice presidential pick because they do run as a package. And so you're sort of pushed to make your decision based upon how you like the presidential candidate. And if you like that one and not the vice president, what can you do?

Maybe the presidential candidate of the other party isn't somebody you can vote for. So that's one of the limitations of politics. And it's another argument, I think, for keeping it at limited corner in our lives, because when I go to the grocery store, I buy exactly what I want and I come away rather happy with just about everything. I can even return something if I'm not happy. But when I go into the world of politics, I have to go for the whole package, even if part of it stinks to high heaven. So that's an argument to me for keeping government small in the first place because it suffers from such serious flaws.

Juliette Sellgren (37.32)

Yeah, it's funny because we often talk about how in politics and with policy and with parties, you have to vote for a bundle even if you don't actually believe in every single part, because why should what you believe about healthcare have anything to do with your beliefs on foreign policy? It seems like we've done this with people too, kind of ironically and maybe a little problematically. If you want to see listeners, a example of Kamala Harris's rhetorical skill. There's a video out there from a few years ago of her talking about transitory inflation, and Garfield would be upset, I think maybe is a good way to put it. Okay. I have one last question for you before the final question. Who are some of the worst presidents in your opinion, and what makes them? So,

Lawrence Reed (38.26)

I have ranked one as in my opinion, the worst of all presidents for a very long time. There are days now when I think Joe Biden is giving that person a run for his money, but I still think the worst of all the presidents we've had was Woodrow Wilson on both a personal level as well as a presidential and policy level. Woodrow Wilson was an unrepentant racist. He re-segregated much of the federal government in terms of policy. He was a radical interventionist. He was a progressive in the heyday of progressivism, which meant he really had considerable disdain for the limitations of his power placed upon him by the Constitution because he thought smart people like him should really run the show. And because they know so much more than the rest of the public, he concentrated power to the best of his ability. He made government ever bigger. He gave us the income tax, he gave us the 17th amendment. He was just a very, very bad president. And he set the precedent. A lot of people would say, well, what about FDR? He gave us all these alphabet agencies. He ballooned government so massively. Yeah, well, one of the reasons he was able to do that is that Woodrow Wilson had set a precedent. And so I have to blame him for that. And I also tangentially blamed Teddy Roosevelt for giving us Woodrow Wilson, whatever good Ted did as president. He sort of undid when he ran as a third party candidate in 1912 handing the presidency to Woodrow Wilson.

Juliette Sellgren 

Wow. Is there anyone else that comes close?

Lawrence Reed (40.21)

I'm not fond of Jimmy Carter either, but I don't give him the bad rap that he's most often given. I think he was personally not a dishonest person, and he did give us some deregulation that was very necessary. Airlines, trucking and even beer retailing. But by and large, he was an ineffective and relatively incompetent administrator. He was a micromanager, which rarely works in the management of anything. You even had to go to him to find out if you could get permission to play on the White House tennis courts. Any sound administrator and his position would've said, that's not a decision I need to make. Let's have the groundskeeper make that decision, or whoever. But Jimmy spent a lot of time micromanaging other people, so they were among the worst. And yeah, I'm hesitating only because there were so many that I don't very highly those come to mind.

Lemme give you an example of one. He was kind of a mixed bag. He did some great things and then he did some bad things, and that would be Andrew Jackson. I mean, I love the fact that he killed the first or second bank of the United States, a kind of federal reserve of its day. He killed it. And we had then an extended period of relative free banking in the country, no central bank. He vetoed bills that would've doled out federal money for so-called internal improvements, which really were subsidies to business and local governments. But then of course, he was the man who engineered the trail of tears, the forced expulsion of Indians from places like Georgia where I live on out to Oklahoma, a very tragic episode in American history. I understand the conditions that prompted him to make that decision. He wasn't inherently an evil, nasty, rotten person who wanted to harm the Indians, but he just made an error in judgment that led to some catastrophic outcomes. But nonetheless, mixed bag, though he was, we had presidents who were better and some who were far worse.

Juliette Sellgren 

Thank you so much for sharing all of this and for taking the time to talk to us today. I have learned a ton, and I'm sure my listeners have as well. I have one last question for you.

Lawrence Reed 

Okay.

Juliette Sellgren 

What is one thing that you believed at one time in your life that you later changed your position on and why?

Lawrence Reed (43.03)

Yeah. I have changed my mind on a few things, but probably the single biggest issue would be the death penalty for decades. I favorite it and I observed that there were certainly people who richly deserved it. I still think there are people who richly deserve it, but I also came to understand in time that the death penalty turns out to be another failed government program. And just too many instances I think out there of people who were sent to the chair or lethal injection, who it turns out upon closer examination didn't do it. And that really troubles me. And so I've come to oppose it. If I thought government was far better at it and more efficient at it and more careful about it than it is, maybe I'd be persuaded to support it again. But I don't see that happening anytime soon, anytime. So I'm against it simply because too many innocent people fall through the cracks and there is a better alternative, which may be life in prison, but the death penalty itself have come to have great misgivings about.

Juliette Sellgren 

Once again, I'd like to thank my guests for their time and insight. I'd also like to thank you for listening to the Great Antidote Podcast. It means a lot. The Great Antidote is sound engineered by Rich Goyette. If you have any questions, any guests or topic recommendations, please feel free to reach out to me at Great antidote@libertyfund.org. Thank you.