Brian Riedl is my guest on Q&A — here — and a wonderful guest he is. Bright, interesting, independent, honest. He is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and an economic-policy whiz. A budget whiz, in particular, you could say.
Brian is from Appleton, Wis. — which I know as the home of Lawrence University. Brian points out that it is also the hometown of Harry Houdini. “The old joke goes, Houdini’s greatest escape was from Appleton.”
Early in our conversation, I ask my guest how he came to his views. He is a Reaganite, basically. It all began when he was a metalhead, he says. He was in a thrash band, and he was ticked at conservatives who wanted to censor rock music.
“This was in the ’80s, with the PMRC and so on.” (Those initials stood for “Parents Music Resource Center.”) “I became a big libertarian, because I didn’t like authority and I didn’t want to be told what to do and I wanted to be able to play Slayer and buy Megadeth CDs.”
I put it to Brian this way: “I was on Tipper Gore’s side and you were on Frank Zappa’s.” Brian seems flabbergasted that I was on Tipper’s side. He does not realize what a dinosaur I was, and am. I believe I was more pro-Tipper, on cultural issues, than Al was.
At any rate, young Brian Riedl read Free to Choose (by the Friedmans), which led on to Hayek, Sowell, et al.
After earning a graduate degree at Princeton, he went to work at the Heritage Foundation. “I ran the budget-policy shop at Heritage for ten years,” he says. “It was my first job in Washington.” The Right has experienced a very strange trip. “The Heritage Foundation today bears almost no resemblance to the organization I worked for for ten years.”
No kiddin’.
Riedl then worked for Senator Rob Portman. For the Romney-Ryan campaign, he drafted a deficit-reduction plan. He worked on Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign.
So, that’s a very Republican résumé. Brian joined the GOP when he was 18. Like many of us, he has not been a Republican since the spring of 2016. He is independent, tenaciously.
Back to 2012. Romney and Ryan were willing to be one-termers. They wanted to implement necessary policies — policies that might not be popular, or that might not bear fruit immediately. And if that rendered them un-re-electable . . .
I would have liked to see it. I would have liked to see what a Romney administration could have done. Riedl feels the same way.
“I mean, Romney was just so competent,” he says. “He was so organized. He was so intelligent and, again, so competent. And, yes, he wasn’t the greatest communicator. He has a little bit of personal awkwardness. I get all of that. But . . .”
Yes, “but.”
In the course of our Q&A, we talk about the recent drama in the House. (Comedy?) The GOP “can’t function coherently,” says Riedl. “At this point, it is so driven by performative outrage, fundraising, and Fox News hits, it has completely lost the ability to govern or function.”
He then asks, “Is that too harsh?” No harsher than reality, I’d say.
Back in 2010, the Simpson-Bowles commission made its recommendations on budget policy. Everyone was against them — Democrats, Republicans, everybody. Dead in the water. A few years ago, Mitch Daniels was my guest on Q&A (here). I asked whether the country would be better off if we had adopted Simpson-Bowles. No doubt, said Daniels. And we need to do something like it, regardless.
An aside: Brian Riedl has written in Daniels for president twice.
If Riedl were czar, what would he do, to tackle the federal budget deficit and the national debt and save the country from insolvency? He lays it out, in our podcast. And he warns, “Time is not on our side.” The medicine will be bitter. It would be bitter if we took it tomorrow. But it will be far, far bitterer, the longer we wait.
We talk about economics generally — the struggle of free-marketeers against collectivists (of all stripes). We also talk about Ukraine. Riedl is a supporter of Ukraine and of American aid to that country. In his old party (and mine), there is a lot of hostility to aid, and plenty of hostility to Ukraine, too.
In explanation, Riedl cites an “isolationist strain.” He goes on to say, however, that “a lot of it is a certain knee-jerk contrarianism.” We saw this during Covid. The fancy people say vaccines are good? They must be bad, then. In a similar vein: The fancy people are rallying around the Ukrainians? Then . . .
Deeply human (like many things to be resisted and overcome).
At the end of our podcast, we talk about independence: independence of thought, independence of conduct. Independence from party. “It’s very liberating,” says Riedl, about partylessness. At the same time, it is difficult. You can be as friendless as you are partyless.
There are people who agree with him — agree with him about policy and even about politics — who tell him, nevertheless, to shut up and be a “team player.” But “I am too bullheaded for that,” says Riedl.
When he was first in Washington — in that first job at Heritage, in 2001 — he was banned from the Bush White House. The reason: He had criticized the administration’s spending. When Obama came in, eight years later, Riedl said the same things — to the applause of Republicans.
Back in the ’80s, when he was thrashin’, he had a T-shirt made that said Stop Tipper Gore. I was on the other side. (I carry a memory of Frank Zappa, testifying before a Senate committee, mocking Tipper, which totally won me over — to her.) That is water under the bridge. I would be thrilled to see Brian Riedl as OMB director, if such an administration ever came to pass.
How about senator from Wisconsin?
Anyway, give him a listen. Our Q&A, again, is here.