Former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf joins me in this episode to talk about his time as Governor, the lessons he learned about leadership, and what he would have done differently if he had been elected in 2016. Tom Wolf is a Republican running for president in 2020, and is a former governor of Pennsylvania. He served as Governor from 2011 to 2017, when he was elected to a second term and served as the first openly gay governor of the state. He is now running for re-election, and we discuss his transition from the governor s office to the campaign trail, his views on leadership and what it takes to be a successful politician, and how he thinks about the role of women and LGBTQ people in our society. Tom Wolf has been a long-time friend and supporter of mine and my campaign, and I'm excited to have him on the show to talk to me about his experience as a governor and the lessons that he learned from serving as one of the most powerful men in the state for the past eight years. I hope you enjoy this episode, and that you enjoy the conversation we have with Tom Wolf! Thank you for listening, Tom! -Jon Sorrentino and Matt Knost and thank you for supporting this podcast! Tim Wolfe and Jon Taffer, both of whom are working hard to make a difference in our country. Tom Wolfe, Governor of Pennsylvania and Jon Corbett, President Tom Wolf, VP candidate for the 2020 Democratic primary campaign Tim Wolf, President of the Third Way Back in Time, Jon Rocha, Inc., Inc., is running for President in the Democratic primary on November 6th, 2020, 2020. Jon Corruptor, Inc. John Ralden, Jr., is an expert on the ground floor of the Democratic Primary campaign. And he's a good friend of mine, and a great human being and a good human being, and he's also a great friend of the country and a very smart human being. I can't wait to get back to work with him in the middle of the political process. . Thanks for listening to this episode. -Tom Wolfe, Tom Wolfe and John Rochowski, Jon Rooker, John Perone, Sr., Sr., and Jon Raldee, Sr. and Jon, Jr. Thanks Jon, Jon, and John, John, Sr.. John, too, and Jon Sellett, Jr..
Transcript
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00:00:02.000I've frequently said that the dividing line in American politics today is not between Republicans and Democrats.
00:00:33.000Certainly not between black and white.
00:00:35.000Certainly not the divisions that they would have you believe in this country.
00:00:39.000I think it has to do with whether or not you are pro-American or are you anti-American.
00:00:45.000And I think there are strains of both in this country.
00:00:48.000To me, being pro-American means that you believe in the ideals that set this nation into motion 250 years ago.
00:00:57.000Do you believe in basic ideas like merit, free speech and open debate?
00:01:02.000Do you believe in the importance of self-governance over aristocracy?
00:01:05.000This is part of what it means to be American.
00:01:07.000Are you willing to stand behind policies that advance those principles?
00:01:12.000Or are you, as I think many people in this country, some people in this country increasingly are, anti-American insofar as it means that you're apologizing for the existence of those values.
00:01:24.000Unwilling to stand behind principles that advance those basic principles.
00:01:28.000even if radical ideas that set our country into motion two and a half centuries ago?
00:01:33.000I think that there are Republicans who stand on the side of apologizing for those values.
00:01:38.000I think there are a rare few Democrats and certainly a lot of politically unaffiliated people who will happily advance those ideas, too.
00:01:46.000I think the partisan distinctions matter less than what do you actually stand for and why do you stand for it?
00:01:55.000Let's have an open conversation about it.
00:01:57.000I think that's the spirit with which we're approaching this campaign.
00:02:00.000And with that in mind, one of the things that I'm aiming to do with this podcast is not just to bring along a lot of people who facially agree with me on matters of public policy, even people who pledge affiliation to the same political party that I do.
00:02:16.000I'm a Republican running for U.S. president.
00:02:18.000But I think that if it's really true that we don't believe in these artificial distinctions nearly as much as they'd have us believe.
00:02:24.000Then we have to be engaging in conversations that go beyond our respective echo chambers.
00:02:28.000That's something we're going to regularly do on this podcast, and we're going to be doing it today.
00:02:33.000To that effect, I'm pleased to welcome today's guest to the podcast, Governor Tom Wolf, who most recently, until a few months ago, served as the governor of Pennsylvania.
00:02:43.000We're going to talk a little bit about his experience, his perspective, some of his views on leadership in ways that have nothing to do with partisan politics, and then I want to take off our gloves and get into some dialogue on some areas where I think he and I have some different points of view, but to air it so we can advance the conversation for the better.
00:03:00.000Tom Wolfe, Governor, welcome to the podcast.
00:03:05.000So I thought before we get into some of the areas where we might have some, I think we do have some different points of view as a matter of policy, we'll get there.
00:03:15.000I thought you're hot off the heels of being a governor.
00:03:23.000What are some of the lessons you learned about leading, about governing in a state?
00:03:30.000And I think I'll ask you kind of a challenging question to start because no one wants to hear from any politician about what their standard talking points are.
00:03:40.000I'm not saying that that's something you would do, but let's get into the meat of it.
00:03:43.000What's something that now you've had the distance of a few months That you wish you had done differently as a governor, and what did you learn from that experience?
00:04:00.000The thing that I was a business person like you for most of my adult life And I ran for governor because I understood that, as I think you do, we need to make sure that we bring, I think, good leadership to the public sector.
00:04:23.000And my platform was basically honesty, integrity, and competence.
00:04:30.000And that's what I did for eight years.
00:04:32.000And the people of Pennsylvania seemed to like it.
00:04:35.000The last election, Pennsylvania actually had a blue wave.
00:04:39.000And I think the key point of my administration was that I was honest.
00:04:44.000I had a gift ban from the day I started serving.
00:04:48.000I took a big deficit to a big surplus without raising anybody's taxes, actually lowered some, and invested a lot of money in things that I thought were important, like public education, early childhood education, and so protected women's rights, LGBTQ rights.
00:05:08.000I did those things, and I'm very proud of the eight years that I had as governor.
00:05:15.000Let me ask you actually, just even off the bat there, you said honesty, integrity, competence.
00:05:22.000I find that interesting because honesty was distinct from integrity.
00:05:30.000Of course, honesty is part of integrity, but I'm glad you drew that distinction because I've actually spent my career before my nascent life as a political candidate in the world of business.
00:05:42.000And one of the things I've talked about is the integrity of a corporation.
00:05:48.000Being honest is being honest, speaking truth and not speaking falsehood.
00:05:53.000To me, and this is going to get to some of the areas where I want to put some pressure on some of your policies here, but to me, integrity means that you're true to the purpose of the institution that you're leading.
00:06:06.000So if you're a company operating with corporate integrity means...
00:06:10.000You have a mission, and you got to be honest about what your mission is.
00:06:14.000But corporate integrity means staying true to your mission, even when that involves making trade-offs.
00:06:20.000So my career, like much of your career, was in the business world.
00:06:26.000Talk to me about what that definition means in terms of running a state.
00:06:31.000I think running a state has a purpose.
00:06:35.000What does running a state with integrity mean, above and beyond just being honest, which was a separate part of your leadership style?
00:06:43.000What does integrity actually mean to you?
00:06:45.000To me, when I was running my business, it was being fair and open, transparent and honest with my employees, my customers, my vendors.
00:06:55.000And I expected the same thing from each of them.
00:07:02.000My experience in business and my experience in politics is that if you treat your constituents in politics, your colleagues in politics and in business, your customers, employees in business, With the integrity, treat them fairly.
00:07:17.000And so I made every effort in my business to be open and transparent to the point where my company, we made a fetish of not even allowing people to ask, may I ask who's calling?
00:07:52.000Well, it was a family business, but I built it up.
00:07:56.000My two cousins and I bought it in the 1980s and then built it into a fairly large company.
00:08:02.000And we ended up being best known for kitchen cabinets, wolf cabinets.
00:08:07.000And so the lesson I took from business and the lesson I brought to politics and the lesson I come away from politics is that if you treat people fairly with honesty, but also integrity, that you actually are true to your word.
00:09:02.000We actually sold my two partners and I sold the company in 2006. And then I was retired.
00:09:09.000And we did it in a way that allowed the employees to really control the business.
00:09:14.000And then in 2015, I was Secretary of Revenue in Pennsylvania because I knew the governor and he needed somebody to be Secretary of Revenue.
00:09:27.000So I did that for a year and eight months.
00:09:29.000And then I decided, I think I'd like to run for governor.
00:09:32.000I had been active in the community in York and South Central Pennsylvania.
00:09:38.000And I realized that of all the good things that we were doing in the community, that government played a big role in making my community better.
00:10:36.000You know, I'm going to come back to the political component of this, I promise.
00:10:40.000But on the business side, so be the best provider of building products in the US. That's interesting.
00:10:49.000When you were running this business, it was before a major trend in American business today, one that I've been fascinated by, critical of.
00:10:58.000You could say it's the rise of ESG, environmental, social and governance factors that now pervade public company boardrooms.
00:11:06.000Was that Part of the ethos of your own business taking on environmental issues, social issues like racial equity?
00:11:15.000I mean, talk to me about whether that was part of your business or not.
00:11:20.000And what I found was, I went beyond that.
00:11:23.000Can you give some examples, actually, just to make it real?
00:11:27.000We hired the best people regardless of color of their skin, their gender, and it actually went even beyond that to returning citizens, people who had been in prison.
00:11:46.000We didn't dismiss them, as most businesses do, out of hand.
00:11:50.000And what I found was when you do that, It actually makes for a stronger company.
00:11:54.000I think McKinsey's done a study where they looked at C-suites in companies and the most diverse C-suites tend to be the most profitable because you have a diversity of opinions.
00:12:13.000One of the things that we were known as a good company to work for, we paid really good compensation.
00:12:19.000As I say, we shared 20 to 30% of our net profit in annual cash bonuses.
00:12:24.000We had great benefits, life insurance, health insurance, great pension plan, all those things and more.
00:12:33.000If we just did nothing and didn't really pay attention to doing something consciously about diversity and equity and inclusion, everybody would look like me.
00:13:18.000On one hand, you say that And this is a great conversation between two, you know, former business leaders who are now wearing different political hats here.
00:13:27.000On one hand, you say we wanted to hire the best people to advance presumably the mission of being the best provider of building products in the U.S., regardless of skin color, gender, sexual orientation, as you said.
00:13:40.000On the other hand, and I'm putting a fine point on this because so many business leaders like you say the same thing.
00:13:45.000And, you know, there's McKinsey reports say the same thing.
00:13:49.000That you have to be intentional about making sure that everyone doesn't look like you.
00:13:55.000Those two statements aren't exactly the same thing.
00:13:59.000I'm not automatically claiming that they're contradictory, but they're not the same thing.
00:14:03.000To say that you have to be intentional about making sure that everyone doesn't look like you is a different thing than saying regardless of skin color, you could hire people like they do a blind orchestra in New York.
00:14:15.000You know what the blind orchestras look like?
00:14:17.000An orchestra, if you want to advance the mission of producing the best classical music, it doesn't matter how the person looks.
00:14:23.000They just do a blind orchestra audition based on how well somebody plays the violin or the cello.
00:14:29.000And when they did that in the city of New York or in other places around the country, it turned out that you actually did get a lot of people who look the same.
00:14:37.000A lot of them tended to be Asian and a subset tended to be white, but that's actually what yielded what produced the best music according to a blind audition.
00:14:44.000So I just want to put some pressure on that because, of course, everyone wants to live in a hunky-dory world where everything aligns, but I don't think those two things are the same thing.
00:14:54.000And I think it's convenient to say both at the same time, but what if those goals are in conflict with being intentional means taking into account skin color while not taking into account skin color means not taking into account skin color, just being blind to that possibility.
00:15:14.000My point is, if you're fair, and if you're honest, the results will be what they are, but for the most part, You will end up with a fairly diverse-looking group of people working with you.
00:15:32.000You might have a concentration in one area or another, depending on what exactly you're doing, but you're not going to all look exactly the same, I don't think.
00:15:43.000And is that an objective, or is that just a means to the end?
00:15:47.000I think the objective should be to be the best company you can possibly be.
00:15:52.000And you should not allow your prejudices to stand in the way of that.
00:15:57.000And that is what I think, at its best, diversity, equity, and inclusion really means.
00:16:01.000If you're just doing it, to put a gloss on it, I think that's ridiculous.
00:16:05.000But you're doing it because it actually makes sense.
00:16:11.000And you had a private company, but suppose you were at the stage where instead of selling it, you wanted to take it public, and you showed up at the board of Goldman Sachs.
00:16:19.000And Goldman Sachs tells you, as they do now, that, you know, suppose your board did not meet their standards for what was diverse, and that you needed to meet that standard in order for Goldman to take you public.
00:16:35.000What's your view on whether that's a good thing or a bad thing for a firm like Goldman Sachs to be playing that role as a gatekeeper to public markets today?
00:16:44.000Well, as you say, I had a private firm, so I didn't do that.
00:16:47.000But I was a public CEO when I was governor of Pennsylvania.
00:16:51.000I had 13 million people looking over my shoulder, not just Goldman Sachs.
00:16:56.000And I brought the same passion for diversity, equity, and inclusion to that job as I had in my company.
00:18:12.000It was not just something where you're affecting sainthood.
00:18:15.000That you're actually trying to do something that is going to make a difference in the lives of those people living down the street.
00:18:21.000And if you are discriminating in who you bring into your government, To help you administer it.
00:18:30.000If you exclude a certain group, any group of people for whatever reason, you're really not helping that family down the road.
00:18:40.000On the other hand, if you're bringing people in just for show, and what you're doing for show isn't helping those folks down the street, that's wrong too.
00:18:54.000Here's the rubber hitting the road here, though, because I don't think that anybody disagrees with what you laid out, or most people, Republican, Democrat, certainly me.
00:19:02.000I don't disagree with what you just said.
00:19:05.000How could you, really, to say that to advance the goal of a business, you don't want to be engaging in discrimination on the basis of race or gender?
00:19:14.000First of all, it's actually even unlawful to do exactly that.
00:19:17.000But I think the place the rubber hits the road, I think it's important not to elide this distinction.
00:19:22.000And maybe you have an issue and you're with me and you disagree with some of these behaviors, or maybe you agree with them on different grounds, is you take a company like Pfizer that says that it is making a commitment To ensure that 25% of certain of its higher executive ranks are Black or persons of color by a certain year point in time.
00:19:43.000You take a company like Apple that initially did not want to make a racial equity commitment based on outcomes of who they fill, but BlackRock and State Street and others vote in favor of a shareholder proposal that demands they do that.
00:19:56.000and now Apple's conducting a racial equity audit to pave that way.
00:20:01.000I don't think most Americans agree with the idea that we should allow, or even want, companies or state governments to engage in purposeful discrimination that allows them to be less good at what they otherwise would do versus getting the best talent, which is the view you've articulated.
00:20:17.000I further don't think that most Americans, certainly I don't, believe that we've always been perfect at that for most of our history either.
00:20:25.000There are clearly demonstrated periods for much of American history where most institutions, including businesses, did engage in discriminatory practices that had nothing to do with advancing their mission, say being a provider of building products or like me, being a developer of medicines.
00:20:42.000But I think where the rubber hits the road now, I'm not talking about, you know, 30, 50, 60, 70 years ago, but today, in the year 2023, is diversity with a capital D, equity with a capital E, and inclusion, and equity as distinguished from equality.
00:20:58.000Really does call for, and if you take a lot of the proponents of this movement at their word to say that, you know, I'm quoting Ibram Kendi, who makes a lot of money given lectures at corporations about diversity, equity, inclusion, says that the answer, and I applaud him for being honest about this, the answer to past discrimination is present discrimination.
00:21:15.000The answer to present discrimination is future discrimination.
00:21:19.000That's what you see codified in a lot of policies.
00:21:21.000Executive Order 11246 in the federal government requires you to, if you're going to do business with the federal government, to adopt certain race-based distributions in your workforce.
00:21:32.000And my question is, if you did the blind orchestra for people who are participating in orchestra, you don't end up with an even racial distribution.
00:21:39.000The question is, when there's a trade-off between saying that we're going to be actually colorblind and truly stay meritocratic without discrimination, That is in conflict with the essence of what many of the modern capital DEI demands make upon institutional leaders of corporations and governments.
00:21:59.000And I guess the answer you gave, I think, would be appropriate 50 years ago, which is to say we need to end discrimination.
00:22:05.000But in the moment of today, I just think that elides the reality of what's going on in many universities, many companies, and even many governments.
00:22:16.000Like, do you at least recognize the tension that I'm pointing out in the reality of today, the racial quota targets that we set?
00:22:23.000And if I'm to read between the lines of what you're saying, it sounds like you'd be against that.
00:22:45.000And so the tension that I think you're talking about is when people are trying to fake it.
00:22:55.000If you're faking DEI, then yeah, that's wrong.
00:22:59.000But if you're doing it in a way that companies weren't doing it 50 years ago, because it actually makes sense, then I think that's improvement.
00:23:50.000You've got to show that you have the virtues.
00:23:52.000And so I think a lot of the things that people are doing in business and in the public sector Along the lines that you're talking to us, to make sure that they actually show that they have the virtues that they in fact have.
00:24:07.000If you go into this faking it, either way, that's wrong.
00:24:11.000You got to do it because it actually makes sense.
00:24:14.000It made sense for me in the private sector and business, and it made sense when I was in the public sector as governor of Pennsylvania.
00:24:21.000You know, one of the puzzles to me is, so I'll tell you a little vignette.
00:24:26.000I happen to have the benefit of the last few years of having studied this issue in depth.
00:24:34.000It's been a core area of focus of mine, so that's where I'm sort of pulling some of these facts.
00:24:39.000But one I'll share with you is NASDAQ implemented a requirement that in order to list on NASDAQ, Your board would have to have at least one person of color and or woman and or sexual orientation minority.
00:24:56.000And if it did not, and you did not provide an adequate explanation for why, that you could not list on NASDAQ as a company.
00:25:06.000And because the SEC regulates NASDAQ, that had to be adopted as a rule by the SEC, which governs the exchanges, which means it's subject to notice and comment from the public.
00:25:18.000You're familiar with the Administrative Procedures Act.
00:25:20.000You have to take notice and comment from the public.
00:25:23.000That's something you're familiar with, I think.
00:25:25.000So the comments that came up during that period said things like, Oh, okay, well, why don't you include veteran status?
00:25:35.000Why don't you include disability status?
00:25:37.000Since part of the justification for this is it's a heuristic for diversity of thought, why don't you include political expression and political viewpoints as expressed?
00:25:46.000If you want diversity of thought, let's include the parameters that better screen for diversity of thought in the boardroom.
00:25:52.000And NASDAQ and the SEC's answer to that was...
00:25:56.000After careful consideration of these comments, we've actually concluded that the research supports that including greater indicia of diversity would have the counterintuitive effect of reducing the desired forms of diversity.
00:26:13.000And so they did not include veteran status or disability status or otherwise, but they stepped to race, sexual orientation, and gender.
00:26:22.000Well, talking here to a student of that, I would, I think, be taking this too far to try to pretend that I could know everything that you know.
00:26:35.000But it strikes me that you can take anything.
00:27:02.000And if you're a public company, you're not being fair to your stockholders because you're not bringing the best possible people in.
00:27:10.000How you define that and how you actually implement that and push people along and shepherd them to a point where they're actually doing that, you and I can disagree over what the best way to do that is, but it sounds like we both agree that one way or the other, We really ought to be doing that.
00:27:31.000And so, yes, you can take issue with some of the specific policies NASDAQ has or The signer of the executive order, the federal executive order has.
00:27:43.000But neither you nor I seem to be taking issue with the general idea that we ought to be hiring and putting people in positions of leadership in a way that advances the fairness idea.
00:27:59.000Well, I think that you had me until the very end where...
00:28:04.000I think it is to advance the mission of whatever institution and organization it is.
00:28:09.000And that means corporate integrity, right?
00:28:10.000As you said, what allows you to be the best provider of building products in the US. And to be the best, you probably have to be meritocratic and inherent in the idea of merit is being fair.
00:28:21.000So in that sense, through that cascade, you know, I think we get to a similar place there.
00:28:27.000But I do think that, look, I do think that The reality of the modern, maybe not in the sense that you mean it, but the modern capital DEI agenda as advanced is effectively about advancing quota systems in some way or another.
00:28:49.000And I think beyond that version of it, I mean, you just listen to the corporate proclamations that have been made, and maybe you would criticize that as just being for show, which I think is a fair criticism.
00:28:58.000But I go even further in this just philosophically, where let's just take someone like me, okay?
00:29:04.000It so happens I'm a vegetarian by choice.
00:29:07.000I was raised that way, but part of it is about grounded in a belief for not wanting to kill animals for my own culinary pleasure.
00:29:24.000Let's say you're a steakhouse and you're hiring employees.
00:29:29.000I don't believe that it is your job to be diverse for the sake of being diverse, even when it relates to the ever-prized diversity of thought, right?
00:29:38.000This is where it gets controversial because everyone will say, oh, diversity of thought is good.
00:29:41.000Well, I mean, a diversity of thought is usually good, but what kind of thought it should be in service of advancing the mission of that institution?
00:29:49.000Which of your steakhouse is to serve good-tasting steak to your customers who come there for delight.
00:29:54.000And so my view is, if you're a steakhouse...
00:29:58.000You shouldn't necessarily want diversity of thought in your waitstaff when it comes to diversity on whether or not the essence of that business, serving animal meat to customers for their culinary pleasure, you probably don't want and shouldn't want an employee like me.
00:30:15.000That would be one of the reasons why I would not make for a good employee of the steakhouse, even though I would be adding to the diversity, even diversity of thought, Of that workforce.
00:30:24.000And I think that I use that example because it's first personal, the rubber hits the road.
00:30:29.000But I don't think that there's any other question that should matter for that restaurateur than what makes him best positioned to advance his mission.
00:30:39.000And I think that that's fundamentally intention with the modern diversity, equity, inclusion, capital DEI version of that.
00:30:47.000And I think it would be I think you're a smart guy.
00:30:54.000I think you would wish for there to be a difference and not a conflict there.
00:30:58.000But I think that it would be helpful to recognize that in the way it's being applied today, there can be a tension between actually serving the mission of the institution and simply advancing a separate, maybe worthy social objective, but a separate social objective that sometimes intention, maybe worthy social objective, but a separate social objective that sometimes intention, they're not always the
00:31:18.000And I think the more honest we are about that, the more we're able to smoke out areas where we disagree so we can see it rather than suppressing those disagreements which then bubble up and show up in weird ways.
00:31:30.000So I think if I... At the time, I could come up with the same absurd lengths to which you could take anything that is out there.
00:31:42.000But I think we really need to return to the basic premise that do we, would you, and certainly not I, but would you think that it would be right to go back to where we were in terms of our companies 50 years ago or 60 years ago?
00:32:03.000Shouldn't we have made progress over the last 50 or 60 or 70 years in terms of having more people of color, more women, more gays in positions of responsibility in the private sector and the public sector?
00:32:20.000That life in the 50s was not all that it should be.
00:32:26.000That American life that you're celebrating, and I think rightly so, wasn't open to so many people.
00:32:33.000Now, how we get from there to where we are now and saying, have there been excesses in terms of maybe trying things that have taken us too far or that could be abused?
00:32:52.000But if the alternative to these excesses is not doing anything at all, then I think it would be wrong To avoid doing these things that have maybe some excesses that don't necessarily comport with everything to do with fairness.
00:33:12.000But we have certainly moved a long way from where we were 60 years ago, and I think that's a good thing.
00:33:19.000You know, I'll pick one last example here that I'd like for you to respond to.
00:33:26.000I mean, these are real-world examples.
00:33:30.000And then I want to tie this to your philosophy of governing in the state of Pennsylvania, which I'll get to on a different matter.
00:33:38.000So what's happened after one of the big things that changed in the last 60 years in this country is we did have civil rights laws.
00:33:45.000We had a civil rights act in 1964 that said you can't discriminate based on race or sex.
00:33:49.000Now, sex includes sexual orientation after Bostock, religion, national origin, and so on.
00:33:57.000But the way those statutes have since been interpreted and applied in corporate America is to say that not only can you not discriminate on those axes, I think companies tend to be better versions of themselves when they don't.
00:34:13.000But anyway, the law also requires it, as it turns out.
00:34:17.000But those laws have been interpreted, including by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, including even voluntarily by many businesses, to mean that you can't create what's called, as you well know, a hostile work environment for a member of one of those protected classes.
00:34:33.000Now, the place that's gone in recent years is to say that there's an example of a mom.
00:34:39.000She's a military mom who wore a red sweater every Friday and would organize a group of military moms in that company.
00:34:48.000And to the human resources ranks, an employee of color, to part of the lexicon of the day, I think he was black, but I don't remember the details of the exact race, complained to say that that made him feel uncomfortable.
00:35:01.000The company's HR ranks then say, hey, we don't want military mom Fridays anymore.
00:35:07.000Don't wear your red sweatshirt to work.
00:35:09.000So she doesn't like it, but she starts wearing a red sweatshirt, but she hangs it on the back of her chair in the workplace, after which said employee still said to feel uncomfortable, after which she's then forced to take it off of her chair, sues the employer, but the employer appears to be on firm ground on the sues the employer, but the employer appears to be on firm ground on the grounds Is that to you?
00:35:30.000I mean, you keep using the language, which, you know, I want to understand what you mean by it, of going too far.
00:36:14.000I mean, you were doing that through 2008, right?
00:36:17.000The first time, but then I was only away for a year and eight months, and then I bought the company back because it was struggling and took back control and back ownership of it.
00:36:42.000And by the way, as somebody who identifies as Republican, I'm a fan of preaching to my own tribe all the time about challenging where they are.
00:36:50.000But Assume for the purpose of this discussion that I gave you the facts correctly.
00:36:57.000You're not accountable for that, okay?
00:36:59.000On that set of facts, does that strike you, though, as falling in the category of going too far or not, creating viewpoint discrimination expression?
00:37:08.000Because this is the reality that people experience.
00:37:10.000It's not people fathoming up on cable media that diversity, equity, inclusion is somehow a problem in creating a boogeyman.
00:37:17.000I think that that creates more division in our country where we fail to recognize the actual, to borrow the parlance, of lived experience.
00:37:23.000This is the lived experience in today's workplace, in today's economy.
00:37:27.000And I just think it's helpful for people to hear, especially from somebody who has been a Democratic governor otherwise, If your answer is yes or no, it doesn't matter.
00:37:34.000I just think I would love to, I mean, just be good to hear it.
00:37:37.000On that side of the fact, is that going too far or not?
00:37:39.000Let me point out that I did sell the company in 2015, but I was an employer right up until two months ago.
00:37:47.000And we faced the same EEO issues and hostile workplace that you're talking about.
00:37:53.000So it's not something that I have not lived with.
00:37:56.000Up until my retirement two months ago.
00:37:59.000So I think the problem I have with the argument that you make is, which taken in isolation, are there excesses?
00:38:30.000You cannot have a good state if basically you're Stand to the folks that you're responsible to, but I'm going to make this work for a very small subsection of the population.
00:39:39.000We need to reflect the population that's out there.
00:39:44.000And when I'm back in my company and when I was governor of Pennsylvania, when I wanted the best people, shame on me.
00:39:51.000If I had said, and I'm going to exclude you and you and you because of the way you look, because of your gender, because of who you love.
00:39:58.000Yeah, but not many people think you should do that.
00:40:02.000There's a tiny, tiny minority in this country.
00:40:05.000But I think you have to be clear that in arguing against some of the excesses of the things, the policies that have been enacted to try to move this country forward, that you basically...
00:40:20.000Risk showing yourself in opposition to all that.
00:40:34.000But you and I have to agree, and I think most right-thinking people Yeah.
00:40:45.000the best way to move this country forward, the state forward, the company forward is, is to actually open yourself up to as many different forms of expertise, many different people, the best possible people, regardless of who they are, what they look like.
00:41:03.000I think that, I'll tell you the essence of what I think is going on.
00:41:06.000Then I want to move to an issue unrelated to diversity, equity, inclusion, but a different issue in how you govern in Pennsylvania, which I think will be interesting to delve into.
00:41:16.000is I think the essence of what's going on, if you take the best intention to people on different sides of this debate, put aside cynical intentions, but the best intention people, I think the essence of what's going on is that there is a current in the country that says there have I think the essence of what's going on is that there is a current in the country that says there have been racial and gender and sexual orientation driven injustices in the past and that we have to expressly correct for
00:41:44.000those in order to move forward, even if in the short run, that means sacrificing the best person individually at the individual level for that
00:42:00.000So to say that if somebody was going to test higher to get a spot in college, if somebody played the violin better to get into that orchestra, if somebody on day one were going to produce more revenue in that sales role, even if we're trading that off in the short run, We have to pay for the sins of the past by actually expressly using the counter-reversing tactics of discrimination.
00:42:22.000I think that's the essence of what's going on versus where I would land, which is, I think, a well-intentioned recognition that we have never been perfect, that we don't want to revert back to 1800 or even 1950 for that matter.
00:42:37.000But to say that the best path forward is to not look backward and to acknowledge that merit, colorblind merit, is itself an ideal that the best way we can live up to it is by just starting today on imperfect ground as we may to move forward.
00:42:57.000I just think that, if we're being honest about it, is the heart of the well-intentioned, non-cynical versions of the debate on both sides of it.
00:43:04.000I still think that's a very real debate.
00:43:06.000That shows up that we can't just glide over.
00:43:08.000And how would you show progress toward that goal?
00:43:33.000And I think the root cause is, I think one of the things that bothers me, and this is maybe transitioning to your role as a public leader and as a governor here.
00:43:40.000So I'll give you an example that's first personal to me.
00:43:43.000I've talked about it in a separate context before, but I went to a racially diverse, I think majority black or close to majority black public school, first through eighth grade, right?
00:43:51.000Now I've gone on to found multi-billion dollar companies and my whole success story is known to our audience, but there isn't a single one of those black kids that First through eighth grade, some of whom were two years older than me because they were held back one or two years even, that couldn't have achieved everything that I have if they hadn't been given at a very early age the same privilege,
00:44:13.000true privilege that I enjoyed, which was a stable two-family household with parents who were committed to education and the opportunities to realize it.
00:44:22.000And you know what's really funny is we don't talk about one area of not wanting to go back.
00:44:26.000Actually, most black kids in this country, even in the 1960s, were born into, 70% of them were born into stable two-family households.
00:44:35.000Many of them were economically, maybe black Americans were on average economically better off in the 1960s than they are today.
00:44:41.000And what changed in the meantime was among other things, I don't think we're more discriminatory as a country today than we were in 1960.
00:44:47.000In fact, I think we're far less discriminatory as a country than we were in 1960.
00:44:51.000The Great Society and Affirmative Action and the very kinds of policies that even with the best of intentions were designed to, say, achieve black mobility, actually stopped fostering that at the earliest stages, where what we really need to do is we're not going to in certain cases, achieve equity.
00:45:08.000My bet is, and this is a controversial thing to say, but my bet is if you apply purely meritocratic policies, you probably would see greater racial disparities than if you were using race-conscious policies today.
00:45:18.000But that's a band-aid to stop us from going upstream to the root causes of inequities that begin when we're like three years old or four or five years old entering kindergarten in public schools versus in one region versus another, that it stops us from bearing the responsibility of fixing that By creating a cosmetic equality in the back end by saying, because you look like somebody who was harmed 200 years ago and you look like somebody who committed that harm, not because you're the person who did it, that you're actually correcting for that.
00:45:47.000That's part of what animates me on this subject, to be honest with you, is I think we're creating more of the very harms that we purport to solve by using these Band-Aid solutions on the back end when, in fact, we should be focusing on the front end, schooling, even family formation, At a very young age, or else we're going to still be spinning the same wheels 50 years from now.
00:46:09.000Well, I still think that you're ignoring the central problem.
00:46:13.000You're looking at these, again, abuses that might have happened and might be apparent in the efforts to move forward.
00:46:23.000But you're overlooking the grand theme, which is we have to make progress.
00:46:28.000We've got to move from the past into an era when all Americans have an opportunity to do what you've done.
00:47:17.000So the idea, I'm sure, at Harvard was that they were going to try to make the best possible class campus.
00:47:30.000And they might have made some decisions that wasn't everybody who got 800 on the SATs.
00:47:40.000And you could look at that and say, gee, well, they actually didn't do a meritocratic point here, I think.
00:47:49.000But in the minds of the admissions directors, they were making meritocratic.
00:47:54.000They just weren't going according to the definitions that you were going for.
00:47:58.000And in their minds, as a result, Harvard had a better student body, people who ended up doing better things and maybe contributing more to the college than had they just simply taken the people who had the best SAT scores.
00:48:14.000So I think we've got to recognize that You can't use the absurdities that sometimes happen because people are misusing the things,
00:48:30.000the means to get to a fairer end, to use that as an excuse to basically cast away Throw away the idea that we need to make progress and we need to create a much more equitable society than we had 50 or 60 years ago.
00:48:50.000So to wrap this section of the discussion up here, I think the question for the House, okay, question for you is, do you come out on supporting more race consciousness in hiring as a way of, as you put it, moving forward?
00:49:07.000or is the right way to move forward to abandon race consciousness and be colorblind about the whole thing.
00:49:13.000I come out expressly and unapologetically on the side of embracing colorblindness.
00:49:19.000If we could make an interview colorblind, auditioned, like a blind audition, or even if it was a Zoom interview to use avatars or technology to be able to not even know what the race or gender of the person you were talking to, to be able to get to the essence of whether or not you were getting the best person for the job, all else equal, I to be able to get to the essence of whether or not you were I would stand for that.
00:49:39.000I'd just love for you to just take a position on either side of that, because I think that there's thoughtful advocates on both sides.
00:49:47.000Tom, more race consciousness or pure color blindness?
00:50:19.000Just like I'll put to one side that people are excesses on the other side.
00:50:24.000We're still going to have to figure out how we show progress.
00:50:27.000Now, you mentioned NASDAQ a few minutes ago.
00:50:29.000And NASDAQ had what you called a quota system on their boards.
00:50:34.000And if the boards, private companies didn't live up to that, they had to explain, you said, why they had.
00:50:42.000So NASDAQ sounds like, from your description, that they're making an effort to be Fair about this, that they're asking their companies to list, who list with NASDAQ, to show that they're making progress.
00:51:01.000And if they can't show it in the way that you say, and in some cases might actually be a very surface sort of acceptance of this idea, that they have the opportunity to explain, you know, how they're actually doing.
00:51:38.000And if you have a different way than we do, we're okay with it.
00:51:40.000So it sounds to me Like NASDAQ is trying to do the right thing, trying to do what you think is right.
00:51:46.000They're not resorting to this sort of casual, empty, sort of formal accountability or measurement that says, you know, here's a few ideas here of people to show that we're making progress.
00:52:00.000No, we really want to make substantive change.
00:52:03.000And if you show that, we're okay with it.
00:52:08.000Yeah, so an easy thing for me to do would be to misrepresent what NASDAQ said to make my point, but I wanted to accurately represent it, and that's exactly...
00:52:18.000I still disagree with it, but that is what they said, and they would say what you said, in fairness, okay, is that you get a chance to explain it, even if you don't meet that criteria.
00:52:27.000However, I think what bothers me about it is itself, even the criteria are only race, sex, and sexual orientation as a proxy for viewpoint diversity in the boardroom, while they rejected, in the first instance, veteran status, disability status, or actual viewpoint difference, such as political viewpoint difference, as a similar criteria, which I think smokes out what's going on.
00:52:49.000It's not really about just viewpoint diversity.
00:52:51.000I think all of us, you included, would be fine if we come up with a different measurement that is better.
00:52:58.000What we can't do is say the measurement as it's given to us is bad, therefore the whole idea is wrong.
00:53:03.000And I don't think that's what you're saying.
00:53:04.000I would say measure corporate progress against your mission and against your goals.
00:53:08.000And the best way to do that is for each company to decide what form of diversity best allows it to accomplish its goals, just like a steakhouse shouldn't hire a principled vegetarian to work on its weight staff.
00:53:17.000Yeah, I think, again, there are better ways to do everything and we ought to be looking for how we continuously improve the process.
00:53:27.000What we can't do is backslide on the idea of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
00:53:31.000If there are better ways to approach it, I'm all in.
00:53:36.000What you can't do is get to a point where people think of you as someone who's just against diversity, equity, and inclusion.
00:53:45.000Forget about the people who will, on either side of this debate, cynically use an argument as a smokescreen to advance a respective agenda that's more discrimination of some kind.
00:53:56.000There's maybe cynics on either side who might adopt that in principle.
00:54:00.000Let's accept that and put that to one side.
00:54:01.000But I just think that, again, back to the first word you said, which I respect, is honesty.
00:54:06.000I think that in the interest of honesty...
00:54:10.000I here's where I stake out my position is that I don't want discrimination of any kind.
00:54:15.000I don't want unwanted discrimination or undo or inappropriate discrimination of any kind on the axis of race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, etc.
00:54:27.000And that's why I think colorblindness as a goal is the right way to go.
00:54:31.000And it sounds to me like though, I think I'm going to represent your view and you tell me if this is right or wrong because I've pressed you on this, but I think it's important for even people who follow you to understand where you land on this.
00:54:45.000Even though maybe in an ideal state, you would agree with me on that, that it should be pure colorblind meritocracy.
00:54:53.000You nonetheless accept and maybe even embrace and endorse the use of explicit color conscious or race conscious hiring policies if that is a metric for demonstrating what you call progress.
00:55:07.000Like that's a different point of view than mine, but it sounds like that's where you end up landing is some race consciousness is going to be required in order to rectify injustice of the past and demonstrate progress.
00:55:18.000Whereas for me, I would say that the right way to move forward Is be colorblind and actually the best way to end discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race full stop.
00:55:32.000We both agree that we need to stop discriminating when we hire for whatever position.
00:55:40.000And The problem is, we also have to figure out how we're going to show that we're doing that.
00:55:47.000If I'm a CEO, and you're a CEO, and you want to know how the hiring process is going, what are you going to look at?
00:55:55.000And if what you're going to look at is someone saying, well, I think we're doing a really great job, that's like trying to run a business from a financial point of view without financial statements.
00:56:05.000You don't want to hear, yeah, I think sales are really going well.
00:56:10.000And I think when it comes to something as important and fundamental to business success is making sure you're hiring the best people, not just your brother-in-law or your cousin, that you actually have some way to measure that.
00:56:23.000Now, is the measurement that is out there maybe the best that there could be?
00:56:57.000Full agreement that we're never perfect.
00:57:01.000You know, continuous improvement is a journey, not a destination.
00:57:04.000And in terms of making efforts to be more open, to be less discriminatory, we need to make progress, but we need to also show that we're making progress.
00:57:15.000And that seems to be where the problem is in terms of your embrace of Diversity, you got to do both.
00:57:23.000You can't just sort of say, yeah, our sales are going to be increased.
00:57:27.000We're going to grow those sales and then not measure it.
00:57:31.000You got to say, I want to increase sales.
00:57:32.000Here are the things I'm going to do to do that.
00:57:35.000But I think you also have to be able to show that you're making some progress.
00:57:42.000And however you want to define that, We can argue about that, but it can't be an argument that is based on the idea that the best way to solve this problem is just not to do it at all.
00:58:06.000Before we wrap out of time, though, I want to channel this to actually one topic that stood out to me about it wasn't the biggest part of your tenure as governor of Pennsylvania.
00:58:16.000It was just a part that stood out to me that I think takes the same philosophy of what does it mean to pursue integrity of an institution here in the case of a state government that interested me.
00:58:28.000And I think we had probably different points of view on it.
00:58:31.000I just wanted to smoke out before we wrap up.
00:58:33.000That has nothing to do with diversity.
00:58:34.000It has to do, in this case, with climate change.
00:58:37.000I think you were one of the governors who took an express step in favor of effectively putting a price on carbon.
00:58:44.000We could talk about the mechanics of how you did it.
00:58:49.000I happen to disagree with it for a lot of reasons that go beyond the scope of what we're talking about here relating to my views on the anti-impact framework itself being misguided versus a human flourishing framework that actually matters.
00:59:01.000But the question I think that's more narrow and interesting for us is, is that even the job of a governor of Pennsylvania to take into account?
00:59:14.000Is the job of the governor of Pennsylvania or state government to look after the interests of that state or is taking on this other potentially and we can debate it, but let's say potential global challenge.
00:59:27.000The job individually of a governor of an individual state in that union, especially when you have coal miners and fossil fuel producers and natural gas producers in that state who are in the short run adversely impacted by a decision like that one.
00:59:51.000Clearly, you believe the answer is yes, because you did it, but why is that an appropriate use of a state government's authority to carry out something that doesn't directly relate to that individual state's interests?
01:00:04.000So, here's the problem, and I know you're a big fan of the free market, as I am.
01:00:11.000One of the problems with the free market is it has things called externalities.
01:00:18.000So an externality is something that the market finds it absolutely, not hard, impossible to price.
01:00:24.000And so if it's impossible to price, then if the market is left alone, it doesn't get priced.
01:00:31.000So if I put sewage into your drinking water upstream from where you take your drinking water out, I'm disposing of my waste for free, but there is an externality.
01:00:44.000There's a real price there, but I'm not forced to pay it unless somehow somebody forces me to do it.
01:00:50.000That's where government can play a role.
01:00:52.000When it comes to carbon, which is a problem.
01:00:57.000That is an externality in the generation of electricity.
01:01:01.000So if I'm paying my electric bill based on the generating companies and the distribution companies' idea of how much it costs to get it to me, and they're not factoring in one real cost.
01:01:15.000Of providing my electricity, that's a problem.
01:01:18.000So in the free market, these externalities typically get priced by governments, which are democratic, which are open to people to complain, to argue, to vote out the people they don't like.
01:01:31.000But it's one of the central roles of government in making a free market capitalist system work.
01:01:56.000Probably fundamental difference, and this is not one we need to discuss today because it's an hours-long discussion that I'm airing in other formats about whether carbon and the release of carbon is itself a negative externality at all.
01:02:10.000You're on the current consensus side of this that takes a view that it is a negative externality.
01:02:16.000I'm in the minority view, although it's a closely held minority view, a strongly held minority view of mine, that it is not.
01:02:23.000But even if we're adopting your view for the purpose of this discussion, carbon is a negative externality, even if you adopt that view, which I don't espouse, for the planet as a whole, because it contributes to climate change.
01:02:41.000So the whole question about me asking about this in the Pennsylvania context is I share your view.
01:02:46.000If you're dumping chemicals that relate to clean air or clean water, let's say clean water is the cleanest example, then yeah, you've got a case for making sure you can't just dump in somebody else's backyard.
01:02:56.000But the thing that fascinates me is what is and isn't the appropriate role of the governor of a state, not the leader of the country as a representative at the UN or whatever, but as a leader of an individual state in the union to take steps that arguably, and there were people but as a leader of an individual state in the union to
01:03:15.000you'll know, who would say that it makes Pennsylvania less competitive, who would say that the coal miners or whatever in Pennsylvania are less well off because of it, to nonetheless say that this negative externality for the world is something that it's an appropriate Action for a governor to take on, and I ask this because it's philosophically similar to the similar question we were talking about, even in the case of the CEO taking on diversity, equity, inclusion.
01:03:36.000Just on first principles there, you know, offer a defense of that, and I want to hear the opposing view to mine before we wrap.
01:03:44.000Yeah, no, you're right, and thank you for bringing it.
01:03:47.000It rests on the assumption that we both agree that carbon is a negative externality.
01:03:51.000If we don't agree on that, then that becomes real.
01:03:54.000But if you think, as I do, The carbon is a negative externality.
01:03:58.000The movement of air and carbon does not recognize state boundaries or even national boundaries.
01:04:05.000So if I pollute the water, I mean, we run into this, say, with the Chesapeake Bay.
01:04:11.000The Susquehanna River actually starts in the state of New York, but it ends up in the Chesapeake Bay, which affects Maryland and Virginia.
01:04:18.000So if I decide, or a governor of Pennsylvania decides, that they don't want to play any part in making sure that Runoff does not degrade the quality of water in Maryland and Virginia.
01:04:31.000You could say, well, I'm looking out for the farmers and the sewage.
01:05:17.000With me, that carbon actually is a pollutant, just like acid rain was a pollutant that transcended state boundaries, and different states worked on that together, including Pennsylvania.
01:05:29.000But if you agree that carbon is a pollutant, there ought to be some way that we try to attenuate the exposure of the world to carbon, and Pennsylvania needs to do its part.
01:06:06.000I'm looking forward to spending time with my wife and I. We've been married almost 50 years.
01:06:11.000We're looking forward to spending time with our families.
01:06:14.000That's the sense I get from talking to you, and I think that's a good thing, actually, because philosophically, I've just had a different place than you in terms of whether that's the proper role of a governor of Pennsylvania.
01:06:26.000Also age, you're in a different place than I am.
01:06:30.000I'm 37. We're different generations, but that's okay.
01:06:35.000We're able to have – we have different shades of melon, and we're from different places.
01:06:38.000We're still able to have a great conversation.
01:06:44.000Even though I'm philosophically different on the foundation of whether carbon's a negative externality, and even if it were a negative externality, which I don't agree with, I still disagree on whether it's the proper role of a governor or not.
01:06:54.000I... I think that's an authentic disagreement, which is actually why I have a bigger issue with someone like Governor Ron DeSantis, who does have future political aspirations.
01:07:04.000He's running for president through a shadow campaign right now.
01:07:07.000I think the thing that bothers me is the use of a state to take on issues that have nothing to do with that state.
01:07:14.000It's not even a Republican or Democrat issue here.
01:07:17.000I just think it's an inappropriate use of a state's resources to say I'm going to shoot my own capabilities in the foot to address global climate change in the hopes that every other person in that collective action game does the same thing when I'm still hurting my people in the short run.
01:07:32.000But at least if you're doing it on your own authentic convictions and first principles as opposed to as a path to a presidency, at least there's authentic.
01:07:38.000And even though we can disagree and disagree deeply, it's authentic versus using state funds to fly people from one state to another state, neither of which is mine, who are designed to create a news cycle and earn media in conservative circles as part of a pedestal for running for presidency and using state funds to do it.
01:07:55.000That's an inauthentic and cynical version of it.
01:07:57.000I call that out because there's plenty of democratic versions of that I could call out, but I think it's important that people call out people in their own tribe if we're actually to make progress as a And so, you know, I think on that distinction, I think that you have one up even to say that if you're really honest about it, that you're not doing the things that you did in Pennsylvania as a means to the end of running for higher office by signaling your virtue.
01:08:19.000I think that in that sense, you're doing better than some of even my colleagues who are already in this presidential race without admitting it, which I think is a good thing.
01:08:26.000So anyway, that's my two cents to wrap this up.
01:08:29.000I think you just gave me a compliment.
01:08:31.000So let me just say that as you run your campaign, one of the things I found that was really heartening was, you know, Pennsylvania has a reputation as a purple state.
01:08:42.000We actually had a blue wave in the 2022 elections.
01:08:47.000We actually took back the State House of Representatives.
01:08:53.000And my successor, the first time a member of the same party, after eight years of one party being in the governor's office, I think in decades, maybe a century.
01:09:06.000So it's been a long time since this has happened.
01:09:08.000And I think what people in Pennsylvania were responding to was that honesty, integrity, and confidence.
01:09:14.000I think they looked at the fact that I didn't take any gifts.
01:09:18.000I didn't even live in the governor's mansion.
01:09:21.000We actually got votes because of that.
01:09:26.000I think that they looked at Pennsylvania that has been flat on its back financially for decades.
01:09:31.000I mean, you go back into the 50s and 40s, Pennsylvania was always straining for money.
01:09:37.000We now have billions of dollars in our rainy day fund.
01:09:41.000We have billions of dollars of surplus.
01:09:43.000I've had surpluses since 2019, even before the ARP money started flowing and the money out of the Trump and the Biden administration from Washington.
01:09:52.000And I think people responded rationally to that.
01:09:55.000And I think that's the lesson of the 2022 election.
01:09:58.000And I think as you go forward, you know, by all means, be honest in the things that you stand for.
01:10:05.000The voters out there are really looking for authenticity.
01:10:33.000I mean, it sounds like it isn't a Republican or Democrat idea.
01:10:37.000I would rather say everything I believed without apology and unvarnished and lose this election rather than to play some game of political snakes and ladders to say the right thing and win.
01:10:46.000And there are professional politicians, career politicians, even in my race, who I think are taking that approach.
01:10:53.000And my bet is that taking the other approaches, I know this won't give you much satisfaction, but will probably, if I'm successful in the nominee, turn Pennsylvania back red in 2024 in the presidential cycle, at least.
01:11:05.000But anyway, Tom, this is a real pleasure.
01:11:07.000And we need more of this in the country.
01:11:09.000Frankly, you and I don't agree on the DEI issue.