Bill Kristol welcomes recently retired Col. Bree Fram to discuss Hegseth's leadership and the damage he's inflicting on the United States Military, as well as her own personal experience being forced out of the military after over 20 years of service.
MILLIONS OF WORKING PARENTS struggle every day to find decent childcare they can afford. And it might not be happening if only Richard Nixon had signed legislation to create a comprehensive childcare system back in 1971.
The bill had landed on his desk in the middle of a major demographic shift: women entering the workforce in large numbers, creating demand for childcare that leaders in both parties said they wanted to address. Nixon signaled he would support a major initiative, and seemed friendly to a bipartisan bill that passed both chambers.
But autonomy for women and changes to family structure didn’t sit well with many social conservatives, especially top Nixon adviser Pat Buchanan. Nixon heeded Buchanan’s advice and rejected the bill, warning in a veto message that it would be “family-weakening.”
Since then, Democrats and Republicans have been arguing over whether the federal government has any business supporting childcare and—if it does—what that support should look like. The polarization helps to explain the failure of more recent efforts to pass childcare legislation.
A new proposal from Project 2029, a Democratic-aligned think tank, is designed to get past that polarization.
It envisions legislation on a scale that would rival or exceed what those 1971 lawmakers had in mind. But it also addresses some concerns from Republicans and conservatives by offering families a choice: access to free childcare, financed and regulated by the federal government, or direct cash support that parents could use to offset the cost of other arrangements, including staying at home to raise kids themselves.
“In a lot of ways, this represents a real evolution in Democratic thought on childcare,” Elliot Haspel, a prominent left-leaning analyst and writer on childcare policies, told me in a phone interview. “It’s the idea that, actually, families want and need wildly different things when it comes to their childcare, and it’s also that they need something that is simple to use.”
The primary authors of the proposal are veterans of past Democratic administrations. That’s not a coincidence.
For the last few years, left-leaning advocates and experts on a variety of issues have been trying to develop ideas that approach longstanding problems in novel ways. A starting point for many of these conversations has been trying to understand past failures. In the case of childcare, that means revisiting what went wrong the last time Democrats tried to take a big swing—back in 2021, when Joe Biden was president.
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Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling (Ret.) joins Mona Charen for a conversation about why character still matters in leadership, how America lost many of the institutions that once helped build it, and what the military can teach about integrity, responsibility, and moral courage in an era of political double standards.
show notes:
Mark Hertling on character
Mona and Mark discuss his book “If I Don’t Return: A Father’s Wartime Journal”
Programming note: This Wednesday join us for the next edition of The Bulwark Book Club. Mona Charen and Bill Kristol will discuss Mark Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson with you LIVE at 1:30 p.m. EDT. Drop your questions, comments, and thoughts on the book in the comments of this post.
Published in 1894, the novel tells the story of two boys–one born into slavery, the other the master’s son–who were switched at birth.
Watch your inbox for a link on Wednesday to watch the show.
The Mona Charen Show is a weekly, one-on-one discussion that goes in depth on political and cultural topics. New shows drop Saturdays. Find this show wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube. Add the show to your player of choice, here.
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