Hosted by Gerry Shields
Gerry is a former longtime Washington correspondent and political writer for The New York Post, Baltimore Sun, and Philadelphia Inquirer and author of the new book: The Front Row: My Jagged Journey Recording American History from Reagan to Trump.
Episodes
Welcome to the Retail Politics Podcast. Without enough hand sanitizer for candidates to shake hands, let alone kiss voter babies, we redefine Retail Politics for the digital world, reaching you one download at a time. We’ll speak weekly for 30 minutes to politicians, academics, and reporters on the front lines of American political issues to help you choose best how your government should function.
S01E42 Dr. Edna Greene Medford, Politics of the Presidency
Howard University history professor, Dr. Edna Greene Medford, discusses the best and worst presidents in American history. Trump detractors thought finish last in the C-SPAN poll. Guess again.
“When we’re looking at them, we are looking at more than just what is happening in the four years or eight years that they’re leading the country,” Greene says. “We’re also looking at what they did when they got into the presidency and certainly what they do when they leave.”
S01E41 Bill Cowles, The Politics of Voting Rights
New voting rights laws in several conservative states combined with a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding them has thrown the American voting system into disarray, a Florida Supervisor of Elections said.
“The irony is that the 2020 election was the highest turnout in our country,” said Orange County Supervisor of Elections Bill Cowles. “As an elections administrator who is trying to figure out how to run the election in 2022, we’re trying to figure out what the norm is going to be.”
S01E40 John Fritze, Politics of the Highest Court
Despite the hue and cry over Donald Trump creating a 6-3 conservative U.S. Supreme Court majority, the justices ruled more moderate than detractors and supporters anticipated.
“For the vast majority of the term, that’s right,” said USA Today Supreme Court reporter, John Fritze. “That definitely didn’t happen.”
S01E39 David O. Stewart, Politics of George
Though George Washington was America’s first president and Commander, he also stands out as one of the greatest political figures in the nation’s history, winning four key elections without having a single vote cast against him.
“The man was incredibly successful politically, and that’s not how we think of him,” said biographer David O. Stewart, author of the new book: George Washington: The Politic Rise of America’s Founding Father.
“We think of him as the soldier, a farmer, as an all-around upright guy,” Stewart said. “But we don’t think of him as a political actor, and he really was for much of his life.”
S01E38 Gary McLinney, Politics of Violent Crime
Murders across the nation have reached their highest in a half-century, and many blame the demoralization of American policing in the wake of the George Floyd killing a year ago.
“They’re doing the job that elected officials and some communities want them to do,” Gary McLhinney, former president of the Baltimore Fraternal of Police, told the Retail Politics Podcast with Gerry Shields.
“They don’t want them engaging with criminals,” McLhinney said.
S01E37 Jon Allen, Politics of Ransomware
“There really seems to be no solution,” Jon Allen said. “Our government has not figured them out, our corporations have not figured them out, and other organizations have not figured out how to stop this from happening,”
Allen, an award-winning former congressional reporter and author of the new book, Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency, discusses how the president is faring and the road potholes ahead.
S01E36 Former Congressman Charlie Dent, Politics of Ethics
The former Republican chairman of the U.S. House Ethics Committee found most members honest but recalls a greatest hits list of our generation’s most ridiculous congressional scandals.
Former U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania also admonished House Trump supporters for blocking the establishment of a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection and Trump’s attempt to overthrow the government.
“I thought Congress should have enacted an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate the events of Jan. 6 that led up it, the day of the event, including the actions of the president,” Dent said. “I think it was a mistake that one was not established.”
S01E35 Howard Mortman, Politics of Congressional Prayer
As C-SPAN spokesman, Howard Mortman watched much congressional footage before one daily tradition caught his eye: the prayer before each session.
Mortman has written the definitive history of congressional prayers with his book When Rabbis Bless Congress.
“The very first thing that Congress does, both chambers, is open with a prayer,” Mortman tells the Retail Politics Podcast with Gerry Shields. “It’s like nothing else that happens during the day. There’s no acrimony; there’s no hatred, there’s no debate, there are no votes.”
S01E32 Steve Lopez, Politics of California
Los Angeles Times Columnist Steve Lopez discusses the bizarre election to recall and replace California Gov. Gavin Newsom. One candidate is touring the state with a bear, calling himself the “beast” who will rein in California spending.
“I’m not embarrassed to say, I was rooting for the bear to break free and turn on him and maybe take a bite out of his rear end,” Lopez said.
S01E31 David Hawkings, Can Biden’s Focus Be Sustained?
President Joe Biden is off to a fast start, remaining focused on vaccinating the country and restoring the economy, but faces monumental challenges in working with Congress on issues such as immigration and guns, the former editor of Congressional Quarterly Weekly magazine told the Retail Politics Podcast with Gerry Shields.
David Hawkings said the possible loss of Democrat control in the U.S. House of Representatives 18 months now could puncture Biden’s momentum.
“He has not allowed himself to get distracted by things that other people want to talk about,” Hawkings said. “That was not the book on Joe Biden...whatever caught his fancy; he would talk about. In contrast, he’s stayed pretty focused.”
S01E30 Patrick J. Kennedy, Politics of Mental Health
Former U.S. Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy kicks off national Mental Health Awareness Month on the Retail Politics Podcast with Gerry Shields, stating that America’s failure to adequately treat mental illness and addiction driving overdose deaths and mass shootings.
The son of former U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy discusses his own mental illness and addiction to deadly opiates, leaving Congress to start the Kennedy Forum, advocating for better mental health and addiction treatment.
Kennedy lauded the nation’s commitment to fighting cancer but notes we have spent trillions – with a T – on that battle.
“We’ve spent a fraction of that on mental health,” he said.
S01E28 Kevin Fogarty, Politics of the U.S. House
The U.S. House of Representatives is paralyzed by growing political factions wielding disruptive power and the lack of bipartisanship that once made the American legislature respected, a longtime Republican House staffer told the Retail Politics Podcast with Gerry Shields.
“The idea of reaching across the aisle is seen as a weakness now,” said Kevin Fogarty, a longtime chief of staff and legislative director for recently retired U.S. Rep. Peter King of Long Island.
“Unfortunately, a lot of that is leading to things not getting done,” Fogarty said.
S01E27 Gary McLhinney, American Police in Polar Peril
The testimony of eight Minneapolis police officers against colleague Derek Chauvin will likely doom the officer accused of murdering George Floyd; a veteran police analyst told the Retail Politics Podcast with Gerry Shields.
“If I put myself in the seats of the jurors, I think it’s pretty damning,” said Gary McLhinney, former president of the Fraternal Order of Police union in Baltimore. “You judge police officers’ actions by what their peers would do in a similar situation. I think the testimony so far has been that the average police officer, in that situation, would not have done what that particular police officer did.”
S01E24 Dr. Andrew Kolodny, Politics of the Opioid Crisis
Despite 500,000 Americans dying from opioid painkiller overdoses in the last 25 years, prescriptions continue being written aggressively while the federal government fails to regulate it, a leading medical expert on the issue told the Retail Politics Podcast with Gerry Shields Sunday.
Dr. Andrew Kolodny, medical director of Opioid Policy Research at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, said the chief contributor to the crisis is the federal Food and Drug Administration, who approved the drugs and continues to fail to regulate them.
S01E22 Daniel DiSalvo, Politics of Bullying
The current political troubles of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo – now accused of sexual harassment and fudging COVID nursing home death numbers -- stem back to the year 1512, said Daniel DiSalvo.
“The great Italian philosopher, Machiavelli’s phrase, was ‘choose to be loved or feared,’” the chair of the City College of New York’s political science department told the Retail Politics Podcast with Gerry Shields on Sunday.
S01E21 Ken Herman, Politics of a Texas Size Storm
“It was the most snow in Austin since 1949,” Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, Ken Herman of the Austin American-Statesman, told the Retail Politics Podcast with Gerry Shields on Sunday. “This impacted everyone in Texas in some way...It was an all-encompassing disaster you couldn’t escape.”
S01E18 Paul Kane, Politics of the U.S. Senate
American Democrats’ rejoice over a Georgia Senator’s win last month giving them control of the Senate is being tempered by a chamber filibuster rule that leaves them ten votes short shy of passing President Biden’s legislative agenda.
Veteran Washington Post congressional correspondent Paul Kane explained the rule on the Retail Politics Podcast with Gerry Shields.
S01E17 Jim Steele, Politics of the U.S. Economy
The gap between the rich and poor in America is at levels not seen in more than a century as the nation wrestles -- both politically and economically -- over the question of public welfare versus private gain, a legendary investigative reporter said Sunday.
James B. Steele told the Retail Politics Podcast with Gerry Shields that tax breaks to the rich over the last 40 years have cut their individual contributions to the federal government in half while corporate tax rates have fallen 30 percent.
S01E16 Dennis Culhane, Politics of Homelessness
Dennis Culhane, the foremost expert on American homelessness, told the Retail Politics Podcast with Gerry Shields that the number of street homeless has spiked 75 percent in the last six years.
S01E14 Pete Leffler, Politics of Fury
Leffler accurately predicted in September that Pennsylvania, which gave Trump the 20 electoral votes need to win in 2016, and Biden the same in November, would play the crucial role in the election. In addition, he stated at the time that Trump followers would claim the election was stolen and that there would be “blood on the streets.”