My latest guest on Q&A is Patrick Chovanec. Go here. As I say in my introduction, Patrick is a hard man to sum up. He’s a writer (that’s easy). He’s also an economic strategist and adviser. He has extensive experience in China. And in U.S. politics. He has lately become a pilot. Indeed, he writes about this in his new book, Cleared for the Option: A Year Learning to Fly. Our conversation on Q&A is wide-ranging, though not as wide-ranging as Patrick’s life.
I have some questions for him about China: Is the Chinese economy slowing, and, if so, what are the consequences? For years, we heard, “Political liberalization follows economic liberalization, as night follows day.” Has the Chinese Communist Party broken this law (if it is a law)? What about Taiwan? A goner?
Like many of us, Patrick Chovanec is an ex-Republican. He retains his conservative beliefs. But he is now independent of party (and the parties independent of him). I think of what George F. Will said, when asked why he had left the Republican Party: “For the same reason I joined it: I’m a conservative.”
In our podcast, Chovanec says, “It has been liberating in some ways not to be part of a partisan choir. Politics is a team sport, and I appreciate that. I think it’s important to work with other people. But it’s also important to think for yourself, and to look at things on the merits” — no matter the tribal associations of those things.
He further says, “It can be hard, because if you’re not a member of the tribe, people don’t want to listen. But whether it’s on China or the economy or immigration or trade, I have just tried to stay true to what I think.” He has indeed.
At the end of our podcast, I ask him something like, “Are we gonna make it? Will the constitutional ‘guardrails’ hold? Is our democracy going to be okay?” He says, “That’s in our hands.” It’s up to us.
He cites a line from Lawrence of Arabia. As I understand it, people keep saying, “It is written.” It is fate, it is predestined — there’s nothing you can do about it. Lawrence goes out to rescue a man in the desert — a man fated to perish there, in some eyes. On returning with him, Lawrence says, “Nothing is written.”
Marvelous.