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Matt Mackowiak's Mack On Politics

Smart political talk every week from Austin, Texas political consultant Matt Mackowiak, who has served in senior roles for two U.S. Senators and the Bush administration.
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Matt Mackowiak's Mack On Politics
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Now displaying: September, 2018
Sep 28, 2018

Making government work better is the subject of the 101st episode. 

Our guest is Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit founded in 2001.

In this discussion , we delve into several topics: why he started the nonprofit, how government can effectively attract top talent (especially young talent), how the scale of the federal government should be a selling point, why presidential transitions matter, what three things he would do to make government work better, whether he despairs at how difficult it is to reform government and what inspires him.

Sep 13, 2018

Populism is the subject of our momentous episode 100 and our guest just wrote a book on the subject.

Fox News politics editor Chris Stirewalt is the author of the new book, “Every Man a King: A Short, Colorful History of American Populists” and the book’s timing could not be better. 

In this conversation, we examine populism through the years, from Andrew Jackson through Pat Buchanan, whether increasing government dependence is a goal of populism, what he learned in writing the book, how Buchanan brought us Trump and whether Obama’s record created the conditions for the rise of populism again.

Sep 10, 2018

Bill Bradley is our guest for the 99th episode.

He served in the U.S. Senate from 1979-1997 as a Democrat from New Jersey and ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2000.

Today he serves as Managing Director for Allen & Company and hosts a weekly radio show on SirusXM.

In this conversation, we talked about trade, Russia, the Middle East, and defense spending, before turning to what worries him most about Trump and how he believes the progressive movement is affecting the Democratic Party.

Sep 4, 2018

Our midterm election expert, Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report, is the guest for the 98th episode.

Our topics in this conversation: The current state of play for control of the House, whether either party benefitted from the primaries, whether Trump voters will turn out, if special elections are predictive and whether this is a wave election.

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