Yuval Levin

One of them is a Windsor chair.

And right next to it is this bench that is, it is turning colors.

It is rusting.

The paint is falling off of it.

It's flaking.

And you can tell that it's got like a long and difficult history.

And that's because it is the bench from the jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama, where the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

wrote his letter from Birmingham Jail.

Yuval Levin, welcome to the show. Thanks very much for having me, Ezra.

Yuval Levin, welcome to the show. Thanks very much for having me, Ezra.

Well, let me give you a kind of middle-aged answer to this question. I'm 47. I've been in Washington since I was 18, with a little break for graduate school. I've seen presidential terms since George W. Bush's first, and... One thing you learn over that time is that the first few weeks of a new administration are really surreal.

Well, let me give you a kind of middle-aged answer to this question. I'm 47. I've been in Washington since I was 18, with a little break for graduate school. I've seen presidential terms since George W. Bush's first, and... One thing you learn over that time is that the first few weeks of a new administration are really surreal.

They're very different from the rest of the time because the administration controls the agenda. And that isn't really the case most of the time. But in the first few weeks, they've made plans. And you don't know those plans generally. They do. And they're rolling them out in a certain pace at a certain way. And it just feels like they are in command of the world.

They're very different from the rest of the time because the administration controls the agenda. And that isn't really the case most of the time. But in the first few weeks, they've made plans. And you don't know those plans generally. They do. And they're rolling them out in a certain pace at a certain way. And it just feels like they are in command of the world.

So I think that it's natural in that period to think, wow, these people are really in control. The opposition is totally on the ground, on their backs. They don't know how to respond to this. That's always what it feels like. That happened with Bush. It happened with Obama. It's happened with Trump. It even happened with Biden, if we can remember four years ago.

So I think that it's natural in that period to think, wow, these people are really in control. The opposition is totally on the ground, on their backs. They don't know how to respond to this. That's always what it feels like. That happened with Bush. It happened with Obama. It's happened with Trump. It even happened with Biden, if we can remember four years ago.

And it doesn't take very long for that to break. The opposition is back and organized pretty quickly. That takes a couple of weeks maybe. And the world comes back at you too. And the rest of the time presidents spend a lot of their energy just responding to the world and what it throws at them and they're judged by how they do that. That's definitely going on here.

And it doesn't take very long for that to break. The opposition is back and organized pretty quickly. That takes a couple of weeks maybe. And the world comes back at you too. And the rest of the time presidents spend a lot of their energy just responding to the world and what it throws at them and they're judged by how they do that. That's definitely going on here.

And so it's very hard still to judge what we're looking at. I think a lot of people have come in with a very strong prejudice that this time the Trump team is much more competent. They have a much better idea of not only what they want to do, but how. And a lot of what we've seen is actually a lot like what the first term's first few weeks felt like. There's a lot of ambition.

And so it's very hard still to judge what we're looking at. I think a lot of people have come in with a very strong prejudice that this time the Trump team is much more competent. They have a much better idea of not only what they want to do, but how. And a lot of what we've seen is actually a lot like what the first term's first few weeks felt like. There's a lot of ambition.