“If you flew in from Mars and you observed this situation, you would say, well, one party controls the House by two votes. They should surely compromise with a party that only has two votes less because that would be a sensible thing to do. But we don't do that. Both parties, if they control the House or the Senate by one or two votes, act as if they control it by 20 votes or 30 votes or 40 votes.”

Freakonomics Radio · Ideas & Essays · October 2026

Stephen Dubner asked whether the political center in the U.S. can hold. Rubenstein says he isn't sure and calls the system somewhat dysfunctional. Earlier in the conversation he blamed money in politics for making bipartisanship "archaic".

Freakonomics Radio · 2026-10-16 Listen to the episode → More from David Rubenstein → More Ideas & Essays quotes →

Transcript

Freakonomics Radio Around 29:03 into the episode

David Rubenstein

…is corrosive. And if it's limited, I think it would be the best thing you could possibly do. Now, under our Constitution, you'd have to change it because the Supreme Court has ruled on several occasions that money affects speech. So you've got to change the Constitution, and that's difficult to do.

Stephen J. Dubner

I'm sure you know the line from Yeats, the center cannot hold. Things fall apart. Do you think the center can and will hold in the U.S.?

David Rubenstein

I'm not sure. Time will tell. Right now, it's clear that we have a somewhat dysfunctional system. Think about this. If you control the House of Representatives by two votes, if you flew in from Mars and you observed this situation, you would say, well, one party controls the House by two votes. They should surely compromise with a party that only has two votes less because that would be a sensible thing to do. But we don't do that. Both parties, if they control the House or the Senate by one or two votes, act as if they control it by 20 votes or 30 votes or 40 votes. So

Stephen J. Dubner

let's pretend that I just flew in from Mars and I don't know anything about your U.S. president. Tell me a little bit about him.

David Rubenstein

Well, Donald Trump was a real estate developer in New York who was not thought to be a likely candidate to be president of the United States. But he ran. He had 16 other people he ran against. And then to the surprise of, I think, himself and his family and everybody else running, he beat the other…

Stephen J. Dubner

How do you rate or assess his performance, his behaviors, his adherence to governing norms?

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode

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