Episode 1011: Annual Leadership Spook-tacular

Carter 0:00

Fun for me. I said to her, you can't touch me there. That's totally inappropriate. And she's like, oh, is this where I'm not supposed to touch you? Anyways, I've had a much better massage in Calgary.

Corey 0:11

Was that a bit? Are you trying to do a bit? It was funny.

Corey 0:17

not going to encourage this. Now he's doing fake, like hot mics here. So

Carter 0:21

So I know because you told me 13 times to watch out because we're going to have a hot mic. And

Carter 0:26

And that's why I did it. Sounds like

Zain 0:27

like a real story.

Carter 0:28

Could have been a real story. I

Zain 0:29

I want want them to keep going actually okay well let's do it after the intro music this

Zain 0:32

this is the strategist episode 10 11 my name is zane belger with me as always stephen carter cory hogan guys

Zain 0:39

what is going on it is our annual strategist halloween special yeah it's a mouthful but you know what carter we do it every year so you should be used to it by now oh

Carter 0:49

oh yeah i had to take the makeup off yeah they wouldn't let me keep the makeup on i had a whole skeleton thing going and

Carter 0:55

and she said that i'm glad to

Zain 0:57

hear it was a skeleton and not uh something else and not a shade of makeup that would be offensive

Carter 1:02

offensive skeleton she just said it looked too much like my future self so i was upset i

Carter 1:07

think she's trying to kill me to

Carter 1:09

be honest you know

Zain 1:10

know the strategist halloween special is something we do every year um obviously like many things we do every year yeah um yeah how is your halloween shaping up on on your end i mean non-strategist podcast wise are things in line are you doing full-size chocolate bars you seem like the type of person to do full-size chocolate bars to compensate uh

Corey 1:28

uh we don't do full-size chocolate bars but our house dead in

Zain 1:31

in the northeast man nicely

Zain 1:32

nicely done yeah the northeast spirit our

Corey 1:34

our house dead ends onto a busier street so and because the other side of the street has fewer houses nobody really comes down our street we get like six kids so i probably should do the full-size candy bars but i don't you you know why why

Corey 1:47

why live in that northeast life you

Zain 1:49

you know we we actually to be clear do full-size chocolate bars in that northeast life we just open them up and and just break them into pieces so because four kit kat pieces per full-size chocolate bar that's

Zain 2:01

that's why that's not true don't

Zain 2:03

don't lie to me how do you know that's not true how

Zain 2:05

how do you not know how do you know that's not what hey

Corey 2:08

one of our addresses is in the northeast right here out of the three of us right yeah

Corey 2:12

this is true uh

Zain 2:13

uh stephen carter how's your halloween setup going uh of course you're you're not wearing your makeup i suspect we'll be back on tomorrow uh when you're greeting um children at the doors um two questions for you what are you giving out and uh how many stephen carter costumes do you usually get per year we

Carter 2:30

we usually get three or four stephen carter costumes um it's hard to tell because you know bald white men all look the same um but uh we We have them come by, and I give them extra candy. This year, we've gone with the chocolate bar motif. We're at a new place for us, so we don't know how many people are going to come by. What

Zain 2:47

What do you mean you've gone with the chocolate bar motif? What the fuck does that mean? That means that we're going with chocolate bars instead

Zain 2:52

instead of chips. That's

Carter 2:54

lot of extra words. If I got chips, I'd eat all the chips. So we have to go with chocolate bars. Carter, you're an orange juice house,

Corey 2:59

house, aren't you? You

Corey 3:00

things of orange juice. Apple

Zain 3:01

house. So I was a, okay, I was king-sized, split-in-pieces house. house. Corey, you are, I suspect, regular size. Well,

Corey 3:10

Well, I'm actually going to be giving out Rishi Sunak's book, A New Era for Retail Bonds, How Our Savings Could Help SMEs Grow, which came out in 2017.

Zain 3:19

I'll also be giving UK politics-related items. I'll be giving leafs of lettuce, individual leafs, of course. I could afford to give the entire head of lettuce, but I'll be giving individual leafs. That's good to know.

Carter 3:31

You guys jest, but the most popular house in my neighborhood when i was a kid was the house that gave away uh the house that gave away little pads of paper the

Carter 3:39

the guy worked at a print shop and he no definitely not pads of paper they're realtors and then and

Carter 3:44

and you can go buy and pick up this is the most popular this is the most you guys mock where did you live oh you know how hard it was

Corey 3:51

was to get paper this was the 1920s yeah that's true Carter is submitting

Zain 3:56

submitting his homework in

Corey 3:56

in Len T. Wong newsprint.

Corey 4:00

What a deep pull for the Calgary heads out there. That's great. You know, I saw a Len T. Wong bus ad just today. I'm so excited. He's no Justin Haver,

Corey 4:11

but Len T. Wong can hold his own. Hey, my daughter went to a summer camp with Justin Haver's daughter. That's my claim to fame.

Carter 4:19

went to a summer camp

Corey 4:19

camp with Sharon's kids. Carter, how much do you think Justin Haver spends on marketing a month? I

Zain 4:22

I feel like Justin Haver probably spends, and I'm not exaggerating. $5

Zain 4:26

$5 million a month in marketing.

Zain 4:30

And if you don't, by the way, if you don't know, if you're listening, you're not from Calgary, if you don't know who Justin Haver is, you've got your own Justin Haver locally. You know this person, okay? They're generally white. They generally look like 10 years younger than Stephen Carter. And they spend about $8 million a month on their real estate marketing firm. In Calgary,

Zain 4:49

Calgary, Justin Haver, I'm sure every city's got their own.

Corey 4:51

I got to call you out. like part of the reason why you think justin haver is so widespread is because he's got the world's largest billboard like six blocks from your house yeah

Carter 5:00

you're a little bit local focused here yeah

Carter 5:02

i'll tell you something in surrey is what we call the white guys either yeah

Carter 5:06

yeah i mean i've just there there was all kinds of ads for well here's massive realtors let

Carter 5:11

let me tell you something

Zain 5:12

carter if we ran a poll in our city and

Zain 5:14

and you asked someone do

Zain 5:16

do you know your city counselor more than they know the name justin haver i bet how justin haver comes out on top every fucking time this is not a quadrant thing this is not a war thing i think justin haver's paper the city i

Carter 5:27

i wasn't actually going to tell cory this but we actually just did a poll in medicine hat brooks um oh very nice listeners of the pod might want to know why uh because there's a by-election there with daniel smith and uh name recognition cory hogan came out just a sliver in front of me and i gotta be telling you i'm pretty pissed off wait normally i i dominate these things but cory hogan is now a smidge in front of me we think that they think you're john horgan that's the only way that it makes sense because john horgan retired cory

Corey 5:55

cory morgan it's that cory morgan bump that cory

Carter 5:59

okay is this actually

Zain 6:01

actually true you actually polled uh there's

Zain 6:04

no way this is true

Carter 6:04

true yeah it's not totally true i'm gonna send you guys the poll as we're talking yeah

Carter 6:09

it's totally okay there's

Zain 6:10

there's absolutely no way that is true I'm going

Carter 6:13

going to send you the poll I suspect you didn't add

Zain 6:16

name I suspect you didn't add my name to the area of

Carter 6:19

of Brooke's medicine hat

Carter 6:22

hear where we were polling?

Zain 6:24

despite the posters I feel like the penetration there is low I will say one final plug, as we of course have a Halloween through line, it is of course the annual Strategist Halloween special if you are looking for a last minute costume and there's three of you in the household hold

Zain 6:42

um the strategist i mean this is a it's it's a slam dunk i mean it is highly recognizable um it works uh with any constellation uh kids parents all kids teenagers uh you know we're extremely extremely happy to provide you tips uh on dressing uh cory and i will actually uh respond to any uh suggestions you may have on how to best dress as us Corey will, of course, advise you on the best Washington Wizards hats. I've got a wide selection that I can advise you on as well. So just think about it, folks. It's a costume that could really make a special Halloween season.

Corey 7:22

It really comes together quick, too. It

Zain 7:25

You've got to think about comfort.

Corey 7:25

comfort. A lot of people are dressing up as giant dinosaurs. Who wants to wear that all night?

Zain 7:29

night? No one wants to. You've got

Zain 7:31

dress as three white dudes on a podcast. And that's what makes it, okay? Okay, that is what

Carter 7:37

it. I've sent you guys the poll. Page four, I think it is.

Zain 7:42

Okay, this is great. We'll verify this at some point. Carter, anything else you want to get out of your system before we jump into our first segment on this Halloween special?

Carter 7:51

No, that's all I have for you right now.

Zain 7:53

Let's move it on to our first segment. Our first segment, Don't Be a Scaredy Cat. Guys, I want to talk about a very particular debate. I want to talk about a debate, not even in this country. i want to talk about a political debate that happened in pennsylvania uh cory's

Zain 8:10

cory's smiling because he's now noticed that he's

Zain 8:12

he's actually in the ball carter was not bullshitting

Corey 8:16

17 of people in this writing have heard of me that's that's pretty remarkable that's pretty good you

Zain 8:21

you have literally you have two first

Zain 8:24

first names as your first name and last name of course they've heard of you but hang on

Zain 8:30

brooks medicine head everyone's cory and hogan are one of the the top 10 most popular names there and you put them together of course it's going to be 17 we both

Carter 8:39

both crushed cyril turton crushed him he's an elected mla crushed him sorry

Corey 8:46

sorry cyril sorry yeah okay

Corey 8:49

i want to know the two percent of people who have not heard of rachel notley by the way but that's i know we can move on yeah

Zain 8:54

yeah okay this is this is interesting i'm looking at right now everyone's heard of okay this is good um cory

Zain 8:59

cory let's talk about this debate this is a a debate in Pennsylvania where there is an open Senate seat. And of course, those who may not be aware, the U.S. midterms happen in less than 10 days from now. On Tuesday the 8th, there's an open Senate seat. Pennsylvania is one of the big battlegrounds between Dr. Oz. Yes, that Dr. Oz is running as a Republican, a carpetbagging Republican who, you know, once may have been pro-choice, certainly is not anymore. Once may have been for gun legislation, certainly is not anymore. He's got the Trump endorsement. He's running as a Republican.

Zain 9:35

And you got him against John Fetterman, the Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania,

Zain 9:39

Pennsylvania, this guy who's larger than life, quite literally, over six feet tall, wears hoodies, relatable, blue collar vibe. The reason I bring all of this up, Corey, is that all of this triangulated to a debate where John Fetterman, who'd suffered a stroke five months ago, was in this debate with Dr. Oz. Oz. And this debate did not go well for John Fetterman, mainly because of the fact that he's still recovering from a stroke. And what

Zain 10:09

what I want to talk about is really this concept of this debate. And in some ways, you might be asking, well, why did John Fetterman's team agree to this debate? Because it seemed like in some ways, perhaps turning down this debate was a worse option for them. And you had Dr. Oz for months, egging him on saying, you got to debate, you got to debate. This is how we showcase to the voters who's fit for office. I want to test that assumption after this debate, because for many, and normally, Corey, I would play a clip of this debate. I don't think that's appropriate. I don't want to do that. People can find it online. They can see exactly what happened. But I want to talk about this concept of a debate being an accurate litmus test. We've talked about a version of this before. But Corey, give me your sense of it. After seeing clips of this or watching this debate, where Fetterman clearly struggled against Oz, where does the debate as a core construct of how we elect people, or at least a core part of a proof of how we elect people fit in your mind after watching this and experiencing this past week?

Corey 11:13

Yeah. So can we start here? I

Corey 11:15

I didn't watch it. I didn't watch it. Okay. Start there. start there and

Corey 11:18

and my um view of

Corey 11:21

this debate is like in my mind john federman was beyond terrible like couldn't

Corey 11:28

even string a word together just based on the social media coverage of it in my mind oz wiped the floor with him and one of the things that i think feeds into your point about maybe this isn't the best way to determine how somebody should be

Corey 11:39

be elected particularly in a position like senate and

Corey 11:42

and you know the funny thing is like senator has a different job requirement than a governor, for example. And

Corey 11:47

yet we give them the same test,

Corey 11:49

test, that being the debate.

Corey 11:52

I do wonder if one of the challenges is people don't watch debates, and it's the meta-analysis of the debate that drives their opinions of the debate. And so there's

Corey 12:02

lot of people, I would imagine, even in Pennsylvania, who have opinions about this debate, who believe that John Fetterman lost this debate, and

Corey 12:08

and they are doing it entirely on meta

Corey 12:11

meta-analysis, right? People talking about the debate oh he did so bad or or whatever it is and so one of the challenges we have is this

Corey 12:21

this is not something where you have universal audiences to begin with and so a lot of us read

Corey 12:26

read about debates and hear about debates and score debates not based on our own feelings but based on the feelings of the people that we uh

Corey 12:33

uh you know already agree with or or commentators that we listen to more regularly and

Corey 12:38

and that's a challenge too right i mean it's not unique to debates a lot of our news about politics is filtered through such channels but it's it's not people don't really like this is not the

Corey 12:49

the entertainment it was in the 19th century where everyone would come from far and wide and watch a debate for four hours right yeah

Corey 12:55

yeah it's just a thing that networks begrudgingly post and then people pretend to watch like pbs you know it's like the old nelson thing when they actually started actually checking what people were watching on their tvs instead of the journals channels, PBS viewership cratered because people

Corey 13:10

lie. They say what they're supposed to do, which is watch public broadcasting instead of monster truck rallies, or watch debates instead of definitely not watching debates because debates are boring.

Zain 13:23

that's a challenge. This phenomenon of the meta coverage is not unique, right? We saw this, and let's just use this American midterm cycle as another proof point, right? Warnock versus Herschel Walker, Clips out of that were posted by both sides. If you knew anything about that Georgia debate, you probably knew that Herschel Walker pulled out a prop, i.e. a fake police badge to indicate that he did indeed work for the police. Or

Zain 13:50

Ohio, J.D. Vance against Tim Ryan, right? You probably saw that. If you saw anything, I should say, you probably saw that takedown of J.D. Vance. Carter, you know, I don't want to get into that same conversation we always do around the importance of debates, et cetera, because this is different. And I'll get to what's different about this conversation in a second. But give me your thoughts here. After either witnessing clips or moments of this debate, whether you did or not, from the Fetterman-Oz debate, where do debates kind of stand in your mind? Give me your table set, and then I'll move on to the heart of the conversation that I want to focus on for this.

Carter 14:27

Well, I'm not a really big fan of debates. I think that especially given that debates have been restaged now by media companies to try and make them into something more designed to capture a television audience. We're going to put 90-second answers with a 30-second rebuttal and no one's talking. They're either trying to contain it so that no one's talking over each other or they're trying to let it go so that everybody is talking over them. And, you know, I've been lucky enough to, you know, Alison Redford went into a debate the Thursday before her leadership vote and her mother just passed on the Tuesday. So, you know, that was one of those types of debates where how is Alison Redford going to lose? You know, personally, I think that John Fetterman should not have stood for Senate this year. He had a massive stroke after the nomination. nation, um, he should have stood down and allowed someone who was healthier to, to, to, to run for this seat. Um,

Carter 15:31

but that's not the way it played out. And so he walked into this debate. Um, there are two narratives that I've heard coming out of this that favor Fetterman. Uh, one argument coming out is that Fetterman showed that he was working through it. You know, there's lots of people who've who've

Carter 15:47

who've got family with strokes and blah, blah, blah. That's bullshit.

Carter 15:52

Sometimes, yes, we root for the underdog, but when

Carter 15:55

when you walk into the voting booth, I'm not sure that that's necessarily going to be the path. The second narrative that's come out of this is that Oz, when he said that an abortion should be between a woman, her doctor, and local elected political officials, Oz had a a clear field and somehow still managed to score on himself um so yeah that was you

Carter 16:20

you know that's that's a little bit you

Carter 16:24

know that at least favors Fetterman but I just I don't think he should have been on the field at all you

Zain 16:29

you know Corey Carter's point is is slowly creeping to what I want to talk about because Carter's getting to the content of it which is these debates are rarely about the content I mean on both sides of the border right they're really about the performance how well the line was delivered versus what was said, right? How nice the takedown or how clean the takedown was of J.D. Vance in 45 seconds versus the rest of the 90 minutes. You know, the prop and how Warnock responded to it versus the rest of what matters in these cases.

Zain 17:00

What I want to kind of jump into, and is there anyone who responds here to Carter's comments before we kind of jump into the thought exercise I want to lean into?

Corey 17:07

Oh, look, I'll say I also don't much care for debates they are so scripted for starters it's everybody just trying to get their canned lines out and my biggest problem with them though is that we we tend to only do one now

Corey 17:21

or two yes or three maybe but that's it and um you guys know me you know i don't like hockey very much it's not like i hate hockey it's not like i'm opposed to it but it's not my favorite sport the reason why it's not my favorite sport is anybody

Corey 17:33

anybody can win any day randomly right like there's

Zain 17:36

there's like just a lucky bounce

Corey 17:36

bounce that goes in and and the randomness of hockey i think if you line up the major sports hockey is the one where it's most likely that the person who's not expected to win wins and

Corey 17:48

and a lot of people like that about hockey and i get that but um you know my challenge is it's so much not about talent and it's so much about the randomness of how a puck bounces off of something a skate you know a crossbar whatever it is and i can't tell you the number of times i've been at a hockey game with a friend i'm talking to them i've got a beer in my hand the light goes off the horn goes off and i realized i missed it and that was the only action for like a you know because there's only three goals that are going to be scored by that particular team um

Corey 18:17

debates are a bit like that

Corey 18:19

one winning one debate really says nothing because it is so you know random it's so short and the best person doesn't always win the debate you know if you had a best of seven series maybe Maybe you could make an argument to me that, oh, it's showing who's the quickest and who's got the strongest command of policy. But as much as anything right now, it just tells you who had a bad burrito earlier in the day, right? There's

Corey 18:41

just a randomness to these single event debates that I loathe.

Corey 18:45

And there are other ways to suss out some of these things if you're only going to do

Corey 18:51

do one of them. I wasn't really joking about these four-hour debates. They used to be much longer. It

SPEAKER_01 18:56

It would be between

Corey 18:56

between two people. It was way less scripted. it would go back and forth you'd really see around hour two probably who actually has command of their fucking policy and stamina and

Zain 19:05

depth yeah yeah exactly and

Corey 19:06

and um and so yeah i think that in some ways it

Corey 19:12

it was perhaps the best way we had to gauge these things 150 years ago but i'm not really sure it's true in 2022 well

Zain 19:19

well carter it doesn't need to be true anymore because this is what the conversation is that i want to get into carter it is the halloween spectacular we're giving you a a magic wand, Stephen Carter. I'm giving you a magic wand to say, I want to replace debates with X.

Zain 19:36

Insert here, Carter, what would you, with

Zain 19:39

with your strategist brain, with your political experience that you've had over decades, seeing how candidates perform, seeing what's required to do the job. This is as much strategist as it is, let's say, beneficiary for the populace, the voter, what works for them, what would serve them the best, what

Zain 19:58

what would you start as the building blocks to replace a debate? It can be something similar to a debate. It can be something totally different to a debate. Whatever it is, it is now mandated by you. It is now mandated that this happens in the next race, that this pilot project will happen in the next state or the next province or the next country you get to choose. That's the miracle of Halloween, Stephen even Carter, you get to wave that magic wand.

Zain 20:23

What would it be? What would you start

Corey 20:24

start with? Can I jump in?

Corey 20:26

ask? I'm glad I'm saving the audience.

Corey 20:31

What are we trying to determine with it? Like, this is

Corey 20:35

before we get to the actual thing. Like, what are we trying to measure people on? What are the things that we as voters need to know about our elected candidates before we give them the job? This

Zain 20:44

This is why I asked Carter with his experiences to get us started with his his experience about what matters in office, what matters in terms of how to govern, what skills are required versus what skills we perhaps need to perform to symbolize. Carter, bake that into your answer. Where do you start and why?

Carter 21:01

Well, I think the reason for all of this is to determine how a person's going to govern, right? So how will they actually govern? And I think it's really interesting. Obviously, debates are about trying to get your talking points out, right? So your Your talking points are X, Y, and Z, and they're all cleverly crafted. Well, we here in North America, around the world, actually, have just gone through, we're in the midst of one crisis, and we just went through another crisis for the last three years. And that was how people would respond to various pandemics, and

Carter 21:32

and it resulted in inflation, right? So we're in the midst of the inflation crisis. We just went through the pandemic crisis. Arguably, we're still in the pandemic crisis, but we've chosen to ignore it. So we move on. Right. And we've we've moved on to these, you know, these these are the things that actually changed the way that our government functioned.

Carter 21:51

And there was no there was no evidence of how Jason Kenney would respond. There was no evidence of how Justin Trudeau would respond. There was no evidence of how any of our elected leaders. And now we we're

Carter 22:04

we're we always are doing our elections on past data. Right. How would you respond to a hurricane that's already hit? Well, that's an easy one because we know what we want to hear from the candidates. What

Carter 22:15

What I'd be interested in seeing, and I would never allow my candidate to do this if they were seeking election, but I'd love to see a case study.

Carter 22:24

I'd love to see people get up there with no idea what the case study is going to be.

Carter 22:28

And they reach into the hat and they pull out a topic.

Carter 22:34

And that topic is a hypothetical situation where they have to determine how they would actually react. and what steps they would actually do.

Carter 22:41

Right. Like a, okay.

Carter 22:43

You know, we've been seeing what happened in Uvalde, Texas with elected officials and non-elected officials responding to gun violence. How would you respond to gun violence? And actually having a situation where they have to walk us through as an audience, what's actually going to go through their minds? Who are the experts that they're going to call in? Why are they calling those experts in? What are they wanting to hear from them? How would they actually manage it? I'd love to see a case study where they actually got the opportunity to show us how they're actually going to lead in a situation or circumstance that has some reality to it. Because these debates aren't real. The debates don't tell us a damn thing about how they're actually going to govern. What they tell us is a set of tools that are valuable in politics, rhetoric, debate, the the ability to put your opponent into a corner, those have some value, but they offer very little in the way of value to the actual elected representatives or to the voting public.

Zain 23:47

So Carter, just to be clear, and Corey, I'm coming to you in a second here, your proposal would be keep the televised portion of it, right? Like let's walk me through this. Keep the televised portion of it. I assume have a moderator, but change the bulk of the time on stage. How long would this be? Would this be a couple hours for you? Would this be like a marathon, like Corey you suggested of debates of year past, what would you be waving your magic wand on in terms of time? How many would you want these to happen? Give me a bit more. I know I'm asking to make it up. Yeah,

Carter 24:14

Yeah, it'd be really cool, I think, to have them do 30

Carter 24:18

30 minutes each, right? Because the reality is you're never going to get through all the way to the details. You can bring two of your key staff with you.

Carter 24:25

And you're going to work with your key staff and you get like 10 minutes of preparation. operation and then you're going to go through how you would actually respond to this real- Like a tabletop exercise.

Carter 24:36

Right, a table, you know, like where they're going to, you know, like the president of the United States is tested on how he or she would manage a nuclear reaction. How would you do that? How would you deal with, you know, you're going to be the state senator. Senator, how would you deal with the following situation, right? You've got a piece of legislation coming coming through and, you know, the

Carter 24:58

clock is ticking on the dead ceiling, right? How would you deal with it? What information would you want to see? How are you not going to play politics, but how are you going to actually protect the people of Pennsylvania so that we actually know that when we go to work the next day, it actually functions and give us a 10 minute reaction to it. Not a, you know, here's my 30 seconds speech. Who are you going to listen to? Why are you going to to listen to those people and what questions you're going to ask, what answers you're looking for. I think that that might be, I mean, I don't, like I say, I don't think I'd ever recommend it to my clients, but I do think that if you really want to get to the bottom, it may be terrible television, but I think it would actually give us some answers as to how people are going to behave in real difficult situations.

Zain 25:44

Corey, I'm going to turn this over to you. Give me your reaction to what you heard from carter in terms of how he'd remodel or uh from the ground up uh the the debate if he could replace it with something and then give me yours what would you wave a magic wand on to to replace the the debate with i

Corey 26:00

i like a lot of what he said um and maybe

Corey 26:03

maybe maybe i'll just jump right here and i'll go back but sure a lot of what he's described are is not so different from hiring for any other role you know it's almost like a job interview and in fact maybe an interview view is a big component of this right but the case study the idea that you give a 30-minute presentation or lecture or powerpoint almost right on a different topic maybe

Corey 26:23

maybe we should be throwing in background check and maybe there should be this public expectation of background checks that that have somewhat drifted away in the past right so whether that be criminal whether that be credit all of that depending on the nature of the role and uh and maybe there is like a formal resume component um god knows hiring is not perfect but i think that there's actually a lot from the hr world we can lean on here but

Corey 26:45

but you know for me i continue to be sitting on before

Corey 26:48

before you decide how you're going to measure someone you better decide what you're measuring so

Corey 26:52

so let me let me tell you what i think you need to know about a candidate before you select them for office that's great

Corey 26:59

not necessarily a complete list i'm sure that we could all add to it here let's

Corey 27:02

let's start with like your philosophy what you believe what you want to do so almost the things you will do day one day you know i actually think debate's a pretty shit format for that but that's one of the things you you try to get out in a debate. This is what I believe. I am liberal, I'm a conservative, I'm a socialist, whatever it may be.

Corey 27:21

The next thing you try to show is wisdom. And by that, I mean depth of information on files. So the background that you bring into it, command of files, because that's what you're going to rely on when you actually have to then deal with situations as they come up. You're going to say, well, I've been there before. Well, I've got this degree well i worked in this various situation that would be somewhat

Corey 27:42

somewhat relevant there so that i'm going to call that wisdom and

Corey 27:46

and i do draw a line from that to intelligence which i'll call mental acuity as well right and that's really important for me because carter's right so much about the job is not what you plan to do it's how you react to what actually happens all

Zain 28:00

a sudden we've got a

Corey 28:01

global pandemic you don't want a dumb ass there right you want somebody who's able to to process information, new information, synthesize it with that wisdom that they've brought in and put together something that's fairly coherent and then is able to react quickly.

Corey 28:15

So that's all kind of sensible, but then you've also got the other things that we often call the, I'd like to have a beer with them.

Corey 28:24

there's compassion and empathy. What do they care about? Who do they care about? How much do they care? That's something that we try to get out of a a debate. I think that's a bit of a bullshit exercise, but that's one of the things we try to do. And then temperament. Are they going to lose it? We talked a lot about this with Donald Trump, right? Can he control himself? Can he maintain it? Can he keep it together? Are they going to fall to pieces in the crucible? And you guys were talking about tabletops.

Corey 28:47

How many CEOs have we seen fall apart during tabletop exercise?

Zain 28:51

Oh, yeah. Too many.

Zain 28:53

Too many. Never reveal any

Corey 28:54

any of the company names,

Zain 28:55

way too many. And the companies are sometimes way way too big yes

Corey 29:00

then there's two things that i think debates don't actually give us any insight in or very little at the most uh

Corey 29:06

uh although the fetterman example cuts against health right you know arguably there are examples where we've elected people who are very unwell and we just did not know and

Corey 29:16

and um ethics and i believe debate does nothing really on that front besides if they just act like a shit heel but it doesn't tell you if they've comported themselves in an ethical fashion so

Corey 29:27

you know like i think you could make that list longer but philosophy wisdom intelligence compassion temperament health ethics there's

Corey 29:33

there's a pretty reasonable start the

Corey 29:36

the debate gives us glancing blows at all of this and i guess the point i want to underline is there's probably not one thing we can do that will provide us all this information but

Corey 29:46

if we can think about this in terms of like a bundle of things that inform voters we can cover off a lot of them with things like steven's idea of the you know the presentation or having an interview or giving them a case study um and there's things that we can do that legislated like you must provide your last three years of income tax returns or you must provide a public version of this background form because you know these are all your employers here if you're going to be premier i'm not saying every mla but perhaps for the most senior jobs and

Corey 30:17

yeah i i think in general debate

Corey 30:21

is probably going to only give you a good reading on the intelligence one, on the mental acuity. I think debate kind of sucks for the rest of it.

Zain 30:30

that's really interesting. Corey, can you run that list through one more time, just for listeners and for myself, so I can document it? You've got philosophy, wisdom, and then take it from there. Intelligence, compassion,

Corey 30:37

compassion, temperament, health, ethics.

Zain 30:44

Fascinating. And I agree with a lot of this. Hard to disagree, Carter. Carter, your reaction to this. And then there's something Carter said that I want to get both of your thoughts on that I thought was really interesting. But Carter, this framework that Corey's presented around the baseline of what you need, does

Zain 30:58

does this work with your format?

Carter 31:01

Yeah, I think that some of it does. I mean, my format is primarily designed to get at that temperament and to showcase the skills that the person will be bringing to the table.

Carter 31:12

You know, I think that the other questions are, who will you ultimately surround yourself with? I mean, and those questions are so easily batted away by most premiers. I mean, judgment.

Carter 31:23

Yeah. You're right. There's a judgment

Zain 31:25

And this is exactly what I want to jump on. And Corey, maybe I'll interrupt you there, Carter. Get your reaction to this, Corey.

Zain 31:31

Carter's exercise includes bringing on other people. And I think for the longest time, and you guys might disagree, that these debates were all about I and I alone. And Frank, I shouldn't say they were. They still are. Me and me alone. I will do this. I can do this. And anyone who's known government knows that you distribute a lot of the successes, but you also have to distribute a lot of the responsibility, even if it's a strong PMO or a strong presidency or a strong premier's office. Talk to me about this concept of in this format showcasing your ability to work with others, whether handed to you or chosen by you to kind of drive to conclusions and outcomes. Absolutely fucking love

Corey 32:11

love it. You know, when we were talking about the Ontario debate, one of the things that was lighting my hair on fire was that you had Horvath and Del Duca talking about what an outrage it was that Ford had a binder. And yes, maybe it was a violation of the rules. yeah

Corey 32:28

my point then and i'll make it again is it's

Corey 32:31

it's it's kind of dumb to say you can't have a binder do you think that the premier does not have a binder in front of them when they're in a briefing like it's it's not unreasonable for somebody to have briefing materials here yeah

Zain 32:41

yeah so i think

Corey 32:41

think the more you can make it like the real job the better and in the real job you have a team right

Corey 32:46

right this is like one of those bullshit

Corey 32:49

bullshit high school math exams you'd have where they'd say no calculators when

Corey 32:53

when in in your fucking life are you ever not going to have a calculator,

Corey 32:57

Your premier, when are you not going to have your team? When are you not going to have a binder? And we should get rid of these conceits because it's much more like the real job if you provide those tools.

Zain 33:08

Carter, you know, one of the things that I feel like, and Corey's list is great. One of the things I feel like is required in these jobs, and I kind of maybe will broaden the framework here from beyond politics to maybe these executive leadership jobs, is synthesis, right, is taking a mountain of information and finding the nugget of insight or the nugget of truth,

Zain 33:31

truth, so to speak, that helps you make a decision or that helps you kind of say, okay, so to be clear, X leads to Y, which leads to Z. Are we right? And everyone kind of says, yes, that is actually right. And he's like, okay, so then we should do option A. And people are like, yes, okay, that makes sense. How many times have we seen that a good leader has that skill, deal, Carter, to take thousands of pages, hundreds of pages, mountain of information and drive to a clear-eyed conclusion.

Carter 33:58

Well, I mean, that's ultimately what we're aiming for here because, I

Carter 34:01

mean, I often talk about how in the premier's office, there's no such thing as an easy choice, right?

Carter 34:07

right? The 50%, you know, the 90-10 decisions are made by low-level frontline staff. The 75-25 are made by ADMs and managers, and then you get the deputy ministers are making most of the 70-30 type things, and the ministers are making your 60-40s. The stuff that lands in the premier's desk, the stuff that lands in the governor's desk, the stuff that goes to the – that

Carter 34:36

that stuff is all going to be in the 51-49 category, right?

Carter 34:42

You know, we had power blackouts during the Redford days. We had power blackouts. We were browning out industry in order to ensure

Carter 34:52

ensure that people were getting electricity. You have any idea how complicated that is? What

Carter 34:57

What do you want to do?

Carter 34:59

You know, do you want to increase rates on people? Do you want to encourage, you know, allow the blackouts to continue? Do you want the blackouts to, you know, to stop? how are you going to make this all happen given these competing objectives do you want to shut down resident do you want 10 000 residences yeah

Carter 35:18

not have power or do you want to shut down some uh some power in uh industrial alberta right which do you want to do both

Carter 35:27

both have a consequence now you got to choose between those these aren't an easy decision this is why i landed on the premier's desk and i'll tell you something it took me forever to figure it out And, you know, not just me, but I was the one in the briefing with

Carter 35:44

with all the senior bureaucrats because the premier was out shaking everybody's hand, kissing all the babies, making sure that all of the stuff that the public view was being taken care of. And so I would get briefed. The deputy minister would be briefing me. We would have all these different smart people, and then we would synthesize the problem, come back to it and say, okay, we're agreed. This is our best solution. And our best solution often wasn't a good solution.

Carter 36:13

It was the best we could manage.

Zain 36:16

You know, Corey, I kind of want to throw one more curveball into this as we kind of talk about synthesis.

Zain 36:20

fair to almost say that these debates, as they're structured right now, they disproportionately oversample rhetoric or the ability to lead through oratory, to lead through persuasion.

Zain 36:34

How important, and this is almost an aside, but it doesn't have to be because this is an open format. What would you do if you could replace debates? How important in your mind for political leaders is the written word?

Zain 36:46

Is there ability to communicate on paper? Is there ability to kind of communicate? And it kind of leads into the conversation of synthesis and distilling. And I don't mean flowery rhetoric. I mean, clear-eyed sort of executive style thinking around how you would take that 100 pages and mount it down to the one paragraph conclusion. In your mind, how important is that from what you've seen? And is there a way that we could test that for our leaders? And you might say, listen, it's less important in politics than in other executive jobs. But I want to open up that question for both of you and get your take on it. Because as many of us realize that it really comes down to, yes, your ability to orate one to a thousand, one to a million in certain cases. But it's two things. It's the one to small communication that we've talked about before, the one to the room of 10, but then something we actually don't talk about a lot, which is your ability in the written word to be clear-eyed and persuasive with your communications.

Corey 37:41

actually don't believe it's very important at all.

Corey 37:44

I'm thinking back on my

Corey 37:47

my almost four years in government, and I can't think of a

Corey 37:51

a premier writing anything down that I was like, okay, I need this and I've got to deal with this.

Zain 37:56

this. Such an ephemeral job for them, isn't it? Well,

Corey 37:59

Well, yeah, I mean, a lot of it is making decisions and providing your judgment in the moment.

Corey 38:03

And once the decisions made, it falls to others to articulate it. And a lot of the time, it's them reacting to the written word. It's the briefing notes that come from those deputy ministers, Stephen Carter was talking about, the briefing notes that come from their chiefs of staff, which

Corey 38:16

which is not to say that premiers can't write. Right. Both Jason Kenney and Rachel Notley are very good writers, but

Corey 38:22

but it's not it's not actually, I think, the most important part of the job. It is it is the decision making that's important, not

Corey 38:31

the not the articulation in

Corey 38:33

in the written word. Right. Like the requirement is to articulate in a different sense and convey. And, you know, one of the things I think we've all probably found in our lives is sometimes

Corey 38:43

sometimes when I'm having trouble writing something, I'll just actually I'll use this example. I would often say to clients, right. When they were really like, they'd write something down or they'd be putting

Corey 38:54

putting a brief together and I couldn't make heads or tails of it. Yes.

Corey 38:57

I would just ask them to talk to me. And then they

Corey 39:00

would come out in like 15 seconds. Right. It's a real art to actually write something down. And we're much better at conveying things through a spoken word than we are written word because

Corey 39:10

because we can lean on body language and tone and just

Corey 39:13

so much more that's available to you.

Corey 39:16

That's the skill set really that politicians

Zain 39:22

Nowadays, nobody's reading. It's a very interesting point, but in some ways, Corey, you've probably experienced this in your executive world that having a CEO or an executive who can be clear in their communications, super important in that world, whereas politics perhaps slightly different in that sense. I know there's caveats to all this. Carter, I want to get your take. Corey Corey makes a really good point here. From our workflow, I know how you work because we've worked together for a while, but you're a phone call guy, right? You're like a short texting, but phone call guy. Yeah, you're not a writer. I'm a writer. You're not a writer. I've become that too in many ways. And to Carter's mold, even in my day to day, it's really about picking up the phone and being like, can we just hash this out? Because it's going to take me much longer to write it. And it probably won't be as clear eyed than I can probably explain it to you over the phone. But Carter, talk to me about this. Let's round out the conversation here. The written word as it relates to our leaders, Corey says, overrated in that sense in terms of a skill to perhaps test. Do you disagree or do you agree?

Carter 40:16

I totally agree. I mean, if I was asked, would you rather have a premier

Carter 40:20

premier or a leader that can write or one who can read?

Carter 40:24

I would take reading a thousand times. As

Zain 40:26

As part of synthesis, right? Well,

Carter 40:28

Well, I mean, the ability to, so you're getting these briefings. And inside the briefings, oftentimes there will be a line, a note, or just something that's not even highlighted. And

Carter 40:41

understanding that one tidbit of information is the difference between understanding what's happening and not understanding what's happening.

Carter 40:48

And I need the premier to be able to read that and understand that. If

Carter 40:51

you are talking to the premier afterwards and

Carter 40:54

and trying to explain the decision-making matrix that you're setting up and that decision-making matrix is misunderstood because they missed that one line, they missed that one point that was really important, and then you have to go and explain it. First of all, no one likes explaining to the premier, right? You're

Carter 41:15

explaining to the premier, you've got big problems because it almost sounds like you're talking down to them. right?

Carter 41:21

right? When you're explaining to them, you, the briefing note was there, the briefing note supposed to do what it's supposed to do, right? It's supposed to carry this work for you.

Carter 41:31

And if it doesn't, if they've missed the point of the briefing note, because they don't have the reading comprehension, or they just didn't, they

Carter 41:38

they didn't care enough to really understand it,

Carter 41:41

man, you've got real problems. I don't need them to write a briefing note. I don't need them to write a memo about the briefing note. They

Carter 41:47

They can sit down with me and, uh, and say, this is what's going to happen, boom, that's what's going to happen. You

Carter 41:54

You don't need that written word. You need them to understand and then be able to articulate very clearly what their expectations are. And then you've got yourself a partnership.

Zain 42:06

We're going to leave that segment there. That segment, of course, brought to us by our sponsor, Flair Airlines. Flair Airlines, it's a horror every night. Let's move it on to our next segment. Our next segment, boo to you from our 44 billion dollar crew guys that's part of our halloween special we want to talk about things that make your skin crawl steven carter cory hogan elon musk now officially owns twitter and he's wasting no time in his 44 billion dollar acquisition of twitter as its chief twit he's already changed the home page he has now asked for uh by november 7th which is next uh which is next Monday, Monday after next, to have a new $20 a month subscription to keep your verification, your blue check. So that applies to you too, certainly. He's moving fast and he's breaking things, Corey. This is what they've said in the tech world. This is how you move. This is what you're supposed to do. Well, he's moving fast with his $44 billion company. There's always some things that are going to break. But give me a sense of your first days of Elon Musk owning Twitter. And then I want to start talking a bit about a few of the things I mentioned and including some of the hate speech comments that we've now seen take a bit of a meteoric rise, correlation causation, as part of Elon's reign. But give me your analysis of Elon's first days as Twitter's new owner and chief twit.

Corey 43:25

Well, maybe as a bridge from the last one, can I just say the one area where politicians do write routinely these days is Twitter, right?

Zain 43:33

Good point. You're seeing

Corey 43:35

And by the way, just as almost an aside on the way here, I'm

Corey 43:39

I'm a huge believer in the value of writing. You kind

Corey 43:42

kind of put some words in my mouth in terms of whether I thought it was a useful skill or not.

Corey 43:47

I've never seen politicians do it. They lean so heavily on the other side, but I believe this

Zain 43:52

this is the strongest

Corey 43:54

strongest when you write, right? Like you really have to know what the hell you're talking about to put it on paper. You have to know the pros, the cons, all of that there. Now,

Corey 44:00

in terms of Elon Musk and in terms of his first couple of days in Twitter, I

Corey 44:06

I mean, in some ways, you said it's the tech bro way almost of doing that.

Corey 44:12

But it's the opposite of everything they will teach you in a management textbook about how you're supposed to deal with people.

Corey 44:19

He came in after musing about laying off 75% of the workforce. He's now said it won't be that. There was some reporting that layoffs of maybe up to 50% started on the weekend.

Corey 44:31

There was a suggestion that if he doesn't, and this is, by the way, there's reporting on this. I'm not, I can't say it's 100% confirmed yet, but this idea that if they don't get in this idea of being able to bill for verification within,

Corey 44:43

by November 7th, they're fired, right? Yes. I

Zain 44:46

I mean, that's the team that's developing this new feature within the product that is known as Twitter. If they don't do it and they don't have it up and running, they're going to be all fired. Yes.

Corey 44:55

Yes. I mean, that's crazy, right? And it creates this kind of collective responsibility where anybody who's worked on a development team will know sometimes there's bottlenecks, right? And sometimes it's one person. You could have the world's best team and one idiot, and Elon Musk seems to think, well, I'll just fire them all, right? That's not really how these things should work. And I feel like he

Corey 45:19

he is – I

Corey 45:20

I think the problem with any smart, talented person is that they can believe their own press. And when you are the richest person in the world, that's probably triply so. And part

Corey 45:29

part of me thinks the basic idea of charging for verification, I mean, not the craziest idea. I joked online that the blue check's an indicator that you're bad with money now is what this is going to mean. But in

Corey 45:44

there's about half a million blue checks. And of those, about a quarter are journalists.

Corey 45:50

Conceivably, their company is going to pay for them. conceivably most of the people who are verified were verified on behalf of either business interests or journalistic interests or whatnot and they'll probably find a way to get it paid by somebody else and

SPEAKER_01 46:03

and so not a let's

Corey 46:05

let's just say half a million like like they don't go any bigger but they just keep that half a million and let's pretend they get 100 conversion it's

Corey 46:11

it's 120 million dollars a year not a crazy idea but

Corey 46:15

but to execute it in this way and in such a antagonizing way within your own company and the amount of churn that's going to create,

Corey 46:22

I don't even know where to start with this, Zane. I mean, this is some madman action here.

Corey 46:29

And I'm not convinced it'll work with an organization that

Corey 46:34

that feels like they're under such epic threat.

Zain 46:38

Carter, let's talk about this a bit more, this particular thread Corey's introduced around. And we can keep talking about Elon Musk's management style and his philosophy here as well. Yeah.

Zain 46:49

But I do want to talk about this, and this is reporting, but let's jump on it because I think it's quite interesting. And it seems to me credible reporting for a couple of reasons. Number one, the sourcing seems to be from a reputable sort of tech publication. But secondly, Carter, $20 a month to get verified seems very much, and keep your verification, seems very much in Elon Musk's sort of general wheelhouse of A, revenue generation, but B, it's free speech, right? Right. Like, you know, you got to you want to keep your verification, you

Zain 47:19

know, you got to pay for it and perhaps not necessarily recognizing the downside risk of that, which is that if you're no longer verified, but you were a verified source, there could be some implications to that. that. Let's say you're one of the journalists who works at a small publication. You can't afford this. So you lose your verification, and now you don't get to rise above, so to speak, with your news stories, not in terms of viewership, but in terms of credibility about the information and the quality of your sourcing. You're kind of just part of the chaff, so to speak.

Zain 47:49

Carter, talk to me about the potential, and you might think I'm overblowing them, talk to me about the potential potential democratic civil society ramifications around, you know, this particular move by Elon Musk that

Zain 48:01

that we might see.

Carter 48:03

Well, I couldn't disagree with Corey more. You know, the idea that you're going to pay now. So the previous way

Carter 48:12

way to get verified was you had to be kind of, you know, you had to be a journalist, you had to have a job within government, you had to have some sort of a to verify you had to be using your real name or something vaguely resembling your real name uh you had to show that you had information that was essentially verifiable and by putting that information into into the the internet into twitter you are sharing with people information that has value and people could go and say well you're a blue check mark you're using your real name i trust where that information is coming from now musk

Carter 48:50

musk is saying well we don't actually want that we don't actually want people to trust where this is coming from and on top of that cory's talking about the 20 or the half million people who are currently verified what about the half million lunatics that are on the other side of this that now want to get themselves verified and they put a little blue check mark beside and now the same privilege that cory and i have that that you don't have for very good reason, for very good reason,

Carter 49:15

shows that you've bought yours and the drivel that comes out of your mouth is going to have now the same weight that comes from Corey and I. This

Corey 49:24

This is almost the point. The blue check is only ever meant verified identity. People see it as something more than that. And that's actually been quite dangerous. So I'm not too fussed with people all of a sudden thinking a blue check is

Corey 49:38

is something you can just

Carter 49:39

you're on my time now you're

Carter 49:40

you're on my time now bottom

Carter 49:43

bottom line this is worse for for twitter and worse for the democratic ideals of sharing information now literally any idiot and i can't believe now now we're talking about this i can't believe hogan's fucking verified listening to this drivel that's coming out of his mouth about this i

Corey 49:59

i actually don't know how you're verified i was a government official that's why i'm verified well a car was a

Corey 50:04

government official i mean he

Carter 50:04

he got in in the 15 deal you were minute one get verified yeah

Carter 50:08

yeah once you're verified you are always verified you know like don't start with me anyways the point being that this is a this is musk undermining free you know free speech which is hilarious it's free but it's going to cost you 20 bucks if you're verified and it's not going to cost the people who aren't verified anything and to me this is this is all all about him undermining expertise. I mean, look at the number of bullshit tweets he's put up just in the 72 hours that he's owned this shit.

Carter 50:40

You know, his own team pulled one of his tweets down today. Um, you know, this is, you

Carter 50:46

you know, Elon Musk, isn't the Elon Musk that we all thought we knew and respected. Um, but I'm not giving back my Tesla. I'm just letting you know where that stands.

Zain 50:56

Thank you, Carter. Really appreciate that. Yeah. Um,

Zain 50:58

Corey, there's a lot of lessons to be learned here around management, around philosophy, around that. You've mentioned a few of them. There's also lessons to be learned here around what the future might hold for this platform. And one of the things I find quite interesting is a lot of individuals, and we've seen waves of this in the past, I'll caveat, but a lot of individuals, some verified, some not, mostly with progressive leanings, are saying, I'm not here for this shit. They're leaving the platform. Do you suspect that this is... Has Twitter become a public square? And I know this is an age-old question, and by age-old, I mean over the last decade. But is this an inflection moment where people leaving the platform, from a strict political perspective, as we now dig down into our area of expertise, would you advise people to leave this platform? Is it too much of a public square to have your voice heard and amplified and key points of either policy or or politics to be made that you would advise, whether it be a client, a political figure, a political party, to not leave the platform? What do you think?

Corey 52:04

Well, I think that when we think about social media, we should think about why they act the way they do and why

Corey 52:10

like Twitter have been free, why things like Facebook are free. And there's the old cynical answer, you are the product, and that's sort of true, but I don't think it's true in the way that a lot of other people mean it. um these things have value because of their size it's what we call the network effect right

Corey 52:27

right and uh being on a social media platform of a hundred people has a lot less value to you than being on a social media platform of a hundred million

Corey 52:35

and twitter is big and so you know a lot of people can make comments about i'm gonna leave twitter but to be honest i've seen fewer of those than like well i'm also gonna get a mastodon account or or people seeming to hedge because

Corey 52:47

because Because they know, forget public square, I don't care. Maybe it's just Mall of America, a giant private square, right? But it's giant and there's value to its size and people don't want to walk away and lose the things that they've got.

Corey 53:00

Think about Stephen Carter, poor Stephen Carter with his 15,000 Twitter followers. What

Corey 53:05

What would he do if he couldn't share his thoughts with those 15,000 people? He's not going to leave, right?

Corey 53:09

right? And so I don't think the risk is that Twitter dies instantly. It's that Elon Musk's decisions make Twitter such an awful place that everybody just gradually drifts away, right? It becomes this place like, frankly,

Corey 53:22

Facebook or so many other unappealing places on the internet where they

Corey 53:30

Nobody's very interested in hanging out on them, except for a very extreme cadre, which he seems to be gearing himself towards.

Corey 53:39

That's the risk. We talked about Elon Musk coming in and making decisions that no business text would tell you to do.

Corey 53:46

Musk is clearly trying to build a culture at Twitter. I think it's a pretty toxic one based on the first couple of days here. But he's clearly signaling this is the kind of place Twitter will be. But he's not just signaling that to employees. He's signaling that, I think, to Twitter. And there's

Corey 53:59

there's going to be a Twitter culture that evolves from some of these decisions he's making as well.

Corey 54:04

And culture doesn't happen overnight. Culture takes time. So, huge

Corey 54:09

huge value right now. Will there be huge value tomorrow? Maybe a little less. Maybe a little less every single day until people make the decision to disengage from it. But there's not going to be that light switch moment. That's my firm belief.

Zain 54:21

Carter, would you advise a political candidate based on their ideals, let's say they're not in line with Elon Musk's, at least what he's expressed prior to the official closing of the purchase, a free reign, free speech sort of platform, would you advise anyone? And under what circumstances to leave Twitter as a platform? Or is it too much of a public square these days, Carter?

Carter 54:40

I wouldn't advise them to leave Twitter now the same way I wouldn't advise them to leave Facebook now. But I do note that Facebook isn't the platform today that it once was. And we can see that through Meta's stock drop. We can see that people aren't using Facebook. We're getting less and less response when we advertise on Facebook. I mean, we barely advertised on Twitter to begin with because it was a lesser light than it's more popular cousins or more easier to use. use i mean have you guys been on tiktok recently i don't know if you guys are following but that tiktok thing has way more ads than twitter no

Carter 55:24

no seriously i've been popping in and out and you get an ad maybe every six or seven videos that

Corey 55:30

that must be so frustrating for you you get five thirst traps and then like one uh like

Corey 55:35

like one ad on your i'm

Carter 55:35

i'm not allowed to talk about thirst traps anymore in the house that apparently is a topic that is off limits um i learned that today uh but yeah i I mean, this is, this

Carter 55:46

this is actually, you know, will

Carter 55:49

will everybody leave Facebook or will everybody leave Twitter? No, no one ever leaves these things. What you do is you evolve away from them and something else comes along. You evolve into that. We all thought that Snapchat would be the next great thing. We all thought, you know, that Bebo, you know, was going to be huge. None of these things, you know, you don't predict them. You just, when they get there, you ride the wave when they're there. And social mediums aren't going to be one

Carter 56:22

one and done forever. We're not going to see Facebook 30 years from now being as dominant as Facebook was in the last 15 years.

Corey 56:31

Carter, such a great point. It's not about I'm

Corey 56:35

I'm here, now I'm not here, I'm there. Any organization of any size, including any political campaign, is going to just slowly adjust those dials over time, right? They're not getting what they want out of this one as much. So they're going to invest less time and less money there. And they're going to turn up a dial somewhere else. And very rarely do you just spike the dial all the way down again, because of that network effect, you've got, you've put investments into these things. And so you'd be walking away from those investments, the investments that have built your audiences and have built your brand in these spaces. You just, you just slowly use them less.

Carter 57:06

Yeah. I mean, but we are using Facebook a a ton less i mean already you can see that this thing that was was so unbelievably dominant no one's ever going to leave facebook yeah we're still all there but we're not spending money the way we used to fascinating

Zain 57:22

fascinating points we're going to leave that segment there moving on to our final segment steven carter our over under in our lightning round trick

Carter 57:29

is this happening this is so quick today this

Zain 57:32

this was not quick this was trust me we've got things to talk We've

Carter 57:35

We've got four minutes left.

Zain 57:37

Carter, we've got four

Corey 57:39

You know what that means? You

Carter 57:40

You know what that means, Carter?

Carter 57:41

Yeah, here we go.

Corey 57:43

I'm up by eight points, and the first of us to get to nine

Carter 57:49

I crushed you in that last round. We're not going to explain this to

Zain 57:52

to anyone, are we? We're not going to explain this

Zain 57:53

to anybody. This is just for us. This is just so widely known. It is extremely widely known, the

Zain 58:00

We're not going to talk about it. Fine. fine.

Zain 58:03

I'm still jealous that I don't own a basketball team. That's all I'm going to say.

Zain 58:06

Stephen Carter over under lightning round trick or treat edition. Stephen Carter, a looming recession might be on the way for Canada and the US. Krista Freeland is set to give her fall economic statement on November 3rd. Will this be a trick, Stephen Carter? Will it be a tricky situation for her or will it be a treat for Krista Freeland to deliver this fall economic statement?

Carter 58:29

It's absolutely going to be a trick. It's super hard to imagine knowing where we're going in the coming

Carter 58:37

coming weeks or months. And not all the country is necessarily going to move at the same rate at the same time either. I mean, I think we can see some

Carter 58:45

some good things happening in Western Canada and some harder things happening in the rest of the country.

Zain 58:52

Corey Hogan, this might be an easy one. Trick or treat. Christopher Freeland giving the fall economic update? Is it going to be a trick for her? Is it going to be tricky for her? Or is this going to be a treat for her to deliver?

Corey 59:01

I think it's going to be tricky.

Corey 59:04

I've always said on this show, and I'm going to reiterate, I think it is very hard to

Corey 59:10

to rein in inflation and not create a recession. The idea of reining

Corey 59:16

reining in inflation without a recession is a story we tell ourselves to sleep but

Corey 59:20

the reality is landing that plane in that way is nigh impossible and

Corey 59:25

you're almost certainly going to overswing especially when you're coming down from the percents that we are in inflation the

Corey 59:31

challenge is as we've seen it particularly in the uk but all over the place including here in canada is

Corey 59:37

when we have our central banks essentially trying to cool down the economy at the same time our governments are trying to heat up the economy chaos

Corey 59:45

chaos can ensue so it's just a tough one for her it's a tough one for any finance minister i don't envy her stephen's

Corey 59:50

stephen's right we've also got challenges in that it's a very uneven feeling across the country in saskatchewan basically everything they sell is is

Corey 59:59

is through the roof you know the economy's going gangbusters here in alberta even though the price of oil has come down a bit we've certainly seen economic growth meanwhile

Corey 1:00:06

meanwhile when you look in ontario some of the things that we're seeing as boons are or maybe not boons for everybody but if you're a homeowner housing

Corey 1:00:14

housing prices were up now they're coming down.

Corey 1:00:17

There's all of a sudden, with that house building is down, all sorts of things are down.

Zain 1:00:24

Corey, I'm going to stick with you for our next one. You know, I mentioned earlier that next Tuesday, the United States goes to the polls, the Americans go to the polls for their midterms. You're hearing a lot around the end game strategy for the Democrats in particular, with this term that many people may not be familiar with, called deep canvassing. Have you guys heard of this, this this this term of rather than just simply door knocking in the final days, going door to door canvassing, but actually encouraging empathetic, deep conversations to shift people's beliefs, using this in the final week or so to kind of move the vote, especially in these close areas, including the Pennsylvanias, Ohio's and Georgia's that we've talked about. Now, Corey, trick or treat, deep canvassing as a political tactic or strategy, is it a bit of a trick or is it actually quite a treat in the sense that it is a useful political tactic?

Corey 1:01:21

You know, this comes up every couple of years. I believe a lot of this deep canvassing work comes from a study that was done about changing people's minds about same-sex marriage, if I'm not mistaken, and

Corey 1:01:31

and they found that it was very successful. And in some ways, I want to shake those people and say, holy

Corey 1:01:37

holy shit, really, when we have in-depth conversations with people, instead of these grazing by them, just asking who they're going to vote for. These

Zain 1:01:43

These transactional conversations. Yeah. Wow.

Corey 1:01:45

Wow. What a shocking outcome. But I think it's going to be a treat. I think people are coming around to the idea that

Corey 1:01:51

that the conventional wisdom we build, people, we

Corey 1:01:55

but Stephen and I would be saying this for years. You don't try to change minds at the door. Just identify them. The whole idea is just to get more of your people out on election day. that was the purpose of that kind of canvas but

Corey 1:02:07

we have retreated to these camps as a result and i think deep canvassing and tactics like it are how we're going to find some

Corey 1:02:14

some sort of balance again in the system and so um

Corey 1:02:18

um i'm hoping it's successful for a lot of people and not because i'm hoping that it means one side wins or the other but

Corey 1:02:23

but because inevitably it means we're talking to each other in a way we

Corey 1:02:27

have not been for a very long time by

Corey 1:02:31

this fun This is a little tidbit, you know, that just deep

Corey 1:02:34

deep canvassing was also the name of Stephen Carter's OnlyFans.

Zain 1:02:40

Deep underscore canvassing. Yeah, no, it was taken down. Speaking of thirst traps, Carter, talk to me about deep canvassing. Actually, you know, more specifically, Carter, I'll add a little bit of a finer point on it. Talk to me about deep canvassing in the end game, right? So we sit here Sunday, October 3rd, the election's November 8th.

Zain 1:03:00

trick or treat given the framework and the timeline it's a slightly different question i asked cory but i'm going to ask you this trick or treat given that the end game timeline that the that the the race stands in right now well

Carter 1:03:11

well i don't believe that anybody would sit and talk to you prior to the end game because of the give a fuck fact right interesting

Carter 1:03:17

give a fuck factor is going to be just too low about a looming election um so if you've already got a position if you already are voting for some one of them you're still going to get that pfo right at the door um and you'll be told to leave and that'll be that'll be the end of that particular conversation which

Zain 1:03:36

pfo can we explain to people please flare off right just so please

Carter 1:03:38

please flare off yeah it's perfect thank

Carter 1:03:41

yeah brought to you by flare airlines uh get there faster that's

Carter 1:03:45

actually not a terrible slogan

Zain 1:03:45

slogan not please flare off

Zain 1:03:49

flare off is actually Actually, that's

Zain 1:03:51

that's actually one of

Carter 1:03:52

of the better ideas we've given them for free. We're going to bill more this month, guys. Bill more.

Carter 1:03:59

Listen. Carter, keep going. Yes. But you're saying that the timing is the only thing.

Carter 1:04:04

Yeah, because, and I'll tell you, we just, coming back again from British Columbia, where we got our asses handed to us, one of the things that we've been talking a lot about is voter identification modeling.

Carter 1:04:15

Because we had outstanding data. data and we thought we had a very very reasonable chance but when you look back and you go back at the data what we were getting was um yeah of course we're going to vote for you now get the fuck off my lawn um and that type of data i think is more and more prevalent as people start to figure out that this is the actual you know you are the product as cory was saying about about facebook people are figuring out that they are the product in these discussions and they're They know that they can just simply say, yeah, I'm with you, and they no longer have to speak to the team. And for

Carter 1:04:56

for my money, that's way worse

Carter 1:04:59

worse than trying to do a bunch of deep targeting and deep discussions about the future of our society. I think that the deep canvas actually then holds up very, very well.

Zain 1:05:13

Corey, I'll give you the same opportunity here if you want to talk about de-canvassing as it relates to the endgame strategy. Carter's saying, ultimately, it is the perfect time because that's the only time that you're going to get the engagement level or the give-a-fuck factor as the race becomes closer and closer and more relevant to people's lives rather than being something that plays around in the background for months. Your thoughts on that?

Corey 1:05:33

A lot of logic in that. I think that's something I'd like to see some testing on. How durable is it if you have it six months out? Because I would imagine if you want to go So

Corey 1:05:42

really deep with your deep canvassing, you would actually have a relationship where you come back multiple times, see how they're doing, continue to answer questions, really, truly build a relationship.

Corey 1:05:50

Maybe that's like deep

Corey 1:05:52

deep canvassing 2.0 and maybe it's something that people should explore.

Corey 1:05:56

I think one of the things that often happens when you get to this point in a campaign, especially a campaign that has quite a long runway,

Corey 1:06:03

runway, like a U.S. campaign here, is

Corey 1:06:06

is you also you sometimes hit a saturation point with your voter ID. right you you phoned as many people are going to answer the phones as you're going to answer as many people are going to

SPEAKER_01 1:06:15

to answer the doors and tell

Corey 1:06:15

tell you is going to answer and tell you and the diminishing returns mean it becomes more appealing to try these tactics too so could

Corey 1:06:22

could be some good alignment it really depends on the campaign i also know campaigns that crash up until the last minute trying to get this voter id but

Corey 1:06:29

but i've worked on campaigns where with a week left you're like well voter id is coming in and a trickle now it's

Corey 1:06:35

it's not really changing so why not try something else And you've got all these volunteers. They're as keyed up as they're going to be because, as Stephen said, the give-a-fuck factor is the highest for everyone, including your volunteers.

Corey 1:06:46

So why not try something like this?

Zain 1:06:49

Stephen Carter, I'm going to move on to our next question. Is this a trick or a treat for the federal liberals? The cost of the Arrive Can app, Carter, many saying, including the opposition, that this thing could have been built for less than a million bucks, not its projected $55 million cost. Now, in the grand scheme of pandemic spending, this was a drop in the bucket. But as we talk about quite often, not

Zain 1:07:11

not that we know what $54 million looks like. We know what an app looks like. We know what its functionality was. We can kind of ballpark that as layman, in, so to speak. Is this a trick for the liberals? Is this pretty tricky or is this going to be a slightly palatable, maybe not so tasty treat that they can stomach at the end of the day?

Carter 1:07:29

trick and a treat. And I'm going to tell you why. It's a trick because we all know we could build this app for a lot less. I think the three of us would be able to commit. Well, when I say the three of us, I mean, Corey, to build this app for a lot less money. Probably build it tonight.

Carter 1:07:45

Yeah. He'll have it ready by tomorrow morning. But we weren't dealing with the bureaucracy. Corey,

Zain 1:07:51

Corey, I know a billionaire that may want to hire you. Keep going,

Carter 1:07:54

We weren't dealing with the bureaucracy. We weren't dealing with the panic. We weren't dealing with all the various challenges that were coming forward. And frankly, I think this is where the treat comes in. People have a really hard time relating to $54 million. They have a way easier time relating to a $16 glass of orange juice or $1,000 a month for a committee meeting that never happened. Those types of things that people can immediately relate to are far more damaging than it costs $54 million to produce an app that most people don't know how to build an app. They have no, they have no comparatives.

Carter 1:08:30

comparatives. So maybe it hurts in the industry. Maybe the communications firm that did it might be feeling a little bit sad. But for the most part, everybody Everybody else, you

Carter 1:08:42

know, I think it'll be gone in a relatively short period of time.

Zain 1:08:46

Boy, the conservatives are clearly trying to make political hay out of it. But at the end of the day, when all is said and done, is this a tricky situation for the liberals? Or is this a maybe

Zain 1:08:53

maybe not so tasty, but digestible treat for them?

Zain 1:08:57

I think it's both as

Corey 1:08:58

as well. Let's talk about what's tricky about it.

Corey 1:09:02

It's funny because I think the general public are going to say, I don't really know. You know, it's not quite the billion dollar long gun registry. doesn't quite have that impact. And I think that people are pretty used to massive cost overruns on tech programs. And I think that a very in the know audience will also look at it and say, well, you know what, it seems too high, but there's a lot of things that justify that expense, which I'm going to kind of try to quickly outline in a second here. It's the group in the middle that it's very tricky with, right? And that includes people like reporters who will say, okay, explain to me how, Because I think I understand the complexity of this app. It is basically just what we call a crud app, right? Or at least it appears on the surface, you know, create, read, update, destroy. It's just changing records around. You're just adding information to records. But it's

Corey 1:09:52

it's not so simple, right? Like the difficulty in an app for the federal government is not in the coding. Like, I mean, I was joking about doing it in one night, but it's not a huge lift to build an app like this. The complexity comes from the integrations that need to occur, the changing scope that's going to happen along the way as you bring in all of these various departments. Obviously, the security requirements, we're not keeping what's your favorite flavor of bubble gum in this app. We're keeping information

Corey 1:10:18

information that's related to border security in this app, right? And the systems it needs to integrate with is going to have to have some pretty tight connections. And then these

Corey 1:10:27

these systems that it's connecting to were not created yesterday using the latest web standards. So there's a lot

Corey 1:10:32

lot of legacy systems that need to interact with. I'll tell you something from my time in government to illustrate how absurd this can be.

Corey 1:10:38

There was a time we were asking about something to do with billing in the Alberta health care system. We

Corey 1:10:44

asked if this could be a report that could

Corey 1:10:46

pulled. And it was not on specifics, just to be really clear. It was on general data

Corey 1:10:51

in aggregate. And the challenge was it couldn't because it was all using magnetic reel-to-reel from the 70s and 80s. And it didn't have like a database that was naturally able to be kind of SQL queried in that particular fashion. It just wasn't possible because we're not using the latest and greatest in government. Governments are early adapters. They're big institutional adapters. Change costs are enormous. And it may have been a situation where somebody said, okay, we can build an app that should cost us 10 million for 55 million, or

Corey 1:11:22

or we can update a system that's going to cost us $4 billion to update, right? And so you make that short-term decision instead. And yeah, maybe every app is then going to be more expensive for a while, but it's a big thing to digest. And government also, and

Corey 1:11:38

and this is my last point here,

Corey 1:11:40

what do you think the fail rate is acceptable in government? Because it's basically 0%. These things have to be always on, always working. And that adds a lot to cost because you've got to build in a ton of redundancy as a result. So this is not something that your neighbor could build. I just want to underline that. Should it have cost $55 million?

Corey 1:11:59

Probably if the government was a little more on the ball, it wouldn't cost half that. But it's not the great drama that some people are trying to make it.

Zain 1:12:08

Gory, we'll finish off this Halloween edition of the Over Under the Lightning Round, the trick-or-treat edition with this final question and prediction for you, Corey Hogan. Will the trick and the treat, that is Donald Trump, be back on Twitter? Twitter, Corey, will

Zain 1:12:24

will he be back on the blue check,

Zain 1:12:26

check, the bluebird platform?

Corey 1:12:29

I think we should egg that house.

Corey 1:12:32

I don't think we should stop and ask for tricks or treats there. It's just a bad, bad man.

Zain 1:12:37

Carter, are you willing to make another Carter prediction?

Zain 1:12:42

Will Donald Trump be back on Twitter?

Carter 1:12:56

yes you'll be back on twitter by the time we record our patreon special on thursday really

SPEAKER_01 1:13:08

you have just been witnessed to another

SPEAKER_01 1:13:14

now back to your podcast already in progress

SPEAKER_01 1:13:20

yeah he'll be back by thursday

Zain 1:13:24

gonna leave it there that's a wrap on episode 10 11 of the strategist my name is with me as always for our halloween special steven carter cory hogan and we will see you next time

Transcript