This week on The Score: A conversation with congressional candidate Thomas Oh. We talk to historian Garrett Peck about the Great War that ended 100 years ago. Economist Christine McDaniel explains the new U.S. Mexico Canada trade agreement.
http://bearingdrift.com/wp-content/uploads/TheScore-Oct27-2018-fullhour.mp3 [1]Eighth District Candidate
Election Day is not even two weeks away. So far this campaign season, we have heard from congressional candidates Ben Cline and Jennifer Lewis, Dave Brat and Abigail Spanberger and Joe Walton, Denver Riggleman and Leslie Cockburn, and Pete Wells, as well as U.S. Senate candidates Tim Kaine, Corey Stewart, and Matt Waters.
This week we chat with Thomas Oh [2], the Republican candidate in Virginia’s Eighth Congressional District, who is challenging incumbent Democrat Don Beyer. The district is not friendly to Republicans, with the last GOP congressional victory in 1988, thirty years ago. Two years later, Stan Parris lost to Jim Moran, who held the seat for more than two decades.
Just 26 years old, Oh is a military veteran and first-generation American. (His parents are immigrants from Korea.) By some calculations, he may be the first member of Generation Z to seek election to Congress from Virginia.
Great War
Two weeks from now, on November Eleventh, we will mark the one hundredth anniversary of the armistice that ended the First World War. Historian Garrett Peck has written a new book called The Great War in America: World War I and Its Aftermath [3]. Its official publication date is December 4, 2018, but The Score has a preview.
Peck is a prolific author. His previous books include The Prohibition Hangover: Alcohol in America from Demon Rum to Cult Cabernet [4] (2009) [see this [5] interview [6]], The Potomac River: A History & Guide [7] (2012), Winemaking in Ancient Israel [8] (2013), The Smithsonian Castle and The Seneca Quarry [9] (2013), Capital Beer: A Heady History of Brewing in Washington, D.C. [10] (2014), and Walt Whitman in Washington, D.C.: The Civil War and America’s Great Poet [11] (2015). A few meet-the-author events [12] are listed on his web site.
North American Trade
Over the past few months, The Score has homed in on trade policy issues. This week we have a return appearance [13] by Christine McDaniel [14], an economist at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, where her research focuses on international trade, globalization, and intellectual property rights.
McDaniel has held several positions in the U.S. government, including Deputy Assistant Secretary at the Treasury Department and senior trade economist in the White House Council of Economic Advisers, and has worked in the economic offices of the U.S. Department of Commerce, U.S. Trade Representative, and U.S. International Trade Commission. She also spent three years in Australia as deputy chief economist in Australia’s patent office.
I spoke to Dr. McDaniel at her office in Arlington earlier this week, and asked her for her assessment of the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, called the USMCA.
Prohibition in Washington, D.C.
Earlier in the show, we had an extended interview with historian Garrett Peck about the First World War. In this recording “from the archives,” I talk to him about Prohibition in Washington, D.C., one of the results of that war — and the title of his 2011 book [15] on that topic. As it happens, our conversation took place in the Woodrow Wilson House, where the president who led the United States into war lived after his term ended.
The Score will be back next week with a film review from Tim Hulsey and some predictions about the outcome of this year’s mid-term elections. And who knows what surprises we may have in store?