Jim Douglas, Successful Republican In Liberal Vermont, Talks Taxes, Bernie, China, “Woke” Middlebury

Vermont is famous for its mountain scenery, maple syrup and liberal politics. Socialist Bernie Sanders will become the state’s senior U.S. senator next year. State legislator Becca Balint trounced moderate Lieutenant Governor Molly Gray in this year’s Democratic Party primary election for an open U.S. House of Representatives seat this month, putting her on track to become the state’s first woman and first openly gay representative there. In addition, Vermont’s state’s legislature has been controlled by Democrats for nearly all of the past quarter century.

And yet voters have elected two Republicans into the Governor’s office for all but seven of the past 20 years: Jim Douglas, 71, had the job from 2003 to 2011, and incumbent Phil Scott, 63, first elected in 2015 is running for a fourth two-year term in November. Scott, one of the country’s most popular governors, has reportedly said “there needs to be an adult in the room” in political negotiations in Democrat-dominated Montpelier, Vermont’s capital.

Douglas, who retired from elected politics after leaving the governor’s job, is now teaching at Middlebury College. Like Scott, he espouses a middle ground for the country. His 2014 memoir “The Vermont Way” opens with a quote from Dwight Eisenhower: “People talk about the middle of the road as though it were unacceptable. Actually, all human problems, excepting morals, come into gray areas. They are not all black and white. There have to be compromises.”

In a wide-ranging interview earlier this month, Douglas sized up U.S. election primaries this month, the presidential prospects of 80-year-old Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in 2024, “wokeism” at his employer Middlebury College, and U.S. relations with China, a country he visited as governor. Excerpts follow.

Flannery: What do you make of the primary results around the country this month?

Douglas: What we’re seeing in Vermont and around the United States is less centrist candidates are prevailing on both sides of the aisle. My fear is that will exacerbate our polarization and make it even more difficult for Congress to accomplish anything. That trend is continuing and, I think, troublingly, based on the Eisenhower quote. But here we are.

Flannery: What does all that mean for the Republican Party, in particular? Will there eventually be a split?

Douglas: That’s a topic of wide conversation. There have been different branches of the party historically. In the 60s, we had the Rockefeller Republicans and the Goldwater Republicans. We’ve always had a variety of views within the GOP. We talk about the big tent or big umbrella; I believe in that. I read Senator (Ralph) Flanders’ memoir before I wrote mine. He was a senator from Vermont from 1947-59 when the U.S. Senate was pretty evenly divided, and once said: “The differences within each party are greater than the differences between them.” So there’s nothing new under the sun.

But that leads to another question: Is there room for a third party? We recently saw former Governor (Christine Todd) Whitman and Mr. (Andrew) Yang launch a Forward Party. The history of third parties in America is not impressive. The only third party that has really succeeded was the

Republicans in the 1850s. I don’t know that there’s a compelling issue like slavery that will galvanize enough people to break from their traditional ranks now and go that direction.

So I’m not particularly optimistic about that. I think the parties will have to work these issues out among themselves. And we hope they’ll find a way.

Flannery: Vermont is beautiful state, but, similar to other states, is facing problems with economic competitiveness and demographics.

Douglas: Vermont has historically been a pretty tough place economically and is not for everybody. I believe Vermont is the best place on the planet to live, but some find it remote. The cost of living here is relatively high. Housing in particular is expensive, healthcare costs are high, higher education even for in-state students is high, and taxes are high. People think this is a smaller, rural area where everything must be cheap, and are shocked at the cost. If we can make it more affordable to live here, we will be much more successful at attracting people at a time when the workforce has shrunk in recent years.

Our state revenues are strong, though part of that is the federal largess for the last a couple of years. There’s going to be a reckoning on that front. They’re spending wildly in Montpelier now, but the next few years are going to be very difficult for whoever’s in charge.

Flannery: What can be done to increase the housing supply and reduce regulation?

Douglas: That’s the key. A lawyer for one developer once told me: “Give me a red light, give me a green light, but don’t give me a yellow light.” That’s what really frustrates people here. We have to find a way to be more competitive.

Flannery: Vermont’s demographic problems are common to many other states.

Douglas: Three northern New England states are the three oldest in the country. We have among the lowest birth rates in the country, and recently had fewer births than in any year in the state’s recorded history.

UVM economics professor Art Woolf has said the solution is simple: make babies. But we have to attract younger working-age families to come and stay. Foreign immigration could be a part of that. We have had a little, but we would welcome more.

Flannery: In your book, you describe Bernie Sanders as viewed as a gadfly who supported the Socialist Workers Party candidate for president in 1976 prior to his election as Burlington mayor in 1981.You’ve observed him now for decades. President Biden’s struggling in polls. Do you assume Bernie’s running for president again?

Douglas: He wants to continue to play a role, to be relevant, (and) to guide the discussion, but whether he personally will be a candidate again, I don’t know.

I don’t mean to be ageist, but people are looking at the incumbent. And it’s pretty clear he doesn’t have the spring in his step that he once did. And Donald Trump will be 78 at the next presidential election, which is the same age Biden was when he was elected.

I hear some Republicans sort of whispering that besides all this other stuff (about Trump), he’s not the healthiest guy in the world. Does it really make sense for him to run? And Bernie, although in better shape than either of them, is older than both. Maybe his time is past, but he’ll be the senior senator from Vermont next year for the first time. So we’ll see.

Flannery: We met in China years ago when there was more optimism about the U.S.-China relationship. Vermont’s benefited from tourism and Chinese student enrollment at UVM. On the other hand, U.S.-China geopolitical tension is rife, and new tension over China missile tests near Taiwan flared this summer. How do you size up that relationship?

Douglas: It’s disconcerting. I recently saw a graph about the number of (China) student visas that’s come way down. This is unfortunate because there’s an awful lot of talent we’ve been able to capture through the years and from which we benefited. It’s discouraging to see what has happened in Hong Kong and the military exercises around Taiwan.

We can’t expect to impose our values and democratic structures on other nations, but we’ve seemed for quite a long time to have a good working relationship with the Chinese. And I’m concerned about it now. Economically, it’s not as important for Vermont as Canada by far, but we have had a lot of investment through the EB-5 program that injected helpful resources. I hope we can get back to a better place.

Flannery: How are you working to improve the education standard of Americans and Vermonters at Middlebury?

Douglas: I’ve enjoyed it a lot of great students and have a lot of great colleagues in the political science department and elsewhere. But there’s a wokeness on our campus and others.

I’m having a dispute with my alma mater/employer now over the removal of (former) Governor (John) Mead’s name from the chapel that he purchased in 1914, because of one remark he made (about eugenics) in this farewell speech in 1912.

I’m trying to get them to look at this and other things in perspective. I read a great book recently by Yale University’s Anthony Kronman, in which he says we should look at people’s dominant legacy. Everybody has warts. Especially now in these years of social media, you can find a remark by anybody that may not look good today. And not only that, but mores and sensibilities change over time; people have to be viewed in there in the context of their time. I think it was a terrible knee jerk reaction. It wasn’t just an honorary name. The guy bought the chapel.

I co-chaired a task force on campus free expression at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington and feel very strongly that all views have to be heard. This is the tradition of America. It was liberals who were shouted down 50-60 years ago. That’s flipped now, but what goes around comes around. Our view is every voice should be heard. That’s how students learn.

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