Young Political Leaders Have a “Bias Towards the Future”

“Are we going to transcend the divide? Are we going to create new incentives and new governing paradigms that make collaborative governance more of the norm? So that was a big question we wanted to take on. And that’s what led to establishing the first ever bipartisan caucus of young members of Congress, which is the Congressional Future Caucus.”
    — Steven Olikara on the 12 Geniuses podcast

In the latest episode of “Debate Without Hate: Elections 2024,” Steven Olikara, founder of the organization Future Caucus and former candidate for Wisconsin’s Senate, talks about our divides and about why it’s important to get younger leaders involved in politics. 

Steven has been an on-air political commentator on CNN, NBC News, Fox News, and many more. He talks about the difference between how pundits act on air and how they talk to each other off-camera on these shows: 

Being behind the scenes with many elected officials, as well as some of the most prominent media personalities […] they have extremely constructive, respectful conversations behind closed doors, behind the scenes when the camera’s not on, and then they go on cable news or they go on any kind of media platform and that tone changes. 

Steven says “a lot of incentives, media, political, and otherwise” are “causing them to polarize as they go into the public limelight.”

In the same way, there are incentives in Congress to not arrive at solutions. On the immigration issue, Steven argues that some multi-partisan solutions would get majority support in Congress but only if “it were a secret ballot.” There are just too many political incentives to take team-based, us-versus-them stances on issues and to avoid working across the aisle to solve them.

Watch this 12 Geniuses episode now. 

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