509: Joe Manchin—A Declaration of Independents

Mike Rowe introduces the episode from Brush Creek Ranch in Saratoga, Wyoming, where he is attending the Frontier Summit and interviewing speakers. He describes former West Virginia governor and senator Joe Manchin as a longtime Democrat who became an independent and is now working with the Independent Leadership Council. Rowe says roughly 47% of voters identify as independent, yet no independent currently serves in Congress. The obstacle, he argues, is that the two major parties control ballot access: independent candidates often must collect tens of thousands of signatures and raise substantial sums in each state. Rowe stresses that Manchin is not trying to form a third party. Manchin’s proposal is to create open primaries, impose term limits, and establish a level playing field so independent candidates can run without caucusing with either party. Rowe is initially concerned that a three-party system could produce presidents elected with only a minority of the vote, but he sees Manchin’s approach as a way to give voters another choice without formally adding a third party. He calls the effort a “declaration of independence,” while Manchin says the goal is to restore a direct pipeline from citizens to policy rather than having citizens represented primarily through party organizations.

Manchin explains that he did not enter politics until age 35, in 1982, after working with his father in the family furniture business. When a man asked his father for a personal favor, Manchin objected that the man was practicing “self service,” not public service. His father warned him that politics was dirty, but Manchin replied that his father had always said the country needed people of good character who put others’ interests first. His father eventually agreed to let him run. Manchin says his family identified as Democrats because his grandfather had benefited from Franklin Roosevelt-era assistance in West Virginia’s coalfields, but the family never viewed Republicans as enemies. He describes himself as “fiscally responsible and socially compassionate,” a combination he believes represents most Americans. He says he never chose the Democratic Party because of an ideological transformation; he inherited the identification and continued to operate independently within it. Republicans repeatedly urged him to switch parties, but he told them that changing labels would not change who he was or make him vote differently. He eventually left the Democratic Party because the party system had become incompatible with the independent judgment he had always practiced.

Rowe asks whether Manchin would have run for president as an independent. Manchin says he would have done so “in a heartbeat” if he could have guaranteed ballot access in all 50 states. He wanted to participate in the national dialogue and challenge both parties on issues such as the national debt, saying Americans should not be forced to choose between candidates and policies they cannot explain back home. Manchin says his daughter Heather showed him that the political system operates like a business with billions of dollars, control over the rules, and little meaningful competition—conditions that would be illegal in most other industries. He argues that party leaders gained power by controlling primaries and limiting which Democrats and Republicans could compete in general elections. His alternative is an open primary in which Democrats, Republicans, independents, Libertarians, and other qualifying candidates appear together. He says the ballot rules are deliberately inconsistent: party candidates can often qualify by paying a filing fee, while independents may need tens of thousands of signatures, which parties can then challenge state by state. Manchin’s immediate objective is modest but strategic: elect one or two independent senators and two or three independent representatives in the 2026 midterms. An independent who refuses to caucus with either party could work with Democrats one week and Republicans the next, forcing both sides to negotiate for that person’s vote.

The conversation turns to the national debt. Manchin says the last balanced federal budgets occurred from 1997 through 2001, and he credits Ross Perot’s 1992 presidential campaign with forcing fiscal responsibility into the political conversation. Perot did not win, but Manchin says the roughly 19% or 20% of voters attracted to his message pressured the political establishment to address the country’s finances. Manchin recalls that the United States had once been on a path toward becoming debt-free by 2006, but the September 11 attacks, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the decision not to pay for those wars pushed the debt upward. He says the country has now passed $40 trillion, which he considers unsustainable even though $30 trillion was already unsustainable. He invokes what he calls “Ferguson’s law”: when a nation’s interest payments exceed what it spends defending its people and country, it has entered a dangerous downward spiral. Debt growing faster than GDP can reduce confidence, discourage investment in the country’s debt, and force the government to pay higher rates. Manchin repeats his grandfather’s warning that unmanaged debt leads people to make “carolid decisions”—bad choices made under pressure. He says politicians avoid necessary cuts, tax increases, or reforms because they fear losing votes, but families facing financial crises eventually cut spending, work harder, save, and become more disciplined. He argues that government should be forced to do the same.

Manchin argues that the response to COVID-19 damaged the connection between work, responsibility, and opportunity. He recalls that unemployment benefits traditionally required people to seek work and could be lost if they refused suitable jobs. During the pandemic, expanded benefits—including an additional $600 per week, later reduced to $300—made remaining out of work more financially attractive for some people. The government also sent checks to households while supply chains were disrupted, leaving consumers with more cash, fewer goods, and sharply higher prices. He says he warned President Biden that the policy would produce major inflation. When Biden cited 17 Nobel laureates who supposedly believed the inflation would be temporary, Manchin says he replied that the president had been given advice by “17 educated idiots” who told him what he wanted to hear. Manchin’s reasoning was that vaccinated consumers felt safer, had extra money, and wanted to spend it even as stores had limited supplies and raised prices. He points to Louis Vuitton’s exceptional growth during the period as an example of money flooding into the system, saying roughly $5.5 trillion was used to run the country in 2020 and 2021, with another $3.2 trillion added between March 2020 and February 2021, followed by Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. Manchin contrasts this with the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps and Works Progress Administration, which provided work and opportunity rather than simply sending checks. He says COVID taught people to expect the government to be their provider, whereas his governing philosophy was: “I am not your provider, but I will be the best partner you’ve ever had.”

Rowe asks Manchin about Pennsylvania’s energy and data-center debate after a summit where $93 billion was pledged for data centers and energy initiatives. Manchin, who chaired the Senate Energy Committee, says developers and policymakers badly underestimated electricity demand. In 2005, projections for 2025 failed to anticipate the rapid growth of machine learning, artificial intelligence, data centers, renewables, and natural gas replacing coal. Coal was expected to provide 54% of the power mix but had fallen to 17%, while the grid was not prepared for the new demand. Manchin criticizes data-center companies for choosing attractive sites rather than brownfields or retired power-plant locations, and for buying electricity in such quantities that ordinary customers may have to pay more. He proposes that hyperscalers build their own power plants, construct more capacity than they need, and sell the excess back to the grid. That could improve reliability and reduce costs, he says, but developers must be held responsible for their infrastructure and present projects as community partnerships rather than promising large numbers of permanent jobs. The discussion then moves to AI and quantum computing. Manchin worries that machine systems may learn to communicate and outthink their designers if they are deployed without guardrails. He says society made the same mistake with the internet, gaining economic benefits while failing to protect young people from its social harms. He supports stronger regulation, including changes involving Section 230, but says technology lobbyists repeatedly overpower attempts at reform. Rowe compares the public’s repeated panic over the Ice Age, Y2K, and 5G with the need to take genuine risks seriously without blindly accepting every prediction.

Rowe and Manchin connect economic policy to gratitude and character. Manchin says people born in the United States have “hit the jackpot,” whether they were born here or became citizens, and should consider how to invest that opportunity rather than feel entitled to it. Rowe describes his “sweat pledge,” whose first principle says that being alive, living in America, and walking the earth is the greatest lottery of all time. Both say they prefer persuasion to lectures, but believe citizens should recover a sense of responsibility and gratitude. Manchin rejects the idea that successful people should be punished merely for succeeding, calling himself a capitalist “with a heart.” He nevertheless believes everyone should contribute something, that wealthy people should not escape a fair rate through loopholes, and that the tax system should be simpler. He says he is open to a flat or progressive-flat tax treating all income as earned income, without special treatment for passive income. He cites the corporate rate falling from 35% to 21% but says many corporations still pay far less through exemptions and loopholes. Any system, he argues, requires public confidence that tax money is not being wasted. He repeatedly uses his family’s expression—“leave a little meat on the bone for the next dog”—to describe fiscal responsibility. If the next generation inherits only scraps while today’s leaders consume everything, the country will create desperation and conflict. He also says upper-income Americans can reasonably debate whether everyone should pay roughly 25% to 30%, but the central requirement is fairness and accountability.

Rowe and Manchin use scouting, sports, and their childhoods to illustrate how people once competed without treating opponents as enemies. Manchin recalls winning West Virginia’s bid to host the Boy Scouts’ high-adventure base rather than merely competing for it. The state offered a 10,000-acre site with whitewater rafting, mountain climbing, zip lines, lakes, and other activities. He says West Virginia’s people and resources ultimately won the organization over. Rowe says scouting taught him to tolerate discomfort under the leadership of a retired Army colonel and a Baltimore police detective. He and Manchin trade stories about rough scouting traditions: swimming merit badges, improvised floats made from clothing, “swing the thing,” British Bulldog, carrying a sleeping camper on his cot to a lake, and a boy being hoisted up a flagpole. Manchin recalls failing the snake-handling merit badge after a friend squeezed a black snake so tightly that the counselor threatened to withhold the badge if he killed it. The political lesson is that competition should make people better, not permanently destroy the loser. Manchin compares politics to the Army-Navy football rivalry: each team wants to beat the other, but nobody in the stadium regards the opposing team as the enemy. He says modern parties instead seek total defeat, preventing opponents from ever returning to public life. He blames the absence of political competition for producing an inferior product and says independent candidates could restore rivalry, negotiation, and accountability.

Manchin directs listeners to the Independent Leadership Council and AmericansTogether.org. He says AmericansTogether.org can identify a person’s local government, show whether district lines or party behavior are preventing proper representation, and explain how to get involved. The Independent Leadership Council, he emphasizes, is not a third party; it is a movement to elect independents who will answer to voters, refuse to caucus automatically, and work with whichever side has the better idea. He says the system’s unfairness would become obvious if an elected independent were blocked from committee meetings simply because neither party could control that person. Manchin argues that political parties have become victims of the extreme products they created: by narrowing primaries and controlling nominations, they helped produce movements such as MAGA and the Democratic Socialists of America, then discovered that voters liked candidates the parties did not want. He quotes George Washington’s warning that parties could become engines for taking power from the people. The conversation closes with college sports and name, image, and likeness rules. Manchin says NIL has turned student athletes into semi-professionals who transfer repeatedly, sometimes spending seven years in college without graduating. He praises his friend Nick Saban, whose recruiting promise was not guaranteed professional wealth but an education, accountability, and a young man who could contribute to society. Manchin wants athletes to remain at one school for three years except in hardship cases, with a later transfer opportunity if they are not receiving playing time. The underlying point is that institutions should develop character, not merely monetize talent.