In today’s political climate, “left vs. right” might be the wrong way to describe the fight. Congressman Tom McClintock thinks the real split is between normal and crazy.
Appearing on Breaking Battlegrounds with hosts Chuck Warren and Sam Stone, McClintock didn’t mince words:
“The debate is between policies that work and policies that don’t. These aren’t theoretical discussions — we’ve seen the results, over and over again, for thousands of years.”
McClintock’s main frustration is one you might share: Washington keeps recycling ideas that history has already proven don’t work. Wage controls, heavy regulations, and massive tax hikes aren’t innovative — they’re ancient. In fact, McClintock points to Hammurabi’s Code, the first written law in human history, noting that it contained price controls. The outcome then? Shortages. The outcome now? The same.
“History is the lab notes of civilization,” McClintock says. “But in politics, we keep making the same damn mistakes over and over again.”
The path to economic recovery, he argues, isn’t a mystery — it’s been proven repeatedly. Reduce the regulatory burden, cut unnecessary taxes, and growth will follow. He points to John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton — Democrats who embraced these principles — as examples of leaders who oversaw booming economies. In contrast, presidents like Jimmy Carter and Joe Biden increased regulations and taxes, leading to stagnation or decline.
Why does Washington keep going back to bad ideas? McClintock blames it on ideology and political short-term thinking. Unlike science, where each discovery builds on the last, politics seems determined to ignore the past and start from scratch — even if that means repeating failures.
Whether the issue is immigration, forest management, or the fentanyl crisis, McClintock believes the solutions are rooted in common sense and historical precedent. The challenge is getting policymakers — and the public — to remember what’s worked before.
“When people are paying close attention, when a crisis approaches, they start making good decisions. That’s the strength of democracy,” McClintock says.
If you’re tired of watching the same bad policies play out again and again, McClintock’s perspective offers a bracing reminder: we already know what works. The real question is whether we’re willing to act on it.
Transcript
**Sam Stone: **It seems like today you could throw away the left right labels and just say there's one side that wants to do things that we know that work and the other side is just tied up in this ideology and it's totally impractical and it fails at everything.
**Chuck Warren: **It's a hashtag common sense. This goes from fentanyl to cartels to forest management. They're just common sense. That's illegal immigration. The Democrats are always trying to squaring the circles, they would say, trying to make the impossible happen. How do we get around this? Do we need to communicate better on these common sense principles, Congressman?
**Congressman McClintock: **Well you know people are rational and they do practice common sense of when they need to. We've based our entire form of government on the assumption that more than half the people are getting right more than half the time when people are paying close attention when it crisis approaches they start making very good decisions less the strength of the democracy and I think these are sound principles and and I think we can be confident about it.
It might have been a something Sarah Sanders said that there's no longer the debate between left and right, the debate is between normal and crazy.
Sam Stone: Right
**Congressman McClintock: **Now the point that you make out that that that that this is basically a question of policies that work and policies that don't work. And these are not theoretical discussions.
**Chuck Warren: **Correct
**Congressman McClintock: **Very little of what we do in government is new in fact and very few new policies. You know we've been debating well wage and price controls, tarrifs, the effective taxes and regulations on an economy.
These go back to to Hammurabi’s code the first written law of of of inhuman civilization about a third of it will wage in price controls and they work exactly the same way that as they do now. They create shortages of whatever it is that we we control. So we've we've got we've got thousands of years of experience with these policies very few of them are new and maybe the next time
that we try this bold new idea we need to go back into the history books and ask ourselves okay what happened the last ten times we tried this bold new idea. We don't have enough attention to history which is the lab notes of civilization these things have all been tried before we know what works we know what doesn't work. The irony and the mystery is that we we often go back to policies that history warns us simply don’t work. I don't get that you know the physical sciences will make a discovery we will build that into our knowledge base and then build an advance on top of that. In political science we keep making the same damn mistakes over and over and over again and go on as if nothing's happened. It's I don't understand that part of politics and I've been in it for a long time but it's it's frustrating because we know what works.
We know how to revive an economy, we know how to tank an economy. You want to revive an economy simply remove the burdens that have been placed upon it. The regulatory burdens and the tax burdens and the economy thrives. It did it under John F Kennedy and Bill Clinton give credit where credit's due and we know how to tank an economy. Add huge new burden of regulations and taxes on it that's what Biden did and that's what Carter did.
We know what works we know what doesn't.
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