Head for the Hill: this week’s impeachment hearings

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Hello and welcome to the intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. You can buy just about anything online, but only a small fraction of online shoppers get their groceries delivered. It's a business with sticky logistics and paper thin margins. But e grocers big and small are battling it out to drop off your weekly shop. And it used to be that a breakout album could spend years on the charts. These days, not so much. Albums that come in as chart toppers are gone from the list faster than ever. And those that don't hit number one with a bullet never get there. But first.

Will come to order. Good morning, everyone. This is the first in a series of public hearings.

The public stage of impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump is entering its second week. The question of whether Mr. Trump tried to coax his Ukrainian counterpart into investigating a political rival by withholding military aid is dominating Washington after two days of testimony last week. In front of the cameras come three more. Eight witnesses are due to be heard this week.

The hearings are absorbing an enormous amount of attention in Washington.

John Fasman is our Washington correspondent.

I went up to the Hill on the first day last Wednesday and I arrived at what I thought was a prudent two hours early in the line outside the Ways and Means Committee room already stretched all the way down the hall. And I was sort of stuck between two conversations. One was a bunch of photographers trading tips on how to get the best witness pictures, and the other was a bunch of Hill interns, college students steeped in impeachment arcana. The better question, I think, is how much attention it is absorbing outside of Washington. And there, I think the evidence is more equivocal. I sent out a blast email after Wednesday's testimony to a couple hundred friends and family members who live outside D.C. and outside the country. And for the most part, it seems that the political junkies are paying attention. But a lot of other people seem to either be tuning it out or just reading highlights at the end of each day.

And so what's next on the agenda? What are the foreseen highlights of the coming days?

This week we will hear from another eight witnesses who will testify on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I think the highlight will be Gordon Sondland. He is America's ambassador to the EU he's testifying on Wednesday, and he seems to have acted as sort of President Trump's go between his cutout in this whole process. You know, you remember he had to reverse his testimony a couple of weeks back to acknowledge that he told a Ukrainian official that America's release of military aid was conditioned on President Zelensky publicly announcing an investigation into Hunter Biden. In other words, something that sounds a lot like a quid pro quo. And really, he seems something of both a slightly comic and a tragic figure. And I say that because the comic side is last week, William Taylor, America's top diplomat in Ukraine, testified that Sondland called President Trump from a crowded restaurant in Kyiv, which from a security perspective is just a nightmare. And the tragic aspect is that he is this successful hotelier from Oregon who wanted so badly for so long to be an ambassador, and he finally got his wish. And this is where he finds himself.

And who else apart from Mr. Sondland is coming up this week?

I think another highlight will be the last witness to testify this week on Thursday. That's Fiona Hill. Until this year, she was the National Security Council's top Russia expert. She had previously testified behind closed doors. She testified that both she and her boss, John Bolton, were worried about Rudy Giuliani's influence on Ukraine policy. She was the source of that great line from Bolton that he didn't want any part of any drug deal that Giuliani was cooking up. Aside from that, on Tuesday, we'll hear from Lt. Col. Vindman, who is the National Security Council's Ukraine expert, who testified that he was on the phone call between Presidents Trump and Zelensky, and he registered his concern with the NSC's lawyers almost immediately. And then we'll also hear from Kurt Volker, who is a former special envoy to Ukraine. And I think Republicans are looking forward to hearing from him because he was fairly distant from the action. And he previously testified that the whistleblower got some facts wrong. Though, of course, in light of all the evidence that come forward, precisely what the whistleblower said or didn't say really doesn't matter all that much. I suspect we won't have many, and maybe not even any surprises. Remember, all of these witnesses have already testified behind closed doors, but we'll hear from people who are close to the action. And the theme seems to be that President Trump really was far more deeply involved in these matters than he had initially let on.

Well, what do you mean by that? What were the sort of key moments from last week's testimony that lead you to say that?

I think there were a couple of key moments. Again, there weren't really any surprises. This is not the Nixon hearings when the American people were watching Congress uncover events in real time. These hearings are designed for public consumption. The Intelligence Committee has already heard their testimony, and the Democrats aren't uncovering new information so much as they're building a public case for impeachment and trying to move public opinion. That said, I found two things especially noteworthy. The first was William Taylor's testimony that his aide overheard a conversation in which President Trump asked Ambassador Sondland about the investigations as the Bidens.

Following the call with President Trump, the member of my staff asked Ambassador Sondland what President Trump thought of about Ukraine. Amasser Sondland responded that President Trump cares more about the investigations of Biden, which Giuliani was pressing for.

You know, I guess that's not terribly surprising given what we know, this saga so far. But still, it's striking that an American president's main concern about an independent country fending off Russian aggression appears to be how useful it can be to him politically in the next election. You know, that that really would have been unthinkable for any past president. The second striking thing from last week was President Trump tweeting insults at Marie Yovanovitch as she was testifying.

Master Yovanovitch, as we sit here testifying, the president is attacking you on Twitter, and I'd like to give you a chance to respond. I'll read Part of one of his tweets. Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad. She started off in Somalia. How did that go?

Adam Schiff implied that the tweet could amount to witness tampering. I think that's kind of an extreme view that, if accepted, may haunt future presidents. But even if it's not actual witness tampering, it's still pretty graceless. And I gather that Congressional Republicans managed to convey to President Trump just how unhelpful that sort of behavior is.

And how have Republicans generally been responding to all of this seemingly damning testimony, to this gracelessness, as you put it? Do they have a game plan here?

Well, Republicans have followed two basic lines of defense. The first has been to try to distance and insulate President Trump as much as possible. They've emphasized that none of the witnesses had firsthand knowledge what the president did or said. You know, they've relied on what others have said. But, of course, the White House has also blocked those with the most firsthand knowledge from testifying. So it's kind of a nifty little hermetic trick, telling the public they're just getting a bunch of secondhand information, but blocking people with firsthand information from appearing. They've also been arguing that what the president did isn't impeachable. They made a great deal of Ambassador Yovanovitch's testimony that she had no evidence of criminal conduct from President Trump. Of course, impeachment doesn't require criminal conduct or conduct that violates a criminal statute. The articles drawn up against President Nixon, for instance, focused on abuse of power, which isn't a crime. But I think emphasizing the fact that President Trump has done nothing criminal and that nobody has really spoken up with firsthand knowledge of what he's done, those have been their two main lines.

And what about the Democrats? How would you sum up their game plan here?

Well, Democrats have a very difficult task here. It's not enough to show that Donald Trump behaved badly or broke norms. People know that about him, and a lot of them like him for it. Democrats have to show that this particular bad behavior was so harmful to the Republic that he deserves the most severe censure available. That's going to be very difficult. This inquiry is really aimed at neither doctrinaire Republicans or Democrats, but at that sliver of persuadable voters in the middle. And, of course, Democrats also have to decide precisely what merits impeachment in this case. Are they going to focus just on the Ukraine affair? I mean, Robert Mueller, in his report, listed multiple instances of obstructive conduct. Are they going to look to impeachment for that? Adam Schiff implied that Trump's tweet may constitute witness tampering. Is that grounds for impeachment? I don't know, and I don't know that they yet know the answers to these questions. You know, initially I think they wanted a quite sort of swift, conclusive process wrapped up before Thanksgiving, you know, but on Sunday morning, Nancy Pelosi left open the possibility of more hearings after the Thanksgiving recess. So Democrats seem to sort of be feeling things out as they go and looking for something that might stick.

Thanks for your time, John.

Thank you, Jason. Always a pleasure.

In the early days of the Internet, it was a big bet to imagine customers would buy their books online rather than peruse the shelves of a physical store. We all know how that turned out. Yet another bit of e commerce remains persistently physical groceries. Plenty of companies are trying to crack the online grocery business, including Amazon, the one that changed the global book market. And though some firms have been at it for a couple of decades, it's still not looking easy.

Around the world, panic is sweeping through the supermarket aisles, and this is a tough business. Profits are incredibly slim. There's a lot of competition from discount grocers. There is a lot of convenience stores.

Henry Tricks writes Schumpeter, our column on global business, finance and economics.

And on top of this, you have the threat of online grocery shopping, which has been slow to take off, but it's coming. And even the big boys, the Amazons, Walmarts, Alibaba's in China, they're all looking at each other and wondering who's going.

To win this battle and why is it tougher online?

It's very difficult to take perishables, to take food and drink and put them online. It's proven to be much, much more difficult than selling a computer or delivering an item of clothing. So online grocery penetration is low around the world. And the reason for that is partly because it's just harder to deliver groceries. So, you know, you've got items that have a very short sell by date, and some need to be delivered frozen, some need to be delivered at room temperature. So they're hard to deliver for the grocer. But also the consumer is, is sort of hardwired in a sense to want to choose their own groceries, to want to walk through the stores. And the supermarkets have done a fantastic job over the years in basically putting things in supermarkets in a way that make it really attractive for us to wander through the Aisles, feel those bananas and sort of check out the color of the tomatoes. This is something, a satisfaction that you do not get when you're clicking through tile after tile on an online grocery website.

And what about those bigger players you mentioned, like Amazon? Are they likely to clean up here?

They are certainly investing a lot of time and effort and money at the moment in trying to work out what ideal option would be. But there are some interesting insurgents, companies that are attempting to take on the big three. And probably the most interesting is a British company called ocado, which started 20 years ago and has basically been the pioneer of online shopping in the uk. It's been partly responsible for actually accelerating the growth of online grocery shopping in the uk, which is one of the biggest online grocery markets in the world. And Ocado is a company that uses a very clever mix of savvy marketing. It ties up with companies that have good brand reputations like Waitrose, a posh supermarket, and now M and S Marks and Spencer. But it's also incredib technologically savvy. So its warehouses in the UK are run by robots that pick 50 items in a matter of minutes. So what they've managed to do is to turn these incredibly efficient warehousing and delivery into competitive prices for the customers, which has attracted people in the uk and their idea now is to take that globally, especially into the us.

And do you think that that works? I mean, there are certain issues of geography that always change matters in America.

Well, yes, it's a very different market to the uk. And interestingly enough, in early November, Ocado's shares suffered a very sharp fall because of some concerns that the market for their technological offerings, their warehouses in the US may not be growing with the gangbusters that people had expected. But I should point out that over the last two years, Ocado's market value has increased by about three times. So it's had this incredible run up and people basically are valuing it now like a software company, not like a supermarket. So there is much more volatility in its shares. But it's one of these companies that although it's cracked the market in the uk, it's still an open question as to whether it will succeed in the us. There are different models emerging. Walmart, Amazon, they all trying different ways of experimenting with online groceries.

How do you mean? How are those big incumbents trying to crack it?

Amazon puts the fear of God down all retailers for good reason. But groceries, it's still early days. In fact, only about 6% of its sales of perishable goods. Having said that, it's certainly moving into the area. So it bought Whole Foods, the grocery store, the bricks and mortar grocery store. In 2017, Walmart now has started to offer a service in which it can deliver groceries directly into your fridge with a trusted, hopefully employee coming in with a wearable camera, and you're able to monitor that person as they unpack your groceries. But I think the model that people are most interested in, because it seems to be most technologically advanced, is the model in China. And there Alibaba, which is the big E commerce company, the equivalent of Amazon in China, has created a whole chain of grocery stores called Hema, which are a mixture of fresh food with incredible kind of QR codes that tell you how fresh the fish is, where it was caught, that sort of thing. There are lines above your head with bags running along them, where robots are putting groceries into them as you shop. There are apps that you can use as you're shopping to find out where the groceries are. It's extremely sophisticated, so it's certainly one to watch. And China also has very low cost labor. So things like picking, packing and delivery is cheaper in China than it is in the West.

Seems like a tremendous amount of technology and innovation being thrown at the very simple problem of thumping the cantaloupes and smelling the tomatoes and so on.

Yes, there is also a technological challenge at the other end, which is how do you get them to feel as comfortable with the experience online as they do when they're walking through the supermarket aisles? And for that, the guess is that things like virtual reality, headsets, perhaps touch and feel technology, who knows, those will one day make us feel that shopping in our living room is pretty much the same as going to the local supermarket.

So the future may be me thumping a virtual cantaloupe without the trouble of all those other customers getting in my way.

What could be better?

Henry, thank you very much for your time.

Thank you, Jason.

Before the stadium shows, before the feature length film, before stardom put them in the high fidelity first class traveling set, Pink Floyd released Dark side of the Moon. It's the album that turned the band around. After the lackluster performance of its predecessor metal, it would go on to become a defining album of the band of the era. And of course it made the band quite a lot of money, but it wasn't an immediate hit.

Dark side of the Moon by Pink Floyd was released in 1973 and it entered the Billboard charts, which are the American album sales charts. It ranked number 95 when it first entered.

Lizzie Peet is a researcher for the Economist, based in New York.

It then did something quite incredible and spent a total of 943 weeks on the chart, which is the equivalent of 18 years. Both of these feats starting ranking quite low and spending such a long time in the charts are becoming actually much less common, according to a new paper by a couple of researchers at Goethe University in Frankfurt, who analyzed music charts in America, Britain, Germany and the Netherlands going back to 1979.

And so what did these researchers find?

Well, they found a few interesting trends. Basically, there's a lot more jostling now among musicians to get to the top spot. So 30 years ago, say, there might be roughly a dozen number one albums per year. These days are around 40. So if you think about it, that the maximum would be 52, 52 weeks in a year. We're getting quite close to a point, if you follow the trend, that there might be a new number one album every single week. A successful album also now spends less than half as long in the chart as it did 25 years ago. So the idea of an album sticking around for 18 years is almost impossible these days.

So essentially, the number one slot is turning over a lot more often, and things kind of essentially come into and out of the charts much quicker these days.

Exactly. I think the charts have just basically become a lot more volatile and pop music has in turn become a lot more varied. So the journey up a ranking to number one has become a lot quicker. For most of the past 50 years, albums took a few weeks at least to climb to the top after creating a bit of buzz. So they would be released, people would tell their friends, they'd go on TV shows, they'd promote them on the radio, for example, and it would take several weeks to actually build popularity and get to the top. Whereas these days, if an album doesn't immediately reach number one upon release, it's very unlikely that it will.

So does that say something about the kind of music that's being made or a change in the way that tastes are kind of coming and going, or the way that music is consumed?

I think it says quite a lot about the consumption of music. If you look at when these trends start to accelerate, it's around about 2,000, which is when the Internet came along. So you have sites like YouTube, Spotify, SoundCloud, MySpace, really transforming how listeners can access music. Smartphones as well have given music lovers quite instant access to new music. And also online shopping, like Amazon has made the purchase of music a lot quicker and more of an instinctive choice rather than something that people thought about and discussed with friends before they went out to purchase.

I mean, what's your view on that trend then? Is that better for music or for music listeners?

Well, I think there are kind of ups and downs to it really. For example, you have more and more albums coming into the chart every year, which is obviously must be a good thing for all listeners. Much more variety and diversity of music. However, also there's a flip side which is that it's probably worse for musicians themselves in terms of just economics. They can't expect to sort of hold iron grips on music charts like they used to.

Lizzie, thank you very much much for your time.

Thanks very much, Jason.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. If you like us, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts and you can subscribe to the economist@exterator.com radio. Offer 12 issues for $12 or 12 pounds. See you back here tomorrow.