With Honor
Rye Barcott's book.
My partner in the ‘Night Owls’ podcast, Joe Klein, first introduced me to Rye Barcott eight years ago. I was impressed because he’s impressive. In a recent post, Joe described him as follows:
Rye is an optimist, an activist. While he was still in college, at the University of North Carolina, he started a charity in a Kenyan slum, Kibera, that has blossomed, more than twenty years later, into a health facility, an education and sports program. He then served in the Marines, in Iraq, Djibouti and elsewhere. Afterward, Rye went on to get joint masters degrees in Public Policy and Business from Harvard. With his mentor Gergen and fellow veteran (Peter) Dixon, Rye co-founded With Honor—which funds the campaigns of Democrats and Republican veterans, but only if they sign a pledge to work together. There are now 37 With Honor members in the House, 11 in the Senate and three Governors. These are among the most admirable Americans I know; there are future Presidents among them.
Rye’s new book Courage Can Save Us, offers profiles of ten House caucus members, 5 Democrats and 5 Republicans who are members of the cross-partisan caucus. It is not like other books too frequently celebrated these days: it’s not about how awful everything is in America. It is the opposite: a hopeful look at some of our emerging national leaders, without being a hagiography. Working across party lines isn’t easy, these days. It begs death threats from freak constituents and primaries from extremists (on both sides). Three of Rye’s 10 subjects are leaving Congress. But more are on the way! The caucus persists and is an antidote to the despair so many feel about American politics these days.
Rye’s new book has now launched. He’s on the trail promoting it. Joe and I talked with him about the book, his work leading With Honor, and his belief that more productive, less performative politics is still possible.
(‘Night Owls” podcast with Rye Barcott. Recorded 27 May 2026. Produced by Dale Eisinger. If you prefer to listen to podcasts on the major podcast platforms, you can find this and all the other ‘Night Owls’ podcasts at Apple, Spotify, Amazon, and iHeart.)