And incredible books that think youre going to find surprising in many ways as i did when i was able to read them. First is loving, and the second is one nation after trump. And these books at first blush would seem to be very different, having that much in common. After all one book is about interracial sex, procreation and marriage and not nestled in that order but thats what its about. And of the book by my friend norm ornstein is about erectile dysfunction and major flaws in governance in our government that have been worsening for three decades. And yet both the books have a lot of income. For example, they both have incredibly bland, noncontroversial titles this one by professor Sheryll Cashin is loving, interracial intimacy in american the threat to White Supremacy. Okay. Thats very bland. And then this one is really does not choose sides and is very sort of day right down the road one nation after trump a guide for the perplexed, the disillusioned, the desperate, and the notyet deported. [laughing] supplicate both bland titles. Both are compelling, incredibly readable, captivating stories about their political history is really with analysis of how our nation chewable, the constitution in practice works, how our laws are written, how they are implemented by the executive branch, how they are interpreted by the judicial branch, and how they are changed. And then finally, both books are very much focused on the meaning and the power of we the people, the first three words of the United States constitution. So lets get right at it. Im going to start with professor Sheryll Cashin. Professor, Georgetown University has published some outstanding books and articles. Shes passionate about Racial Injustice inequality, and this book, loving, is quite remarkable. Some just going to ask you right at the start very briefly, just in a few minutes, tell us all a bit about what motivated you to write this book and what its about. Okay. Well loving v. Virginia, the 50th anniversary of this case, this is the case in which the Supreme Court struck down bans on interracial marriage as a law professor i teach the case, and i knew the 50th anniversary was coming and it struck me as a refreshing kind of way of commenting on how it is were so messed up around race and all this division. What my students learned when i teach this case and what i learned in researching it is that the regulation of interracial sex and marriage with the means by which White Supremacy was constructed in this country. And i wanted to tell that story from the beginning, weve been in this dance between the values of universal Human Dignity in the declaration of independence written by Thomas Jefferson and the values of supremacy, also written by Thomas Jefferson. And i wanted to tell this story of how we been in that dance, and i tried to explain it and end on an optimistic note. The book is about so much more than the case. It starts literally with the beginning of america. It runs up to the case and then it runs forward. This is certainly not, the book is not just the screenplay for the movie. Do you want to explain that although the . No, its the same case, the same title, loving, shameless. Why not try to get the updraft of the movie began, right . The book starts in 1607. I have before loving, during and after. Its a sweet, and i tried to tell this story of whiteness, why was whiteness constructed. It was constructed when the slave owning elites wanted to transition from white indentured servitude to black chattel slavery. They had a problem. For the first six decades or so in the virginia colony, there had been a lot of fraternization. Indentured, white people, and enslaved like an Indigenous People fraternize together, sometimes got drunk together, had sex, ran away. There were some marriages, and they also rebelled together. The initial bans on interracial sex happen in the virginia slave code. They want to coopt indigenous struggling whites and heal them away. And i tell this story from the beginning. Every time you have an assertion of whiteness and an ideology of whiteness in this country, theres an economic story of plutocrats who fear struggling people of all colors demanded too much of them peeling whites off. I tell that story. It happens again and again throughout the book and throughout our country. Now, i want to ask you a couple of questions, actually two, about the writing of this book. The first thing i want to ask you about is how its written. It is beautifully written. It is eloquent. Its literature. It is, i hope im not embarrassing you, and as a former practicing lawyer im not beyond, i can respect, but i really mean quite genuinely that this book is written in a way that goes far beyond your opening introduction to be a freestanding essay for the ages that people would refer to. What im going to ask you as an author is are you striving for that . Is there in use . This is a terrific history but its written beautifully. I didnt pay him to say that. [laughing] and im not embarrassed. Thank you so much. I worked very, very hard at the craft of writing. I intentionally, this is my fourth book. I intentionally have developed a voice as a writer. I kept a diary from age six to 26, and i happen to come across a line in one of those diaries where i said if i had, if i was brave i would admit to myself ii want to be a writer, but you know i, like sweet people was afraid to just go into that. I became a law professor. Its nice to have a day job, you know . But as ive gotten older, and i am tenured and in my 50s, like you get emancipated. I just go for it and try to write the best books i can that speak in my voice, that speak passionately, and im so honored for you to use the word literature to describe this book. Well, its true and i committed to everybody else. Rick when you get back and ask you both some questions, but i want to turn to norm just briefly here and ask norm ornstein, my friend who is, i just figured out that is to coauthors, and norm of known for a total of 10000 years plus, and norm actually has been a neighbor for a long time in washington of us 100. What prompted you to write this book and tell us about it briefly. Whats the theme of the book . I wasnt going to write another book. Tom mann and i have done many, many things together over decades, and we did a book in 2006 called the broken branch and then we did another in 2012 called its even worse than it looks. And then we updated it in 2016 to its even worse than it was. And i joke, one half joking that if i did know what might it be called one for your lives. [laughing] edited one to be the Debbie Downer of american politics i didnt want to be the brilliant editor can who had done those of the books called me and got me thinking that it was important to do something now. Cyphers came up with the subtitle, and with that i recruited e. J. And tom. We knew that we wanted to get this out as quickly as possible and it would be better if we had the three of us and we combat things, we have the skills i think that are complementary, and then i came up with the title after that just think about one nation under god. And one nation after trump is meant not just to be once hes gone, its also a a very significant focus on the one nation part. This this is a much more optimic book than the others in some ways, oddly enough and well get to that. Well get to the optimism part, but speedy but i could talk about the pessimism part. You can talk for hours. Theres nothing wrong with that. I say that to my law students. If youre the one doing the billing, theres nothing wrong with that. I learned a long time ago its not building, is collecting. In any event, especially given that the climate where in, one of the surprising things about this book, but you could see this coming along ways, is you authors, including you and tom who are, youre with the conservative aei, hes with brookings but she has a reputation as being in the forefront, and straight shooters and objective commenters who love the institutions that on government. Youll be accused of having chosen sites basically. Is that fair . Did e. J. Dionne, the liberal Washington Post commentator lawrence woggle you or bamboozle you . Let me go back with a little bit of history. Its even worse than it looks became a New York Times bestseller in part because a wonderful and brilliant editor at the Washington Post, carlos lowes otto who edited the outlook section there of the sunday paper, we did an excerpt the sunday before the book was released on monday and he gave it the title lets just say it, the republicans are the problem, and that went viral. And we got a lot of, whereon whn cspan, so i wont use some of the terms, a lot of feedback from that. But a lot of it was pushed back from a press corps that simply couldnt deal with the notion that they are not equivalent. But we didnt come at this as partisans. We came it this as objective social scientists, and the fact is the norms have been shredded in a congress and in a political system by one party much more than the other. There are no angels here, but your youre looking at the difference between jaywalking and manslaughter in terms of what it was doing to the institutions and the nature of our politics. And really turning estimate partisanship thats deeply embedded in our political system to tribalism. I may been the first one to use the term tribalism in which is now become commonplace, and were still finding that the false equivalence which is there for the parties but also now this, and i call it the journalism stop us before we kill again phenomenon, this incredible, intense need to normalize donald trump and say now hes pivoting, now hes becoming just like other president s, and putting them into a frame that he simply doesnt belong in. If youre going to be intellectually honest in this process and you go with the data, your own experience and own observations take you, and ive had now close to 50 years of working around washington and the institutions, both the congress and around president s in executive branch, and with both parties on an awful lot of things on reform and some substantive areas, and i still do to some extent, but this is the reality of our politics. What really has wrangled me about journalism is if you dont call out miscreants, 80 basically say theyre all like that, you get to phenomenon, one of which helped to lead directly to trumpet it is they are all horrible. What could be worse than this . And that leads to the what the hell have you got to lose that donald trump used to try and convince africanamericans and boy, are they saying what they got to lose now. But its also that you end up with a political system where there is no penalty for eroding those norms. Thats just a terrible thing. And, frankly, they are being eroded even further in some of the injuries we can get to in the senate in speed is asking about those. Norm, you like talking about norms, so your toggle some of the norms that have eroded. Maybe you could give a look at the background, the blue slip controversy thats going on right now. Sure. I do but he about the shredding of norms with the nomination of Merrick Garland and aftermath of the unexpected and untimely death of justice scalia. And now his replacement by neil gorsuch, and that of course the longstanding practice built into the rules for a long time that it would require a supermajority vote for Supreme Court justice. So thats one thing. But very longstanding norm in the senate, over many, many, many decades, is that when nominations are moved for District Court and Appeals Court judges from particular states, that the senators from the state are consulted. And usually that consultation doesnt have to involve picking somebody they also want. Obviously if you have a democratic president , to republican senators or vice versa you may not have that but it usually involves heres a list of people, tell us who you like, you wouldnt. And if those senators, either one from the state, doesnt approve, then they have blue slip, and if they dont turn into the judiciary committee, that nomination goes nowhere. Now, that no one in practice continues to the obama years. The chairman of the judiciary committee, when he was chairman, a democrat, patrick leahy, abided by it, but during a time when it was misused in a fashion we had never seen before. Because you have republican senators from states he refused to move forward with the nominees, even those they had supported in the past, in some cases have recommended in the past, and it was all about keeping the seats of bacon in the hopes that at some point it would be able to fill in. And patrick leahy, who was criticized by many of his colleagues basically believe that this was the way you behave, and if you showed that kind of courtesy, it would be reciprocated. And now we have a handful of Democratic Senators holding up nominations, in some cases for Appeals Court judgeships that had been held vacant for a long time, now are being pushed for with nominees and they were not consulted. Mitch mcconnell is a we may just have to blow it all up. Very briefly, whats wrong with that . Whats the cost of that . So it for looking at tribalism, it isnt just in congress and, of course, its metastasized alchemy states into the public as a whole here americans see people from the other party as the enemy, trying to destroy their way of life. But we also seen sharp partisanship and even tribalism in fact, the federal courts. Were seeing these dramatic divisions. Lets just pick one example recently where after we had multiple courts say that the redistricting process in texas have gone so far over the line that you had you redraw these lines, the Supreme Court just lock that from moving forward for the 2018 elections on a very predictable by four vote, a partisan vote in effect. 54. If you try to move the way in are selected only by one party and solely with the goals of making sure you pick a younger person who will be there for a very long time, long after you have any political power, which is itself something that is a dramatic blow to the whole notion of a popular democracy, you are no longer in power but your policies it continued because these are in effect lifetime appointments. But youre also going to end up being pushed and incentivized to pick the most extreme people and the people who you know are going to vote the way you want them to vote. And that just blows up the whole notion of judicial process with a level of integrity. Every one of these norms is therefore a reason and they can be abused. Thats a norm that fit into the system on the basis that partisanship and shortterm political interest is not a motivation of people, but they have longerterm and so that kind of is one of the constitutional things that smooths things out over time. Well get back to that of a litter of what to turn and ask professor cashin the question, and that is, both of you, youll get the same question, norm here both of you are incredible optimists in your book, notwithstanding that you both are chroniclers of some of the worst, most obscene, if you will, episode in american history, most disappointing. So why are you optimists, and what are you hopeful and what is it that you hope they can be accomplished in a future . Optimism is a choice. I couldve written a very dystopian both, but i do not have much hope of a classy unity among struggling people of the kind that existed in colonial virginia preblack slavery. But one thing that gives me hope in this country is rising, and this this is a term i coined, cultural dexterity. And what is that . It is the opposite of colorblindness. It is the acquisition through intimate relationships with the person of a different race or ethnicity of an enhanced capacity for being among people who are different, seeing those differences and accepting them rather than demanding and assimilation to your own norms. And that document this in the final part, the third part of my book. In this country today, right under our noses we are exponential increase in interracial intimacy. Marriage, cohabitation, dating, adoption, friendship, and even paris social or virtual relationships with characters or a black president commuting affection for in the media. All of the social science showed that white people who have an intimate connection, particularly with a black person, it tends to reduce their prejudice. It predicts that they are more likely to be angry about black people are treated, and more likely to engage in collective action to do something about it. Diversity people under 30 agree with the critique of the black lives Matter Movement of police come right . And so i argue or speculate i should say that we were goingo reach a Tipping Point with a Critical Mass of whites, not all whites, but a Critical Mass of whites accept the loss of centrality of whiteness and wants to be part of the multiracial democracy. What gives me hope in particular is the transition in california. California in a 20 year period went from being majority white to gridlocked to majorityminority the functional again in its politics. It did away with gerrymandering. It is retreating from the war on drugs, investing more in education, leaving on climate change. If you look at california in the late 80s, it was just assess functional and ungovernable as congress is today. So youre an optimist. Let me ask about another term that you use threat the book, racial intimacy, interracial. Is that sex . Is that romance . Is that procreation. What you talked about, or is it all of the above . There are different forms of intimacy. Cohabitation, marriage, dating, adoption. One quarter of all adoptions across racial debate in this country. One quarter. And friendship. I actually think the most potential in effect, and i say friendship i mean if you sit down and have a meal with someone of a different race, you are likely friends. If you go into their home and vice versa, and like i said, its not Rocket Science but intimate relationships to integrate empathy. While i dont make the silly argument that interracial intimacy in and of itself is going to dismantle White Supremacy, what im saying is when you take risi