The books title is intriguing, the broken, can the senate save itself in the country. Im curious, what is your conclusion to that question. Tom, first of all, im thrilled to be having a conversation with you. When cspan told me you were going to do it, i felt like i had won the lottery. To see an old friend but also also great senator and Senate Leader and an author on this subject. You cant do much better than that. Thank you. I am flattered. The easy answer is that your jury is still out on how it will go. When i tried to convey in the book was, first that the senate has declined over a long period of time, not a couple of years, more like a couple of decades for the senate has declined in a way where it sort of goes like that and it stevens over the last nine or ten years. What we are facing now is a very diminished and weakened senate at precisely the time we need a strong one. All of a sudden we are facing the possibility, lets say we were facing the possibility of an inexperienced, reckless, perhaps irresponsible authoritarian president. You would want a strong senate, and we dont have one. In the senate save itself, change from the downward spiral its been on and then step up to its responsibilities. Thats the question. The book is optimistic in certain ways. Ive been criticized by someone who said youre too optimistic. Its optimistic because i believe, and weve seen recent evidence that so many of the senators are disgusted with the institution the way its been. Youve written about this, and you know this is one of the least well kept secret in town. They want to be real senators, they want to be in a senate that functions and yet theyre not so the chance that they can do something about that are potentially still there. Lets talk a little bit about you first. We got to know each other long, long ago. You served six senators which may be a record from the 75 75 87, 12 years, tell me what that was like in compared to what you think it would be like if you had that experience for the past 12 years. Great question. The audience wouldnt know, but we had the privilege of meeting and becoming friends in the late 70s when we were both staffers and what i call the last great senate. We were privileged to be there because of the senate that was there. I got hooked on the senate early like many people do in high school and college as i was starting to think about politics in the world. The senate was playing such an important role, i remember the civil rights act, breaking the filibuster and seeing it. Then i got to college and i remember the vietnam hearings exposing the follies of vietnam. Jean mccarthy and Robert Kennedy stepping forward to run for president. Watergate, i got hooked on the senate and i had a Senate Internship in 1969, one day after college. It convinced me i should come back and try to work for the senate and i got back in 75. I had a great time for 12 years doing different things. The senate, at that time, which i call the last great senate, but the throw that out, i would call it mansfield senate. Mike mansfield set the tone for that senate. The longestserving majority leader. He built the senate, in my view that was promised on trust, mutual respect, goodfaith engagement and bipartisanship. It was a healthy place. I found not to be the case while i was working for senators and the majority in the 70s, and then they carried over into the 80s even though we lost the majority control of the senate. So, i loved what i was doing. I think everyone there loved what they were doing. It was a great place. Its no accident that people that we know now that we didnt know then were running around like Madeleine Albright or Steven Breyer or Lamar Alexander and susan collins. I cant even begin to fathom what it would be like now. All these right people who want to work in the senate, come to the senate, theyre very busy, theyre still very busy. They do good work. Sometimes they do things in communit committee and the leader says were not doing that. I want to hear your views on this because you thought about it so much. The evolution of the leader driven status and the loss between the leaders and the committee is a important problem. I dont think the relationship factors what it was when we were there as staff members. Relationships were built across the aisle to really engage, i think it really deteriorated over the years and thats been pervasive even to the staff level and i think thats a very troubling aspect of what much of what were experience today. You mentioned your last book, the last great senate, got rave reviews and expect the sun will too but what led you to write a volume two or this book now. The last great senate came out in 2012. Its basically about the senate of the late 70s ending in the 80s but i was persuaded by my publisher to write an epilogue. In fact, not only did the senate decline in stages and it keeps declining, but when i started writing the last great senate, i felt more optimism because we would have a president ial election and it turned out barack obama would be president and there be a new opportunity. , wrote the book that role had pretty much vanished. As the situation people progressed and things got worse, the book that you wrote, crisi crisis. , Olympia Snowe book, other books, i decided to finish the history and explain what had happened in the important thing about it, i made a decision to write the book when i was quite sure secretary clinton would be president but i didnt think she could govern unless the senate changed and was better and went back to be more of the senate we remember. I wasnt motivated by donald trump anymore than you were motivated by the trump candidacy when you and trent lott wrote your book. It just seemed like the need for the senate to go back to playing its role as what mondale called our national mediator, the things place where things got worked out, i thought it was important to revisit it. You make a refreshing but counterintuitive revelation in your opening pages. You know that you write the entire book without talking to anyone. Most riders, myself included just sort of consume themselves with interviews and discussions and other perspectives and we do some conclusion rewriting from that but you chose to do it without the input of anybody what your own review of the current published information. Tell me, what motivated you to use that approach. The way you describe it, it sounds more than counterintuitive. It sounds somewhat arrogant. But actually, on my first book which was historical, actually did about 90 interviews but essentially wrote the book from the public record, newspapers, books, et cetera. The interviews are animated a little bit but it was mostly written on public record. This was a different situation and i had done some of the researcher ready because i had thought about it for the epilogue of my first book. I knew i couldnt interviews of people, im not a journalist, i knew i could interview enough people to have a full sample. I was a senate insider once but im not anymore. I havent been for a long time. I know very few of the senators and i didnt, and very few the staff, and i didnt want to just interview the ones i knew. I basically decided theres been a lot written about the senate, theres some great journalism goes on all the time, theres enough there to write off. And so, i take responsibility for anything in the book, but i didnt think that interviews were the right way to go. I commend you. In fact, its inspired me too try to do something similar someday. Having this worked out very well. Its really two books in one. The first book takes us through the decades up until 2016 in a very eloquently written senate history, much like you did in your first book, but this honestly had new information and quite an account. I want to talk about some of the things you write about in that first book. The second book, how was it you decided to organize the book in that fashion . Well, i thought the trump election was the most astonishing political event in history and, in a sense, the book i was writing which describes the importance of the senate and the decline of the senate and the dangerous decline of the senate intersected with trump selection so, the question of whether the senate could face up to these new challenges, this extraordinary challenge seem to be very important so i essentially decided that i would write a second part showing the initial encounters and it ran through seven or eight months, maybe its nine, simply because while it would be conclusive, there would be important things you could see about it and i think it worked out that way and thats part of the reason the jury was mixed on the question because i can find evidence of the senators and the senate doing things that are hopeful and promising, and i can find other evidence where they are failing us completely so mixed picture but it didnt seem to me, given the times we are in, you couldnt ignore the fact that i was writing a book while donald trump was becoming president , but trump wasnt my main focus. On page 16, you quote the famous football coach been somebody that winning isnt everything, its the only thing. How is it that that attitude, that philosophy is currently reflected in the way the senate works. Well, i think, its interesting, a very interesting question. Senator mcconnell has given his view. He said winners make policy and losers go home. The problem is, from my standpoint in our system the winners and losers stay around. That is the majority and minority stay around. They have to Work Together where traditionally they had to Work Together and thats because, we are not a parliamentary system and so, traditionally when the senate worked well it was because the majority and minority could come together on things to build enough broad support so the idea that winning is everything and losers are to go home, the minority is still there so thats one part of it. The other part is although politics is a contact sport in this great deal at stake, winning isnt everything. You have to sort of win in a way that maintains the institutions, maintains our government, and i think thats whats in danger here at the moment. On the context, i think, and im sure youd agree that it ought to have a broader definition. As we look at the political elements of it, thats one thing that the context of winning in terms of moving the country forward, its a totally different one. I think weve involved in it seems to be thats whats driving so much of the environment today. Absolutely. But i think, part of this evolution has been more tribal politics over a long period of time. Theres no question thats the case, but part of this is that you can differ with people politically, we all do that, democrats, i will accept the view, they are moving right rapidly and theyre doing well. But politics was supposed to be about finding a way to overcome some of those differences through extended discussion and a real legislative process, through principle compromise. It wasnt supposed to be about one Party Winning on their own. The times as you know, times in history where one party has been able to do this on your own were very few. Maybe 1933 and 34, fdr dealing with the depression, lbj, 6465 but even lbj reached out for republicans and fdr had republican support the first two years. When Mitch Mcconnell, it will probably come back to him a couple times. When senator mcconnell started doing healthcare and get 50 of his 52 votes from his caucus, my reaction was, well, that should work and couldnt work and its not supposed to work that way. Youre supposed to be looking for people on the other side to get 65 or 70 votes. Of course he would say that would be impossible because none of them would vote with us because their against trump, et cetera, but this notion that one party has to rule by themselves brings us to some bad places. Absolutely. We have moved from Common Ground to stand your ground. Weve moved from the view that compromise is a good thing to compromise is capitulation. That mindset is dangerous. Early in the book, to that point, you make an observation that i think is really the essence of the book. You state, america is Strong Enough to survive a few bad years, but the senate has been in decline for several decades. What are the applications of that . The fact that weve been in decline this long. Well, i think there are profound implications if its not reversed. Frankly, no one captured them better than you and trent did in crisis point where the system isnt working and what the consequences for that are. In our system, the senate i believe plays a key role as the balance wheel in the system, as the National Phrase for the mediator where the diverse and contentious country come together and hopefully get reconciled. If you dont have that, then the system seizes up. The polarization becomes dysfunction and thats what weve seen. Thats extremely dangerous for solving any problems but its also terribly harmful to public confidence, people dont have any faith in the government and why should they. Why should they have any faith in the government. You are a very good leader for reasons i will get into when i talk about leaders. Leaders, lets take as an assumption that we are a diverse country and its pretty tough out there in terms of partisan differences. But, you can be a leader who tries to overcome those differences and bring people together or you can exacerbate those differences and drive partisan polarization as hard as you can. Weve seen that leadership rather than the type of leadership that brings people together. Or tries to bring people together. Let me ask you, you talk as i would and as i have and continue to do, very fondly of the 60s and the ensuring achievements of what you describe is the golden era of the senate. I look back to make sure i remember correctly, but the 89th congress had 68 democrats. President johnson won in 1964 in a landslide. You had tumultuous crises, the civil rights, the vietnam issue, the assassination of three National Leaders and it was all a very short time in the 60s. You had a combination of an overwhelmingly Democratic Senate, 68 senators, a president who had been clearly given a mandate with an overwhelming landslide election plus the catalytic factors that come with crises. To what extent, and i compared that set of circumstances, that landscape in the 60s to today where weve had three wave election in the past 15 years, changing control, weve had constitutional crisis with the selection of a president of 43, weve had just enormous turbulence politically. How difficult is it and is it unfair to compare circumstances today with the golden era given how difficult the landscape was then versus now. Everything, at a certain level everything is different. The golden era, the lbj victory in the majorities he had, some of that didnt last very long and when i praised the great senate for mansfield senate, its because they sustained a certain way of doing business throughout the 60s and 70s which were difficult years and, it wasnt, it was a Democratic Senate for a long time dealing with bj, but then of course dealing with richard nixon, dealing with gerald ford, and then a new outsider president he was a democrat but had not been in washington and there were plenty of problems throughout the whole period. And yet the senate kept contributing, reconciling differences and stepping up to foreign and domestic crisis issues. Also stepping up to the biggest crisis of our times. Vietnam and watergate after the civil rights legislation. Those were big problems. To some extent, you fastforward and you see big problems also, but many of them not being faced so you can have a larger problem than the economic crisis that happened after the lehman shock in 2008 and the effect of that collapse on main street or across the country. They produce the tarp program when it was needed. Three months later we had barack obama as president. We lost 750,000 jobs the first year. We were still in danger of going into a depression but we no longer had any cooperation to deal with the problem. President had changed so therefore the republican response had changed. That wouldnt have happened in mansfield senate. It would happened with howard baker, it wouldnt happen with bob dole, it wouldnt happen. That leads me too ask the question that you explore in the book, and i think its so important in such an important observation, you talk about the commitment to make the senate work as a key factor and you just alluded to it were now its the difference between a collective agenda and an individual agenda. Talk a little bit about that distinction and why that distinction is so important. Mansfield, who i refer to, who reluctantly became Senate Majority leader at John Kennedys request had a view of how you should do business, and he was sort of the reaction to lyndon johnson. He didnt believe in bullying people. He probably never twisted an arm in his life. He believed that all of the senators had to contribute, not just the leaders, and he believed in treating everyone well. He lived by the golden rule. When he first heard what he was trying to do they said it couldnt possibly work in the senate. And yet, it did work, although it wasnt that easy. The senate responded to the crisis of civil rights and president kennys assassination and moved ahead that way. Part of what mansfield instille instilled, the ones that we knew, was that they represented their states vigorously, they were democrats or republicans and they had an overriding National Commitment to change john mccains view. They were there for the National Interest but what that also meant, and mansfield insisted on, individual agendas you have your individual agendas but were here to make the senate work. You have to subordinate your individual agendas to the need for collective action. Thats what were here for. They took up issues and they took their and they argued and had their arguments, they took their votes, but at the end of the day they knew they had a take collective action. Nobody won all the time. Absolutely nobody one all the time. The notion that they were there to make the senate work with something that is very important to them. We see the opposite now. Senator mcconnell has shown no interest in making the senate work. Hes undermined the way the senate works. One of the problems as they know how too do it. They know how to make it work. He has said in his speeches, his speech where he laid out how the senate should work, its a speech you could of given except he doesnt work that way. Hes contradicted and run the sena