Welfare, then the general welfare. The washington machine that gobbles up our freedoms and invades every note and cranny of our lives must be stopped. Too often when republicans have one we have squandered our victory by becoming part of the washington machine. That is not who i am. Charlie joining me now is Mark Halperin of Bloomberg Politics also John Halperin john heilemann. Tell me about the announcement, and the outlines of his candidacy and how he sees an self getting the nomination. Mark 1500 people in this hotel a well choreographed events. Introduced by his wife, kelly paul. Then he gave a speech which was his message. Some of the referendum shaved off, the liberty agenda. His father was in the audience. Photographers could not capture very easily the two of them in the same shot. This is a guy who was not afraid. He has underrated strength in the early voting states. He believes he can go by the mantra that john and i created for him that says the Republican Party is too small and the government is too big, and that he will stand out. It was a different kind of message. It is a bad it is a bet that the fight will be different. He cant win if the roles of the same. If they are different he will be a finalist. John people said he was the republican obama. There were a lot of republican a lot of problems with that. The way that obama won the election was by appealing to not just in the crack but not just in a craft, but democrats. Tim cruise is just try to get the same republicans. Rand paul has a obama like pitch. He wants to appeal to young voters. He wants to appeal to voters who have not taken part in the process before. He wants to appeal to some democrats. Charlie an african americans. John he said he wanted to repeal any law that had a disproportionate impact on minorities in terms of incarceration. That is most of the criminal justice. That is a rather striking thing to say. Will that help him win the election . There are reasons to be skeptical. And a place like iowa where he starts with a builtin base of his fathers supporters, many of those people will stick with them. He inherits the wisdom of those supporters who his father god. Tens of thousands of them. He starts there any can use those lists and look for likeminded voters, then preach this gospel that is different from standard republicanism right now. He has a chance to make that catch of expanding the universe. Charlie he is having to backpack from the isolationism. John that is his biggest problem. The traditional strength and military assertiveness, which have not been his calling card. They are predominant in the party. He is trying to get into a more conventional place. Charlie is iowa crucial . Cruise has a claim in iowa. John if you look at jeb bush, scott walker, marco rubio, those are establishment welker is playing both sides. Bush and rubio are going to be establishment candidate and put a lot of ships in new hampshire. If you are one of these other guys running into any establishment bracket, iowa becomes important. You have to put a win on the board somewhere. Iowa is the better opening for ted cruz my cut could become up rick santorum. They have some builtin advantages. Theres going to be a big scrub trying to get out through that to chock a win up in the hawkeye state. Charlie weve had two announcements. Ted cruz and rand paul. What is most impressive so far . John there are two different kind of announcements. Cruzs announcement was powerful rhetorically. He gave a great speech. The crowd was there by force. They were students who did not come to that event. The enthusiasm level was lower. He is great on stage. With paul it is harder to george to judge. It was a more enthusiastic room. He is not a great orator. When it came to his oratorical athleticism, his ability to command thise stage he was not as potent. He is trying to show he is a big time operator. He has an organization and place in iowa welcome in iowa, new hampshire, south carolina, other places that demonstrates organizational muscle. Inherited from his father, not entirely, but that is a different kind of strength. Charlie is that what this is about . The republicans on the right, tea party want to see someone early on clear the field so they can go against hillary because they think the establishment has each time won the nomination and each time lost the general election. John there is no doubt the antiestablishment part of the party does not want to see the establishment part win. Mark suggested they want to show they are the ascending part of the book and party and another establishment nominee will not win against Hillary Clinton. I dont think anybody has any assumption there is going to be a clearing of the field until we get to iowa. The interesting thing is that the party, even in the establishment wing, there are people who like jeb bush but are concerned about the notion that you would run a bush against the clinton, and you would forfeit the argument of we are new, the future. There are people in this town who are big on wall street. Jeb bush is raising a ton of money. If the go around wall street are people looking at scott walker people who are going to write checks for marco rubio. He is supposed to announce monday. They are establishment players writing checks for marco rubio. There is just quiet about jeb bush. What he has not done in his shock and awe, he has established hes going to raise a ton of money. What he has not done is clear the field. There were people who thought if you raise 100 million in the First Quarter marco rubio would not run against him. The establishment side would say bush already has two much support, step back. No one is running away running scared of him now. They are looking at the poll numbers and see he is he has real problems on common core with large segments of the electorate. No one is running scared of jeb bush even though he looks strong. No one thinks he looks unstoppable. Charlie what is the latest on Hillary Clinton . John she Just Announced a lease on a place in brooklyn for her campaign headquarters. Charlie what was behind that . John she is from new york. She is went to run this out of new york. That was clear. Some would say she wanted a hip, youthful coolness of brooklyn. It is like the upper east side. There is nothing hidden or cool. It is a perfectly nice neighborhood. A lot of people work for her campaign will live in brooklyn. It is easy in terms of access to the airport, which matters a lot. It was more about logistics. Charlie when will she announce . John any day. Sunday, this coming sunday or a few days after that would be the likeliest time. Charlie within a week. John within a week. Charlie thank you for coming. Back with us. Charlie this year marks the 150th anniversary of the nation magazine. It was founded in 1865, focusing on corporate power. Katrina vanden heuvel has been the editor for 20 years. She started as an intern. I am pleased to have her back. Katrina the nation was where i learned about journalism. Where i learned about america. Where i learned the boot camp. It was a school. It is what you dont learn in university. You dont learn about it in school but it was a sense of coming in that 19 years old, and there was Christopher Hitchens from london and in exchange, kai bird, christopher came to the office. It was a lot of whirling discussion and argument. It was a place where you learned about debate. You learned about dissent and rebellion. It was a space, a physical space for freethinkers and dissenters. Then the pages where its built over an edited. It was a great school. But it was a fun, exciting literary political place. You talked about civil rights corporate power. It has a great literary tradition, which one was steeped in with bessie dakota. Taking on norman mailer. What you learn when you got there, william faulkner, let me get it right the past isnt past. You learned about a James Baldwin. You would go back into the archives. Now they are digitized. But the volume is for you would read a James Baldwin from 1966, report from occupied territory harlem where he talks about stop and frisk. Then you think today, as i work with younger riders in this moment of turbulence around black lives matter they are younger riders who are younger riders were going back into archives digitally, learning so much from an extraordinary writer like James Baldwin, who was on her Editorial Board for many years, and wrote his first piece a review. There was a sense of great literature, a great turbulence. Charlie you mentioned Christopher Hitchens. Mary ivan. Martin luther king. Katrina he wrote an annual essay on the state of the Civil Rights Movement from 196119 xts x. 1966. He began stop economic justice. Which is where he was. He was speaking to the garbage collectors. He wasnt just in the pages. In 1967 before he gave his riverside speech, coming out against vietnam, at an event in los angeles in 1967, he came out against the war, when you were the 50th anniversary of the sending of american troops to the anon, the nation heretical ideas in one moment can be common sense a generation later. The great historian of vietnam he wrote in the pages of the nation maybe a negotiated solution will be better than a military solution. Charlie this is the 150th anniversary edition. Katrina nearly two years in the works. Theres a piece in there, we spent almost two years. Izzy stone, a great journalist who understood maybe it is better to not go to too many dinner parties with those documents. Governments often live. We decided to understand the history. We didnt do an anthology. A lot of places i have done an anthology. We did one for the 100th. This has great archival material. Charlie you quote the first editor female editor. Anniversaries should be approached without all. Katrina if you approach it with too much awe it suggests you are in the past. We want to say we are here, we are present, we have survived. Survival charlie it is hard to survive as a journal of opinion. Katrina absolutely. One is independence. Not only independence of thought, but independence of ownership. Our backers have cared more about what we stood for than what we made. We are always happy to bring in partners web and interesting financial structure. Charlie was paul newman part of that . Katrina paul newman was a partner. We have a great circle who give. But keeps the nation alive are those who give smart small amounts. 25, 100. There is a sense of community. Charlie you are planning a new website. Katrina part of the future. You have had different editors here. The old order is changing. We are in a revolutionary, transitional time. You have to have a foot in different places. Right now we are read on all kinds of tablets and platforms. On the actual birthday when these young abolitionists launched the nation, we launched the site, which is going to be intelligent, innovative, and bring younger readers. Charlie i want to view two clips. Our great friend, this is in 2003, on his view of the magazine. Here he is. Charlie you write for the nation. They have always accused me of being insufficiently political. Letting the agony of the scottsboro boys dim from my memory. I did say once on a television show, someone said i was in boston with a book of nation columns. I would you describe the nation magazine. I said, playing go pinko. Its upa pinko magazine. Yes, printed on very cheap paper. It is the sort of magazine that if you have a piece in the magazine and you get a xerox copy, the copy is better than the original. Charlie are your politics in the nation, is that where you are on the spectrum . Or is it none of my business . It is certainly your business. I agree more with the nation than the national review. Katrina i love going cruising. Charlie you were struck by the continuing conversations of the contributors. Katrina to go from bad to this one of the great impulses and principles of the nation has been antiimperialism, opposition to reckless wars. The spanishamerican war vietnam war into iraq. I speak about in iraq because i was editor then. Charlie both the iraq wars . Katrina im thinking through 2002. You had a great correspondent the continuing serious. Series. That was a defining moment. It was not popular. The nation is not often popular. Many of the liberal media decided to go with the runup to the war in 2002. The nation opposed. Here again i come back to the fact that what is heretical or sometimes is common sense. Everyone believes iraq was a debacle. It has played out in the sectarian shiite struggles. There was an animating impulse that this was contrary to american tradition. Preemptive war. Unconstitutional. Related to that was the betrayal of our principles. Civil liberties have been a part of the tradition. The patriot act, the torture which we started writing about in 2003, one of our young writers, looking at the media and averting in size from torture. These are this is part of the in pauls. The nation you can see the continuities. Charlie you and victor are close. Katrina he is a mentor in many ways. He is a noninterventionist mentor. He is there to tell me ideas. He was my predecessor. He has a brilliant essay in this issue. His passion through the years has been the mccarthy era. He wrote an extraordinary book naming names. In this essay it is about what i write about in my introduction, there always alternatives. His piece is looking at mccarthyism, that time in the 50s and 60s, or hooverism. The ideas that were stigmatized, the people whos voices were marginalized. The conformity that was enforced in the name of a false fear of communism. That is a correspondent correspondence between time. Charlie take a look at this. The legacy of the nation. Our magazine has been a historic identification with the distance since. It grew out of the abolitionists movement. Its charter was to follow the plight of the newly freed slaves. Simultaneous with that was a journalistic ideal that it would tell the truth. You have this double legacy. My two favorite sentences in connection with this are the first sentence in the first history and the first story, the week were singularly barren of events. Imagine tina brown launching her new magazine. Singularly barren of significant events. What that says as we are not going to be a part of the buzz and hide. We are one to tell the truth wherever it leads. Charlie you include some pieces which turn out to be less than prophetic. Katrina one was we have henry james writing a scathing review of walt whitman. He later came to regret that. Whitman survived. Of course, the nation at a different point tracks the arc of liberalism. The nation was part of the new york post. Charlie then there are people like Christopher Hitchens. Katrina we have the historian, a piece about those who came to the nation as leftists, and who left as apostates. Christopher hitchens was one of them. Christopher left. The nation pages were open to him. We were rating ready for a fight. He left, a formal socialist. He left in his column saying the nation had become a moral. Because of his because of the unwillingness to hitches start to the coming war in iraq. It is for people who understand and save on complexity but are pretty for a fight. The complexity when you move from left to right charlie he was always ready for a fight. Katrina by hitching his start to bushs war he did tie in. [indiscernible] there was a principled stance so there was a regret when and this happens in politics and culture you tend to have to join forces. He had a principled stance. As others did. He was a great part of the nation for many years. But, the piece is worth reading for all who see what in our culture there is too much dumbing down, too much passing of debate. Charlie this is a clip from a documentary. If you look at the consumer part of washington, it is a tiny part of the budget, a tiny part of the number of government employees. There are many stories that the nation broke over the years. Ralph nader did this expose of automobile safety. The nation was one of the first places to expose the link between cigarette smoking and cancer. It is not accidental that a magazine that had no car advertising in it, had no cigarette advertising in it broke these stories. Katrina ralph nader continues to call me to this day. Charlie with ideas . Katrina berating me for what we are not doing. You have to respect the tenacity. He came on the cruise. When he came on the ship, he wanted to throw them overboard. By the end of that there was great respect. As a Younger Generation that doesnt remember they did bring us the weekend. He brought a seat belts. They think of him, and the nation has an respect for third parties, there were barricades, gore or nader. Charlie so where is the nation today as it celebrates 150 years . How does it make its way among a different media landscape . Katrina i think the different media landscape worries me less. We are testing. We have a democratic on the web we have mobile, and digital. Charlie you also want to use the web for instant access. Katrina that is downloadable. That is the issue. The history of the magazine, we have digitized archives. We dont know where this is heading. A few years ago the conventional wisdom more people would not read longform journalism on the internet. That has been upended. Part of the nation is challenging the orthodoxy. Where we heading . I believe this is a country where we need rebellious dissident voices. We need quality journalism. You need to push the parameters of what seems possible. We are in early alert. Reporting on cuba we ship history. We warned when glasssteagall was repealed what it would lead to. We prefigured occupy and the discussion and equality. Charlie the many battles are still issues facing the country. Katrina absolutely. The nation i dont believe in lost causes. I believe in causes waiting to be one. There are a lot of causes waiting to be one. Im excited because i think it is interruption. It is a movement moment. The nation has been a reporter of movements in the change, the deep transformational moments change can bring. Maybe it is the immigrant rights movement, whether it is fast food workers, the student debt strike. These are moments we are in touch with. As the same time i am a Firm Believer in inside, outside. You need principled leaders inside the system. The debate around selma, king johnson, that goes on today. You need elizabeth worn inside or progressive voices we lift up. If people dont learn there are people like that, theyre not going to make the leap. Charlie would you like to see elizabeth worn run . Katrina i would like to see a contested competitor primary. I think Elizabeth Warren is someone who speaks more clearly more powerfully, mor