Transcripts For CSPAN Congress And Bipartisanship 20150111 :

The week ahead will task you with thinking about many of these challenges and considerations that Face Congress and the president every day. With your faculty director, you will explore these issues and attempt to find some Bipartisan Solutions. This seminar is a unique spacebased experiential learning opportunity that very few College Students will ever have. Being here in d. C. Together as a group and engaged in the seminar will allow us to do a deep dive into and to remain focused on the issues at hand. With the help of your faculty director, you are able to tie the remarks of one speaker to another, tie them back to your readings, to Small Group Discussions and to what you of learned. You will have the opportunity to reflect on a great deal of content and do it right here in the laboratory of politics in washington, d. C. I would like to introduce you to your faculty director this week. We are really thrilled to have dr. Bose back and i wish we could clone her and have her lead all of our seminars. She is the exact type of scholar that we look for to lead this kind of Academic Experience for us. Dr. Bose is the calico chair in president ial studies at Hofstra University and the director of hofstras study of the american presidency. She is the author of a book about president ial policy. The National Security decisionmaking of eisenhower and kennedy. She is the editor of the New York Times on the presidency and the coeditor of several volumes in presidency studies. Dr. Bose is also the third author in the last several editions of a very popular textbook on American Government called American Government institution and policies. Her Current Research focuses on u. S. President ial leadership in the united nations. Dr. Bose was active in our nonpartisan courses sponsored by the Washington Center in connection with the 2012 National Political Party Conventions in both tampa and charlotte. And she was our faculty director for this seminar last year. In addition to hofstra, she has taught for six years of the u. S. Military academy at west point where she also served as director of american politics in 2006. Dr. Bose received her b. A. In International Politics from Penn State University and her m. A. And phd from princeton university. Please welcome, dr. Bose. Good morning. I have never thank you for that warm introduction. I have never been called before that i should be cloned. I just watched attack of the clones with my young son. I cannot tell you how many times i have seen this movie on saturday. It gives me an entirely different vision of clone intellectual. How is everyone today . Excited for a very busy week in the new congress . I have to tell you over the holidays whenever i told people what i was doing in the year im going to washington to explore Bipartisan Solutions by the new congress and inevitably, is congress attending . Is anything going to happen . I thought well, why is it that so everyone is so skeptical . Of course, if you look at opinion polls, some real clear politics, president obamas Approval Rating is in the mid40s. 52 disapproval. Congresss Approval Rating is 14 which is actually good at least they are in double digits. They were at 9 during october 2013 during the government shutdown. And, congresss disapproval is more than three quarters. At least, this was a compilation of polls for december. Less than a third of the country believed we were moving in the right direction and nearly two thirds of said wrong direction. There is a lot of concern, i think, in the public. About governance. I think that is actually reflected in our elected officials as well. If you look at the oped senator mcconnell and Speaker Boehner wrote after the election, president obamas News Conference there was not a lot of glorification of winning and losing. It was a different message. The results were significant and with Party Control shifting in the senate, it will be consequential for policymaking. This seems to be a real focus on what president obama said in the News Conference on getting stuff done. Our task over the course of this week is to identify how our elected officials can get stuff done. Let me give you a little bit of a framework for how we are planning to do that over the course of this week. As i look at all these Washington Center bags, you should carry these with pride. In hofstra, she said why are all these faculty carrying Washington Center bags. They can carry a laptop and not break for a year. I can tell you that because mine is starting to fray so i am so happy to have my new one. Hang onto those bags. In this seminar, we have three underlying questions. What i want to do this morning is to talk about these questions and the readings we selected for you to analyze the policy issues we are focusing on the budget, immigration, health care. The specific policy issues over the next three days. I will talk a lot about those today. I want to talk about the questions, our readings, and some of the specific scholarly debate that informs the political debate in washington today. The term the participant observer that dr. Gross used that really encapsulates well what we want, how we want you to approach of the seminar. It is different from a 15 week class. We want you to be engaged in discussions and want to make the link between the policymaking process. Very explicit. That should happen in the classroom everyday. It is difficult when you are covering a range of topics in american politics. When you have a diverse audience as well. Here, we are a homogenous audience. 168 students here that are passionate about american politics. We have an opportunity to make some advances from the ideas that form the foundation of our political debate to engage in the political debate and to participate in that as all of you will be doing in the simulation. Hopefully, finding ways to reach policy outcomes. I would like to read a few minutes today i will probably have more time tomorrow for you to come to the microphone and ask if you want to think about this now and i will get to this in about 20 minutes. Questions that you would like to see us address about bipartisanship or short comments. Keep the remarks brief. I will try to address your comments. Think about that. I would like it to be a conversation as much as possible. I will try to put conversation in each of my talks. The questions underlying our seminar why dont we have bipartisanship . I think it is pretty fair to say when you look at the 113th congress, the least Productive Congress since the end of world war ii. Government shutdown for 17 days. We have not seen bipartisanship. Why dont we have that . Is bipartisanship a desirable goal for american politics in the 21st century . We should not take that as a given. The title of the seminar is exploring Bipartisan Solutions in the new congress. As you will see when our speakers come over the next three days to talk about the budget, immigration and health care, their definitions of bipartisanship are not always the same. Without getting into specifics we have two repeats speakers from last year and other new ones. The returning speakers have clear positions on what the federal government needs to do about economic policy. What bipartisanship actually means. This is reflective of scholarly readings as well, the one by the political scientist grossman and hopkins on the differences in the Political Parties. Bipartisanship what the public always wants. The third policy is oriented towards the policy. What can the congress and president obama due to achieve bipartisanship with the budget immigration and health care . To address of these three questions, we spent some time this fall identifying a series of readings that encapsulate address some of the most pressing, scholarly debates that appeared most often in public discussion. The first set of reaadings, the debate over the American Public being polarized, is one that received quite a bit of discussion. I often switch between the fox and msnbc, cnn to see what everybody is saying and there were discussions of 2016. The number of books that are coming out from potential candidates and their spouses. There was the discussion the new Congress Convening and what will get done. Are we too polarized . It is fastening what the terms are being used. It is the College Debate in washington today. The first question for all of us the first debate that i want you to engage in as you listen to the speakers, write in your journals, do we have polarization . What is the American Public think about policymaking in the 21st century . A political scientist from stanford published a book 10 years ago in which he argued that the American Public has not changed in the last several decades. That we still have a strong center, but that the extremes on both sides the far left and the far right have become much more polarizing and much more activist. He attributes the dysfunction or the obstacles, the barriers to policymaking to polarization among party elite. That is elected officials and political activists. There is a different argument. He says i shouldve added the polarization is extreme. The public has sorted. The public is not polarized. There is a large group of people in the middle. People in the left have moved to the left and the people in the right have moved to the right but there is still a middle. He agrees about polarization among the elites but says that has filtered through to even the less attentive public. Some of the opinion is more broad. Professor said we do have polarization in the public. Also combine that with a divided government and what he says is abuse of the filibuster in the senate to halt policymaking, to create almost not impossible to overcome, but highly difficult to move past these barriers. That is the first debate that is important for us to engage because when we look at Public Opinion and Political Parties, Representative Democracy depends on Public Opinion. The framers did not want Political Parties. The organizing principles of the party is to bring voters together. That is the first set of readings. The reading by klein on red states and blue states, i think is very informative because it talks about differences in the composition of the political party. Klein looks at the research by grossman and hopkins and finds when you look at the constituencies of the republicans and the democrats, they see parties have very different interests. They see the republicans tend to be much more focused on ideology. Whereas democrats tend to have a coalition of groups that focus on compromise and governance. It is not the say one is good or one is bad. If i took all of those three words ideology, compromise and governance, we would say elected officials should embrace all of them in some form. We dont want officials who have no idea what they are doing. We dont want officials who cannot govern. We do need officials to Work Together. The two parties have diverged in their constituency. The people who go towards one party say either one of those principles. It makes it very difficult to bring the parties together. The reason i picked kleins analysis as well as for the president ial leadership piece is that he presents a very thoughtful summary and then a critique. With the other piece, he says his view is the voters can change parties. Voters see ideology as their main goal. They can also shift of the direction of their party to be more amenable to govern its or bipartisanship. Or if their party is so focused on getting something done that compromises lose sight of the larger term goal. Health care but Incremental Health care reform rather than some of the larger plans that were proposed in 2009. That is just one example. Voters can shift parties because after all the party represents all of us. Think about that as you look at Political Parties and voters. To what degree do we see polarization . Is that among our elite or is that among the general public . How did the parties reflect their constituencies and do voter Party Members direct their elected officials to act in certain ways as far as either pushing for the policy process or halting it. Once we shift from voters in parties, we also selected a series of readings on the institution. Not so much on the courts although as we talk about health care, obviously they play a significant role. We will discuss that. For the policymaking process we are focusing on the new congress and the white house. I will talk about the reading on the new yorker because i think that addresses a number of issues in president ial studies of that seems to be at odd with how president ial politics works in practice. The main debate in president ial politics studies today is what is president ial power . A famous political scientist published a book in 1960 that senator kennedy read during his campaign and use it as a model for how he would govern. After the bay of pigs, i believe it was aimed to be towards eisenhower. He famously said in the book that president ial power is the power to persuade. He goes on to say the power to persuade is the power to bargain. How do president s persuade . Well, he talks about professional reputation with washingtonians, that is members of congress, Interest Groups the larger circle of people that make up the policymaking spehere in washington, including elected officials but not only elected officials. That is what many of our speakers you will see come from major think tanks in washington that have played a significant role in influencing the policy debate. For immigration, i was very excited we could bring two speakers from organizations that have been in the news repeatedly since president obama announced his executive order on immigration. People who are not legislating but significantly influencing legislation. President s persuade through building their professional reputation in washington and through public support, public prestige. How do they build public support . A common argument is they do it through the bully pulpit. Teddy roosevelt is mentioned with this. Im not sure where he actually mused that phrase but we will give him credit for it. The bully pulpit george edwards, political scientist at texas a m university, published a book that said on deaf ears, the limits of the bully pulpit. Public medication is not persuaded all, he said. He goes on with his argument that newstaff was wrong to say that president ial power is persuasion. We have these High Expectations for the president to persuade. If president obama can just give a speech like the ones he gave in 2008 or the speech in 2004 in boston, the keynote address for senator kerry, that he can move the policymaking process forward. There are discussions about president obama can do more to communicate privately with his counterparts in congress. We can talk about that later. Edwards says this idea that the president can shift of the political debate in washington or can move the public is just wrong. Now, maybe it is not simple to say one person is right and the other is wrong. Richard neustadt, we had a conference honoring him. He spoke and said he is thrilled that we are using his book now 30 years after the publication. He hopes 40 years from now that we will be using something else. That one book should not define a field of politics for so long. I think that is an active debate because we Pay Attention to president ial communication. We Pay Attention to the fact the state of the union will be on january 20. That president obama is visiting several states to lay out what his program for action will be. This is unusual. President s have been delivering the state of the Union Address in person before Congress Since 1913. Woodrow wilson resumed at that tradition. Jefferson thought that was too ceremonial. He sent his speech and writing and that is the way it went until Woodrow Wilson picked up the position. Today state of the Union Addresses are a big public event. We are paying attention to them, we look at president have to say. It has been the source of significant statements. Think about president bush in 2002 the axis of evil. President s usually use the state of the unit dressed in layout. President obama has already given an indication in how we are moving forward with policies, including health care and energy, immigration, economic policy. He will be making the case for that in the next couple of weeks as the build up to his state of the Union Address. Is it fair to say none of that matters . Maybe it does not shift Public Opinion polls, but edwards evidence is fairly solid. If you are not persuaded with obama being a good example president reagan would go out and give a speech come and get lots of applause and not move the Public Opinion needle at all. We can like a president s com