Author of big, hot, cheap and right, and what america can learn from the strange genius of texas. [inaudible conversations] good morning. Im glen, the directer of the school of journalism at the university of texas at austin. I welcome you. Theres two superb authors here to morning to talk about the state of the union where we went wrong. We have 45 minutes, but could spend 45 hours on this. We better get rolling. Ill introduce the writers, ask questions, and i turn it over to you. I want to remind you when the session ends, two authors go to the signing tents, and theres a place to buy copies of the books and take them to the tent and have them signed. Follow us out when we leave. To the left, george packer, staff writer for the new yorker magazine, author of asass sins gate, named one of the ten best books of the year by the New York Times, written two novels and two Nonfiction Books, a play off broadway, and lives this brooklyn, new york, the new book called the unwinding inner history of new america narrating four americans, a rust belt, entrepreneur, a billionaire, and a interweaves with sketches of leading public figures, and oprah, and he is particular places and moments in recent history like the tampa, florida realize bust and scandals on wall street, creating a portrait of decline and anxiety, and the New York Times reviewer wrote its the achievement that these pieces freshly shuffled and assembled have speed and power to burn. The book comes with sorrow, outrage, and comparison for those caught in the gears of the machinery, and for these reasons, the finalist for the National Book award. Theres another author here, to my left, and georges left, a Senior Editor at Texas Monthly from 200720 12, southwest correspondent for the economist. Her writings appeared in the New York Times, in the spectator, and she is a masters degree in Public Affairs from the lbj school here. Shes from san antonio, lives in os p, the book called big, hot, cheap, and right what americans can learn from the strange genius of texas, and this is her first book, conventional in structure than georges, and seeks to explain texas to the world and talks of economic successes running counter to the standard east coast, left coast dismiss sal of texas as a place with too many guns k bible, and fanatics and not enough compassion. The observer, itself, a bold of liberalism, praised the book as a welcomed voice to the debate, an acute observer and avoid the cliche. Whats happened not United States . Whats wrong with the sense of community . What might be done to make it better . I want to start with the basics, and starting with george, when did you think about this as a book, and how did you, you know, come upon the particular narratives that has the trilogy from the 1930s, the usa trilogies . It was a strange because i traveled and a lot of interesting things are happening. A lot of historic, and in some wayings, worrying things, and i went to tampa, as you mentioned, drove around new subdivisions which were ghost subdivisions because in two years time, everyone left. You had the houses and no human beings. The landscape was memorizing that way. I went to Rural North Carolina where the tobacco and textile industries had pretty much disappearedded, and, you know, it looked like inner city poverty in a lot of places that are consideredded heart land america. How it became a book is a gratuitous story. I did three years worth of traveling finding people who would carry the story forward, and thats the key part, and its the hard part, but the structure was not clear to me, and at the last year, i sat down with the massive notes and transscripts and memories and thought what the hell will i do with this . I didnt have a form for it. Actually, not advisable to get that far down the road without an idea of how its all going to come together, and at the very start i said, what i want to do is break out of the straightforward journalism ive been doing for the new yorker which is only straight former is a rare thing these days and do something experimental, and its pretty much forgotten now, and i hear from people who say its not as forgotten as i thought. In usa, the passes tell theres fictional characters who move through 30 years of American History at the other enof the 20th century, at the beginning, and their lives are cop constantly pushed this way, that way, submerged, and surface by the big history happening around them. Youre not getting a straightforward history of the times. Youre gismg the given the the history of the Central Nervous system and lower consciousness of the country, and along the way, you meet figures like henry ford, Woodrow Wilson. It seemed like a viable form for notary nonfiction, but a problematic one. Could i get deep enough into the characters lives that they would sustain 30 years of biography . Its not for me to say whether ive done that, but that was a template for how to organize all the material into a 30year portrait of america. Its not for you to say, but i read it, and the i want ma sigh in which you get into their lives, and how it moves from the intimacy of their particular crisis and moments to the biggest picture of the communities that they live in, and that even elevates from there is quite an achievement, one of the reasons why its been so honored. Did you know in the end the book has a sense of sadness to it. Did you know going in that that would be the peel . To some extent. I felt the crisis going on. Remember k 2008 remember, 2008 was the year i thought about the book that seemed as if major, major institutions that sustained American Life were collapsing. The banks, the auto makers, government seemed to be deteriorating as a positive force, and so i knew i was going to explore how ordinary people were experiencing a crisis. Sadness came from being introduced into their world, thinking of dean price, the truck stop entrepreneur in North Carolina going into biodiesel, having problems along the way, son of tobacco farmers, took me around town in North Carolina, and all this pretty much deserted, boarded up, for represent, and its not just the stores that closed, and the the pillar in the community, and in the civic clubs, and when their businesses failed and the town lost pillars of the support, and when you ask, well, where people shop, its on the hill in the box store, and it points further, so it was not my own mood, but i dont want to suggest its a downer. I hope it suspect. These are really resill yept resourceful people with a comaft and it may be an american capacity to remake themselves when things look dire and to respond to a historical challenge by imagining working and living and the lives took unexpected turns along the way, and so you always wanted to know what they were going to do next. I want to ask now basically the same question. Youve been covering the southwest for the economist magazine for five years or so. [inaudible] at what point did you come to decide that texas was a misunderstood place, and that we needed a book and you were compelled to write a book, and what surprised you the most . Well, i think writing about living in texas theres a cop standpoint set of opportunities to correct throughout the day from neighbors and friends around the country, and no, were not competing, not all oil workers, and thats the drum beat at the economist and living in texas in those years, since tween, but beyond that, i was covering the surrounding states in the period that george described, a period of sort of incredible change in the national economy, and traveling to in state and other states, id be reading headlines about unemployment, long term unemployment, housing crisis, financial crisis, people losing savings, houses, kids finishing college, not finding jobs, and that was a horrible set of stories we saw for years around the country, and this was a set of stories where we had the same trouble in the state of the recession, in the downturn, but we really, really evaded the worst. Lower unemployment than the country as a whole for more than six years now every month, seeing job creation every industry, and more than half the new jobs, the states created have been in the top two income, and state where middle class is agreeing rather than contracting. Those two things, and the fact the state has a cartoon application and the fact were doing really well in a lot of ways that especially mattered, especially at that time, to me, added up to a set of good reasons to write a book about it and see how it would go. Its interesting because youre accused of defending the texas miracle and swallowing it whole, but you read the book, you offer many warnings and caveats along the way, and even the title referring to texas as having a strange genius is a certain amount of am ambivalenc. What about those who say the texas miracle boils down to too much oil and natural gas, low unemployment due to make jobs in walmart and, you know, end up poorly under funded Public Schools and social services and people are exploited in the process, i mean, im not asking you to defend texas, but how do [laughter] you address the level with this thing . Im asked that a fair amount. The first thing i say as i talk to somebody a critic of texas would be that i think only by to put it in another way, if we focus on the real problems of texas, then we critique those all we want, but focusing on the wrong problem is not a good approach to the state. As far as those often cited, jobs, oil, bad schools, ect. , the data does not support that. We have tons of research throughout the states economy that Energy Sectors important for us, doing well, helping us, but not as important as it was. We are diversified more since the 70s and 80s, and its not a big driver of unemployment. As far as jobs, fist of all, i feel weird about the line of attack because i dont think any job is a bad job if you have that job, but in this state we have a higher rate of workers than the National Average, but we have a lot of other workers also, and Median Income is about what the National Average is and low cost of living state. On that front character does not hold up to certain, and things like the schools, the schools are funded in a low per capita rate, but they are an okay system, especially compared to the other big state systems. If you look at sorry thats the texas economy behind us. [laughter] right. Always working. [laughter] the federal test scores, matt, reading, science, and as a state, were the best of the big state systems on the board, and average overall, lets get a view starting from and work from there. One of the things i found fascinating is the way you took this argument and this discussion and pull it back to the history of the state. I was surprised too, actually. I thought why did we get this approach and talk about it, and, you know, you hear from republicans in control of the state for the last few decades, but its really not their they didnt start it. Its been this way since the beginning, and so the more i go backwards, really it startedded back in the old days, back in the frontier, the republic. I mean, youre both journalists as well as authors so its a fair question to ask, where does ted cruz fit into all this . [laughter] george, ted cruz is not in your book, but i can see him being one of those portraits, and i think have you been writing that book now instead of in the last few years, you might have been tempted as well. Could he have fit, you think, in your portrait . You know, the politician theres profiles of ten people, and i chose them for the part of the life they come from. Newt gingrich is the politician in the book. Newt gingrich, i think, will be seen by history to be maybe more important than Ronald Reagan and bill clinton and barack obama for how he shaped theway our Political Class behaves, and talks and thinks and the total war strategy that he brought to washington where he tried to Bring Congress down, antiinstitutional, and theres a theme in the book of institutions kind of eroding from within, and congress, i think, most of us would agree is one of them, and Newt Gingrich was there at the start and had a lot to do with the way politicians demonized their opponents so they could not possibly work with each other because they were the devil. Turned out, Newt Gingrich call his opponent the devil and worked with him. The change, i think, is that his successors called the o point the devil and believed it, and, therefore, are unwilling to shake hands with the devil. I mean, ted cruz, what can you say . Hes an interesting phenomena. I think, erica, youre working on something about him. Maybe you have more to say about this. From afar, i have to think that maybe part of the success of texas here is that youve exported your worst politicians. [laughter] [applause] to washington. [applause] so that they have become the countrys affliction while [laughter] you can go about your business of being an economic mere miracle. [laughter] all right, erica, its your turn. [laughter] okay. Well, i think ted cruz is really just a wonderful senator in every respect, probably the best since lbj. Hes different for us. I mean, we had a tradition of having pragmatic republicans. At the end of the day, they are business minded at the core, and cruz had a more mill soft philosophical, and i think he certainly was a once in a generation political phenomena in the course of the campaign, 2012, got in the race with everyone saying he, you know, theres not a chance, he couldnt possibly win it, went ahead and twon. I think he sort of rode the wave in certain trends, tea party trend, went for it, succeeded in that campaign, and im working on something coming out in a few months, a profile, started june and july, saying, the new senator will have been in the senate for a year. Lets do an essay where he came from, where he is, how hes doing, making impacts in dc, and so its a fulltime job because he impacted dc, visible, and hes, as you noticed, against the Affordable Care agent. Yeah, weve noticed. [laughter] yeah. In some ways, i think, the past month its not been more complicated than that. Hes campaigning op the message he wants more, you know, more jobs, more economic growth, jobs should be the focus of congress and dc right now, and thinks the Affordable Care agent stands in the way of the goals so thats why hes against it. As far as the, you know, the sort of turning over the table aspect with ted cruz, i got to say congressman, i guess cruz shares the majority opinion on that. Heres the question. You portray texas and make a good argument, but at the end of the day, the people in texas believe in limited government, stay out of the way, dont believe in good government, but they keep it minimal, and they are not they are pragmatic. Cruz and, you know, that was to an extent governor perry, and cruz has another angle than that, had the aspects pointed out, but theres another aspect to the right in texas, and that has been effective, much more in your face about a set of principles and things that can be very intrusive. You know, is this a new phenomena . Do you think . Yeah, its interesting. I think in the book i have a pendulum effect in american politics and texas politics. The Republican Party in the state is so big, won suture and thor rely in recent years, they are at risk of running too far to the right so things move back to the center. They have the advantage of theres not a lot of democrats running for office at any given time. Theres senator davis, but theres not one on the democratic side, kind of astoppishing in a astonishing in a state this size. You look at increase years elections, and they scrambling further to the right, and in pursuit of that theres issues like, you know, they want to repeal the 17th amendment, i think, not a pressing public concern. There is selfperpetuating push to the right right now, partly inspired by cruz seeing as somebody that started that facility. Back to george. What interests me about this, and you wrote about it is education tent which theres a third and selfcorrecting mechanism going on represented by the failure of the shut down. Cruz has support in texas and popularity has not declined, but elsewhere in the country, the polls are showing a longing to get back to some middle ground Elizabeth Warren is portrayed in your book. Do you see a selfcorrecting mechanism to this from your perspective this comes back, and does it come back only whats i know journalists hate to predict. I know i do. I do too. What extent do you think the country has the ability or capacity to move back to the center or even a bit to the left to deal with some of the issues you describe in the book . We have had that power in the prologue to the book theres a historical riff that talks about other periods when institutions seem to be failing and politics in the economy were not working very well. You know, the civil war is the most dramatic example. The wall street crash of 29 and the Great Depression is another, and we have come back from those a stronger country with new institutions or rebuilt ones that answered the problems and challenges of that day. History suggests we have an inmy nit capacity for renewal, but weve had a long term trajectory of growing economic inequality, diminished social mobility, upward mobility, flattened wages, and a hallowing out middle class which is what i saw in places like youngstown, ohio, North Carolina, and tampa, florida. Silicon valley with its, you know, selfcongratlation power has not had reversed that. Maybe texas sails off into the sunset of prosperity while the rest of the country continues to struggle. I dont know. I mean, who knows. What i worry about is that our leaders and institutions they run dont seem to be capable of correcting themselves, and in fact each year try to outdo the followlies of the previous year. Its a difficult thing to explain in one phrase why texas is doing well, but its difficult to explain what it takes to be renewed. Theres the loss of manufacturing jobs,