Institution of human interface. I think it is not surprising that we are spending more time talking to machines and humans themselves are systems that it make indicate human. You can watch this another like this at book tb. Org. And now on the afterwards program John Davenport talks about the relevance of religion. It is so good to see you, i want to to congratulate you on your new book, the how faithful people can change politics. Thank you very much it is good to be with you. I have to to say that i enjoy working on this book. I hope people enjoy reading that. Host i hope and i look forward to visiting with you about it. And creating some interest. I think it is a worthy read. You want want right in the prologue, when politics is broken we should fix it. You describe religion and religious people as a gift to politics, and that religion puts politics in its proper place. As someone who has led a little bit of politics myself it can become allconsuming, it can become an idol and it can become god. You tell tell a story, in your 1982 reelection when you are running against harriet wood, tough race. Guest tough race, almost lost it. Host your family, and efforts to encourage you and despond and see about the quickness of the race, can you recall that story that your daughter, i think she was 15 at the time. Guest my third daughter, dede, i never thought that i had the chance to lose that election, i thought that was going to be fairly easy per. And then maybe three weeks before election day poll came out and it showed that i was dead even with my opponent. I thought, i am going to lose. Everything is going to go through the floor here. Host her numbers were rising. Guest yes her numbers were rising in my numbers were plummeting. She had all of the momentum on her side. And when he think, oh gee ive spent my life and politics and it is all going to be, im going to get the boot. My then, 15yearold daughter, dede, who is trying to comfort me and she said, well it is not the world series. And it really put it in place. For a saint luisi and, the world series really is the deal. I think it was telling because it said that politics is not the beall and endall, and it it really isnt. It is important for all of us to keep it in its proper place. Host absolutely, that kind of leads me and talking about religious and religious people as a gift to politics. I thought when you said when politics is broken we should fix it, no one is going to disagree with the back that it is broken right now. You say that religion raises our sites above the interest of self and group, for the common good. You spoke a lot about the first president and their view of a virtuous citizenry, what did they mean by that question market what you mean by having virtuous citizens . Guest well the word future was used by each of our first four president s. What they meant by virtue was something more then just how people hold themselves. Whether they just live wholesome lives or not. It had to do with the common good and whether we as individuals could put the good of the country ahead of our own interests. To me, it is fascinating that this is a point that was made particularly by james madison, because madison was a great political realists. Realists. He was really the architect of our constitution. He understood that everybody had interest, groups had interests, we had to balance interest to have a country that would function. He also said that no matter how well structured our government is, our political system is, the country is not going to succeed, america is not going to succeed without the virtue of its citizen. That is, it has to be more than just self interest, it has to be more than what is in it for me. There has to be a sense in the part of the citizens that we are here for a purpose of beyond just grabbing everything we can for ourselves. That concept of virtue that our first four president s thought of was a republican with a small our republican quality, faded out with them. We did not hear much more about them, few outcroppings, lincoln, and most notably john f. Kennedys inaugural speech when he said ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can dupe your country. Then he said, and that very short in our girl speech, that america, americans will pay the price and bear any burden for the future of liberty. Will that was over half a century ago and we have not heard anything like it since. Instead of politicians say we will pay any price, they say you dont have to pay any price at all. It is all about your own interests, namely, what can government offer you by way of benefits and how little can government take from you in way of taxation, it is as though politics is now exclusively an appeal to the self interests. Host how can people of faith change that . Spee2 well, when you you think about it it is the opposite of what the message of religion is. Religion does point us beyond ourselves. For faithful people, the meaning what is in it for me, the me is not central. There is something higher, namely god is higher. So your whole focus is on something bigger and better than yourself, i think that is a message that comes from religion, would be a great offering by faithful people to politics and it is not heard in the political spirit as well. Host that struck me, since john f. Kennedy we have not heard a call for national sacrifice for individual sacrifice on the part of citizens. Guest the result is, we have a 20 trillion National National debt, or knocking at the door of 20 trillion. Your after year goes by and nothing gets done about it. My last year in the senate i was the vice chair of the commission on the entitlements reform. Reforming the the entitlement program. Bob curie from nebraska was the chair from this commission. We came out with a terrific, at least preliminary report. Beautiful showing Social Security was doomed, medicare was doomed, and the National Debt was going to soar, and all of this. That was 21 years ago. Nothing came of that. Five years ago we had set some goals. That was a balanced program of taxes on entitlement cuts, spending cuts in order to try to get our National Debt in some sort of order, and nothing came of that. In fact, those politicians who were supportive of us were attacked for various pieces of how they supported. Host i remember well. We we will talk more about the need for compromise and republicans unwillingness to accept any kind of revenue increases, democrats unwilling to touch any changes in the entitlement programs. So it went nowheres. Guest s thats right. I think it is not so much that politicians are odd ducks, maybe they are. I dont think it is that there is something peculiar and members of congress, they just dont get it, i dont think so. I think politicians are very, very keyed in to what they are hearing from the public. They respond to it and that they in turn vote that. So if, what they are hearing, what they think theyre hearing from the public is i want mine and i want it now, give me, then what they are going to say to the public, and you hear it now in the president ial Campaign Love it do i have great thing for you. I have more benefits for you than anyone elses offering, vote for me. So it ebooks this, they listen to what they think is a message of give me, and then they ebook that same message intern. There we are in politics, the result is a very unsound base for our economic future. Host it is frightening. Continuing this religious is a gift to politics, you mentioned that religion is communal and binds us each together. I was very struck by what you described as the growing isolation and loneliness of the American People and that you can see how that has even bled over into our political life in the institution of the senate. Did i reach you correctly on that . Guest yes. This is far from an original points, it was made most eloquently by Robert Putnam and, a harvard sociologist, he wrote a book called going alone. It is how we are all just becoming more individualistic. We are becoming more tuned in on ourselves and hence the title. We are not even, we dont even belong to bowling leagues, we go bowling alone, that was, that was the title of the book. And i believe that is true here in washington as well as throughout the country. We have the country, what are we doing, were sitting in front of our television sets, we are driving our cars, the country, it seems the less we are in interpersonal relationships. I believe this is also true in the senate where you served and where i served because there was social interaction among members of the senate. We lived here, most of us. Our families knew each other, our spouses knew each other, we knew each others children, we were in each others homes, and if you have that kind of interpersonal connection with people, it is really easier to work things out politically. Whereas whereas if you only know someone as a politician, but i have one member of the senate tell me, a member of the senate, tell me that this particular senators cannot think of more than six other senators to have over to his house for dinner. Host right. You speak of the collegiality. The collegiality when i was in the senate was disappearing a lot. A lot of the problems were seeing now i think a back to those years. What you see is contributing to the dysfunction of the senate today . From the collegiality, the past, to the kind of combative partisanship that characterizes the institutions. Guest i think there are a number of components to that. I think one of the problems is just scheduling. The need for senators to be on the road raising money in relatively small increments. I think the most a senator can raise for a campaign from an individual is like 2700 for primary and the same for general election. Meanwhile, these uncontrolled groups, packs, individual contributors can put in anything they want. So the senator who wants to define a message has to go out on the road and raise maybe 15 or 20 million, 25 million or more Million Dollars or more depending. Host they are not in washington. Guest it means theyre not here, they they are not relating to each other. So i think that something is lost in that regard. I think Something Else is going on that is even more serious than that. That is that the pressure that members of congress are hearing from their socalled base, their stalwart supporters, all of the pressure is dont get along, dont compromise, dont make a deal. So you have basically an independent contractors out there making speeches and the idea of politics, meaning working things out, is lost in the shuffle. It is lost in the pressure. Host let me go back to your, and about the senator who only had halfdozen senators who he thought he could fight over, for lack of relationships beyond the combative, on the floor kind of you if i recall in the book talk about cornell, congressional delegation of a foreign trip you took. I think it was to asia. Guest it was in 1979, it was at the time of a terrible refugee problem on the border of thailand and cambodia. Vietnam had them baited cambodia, cambodia cambodia have been ruled by this terrible tyrant, but these refugees were across the border and line on the ground dying, it was just awful to see. Three of us from the senate, all freshman senators, went over to thailands and the border of cambodia and then into cambodia in order to call attention to this starvation and to try to figure out what could be done and to try to resolve the problem. What happens in addition to focusing on this humanitarian crisis was that the three of us spent a lot of time together. Long nights together from washington d. C. To bangkok is three legs and it was long. We got to know each other. I got to know max who is my colleague in the senate, we both served in the Senate Finance committee which is a very heavyduty committee. We are both interested in a lot of the same things, particularly in national trade. So we got to know each other, we got to like each other. Host max being a democrat. Guest max was a democrat and he had a son named zeno. Zeno was a baby at this time. So he asked me because i am an ordained clergymen to baptize zeno, which i did. Now, i cannot imagine that in todays u. S. Senate as i understand understand what is going on in washington. I just think its a battle all of the time. But, if you get to know someone on a personal basis you can try at least to communicate and to work things out. Spee1 that story story about max really resonated with me because i made one of my best friends on the other side of the isle with ben nelson. It was the result of a cornell to afghanistan. It is it is really true, when your many hours out of that furnish that is the senate, you get to know someone as a person it is harder to hit them on the floor. Guest thats right. How is the media going to deal with Something Like this . How is your opponent going to deal with it . Hardly a junket to the border of cambodia when people are starving to death. But it is an opportunity for quality time and that is really important. Host yes, i think that is very true. That is contributing to many things, certainly a big contributor to what we see in washington today. Then you you say, youre right, religion creates the environments where compromise thrives. You told about the advice of the legendary senator russell long gave you when you became chairman of the commerce committee. Can you recount that for our viewers today . Do recall the advice again . Guest yes, russell long was just great. If you ask me what did you enjoy most about serving in the United States senate . Why, russell long would be very close to the top of that list. He was so clever and funny, he understood how politics worked. He was the chairman of the finance committee, i i was on the finance committee, then i think it was 1985 republicans got control of the senate and i became the became the chair of the commerce committee. Somewhere i have this recording, may be in a closet somewhere dont know, i took this tape recorder and i went to russells office and i turned on the recorder and i said, russell, tell me how to be a good chairman. He said i have two pieces of advice, one piece of advice is it give everybody on the committee a sense of participation. A sense of a stake in the legislation that youre trying to pass. Give them an amendment, give them some little piece of the legislation so that they want to think to pass. The the second thing he said was, never hold a grudge. Because the person who is your opponent today is likely to be your ally or summit you will need is your ally tomorrow. Those were the two things he told me. Host and that relationship with senator had gone back to your early day when you first came to the senate. Guest yes, the first first day. The first and the Senate Finance committee. This was russell, what happened was i showed up for my first day on the Senate Finance committee. I was one of 38 republicans in the u. S. Senate, 38 is, you eight is, you might as well have zero, it is nothing. We had 388 republicans, i had just turned 40 years old, i had just arrived in the senate, i had never met to russell long before. He was the chairman of the Senate Finance committee. I was was delighted to be on that committee. It has to do with taxation among other things, but that is the big issue on the finance committee, tax legislation. So i show up for my first day on the finance committee and russell is presiding, what the committee is doing, is there he should setting up their program for the year ahead and writing a letter to the Budget Committee and telling them what their plan was for the year ahead. So there is a positive proceeding, so i am way down at the end of the table and he had never seen me before, i raised my hand and i said, well mr. Chairman, i have an idea. He looked on the table and he said, zero . What is your idea . And i said, being a republican, i think we need a tax cut. He said, zero . , to the tax cut . Well i had never thought about that. So i blurted out, this is an early 1977, i said 5 billion. In said 5 billion. In those days 5 billion was something. And he said, all right, does anybody objects . Objects . Without any objections, that is agreed to. I thought, wow this is going to be great. Of course i hustled back to my office turned out a press release that said, first day on the job and i have have got you a 5 billiondollar tax cut. Well i didnt do anything of the kind. We were just writing a letter, we were not legislating. The question was, why why did he do that . Why did russell long, senior democrat, do that for the junior almost useless republican on his committee . The reason, thinking back on it was he wanted me to look good. He wanted me to look good. He knew i was going to crank out a press release and he knew that if he did something generous for me then i would be a participating member of that committee. That is the way back finance committee worked. It always worked that way. I was on it for 18 years, we had terrific chairman in both parties on that committee. It always worked across party lines and if you wanted to do anything you had to have bipartisan support for it. Host i love that story. So that early mentor for you which practicing the x ructions he gave about giving a stake to every member and dont make an enemy, you may need to be an ally. My question is, will that advice work in the senate today with the rigid ideology and partisanship . Will work today, will that advice . Guest it is not working today. I think the reason it is not working is, what are members of the Senate Hearing now from their constituents . Are they hearing, dont compromise, and i think that is what they are hearing. They claim it from the of the two parties, if i try to work anything out with the other party i am going to get a primary opponent. Im good going to be opposed in the the next election in my own party. So the boys they hear is, dont give an inch. Dont do anything. Dont budge. The result of that is, nothing happens. Nothing. What is happening in the house of representatives . The message as i understand it, the message to at least some members, republicans in the house is, if you vote for lets say paul ryan or whomever to be the speaker of the house, we are house, we are going to oppose you in the primary. So it is as on to if those are desperate to keep their job in the message they are hearing is, dont give. I dont think thats where the American People are. I think these are the loud voices but i dont think this is where the American People are. Host bringing you back to the message of your book, where people of faith, religious religious people can create an environment where compromise and wor