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CSPAN2 After Words November 1, 2015

Wholesome lives. But it had to do with the common good and whether we as individuals put the good of the country ahead of our own interests. It was very, to me its fascinating that this is a point that was made particularly by james madison. Because madison was a great legal realist. He was really the architect of our constitution. He understood that everybody had interests, groups had interests. We have to balance interests to have a country that would function, but 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 citizens. That is, its got to be more than just selfinterest. Its got to be more than just whats in it for me. There has to be instance of a part of the citizens that we are here for a purpose beyond just grabbing everything we can for ourselves. That concept the virtue, which are first four president s thought of as a republican, small r republican quality, fade out within. We did hear much more about it or anything like it. The few outcroppings, lincoln, and most notably john f. Kennedy inaugural speech when he said, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. And then he said in that very short inaugural speech that america, americans will pay any price and bear any burden for the future of liberty. That was over half a century ago and we havent heard anything like it since. And instead of politicians saying we will pay any price, they say you dont have to pay any price at all. Its all about your own interests. Namely, what can government offer you by way of benefits, and how little can government take from you and where taxati taxation. And its as though politics that is exclusively an appeal to the selfinterest of the host how can people of faith change that . Guest when you think about it, its the opposite of what the message of religion is. I mean, religion does point us beyond ourselves. And for faithful people than me, you know, whats in it for me, then the, if not central. There is something higher, namely god is higher. So your whole focus is for something bigger and better than yourself. And i think that that is a message that comes from religion, would be a great offering my faithful people to politics, and it does not hurt in the political sphere at all. Host that really struck me that since john f. Kennedy we really havent heard a call for national sacrifice or individual sacrifice on the part of the citizen. Guest the result is whether 20 trillion National Debt, or knocking at the door of 20 trillion. And year after year goes by and nothing is done about it. When i was, my last year in the senate i was the vice chair of the commission on the entitlement reform and the Entitlement Programs. Bob kerrey from nebraska was the chair of this commission. We came out with a terrific, at least for the many report, beautiful fourcolor crafts show that Social Security was doomed, medicare was doomed, the National Debt was going to soar and all this. That was 21 years ago. Nothing came of that. And then five years ago we had simpsonbowles, and that was a balanced program of taxes and 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 it were attacked for various pieces of how they support it. Host i remember well. We will talk more about the need for compromise, but republicans unwillingness to accept any kind of revenue increases, democrats unwilling to touch any changes in the Entitlement Program and so it went nowhere. Guest thats right. I think its not so much the politicians are just sort of odd ducks. Maybe they are, but i dont think its that. That theres something peculiar in 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. And to respond to it and then they in turn revoke that. So if what they are hearing, what they think they are hearing from the public is outlaw mine and i want it now, give me. Than what theyre going to say to the public, you know, you hear it now and the president ial campaign, up to have a great thing for you . Do i have, i got more benefits for you than anybody else is offering, vote for me. And so it evokes, they listen to what they think is sort of a message of give me, and then they be focusing message in turn. So there we are in politics. The result is a very sort of unsound base for our Economic Future house but its frightening. Continuing this religion as a gift of politics, you mentioned that religion is communal and binds as each together. I was very struck by what she described as the growing isolationist, loneliness among the American People, and that you can see a that has even bled over into our political life and an institution in the senate. Did i read you correctly on that . Guest yes. This is far from an original point, and it was made most eloquently i think by robert putnam, harvard sociologist. He wrote a book called bowling alone. Its how we are all just becoming more and more individualistic. We are becoming more and more turned in on ourselves, and hence the title. We are not even, thats right, we dont even belong to bowling leagues. We go bowling alone. That was the title of the book. I believe that that is true here in washington as well as throughout the country. Throughout the country, what are we doing . We are sitting in front of our television sets, driving our cars. The country it seems the less we are into interpersonal relationships, and 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, its really easier to work things out politically, where as if you know somebody as a politician. But i had one member of the senate tell me, a sitting member of the senate, tell me that this particular senator could think of more than six other senators to over to his house for dinner. Host right. You speak of the collegiality, and the collegiality when i was innocent was disappearing a lot. A lot of the problems that we see now i think go back to those years. But what do you see as contributing to the dysfunction of the senate today from the collegiality of the past to the kind of combative partisanship that characterizes the institution no . Guest i think there are a number of component to that, but i think, i mean, one of the problems is just scheduling and the need for senators to be on the road raising money in relatively small increments. So i think that the most that a senator can raise for campaign, from an individual, is 2700 for the primary, same for the general election. Meanwhile, these uncontrolled groups, individual contributors and the pacs tech achieve anything they want. The so the center who wants to define a message has to go out on the road and raise maybe 15, 20 million, 25 million or more depending on the state. Host they are not in washington just the that means they are not here, they are not relating to each other. Something that something is lost in that regard. But i think Something Else is going on thats even more serious than that, and that is that the pressure that members of congress are hearing from their socalled base, from their stalwart supporters, all the pressure is, dont get along, dont compromise, dont make a deal. And so youve got basically independent contractors out there making speeches, and the idea of politics, meaning working things out, is lost in the shuffle. Its lost in this pressure did absolutely pure and taking a position. Host let me go back to your comment from the center who only had half a dozen senators he thought he could invite over, the lack of relationships beyond a competitive on the floor kind of. You, if i recall, in the book talk about a codel, congressional did you recount that . Guest it was in 1979, and it was at the time of a terrible refugee problem on the border of thailand and cambodia, where vietnam had invaded cambodia. Cambodia had been ruled by this terrible tyrant, but these refugees had crossed the border and theyre just lying on the ground dying. It was just awful to see. And so three of us from the senate, all freshmen senators, went over to thailand and the border of cambodia and then into cambodia in order in order to call attention to this starvation, to try to figure out what could be done, how to resolve the problem. What happened in addition to focusing on this humanitarian crisis was that the three of us spent an awful lot of time together, long flights, i mean, to get from washington, d. C. To bangkok is three lakes in that flight, and it was long. But we got to know each other. I got to know max baucus who was my colleague in the senate, and we both served on the Senate Finance committee which was a very heavyduty committee, and we were both interested in a lot of the same things, particularly international trade. And so we got to know each other. We got to like each other uzbek max being a democrat. Guest max being a democrat, and he has a son named zeno. Xena was a baby at this time and so he asked me because im an ordained clergyman to baptize zeno, which i did. Now, i can imagine that in todays u. S. Senate as i understand whats going on in washington, i just think its a bit baffled all the time. If you get to know somebody on a personal basis, you can try at least to communicate and to work things out. Host the story about max baucus really resonated with me because i made one of my best friends in the senate on the other side of the aisle with ben nelson, and it was as a result of a codel to afghanistan. Its true when your many, many hours, your out of that furnace it is the Senate Education know somebody as a person. Is a little harder to hate them on the floor test mac thats right. And i think, you know, so how is the media going to do with Something Like this . How was your opponent going to deal with it in the local campaign . Hardly a junket to afghanistan. Hardly a junket to the border of cambodia when people are starving to death. But it is an opportunity for quality time, and thats really important. Host i think thats very true, and that is, as you said many things but certainly a big contribute to what was in washington today. You right, religion creates the environment for compromise and thrive. And 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 you recall the advice he gave . Guest yeah. Russell long was just great. I mean, if you asked me what did you enjoy most about serving in the United States the senate, why, russell long would be very close to the top of that list. He was so clever and funny, and he understood how politics worked. He was the chairman of the finance committee. I was on the finance committee. Then come and i think it was 1985, republicans got control of the senate and i became the chair of the commerce committee. So i took come in somewhere ive got this recording, i think summer, maybe in a closet somewhere, i dont know, but i took his tape recorder and i went to russells office and i turn on the recorder and i said, russell, tell me how to be a good chairman. And he said, i have two pieces of advice. He said, one piece of advice is get everybody on the committee a sense of participation, since of a stake in the legislation that you were trying to pass. Give them an amendment, give them some little piece of the legislation so that they want the thing past. The second thing he said is, never hold a grudge. Because the person who is your opponent today is likely to be your ally or someone who will be your ally tomorrow. Host that relationship with the senator had gone back to your early day when you first came to the senate. Guest yeah, first day, first on the Senate Finance committee. Host he had an idea. Guest thats right. And this was, this was russell. So what happened was, i showed up for my first date of the Senate Finance committee, and i was one of 38 republicans in the u. S. Senate. 38 is, you may as well as zero. Its nothing. We were at 38 republicans. I just turned 40. I had just arrived in the senate. I have never met russell long before. He was the chairman of the Senate Finance committee. I was delighted to be on that committee. And it has to do with taxation, among other things, but thats the big issue in the finance Committee Tax legislation. So i show up for my first day on the finance committee, and russell is presiding. And what the committee is doing is they are setting up their program for the year ahead, and writing a letter to the budget committee, heres what our plan is for the year ahead. He was drafting a letter. So there is this little pause in the preceding, so im way down at the end of the table, and he had never seen me before. And i raised my hand and i said, mr. Chairman, i have an idea. And he looked down the table and he said, oh x. What your idea . And i said being a republican, well, i think we need a tax cut. We should have a tax cut. And he said, ill . Ashman o. . How much of a tax cut . Well, i had never thought about that. So i blurted out, this is an early 1977, i said 5 billion. In those days 5 billion with something. And he said, all right, does anybody object . Okay, without any objection is agreed to. And i thought wow, this is going to be great. And, of course, i hustled back to office, turned out a press release that said first that on the job and ive got you a 5 billion taxcut. Well, i didnt you in the coming. We were just writing a letter. We were not legislating from the question is why did he do that . Whited russell long, senior democrat, do that to the junior, almost useless, republican on his committee . In 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. And thats the way that finance committee worked. And it always worked that way. I was on it for 18 years. We had terrific chairman in both parties on that committee, and 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. And so that argument before he was practicing exactly the instructions he gave about giving the state to every member and dont make an enemy. Now, my question is will that advice work in the senate today with the rigid ideology and the partisanship . Will it work today . Guest its not working today, and i think the reason its not working is what our members of the Senate Hearing from their constituents . Are they hearing, dont compromise . And i think that is what they are hearing. I think they claim from the base of the two parties, well, if i tried to work anything out with the other party, im going to get a primary opponent. Im going to be opposed in the next election, in my own party. So theres no voice they hear it is dont give an inch. Dont do anything. Dont budge. And the result of that is nothing happens. Nothing. What is happening in the house of representatives . Whats the message . As i understand it the message to please some members, republicans in the house is, if you vote for, lets say paul ryan for whomever to be the speaker of the house, we are going to oppose you in the primary. So its as though everybody is desperate to keep their jobs, and the message that they are hearing is dont give. But i dont think thats where the American People are. I think that these are the loud voices, but i dont think this is where the American People are. Host bring you back to the message of your book where people of faith, religious people, can create an environment where compromise and workability can actually occur, if they allow their voices to be heard and not drowned out. Guest is the theme of the book. The theme of the book is to encourage religious people to be more active in politics in order to fix politics. We have this wonderful tradition in america of not wanting to entangle religion and politics. Separation of church and state, very, very important principle. Very important not to use religion is a very partisan way. But what im talking about is the tone of politics. Its not, you know, support this piece of legislation or that, or be a republican or democrat. Is everything on the philosophical spectrum. But i think what religious people can bring to politics, that they have in common is another voice, and alternative voice to what the politicians are hearing. What they know hearing is dont compromise, dont give an inch, dont cut any spending, dont increase in taxes. And its gridlock. Its like a shiny car that just doesnt work. You can turn the ignition and you just get nothing. It doesnt move in any direction. Host dont you agree that a lot of people and good will in the senate who dont like whats happening, but they cant figure out exactly how to solve the problem transferring i think so. I wish some of them would be a little more edgy in sticking up for the principle of making government work, just for the principle, lets make this thing work. And maybe a little less worried about i must satisfy the loudest people in order to survive the next election. I wish that but i think that, that we the people can encourage of this in our politicians. We can attempt to evoke from our politicians and attitude toward politics where they dont treat us as just a bunch of selfish people go all out to ourselves, or a people who will never give, we never compromise. I think if we give in that message they will respond to that. Host in the prologue he wrote something that raised the question in my mind. You said that you had found it difficult in your life to draw Straight Lines between things people eat and policies you support. Because a lot of people do say god told me this, and this is why. But i wonder whether you believe a persons theological belief, and youre right, people of faith are all over, and theres places on theological beliefs, but whether those theological beliefs influence by the end of a conservative or a progressive, does it drive you in one direction or another . Guest i think people are conservatives would say yes, and i think peop

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