A More Perfect Union?

Description: It’s not clear you can get elected by saying what you believe.

Transcript: The fact . . . Well certainly politics and how our politicians all around the world, particularly in the United States, don’t say what they believe. Every time I give a speech, I get asked, “Do your ideas about authentic leadership apply to politics?” And I say, “I really don’t know if you could get elected.” Because today’s it’s not clear you can get elected anywhere by saying what you believe. And I think the lack of . . . the compromise that’s taken place in public life is a tragedy. And to me it’s gotten much worse over the last 40 years, to the point where good people . . . young people today don’t want to go into that life.

Recorded on: 7/6/07

Description: We've passed from differences in outlook to bitter partisanship.

Question:  Is the American political system broken?

Transcript: I don’t think the system is broken.  I think Americans look at the debates that go on, for example, in Congress and say, “Well, they can’t seem to get along with each other.  Or they’re just political or partisan.”  And there is an element of that; but people come from across the country, and I’ve had the privilege and experience of representing . . . being in both houses of Congress.  So I look at when I was in the House of Representatives, there are . . . 435 people come from across the country, from North and South and East and West.  They come from great cities and farms.  They come from suburbia.  They’re doctors, and lawyers, and farmers, and business people, and teachers, and former veterans and a whole host of other things.  They’re Jew and Gentile, Protestant and Catholic, Muslim.  And across the spectrum they’re brought to the nation’s capitol to not only represent the interests of their particular district, but to represent the collective interests of the nation.  And they’re asked to face some of the most difficult challenges we have in our country, and to also look at the great opportunities that exist with our country, and come together to lead in what hopefully is a strong bipartisan response to these issues.  But at the end of the day, all those different experiences, all those different backgrounds, all the different political ideologies . . . sometimes they are rooted in . . . clearly in very strong views – principled views – as to how we achieve these goals or overcome these challenges.  And those principle views can sometimes be in great conflict.  And so that . . .  Whether it’s in the House or in the Senate, the reality is that it seems to me that what people sometimes view as strictly partisan is the clash of ideas – the clash of ideas that people brought from a very diverse country, but who hold, I think, common goals of achieving . . . making America the best that it can be.  And in doing so, that clash of ideas produces differences.  Some people look at that as a broken system.  I look at that as largely to be the fulfillment of the democracy that we have.

Recorded on: 9/12/07

Description: The system is working, but for whom?

Transcript: The American political system works; but the question is, “Who is it working for?” It’s working for the auto companies.  It’s working for the mining companies.  It’s working for the banks, and it’s working for the utilities, and it’s working for the insurance companies.  And it’s certainly working for the pharmaceutical companies. So the system works.  The question is, “Who does it work for?”  Now I can tell you who it doesn’t work for.  It doesn’t work for middle America.  It doesn’t work for working families.  It doesn’t work for single mothers.  It doesn’t work for small business owners.  There’s a lot of people it doesn’t work for.  And what I’m determined to do as President of the United States is to make sure that we have a government that works for everyone. Now one of the reasons why government doesn’t work for people is there isn’t much of a difference between the two political parties.  You know the Democrats and the Republicans at the top really are pretty much the same. 

Recorded on: 10/19/07

Description: We have to sit down together for the sake of the country.

Question: Is the American political system broken?

Transcript: I think the system is under strain, and we’re seeing a manifestation of that in the rise of the independent voter registration. I think the political system, if you look at here in Washington from the governing standpoint, it’s clearly broken. We’re gridlocked on every issue. We fail to address issues of irresponsible spending, or Medicare, Social Security. And we don’t do any of the hard things. We spend . . . We’re in a continuous battle over the war in Iraq, and partisanship and bitterness is probably as high a level as I’ve seen it in all my years here.

Question: How do we it?

Transcript: That we sit down together for the good of the country. I know how to work across the Iowa Democrats. I have for many years. As president I will reach across . . . my hand across the aisle to the Democrats. And I will ask them to reach across to me, and I will ask the American people to urge them to do so. If we get things accomplished, then I’ll give them all the credit.

Recorded on: 11/20/07

Description: Rooting for a political cause, Lieb says, is like rooting for a football team.

Transcript: I sometimes feel like rooting for any political cause is, in a way, like rooting for a football team.  You have about as much affect on it, and whoever wins has about as much affect on the . . . whatever happens in the world, or at least in this country.  That’s strictly me speaking for me.  It may be I don’t always feel that way.  I . . . the . . .  The things that bother me about, say, the world today and . . . and politics today . . . and I . . . I can’t . . .  Maybe I would have thought the same 50 years ago.  I mean everybody thinks their age is the worst.  But I . . .  I hate being lied to, and I hate . . .  I feel like there are so many cheap lies being thrown at us.  I think we are being . . .  I hate being treated like an idiot, and you know our government treats us like an idiot.  It treats us like a child.  And I . . .  I’m not saying, oh, this . . . this administration either.  I . . . I will never forgive Bill Clinton for lying to me.  He . . .  He took me for a chump.  He said, “I didn’t sleep . . .”  Just say you fucked . . .  Just say it.  But he really . . . okay he said it.  He said that sincerely.  Alright, I believe you.  Oh, you know, screw you.  He . . . he really . . . he lied to all of us.  And it . . . it’s like it’s not a big deal.  Yeah, it’s a big deal.  He really . . .  He took us all for chumps.  He thought, “Oh, I can lie to these people.”  And you know you don’t just do that once.  You do it in every occasion you can.  I hate being lied to.  I hate being . . . and . . .  And I think . . .  I think that’s related to the problem of the government treating us like we’re children.  And which, you know, I think they think we’re stupid.  And I think they think we’re children.  And I think we act like we’re children, you know, because we let them do that, you know?  It’s a give and take sort of thing.  But you know the more they treat us like children, the more we act like it, and the more they take away from us.  You know I’m an absolute, you know, freedom of this, freedom of that guy.  I’m . . . I’m very pro-gun.  You know I’m pro-school choice.  I’m crazy, you know?  But I just . . . I . . .  I think we need to be treated like adults.  I think we . . .  Americans, you know, we have these hard won liberties, and we really just sort of have to cling to them every chance we can get.  Because you know, they never get rid of laws.  Every law they write basically gets stuck on the books forever, and they all infringe on our rights in some way.  I mean I think in some ways we have to . . . it’s sort of our duty to fight every law that gets put on the books.  Yeah.  It’s . . . it’s . . . it’s hard not to feel a little trapped by if people lying to . . .  It’s . . . it’s . . . it’s almost . . . it’s also like you don’t feel like necessarily they’re doing it in your . . . your self-interest.  They’re . . . No it’s . . .  Okay.  Your mother drives you crazy when she, you know, tells you to tuck your shirt in, but you know she’s doing it because she loves you.  When our government tells me to tuck my shirt in, I don’t know why they’re doing it.  You know I think they’re just doing it to be bossy.  So that’s how I feel.

Recorded on: 9/4/07

Description: What Democrats and Republicans don't get.

Transcript: It’s going to take obviously a combination of really pushing people to levels of personal responsibility that they never imagined. That’s what Republicans tend to be right about, though they themselves don’t take personal responsibility. It will also take investment in other human beings. That’s what Democrats tend to understand, though they don’t match the investment in other human beings, and in economic and social structures, and educational and health structures. They very rarely match that investment with calls to personal responsibility.

Recorded on: 8/15/07

Description: Not broken but not working as well as it should.

Transcript: Well I’m hesitant to word . . . use the word “broken” in the sense that if one looks at our political system in a comparative context, it is not broken. Which is to say you know . . . Isaiah Berlin talked about the “crooked timber of humanity”, meaning that human beings are not angels. Human beings . . . There are . . . There . . . And this is a conservative insight, but it’s an . . . probably . . . it’s an important insight, that there are . . . human beings . . . Any institutions that human beings create will probably be, to some . . . in some way broken; that human beings in a sense are born broken. We are not angels. So if you look at the degree to which other political systems historically, and other political systems around the world have been broken with massive violence perpetrated by the government against its own citizens, for instance; or widespread chaos and public disorder, our system is not broken. Our system is in historic . . . __________ historically quite astonishing if looked at in that context. But I do think that the American political system is not working as well as it could, and you might even argue not working as well as it has in past moments. And I think that is connected to the . . . the . . . the decreasing participation of Americans in their own government that we have seen since the 1960s or ‘70s, and the not unrelated increasing power in America’s political system of vested interest groups that use their . . . use their economic power to produce outcomes in government that the American people themselves would probably not approve of, and in many cases don’t even know about.

Recorded on: 9/12/07

Description: The career politicians have broken politics.

Question:  Is the American political system broken?

Transcript: Washington is broken.  The states are doing a pretty good job.  Cities across the country are doing a pretty good job.  States are able to balance their budgets – doing so without raising taxes, without borrowing money.  But Washington has been incapable of dealing with the extraordinary challenges America faces today – dealing with global jihad; dealing with the overuse of energy; the overspending of money in Washington; recognizing the need to become more competitive, particularly with Asia.  The job just hasn’t been done.  Of course something as simple as illegal immigration . . .  Washington has been unable to stem the tide of illegal immigrants into the country.  So it’s time to have people from outside Washington who are not lifelong politicians finally get the reigns and get America back on track.

 Recorded on: 11/26/07

Description: The three branches of government can be mutually counter-productive.

Transcript: I think the United States here labors under a disability which does not afflict all the industrial democracies. Which is that our founding fathers – and mothers for that matter – were so worried about tyranny that they made it very hard . . . they designed a system of government which made it very hard to do big things. They designed a system of government which was designed to produce a legislature that restrained the executive; and executive that fought with the legislature; and the judiciary that placed severe limitation in certain directions on what either of the other two could do. And it was likely to be disliked much of the time by the legislature, and arguably also by the executive. So I said . . . I said that I think leadership is important. We have a system in which leadership is extremely difficult because the incentives for those in opposition – and I include the (01:05:53) opposition between the branches as a form of opposition, even if they are in the same party, the incentives for the opposition are always to make leadership difficult.

Now it has to be said, to do him justice, that George Bush has also devoted a fair amount of his time to pushing the Congress to do more for example about AIDS in Africa, spend more money there than was spent for example under the Clinton Administration. And the trouble is to get money out of the Congress, whose members have to go home and explain why they are not subsidizing the corn in Iowa this year so much is difficult.

one of the things that I think has depressed me most about our political system in the last decade or so has been the incredible partisanship. There’s nothing wrong with people fighting about issues, and having different views about them, and arguing vigorously for their point of view. But opposing a point of view simply because it’s their point of view of the other party, right? That’s bad. But again, our political system is in some ways designed to reward that, because by defining yourself as “not them”, you draw on political identities. And political identities allow you to win elections and so on. So I think there are very difficult challenges facing the United States in particular in my view because of the divided system of government that we have; because of the separate branches and their conflicts – their intrinsic conflicts with one another.

Question: How do we fix it?

Transcript: I would say there are some potential institutional solutions that are consistent with not reforming . . . with not amending the Constitution. I think for example that . . . This is an idea that Jim Leach of Iowa, who is actually a former Republican congressman, has pushed which I think is every sensible idea. Part of the partisanship flows from the fact that electoral districts in the United States are increasingly designed to be majority one party or another. This means that the way you win election is by winning the party, and the way you win the party is going to be by persuading the most active people in the party, who are going to be the most extreme people in the party. Because they are the ones who are the most excited, as it were, by the political situation. The result is that if you design a majority system where the districts are designed to be majority one party or the other, you will get the most extreme people of both parties elected, and they will be the most partisan people, and you will have partisan legislature. It’s why the Congress is more partisan than the Senate, because in the Senate you can’t gerrymander because the districts are defined by the states. And it’s why Iowa is less partisan than other states, because in Iowa congressional districting, because of the way the Iowa constitution does it, doesn’t allow you to gerrymander the constituencies, which is why an Iowa congressman has made this proposal. Now it’s very hard to figure out how to do this in general, and it’s even hard to figure out . . . I’m not a lawyer, but it might be difficult to do by congressional action because our constitution envisages the states managing their own electoral processes. But I think urging on everybody that it’s tremendously important to have political districts in which there’s a real chance of shifting parties, because that pushes people towards consensus. It pushes people towards the middle. And we desperately need to be able to create consensus and to be in the middle, I think, in order to make progress of any of these questions. Now it’s a long answer to it, but it has to be a long answer because it’s a complicated question – how you reshape the institutions in order to make these things more likely to happen . . . the good things that we need to happen. But I think that it’s an instance of the general problem. You take human nature, and unless you design the institutions very carefully, people will be incentivized to do things which everybody, if they stand back from, can see are not helpful. It’s remarkable to see very smart, thoughtful, committed public servants behaving like spoiled children in the legislature, whether it’s in the Congress, the House of Representatives or in the Senate. Because that’s sort of what the structure of incentives is. And we can’t individually do much about this. We can’t even do much about it collectively unless we reshape the institutions to reward the people who are going to behave differently. Right now a congressman who says . . . A congressman from an agricultural state who says, “Look. It’s more important right now for us to have a just system of world trade in agriculture than it is to subsidize the people in my district” is (01:12:18) going to lose the next election. And we have to figure out ways around that problem. And I don’t have a general answer; but on the particular question of the kind of polarizing partisanships, I do think there are institutional changes that we could make. They’re perfectly constitutional to make. They’re perfectly legal to make them in the states, which would diminish the extent to which that’s true.

Recorded on: 7/31/07