Bennet. And later, more from campaign 2020. Candidates meeting with voters in iowa. Next, a discussion of president ial misconduct by looking at the Trump Presidency and past administrations. From Fordham University law school, this is an hour and a half. Welcome. Thank you all for being here. Before we get started, i want to tell you i am so happy to be having this event because we never get to talk about history and historians. Politics talk about and the law and foreign policy. It is all very interesting. I think it wouldve been a very good thing if more historians were weighing and more frequently. This is our attempt to do that. Before we get started, let me say that this is being recorded by cspan. When you get the microphone, speak into the microphone. Wait for it for you speak. Be aware of the fact that it is being recorded. Started, let me introduce the men to my left. An editor of a book about president ial misconduct. That is the kickoff for our discussion. A historian who spent most of his career teaching at princeton. His most recent book is about being a historian. I think it is about the profession and the worldview. And written numerous books. Including the one we are featuring tonight. He is one of the creators of the National History center. I was a graduate student at yale. People would always say, there is this great historian. He is going to be so great. He defined a field. How to think about culture in a different waysy of speaking to political life. We are very happy to have him. His most recent book was rebirth of a nation. He writes constantly for the new york review of books and the london review of books. To his left as a journalist known for many things. Tonight, i would like to introduce him in a number of ways. He is a famous speechwriter for jimmy carter. We will talk a little bit about jimmy carter. The neworked twice at republic. He is given a lot of credit for refashioning that magazine. He has been a finalist for the National Magazine award. His most recent book is about the birth of a new political era. A historian, do journalist, critic. He is the distinguished professor of english. He has written 10 books. He is a contributor to the new yorker, atlantic, rolling stone. Politiciansen about from bill de blasio to george bush to barack obama and many others. I am hoping among these panelists tonight we can get of proportionality about what is happening in the country today. What i would really like you to tell us briefly is why the reissue of this book that originally came out in 1974. I am happy to do that. Do haveo say that i some views about the Trump Presidency. But i will keep my powder dry until we get into a general discussion. A way of capturing historians by surprise. I was caught up in a project 45 years ago to present to the impeachment inquiry of the House Judiciary Committee at the request of its special counsel. A contextual survey of president ial misconduct from George Washington through the administration of Lyndon Johnson. Along with about 14 other historians under the manager managing editor. We compared reports, cemented , and they were accepted. They were getting ready to present the report to the members of the Judiciary Committee and the president resigned. I hoped that would give me some license that i had something to do with nixons resignation. But it did not. It turned out that the report never got into the members of the impeachment inquiry. But the text was in the public domain. It was scrapped up by dell publishing house. The book fell dead in the marketplace. It is scarcely known among historians. It was reviewed only once. By myself. I wanted it to be a footnote to the impeachment inquiry. I went on about my life as a historian. Joe lepore is a fellow historian at the harvard faculty. A lot of you know her as a writer for the new yorker. Asked, what is this book . She stumbled upon it. All hell broke loose at my desk. I eventually turned it over to my agent. The result is this updated version of a report that was first written and submitted to congress 45 years ago. I am still alive to tell the tale. This book goes through the presidency of barack obama. The original one did not cover the presidency. This one does not touch upon donald trump for two very strong reasons. Now, theiously and administrations that occasion a report like this are not complete. Second of all, most of the documentation of nixons administration was not available then. Certainly an Trump Administration now. It is only fair that we leave the sitting president out of it. Things about two the nature of the report. This is not the kind of history that i am my colleagues with think of producing. It is very much against the grain. It is factual, and interpreted. It is really a chronicle. The kind of history that was written through the medical middle ages and beyond. No connective tissue. Just what happened about certain aspects of the presidencies going back to George Washington. Report aboutace, a president ial misconduct over 230 be unprecedented. There was no seriously Academic Field of president ial misconduct. Fairny respects, it is a very narrow way to interpret thetry to evaluate strengths of presidencies. We are going to look at a presidency and we are going to by itsevaluate it success and implementing its vision. The political skills of the administration. The obstacles faces based on the crises. Take for example the presidency of warren harding. It lasted for 2. 5 years and one was one of the most corrupt in history. Harding himself was not correct. It was all the people around them. He was a sex maniac. You and i will have to talk about that later. [laughter] my colleagues and i have not gotten into private lives. Take Harry Trumans presidency. It was many very corrupt in many ways. Who would judge the truman presidency on the grounds of his conduct . He ended the second world war. He integrated the armed forces. The Marshall Plan came into being. It was an administration of extrudate achievements. I think of that old joke, how is your wife . Whom . Ed to it is hard to think of the record we have made. Imperative. Ve any we need to know more about our representative democracies. Britain, france, scandinavia. Compared the record that we have amassed with the record of misconduct or Good Behavior on the part of governments elsewhere. That should ben the comparison. Compare theuld records we have amassed against the records of states and cities. Then it seems to me if you compare this record against chicagoland, louisiana, it may look pretty good. Accountway from our own not certain if i should feel depressed or rather confident that somehow we have muddled through with the effective institutions that we have. In makingconfident some comparisons later on. Karen i want to turn to you next because i want to hear your on what president ial misconduct is. Even beyond this book, what is actually this word misconduct mean and what does it not mean . How should we think about it . Perspective ing the short perspective of what is in front of our eyes. I think im the only one up. Who has done time in the white house. I eagerly turned to the jimmy carter section. It could have for with a oneliner. Nothing to see here, move on. His scandals, such as they were, fact that hethe had never served. The only time he had ever served in the federal government was when he was in the navy. He did not know anyone outside of georgia. The scandals, such as they were, derived partly from the fact that he brought with him the people he trusted in georgia. Not all of them by washington standards were trustworthy. Real problem with president carter was that he was an experience. His image can be explained in that way. He put a cousin of his in charge of white house housekeeping. The penny pension ethic she had brought with him from georgia resulted in some mistakes that were more damaging than any scandals. Example, newspaper subscriptions were all canceled. That was to save a few dollars. That was the worst one. He sold the sequoia. That was the president ial yacht. That turned out to be a mistake of the first order. He was trying to deroyal the white house. Chief. up hail to the he thought the president did not need a yacht. He sold it. It was a costly mistake. It was a real money saver. With the yacht, he could take half a dozen senators out for a trip up and down the potomac. Serve them some bourbon and water. He banned alcohol from the premises. Hard alcohol. There was beer. Hard liquor works better when youre trying to make a deal. When he compromised, he had to give up something of real value. A lot of those concessions could have been replaced more cheaply by trips on the potomac. That was a scandal of sorts. Perhaps people can point out to me things i have overlooked about carter. The book, which is full of revelations, defined scandal rather narrowly. It does not include the Lyndon Johnson section. It does not include the vietnam war. You could call that a scandal. It was a horrible mistake. Perhaps even worse was the invasion of the dominican johnson, where the Dominican Republic could come into the hands of a social democratic. Those limitations were set for us. Misconduct, i cannot recall any of that from the carter administration. Correct me if im wrong. The lack of washington insiders was a handicapped for carter. Guess i will leave it at that. Karen i want to ask one followup question. At what point did it or did it not become evident inside the white house that the lack of insiders was a problem . Office, later i became the chief speechwriter. That seems pretty clear to our little cabal. Karen give us some reflection before we get into individual president s on how you think about this word misconduct and what it means in terms of how we should think about ideology, policy, sexual scandals, whatever it is. Mucham in favor of a broader definition of misconduct. I feel like the most serious and thetial misconduct type that has been most destructive to human lives and liberties both at home and abroad has occurred at specific historical moments. In the last 70 years. Thee the emergence of imperial presidency and the National Security state. It can remain largely invisible to the American Population at large. I think it is interesting that in the reissue of the book, the two president s whose administrations do warrant broader coverage of misconduct are Richard Nixon and george w. Bush. Both of these president s were engaged in serious abuse of power. Through the institution of domestic spying by the cia, which is clearly against the cia charter. It was begun under lbj and directed at protesters against the vietnam war and other dissidents. Nixon expanded that program considerably. Chaos was finally exposed. His exposures provoked the hearings that were conducted by Senator Frank Church into the misdeeds of the cia. The committee discovered all. Inds of misdeeds not only the spying of u. S. Citizens who opposed nixons successfult also the and president ially authorized cia coup in chile. The overthrow of salvador a and day. Me wass interesting to there was this fusion most of the time between the executive branch and the rest of the National Security state, in particular the intelligence agencies. Sometimes there was tension. Under the kennedys. There was very little tension under nixon. That was when the government and thepresidency committed most egregious misdeeds. They were guilty of the most extraordinary misconduct. I would say the same thing was true of the george w. Bush administration. Provided a new lease on life for the National Security state after the very brief moment of public skepticism spawned by the Church Committee and the failures of the vietnam war. The global war on terror brought it back. It brought back the possibilities for the most serious kinds of misconduct. Warrantless electronic surveillance, which is a clear violation of the fourth amendment. These were the conventions that take 20 dick cheney said were quaint. There were various levels of misconduct. Warn Warren Hardings encounter with a chambermaid at the palace hotel in San Francisco to other boys areas matters involving public broaden this to have these other issues. To you about talk this were quaint. One of the things i would like to hear you, and then i will turn to eric, think about is are we living in a different paradigm . I know this book lays out president ial misconduct. Whether it is about policy or personal life. Insays, there is misconduct all of these different administrations. Eric will tell us how trumps lying is worse than any other president. Before that, i want to ask you, before the war on terror, it changed the presidency and the executive in things we dont understand. That . Agree with are we really any different paradigm or are we just going to, in 10 years, issue another book, president ial misconduct, updated once again . Or are we living in a different place . Because of the National Security state . I fear that we are living in a different place. I am deeply suspicious of pronouncements of new paradigms. Predicting the utopian future that awaits us ever after the bumpy transition. The transition is where people live. We cantot something escape that easily. This is everyday life. Is everyday lives, and this partly due to technology, as you know, and the capacity of the agencies, the kinds of revelations that eric snowden made about the dragnet that encompasses all americans. Monitoring our conversations. Our imminent internet business. It makes me worry that if there is nothing new paradigm, there is a new public mentality. In not only younger people, but often younger people, who say, why should i care if all of my data is out there i have done nothing wrong. I cant do anything about it anyway. Why should i care if the government knows these things about me . Haveroblem with, if you nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear, is that nobody ever says that about the snowden revelations who lived under a dictatorship. No one from germany says that. No one from the former soviet union says that. You could continue that list. It is people in the u. S. Yes we have a government that has abused its powers grievously, but we have not reached the condition that the germans were in under naziism or communism. I think there is a certain thatte as well as a belief technology has brought us into this new era and we have to adjust to it. A kind of technological determinism. The train has left the station and we better be on it. We dont have to just accede to technological determinants here. Eric, i want to turn to you. Before we get to trump, talk a little bit about how you see the presidency, the contract between the president and the citizenry, and where you think it fits into this discussion about misconduct overall. Is a big topic, obviously. Book. Turned in my second in 2004,book came out i think. In the first book, i concluded the president shouldnt lie. Now i dont feel that way anymore. I really dont. Part of life. Is a i think everybody lies. Just about everybody. And just about all politicians live. If you look at how president s are judged, the ones who lied are not any less popular or successful than the ones who didnt live. Jimmy carter hardly ever lied. John kennedy lied all the time. Franklin roosevelt lied a tremendous amount. And he saved western civilization by lying, i would argue. President of the United States, you almost have to live. Lie. Because people cant handle the truth. For the First Century and a half of american history, i would say president s lied for two reasons. They lied about slavery. They lied about the nature of human beings. Lied because america was committed to endless expansion. Every president was sort of responsible for expanding the country and yet people didnt or centralns americans or American Indians or free blacks to have the same rights they had. Toorder for these things happen, they had to continually lie about what was happening and how these people were treated. The most consequential liar of the First American century is james polk, who increased the size of the country by 25 with a war that he lied to get into. Interestingly, the hero of the truth of that story was abraham lincoln, who tried to hold him to account as a congressman. Empire,e became an empires demand lies because they are very ugly business and people dont want to hear the truth about that. Lierow wilson didnt personally. Teddy roosevelt did lie. Hoover, i couldnt find a single lie that hoover told. Harding only lied about his sex life. But once you get into the modern postwar period, beginning with world war ii and after, we become an empire and we define our National Security in such a way that anyone who does anything we might not like has to be stopped. Lying becomes a part of being president. The United States didnt but underchile, eisenhower, we overthrew guatemala and iran directly. And congo. Donesia all of those things happened under eisenhower and yet he is considered a wonderful guy. Lied a lot. Esidents kennedy lied about the cuban missile crisis. Again, im really glad he did it. You cant really generalize about lies. Nexen was a terrible person and his lies were incredibly damaging. I dont think for the same reasons jack says. I think they were damaging because they killed millions of people. Vietnam have ended the war repeatedly, but he didnt want to because he thought it would be bad politics. We have actual discussions where he says these things. Also is. Bush responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of people and the creation of millions of refugees on the basis of lies. When you get to trump, interestingly trump is not in their league in terms of the number of People Killed and the chaos caused in the world, and yet hes told approximately 14,000 falsehoods. Not all of them are lies, but most of them are. We are in a new era with trump. These other president s, as ,orrible as what they did was reagan, he was a terrible liar, but gave the impression of believing his lies. Hey were lying for a purpose we kind of knew that they were lying. They ran basically competent governments that had individual obsessions of the president himself that went too far. They were reined in overtime. Trump has destroyed any distinction between truth and lies. He just doesnt care. Is hes done his whole life live. He lied when he ran for president. He lied in the debates. It was amazing to me what he was getting away with. The very first day of his presidency, he went to the cia and started lying before the cameras. Life,ttacking our way of our government. Quite consistent, the origins of totalitarianism, if you want to destroy peoples ability to resist, you have to destroy the distinction between truth and lies. If they cant believe anything, they cant act. Compare the to United States to nazi germany or stalinist russia. I reject those comparisons. But theres an awful lot of similarity to the way those dictators treated truth and the way trumps supporters go along with it. Think there are elements of totalitarianism in trumps presidency and the movement that derive specifically from his ability to keep lying. Reelected, ime not sure our form of government would survive. I dont make predictions. But it is a new situation and we dont have the words for it. Think about fox news. Theres never been anything like fox news. We know what fake tv is and we know what independent tv is, but we dont know what fox is. It is something brandnew and it reinforces the lies. You have to contend with them defining the truth as lies and they are very powerful. My new book started as a history of president ial lying but it became about a culture of lying and how the president is part of that culture. Hes the most important symbol of it. But it is a much bigger problem. Accepting what you said, can i shift categories for a minute regarding President Trump . I think the crisis that we face is graver than most politicians, most of us, most journalists understand. If i read the record correctly, and i would like to know whether all five of us read at the same way, the most egregious corruptionrom normal , using Public Office for private gain, telling lies, covering up, occurred under Richard Nixon. You read an account of Richard Nixons presidency and the account is really what was going on . Nixons departure from the embodiments of corruption and miscreants and wrongdoing was the fact that nixon and his advisors were orchestrating misconduct, thegality, corruption, from white house. It had never been done in that fashion before. Nixon was a party to the misconduct for which he eventually had to resign because he probably would have been voted out of office. Nextems to me that the most serious moment of president ial conduct came during the irancontra affair of ronald reagan, who went to his death saying that he knew nothing about it, and i think he probably did know something about it, but the evidence as i read it is not exactly clear. Policye is a case that was being made out of the white house in contravention to congressional act. Pocketas taken from one for which it was authorized and appropriated and used for other purposes. Or awas a shadow cabinet shadow group of officers working against the law. What the Trump Presidency has done is to combine both. Trump and the people in the white house are orchestrating illegal behavior and they are doing it now with a shadow government that operates outside the white house. And weve never had that before. Downis a step up or a step in the nature of president ial and administrative misbehavior. I think weve got to understand it structurally. It is certainly true that the president lies all the time, but ive always thought that was gestational. That is the way he came out of the womb. Add, borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality so disorder, there is things that i believe are not intentional. He cannot help himself. Hes a man of low character and he lies and hes incompetent and he segment, and we know those things, but how do we make sense of this presidency in the long history of president ial behavior . You can see an accretion in misconduct, and in this case it is structurally different and more grave than any weve ever had. Talked about bringing in the people who were inexperienced, which is a comparison that is often made with the Trump Administration, bringing in people who are not experts, who have never worked in what field they are in before, and you see it through various departments. Do you take what you are saying, which is basically that this is f shadow government combining this with what is going on, coming out of the white house, is a new marriage, or do you see it as weve seen corruption before, we are going to see it again, weve seen interference in Foreign Affairs done behind the scenes before how do uss the difference in this administration or not . Im not sure how to do that. Is something new and different about the trump experience. Any politics. E he doesnt have any policy preferences. Weve never had a president i think your diagnosis of several wellrecognized mental disorders is on the money. It could be worse. He hasnt got us into any wars. He doesnt want to have a war to the extent that he has any thoughts about that at all. It is astounding that he uses the office to enrich himself in such an obvious and unmistakable way. Eric said about of aews and the growth kind of state television, the kind of thing which you see in a lot of much less morally developed countries, that is im not sure that trump would have been possible without that. Roomnk everybody in this probably watches cnn or msnbc. Is there anybody in this room who gets their news from fox news . No hands are raised. [laughter] and so many of the things im not sure im on topic, but you an enormous part of the interested public, people who are interested in the news, who simply dont know and cannot know what is going on. They are living in a completely different reality than the rest of us. And i think that what we know, the news that we get is pretty much true, and we are astounded day after day that he hasnt just been hustled out of there. Because the things that outrageous day after day are unknown to a large part of the public. That is certainly a new development. Like you toi would weigh in here. I get the National Security part and im with you on that, but what eric was saying, it is more than that. You even say it about not caring about your privacy and the new point in time. What is the cultural ramifications i dont mean that you have to predict, but if you were going to write the history of the next 10 years, what would you be looking at culturally to understand the presidency, whether it is the war on terror, presidency, or now, had fundamentally changed what would you look at other than fox news . Im glad you didnt ask me to predict anything less. I predicted that jimmy carter was going to save american capitalism. I guess that happened, but i dont know if he did it or not. I dont know. I will have to get the details on that. It was a hopeful time. We just passed through the valley of the shadow. I am very discouraged and depressed about the state of our public life and the prospects for the next 10 years and i have to tell you it is not just because of trump, who is a dangerous man, a genuine menace i agree with all of that. With respect to the culture of lying, i still feel like we have to get beyond personal characteristics and even personal pathologies. One can find pathologies in almost anywhere. Trumps are just more flagrant than most. Terms of as to me in political culture of lying i dont want to sound like a broken record, but to the creation of the National Security state. In particular, the creation of an agency, the cia, that was explicitly designed to produce disinformation. I think lot of fox news is equally dangerous, certainly as dangerous in its own way as trump in terms of twisting our discourse. , and iont believe cnn dont believe msnbc either, and i think they are about as close to state media as you can get, just a different part of the state. The New York Times, the washington post, they will produce unnamed officials, unnamed official sources without tracking them down. Journalism is in such a bad position. It is not just because of the internet and the concentration of power in a handful of media companies, although that is crucial. But i think the practice of journalism has suffered terribly. Really since the early 2000, maybe longer. In 1978,l moment is when richard helms, the head of the cia, has been convicted of lying to congress about his role and he cops ap a 2000 fine and the times runs an editorial praising this plea and saying, the need tobalances enforce the laws against lying with the continuing need to keep secrets. Forward, anyday cia official who took the oath of secrecy that is required of that organization could get up before congress and lie, and they have done it since then repeatedly, including a good many of the ones who are serving as commentators for cnn and msnbc. Do you want to comment . Im very angry that jackson keeps putting me in the position of having to defend nixon and kissinger and the cia. The cia wanted to overthrow. They didnt do it. They tried a couple times and gave up. He was overthrown by his own generals. When the coup came, nixon turned to kissinger and said, did we do this . Because he wanted to take credit for it. And kissinger said no. And then he says, maybe we created conditions for it. But he was overthrown by his own generals. They tried, but it never worked out. The culture that we are living in now the point about helms remains absolutely right. There was cia involvement that may have been ineffectual. People were killed with cia weaponry and so forth, but i dont think we need to quibble about [laughter] i think the important point is that the cia got permission to lie at that point. You mean from the New York Times editorial page. In a sense, that is an example of the media that im talking about, the kind of state media role played by the times, just as in the runup to the iraq war. Youm going to differ with in a big way here. I wrote a book called what liberal media i still get a little check for it. On the first page of that book, partially because im obsessed with english even though my degree is in history, i always make the point that the word media is a plural noun, so it is grammatically in correct to say the media is. You have to say the media are. Therefore it doesnt make sense to talk about the media. Whatever you say about the media is going to be true about one part of the media and false about one other part of the media. Even when you get down to institutions like the new york over, which right now has 1300 editorial employees. Some of them are great and some of them are terrible. Indefensible to say that it is a state media. The same is true for the washington post. There are a lot of people there who are working hard to tell very uncomfortable truths about our government and there are a lot of people who are uncomfortable with those truths being told. It is a constant battle. Sometimes the truth wins and sometimes it doesnt. Especially, times because it is the most important and most influential, and i write about it more than anything else, and i write about it critically 90 of the time. It is actually the most private most important private institution we have in terms of maintaining our democracy. Without the New York Times, we wouldnt be the democratic country we are. We could do this all day. Did this, butthey then they did this. But the fact is, the media are a very complicated institution. The part of the media that requires that tells us the truth, requires our support. Yet people talk about it as if it is a monolith. You could say anything you want about it as a monolith. Would you make the same comment about government at large, the executives, that there is as much good as there is bad, and you just have to be tolerant that it is an institution in progress, or would you distinguish between the political and the Cultural Institution . This is one of the things that is so dangerous about trump, that this fish is rotting from the head down. He is setting an example of contempt for all the functions of government. And culture. Lyndon johnson lied about vietnam every time he spoke, but no matter where you look, it is a failure, they dont care about the truth. So i think there are a lot of good people in government. There are lots of people in the nixon and ragan administration trying to do a good job. This is the first time weve had a president that has contempt for the job that government does. Ragan talked that way, but he didnt act that way. He has contempt for the truth, for the job that he does, hes got no politics at all, and we are in uncharted territory. We are going to turn to questions. Believe it or not we are sort of out of our time. Each reflect upon this for a moment. When we are done with this presidency, however it ends, do you think there will be energy towards rethinking the presidency or the executive . Do you think, we will go on, we hope that doesnt happen again . Do you think there are lessons to be learned that need to be addressed legislatively, policy wise . Personally, i dont think you can go back in time very easily. Obama was wonderful in a lot of ways and a disappointment in a number of ways. Disappointed, he was a constitutional law professor. He didnt rain in the appeal presidency at all. Once he got the power, he liked having it. Situation the other thing that worries me, we are attacking fox news and the presidency. The American People have a role here. Barack obama literally, according to the account of the people who keep count of these things, he told fewer falsehoods in eight years then trump tells in 10 minutes quite frequently. Im not exaggerating. He told a grand total of 12 falsehoods in eight years. Wherewas one conversation trump was talking to hannity on the phone. He told 45 for the falsehoods and 45 minutes. And yet, our most honest president was replaced by her most dishonest president. For the second time in a row. Jimmy carter was or other most honest president. The American People care about this. They care if the lies are consistent with their resentments. People are not demanding the truth. They are demanding comfort. They are demanding reinforcement. Thats what politicians respond to. The Republican Party is terrible because the people who vote for it are terrible. Its complicated because we get lied to and so forth. I dont see us going back. I see us living with this. I cant really imagine the future. Give us some hope. What can be done to make it better . They cant just be, it will be bad forever. I gave up the practice of commenting on the weekly developments. Ive devoted most of my Mental Energy to what i think is the big problem. Is, the constitution. Ive heard of it. [laughter] usually it is right out of the box. Constitutionof the is not a good thing. The consonant vocation of the framers, the idea that the federalist papers is wholly red, even the authors didnt agree with them. They reached a compromise and they were out to sell it. They were right that it was a better deal. So i think we need to rethink the constitution. Way the easiest fix that we can make is to elect a president by popular vote. That can be done without touching the constitution. You may have all heard of the National Popular vote interstate compact. I wont go into the details of that. Wrong to blame the American People for trump. It was wrong to blame the American People for bush junior. The American People did not choose the American People chose otherwise. Bush, that could ifa planetary catastrophe the winner of the popular vote the winner of the election the way we understand elections had taken office, we would be in a very different place now with respect to socalled climate change, global heating. Course is thef case for trump. Trump seems aware of this. Says that he crazily 3 million more votes were stolen in california. Thats why hillary won the vote of the American People. The American People are doing their best. The machine is rusty and faulty and broken. It can be fixed. It can be fixed. Its not going to be easy. The odds are against it. A 25 chance of national survival. I appreciate that eric and i both result resort to the historians tribe which is complexity. The New York Times is a huge and complex organization. As is the freaking cia. There are good cia agents. Hersh found military officers and people in the Intelligence Community who believe they had taken an oath to the constitution rather than to their bosses. Their immediate superiors. They became the whistleblowers of their day who supplied him with the material he used to uncover misdeeds by government. Mediaoughly agree that are plural and are plural possibilities within each media institution. The drift of things at this particular moment is discouraging to me. To do awayly willing with the Electoral College. I agree that would be a good thing. To toss theling baby of the constitution not with the bathwater of the Electoral College. Im more devoted to the bill of rights than i am to the constitution. The constitution is full of a lot of ingenious 18thcentury mechanisms for balancing and reducing the concentration of power, which more or less worked for a long time. Im not sure we want to dismantle those mechanisms. I do think that what is precious to me in the constitution is the bill of rights. By the way, it was precious to edward snowden. Thats what got him involved in. Is career of revelation i think were going to need i think its going to take a lot , more ingenuity than the Current Democratic Party is demonstrating, to redirect Public Discourse in a way that it needs to be redirected. Dnc and theamong democratic establishment, as well as among most of the major media, is a longing for the status quo antitrump. I dont think thats enough. The reason trump was elected was because there was serious shortcomings in that status quo neoliberal,way that promarket forces had taken over the Democratic Party to a large extent, almost as much as it had artie taken over the Republican Party. Not quite the same fundamentalist tinge. More of a technocratic tinge. They were not satisfying popular needs. I think we need a reorientation of the Democratic Party in a way that would satisfy a social democratic direction. That would involve a couple years ago, i and a number of historians and political scientists who wrote about the reform tradition in american political history had been invited by the Rockefeller Brothers foundation at the rockefeller estate in terry town. There was a lot of talk about philanthropy and good intentions. At one point, one of my colleagues said, there really is going to have to be some people will have to lose and some people will have to get more. There has to be redistribution here. We cannot keep growing. I think thats the really hard challenge. Some people are going to have to pay more than they do now. Society. A decent i think it could happen. Theres enough goodwill out there, enough intelligence. Theres a native brightness and a lot of American People, even if they are not highly educated. I believe in the vernacular intelligence and decency of a lot of people. Maybe they were misled by trump. Maybe they really do have a mean streak that he tapped into. Thaty case, i dont think we are stuck with expecting that same group of voters to keep voting for the likes of trump. The likes of trump are not likely to come along again anytime soon. Optimistic, being im sorry to say. Im cautiously hopeful, cautiously. We will leave the optimism to you, jim. You are more optimistic than you sounded earlier in the discussion. When someone talks about rethinking the constitution, my heart turns to ice. Over 30 states have passed resolutions calling for in Article Five Convention to rewrite the constitution. If any of you can convince me that we will find a George Washington, a ben franklin, a james madison, alexander hamilton, james wilson, so im , you in this day and age are more optimistic than i am. In theental changes instrument, such as the interstate compact that tries to circumvent the impossibility of changing the Electoral College by amending the constitution, is a very promising approach. I also think that instrumentally and practically and institutionally, the way i usually end up thinking about these things, our first order of business incumbent on all of us to enforce upon the Democratic Candidates in the plural and upon the one who gets the nod at the end of the primaries, is to force them to tell us what we are going to do specifically to clear out the wreckage of this administration. Aboutt thinking here Campaign Finance reform. Things that have been on the agenda of liberal well thinking, smart people for decades now, well over 50 years. Im not talking about that. There he specifically, what will be done on day 1, 2, 3 . Boundaries of political action, political behavior, to get us back in the paris cards and so on. I want to hear that from our candidates. These are not constitutional issues. And are political administrative issues. I have yet to hear any of the Democratic Candidates speaking in those terms. I think its incumbent upon all of the citizens sitting in this room and elsewhere to get hold of our candidates somehow, through people we know, through members of congress, to try to bring that to bear upon them. We have to know what they mean to do as soon as one of them takes office. It is time for your questions. To what x to what extent would you say that a lot of the problem has to do with the triumph of emotionality over rationality in the society at whole . And this kind of corporate consumer thing thats going on about what somebody wants is more important than what somebody else needs . As an example, i had a discussion with somebody about obamacare. We all agreed that our health care went up but millions of children who were not insured were then insured. This is more an attitude that is the exception than the rule these days. The generation that went through world war ii and the depression, there was at least an agreement that, to make some sacrifices on what you yourself wanted for what somebody else needed. To what extent is that a factor . And also the triumph of emotionality. Want to take that, eric . Two points about that. Generation who made those sacrifices, they made them for white people. Once you brought in people of color, people who were different, things got a lot more complicated. People were must less willing much less willing to make sacrifices for people who look different from them. That are monocultural are much easier to govern than countries that are not. Secondly, up until recently, we had a pretty narrowly defined elite to who people deferred. , we had aekeepers group of people, the protestant ethic, who felt a sense of larger commitment. They did all right for themselves. They were serious for serving the larger public and the ideals they were raised with in places like private schools that instilled these values in them. Harvard and yell and princeton. That elite collapsed for a lot of reasons. Greed. It was their own all the money that became available in the 1980s. Part of it was that it was not sustainable anymore. The most important element of this is the internet. It democratized information. It used toody be that people would argue in broad terms. Now they know every little thing about every little issue. They can create boxes around politicians that politicians can get out of. They will face some sort of reaction. Fewer than 10 of people support our actual guncontrol laws. And yet, we have these lack of guncontrol laws. The 10 of people will make your life hell if you try to oppose them. Otherwise, in the past, they wouldnt have known. Fact that weve democratized information in the elite has stepped away from its role as a gatekeeper has increased the emotionality of these issues and decreased the ability for gentlemen to settle things. Made Congress Much less fun for everybody and much less effective. They dont have the freedom to make the kinds of deals that they wanted to see made. Theres too many people involved. They are not the same kinds of people. They hate each other. [laughter] more questions . Thank you for that. Right here. Im a psycho historian. International center of multi generational legacies of,. Thequestion i have, ultimate decisionmakers in terms of future thomas. Traumas. Futureways invoke generations, right . The hope for future generations. Decisionsany of the are very immediate for the next four or eight years. About the give a damn impact of those decisions on next generations. I would like your views on that. Its not only president s. Its many decisionmakers. Thats because of the political system. I would like your views on that. Ran hitlers man, hitler , he was considered an idiot by some and not taken seriously. We know the multi generational effect of that. Jackson . Thats a tricky one. Thats a serious and difficult question. I agree with you that residents do always president s always talk about future generations. Reagan is a good example of a isd of genial demagogue who talking the kind of game that gets everybody feeling good. Good about america is back and what he meant by america was, turbo capitalism. Guess what i think you are getting at is the whole problem of leadership. This has to do with the balance between emotion and rationality. Leaders have to be able to makere emotions as well as convincing logical arguments. Fear im not trying to shift the ground away from the generational issue. Think its critical on the other hand, generational conflict is often worked up as an excuse for a way to distract people from other more fundamental kind of conflict. I was suspicious of it in the jos dont trust anyone over 30 days. Suspicious of the same kind of general crossgenerational suspicion now. I do think we have a problem of leadership in this country and what it means to be a leader is a very tricky business. I agree entirely with eric about how much easier it was for white americans to care about other white americans when the face of poverty was right. When affirmative action was white. One of the things we are looking at here that makes it difficult to cover this, we are more generally multicultural democracy than we used to be. More so all the time as more immigrants arrive. I teach at rutgers which is one of the most diverse schools in the u. S. Probably. Ive been there for 30 years. It has changed dramatically. 30 years ago, it was mostly the white sons and daughters of american new jersey middle class. Its much more complicated than that. Its harder to be a leader who will address a multicultural audience. Obama did it briefly. Soon as he was nominated, he turned around and accepted the existing order of the National Security state, the political establishment, whatever label you want to put on it. Think its very difficult there was a moment there in hyde election,night of his a small the democratic triumph. It was the end of the bush administration. The end of that neoconservative coup. I think that was the great disappointment. I dont know. I dont know whether he could have stepped up or not. Feared threats to his family, anyone that tries to change things in this country is going to be violently threatened. I think its a real challenge to get to press politicians. We have the opportunity to press them and say, lets talk about what your policies mean for the next generation and the generation after that. We have the obvious example with climate heating. I like that phrase. A little more straightforward. Rhetoric is important. There is such thing as mere rhetoric. Rhetoric shapes how people feel and think about their own possibilities and the countrys politicians these possibilities. Trump never talks about future generations. Trump never talks about future generations, never. Several people in his administration have talked about how they dont care about the legacy because they will be dead anyway. That is one of the means that has come out of it. Thats the wall street mentality. Youll be gone, ill be gone. I think you are a little hard on obama. He had to deal with this constitutional structure, excuse me. Thise running up against in the current campaign. Alling over medicare for versus building on obamacare. There wont be medicare fraud. Thats a nonstarter. We are setting ourselves up for disappointment and cynicism by pretending that by electing a democratic president who believes in turning us into norway, which i would love to see, that would be wonderful, we are setting ourselves up for cynicism. To recognizing that we have do these things through a very rusty machine. That machine is not going to give us the kind of change that bernie, for example, is talking about. It just aint going to happen. We have time for one more question, a quick question and a quick answer. High. I want to mention the extraconstitutional impulse for metaconstitutional a very quick example, bush legal or gore was a constitutional travesty. I think the decapitation of the liberal leadership in the 60s, covered over by the lone gunmen phenomenon embraced by the media and comforting the public, is the second thing. Consensusical rejected out of hand. The third thing, your boy truman. Im very taken by what call burn Carl Bernstein revealed buckler clifford, truman and i werent afraid of the red scare and the red menace. To me, these are rather anticonstitutional and extraconstitutional points that one could try to digest but not explain away by saying the constitution has no real order. I think we got to start living up to the constitution and get better. Its dismissive when you see these kinds of extraconstitutional monstrosities. Theres many more than this. I figured i would pepper the stew here. Ok. Were out of time. That was more of a comments in a question. I thank you for it. A couple things before i make any concluding remarks. Interests. On thursdays, the center has a new online publication to inform the public about foreign policy. It runs the gamut from terrorists and china terrorists and china. Its the wonky us most deep dive into things you should know and you might want to know about. It comes out on thursdays are you can link to it in the morning brief. You should read it. Its fantastic. I just wanted to mention that. Thats the first thing. We have two more events this semester. I dont know how that happened. Two in december. One is on november 12. December 12. Cyber,out highpower cyber and geopolitics. Cyber offensive, cyber attacks. It is an eyeopener. You really should come. Hes just phenomenal. Peter bergen has a new book on trump and his generals about how itl security and morphed via the generals who were so powerful in the first years of the Trump Administration. That is on december 17. I invite you back for both of those. , aconcluding remarks are couple things that werent mentioned tonight. Is, the issue of the constitution. I think its going to become a really important point of debate. Not a point of, lets have a religion of the constitution. I think something that wasnt balance mentioned, balance of powers. This was seen as a discussion within the executive. We didnt have enough time. Taking about the balance of powers is the next thing we have to talk about and what that means. Whether we revise it or we dont. In terms ofg is, Going Forward i think you all touched on these cultural discomforts, whether its that we accept lying, that we accept thing privacy, that these things have changed since her childhood. Our childhood. What we need to do is have this same panel with 30yearolds. Seriously. And see how they think about these issues and whether they think about these issues. If they dont, what are they thinking about about . They are thinking about the future and the fact that they want to be here for the future. I think i had a lot of other things to say but i will leave it at that. We will reconvene with younger folks at some point. Thank you very much. [applause] one more thing. Theres a book signing out in the hall. Jim will be signing the president ial misconduct book. You should all read it. Ok. [applause] you for reminding me. [applause] [inaudible] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2019] the impeachment inquiry hearings continue next week when Jerrold Nadler calls the committees first impeachment inquiry hearing into President Trump, focusing on the constitution and the history of impeachment. Coverage live wednesday, december 4 at 10 00 eastern on cspan3. Chairman nadler extended an invitation for the president and his counsel to appear before the committee. Read the letter to the president and follow the impeachment increase live on ,span3, online at cspan. Org or listen live on the free cspan radio app. Part of my message would be to the court and part would be to the public. Everything i just said suggests that the court should think hard when its doing this , trying as hard as it can not to look polarized and politicized and deeply divided. We live in a polarized time. The last thing the court to do is look as polarized as every other institution in america. It would be great for the courts to be seen as not that. The leeway to be seen as not that is not to be that. A lessonhat theres for the court in how it operates. I wouldres also also say to the american public, they shouldnt jump to conclusions so fast on the basis of one decision or another. Hardestare trying our to decide really difficult matters. We are all doing so in good faith. Sometimes, it will look like the world is falling and in because of one decision. Maybe it will look to other people like the world is falling in because of another decision. You can hear more from elena kagan tomorrow as she talks about the inner workings of the court and how its viewed in the current political climate. That conversation comes from the university of colorado law school. Watch it in its entirety at 8 00 eastern here on cspan. Cspan recently sat down with colorado senator Michael Bennet to discuss his background, his decision to run for president , and the Campaign Issues hes focused on in the 2020 rates. Raise. What led to your decision to run for president . Thank you for having me. It was the fear that our democracy is in real peril. If we continue to engage in politics the way we have the last 10 years in this country, my generation will be the first generation of americans to have less opportunity. I think that is as unamerican as we can possibly be. When you talk to your wife and family, what was their reaction . My wife was for it. We had a checkered career in business. Running the democratic republic schools, its own challenge. She was up for another challenge. My daughters had different reactions. We have three daughters. The girl who was then 14 said, you should absolutely run. Reaction right out of the shoe. It made me glad that she was so proud of my public service. The longer we talked, she sought as an opportunity for me to be out of the house during her 15th ar
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