It is nice to see you again. Your book, breaking the twoparty do with the mystery of Political Science and has garnered a lot of attention. I just want to start out by pulling you back a little bit and asking you why do you want to write about Political Parties . Your first book was focused on lobbying within the universe of potential reform college and money in politics and executive power, you chose to focus on parties as the linchpin. Can you talk about what drew you two parties in the process . Its good to be with us light reunion here on cspan. So why did i write this book . Because i was worried about american democracy and i saw hyper partisanship as a serious problem affecting the country and wanted to see if there was a way to solve that problem. It imploded it directly from my previous book which is about corporate lobbying the map book had concluded one reason why lobbyists were so powerful in washington dc was because they broke a lot of laws there wasnt knowledge or expertise on capitol hill because staffers turned over at a different rate and after that book came out i went around talking to folks saying congress should just hire more staff for more expertise. Everybody set of course. That makes total sense. But yet it did not happen in one reason is because power was decentralized and then some realized adding more staff doesnt solve the problem of paper partisanship as a way in which nothing gets done because there is so much gridlock. And the core problem of our democracy at this moment is the fact we have two distinct National Parties. This is something that is new and it is just at odds with the way our governing institutions work and frankly i think its a little crazy. Talk about why you think it is new. Obviously america policy goes back to centuries so talk about how the framers envisioned politics working. That were four factions and parties and why this is such a departure said lets start with the framers. The framers were engaging in this radical act of coming up with a system of selfgovernanc selfgovernance. They thought Political Parties were very dangerous because they read their history of ancient rome and ancient greece and they saw that the civil war through selfgovernance and it was split into and there was a majority and Minority Party and then what would happen one would use their power to will press the Minority Party. So they thought they would come up with a system of government to make it very hard for parties to form with bicameral legislature, three branches of government on top of federalism and they did make it very hard for parties to form. At least in a coherent way. Thats one of the reasons why american parties have been so weak and incoherent because they were state and local coalitions separate branches. The parties were a mess but in recent years over the last several decades it has truly nationalized for the first time now these truly nationalized parties that are distinctly representing genuinely different values different visions of america and we have this partisanship which is the very thing that the framers feared. Just going back a little bi bit, the twoparty system although not always democratic and rep public but it has survived for centuries. Why has it endured . And then we will get to the hyper partisan development but historically it seems to have endured and the parties seem to have been responsive to a National Crisis pressing national concerns. I think it endured because the party didnt stand for all that much in the fact that we had a multiparty system but the parties themselves were a broad overlapping coalition so that they were more flexible data governing level to build those coalitions across parties the local political identity was more important than the National Identity and not allowed for politics to help grease the wheels of the legislative process. In the earlier era it is just easier to build different coalitions at different times and all the parties are so distinct and separated and competing for this narrow majority, the compromise and Coalition Building as a system of government depends on, no longer works. There is a fascinating warning within your book about the nationalization and the hyper partisanship. One thing that struck me with the historical development, our politics more in peril during earlier eras like the Great Depression or in the sixties with scores of urban riots and antiwar protest . Three political leaders were assassinated, please were clubbing demonstrators outside of the dnc in chicago. Looking back did you see democracy under greater threats in the thirties or sixties from how it is today and what you would do in the earlier era. We will start with the sixties certainly the idea of violence is not new to american democracy to be a healthy and peaceful age of politics is a total myth but to be nasty and at times a little violent but what was different about the sixties was the conflicts over civil rights were not hyper partisan. It was fought more within the party they had between the part party. So the civil rights bill there was a High Percentage of republican members of congress until the Democratic Party came to own that set of policies. So it meant these were difficult conflicts and there were people who lost their lives in the conflict, they didnt threaten the fundamental stability because they didnt create a condition in which everything was at stake with every election which is the situation we are in now with these incredibly high stakes and this bifurcation of the country into two distinct coalitions to undermine the legitimacy and fairness that the system of democracy has to depend on. That is the fundamental challenge. The thirties was a challenging time thinking democracy had come to its end and perhaps since the election of 1932 it wouldve turned out differently or do we long. So all of which should remind us that selfgovernance and democracy is not something to take for granted so it is somewhat fragile. Talk about this mid century for parties system to parties within each party so was there a bargain made on the issue of race and civil rights that the parties agreed for a number of decades to essentially push to jim crow and racial segregation aside in order to have these harmonious bipartisan potentia potential, because once civil rights was introduced for a lot of white americans the stakes were extremely high. Exactly right. A lot of folks with nostalgia and the bipartisan consensus of the fifties and early sixties but of course that was based on exclusion of civil rates from the jim crow south. This is why politics fundamentally are about conflict we just have to figure out how to have these discussions in a way thats not so binary with a zero sum and the Civil Rights Act with the realignment of america along cultural and social identity that is a combination. From the mid fifties through the late eighties was the for parties system alongside liberal democrats and republicans. And although that system was in perfect in retrospect it worked pretty well to have different coalitions and the legislation passed with overwhelming support and congress had committees with well needed resources and for a lot of voters it meant they didnt stand for anything which i felt that frustration but it worked pretty well. And ultimately we ought to get back to Something Like that but it is actually multiple parties to make those choices. You mentioned civil rights with the sixties and seventies and eighties. Of the broad cultural forces at work how word you explain with the rise of the National Parties of the polarization . And accelerated by roe v wade and the increasing salience at the National Level at the end of the cold war played into that as well. And it is that complexity. As americans became more prosperous and middleclass expanded with those separate national images. With at culture war reaches the level the Democratic Party and so those trends and voters so what fits with their values better. And those that the republicans disappeared from the Republican Party and then the National Identities changed and that is what led to where we are today. You described a memo from Newt Gingrich who was the leader of the socalled republican revolution in 1994 of how to describe democrats. And those democrats to came and destroyed. That is a pretty remarkable set of attributes to fix on ones opponents were a different level of rancor that is always been bitter and brutal and fundamentally new. Newt gingrich did a bunch of things in 1994. He encouraged the republicans in a much more aggressive way. With those Congressional Elections and gingrich noticed something. But that they were losing Congressional Election and the key was to emphasize that bush the first had. And it is a complicated figure with the caricature and then everything was fine with the centralized power and one reason why gingrich came to power because there are republicans in the house tired of being the minority and those that was more oppositional with the majority of the house and 40 years they have grown corrupt increasingly strong centralized leadership under speaker jim right which a lot of republicans rebelled. They were cut out of the process more that led to the rise of Newt Gingrich. He is an important player but he is a product. So maybe it is more a symptom. I dont want to undervalue the role of the actors at a particular time but when they are largely responding to pressures and broad patterns. So i want to get back to this but one of the refreshing things about your book is contemporary politics. And has been mentioned a couple of times but it is refreshing and with those focus on him. Those to bring us up to where we are today through the two thousands congress had a serious burst of bipartisan lawmaking since 1990. And when i read that i thought i know congress is dysfunctional. With the partisan warfare and at the same time it with the Bipartisan Legislation after 9 11 they are seen coming together with the National Security reforms and then the passage of tarp with the financial crisis. Have they been able to reach, provide one compromises . Or are these examples that i am siding that are so exceptional to this toxic hyper partisan. There has been a steady decline. With major environmental law major budget reform and americans with disabilities act not to say there hasnt been major Bipartisan Legislation but having four major bills and then for the first time to have that genuine twoparty system. And that only legislation now is partisan legislation. There is some stuff that passes with criminal justice reform. And 2018 was something but. We are talking about the number of problems that congress has been called on to solve and that fraction get smaller and smaller speed seems that majority people. The title of the book and we know that politics is never static and then to spiral into a negative. That there is no escape if we dont have prodemocracy one democracy reforms. Fighting over a zero so conflict if one party is democrat with urban cosmopolitan america the other has rural traditional with the Global Knowledge economy and its very different visions. And the challenges and roughly equal power in any given election and going back to 1992 and with divided government and unified government for the other party and with unified control after the 2020 election would only keep it for two years. And in this era of extended trench warfare with no obvious resolution in both sides desperately fear being in the minority it is a stalemate and then to back down. And then you cant move with those fundamental barriers ahead. But you are getting angrier and angrier. And leading to more escalation people get more emotional and to cut off friendship people that share their values reading information and news in two sides have different relations that is a true fact at this point. And you said the elections. The anti trump partisan and then to let out the steam the democrats won the house and state legislatures and the toxins minutes not a longterm solution and with that antitrust energy will dissipate and democrats will be disappointed. And disengage. There are two big problems. One is that there are National Issues to deal with light climate is the most important and existential. And number two this escalating hyper partisanship now fighting over basic rules of who gets the vote so democracy these are not political issues but so that you could say that rules are fairs and to provide by those outcomes and that i elections are fundamentally called into question there is no way to arbitrate this agreement we dont have a democracy anymore. But you did say you are a democrat. What you say the common argument with the Republican Party is to extraneous, it is captured with those forces. But that argument and the problem so can you talk about why you think the arguments and for those and republicans are quite extreme. Why is that flawed . It is flawed. I do agree the Republican Party is extreme and therefore democrats need to win all the elections doesnt solve the underlying hyper partisanship problem that makes it worse. Mama democrat and think they would be better but i dont think thats a solution to the underlying structural problem. The reason the Republican Party has become so extreme is really a fundamental function of the twoparty system. So those that were not on board where trump wants to take the party but you cant be a democrat so theres no other party so come along with me. So slowly that go with them. So there are a lot of republicans and wouldve left the trump Republican Party joining a different race. You can be the plurality and gain total power so by winning the republican nomination, trump got to redefine the party and for a lot of the voters it was a binary choice. There is a lot of columns of the folks that say i dont want to trump democrats are crazy so i guess i have to vote for trump. And in that binary system i guess i have to vote for the republicans. There is no other alternative. Host folks on the right say National Review have come around and support them with a handful of exceptions. If you dont want to be an independent and have no power. Host it is up fo important e have to stick. Guest the lesser of two evils is the defining logic in our politics. By the way, if you do a google e search for lesser of three evils you will not find as much. It didnt do well when they changed the name. Host that might be an appropriate name. Let me ask why isnt it conceivable that in 2020 would say trump loses and the republicans dust off the report and the party shifts. It becomes a more moderate party or has a much bigger space for the moderate policies on issues like climate change, immigration, even at some point taxes. Why does that seem so farfetched in your analysis . Guest with how it has shifted since 2012. We have to reach out to immigrants and of the opposing faction in the party. It was defeated and the Republican Party is now in opposition and the fighter for the traditional values and those are the folks most active in the party now so the idea that theres all these folks active in the party and they believe deeply in these values and they probably think that they were cheated and that the reason they didnt win as they di they didnt hard enough on their values because that is who is in charge of the party now. The idea that they would embrace a completely different vision of what the party stands for seems to defy logic. Thats not the values of the Republican Party and they are not going to suddenly transform their values when they think they can continue to win. Maybe if they lose four president ial election in a row and become a minority faction in a dominated politics than they might rethink it, but that is the way that its often. I dont think it will happen anytime soon. Host one of the things i like about the book it isnt at all relentlessly bleak. The first half or two thirds is focused on the analysis but youve got a solution section high recommendations and you thought about them. Id like to spend time going through the case for reform and thats the subtitle the case for the democracy in america. Multiparty democracy seems very foreign to us but what would be the chief advantage to having a multiparty democracy . Guest . One i think we had a multiparty democracy for a long time contained within the twoparty system but it was much more akin to the democracy with different coalitions than the twoparty democracy that we have now. It is the deviation from the american political norm. If you look at what the framers were writing again they didnt like parties bu parties that why really didnt like is the twoparty system. I agree that madisons federalist number ten. The key to a stable democracy is fluid coalition that you have different factions building different majorities on different issues that you want to have a democracy so that no group feels like it is going to be in the minority and therefore it doesnt use the system as legitimate. That is fundamentally a vision of the multiparty democracy in which different parties yield different coalitions at different times and depending on the different issues thats more responsive and fluid parties can come and go to change the demands and concerns of the electorate and so it shouldnt seem that far in to us. We havent conceived of our political history in that way. I think it has tremendous advantages. One big break this zero sum politics and builds in a politics that is about compromise and Coalition Building. Then there are some other advantages as well. One is the turnout is higher because every vote matters in the proportionate democracy but in the u. S. If you are not in one of the hand full of swing states your vote doesnt matter if you are more likely to find a candidate or party that you feel like speaks to you. Why do we have such low voter turnout we have made it much easier to vote in the last 60 years notwithstanding some backsliding. It does the pentagon a little bit depending on the election. The reason is with only two parties a lot of voters feel like they dont have a party they can feel excited about that a lot of uncompetitive districts most importantly theyve written off large parts of the country and dont even run operations where as if every vote matters yoyoure more likely to vote and they will go after the vote. Also gerrymandering is only a function of our twoparty system of the plurality districts and if you have more parties and larger districts which you need to get more parties the gerrymandering goes away because you dont have a way to run these algorithms to predict how different they are going to yield. Host you talk about also some of the reforms you envisi envision. So the multimember house districts, what are these and why would they be better . And that proportional representation the system that we have now is somewhat unique in the world most countries have moved over the course of the 20th century. There are many types of proportional representation. Theres the sort of hyper pr that generates too many and its modest multiparty democracy with four to six parties into the system ireland uses and rather than having a Single Member district which is what we are used to combine the five districts into one and then have five representatives elected proportionately do you wind up having about 17 of the vote if you use a system that is within the multimember districts. Host can you give an example say nebraska, oklahoma guest bfi exceeds. Oklahoma is probably 60 republican. There was one democrat who won in oklahoma this year just barely said democrats should have probably 40 that is a Fair Distribution of you have a multimember district. He would have probably more than two parties because now they can compete without having to win a majority. A more moderate Democratic Party like joe biden ended then i would argue in the pi book you e the Republican Party would the sort of moderate republican reform one that the more traditional Christian Conservative freemarket party. Host you see the biggest constituencies representing the parties. Guest it depends. You could see more parties, but people will vote based on the parties on offer but there is nothintheresnothing sacred abot two parties. Host you make a good point in the book which is the electoral rolls and system most of it is not set in stone. Can you talk a little bit more about because it was so refreshing to read about the shifts. Can you talk a little bit about why we dont have to be bound up by the two parties. Its not necessarily. Just for the only reason we have the two parties is because we have a plurality Voting System and the framers imported from the british, the 1430 innovation and at the time it was the only system available and a constituentbased system thereve been innovations in the electoral rules that have created systems that are fair and representative and we can certainly benefit from the advantage of some of that innovation. There was a period in the 1830s and 40s when they moved to the single vote which is the only thing worse than plurality voting. Because if you have 60 of support in a state and its all that large and say theres ten seats in the state, everybody gets ten boats and democrats have 60 of the state. They started with an 1830s and the way that its gotten power they got rid of it and that is why we have the single winner district mandate they can do what they want with the voting rule host its been used a little over a hundred years. It is the first president ial election it gets eliminated and transferred. And second or third you pick the candidate that you think can win and it gives more expression so its like having this ability and also encourages more Coalition Building that may not be the first choice but i would like to be the second choice in the cities that have adopted and have seen less negative campaigning and voters tend to like that so it is a way to reduce polarization and it would lead to the multiparty democracy. Host let me play devils advocate for a second. As you know most of them have unintended consequences. Some reforms have advanced democracy like the Voting Rights act in 1965. Others seem quite flawed in retrospect so thinking about the California Initiative they are designed to put power in the peoples hands that led to but o things like proposition 13, proposition eight, 187 all very controversial. The rhetoric seem to outpace the reality. Talk to us a little bit about what do you think could go wrong with the unintended consequences you might worry about the. Guest to maintain the status quo fire risk for the status quo in the change. Its important to have a realistic view of democracy. Its not something thats sold its always good to be a tradeoff in for me the goal of reform is to try to solve the most pressing problem at a particular moment and also think about changes we have experience with. Its not a crazy idea but even reforms we look back on it says that wasnt the best idea in the initiative. A lot of these reforms if you go back to the progressive era result is concentrated power i guess what we do about that is take power away from them and i think it worked pretty well but then some communists got elected in one place and the two parties kind of shut us down. We always have to weigh out whats worse. Letting things continue as they are in a way that seems incredibly destructive and harmful or solving what is the biggest problem now and we will deal with those then but we have to allow for democracy to continue to solve problems in the future. Host because you are a senior fellow, my sense is that they have an interest in seeing some of their ideas totally outlined some of the ideas come into action. Can you talk about the mechanics of implementing the changes and how these reforms get done and beyond the buck are there steps that you and new america, not to link the two things together, but it might take to promote the reform idea . Guest it will be on the ballot in massachusetts. Theres a lot of energy already out in the country around electoral reform. It will happen in the states. The states can change how they elect the legislatures and if well have another National Level. I thin think theyd reform is nr easy but we are at a moment in which americans are really frustrated with how the political system works and two thirds of americans say they would like more than two parties. More americans than ever are choosing not to affiliate with democratic or the Republican Party. Inequality is incredibly high and we are also seeing the breakdown of a lot of things we thought of the need to movement and black lives matter changed a lot of things and they are changing the social hierarchy. Although the presidency has done a lot of damage, if also i think cleared away a lot of assumptions that work pretty well and i think its woken up a lot of people to the idea that maybe there is a crisis in the democracy that we ought to reform. There is a pattern of crisis and a renewal. The progressive era and the Civil Rights Era we have these moments in which it seems like something is broken and then we make the democracy more inclusive and responsive and more functional and creates new problems for another era resolve problems in that era. How does one get the two parties now. The leadership of the two parties are going to hate this book. The reform happens when theres folks that demand it and frankly theres a lot of politicians that are really frustrated with being trapped in a system they want to get into Public Service and solve problems and they would like to engage in more problemsolving. By the primary voters into purchasing frenzy there are a lot of folks that would actually do a lot better under a new system. In the book i talk about Different Cases of reform to the proportional system in the 90s when voters demanded it and they felt the political system was unresponsive. A lot of western european democracies made the transition in the first two decades. The political leaders eventually realized we can do quite well under this alternate system and could actually do better for the country. I think it is very shortsighted of them to persist. Thats all they knew and a lot of folks in the Public Service got into Public Service because they wanted to do some good for the country and they are very frustrated right now. Host i want to pull back a little bit because as i was reading the book there was a lot of literature that has emerged. So much of it seems to be in response to the 2016 election. When i read this book i wonder do you think anything would have been different the way you wrote it. Would we be having the same conversation or would it feel quite as urgent you made the point about trump and crystallizing the flaws in the system the people are waking up to. We would be looking at a scarier 2020 election. Im sure it would have written a different book about some of the same things prior and its forced me to rethink and change the book i wrote. I dont think we would see as many people getting politically engaged. It would feel like more of an extension of the obama years. In some ways i think we may be better off as a country for having trump come to power in a way that was completely disorganized and there was a sort of buffoonery aspect to it rather than a more disciplined trump like figure. Host what do you make of the books on tierney and how democracies died into the books that worn you fall into that genre. I draw quite a bit on the democracy framework and in the discussion of when mutual toleration breaks down this is the path that we are on the because we were breaking out of these norms, so its very much in conversation with that. They are not really solutions but one of the things i wanted to do in writing this book is to write a solutions book. They were sort of hair on fire we have a problem and he ended it people should be nicer to each other. Guest wha guest what i was trying to do in the book how do we get to this moment and what are the deeper structural colleges and what impact can we change, we are not going to change for the entire structure of the media works but we can change the incentives and institutional rules because weve done that throughout american political history and thats fundamentally the philosophy that guided the constitution into the welldesigned institutions can channel and minimize the worst of things and that is the inspiration i take in proposing democracy reform for the 2020s. Host i think you succeed in capturing the breakdown of the structure and looking at the kind of structural problems that we had as well as proposing smart and sensible solutions, so its been wonderful to be with you. Guest its been a pleasure having this conversation. This program is available as a podcast. All after words programs can be viewed on the website booktv. Org. Editor of the new zurich preview shared thoughts on raising kids to become readers. Readers. Heres a portion of the talk. You are not their teachers who dont treat reading in the home like a chore. Treat it like something that is special. And i will give you one example of a practical tip used in my home which we told our kids when they were growing up, while they are not ten, 13 and 14 but when they were younger we would set a bad time say 7 00 and say if you want to stay up quietly reading you can stay up until 7 30 so with that host them is it is a privilege. Reading is something you get to do because they were older and d went 7 30 comes along they dont say can i stay up late or finish this chapter or finish this page im almost done with the buck. So you were sort of training them in a way to want to read cover to view reading a positive light