Transcripts For CSPAN Future Of American Political Parties 20170811

On each of our panelists and i will get started. I will start with joe sexton on the very end. Atis a Senior Editor republican new york city. Its independent nonprofit newsroom that investigates journalism in the public interest. The organization has 13 pulitzer prizes. Atbefore that, he worked the new york times. Won two pulitzer prizes. Papers editor that oversaw snowfall and multimedia creation that earned john branch the pulitzer prize. Editor on an unbelievable story of rape,hich won the 2016 pulitzer reported to be a schedule Television Series on netflix. As a reporter, joe covered politics, crime, and the haul of theer countrys legislation. Joe has done in all as an investigative reporter. Benson, who is right next to me here, is the Political Editor of townhall. Com. Ands a Fox News Contributor coauthor of end of discussion , published by random house in 2015. He is a familiar voice on radio. He regularly guest host. Having anchored the guy benson show from february 2008 until september 2015, he was named one of the top 30 under 30 conservatives in america by red alert politics. Magazine rms Forbes Magazine named him into the 30 under 30 policy roster. We are very lucky to have guy here. We have vicki huddleston, who i remember it was last year that vicki was also here. We are very lucky. She has been an ambassador throughout africa. She let the American Diplomatic Missions in mali, madagascar, ethiopia, and cuba. She was a Senior Advisor to the secretary of defense in the u. S. Military command for africa. She managed the u. S. Agency for International Development project in haiti. She was the Deputy Assistant of state for africa. She was acting ambassador to ethiopia, ambassador to molly and madagascar. She managed american policy toward cuba as the coordinator of Cuban Affairs in washington , d. C. She became a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institute where she coled the project on u. S. Cuba relations. Writing arently memoir on cuba. Obviously, very lucky to have the ambassador here. Finally, steven hayward. He is currently senior resident scholar at the university of calgary and a visiting lecturer at a law school. He was previously the Ronald Reagan distinguished professor at pepperdine. He wrote to wonderful book on Ronald Reagan. He was also the inaugural visiting scholar at the university of colorado boulder. Forhen writes frequently the new york times, washington post, national review, and other publications. He is the author of six books, including a twovolume chronicle on reagan that i already mentioned. He writes a periodic online column performs. For forms. Rights for one of the nations most political red websites. Lets give a round of applause to our four fantastic panelists. [applause] the way we usually do this. Ere is explain the format each panel member will have 10 to 15 minutes to make a statement about the topic. After the statements, the panelists will respond to. Uestions the panelists have 10 to 15 minutes. The panelists are done, we will line the audience up and you can ask questions for the remaining portion of the panel. I think we are going to start we are going to start with joseph sexton. Joseph that is your first bit of bad luck. Andnt have a lot to say what little i do is probably profaned. You are fairly warned anyway. Im actually spectacularly unprepared. I need to get out of the way for the much more esteemed columnist panelists. Or thing i do do well is reasonably well is play the role of provocateur. I thought i would come at it this way. Im not going to talk at all about the two Political Parties becausedea of another america seems to face a much more essential civic question about its political life. Cant answer better than we have today, it makes a discussion of Political Parties 1, 2, 300, not for me terribly relevant. That is that folks in america dont vote. , then thet vote question of whether the twoparty system has come to an end feels less significant, almost irrelevant. I could go through some of the numbers, but you probably know them. You have probably heard them in your own civics classes or politics classes. Developed top 35 countries in the world with reasonably robust democracies, we come in 31st in terms of the percentage of our eligible voters who actually go and vote. 31st. Sad,. We spend a lot of time most recently in the last fevered 18 andhs talking about america what is america and what do we want. Gentleman weed the have elected. We have the government we voted for. But a tremendous amount of the country said it out. How is that possible . How is that defensible . I put it out there in part because i think if you kids are thinking about the big question of whether we can create another Political Party or how that , what little i know about politics suggests that that is a daunting sort of notion. The amount of money involved in politics is so extraordinary in the interests are so entrenched that you might think, wow, creating another Political Party thats fanciful, thats crazy. I think you might better grasp a more concrete idea liked what can we actually do to improve things . To make we actually do the notion of another Political Party or multiple new Political Parties practical . That is to get people to vote. Get yourself register to vote. Leaving aside partisanship, republican, democratic, whatever , help other people registered to vote and work them to actually get to exercise that right. That to me feels like something kids could do energetic, kids could see done and you could feel like you have a real impact. Me and imarkable to , but if i sound down double down on my dispirited any, if there are efforts that limit the peoples ability to further. People have selflimited and cells from voting either out of a lack of interest or a lack of knowledge or the inability to get to the polls, whatever accounts to our miserable record in voter participation. Now theres actually interest in eliminating that further. Manifestctually see it in a variety of forms in a number of different states. Facts are in the dispute. There is a ruling just this week in texas about the texas voter id law. Texas had several years ago adopted what many regarded as a very restrictive voter id law that you would have to produce if you intended to vote a form of identification that fell to certain categories. Case had people file suit and so this would discriminate against people of color and low income people in parts of the state. A federal judge heard the case. The u. S. Department of justice joined the plaintiffs. A federal judge held that that law was intentionally discriminatory and that its impact was discriminatory. On, went to at court of appeals. The court of appeals upheld part of that ruling and sent the rest of the case back to the District Court judge to live to litigate further on the question of intentionality. She ruled this week that indeed that is for finding that this law was intentionally conceived to limit peoples ability to vote. Interestingly the department of justice, which had spent years working on behalf of the plaintiffs changed sides. They decided it was actually going to sit that litigation out due to the change in administration. We dont need to make this partisan question. We dont need to make necessarily bogeymen out of republicans or democrats, but in a country with a demonstrated inability to get respectable numbers of people to exercise one of the fundamental rights are country was created to both conceive and the stone us bestow on us that there any efforts to further limit how many people get to vote seems quite frankly obscene to me. That the twoparty system is dead, maybe there will be third parties, maybe there will be additional parties, again put before you in an act of intentional provocation, and without having dropped an f bomb, it doesnt much matter if people dont vote. You guys can affect that. Dont let yourself become one of the people empowered and authorized to vote who chooses not to. I know you are all sitting there saying, thats let me. Not me. I will vote. How hard is that . You will be shocked in a couple of years when you are of voting. Ge how many of you dont you can control that. You cant necessarily create a new party, although god bless you for trying if you do. But you can certainly control that. Dont give it away. Thanks. [applause] thank you, joe. Guy thanks for having me. Im going to maybe be a little bit more on topic. Although i think that was correct. Everyone should vote. Get involved and the bottom line of what joe said, i heartily endorse. Some of the points that he made we will maybe dispute only talk among ourselves. Is the party over . Is that how are the two major Political Parties waning or is that a sort of fever dream or hope or aspiration . I would start with at least one anecdotal piece of evidence that maybe at least the party elites and the Party Establishments are losing some of their grip on how their own parties are run. I think you look back to the last election on both sides of sle. Ai if you talk to people who run the Republican Party before the process started, they would taken their money and said no chance that someone like donald trump would not have done well and to win the nomination was totally inconceivable and crazy. That turned out to be fake news as he might call it. 41 contests won in the republican primary. Won 45 of the popular vote and the repulsion primary. If youre one of the washington elite and you are watching this unfold, youre certain that it must be finally over for him. An early one being where he took the shot at john mccain and said i preferred shoulder soldiers that are not capture. D. Then all the little nicknames like are we in kindergarten . Like little marker, so short, sweats a lot. Really . This is a president ial campaign . Lying ted. Many people said his father killed kennedy, not my words. Thats a real thing that happened by the way. He did say that. B so low energy, so sad, believe me, believe me. Theres no way he is going to get to a general election. If he gets to it, what will he come up with . Crooked hillary. So crooked. [laughter] [applause] and now hes president. Thats a real thing happening in real life. If the party elite had any say over it and they tried to, then it wouldnt have happened. Jeb bush have 100 million in the bank and hugh won for delegates. Spent almost nothing and got a lot of free press and he won. On the democratic side, kind of the same deal in a different way. You had Hillary Clinton, who was sort of the heir apparent. She and the cabal at the top of her party really felt like she was entitled to this, like she had a great sense of entitlement and superiority, almost as if she went to Fairview High School or something. [laughter] thats a joke. Thisse anyone is recording , im sure there is wonderful people over there. She is like this is mine, everyone get out of the way. Who are these people . The former governor of maryland, who cares about him . ,hen there is this frumpy thick accent and old guy from vermont, who is like note, lets do this. There was a real sense of anger. I have a lot of friends who were democratic establishment people who were very upset with Bernie Sanders for having the temerity to challenge Hillary Clinton and do it pretty seriously. Wouldnt you know it . He won 13 million votes. He won 23 contests. He won 43 of the popular vote in the democratic nominating process. He did not win, but if the people who control the Democratic Party had their way, they would have cleared the field completely for hillary. It wouldve been a complete joke of a primary. There would have been no resistance. She would be gearing up for her general election basically from word one. Instead she ended up having quite a fight on her hand. Those are pieces of evidence that maybe the bosses are not quite in control as much as they used to be. That being said, i think its important to sort of have a reality check. The party is not over. The two major parties are the only show in town for the most part still and i will probably be the case for quite some time. Heres the stark reality. , thevember 8 of last Year American people voted and we all do what happened. One thing when you look at the exit polling data, which is a vast amount of information collected all across the country , it is sort of shocking. You had Hillary Clinton and donald trump two of the least popular people ever to seek the presidency running against each other. They both had majority disapproval among the electorate. Hilly clinton 55 disapproval and donald trump had 60 disapproval. That is the guy who won. She is the woman who won the popular vote. These incredibly unpopular figures, they needed each other in some way. To out awfuling each other, which they did consistently throughout the process. It was sort of impressive to watch and stomach churning. Despite the fact that the American People really solidly have negative views of both of these human beings, they combined to win 94 of the popular vote because they were at the head of the two major parties. One of them was going to win and those are your options. That is reality. The other thing i would point of politicalwer parties and increasing polarization of the parties where they are walking much more ideologically in lockstep than they used to, there used to be more cross politician pollination and we are coalitions of moderates and conservative and cry at liberal republicans and it was less predictable on how someone would vote based solely on their party affiliation. That is not really true anymore. If you look a just the huge fight that they had in washington over the Supreme Court nomination of neil gorsuch, a boulder native actually, you look at his final vote tally. He got all the republicans to vote for him and only three democrats, which is historically extraordinaire. Their attempted to filibuster. They attempted to filibuster. Get into allppy to those exciting details in the q a if you like to hear much more about that. I know all of it because its part of my job. Going back not that long ago, you had Antonin Scalia of, whose ando seat was open gorsuch is now filling, very conservative was unanimously confirmed in the senate. Restated Ruth Bader Ginsburg was confirmed 96 to three. Become hards have pitch and zerosum. Some people say if only we had a system like another country, like a parliament in Great Britain or canada or wherever. In order to adopt a completely different electoral process, that would take massive constitutional changes. I dont think its realistic. One thing that i do think we ought to at least take a look at is the system of voting that they have in australia. I have a cousin who works in conservative politics in australia and i visited him a couple years ago. They were in the middle of an election campaign. If you think we have tough ads here, attack ads, some of those Australian Attack ads were brutal. I was like, oh man. Anyway, the way that they do it is they have what is called a ranked voting could the more. The more that i thought about it, the more i liked it. The way that it would work is or at least the way it works here is that lets say you have four or five people running for any given office. Lets say its president. And the person that you really like the most, lets say you are a liberal. Maybe we have a few of those in the repair. In the room here. Really deep down youre not a big fan of Hillary Clinton at all and you wish that ernie had won the thing. Jill stein maybe shes nuts, but shes closer to me than hillary. I really wish that i could but for jill stein. But if i felt for her, im sort of throwing away my vote. May be helping donald trump in some sort of perverse way because you are taking the vote away from hillary. Lets say you want to go for gary johnson, because your Biggest Issue is limiting government or lowering taxes. Or pot. Guy thats one of his issues. Ultimately you dont want hillary to win, but maybe you suck it up and vote for donald trump because you do not want to deny him a potential vote headtohead against hillary. People make these cancellations collations all the time and they pick the lesser of two evils in their mind. I think in 2016, people really thought that they really were two evils, literally. What they do in australia is they have all four names, you rank them by preference. So you could say, alright, jill stein one, hillary, to, johnson hillary 2, johnson 3, donald trump 4. As an example. All the votes get put into the pot. They tabulate them and if nobody has a majority of first place votes, they take the lastplace person out of the running and it is down to three people and is a recount again. And if there is still no one with the top vote majority, they eliminate the next person until they finally have one person left with all of the rankings evened out who has the majority. That way, you can vote in good conscience for the person who represents you best, without the fear that you would end up helping the person that you want the least to win. You can vote for gary johnson or evan mcmullen, or whoever, and then if you are a conservative, you could have trump second and hillary last, without the risk of helping, in this weird system that we have, Hillary Clinton. I think that would be a worthwhile pursuit for the United States to think about. Maybe states can adopt it. Local municipalities can adopt it, and it would give people the opportunity to really vote their conscience and then sort of have a backup plan that does not allow the greater evil, so to speak, to prevail. Something to think about. Looking forward to your questions. Thanks, guys. [applause] dave thank you. Vicki hi, everybody. Thank you very much for inviting me back. I am delighted to be here. As some of you might remember, i am an alum of the university of colorado. I hope some of you will go up the hill to the university of up there, that is a really great school. I wonder if i can begin by asking you all a couple of questions and then i will tell you what i think. And i have to point out, that the people on either side of me are experts in Political Parties and in american politics. I am not. I am a career Civil Servant. And we can have our Political Parties, but we serve whoever is the president and the party in power. So my colleagues are more knowledgeable, but so far, they have not been as angry as i am. So, after i hear from you, i am going to tell you what i think as a retired career Civil Servant of our great country. So, first, when i was your age, when i was in high school, i might have been a republican, because my parents were republicans, but i do not think i was really interested in any serious way, in politics. And i did not identify seriously with any party. How many of you, identified with the party during the last election . So, is that a lot were a few, do you think . More than you would expect. Definite minority. Because werrisome just listened to what joe had to say, which is that if you do not participate, it can have a huge impact. Which Political Party in power, it determines everything from the contents of your school lunch to whether your parks are well preserved in colorado, or whether there is a peace corps if youre interested in joining it. Everything in your life, even now, when you are still in high school, your health care, the quality of your education, is to some degree how many taxes your parents pay, are going to be determined by the party in power. So it is really, hugely, hugely important. Second question. How many of you liked the two candidates . Uy that heard from g most americans did not like either of the candidates. Which did you like . Did you like any of the candidates . Wow. That is really bad. Did you dislike the candidates . Considerably more. Premise is that the system is broken. And i think it is broken because there is not great enough participation. People are not identifying with either party or either candidate. People are opting out because they are disgusted. But then i wonder if that is how , you feel about it or we feel about it, then whatever we get, we kind of deserve. If you need health care, and you voted for trump, you know, you might not have health care. It really, really makes a huge difference. But why i say the system is broken is exactly for the reasons that guy said. He told you there were two candidates that the public did not like. You just told me the same thing, and yet, the parties put them up. Hillary was eminently qualified, and as a woman, i was delighted to see a woman, but it is true that she had been around too long. She had a Party Machine behind her. The publicity thing was bad publicity. The democrats put up a bad candidate because bill clinton still controls the party. And the republicans i think did worse. They did not even put up someone who was part of their Political Party. They put up a billionaire businessman who does not pay his tax forms,e who knows nothing about and hasional policy, surrounded himself with family so we looks rather like we are some kind of small country dictatorship run by a longtime autocrat. So, how did we get here . Is it the fault of the party . Is it the fault of the republicans . They could not come up with a candidate who really was competent . Is it the fault of the democrats that they should have known better and come up with a candidate i saw that. That would be more representative, and obviously, it is the fault of both parties. Both parties are absolutely responsible for the mess we are in. But guess what . In four years, most of you will be out of high school. Some of you will be at work, some of you will be in college. Not long from there, you will be voting, you will have jobs, you will be onto your careers, and it will be you who will be deciding. But you will have to clean up a pretty big mess. And i am sorry that we have given you a pretty big mess. But i hope you do a lot better than we have done. Thank you. [applause] so i get the cleanup spot and this is ironic and highly amusing to me. I was certain starting out that i would be picking fights with vicki and joe. But instead, im going to pick a fight with guy. Ranked voting, dude . Seriously . It is a horrible idea. I will call an old pal of mine, hugh. I knew him when he was just a lawyer. I can make long arguments about it, but it would be the last nail in the coffin of the party. We can come back to it if you want. I had to throw down on that with you. Fine. A few observations about parties. Parties, especially among young people, are very unpopular. Still, a minority. I thought it would be a much smaller minority for a first show of hands. Political parties are almost as unpopular as united airlines. [laughter] out in california, where i live, i think it is a bad thing that parties have become unpopular for everybody. People say i dont want to be a , member of a Political Party. Outnumberingoters both parties together. California is now a oneparty state. The Republican Party meets in a phone booth in newport each. A lot of those voters aligned with the Democratic Party, but dont want to be a member of that particular party. Now, i think the decline of the popularity of Political Parties tracks the decline of Public Confidence in government itself. To me the most salient public , survey number of the last two generations is this one from gallup which starts in the late 50s. They have been asking every year , do you have confidence the federal government will do the right thing most of the time, all of the time, most of the time . That number in the late 1950s was usually close to 80 . Lately, it has ticked up a little bit to 15 . If you look at the trend line for that question from 1962 to now, it looks like a ski slope in the rockies with one exception. It ticked back up again during the Reagan Administration, about which we can say some things if we wanted, but dont need to. The second thing is something guy mentioned, he is right about this. Die thank you. Steven Political Parties used to be very heterogeneous. I dont know if in High School History they teach you about the famous new Deal Coalition of the party which dominated american politics for 40 years into the 1970s. I dont know how they teach it. It is something that College Students do not believe me about. Jews southern , segregationists, northern catholics, and it made no sense on paper except on election day, when it turned out majorities, and then you would have all the back room smokefilled room deals about legislation. And of course, you would have a nominating process in the smokefilled rooms. I think we should bring back those smokefilled rooms. Then you would not have gotten trump. In colorado, you have the best smokefilled rooms of all these days. Parties have become more homogeneous ideologically. That brings some clarity i think. A couple more things about this. I think the parties even though the ideological character now is more fixed, there is a great more heterogeneity in the Republican Party. With theseen it factions over repealing and replacing obamacare. Democrats got to sit back and laugh. In electoral terms, currently, the Republican Party resembles the new Deal Coalition. You have evangelicals, the chamber of commerce types, libertarians, foreignpolicy hawks, they have big disagreements on regular things, but they line up on election day pretty well. I will add one other thing. Maybe joe might want to weigh in on this. The boulder of the pacific coast. With students, we were going statemente port huron , a very reactionary document compared to the student new left today. They did not want safe spaces, did not want administrators setting up new programs for them. They wanted to grow up and have sex without lawyers present. , a veryen wrote it bright guy, known well in california in the legislature. He said Political Parties are a mess. Democrats have southern liberals and the republicans have the northern liberals. I wish there was clarity to where the parties stand. Problem solved. Most political scientists now say this is terrible that the parties are so ideological and polarized. I will make two more propositions and then stop. One is an awful lot of our , wellmeaning reforms in the last 50 years have contributed to the weakening of parties. The move to direct primaries. If you still have the smokefilled room, trump could not have gotten nominated. Hillary would have gotten nominated, but not trump. I think that is true going back to 1980. The republican establishment was dead set against Ronald Reagan, something that has disappeared in the mist now. Likewise, the Democratic Party would never have nominated George Mcgovern in 1972, right . That is a fascinating story. And then, campaignfinance reform. We are worried about corruption, especially coming out of watergate, and we passed, you know, very elaborate Campaign Finance regulations. I have on my shelf the code of regulations. Nowadays, to participate in politics on the federal level is almost as complicated as doing your taxes. You need a lawyer. To make a long story short, an awful lot of the campaignfinance regulations nedkend weake Political Party organizations and have amplified the independent character you know, sort of the people who call themselves republicans or democrats but are increasingly independent actors. Parties have much less ability to exert discipline on their own candidates. Secondly, it has empowered special Interest Groups to have a much more important role. There is a lot of Campaign Activities now outsourced to the independent groups. If you are a candidate, you lose control of your own message in the campaign because one of the rules is you cannot coordinate between the campaign and an independent expenditure group. You may hear that the chamber of commerce will come in with ads, you cannot control what they are saying. It might not be what you want. It is illegal to call them up and say do not run that add or please run a different ad. That is against the law. We have weakened parties. I like the idea of bringing back stronger parties, bringing back smokefilled rooms, making it possible i will give you one recommendation and then ill stop. When people ask me what good biographies to read i have a , long list of them. One that is germane to this problem is the volume of robert caro on Lyndon Johnson as Senate Majority leader in the late 1950s. The biography is going to be six volumes when it is done. It is extraordinary piece of work. But reading how masterful johnson was in the senate in the late 1950s is to recognize the smallness of Senate Majorityminority leaders in the last 20 years. Part of the reason he was able to be so effective, get a lot of things done, a lot of things cross party was, you still had smokefilled rooms, you could still do earmarks, which everyone hates these days. And nowadays, if you reincarnated Lyndon Johnson today and made him Senate Majority leader today, he would not be able to be as effective as he was. It is a big book, 900 pages, well worth studying closely as an example of what politics used to be like and one of the causes of the decline of Political Parties. I think stronger Political Parties parties used to be like your union membership, your bowling club, your rotary club. Today, you do not think of them in that collection of things. If you could bring that back, you could get people to vote thingse a lot of other go better. [applause] so i guess at this time is there anything the panel wants to ask each other . Anything you want to add before we open it up . Vicki what i find disturbing now is twice, the people have voted the majority of people have voted for a candidate that did not become president of the United States. And of course, this is part of our constitution to have the Electoral College. But if you look at the way it is set up, which presumably, it was set up to ensure that a really bad person that did not know anything about governing wasnt elected. [laughter] vicki i didnt say any names. How can we move forward when the American People cannot elect a person of their choice because the person is determined by the Electoral College . A couple things. A majority of americans did not vote for Hillary Clinton. A plurality did. No one won a majority. 48 . On he won 46 . No one won a majority. If we want to focus on the popular vote metric, which i think is interesting on some level, but it was not the goal. The goal from the very beginning, the rules everyone agreed on ahead of time was to try to win the Electoral College, which is why both campaigns focused on the states they did as opposed to trying to run up the numbers in various places to win the popular vote. If they had set out from the beginning to win the popular vote, the whole Campaign Looks totally different. I have heard conservatives say that if you add up Hillary Clinton and jill stein popular vote and you add up trump, and mcmullen and gary johnson again, i dont think it is quite that clean. We can argue in circles. I think Electoral College reform is something of a hot topic. There are ways to do it without changing the constitution. There is a compact of states where they would allocate their electors based on popular vote winner nationally. They are not quite where they need to get to yet, but that is an interesting point. I want to respond to something you said because i think it is interesting in making the plea for people to vote and get involved. You are saying the party that is in power in washington really controls everything, and so many crucial things in your life, and therefore, you really ought to Pay Attention and get involved and care. To my ears, as someone who supports Smaller Government as a limited government conservative, i think that is a great argument to try to reign in the power of washington, d. C. , and not consolidate more power in washington, d. C. So if some people that you dont like happened to win some federal elections, they cannot come in and ruin your life. Lets have the politicians at the state and local level ruin your life, because at least they are closer to you, more responsive in theory to you than people who fly off to washington and have to march in lockstep with whatever Chuck Schumer and Mitch Mcconnell tells them to do. I will add one quick thought. I am for small government. More than that, i am for madisonian government. I have always liked the Electoral College as a madisonian device. Among its other virtues if we , denounced it, both campaigns would campaign very differently. Trump would have campaigned in california. Republicans might have come up the statewide candidate in california. Was twoornia, it democrats because of the system. Think this election turned on all those voters in those swing states. Three what the Electoral College does is it requires that the winner or loser take account of particular interests, even though it may be a minority interest. A countermajoritarian factor that i like. Both parties are talking about about what that represents and what it means. Now both parties are talking about it. And that is a good thing to take account of the interest. It also means the Population Centers do not dominate the countryside. Just because few people live in wyoming doesnt mean their interests are not as legitimate as the people who live in brooklyn. There are several parts of the madisonian case. I have come around to the view that this is Divine Providence twice in 16 years that the Electoral College has saved us from al gore and hillary. I think maybe it is an act of god. [laughter] do we want to argue about voter i. D. Laws . Steven the system is working in a madisonian way. Trumps two executive orders both locked by federal judges. He has not set federal marshals to arrest them. Congress i cant do trump like you. Guy repeal and replace so quickly, so quickly. It will be so easy, believe me. Steven and congress is acting Like Congress is supposed to. You cannot do things like that. Guy and there is a contradiction from some of our friends on the left to hate donald trump. On one hand, he is going to be a dictator, acting like an autocrat. On the other hand, they cannot get the votes in congress. Pick one. He is a bull in a china shop. There are conflict of interest concerns. There are plenty of legitimate things to be worried about with the president. I think sometimes we do ourselves a disservice if we start invoking words like authoritarian dictatorship without cause. Those are alarmist terms that undermines more faith in the system. Vicki two responses. The First Response is your answer to this Electoral College problem is that no, the candidates campaigned for an Electoral College. It is right but it does not answer the question of lets change it so that people can vote for the candidate of their choice and see the candidate of their choice elected. You mentioned how this might be reformed, but i think it is one of the most imperative things that we need to think about now. The second is that yes, to some degree, domestically, trump has been trumped by the congress and his own party. But i can tell you, as a foreignpolicy practitioner, the president has immense authority. For example, we responded to the gassing, the chemical attack in on its own population with missile strikes on airfields. I think it was a good response and a proportionate response, but that is a huge decision. But that is up to the president. And i have to give you credit. On this one, trump made the right decision, at least in my view. I dont know how you think, but probably. But there are other things that i do not know whether this president has the right advisors and the right temperament that he might decide he is fed up with north korea and their prerogative acts visavis testing missiles and decide that the best solution is a strike on north Koreas Nuclear missile storage. And it is unlikely that this would be successful, and there would probably be enough around to drop a couple of missiles on south korea and japan, our close allies. I can give you examples of domestic policy being captured by one party or the other. You can validly argue that al gore lost the election because of a little child, elian gonzalez, found floating in the straits of florida because all of the cubanamericans were so annoyed that he was sent home by bill clinton that they voted against gore and for george bush. Domestic politics from top to bottom have a huge impact on foreign policy. Thank you. Im going to open the floor to some questions from students. Just to remind the students, dont make a statement. Just ask us a question. We want to hear what the panel has to say about it. You are first. Hi, so i think you all agree that the party system is not over. The democrats and republicans are going to stay. But what do you think the two parties need to do in order to get back on track and adapt their parties to become more popular and more respected among the American Population . I will talk about the republicans for a second because if first of all, it is hard to tell a party that is doing really well right now that it needs to change. Right . The republicans control most of everything at this point. The presidency, the house, the senate, and the majority of states, two thirds of governors, more than two thirds of state legislatures. Republicans have done very well. A lot of that was a backlash to democratic control. Everything,ntrolled the American People did not like that and said let us do more change. The pendulum swung and eventually, it will swing again. Maybe sooner rather than later. There are bedrock principles i agree with in the Republican Party or at least the conservative movement. I am not sure those are so much the same or ever have been. Those are the reasons i tend to vote republican, but not always. But i think moving forward, there are some issues that are difficult because i think if you look at younger voters, for example, and the coalition of folks who eventually are going to be the majority of the electorate, millennials are the biggest generation in america right now, and the Republican Party is not super popular among millennials, right . There are a few barriers to entry. The face of the party is going to have to change on a couple of issues, whether it is gay marriage i think is one of them. How do you start make changes to appeal to a new group of voters moving forward that think very differently from their parents and grandparents without alienating those parents and grandparents among whose votes you rely to win elections right now . I think that is one of the growing pains in the Republican Party that i will be fascinated to see how they handle that. Maybe not the next few years, but definitely over the next decade, decade and a half. The current iteration of the Republican Party i do not think would be a viable party in 20 years. It will have to change. Question is, how do you get from point b without pissing off the people who vote for you now . We have lost the kind of as city you saw as recently Ronald Reagan, the great communicators, he was hard on his orked speeches. Go back to john f. Kennedy, roosevelt, that guy was good and he made arguments and way, hem the persuasive sometimes deeply partisan. Sharp elbows for republicans and royalists, appeal nothing a way that brought reagan n, the same way did. A lot of reasons this happened, not a media, twitter, best format for political argument, as we know. Only half seriously say if i could do one reform, to write liticians their own speeches. Writers, right . Sometimes ive seen and i know this from speech writers themselves, one Vice President this was true of, the first time when they open the folder on the podium to give it. They dont take speech making as seriously as they used to. That is not a formal thing, but politics that has had a big effect on declining regard for citizens, not partisan, le they look at the way it is say yuck, i just want to hear something that adult. Me like an to answer your question, i come back to my initial remarks, to convince you guys that are invested with the ability to, if you dont like the way he parties look, you know, run for office. There is you ttendancy in the country to sort of lament the state of and simultaneous ly to actually ability change things. Your question most directly, right, you know, what ere the parties have to do in order to change to be better . Worryd turn around, dont about them, worry about yourself. If you want to change the know, join them. Run for office. Run against them. Create your own. Power to ave the affect the change. Ont ask the party to change themselves or itself, do it yourself. And by the way, i think that is such an important point and you guys might not like the tea party the movement, but put that aside and party what the tea movement did, look at the election of democratic majority, democratic democratic president , these guys dont do a good job for us, they us, they are nt squishy, they dont stand for anything, they are not serious bout limiting government or spending, look at bushera spending levels. Its time for us to try to this party from within and were going to challenge the boring republican like harlie crist, who is now a democrat and put up marco rubio, more conservative, has more we will back him instead. There was revolution within the party itself that has turned out sometimes a headache for leadership, but that really was a lot of gras roots people feeling deeply dissatisfied with the state of deciding to ty and get off their asses and do the hing about it and Republican Party looks different, for better or worse, that is what joe was talking about. And thats probably what the democrats should be doing and eve seen a little bit of it, too. The womens march all across the ountry and other marches, and protests. And i think if the democrats can figure out where to go from here, they might reform their party before the republicans power, when youre in its pretty hard to reform. Another question up. Thank you. Thank you. [applause] hi. My question has to deal has partisanship affects institutions in america. Be the United States Senate Voting to abolish Supreme Court for nomination or comments made by of the united nt states, regarding his political i remember nt of the c. I. A. Wall, the stars and of alienating nd a career i mean, as public servant, you mentioned servants er public serve and serve the american and ca, the american idea the American People. Oday i see that partisanship kind of can get in the way of some of the principles that have been what is your question . Im sorry. My question is, what do you think about that and how does partisanship affect the bility for the American Institution to work as it was founders . By the well, i can try to give you a Political Science answer, James Madisons answer, which is what put it this way, we want to have majority rule with want ications, but we majorities that think. You have delib rative structure of the constitution. Parties organize interests. Have interests, factions is what he called them interests. Ial i kind of like, i dont like rank partisanship, we dont theyre bad or good, whatever. On the other hand, partisanship clarity, presents choices. Bernie sanders might say, i want singlepayer healthcare and higher taxes, laundry list of republican or libertarian will say the obsit, now you vote. Lets vote. In office, then you try to implement a policy and elected somebody. Liberal. Ama partisanship filtered through generates,n actually wont make everybody happy all at time, of course, but least gives clear sense of direction until the next election when we shuffle the deck. Elections every two years to take temperature of people and 2010, m, the election of the big republican landslide, that was a restraining order going too far too fast and people didnt like obamacare. Other thing, i give one, one and a half, maybe two cheers for partisanship. Why you wouldnt give it three cheers it is out of hand and im not sure how to solve that problem. But i think we have to solve that problem. About now it king seems to me and its happened in all administrations, but i see happening more in this, than any other is that partisanship replacing the National Security interests of the United States. And thats when partisanship hurt. Y begins to the science says that there is Climate Change, most states in union, many of the major companies, most countries and leaders around the world believe that Climate Change is a serious going to affect your lives more than mine, but everybodys life across the world. A particular se partisan group that happens to and it President Trump is very conservative view on it. Mate, they deny thats not in our national interest. A great nk this is question and one that says we leaders who put the ofional interest before that a small minority that might help them get elected. [applause] i do want to remind, weve eight minutes left, so i know well not get verybodys questions in, well try to get as many as we can. Just to complete the answer, take a stab atki this. Im not a student of politics. When i was the metropolitan new first and my happiest duty was to put omebody else in charge of our political coverage. To say this,enture ook at the 2016 election as a sort of National Exercise in ang anger. Of the people who voted, voted in anger. Out, f the people who sat sat out in anger. Im sure you while guys have grown weary of the eople in your lives, whether they be High School Counselors or your parents or whatever, on just how ou unconstructive anger is. Again, to try nk to encourage you guys to have i the day is rm of gency and in your own lives, whatever, is to, you know, hyper the issue of a artisan overly angry political environment by being less so in our own lives, whether that be at home, at school, you know, we meeting someure of young kids who helped organize in eecht prior to coming here and a young woman was of collegeher choice and one of the reasons that she wanted to go was because it was conservative school or seen as conservative school and she wanted to expose herself to, you growing. T as a way of now i look back and i had had a ise ass answer to it and discouraged her from doing it, i now feel miserable about that encouraging the very kind of behavior that is productive, so she had the answer, she had the right instinct and the degree to which, again, you can just open atrselves, you know, whether home or in class or on the you know, to an opposing is siege of way to reform political discourse. Has to do it also with, this is something i dont always practice perfectly, but i your own lives, some politicians are like, theyre gone, theyre professional in this at this point and theyre not going to change. Ne problem, we need to stop assuming the worst about each other and why we believe the hings we do f. We can just maybe take a step back from that and have a conversation without impuning motives or motives, that would be helpful. Aybe someone who is against abortion believes that not because they hate women, maybe someone who supports black lives matter does that not because they hate cops, we tend to characature and demonize people who disagree with us, it is lazy way, easier to dismiss them for fake reasons than to think about the actual reasons. I encourage you to like lets in lives, if you run across someone with isagreement, have a 10minute moratorium on questioning motives and name calling and get to why you believe what you well go from there. Its a start, its small, but its a start. [applause] yeah. Respite caused by the new administration in both parties, but especially in the republican arty, after the fail of trumpcare . Is that going to affect in the the i guess the future of bipartisan relationships and is a time er going to be when we can return to bipartisan administration, such as the first clinton administration, or Reagan Administration even the Johnson Administration . Yeah, ive been thinking, talking about that a lot. Know. T i do think we need so one of obamacare, not f so much on policy grounds, i can o that, it was based on historical fact, we do not make large policy change necessary you have theunless consent, not necessarily support, but consent the minority party. Oftentimes that will include a ot of votes, minority party, Social Security gets votes, Civil Rights Act of 1964 get votes then can democratic votes, which republicans seem not to know, medicare, medicaid, they get a lot of republican welfare got more 100 democratic votes in the house, years, orm in the reagan all the things you can mention. That is why, it didnt start it with a, bush did Medicare Part d, rammed through a Party Line Vote damaging think, with 31 2 hour vote in the middle of the scandal. Mething of a we want to, something that system, on party line basis. That is a problem. It means that even if you dont with the policy, if you are not enthusiastic about edicare, you consent to it and the public tends to get behind it and support it. Numbers for obamacare, five, six years now, public appreciation or support for it s now top 50 , that is historically low for any big policy like that. Unstable eans we have policy and how do we get back to i dont know. I feel like tax reform of 1986, story. Fun, great lobbyists were all over it to kill it. They had hooks in both parties the Committee Votes it down on a friday afternoon and lobbyists are literally whooping in the halls of the senate and senator packwood says, were finished. S well, guess what, saturday morning, members of both parties snuck in the back door without their staff, nobody around, bill, voted onew monday morning before the lobbyists knew what was screwed them all and had a pretty good tax reform ill, not perfect, but pretty good. Pat monahan, said it was the had seen ted act he the senate do. I dont know if we can get back years , that is only 30 ago that, is not the bowler war that, is my optimistic side, but might be possible. Thank you. Think, how we doing on time, fw guys . What do we have . One minute. One minute. Hey, before you get up and didnt get to e everybodys questions here, but im glad you are lining up and go, i you get up and think you need a great round of panel. E for our [applause] and hold on. You go, i love when panel come in here and talk to high adults, not ts as it, scending, the panel they were have a nice day. Annual conference is going on this week in atlanta, live coverage on cspan picks up at 1 p. M. Eastern with discussion on how to promote progressive alues with wisconsin democrat mark pocan, and democrat ro conam. Congressman Keith Ellison leading discussion on can win back es political power through Grassroots Efforts and democrats have lost 1000 elections since for mr. Ellison ran Democratic National committee perez. Losing to tom we will finish netroots the day talking about political movements changing democratic principles. August is out for the recess,