Transcripts For CSPAN Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20160105

Area at the same time and experiencing common externally imposed political frameworks, nd that started with the northwest ordinance in 1787 or so, and that meant that a whole prawling section of u. S. Territory, the future states of ohio and indiana and michigan, illinois, would meantve slavery, and that that the appalachian, the midwestern side of the ohio river, ended up evolving in a different political and economic frame work than the western side so yeah, there are midwestern differences and also, g e midwest ended up creatin this firewall that prevented the expansion of tide water from the Kentucky Blue country into the midwest and also with the later missouri compromise in the early missouri ry, the main compromise we call it in maine, ut nobody else does, essentially said that all the territory that makes up the uture states of minnesota, iowa, kansas, nebraska and the so on would also be free states and so created this additional firewall. Being a here ended up creation of a common set of experiences. So the midwest is absolutely something that this federated entity, which i think is helpful in the worthy inform the worthy effort to reinvigorate regional studies is to realize where those achill ees heels were as work out how to define it and sustain it. The takeaway, i guess in all of this, is that early settlement can matter a great deal in history. This, for example, is a map of the location of congregational atlas of from the historical geography of the United States. 1860. Gational churches in each dot is five churches. The Congregational Churches, in defend of the puritan church. So this is the marker of yankee settlement in 1860. Notice the close correspondence to my yankeedome boundaries. Iowa. So check out yankees tried to make it their own in their Great Mission to kentucky idwest from ans and whoever else that got in the way of the yankee way, and hey brought out the iowa band from the andover theo logical the ary who founded denmark, and created grinell, as of these many new england style colleges of production, overlyn, overlat, carlton and so on and so forth throughout the midwest. Key roles in the Abolition Movement in places like iowa and werent able to e. Hieve dominanc however, their influence was felt at some level. Iowa was delve the midlands. I sometimes wonder, this may be a reach, but i throw it out there. If youll look at iowa and match it up with say Political Behavior recently, its amazing Congregational Church map matches the bluered fizzures in recent elections. Ive been asking people in iowa, even owa city and maybe aimes, you can explain the luered gaps but why are rural farming counties in the eastern part of the map, with very counties on the western part, why are they voting differently . Mix. That may be part of the and i would open it up to questions now. Anybody . Dont be bashful. Its always the av. Audience thank you very much for coming and visiting with us tonight. My employment with microsoft has caused me to live in many ifferent places around the country. And when i read your book, it was very interesting to me to places that i have that d living are places are very similar to my beliefs, politically, and the things that culturally. I guess its why im kind of iowa. Alent about its very pearlistic. But i like it a lot better than say the deep south, for example. As youve gone through and learned so much about this subject, is that a common experience for people to have . Mr. Woodard yes, and i hear talks, but another interesting question people should bring out whenever anyone hey, youward and says, know, the early settlement nt terns of the contine explains events that are happening now. But people say yeah, but people are moving around, right . You had all of this immigration in the 19th century. Retailing, got mass the internet, mass broadcasting and the media. You know, certainly that must be making everyone more homogeneous, right . Eroding all the regional differences in cultures, with all this moving around and such. By any ts not measurable you know, technique. Actually es are getting wider, and part of the reason is exactly what you explained. When people started looking at this question, one of them is bill bishops the big sort that asked the question, you know, they had realized in the 1970s, the number of counties, counties in the u. S. That were landslide counties in elections where they always and for the same party that party won by 20 points or more. It was only like, i dont know, counties were like that. The rest were kind of in the middle. Then fastforward to the early it had grown to, i dont know, 50 or 60 . Theyre like, what happened . How could that be . So they started looking at where people are moving and what people are doing, and what they discovered was that people, statistically speaking, when hey move around and take jobs elsewhere, to the extent that they can control it, they tend places e to move to where theyre surrounded by likeminded people, where they feel at home. And sometimes theyre doing that because they didnt feel quite at home in the place they started and choose to start going and sorting themselves, selfselecting, into communities where they feel like theyre surrounded by likeminded people, right . Because this map, you know, were talking about dominant cultures, and every single one counties, you have the full spectrum of political beliefs represented. Even in the bluest of the blue and reddest of the red counties, 30 of the ave 20 or electorate voting for the wrong side. Whether or not you feel like the culture around you, like yeah, im so glad i live here, everything feels right, or completely re frustrated, like why is it people think this way and act are there all y these unexamined assumptions i cant stand . Maybe its the observation of some people. Some of each, i think. But you get a chance to move and statistically speaking, people try to end up moving to places where they like where theyre going and others started migrants, hat politically speaking, tend to resemble their destination more than their point of origin. In other words, statistically speaking, the people who move than the different people they left behind. So the big sort is actually part of the reason those cultural differences are and and him of that answer. Looking at the map, i noticed kansas itself has almost three reports of appalachia and the midwest. What did in fact happen to kansas to create one of the few three different regions going through . I am not an expert on kansas politics. The statewide experiment has been controversy all. About a trickledown economics will work. The answer is, maybe not. Why would that take place in kansas . I would be guessing. The midlands is a swing region and canned shift around depending on the climate. You have a pretty big chunk of greater appellation of that would be that way. Experimentlity of an like brownbacks doesnt seem implausible that it would happen there. Why it happened there and why it happened now, i do not know enough about kansas to answer. I am not shocked. Insert butd a better main is far from a kansas. I understand. Thank you. Being from a iowa, it is interesting to look at this map. I feel were half up alicia and have yankee dem. A[ppalachia and half yankeedom. Unit is the only substate that has historical continuity. Counties are stable and bytistics are collected counting. In terms of deciding which a given will be in, the process is incredibly accurate. As you work left, it gets harder because the depth of history is shorter. The speed of settlement becomes more rapid. It is one thing when it took from getting from one county to another for generations. Century, you could jump several states forward in a few years. It was made easier in that you individual data. Yankees, at a certain point in the 19th century, once the external migration was happening, it became important for some to establish they go all the way back. The daughters of the american revolution. The mayflower society. Nkeedom was trying to establish they came earlier. Some local luminary put together the history of my tiny little town in seven leatherback volumes, detailing everything. Thehe back one third of history would be genealogy of every Single Person living in the town whenever they put the book together. Every Single Family traced all the way back to the old world to establish where everyone came from. Scholars tap to on these because there is one for every town. By putting it together on an individualized level, it was came from wearo and trace its backwards, so that was made easy. But when you get out closer to where the regular agricultural folkways could not sustain themselves, they collapsed for lack of water. Where you needne artificial, largescale irrigation or you cannot function. You get closer to that line, yuki and the tease out if it is a Midland County or yankee county. It gets trickier. Often there is not that level of detailed genealogy. Yankee manifest destiny. The midlands is an inherently the characteristic of no one Ethnic Cultural Group in charge. Theirle communities with own language maintaining it sidebyside. A danish village here, reformed village there. Speaking their own language, publishing their own newspapers up to the 1920s. Ease of us. To the if you did that in yankee dem, you would have somebody knocking on your door, never living alone. Yankeedom, it is a melting pot. You must assimilate into it. Not so for the midlands. That makes it trickier to justify the Midland County. You work with every item you have. Where were the churches located . Sometimes there are markers. Are particular elections at a local level. Sometimes federal, highly polarized. Regional culture would vote a certain way. The dialect maps past and present give you a tracer of how people speak by a county level. Culture is a messy business. But it is solid on the right, you have to make decisions and do the best you can. The dakotas are the hardest part to do. In terms of iowa, there is a material building culture that swipes through the section of northeast iowa. Maps you getalect a ball much that starts in dubuque and works north. The norwegians were coming from the northern freedom into the top counties. That minnesota overflow. That is why i categorize it that way. That yankee effort using in the Congregational Churches and the early history of iowa. It did not succeed. I took a conservative approach where it seemed maybe it dominated over the pluralistic culture. I would be curious to see what the people thought of that. Of you afterwards are there. It is good to get crowdsourcing from individualized places. My question is, you mentioned people arern times becoming more ideologically. Ondensed is perhaps the word do you think this condensing can cause things like recently, in texas, more movements to separate texas from the rest of the union . Kind ofand over in an old civil war manner . At yes. That leads into the zeitgeist. And partsnd loyalty of the location are starting to sink up. You get frustrated. Thoseposition is from people over there into that feel the same way. You were going to get into the geographic rather than partisan differences which will lead to mutter about, but maybe it would be better if we seceded and had place. Hopefully that does not become realistic. People say, when it be easier if we just broken up. You can snap your fingers and that might be true in theory but i have a more tragic sense of. He human condition the collapse of communism, the aftermath in bosnia. I do not have faith it would all just happened peacefully if we started going down that road. I am a of the, we have to work out a way to Work Together, not as the american experiment has been so successful, but the cliche that the world needs us true. R leadership is there is nobody else to step in and so it is important to everybody on the planet that we somehow succeed and carry on. Thank you. I was wondering why you left miami and south florida out. Excellent an question. I needed to decide, i am going to write to one book and tell everything and have it go back 400 years. This is a practical manner i had to define it to and put some limits on it so i did not end up the croatian that miners who created a croatian enclave at the edge of the southern ocean. I needed to have a definition is to where i would stop. So my definition is the landing point from which it extended outwards and had to be within the present confines of the United States and canada. That left out hawaii, which is in greater polynesia i imagine. Newfoundland, colonized from the southern sections of labrador and the southern part of florida. The reason the book was a history, ahistory, with each fog culture and how it got started, then you move forward to the next phase. Each one added, i would have to the history. The great celestial navigators in the pacific going between islands and setting up cultures in hawaii and micronesia and elsewhere. But it does not intersect with story athe american the continental level. It does not enter our sphere until the yankee missionaries go out there. Newfoundland did not join canada until after world war ii and the referendum, the old people in newfoundland are still furious about. Bit. Only lost by a little to this day, if you are in newfoundland, you get on a ferry there is a constitutionally established very which must connect newfoundland to the rest of the country. When you are there, when you get on the ferry, everyone says, i am going to canada. They still say that, and they are serious. And also, south florida. South florida florida is a swing state and everyone asks about it. Not matter, that did until the last 40 years or so. The deep south finally settled. It is not from the founding colonization culture of southernmost florida. That came not from the l norte wheref new spain but from all of the caribbean zone and treasure ships that were coming from the mountains, they were making an income mine and the trans shipments from asia that the spanish empire had gotten together. They put them together on these calledg fortresses manila galleons. They got into mexico, brought incredible treasure by packed meal. They came to havana and would work their way through the florida streets. Deal. As a big i would have to tell that entire story to bring south florida into the equation. Nots not that it does exist. Or as a newspaper columnist and miami angrily said, writer sallisaw florida not art of the u. S. I say that . It is not what im saying, it is just a part of the regional cultures established here. There will be a reception and book signing following shortly. Almost after running no ads in 2015, the Donald Trump Campaign has released its first out of 2016. Here is a look. Trump, and id approve this message. Donald trump calls it radical islam and terrorism. That is why he is calling for a shutdown of muslims entering the United States until we can figure it out. And, he will stop illegal immigration by building a wall on our southern border that mexico will pay for. Donald trump we will make America Great again. Kentucky senator rand paul holds a town hall meeting in exeter, New Hampshire. At 6 30 eastern on cspan two. And, former governor jeb bush will campaign in meredith, New Hampshire. That is live wednesday at 6 30 p. M. On cspan two and cspan radio. Clintonr president bill campaigned for his wife hillary. That is next on cspan. And, former congressman agriculture secretary dan glickman talks about president ial campaigns into the political process. On our next washington journal, we will discuss finance and spending for political ads. That, we will talk about the roots of islamic extremism and the ways to counter it. You can join the conversation live via facebook and twitter. Washington journal is live every morning at 7 00 a. M. Eastern. Cspan takes you on the road to the white house. Best access to the candidates at speeches, rallies, and town halls, and to meetintogrades. Coverays, every event we is on our website, cspan. Org. Campaignsill clinton for his wife Hillary Clinton in exeter, New Hampshire. The former president also talks about the economy and National Security. [applause] there is a huge overflow crowd upstairs. Can we hear you . [shouting] we heard you. You for coming out. This is where president s speak. Thank you all for coming and thank you for president clinton for coming to exeter today to this today. Bout volunteers have worked tirelessly for the last nine months. But we have a crucial 36 days ahead of us. 36 days. Over 36 hundred Daylight Hours left for those of us knocking on doors. The stakes for New Hampshire families could not be higher. Our country faces difficult and challenges. Like sharing prosperity with all of our countries people that are willing to work harder to get ahead. Like feature manic instance of Substance Abuse and how were going to deal with that. Like in Adequate Health care. Guns falling into the hands of people who should not be able to own them. America needs a president who has what it takes to get the job done. They are going to be asking themselves, who is tough enough to take them on and make a difference for working families. That is Hillary Clinton. [applause] president clinton, i was looking at a photo of you and hillary back in your gale law school days. [laughter] yet, it it was that one. You both look so bright and hopeful just like the two of you look today. [applause] thinkinghoto got me about the path the two of you have each taken. You both could have gone anywhere. You could have followed any path. Thankfully, the path that called to each of you was the path of public service. [applause] you reach called to address the issues of prosperity, hope, and justice through service and government at the state and national level. You both chose to put your lives, your fortune, and joe sega and honor at the same that thing we call government. Is nothingse, that more and nothing less than what together. Eed to do such a choice that hillary has made, and you, invites me, or maybe better yet, rather than invite, mutuality commands me in this moment to make a similar choice. Hillarys campaign, a campaign capableor the most visionary and capable candidate in many a year, her campaign beckons me to pledge my life, my fortune and to pledge my sacred honor. That is why i have been out knocking on doors since last june about hillarys extraordinary campaign. [applause] and that is why i will continue to knock on doors on her until february 9 and then hopefully until the general election in november. Wont you all join me . [cheering and applause] but no one knows all of this better than her husband. President clinton knows the stakes are higher than ever this election year. He knows that the people of New Hampshire want the president who will create shared prosperity so that everyone has a chance a brighter future. And he knows Hillary Clinton is prepared to do that job. Everyone, please welcome back to New Hampshire someone who needs no introduction, our 42nd president , bill clinton. [cheers and applause] president clinton thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Everybody, sit down. First of all, thank you, dan, for that wonderful statement, for your support. Thank you, russell and mr. Witherspoon, for your service in this community and throughout our country. I want to thank tom for being here for his support for hillary and for being first gentleman of New Hampshire. It has a nice ring, dont you think . People, i get nervous. People say, if hillary wins the election, what do you want to get called . Nobody has voted yet. Im superstitious. I want to thank all of the organizers who are here and especially for the good work she has done, and i want to thank all of you who came out on this cold night. Not really too cold by New Hampshire standards. And the people upstairs who gave us an overflow room. Thank you. This is quite a gag. A gig. {laughter] clinton look, every time you have election people say it is important, but if it is a directional election, it is important. Often the winner of an election is determined by what people decide it is about. And it seems to be clear, if you look at where america is today, we went through that terrible crash in late 2008, we had come out of it in a sense that the growth number of jobs that were lost have been replaced, we avoided following into a depression, we put in new protections against a financial crash in the future. We have made some real exciting progress in leading the challenge of Climate Change that leads to more jobs and clean energy. But we still have not gotten the incomes back. We do not have broadbased prosperity again, and it is the major challenge facing the next president. If everybody has a job and has something to look forward to in the morning, it increases the hope in a country. It makes people more secure and less likely to disintegrate our community into separate groups of resentment. I see all these movements that say i like all those young people and black lives matter. I think what they are saying is [applause] president clinton when you see an unarmed young person get 17 bullets in one of our cities and another mentally ill man that should never have had the gun that was in his hand running away from the police and have 32 bullets fired at him, and then you see the heroic performance of the Police Officers in the aftermath of the tragedy at san bernardino, you know we have to do something to pull it back together. I feel the same way about all the young immigrant dreamers who want to pursue their education here. I feel the same [applause] president clinton the same way about the progress that South Carolina made when they took the Confederate Flag down after a speech by republican woman, four minutes long, who was a direct descendent of the president of the confederacy, jefferson davis. She said, if i want to take it down, we should take it down, you know it is the right thing to do. Why am i saying this . Because to have broadbased prosperity, you have to have inclusive economics and more equal opportunities for people to take advantage of it. And to make it work, you have to have inclusive societies, where we relish our differences, but when the chips are down, our common humanity matters more. I was proud of hillary for being the first candidate to propose a comprehensive plan to help all those in coal make a transition into a new economy. Those folks have not been voting for us much lately, and she said you are americans, you deserve a chance. When there is discrimination against africanamericans or hispanics or muslims, just because of who they are, i do not like that. But we never can forget that what we have to do is unite the police and the community, unite business and labor, unite this country. That is when things happen, you have inclusive economics and an inclusive society, and in order to do that, you have to have more inclusive politics. So the big job of the next president is to give us those things, inclusive economics, inclusive societies, inclusive politics, and defend the National Security of the country in a way that preserves our values, that prevents big, bad things from happening, and wages be better, we must work, with billions of minds of the social media, for the kind of world we will live in, a world where we just get all atomized and hunkered down in our bunkers or whether we have our hands outstretched that is what i think this election is about. If you decide that, you have asked, who is the best person to do that job . Hillary [applause] president clinton here is why i think that. I think at first because she has spent a lifetime listening to people, just like she did when she was a senator from new york, or traveling the world when she was secretary of state. And she has a good economic plan. Ok, we got to cut our Greenhouse Gas emissions. Because we dont want to burn up the planet for our kids and grandkids. How in the wide world could you create more businesses and good jobs and by changing the way you produce and consume energy and other local resources . It is the greatest opportunity our country has ever had. [applause] president clinton this is not a pie in the sky deal. Today, iowa, minnesota, and the oil capital of the country, texas, get 25 to 30 of their baseload electricity from wind, and it is an enormous competitive advantage for them. The kilowatt our cost when i was president was 5. 8 cents. Now it is 13. 9 cents in new york. Thats the highest in the country. Our neighbors in the caribbean, the great source of fraternity for us and for them, before the collapse in oil prices, were paying 36 to 50 cents because it was all imported, heavy, polluting oil. We need a modern infrastructure. There are too many of our fellow americans who live in rural areas could make more money and generate more customers if they had access to rapid broadband. Nationally, south korea averages three to four times ours. We got to make sure people have opportunities to do this, including the opportunity to get a job, build a business. I like the doddfrank bill, and hillary has things to strengthen it so that those institutions who generate more money by trading with each other instead of investing in americas future cannot take undue risk. We also have to make sure if a bank wants to make a loan to a Small Business, that the cost of that transaction is not so high they will not loan 100,000 to someone to start a new business. We have got to have a Small Business said of rules that makes sense. I was governor, there is a lot of difference between the amount of cash you need to protect against financial speculation that has no impact on the real economy except if it goes bad it can crash. And, how much you need for a downr whose tractor breaks right before he needs to plant the crop needs a new tractor. To open a who wants restaurant or Hardware Store or print shop can get the loan to do it. It is crazy for a bank to say we are not doing that anymore. We have to do that. If you want to raise wages and inequality, you have to create more jobs and more jobs and businesses and areas that have a good growth projection. We can do that. We also had to make sure we are taking care of the workforce. Some people and the other party, i might add ] aughter have made disparaging remarks about hillarys paid family leave, university universal access to health care. Look, here are the rules. , theery wealthy country longer you stay wealthy the smaller the family size. Culturesrue of all without regard to family and religion. We made up toward before by inng at the top of the world Small Business formation and always at the top 10. When i lost left office we were seventh. Not even in the top 24 women in the work force forhen hillary comes out equal pay and family leave that as an economic strategy. You have to keep young people coming into the workforce. Having lost its i can tell you that youth matters. [laughter] mr. Clinton it is a large determinant of the future of the country. The other thing we have got to do is we have to recognize that , in the aftermath of the crash, even states governed by people who dont favor funding for education have underfunded Higher Education to keep funding the schools. It was like a hobsons choice. You couldnt raise taxes as bad as the economy was. You had to take care of the kids coming up. The result was that ct has spiraled. The average debt here in New Hampshire is around 30,000 which is far higher. If people are going out into the world with all this debt, they are in jobs with a cannot sustain it. I spoke to a man who has an assistant that he was paying 110,000 a year. After taxes it is about 70,000. The womans Monthly Payment on her college loan was 2900 a month. Ask yourself if you could live in manhattan on the rest. Or brooklyn or the bronx. This is being repeated everywhere. Hillary has a plan to deal with that. To lower the Interest Rates and allow people to refinance. Have a system where people get to pay up back as a fixed percentage of their income so they will not be swamped by debt. [applause] it is a good program. On the question of building a more united society. Theres nothing more important than preserving and continuing to improve this health care law. Congress is about to vote again to defund the health care law. We have 90 of our people insured for the first time. [applause] we were down toward 80 . If the 22 states that still havent taken medicaid would do it, we would be almost to 95 . We had four years of the lowest medical inflation in history. Last year we had a little bump. That is because all the people who joined the Health Exchange by and large were older people and and older we are the more Health Care Dollars we consume. This year 2. 4 million more people have entered those Health Exchanges. They overwhelmingly are younger healthier people. They are going to help us build a system that will hold premiums down. It would be a real mistake to give into the attempts to weaken or water down this health care law. We need to continue to strengthen it. [applause] when dan was introducing me and he said what he did about access to guns, i just want to point out that one of the problems with the current law is we dont have good recordkeeping for all Mental Health instances. There are some people who wouldve gotten health care if it was available. So the background check law is not always effective. 85 of gun owners support universal background checks. If they knew more about the flaws in the Mental Health recordkeeping system, you wouldnt have people running down the street los angeles with a gun that he had no more business having than the man of the moment. The biggest problem we have is this opium and heroin problem. It is a problem in New Hampshire. It fits with the general problems of small town and rural america. Do you know what state has the highest percentage of its population subject to overdoses . West virginia. In all those small towns, where the coal jobs have been going down, people think every single day is going to be just like yesterday. A lot of those people are dying of a broken heart. The Life Expectancy of noncollegeeducated middleaged white americans is going down. It is never happen in my lifetime. We have got to do something about this. This is one area where i am very hopeful for bipartisan progress. Most people without regard to party understand that this is a Public Health problem not a Law Enforcement problem. [applause] in the last four years i have lost three children of Three Friends of mine who all had the same story. One was at home and the other two went out. They drank a few beers and their partner said what you pop this pill that will give you a buzz. It does give you a buzz. But if you fall asleep it kills a part of your brain. The part that tells your body to breathe when you are sleeping. In addition to the people that are addicted we have lots of people dying every year he has they dont understand the basic biochemistry of what is going on. I applaud the governor for the work that she has done to make this drug more available. In our foundation we are trying to get the fda to approve a nasal spray version of it. About 40 a dose. Were trying to get out all over the country. This is a huge problem. The next president ought to know the kind of problems to keep americans up at night. Hillary does because she takes those listening tours. She had to come up with policies and figure out how to pay for them. That is a very big deal. We have got to figure out how to come back together again. I just want to say this about the fear we all have after paris and san bernardino. It was tragic but couple of days after san bernardino, i picked up the new york daily news. I was thumbing through it. There was a little article about an immigrant from yemen who came here in 2002. Leaving his wife and four Children Home in yemen. Trying for more than 12 years to bring them over here. He is working at a little quick stop store in new york. Two robbers come in with pistols. They tell him to get the Cash Register open and clean it out and give them the money. He opens the Cash Register grabs the money and he says i have only had this job over a year and is not my money. He slammed the governments hand. The gun goes off and mrs. In by a few inches. Misses by a few inches. The bullet goes in the counter. Thank goodness for him the robbers werent total idiots. They realized they just fired a gun in Downtown Manhattan in the middle of the day. So they run away. He goes nextdoor calls the police. He goes back and secures the Cash Register. The guy who owns the store is over the moon that he did it. Gave him the afternoon off. He went home and took out his prayer rug and gave thanks for his survival and said a prayer that maybe finally his wife and four children might be able to join him. He is far more representative of the Muslim Community in america than what happened in san bernardino. [applause] [applause] mr. Clinton so, i think her plan on this is really important. We cannot do this. Heroin is now cheaper than oxycontin. Properties are being harvested by preteens. It is being grown in the sierra madre in mexico. We have got to do something about this. Which brings me to the third thing. We have to have inclusive politics. We have to get this show on the road. Or, asillary said, hillary said, i am a progressive but im one who likes to get things done. Let me start with this. The next president will make between one and three appointments to the u. S. Supreme court. [applause] mr. Clinton but i think she has proved she knows how to get things done. When she was secretary of state she spearheaded the development of the iran sanctions. She got russia and china to sign off on them. I didnt think she could do that. [laughter] and, she worked with the president of the Muslim Brotherhood in egypt to stop a fullscale shooting war between hamas and israel. In gaza. And, she worked with were public republican senators to ratify a treaty that her team developed called the new start treaty which is the only thing that survives our attempts to do better with russia. They are honoring that treaty. And i think it is a good thing in a dangerous world that we reduce the chances of a Nuclear Exchange between ourselves and russia. These are important things. When hillary was a senator she was on a commission to study the future of the american military. The pentagon yesterday on it. The print again asked her to be on it. The pentagon asked her to be on it. Newt gingrich was on the commission. I had occasion to talk to him. He went out of his way to tell me how good she was. If you nominate her youll be treated to a lot of things the republicans said before she started running. [laughter] mr. Clinton but anyway, she knows we have to do something about this black money in politics. The Supreme Court said that we cannot limit the amount of money people spend on campaigns. I think it was a bad decision but they said it. They did not say that we had to let people give money in an undisclosed way and sneak around when they try to change the whole future of politics nationally or in New Hampshire. We have to keep working for that. [applause] i want to say one thing about this election. You have to decide whether you want inclusive economics, inclusive politics. Whether you want somebody who actually knows how to defend the country without giving away our values. How to build an economy for the struggling, the striving and the successful. What you think thatll be the model. To do it you need a change maker. I will close with this and ask you think about it. I will say in advance you are entitled to say what else is he going to say, they just celebrated their 40th anniversary. [laughter] mr. Clinton and, you are it, but io discount do know her. When we met in law school, it was relatively rare for women to be at yale law school. Or in law school at all. It is hard to believe now. She could have gone anywhere. Her interest in law school was Legal Services for poor people. When she got out instead of taking a clerkship or a big firm job she went to work for the childrens defense fund. She went to alabama to investigate whether segregated academies were claiming Tax Exemptions on the grounds that they were just private academies that happened to have no africanamericans. They changed the law and the school changed the practice. She went to South Carolina to investigate why so many 14 and 15 euro children all of whom were africanamerican were in adult jails. Not so much of that anymore. Everywhere she went she did something good happen. She came to arkansas to be with me she opened the first legal aid clinic we ever had. Where the university is. I will never forget, she made me take her to court the day the judge accepted the legal aid proposal. He was a crusty old guy who liked the old system of just appointing lawyers. The guys sitting on the bench. I introduced him. He was polite but stern. She makes her presentation. He leans over and says i dont like legal aid very much, and i dont like lady lawyers very much, i apologize to the young people but people used to talk like that. [laughter] within six months he changed his position on both. She made something good happen and it is still thriving. When i became governor she came in and said, bill we have all these really poor families that dont have any education and theres kids are starting school so far behind. I found a program from israel. For immigrants who didnt speak hebrew or english. Home Instruction Program for preschool youngers. It gets the parents involved in the whole educational enterprise. I think it would work here. She said, dont worry, i just talked to the woman who founded it and shes going to be here at about 10 days and she is going to set it up. She had not been elected to anything yet. [laughter] the next thing i know, we have a whole Program Going and before you know it it was in 26 states, it was a National Organization and today before there was ever childcare standards for preschool, there were these thousands of kids who came from these poor families who got a better start in life in the last 30 years because she made something good happen. Wherever she is, whatever she is doing, she just makes things happen. [applause] we had to redo our school standards. The National Experts said arkansas had the worst schools in america. I took office in 1983. I put her in charge of this committee calling for greater standards. Smaller classes and a lot of other things. More science and math. Nine years later i came to New Hampshire running for president. The same guy that said we had the worst schools in america in 1983, said we had one of the two most improved School Systems in the whole country. I used it in speeches here to try to talk you into voting for me but she did that. [laughter] [applause] mr. Clinton so then we go to washington. We try to do health care. We offered a bill that people now forget was widely acclaimed by the experts and took more pages out of federal law that put in. We just didnt have 60 votes in the senate. She didnt give up. So when we passed the balancedbudget bill she worked with senator kennedy to put the Childrens Health Insurance Program in it. There are 12 million kids in the program today. It was the largest expansion of health care from the time medicaid and medicare passed until obamacare passed. She just did it. She came to me one day. And i thought this is never to happen. She says what ive finally found something we can work with tom delay on. A lot of younger people may not remember tom delay. He was Newt Gingrichs enforcer in the pretea party to party congress. He didnt think much of may. I said youve got be kidding. But he was an adoptive parent. We had attempted problem with to make its enforcer homes. Not enough kids moving to adoptive homes. Kids aging out of foster care with nowhere to go nothing to do no Education Bill continuing support. She and tom delay got together and it was one of the happieist bill signings i ever did was signing the bill they agreed upon and at the time i left office it had already increased adoptions out of foster care at 65 . Before i even left office. [applause] mr. Clinton she had not been elected to anything. When she started to run in new york, she came home with ideas every day. After she got elected, she got these farmers on long island involved in doing things to preserve the farms there with the real estate was pretty high. Pretty soon there were several of them in iowa knocking on doors saying i am a republican but she is the only person who ever did anything for us. Wine growers in upstate new york selling their wine in restaurants for the first time. A guy making fishing rods in a little town in upstate new york introduced to ecommerce and quadrupled his business and all his new customers were in norway. It never even occurred to him. She just makes things happen. Just put her somewhere, and two or three days later, something good will be going on. [applause] mr. Clinton she left office and came to work in our foundation and all of a sudden we had a project called no ceilings that pointed out all the places where gender disparity still existed. Another project called too small to fail the let parents know what they could do putting their children whether or not they had any money before they went to school. She just makes things happen. We need a change maker. I spent a lot of time when i was president upset seeing about restoring broadbased prosperity. Somebody asked me what i celebrated the 10th anniversary of my library was most proud of. I said i am most proud of broadbased prosperity. We had 40 or 50 more jobs than were created when president reagan was in office. That is the only time trickle down economics ever looked like it was working. We cut taxes and increased spending so dramatically the same time. Incomes dropped for everybody during the two bush administrations. We had a hundred times as many people move from poverty into the middle class. They work their way there. We can do that again. The people in the middle 50 more. The just below the middle more than twice as big an increase. At the bottom increase for the bottom 20 7 10 of 1 what president reagan was in office 23 when i was there. [applause] the rest did just fine. Forget about that, i am telling you we can do this. There is no open country better position to that the United States for the future. We can do it. But you have to have somebody we can also navigate this very uncertain and often perilous world, without blowing it up or blowing our values up. You have to have somebody who knows how to stop bad things from happening. In my adult lifetime, there has never been anyone better prepared for the job that awaits the next president , then hillary. Never. [applause] she is pretty much still the same girl i fell in love with in law school. She really is. Really why she is still Close Friends with her best friend from grade school. And way all of these people she went to high school with our coming to New Hampshire or iowa, and why people she met more than 30 years in arkansas keep coming to New Hampshire every time she is out. There are candidates, and then there are candidates. [laughter] there are records and then there are records. I like intel units, and our family, here is how we keep score. Is, in ourn tell you family, here is how you keep score. I think coming together, or are things coming apart . You have one choice, and i hope you will help her win in New Hampshire. Thank you. [applause] cspan takes you on the road to the white house and into the classroom. This year, our student cam documentary contest asks students to tell us what issues they want to hear from the president ial candidates. Although cspans road to the white house coverage and get all the details about our student cam contest at cspan. Org. President obama is expected to announce that his administration is closing some of the loopholes on background checks for firearm purchases. We will have live coverage at 11 40 Eastern Europe cspan. The president gave a preview of the new Gun Initiative after meeting with attorney general lynch, fbi director komi, in other law enforced and other Law Enforcement officials. President obama happy new year, everybody. Before the new year, i mentioned that i had given charge to my attorney general, fbi director, Deputy Director, and the atf and personnel in my white house to Work Together to see what more we could do to prevent the scourge of gun violence in this country. I think everybody here is all too familiar with the specifics. We have tens of thousands of people every single year who were killed by guns. Ee have suicides that ar committed by firearms at a rate that far exceeds other countries. We have a frequency of Mass Shootings that far exceeds other countries. And although it is my strong belief that for us to get our complete arms around the problem, congress is to act, what i asked my team to do is to see what more we could do to strengthen our enforcement in prevent guns from falling into the wrong hands, to make sure that criminals, people who are mentally unstable, those who could pose a danger to themselves or others, are less likely to get a gun. And i have just received back a report from attorney general andh, director comey, Deputy Director brandon about some of the ideas and initiatives that they think can make a difference. The good news is that they are not only recommendations that are well within my Legal Authority in the executive tha thebut also ones overwhelming o majority of the American People support. So over the next several days, we will be rolling out these initiatives. We will be making sure that people have a very clear understanding of what can make a difference and what we can do. And although we have to be very clear that this is not going to solve every Violent Crime in this country, it is not going to prevent every mass shooting, it is not going to keep every gun out of the hands of the criminal, it will potentially save lives. Pain and families the the extraordinary loss that they suffer as a consequence of a lovea firearm being in the hands criminal. I am confident that my team are entirely familiar with the second amendment, and the law right to bear arms. We have been very careful recognizing that, although we have a strong conditioned to gun ownership in this country, that even those who possess firearms or self protection , and for other legitimate reasons, we want to make sure it wont happen for the wrong reasons. I want to say how much i appreciate the outstanding work the team has done. They worked over the holidays to get this set of recommendations to me, and im looking forward to speaking with the American People over the next several days in more detail. Ok . Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. We will have live coverage of president obamas Gun Initiative announcement as is expected to close background check loopholes, live analytical 30 a. M. Eastern here on cspan. Live at 11 40 a. M. Here on cspan. We need to know how many people are reading this. We need to know how they are coming to us. Example, if they are not coming directly to our website but through facebook or google or twitter or snatch at or reddit or any of these other venues, we should know that. The changes at the post since he took over in 2014. He also discusses the depiction of his work as editor in chief of the boston globe in the movie spotlight. I think the movie is quite faithful to the outline of how the investigation unfolded. I think it is important to keep in mind that it is a movie and not a documentary, so you have to compress within two hours seven months of, investigation including things that happened afterward, and you had to introduce a lot of characters, and you had to introduce the important things that emerged. Sunday night at 8 00 eastern on q a. Researchers will look at the issue of sports injuries sustained by middle or high school students, focusing on concussions. Have liveng, we will coverage from the National Press club at 10 00 a. M. Eastern here on cspan. Obama willdent announce his administration is closing loopholes on some of the gun background checks. That is live from the white house at 11 40 eastern, also on cspan. Later on cspan2, the head of the American Petroleum institute speaks about u. S. Energy policy and oil and Natural Gas Industry priorities, live at 12 30 eastern. Up next, former indiana senator Richard Lugar talks about bipartisanship on capitol hill. From washington journal, this is 30 minutes. Now, we have us Richard Lugar, former u. S. Senator, republican from indiana and now president of the lugar center. We will be talking about one of the centers projects, ranking bipartisanship in the segment. Thank you for joining us. Talk to us about what this bipartisan index is. Guest the bipartisan index at the lugar center rates all the members of the senate and the house of representatives. 1100 and 1435 in terms of their ability to cosponsor legislation, introduced it to begin with, and get cosponsors. We have found that that is a pretty good criteria for measuring the ability of people to Work Together and actually accomplish something in congress. Program to moving a. Egislatures desires for any viewers and listeners of the program, you can get your own chart and listing at the Lugar Center Bipartisan Index by going to our website at www. Lugar center. Org. And getprint it all out the whole list of the writings of your congressmen and your senators or anyone else you are interested in. Center ranks not just current members of congress, correct . Guest we met one rating of the current members published last fall. The one that was just published for 11ays ago is congresses. In other words, a goes into the history of the senate. We are doing one for the house shortly. Anybody who has served for a iod of time during the last 11 congresses is in this last senate list, about 230 senators. The reason that we did this is to show how the partisanship that has become very intense in the last two congresses developed. In other words, this was not always so. In any event, it is very interesting to take out people who have served during that 20 year period of time dion b 100 better serving there now. Beyond the 100 that are serving there now. Host we want to bring in our viewers talking about bipartisanship with Richard Lugar feared democrats can call in at 202 7488000. Republicans can call in at 202 7488001. And the independents can call in on 202 7488002. Why focus on the issue bipartisanship . Guest most political scientists and most citizens think congress is not working, that things are dead in the water. At least this time we got a budget so we do not shut down the government. In essence, very little legislation is passing while the needs of the public are great as always, both home and abroad. In short, the partisanship has become so intense that is impossible for most people to pass legislation, amendments to ratify the nomination of judges or ambassadors or anything else. This is unsatisfying. Ask do you if you approve of congress, a startling know. No. It is very rare that either party has 40 approval. Most frequently, it is down to the 30s or the 20s. This is not a healthy government. What we are trying to do is illustrate in a very critical way why you can have a situation that is different, namely if members at least talk with each other. Occasionally introduce legislation as opposed to making speeches about it. Draw somebody across the aisle to cosponsor it so theres a chance to pass. Government begins to working in. It does not mean that anybody gives up for a moment their convictions or the convictions of their constituents. Its just that as a practical matter that Congress Works only if you get a majority of votes that passed bills. We are trying to look at Something Like that and to recognize those members that have been doing this and much better than others. It is only fair to the public that they should know who they are. Host you spent a lot of time in the senate. Guest 36 years. You thinkdo bipartisanship is a lot tougher to achieve now than it used to be . Its essentially because many members, in order to get reelected in their democrat or republican, are not taking a look at the lugar center ratings but veryisanship or specific Interest Groups. They are very down to particular parts of their constituency. So the scorecards there are very tough and very rigorous. Likewise as many have pointed out, a grade of more money has come into politics. Whether you have a particular cause like drug control or agricultural or whatever it may be, and a lot of people are willing to spend a lot of money on a specific issue and run negative ads to try to terminate the career of those who do not serve the interest, not the public as a whole, but that particular interest. Much has been made of how the junior remembering gerrymandering has occurred in the socalled safe districts. This means the primary is even more important because it is virtually impossible for the other party to win a seat in a general election. Very few people vote in primaries. This is too bad. It means that specific interest often dominate the situation. So when it comes to the for the congress, you have people not interested in talking to each other. They are interested in staying alive politically and keeping track of who sent them there. Host let us talk about the rankings. Who is at the top of rankings for senator . Who is the most bipartisan senator according to the new list . Guest Susan Collins of maine has done very well. 11he latest list of congresses, Lincoln Chafee of rhode island came out number one. Ofan collins is number one those who are now servin servin. Nunn, with whom getting for 20 years all the missiles and warheads out of the former soviet union, comes in at number five. You have a lot of people from the past who really were remarkable exemplars of bipartisanship and statesmanship. Host you came in at number 24. Was that disappointing for you . [laughter] guest it shows its at least an objective survey. The work being done on a lot of the data was done by the school overhead georgetown. People diligently went through all these votes for 22 years in essence. While i am pleased that i was no than 24th, i would hope to be in the top sensors to so to speak. Rsst lets bring in our calle in from the independent line. I probably pronounce that wrong, richard. Caller you are close to the post. Host whats your question for senator lugar . Caller its a pleasure to talk to him and more of a pleasure to listen to him. I wish he would run for president. My question is that he mentioned the leader center. The lugar center. From what he was saying, i know you want people to get to the point, but when people run for congress or senate or political office, they will say what you want to hear. When they enter, sometimes they cannot do it all. I think they are all good American People no matter. If they are running for office, they mean the best for the country. I know they do. When people say this guy wants thats our guns away, not a reason to vote for him. Issues thate other are more important to the country other than gun control. People are so biased toward certain issues that they dont look at the bigger picture. Illegal be bad for aliens in the country or not good on international issues. How can you get more background on them where people can be more informed instead of voting over one little thing . Host let me get the senator to talk to that. Do you think some of these hot button issues make it tougher for people to really think about bipartisanship . Guest of course, they do. Getting to richards question, this is one purpose of the bipartisan index to at least bring recognition and reward people who are thinking about a lot of things. In other words, if youre introducing legislation and you are getting scored on the number of times you introduce bills, and more importantly, get some the on the opposite side of the aisle to support you, and more than one person on the other side of the aisle, your score for that. This means that you began working for the problems of the country. It cannot be simply gun control or any other specific thing of that friday. People on the other side of the aisle will not support something that is perceived as extremely partisan. Host on our democratic line, we had been from winchester, virginia. Youre on with former senator Richard Lugar. Caller thank you for taking my call. Im glad to hear you mentioned the gerrymandering issue because i have been deeply troubled over the years watching more and more primary challengers taking out the people who are willing to work across the aisle and get something done. Do you think that has bled over to the senate . There is this plot of the primary challenge. If we were to do something more on the federal level to the most or discourage excessive gerrymandering, do you think that would also bleed over to the senate and bring bipartisanship to the senate . Guest i think the reforms will really have to occur at the state level. This is where the maps are drawn and that is appropriate. I would say that there are some states that have really tried to argue this through. California, i think, has done a good job in providing for a primary in which the top two candidates are the finalists. That could be to democrats or two republicans, but at least you are very likely to get some middle of the roaders and you will get the majority of the voters in that particular district, as opposed to a primary in which you have a socalled safe district in which few people vote and special interests are more paramount. Host and our last segment, we were talking a little bit about congressional races. I noticed people in tough reelection bids also rank very high on your bipartisan index, such as kelly ayotte, a republican from New Hampshire, mark kirk, a republican from illinois. Talk about that economy that that the more bipartisan you are, the tougher to keep your job in congress. Guest its tougher because most of these special interests are not interested in bipartisanship. They are not interested in the production of legislation or the congressmal workings of and the checks and balances of the president. They worry about the issues that are most important to them. Whether it is kelly ayotte mark kirk, you have to keep looking over your shoulder. The specific Interest Groups in their states are getting up on them and preparing to run a lot of negative advertising and do a lot of negative research, literally trying to sabotage their campaigns, as opposed to general discussion of the Foreign Policy of this country or how jobs might be produced or how roads might get repaired or how education might improve for everybody. These are things that ideally people always say this is what we ought to be talking about. If you are looking over your shoulder at a very specific special interests, that is not with those folks are talking about. Host we are talking to former senator Richard Lugar. We want you to join the conversation. You can call him on the democratic line at 202 7488000. The republican line at 202 7488001. And the independents can call in at 202 7488002. Lets talk about your list a little bit. Who was the least bipartisan on your most recent list . Guest i cannot recall to be truthful. I do not want to single out. I do not have the list in front that ibut there are some suspect our nominees. I think in the Current Senate ted cruz was very close to the bottom. Tim scott of South Carolina was another very close to the bottom if i recall. Host speaking of ted cruz, we have a lot of our current president ial candidates who have been in congress in the past. , a mentioned Lincoln Chafee former candidate for the democratic nomination, was number one. The next candidate you have to go to number 122nd, senator lindsey graham, who was until recently a candidate for the republican nomination. Why the low numbers of people who are running for president do you think . Guest they too are looking over their shoulder at all the people theyre going to have to raise money from. All the constituencies across the country as they run into town meetings or wherever they are speaking. As a matter of fact, i have some admiration for people running for president who are at least in the top half of the list. Heroes and i respect them. We talked about that in our commentary in the lugar center index that it takes some courage to be in the top half. Host some other folks on the list Hillary Clinton, former at 156. Of new york, is we have marco rubio from florida at 170. Bernie sanders at 217. Republican rand paul at two 22nd. And as you mentioned, ted cruz comes in at 224, the republican from texas. Lets go back to our cause. Next, we have derek from lakeland, minnesota. Youre on with senator Richard Lugar. Caller good morning. Welcome, host. Ive not seen you before and ive been watching for 25 years. So welcome to you. Host thank you very much. Caller youre welcome. For a guy who is been around so long, respectfully i say to you i was born in 1970 and our country in any way has gone down the tubes. The almost represent the whole amount of time. You might be the one to blame. I dont know. What i will say is that when you start a bipartisan center, youre right there telling me that theres nothing different. Quad it not a tripartisan . The greed and power in d. C. Is so polluted. The koolaid that you are drinking is potent because i her husbandr left, they moved to the east coast, they do not take calls. If you are anything other, they do not take your call or respond to questions. Theres no accountability for those folks. Six years, you get turned every time. We look at it and i think we need citizen statesman do not get wrapped up in the power. Do we need to not your salaries down to 90,000 versus 200,000 . Host lets give senator lugar a chance to respond to you. Guest let me respond by saying that i did serve 36 years through much of the time that you are describing. I mentioned already that my partner, senator sam nunn of georgia, with whom i work for ,he better part of two decades we formulated legislation after visiting the former soviet union and satellite countries. The possibilities to disarm them and take back the missiles and the warheads and the chemical weapons and what have you during a time that the soviet union was breaking up. This was a bipartisan mission from the very beginning. It involved ask carter, the secretary of defense, who had a white paper for breakfast that brought republicans and democrats together. Pass this in a lastgasp session of 1986. It was something kept alive through Appropriations Bills every year. It was very important to the security of the country. We were in 40 years of mutually assured destruction or a bad mistake could have destroyed an american city, like my own city of indianapolis. When i was mayor, i had no idea that we could of been annihilated by weapons that i was busy destroying over there. Constructive work is done by members of congress reaching across the aisle, not just want but really working out these problems. I believe our country is much better off than we were of 40 years of mutually assured destruction. There are still potential problems in which terrorists might get a Nuclear Device create and create havoc in a city in america. This is very different than all of our cities being annihilated and all of our armed forces. We have moved from that and moved very successfully. Host up next on our democratic line, we have jason from hyattsville, maryland. You are on with former senator Richard Lugar. Caller good morning, cspan and senator lugar. I know that there are rules committees they are in congress. I wonder why they cannot get together and just work on the rules. It seems to me that so much of the problem with it impasses there are due to the short term look at things. It seems like an objective, longview rewriting of rules, targeting six or eight years out in order who is going to be in the majority or the minority and write some very fair rules to allow legislation to come to the floor and improve the efficiency of congress. A good step toward the bipartisanship. Guest i believe the rules that we have currently in the congress are reasonable. They come really from our constitution, which provides for checks and balances and provides that one party should not simply trample over the other or one particular interest. Least of always at ensuring that you get a majority. Theres always possibilities at the margins for changes there. When you look at this objectively, the checks and balances are reflected in the rules of congress. The question is given the fact that youre going to need 60 votes for something, your ability to reach across the aisle, if you do not have 60 votes on your side at one time or another and find others to work with you. The point that im china make with the lugar index is the desire to talk to somebody else and try to persuade them in the best interest of the country. This is something we ought to proceed on. We do this very frequently because we have many issues in our country that need attention. Host we are talking about the bipartisanship rankings by the lugar center. We are talking with former senator Richard Lugar. The president and Vice President are both former members of the senate. They both have rankings as well. President barack obama, democratic senator of illinois, 165 while joe biden, democrat from delaware, ranked at 37. Quite a difference there. How does that make them work with each other and how did that difference occur . Guest i was on the Foreign Relations committee with joe biden as chairman. I was a Ranking Member of the committee at the time. Position in terms of Foreign Policy that the face of the americans Foreign Relations committee better be close to unanimous. Peace,re talking war and countries will not be impressed with a 109 vote. We work very hard together on issues that were very important to the security of our country. Joe biden exemplified that. He really was very helpful throughout that. President barack obama works on the Foreign Relations Committee Just for our year or two while i was still chairman. He was very conscientious. He was just in the beginning of his Senate Career is so much happened after that, of course. I would say that frankly after a few months, can i go with you to russia . I know you go there every year. Said, sure. Barack obama went with me to russia and to ukraine. Both went there together and we saw the dangers that our country still faced in the things that we could do. As a result, barack obama said we need to offer legislation of our own called the lugarobama act. When barack obama was running for president , he was challenged in the debate on legislation he pursues. He had produced. Easy the lugarobama acted that was a result of obama working in the Foreign Relations committee. Host a piece of bipartisan legislation. Charles from north carolina. Youre on was senator Richard Lugar. Caller is a pleasure to speak with you. I just got back from washington. I spent a week up there and i saw the construction cranes. I think i counted like 32 cranes around washington. I think they do not make anything, so that means the government is a lucrative business. Clintons from the Washington Post are pulling in of hundreds of millions dollars. A former congressman is now lobbying for turkey. These guys have to have a business when they get out of congress. And i think the rule roots of partisanship comes down to just money. Number 2 you talk about statesmanship in congress. I just want to have a quick memory on air for senator dale bumpers of arkansas, who i think was the ultimate statement. You may be correct that a good number of members of congress do find employment in washington as lobbyists or members of corporations that are doing business and what have you. That is not true, however, for all of us. Let me just say for the record that the lugar center help formulate with former Staff Members of the Foreign Relations committee that i receive no salary or compensation. Do this because i believe it needs to be done. We need to work on arms control and food security. There are many persons like myself doing this kind of work in washington or in the states or constituencies in which they came. I admire that. I do not want to criticize anybody, but i would say a good number of us that have come out of congress have tried to capture some of the idealism that we found there, some of the ability to Work Together, and continue to do that. Senator Richard Lugar, former republican senator from indiana [applause] on our next washington omar will talk about the roots of islamic extremism and ways to counter it. You can join the conversation by phone or on facebook and twitter. Washington journal is like every morning at 7 00 a. M. Eastern. We need to know how many people are reading us. We need to know how they are coming to us. So for example, if they are not coming to wii to our website and are coming to us through facebook or google or twitter or snap chat or reddit for any of these other venues, we should know that. Sunday night on q a, marty baron talks about the changes that the post since he took over at 2013. He also discusses the depiction of his work as the boston globe in the movie spotlight. I think it is quite faithful as how the investigation unfolded. It is important to keep him mind that it is a movie and not a documentary, so you have to compress within two hours seven months plus of investigation, and you had to introduce a lot of characters, and you had to introduce the important themes that emerged over the course of the investigation. Sunday night at 8 00 eastern on q a. A conversation on president ial campaigns in the political process. Former congressman and agriculture secretary dan at the Washington Center for internships and economic seminars. It is two hours. O hours. Our seminar is titled, in pursuit of the presidency. I put in a subtitle, being a professor here, does conventional wisdom matter . Let me give you a little bit of background. In the past 20 years and i have been teaching american politics since fall of 1996 we have had six president ial elections. Three of them had no incumbents. Elections willse be in the history books, and the american politics texas for different reasons. Politics american textbooks for different reasons. The political000, association gathered together for four days to assess politics and political theory. The association had a panel asking if the campaign mattered, because a number of political scientists had run models forecast who was going to win, thereey also there was was a New York Times article. I can remember exactly where it placed, predicting that out was going to win the popular vote. Did thosestion was, months really matter . Model is correct. Al gore did win the popular vote, but he did not win the presidency. I was teaching at west point at the time. It was my first year. I will never forget on election day, one of my students, who d dozed through much of the semester, raised his sand and said hand and said, what happens if george bush wins the popular vote, and al gore wins the Electoral College vote . I said, it has not happened since 1888. We are not going to see that again, it is uncommon, it is an aberration in american politics here and we will know wednesday morning who the next resident president will be. It did not happen. Of course, it was the reverse. I still remember that the four , ohio, pennsylvania, florida, and michigan. I remember when florida was called, and pennsylvania, i remember my mother calling and saying, you said whoever wins three of those four states wins election, so that means al gore has won. And im sure you remember when florida, changed, waking up in the morning seeing florida as undecided, and then the election went into december. Shocking. If there had ever been momentum for getting rid of the Electoral College, it was after the 2000 election. I think the National Popular vote organization, which you may know about, and we will be talking about Electoral Reform later this week, had gained momentum over the next few years. At this point, it does not seem as though those changes are moving forward. Fairhere are certainly the vote organizations about other proposals for reform. We will be discussing that later. I think it is very possible in the next 20 happened 30 years yearse will see 2030 that we will see structural changes in american politics, and we can take that to the 2000 election. Head to 2008. October 2007, i was in washington for a conference. Commentator, in american politics, spoke, and said if everything goes as we willt, senator clinton lock in the democratic nomination on super tuesday. The real question will be, who wins the republican nomination . That was roughly the middle of october, 2007. November 9, 2007 was the iowa Jackson Jefferson ever credit party dinner. Democratic party dinner. Barack obama was one of the last speakers. He delivered an address it dr. Martin luther king, talking about the fierce urgency of now, and why he was in the race. That put the Clinton Campaign on notice that there was a serious challenge, and that this might not be a coronation. January 3, we had the iowa caucuses, and history changed. What is historic about 2016 . The 2016 elections have made history, and not a single vote has been cast. The number of president ial candidates 17 republicans, now i doesnt. Dozen. Now i doea high fundingwith dropped out of the race. Rick perry from texas, widely seen as a strong contender, dropped out. Some of the lesser tier candidates, even those candidates have gotten quite a bit o attention. The democratic side, five candidates down to three. It looks as though the democratic nomination is clear. No onehe 2008 surprise, i think will ever, in the next couple of decades at least, suggest a coronation again. Candidates, the number of outsiders. Donald trump, ben carson, carly fiorina. Describedntators Bernie Sanders as an outsider, of course he is in congress, so not quite the same but certainly presenting a very different political policy perspective within the democratic party. It is not just the number of outsiders that are new in 2016. It is their staying power. The first republican primary debate was on thursday, harvest august 6. There were so many questions, what is donald trump going to do . Is he going to storm off the stage or get into an argument with one of the moderators . He stayed, through all three hours, continue to endure. We have seen other candidates , anddr. Carson ridse now fall. Senator rubio, who was seen as someone initially, someone who is going to make a trial run, now is perhaps seen as the establishment republican partys best hope for a viable candidacy. Fall of theng insiders, governor bush of florida. All of the articles now talking about, what has gone wrong . What has gone wrong in the Bush Campaign . An important question for us to consider is to what degree do we as the influence our difficulties of the individual, and to what degree is that candidate in particular saddle two bushy, family, and presidencies. It is easy to point out flaws in that campaign, but im not sure a flawless campaign could den of a the burnin controversial dynasty. This is what is new in 2016. The candidates, the types of the interest in these campaigns. Im sure you have seen the numbers on how many people are watching the president ial debates. These are exciting. Anywhere from a low for the Republican Debate of 30 million, to a high of 25 9 13 million, to a high of 25 million. The last one had close to 6 million total viewers. This is big news, this is exciting. It is almost like netflix. The almost wish you could see the full dozen of them all at once and binge on the debates. The money. Donald trump is saying hes going to spend 2 million a week to run television ads. That is really the first big Financial Investment he has made in the campaign. This is a change. Stat same in 2016 . It is less exciting, but it will increasingly become the focus over the next 10 months. 2016, from spring when the from when the2015 candidates were announcing, that was about what was new. 2016 is about the process. The process remains the same. The candidates have to go through the invisible primaries, what we are seeing