The night that i win the emmy. Being on the Supreme Court was an improbable dream. Its hard work and its controversial. Without information, there is no freedom. And its journalists who provide that information. Window rolls down and this guy says, hey, he goes to 11 00. [laughter]. Rick hertzberg, welcome. Great to be here. Nice to see you again, and for no particular reason except just to talk politics, which i love to do. The oh, im ready for that. And especially with you. So lets start with the president. Lets start high up on the chain here. You wrote a book after the 2008 campaign. It was a collection of essays, in fact, published a book called obamanos the birth of a new political era. Has it turned out in the intervening years as you expected it would given your thoughts about him back then . Well not really, no. But of course its traditional among political pundits to say, well theres nothing really surprising about anything thats ever happened because i saw it all so clearly in advance. I think one thing i did see in advance is that there would be disappointment. Yeah. Its a rule of american politics that everyone disappoints. Right. And then if theyre lucky enough, the disappointment recedes and 10, 15 years later. It turns back around. They become theyre inaugurated into heaven and theyre gods. Right. Even and its not just liberals too. Ronald reagan was a great disappointment to many conservatives. Hard to imagine that today. When he was giving away the store to gorbachev and when he. Raised taxes. Raising taxes and all that. Amnesty in 86, right . Oh. Right, for illegals. But the fact is reagan is all thats forgiven at this point basically, right . Yeah. And the same is true of roosevelt, of franklin roosevelt, of john kennedy, of lyndon johnson, of, perhaps prematurely of jimmy carter. But well have an obama resurgence, lets assume. Because theres always a resurgence of interest in approval, but for now he has failed to meet the probably Unrealistic Expectations of people who saw in him whatever they wanted to see back then. Yeah, and i dont fault him for that. You dont fault him at all for that . Oh, ive got a few things id fault him for. Name them. I want to hear it. Let me see the bill of particulars. Well, they began on the day of his inauguration. Okay. I was his inaugural address was too rosy. What he needed to do was to say how terrible things were, just how bad they were. The speech was too much of a played that down too much and it was a kind of uplift. Right. Franklin d. Roosevelt was lucky. The depression had gone on for three years. Right. When he became president. But obama ended up getting ownership of that bad economy. Correct. Totally not his fault, but he didnt lay the groundwork to so that his proposals would carry. So it wasnt just about lowering expectations, it was about just being more honest about the challenges that we faced, right . Oh, i wouldnt say it was a question of honesty versus dishonesty. No, i think it was a political miscalculation. On his part. On his part to emphasize yes we can, were all going to do this together side of this personality rather than a realist side. Now of course you were a speech writer for jimmy carter so youre not just kibitzing about this. You actually know something about writing speeches for politicians and a big stage. Well, if being a speechwriter for jimmy carter can be characterized in those terms, yes. [laughter]. Well, i choose to believe that once youve done it they cant take it away from you and you probably have a sense that the rest of us dont have of whats right and wrong and whats good and bad in situations like that. And what works and what especially doesnt work. In this case, well you said it. Thats exactly right. So in some ways he began to disappoint on that day. But over time, if you look at the list of accomplishments, supporters of his will say things he was able, often very difficult circumstances to get done over the last six years. If you step away from the politics of it and simply look at kind of the track record, youd have to assess on paper, a pretty good six years, right, from the perspective of his supporters. Yes, you would. And from the perspective of objective reality. Yeah. To its been a pretty good six years. Yeah. Its he is up against, as all president s are, and especially this is for liberal president s, hes up against structural problems that prevent the realization of these visions. Yeah. You know, our system is sort of a machine for creating disappointment. Yeah. You run for president when you run for president you dont say, when im elected were going to have a health care reform. Its going to be messy. Right. Its going to be awful. It will cover a lot of people but then there will be people who fall between the slats and its going to be a big mess. Just not going to be as big a mess as what weve got now. We have now, right. Yeah. Its going to be better than what weve got now, and thats my vision. Yeah. [laughter]. Thats not exactly salesmanship. Nobody runs for president that way. You run for president where you almost by definition you make promises that cant be kept. And then you dont keep them. Right. But you do your best. Or you hope people dont notice that or, you know. And you take these six years of obama. Yeah. And i think you could put them up pretty well against just about anybodys six years maybe with the exception of f. D. R. Yeah. Whats been interesting to me, rick, is that not just democrats, but republicans have been, in some ways, nostalgic for the first six years of bill clinton. Again, this is kind of a Restoration Hardware problem. Theyre nostalgic for a time that never actually existed, you know, they have this idea that somehow the first six years of the Clinton Administration were so perfect from the standpoint of their own disparate agendas. Democrats see in them the kind of great hope for their side. Republicans remember him as somebody who was not quite as bad as obama. You know, they could work with him. But the fact is at the time they both were disappointed by clinton in their own ways too, right . Yeah, and the hate that was directed at clinton. Specifically. Specifically, and in the most vicious terms and ending up with, unbelievably, impeachment. Yeah. Is conveniently forgotten. Right. I think the passions of that time have faded. Yeah. And clinton is now regarded with this rosy retrospective glow. Yeah. I think it will take a lot less time for that to happen to obama. You think so . But we always miss them when theyre gone, but we dont love them. When theyre actually here, right. We wait too long to tell them. So speaking of clintons, forget him about him, lets talk about her. Had she been president , secretary clinton. Then senator, now secretary clinton over these last six years, materially would the conversation about disappointments and expectations and all that be different as we were sitting here . I doubt it. And i doubt it might be a little different because she would have been elected under a different set of illusions. Yeah. [laughter]. And she would be seen as a more workaday kind of non visionary but practical person. So the accomplishments might add up to roughly the same. But there might be less of a feeling of disappointment. On the other hand, ten years fom now there might also be less of a rosy retrospective. Yeah. I do think that and maybe this is just taking comfort in a weird way, but i do think that obama is going to be looked back on lovingly. You do . In the future, yes. Do you buy the argument that some have made that it starts and ends with his race. That if he were a white president , same circumstances, same inputs, same outputs, that the conversation we have had for the last six years would be different . Its temping to think it because people have given us reason to give in to those kind of worst thoughts about the way people behave, but i think the flip side of it is that maybe were overcorrecting and not really regarding the situation as clearly as we could. Yeah, well it is kind of unknowable. Yeah. Its such an enormous fact about him that it cant be of no significance. Yeah. Theres just no way it can be of no significance. He is the first africanamerican president , but of course hes africanamerican in this curious fashion. Hes africanamerican the way somebody whose grandfather came from italy is italianamerican. Right. And in a sense hes a kind of controlled experiment where race became a single factor unencumbered by a lot of cultural encrustations that apply to jesse jackson, for example. Right. So looking ahead as we contemplate a situation in which were likely to have the democratic nominee, likely but not certain to have the democratic nominee be Hillary Clinton and we therefore have the prospect of the first female president. Have these years, these historic years with obama in the white house taught us anything about how she is likely to be regarded in the course of making history if she were to win . Is she going to be held to a similarly weird standard . Will there be judgments of her on the basis of her gender in the same way that there have been judgments of him on the basis of his race or has she transcended that in all the years that shes been in Public Office . Well i think to a large extent she has, but its kind of the picture is made a little blurry and fuzzy by the fact that she wouldnt be just the first female president , but she would be the first spouse president. Indeed. She would be the first time a spouse of a president has become president. We have had sons and we have had grandsons. Yeah. We havent had any granddaughters or daughters, but its a completely unique thing to have the exwife exwife. Im sorry. [laughter]. The wife of the expresident. Which is which . Right, dr. Freud is thinking this is. [laughter]. The dynastic aspect of that, which i guess is the best way to consider it, is obviously something in discussion now because we have the prospect of one dynastic candidacy versus another dynastic candidacy if jeb bush were to be the republican nominee. A lot of being made of that as we sit here. Too much, do you think . Well, it would certainly be i think it would be to both of their advantages. Because it would put the dynastic issue aside. Neutralize it. Neutralize it if both were dynasts. Yeah. If its just hillary, i think that is going to be an unavoidable. Its going to come up. In the campaign. Okay. So we looked a little bit two years. I want to kind of come back and ask a version of the question i asked about obama for the last six years, broaden it to liberalism. So youre proudly, unapologetically a liberal. Thats a word that has become pejorative in some circles, but the fact is liberalism has itself had an interesting journey over these last six years. There are a lot of people who, i guess, from the Elizabeth Warren end of the Democratic Party who have been disappointed, as we said, with the president. Maybe it was inevitable. And, in fact, theyre disappointed looking ahead to the prospect of someone like Hillary Clinton being the standard bearer of the party because they dont view her as in league with them on a lot of core issues. What do you think about liberalism where we sit now . Are we better off than we were six years ago, to borrow the old phrase . We are probably somewhat better off than we were six years ago. Liberals made a huge error, moral and political error when they gave up being liberals. When they gave up saying im a liberal. Liberal, to me, liberal is the best label because liberal is about liberty. Its a lot better than progressive because liberty is a higher value than progress, i think. And the idea that you could somehow, you could somehow gain by this retreat by saying okay they have turned liberal into a dirty word so we wont use it anymore. I mean, they are turning progressive into a dirty word now. And once thats abandoned and then whatever comes next is going to be demonized. Of course liberty is the property of the other side now, in some ways, right . We hear quite a lot about it. Thats one of the unlooked for ill consequences of that surrender because its really about which what kinds of liberty do you value . And i think if youre a liberal, like me, you do tend to value freedom of speech. Yeah. Freedom of association, Civil Liberties like that more highly than you Value Property rights. Gun rights. Gun rights, that kind of thing. So there are these different kinds of liberty that are in contention. I think i know if those are two sides, i know which side im on. You know which side you would choose. Yeah, do you have any sympathy for the position that government has become too much of an intrusive aspect of our lives in all kinds of ways, and that, you know, this idea i dont know if it had to go all tenth amendment on us here. You know, were just going to say no we dont want to government involved in anything, but that somehow government, the size of government or the pernicious influence of government has become a problem to the extent that we have to push back . No. I dont think the size of government is a problem. Our government is about average, i guess, for the western world in terms of size. I think its the clumsiness of government. Clumsiness . The clumsiness of it. People really dont want to do without the services that government in its clumsy way provides. Right. So that theres a lot of verbal antigovernment sentiment, but its best encapsulated in the outraged cry. You know, keep your cotton picking government hands off my medicare. Right, yeah. Fundamentally inconsistent, right . Exactly, yeah. And yet medicare and all of these Government Programs that do ameliorate suffering, because of the ramshackle way that our federal government, all our governments are organized with the separation of powers and the huge number of elections and all of the difficulty of the number of veto points that allow special interests to get their way. Yeah. So our Government Programs are ill designed compared to those of other countries. Yeah. But we still dont want to do without it. So it aint about size. Yeah. Its about efficiency. Yeah, and the fact is government sometimes is its own worst enemy in selling itself to us. Ted cruz would say not while im alive. Well, but im thinking about, for instance, if you wanted to sell the public on the idea that indeed governments involvement in solving the problem of People Without Health Insurance around the country are trying to get to that solution, get to a solution. If you wanted to sell that idea to people you could hardly do it worse than with the Rube Goldberg device that they constructed to healthcare. Gov. You know, the Technology Problems only gave comfort to the enemies. The only thing worse with the status quo. I mean, what weve got with obamacare is better than what we had before. And thats what. So why hasnt that been sold to people . You know, there are x number of states around the country that have steadfastly refused to embrace any aspects of this. Some have even refused to create the exchanges that would allow individuals to exercise what some would imagine is liberty in deciding what to do. I mean, they have really worked against it. And the government has not been able to make the case that youve just made that, really, you may not like what we have given you but its better than what we had better. Well im not sure they havent made that case or im not sure that case hasnt gotten across in a lot of ways. After all, obama did get reelected and obamacare was one of the big issues. The states that have refused to cooperate, the Supreme Court case thats on the docket right now, if they actually have to put up or shut up its going to be a different story. Right. I think that obamacare will eventually be taken just as much for granted. Right. As medicare is now. And in fact the president and his allies said from the beginning that once we give people a taste of what this could be, if those who oppose it take it away, people are going to go, well wait a minute, actually. The things that weve had for the last year, 18 months, two years are going to be to attractive to give up. And obamacare, i mean obamacare is a tougher sell than medicare was because everybody eventually gets old. Obamacare really protects and brings Health Insurance to a smaller group. And so there are a lot of people who dont directly benefit from it. They indirectly benefit from it, but not directly. So thats made obamacare, in a way, a nobler enterprise. Yeah. Because the obvious political rewards are fewer. Right. But also one thats harder to sell. Now you alluded to the separation of powers and the structure of government being one impediment to getting kind of good things done as however you define good things. The fact is that the distance between congress and the executive branches, the legislative branches at the moment, it seems to me is far apart as its as theyve ever been. And the next two years could very well be a case where the republicans refuse to do anything that the president wants. The president still has the veto pen and the majorities the republicans have in both houses are not vetoproof, so we basically have this dance for the next two years, nothing happens. Is this a fixable situation . Am i being too pessimistic about it . It does seem like we might all just go on holiday until 2016. Yeah, and even then its not a fixable situation in the larger sense in the imaginable future. Yeah. Because its fundamentally rooted in the founding document. Its fundamentally rooted in a design for government dating from 1789, you know, Political Technology of a moment. Yep. A brilliant state of the art Political Technology for 1789. If we were all transported back there not knowing what we know now, none of us could have done better. You think it would be great. But its so hard to change that fundamental structure. Yeah. That it just builds in a certain amount, a large amount of clumsiness. The structure has changed, but weve changed, right . And our politics have changed, right . Yeah, and the values behind the preamble to the constitution have not changed. And those should be our guide. Instead of worshiping the founders, we should imitate them. You know, we should. How do you mean . I think we ought to look at the whole structure and take into account whats been learned about Political Technology since 1789. I mean, theres a reason why the other democracies of the world do not imitate our constitution. They imitate our bill of rights, often, or most of it, but not the mechanical hydraulics of our constitution because there have been advances in Political Technology since then that we dont even know about, for the most part. But of course it would be blasphemous to ask whether we ought to move on to something else. You know, we become so fixated on the constitution and the intentions of the founders and all that as it relates to the constitution. And reasonable intent is that the phrase in popular use . Were sort of stuck with what we have though, right . Well, at least its getting more overt. I mean, it is Something Like original intent is ancestor worship in its purest form. Yeah. And not in the good way. And not in a good way. And in a way that would shock madison and hamilton and washington if they were alive today. Yeah. They would be horrified. They would say we designed this thing as best we could and made it a compromise as we could, but we assumed that in the light of experience that you would tinker with it and improve it. Yeah. We didnt think you would just build temples to us as if we were gods and then treat everything that we had done as if it were holy writ. No, thats not who we were and thats not who you should be. In some ways that was original intent, mess with it. Yes. Right . We know how tough it is to amend the constitution, but compared to amending the articles of confederation its a piece of cake. Well we couldnt solve the problems of politics in 23 minutes, lets try to solve the problems in journalism in three minutes. All right. Okay . That should be doable. You have done a total of 30 years at the new yorker, is that right . If you add all the bits together, yeah. Eight the first time, more or less, 22 or more this last round, so you have watched the new yorker as an entity evolve and youve watched long form narrative nonfiction evolve. Youve watched political journalism evolve. Do you think were better off today, to go back to the question i asked you earlier, than we were 30 years ago . Have we come to a good place with this craft . Its a tough question, evan because when youre asked that question and when youre my age, its kind of embarrassing to say, you know it was a lot better in my day. Well there are only old days, there are no good new days. Years ago we didnt have these problems. Yeah. No. I dont know if were better off now. I know that when youre young. Yeah. When youre young youre full of enthusiasm and you take things for what they are. Yep. And you work with whats there. What was there 30 years ago, 35 years ago, for the most part isnt there. Yeah, the new yorker is still there in a way that a lot of other institutions in journalism arent. And true to itself in a lot of ways, right . True to itself. You would recognize this the new yorker, if you went back 20 years ago and looked into the future you would say well that looks roughly, i mean. It was kind of skinny. I mean it used to be like 200 pages of ads. And there were cuss words in the cartoons, you know, and theres some things that are different, but basically its sort of similar. Pretty much. The spirit is the same, the ambition is the same, and the execution, for the most part, is the same. And thats something that very few institutions can say. Yeah. Many of the ones that can say it are small and unprofitable. Right. And thats the fundamental conundrum, isnt it . It sure is. Yeah. And a career path in this kind of new journalism is a lot harder to chart. Well the idea that somebody would enter the business as you did as a young man and stay, in essence, in the same place for decades, we just dont expect that to be the case anymore. For one thing, institutions dont last that long, but also people are restless, they have many more options, right . They have many more options. They can be their own. I mean, a. J. Liebling said that, you know, freedom of the press belongs to the man, as he put it, who has one. Yeah. And now weve learned what its like when everyone has one. Right. You know, when every kid down in the rec room can reach a global audience. 140 characters at a time or what have you, right . Yeah. And to go viral is to go global. Yeah. Thats something completely new and we are only beginning to grasp the pluses and minuses of that. You seem modestly cheerful about that. Thats because im with you. Oh, is that right . I dont inspire cheerfulness in anybody, so i know thats not. Well, im from out of town. Then its hospitality that im expressing. Its good to see you. You seem to not be slowing down, keeping at it. I hope so, yeah, until im not. Okay, good. Well, thats okay. Rick hertzberg, thanks a lot. Great to see you. Thank you. [applause]. Wed love to have you join us in the studio. Visit our website at klru. Org overheard to find invitations to interviews, q as with our audience and guests, and an archive of past episodes. So people hold these ideas simultaneous in their head. The perfection of the constitution along with government is bad. Right. But if the constitution is so perfect, then how can government be bad . The constitution is. It is government. It is the plan for the government. Funding for overheard with evan smith is provided in part by m. F. I. Foundation, improving the quality of life within our community. And from the texas board of legal specialization, Board Certified attorneys in your community. Experienced, respected, and tested. Also by hillco partners, texas Government Affairs consultancy and its Global HealthCare Consulting business unit, hillco health. And by the Alice Kleberg reynolds foundation. And viewers like you. Thank you