This week on press pass, breaking the political gridlock that consumes congress all too often. Its a bipartisan approach by two veterans who offer their in sights in the book the partisan divide. Im joined by mark frost, a democrat from texas and tom davis a republican from virginia. Gentlemen, welcome to you both. The issue of gridlock and partisan divide it is now actually the number one concern. Now that the economy seems to be coming back when you talk collectively to voters, what does washington need to work on . The first thing is breaking the gridlock. Youre trying to offer up a recipe . The purpose of this book is what . We wanted to describe how this came about. You had 15 to 20 years that caused this. You still have a lot of good people that want to do the right thing, but theyre really not allowed to by the rules of the game. Single party districts, media polarization models and the growth of the internet, and of Course Campaign finance where the money has moved from the parties out to the wings. And you were the first one to put tom and me together on your show about five years ago, and tom and i have done a lot of commentary since then. During the course of time, we realized we saw things pretty much the same way in terms of the institution, and we wanted to write a book, but neither one of us could do it by ourselves. So collectively, jointly we decided to write a book and we think we did a pretty good job. Its more of a thorough explanation. Some will say, yes, we knew this about partisanship as the two parties have become more polarizing even among their own parties and the media and sort of the new social media way of doing everything idealogically. If a new member of congress is reading this, what do you hope they get out of it . I hope they will at least think a little bit and realize this could be a better institution, and there are some ways to address the problems. Now the problem, of course, the issue, is whether congress will ever pass anything to cure these problems. Maybe they wont until the public demands it maybe there will have to be some even greater crisis than weve seen before. Congress has the power to require states to use nonpartisan or bipartisan districts appoint panels that are bipartisan to draw these districts. Whether congress would ever pass that kind of legislation is another thing. Congress has the power to require these c4 groups to receive these donors. They havent done that yet. You two both come from the center out a little bit. A center left guy from texas center right guy from the midatlantic. Hard to say a southern state. Your district much more midatlantic than we would call the deep south. Is that what you thats what comes across in the book essentially you think, where have all the centrists gone . Theyre gone. Theyre looking for the opportunity, but the political outlook is not there. The only race that matters is the primary. The general election is just a constitutional formality. So everything is pulled toward that narrow slice of idealogical voters that dominate primers, and they frown on compromise. Its because primaries are low turnout and strongly committed idealogical group can carry a primary either on the democratic or republican side. Not that that many people lose in primaries. You still have a lot of senators losing primaries, live in mortal fear they could be defeated in a primary, so that alters the voting records, make them unable to pass the party line and work on construction solutions. One of the distinct species is the southern democrat. Wide southern democrat. Wide southern democrat. Voting rights act is a huge culprit there. Tom and i disagree on the specifics of that. What i thought was interesting was you dont bring up not only is the southern conservative democrat extinct, the new england moderate republican and western moderate republican. Both went extinct. Isnt that why the centrist is gone . Right, and it shifted to the midwest because they focus on the primary. All you have to do is look at what happened last year in kansas with pat roberts. Pat roberts had a tea Party Opponent a very strong tea Party Opponent as it turned out, and pat went hard far right in his voting record where in the past pat had worked with democrats on some issues. He tried to be constructive where he could be. He went hard right and he won the primary. It was actually a pretty weak opponent. The fact he was identified with the tea party and the tea party was strong his forces were strong. Pat had no choice but to move hard right. There are republicans in my state who, i think, are pretty reasonable people and who would like to work with democrats, but they live in mortal fear that somebody is going to run against them in the primary. You identify many culprits. Jerry mandering you have both talked about. What is the evil doer here . Is it the money and the power these groups have . Basically they have a polarization of a successful business model. Its talk radio which beats social media cable and the internet. They all work together. Its the fact all three of these have come together to make it combustible. Weve never had it like this in the past, but theyve come together and thats made it combustible. One factor can be overcome. You cant dramatically change the Campaign Finance situation because of the supreme court. You could require disclosure but nothing else. If you could do nothing other than just require bipartisan commissions to draw congressional districts and have more competitive districts that would be the single greatest thing. It would. Remember residential sortie patterns play a huge role. Were going to hit the pause button here, and well pick up after the break. Well have more on martin frost and tom davis in just a moment. Lf designing the next vital solution to get ahead of evolving cybersecurity threats. See yourself at tasc creating integrated intelligence, surveillance and Reconnaissance Solutions that deliver information where when, and how it is needed. See yourself advancing Homeland Security efforts to protect americans at home and around the globe. Join tasc and see your engineering and Technology Expertise help solve the nations most pressing and complex challenges. See your career without limits at tasc. Were back. Tom, you wanted to talk about the media plays. I worked as a radio and Television Reporter before i went into politics. I am for freedom of the press. I am not for trying to krencensor what the right wing can say and the left wing can say in the media. I wouldnt try to change that but you have to understand. I know youre a huge person of history. There is a newspaper called the arkansas democrat gazette. There is a newspaper in town called the tallahassee democrat. Its because back in the day, the tallahassee democrat was the democratic paper, and the arkansas gazette was the republican newspaper. Right, but Business Models changed. You didnt have to show both sides and people decided this is a pretty Good Business model. We need to be aware of that role. Also with the internet, you dont have editors in all cases, so so much material is out there on the internet which may or may not be true. I have right wing cousins in texas that used to send me things saying, isnt this terrible in congress . I had to write them back and say look, you understand thats not exactly true and let me tell you what the truth is. But we have to understand the system, and we have to live with the system we have. We talked about all of the things that get members of congress there. But congress itself and how it works is broken. I am of the theory that leadership is too powerful and Committee Chairs are too weak. That is a giant change from 20 years ago when you guys were working. We went ahead and did steroids and a lot of other things. We dissolved the parliamentary system, when you think about it even though it was a balance of structure where the president s structure is independent of the president. Its not an independent body any more. If you want to move that work product through, you have to stop the committees in leadership. I gave a speech at my alma mater at university of missouri right after nancy pelosi became speaker. The topic of my speech was pelosi and gingrich two peas in a pod. They both believe in strong leadership coming out of the Speakers Office and not necessarily strong committees. And the senate is being run this way as well. Committee chairs dont have and i wonder does that drive people away from even wanting to be in congress . Oh absolutely. You look at who the retirements are, its kind of the wrong people. Its the people you wish would stay in there. Its the people who are the deal makers. The houses majority rule, instead of being the Minority Party now, the democrats are the Opposition Party and the minority vice versa. Opposition party is no to everything. This can get changed very easily right . Leadership can change it . It takes the right people in leadership. Im not sure it can be changed easily at this point. One of the things tom and i recommend is that you have a National Primary day where all the primaries are on the same day so theres more media and you have high turnout. If you have a higher turnout in primaries, you have a more Diverse People voting and maybe you dont have them driven to the extremes. The leadership has to deal with people on the extremes. Look at the 25 votes against mayor in the house caucus. Leadership doesnt have the flexibility they would like. Right. One of the more astute almost in congruous, right, which is this idea that the rise of polarization is coming simultaneously with the rise of people calling themselves independent, not a member of either party. The rise of independent, that rising independent doesnt participate in the process. And they dont vote in the primary. In some states they can. Also, the polarization even in states only in four states was the president ial election decided in five states. Four states. Thats unbelievable. Our, quote, swing states. There are only four of them that do this right . Virginia, florida north carolina. Thats ohio. Those are the only four with less than five points right . Thats unbelievable. I want to go back to this because this is one area where tom and i have some disagreement. Thats the Voting Rights act. I think the Voting Rights act is long overdue. You had large parts of the south that didnt have any black congressmen at all. So the Voting Rights act gave blacks it was really a bigger problem on the local level. It was locally elected officials that blacks wouldnt get elected to any position. Prior to 1992, seven states didnt have a single black member of congress. Heres what happened though. This didnt have to be the result that you went up against white districts and black districts in the south. The republicans were very shrewd in what they did. They made Common Ground with some people in the black community who said here, lets give you a nice the Bush Justice Department in 1991 and the Congressional Black Caucus basically ended the democratic partys stranglehold on the house of representatives. Right . But theres somebody else you mentioned. Ben ginsberg, who was the attorney and driving force of the Republican National committee, very shrewdly put together coalitions statebystate so as blacks were packed in there there would be a smaller number of districts and all the small districts were bleechd bleached. That didnt have to be the case. They said, dont do that. It did, but thats correct, and now they want a lower percentage because they want to maximize it. The book is absolutely for anyone, whether you care about money in