to have conversations with the people and the media became his pulpit. jfk did great press conferences where television was perfect for him. and ronald reagan knew how to give great speeches. i think what s happened with obama, he hasn t figured out the right form for him as president. it worked in the campaign. when he has a written text, nobody s better. when you re president, speaking to a camera and the stupid teleprompter is there, lbj had a teleprompter, he never wanted to go without. they called it mother. he never wanted to go anywhere without mother. he was so stiff behind there, too. i think that s right. is there another dimension? has the media become more invasive, more hostile? it can t let itself develop the bonds or relationships fdr or teddy roosevelt had with the individual networks? that s part of it. part of it is the internet has become a big source. it s almost like the fifth branch of government now. what does the internet do to the
we wouldn t be here where we are now. it would have been a different ball game. is eliot spitzer a movie? got to make enemies in politics and he proved that. i want to go back to fdr. fdr had a difficult moment two years into his presidency as barack obama has. he doubled down. he instead of veering back the way bill clinton did, instead of saying let s compromise, he said, i believe in these principles and he went after the al garks in a different way. would that have worked in this moment? there was a moment in time when obama had the the electorate was sizzling with even the republicans were upset with bush. it was that moment in time. let me ask you this. would you have thrown away i happen to agree with you. i think what stood in his way was this incessant push for bipartisanship which everybody desired. when they won the obama administration suddenly was surrounded by the traditional establishment. his cabinet, i call it his
understood you have about the same amount of tax revenue generated on a per capita basis as in the united states. in the united states we have a much lower tax burden. how is it you re generating same amount of money in both places? when you re talking about herbert hoover and fdr the fact is we live in a different world now. this entails different economic strategies. i wish we did live in a different world. i do believe the right wing today is animated by a desire to roll back the new deal. and those core elements which built a strong middle class in this country and the architect of the pieces, which create a middle class, and i have to say that i see nothing in the tea party or the republicans today except retro old ideas which are about deregulating government which are about cutting taxes for the very rich, and which would put us back in the mess we were in. one retro old idea was the reform to social security under president carter, not under president roosevelt.
he was would go on about negativism in the media. but i do i will never sit in judgment on a sarah palin, for example. i think politics of condescension are dead on arrival. they want to gut medicare. they want to end a minimum wage. these are the real issues of our time. i think they want to do they want to do some cutting and stop some spending and keep government from expanding. that is witchcraft. that i don t believe in. that is witchcraft i will never to my last breath. i am a witch. i m with katrina. i think the reason they need to run on the vap pid claims of less government at its root what they re going back to is a herbert hoover, pre-fdr eliot, i have a ton of respect for you. in western europe, broadly
that changed the way we calculate social security, cost of living adjustments. and made the program much, much more expensive. we had to tax on working family that s not rolling back fdr, it s rolling back carter. let s reframe this conversation. the conversation has to be about what is the proper role for government in driving an economy forward, to create wealth you re talking about? and how much government investment in things like nasa or in high-speed rail or in infrastructure which is report today tells us is decaying. you find the less government equals more freedom thing. kathleen said early on, the question is not do we go to zero public spending but are we getting value for our money? i wrote a column last week called eat, pray, vote. and i say that, no, because i think you are seeing people wake up to the fact, i come back to this idea of a country that is on the cusp of having the reforms that made it a great country, whether building a