in the so-called bipartisan infrastructure reform bill which was adopted a couple months ago. starting with a bipartisan group in the house, the house problem solvers focused, they joined up with a group in the senate led by joe manchin and suzanne collins and ultimately, president biden joined them in the senate and they compromised, which is the way it is supposed to happen. that is what i mean by the centrist solution. and the bill passed and it will do a lot of good for this country. not only in terms of fixing our roads and bridges which desperately need fixing, but also making some investment in access to broadband and doing some things about climate change. it isn't much talked about, but it matters much to me. we had a recent example of how it can work, the history of centrist solutions. centrism is not the same as moderate. centrist means whether you are left or right or center or democrat or republican or independent you are willing to come to the center to talk about a problem with people who have different points of view, different parties than you, and willing to negotiate and compromise to get something done for your country and your constituents. in this book, i described a number of cases where i was in the middle of that kind of process on balancing the budget, environmental protection, national security homeland security after 9/11. it can discuss, but it hasn't been done lately and the american people have suffered as a result. host: q used the word compromised twice in the answer to the first question. why do so many members of congress consider compromise a bad word? is there something wrong with how this political system is set up that makes members of congress west willing to compromise -- less willing to compromise? guest: in a democracy where people have different points of view like ours, there is no central authority some of no dictates to say "this is the way it's going to be," you only get things done if you sit down and compromise. i always say to people, it does a senior has to compromise your ethics or your morality. if something that is being proposed you think is just unethical or immoral, don't support it. but most of the time in the legislative sessions, and i can tell you because i was in the senate for 24 years, the compromises are not moral or ethical. they are questions like do you want 100% of what you want on a given bill, or are you willing to come beside some which is to say, access last -- accept less. going back to the constitutional convention were the compromised to get this country of ours going, it has always that way. in recent times, there been a lot of pressures going the other way. pressures from political parties, from contributors, increasingly partisan media that have made members of both parties, liberals and conservatives less willing to compromise and therefore the american people have suffered because their problems have not been responded to or solved and opportunities for our country have not been used and that is what we got to change for the good of america. host: what was the most consequential compromised that you helped together when you were in congress for over two decades? guest: that's a great question. i don't know that i've ever answered it exactly that way. i think you asked me what i the most significant -- in my 24 years, what do i feel is the most important laws that i help adopt for america, i would say it was the laws that we adopted after 9/11, after the terrorist tax. i happened to be a ranking democrat at different times on what was then a governmental affairs committee and later became the homeland security committee. we created the department of homeland security and we created the 9/11 commission and we helped adopt the 9/11 commission report which i think made america safer from terrorist attacks and a lot of other dangers to our people at home in the years since then. i mean, i was involved in the clean air act, help to rebalance the budget of foreign affairs supporting our military. but in the 24 years if you asked what do i feel the best about, it was those post 9/11 laws. incidentally, the good thing to say is that we had a lot of just in adopting those, but they were not partisan. they were more about different ideas that have to solved the problem, how to protect america, and they were about turf protection five parts of the federal government that didn't want to be performed, didn't want a homeland security department over them. and we were able to reconcile that because we understood that america had been attacked and if we didn't do something about it, probably would be again. host: is it fair to say that national crisis begets more compromise on capitol hill, and if so, why hasn't the national and international crisis of the pandemic begat more compromise? guest: excellent question and anyway, -- in a way, that is a measure of how corrosive and damaging the partisanship and ideological extremism that seems to dominate washington and our government these days is. in other words, under president trump and president biden, in response to the covid-19 pandemic, we have had some bipartisan legislation adopted to deal with it. probably the most successful and important to the american people is the one thing that both parties supported under president trump to fund the development of the vaccines that are keeping a lot of people in our country and around the world alive today. but the partisan reaction to the pandemic among the american people the differing reactions, current, to wearing masks or accepting the vaccine would seem to be based on partisanship just as a measure of where we are now and how we've got to get to a better place where we see each other as part of the same large, american community which we are blessed to be part of and it is only going to continue as strong as it has been throughout our history if we start thinking first set the country. and much later about party or ideology. particularly when we are threatened by something as deadly as covid-19. host: former senators joe lieberman with us about his "centrist solution: how we made government work and how we can make it work again." republicans, (202) 748-8001. democrats, (202) 748-8000. independents, (202) 748-8002. senator lieberman, as folks are calling in, a big part of the bill back better act has to do with climate change efforts, efforts to fight climate change in the. i just want you to talk a little bit about the last time major climate change legislation was moved through congress and your involvement in that. remind viewers of what that legislation was. guest: well, going back to the 90's, i was just reading about climate change a lot and i heard some hearings from the government affairs committee and i just concluded that climate change was a real problem that was getting worse unless we changed by doing tough things to reduce the carbon emissions into the air. life on the planet wasn't going to be forever children and grandchildren what it was for us so we had to try to get things done in washington through the federal government always with a republican cosponsor. i knew something this big and controversial never would pass on a partisan basis a series of republicans was adopted from the very successful clean air act 1990, adopted under president bush 41. that have been used very successfully to combat acid rain which before that have been compromising health, particularly older people and younger people, and destroying a lot of forest and lakes in the northeast and other parts of the country. but it was too political and people didn't want to change. mccain and i got our proposal over 50 votes on one occasion, but ultimately not to 60. a lot of the people against were mostly republicans and change our title into cap and tax. and of course, the industries that would have to change most really lobbied hard against it. the question, what was the last time, that was the last time there was major climate change legislation can by congress, but there really has not been major climate change legislation adopted. ironically, i would say that the i'm a change our of the infrastructural form bill adopted a few months ago maybe the most sick victim governmental action in this regard except perhaps fuel efficiency standards in air vehicles. and i want to end my answer to this in a way that is not totally pessimistic. the last decade or so, we have made with the significant progress in trying to reduce emissions. it is interesting to me that it has come without governmental regulations or laws for the most are. the private sector has done it with developments like electric cars and the increasing sophistication of alternative forms of energy, so that gives us some hope. but really, ultimately, this will only be not solved for now, but the dangers of global warming and climate change will only be reduced significantly if both public and private sectors are working together to do that. of course, i hope and pray that that will happen soon. host: plenty of callers waiting to talk. utah, democrat, you are up first. good morning. caller: good morning, senator. it is an honor to talk to you. what i've been thinking about for quite a while, you know, we are a capitalist, socialist country whether people like it or not. how many people work for your city, state, york county? all government agencies, all the schoolteachers and everything. they all depend on the government. we depend on each other. whether you are democrat or republican doesn't make any difference people don't realize that the difference between a communist and socialist, a communist, you don't devote. a socialist, they take their leaders. tell me where i'm wrong. thank you. guest: thanks, it is an honor to talk to you, i appreciate your sentiment, it is the kind of sentiment we need in our country now a lot. what i really like is what you said about working together and not saying or doing things that divide us further. george washington warned us in his farewell address that loyalty to the political parties will come to a point where it was more important people than loyalty to the country. and without the kind of unity that existed at that moment in our history, he worried that america would not remain independent. it is still a worry. less about our independence now, and more about whether we are going to be the great small d democratic country that we all wanted to be. so you're difference between communism and socialism is kind of interesting. anyway, you are right. communism generally has been totalitarian. terrible deprivation of economic and personal freedom, and we saw it in the form of the soviet union and we still do in many ways. socialism is a different interview than that. it puts a lot more into the government. a lot more responsibility. it relies much more on the government than the private sector to deal with our problems. if you had a spectrum of political views, you might say that it goes center, center, left, left, socialism. generally speaking, i don't think the country as a socialist country and that is something that the democratic party really doesn't say clearly to the american people. i do want to say one word about what you said about people who work for the government. the government was created not by the politician so they could have jobs, although i know people think that. the government was created because we need government to protect us, to do things for us we can't do for ourselves, beginning with our security, but also our moral values of helping those who really cannot help selves. but of course, that doesn't mean that we should let the government mushroom and grow to take more money that people work so hard for. anyway, we are going back to the title of my book. it is a question of centrist solutions, not far left solutions that give everything to the government or far right solutions that they want to dismantle the government programs that people rely on. and that requires negotiations and respectful discussions among elected leaders in washington, negotiation and compromise to get something done. centrist solutions, they require members of both parties and usually are more balanced. and something else, they last. if you adopt something only with support of members from one party, the odds are when the other party takes control of the white house which certainly will happen at the boy, they will dismantle for repeal what was adopted by the one party and that doesn't give the country the kind of stability and the american people the confidence to depend on what their government has done. all of this, i think ends up in a thoughtful, patriotic center of american political. we haven't been there enough in recent years. host: along with seeing the title of your, viewers are also seeing cochair of no labels. can you briefly explain what no labels is? guest: no labels as a group that was founded about 11 years ago now, a little earlier than december of 2010. there was an idea to get something done. in this case, a woman who had been a political fundraiser. in 2009, she decided the country was becoming much too partisan. there were terrible partisan rights over how to respond or whether to respond to the 2008 great recession. she worked and talked to people including me, and i encouraged her about setting up an organization which they have discussed this morning. over the years there have been different tactics or strategies. first, with no labels convening groups of republicans and democrats in congress to get them talking together. and then he continued that we tested for bipartisan support among the american people that were popular. then, we spun off a group to raise money for candidates, republicans and mcgrath who really were centrist and willing to work across party lines to get something done for the country and we know that they wanted to do that, and a lot of them, but they were afraid of being cut off by their parties, by interest groups, by big contributors. if you want to work across party lines, if you don't want to march every time your party leader tells you to march because you don't get is the right direction, we are going to work you. and of course, the frustration of our government, a lot of people in both parties feel it has gotten to a point where we have the house problem solvers caucus, 29 democrats, 29 republicans, and sometimes as many as 20 centers equally -- senators to work on problems. again, the most recent compliment that i give them credit for his bipartisan infrastructure reform bill. so that is no labels. to reelect a lot of the republicans and democrats in 2022, and hopefully encourage the election of a centrist president in 2024. i became chairman of the group in 2014 or 2015 after i had been out of the senate for a couple of years, and i'm very proud of what the group has done. i think it is the most effective response to the crisis in our government, trying to work with the two-party system to make it work again for the american people. host: morgantown, west virginia, independent. good morning. caller: good morning, thank you for taking my call. senator lieberman, i want to take a few minutes to give suggestions or tips for just the ordinary voter who would like their elected legislators to compromise. i write letters, i make phone calls. i don't deal that i get through. i feel and can eating against who else is down there, wealthy, special interest. i don't really stand a chance. the other question i had for you is, as you became independent, do you have advice for independents and other voters that aspire to be potential candidates not of the two-party system? thank you. guest: thank you, those are great questions. you know, in the end, the ultimate power in our form of government is with the voters, with the american people. but the question is how do they express that power to the people in office? because otherwise, which is the case now, they political parties, people with big money, people who are ideological activists, most of them would be further to the right or left, have more power than the average citizen like yourself, and the only way to overcome that, don't be frustrated to the point you stop doing it. you have got to write your elected members of congress, you have got to call them your election time, you have got to tell them, hopefully with a lot of other people that you want them to go to washington to make things better. and that requires working across party lines. and really, you want them to remember you and your fellow voters of all parties because that is who they represent, not the party buses or the big attribute or's or even increasingly partisan media in our country. and the final point, wrinkly, if you have the time, and i know it is not always easy for everybody, but get involved supporting candidates reflect those values, regardless of what your party is. and if you really have the feeling and the time, run for office yourself, because we need people with exactly your point of view to get involved and be part of our government. your second question being independent, there is an interesting irony here, which is that i know a lot of places around the country, the largest voters, and sometimes i this way, the fastest-growing political party in america is no party. it is the independents, the unaffiliated voters. these are people who are fed up with the behavior of the two major parties. but independents just because they are independent or because of the way our political system is organized have trouble getting together. but there is a lot of power in independents if they work together. i must say, i thought a lot about this. iran in 2000 the u.s. senate as an independent frankly because i lost the democratic nomination and i said i'm not going to live just one group of already members decide whether i can continue to serve our state and our country, and so i was able in connecticut to run as an independent and god for the people of connecticut, i got reelected as an independent with support from independents, democrats and republicans, so it can be done, but it's not easy. certainly at the national level, we have not elected an independent -- or, you might say a word party candidate for president since 1860 with a fellow named abraham lincoln. incidentally, lincoln ran on a bipartisan ticket, a republican. he chose a democrat, andrew johnson, the governor of tennessee to be his vice presidential running mate to try to unify the country on the divisive issue of slavery of course, the civil war was about to start. so, it can be done but it takes a lot of guts and the circumstances in a particular race to make it happen. the two parties have an almost serious power in our country. the constitution doesn't call for only two parties. the laws don't say you can only have two parties. they have used their power to block third parties from coming in to the political system. so no labels works the major to artese, but if the system doesn't work for the american people, i think people are frustrated enough, angry enough, worried enough about the future of our country in difficult times that there may be opportunities for a third-party or independents. and it could happen in 2020 or depending on who the republicans and demo dominate for president. it is a very serious, difficult, and in some ways exciting time, and i hope you and people like you will not only stay involved, but get more involved things can come out right for the country. host: we have just about a half-hour left with senator joe lieberman and i do have a lot of calls waiting for you jackson, texas, republican. caller: hello? host: go ahead, mark. guest: hi, mark. caller: ok. i want to relate the story from the year 2000. in the year 2000, i attended a piano concert in galveston, marvin hamlisch. and he would talk to the audience and that one when he asked for a show of hands of democrats or republicans and the audience was overwhelmingly republican and he asked why don't you like joe? in one of the members of the audience shouted out "we love joe, we just don't like al." at that point, the audience erupted in applause. i think if the right candidates are running, republicans will vote them i just wanted to let you know that story. guest: i really appreciate that. i don't really know marvin hamlisch but that means a lot to me and i also appreciate the reaction of the route. i am a big fan of al gore myself and grateful to him because if it wasn't for him, i never would have had this rate through opportunity to run for vice president. but i love the stories and i'm hopeful because at this moment in history, they say that people are not blindly partisan. at least, they weren't in 2000. if you given candidates and platforms that they want, they will support people who art their party. in fact, that's part of what happened that elected joe biden in 2020, certainly among independents and hopefully more of that will happen in 2022 and 2024 to benefit republicans and democrats who are problem solvers and centrists. thanks a lot for calling. host: someone on twitter once to know that if you think don mckay had picked for his vice instead of sarah palin, do you believe you and john mccain would have won? guest: well, unfortunately we will never know. just generally, getting to be mccain's friend, personal, not just political was one of the blessings of my life and i miss them, i feel sometimes that i could use advice from him now. usually directions. to me, when they called me, is campaign manager called me in the spring or the summer and i said, are you kidding? i am supporting him, i was as close as two people could be. we had a lot of different opinions politically but we trust -- trusted each other. how could we do it? he is a republican, i'm a democrat. and the campaign manager said i'm serious about this. so i talked to john time i saw him and i said rick told me about this, i don't know how you could do it. you don't have to do it the same way. so i got a reason. i went through the whole it -- bit. and don said, joe, that is the reason i'm thinking about this. the fact that you're a democrat and i am a republican. this country needs bipartisan leadership and the best way to do that is for me to have a democratic awning mate who i -- running mate who i trust to work with. and it really was admirable that he had the guts to do it, knowing in the end people in the republican party would destroy the party and a lot of republicans would walk out of the convention if he attempted to nominate me which is what i expect would have happened if the democratic candidate shows a republican vice presidential and. let me get to your question. do i think mccain and i might have won? we'll never know. john and i talked about it a little bit and we both read that barack obama, he was walking in the clouds at that point on the mountaintop and of course, the republican party's standing because of the great recession was way down. president bush was unpopular even though he is very popular now today. it would have been hard to win. it would have been quite an experience. i always feel that we would have done better and i will always be grateful that john mccain actually seriously thought about doing this and it shows how much he felt that partisanship was weakening america. if there was ever anybody who was a patriot and put our country first both in war and in peace it was john mccain. host: in the pelican state, this is janice, independent. good morning. guest: good morning. caller: hello, mr. lieberman. nice seeing you again. guest: good to hear your voice. caller: humanity is killing our planet, our spaceship. we are polluting the water and the air in the ground. we must wake up for it is too late. government is a natural, god-given starting with family, extending to the community, state, country and world. war is stupid. racism is crazy. we all need to share, to show respect and care. government is of and by and for the people. greed is a cancer. education and training and work is a must. cost and control would take a waiting ration and everyone should pay some taxes. more honesty is essential to all persons and ultimate survival. host: do you have a question for the senator? caller: i -- i -- i'm a sensualist and i wonder if you is. guest: i think that is an inspiring statement. it is full of ideals and values, some of which may be controversial, but i think so many of which are consistent with american values and the public interest. what i want to give you, if you are not involved in the politics, if you take the values and the ideas you just talked about into politics, support a candidate or candidate who best reflect those, or run yourself. see if you can convince the american people. a lot of whom want to do everything you have just said. i appreciate very much what you said, i'm why you called, and i hope others will listen and the same. host: let me take you home to the constitution stating town this is ted, independent. caller: how are you doing? i have a couple of questions for you. you talk about climate change. i honestly believe that washington doesn't leave the effects of climate change because it is doing so much unnecessary traveling. and my question to you, how many cars and fast burning -- from the ice age to melt all the ice? guest: john, i didn't hear the question at the end host: he was talking about all the fossil rules, earning vehicles, the impact that is having on the environment. guest: i agree. over the years, the people who have either been skeptical or accept the fact that to me, the planet is warming and climate change is happening and it is causing more extreme weather, the melting of ice and rising of the sea levels which will begin to were already has begun to get to low-lying countries around the world. i will tell you a story. after the 2000 campaign in which i ran for president and in win, we were good friends by then, he worked mostly on foreign defense policy. andy came over to me and he said during the campaign for president, a lot of people asked me about climate change and i gave them an answer that i wasn't really happy with because i don't understand it. i haven't spent time on it, i know you have. i want to work on it with your staff and my staff and see if i can understand it at her. that is what he did, and then we introduced the first trade bill. and i will tell you what impacted him. when he spoke on it on the floor , he had big, blown up pictures of both angst. the movement of ice and snow the top of some of our tallest mountains. where is that ice going? it is going into the water. vehicle emissions are a big part of it. here is one place, and the government really did lead the way under earlier clean-air legislation laws, one of which had described in great detail how it was adopted in 1990 with bipartisan some work, but it gave the government the authority to require an automobile manufacturer to make cars and trucks more fuel-efficient. as i said earlier, the big jump forward on this came from the private sector which, anyway, was responding more immediately and boldly to what they believed was the public interest in climate change and doing something about emissions. cars, hydrogen fuel cell cars and alternative sources of energy. as i say that, it is hard to find somebody who will say climate change isn't happening, because it is. people see it. the question is what are they willing to do about it? frankly, i hope that one of the things that comes out of joe manchin leadership now is that the climate change art of it will work and there is a compromise and it is not exactly what either side wants, but it represents progress dealing with problem because, again, our children, grandchildren, and their grandchildren are not going to live the lives that we have been blessed to live because the planet will be threatening to them. nature itself. host: mark stone on twitter with a question: how do you feel about democrats trying to end the filibuster and possibly pack the supreme court? guest: i'm very leery of it and my position on the filibuster has changed over the years. i used to feel like this is a majority government, why do you have 60 votes? but you know, it was there, as the people who adopted a long time ago with that, to stop passions from running across the party -- country and being in a war and a balance. but in more recent times, i am not for altering or repealing the mustard i think the most serious challenge to the effectiveness of our government in dealing with their problems domestic and foreign is partisanship. a 60 vote requirement is part of the major remaining senator lugar procedure that requires bipartisanship because it is very rare that either party has 60 vote. today, i would say let's work to get the 60 votes for legislation that ought to be bipartisan. now it is something that democrats would like to do but if they do it, wait until the republicans control the senate and see how angry and frightened democrats are about the republicans what the republicans do without a filibuster. remember, the medicine that you force the senate to take today will be the medicine that is forced angry throat tomorrow and my guess is you will not like. host: several callers waiting. larry and florida, republican, thanks for reading. caller: i have a couple questions, kind of a two-part question. what do you feel about the democrats having in mandate change this country so dramatic over the last year with basically a one-vote majority using the vice president, and then not having that mandate to not have any kind bipartisan legislation to change the election process of the federal takeover of elections? guest: right. so you put your finger on one of the big problems in washington under president biden. i've worked with biden forever. we've served together for 24 years. he is a wonderful person and his whole record personal values in the senate that i watched and was part of was almost always willing to work across party lines to get something done. i think the american people that work for him that and that is out of what some of them were concerned about the divisiveness under president trump when they saw joe biden as a unifier and somebody would find centrist solutions. but there is no question that part of that is what he has tried to do any response to the big problems the country faces, and part of it, this happens with presidents. they want to do something that is lasting legacy. in his case, as you say, the reality was that he has got a 50-50 senate and a four vote democratic majority. his own party is actually big, bold. and i will say something else. you've got to, no matter what your personal agenda is, if you are lucky enough to be elected a leader of a democratic republic like ours, you've also got to keep your eye on what the columns of the moment are. the big problems of the moment, of this time are obviously the covid-19 pandemic and the economy. and now, in nation. the components of the build back better bill, they are good programs in a lot of ways, but most of them, in my opinion, don't deal with central issues. the virus and the economy and elation. i hope that people on the left of the democratic party will not continue to pressure joe biden in a way that doesn't respond to the priority problems, and let him do what is in his nature which is to go bipartisan solutions that are more centrist and get something done about the two big problems we face today as he did with democrats and republicans in congress on the infrastructure reform bills. your question is a great one and that is my answer to it. host: to the badger state, this is tim, democrat, good morning. caller: thank you for taking my call. i just am really curious how a man like aloe trump could take over the republican party. i mean, what he said about john mccain, i didn't agree with him on his political use but there is no doubt in my mind that he was a true american hero, what he went through, but the big russian is how a man who was born into wealth never surface country gets the veteran vote, and how he completely took over rural america when i don't think he has ever got his hands work dirty. he was born into wealth and everything is glitter and gold and he is a womanizer, we all know that. so how he convinced all these people across the country that he was the greatest thing since sliced bread and how he dragged rubio under the bus and they still stand behind him. guest: that is a really important question that everybody in the country should think about. i was offended, really shocked by his comments that president trump made. i guess he was running when he made them in 2016 about john mccain. as you said, you could agree with john or disagree with him, and i did both, but he was a hero and a patriot. here is why i think president trump got elected, and it was totally surprising to me. in other words, the political system has so disappointed, frustrated, and created some of the american people that in 2016, when trump ran against hillary with a lot of experience , and lot of people in the middle, self-described moderates, if you look at the exit polls that year, they wanted a change. and they knew, a lot of them, that trump was a risky choice but they figured he is not a politician and he is accessible in business, so let's give him a try, how bad could it be? instead of senator, secretary clinton who is part of the political establishment. and i think a lot of them decided whether they agree or disagree with the things that president trump did divided the country. if you look at the vote in 2020 and presidential election, the self-described moderates who voted for clinton, but not by much over trump in 2016 voted overwhelmingly for joe biden in 2020. that is the answer. the very problem we are talking about today, partisanship, division, failure of the government to give solutions to our problems and hope to the american people and unity to the american people that elected president trump. and he helped some on some issues, but overall, made the partisanship and division worse and that is why i think people voted joe biden in 2020 and i hope they can realize their hopes for the country to come together and unify again host: ie last two calls in a row and then come back to you for your final thoughts. ken, go ahead. caller: good morning. i just wanted to know how you feel about the jewish population in this country. from history, the democratic party has been anti-semitic. i was wondering how you feel about the jewish community always voting democrat. i haven't been able to wrap my mind around that. host: this is bill in pennsylvania. good morning. caller: hello. about 50 years ago, i was a journalist at the university of maryland. another person at that school was david lightman. i have a lot of respect for him. he went on to work for the baltimore sun. my understanding was he left his son to work for the hartford current. he wanted to cover you. i would imagine you have had a lot of conversations with david. i was curious if you know what he's up to these days. guest: let me start with the first one. i've never been asked that question. i have been asked a question about why some jewish americans recently support democrats because republicans so the argument goes are more supportive of the state of israel. the great reality is there is bipartisan support in washington for a strong u.s. israel relationship. jewish americans may be more like this. whatever their race or religion or nationality or in the else, they are with different points of view. there not a monolith. it is part of the jewish tradition to fight for social justice. a lot of jewish americans have felt the democratic party was the best place to do that. the support for republican candidates among the exit polls has grown in recent years. i don't know that i agree the democratic party as a record of anti-semite is him. since the middle of the 19th century, there is been anti-semi to cement our country. i don't think either of the two major parties has reflected it. that's america. the point i'm making is regardless of your position on issues, we are part of a big family. whatever your religion or nationality or anything else, we disagree with each other, it's important that we come to the center and work across party lines with respect and get something done. the question about david lightman is interesting. i don't know that he came to hartford from the baltimore sun to cover me. he did cover me for a lot of years. we had a close and sometimes -- we disagreed sometimes. he didn't cover me exactly as i would've wanted. david is a great journalist. he is not partisan at all. we need more of that. what is not so good is the media -- newspapers have diminished in their importance. they really are important. the remaining media including social media has become much more partisan and not informed and educated. the last i heard, i don't know if it's still true. david went from the hartford current, thought he was going to retire. he wound up with the mcclatchy newspapers. host: that's where he is now. his twitter profile has him as a political correspondent and reporter for the mcclatchy newspapers. caller: that's great. guest: i must tell you as my own personal bias, he's got a lot of talent. i'm glad he is still writing and covering government. we ended up being good friends. i want to make this final point. the media are part of the problem we are talking about. it has changed a lot. in some ways, it's part of the diversification of immediate. we have three big broadcast networks. i didn't know what walter cronkite's politics were. he just told the news and informed us. today, you go to the cable news networks that reflects your point of view. the unit has improved our lives but through social media, it is helped to divide us and created bigotry and hatred. we've got to figure out a way to discipline ourselves and create some ground rules for the media that don't compromise freedom of expression. that's one of the basic rights we have. i'm an optimist about the future. we are about to begin a new year. i think we have it within ourselves to get america back on the right track. we can do it. that's the message of our history. i am arguing we have done it recently and we can do it again. it's going to happen from the problem-solving bipartisan center of american government and politics. thanks for having me on. it's been a good discussion. i appreciate it. host: i hope we can do it again in 2022. the book, the centrist solution, how we made government work. thank you. >> this way, watch washington journal's special holiday week, featuring live segments with the new writer. coming up tuesday morning, economist heather mcghee discusses the book some of us -- though some of us. watch for special authors series or on our new mobile video outcome at c-span now. >> c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we are funded by these television companies and more, including cox. >> cox is committed to providing internet. cox, bringing us closer. >> cox supports c-span as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. >> next, military officials testified on the possibility of releasing prisoners from guantanamo bay. members of the senate judiciary

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