From a country that never gave us ten cents, china. We are losing a more important battle. The education race in the east. What can we learn . Ill bring you the answers. And why did this ship end up crashing into rocks in broad daylight . Why was this oscar announcement so screwed up . Looking at how things can go very wrong very quickly and how we can avoid catastrophe. First, here is my take. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It is a secular celebration in america. As an immigrant, i have much to be thankful for. Plus im an optimist who tends to see the story of this country as making progress over the long run. Lately, it has been tough to maintain that sunny outlook. The constitution republic and democratic character seem to be in danger of the breakdown. Listen to the language of the president. Our radical democrat opponents are driven by hatred prejudice and rage. They want to destroy you and they want to destroy our country as we know it. Words like treason and coup are casually tossed around. Some imagine the impeachment inquiry would produce evidence and facts that would cut through the spin and fantasies, but in fact the opposite has happened. Can america survive through such poisonous times . In the past it has, it has survived the battles between slave owners and abolitionists. Neat nam and watergate. Could this time be different . Alas, yes, in a thought provoking essay called, america ends. Undergoing a transition no stable democracy has experienced. Its historically dominant group is on its way to becoming a political minority and its minority groups are asserting their coequal rights and interests. He acknowledges there have been smaller moments before, but those have been wrenching, often stretching america to the breaking point. It took a civil war to end slavery and then almost 100 years of struggle to end jim crow. The United States passed the chinese exclusion act, and in turn 120,000 japanese americans before opening its gates to immigrants from all over the world. Coupled in demographics is one more worrying trend about the character, the everexpanding power of the presidency. Whatever you think of the charges against donald trump on russia or ukraine, his noncooperation with congress in the impeachment inquiry should trouble you deeply. If congress cannot exercise its core constitutional oversight capacity, the presidency will have become an elected dictatorship. Weve been going down this road for a while. Authors have written about the imperial presidency in 1973. The legislation and culture after watergate led many to believe that matters were under control. In fact, in a 2006 reissue of the took t presidency has become stronger than ever. The furor after 9 11, the president gained the ability to snoop on private americans, use military force at whim, torture prisoners and detain people indefinitely. The president of the United States can now order the execution of american citizens who are deemed by him to be terrorists without due process. Attorney general bill barr believes despite all this history, that the great problem in america is the presidency is too weak. He has enabled a policy of stonewalling and silence, in which Top Administration officials behave almost as if congress does not exist. People often ask what the founders would think of america today. It seems to me that the greatest shock to them would be the incredible growth of president ial power. Profound demographic change, fierce political backlash and a presidency that refuses to be checked. My optimism is wearing thin this thanksgiving. For more, go to cnn. Com fareed and read my Washington Post column this week. And lets get started. Extraordinary is an overused word in the modern vernacular, but i dont think its hyperbole to say we are living in extraordinary times in the United States and i often wonder how historians 20 or 30 or 50 years from now will view this moment. Thats unknowable for now, but what is knowable is how historians are looking at it. I have doris concerns goodwin. Her latest book is leadership in turbulent times. She has a master class available in history and leadership. Rick perilstein is a historian of the conservative movement and a chronic cool of the presidency and res ignition of richard nixon. And we have the billionaire businessman, the cofounder of the Carlisle Group but one of his great passions is American History and hes just published a book called the american story, conversations with master historians. Before we begin, david, i want you to explain what your book is and how it really came out of an act of educating american congressmen about the countrys history. I have a concern that people dont know as much about our history as they should. Recently in a survey, threequarters of americans could not name the three branches of government and only onethird could name a branch of government. We dont teach history as much as we used to or civics. And members of congress are in the same category. They know more than the average citizen and they should know more than they probably do. So i started a series at the library of congress to interview our historians. Ive now done about 50 of them and ive taken about 18 of them and put them in a book and distilled the interviews a bit, edited, and its designed to give people a look at American History through the eyes of the greatest historians we have talking about washington, adams, fdr is so forth. Lets get to the substance. You wrote this great book about the end of the nixon presidency, invisible bridge and you point out when we think about the impeachment hearings, there was a lot more going on with nixon than just the impeachment hearings. Describe the kind of breadth of the investigation. Well, by the time nixon resigned, what the public referred to when they said watergate were things that had gone back to the beginning of his presidency. It was 1969 when he did his own phone tappings. He was so terrified about leaks. A what the investigation found out was he approved a memo recommending breakins of his opponents. Watergate was followed by payoffs with secret funds to the burglars, but even as they were investigating all of this, they would turn over rocks and turn over rocks and each rock would reveal, you know, another thing. Nixon using public funds for his private residences. And all of this was discovered through not just one impeachment inquiry . It was of course the media and her sh and bernstein. But also in 1973, the senate voted with only two votes in opposition to have a special committee that would investigate nixon and have public televised hearings. And they were galvanizing. And the reason two people voted against it is they were a ploovd at a time when no one could have imagined that the white house was involved. You lived through that period and what is your sense when you look at that impeachment and this one . What are the differences . I think the main difference when you think about it is that when those impeachment hearings started, only 19 of the country thought he should be impeached. And then you watched that process unfold, and they educated public sentiment, both the events and the hearings and the discoveries. By the end, 57 thought he should be impeached. And then that great moment that you know so well about, you both do, when finally the day before he resigns, barry gold water and a couple of other republicans come to tell him what the situation is. And hes wondering can i get 34, maybe hell get 20. And goldwater says theres only four and im not one of them. It wasnt a small compartmentized thing. Now theyre going after one bad thing he did. But the key at that time i think was that the republicans decided in the House Judiciary Committee to vote in favor of an impeachment article. And right now it seems as if its very split by party lines. So nixon was unable to hold the Republican Party in the house and ultimately unable to do so in the senate. Today it appears that the president is able to hold his Republican Party. And it shows that the big challenge, i think, is that they have to educate public sentiment about what is an abuse of power, what does it mean to violate the rule of law, what is bribery and an impeachable oh phones. Why are we impeaching him now . Thats what lincoln said, with public sentiment, anything is possible. Without it, nothing is. And that country was educated under nixon and it came out fine in the end. Ford said our National Nightmare is over. Presumably the opiniorepubli are doing this is because they recognize that trump was the base of the party and the entire party with him, that if they were to break with trump, they would lose their primaries and elections. So is it that the country is so much more polarized that theres simply no prospect of the 50 50 i think polarization is a poor metaphor. The Democratic Party loves bipartisanship. We nominate a guy who says there is no red america, there is no blue america. Our guy in 1988 who says this election is not about ideology. But in these four books ive written, im writing about the surrender of a party to almost au authoritarianism. The fact is were at a point now, which basically the things that would get a republican there was something called the john Burke Society. You guys will all remember that. And they said eisenhower is a communist conspiracy. Back in the early 60s, you had to disavow the john Burke Society in order to be taken seriously in the party. Now people are saying things like that. The idea that ukraine sabotaged the election. The congress is a pretty good barometer. If the American People were dead set against President Trump, congress would reflect that. Right now the Republican Party is intensely supporting him and if that changes, it would be different. But right now i think President Trump has a much better hold on the party than nixon did. And the media is so different. Youre hearing two different narratives now. When you saw the meetings last week, there was one narrative on msnbc about people who had come forward to tell the truth and then you listen to the other channels, maybe perhaps fox, and youll hear a different narrative. So its much harder to bring a consensus in the country when youve got the split in the cable networks. 10 of the congress, you know, represents 75 of 75 of the congress can represent 10 of the public. Stay with me. When we come back, ill ask the panel what history tells us about the other side of the aisle, the democrats and their multitude of president ial wannabes. Tech so you think this chip is nothing to worry about . Well at safelite, we know sooner or later every chip will crack. These friends were on a trip when their windshield got chipped. So they scheduled at safelite. Com. They didnt have to change their plans or worry about a thing. Ill see you all in a little bit. And i fixed it right away with a strong repair they can trust. Plus, with most insurance a safelite repair is no cost to you. Customer really . tech being there whenever you need us thats another safelite advantage. Singers safelite repair, safelite replace. Im part of a community of problem solvers. We make ideas grow. From an everyday solution. To one that can take on a bigger challenge. We are solving problems that improve lives. To one that can take on a bigger challenge. Mucinex cold flu allinone. Fights. Oh no. Nonono. Did you really need the caps lock . Mucinex cold and flu allinone. Makes my butt look good fancy but not too fancy no matter why you love your clothes, care for them with woolite. Woolite keeps clothing looking like new and cleans with just twelve ingredients versus the leading detergents twentyfour. Woolite. Less ingredients. More love. And we are back. Youre a democrat. Im registered as an independent. You wosrked for jimmy carter. I want to ask you looking at it as a historian. When the democrats nominate somebody who is a kind of fresh face from the outside who kind of captures the imagination of the country, carter, clinton, obama, they win. When they nominate the kind of stalward standard carrier of the party, they dont do so well. If you look at history it tells you what likely will happen in the future. So if you look at history here, it looks as if a fresh face is more likely to win a general election. But the party is obviously i would say pleased with some of the people that have been around for a while. Biden is clearly the frontrunner i would say right now. And remember, when people vote, they dont look at history patterns as much as what they feel today. So i cant say its easy to pick who is going to be the nominee. There are many candidates there. Right now, four years ago, you wouldnt have predicted probably that President Trump would become president. Its just too early to say. If you go back the last ten president ial elections, a year in advance of the election, i dont think you would have predicted the person who would have won the elections. You wouldnt have predicted barack obama a year in advance. Because they were all trailing. And barack obama, when he got the nomination he was trailing behind Hillary Clinton the first time way behind before the iowa caucus obviously happened and then he won the iowa caucus and went on to win the nomination. My point is a year in advance is too early to say. When you look at the primaries, people say so many people, bloomberg, is this more cr cray yotic . The theserrible thing i woul admit, i wish we could go back to Old Convention center. On september, labor day, it would begin and we would have lives all between the elections. Of course it was Teddy Roosevelt when wanted it in order to beat taft. The New York Times printed an editorial because the campaign against teddy and taft, the first primary system was so awful that the New York Times said this is the first president ial primary. We hope its the last. Foreigne foreigners must be laughing at us. There is a problem with the way its set up. Its democratic to have more people vote. But how are we judging the candidates in these primaries, how they do in a debate, who squings who. Thats nuts, theyre not going to be doing that when theyre president. How much money have they raised. We should be looking at what kind of leaders theyve been in the past. Theyve all come from somewhere. We dont need a magazine article. We should be talking constantly what kind of team do they have around them. Do they share credit, shoulder blame, do they have humility, do they have resilience, are they accessible, what is their ambition like . We should know these things. Thats what we should be asking them in the debates. Have you failed. One question was asked, but i would love to see those leadership things as an index for judging them. Rick, let me ask you about the question of how to win for a democrat. So there are essentially two theories. One is, you need to bring out the base. All those people who voted for obama but didnt vote for hillary. The other is you need to get to all the persuadable people in the middle in these states. It feels like those are obviously, ideally you would do both. Elizabeth warren brings out the base and joe biden reaches the people in the middle. What does history tell you is the way to go . I think the answer is political science, actually, which its very clear that there are very few people who are persuadable. We have people that are called patents, but when we drill down and say what do they believe, how do they vote. They tend to vote for one party and call themselves independent because it sounds more independent. Or theyll say theyre not republicans because here libertarians. Its not a perfect process, but its a process that i think is the envy of the world in some respects. We actually have a lot of votes and a lot of primaries and caucuses, and i think a lot of people would like to have a vote and vote many different times. So i dont think its a perfect system. But for right now i think its as good a system as we can probably get. Let me ask you as a billionaire, what do you think of Elizabeth Warrens desire to tax the hell out of you . Well, i dont make the laws. Whatever the laws are, im going to comply with. So i pay whatever taxes im supposed to pay and i pay a lot of taxes and im happy to do so as an american who came from modest circumstances. My parents didnt graduate from high school or college and i got lucky in the Business World so im happy to pay the taxes. If the ways and Means Committee which initiates legislation and the finance Committee Goes along with it, if they pass a bill, ill comply with it. I dont know that theres a lot of support, but if the law is the law, ill comply with it, of course. On that note, thank you all for a very interesting conversation. Next on gps, many on wall street would have you believe that Elizabeth Warren is cut from the same cloth as karl marks. In a moment i will introduce you to a politician who would like to do something that would be considered socialism. Its not bernie sanders. How did you find greatgrandmas recipe . Were related to them . Were portuguese . I thought we were hungarian . Grandpa, can you tell me the story again . Behind every question is a story waiting to be discovered. Backseat chefs peer inside your oven behind every question but youve cleaned off all the bakedon business from meals past with easy off so, the only thing they see is that beautiful bird go ahead, let em judge your colds gonna make you a zombie tomorrow. Wrong. New mucinex nightshift fights my cold symptoms so i can sleep great and wake up human. 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