Transcripts For CSPAN2 After Words 20150920

Plymouth, minnesota. Tell us what happened. Guest what happened as i was wearing the first pair of pants ever to be worn to elementary by a girl. It was a Public School in minnesota gets to be 10 below zero and i wore a multicolored flower bell bottom pants. I was so proud of these pants and sure enough i was called in to mrs. Claytons office, the principal who had this enormous beehive haircut and still remember to this day. Im sitting there trembling as she says you can wear your trousers in your culotte enter pantaloons at home, but it he can high school you wear dresses. I literally got a permission slip, walked home to my house to the woods somehow, changed into address and i shed a few tears. Ill say that much. I use that example of why i wrote the book to show off the road all changing culture that i ended up being able to wear pan, being able to be the girl that could respond to the mrs. Quaid is that the world. At that moment i did wish he said. The one tangent to the story is from the book comes out i got a call and they said i mike r. Now. He says i did my quaid said about my mom. I said was true. She did take me out of the school. And what he said about her hair with a beehive. I sent a check of the internet, she has a beehive. I have a lot of respect and all of a sudden you hear this voice saying this is al. It is now franken, my colleague. That is how the book started. Host one of the things i took from the story is that it is a process to learn how to stand up for yourself in a situation and it takes some time especially for girls to figure out how to do that. Guest its not about girls. Its people from regular backgrounds growing up in a middleclass neighborhood trying to get people to run for something or get involved in the political process. For me, my teachers were credible mentors back then. She was in that nice that other teachers, the one that caught me off the front of the doors and got stuck on that one of first grade teacher with a bright red hair who would literally stand in the back of the class and yell speak louder. I cant hear you when i gave presentations. She would rather my report card, speak louder. She would put a space between each letter. Those are people that influence my life and made it easier as they went ahead. Every step of the way from then to the last two years for a link to a show with john mccain and all those male leaders. John did start the meeting then they would look over at the end job but said no. Senator klobuchar is the democratic lead him astray. Your dresser next. Those people have not been on women, the people of help to me and others along the way i thought about what the book is about. Host in about the senator next door you read a lot about your family am your daddy was a long time about that columnist for the tribune and worked for the associated press. In the year you were born, he played an Important Role in the president ial election. Tell us about that. Guest my dad was the one that called the election and this is a situation where illinois, california and minnesota were the last three state valve. It is down to the wire. California ended up going to nixon. So theres my dad, a young reporter said this is what happened. I got this from interview in may god and then verify memories. My dad told george moses, his boss. My dad told george moses he had little doubt the region would go for kennedy. If you grow up on minnesotas iron range in the 20th century he later said he knew they had as many bars as churches and second that the prospects of northeastern minnesota in 1960 were as bright as the Temperance Movement chances in west duluth. He emphatically told moses and northeastern minnesota a workingclass called kennedy would most likely pick up two thirds of the vote en masse when the state and kennedy won minnesotas 11 electoral votes, that would put them over the top. After hearing to reporters, moses placed a call to the ap general desk in new york sam blackmon. We are going to elect kennedy told blackmon. Violence followed. Ive got two words for you guys he said. Soap was my dad would go to edwards let that be our in his early 30s about the chance to read the National Story that declared john f. Kennedy the victor and thus the next president. A sweaty fingers flew across his old underwood typewriter hammering the keys fiercely with no time to follow the usual protocol of three carbon copies underneath. To beat the competitor United Press International to the punch, my dad would hand a page to moses containing a single paragraph at a time. Moses to check the copy for typos and run it to the teletype operator paragraph by paragraph that a carbon to review and each page including a small piece of the story my dad kept yelling to the operator, bob, how did the last paragraph and . After a night of little sleep, bob would yell back with me. , jim. With a period. He sent out across the wires at 12 33 p. M. Eastern time the next day appeared in newspapers across the country as james reston of the New York Times six lane the next day the call in and was fundamental. At 12 33, senator kennedy clenched minnesota in the election. 13 minutes later mr. Nixon made a formal compassion. After nixon conceded, my dad celebrated his groundbreaking story with moses and johnson. Maverick doing the story. I almost died twice and barely missed a hernia at the party was briefed. My dad went to lunch at a nearby swedish cafe to return to the office. He was given his next assignment three pigs stuck in a mud pit airfare about minnesota. He died in a murder story. That was the year i borne. A year of Endless Possibilities of new houses and cars and refrigerators. You hear when a kid from of minutes out of it rather started calling the president ial election. They took a risk and elected a new vigorous leader in catholic thought. It was a good year to be born in. They did and that getting it right. Did i spell retired as of the old writings to help confirm that. It was time to go back and remember those times. Host when you were little girls and your dad was covering politics, sports and other things, do you think he thought tucker would be a u. S. Citizen . Guest grossmont are and not as much, but my dad had ambitions for me. He wanted me to be a judge that he also encouraged me inspired me and we would go on this crazy trips together that were long and he taught me how to persevere. Would you go 100 miles in a day in your dad that i think we can do 20 more, that is a lesson in perseverance. Host the story about paris on bike rides are terrifying. He read about wearing no helmet, going 145 miles. At one point i got off my bike, laid it on the highway shoulder and pretended i had fallen. He did not buy that. Just dont know. Part of this was he was writing about the stories for the newspaper. We had a map showing progress but the second part was really a gift from him in my mind for us to get to know each other again, a teenager who didnt want have long dinners at their dad in talks or how he was doing and what was happening with his love life. This is a much better way and it was my dads idea. Host your parents got divorced because of your father struggle with alcoholism which you write about. We fully aware of what he was dealing with . Guest when i was really young he was not. Around the time i was born he wasnt drinking that much but it got worse and worse. Part of it was the life of the reporter. People would go to drinks with cops, football coaches and covering vikings at the time. The other part was his own background. There were 15 feet underground in my grandpa would go all the time and drink my dad grew up seeing now. He clearly was an alcoholic and started to drink more and more and when i was growing up i remember being in a car with him when he went off the road after a Football Game no one was hurt but its clearly because he was drinking and we got home and he cried and told me he wouldnt do it again. Then he had been drinking related arrests. Back in the 70s they didnt do much about it. He got the news, it they didnt do much about it. Finally before my wedding in 1993, he got a third dwi for driving related incident with alcohol and this time the laws had changed and i was treated very seriously. I went in with him and his lawyer and the counselor and talk to the judge and we went through everything that that it happened in our lives. He said full text drinking for a while, then he went back to it. He went to treatment and that is when he found redemption. He wrote about how his religion and a get through the time. Because it speaks about it all the time and his whole life has been turned around. Hes happily married for the third time and so i was able to see not only the difficulty is and badness of alcoholism, but also my dad recovering that redemption. Host he is open about it, but was a hard to write about it in your book . Guest my dad has written a lot about it before so thats made it different. For me personally yes. Obviously i showed it to him ahead of time because i wanted to make sure he was okay with it. It is a hard thing because it to sit back and think about the effect of how he perjured it to the world. But it meant to me and my mom and sister. Host another family crisis helped propel you into politics into a political career. Tell us what happened. Host my daughter was very sick when she was born. She couldnt swallow. They came in and got us in the middle of the night and that she is very sick you cant swallow. They thought there was a tumor she mightve had cerebral palsy. They couldnt figure out what was wrong. She was in intensive care with tubes and Everything Else back then they had a really got kicked out of the hospital in 24 hours even if the baby was in intensive care. I had no sleep at all. They were giving me the stuff on breastfeeding and i got out and it was really a difficult thing. When she started to get better come it took about a year and half, but somewhere in the middle of their she was still fed by tubes for a year and a half. I went to the legislature and worked is either good or legislature and talk about things wikipedia is things wikipedia has amazed and embarrassed pretty much all male legislators. We got one of the first laws guaranteeing mothers a 48 hour hospital days. They ended up taking it on the national level. I also learned how to get something done. Ended up at the Conference Committee. People couldnt say they were against it, but some lobbyists are trying to delay at so i brought six pregnant women to the Conference Committee who are friends of mine and they outnumber the lobby is two to one. The legislator when should this take effect, the pregnant moms raise their hand and said now and it didnt even wait until august 1st. It went to effect the day the governor signed it. Host tell us how your daughter is doing now. Guess who shes doing much better. Shes a great kid. She was sick a lot growing up because she was so small. But she kind of came out of that with a lot of help from swallowing air piston doctors and is just a unique condition that didnt lead to any other major disability. Shes a lot of fun and she also didnt mind having the story told. I dont also wouldve been her choice, but shes a great kid. Host if there is a thread that goes through your new book, it is summed up by a writer you quote in the book. Obstacles in the past are not obstacles. They are the past. What does that mean to you . Guest to me than if everyone has things they confront. The key is what you do with them and how do you move on and do you try to at least gain some strength from what happens to you and then try to help other people. That is the key that a lot of people who become Public Servants and i try to make a case in the book that not everyone is a cartoon character duking it out every day on tv, but a lot of people go into it for the right reasons and has to do with things that happen in their lives that either an elected office or back at the time. That is a lot of what i view my job and i view these things that have happened to me and i dont mean none of them pollyanna way, that they were gifts in that they made me understand how other people thought, how do parents of kids with permanent disabilities felt and how difficult that is what its like to have an alcoholic in the family and how that led to work on drug courts are some of the treatment nospaceoff right now proposed in the senate. Host minnesota house of politicians from Hubert Humphrey to Jesse Ventura, and of course Walter Mondale has played a role in your career. How did you need him . Guest Walter Mondale is someone everyone still loves in minnesota. I first got involved working with him when i was in college and applied for an internship. I ended up getting the job. It was so glamorous. I showed my first in executive office building. I show up in my assignment ready to read it a policy piece was to do the furniture inventory of every piece to crawl under the desk, with the numbers down. It took three weeks and as i like to tell kids that didnt turn to me, that was my first government job in washington and this is my second promise to take them seriously. Host Walter Mondale was someone who knew for years. What you take from his career by what he had ever taught you are told you by example. Guest the stability dignity he has is something missing in todays politics and i tried my best to crack is that in how he would treat people. When i was working with him later at the law firm, the republicans do with colin to talk about issues because he viewed his job in that way and he didnt use a lot of heated rhetoric. Some people made fun of him for being too norwegian. He was a lot of fun when he wasnt on tv but there was some value to that and it helped them get done. Host when you are more politically a tip yourself you addressing the Democratic National convention in 2004 and he gave you advice. I wonder if you tell the story. Guest the background is an elected county attorney and john kerry is running for president. My first major involvement been a speaker. The first time with terry came to minnesota and introduced and i made the rookie mistake at this big rally. I said i give to you it is up there with me, the next president of the united states, john kerry. The crowd goes wild. So obviously think im done. He comes over and says i know you arent done yet, so why did you finish up. Posted at such a strong grip on the microphone. Guest he later told me it was being nice but i knew i couldnt get away from you. Later they have me speak at the boston convention. I had gotten the speech together. You cant say certain things. They had all these rules. I had a tiny joke, wasnt that funny language and with the words of someone famous in texas. She said what america wants is something as big as this promise. They told me i could use it. The morning of the speech, Walter Mondale came to me. Memorized your speech. I said i should be fine. Note that is he said. Remember that time at the convention when carter said hubert or ratio hornblower . Alastair teleprompter screwup he said. Dont trust it. Memorize the speech. This advice struck me as a little out of date. I told him i would memorize my speech and i did. Later he turned up at the appointed hour and found myself backstage with patrick leahy, Chuck Schumer and charlie ringo. Dont ask me why the conventions organizers could meet together with highpowered congressional crowd but they did. The Convention Hall was fairly full. Senator leahy was just before me. He started into his speech but half a minute he stopped and looked around. Teleprompter had gone dark. He made a joke suggesting the malfunction was tied to a wellpublicized fight he recently had with Vice President dick cheney. Eventually someone brought out a copy of senator leahys remarks. Omar i stood waiting at the corner of the stage i could see Walter Mondale. He was sitting right in the front row. I made eye contact and ive never seen a more pointed i told you so not in my life. I nodded back. I stepped up to the podium. Someone gave me a printed copy and at some point the telecom or cannot the life that i rarely let data i never looked at the printed copy. Thanks to Walter Mondale had memorized my speech and i was only at the crowd. I had some fun in the speech went great. I use the bush line. You are elected from minnesota. Is your gender and asset or liability . Weve had two strong women and the majority leader in the 80s and before that in the 70s the secretary of state had run and they both lost. People would literally ask the newspaper editor to save you think a woman can win. But they reference to kay bailey hutchison, i said well, a woman one in texas. I think a woman can win. So i finally ended up i didnt emphasize gender that much because of the issue in the other two women and i would just say some of the guys to speak to these big rooms of workers and someone would ask that question and last time i checked cap the voters were men. If i was just running as a woman i wouldnt win. I said so im running as a prosecutor of what i want to do for the state of minnesota. At the end of the election when i won, one of the newspaper reporters who writes for the review noted i had emphasize gender. It didnt mean i didnt have a lot of women support. I had a group called amy angels that meant a lot to me. We did do a lot in terms of Gathering Women support. Host we have a Record Number of women serving in the u. S. Senate right now but its only 20. Fewer than 50 women elected in our country. For the 20 women now in the senate, do you think a women senators tend to behave differently than the male senators . Guest i do. Is a recent study that showed the Womens Centers tend to sponsorship is both more and get things done more and they are more bipartisan. Its not just anecdotal. As seen time and time again whether Susan Collins and they shut down and we put together 14 and whether it was debbie stab at no, barbara mikulski, patty murray. Youve seen Barbara Boxer working with Mitch Mcconnell last month to get a transportation bill done added the u. S. Senate. A lot of times you see women showing this leadership and theres a lot our trust and we have her every other month dinner and what we say about the man and we never talk about them. Thats an important part of the senate. The countries never elected a woman to Office Although sarah palin was vice for public and of those ticket and Hillary Clinton is now favored to win the democratic nomination for president in 2016 and Carly Fiorina is running in the gop race this time. To what degree do you think gender as a factor . Guest weve gotten better now, but a lot of men give money to men in a lot of men are in business and so the more we get women in business will be to our advantage. The second piece is sometimes its elite for people to think of women in that management role and thats what you seem percentage smaller of women governors and of course the woman president has not been achieved even though its been achieved in many countries. I think the time has come and people are starting to see more and more women in leadership roles and they want their own daughters in leadership roles and that change is thinking. Host Hillary Clinton, you are supporting in her president ial campaign. Is it the same criticism. Every other official has gotten criticism and happen to everyone. How do you move on. I talk in the book in the exit patients are people do the job and then you have this beachwear you show your stuff and you can be tear to your advantage if you do it right. The second thing i talk about the harassment and it must be taken seriously in the sexist names in so many races are patty murray is called a mom in issues or Claire Mccaskill gets the opponent talking about as is the fault of the women, all that kind of stuff. Yuko legitimate thats what they called it. When you go through those things it starts to boomerang and hurts the opponents who say these things. I had someone to work for my opponent call me a prom queen. I wish. And daddies little girl girl, things like that. Nobody knows because i did make a big deal about it. No one notices that because it was so minor and necessary but if you do it the rings. Some of that is behind us. The real challenge is still the thing so hard to define when youre a minority, whether you are official minority or a minority because youre a woman. Uis wonder sometimes with my not included in the game to work on the grid because they have no women and they wanted to hang out with each other or suggest to people they wanted to have in the group and its really hard to define those things. Shara samberg has talked a lot about that in been in some of the columns being kept out of power and rooms. At the leadership level and i do not discount the words are her rest and is still going on. That is where the fight is now and gets into the president ial level. Make sure we are calling people when they exclude women from the decisionmaking worlds. Host one of the things weve seen as candidates as well as handling charges are offensive names in a different way. The media focus and i think she has responded. She understands when there are requests for the server she has complied. Has voluntarily given over 35000 emails. She has acknowledged that she tasers possibility for what happened, but its her response ability and she has agreed to hearings in front of the house of representatives so she can be publicly asked questions, so i think when you combine the review of the email and the release of the emails by the state department, with the public hearings, with her responsibility my hope is then that when all of that is complete we can then move to some of the major differences between her and some of the people on the republican side who are talking about deporting kids that were born in this country or talking about building a wall from canada and saying things like one of the problems for American Workers is they are not working hard enough. I think those kind of issues and the serious policy protection she is putting forward whether its about people who are hooked on Prescription Drugs, we have Serious Problems in this country that later leads to heroin abuse or the work she is doing on trying to change our kamran Campaign Finance laws are so temperamental right now to the economic proposal and thats where i hope we will get within the next few months. Host youre in the same senate class as Bernie Sanders, a senator from vermont who has exceeded just about everyones expectations perhaps including his own. Why do you think he has managed to strike a chord . Guest Bernie Sanders speaks from the heart and i came into the senate with him. We are friends and we have worked together on a number of things and im not that surprised because he is someone who has spoken from the heart and has a strong grassroots following and i just look at this as not as a negative. I look as a positive that we have a robust, interesting primary going on and i think Hillary Clinton made clear from the beginning that she met what she said that it will not be a coronation, that there will be debates and contested primary. Thats whats happening and i will say there are major differences between the democratic side of the republican side and i see some more similarities in the views on the democratic side, but i also that attacks have been so caustic. Putting their cell phone numbers out on tv, for example, thats more than a prank. These kinds of things, i think, are important as we look forward as we get to one candidate on our side. Host if you want to have a robust interesting primary on the democratic side, will be lucid by having democratic Vice President joe biden run. Dc he will will run . Guest i have a lot of respect for the Vice President. He is loved by all of us and hes come to state many times and i think you will have to make his own decision based on what he wants to do in ways family wants them to do. Host you mentioned Jesse Ventura earlier in the conversation and who is kind of in his ways a predecessor of donald trump and its an outsider who manages to get the attention and support of a lot of voters and we will see what happens with Donald Trumps campaign, but what you think is behind Donald Trumps surprising appeal on the republican side, but with a lot of americans . Guest as i point out in my book i was actually at the front line when just he first got elected, when he signed and his supporters would be in the back of the line and we were a lot less funded. I was running for county prosecutor and he was running for governor and we somehow always got to the back of the parade and his people would have the signs that say retaliate in 98, and i think that kind of sentiment captures how some people are understanding the feeling about institutions and there are people that are mad at governments, meta business and there are people that just be left behind and you can see that with the income inequality and whats happening in this country, so i think in that way that has fueled some of this of the donald trump and we will call it a phenomenon, but i think its really terms of how people are feeling and as i said earlier i went to get to the debate stage because i would have the candidates talk about what are your Real Solutions between the twos parties and what will really help people. The thing i would say about the jesse trump comparison is that jesse came on really at the end. I was with him. He was running a Good Campaign route the year, but he really didnt catch people attention until after the state fair. Then in minnesota thats the end of august in case you didnt catch it and then the other thing is that jesse, while he was productive he didnt say that things about his opponents in the same way that trump, so there is some comparison, but a lot of differences. Host you have had experience in politics, do you think its possible that donald trump could be the nominee . Guest anything is possible in politics i have seen that in our state and i dont rule anything out. I think the fact that he now has said that he would not run as an independent, which is what ventura did. He was that way when there are two Party Candidates on either side and now he will run in that republican primary and i think that will be quite a path for him. Host your book is called the senator next door. What is that mean . Guest i named it that in part because i wanted to bring back this idea up representing your neighbors, so the fundamental idea of democracy that you get elected by her neighbors either city council or the u. S. Senate and you represent your neighbors. You 02 them to act like a neighbor, so if you have someone next to you that you dont always agree with in your neighborhood or you dont really like, you have to find some way to get along and that is not what has been happening in washington, so i make the case here that there are a lot of good people that went up for good reason and i tell good stories of getting bills done in working across the aisle weather permit was senator hogan in north korea dakota or senator mccain. And i make the case that we were to our neighbors, and who we represent, to not act like boxers in the corner of her ring, but to find the Common Ground in the common line. Host you talk about in a way redefining political courage because we think of political courage as one standing up for principles and yielding on the above principles, but you make the argument that there is perhaps more courage to be willing to make economize. Guest it does and an example like Lindsey Graham coming out for soviet you got a lot of grief on the right for that or would like for a certain kind of , that public option debate and i thought it should be a competitive public option became to that a formal care act, which, of course. Supported and i got grief on the left for that. There is example after example of the people who show courage, in my mind, when theyre willing to stand next to someone they dont always agree with and come up with a combo drive instead of just going to a chamber and giving a speech alone. But, that has turned out in these recent days to be pretty easy to do. Whats hard to do with your own base, is to try to find a way that you can reach Common Ground. Host a lot of americans look at washington and say they throw up their hands and say that the dysfunctional capital. How is that ability or the willingness to make optimizes to get things done, how did that get lost in and is there a way to bring about . Guest i think first of all is the way the money works, its a denture memo, rise because with the independent expenditures in citizens united, which is why support a constitutional amendment and anything we can do to reverse that decision come at the money has to go to either the independent expenditures, individuals who want you to get things done in the happens all the time. Someone that does that, thats her base of support, but the money tends to go to the extreme and they want you to be there and they dont want you to cross over and so that they believe a problem. The second problem is just the way it works now with social media that we love and thats how we get our message is out dreck the two are citizens, but rumors and things spread again from one side to the other and a sometimes written up and sponsored by Interest Groups that also the media, of course, not every discussion is like this on our appearance today and a lot of the discussion are people screaming at each other going back and forth and that is in encouraged and you get a lot of attention like donald trump and you get a lot of attention when you act like that and when you tend to be more consolatory and it doesnt mean you dont stand your ground. One of the things i love and david brooks new book is he talks about what moderation means and its not necessarily the middle of two points, its unnecessarily your character when he talks about right dwight eisenhower, but john mccain doesnt exactly have that moderate character, but its whether in politics you can see inside the other person views whether or not you can put yourself in their shoes and try to figure out where that point, ground is. If this idea that you can stand your ground, and look for Common Ground. I think that has been missing and i think some of it involves the way politics is no longer just, lets try to figure this out. Every single thing we do is covered by a second on buzz feed or linked in a tweet and its an anvil its unbelievable, so its harder to find those moments, yet as i tell in the book there are Great Stories of people that the immigration immigration go in the senate thats where people came together. Host but its divided in the house. Guest we have a roadmap for the next president read it got done in the senate it was not easy and people took grief on both sides. You have the recent infrastructure bill that i just brought up that is a great example, so you have those examples of courage and my own personal experience with that as well as others and i think its important for citizens to know that happens and reward that. Host in the wake of the Supreme Court decision including the unprecedented amount of money being spent in political campaigns, there is more money is not disclose where you are not sure who is putting the money up. When youre a us senator, how much time and attention does the prospect of raising money for your next campaign, how big a world does that play in your daytoday life. Guest its nothing like some of these are dealing with independents expenditures. So come i tell the story here that me i started just having never raise more than 500 a person in a local das race and suddenly having to raise 10 million and i literally ended up having to i tried to call people nationally and no one called me back. Finally, i when they give it up in august because no one was calling back and i went through every old rolodex do you remember those and every book i could find directly raised 17000 from an exboyfriend. As my husband points out, its expanding base and so youre given an environment and you have to find a way to survive and thats how i look at it. I do not let it dominate my days to read i have been fortunate enough to have strong and pain for the real grassroots orientation that made a difference and ive reached out a lot of casiano. I have not had to have those kinds of major partisan warfares, but its not to say that for those races that do, it can be up to the fight. You have to be. Host you mentioned all franken calling you after he read your book. When he was elected, some of the Senate Leaders take you decide to give you some advice noting you with the senior senator from minnesota, but that with a celebrity compatriot that thinga challenge. Guest i had been there just to have years and i just got used to be in a senator and its hard for any new senator coming in and suddenly my other senator is a celebrity and they talk about their experience. Host who talk to you . Guest schumer and berman chucks schumer had Hillary Clinton as his other senator and dick durbin had barack obama, so they come in the what it was like and its not as easy as you think having them be your constituents. I said i can handle it and it allculminated in us getting on a plane once with a Flight Attendant and she announces shes from the south. Well, ill be we have the libertys on the plane, mr. And mrs. Al frankan treat everyone laughed and al said no, no, shes the other senator and she says how cool is this husbandandwife senators. Its never easy. Guest i had to say thats the worst southern accent ive never done. Host the Current Issues converses dealing with prospective iranian deal. It looks like the presidency is guarantee to be able to put the deal in effect and maybe there will be a filibuster that prevents about. Are you a supporter and are you uncomfortable with the idea that this very important agreement will go into effect because a minority of the senate is going to back it even though a majority of the Congress Opposes it . Guest well, first of all, there was agreement, a bipartisan agreement the tween senator corker and senator cardin about the rules of the game here and how this would work and that like any other boat in the senate on a major issue we voted basically with that 60 threshold. And that is how it has worked since i was elected. Has a proposed changing that . Yeah, i would like to, but those are the rules that were set for this bill and i have proposed changing it overall. So, what it looks like we will have i dont know what the exact number will be, but it will be over 40 senators that approve of this agreement. If you even put it forward as a motion to approve it wouldnt get up to 60. If you put it as a im sorry, if you put it as a motion to disapprove it would not get over that 60 vote threshold. However you did it it would not get to those numbers, so its like any other bill that we have and not only that it was negotiated with republicans about what that process would be and we have followed that process. So, that would be my first answer and the second is that this was agreement the president made. Congress got i ran to the table. There is no doubt about that with the sanctions and i think that is why you see congressional involvement kilted technically, the involvement would not have to take place to read i was when i thought it was important and made an agreement on how we should do and that is whats happening. Last, i hope there will be a bipartisan agreement on another package of proposals, aid to israel, more security, tracing the money that goes back to iran and other things and im hoping that will happen. It has to happen. Host i think it distresses some americans to look at this debate can see that just about every republican will oppose it. On most every democrat is going to support it. Although, there are some prominent democrats who will not and its not an issue that you think would nessie with split on this partisan lines to read what is it say about our politics . Guest i think traditionally foreignpolicy has not been partisan, but it has become a little more that way. We certainly see with issues about a. Although, you always have summer publicans going to wait used to be in realizing foreign aid is important our Country Security and a lot less expensive than a military involvement. I do have again the people come together and both agree on a process and i think part of that was knowing in and, this might break down on party lines. So, i would go back to that fundamental reason, the idea we did come up with a process that was bipartisan and that im hoping after this vote there will be a package of things that are bipartisan because traditionally that has been important to our country. Host its more of a tradition of funding the government and that would break along party lines to read we have. September and the government is not funded for the fiscal year that starts october 1. What are the odds you think there will actually be another government shut down this fall . Guest i dont think those odds are great and im hopeful ive heard from Republican Leaders and i know there leaders like senator cruise that played an instrumental role in that it not go that well in terms of the reaction of the market people. So, i thought mitzvah, recently said that the issue of defining of the planned parenthood that you would need a new president to do that and i think that is some acknowledgment that if that was given as a reason to shut the government down that that probably wouldnt work and so im hoping that it means there will be adventism and we certainly saw in the negotiations on the highway bill we recently had and we saw some pragmatism on the way that Speaker Boehner in the medicare payments beginning of the year. So, my hope is that we can get through this and come up with an agreement with that said, on our side with his preimportant that you have, that we try to change sequestration and try to do something that is fiscally responsible and involves both the domestic and military side. We have done so much of our budgeting has been and i have supported some of these and they have been Something Like three to one, four to one cuts to revenue and all those reports, the bipartisan work suggest things like one to one or more likely to to one and weve exceeded that with the cuts to revenue, so the long term as we look at tax reform, how we will move our country forward we need to get in that range as we look at reducing our deficit. Host there are five senators running for president , four republicans and one democrat. How much affect doesnt have an effect on the debate that we will see the small . Guest i think it does. He see Mitch Mcconnell dealing with people that are ready for president s who has ted cruz did back in september, call everyone back and tell the story back, call everyone back with both leaders say they could go home and to vote on some constitutional vote to have of his own party ended up opposing current half of his own party including mcconnell and to be that is showmanship to read what everything about the issue, that was an issue that was not going to be victorious and we have some important things to do with confirming very important positions. We had and if your bills that had to be passed and we were off doing that and that was to make a point. Not to get something done. I think yet seen that time and time again on some of these issues including some of the issues with the revision, the important changes the had to be made to the patriot act, with grandpa. The way its done with tv ads in the capital blowing up, come to a sunday showdown, that is designed for president ial campaign, not governing. Host you are marching in a labor day parade in minnesota. Guest that is on the cusp of minnesotas iron range, great town. Host there were people on the sidelines shouting you for president carried what you think about that. Guest i love my job right now and thats why i have called the book, the senator next door, and there are a lot of people running for president and im happy doing my job. Host saying i love my job right now is not guest im not ready for president s. If i wanted to i would call the book born to lead or Something Like that. Host i was make a list of the next generation of democratic officeholders who might be considered for president or maybe running for National Office and you have the senator from new york, cory booker, the new jersey senator, the California Attorney general pamela harris, the castro brothers from texas now that one thing that struck me was how diverse the group is. And didnt intend to make a diverse. Its just that every one of those people i mentioned is either hispanic, africanamerican or a female. Do you think that the time has come when democrats will no longer nominate a ticket that is to not hispanic or white male . Are we had a point where there will be next occasion of diversity on the National Democratic ticket . Guest i never like to say it has to be a way, but i think were heading into that time and i will be the choice of whoever our nominee is an our party. But come i think when you look at the Democratic Party and there is no doubt about this we are Diverse Party to read our policies bring in diversity. Immigration reform, support for that and i think you see a party that brings a new people that has been a good party for women and a lot of the issues women care about, the pocketbook issue, child care issue, family medical leave issues and so thats why i think you will see more and more diversity on the democratic ticket and i would be surprised indeed, if it was just again what we have seen in the past, which is the white man. I think youll see a difference on this ticket by the way, it was not always like that. Who picked a woman . Walter mondale. Host only time there has been diversity on the Democratic National ticket except for the two elections with barack obama, of course. Guest of course, but i was looking at the womens part of it and hes really one. Host thinking about your political career as a kerry prosecutor, us senator, can you name one achievement that you think im so proud of this and this is the thing im most proud of as a political achievement. Guest i think it was the work we did on whitecollar crime and the fact that we basically decided in those cases are complex and iran an office of 400 people. We had the major murder cases, property crimes, drugged cases, but i made the decision that a lot of his time was after 911, and Us Attorneys Office understandably minnesota, was involved in one of the cases with the missing hijacker, the guy that was actually caught by some pilots in minnesota who is in jail, and so they were busy and focus on that. We took on more and more whitecollar cases 20 with them and then in our own office and i came to believe it doesnt matter how someone commits a crime whether its with a crowbar or a computer, its silly crime and while this cases are complicated going after a judge like we did when i was a chief prosecutor, a guy that had stolen 400,000 from a mentally disabled woman he was on the Second Highest Court in our state and i said that we do our job without fear or favor. We go after someone whether they are running a business or whether they are standing on a Street Corner doing drugs and so we made that a major emphasis and i realized helped not only to make people understand that you cant have two systems of justice, one for the rich and powerful and one for everyone else when we would get convictions, when we would win those cases, but also had racial implications because you close your eyes to those like all cases and mostly involving people who are not of color and then you are spending all of your time going after people of color and that contributes to the racial inequity in the system. I was also part of the work we did on doing a different way of photo identification where working with the Innocence Project that turns out that it leads to less misidentification, which is a major problem through the work we did on dna and other things to read we worked really hard to be fair in our system and to kind of i would always play with myself this race game, should we plead out, shall we drop it and i would think what if the defendant was white instead, what if the victim was a person color instead. It wasnt always necessary, but you want to try to be as colorblind as you can in these cases. Host finally, in thinking about your career so far, tell me about the biggest disappointment that you try to do and failed. Not that you wont try again, but this is what you say is your regret. Guest biggest regret i have right now from a policy standpoint is that we have not been able to move some of these Prescription Drug mails that i have, the drug prices have been escalating and with a situation where Drug Companies are now paying Generic Companies not to put their products on the markets. Estimates are about 3 billion in 10 years for taxpayers, somewhere in that read to 4 billion to read either bill with Chuck Grassley 35 a bill which on to allow for imports of drugs from canada to create, titian and that hasnt stopped to read i have a bill with a number of democrats i am leading to negotiations for medicare prices in the husband stopped. I am just not going to give up, but at some point we will have to change some these policies. Host thank you for joining us to talk about your new book called the senator next door. Guest thank you so much. That was afterwards, but tv Signature Program in which authors of the latest nonfiction books are interviewed by journalist, public policymakers and others familiar with their material. Afterwards there is every week and on book tv at 10 00 p. M. Saturday, 12 and 9 00 p. M. Sunday and 12 00 a. M. On monday. You can also watch afterwards online or go to book tv. Org and click on afterwards who organizes this event, which i hr heard of, called me a few months ago and said let me tell you about freedom fest. And i would really like you to come to freedom fest and talk about what is the national pastime. Football, baseball, basketball, soccer, what . And he had gone on i asked him last night, why me . He had gone on the internet, and he googled. He wanted somebody in something other than, you know, the political stuff. Be and so thats how