think. "broken" can the senate save itself and the country? and i'm just curious what is your conclusion to that question? >> guest: tom first of all i'm thrilled to have a conversation with you. when c-span told me that you were going to do it i felt like i had won the lottery, to see an old friend but also a great senator and senate leader and an author too on this subject. they can get much better than that. >> host: thank you. i'm flattered. >> guest: the easy answer is that the jury is still out on how it's going to go. what i tried to convey in the book was first the senate has declined over long period of time, not a couple of years, more like a couple of decades and the senate has declined in a way, the decline goes like that and then it's deepens over the last nine or 10 years. what we are facing now i believe it's a very diminished diminished and weakened we didn't senate at precisely the time that we need a strong one. all of a sudden we are facing the possibility, let's say we are the facing the possibility of inexperienced reckless perhaps irresponsible maybe authoritarian president he would want a strong senate and we don't have one. so can the senate save itself change from the downward spiral it has been on and then step up to its responsibilities and that's kind of a question. the book is optimistic in certain ways. i've been criticized by someone who said you are too optimistic. it's optimistic to co's i believe, and we have seen recent evidence of it, that's so many of the senators are disgusted with the institution the way it has been. you have written about this and you know. it's one of the least well kept secret in town. they want to be real senators. they want to be in a senate that functions and you dare not so the chances that they can do something about that are in my mind, the potential is still there. >> host: i want to get into a lot of questions regarding the senate but let me just go back before we get there and talk a little bit about you. we got to know each other long ago. he served six senators which may be a record from 75 to 87, 12 years. tell me a little bit about what that was like and compare if you will be experienced for the last 12 years. >> a great question. the audience wouldn't know but we have the privilege of meeting and becoming friends in the late 70s when we were both staffers in what i call "the last great senate" in my first book. we were privileged to be there because the senate was there. i got hooked on the senate early like many people do. in high school and college as i was starting to think about politics and the world, the senate was playing such an important role in civil rights. i remember the civil rights act breaking the filibuster and i got to college and exposing the follies of vietnam. gene mccarthy and robert kennedy stepping forward to run for president and of course watergate. i got hooked on the senate and i i had a senate internship in 1969, one day after college. it convinced me that i have ought to try to come back and work for the senate and i got back in 75. i had a great time for 12 years doing different things. the senate at that time, which i have called "the last great senate," let's throw that out. mike mansfield set the tone for that senate, the longest-serving majority leader. he built the senate in my view premised on trust, mutual respect, good faith and i would say bipartisanship. it was a healthy place and i found that to be the case while i was working in the majority in the 70s and it carried over into the 80s even though we lost majority control of the senate. so i loved what i was doing and i think everyone there loved what they were doing. it was a great place. it's no accident that people we know now were running around like madeline albright or stephen stephen breyer or lamar alexander or susan collins. so i can't even begin to fathom what it would be like now. all these bright people who want to work in the senate, come to the senate. they are still always very busy. they do good work. sometimes they pass things in committee and then the leader, the leaders says we are not doing that. it's not part of our partisan agenda. i want to hear your views on this because you have thought about so much but evolution of the leader driven senate and the loss of a balance between the leaders and the committees i think is a very important problem. >> host: i don't think the relationship factor is nearly what it was when we were there as staff members. relationships were built across the aisle, friendships and social opportunities to engage i think is really deteriorated over the years and that has been pervasive even at the staff level. that's a very troubling aspect of what has crossed into our experience today. he mentioned in your first book "the last great senate" got rave reviews at my expect this will too but what led you to write a volume two if you will? what led you to write this book, now? >> guest: "the last great senate" came out in 2012. it's basically about the senate of the late 70s ending in 1980 but i was persuaded by my publisher at that time to write an epilogue on what happened since then so i wrote an epilogue which describe the decline of the senate. in fact the senate has declined in stages and he keeps declining declining. when i started writing "the last great senate" i felt more optimism because we were going to have a presidential election and it turned out barack obama would be president and it would give me a new opportunity. by the time i finished the book that had pretty much vanished. so as the situation progressed and things got worse and the book that you wrote crisis point with trent lott i decided to try to finish the history and explain what it happened and the important thing about a tom is i think from my standpoint the decision to write the book when i was quite sure secretary clinton would be president. but i didn't think she could govern unless the senate came and was better and back to more of the senate we remember. i wasn't motivated by donald trump any more than you were motivated by mr. trump's candidacy when you and trent lott wrote your book. it just seemed the need for the senate to go back in playing its role in what mondale called our national mediator, the place where things got worked out i thought was important to revisit it. >> host: it's somewhat of the refreshing but counterintuitive revelation in your opening pages pages. >> guest: i'm sure. >> host: you know you wrote the entire book without as i recall talking to anyone, without talking to anyone which most writers, myself included, just sort of consume themselves with interviews and discussions and another's perspective and we take notes and then do some inclusionary writing from that day you chose to do it without the input of anybody but your own review of the current published information. tell me what motivated you to use that approach? it's intriguing and the way you describe it sounds more than counterintuitive. it sounds somewhat arrogant but actually my first book which was historical, i actually did about 90 interviews but essentially wrote the book from the public record, newspapers, looks etc.. it was mostly written on the public record. this was a different situation and i had done some of the research because i had thought about the first book but i knew i couldn't interview enough people. i'm not a journalist and i knew i couldn't interview enough people to have a meaningful sample. i was the senate insider once but i'm not anymore. i haven't been for a long time. i know very few of the senators and very few of the staff and i didn't want to just interview the ones i knew. i basically decided there had been a lot written about the senate. there are some great journalism going on all the time. so i take responsibility for everything in the book but i didn't think interviews were the right way to go. >> i have to commend you. it has inspired me to try to do something similar some day. i think it's worked out very well. it's really two books that you have written, two books in one. the first one takes us through the decades up until 2016 in a very eloquently written senate history like you did in your first book but this obviously has no information. i want to talk a little bit about some of the things you write about in your first book. the second book of horses a review of the first six or seven months of the trump administration 2017. how was it you decide organize the book in that fashion? >> guest: well i thought the trump election i think was the most astonishing political event in history and in a sense the book i was writing which describe the importance of the senate and the decline of the senate and the dangerous decline of the senate intersected with trump's election. so the question of whether the senate has these new challenges seems to me to be very important. i sensibly decided i would write the second part showing the initial encounters and ran through about seven or eight months, maybe even nine simply because while it wouldn't be conclusive it would be important, the things you could see about it. and i think it worked out that way and that's part of the reason the jury was fixed on the question. i could find evidence of the senators in the senate doing things that are hopeful and promising and i find other evidence where -- so mixed picture that didn't seem to me, given the times you couldn't ignore the fact that i was writing a book while donald trump was becoming president. but trump wasn't my main focus. >> host: on page 16 u. quote the famous football coach vince lombardi. winning isn't everything, it's the only thing. how is it that philosophy is currently reflected in the way the senate operates? >> well, i think it's a very interesting question. senator mcconnell has given his view. he says winners make policies and losers go home. the problem is from my standpoint that in our system the winners and the losers stay around, that is the majority in the minority stay around that may have to work together. traditionally they have to work together and that's because we are not a parliamentary system. so traditionally when the senate worked well it was because the majority and the minority could come together on things to build enough broad support. so the idea that winning is everything and losers ought to go home, the minority is still there so that's one part of it. but the other part of it is although politics is a contact sport and there's a great deal at stake winning isn't everything. you have to sort of win in a way that they'd change the institutions, maintains our government and i think that is what is the danger that the moment. >> host: the context i think and i'm sure you would agree, if not to have a broader definition definition. context as we look at the political elements of it is one thing but context of winning in terms of moving the country forward, moving toward the american people is a totally different one. think when you draw for the mindset to winning with the party seems to me that is what's driving so much of the environment today. >> absolutely but i think the evolution of course is going toward a more tribal politics over law period of time. there's no question that is the case but part of this is that you can differ with people. i will accept the view of a little left of center. but politics is supposed to be about finding a way to overcome some of those differences through extended discussion and a real legislative process through sensible compromise. it wasn't supposed to be about one party winning on their all in. as you know the times in history when one party -- on your own very few, maybe 1933 and 1934 in the depression, lbj, 64, 65 and even lbj reached out to republicans and had republicans support the first two years. when mitch mcconnell we have will probably come backs him a couple of times. when senator mcconnell started doing health care and trying to get 50 of his 52 votes from his caucus my reaction was well that shouldn't work and couldn't work and it's supposed to be that way. were supposed to be looking at people on the other side to get 60 to 70 votes in course you would say that would be impossible because none of them were vote for us against drop ephedra. but this notion one party has to rule by themselves has taken us to some bad places. we have moved from common ground to stand your ground. we have moved from the view that compromise is a good thing to compromises capitulation and that mindset is dangerous. early in the book to that point an observation that i think is really the essence of the book the state america is strong enough to survive a few bad years but the senate has been in decline now for several decades. what are the implications of that that we have been in decline as long? >> guest: well there are profound implications if it's not reversed and i think frankly no one captured them better than you and trent lott in crisis point. when the system isn't working and what the consequences were that are. in our system the senate i believe plays a key role as the balance wheel of the system. while term mondale's phrase placed in when our diversity come together and hopefully get reconciled. if you don't have that then the system seizes up. oler's agent becomes dysfunctional and that's what we have seen an that's extremely dangerous for solving any problems but it also was terribly harmful for public confidence. people don't have any faith in the government and why should they basically have faith in the government? you were a very good leader for reasons i won't get into when i talk about leaders. let's take as an assumption that we are diverse country and it's pretty tough out there in terms of partisan differences but you can be a leader who tries to overcome those differences and bring people together or you can be a leader who exacerbates those differences and drives partisanship and polarization. we have seen out leadership rather than the leadership that brings people together. >> host: let me ask you, utah is i would and as i have and continue to do very finally of the 60s and the extraordinary achievements of what you describe as the golden era of the senate. i looked back just to make sure i remembered correctly but president johnson won in 1964 in a landslide. you had tumultuous crises, the civil rights in the vietnam issues. we had the assassination of three national leaders in a short period of time in the 60s so you have the combination of an overwhelmingly democratic senate, 60 senators and a president who had been given clearly a mandate in an overwhelming landslide election laws that -- plus the catalytic factors that come with crises. and i compared that to the set of circumstances, that landscape in the 60s to today where we have had three wave elections, parties changing control. we have had a constitutional crisis really with the selection of the president 43. we have had enormous turbulence politically. how difficult is it and is it unfair to compare circumstances today with the golden era given how different the landscape was then versus now? >> guest: well, look at a certain level everything is different but the golden era, lbj's lbj's victory and the majorities he had, some of that didn't last very long and when i praise the so-called great senator the mansfield senate it's because they sustained a certain way of doing business throughout the 60s and 70s which were difficult years and the democratic senate for a long time dealing with lbj but then of course dealing with richard nixon, dealing with gerald ford and the outsider president who is a democrat, jimmy carter. there were plenty of problems as you know throughout that whole period and yet the senate kept contributing creative legislation, reconciling differences, stepping up domestic and foreign-policy crises and stepping up the biggest crises of our time, vietnam and watergate after the civil rights legislation. so those were big problems. to some extent and you fast-forward a ways and you see a big problems also but many of them not being faced or not being handled by the senate. and so you couldn't have a larger problem than the economic crisis that happened after the lean in shot in 2008 and the collapse on main street across the country. in 2008, the end of 2008 the senate played a commendable role in producing the tarp program when it was needed. senator mcconnell played a key role in that. it was the way leaders ought to be. three months later we had barack obama as president. we lost $750,000 the first year going into depression between no longer had any coif ration to deal with the problem. the president had changed so they are or where the republican response had changed. that wouldn't have happened in mansfield senate. it would not have happened with howard baker there and wouldn't have happened with rob dolbear. it wouldn't have happened. >> host: that leads me to ask a question. you explore in your book and i think it's so important, an important observation. you talk about the commitment to make the senate work in that period of time and you just alluded to it. for now it's the difference between a collective agenda and a visual agenda. talk about that distinction and why that distinction is so important. >> guest: mansfield who relocked and we became senate majority leader at john kennedy's request had a few of how you should do business and reaction to lyndon johnson who didn't believe in bullying people and you and trent lott said never twisted an arm in his life. he believed that all the senators had to contribute, not just the leaders and he believed in treating everyone well. he lived by the golden rule and edward derksen when he first heard what's mansfield was trying to do these that it couldn't possibly work in the senate. and yet it did work but it worked when the senate responded to the crisis of civil rights and president kennedy's assassination. and move ahead that way. part of what mansfield and still than the other senators felt the ones that we knew is a representative their states vigorously either democrats or publicans but they had an overriding national commitment. john mccain's view country first. they were there for the national interest but that also meant that lance field insisted on individual agendas. we had our individual agendas that we are here to make the senate work. you have to subordinate the individual agendas for the need of the collective. that's what here -- we are here for. they had their arguments and they took their boats but at the end of the day they knew they had to take collect of action. nobody one all the time, absolutely nobody one all the time but the notion that they would get the senate to work with something that was very important to them. we see the opposite now. senator mcconnell has shown no interest in making the senate work. he is undermining the way the senate works and one of the problems i have with that is he knows how to do it. he knows how to make it work. he has said in his speeches, his speech in january of 2014 where he laid out how the senate should work, a speech that you could have given or mansfield could have given except he doesn't work that way. he ran the senate in entirely different way except for one year when it was in his interest to become bipartisan when he was first majority leader. >> host: you mentioned another distinction that i think it's a critical. you talk about the remarkable demonstrations of courage that occurred all the time during this period of time during the 60s and 70s, the 70s especially. the panama canal treaty is one classic example of real courage. a lot of progressive senators from red states knew it could jeopardize their career. i happen to know one of them extremely well, george mcgovern but you also mentioned the republican howard baker who showed remarkable courage and leadership. that made a difference. to what extent can you explain why there seem to be so much courage when it required it in so little now? >> well, it was tom brokaw's greatest generation. some of those people that had fought in world war ii and gone into normandy and iwo jima. they were wounded in war like senator dole. they didn't think casting a hard vote was the toughest thing they had ever done. beyond that, that was the ethos then and look none of them were perfect. i'm not saying they were. my favorite person in the world senator tom eagleton who was great on many issues. he came into the senate in 1968, an avid gun control advocate but he almost lost the election and he decided he wasn't going to be for gun control anymore. so none of them were perfect but the ethos was in howard baker epitomized this plan as they say in the book when jimmy carter said i want to do a new panama canal treaty something five presidents had looked at howard baker the new minority leader said why now, why a me? and he said senator if you do this you will never be the president did aker says i'm the senate leader. i have to figure out what's right for the country and what's right for the senate. and he did that and that's why it passed. he never was president that we remembered him as a great senator and a great leader and a great public servant. it was the ethos then. >> host: utah as well about the transformational evolution of the senate and you cite certain moments when not evolution was accelerated. you talk about the elections of 78 in 80 and the confirmation battles around robert bork and 87, clarence thomas a little bit later. what was it about those moments and that experience the caused the acceleration of the devolution? >> well 78, and 80 marked the beginning of the more partisan climate. we all think about citizens united case that back when but we versus vallejo started it brought up all kinds of special interest pacs that flowed through the system and things got more partisan than mummy -- money became more of an issue. even as we went into the 80s even though the senate changed dramatically in the 1980 election when the republicans took over because of ronald reagan's victory, there were enough strong senators there and the senate still functioned basically the way the senate would function and howard baker being the leader for four years and you were on the house side at that time so you didn't see him but he did a superb job and bob dole came in and dole was at his peak in the provided great leadership. something went on sometime in the late 80s. there were serious confrontations and everyone tells the story differently. it's almost like the sharks and the jets trying to remember the who struck the first blow. who went after jim wright and who went after michael dukakis. there were a series of these things that were quite confrontational and it did take an effect over time. i see the bork fight differently than some people. i see it as a necessary fight and won the senate recovered from. other people don't agree. i think the clarence thomas hearings were a disaster for the senate so there were a series of things that went on. but what we were seeing and that's like your views. he became leader at precisely that moment. the rise of a harder edge partisan politics, what i would call a combination of the politics of personal obstruction and the permanent campaign sort of weaponized politics which, not to assign it to any one person but newt gingrich is generally regarded as quite formidable. politics changed around that time. it became very difficult for him moderate republicans and they saw the senators start moving out. they looked around and they said not sure we want to be here anymore. redman left and cold and, zero whole lot of them 1992 in 1996 so policies change around the 90s. george mitchell when he retired he got out at the right time. >> host: you use the term permanent campaign and i think that's such an accurate description of what is happening. each one of these events triggered a further evolution away from a legislative experience to a political one where the political consequences and political tactics and strategy around those consequences became preeminent. less legislating a more political to a point where we default to what you properly described as a permanent campaign but maybe just for purposes of those who are listening let's talk a little bit about what is the permanent campaign and what are the ramifications of occurring campaign as we look at the senate and legislative responsibilities. just i think the phrase the permanent campaign was coined originally by sidney blumenthal in one of his books. when in the senate we grew up in obviously a political body but they were governing. governing went on all the time. people were running for office and in the last couple of months they'd be out campaigning. they would come back and they'd govern again. votes would be cast and somebody could use it against you but votes weren't framed to put you in a spot of casting a difficult vote for political reasons. that really didn't happen very much. i called the senate perhaps overstated it but i think i was right. the senate that we knew in the 60s and 70s to be almost did the miller ties sewn in terms of partisan politics and that has changed radically. when you get into the permanent campaign issues are set up so that we will be forced to vote on things or their leaders harry reid for one, mitch mcconnell or another start preventing them from voting so days and weeks go by and issues don't get taken up because somebody might have cast a vote. in the context of the permanent campaign and the next election how we can keep our majority or were going to lose it. there's a good book called insecure majority. he makes the argument for tightness of the majorities in the portenza keeping them makes people focus on the policies rather than anything else. >> host: you make and enormous wicked case about what happens in the intersection of the permanent campaign and the legislative roles that are so incumbent within the bodies. you write so well. it's one of the best accounts of the impeachment trial that i've read frankly and i really want to congratulate you on your historical analysis of the impeachment experience. it was really one of those demonstrations early on at the intersection of politics and statesmanship and catalytically affected relationships within the senate. talk a little bit about that whole episode and what lessons could be learned from it? >> first it's nice of you to say that but i rely very heavily as you know on peter baker's great book about the impeachment trial so the facts is peter described them and he wrote a wonderful book about it so i looked at that and i relied on a night tried to analyze it accordingly. the clinton impeachment presented the senate with an extraordinarily difficult situation and you and trent lott the leaders were confronted with it. the country was basically it appauled by president clinton's behavior and the country also for the most part for everything that could be measured was one of impeachment and in 1998 the off year election democrats extremely well and the republicans did terribly. it'd make any progress in most impeachment was off the table but the republican right energized particularly by tom delay at that time were dead set on impeachment so they ran through impeachment in the house on a partisan basis in 1999 and u.n. senator lott and the senate had to confront this question. how do we measure our responsibilities here? how do we balance the law of impeachment which there wasn't much, with the political situation because essentially impeachment is a legal put issue but it's a political determination about what the president has done, what the president has done to try so hard at our government and country and state and what peter baker said and what i've tried to describe the process of how you work this through in an incision ration where there are no rules and the two of you did when you first communicated superbly together. second you involved all the senators in a way they felt the senate was really considering all kinds of options. they ended this trial quickly and we censored the president. various things were all considered and how many witnesses would come forward. he did an extraordinary job of steering your way through its being sensitive to the politics but always understanding that there had to be enough of a trial to satisfy everyone that it had been adequately examined. >> host: i recall when it was all over the last vote was taken and the number of hugs we had on the floor with republicans and democrats across the aisle. he was really an emotional experience and it was an extraordinary moment when everybody looks back with some pride. we got through it and we ripple to address our constitutional responsibilities and we did so with respect for one another. i felt that was very catalytic. you mention something else. surely after impeachment that i think was also a factor as we looked at this devolution and how broken the senate is and that is the way we look at rules in the senate today. he mentioned especially the circumstances around the bush tax cut in 2002 and the reconciliation and how relevant reconciliation in 2002 was with the tax cut that was just passed last year and 2017 and began the use of reconciliation and the irony that the mechanism in the budget act that is designed to reduce the deficit was used to exacerbate it. talk about that irony and the unfortunate in my view deplorable misuse of the senate rules to accommodate personal and political agendas. >> guest: well i couldn't say it much better than that. the reconciliation process created in the budget act of 1974 was intended for a limited person -- purpose. it was the exception to the notion that you would need 60 votes or a supermajority. it was an expedited process put in place, a procedure put in place for the purpose of coming up with an overall budget and for reducing deficits presumably. from the beginning it worked all right but there were pressures to use it for other things and i mentioned in an article recently when president clinton was in office the first year there was thought given to using reconciliation to push health care and the president and mrs. clinton talked about that with george mitchell at the time. robert ernst said absolutely not. we are not going to use the reconciliation. that is not what this is supposed to be. we want to have full consideration of something this important and yet in the bush tax cuts in 2001 and now again reconciliation has been misused in order to accomplish something with 50 votes. >> host: i believe that i recommend and i point out that senate rules haven't looked at since 1979. they need to be re-examined perhaps by former senators with public representatives as well and the bipartisan policy commission. it's a serious question you could ask whether the senate should have supermajorities for anything as opposed to just majorities but it has to be agreed on. you can't claim that democrats are in party but when republicans are in power you need 50 votes. that doesn't work or it shouldn't work and the tragedy is that has worked for the republicans and most particularly and most recently for senator mcconnell. >> host: i want to talk precisely about that for a couple of moments and we are getting close to the time where we will have to wrap up. you mentioned in the 113th congress from 2013 to 2014 we had 187 cloture votes in two years. compare that with the entire decade of the 70s where we had only 43. we have done a couple of things over the course of the last several decades the ones we have ended for the need of what is commonly called the talking filibuster to hold the floor. we now resort to something called tracking where there is a filibuster we move on to something else. to what extent have unintended consequences play themselves out what these so-called, i wouldn't even call them reforms the changes in the way we operate. to what extent is that the reason why we see this proliferation of cloture votes in filibusters today? >> guest: i think if it is not the reason, that's the mechanism and that's the justification for it. the reason is to paralyze the senate and to defeat democratic initiatives that the mechanism is the use of filibusters in the way that they weren't used for, a real filibuster. now i filibuster is just very close to a hold which is basically some senators is i'm not going to give the unanimous consent for this so i basically don't leave those kinds of filibusters should be used. i think we should go back as senator merkley and senator udall have suggested to if you have a filibuster about to be a real filibuster. this notion of a hold, the idea that one senator can say i care a lot about this so please don't take it up while i'm flying back from somewhere else. that is what the whole piece to be, temporary courtesy. it wasn't my object to this you can't move that legislation by the way you can't move those 10 nominations either. the system is out of control. trent lott in 2005 in his memoir said when did the holds morph into this so i looked it up and i found they had morphed quite a bit earlier. that's one reason i want to look at the rules. i think we do have to reconsider the rules and what works but i don't want to lose, don't want to lose the point that the manipulation of the rules for partisan reasons is the real problem. >> host: we have seen an extraordinary manipulation of the rules with both parties invoking the so-called nuclear option where just on a simple vote overriding the rule of the chair week change of rule in the senate once by the democrats in 2013 and once by the republicans in 2017. how much has the use of the so-called nuclear option and change the character of the senate? >> guest: it change the character of the senate quite a bit but in my view tom i think it's all part and parcel of a long series of partisan confrontations and bitterness that has ensued from it. senator mcconnell is fond of saying i told harry reid that he would regret the nuclear option and i'm sure harry reid does sometimes forget the nuclear option but these problems arise when you have leaders that can't talk to each other. the senate was facing difficult times even when you were a leader but i believe it's very possible u.n. trent lott would have started by saying this is not working well, let's talk about what we might need to do. that conversation could never happen between reed and mcconnell. that conversation didn't happen between schumer and mcconnell because it can't happen with anyone and mcconnell so that's a real problem. >> host: we have talked a lot about the trump administration but you spend the second half of your book talking about what it was like on the inside for that first seven or eight months and 2017. part of your narrative i think is so appropriately focused on the loss of the normal and the lack of civility and the coarseness of politics and dialogue largely emanating from the white house and the president's tweet but you properly in my view holds republicans as enablers. the trump style as well as the trump policy. to what extent has the loss of norms and respect in the office itself, how much of that has pervaded this whole environment and how concerned should we be about that and how reversible is it? >> guest: i think we should be hugely concerned about it. it comes back to the point i made initially. we have an unusual president and it's a time with me the senate and the congress to work at its best, not at its worst. there was an observation made by someone doing health care who was asked and said well we never legislate like this during normal times. well i suppose that was a reference to president trump but that is precisely the reason you should legislate in the traditional way. i believe you have thought about health care more than anyone i know. i don't know of anything that compares to what mcconnell did on health care. to read make, to repeal the affordable care act and to read it we change medicaid without a hearing, without committee action, without an amendment, without a supermajority, without any representation of the other party. i was stunned by that. democrats were shocked by that. republicans were shocked by that. every day there was another republican senator saying this is and how we ought to do this and yet it moved forward. they came close to succeeding. then after mcconnell didn't succeed he said we are done with health care. we will move onto tax and he brings it up again and he brings it up again and he brings it up again and ultimately when he did not win it came out in the tax bill. that's not the way senate leaders have a verb dealt with the senate to abuse the process and what we have seen here is as i said before the long decline and the deep downward spiral. when you think you've hit the bottom it gets worse. >> host: many have asserted that to a certain extent the senate and congress really reflects the country and because the country is deeply polarized and divided and because emotions have now risen politically and philosophic way in the country to a point where mcconnell argued we haven't seen this in history but certainly not since the civil war. you only have to go back to the 60s to see a country is divided in polarized as we are but whether it's the 6-d, the 1960s or the 1860s we are deeply polarized as a country so what extent that the senate is really reflecting an till we deal with the country as a whole we can expect to see any change in the embraer meant within the bodies to represent the country. >> guest: it's the fundamental issue and i would say two things about it. first, i don't believe that the senate should reflect differences in the country and i think they certainly shouldn't be exacerbating them and inflaming them and what we see now guess they are a very fundamental differences. the senate's obligation is to try to overcome those differences. instead they've been more partisan nay to fight the differences. the amplified the highest level of the government and then what happens is people lose faith in the government if they lose faith in it and they divide further. it's an interesting argument i believe and i believe that if we had leaders producing results in the way we used to produce results i believe those divisions would somewhat ease. i think the divisions can be dealt with but look i don't and i know you don't and i don't accept the view that the senate has to reflect those divisions and error are a lot of very serious challenging factors out there. i think we have to rise above it it. >> host: in a minute we have left we have talked a lot about the problems in the state of the senate today. if you had to summarize as briefly and succinctly as one can how do we find solutions? how do we find answers to how broken the senate is today? what is your set of priorities as we look at those solutions today? >> guest: i would ask the senators to be real senators and not just partisan warriors. i would ask them come in 2012 i said senator should take back the senate from the leaders. they can do better and i don't think they are helpless to dems trapped in the institution. they should do better like the common sense coalition that has risen. that's the kind of activity that i think is possible. i don't think the senate can work well with senator mcconnell there. he has for too long operated in a certain way that has erased any modicum of trust. trust is the essence of the legislative process. it's trust -- legislating his extraordinary difficult. it becomes impossible in the absence of trust and mcconnell has sacrificed all trust but essentially he has not been trustworthy. so i was thinking about this and it seemed to me that donald trump is in part certainly a large part of president because of the dysfunction which created anger in the country. he is somewhat the result of dysfunction. mitch mcconnell is the cause of the dysfunction. people say to me well you are putting too much weight on one person and i would respond and say how do you think the senator would work if lamar alexander was the republican leader x. all these external factors and still comes down to people who make the difference. >> host: the book is entitled "broken" can the senate save itself and the country. we are out of time. i congratulate you on a well-written book and i hope our audience will take the time to read it. thank you very much. >> guest: thank you, tom. .. [laughter] >> select author -- no, no we're not going that far. well definitely, those that