Immediately after this presentation and there are numerous copies of the books on sale in the politics and prose tent. Buy your books early buy them often. No doubt you have friends who want these books. Please buy a bunch. Our writers would appreciate. I. This race free event. We want to keep it that way. It really does help the book festival if youll be buying some books. The more books we sell, the more publishers will send their writers their speak with us, and purchasing books from our partner, politics and prose will help our local economy. It supports local jobs, supports the book festival, and supports independent book stores. Thats really important. They need your support. So if you enjoy this program please buy some books. Martin frost is here with us today. He spent 26 years as a member of congress representing dale dallasfort worth. He swept four years of the Democratic Congressional campaign and four years as chair of the House Democratic caucus. Richard cohen is not our Washington Post rich cohen. Im told hes the good richard co handbut has been write about politics for many years he started covering the North Hampton city council. Is that right . Yes. A couple years ago. This book by martin frost Richard Cohen and tom davis who couldnt be here today have written the partisan divide. A concept relatively unknown here in all democratic Montgomery County, maryland. We know we have republicans here but they have not elected anybody recently. Current count and state elects individuals are divided on scales of progressivism but not party scales. It makes our lives less contentious. We do have that in the state of maryland and we have plenty of conversations going on right now about party issues and the like. I personally feel very related to these authors here, and nat the one republican i have served with who served on the Montgomery County council howie dennis actually worked for tom davis. A great guy and this is important. I cast my first vote for president , George Mcgovern in the town of North Hampton massachusetts. When i was in college and that is mr. Cohens home town. So like were practically related. He was the president of massachusetts. He was he got massachusetts, that was it. Oh well. At least my vote counted that year. And in addition, my strict, which represents includes all million plus members of residents of Montgomery County is im not sure were proud of this or not were proud home to a portion of what has been called the United States least compact read most jerrymandered, congressional district. District 3 which covers a portion of the eastern part of Montgomery County and was referred to in that book looks like a no one can come up with an animal that describes have to get in line to be the most gerrymandered. Were right up there and were proud of it. The authors will be glad to know were ahead of you on 0 couple of these issues. We just enacted a Public Campaign finance program for local elections some this week, we funded it to a tune of a Million Dollars. So we have much in common with the world of politics and action. Im sure we can do better and well learn more from these great leaders today. So this brings us to the main event, martin frost richard co hand, and the partisan divide. Our co are authorize tom davis couldnt be here because he its a Commencement Ceremony so he has good excuse. Let me tell you how this book came about. And then well give you time to answer questions itch was chairman over the Democratic Congressional cam pine committee in 1996 and 1998. Thats the committee that raises money for candidates and recruits candidates and plans strategy. Tom was chairman of the republican Congressional Campaign committee in 2000 and 2002. So we didnt good headtohead, and that way were friends. Tom and i beth have been out of congress for a while. Ive been out for ten years. My term ended in 2004. Tom has been out for a little bit less time. I served 26 years tom served 14 years. So that between us we served 40 years in congress, and we also saw, when things were different in congress, where im not saying everyone got along all the time but it was possible to get things done, and it was possible more possible than it is today to work across party lines. When i was first eelectricity to congress there was a congressman from Miami Florida bill layman. Bill had been a used car dealer before he was elected to congress and used to the all of us he didnt think he could fall any lower in public esteem and then he was elected to congress. That is at a time when congressional approval rates were in the 40s and 50s. There was a poll last year that showed only eight percent of the public approved of the job congress is doing. Thats family and friends and paid staff. And its not really good for our country, quite frankly that congress is held in such low esteem. Were a great country. We hope we have a legislative branch that can respond to the desires of the public, and it can Work Together and to that and that has not been the case in recent years. Tom and i after we both Left Congress we would appear on Cable Television sometimes in kind of a pointcounterpoint. We were first put together by chuck todd on msnbc on his show the daily rundown. And after that we were on cnn and bloomberg variety of cable shows, and we realized that even though we were partisans he was a partisan republican and im a partisan democrat weapon didnt agree on a lot of issues but we didier on the fundamental problems that faced the institution of congress and why congress doesnt function very well today. So we decided we would write a book. I will tell you for those in the audience who have ever written a book, this is hard. Id never done this before. And in writing books it is better sometimes just like it is in life, its better to be lucky than smart. And toms College Roommate amherst was an executive aft a Book Publishing company and i used to be a journalist. A journalism degree from the university of missouri, i covered congress for Congressional Quarterly before i went to law school and got in politics. So i write pretty fast, and tom had been thinking about this for three or four years and had published of the book in his head. Had part of the book in his head. So it took us a little less than a year from the time we started working to when it was published. Thats pretty fast. Time and i did an outline of 16 chapters and made a decision. Some of you have read books where there are cao authors and and the book is written in a blend voice youch dont to who said what. Tom and i decided we would each take half the chapters. Rich would work with us. In fact rich was the coauthor on a couple of chapters but he would be clear who wrote which chapter in the book, and then we would put our names on the beginning of the chapter and then we each were given the tub to comment on each others chop at thes to make opinion wes thought the other one may not have done fully or we might have a slightly different opinion. Not a bad way to write a book. Once the oak appeared, we started can do book events at president ial libraries. We have done five libraries so far. The Reagan Library the Nixon Library on the best coast, the Clinton Library in arkansas, lbj in austin, and we did the george w. Bush president ial center in dallas and we were on the west coast, we did stanford and usc we did rice while we were in texas. We have done some on the east coast. We did one at tufteds. Were going to am hurt at the end of the month and politics and prose the cosponsor of this book fair, had a very nice event for us at their store after the book came out. So this has been interesting. An interesting experience. I share that because its not something id ever done before, and i found that people are interested, they come and ask good questions. And this is not like one of those raucous town Hall Meetings you see sometimes. People actually come and want to know. They have things on their mind and want to know why this place doesnt work better, and we try to respond to that the best we can. Let me tell you some of the thing wes cover in the book. I want to give you that background. We really looked at this from three different perspectives. Theres 16 chapters and they deal with pieces of this. There are three fundamental reasons why there is so much partisan divide in congress today. And again this may not be the nice Montgomery County but this is the case in the country and you see that every day on television and the newspapers, when congress cant get its act together cant do things that people want done. One is the role of redistricting. This is just a house issue. There are three factors in redistricting. The first factor is that in recent years the Political Parties have made a real effort to take over state legislatures in the the two years right before an election so the republicans in 2010 they didnt do anything illegal. It was within the rules. They absolutely put a lot of money into elected people in state legislatures and electing governors particularfully states that had gone democratic for president. They took over michigan, they took over ohio, they took over pennsylvania. So obama carried those states for president but the Republican Party controlled those states when the district lines were redrawn in 2011. So you now have a situation in those three states alone where the majority of the vote for congress and for president is democratic but 70 of the congressional districts are republican. Now, democrats have done the same thing in previous years. Dont get me wrong. The republicans are not the only ones that have done this. But republicans have done it to a fair the well, so now in the 2012 election, republicans won control of the hoe house by 17 votes. So you have to ask how did his happen . Computers are wonderful thing youch them what you want and theyll draw a terrific jerrymandered district for you. It will give you the result you want. So most Congressional Redistricting is done by partisan legislatures. Ill talk about some alternatives to that. And thats how you got the kind of districts you got. And the result of that is that these are oneparty districts. Whoever wins the primary is the Congress Person, and the general election is almost irrelevant in 80 parts of the districtness the country. And so what that means is that the whole contest is in the primary, and that the Congress Person the man or woman who represents that district, has to be always looking over his or her shoulder as a wellorganized small group because primaries are small turnout elections that can take control of a primary. Republican congressmen are looking over their right shoulder to see if some far right winger is going to run against them in the primary and this influences their votes. Democrats likewise look over their left shoulder, worried that someone from the left might run against them in the primary low turnot, so theres no incentive to cooperate with the other side. In fact its exactly the opposite you dont want to be seen in public with somebody from the other side. Certainly dont walk to have your name on legislation with someone from the other side. Now, one of the other things thats contributed to this is something called residential sorting. My coauthor tom davis puts a lot more weight on this than i do but he makes a legitimate case that in many cases, people who live together think the same way. People move to Montgomery County want to be in a democratic county, and so people in center cities, people are democrats. Out in some of she suburban counties in thing midwest and southwest, those people are runs. Thats where the republicans live. So that influences the way districts turn out. A third thing is the Voting Rights act. Tom and i have a difference of opinion on this. Tom thinks it was inevitable that when the vote rights passed that the result would be africanamerican districts heavily africanamerican districts in the south would be represent bid black democrats and Everything Else would be represent bid white republicans itch think the republicans filed a careful strategy trying to make friend, trying to go to some black elected officials particularly early on and say look the democrats have discriminated against you. They havent drawn africanamerican districts in the past. Well make a deal. Well put as many blacks as possible into certain number of districts to guarantee that a black can be elected and it just so coincidentally all the surrounding districts will be bleached almost all white. So i didnt think that had to be the inevitable result and some key people in the Africanamerican Community john lewis, who said dont do that. Lets put enough africanamericans in the districtness the south where an africanamerican can be elected but lets have africanamericans in some of the surrounding districts where they can influence the outcome. That was not the case in many instances and now all you have in the deep south are black democrats and white republicans there are no more white republicans, with limited exception. Some in florida and those politics say the farther south you go, the farther north you get in florida so theyre not a typical southern state. Theres one in anyway a couple of anglo white congressmen in texas but they represent hispanic districts. Thats another matter. The hispanic turnout is lower so you have to have a higher forge guarantee a Hispanic Women bell elected. So the Voting Rights act arental shorting and intentional gerrymandering has led to safe districts where people dont talk to the other side and theyre worried they may lose the primary if they do talk to the other side. Another factor is what has gone on with campaign finance. Tom and i both were harsh critics of the Mccain Feingold law when it was passed about 15 years ago. Our view was that under prior to mccainfeingold, outside groups labor and corporations and wealthy individuals could contribute to Political Parties. That had to be disclosed. When i was children of the dccc we disclosed every money. Mccain fine gold took that away from Political Parties and we argued with the people who were authoring Mccain Feingold. The inevitable result the money will about to ideological groups on either frame wont go to the parties. We were right and they were wrong. And thats exactly what has happened. And now with the Supreme Court taking the position that money is a free speech issue and you cant put limits on what anybody can spend in politics. You can put limits on what they can give directly to a candidate but you cant put limits on and what they can give to a party but no limits on their able to have independent expenditures or give to groups on c4s, and the problem i the c4 groups dont have to report their contributors so large amounts of unreported money being dropped into races in the last minute and an incumbent congressman alives in mortal fear somebody will spend three or four Million Dollars against him in the last couple weeks of a race so you have this odd combination of safe districts where the challenge could be in the primary and Unlimited Money from the outside. We have some suggestions about that. And ill talk about that in a minute too. The other thing i dont mean to be overly critical of the media. I used to be a reporter. But we now have highly polarized media. When i was first elected there were no all news cable stations. Somebody figured out, some very smart people figured out roger ailes figured out for fox that there was money to be made by having a conservative talk channel, and that is exactly what they did. So the people on the right could know where to go to get their evening fix on what was going on and most of thats very partisan. And then msnbc figured out their making money on the right. Lets make money on the left so they started msnbc. Its not as extreme as fox is, but its pretty partisan. They dont cut much slack for the other side. Poor old cnn tried to go down the middle and theyve lagged in the polls so theyve lagged in the rate examination the other two have been more successful. Also the internet, of course, is a source of enormous amount of information. Some of which is not true. And the internet does nose have editors in many cases. So the public is being bombarded with all kinds of partisan highly partisan information and im not as a reporter, former reporter im not for censorship or putting restrictions on what people can say on the media or the internet but i think we have to understand the effect of all that on our political process. How can we solve this problem . The recommendation champ at the in our book makes several specific recommendations. One is that Congress Pass a law which it could do its empowered to do this, whether it would do it is another matter requiring states to have nonpartisan commissions to draw congressional districts. Not a bad idea. Five states decided to do that on their own. California arizona wisconsin. Washington and new jersey, and in m