Republican or democrat but youre still basically american and share the same culture and you know your side is half wrong. When you have the mentality of im half wrong and hes probably half right, it will be easier to come to an agreement. But if you have an eggotisticle at tiew tude of pim 100 right and hes 100 wrong, then its hard to come to an agreement and i think weve had a failure of modesty about our own rightness and wrongness. We conclude with the marks of genius at the Morgan Library with assistant curator John Mcquillen. I think it changes as we pass through the centuries from if an a chenet roman idea of genius being a sort of guardian spirit that everyone had, every man had his genius, every woman had her juno, to something more selective. 18th century authors, alexander pope, the great romantic poets thought genius was something only a select few could ever hope to cleave and whether given by nature or god, but it was a very selective thing that set them apart. Politics in america and genius at the Morgan Library when we continue. Theres a saying around here you stand behind what you say. Around here, we dont make excuses, we make commitments. And when you cant live up to them, you own up and make it right. Some people think the kind of accountability that thrives on so many streets in this country has gone missing in the places where its needed most. But i know youll still find it, when you know where to look. And by bloomberg. A provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Jon good evening. Im jon meacham filling in for charlie rose who is on assignment. We begin the program with a conversation about politics, in particular why a polarized washington seems incapable of action on issues ranging from immigration to entitlements. With fewer than 1,000 days left in office, president obama must govern with an Approval Rating around 40 . By comparison, at this point in their second terms, Ronald Reagan was at 63 , bill clinton at 62. Obamas current standing is roughly akin to that of george w. Bush who stood at 39 . Congress is even worse. Only 7 of americans say they have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the house and senate. An unpopular president , a desperately unpopular congress. Whats driving the disspiritting public discontent with washington . Joining me two incumbent lawmakers candid, joe manchin and jim cooper. Senator, you have been quoted saying that your worst day as governor is better than your best day as a senator. Why is that . Jon, i think if you base id on accomplishments, getting something done, and i think you and i spoke about this before, i was able to basically get up every morning excited as governor, knowing that i could change somebodys life and make it better for them in West Virginia. My beautiful state that i love so much. And ei could go to bed at night fulfilled i had done something productive. I dont get that same feeling now. But im very hopeful and it is still the place if youre going to change the world, being in congress and washington, d. C. Is the place to do it, weve just got to get our act together and act like americans and quit worrying about being democrats and republicans. Jon congressman, you have served in congress under five administrations from 1982 with a little break in there. Which was the most effective and what was it about that era that was missing now . Well, theres never a golden age, john, but there might have been a bronze age. The tip oneal era, in retrospect, was a pretty harmonious time because tip could sit down with president Ronald Reagan and get things done after hours. Thats almost no longer true today theres such acrimony, and were behaving more Like Parliament than congress because my colleagues 999 of the time with their Political Party affiliation. Joe and i sometimes break from our party. No party has monopoly on wisdom. Our main job is to do the right thing pore the country. Jon what is it, simply the personalities that you dont have a speaker or a president , or what are the other factors . Personalities are part of it, but also some larger forces. Weve gotten so darned good at gerrymandering with computers that these computers are preset to send people to washington and once they get there they dont know anybody because they dont live there and after the last vote we fly back home. The internet changed politics tremendously. Used to be when we had three news channels, we had a common set of facts to operate on. Whether youre watching fox or msnbc, you can see a different picture of america today. Whats never changed is human nature and common sense and thats what youre miss so much is the human contact, human interactions. Common sense. If i can go home to West Virginia and explain why im supporting something or why im looking at something differently, if i can explain it, i can vote for it, if it makes sense. If it doesnt, i cant. I dont care whether its a hard Party Line Vote they want me to take, whether it be democrat or whatever it may be, and the thing that ive said is basically were an environment, jim and riin an environment now and jim can basically give you the experience of history here being through five administrations, ive only been here through one administration, i dont know what five would have done to me, but, anyway, john, with that being said, i made a pledge dr. I have made a i have made a pledge to myself and every West Virginian thatly not campaign against a setting colleague. If you expect me to go out and beat up my colleagues who are republicans and who are running to go down in their states and get involved in their races, i wont do it. Jon senator, you came to National Prominence after the tragedy in newtown in connecticut as a democrats from West Virginia and someone who in a campaign ad who shot the cap and trade bill, coming out for some common sense gun legislation. Can you tell us what that experience taught you for good or for ill about whats happening . Well, i pretty much knew, you know all these personal issues, i come from a gun culture. Im a lifetime member of the nra, proud member. I shoot and love to go hunting and shooting and have friends ive done that with all my life, and with that i always felt common sense would prevail, and if i wanted to be treated as a lawabiding gun own, then just because you dont come from a gun culture, dont look at me as ive committed a crime because i own a gun. Maybe its a type of gun you dont want me to own. But i could say why do you have a car with 140 on the speedometer when the speed is only 70 . You have the right to buy what you want in america as long as you abide by the laws. Thats how i want to be looked upon as a law abiding gun owner. With that i thought game responsibility. We never put restrictions on personal traction actions. I want to sell or give jimmy gun, i can do it, dont need a background check. Law abiding person wont sell to a stranger or unstable person or even irresponsible family member. With all that, if i dont know you ant go to a commercial transaction such as a gun show or on the internet exchanging and trading guns that at least i ought to have a background check or a background check on you so i know who im selling it to . To me that made sense. If i want to be treated as a lawabiding gun owner with all the right and the second amendment, then i should be at least showing common sense about getting a background check when i dont know somebody. Jon well, you did this in a bipartisan way and it didnt work. Well, when you say it didnt work, you know, we had almost i think 60 votes on cloture. Then they said, oh, my goodness, this will pass. Then all the wheels started turning and people got scared and threatened and this and that. It takes an awful lot of work. I have been asked the question, do you wish you hadnt done it . Well, you know, if thats the case, why did you send me here . Why dont you just send somebody here that basically will do exactly what the path of least resistance would be and just go along to get along . I knew if i couldnt bring some expertise to a piece of legislation i knew an awful lot about, then what was my purpose . So it did take an awful lot of work and politically you take maybe a little bit of a hit, but i truly believe if you work hard enough, people will respond and get involved and penal are looking at me now do you know what the whole problem on that was, jon, on that . I said, did you read the bill . They said, no. We broke it down to one page. After they read it, they said, joe, we like your bell. I said, thank you. They said, we just dont trust government, thats why were not for it. They didnt trust government stopping there. I said, guys, this is a constitutional amendment, it has to go back through process. I can assure you we wont do anything different than what the bill says. We just dont trust government. Jon that ring strew . Oe was describing the sausage making process the legislature goes through. Its not pretty, just hope it tastes good when youre done. Moving into the polarization, were finding some people want pork, some want beef and they dont want to mix the two. So its very difficult to get a compromise. Joe was ideally suited to achieve a compromise on the gun issue. He tried hard. He didnt succeed because its hard for anyone to beat the National Rifle association. Some issues are difficult to solve and takes times. But there is so much more the congress could be doing. We should be humiliated were at 7 in the polls and should be doing Everything Possible to do better. Joe and i coapt bill called no budgets, no pay, which would eliminate congressional pay if we didnt pass that for a budget. We passed it for one year. The republicans limited it to a year. Now its expired. So now there wont be budgets for the United States of america. There are new approaches, like incentive pay, penalty pay, also gamey fying it, so if we got to pick the Committee Members that might change the cal clues. To an outsider, this is all way complicated and sounds like roberts rules of order or something. But this is the system the founders gave us and in the fourth of july weeks we should be obligated to make it work. And when we have funerals like senator howard baker who is one of the giants of our time, to be sure a short giant, he knew how to get along and will go down in history as one of the greatest and todays leaders are not measuring up. If we followed the examples of the recent past, we could do better. Joes idea about not campaigning against colleagues would be helpful. You cant just have unilateral disarmment, they have to agree to the same thing. Some people say when bill frist attacked tom daschle, that was one of the first times the senate got off rails and personally attacked each other, making comedy very hard. Jon when you talk to people in the white house about these issues, they bring up something jim mentioned a while ago which is a letle lack of a common audience and a common fact base in which you could have Something Like the fdr, the reagan going into the country, explaining things, even, god help us, ross perot, have a charge, a teachable moment, do you think that kind of president ial leadership is possible in this environment . I think so. Dont you, jim, think people are hungry for that . They are hungry for it, but also we are at fault. We make the presidency almost an impossible job. Even as an historian, there was never an easy time for an american president. Thomas jefferson didnt have it easy. Andrew jackson didnt have it easy. Now we make it almost impossible because youre damned if you do or dont. If people could remember harry truman, he was vilified yet made some of the wisest Foreign Policy and domestic policy decisions in history and only in retrospect do we see his greatness. Look today, it would be common sense to pass an infrastructure bill, but because of not wanting to raise any taxes, senator corker is the only republican i know of willing to break with orthodoxy. So it used to be common sense for congress to pass highway bills. Weve really blown it for a long time. We havent had a real highway bill for seven years. Thats crippling for the country and the presidency, too, but its not his fault. Right. Immigration is very important right now. Its reaching a level of humanitarian crisis in california, texas. Whats the hope for congressional action in terms of addressing this with some dispatch . Senator . In the senate, we passed a bipartisan immigration bill which basically said secure your borders first. Those people who have been here and came here illegally will pay their fines, get in the back of the line and go through a process. There was no amnesty there whatsoever, and its something that i think it was a Good Building block for us to work off of. Were just asking our friends on the house side, both the republicans and our democratic friends, to look at this. And lets bring this up, with what you see the influx now of these young people coming from all over south america. Something has to be done. Weve got to secure these borders. Weve got to make sure that were able to do it in a systematic way thats fair but also manageable, and right now its not. And you cant do it without Immigration Reform, thinking you have 11plus Million People here who came here illegally and youre going to round them all up and throw them out, we cant even stop the ones coming here just recently and get them turned around to go back. Were having a hard time there. I think, jim, that was the 2008 law that was passed, and thats what henry and i are working on right now, seeing if we can eliminate and we peel that piece of legislation and repeal that piece of legislation and treat all the noncontiguous countries the same as mexico and canada and get them back to their home country within a 48hour period. Joes exactly right, comprehensive Immigration Reform passed the senate and thats a miracle but the house of representatives wont even allow a vote. They are so afraid of alienating the ultraconservative base during primaries they arent willing to consider it and even after the eric cantor defeat theyre more paranoid. But i have a semifunctional senate and completely dysfunctional house, and if they were to allow a vote it would pass and be solved, but they wont allow a vote because its internal republican politics. Theyre worried about the Tea Party Wing and folks like mario arubio are having a hard time. Im asking about senator manchins potomac hospitality and whether you have been drinking with him on the potomac river. No laughter jon senator, do you have a house boat is this. I live on the potomac. I couldnt come to investing in real estate in d. C. It wasnt many my dna. I said, i just cant do it. I told my wife, im going to buy a boat, then when things get crazier than now, i can float away and no one will notice the difference. The main thing, its been a great thing for us to have an evening to get a few senators together, four, five, six, eight, even more at times, and i try to get a balance of democrats and republicans, and people from what you would think of one end of the spectrum to another. One night we had telemarket and ted cruz, a beautiful evening. I know tom and ted looked at me both my friends and before i knew it, you couldnt separate the two from conversation, and we dont get that type of opportunity here. So we have to make every minute count. Jon senator manchin, congressman cooper, thank you. Thank you, jon. Jon appreciate it. We continue our conversation about politics and polarization with president ial historian Michael Beschloss who joins me from washington and in new york david brooks of the New York Times. Welcome to you both. Myel, wanted to start with you. Weve just talked to senator manchin, congressman cooper. Theyre in the arena trying to make things work. How do you see this moment in historical comparison in terms of polarization . Well, you know, jon, i think one way of looking at it is, if it were a perfect system, then the most polarized congress would be at the post polarized times of American History, like the run up to the civil war, perhaps in 1940 and 1941 when americans were struggling, whether we should go to war against hitler and the Imperial Japanese or not, and i hate to say it, but if you had to look at what was done in congress in those times compared to now, i think the congress of 2014 does not measure up very well. Thats remarkable. So we were better off in was more Productive Legislature in the 1850s . Well, they disagreed, but i think there was not such a habit of just disagreeing almost out of custom. The reflective partisanship is on the rise. Sure, around there were not a lot of members of congress who were terrified that if they took a position that was not, you know, extreme enough that they would get primaried, which is a word that, thank god, was not used in the 1860s. Sometimes what david does is party tricks is he sub jew gaits the word to primary. I gave him the word primarily. Jon do you agree . We go through cycles. You know, i think the 1860s, if you look at some of the campaigns against lincoln, pretty polarized. Statistically the cycle started in the 70s and we should be pulling out of it if you look at rough historical patterns of 30 years. What prevents us from pulling out is strictly institutional. If you go to a dinner party in washington, on the left is academic, donor and think tanks so they have an infrastructure on the left. On the right, donors, thing tanks, academics, infrastructure on the right. If you go to dinner in the middle, its lobbyists. Theres just a void. If youre a politician and want to heado the middle, theres nobody there. If you deviate from the right or left, theres punishment, so we have an institutional problem. I agree with david. I think it is institutional, but i would say that thro