spent a a little more time bea politician last year and less time being president d have kicked their butts out. i did know what they were doing. >> find presidential recording season two on c-span now mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts. >> ira shapiro 45 your washington career has focus onn americand politics and international trade. he served 12 years in senior staff position in the u.s. senate working for a series of distinguished senators, jacob javits, gaylordnd nelson, thomas eagleton, robert byrd and jay rockefeller. he served any office of u.s. trade representative during the clinton administration first as general counsel and then as chief negotiator with japan and canada with the rank of ambassador. from 2012-2017 he was 2017 he was the chairman of the national association of japan american

society so see the accommodation from the foreign minister of japan, and he is the author of two previews critically claim books about the senate, in 2012 the last great senate, courage and statement ship in times of crisis. and in 2018, broken, can the senate save itself and the country? his latest book is called "the betrayal: how mitch mcconnell and the senate republicans abandoned america" ." in reviewing mr. shapiro will be eugene meyer and award-winning veteran journalist with passion for history and travel, real estate and the chesapeake bay. widely published in magazines he has authored four books and was for many years a reporter and editor at the "washington post." since leaving the post in 2004 he has received 17 awards for his work and is that more than 50 bylines in the "new york times." his first journalism job was as washington bureau librarian for

the old new t york herald tribue when he got to tag along with a white house reporter to watch lbj signed the 1964 civil rights act into law. pretty cool. [applause] >> so it's hard to j avoid partisanship when discussing this book. look at that title. as i tried to tie this introduction to current events over the last few weeks i kept waking up toee new headlines evy day that seem to require constant rewriting. it was like oh, what mess is mitch mcconnell responsible for today? whether it's the supreme court and abortion or campaign finance or voting rights or climate change or holding up critical appropriations or primary election results, so much can be traced back to what is the so-called grim reaper. but with your indulgence let me focus on the fact that through the lens of mitch mcconnell

ira shapiro raises a foundational question. what should we expect of the motivations behind elected officials in our republic? should we simply expecting to be driven by nothing more than the quest for unbridled power, employing cynical tactics in the name of amassing control and influence, as james madison warned us about in the federalist papers? or maybe just maybe we should expect something more of our leaders that they be able to at the very least sometimes rise above petty and a selfish desirs to amass power, that they serve the greater good, put community and country in posterity before themselves and their tribes. at the very least that they not incite angry mobs are used racist dog whistles or abandon ethical norms or be apologists for conspiracy ferrous r standby in the face of an attempted coup. that's a pretty low bar. but perhaps we should expect

that ultimately at their best our leaders can inspire a shared vision based on fundamental principles, vision toward which we can all work in the name of uplifting natalie ourselves but each other and all of us as the gang of ten has try to do as ira explained in his book. we in gaithersburg at the local level of government genuinely subscribe to that latter view. not because we are naïve but because we've seen that it is possible and we have made it possible, and we know it is a better path. so we try to be an example of something more than the sad and jaded politics on display in ira's detailed account of mitch mcconnell's career and events of the top administration. as a writer i has a wonderful ability to translate tones of dense political news coverage and academic and historical analysis and personal experience into a fluid and captivating yarn about the misguided

characters at thehe center of or national crisis. it all makes for anng engaging y to digest andfa makes sense of e news coverage that many of us are already familiar with, although i have to concede that reading this book and reliving the moment it covers gave me a little bit of ptsd. but with a warm welcome and with gratitude for your willingness to tackle a topic so infuriating and depressing, i have the program over to eugene meyer and ira shapiro. welcome. [applause] .. you and good morning. and ira it's a pleasure to be on the stage with you today. um, so back in let's flash back a little bit to 2013 when you would published your last book the last great senate and although mitch mcconnell had declared his primary goal was to make a

>> you spoke to my incoming college students and you felt that regular order was breaking out. incited a gang of eight, there were stories of healthy politics and you look forward to the next great senate . what happened? >> thanks for being here. it's great to be interviewed by somebody who has had a remarkable career as a journalist and has also beena wonderful author . besides your contribution to the community so thank you fordoing this . and for bringing up my occasional effort to be more optimistic which is has established a long record of nacvetc or disappointment. it's interesting, when i wrote the first book which

was the last great senate, i did it for the purpose of showing how the senate worked when it worked and how the senate was a source of information at one time, not just frustration and disappointment. and i kind of thought, as you point out, i was always looking for green shoots, of evidence that things were getting better. many of the senators actually wanted the senate to work better so there would be moments when it appeared things were going to get better . but inevitably, my hopes would be dashed. mcconnell would step forward and regular order, regular legislative process would fail and the senate would spiral downward again and that has been the sequence of events i believe where the senators would like it to be better but the leader has insisted that it not be.

>> so joe biden when he was campaigning for president and upon his inauguration pitched that he was the bipartisan former senator who could bring everyone together to overcome the polarization that you so eloquently write about . my question is was he being nacve or just political? >> great question and it gets asked a lot because president biden of course had 35 years in the senate. it was steeped in it. he loves to make bipartisan deals. he likes to think or liked to think he was a friend of mitch mcconnell's, even. i think the answer is complicated. i think that the president has a way that he believes politics should be and he's

made every effort to have it that way. but at the same time i think he was under no illusions anymore about mcconnell because he saw him close up in eight years of the obama presidency. so i think he knew, you make the effort, maybe you can bring some of the other republicans along. but i think he was under no illusions about it by the time he was president. >> my question goes beyond mitch mcconnell which is that this age of comedy that you look back wistfully at. is that based on tradition as opposed to foundational? i ask that because we have this ... i don't know how that phrase is. majoritarian foundational rule, giving each one of the

senators that it would work out fine and now you have this situation where wyoming with 690,000 people as 2 senators in california who has 41 million people as 2 senators so you have this great imbalance. so my question is is this at rereally all about mcconnell or is it more foundational? is there a basic flaw in our system that mcconnell and the majoritarian's are exploiting ? >> that's a great question and pretty foundational, actually. i guess when i wrote the book the last great senate, i subsequently have said it may be the only great senate. maybe there was an exceptional confluence of events that brought about the possibility. the world war ii, great generation senators who came back from the war . and also, the threat of the

cold war right after world war ii. and the parties not beingso far apart . we had liberal republicans and moderate republicans and we had conservative democrats so the parties weren't that far apart. so the senate worked in a certain way. but i also believe that people make the difference, by and large and i think that our politics as difficult as they would have been anyway, our politics have been affected disproportionately by acouple of bad actors . and the two that have had the most impact i think our newt gingrich and mitch mcconnell. and so it's accommodation of things. everyone talks about how there are two senators from each state and this is is outrageous. it's baked into the constitution, we know that.

we never thought about it in the earlier years because there was so many good small state senators and they knew how to be senators and what they were there for and that's also what's missing. >> also leadership as you have emphasized is very important . on both sides of the aisle. and i want to go across the aisle to the democratic side for a moment. and look back on the time when harry reid was the democratic majority leader as opposed to chuck schumer. who would you rate as more effective of the two? >> harry reid was not a leader that i think was among the great leaders. but i always got it because he was the majority leader during the obama presidency and faced endless and

relentless obstruction from mcconnell. i think it probably drove him not only to frustration, maybe crazy at a certainpoint . i don't think he wasa great leader . but he got some things done including the affordable care act . he really had an important role in that. i think that schumer is capable leader. dealing with the challenges of the 50-50 senate, a polarized situation. and i think that he's done considerable things in the way of accomplishments and probably made some mistakes as well . >> given that we don't have the two parties that are closer together than they were a generation ago, what if anything can be done about what i described as majoritarian minority rule?

>> i've tried in the book and in my articles before, i've tried very hard to encourage the relatively small group of independent minded republicans or more mmoderate republicans to be their best selves. rwto come forward and join biden and the democratic senators in moving the country forward. andoccasionally that happens with the infrastructure bill, etc. so i think i'd like the republicans to show more independence from their leader . doesn't happen very often. my answer beyond that is i take away as many things as i could that interfere with majority rule in the senate. i would get rid of the filibuster.

i would get rid of holdswhich have turned into this sridiculous thing where rand paul can wake up and stop action in the senate by himself . and so i wouldfocus on those things . but ultimately, i believe that the senators have to understand the great privilege they have and the responsibility they have to protect the national interest and not just be partisan hacks. >> do you think the democrats who have this slim majority with vice president harris as the majority vote have oubeen as effective as they could be or have they been less so? >> like probably every democrat i share stations about joe manchin and the role he's played. i know no precedent for a senator who plays that role not just on a couple of

issues but one thing after another, no matter how many of his concerns are met he has more concerns i have that frustration. but i do think the problem is that joe biden came to office with a very ambitious agenda based on the conditions in the country andour needs as a country . and it has collided with his very narrow majority and that has required him to pull back and one could say possibly that biden and schumer should have understood that earlier . >> we are in a different time than a generation ago and i refer specifically to o social media and breaking news which is breaking 24 seven on the cable news and so on. a so i wonder what your thoughts are and what role have the media been complicit with their horse race club

coverage in making the legislating and comedy more difficult. >> i always say or i always think and sometimes say that it's much harder to be a senator now and it was in the earlier years. and among the important factors that changed it are the very shrill 24 seven cable news. and now, the intense effect of social media which amplifies differences and anger. so yes, i think it is more difficult. but my view is that that merely makes it, sorry, not merely. that makes it more important for them to be real senators to recognize their responsibilities to bring people together to the extent

possible, can't t always agree on things. bring people together and not exacerbate differences. and if i had a criticism and i have many criticisms of senator mcconnell, i regard him as an architect of division. i know of no times or very few times that he brought people together as opposed to driving them apart. and that's wrong for senators but it's particularly wrong for somebody who's a senate leader . >> how would you rate the democratic response to mcconnell's lies and behavior . >> it certainly hasn't been effective overall. i think it's getting sharper and stronger and i think the president is taking on the republicans and will continue to take on the republicans particularly as the republican party comes more and more extreme. a white nationalist party so i think it's gettingstronger . but there is an inherent,

this sounds so obvious but there's an inherent problem which is, it was captured by sam rayburn, the best and most famous speaker of one nancy pelosi. -sam rayburn famously said any jackass can kick down a barn but it takesa carpenter to build one . obstructions easier than governing. and that gives mcconnell, has given mcconnell a great advantage when he's been constructing. but he did succeed in some of his major objectives and he was in the majority as well. but obstructions easier than governing. >> it's interesting you would say that, i read the other day that he was asked what the word republicans do if they got the majority and his response is you'll have to elect us to find out.

>> we will tell you later>> we have no plan if he's willing to talk about a plan at all . >> he does have a thesis there which is a strong part of what he does. he believes that the party in power is going to be held responsible for the conditions in the country so if biden is having trouble and the country is angry ndabout a whole range of things and frustrated understandably with things, that will reward the party.that's his plan. so. >> there's part probably a bipartisan consensus on that. i would think democrats although they wouldn't want publicly say that would probably agree with that. >> naturally being an optimist i disagree with that consensus and that will be proven nacve as usual. >> i want a little bit about judges. which is a major strong point

among democrats and many others and the fact that mcconnell held up garland on the excuse that it was too close to a presidential year and then rushed through in the barracks just before the election of joe biden. and it's basically a push to the senate many coconservative judges. is there anything the democrats could have done differently edto have stopped that or slowed it down. >> i think there are things they could have done but i will, let's drop back and say that the republicans particularly the federalist society has focused on judges for a long time in a way that the democrats didn't. and democrats looking at the last, the long game would say

that they didn't pay enough attention to it. there's a man named brian fallon who founded demand justice. he broke with the former schumer aidewho broke with schumer because he didn't think thedemocrats were doing enough .so to some extent , this is the long arc of how thingshave gone . federalist society, very effectively has been fighting this fight since the reagan years. but, and harry reid opened the door to federal judges other than the supreme court by using the nuclear option as we know to take away the ability to filibuster. so what could they have done? not that much. but i want to make one distinction here.

and i looked this up, this was kind of interesting. we all think of mcconnell running through every federal judge he could in the 4 years of trouble and he did . jimmy carter in his one term had more judges confirmed that donald trump did. so presidents come, presidents go. carter had appellate judges, more than trump did. what's changed is the supreme court. what's changed is the confirmation of three radical right-wing justices. and in that regard the democrats didn't do very well and it shows the polarization of the country that those justices could be confirmed. but i'll take a breath, let you ask the next question before i go on to attack mcconnell's role specifically . >> mcconnell would say harry

reid opened the door but lowering the bar for federal judges with a simple majority so he was justified in doing the same for the supreme court. >> that's what he would say. >> is a response to that? >> i think there is a response to that and one of the charms of senator mcconnell is he not only has his victories but he then rewrites the nhistory. he has very recently said, and he said many times, the left , the democrats are responsible for every escalation of the judicial wars. now, that's simply nottrue . the confirmation of supreme court justices was proceeding sort of relatively normally for a long time until his unprecedented action to prevent the nomination and consideration of merrick garland . he won that one. he came out a winner when

trump came in. everything else followed from that including, and that was an unprecedented act. utterly unprecedented. and the ramming through of amy coney barrett which icall the banana republic confirmation was the most anti-democratic act i've ever seen . >> going back to 2015, back on mcconnell, stepping away from mcconnell. >> let's talk about mcconnell . >> we are. but it strikes me looking back on 2016 and you mentioned the democrats didn't take the supreme court seriously enough. it seems to me at the time and sense 2015 the democrats it's mostly about breaking the glass ceiling and very little attention was paid to the supreme court which is of

equal if not greater importance in the long-term and now we're suffering the consequences. >> spoiler alert, i'm an old guy. you and i together our old w guys so we go back in history a long way. i was in the mondale presidential campaign in 1984 and wrote speeches about the importance of the supreme court and how we might lose the majority . if we didn't pay more attention to it. that was half a lifetime ago. but look, i think what happened in 2016... well, a number of things happened. one, donald trump had a good instinct when it was brought to him the idea that to solidify the republicans if he had a list of judges that he would promise to pickthe supreme court justice from . he grasped it. it was a mcconnell idea.

it was don mcgann, the white house counsel. it was the federalist society andheritage foundation but he got . and it worked for him. number two though, i think the trump versus hillary clinton race was so astonishing overall i think any one issue got subsumed by . you could talk about the supreme court but you come back to trump or hillary or etc. so mcconnell actually didn't expect trump to win from what we can tell. but you want to keep the seat just in case and he came up a winner. >> going back to mcconnell and more current events, reading what he said in private about trump's impeachable offense from the

insurrection which was that he's tired of the guy and i think his exact words, i'm sick of the guy. the democrats will take care of the meaning he will be and then his boat to. >> and his public criticism of trump and his comments on the narrow grounds that he justified his boat. can you believe anything mcconnell says? >> that's a great question. you can believe certain things mcconnell says and indeed, he's pretty transparent about certain things. when he tells you he wanted to repeal the affordable care act you could believe that. and when he tells you how important the courts are. you can believe that. so there are things that he saysthat you can believe.

but in general , look. if you look at mcconnell's speech on the morning of january 6 ngwhen congress came together to certify the results of theelection , or you look at his brilliant speech on february 13, you couldn't make a better speech condemning trump. but then he pivots and finds a way to keep trump from being convicted. i write in the book and i think he genuinely was outraged at trump. he spent 36 years in the capital. it was outraged by the desecration of the capital and the insurrection he quickly calculates he's too powerful and the party for me to bring them down. maybe over time. filled with her away. that's my strategy basically.

>> time will tell. certainly a spark remains very powerful within the party. but trump has been criticized mcconnell, condemns mcconnell repeatedly. it hasn't shaken mcconnell's position in the senate republicans. time will tell but let's see what the january 6 committee does for one thing. >> i have one final question for you. >> will give you a chance to expound on whatever else you want to expound on but my question is should the republicans regain the senate majority after the november election, what you expect and what can we expect from mcconnell. first i would say that my book which some people have said is a very good book but somewhat depressing .

only somewhat. >> it ends with a call to action. fundamentally if you want to change the political direction of the country, what you need to do is reduce mcconnell's power. to be honest we've been living in what i call mitch mcconnell's america for a long time and we still are. if you elect more democratic senators and reduce his power , that would change things. the math is very favorable for democrats even though it's an uphill struggle given the climate but the math is favorable. the republicans have more seats. if god for bid mcconnell again becomes the majority leader i expect he will do the bare minimum for the country. and he will be focused primarily on how to regain the white house in 2024 from whoever the republicans

dominate and despite his combination of trump, he has said i'd support him course if he's nominated. so the senate election has become really important. >> a lot of pundits have said our democracy and by a thread right now. you share their pessimism for not so much. >> i think our democracy hangs by a thread. i'm astonished at how precarious the situation is. if you had told me that we would have this pandemic two years and we would have the joe biden become president and we would have and insurrection and yet the divisions are greater than they ever were, it hasn't, you would have said maybe we

track but it on hasn't worked that way . it's gotten worse. and one of the things that's most important about understanding mcconnell is he's managed to serve the madness of the republican party. stay in power all theseyears . now, he's basically reflects the republican party at this point. he would say otherwise but he is the republican party. i think it hangs by a thread is there anything else you'd like to add. softball question. >> i guess i want to return to the notion of an architect of division. so he's very unrepentant for anything that happens. and so judge jackson is nominated to the supreme court. it's a moment one could celebrate an african-american woman becoming justice. they still have a six three

majority of right-wing judges on the court. but he can't do that.. he can't even say it's quite an achievement, i don't agree with her, i'm going to vote against her. it's the radical left. she's the choice of the radical left. always division. and i want to say that i commend him for going to ukraine. i think it would be great if the president zelensky and the courage of the other ukrainian people remind him of democracy but he's done huge damage. >> i think we have time for a few questions. [applause] >> thanks for the great questions. >> excuse me.

i'm a historian so i'm going to go way back for your time. when i look at social media today and look at newspapers from the 1850s, i see a lot of similarity. the last time the senate was so divided and the last time the country was so polarized was before the civil war. now today we have two major things, mainly. pressuring our society. one is growing influence of the white supremacists who their aim is to start a race war. and the other is the climate emergency, climate crisis which is worsening. both of these things may lead to increasing violence within our society so do you think we are heading in that

direction or a division between the states. >> bank you for your question. i think we're headed in a terribledirection . i think that's why it's incumbent on people who have responsibilities as leaders to look at the condition of the country and national interest and behave accordingly. i guess the reason and i would say if it's social media exacerbates everything and frankly it's not clear to me whether democracy can survive tsocial media but i should have said jean and to the audience the reason i focus on senators is i mean, citizens have responsibilities.

but the senators have real responsibilities. they have these privileged positions like nobody else has. multiple six-year terms, they're going to serve three, four, five times longer than any president can. privilege and the deal which most senators used understand is an exchange you have responsibility for the nation . you have responsibility of particularly in times of crisis you're a party member but you're not partisan. you care about your states but you're not a state i legislator. you've got to lift it up and they haven't lifted it up. so that's why i, voters have their responsibility and we actually came through in 2018 and 2020. in a powerful way.

but these senators, they all us a lot more and they're giving us. >> i've heard a lot about what you think mcconnell worst traits are. worst, i know what you think of the supreme court is perhapsone of the worst things that he has done to the country . but based on your last comment, i would say that restriction of voting rights. that the senate not protecting people's right to vote is perhaps the worst thing based on the last questioners comment about protecting democracy. how would you evaluate mcconnell's impact on that issue? >> that's a great question from a friend who is my wife . [applause] [laughter]

>> and it was implanted. i'm just thinking there's worse things than the supreme court . >> look, i was on lawrence o'donnell the other night and he read something where i had denounced mcconnell and then he said then you write that's not all of it . i think he's been terrible on voting rights. i think that he and the unified republicans have posed federal voting rights legislation that has is desperately needed. you made that comment or not state legislators, you have susan collins thing we don't need federal voting rights legislation because elections were went well in may. that's not an answer to the rest of the country and uawhat we actually need.

part of my reasoning for encouraging people that the 2022 elections was so t important is whatever your issue, whether it's abortion-rights, voting rights, climate, gun control. healthcare. mcconnell's at the root of all of it. he's at the root of all of it. i blame him for everything kind of with the exception of inflation. i don't really blame him about that. >> i come from a slightly different perspective. i don't have that much of our perspective on family, maybe that's an advantage because i

seethings for what they are . and i've seen some change over this last few years especially on the democratic side. so for me, the republican, there's a lot of heat and the right to society but i'm also seeing a lot on the democratic side.ngthe heat levels. when we are looking at a solution for this. for this impasse, where do you go from here? you could say that the extremes on the democratic side are emboldening people who are supporting trump and makingthem stronger . so maybe it's incumbent on our party to come closer to the middle. for example, manchin. i think manchin helps it by

pushing the party away from these big bills which would have really created a problem of inflation. of bringing it back. it seems like when someone is pushing the partycloser to the middle there's so much pushback on the democratic side . that's the part i have. and as an asian there's a lot of icy on the democratic side , this whole concept of asians are white activists which is very hateful. but that's just a perspective and i think from my perspective at least, i would like to see the democrats move more to the moderate side than otherwise. what are your thoughts? >> look, as we discussed i think biden had an extraordinarily ambitious

agenda. and certainly the progressives in congress and across the country had an extraordinarily ambitious agenda and the hopes that you could realize things. there have been a certain kind of progress that has been very rare in our country . . that are rare. fdr, lbj. you don't get these opportunities very often andi think the democrats felt there was an opportunity . it collides with their narrow majority and that's why they had to i think i just. but i don't share the view that the problem is primarily a democratic problem. if you look at bernie sanders and his $6 trillion program. the democrats quickly made it $3 trillion program then they looked okay, 1 and a half trillion dollars they've been compromising.

but for 30 years, the republicans have moved in the direction of from conservatism to radicalism to white supremacy. it's longstory in american politics . we have one political party which is somewhat fractious and we have one apocalyptic cult. i didn't deliver the line quite right. we have one party fractious and one party that was described by a 25 year veteran stalwarts of the republicans ub10 years ago as an apocalyptic cult and it's only gotten worse since then. >> during the second impeachment trial there were,

there was the opportunity to drive a stick through trump's heart. and we were told that if it was a private vote they would get well over 67 votes. there were some republican senators not running or reelection that voted to convict yet portman voted not to convict. did your research, did you find other reasons why republican senators couldn't vote to convict even though maybe privately theywould have ? >> great question. look, it may be one can done. despite my quasi-session with mcconnell, mcconnell could not have succeeded if other republicans had pushed back on him. at any time, five or six republicans or 4 could have stopped not onlymcconnell but trump . but what happened was a

couple of the independent-minded republicans, blake and walker left politics. john mccain passed away. the bestpart of lindsey graham died with john mccain . so, and then we got left with what's susan and lisa and murkowski doing, what about mitt romney? mcconnell after his great speech or as he was condemning trump, he later said i couldn't go against all the otherrepublicans . they were all, the other republicans, many of them would have rallied to convict trump if mcconnell had . and by the way, i don't know ihow rob portman and lamar alexander in any number of the others lives with their records in the last four years. thank you all. [applause]

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