irish shapiro's 45-year

washington career has focused on l erican polit >> 45 year washington career has focused on american politics and international trade. serving 12 years of senior staff positions in the u.s. senate working for a series of distinguished letters. javits, eagleton, bird and rockefeller. serving in the clinton administration first is general counsel been chief negotiator with japan and canada with rank of ambassador. he was the chairman of the national association of japan america societies and received a commendation from the

foreign minister of japan and the author of two previous books about the senate. in 2012 the last great senate. and in 2018 broken. 's latest book is called the a.betrayal. how mitch mcconnell and the senate republicans abandoned america. interviewing mr. schapiro is an award-winning journalist for passion for history and travel and real estate and the chesapeake bay. widely published he has authored four books and was a reporter and editor at the "washington post". since leaving in 2004 he has received 17 words for his work more than 50 bylines in "the new york times". his first job as washington bureau library and for the new

york herald tribune where he could tag along with the white house reporter to watch lbj signed the 1964 civil rights act into law. [applause] it's hard to avoid partisanship working at the title. [laughter] looking at current events i kept waking upeq to new headlines every day that have constant rewriting. what mess is mitch mcconnell responsible for today? whether the supreme court or abortion or voting rights were climate change or primary election results. so much to be trace back to the so-called grim reaper. so with your indulgence only focus on the fact through the lens of mitch mcconnell schapiro raises a

question, what should we expect for the motivations behind elected officials in our republic? should we expectth them to be driven for unbridled power was cynical tactics as james madison warned us about? are we should expect something more of our leaders that at the very least sometimes rise above petty and selfish tdesires to amass power to put the country before themselves and their tribes. at the very least not incite angry mobs or abandon ethical norms or be an apologist for a conspiracy theorist that is a low bar. perhaps we should expecthe ultimately at their best our

leaders can inspire a shared vision based on fundamental principles to which we can all work uplifting not only ourselves but each other and all of us as the gang of ten has tried to do. we at the local level of genuinely subscribe to the latter view. not because we are naïve but it is possible and we made it possible and we know it is a better path. so we try to be an example of something more than the jaded politics on display mitch mcconnell's career and the trump administration. as a writer having a wonderful ability to translate news coverage and academic and historical analysis and personal experience into the misguided c characters at the center of our national crisis.

makes for an engaging way for it makes sense of the news coverage we are familiar with. i have to concede reading this book and the moments that it covers gave me a little ptsd. but with a warm welcome and with gratitude to tackle a topic infuriating and depressing eye hand the program over. welcome. [applause] host: thank you and good morning. it's a pleasure to be on the stage with you today. so to flashback in 2013 when you published your last book , the last great senate. although mitch mcconnell hasoa declared his primary goal is to make obama a one term president you are optimistic

and you felt regular order was freaking out so you had the gang of eight with healthy politics and looked forward to the next great senate. what happened? [laughter] >> thank you for being here. it's great to be interviewed by somebody who has had a remarkable career as a journalist and also and author side your contribution to the community. thank you for doing this. bringing an effort to be more optimistic establishing long record of disappointment. when i wrote the last great

senate i'd with the purpose to show how the senate worked when it worked and it was a source of inspiration at one time. not just frustration and disappointment and i thought i was always looking for green shoots of evidence. many of the senators wanted it to work better. 's there would be some moments it would appear things would get better. but inevitably my hopes would be dashed. mcconnell would step forward and regular orderss would fail and the senate would spiral downward again. that is the sequence of events when the senators would like it to be better but the leader has made it consistent that it not be.

>> when joe biden was campaigning for president and at the inauguration, he was the bipartisan former senator who could bring everyone together to overcome the polarization that you so eloquently writes about. was he being naïve or political? >> great question. it is asked a lot because president biden had 355 years in the senate. he is steeped in that he loves to make bipartisan deals. he like to think he was a friend of mitch mcconnell even. i think the answer is complicated. i think the president has a way he believes politics should be made every effort to have it that way. but at the same time he was not under any illusions about mcconnell because he saw him

close-up and eight years of the obama presidency. he knew that you make the effort or maybe bring other republicans but i think he was under no illusions by the time he was president. host: my question is based on tradition rather than foundational the phrases majority minority rule based on the founders vision of 1787 to somehow give all of the colonies so now you have a situation where wyoming was 690,000 people to senators and

california was 41 million people so we have a great imbalance so is this about mcconnell or foundational with our system that the small state are exploiting quick. >> that is a great question and foundational. when i wrote the last great senate, i subsequently had said may be the only great senate. maybe there was an exceptional confluence of events that front about the possibility the world virtue great generation of senators who had come back from the war. and also the threat of the cold war right after world war

ii. and the parties not being so l far apart we had liberal and moderate republicans and conservative democrats. the parties were not that far apart. so the senate worked but she make a difference by large as difficult as they would have been our politics are affected disproportionately by a couple of bad actors the two that had the most impact our newt gingrich and mitch mcconnell. it's a combination of things. everyone talks about two senators from each state it is baked into the constitution. we know that. we never thought about that in

the earlier years because there were so many good small state senators soon had to be senators and what they were therefore. that's also what is missing. >> that is very important on both sides of the aisle. went to go across the aisle to the democratic side for a moment and looking back at the time when harry reid was a democratic majority leader as opposed to chuck i schumer. he was more effective of the two? >> harry reid was not a leader that was among the great leaders. but i always caveat because he was the majority leader during the obama presidency and faced endless and relentless obstruction from mcconnell.

but he got some things done including the affordable care act. he played an important role in that. and dealing with the challenges of a 50/50 senate of a polarized situation and he has done considerable things in the way of accomplishments and has made some mistakes as well. >> given the fact you don't have the two parties from where they were a generation ago what if anything can be done by majority minority rule? >> i have tried in the book and in my articles before, i

tried very hard to encourage the relatively small group of independent-minded republicans are more moderate republicans to be their best selves to come forward to join biden and the democratic senators to move the country forward. occasionally that happens with the infrastructure bill. i think i would like the republicans to show more independence from their leader. it doesn't happen very often. my answer beyond that is a take away as many things as i could that interferes with majority r rule. i would get rid of the filibuster or the hold which has turned into where rand paul can wake up and stop action in the senate by

himself. i would focus on those things but they have to understand the great privilege they have to protect the national interest and not just be partisan hacks. >> do you think the democrats from vice president harris majority vote has been as effective as they could be or less so? >> probably like every democrat i share frustrations about joe mentioned in the role he has played. i know of 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 concerns are met he has more.

i have that frustration. but joe biden came to office with the ambitious agenda based on the our needs as a country and it has collided with a very narrow majority in that has required him to pull back and one could say that biden and schumer should have understood that earlier. >> we are at a different time from a generation ago and referring to social media and breaking news which was breaking 24/7. i'm wondering your thoughts in the immediate to be complicit.

>> i always think and sometimes say it's harder to be a senator now than it was in the earlier years. among the factors that changed it are the shrill 24/7 cable news. and now the intense effect of social media which amplifies differences of anger. yes i think it is more difficult. but my view is that makes it more important to them to be real senators and recognize their responsibility to bring people together and if i had a

criticism, and i have many of senator mcconnell, i regarded as the arctic on —- architect of division one of the few times but that's wrong for someone who is a senate leader. >> i would you rate the democratic response to mcconnell's lies and behavior? >> it certainly hasn't been effective overall. i think is getting sharper and stronger and the president is taking on the republic as they become more and more extreme so i think if you are captured

by sam rayburn the best and most famous speaker before nancy policy. any jackass can down a bar but obstruction is easier than government which gives mcconnell a great advantage when he is obstructed instructions. >> he was asked the cost of a inflation in the economy about what theav republicans to? he said you have to elect us to find out. >> we will tell you later.

[laughter] host: not sure they have a plan at all. >> he does have a thesis a very strong part of what he does. he believes the party in power will be held responsible for the conditions of the country and so if biden is having trouble in the country is angry about a range of things and frustrated understandably that will reward the out party. that is his plan. >> it's probably a bipartisanc consensus although they probably would not publicly say that. >> being an optimist i disagree that we would be proven naïve as usual. >> let's talk about judges which is a major sore point among democrats and the fact mcconnell held up merrick

garland on the excuse it was too close to a presidential year then going back to joe biden and is there anything thely democrats could have done differently. >> let's drop back and focused for a long in the way the democrats did not. looking at the long game which

means they do not pay enough attentionwh and then he broke with schumer because he didn't think the democrats were doing enough. so tos some extent and then very effectively and then to the federal judges other than the supreme court by using the nuclear option to take away the right to filibuster. so what could they have done? not that much weight all think funnel for your social.

jimmy carter and his one term had more judges confirmed and donald trump so presidents come and go carter had district and appellate judges more than trump. what has changed and with that regard the democrats did not do very well with polarization that they can be before i attack mcconnell's full

utterly unprecedented. the ramming through of amy coney barrett eight days before the election it is most antidemocratic act i have ever seen. >> going back to 2015 with mcconnell. [laughter]

>> spoiler alert. i am anre old guy. you in a together our old guy so we go back a long way with history. i was in thepr mondale presidential campaign 1984 wrote speeches about the importance of the supreme court and how we could lose the majority free didn't pay more attention. that was half a lifetime ago. but i think what happened in 2016, a number of things happened. one, donald trump had a good instinct when it was brought to him the idea he could solidify the republicans if hese had a list of judges he would promise to pick a supreme court justice from. it was a mcconnell idea and white house counsel, the

federalist society and the heritage foundation but he got it. it worked for him. that trump versus hillary clinton race is so astonishing that anyone issue that is consumed. you can talk about the supreme court but then come back it is either trump or hillary. so methodical f do not expect trump to win that we could tell that he wanted to keep the seat just in case and came up a winner.

can you believe anything mcconnell says? >> that is a really great question. and he is pretty transparent about and things when he said he wanted to repeal theno affordable courts are they say you cannot believe that in

general, and of the but to put in the speech condemning trump at that he pivots and finds a way to find him from being convicted.

to beon honest we have been living in mitch mcconnell's and have for a long time and still are. if you like more democratic senators and reduce power that would change things and the math is favorable for democrats even though it is up hills

and we would have an insurrection. the divisions are greater than they ever were. maybe we say wen' get back on track but it hasn't worked that way and it has gotten

worse. one of the things to understand mcconnell. he is very not repentant for anything that happened. so judge jackson is nominated for thet supreme court in the moment where one could celebrate an african-american woman becoming s a justice.t they still have a six / three majority of right wing judges

on the court. but you cannot do that. you can not an achievement i will vote against her. note. it is the radical left always division. want to say i commend him for going to ukraine. think it would be great if president zelensky remind him of thehe importance and democracy that he has done huge damage to american democracyke. >> thank you very much i think we have time for a few questions. [applause] >> i am a historian so i will go back before your time. looking at social media today

and newspapers from the 18 fiftiesot i see a lot of similarities the last time the senate was so divided and the country was so polarized was before the civil war. now today we have two major things pressuring society. one is influence of the white supremacist. and their aim is to start a race war and emergency climate crisiss so do you think we are heading in that direction

between states? >> thank you for your question in your perspective as a historian. i think we are headed in a terrible direction. that's why that's why as leaders to geter the condition andea national interest and behave accordingly. and i would say social media exacerbates everything is not clear that can survive social media. but i should have said the reason i focus on the senate is citizens have responsibilitieses but the senators have real responsibility.

>> they have privileged positions multiple six year terms, they will serve five times longer than any president can. it is a privilege it is an exchange you have a responsibility to the nation you have responsibility and times of crisis you are a party member but not a partisan hack. you care about the state that you are not a state legislator. lifted up. they have notou lifted it up. that is why voters have their responsibility and then to come through in 2018 and 2020 and a powerful way. so the senators i was a lot more than they are giving us.

[applause] >> i have heard a lot about about mcconnell i know you think thest supreme court is one of thehe worst things he has done to the country. that based on your last comment, i would say thehe restriction of voting rights, that the senate noteo protectinger the people's right to vote is the worst thing based on the comment of protecting democracy. how wouldld you evaluate on that issue? >> that's a great question from a friend who is my wife. [laughter] [applause]

>> and it wasn't planted. >> i was on lawrence o'donnell the other night he read something i said mcconnell an' then you write that's not all of it. i think he has been terrible on voting rights. he and the unified republicans and to make the comment they are not state legislators to say we don't need federal voting rights legislation because that's not an answer to the rest of the country what we need. part of t my reason for

encouraging people with the 2022 election is so important, whatever your issue, but i blame him for everything with the exception of inflation. [applause] >> i am an immigrant saw have as much of a perspective on history. maybe that's advantage because they see things for what they are republicans to a certain

extent but for example senator manchin i think he helped

. [laughter] [applause] i did not deliver the line quite right. [laughter] we have one party that is factious and one party described by a fall is very. [applause]

but mcconnell cannot have succeeded if other republicans had push back. at any time five or six republicans could have stopped not only mcconnell but trump

but then all the other republicans, many of them would have rallied as mcconnell had. byt the way i don't know how portman or alexander for those live with their records the last 40 years. thank you. [applause]