the first six months of 2011 friday really went along with the narrative that jim offered for the county roo and really seemed to accept the fiscal problems facing the country were the most important and it was a battle in which he did not do particularly well in public opinion and he didn't do particularly well because i don't think that was -- [ en discernible ] >> so i think by giving that speech president bush really challenged the very definition of what is at the center of american politics. [ indiscernible ]

s on watt me.

>> i came back from iowa yesterday and what really struck me is that president obama and his opponents agreed on the definition of the campaign. every campaign, people always say this is the most important election this time. they're talking about a fundamental argument over the direction that our country is going to take. it is my view and this is the last reason why i think osawatomie was the right choice for a venue is that we have

effectively been governed under a long consensus since the progressive era. that long consensus saw a balance between public and private and saw a major role for the federal government in both regulating the capitalist economy to make it work and to ensure a gat while reagan did not overturn this consensus. you know, that great line about the music that it's better than it sounds? ronald reagan governmeed more progressively than he sounded. he didn't get rid of social security and he didn't get rid f things he talked about that he didn't do and some of reagan's greatest achievements come from having governed. george w. bush, by the way, two of his greatest domestic achievements were based on using the power of the federal government and one was the prescription drug benefit under medicare and the no child left

behind act which sought to use federal power to ensure more accountability in the schools. this time, i think we really are in a fight over the long consensus and the progressives came along building on what the populists had done in reaction

to the politics of the gilded edge and our conservative friend and this is one of the points where bill comes into my book have pushed aside temporarily their more commune tearian traditions and are operating on the basis of the radicalism that

is very much out of the gilded age. i like conservatism. many of my best friends are

conservative, and i want conservatives to rediscover their respect for the role of government and their respect for the importance of community and i'm hoping this election will provide not only a ratification of our progressive direction and some useful lessons of our conservative friends and i look forward to that. teddy roosevelt had been wait for a progre setting up strawmen.

it's either nationalism and community and not a radical individualism and here. the debate we're having is that what is the consensus and the argument and the claim of my progressive friends is that the consensus from the founding forward had been their consensus and it was an unbroken beautiful evolution of progressive programs and arguments? ow go under in a way that is -- that is somehow consistent with a broader consensus with some sort of limits on government. some sort of argument that allows for popular consensus to shape how our politics proceed, and i would argue that president obama's argument is outside of that -- going to one point that you make, and you and i have had this con we have with mr. spalding. i want to be on your side in this argument, but i am having great difficulty for two reasons and perhaps you can help me out. one is because of laws in corporate government that we know about and because of macro

economic problems that require, let's call it, bailing out a rather large, financial instituti institution, is it true? i think it's demonstrably true that we disconnect it with performance and reward in society. i don't care about inequality. it's as much inequality as we can get. if performance is connected to reward. the question is how do we defend the inequality that so troubles the people on the other side if we can't be -- if we can't conceive of reforms that we connect performance and reward, and the reason i see it is because i hear people, my conservative friends that a.j. likes to put it, i assume he has one, that the problem is any

time any reform, i suggest that might reconnect these things they say oh, no, that's really not a good idea. we're not for sarbanes-oxley which would require independent directors. we're not for dodd-frank which will require severing part of the banking system. so i can't ever come up with any reconnection that seems to satisfy the trend. i would love to hear if there are any. >> well, let me try. >> on this question of performance and reward and the bailout, i don't know anyone except for maybe jon corzine and a few others on wall street who are happy with what had begun in

2008. i know president obama wasn't. this was recognized by all as a massive deviation from what capitalism should all be about done under necessity, and i don't think anyone, conservative or liberal would cry that much to say that those people morally should never have been bailed out and were only bailed out because it was said to be necessary. it's something that you do when you hold your nose. on the other hand, here's the point, we've held our nose and done it, and we know that in that sector, i think the profits that people make have very little claim morally to our affirmation. if you could just tax them, the people in that field and that's part of the 1%, and everyone would be happy and gee, that's not the whole 1%. why do the people, and the progressives always mention that where there's no performance and reward. most of the 1%, there is a connection between performance and reward.

what do we do? how many do we do away with before we save the city? i say take a broader look and i think when they make this argument about the 1%, they always say first finance, and they mention crony capitalism and then they mention, now we can go back and mention less often the pharmaceuticals and oil companies and what's financial and natural. then you say to them, steve jobs and lebron james and they say everything is perfectly and just that person should be getting more and bill gates. what does every young person want to do? work in the bill gates foundation all made by private money. i say we put this in perspective and i say where there is a problem with performance, and we see what we can do and we don't condemn the whole essence of the capitalist system and reward on the basis of that problem. the larger issue is the productive many and it's for

that reason, that i think there is a practical and moral defense of capitalism. >> first of all, i've always loved loved irwin because he's willing to face these problems of capitalism even as so much as a defender of the system. i think what you're seeing on the progressive side, again not unlike some of the things said back in the teddy roosevelt day is that we have shifted too many of the rewards within the capitalist system toward those engaged in finance. and that part of the -- you know, you raise the question, you know, how do you create accountability in this system? i think the way in which we have gone about deregulation, perhaps going back to the repeal of glass steagall is that we have a society in which the surest way to get very rich very quickly is

to go into finance as opposed to starting or running a business yourself as opposed to engaging in invention. i think people do make the moral distinction that jim talked about between those who make all of their income from finance. and those who make their income from invention, creation and the like. and i think that we take specific steps such as ways in which we tax capital gains as opposed to income to really say that as a society we seem to prefer finance. i mean, i know the argument for it is this creates a more productive system. i have not seen our economy do exceptionally well since we cut the capital gains tax. it's not proof that this was the guarantee of a more productive economy. i think that is this kind of underlying sort of question that i think is why the occupy wall street movement people seem to get me initial purchase on the country.

there is a that not all of this wealth was acquired by doing things that is generally productive. i can see that sometimes society is wrong about, sometimes i'm wrong about that. but i think there's a sense of injustice and impracticality about the way we have organized the economy in the last 20 or 25 years. >> take some more questions. >> i assume you disagree with me. >> excuse me. i think, e.j., you have to avoid a kind of marxist distinction between people who make things with their hands an finance. nobody is angry at buffett except me for his silly statements. but the -- i don't think you're on to -- on the right track on that. the market ought to decide which industries rise and which

industries fall and if finance rises it's a darn good thing because manufacturing is not in very good shape. so i hope you don't go there. i would rather you think about what should be done to satisfy your feeling or the professor's feeling about that there are unjustified returns, and i held my nose and you have to do it again. and that's the problem. we have this built into the system disconnect that is -- that i find so troubling because believe me, if all of the insurance that our banks have sold against failures of sovereign europe start coming due you're going to hold your nose again and the question is what do we do in those circumstances? >> just one quick -- i appreciate your concern for my

soul and trying to save me from marxist sins, but i do think that there is -- we have a different kind of banking and finance system than we had some years ago. it really does trouble me that there may be more reward for a kind of engineer who can figure out how to beat the market by .2 of a second than other engineers who i what -- who may create products and they get rich that way. and i think we have created a seemingly abstract finance system. we need finance. we need capital to make capitalism work. but i think the rewards within that system we have created don't make sense to a lot of people and they don't make sense to me. >> yes, in the back, please. >> i'm mark with the washington examiner. i had occasion in my younger

years to spend about a year and a half reading and studying everything that john brown wrote and thought. and i'm curious, do any of you have any understanding of why roosevelt picked on an occasion memorializing john brown as the venue for this speech? depending on what your answer is, i might have a follow-up. >> that's a lot of -- that's a lot of pressure. >> right. >> i think there are two reasons. nobody knows exactly i have to say. i have looked through archival smoking gun. there isn't any precise understanding why. one, roosevelt wanted to make an important statement. he was launching a platform, preparing not only for the 1912 campaign, but preparing for a defense -- a much more aggressive one than he launched as president for a major transformation of american

democracy and this because the civil war was so important to the american people, this was a good place to do it. the other places relates to this thing of partisanship versus consensus that roosevelt was sometimes accused of being a socialist and sometimes he was accused of insulting socialists by presuming to represent reform. i think he wanted to go to -- he wanted to go to the john brown memorial to point out that there are certain value and insurgency and we have to honor john brown to a certain extent. but when it goes to mob rule, then we denigrate rather than honor freedom. so he wanted to find a position between socialist and capitalists that was reformist and he saw john brown as a useful way of distinguishing himself from the socialists. a good part of the longer speech

that appears in the outlook magazine spends a lot of time distinguishing reform from mob rule. he also connected a lot of the labor insurrection to historically john brown. is that any help? >> yeah, he was -- according to i think it was a fellow named robert leford who talked about the origins of the osawatomie speech, he was suggesting that as sid suggests that t.r. was hoping to capture the insurgency and sort of -- >> and channel it. >> yeah, channel it away from. he wasn't thinking of running as a full-on challenger at the time. although he kept dropping these horrible comments about the taft administration. he was hoping to sort of use this occasion to say, okay, i'm one of you guys and we can now

keep this progressive sentiment within the republican channel. >> yeah. >> did you have a follow-up? >> yeah. would bit possible perhaps that president obama intended brown analogy that would be something along the lines of for the tea party? after me, the deluge. >> well, there was a part of my remarks when i thought i had 20 minutes on the cutting -- it wound up on the cutting floor which talked about his deafening silence on john brown. it would seem to me that the first african-american president should make a statement about john brown and lincoln and the declaration of independence. he mentions occupy wall street and perhaps he could have done with that what teddy roosevelt did by talking about john brown and lincoln. the fact he didn't mention it again i think shows that although this is an important speech in many respects it's

also a missed opportunity i think in some profound ways. thinking broadly, as political scientists like to think. >> as the gentleman's question suggested i think there was no political percentage in barack obama talking about john brown. >> that's not in the least bit surprising. >> i don't know he didn't raise it. >> it would be fascinating. i don't see how it would have advanced the argument he was obama's best speeches is the one he gave on race at the constitutional center in philadelphia where he does invoke the declaration and talks about how the struggle for racial justice in the united states was a struggle for -- to establish this more perfect union that is called out for in the preamble of the constitution. and i think he could have done something very similar here, but extending the argument to race and slavery to the problems