i announced right where your father had announced. it's so inspiring to have you here today. i thank you. can i get a pen? when your uncle passed, it brought me to tears. he worked on the legislation for the american with disabilities act. i have benefited from having a service animal. >> yeah, he helped so many people. >> thank you so much. >> thank you. thanks for coming. good luck with everything. >> thank you.

>> if you can just write never give up? is it okay if i get a picture with you? >> sure. >> good luck. >> thank you.

>> hi, nice to meet you. i love all the work you do. i want to be a teacher. >> oh, great. >> thank you so much. could i get a picture with you? >> sure. >> thank you so much. >> we have the same birthday. i've always celebrated -- >> that's great. >> along with jimmy hend rix. >> thank you so much. >> thank you for coming.

>> she lived in new york, cbs news. they did great coverage on the radio. thank you for keeping it going. i'm with her. >> these are some of the best volunteers right here. >> thank you for coming here.

can i tell you a quick story? i was 9 years old, it's 1960, manchester, new hampshire, veterans park. my dad put me on his shoulders and i was eye level with your dad. i went, i love you! >> oh, how sweet. >> i was allowed to stay up and watch the election returns, but it went so late. finally i had to go to bed and the next morning it was like, oh, yay. >> thank you so much for coming to visit us, caroline. thank you so much.

>> did you get a picture? >> sorry about all the photos. thank you.

next on c-span3, a look at how the growing number of independent voters in the u.s. fit into the political process in elections. then a senate subcommittee hearing on racial profiling in the u.s. after that, a senate rules committee hearing on campaign finance disclosure rules. with congress on break this week, we're featuring american history tv's weekend programs in primetime on c-span3. tonight we look at the legacy of watergate on the 40th anniversary of the break-in. starting at 8:00 p.m. eastern, tour the nixon presidential library's watergate exhibit with former director timothy neftali. at 9:00, max holland's book examining why fbi official mark phelps became deep throat. at 10:00, the white house officials, investigators and "washington post" reporters who first broke the story. american history tv in primetime, all week on c-span3.

i think that that's pretty clear that the effort that was undertaken there ran into a lot of controversy, a lot of miscommunication, and so i think those bills are not coming back again this year or any year for that matter. >> co-chair of the congressional internet caucus and virginia republican bob goodlatte on prospects for the next congress and other telecommunications issues. tonight at 8:00 eastern on "the communicator" on c-span2. next a look at how the growing number of independent voters in the u.s. fit into the political process in elections. the discussion sponsored by the new york city independence party features former u.s. congressman nicky edwards and president of independentvoting.org. this is an hour and 20 minutes.

>> for underwriting this evening's event. tonight we are going to be looking at the people versus the party. and we have with us two of america's leading advocates for a restructuring of our political process. jackie salat and former congressman nicky edwards. jackie is the president of independentvoting.org. the nation's leading strategy and organizing center for independence, with a network in more than 40 states. she's a frequent television, radio, and print commentator on independent voters and politics. jackie has a book coming out this summer entitled "independence rising: outside movements, third parties and the struggles for a post-partisan america." nicky edwards is a vice

president of the aspen institute. he was a republic an congressman from oklahoma for 16 years and is the former chair of the republican house policy committee. mickey is a distinguished educator, regular political commentator, and columnist and has authored several books. his latest book is also due out this summer and its title is "the parties versus the people: how to turn republicans and democrats into americans." you can see why i wanted to have them both here with us tonight on this stage to have a dialogue with all of us. before i bring them to the stage, though, i'd like to share a clip of each of them in action. we're going to see two very short pieces. an excerpt from a speech mickey edwards gave in october of last year at an event entitled "the constitution, democracy and unintended consequences." then we're going to see jackie

salat appearing on "fox and friends" last summer in the midst of the debt crisis. so give us a moment and we're going to have a look. >> democracy is about process. it's not about policy. democracy is about process. when we talk about the institute, our political system is not working. our election system is not working. and our governing system is not working. a the root cause of these problems is the amount of control over all of the system. the election system and the governing system that we have

seeded and our governments creeded to the private clubs, the political parties that control access to the ballot, that control how district lines are drawn, that control who sits on what committees, that control the basic functionings of the congress. >> i'm a member of the anti-party. >> the anti-party? >> which is about what 40% of the country is today. see, the american people don't like partisanship and they don't like parties increasingly. that's why 38% to 40% have left the political parties in a system which is so dominated by democrats and republicans. they don't like the tone of debate and they don't like the direction that our politics are going in this country. that's what they want to see changed. >> sure, michael? >> my group is nolabels.org. we don't believe in labels. we believe in ideas or ideology. what we're looking for is solutions here. i think both are right. we do want to get the dialogue moving but want to find a solution to the issue. >> jackie, there is no middle

ground, it seems. >> well, there is no middle ground. i think that's such an important poi point. >> the president said the other day, boehner's bill shows up here, i'm going to veto it. >> there's no middle ground. there's a way to bring americans together. the way to do that around structural political reform. the parties have the system hard wired and part stan advantage will trump every other issue every single time. i think the president frankly is trying to play at the center when there is no center. what he needs to do if he wants to connect with independent voters is make a strong stand around structural political reform issues. independents will join with him if he does that. >> that's interesting. >> let me ask congressman mickey edwards and jackie salat to join me. [ applause ]

>> we have to be careful now. we're turned on. >> we're turned on. we're fully miked. i think. >> thank you both for being here. i'm delighted to have the opportunity to speak with you both and to have our audience get to know us more. i'm going to start us off with a couple questions then we're going to open up to all of you. but to get us going, the two of you are the country's leading advocates for the kinds of structural political reforms that move power away from the political parties and to the american people. and you both approach this from very, very different places in history. mickey, you were obviously a highly respected congress member in the republican leadership during your 16 years in congress. jackie, you've been a leader of the independent movement and a progressive for over 30 years.

and yet here we are and you're both advocating for some of the same kinds of political changes. same kinds of reforms. nonpo nonpartisan redistricting reform, nonpartisan open prim y primary. i wanted to ask you to speak to what's going on in the country that brings the two of you together, asking for what i think would be some rather radical restructuring. >> thank you. hello, everyone. great to see all of you and spend this time together. i think that maybe as a place to begin, i would say that there are two things that are going on that bring us together. though i also, not to be -- but

i did just want to comment that it says something about our political culture that we even consider it remarkable in any way that mickey and i would be sitting here having this conversation with all of you. so in a way, just for starters, i think maybe it's helpful to reflect on that because in some ways that's the very issue. two basic things i would say as starting points. first, one of the things that's going on is that there is a massive political disalignment from the major political parties going on. 40% of the country consider themselves independents todayt8 which is a remarkable, remarkable number. particularly in a system which is so substantially dominated, and i love the comments that we saw in the clip from the talk that you gave there, mickey,

about how controlling the political parties are, how they control the electoral process, they control the governmental process, they control the political culture. and yet even with all of that, 40% of the country has made a statement in which they have said, i do not consider myself to be a part of that process. i might vote in that process, i might vote for those candidates, i might participate in various kinds of elections, but i'm making a statement that separates myself from that culture. i think when you have that kind of social political shift going on, which i think is substantially misunderstood and misinterpreted by the political class and by the media and so on and so forth, that tells you that something is happening. what is the thing that's happening? well, different ways to describe

it. but maybe as a starting place is that the political institutions which are designed to be the representatives of the american people, the political the polite not playing that role. they are not representing in any kind of ongoing and meaningful and substantial way the concerns, the interests, the worries, the dreams the aspirations, the desires of the american people. and so that disconnect when you're living through a time in history where institutions as powerful as those and historically as important as those have been can no longer function in their expected role, then, things start to change or perhaps more accurately the

opportunity for change opens the door. and so i think that what we're starting to see and certainly we see this in our organizing and independent visiting all over the country where, you know, in nearly every state we have activists now who are independents who are building local chapters, taking on the issue of structural partisanship et cetera and so forth. that only happens when there's a historical opening. i think that's where we're at as a country. i think that's where the political process is at. i think that raises very complicated political tactical, legal, cultural questions about how to pursue that and how to make the most of it. but that's where -- that's where i think we are. and so i think that one of the issues in that kind of context or one of the -- the questions that comes to the fore is what

can we do to remedy the state of our political process so that the american people can begin to express our interests, our desires, our needs, our dreams and how does that political structure immediate to be changed in order to make that possible and to open the door to that? so much to say about all of this, but that's how i would characterize kathy, kind of the basics of where we're at. >> one of the interesting things is that after my article, the book grew out of an article i had in the atlantic magazine a year ago. the sub title of the book, which is "how to turn republicans and democrats into americans" was actually the title of the article that i didn't come up with, but the editors did who thought that seemed to sum up the argument pretty well. when that article came out,

people would say to me, what can you do about it? it's this feeling almost as though this is the system. nobody in this room is oiled enough to know any other system because the system we have now, the closed primaries and all grew out of the progressive movement many the late 1800s, early 1900s. it's not in the constitution. it's not written in stone, it's a system that grew up pushed by the political parties. but one of the things i've said when people say to me, what can you do about it? the revolution has already begun. 40% of more already independent when people looked at what happened in massachusetts when scott brown won the election, it doesn't matter to me if you were for scott brown or not. people said how could a republican win in democratic massachusetts? well i thought at harvard, i lived up there. it's not a democratic state. there are more unenrolled voters

in massachusetts than there are democrats or republicans. so you have two things happening simultaneously. inside of the beltway, in washington, and in state capitals you have more and more partnerships. you have more and more decisions based on what's going to help our party win in november, but the country is going in the exact opposite direction. the country is fleeing from this system in which we can't come together as a common people to solve our common problems. there are more -- i'll mention a couple of the additional examples of this, but the real bottom line, this is where jackie and i are in complete agreement, it is systemic. it is not about who we elect. we do this every election. we elect people and it doesn't work, so we throw them out and we elect the other people and it doesn't work and we throw them

out. it's always kind of like, charlie brown hoping lucy won't pull away the football. and one of the things, if you think in terms of economics, what do we know about economics? or social or cultural issues? incentives work. incentive systems work. we have created a system in which every incentive is to not compromise, not cooperate. every incentive whether it's trying -- how you have to win a closed party primary. one of the examples that i used in delaware where in delaware nearly a million people in delaware. doesn't impress people in new york, maybe. but it's not a small place. there's nearly a million people. and people were shocked when

mike castle a popular congressman lost the republican primary for the senate. but the woman who beat him, christine o'donnell, i don't care if you were for o'donnell or whoever, she only got 30,000 votes. what kind of a system is it because we have in every state by four we have sore loser laws that if you ran in a party primary and lost you cannot have your name on the ballot in november. and so we have a system where 30,000 people could deny the rest of the million people in delaware the chance to choose among all of the possible candidates. one of the things i'm trying to do is to bring democracy to our democracy. looking at all of you, i've never met most of you, i bet i know one thing about all of you, when you go to buy a phone you want choice. when you go to buy soap you want choice. when you go to buy shoes, you

want choice. the only place that we don't allow choice is when it comes to electing the people who are going to make our laws deciding if we're going to war. you go to the ballot in november you've got a or b. you've got a or b and maybe there's five republicans who ought to be considered. maybe there's three democrats. maybe there's a green. maybe a libertarian. we don't allow that to happen because the parties don't allow it to happen. i want to add one more thing. jackie and i both talk a lot about redistricting. i'll tell one quick story on redistricting. those of you who are up close can see, i'm wearing loafers with tassels. i don't know anybody who store wears loafers with tassels. i'm a city guy. i'm a city dude. maybe in new york city you don't think oklahoma city is a city, but it's a city. and after i won, i was the first republican elected in my

district since 1928. and my district was 74% democrat. and i wasn't supposed to win, but i did and i won again. the oklahoma state legislature at that time was 9-1 controlled by the other party. and they were kind of bothered by the fact that i won. and so they redistricted me because the majority of -- whichever party is in the majority in the state legislature in 37 of the states can make that decision. they redrew my district so that it went from the middle of oklahoma all the way up to the kansas line, halfway over to arkansas, a big upside down l and i'm a politician, so i'm self-centered and self-referential. so when i was teaching, i kept thinking about look what they did to me. i would tell my students at harvard and later at princeton look what they did to poor me.

they didn't do it to me. i'll end with this. the most important part of the constitution says that every single senator and representative must be an inhabitant of the state from which they're elected. it was a deliberate repup dags of the parliamentary system. it was that your legislatures are supposed to know you, know your concerns, know what matters to you, you're supposed to know them. know their integrity. and that system in my case got destroyed because when they redrew my district, i the city guy, was now representing wheat farmers and cattle ranchers and small town merchants and i didn't know their issues. i didn't know their concerns. they were being represented by somebody who could not articulate as needed to be done their -- their most