economic concerns because, why was this done to the people? it was done to the people because the party, the other party and my party does the same exact thing, the party thought it would be to their advantage to redraw the district in order to take republicans out of other districts. so, there's more we can talk about it. the way it's actually run inside the congress which is also a major, major problem that i saw. i'll stop there. but it is, jackie says it so well. jackie's really good with this. we have to change is the system or nothing is going to change. >> let me pick up right there. i think that for a lot of americans the last election and the vote to send barack obama to the white house was a hopeful moment and that people voted for president obama in the hope that he could be a post partisan president and help lead the country beyond some of these

issues. so i want to ask you both to share withes your reflections. here we sit in the middle of the 2012 presidential elections. how do you understand what happened? why wasn't president obama able to do more to materialize a post partisan government? >> sure, i mean i have a number of thoughts about that to share. but i want to preface them by saying i think it's very important because what we're talking about here, when you talk about the american people the majority of the american people voted for barack obama based on many different things, but certainly one of the motivating factors was the idea that bam was going to be able to or believed that the country

should usher in a post partisan political culture. a new way of doing politics in washington and so forth. i think it's important to maybe pause just for a second and to reflect on the fact that historical change of that magnitude, let's face it that is a very, very significant transformation that we're talking about here for all the reasons that you're saying. does not happen in an even line. it moves and fits and starts and things move forward and then they fall back and things get in the way and all kinds of things like that. just speaking for myself now before i give my analysis of all of the things that happened to and with president bam, i just think for me it's important to

remind ourselves that this is a monumental change that is being sought after by the american people. arguably by people all over the world as we see democracy movements flourish, move forward and then take steps back in many, many different parts of the world. so i think that what's happening in this country is part of that broader international process which is a complicated and a difficult process. that said, i think i would point to maybe four things that are worth noting. one is, and people know that as president obama came to washington, he came there on the heels of first having won the democratic primary with the support of independent voters. that's what gave obama the nomination in the 33 states that did have open primaries and

caucuses where independents could vote they voted very substantially for barack obama. if those primaries had been closed hillary clinton would have been the democratic party nominee. so barack obama becomes the democratic nominee with the support of independent. by the way, likewise john mccain becomes the republican nominee also with the support of independent voters. in many respects independents were the tickets of the entire set up of the 2008 general election. so bam comes to washington. he's got the post partisan mandate. from independents and really from a broad cross section of americans. your title is an apt title, how we can make democrats and republicans americans again. there's many, many people who are registered democrats and republicans who are also very fearful and upset about the partisan character of the

country. in any event, the new president comes to washington and here are some things that happened. first the congressional democrats are there. and you know them better than i do. but from where i sit, i think their posture was we got this. we're in control. all the rest of y'all whoever you are, who might have voted for our guy, this is our show now and we're going to tell you how it's going to go. number one. number two, the economic situation which was already in very, very serious crisis even during the campaign was continuing to deteriorate and this produced broad based reactions from a lot of different places including the rise of the tea party movement

which was immediately absorbed into the republican party, but basically became a platform for kind of pressure for social conservatism which put a lot of heat on the republicans which then in turn forced them i think to put a great deal of heat on the democrats. one of the things that the republicans figured out very early on in the game is that if you bring the tea party in and you use that as a battering ram against the democrats, you can make hey with -- hay with that, after all, i'll speak from my vantage point, bam had some problems going in when he was first elected, first of all, he's african-american. and while the country was enormously prideful of having elected its first black president, that's also a historically vulnerable thing to do have happened. and many people in the country have very complex and mixed

feelings about that. while there was great pride, there were also other kinds of things in the mix. he was a progressive. and that draws a certain level of fire. and then he bailed out the banks. so let's face it, he had a lot of things going against him. and i think the republicans figured out very early, it was very machiavellian on their part. they understood i think or they came to understand that if you -- if you said no to everything, what that did was it forced obama to become a partisan. and whether or not bam could have played that differently or not i'm not going to speculate on. but he played it how he played it in a very strong alliance

with the congressional democrats and he acted as a partisan. i think that provoked a strong reaction and a response from many americans but including most particularly perhaps from independents who felt, wait a second, that's not what we sent you to washington to do. and so you saw that play out in 2010 with independents voting for republicans. not because they had become republicans. no. but because they wanted to send a message about partisanship. i think that continues to be the case. so i think just briefly to sum this up, i think the challenge for the president now is that i think it's important for the president to also take a breath and take a pause and to reflect again on who independents are. why is it the case that 40% of the country now identifies themselves as independents as nonaligned voters, as not a part

of the party system. that is meaning jchl. the american people are making a statement about the system and the need to restrekture and reform it to bring democracy to our democracy as you were saying so eloquently. i think the president has to find a way to come to terms with that and to make a statement. i understand that he's president. i understand that he's a democrat. but this is a complicated country. i think he has to find a way to reach out to independents in a way that recognizes who independents are and that takes a stand and makes some moves in the direction of eliminating the structural partisanship that re-enforces the kind of negative political culture that has our country in a strangle hold. >> let me add a couple additional things. when george w. bush was

president, he was going overseas on a trip somewhere i don't remember what about or where he was going. there's a column list who wrote a column about the president going overseas. what he said was that for the next period, however long it was, the president was going to step out of his role as head of government to be functioning instead in his other role as head of state. so i was teaching at the time. i asked my students what jumps out at you about that. i got the answers i might expect. if he's going to be functioning not wearing his one hat where he's head of government, but his other hat as head of state, he'll be talking to people about basing rights, flyover rights, trade agreements and so forth. and i said, no.

that's not the answer. the president's not the head of government. we don't have a head of government in america. we have three separate independent equal branchs of government. in fact, most of the major powers of government whether it's going to war or raising taxes or creating programs or deciding how much to spend are all congressional powers. i think that this president like every other president in recent memory forgot that. whatever obama did and i think he has enormous talent. i think he's an exceptional human being, he was elected as part of a system that as it was constitutionally designed should have required him to reach out not to lecture that's on both

sides. democrats and republicans alike, nancy pelosi she's a friend, but she famously said we won -- this was when bm was trying to say let's bring many the republicans. let's work in something jointly on health care. she said, no, we won the election, we'll write the bills. mitch mcconnell trumped that by saying that his priority was to defeat obama. that's part of it. obama had to operate within the system that existed. it was a system in which most of the power was not many the presidency so therefore he had to be able to work with congress in a system of equals of peers. how do you not achieve that? you don't achieve that because the congress operates in precisely this partisan system that we're talking about. let me give you a couple of examples. the -- how many of you here have

been to washington and been to the house chambers? have actually seen the house chambers? it's kind of an interesting thing to observe. first, let me talk about the chamber. i have a chapter in the book called rearranging the furniture, which i think we need to do. one of the things that happens, i happen to be on a committee because i was in the top ranks of the leadership. i was on a committee that chose who got to sit on what committees. ways and means or appropriations or whatever. and one of the things that the party leaders do in both parties is to say, jackie you're very smart. you know economics. you know tax policy. you would be really great on ways and means. and we'll put you on ways and means if you promise us in advance that before you see the bill, before you hear the testimony, these are our positions, if you promise that you're going to be with the

party, loyal to the party on these issues we'll pet you on the committee and we're not going to put you on the committee unless you have previously committed that you're going to be a loyal team player. that's the way it actually borics. that's why you -- actually works. that's why you see in the committee structure where committees would be a place where you could sit together and reason together and take hearings and think about what needed to be done, now it's a constant war. you use the committee structure as a means for winning the next election. but some of it is even nutty. >> that's not? >> that's not even the beginning. >> one of the first dumb things, one of them was i was so convinced i could be persuasive to the democrats when i came there as a republican that

there's two lek turns. i went to talk to the democrats. and there was this gasp that went. people came up, republicans, democrats both. no, you have to stand over here. it's kind of like you're going to get kootys if you use the same lek turn as somebody of the other party. you have the cloak room. it's where you get a coke, make a phone call, read the newspapers. republicans sit in that cloak room, democrats sit in this cloak room. that's the way the entire congress is structured. it's kind of like if you went to a therapist for family treatment you know because you were arking all the time with your mate and they said, what you need to do is you have to have two sofas facing the opposite directions with opposite televisions instead of creating a circle where you talk to each other.

we have a system inside the congress where it's designed to make everybody identify with team and identify the other team has the ones to be vanquished. we have to change a lot of stuff. not just elections, not just redistricting. did you all know that you don't have to be a member of congress to be speaker? did you know that in britain and canada that you need to have support of people from another party besides your own in order to get elected speaker? you can do that here, too. there's a lot of changes we can make. >> can i -- >> yes, you can. >> you can feel free. [ applause ]

>> we're talking about the three branchs of government and that's an important thing to observe and an important part of the way our democracy is designed. however, we were talking about the president and what happened off of the 2008 election and all of the and the issues that were in the air and on the table as a part of that, i was thinking, though, and tell me if -- how you think about this, that while the three branchs of government are the three branchs of government and we don't have a head of government, the president is the branch that is elected by the whole of the american people. and the electoral college notwithstanding and all of that. and so when i think about this and surely when i think about

obama and the issue of trying to move the political culture forward in a post partisan direction that that is true that the president and in this case obama has this very unique and special relationship to the american people as a whole, seems important. and in some ways since at least one of the ways that i think about the opportunities that exist now, in some respects i think that relationship has to be manifest shall we say in ways that go beyond just the ordinary activity of governing. >> absolutely. >> the founders talked about energy in the executive. and the president is not in terms of authority and high yar ki is not the head of

government. but he is a national leader. and he has a pulpit that no other person has. and the constitution requires him to report to congress but in the modern age with modern communications that gives him the ability to reach out over the heads of the congress to talk to the american people directly and to lay out an agenda. the president has an enormous relationship responsibility to talk about what needs to be done and he can do it in a way, in a way that nobody else can match. and so, one of the questions that people, you know, who are asking about what happened with obama is to ask how effectively or ineffectively he did that. it is a matter of a president cannot simply say i don't have the authority to do this. i'm constrained by the constitutional system from doing this. what other means do i have to

try and persuade the congress? to persuade the constituents to talk to members of congress? that's what the power of the presidency is. some presidents do it better than others. >> i think that's so important. as i see it, i think the american people -- it's interesting, isn't it? because the system is so partisan and it's so structurally partisan in all the ways that we're saying. yet on the day that america elects the president it's the american people who are speaking. and i think that maybe one thing that's happening in the country is that the value of that and is the importance of that is becoming greater or more -- the

potential of what can get created off of that is becoming more visible. when i was thinking also about this phrase the parties versus is people which is the sub title of your book. i love that. it's the title of the chapter in my book. let's not sue each other over that. but i was also thinking -- i was thinking about that phrase the parties versus the people and i was thinking that it embodies maybe a deeper truth within that. which is that the parties aren't the people. the people are the people. the constitution, of course, recognizes the people and not the parties as we well know. but i don't even think that's just a technical issue.

in some ways i think maybe part of where we're come to as a country is that it's a time to remind ourselves that the parties are not the people. and we have to find ways to take action politically that reflect that and that express that. >> you've been playing james madison on stage. you should really see that. the first four presidents disagreed about a lot. washington, jefferson, disagreed about a lot of things. the founders were not unanimous on almost anything and a lot of them didn't like each other. what was the one thing all four of those first four presidents agreed on, don't create political parties? they all said it. they said it in writing. they said it in speeches do not create political parties.

now i don't know if there's any political scientist in the room. political scientists say yes there were parties created during that time. they weren't anything like political parties that we have today. they might have a few issues. maybe it was tariffs. maybe it was westward expansion. but it was if you favor britain or france. they had a few things that they had in common. it wasn't like you have today with the parties marching in lock step on almost everything. doesn't matter whether it's a stimulus package or a supreme court nomination. all the democrats are on one side, all republicans are on the other side. actually if you could bottle this, it's an amazing thing that's been worked here. by some magic, you can have this group of people to be either party. so you have white and black and hispanic and old and young and urban and rural and yet somehow they all think alike.

it's just amazing how they're able to make that happen. so you have the democrats over here and you have the republicans here. at war with each other all the time. because it's become how can my party win the next election? one example of all of you if you decided that because this university is so go and has such great facilities and then you owe a lot to it and you wanted to do something for them, you might say we're going to get together as a big group and we have a lot of friends and we're going to build a new building for you. you would get together all of you in this room and say what do you need? what space do you sneed? where should it be built? what kind of equipment do we need? everything. there's only one thing you would not do, you would not say, okay, all the republicans sit over there and all the democrats sit over here. and that's the way we run our government. >> i'm going to open up now for your questions. let me just raise your hand if

you'd like to raise a question and i'm going to call on people, but wait until you get handed a microphone so we can hear you in our c-span audience can hear you. so the floor is hope. gabrielle? and a mic is coming. over here, second, third row. >> thank you. good evening. thank you for your comments. my question has to do as you were talking about the republicans are over here and the democrats are over here. and some people would say that while we independents where we are is we're many the center. that's and i think that they put this forward as a way -- this is the way that we're going to bring america together is we have to be many the center to really truly be together. and i also speaking personally

feel that this is a kind of a anti-extremist attitude. extremism is bad. it's bad for the country. and so we have to kind of come together in the center. so i know jackie, in your book you talk about this issue of how independents are defined often as centrists. i wonder if you both could address this? >> i am not a centrist. i don't believe in centrist. the civil rights movement did not come from the center. the women's movement did not come fl the center. the labor movement did not come from the center. none of the great advances we've had have come from the center. what i believe in a democracy. democracy is about a vigorous debate between alternative viewpoints. if you want everybody to kind of be in the same spot, you could have the kremlin. they're pretty good at that. democracy requires vigorous exchange about ideas. but it should not be related to

the club that you belong to. it should be that sometimes, you know, jackie's already confessed that she's a progressive. what can i do? so, on some things jackie and i might be far apart and other things we might be together. but it wouldn't be because of what would happen to our club. it would be because we both thought about what's the right thing for america from our perspective and we did that. i think that at some point because there are 320 million of us, it puts a whole different thing. if the first three people over here decided to go to dinner together tonight, they could have a consensus. but if they went two rows back, you can't have a consensus. you have to compromise. that's what 320 million diverse people require. and so i'm not advocating that we come together in some mushy middle that never pushes for any

advances. i'm just saying let's look at the issues on their merits and come together on principal. that's where i am. >> yes. i would like to tell you we are very close to fasism. the democracy that we have now, if obama doesn't win, we are bordering on fascism. the other side don't play by the rules. they don't play fair. they're liars and they'll do anything to get into the white house. also -- >> tom -- >> that's fine. let's let the gentleman finish. do you have a question for our guests? >> also i believe in -- this situation that went on in florida where a young boy was just walking along and shot to death, the man who shot him, i

am i might just show you, i am a retired new york city police officer. you don't have a gun unless you see a psychiatrist. you've got to go and talk to him first. second, you've got to have a mental person, this guy could be in the tenth grade mentally and he could be out and out psycho. he looked like a psycho and you want to tell me that if you threaten me you're allowed to shoot. i'm allowed to shoot you. this is garbage. >> i hear you. [ applause ] >> do you have a question? >> thank you for your comment, sir. >> she carries her own. [ applause ] >> a lot of times -- first of all, thank you both the three of