the 1980's. we hear from nancy johnson of connecticut and peter torkildsen of massachusetts. the edward m. kennedy institute for the u.s. senate is the host of this event. it's about 90 minutes. >> i want to thank you all for coming to the session, former members of congress, donors and audience. i would like to introduce our moderator this morning. peter king is senior lecturer and public administration programs in the john f. kennedy schools of government at harvard university. since joining harvard faculty in 1992, professor king's courses have focused on legislatures, political parties and interest groups. he is also a member of the core faculties within the carr center for human rights policy and is a faculty affiliate of the center for state and local government.

in the wake of the 2000 presidential elections, professor king directed the task force on election administrations for the national commission on election reform chaired by former presidents gerald ford and jimmy carter. that effort had landmarks and voting legislation signed by president bush in late 2002. he later oversaw the evaluation and structure for the boston election department and he served in the advisory board of america elect.org. in the past, professor king chaired harvard's bipartisan program for newly elected members of the u.s. congress and he directed the executive program for senior executives in state and local governments. professor king is the author, co-author and co-editor of three books and he has published in a range of journals including the american political science review and the journal of politics. please welcome david king. [applause] david: thank you. is this amazing just to be in a group of people who are like you?

isn't that wonderful? i know there is always a level of citizens and anytime we talk about politics and especially we talk about legislatures in the united states today, but i think everyone of us may have fallen in love, if not with another person, certainly fell in love with some ideas in the j.k. 1,000 sections of your library. i remember being camped out there for a long time. thank you so much for being here. you have in front of you, not only the subject of your studies, i feel a little bit like they're insects and we are all entomologists. we're going to try and understand nancy johnson and peter torkildsen a little more. we have also agreed that we want to hear your questions and your perspectives and open it up to a broader discussion as we move forward.

nancy johnson asked just before we stepped up here whether or not we want to talk about rinos and was rino a thing when peter was in congress? well, it was just starting to be a thing. congress is changed dramatically or at least it seems. i remember when speaker thomas brackett from the great state of maine was speaker, he had a narrow majority in the house. it was a thin republican majority and you probably know the rules and young democrats came and complained to him. he said two things that were just as true then as they are today. he said the rights of the minority are to show up at work, collect your pay and that is it. and then he said democracy stops at the door of the united states congress, which is a challenging but important point because article i of the constitution wasn't placed there just by happenstance.

article i was the most important branch of government in the eyes of the founders, the core, at the center of a representative republic, we have the house and the senate which are not run democratically and we have political parties that are not nominating folks in a democratic manner at all and it's caused quite interesting results. so when nancy johnson, one of the great moderate republicans of our time was challenged and called a rino, that was a significant challenge at the time and today we don't worry about rinos if you're republicans. if you're a republican in the house today, you are worried about being cantor. so a different kind of dynamic. the institution is remarkably stable in some respects and yet it never stands still which reminds me of another famous quote, this from oliver wendell holmes jr. he says the law must be stable, but never stands still. congress must be stable.

the rules, institutions, the basic idea of representative democracies stay stable, but the institution is always changing. so the institution that nancy johnson from the great state of connecticut entered in january of 1983 and left after the election in 2006, when she left in january of 2007, that institution had changed quite dramatically already, but the institution is still quite stable, important work has to get done, appropriation bills have to be passed. peter torkildsen who was born in my home state, great state of wisconsin, served in the minority and the majority as the republican from massachusetts. now that's almost a definition of a rino, but the term wasn't really widely used at the time. when we were putting this panel

together, robin reed asked us who do we want? well, we want the very best. it doesn't matter if they're d or r. we want people who can be introspective, tell us how the institution has changed and what it was like for them and what their relationship with you as administrators and librarians and educators, how that interaction might actually work. we are obviously the institutions of representation are changing at all times. the way we learn about them, the way our children learn about them will have you forever more they center. so i would like to introduce first and hear from nancy johnson and second i want you to hear from peter torkildsen, two wonderful former members of congress. thank you. nancy. [applause] nancy: thank you. i think at the beginning here i'll talk a little longer i'll stand up.

being short, you don't see a lot, i would rather see your faces. it's a pleasure to be here with you and a great pleasure to work with the uconn library as we put my papers there and talk about accessibility and so on. i hope in a few months to completely retire because i'm still working in washington, so a lot of my friends are there and so i have a different perspective on what is happening and it does pain me terribly that the president tells you -- the press tells you practically nothing at all about the big changes that have taken place in restoring a deliberative body, particularly in the house in the last four years. but just to give you a little sense of the difference, let me tell you when i went down to washington, i was in my early 40's.

i was a seasoned state senator. i had been a ranking member on all of the important committees, appropriations, bonding and education and planning and development in connecticut that was a very, very important committee and really looked at what do we do regionally, how do we do a lot of things. so i had a lot of experience. i was in my office, this was my first year and they're debating a h.u.d. bill about whether or not seniors could have pets in public housing or people could have pets in public housing. we had been through that in the state and it's something that people feel very strongly about. public housing isn't just in the big cities. i went on the floor and there was my friend stuart mckinnie, one of the great republicans of all time. he looked at me and he said what are you doing here?

i said well, i'm going to speak on this amendment. he said you are? well, you know i can only give you two minutes. yes, i know that. he said now, don't go over. i said i won't. so i did my thing and as i came off, he said nice job, but remember freshman are to be seen but not heard. and truly enough, over the next two months, coming up and down the escalators going to brennan and other places, other members would say nice job, nancy, there were only two women elected that year. everybody knew exactly who i was and their staff or they had seen it on the television and that happens your freshman year. you get up and say something that is totally political without substance or text and

you're remembered for it. it was very good advice and i was very careful, particularly when i was so visible. nowadays, fast forward to when the republicans became the majority, six months into that session we got to teach the freshman that the order of the house is different from the campaign trail. you're debating substance, not vision for the most part. they're just bringing too much political rhetoric into the floor. so we talked about that for a while, reached certain ones and we began generally to teach them. i remember one time each party, they know exactly what is going on. if you talk to your staff and you don't know what amendment you're working on, then you

don't what you're working on, they will tell you. i remember one time, he said vote yes, i'll tell you why later. he didn't have time to explain to me. he knew me and he knew i voted yes. so what did i vote for? so with all of the absolute flood of subjects and information, you have to pick trustworthy people that you believe you will follow if you haven't had time to study it. you only have so much time to train your own staff and they are in their 20's, usually right on top of it, energetic, smart, but completely inexperienced. so their conclusion might be completely wrong at the beginning.

over time, they get to know you and your record. i came in, i didn't want to contradict my record. anyway, the whole thing of accommodating as a freshman. anyway, to finish up, a little later on, the guy that came forward came over to me, the california ladies, i understand that they flew all night, they can't come on the floor in jeans. i won't talk to you about the ladies about dress. they were talking to some of the men about dress. there was a decorum on the floor of the house that as the politics took precedence over the substance it began to be a problem. we really need to focus ourselves back on the fact that we are legislating policies that will affect throughout america. on the floor, no one calls you your first name or last name, it's the gentle lady from connecticut, the fact that they were two, it doesn't matter.

in the record they would put whoever, but on the floor of the house, you were just the gentle lady from massachusetts, the gentle lady from connecticut. i don't know how much we want to do now and how much we want to do later, there were a number of terribly controversial subjects while i was there. one advantage of the papers, to me the big advantage of the papers being available to someone in our library and after i gave my papers to the library, we moved to a community, so i couldn't keep all of these papers that i kept. when you go through all of the clippings from beginning to end, you see it completely different, right. you see politics that is totally different from my politics from one day.

some of it we have to get back to. some of it i'm glad it's gone. you see things that you don't see otherwise. and kids can see that. they can see the limit, for instance, i spoke always in a school whenever i was out for a day in the district. the fifth-graders are phenomenal. it's the last. that they are smart and articulate, they'll ask you any questions, whether it's the last one they heard their parents discuss or whether it came off the television, then you can see all that boil up. and particularly if our era because in my district, i had 41 counties, i had six or eight newspapers published every single day. and they needed to know what they should publish. they needed to know what i thought about things and i needed to bring it back down to that town and what was doing to

make a distinction. they each had radio stations. the radio stations follow the school games and the school lunches. you better be able to say something quick and easy to help them understand what congress, what is your congressman doing for you today. the challenge was the same, but the ways in which you could penetrate the minds of your constituents or invite their input were far richer, not only news prints and radios but all kinds of organizations. i went to every chamber, every town over the course of the year, every rotary, every senior citizen center at least once and other organizations that were responding to certain things. land trusts were very active and needed help and so on.

so that rich relationship, i would do community updates, i would plan my schedule. they wanted me to every grade. so we would go to schools. we would sit down with the agencies, with business in town. so if there was a factory that was important, a competition issue, and sometimes you would speak to the workers as to what you were looking for, so you had the opportunity to have a very rich relationship with your constituents. you would have to be there when something important would happen. the state senator and the state representative, the mayor, but we were all part of the community envisioning its own future for managing its own life, developing its own families, creating its own schools.

i had schools where certain days of the week i would go. so it was a wonderful privilege to serve, but it was a deep and systemic relationship the issue of representation. now because there is not so many avenues to reach through any -- easily but also members are , spending more time raising money. they're less intensely interested. i came into politics for basically service, a p.t.a. mom and it was just kind of a larger arena for what i had been doing as a stay-at-home mom. you see that in the papers. i was surprised at how visibly it came through and i'm sorry , that i made the decision not

to keep all of the copies of the columns. we send out thousands he have single week. sometimes we didn't think they would get picked up. sometimes they would all pick them up. it kept the newspaper educated in things that we were dealing with. trade was printed everywhere, health care. i kept only one copy. so now i'm kind of sorry, oh, yeah, there is another one. it was a great privilege to serve, a great challenge to serve. and they would see in those papers what was different in , politics then? why was it that way? the other thing they say is the extraordinary amount of work a member has to do, not just work in their district, but we didn't -- we didn't realize we had no life at home. you got on a plane and one staff

was waiting, another was greeting you, all prepared, we have things for you to do. the intellectual challenge, i graduated from radcliffe, i never worked so hard learning as a member of the congress and we were privileged to have arms control. the people making the decisions thinking the thoughts when we got into 9/11, the armed services committee briefed all of us, the intelligence committee briefed all of us. needless to say, they didn't give us the kind of level of information because it was going to get out. you really had the opportunity and also the responsibility to know both sides of the issue. not just one side. so we have lost some of that, but the work that you have to do, i can honestly say it's as

demanding as any job that america has to offer. also about as great as any job that you can have. [applause] peter: david, thank you. thank you for those comments, nancy. it's interesting that nancy and i both being in new england, we had the curse of the hourly shuttles which is that because, there is always a plane to get back home, people expect you to be home all the time. i remember talking to a colleague of mine from idaho. by the time his nondirect flight got back to idaho, he still had a 4 1/2 drive to get to get to his house. he was not someone who was going to rush home and rush back because it wasn't practical. but nancy and i and the people living in the northeast were always expected back. as soon as congress adjourned, usually on a thursday, you hop on the next flight, you come back and the staff would be there and without exaggerating,

i told people my days were always longer in the district than they were in d.c. in d.c. oftentimes a session would end. you get home at a decent time, get some sleep, it was not uncommon for me in my district to have three dinners in one night, none of which i ate at because you would go. you would greet people. you would give remarks and go on to the next event while everyone sat down and ate. it was the way to maximize your contact with constituents and that's what people expect. they want to see, ask you questions, that was part of the retail end of the policy. before i was a member of congress, i was a state representative and it was really interesting because not only was i in the minority in the massachusetts statehouse but i was in a tiny minority. you had lots of issues that would come by and lobbyists, they would walk right by your office space and keep going and talk to the chairman of the committee and that was that. so a lot of issues would come up

and you would not get any contact at all. in washington, d.c., that was a habit. every issue is important to somebody, even if it has nothing to do with your district. i think i maybe had a dozen farms in my district, but obviously agriculture is a huge issue naturally. there was always people, there were always people lobbying on agriculture-related issues even though it wasn't a big part of my district. my district was interesting, north shore of massachusetts, we had some of the poorest communities in the city of linden my district, we also had others, i was able to interact with people across the sphere and everyone wanted you to know and understand what their situation was. that was part of my education in the process learning that you have to represent people, you get one vote, even though the people in your district may have very, very different opinions on what is there.

david mentioned the concept of rino and i was thinking that in new england, we actually saw that process a little bit before eric cantor. we saw joe lieberman lose his primary because he was a dino, instead of a rino. he was a democrat in name only. in his particular case, he was able to run in the general anyways and defeat the democratic nominee and at the end of that term, he retired, but it's a process we have been seeing i think sadly we're going to see more of it because as the parties go to the two extremes, you're not going to have moderates left on either side. i think that's the worst for america that is happening that for me, for someone to say eric cantor wasn't conservative enough is just mind boggling. yet that's what his opponent ran on. if you remember, i studied this a little bit, the issue being whipped, was actually being whipped on the house floor at the time.

john boehner was having the whip organization assess support for the immigration reform bill. people were looking at, well, they didn't want to do entirely what obama wanted, but could they do something to address the issue? it had gotten that farm. that was the number one issue that was used to attack eric cantor on. even though he had not made any pronouncements on it one way or another, being a member of leadership, he wanted to see what the support was, it was used to attack him. lo and behold, he was defeated. there was no mention of every whipping or bringing the immigration bill to the floor by the republicans after that. obama was like, well, why can't you do that? it was like, well, there aren't other members who want to sacrifice their career on an issue that we just saw the majority leader of the house defeated in his own primary for it. it's somethinthat worries incumbents of both parties. nobody wants to stick their neck

out so far and depending on the year, somewhere between like 60 and 80% of districts are considered safe for one party or the other. so those people aren't even worried about a general election opponent. they are only worried if they are at all the primary opponent and to me, something has to give there. several weeks ago, david and i were on a panel and we were just talking about, well, will the california system help, will the louisiana system help? some type of chance for the voters to say, well, no, we're not going to choose between the most liberal democrat and the most conservative republican. we want a choice other than that in certain circumstances. we're certainly not there, not yet. i'm just looking at the situation we're in right now and the race for president, the democrats look like they're

about to nominate the least popular nominee of a major party for a president ever, except the republicans said, no, wait a minute, we want someone even more unpopular than the democrat. i'm still scratching my head at that, and yet that looks like what our choices are going to be this november. part of it i think is very much and entirely the parties are bifurcating so solidly, they are looking at mimicking what is happening in many congressional districts. when hillary clinton started running, she was not the most liberal person on all of the issues, but during the campaign, she has begun to echo many of bernie sanders' positions. if she is not the most liberal candidate, she is certainly very close to that, which a different situation than you normally have. the republican side, i honestly

don't know what to make of it because, i mean, donald trump on paper does not appear to be conservative, does not appear to be republican, and yet he had a plurality of republican votes, 42% and he will be the nominee. so there is an old adage that may you live in interesting times, i think we are all living in interesting times. i don't know where it is headed, but for members of congress, i think their function is even more important now and for those of you who study the congress, your work is important as well. in terms of explaining that to people, nancy mentioned fifth graders, certainly the younger the crowd that you can get to, i think the more impact you can have, the people with the most open minds explaining to them that there still is a major role for congress, that their

participation in democracy is essential, that you shouldn't look at it as choosing our leaders is something that other people do or it doesn't matter if you vote. in my particular case, when i was defeated for re-election, i lost by less than 400 votes. it was one vote per precinct, so i'm one of those walking cases that tells you, yes, each vote does matter. you really can have a role in that. while i won't even begin to predict exactly where the situation this year is going to lead us, i still have absolutely faith that the people control their government ultimately if they choose to step back, that's their decision and not an informed one in my viewpoint, but they still have ultimate control and to the extent that you can explain and engage people of all ages in that, that is very, very helpful and for your role as keepers of that

information, hopefully you will find some students along the way who want to do that extra research, whether it's for a paper in school. whether it's for later in life out of just interest, whether it's for reporters or people who do blogs and the rest, it really is an essential role. i'm glad that you are still there trying to disseminate that information which is essential for a democracy to work. thank you. [applause] david: thank you, i would like to move the conversation briefly to a little bit about polarization which i know you have been thinking about and there are, they call an over determined problem in that there are so many answers to how in the world did this actually happen.

let's just go through a handful of them. after i go through a handful of them, i would like to hear from nancy and peter again with their perspectives on what they have seen changed and then we will go to you for questions and answers. so we are now based on measurements that are done with something called d.w., princeton is best known for this. we are in the third break movement in polarization of american history. it's difficult sometimes to measure ideology and they think they have a pretty good approach. we're in the third grade moment now. the first grade moment of american history polarization and with the civil war. the second great moment of polarization and at the end of the progressive era and the re-alignment of parties with the democratic party in the election

of 1932 and then we are now at the third grade moment. so there have been, there have been these massive changes that can be quite problematic. one, the civil war, second, a major re-alignment of the parties, and now. well, the parties have been realigning for quite some time anyway and that is issue number one, why do we have polarization, because the fundamental basis of the political parties have changed. when i was young, the republican party in massachusetts was considered the liberal party in massachusetts and the democrats were the conservative party in massachusetts. this begins to change in the early 1960's and in full sweep by the late 1960's as the base of the republican party first kind of signaled by the nomination of barry goldwater in 1964 and ultimately the

unsuccessfully first challenge by ronald regan in 1976 and the successful challenge in 1980, the base of the republican party moved from the south end to the west. this is a re-alignment that happens largely around race and the correlation between a person individual's self-proclaimed identification of their own party and their individual self-proclaimed identification around ideology, that correlation has turned quite dramatically. it began in the 1960's and accelerated the physical re-alignment around race. the second argument is that the, this is an argument i want to shout out to a young star who's name is james d'angelo. it is that the movement towards sunshine legislation in the 1970's has actually made things considerably more difficult for the work of legislators. in 1970 in the house, we have

the 1970 legislative reorganization act, right, a favorite of everybody in the room, i hope, unless you liked the 1946 act instead. the 1970 act was quite a moment because in this act, the sunshine legislation, all votes of the committee of the whole were then made roll call reported votes. previously votes in the committee of the whole only made final passage vote was the recorded vote. so the crafting of the legislation through the amendments and the amendment tree was hidden from public view. you knew the total vote, but you didn't know how actually people voted. that seems undemocratic. remember, democracy stops at the door of the united states congress and seems undemocratic. the push to make that major reform was actually done not by citizens groups, but by lobbying

organizations who wanted to more successfully and accurately monitor the members and see how they were doing. a rather dramatic change in the orientation of many members. instead of looking at each other and thinking about crafting legislation at the amendment stage and then going public on final passage, every little moment had to be crafted in public view because their final votes, their amendment votes would actually be amplified. the data on this is really quite crystal clear. there is a knife edge moment beginning in the early 1970's, these reforms are then later adopted across the senate, every state legs layer fewer for which we have data. there is a dramatic increase in party line voting that begins in the 1970's that continues right up until now. are members becoming polarized themselves?

no, they are actually presenting themselves to a polarized constituency. that is issue number two. there are times when transparency leads to particularly difficult unwelcomed outcomes. the reorganization around race and the political parties was issue number one. issue number three is something we also don't talk very much about unless you are inside the baseball and i want to call you it for you. the unwritten rules and procedures have changed so dramatically. when you two were on the hill, you could go on congressional delegation, these travels. ted, i think you may have actually gotten to go along on a few of these at a time. members were not sleeping in

their offices which frankly is disgusting, but now happens widely. they would move to washington, d.c. if you slept in your office in the 1970's, you would have been laughed out of the institution and yet now it's recommended because you don't want to go native. beginning in 1994, republicans and then later democrats decided they were going to no longer move their families to washington, d.c., but they would keep running back home. it reinforces this idea that the institution is really only running on tuesdays, wednesdays and thursdays and you have to get back home. but it also means that you're not getting to know your colleagues in a deep and careful and thoughtful and loving way which it used to be. there are many unwritten rules that have been violated and beyond sleeping in your office and not living with other colleagues, another very

important one was thrown out in 1994. that was the strong and vibrant rule, you could not -- if you were a sitting member of congress, go into another member of congress's district and campaign for their opponent because if you do that, how are we going to sit down face-to-face two days later or two weeks later or two months later and try and cut a deal. if i know that something i tell you in private as we're trying to craft legislation and do the common good, if i know that that is going to be used against me and you're going to use it to attack me in my own district, that's insane. when that jeannie was let out of the bottle in 1994, first by the republicans and in 1996 by the democrats, that was a disaster. the rules and procedures are simply what is written down, there are norms and behaviors. the fourth big one and this will be the final one is

participation in primaries. there is a very strong empirical regular relationship between when primaries happen and how extreme the candidates coming out of those primaries are likely to be. it's called the primary gap. the primary gap is the amount of time between the primary, let's say it was in june and the general election in november. if you have a primary in june and a general in november, that's a pretty big primary gap. what if you have a primary that's actually binding in may or in april? the primary gap in the united states, forget about the presidential primaries. i care about binding primaries for members of congress. the primary gap has been dramatically increased. when we look at how people represent their constituencies based on that primary gap, it's crystal clear. the smaller the gap, the more

moderate and wide-ranging the candidate will be. because if you have a primary, let's say in late september, now your media buys are also appealing to a general election constituency, you have to broadcast in not narrow gaps. if you have your prior in may or in june, it's all about narrow gaps. it's all about bringing up the narrowest most possible vote. primary turnout has been on a huge decline. if we look at off-year congressional elections, so forget about the president at the top of the ticket. off-year congressional elections beginning in 1966 and going through to present day, it is a monotonic decline in the percentage of eligible voters that turn out to vote. so in 1966, it was just over a third of all eligible voters turned out to vote in this congressional primary.

in the last congressional off-year primary in 2014, 11% of eligible voters turned out to vote. it's astonishing. it's not the moderates who are no longer turning out, it is the months rats are turning out. it's the strong identifiers who are still turning out. these are things that we can change. we can change how primaries operate. we can change the timing of the primaries. we can maybe change how gerrymandering works. the law must be stable, but never stand still. the institution is stable, but it's always changing. right now we're at a pretty difficult time in american history with respect to congress. it doesn't have to be that way. we're always one generation away from losing our democracy, but we are also just one generation away from having the most vibrant and lively and dynamic

democracy that we can possibly imagine and that's going to take every one of us in this room to try and make that. so i would like to -- i was just preaching, i'm sorry to my parents and ministers. nancy and peter. nancy: how many of you saw front page coverage -- it's not on? how many of you saw about a month ago front page coverage of richard neil who is a massachusetts member of congress, probably the longest serving right now in the massachusetts delegation and sam johnson, a long serving member from texas having a press conference to laud their bill, their bipartisan bill to fix the social security disability

program that is scheduled to go bankrupt this year? how many of you saw those articles? outrageous! i mean look at all of the pensions that are going broke everywhere. look at social security which we don't talk about anymore. this one is actually going bankrupt. this is by start san solution. richie said himself i want the press to note this is bipartisan. in my mind, the primary number one cause of the problems in governing america fall at the feet of the press. because they don't report so much. before speaker boehner became speaker, he was asked at the press club in washington, big

deal, these speeches at the press club, about six months out before the election, should you become speaker, what will you do to restore civility, that's our language in washington to talk about all of this. and he said, i'll make it my business to restore regular order. and i'm reading this in the "washington post" and i thought to myself, nobody will get that. i wonder if he has told his team he is going to do that because the republicans started writing legislation in the speaker's office because they had a desperate need to feed their base. nancy pelosi wrote the entire affordable care act in the speaker's office. the committees were explicitly told no structural amendments, you can amend around the edges, but that's why it didn't work so well because it didn't have the

airing. you can't make this stuff up. law is law. i can tell you from chairing the human resources committee of the ways and means committee where we did foster care, we did welfare reform, it is the part of congress that does the children's stuff, even though it's ways and means, but under our tax law is where you find social security. we take all of your money, but we give it back. so ways and means is the giver backer as well as the taker. we do unemployment comp, we do disability, we do welfare. we do foster care because the foster care child is just a person with no means of income. we had a lot of hearings on these things and both richard neil and sam johnson are on the ways and means committee and this is a victory. it's not like the way we pay doctors, it took us 15 years to figure out how to fix it and every year we're punting and punting and punting and they

never know are they going to get paid or not get paid. it got no press. when boehner said, i'm going to return it to regular order, that got no press. that one sentence in the "washington post" and they know better. my first thought was, did you tell your guys that. so boehner started that process. i don't write in my office, go see the chairman. they would tell you go see the subcommittee chairman. a good friend of mine, chairman of energy and commerce, i served with him many years. he is from michigan. i spent a lot of time in michigan. he said, well, who is your democrat? now, fred announced when he became chairman that any amendment that had bipartisan sponsorship would be taken first and most all of the amendments put themselves at a disadvantage if they don't, so they all scurry around and get bipartisan

support. if you get bipartisan support, i'll tell you my best story about bipartisan support. you remember ted kennedy, i hope. he was really concerned about churn and health care. care.ldren and health he wrote this bill that became known as chip. he could not find a sponsor in the house. he needed a sponsor in the house part because the republicans were in the majority in the house. so his staff approached my staff and my staff and i talked about it and i said you know it's an entitlement. anyway, i read it and we thought about it and i said, well, i have to talk to him. i can't co-sponsor this. this is just to medicaid. medicaid is a joke. you can't find a doctor to take medicaid. it's a false promise. i am not going to do that. so ted and i met in his little office in the capitol and he

told me the history of it. it was a lot of fun. we had a good time. he agreed that they would not have to do it through medicaid. they could do it through whatever program they wanted and connecticut became known as husky so that's a good thing. so children joined husky who didn't have other insurance. we needed that flexibility at the state level and from chairing reforms for foster children, i knew how different the state health care systems were. so that was my contribution. we couldn't get the senate onboard and orrin hatch was the key person. he said i can't do an entitlement. you may remember what happened to his colleague senator bennett had. he said i can't be out there having led a new entitlement. this is important so we agreed to a capped entitlement. in some states, it meant it

couldn't serve all of the children, but on the other hand, you have the ability to manage the program the way you want, you can pair it with things you're doing, you can put it down entirely through community health centers because the feds pay much better for community health centers than other medicaid, so we all agreed on that. now we have a bill that has the support of hatch, the support of kennedy, and the support of myself but it's way deep into the legislative session. we had the support of newt gingrich and of bill clinton. and i don't know how they got it done, but they did. it didn't go through committees. it did go just out in the final bill, i don't remember whether it was a reconciliation, but it got woven in because some things are too controversial to get through the committee process unless you have several years.

a good bill takes five years from idea that everyone agrees with to legislative form. i mean, we should have kids study, what is the initial one, what does it come out as? it can't go in and serve connecticut and still serve wyoming, you can't have a bill that is exactly the same for chicago and good for connecticut. so you have to -- legislating is a profound experience. it goes right to the heart of how you build human communities, how you relate to one another when institutions you have already built. this is why the affordable care act, i'm a big advocate, was an early advocate of universal coverage, but because it was done the way it was, it's laid over. it doesn't fit. so it can't tie itself down because in some states there is

a much better pattern. i was very interested in one that recently got the right to expand coverage, but not through medicaid. they can do it through the waiver section, not through the medicaid expanse section. the waiver section has been there all that time, but burwell wasn't flexible enough until toward the end, it was too late, do it through the waiver system, do it your own way. so legislating is fascinating and interesting. we have to help kids see if you look back to see how it was done, then you can see what was good about that and wasn't. currently because boehner made that commitment and started that process, ryan is even better about it. ryan will have a program that the house republican members are going to run on so that he can get them out from under whatever the dialogue is at the time. and the structure of that, under

newt, the republicans did it with a contract for america. that was a pretty loose group that did that. it was signed off by everybody, but ryan has said to the committees, listen, i'm not going to tell you because you saw how boehner got completely done in by his own folks. so boehner's only choice was to go to the floor and let the body work its will, so to speak. i have seen speakers do it on the other side. it's happened. it used to be part of our process. anyway, he did it a couple of times just to show his freshmen that you don't rule the world, honey. there is still a majority of the body that makes law in america. that's part of the reason that he became so unpopular, he went to the floor and let them work it out. ryan is really providing the leadership to let the committees think through this issue in their own committees where they know more than the other people that aren't on that committee

and yet it comes back through the conference process. whether that will result in compelling enough initiatives to be a platform to run on that is strong enough to, in a sense, power through trump, i don't know. but i have different, a totally different view of the trump-sanders race as i call it. i have said too much already and i'll come back to it. david: peter, turn the mic on. peter: it was just getting interesting. it's fascinating for me to listen to nancy because i understand a lot of the inside baseball as she is talking about and if you don't, at some point there are going to be questions that you are going to ask us about this. what i see is that when the republicans took power in 1996

or 1995 rather, it was the first time in 40 years they had been in the majority in the house and the other times they had been in power for just one term unless you went back to the 1920's, so it had been a long time since republicans had been in the majority. normally when the party switches power, you go to the most senior member who was in the majority the last time your party was in the majority, but we had no one in that situation. we actually had to ask bill emerson who was a page in the house of representatives in the 1950's to preside because he was the closest thing we had to a member who had been there before. so we were learning our way in terms of the process and sometimes you look at things and say, well, this needs to be changed and you don't pay as much attention to it and while that first term of the

republican majority, most bills were written at the subcommittee and the committee level, but overtime, they began to appear, well, this is easier if the speaker does it, we can do that and unfortunately it became common place both when the republicans were in the majority in the early 2000's as well as when the democrats took over for four years, so you don't see the negative as it is happening. in the case with john boehner, when you have a two-party system, that's one thing. john boehner was essentially speaker of the house with three parties in the house. two of them were on the republican side, but most people didn't know until he ended up resigning that there was a block of 30 republicans who looked at themselves as a separate party from the other republicans and it's very difficult to preside in a body like that. speaker ryan to his credit said i'm not campaigning for the job

if you want me to do it, you come to me and we'll work out something. the commitment to regular order from john boehner and the bumps that went with it and now speaker ryan who is very much determined not to write legislation in the speaker's office i think is a good thing for the country, even though it's definitely going to have some bumps along the way as well. so it's a situation where the process is headed in the right direction and i hope that it continues in that direction, but again, there is a lot of unknowns that we'll have to see what happens. i think it's an improvement that you do allow members to participate. you don't allow -- you don't set yourself in a structure where a group of 30, no matter who they are, can have a veto power over the process. you want that to continue and in some places, if you're going to

be a majority party, sometimes you have to accept a defeat, but you have to make sure that it's a narrow defeat if you can, but move on to the next issue. if you try to block everything, that's normally when your party gets thrown out of power and that's one thing that i've been researching and want to do more study on, but in 1994 elections, republicans had not won a majority in 40 years. bill clinton had been the first president of either party to control the house and the senate going back to jimmy carter. two years later, he lost the house and the senate. nancy: he couldn't control his party. peter: he couldn't control his party, nancy says. it's very interesting. republicans, a couple years, lost a few seats and then he ended up leaving as speaker. you have george bush elected as president in 2000 losing the popular vote, but winning the

electoral college fight by the bare minimum and nominally he had the majority of the house and senate. a senator from vermont switched parties and became a democrat. they had control of the senate, we had 9/11, the republicans controlled the senate and the house. by 2006, the american public again soured on what was happening and it wasn't just they were, in my view, not just disapproving of what george bush was doing, they were disapproving of what the republicans in congress were doing, too, they threw the republicans out of the house and senate. it's getting worse over time because i thought it's going to be a dozen years before the republicans take the house back again after losing it, it's just the way it's going to be and then barack obama wins huge victory in 2008. 2010 comes around and republicans take the house back and make huge gains in the

senate. and so barack obama had a two-year window of one party control and the american people said, we don't like the direction this is going in. i'll stick my head out and say if by chance one party controls the white house, the house and the senate after this election, i predict two years from now, the american people will take at least one branch of the congress away because the partisanship that is driving the primaries and the members election there is not what people want to see in a national agenda there. the only way to veto that, the next off javier election we'll have a shift of membership to get that done. david: thank you, peter, questions, comments, observations. yes, sir. >> can you speak about your relationship with your repository, have they done anything that has delighted you and is there a downside to

having your papers collected? peter: i donated my papers to the massachusetts historical society. on paper i'm in great company because my papers are with thomas jefferson, john adams and john quincy adams. they have done something to delight me and that is they have not touched them. it's a case where i thought i had a lot of papers and then nancy told me how many boxes she donated and it's like no, i don't have that many anymore. they're in a situation where they have not tackled them yet. i am not in any hurry on that one. i do stay in active contact with them. obviously they have quite a few projects going on of national importance and i'm sure at some point they will get to them and that is absolutely fine by me. i know they will safe for when the seal is cracked. a question,we ask

let's repeat the question so that everyone can hear it. the want to take this question on the archives, or go to another question? yes, sir? >> having recently gone to d.c. and visited the delegation from oklahoma, there is immediate concern on oppositional research down the .oad a lot of people will continue to be in public play. as former members, what advice do you give to someone? even if they have not touched the papers yet, what is the comment that you give to say that it is a good, positive thing? or do you say that it is it? i struggle in those conversations to communicate with people in this environment because i understand the pressure they are under and that there is life after congress.

they have to keep that in mind. what advice would you give your colleagues when they are facing the question of who do you donate to, and how to donate their papers to repositories? nancy: i donated mine to yukon. they have a very sophisticated system and have organized them impressively. he would have to ask a much demand they have for anyone to look at them. i do not think we learned how to use the material to our advantage. .hat is not surprising it is a different kind of material then we have libraried before. and we did it in an era when everyone uses their little thing. the idea of them looking through something that was written and done by others is not at the top of their list. that does not mean that in the long run, historically, it will not be terribly important.

i think we need to refine how we use it. when i was defeated, it was the first election in which -- there have been cycles in the elections. tom delay was known as the hammer. but he brought to the republican party was a greater determination to raise money. we were always behind because the unions contributed standard money to the democrats and standard labor force. the republicans did not have any. the evangelicals were turned into that for a while. that election that i lost was the first one. , he was the head of the democrat operations. the first one where the goal was to go after people's character. before that it had been going after their stand on issues. he was very interesting to watch

that your that is another story. -- that affected us as we donated our papers. we went through to make sure there was not anything that would he misinterpreted easily, at least bad is what i was told. i did not do it. i always told you, kind of, when i retire that i want to spend time with them. when i moved, i went through my notebooks carefully. i had a duplicate set that i sent to them because i thought i would slim it down for my kids. the interesting thing is in the volume of the, leafing through and seeing the communication. my set is better than theirs. there were places that were incomplete. i had to give that to them. i think we need to put real thought into how we do that.

how we answer members' concerns. it is very real. on the other hand, it has been out there the years they have been serving. what is written is already public information about their positions. in their archives, you can see what they really did and what they really thought, versus what the press said they did and thought. i have gotten to be very down on the press. the last eight years i was in office, the reporters were so ignorant it was pathetic. they didn't know anything about government, policy, the issues. a decentarted, we had knowledgeable guy named conrad at the herald. and another guy at the hartford career. they did not write stuff if they aought it was crap or personal attack. if you have something

substantive to say we are interested. are great papers. we should be in our high school having kids write a paper on why one team,elect trump any other why we should elect bernie sanders. it is not on to talk about hillary. it is more instructive. you think the republican party is in trouble, ladies and gentlemen. i am one of the republicans alike brooks and every other republican that i know, probably peter, too. together,rved 4 years but we met weekly and were very active. we know each other better than i know other members of congress. i forgot what i was going to say. david: you were talking about trout and sanders. rump is responding to

-- when i said he would go away, normally he would have. the fact that he did not go away -- who would've thought sanders would have lasted so long. attacking hillary clinton who was secretary of state. never have we had a candidate of that caliber attacked like that. trump's philosophy is that government has let us down. it is a crummy organization that is out of touch. there is some truth in what he is saying, like it or not. i remember all of the years that i struggled to get people to see how we could do international trade and still have an industry. you have to do both, not one or the other. the issues are complicated. at the same time they are killed

off in the newspapers. they killed off the communications equipment and town meetings. toward the end i could not have town meetings because they would be picketed by special interest. it would be all about the picketing. this is the press. instead of listening to what people were saying to me and i was saying to them it would be about the picketing. who made trump? not trump, the first debate. the question was how did you feel when trump called the this name? never have we had a national debate with that focus. if you look at trump and what he has tapped into, not one of us understood. the level of disconnect between people and their government. it is destroying us. cannot survive without

mutual respect for other people's opinions. it is not there anymore. trump is a problem for all of us. is the old democrat who thinks the government can do things better than the private sector. that is a huge threat to the way we have built our economy and society. this is a time when we should have people debate. if you can do it better, how would you do? i have taken perverse joy in this election. really. is much more disruptive than if we argued if we should or should not have invaded iraq. david: a comment on your question. because of opposition research, people are not only afraid to donate their documents, they keep their document. for me, it is a problem. if you have people that are

retiring, and your organization has the ability to reach out to them, do it. it is worth it to keep the record. if they are thinking of running for office, and you are able to keep it under seal, fine, or say 'sve it to us later -- at the local society there was a democrat who retired a few years before me, and he went out of his way to tell them that he .urned his papers they were not happy. chet atkins. it was like, you did what? the record is so valuable that it is worth it to do that. , i believe in transparency and all the rest, but the idea of having presidential records unsealed relatively quickly now is that you have people running for office that were in an advisory whoseon for the president

comments are coming back. i think it needs to be a longer time. historians still have a crack at want peopledo not keeping things. a lot of the work i did i did on the house floor. nancy, a very senior member, she had people coming to her. go toewer member i would the senior members on the floor and say i need this, can you help me with that? the best, do can get is i will see what i can do. there is no written record of that. that islittle bit written that might help you understand what happened, you really want to preserve that is much as you can. you do not want people to be afraid of committing things either to hard or electronic writing. then, you have no record to work with at all. a couple of scattershot

quick answers. you are thinking about electronic resources and tools for old e-mails. a shout out to the sunlight foundation. specific,t project some only last for a few years, but they have done job dropping we wonderful work of keeping materials available on capitol hill. look at their website. you can also put in with them project.cific the hewlett foundation has made substantial contributions to improving the understanding and record keeping around congress through the madison initiative, which is up for renewal soon. the hewlett foundation has done great work. i want to shout out to a book that you haven't seen. if you want to have it reaffirmed how important the work of the archives are, i've

seen this in manuscript form, garrison nelson's new book coming out on speaker john mccormick is going to give you chills. it is a phenomenal piece of work . a great piece of history. it should be out in september. finally, as someone who does not spend as much time as garrison did, basically his entire adult life, but as someone who spends a lot of time in the library i want to thank everyone for continuing to arrange things .hronologically i really never know what it is i'm looking for. the index usually doesn't help me. in order to understand what is happening in context, it is the chronological files that you are maintaining, as opposed to aree-specific files, that

incredibly helpful. next question. yes, sir? >> i have a question for either or both of the former members of congress. someone over the years who has done research and has written some books and articles about former members of congress and president's -- what i have that it is user-friendly for the researcher , for the researcher to find for his or her writing project. the repository helped greatly in .erms of quality talking about john mccormick, in the fall of 1997 looking at some of his papers, i was stunned by that they brought out brown paper shopping bags with

stuffedand telegrams into these brown paperbacks. he had been speaker of the house. he was a representative from more than 40 years. he left congress almost 30 years before. much better experiences at the university of connecticut looking at the papers of tip o'neill -- congress,members of decideswhat criteria where you want to put your papers, how they are catalogued, organized, and treated? it did noty case, have a huge amount of thought.

it was very pragmatic. there was a gentleman who was a state centered or -- state senator in massachusetts that was a mentor to me. he had helped candidates that are supported in college and shortly thereafter. his father had been governor and massachusetts house speaker and u.s. senator. he was active at the massachusetts historical society. he introduced me to folks there. i did not put restrictions on the donation. at the time, i thought i was giving them too much. they sent an archivist and she said that would be of interest, that would be of interest, that stuff. i did not put a lot of thought and organization. given where we are now, if i knew then what i know now i would've kept my files differently to begin with.

not as badly organized as brown paper bags, they could definitely use help. , but it is a good question. nancy: i had a friend who left congress before i did. he announced he wasn't going to fromgain here at gunnerson wisconsin. he was a very active legislator and a leader on workforce issues. he said, why would i leave this junk for someone else to write what they think my record is. the staff picks out the stuff. they wrote their own history. that is what they gave to their library. i think there is usefulness and that. we just followed the lead. there was way too much stuff. i'm sure they throughout half the stuff we gave them. keep.hard to know what to

in particular if you're interested in history. i think that there needs to be more feedback tween the people who are running the library's as to who uses what and what are they looking for in the academic world. and the members. there are so many things that go on that are terribly interesting and very important to the process that you cannot see. therestance, when we were , there would be a breakfast where you would be invited and they would work through the freshman class to expose them to mines like that -- minds like that. same on tax policy and other things. there was a sense that you needed to be exposed to the great minds. you would not see that in the paper. there are probably improvements to make.

at the simplest level of how does democracy function, you can see a lot. in the new group people not have any paper. it is all electronic. they do constituent mail electronically. you have to decide, do you print one copy of all of the constituent mail? i don't know how they do it. i do not know if they send short answers to short e-mails. i remember when i was first elected, i took toby moffett's seat because he ran for the senate, they said oh yes, we answer every phone call with a hard copy. i said, you have to be kidding. you just do it because that is how you hear from your people. there's a lot to be learned about how to cultivate this. it is very important because so many other repositories of that

conversation have collapsed. the small newspapers and things like that. to be learned from the communication amongst members about bills. with constituents about bills. in some letters that she would get from your constituents were very valuable. others were number 1000 on a certain subject from an insurance company that wrote the same letter. that, too, has significance. i think that libraries are remarkable resources that we have. like lots of resources, times change and you have to figure out how to get people interested. we are missing with our high school kids and fifth-graders how much fun it would be to have them of we could figure out how to let them do original research in the library about some of these people. have it organized in a way that

they could do that. that would be an interesting project. david: >> over the last 20 years, we have seen an increase in civic in terms of common core, now on the act's, statewide exams driving -- trying to drive more civic education. but we learned with her head and with our gut. it is that interaction between the head learning and got learning were real learning takes place. over the last 20 years, we have seen a very disturbing trend downwards. every year it is worse. an high school and middle school student government, it is going away. children may be learning in terms of book learning about civics education, but are they

allowed to have their own student government? their own student newspaper? a natural election? election?al schools are on a rapid decline. it is a rapid decline in particular in urban areas and minority communities. we learn by doing, not simply by reading. areink it is wonderful you associated with university libraries and big city libraries. please, if there is a way for you to imagine reaching out to those middle school kids, their teachers, the communities that no longer have student government. there has to bring -- there has to be a way to bring it back. we are one generation away from our demise and a truly vibrant democracy, but it has to be something we practice and learn in our schools and libraries.

assemblya dean of this , where everyone says, oh, we must hear from? does that person want to stand now and ask the final azido? [laughter] final question? [laughter] >> we have four more minutes. >> i will throw in an anecdote. it david said that in massachusetts, democrats were the conservatives. in 1988, it was the first year the democrats ever took control of the house of rep is in it is. the republicans have had it since the civil war. in the democratic leader was tim o'neill. found this great, valid

questions. ballot it was to legalize or control. the republicans were in favor, and the democrats were opposing it. was known to be opposed to birth control and that is now -- and that is how massachusetts was in 1948. [laughter] >> let me tell you another anecdote. when we took the majority under house, we took control of a lot of property we did not know existed. they created teams to go out to look at it. they closed for or five warehouses --four or five warehouses. if trump comes in and look at the government, that could not be all that bad. [laughter] we do things is to layer old things -- new things

on top of the old. care, theyhealth have driven them nuts. personnel management law, as well as our collective bargaining agreements, give a real look at what we are doing. they need someone to do it. we are literally desperate. we cannot keep spending so much on government. no business is operating like it was 10 years ago. none. and no employee is doing the same thing because they have different tools. thosederal government, if people don't want to learn the new tools, you have to keep them on. and they don't learn it. you cannot imagine some of the kind of conversations -- look at what is happening at the irs making it really partisan.

who is a nonprofit is too complicated. and who should get a tax subsidy for priest each. subsidy for free speech. service are a nonprofit families agency, it means that the state government pays u.s. -- pays you less to do the same thing they were doing or more money. way you can keep doing a good job. there is a real coming to terms with what we are doing as opposed to what we are saying. i don't think without a real evaluation. every 20 years, but certainly every 40 years, we have to be thinking about the structure of our government. >> thank you very much for all of you for inviting us here today.

[applause] johnson.ss amended the -- congresswoman, nancy johnson. we are right at the moment that we get food for ourselves. thank you very much and we will see you later. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> coming up this week and american history tv on c-span3, tonight at 8:00 eastern on lectures and history, virginia commonwealth university professor karen rader on student instructional don't made during the cold war. sunday morning at 10:00, on road to the white house the wind, the 1952 and 1948 national convention.

in 1952, dwight eisenhower of the republican nomination and adelaide stevenson received the democratic nomination. in 1948, the first televised conventions where president harry truman accepted his party's nomination. prices, and the ferry to do anything about housing. requiress president that i use every means within my -- r to get the laws >> on american artifacts, we will take an early look at the smithsonian national african museum of culture. its doors- it opens of the public this year. >> we have gotten an incredible array of movie posters. from the 1920's. this is part of our job is to tell