not expected to do very well, i think you are seeing at an earlier pointed in the cycle and that could end up not boding too well for the president. i think that congresswoman's answer on that was pretty interesting is that she is wearing two hats but they do have to allow members to run their own races whether or not that means a n a state like arizona for instance where the president is actually hoping to ride the coattails of some candidates who are running down blalingts such as richard carm in a there you've got a reverse coat tale effect and you might see that and other states as well. but it's a sign of the environment right now and how they're a little uncertain how it's going to play out. >> you asked about her own political future. what is heir ever her future in politics? >> i think that there is a future there. i haven't really heard sort of a matter of when that might be coming in terms of her rising through the ranks. i think the fact that she has

held on to her seat while running the dnc is a sign that there may be a sign but as far as when that happens i think it's always a question of the last time around if there was a time that the democratic leadership should have had a change in the guard it would have been in 2010. that didn't happen. so now the question is what is next in 2012. and so far it's kind of -- >> finally this weekend a way to assess where the race is and where it's going. where is the obama and the romney campaign at this moment? >> well, it's a head to head race. it's just incredibly interesting and exciting to watch here we are with this amount of time to november and the two candidates are really going at each other intense way at this early stage. the stakes are very high. the economy is still uncertain. there's all kinds of external question marks about what could happen in europe, what could happen in oil prices, what could happen in iran.

and considering that the race is this close at this stage and president obama you would think with incumbent power and a little edge and certainly familiarity among the american people is really scrapping to eek out some sort of victory here. >> final thought. >> i think it's just exactly as you said, it's going to depend i think well where we're obviously focus ds like on the unemployment rate and when you look at the swing states it's interesting that that is lower than the national average but is that the one measure of judging how people are feeling about the economy and i think it isn't i think it's one of many things when you look at state like ohio. yes, they played it down but people feel like three quarters of people in a recent poll said they thought the economy is still in a recession. so things like that how those intangible things of how do people feel the direction of the country is going is going to be important.

>> thanks for your quess and your per spectives. enjoy the rest of this holiday weekend. >> thanks. this is about an hour and a

half. >> it's great to be back here. >> i feel like there should be backup singers. >> bill, where are you? are you ready? ok. are you ready? >> let's do it. >> hello and welcome to the slate political gab fest, the washington is just awful but you dear listener are wonderful, edition. i'm david editor of slate. joining me today are sharp as a

samry sword emily senior editor to my right and john, as dangerous as an angry rattle snake, political director of cbs news to my left. we are live in front of a gorgeous crowd. for a live version of the gab fest. >> john, please tell me are these beautiful people i see real or are they figments of my imagination? >> they are real to me. but our listeners don't know that you're real. so -- [cheers and applause] and i don't know if our listeners could tell but that's two ball conies of people. it's not clear but there are a lot of people. >> this is the biggest crowd. this is our biggest crowd here

this is great and we're so glad you are here. >> big rock star moment. >> that's why we've got the head sets. >> exactly. >> that's awesome. go ahead. >> so we've got three topics today naturally the first will be the fight over barninge capital innighted by new york mayor and how it will affect the presidential campaign. the second topic will be why is washington so dreadful. and the third topic will be the sentencing in the case we'll have cocktail chatter, q&a and we have a gab fest first today our friends at c-span, the official public policy tv network are fimenting the show so you should prepare really eloquent questions that should demonstrate just how smart john and emily are. >> then don't make them

eloquent. make them simple. >> answerable. >> did you see that study about the notion that members of congress have a vocabulary of eighth graders and that the way they speak is that they -- >> they're supposed to speak in simpler sentences. >> it was interesting because it seemed like total bull. it basically seems like -- what did you just drop? >> my microphone but it's still on. >> but it seemed bogus because they were punished for speaking simply and clearly and the measurement of complexity. it was the longer your sentence is and the more complex the more intelligent it was supposed to be. >> i found it opposite. there's plenty whose sentences are long and meandering. >> especially if they're asking questions on the judiciary committee. >> so that actually if you scanned it it would be like at the post graduate level but if you took the content it would be at the pre-school transition

level. >> all right. >> chaffs a cheap shot. i just thought we would get it rolling with a totally -- >> so cory booker the mayor of newark, super hero, rescues old ladies from burning buildings, shovels your sidewalk when it snows and much lauded democratic politician made a lot of news this past weekend. why, john? >> he went on meet the press on sunday and they were talking in the roundtable at the end of the show about political campaign and he spent a lot of time talking about the president why he supports the president and what the president needs to talk about. but at the back end of his comment -- and he was very much on message and he talked about the talking points he had next to him, they were sort of a comfort to him as he was making his case. but then he said about the president's ad that week, which had attacked mitt romney for a steel company that bane capital had owned and managed and that

then went bankrupt. that the ad has a bunch of the workers and one of them called bane a vampire that sucked the life out of the company. and booker said that this was nauseating and that it -- and compared it then to the scotched exactly. and he said it was out of bounds. and he said that the campaign add attacked that it attacked basically what bane had done. that private equity was a good thing he said that in the main

bane had -- in the main bane. >> exactly. >> in the plain. >> in the main bane had in fact created jobs and supported businesses, another thing that was kind of off message by later that evening he put out a four-minute video recap pit lating what he said but putting it in a more favorable light. the president was called on to respond at nato and the reason this was a problem is because it was not only cory booker but then also stee rad anywhere who had worked for the president and said this wasn't a great thing. ed rendel the former head of the national democratic committee said this wasn't an ad. >> and now there's a romney ad that quotes all of those. i couldn't tell if ford was criticizing the president or sticking up for private equity. >> so that was incredibly long winded explanation. >> so emily, is cory booker

right that this is out of bounds or is it a stupid attack for the president to go after? >> i think it's he's totally wrong. he could have made the argument that in fact what romney did as the private equity chief was really good for the economy and important and we can't expect this protectionist attitude towards jobs particularly at a steel mill. we talked about this a little last week. but private equity at its best takes companies that are dying on the vine and turns them around and makes them productive in new ways. that's important. but the idea that this is out of bounds when it's wromni's career and he's staking his campaign on the notion that this gives him the experience to be the chief executive seems bananas to me. you all right wrote this week but i am channeling because i agree with that. >> do you think -- there's an

interesting debate about what private equity is and none of us are finance people. i do not even balance my checkbook. but it does appear there is sort of the private equity. there's a great column by matt miller who makes this point that there's private equity and of the sort where you take a really flabby company and you really -- it's a company that is otherwise going to die and you change what this company does and miller makes the argument that actually what president obama did with the auto industry is a kind of private equity. he took these auto companies and said you have a business model which is not sustainable. you have got to get leaner. and that was a good kind of private equity. and then there's the kind of private equity which has surged in recent years which bane is a real practitioner which is more like financial engineering, you fund the buyout with loans from the assets of the companies you're taking over, you pay yourselves huge fees from this company. and whether this company lives

or dies you're not that interested in because you're basically -- i mean vampire is not the right word but you're sort of harvesting. >> not gutting it because in the main you want the company to succeed but the most important part is the financial engineering of that transaction and that's what determines whether bane ends up making a ton of money on it. bane guarantees it's going to make some money on it and then what determines it's going to make a ton of money i guess if the company does successfully turn around too. >> and then we have this investigation by the "wall street journal" this week where they looked at 77 companies that bane actually had refused to give them any information but they found from portfolio accounts what the record was and they looked at these companies and found that if they went out eight years from the time of the investment longer that bane had actually owned some that they came up with a higher rate of brupsy than is the norm for private equity but if they

stayed within the sort of five-year time period that bane was arguing was more fair, then they came up with 12% which was still higher but kind of within range. >> here's what i wonder. so the reason the president said this was fair game is that mitt romney says i'm a business guy and he talks about his 25 years at bane. that's the first thing he talked about. that's all he talked about. and he doesn't really mention his time as governor as much. and he even doesn't mention the olympics as much although he started to more. the question is whether he has a skillset he acquired in those 25 years map to what he says that skills set is. so his argument is that gives me a unique insight into the economy and turning it around. >> and creating jobs. >> and he takes credit for the 100,000 staples jobs although almost all were created after bane sold the company. >> so the question is what did he do and tell us governor what

you did as a capitalist that gives us this insight. so tell us a story. and what's interesting is even though he says this is my core competency and this is the reason you should elect me he doesn't talk about it that much. he asserts it and then he moves on. >> so here's the defense i want to make to that point. are you finished with that? >> yes and no. hold on. the only other thing is -- that would be no. >> well, i'm finished with that sentence. the other thing is obviously -- >> that's going on and on and ofpblet i'm waiting. >> he wants to keep the focus on the president. >> my point is going to be the same. >> i know. >> but i just want to actually -- the point is to keep the focus on the the president so there's a tactical reason for not answering the question, too. so if he had a good answer for why he had special insight into what needs to be done in the economy at the moment he wants the conversation to stay on an up or down vote on the

president's stewardship of the economy. >> so my defense of romney in this is i don't think he can make a credible defense of this where he actually uses his work at bane to say my work at bane is exactly what the president of the united states does and therefore you should elect me because what i did at bane is analogous to what the president does. what he did there was not analogous. his job was to make a ton of money for investors and for himself. and by all accounts he appears to have been very good at it in ways that sometimes benefited workers and sometimes hurt workers. >> and always benefited bane in the aggregate. >> and always, which was his constituency. and i guess the point i would make if i were sort of arguing for mitt romney is here's a guy who has had three jobs that we know about in his life. the job -- i'm sure he's had more but the three main jobs are he was a management consult pt then he ran bane then he did the olympics and was governor of massachusetts. and each of these jobs require

slightly different skill sets he was incredibly effective at his job whatever that job was. so he as guy who was really good, he's given a set of tasks, he's really good. now, whether those tasks that he has had he had to do match what the president does is a debate but he is somebody who when you give him a set of things to do he appears to be very good at getting them done. >> and being executive. >> that's the better argument for him to say in three different instances i've taken complicated systems, figured them out and turned them around. the olympics is not a steel company and the steel company is not the state of massachusetts. so these are three separate things and i was able to go in and figure them out and make them work efficiently which shows -- which is kind of what i'm saying is at least he shows then the set of attributes that he can say nobody has any -- is able to prepare for the presidency. but i've been in a situation where i've gone into complex

places and figured things out. but he doesn't get that far. he's not a small business guy. he's not a guy who started out selling things out of a garage. when you talk to small business people, talked about the chain of restaurants, he talked about smoking brisket in his garage worrying about going bankrupt. like there were a whole lot of people you tell a story like that to they get it. >> here's another argument and i think i'm stealing this from p you but never mind. the president has been using against romney that he only cares about the select few wealth yes and romney has given him lots of ammunition. but what about the idea that you need to be callus and cut throthe and this will be how he actually slashes bloated government programs and there are a lot of people asking for things from the government who shouldn't be getting those

things anyway and that it will be good, the less -- we need an empathy deficit in our president. >> yes. >> that does not make any sense. >> yes. i said cold analytical rigor right there. >> but it doesn't make sense. >> go ahead. >> the reason i don't buy that is that presidents are so inflated anyway i don't think the reason they don't cut bloat is because they're worried about real people on the breadlines. i think they don't cut bloat because of all these constituent sis they're pandering to. >> maybe but here's the one thing. the republican party has gone so loopy on economics and romney is the best quality about him that i see is he's the hyper ration list. you give that guy a spread sheet he can read a spreadsheet. >> but he's not going to reas taxes. that's what we should get out of this. he can bring the republican party back to the brink of

craziness but he won't do it. >> but he's much more likely to do it than some kind of weird crazed pop list republican candidate. >> agreed. but more likely and yet still won't do it is not enough reason to elect him i don't think. >> you're probably right but i guess i have more -- >> he wouldn't take the deal. right? at that moment. >> he wouldn't take the ten to one deal in the midst of a presidential campaign. we'll talk about this that washington is so broken that when you're actually president you couldn't do a ten to one deal. >> he will be george h.w. bush and read my lips because of that moment in the debate. he can't do it. he wouldn't be reelected and he would be seen as the trail benedict arnold. >> by that standard there's no republican that could be president then. given the constraint of this republican -- whatever. i just -- >> don't pander. don't pander. just because you know your

crowd here. >> i mean i do wonder if at this moment it is possible for republicans to be responsible president and it's not that the democrats are doing such a good job with our deficit and fixing the economy either i don't think that but i do think that the other rigidity about taxes right now is really alarming. the numbers don't add up. your spread sheet is right that is what the president should care about but i don't think romney would be that different. >> any chance? >> any chance that he would be different? >> well in our second topic. well it depends. if he's going to -- if the ryan budget -- let's say that he is going to sign the ryan budget. depending on the makeup of the house and senate it's not going to pass. you can't pass it with republicans. he won't have the kind of majority the president had in 2009 and even the president didn't have the majority had in 2009 because of ben nelson and other people because then the question is it seems to me what's wrong about bane and focusing on bane, bane is

interesting, a way to figure out what kind of attributes he has and whether those can translate into the presidency. david is quite right they don't match one to one but can he pick up skills and use them in this new sand box. but he did try to do that in massachusetts and going to a place that was totally democratic and for a guy who is not a back slapper figuring out how to work with democrats and he did it. he's going to have to do that at some level in washington even though he might sign the ryan budgeted it won't get passed without coming to some kind of understanding with the other side. so that's essentially what he did with his health care plan in massachusetts about which he used to be very proud until it became a liability and he had to reverse himself. but what he did in massachusetts -- i was talking to karen who write for time magazine a long piece in 2007 about his health care plan and as he described it it wasn't so much that he was fascinated by the intricaties of health care policy. what he liked was how he got

the deal done. how he moved around obstacles, what david said he wants to get from a to zmp and he marched down and got there. and when there were obstacles he got to that objective. and so if that's what is driving him, if his argument is to basically cut these large numbers or come up with this large number and some kind of revenue piece as a part of that, he has shown what's, ideological flexibility in his career. and so perhaps under the threat of getting nothing done maybe he -- >> and i guess the other thing is if you look at the ryan budget and you are ok with all the slashing of government programs in it. i mean, it gets you part of the way to sustainability, right? it has serious cuts in it. the kind the country has never seen. but it's not irresponsible on the expense side of the ledger. >> but i don't think we should

go -- let's not talk about the ryan budget any more. >> ever? >> just not now. >> can we talk for a second about cory booker? do you think his mouth started running and he didn't realize what he was saying or did he really think that the bane, the jarme maya were both nauseating or was he pandering to the political system and trying to distance himself? >> he was -- he was sort of barack obama from 2008 which was why he was sort of this the petty game playing and the squsting political climate we've got to stop it which is something candidate obama would have said in 2008. >> and he -- >> all of those democrat whose are against it have had to raise money from private equity. >> or were for private equity. >> it must be said the president was raising money from private equity the night that the ad came out. which is why he argued -- he was trying to thread. >> i thought he thread that had

needle actually. >> he threaded it for the purpose obvious people listening. the ad goes right to vampire and the -- >> the add and the threading of the kneel were a mile apart. >> it's an ad full of blue collar workers, they're trying to register. it's an interesting question on whether on the eastern part of ohio who haven't been voting for democrats but who mitt romney doesn't have a strong relationship whether there's any availability to go to obama. it's an interesting question and that's where this ad was aimed. so it aimed at their gut and it hit basically cock cory booker in the wallet because he raises money from these guys and so do all the democrats against hit. >> do you think that had isn't just going after the steel workers in the ad but also the moderates and independents who feel sympathy for the same people who were moved by the bruce spring steen -- the clint eastward ad in the middle of the super bowl? >> his add was detroit we're back.

>> i know but it's the same sense of like the old america, is being threatened. these people are losing their jobs, these iconic american worker figures that ithe not just those workers but also something that appeals to many of the rest of us. >> this goes to one thing we want to touch on briefly was the, a couple of primaries on tuesday night you probably didn't notice but there were democratic primaries in arkansas and kentucky and president obama barely won them and he got only 58% against un committed and some random lawyer in arkansas. and he got only 58% because there was a whole bunch of basically white guys in aplashea and the south who just can't stand him and they went out and bothered to vote against president obama in this primary. and that's -- you know, president obama wants to be sort of the representing the way america used to be but he's clearly not perceived as -- he's perceived as a threat. >> yeah.

>> all right let's move on to our second topic but first the sponsor we're so glad that we're sponsored this week by our friends at stamps.com. they are our friends. and they should be your friends. because all businesses big and small have letters and packages to send out but making trips back and forth to the post office is a waste of your time as i discovered this week, i had to go to the post office. so you can if you're a business you can lease a postage meter which is expensive. or you can use stamps.com. with stamps.com you can do much more than you can with any meter at a fraction of the cost. you can buy and print official u.s. poge using just your computer and printer. it's easy and convenient and the best part is you will never have to go to the post office again. so right now -- the folks in

the audience you cannot do this unless you're on a device. >> we don't recommend unless you're going to stamps.com. but if you use the promo code gab fest for the special offer you can get a no risk trial but a plus a bonus and a scale. so if you go to stamps.com and before you do anything else click on the radio microphone at the top of the home page. i can hear people clicking on it. and typing in gab fest. all right. second topic. i have a, like a long printed disposition here for our second topic. >> but we're allowed to interrupt. >> you can interrupt. >> so this is a topic. >> it goes on for three pages. >> very close to my heart. i grew up in washington, d.c. i spent my whole -- >> you want to stand up? >> it will mess with the cameras.

and the city itself is certainly a lot livelyor than it has ever been. there used to be no sixth and i for example but i think it's safe to say the political d.c. is awful and i don't mean awful in like the funny way that you see on political tv shows not just in the usual self-aggrandizing way. but it's awful in a nonsilly way in a way that seems really dark and poisonous to me like late roman empire dark, like dark. and so i wanted -- i asked yawn if we can talk about this. so first a few of the facts and you can interrupt me here. >> i'm thinking late roman empire. i'm wondering how bad this is going to get.

>> ettu, john? >> so there's really good evidence that the polarization of the house and senate is stronger than ever. john was mentioning this fact that the most conservative democrat is more liberal than the liberal republican. >> there's there used to be overlap and now there is not. >> and it's also true, is it not, that both delegations have moved towards extreme particularly the republicans have become much more. >> the line on the grass is more dramatic toward the democrats have moved as well. >> one explanation, it does not appear to be gerrymandering. there was a very interesting story that we looked at, which, first of all, the senate is almost as polarized as the house, would suggest that it's not gerrymandering, and people -- members who come from swing districts, so districts which are very tightly contested, appear to be just as extreme as

members of very safe districts. >> which was surprising. i don't understand understand that. >> that's true. so why has this happened? i have 10 theories, but i don't know that i should run through all of them. >> you know, 10 is good for email, but i don't know if we can have all of them. >> can we just put this in a tiny bit more of context? the ugliness you talk about, we've gone through a series of these kind of conspiracy operated moments where we've deal with extending the government's funding, the debt ceiling fight, the extension of the bush-era tax cuts, and now end of this year we're going to have a massive fight over two things -- the end of the bush-era tax cuts and the cuts that have been mandated by the debt limit deal of last summer. it requires the adult behavior to keep those two things from happening, the c.b.o., congressional budget office came out with a report yesterday saying if nothing is done and these tax cuts expire and cuts happen in their

draconian fashion, it will send the u.s. into a recession, a temporary one, but, you know -- temporary recession just doesn't feel like it's a possibility, that it's like, you know, it's like a temporary amputation. and so, that's why this matters. i mean, in other words, we've had this serial poisonousness, and now we've got another instance where people have got to deal and they aren't, and i should add one more thing, which is we're going to have a zombie congress dealing with this, which is you may have a president who's been elected out of office who's got to deal with it. you'll have a bunch of members of congress who are either retired or have lost who will be in congress trying to deal with this before the next term. >> january is going to be really interesting. >> well, this will be before january. >> it will be november and december. now, they might find some way to kick it into the next session, but even so -- anyway, so that's -- that felt like a piece that was missing.

>> do you buy this premise? >> i do buy the premise. i don't live here. i do buy the premise. it does seem alarming, and i was most drawn to your theories. i think you covered the waterfront. one was your theory about the big store, which is people have separated themselves geographically and socially, and so we no longer really spend time thinking through the ideas that people were just being friends with the people who we disagree with and that makes it easier to be self-righteous and lack politician who is also don't traffic in diversity of the intellectual kind and that that's really them enjoying. now i'm trying to remember which other idea i was particularly drawn to. someone can interrupt me. >> there's so many. it's such a long list. >> i want to say one other maybe honing of this argument, which is that, in the last several years, you've passed the affordable care act, right? congress and the president did

pass it. it was ugly, but it's the first time a president and congress have been able to pass comprehensive healthcare reform in 60 years of trying. they also passed a stimulus bill that, for all of its possible failures, it passed, and it passed and was a lot larger than people ever thought it would be. dodd-frank was passed -- that seems to me distinct from the debt limit fight, which was here are the biggest issues of the day, and they actually can't get to an answer. but those passed with notice opposition, zero. >> right, but some kind of action that helped some people, and you can argue it helps or hurts, but seems to me to be a greater achievement than no action at all. just in terms of -- >> that depends on a filibuster-proof senate majority, which is not going to happen, and it depends on owning all three -- >> it was passed -- those

overcame filibusters. now, you could argue they were bastardized as a result of overcoming the filibuster, but anyway, i'm just saying that we're not a parliamentary democracy. >> well, doesn't that call for the idea that actually one of the big problems is that the constitution is broken and we need a parliamentary democracy in which one party comes in and passes the agenda and then gets thrown out if that doesn't work, and that this gridlock of the constitution leads us toward has become too dysfunctional because of all these other -- because it's the national media, because of gerrymandering to some degree because we don't live near people who are different from us. >> i mean, we're talking about this. so, the other theory about why this is -- one is that there's a growing branch of sort of research, which says there actually are no independent voters, or very few, that really, they're a bunch of partness is a on both sides, and therefore, there's no actual constituency to be in the middle, that you might as well, if you're a politician, you might as well just go to an extreme. there's no percentage in the

middle. >> people that call themselves independents are not truly open -- >> right. >> and that's always been true. it's just they're getting better at targeting. >> and technology allows you to target people better and better. >> we do a real disservice when people like me talk about independence, because a lot of people call themselves independents and have never voted for a democrat or republican in their life. they just like calling themselves independents. it's better to talk about swing voters, people who might have an open opinion, and there are about eight of them left. >> and you've interviewed r single one. -- every single one. >> is there anyone in this audience who actually considers themselves a swing voter? wow. now, maybe the shy are not willing to respond -- >> for our listeners at home, almost nobody raised -- there were half-raised hands. >> i think they just don't know how they feel. >> amazing. >> they're even ambivalent about their own hand raising.

>> one city council race in which they voted for the green party. >> because of the rise of national media, and particularly part of the national media, which fox is the great example, there's no local politics anymore. every congressman is a national politician, and you can't be a congressman who has those sort of local constituency and does well locally and may be able to be ideologically diverse, because you're so good at serving your local constituency. everyone faces a national challenge if they dissent from the line, and msnbc, i suppose, maybe there's a same function on the left. but party discipline is enforced very quickly and effectively by the nationalization of immediate gentleman and nationalization of politics. that's another theory. another one that is related is washington politicians are no longer actually washington politicians because of the ease

of travel. they don't have to spend that much time here, and they don't know each other. particularly they don't know members. opposing party f. you're a republican, -- and republicans are leaving, right? >> i wondered if that -- so you know, joe, it doesn't help you deal with your voters back home, the ones to punish you or not. i mean, he's losing his mind trying to stay on the right side of the conservative -- >> they sponsor legislation together. >> but that was then. >> now he wouldn't be able to. >> now he's trying to do everything he can to stay on the right side of conservatives in his state, because senator bennett, also from utah, was chucked out because he had the temerity to work with the democrats on a series of legislation -- a couple of pieces of legislation, and so hatch and bennett, they're quite amiable and have friendships across the aisle. that's not helping them with their voters. i mean, look at richard lugar. look at richard lugar.

great friends with the president, got him sunk, you know, by 20 points in his primary. >> part may have to do with the decline of the roman empire theory, where in this moment that that are very spark choices and they're not going to be any fun. this is going to be the moment where you're the university president who has to shut down the french department and, you know -- >> right. i think the sociology department usually. >> you don't get to build the buildings. it's just no -- who wants this job? and the country is incredibly divided by what to do. the tea party's narrative about this is we have to just cut everything. and if we just cut the government enough, we'll take ourselves back to sustainability, and they say that they're up for this big cuts to entitlement programs, which, if you take them at their word, would get us, you know, a large share, at least a moderate share of the way

there. >> i think also part of it is for people in the middle, they look at -- and i wonder if this is also true with media, there's no flight to quality with politics. they look at what's happening in washington, and they just think it's a total clown show, and so, i'm not going to -- i'm not going to engage. the people who then do engage are people who is most passionate about specific ideological. they've already picked their teams. and so, they want their team to win, and they're happy to engage in -- it's like when you go to a football game. i'd like to watch the sport. i don't want to sit next the guy who painted his face and shaved his head in the number of his favorite player. that might discourage from you playing if it's become such a clown show, and therefore, the people who might drag politicians -- or hold politicians accountability to more middle of the road politicians don't participate. >> and they're not running for office either. >> the ones in the middle.

>> the great journalist wrote this book called "the age of austerity," where he says, you know, in 60 years after world war ii, i could paper over all these political differences, because there was money just pouring in. you could just spend and spend. so you want to spend, you want education, you want housing built, do it all. >> that was my point about the distinction between affordable care act, dodd-frank, and stimulus, and these decisions about spending, because they are where everybody -- and i think also for republicans who feel like -- i mean, i went back and looked on c-span, which is one of the awesome things about the c-span archive, you can look up any event. and in october of 1990, when bush put together the budget deal that went back on the no new taxes pledge, i mean, here you had president bush saying that bob michael, the democratic leader, had done such a great job, and bob dole saying richard again hart had done a great job. i mean, you couldn't imagine that scene now.

you can't put the current body on that stage saying -- >> and why did they need each other? was it simply the camaraderie and collegiality of washington, or was it they all needed the cover of praising each other and being in this together? >> yes, they needed that, right. they needed to create a groundas well. also, they lost 126 republicans on that vote, so they needed all the votes they could get. and also, i think they did believe that a mix of revenue increases and spending cuts was the way to actually solve the problem. now, what republicans -- what happened with republicans with that deal and the previous -- during the reagan administration, they said we got hoodwinked. we were made a promise of $2 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax increases, and that promise always gets broken. you get the $1 tax increase, and the spending goes through the roof. and so, we're not going to be sucker the again. in talking to voters who are conservatives, a lot of times people will say, look, i will be happy to pay more if i have

any belief that it would go to -- it would be used efficiently. they hate taxes because they don't to want lose money out of their paycheck, but also, they hate them because they think that everything that's done in washington is so inefficient. >> right, and that actually is really helpful, the thing you said before, about understanding the rejection of 10-1, because if you don't believe in the other side of the deal at all, then why would you say yes to that? >> and i think that -- sorry. i think this is obviously one of the other theories about why everything is broken, and this is -- they say because of this deal, back in 1990, the republicans went down this crazy path, where they have stayed and where they've gotten more and more calcified, where this no taxes has become theological. once you have one party that is so wedded to this one belief, which it will not shake from, it's no longer -- you no longer have politics. >> but the useful thing is it's

not -- it's rational. it's not theological if you buy this idea. if you're bore trade every time because government spending can never be controlled and we've never really had any incentive to seriously control it before, then even if you're heading off the cliff, why would you believe that suddenly this time it's going to -- >> so, their view is, when you're making a deal with the president, and you say, the republicans offer some revenue increases, they say -- in exchange, they hope they'll get some kind of reduction in entitlement spending, they basically think the other side is always going to cheat. and so, in a negotiation where, if you believe that negotiation both sides are supposed to give something, why should i give anything when i know historically the other side cheats, not because they're venal, but because the other side is the normal washington increase and spending that happens by both parties. >> it's not money we're spending, it's the government's money. it's always the problem. >> that isn't to deny the theological -- there is a

theological wing. i mean, there are those who believe in tax cuts solve everything wing, but i think that's distinct from another group of republicans who, as a negotiating matter, feel like they're always going to be hoodwinked if they ever agree to tax increases and never get the spending cuts they want. >> and if you remember and believe, agree with the reporting about the grand bargain and why john boehner pulled out of it, it was entirely that, right? his presentation of boehner is that he's theological, so much as he thinks he's going to be betrayed and cheated. >> quickly, there are two more -- i have so many theories, i need to get them out. there are actually three, but i'm going to skip the last one. one is -- and we talked about this on the show last week, that there can be no more back room deals anymore, because technology and the ubiquity of technology and the quality of technology and twitter, in particular, means that any news that happens gets out and spreads immediately, and there's no room to be private and secret. and plus, because of the reason

we talked about, there's no trust where people think they can come together and make a cross-ideological deal, because they don't trust each other and they know this news will spread. >> i lost you to panopticon. that was awesome. i thought this was like a medieval character in one of the role playing games. >> i don't think this one is right, because of whautsdz last week, which is that some things are incredibly visible and leaky, and other things just go on. it's about the things we pay attention to that are so mallable. and most of it we don't. >> it's over conservative opposition. that happened, nobody noticed. it was like totally not topic a. you know, topic a is whatever shiny thing at the moment was. >> and we even knew about that. remember that guy -- anyway, sorry. >> and then the last one is it's sort of the white rage nostalgia theory, which is that

white guys in particular -- which i am one -- john's one too -- are -- there's some -- >> even our audience knows that about me. >> there's some level of fury about what's happened in the world, lost their place in the world, and it's an african-american president that's kind of set this off, and that there's a component of just almost very visceral, racial rage aimed at a black president. >> so, let's try to take that one notch down from racism -- so, imagine this. you grow up in a part of the country where you are because of a big sort and because of the way the country's been arranged. you are not exposed to people of different colors and backgrounds, and the other part y, if you look at the numbers, the democratic party is likely in the next -- well, not this election, but maybe the next one -- if a democratic president wins, it will probably be with majority minority support. you will get more minority

votes than white votes. >> this is getting very confusing, because minority is going to be -- >> well, right. >> noting that in the lexicon. >> but the point is it's -- when you think of racism, you imagine people who are like basically card-carrying members of the k.k.k. i don't think that's what you mean. i think there are people who can be threatened by a party that's increasingly defined by its nonwhiteness, and not know that they are threatened by it in that way, that it's the other that is urban, it's change, it's different. it's not what they grew up with, and it's not an overt, like i don't like -- >> i agree. that's exactly right. >> feel displaced. >> this was a very depressing discussion. >> it's all your doing. >> you get so animated by this. >> you get so animated by an incredibly depressing topic.

what have you done a list of 10 for? >> there was a piece that was written practically. >> i did think about doing it. >> i mean, good lord, what preparation you would do for, you know, like the plague or something, you know? next week -- never mind. >> let's wrap up that topic. we have another sponsor. can you believe it? yes! and we actually used this last week, because emily often doesn't join us for a show, and the shows are really -- as i think many of you know -- it's much worse when emily is not with us. when we cannot see her, hopefully she's in the room, but if we can't see her, john is on his iphone most of the time, i'm picking my nose, it's just -- and the encounter is much worse than it would be. >> and the emily doll is no -- >> the emily doll, right.

>> really, the problem is, in the very beginning before we start talking, they have a conversation with other people in the room that i cannot hear, because no one's on, so i sit there waiting until someone notices me. it takes a while. very sad. >> anyway, so being able to see a face for a meeting is important. it enhances our relationship. it improves the way we do business. and unfortunately, because emily has moved to new haven, meeting all your clients and colleagues in person is impossible often. that's why we're glad to be sponsored by go to meeting with h.d. faces, which lets you meet face to face anywhere in the world, even on your ipad, when you're on the go. so, with go to meeting, it just takes a web cam and a click to collaborate on a group h.d. video. the h.d. part is very cool, because emily actually looks like emily, not a blob. so, you can see your attendees eye to eye while collaborating on documents in real time. you'll feel instantly connected, even if you're thousands of miles apart.

go to meeting is easy to use, and ipad users, you can just download the free app to join. our listeners can try go to meeting free for 30 days. don't wait. this is a special offer. you can visit gotomeeting.com, click on the try it free but ton, and use, again, the promo code gabfest. all right, third topic. let's do it quickly. >> yeah. >> emily, tell us about our third topic. >> tyler clemente was a freshman at rutgers. in september 2010, he very sadly jumped off the g.w. bridge. as cops investigated the suicide, they found an electric i go trail on twitter of clemente's roommate talking about a kind of web cam spying operation.

essentially, tyler asked if he could borrow the room one night and then invited over a male date, who was older than the rutgers student, and dharun ravi was kind of freaked out about that, and turned on his web cam, which he automatically set to go on, saw them making out, turned it off, but then told other students about what he'd seen, and then, worse, planned another web cam viewing, which was clearly like this kind of titillating answer of his own, which he was using tyler to get attention in his first weeks of college. really dreadful, jerky freshman behavior. but because of this suicide and this investigation, criminal charges, he was convicted of invasion of privacy and also a bias charge in new jersey in the spring. and that meant a 10-year maximum sentence. so on, on monday, the judge in the case had to decide how to handle this. and i watched the sentencing hearing. the clementes spoke very movingly, and then dharun

ravi's parents both spoke, very emotional. his father was furious in a way that was kind of jarring, although i felt like i could understand by the end his sense of powerlessness. and his mother basically started squirming had her seat. and dharun ravi chose not to speak, which is surprising, because it was a moment to throw himself on the judge's mercy t. meant that this moment of catharsis that i was waiting for never happened, and yet, the judge was extremely merciful and gave ravi this 30-day sentence with three years of probation. it was a jail sentence, not a prison sentence. and so, this case, which has riveted a lot of us because you can argue the facts in many different directions. clearly this death was tragic. we have no idea really still exactly what the connection between ravi's boorish jerkyness and tyler's decision to kill himself, we don't know what the connection was. and yet, we could all feel, i

think, clear that spying on your roommate's gay making-out session was like completely a terrible idea, something we want to discourage colleges from doing. and so, what to make of this sentence, which was light. so i wrote a piece arguing that it was light and also fair. but i have to say that, as i was watching the hearing, i felt much more ambivalent than i thought i was going. to i had felt for a long time it was not going to serve any real purpose for ravi to go to prison for any extended period of time, that he suffered so much from all the media exposure and condemnation, that that's a form of punishment in itself. and yet, because he just seemed so unlikable and never showed that he had grown from this experience, i was -- i felt very ill at ease with the outcome somehow. it was like my brain knew it was the right thing, and my heart couldn't quite feel it all the way. >> can i -- first of all, it was a mandatory 10-year

sentence -- >> maximum, not mandatory. did i say mandatory? >> no, no, i probably heard mandatory, sorry. we'll cross that off. >> but what the judge did was remarkable, we should say, legally speaking. i don't know if we need to get into why, but it was really surprising. >> well, why? >> why? >> well, since you asked -- well, first of all, because ravi was offered a plea deal before trial of all community service, no time, notice plea to the bias charge. he would only have had to plea to invasion of privacy charges, and also, he's want a citizen, so there was a question about whether he should be deported. the prosecutors, because they control that, because that's a federal agency, they were going to recommend against deportation. it was a great deal, and he turned it down. when you turn it down, there is a big price for going to trial. that's how our system works. it's how prosecutors push people to plea bar gain. for them to have gone through the whole trial, which went very well, the prosecution did

a great job. the judge was totally fair. this verdict, i think, will hold up, and there was some question about how much evidence there was of bias, but i think there was enough. they won, and they got nothing for it. >> price is unwritten. the judge isn't in on the -- >> well, except it was a second degree bias charge, and so, in new jersey, it actually says that you have to go to prison unless that will be a serious injustice. the judge had to rule that this was a really -- i mean, he didn't say this from the bench, but he had to find that this was a really exceptional case. >> i mean, going to this case and then the john edwards case, where john edwards, we're awaiting the john edwards jury verdict, and he may get sense to prison too, i suppose, or jail, it does seem to me that the facts these men have been truly, viciously punished in the press for the bad thing this did, should weigh into it. dharun ravi's life has been

ruined. >> by viciously, you mean that -- >> i don't mean viciously like it was unfair. dharun ravi is an asshole, and john edwards is things that are even more -- >> vile and odeous, yes. >> but john edwards, he cannot -- his life is ruined. his life is destroyed. and i'm not sure what further purpose there is in imprisonning him. >> but here's the question then. how do you set up a system where you get all of the ruining that happens when you go through a legal process that might put you in jail but never actually does put new jail? >> right. we can't actually prosecute people in order to string them up as -- in order to cause reputational -- >> we're going to try you in the press. >> right. in fact, you can't -- once prosecutors start saying we're doing this to set an example and send a message, that should make us extremely nervous. we have a legal reason, just to

convict someone of a crime that you think that they committed beyond a reasonable doubt. >> the fact that dharun ravi's life is ruined, for a really, really stupid set of things did he as a kid -- that's not enough. i think there has to be prison. >> there actually can be enough in sentencing. now i'm reversing myself. sentencing is still up to the judge's discretion in most states to a large degree, and you can take into account factors like the person's prior record. in this case, he hadn't committed a crime of violence. that was important to the judge. and so, i mean, without explicitly talking about media coverage as a punishment -- you know it also adds to your argument is, in the hearing, when the families were talking, both families talked with enormous emotion about being hounded by the media and what that was like. tyler clemente's father said some members of the media photographed every single person that came out of the door of their house for weeks, and someone who came to his place of employment, we had to call the police to get rid of.

you could see he was just as angry at that treatment by the media as dharun ravi's parents were. >> how does that go to my paint? >> when you become the focus of a really notorious news story, it doesn't matter almost whether you're the victim or the perpetrator. there's this terrible loss to your loss of privacy. it's like having paparazzi follow you around. we don't have a way of really taking that into account officially, but it showed up very vividly on both sides. >> can the judge take that into account? >> i mean, i think you can in your heart. it's not like an aggravating or mitigating factor in the law right now, but you almost think that maybe it should be, that you should have some way of talking about reputational damage and the price of invasion of privacy. it's something that we don't think of as civil damages, but as part -- >> but if damage is the reputation of one side of the case, it also increases the pain of the underlying crime for the other side.

they get to be reminded every single day that their son jumped off a bridge because of the jerk behavior of this other kid. >> that was what clementi says as well. >> well, that's the turnout. >> but whether that's -- they totally made that point -- no, you're right. and they made that point very strongly. i mean, this is something i kind of object to in my lawyer self, they were talking about the terrible tragedy of having to go sit in this trial, and that that was a punishment and a wrong, an injustice that dharun ravi had done to them i would argue he was exercising his rights to a jury trial and we all have that, but to them, it did feel like this terribly unfair collateral damage that had been inflicted on them because of their son. you can't really argue with those emotions, right? i can understand that. >> all right, let's leave our third topic there. let's go to cocktail chatter. we had some awesome cocktails before the show. which could explain the content

of the show. but what's the thing that if you're going to have a cocktail after the show, john, you would be chattering about. now can we use our standing up? >> now you have the same problem before. why is it different for the chatter? >> david wanted to do an oprah walk thing -- >> i was not happy with this. >> and plus you wear the suit, you look like a motivational speaker, you know? he's going to teach you how to make 15-minute brownies in 10 minutes. >> you know,ive two devices up here -- you know, i have two devices up here. one can't download and the other one has totally run out of juice. >> you have no cocktail chatter? >> fortunately, i used this thing, a pen, to write it down on paper. and what it is, but that other thing i was going to talk about, we can't do. >> you're such a good cocktail.

so, you know, it's commencement season, and everybody's got their favorite list of commencement addresses and one is steve jobs' famous one, another is conan o'brien. i saw one that was from david foster wallace. now, i'm not -- there are some people for whom david foster wallace, that's just the thing. that's all you have to say, david foster wallace, and then it's a 45-minute conversation about how great he is. he's kind of a little out of control. and i am not actually a big david foster wallace fan. you know, i think the writing is self-indulgent, and i also had an experience with him when he covered the mccain campaign. the wrote a long account of the mccain campaign, much of which is fictional, except it was written not as a fictional account. and so, i had all of these views. and his commencement address has this line in it, and it says, a huge percentage of the stuff that i tend to be automatically certain of is

totally wrong and deluded. so that was stand in for my views about dade foster wallace, and it was a fantastic ramble through the constant focus and force and struggle in life to break yourself out of your default settings and to break yourself out of your automatic, day-to-day feelings about other people and about kind of dead-eyed drudgery of life at times, and that you should be constantly fighting against that, because it leads to a richer and more fulfilling life. and it was a fantastic commencement address. so i would recommend it to all of you. >> kenyan, right? >> kenyan, yeah. >> i would lining to speak about a story that will be in the "new york times" magazine on sunday by a writer i really liked named samantha shapiro

and edited by my beloved editor, elena silverman. it's about the guru of the natural childbirth movement. she's been delivering babies outside of a hospital on a place called the farm, which used to be a commune, and i think it's in rural kentucky. she's delivered 3,000 babies. she's lost very few of them. what? that's an totally important part of the story. >> the way you put it is not encouraging. >> well -- >> that's not going on the leaf let. >> childbirth remains a fraught moment in which things go wrong, and she's a self-trained midwife, but who chooses her patients carefully, it should be said, but who really -- >> many of them are pregnant. >> hmm. this is turning out to be much more fodder phone your jokes than i was planning. but who really believes that

many of the things that go wrong in the hospital can be prevented if you have a really excellent midwife who knows what she's doing. and so, we have this notion where every time there's a home birth, we see this as this terrible decision that parents made not to go to the hospital, but she has this line in this story where she said what about the death from hospital births? these are equally, because of the way and the environment in which they occurred. so, i was very relieved at the end of the story, sam shapiro, who was pregnant when she started writing it, decides not to have a home birth and has her baby in the hospital, but then she has what the midwife sees as an unnecessary caesarean section. if you're a home birth person, that's seen as terrible. and i was so torn by the story, because i usually -- home births make me very nervous. my older son was born in the hospital, and thank god he was. but i had a midwife for my second son's birth, and it was so much better. so i really do understand. i basically have come to the view myself that you have to really dramatically go in one

way or the other. you have to either have a doctor who is going to, yeah, do a c-section, do whatever it takes to have the baby born in a healthy way, because in the end, that's all that matters, or you have to have a midwife who is really going to help you through the process. the bad thing is to have a kind of doctor who doesn't really know how to help you like a midwife, but sort of doesn't -- also doesn't take dramatic kind of, you know, interventionist action. >> both our kids were born with the most amazing midwife. she was not only amazing to the midwife, but to me, because i'm an important part of this process. >> and needed your hand held. >> yeah, yeah, it turned out that was good. >> and to me, this seems like the way -- >> because i needed to lie down. >> it was not in the taxi on the way over? >> yeah. but the birthing tub was nice. anyway, midwifes are amazing. but this goes to sort of my -- why i sympathize with the home birth people, which is that our

midwives were, i think, basically had to stop practicing, because it was so hard, because hospitals won't take them. they've medicalized so much. >> it depends on the state, right? this really depends on the state. >> well, this is d.c. >> or the jurisdiction. >> ours are gone, right. >> were your midwives in practices with ob-gyn's? sometimes they work together. >> for a while they were, but it just became very difficult. i'm very unsympathetic to this medicalization of every single thing. child birth is obviously -- there's a lot of medicine that could be done in child birth, but -- >> it's another reason -- >> it does feel like this ought to be a reasonable option for people to take the risk. they ought to be allowed to go and have children in a taxi, have children in a field, have children on the stage at sixth and i. >> that's a heck of a reality show. >> but why, david? why isn't that like not vaccinating your children or being a christian -- i mean,

actually, this piece suggests there's a good argument in research that's not clear that home births are necessarily less safe if you do an apples to apples comparison. >> that's why. i mean, unless you can tell me, as a matter of like metaphysical certainty that they are less safe, first of all, only people who are going to choose it, emotionally invested, people who presumably are, you know, going to spend -- i'm not suggesting that every single person who's pregnant should just boil some water, but i do think that people -- >> you remember on the sitcoms, that was always the -- boil the water and get the blanket. >> yeah, what was the water for? >> for disinfectant. look, you still have a higher rate of infection than if you have -- >> but i heard a cup of tea for the husband. >> i hadn't thought of that. you must be right. >> again, nice, relaxing chamomile. very stressful. >> i totally want to hang out with ina. she seems pretty awe.

so >> i'm going to do my chatter. my father can answer this question. i'm going to pander to my father, who's in the front row. yes. you can applaud. >> i don't think that's pandering. >> i'm about to -- >> no, that's not the right word, pandering. >> that's right. >> that's something nice. >> it must be that we don't hold responsible for this one. >> i do. >> so he's a scientist who just retired after 45 years at the n.i.h., running a lab, and slate is about to do a series about science education. look for it next month. and because he's an eloquent and humane scientist, i asked him to write a personal essay for us about how and why he became a scientist. and so, he just sent me a draft. this piece hasn't run or anything. i was editing it, and there was a passage i found really moving and instructive, in part because it recounts a very different kind of childhood than the one that my children certainly are having. and here he's describing

himself at about age 11. so pa, forgive me as i read your work. a couple of my friends, warren and paul, both were doctor's sons and became doctors themselves. i discovered how the ingredients of gunpowder. we had charcoal and sulfur, but not potassium nitrate. one of us found out about a place that would sell comb calls to any body who walked through the door, also magnesium for a fuse. we took the subway to a place in manhattan and bought, no questions asked, what we needed. back in the basement lab, we did all sorts of things involving gunpowder. sometimes just on the floor, sometimes in a small crucible from the lab, sometimes noisy, sometimes smelly, sometimes smoky, often in combination. we didn't know anything about lab coats, gloves, or goggles, nor about bicycle helmets or seat belts in those days. the moment i never forgot was igniting something and causing a great smell and noise and a whoosh of smoke to shoot up to the ceiling, leaving a black smear, which was still there when i cleared the house after

my mother died a half century later. the point is, through all of this, my parents and my friends' parents, perhaps sensing were not psychopathic orr silly, left use lone. they didn't hover over our young sons, which may explain why in part why they turned to words for a living. or asked where we were going or what we had bought or what we were doing anyway. in addition to being curious and to being skeptical, we were free and we were trusted. on reflection, that seems to have been central and to have been deeply formative. i became a scientist. i just thought that was a lovely account of the -- [applause] >> we can stand up now. >> i just thought it was a beautiful account of what a childhood can do in shaping who a person is and what maybe we've lost, what we don't do. i don't know if your kids -- do they have gun prouder? >> they don't buy gunpowder,

no. >> yours? >> i have kids. >> well, let's finish the show there before we get here. you will finds links to some of the things we talked about today at our show page, slate.com/gabfest. you can email us at gabfest@slate.com. please subscribe to our podcast on itunes, which helps other people discover the show. you can search for the slate political gab fest in the itunes store. don't forget to leave a comment while you're there. you're producers are andy, bill and will. the executive producer is andy. a big thanks to our host in washington, he is they are and jackie. the t-shirts are for sale in the back. you can get one. >> please buy them, because they keep hauling them around. >> they sit in my office, like a ghost.

>> he's the editor of the magazine, and he's got to schlep the shirts. >> yeah, buy them. >> for emily and john, i'm david. we'll be back with you next week. thank you. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> we can now have questions. >> in your second discussion, you touched briefly on -- you touched briefly on the idea of filibuster, which i think is maybe more of a road block than i think you gave credit for, just the idea that 41 senators representing, i think it's 11% of the population can and often has stopped everything. i was wondering to what what extent you thought that was a huge road block perhaps contributing to some of this. we would have the public option

and keystone pipeline out, how much you thought that would contribute to this, and also what extent challenges are coming up to it might be successful. >> i don't know. you know, i wonder about the public option. it's funny, because i think there are a lot of people who are not so certain that democrats, if -- that democrats could have gotten the public option through. there were a lot of -- there were many democrats who wanted it. there were a lot of democrats who weren't that excited about it. so i think in the final bill in the senate, i don't know if a public option could have gotten -- >> would be more easily constitutional though. >> you mean if it passed. >> yeah. now that we know the private enterprise solution turns out to be so questionable. >> i'm talking about whether it would gotten the vote. >> i know, i know, i just couldn't resist, i'm sorry. >> the promise of filibuster is people who want it are out of power, and then they get in power -- the people who want -- you never can get a coalition together of enough people to get, you know, to get the votes

to reform it. >> right, but do you think it's a big problem? do you think it has a lot of explanatory power? >> yeah, it has more power than it should. because now you filibuster -- the problem -- i'm not smart enough to know about whether it needs to disappear altogether, but what seems to me tab -- and that's basically true for most topics. >> it does. >> no, but here's the thing. when you filibuster, even the motion to proceed, which is to say the ability to even talk about a bill, that's what is -- that seems to be absolutely -- >> bonkers. >> yes, thank you. it's just insane that you can't talk -- i mean, that you can't -- fine, let it die on its merits or maybe let it die from a filibuster on final passage. but that you can't get it even to be talked about. >> thanks for -- i think it's

on. >> try. >> get close. >> you can yell. >> i was surprised another washingtonian was going to talk about reasons washington is broken. a corollary to the big sort is that the parties have sorted, not just the people have geographically sorted, and the fact that the most liberal republican is further to the right, it's more a fact than the actual election of people -- there are often missed members, representatives, but some are a little further right , called democrats and some would be called republicans, and therefore, because the party -- and that's something i see it as a problem, there isn't a reason to make a deal with someone who you ideologically disagree with. >> that's a really good point. i mean, that does seem like yet another drop in the bucket, right, that if you have neither of those things in common.

yeah. >> great. >> thank you. >> per the branding of your lovely t-shirts, i wanted to engage on a hypothetical. let's say in a move of austerity, the federal government decides to end pandas at the national zoo, and rather in a rather savvy mood, the panda is meant to secure council and take their case before the supreme court. for emily, i'm wondering, how would the justices weigh in on this particular case. for david, i'm wondering, what is the defense? let's say you're not the prosecution, put yourself -- >> what's the lawsuit? what is their claim, the pandas? >> that they have every right to be on display at the national zoo, and it's a rather effective use of taxpayer dollars. and for john, i'm wondering, how is it that polling would play in here? would do republicans and democrats come out on this issue?

>> the pandas have standing. >> they don't have standing. they would be like this. >> they are sitting. >> i don't think they have lulling about. >> they have an injury that i can't remember the rest. anyway, they have been standing about. but i don't think they have a right to bear particular habitat. nobody gets to tell the government how to spend its money and the government can change, right, because it's congress' power of the purse. >> but they have no constitutional -- i think the way the polling works out is since all -- since politicians on both parties are so good at pandering, i think that they've done it before. >> very good. >> that's good. >> my view is that this is actually an issue for

immigration services, because they're here illegally. ashe deportable. self-deportation for the pandas. >> and this is final an instance, david, where it is an issue of black and white. >> dickerson for the win. follow that, sir. >> i know that i can't, so i'm not going to try. my question boils down to who do you think is going to win the election, but it's got a really great windup. so, a couple -- >> i wish the election did. >> david on the show essentially said that the republicans could have nominated a carpet to be their nominee, because the economy is so bad enough that they would have gotten some -- >> did you really say that?

>> oh, yeah, ok. >> i'm a good listener. >> the republicans clearly have going for them that the economy is not as strong as it could being or should be, and that they're going to say the president's policies have made it worse and weaker, and that that is, you know, what disqualifies him from being re-elected. that's their chief advantage. on the other hand, the obama campaign seems to have quite a few advantages. it has a strong electoral mass. they can afford to lose a lot of states that they want in 2008 and still win. demographics seem to be on their side in terms of their coalition, if they can reassemble it. they have a very advanced state of mining and get out the vote operation. so, given that in this process, what do you think wins out? does the economy always trump all, or do you think that some of these tactical advantages that the obama campaign has can overcome whatever we think there might be in the economy in december?

>> i think you framed it just right. i don't think we know. i mean, i think you have, you know -- what you have is a weak president, weakened by an economy that is not recovering fast enough, and he has to convince an incredibly anxious and skeptical public that they should not turn him away when their inclination at the moment is to turn -- is to vote thumbs down on him and embrace a candidate who is not universally liked, but who people are liking a little bit more as every day goes by. part of that is because republicans are coming into the fold, and so there may be a ceiling to the rise in romney's favorability rating that's gone up. i think that -- >> you've got this -- i don't know what the metaphor at the moment is, but, you know, the president has -- all of those things you described are quite right, that he has a good -- the electoral map is better for

him. he can move around. romney basically has to win florida, the quinnipiac poll had him up by seven just he today, and he kind of has to win ohio. lots of states he has to win, but -- romney -- obama can go and win out in the west and let go of florida. he's got much more -- and as you mentioned in ohio, virginia, north carolina, the minority population has increased, giving him a larger share of voters he can go after. and he's got all these tactical advantages. so he's got these super powerful legs, but really big ankle weights on him. he just, you know, i don't think -- i got no idea. it's going to be really, really close. the national polling, which is of limited value, but it gives us some hint. i think the average is now -- the president is at 45.6%, and romney is at 45.5%. you know, it's tied in ohio.

romney is up by seven in florida. the president is up by seven in virginia. and then it's tied in lots of other places. i just think it's super, super, super close, and it's going to be all the way through. >> i think romney is going to win. >> i don't buy your theory at all. i think they're going to vote for individuals. they have to like the person. they have to make their peace with him personally. >> he's a good carpet. >> yeah, but people -- people were fine with him on the question of -- they may not like him of course but it's obvious they're not voting for the person they like, because they'd much prefer the president. >> no, i hear you. i don't think that you have to win the personality contest. but i don't think you can just be anybody. i think you have to be three-dimensional. >> you have to be a nice, plush carpet, not an objectional one. >> yes. >> we're just going to do four more questions. i'm afraid some of the folks at the end that have line, you guys are going to miss. sorry about that. >> sorry. >> he would have made a good venture capitalist.

>> all right, so you hear a lot these days about obama campaign's secret plans and data mining and microtargeting and everything else, and it's kind of exciting, because you think that maybe it can push the obama campaign, you know, out to the wind. but i also wonder what did we lose as society and as human beings when we kind of instrumentalize people that much, and i guess i would draw a comparison with no child left behind and, you know, this incredible emphasis on test scores. you know, what are the pros and cons of breaking things down this much and saying, you know, if this person, you know, supports, you know pro-choice, then we're really going to target them this much, and we

think we know what they're going to do and how they're going to vote. >> i think i'd be more worried about this -- i mean, this is the danger of narrow casting, right? since the rise of the internet, we've had this idea that people are only going to read and be exposed to the kinds of things they want. i don't think human experience is too varied -- while i do think you can be separated from people who you don't agree with, and that happens a lot, thaw just end up exposed to lots of different ideas, and that someone will think they have the perfect message to target with, and it will be completely wrong. you don't actually want to hear that pitch, because there's some individual part of you that no equation is going to take into account, and that thals always spoil the caster enough. >> first, thank you so much for bringing us back to d.c. where it belongs. >> i have a process question for you. i listened to the gab fast

every week on my futuristic devices. you're talking about, you know, the question of the moment and talking points for going home and sounding a little smarter than i already am. and everything seems very 21st century until, you know, these strange interludes, when it hearkens back to the texaco comedy hour, where, you know, you have to shill for a product and talk about the sponsors. and so, i'm wondering, you know, first, i'm genuinely curious about your thoughts about that part of the enterprise. and second, and i understand that you may not be able to be as candid as you might have been at the cocktail hour, and also, you know, is this a good solution for the genuine problem of your needing funding to put on the gab fest and you need to make money and you have legitimate costs? >> i'll answer that, because

why not? >> i do most of the ads. i'm thrilled to do the always. i mean, our publisher tells us we're going back to the future, it is very much like a 1950's radio show. and honestly, slate needs to make money. we are a money-making business, and we do a lot of stuff, and does this -- is this hair-free? it is free in that it is leaving its home often. and we are ambitious and creative about ways we can get revenue to slate. i mean, we charged you for the show tonight, because we're not making a ton of money, but it helps. it helps us. and we make the site, we make the podcasts, we make everything we do available for free to our listeners.

but we need to get paid. we need salaries. we need to pay for our rent and things like that. and welcoming sponsorship is something that we do. every time i get an email from our publisher or one of our ad sales people saying we sold another sponsorship for the political gab fest or this or that, i -- my heart skips. it really helps. >> you know, you guys may find it irritating. you may not like sponsors that we have, or you may not like the interruption of the message, but it's really important to what we do. we couldn't do it, slate couldn't continue if we didn't experiment with these kind of ad forms and do it. so it's a passion of mine. >> i think we also really liked the idea that the medium of podcasting is something that can be marketable, that there's something retro, but also intimate about it, that people respond to, and so the idea that advertisers believe in

that is something that we really like that idea. i really like that idea. >> all right. next to last question over here. >> this is another question about this poisonous atmosphere. it seems so many times that people are having disagreements, not about their opinions or their views about facts, but about the facts themselves. and that's something you can't really -- you can't really break that, especially if it feels like some of those people are in some sort of bubble, that that can't get to. do you thinky got more of a cause of the atmosphere or an effect? >> well, that's so interesting, cause and effect. i mean, i think it has tremendous power as a cause. i'm trying to think about the effect part of it. i'll just go for the cause. it is so hard to bridge that particular gap, and one thing that strikeswh