napolitano. q&a.er chance to see >> a he has been called " probably the most intellectual of the obama era." what does that mean? >> i wonder by whom. >> probably by jonathan chait.

>> i guess it means an intellectual in politics is a person who tries to connect events to deeper currents, theoretical or. occurrence. there are narrow definitions. an intellectual is a person who tries to remake the world in the image of some theory he has. in decades, there is is no such thing as a conservative intellectual. thatu take a broader view an intellectual tries to connect theory and practice, then maybe that is right. that is part of what my work trusted do very >> -- to do -- what my work tries to do. i am the editor of national affairs, quarterly journal of essays on public policy and political thought. i am also a fellow at a think tank here in washington. >> what you do?

>> editing the magazine means editing the magazine. we run long essays by experts for the most part, academics, intellectuals, you might taken, about complicated public questions. some of them are very tactical. -- very practical. some of them aren't deeply philosophical -- some of them are deeply philosophical. it gives us a chance to edit their work and make sure that it is red and to get them noticed. really, my job is to study public questions and influence of the debate in various ways. most of my work is in the area of healthcare. deeper. work some on a questions, questions about how relates to theory in american politics. >> where did this all start? >> i started as a college

student. i came to washington to go to american university. in the course of studying there, i worked on capitol hill really from the very first week of my very -- as a freshman. bob frank.for he passed away this year after a long fight with cancer. he was a member of congress. a member of the budget committee. i worked for the budget committee because of him after that and then i worked for newt gingrich when he was speaker of the house for the last year or so. >> what is the one thing you take away from the newt gingrich experience? >> working in college and -- working in congress in general is extraordinary for a young person. is an incredibly open plays, more so than you would imagine.

the more time i spent in washington, the less simple i have become about it. you can't believe conspiracy theories when you work in washington. what happens here is really people, human beings come all the way down, trying their best to advance the good of the country the way they understand it. it is very messy and competent as i was away human beings are. but it is a very open process. it is a very open place for people who are willing to work hard and have ideas. what i learned from the gingrich era is that you can't have -- it matters what happens in politics. it really does change the course of the country. gingrich, in many ways, he was a wonderful speaker and a lymphatic speaker. i learned a lot respect for people in public life. >> what's it like to be a conservative today? , this is a of ways challenging time for people who are conservatives.

we have not only a democratic president, but a quite liberal democratic president who has not only been elected, but reelected after putting into play some ideas and programs and projects that i think are very wrongheaded during the public had a chance to think about that and they did reelect him. it is a challenge. ifs also an exciting time you're trying to modernize conservativism. trying to bring it into line with the challenges facing now and have the country think about how to confront the challenges of the 21st century. neither party is doing a very good job of that here and there is a lot of opportunity for thinking about what america in the 21st century needs to change about the way it governs itself to get back to economic growth, to get back to press rarity, -- to prosperity, to get to the kind of world that we need here at its challenging, but it's

exciting. >> go back to before american university here i. >> i was born in israel. i came to this country when i was eight years old. i family came because of economic reasons mostly. and i say mostly because really my father was always drawn to american culture to the american dream. he owned a small disruption business in israel in the early 1980s. the israeli economy was in trouble and he decided to make a change. but in a lot of ways, my father was an american rock -- an american born in a wrong place and then he came home. he is one of the most american people i know which is a very high component. so we came here when i was a small child. i grew up in new jersey. i became interested in politics

earlier than i can exactly remember, i guess. it was something that i wanted to do some point in high school. i signed college that maybe it would really was. >> do your member when you had your first strong views, political views, and why? the sense come i was always a conservative and that certainly has to do with my father who is a conservative. but, as a unit -- but, as a very young person, it was, cultural -- it was countercultural. i'm not supposed to be a conservative. about thesomething way of thinking that appealed to me. and there something about the idea of human freedom understood in the american way that appealed to me. but i see that looking back now. it is hard to say exactly why you become what you become and your way of thinking about the world. i was drawn to the intellectual side of conservatism probably in high school. if there is a

moment come it would be a good friend of mine gave me a book by i probablyll which would've been about 16 or so. it is not too -- much to say that it changed my life. i didn't quite know i was searching for this. i never stopped reading the book. >> have you told george that? >> i did. i think he said he is flattered by it and he does not agree with every inc. in that book. you can see that in his writing. but more than the specific , the way of thinking, the way of approaching politics in a way that is grounded in philosophy and in history, it takes politics seriously as a human endeavor that is really about finding the truth and finding the best way of life. it appealed to me nervously and he continues to. >> what did you do for george w. bush?

>> i was a member of the domestic policy staff at the white house. i went to the university of chicago in a very unusual program called the committee on social thought, which is an interdisciplinary graduate program that combines clinical theory with economics with lasix and literature and allows you to form your own or substudy. one of my teachers there was leon kass. he became chairman of the bioethics commission. because i had some washington express, he brought me back to washington with him. i was staff director of the council for while and then i went to the bush white house. in a bush white house, was a member of the domestic policy cast. >> what is bioethics? \ >> it is devoted to thinking about the moral applications of biotechnology more or less.

today, that means stem cells, cloning, but it also means -- it originally meant more so the ethics of methods and -- the ethics of medicine. is a branch of philosophy that things about modern science. >> give us in a nutshell what you think of obamacare. cracks in a nutshell, i think it is stressful. i worked on healthcare issues in the white house. i worked on it previously on the hill, two. i think obamacare is an encapsulation of the liberal way of thinking of healthcare. it is a very impressive achievement for democrats. it is something like what they've been trying to do for a long time. i think it is wrongheaded because it embodies the notion that what is wrong with our health air system is a lack of centralized control, a lack of order. it's not a silly idea. the basic challenge in healthcare is how to control costs. the problem we have present

itself on the face of things in two ways, is not enough people who can afford insurance so we have a lot of uninsured in america. at the same time, the federal government is going broke they for healthcare. these two things would seem to pull into different directions. . on one hand, we need to spend more on insurance, but we are going broke spending money on insurance. but healthcare costs too much. the cost of it rose to quickly and it has for a long time in america. to the question at the core the debate, for people who steers the think about it is how do you control those costs. what it reveals is a very deep division between the left and the right and the left says that the cost growth is because the system is disorderly. there are a lot of interest s.lling in different direction the conservative answer is that the system is opaque. there are no prices and no

economic signals. nobody pays for their own care or their own coverage and nobody knows what anything costs. bushcame to me in the white house. we tried for several months to figure out a little factoid for the state of the union address. what is the average cost of a hip replacement in america? answer to that. there are no prices. the reason why costs go up so quickly is that there are no economic incentives. they are all directed toward inflating costs because no one is paying for what they are getting. toeveryone has an incentive spend more and more and more. so you need a system that is more market-oriented. in that sense, it is more chaotic. truth oferintuitive capitalism is that chaos produces efficiency. there is a real deep difference

of opinion between left and right about that cared and that is not just a -- about that. and that is not just about healthcare. it presents itself in the healthcare debate and i inc. obamacare is the embodiment of the liberal view of this and i think it is a message -- it is a mistake. there's a lot writing about you. define as present? >> -- do you find that surprising? >> yes. in "the newistmas" republic post quote where he new republic" where he says that he has a reputation as the conservative movement's great intellectual hope. >> i hope there are higher hopes and that. that kind of thing is obviously flattering. like the other quote, it it is basically used in the service of criticizing me, but that is fine, too. >> karl rove calls you

popularizer. what does that mean? >> i'm not sure. tothat context, that i try make obligated ideas accessible to readers, to politicians, to anybody who cares to take an interest. for example, in thinking about healthcare, you try to start at a place where people understand, a place that speaks to their life experience and draw them from there to the deeper questions, to the theater at the questions, the philosophical questions. i wouldn't say that i am a popularizer of today's conservative agenda. i am probably a critic of it. i think he needs to be changed and modernize, more focused on the problems of working families, which it really lacks now. if what that means is that i make all sick questions a little more understandable, that is certainly what we tried to do a national affairs, for example. we try to take the work of experts who speak the academic world and make it accessible at

the very least to politicians and people in washington. towhat does it cost people buy "national affairs" for a year. >> it is $27.09. a lot of it is online for free. .e want readers we want people to have access to these ideas and these proposals. so you can get a fair amount of it online for free. reading inis worth print and worth paying for because in your surrogate electronic access to the rest of it. it is sold in bookstores and in stores around the country. you can subscribe and get in the mail every order. >> how do you pay for it? >> in some parts from subscribers, but in large part from donors. we are a nonprofit organization. so donations from foundations supported a lot of our work. >> like can you tell us? >> like the bradley foundation, the sorrow foundation. and individual donors who give

to conservative intellectual efforts. >> what does it mean that you got the bradley prize and the $250,000 check. >> it is a very nice. it is an annual award given by the rat the foundation, a philanthropic foundation based in wisconsin. the award is to be given to people with the selection committee chooses thanks that they have the cause of protecting american institutions are strengthening american institutions. they have been giving anaphora 10 years. it is given to four people each year. and i am one of the four this year. >> here is leon kass who appeared in our call-in show in 2002. he was starting out at the white house. did you start with him? >> yes. video clip]

>> at a certain point, it struck me that there were enormously important moral and human and social russians raised by money of that -- by biomedical advanced. acquiring for the humanitarian surfaces for a curious cures for disease. and we alter what it means to be a human being and could lead us down the direction of [indiscernible] having written about these topics, i left the life of the lo laboratory. the president said these are important things. i am serious about this. i would like you to lead a group of scholars and try to help me with my decisions and

tell me educate the public just what is at stake. one can't say no. >> what did the council giving your opinion? how long were you at george bush? >> i was the counsel for three years and then at the white house for another three years under the bridge administration. the council was called together to advise the president on bio solutions but it was really about funding on stem cell research. , before september 11, one of the big issues that the then new president faced was the question of whether and how the federal government should fund and be on extent so research. stem celld embryonic research. the president made a decision that, in which he was advised by leon kass and others, that said

you could spend money on lines of cells that already existed at that point, but not onto one city would be using federal dollars are encouraged a further destruction of human embryos during in the course of announcing that decision, he said that these kinds of issues will stay with us. they won't go away and we need help in thinking about them. and he called together the bioethics commission, a group of who would come together several times of year and consider challenging biomedical edgy -- biomedical issues and provide advice to the administration and really to the country by a report. rode a report on cloning, on stem cell research, on enhancement technologies, ways of enhancing human abilities. they wrote reports on caring for the aged. on dementia and other related issues. i think the council did very important work.

it is important work in the long run. it is -- it's direct effect on public policy is hard to judge. the president called the council together after he had already made his stem cell decision. so they didn't shape a decision. i think their work was useful in a number of ways and in particular junctures where those kinds of questions were central. lastingre important influence was in the reports. >> what about this president? >> this president has undone the bush stem cell policy. he doesn't believe that the destruction of the human embryo is tantamount to the taking of a human life. so he thinks it is worth spending public money on it and he has been spending public money on it. >> in some ways, you are from the same part of the country. actually present in

chicago for about three years and then i wrote a doctoral dissertation which i did not say .rom washington during , voted against rocco amah voting for the guy who ran for state senate. >> did you know him? >> no, i don't think i ever really encountered him. he was teaching at the university by then. >> you have come to the stem cell issue this way and he comes to it that way. where does that come from? >> it is a challenging question. i come to the issue because i take seriously the first sentence of the second paragraph of the declaration of independence which says all men are created equal. i think that's true. and i think that what that means -- i think it is a challenging factor american

life. it has been many times. it is a fact that calls us to our best selves. it is particularly challenging when we think about human life and is very origin. human life at the very beginning can't speak to us. it cannot the to us of its pains and needs and wants. we have to work to understand that that is a human being and that is how all human beings begin, that that is where human life begins given that fact, we have to limit what we do to a human being, even when it is useful to us to use that human person as less than a human person. we should restrain ourselves and find other ways. i think there are other ways to advance medical research without doing that. the president certainly doesn't think that way he endorses involves the taking of a human life. i'm sure he wouldn't endorse it if he did get how he gets to that point, it seems to me --

and i start out from a different place. i am inclined to be critical of his way of thinking. it seems to me that he gets there from the end and a from the beginning, thinking first how useful it would be to use these cells for the reasons or by thinking first about, on the question of abortion, thinking first about the freedom of the adult person rather than about the needs and exigencies of the very young person. and he simply persuades himself that life began sometimes lady -- sometimes later. maybe a earth, maybe a viability command we can invent all kinds of things. i don't think there is a nonarbitrary ways to put that than other than in the beginning, added -- at conception. there really isn't a russian there is a-- question about when a new human being can exist before. >>

>> what does george will change in his thinking that has had such an impact on you? -think he is more of a libertarian now. that book presents a kind of community centered vision of conservatism. it argues for an idea of what government can achieve that understands first and foremost the need for limits, but the need from limits in the service of a notion of community, a rich notion of community. and he argued then and believed that government had an important role to play, a limited but an important role to play. that government helps shape citizens, that helps to shape citizens is the nature of america's government. lessnk you take that to be important now or is less worried about the downside of government. it is understandable. i am very worried about the downside of government as well.

that thereto think is no escaping the fact that the nature of our government and what we do through our government shapes who we are as citizens. and that means we have to take a certain approach to government. we have to take it seriously and hold in high regard. in order to hold in high regard, we have to make sure that it is a government that works well within the sphere that it is supposed to work and, to be supposed tod -- work in. to be respected, it has to be respectable during >> we will go back to 2005 -- to be respected, it has to be respectable. >> we will go back to 2005. bracken ip was >> our culture is continuing to decline. working on a marriage amendment, something that i want was self evident, that marriage was between a man and a woman.

no, we are having difficulty trying to get this passed. in changingcceeding the culture to return to a time when values mattered. they are becoming less and less important. itn all is said and done, doesn't matter whether you have a minimum wage are not. it doesn't matter what kind of trade policy you had. if in fact the moral fabric of a society has disintegrated. >> what about the morals, the values? his definition may be different than today's. >> let me start in a general wave. i think conservatism is -- the difference between

conservatives and liberals is a very found of france conservatives begin from a ,onstraint and limited notion limited set of expectations about what human beings can achieve, what human knowledge can achieve, what human power can achieve. because of those lower expectations, they value very highly the aims at work in our society. and they want to preserve them. they want to save the preconditions for those things continuing to work. liberals tend to begin from higher expert patients, from greater perfectibility in a human being, about human knowledge and human power. for that reason, they start out with a sense of outrage about what is failing because they think we can do a lot better. they don't begin by appreciating what is best. they try to undo or root out what is worse. both of these are very valuable and very necessary. but they are quite different. you start looking at a world

that has both good things and bad things in your first instinct is to be grateful for the good and build on it to address the bad or you look at first instinct is to be outraged and root out what is what based on an idea of could be best, an idea perfectibility. what you see from there in part is a sense that what works about our society has to be protected because it is rare. because it is enormously valuable. and because it can be lost very easily. conservatives care a lot about culture because culture is the way we sustain those things, the work of our society. any human society is always under a constant brush by new members, people who are born without all the great progressive notions of what they can do. we are all born with our bearings and have to be trained to be civilized evil. culture is what makes it possible to turn a newborn human being into a civilized american.

that doesn't happen by itself very one of the most important things that any society has to do is to preserve that, to worry about the culture some of the way in which you can train the next generation to continue in the footsteps of the past ones. culture matters an enormous amount. it isn't taken for granted as being there and we can build on it and it has to constantly be nourished. >> is there anyone out there today in public life that represents what you think and who you think would possibly have a chance of being elected? >> president? present youare perfectly, but i think there are some great people in public life. i think paul ryan is an impressive figure who has become best known on budget issues as chairman of the house budget committee. but also is very serious about deeper questions. he has been talking more about the problem of community. >> have you had a relationship with him? >> i might work with him a

little bit and i have been impressed with him. he is one of the more intellectually serious members of congress. but there are many others. i think marco rubio in many ways is very impressive. he is a very interesting political figure. he has a biography that is different from most. it is a biography that is a lot like those of many democratic politicians and it makes him understand the ways of people who don't naturally disagree with them think in a way that is very important t. i think bobby jindal, the governors louisiana is very impressive. and chris christie of new jersey is impressive of a lot of ways. >> would he think of this guy? [video clip] x it is easy for us conservatives to look at the november election and look at of theabashed embrace last and have a moment to spare. let me say this room is

critical to preventing that to happen. national review has a long -- ofy of us dandy halt.ing and yelling healt we can stop this. we can turn it around. in fact, i am right now incredibly optimistic that, they say, it is always darkest before the dawn -- we are on the verge of a rebirth of this earth. >> he and marco rubio have different approach. they're both cuban-americans. which one do you think would be most appealing? >> it remains to be seen. new senator from texas. a very impressive guy. he has held a lot of impressive

positions, including in the bush administration. more of ao be populist conservative than marco rubio. i think he sees himself more representing a kind of tea party anxiety. although marco rubio is thought of as a key party guy and in .is -- and is in a lot of ways i think the distinction is about the connection of rhetoric to policy. the criticism i have with a lot of the public additions is that they're not turning the rhetoric into policy. there is a lot of talk and a lot of it is very constructive talk and very useful talk. a lot of it is try to learn the lessons from the last election in ways that are important. intot needs to be turned a policy agenda. i think there is a sense among some conservative activists, people that i agree with a lot of ways command whose rhetoric i find myself nodding my head to. -- but then they think that rhetoric means in practice is less of the same. i think what he has to mean in

practice is a transformation of the way we think about government in america, a reform agenda to my reform of our governing institutions. and conservatism, if it is going to be in electable maturity has to be a governing majority. we have to think about the way we govern this country. marco rubio in some ways is try to do that. you can agree or disagree with the ways he's trying to do that, but he is trying to transform into a different direction come into a different agenda. i don't think you see that enough in other politicians. >> here is a fellow who is governing out. and he defined conservatism back in 2005. [video clip] nine come from yourls political philosophy, your voting record. if you look at my voting record and you look at my tickle philosophy, it is conservative very i am -- i have one of the

most conservative voting records in the united states senate. i think summer or plex by that. -- i think some are perplexed by that because i challenged my republican administration on the -- and detainees shoes detainee issues. but i do it i think is right and i say what i think is right. and i don't ever worry about whether there is republican or moderate. a concert of like hagel end up in the obama administration? >> i think that he agrees with the obama administration on a lot of things coming in a foreign-policy russians. -- lot of things, including foreign-policy questions. i disagree with what i think is an important part of what he said. hi think it actually matters that you are part of a party, that your heart of a

movement. a truly public spirited person has to see himself as part of a team in politics. and when a person says that he is simply the ended, that he calls things as he seized them, everybody calls things as he sees that. there are many people in my experience who simply do what the party says. but they work with the party because the only way to really make your lyrical ideas matter is to work with other people who basically agree with you. not 100%. no two people agree entirely on everything. but i think it is important -- no two people. it is a common effort. the person who holds himself above all that and says, well, i'm just me: the shots as i see them is both showing not enough respect for people who are in the arena because they're all calling shots as they see them and is not being serious about making his political ideas real.

that has to be done through party. doesn'tpartisanship deserve the terrible reputation that it has. it is actually a way of moderating people's views. it is the way to make it more practical and the way to make democratic policies possible. talks aboutman that vism.nservativ ] ideo clip saidving kristol once said they evolve in time into conservatives. if you is number one. asked the neoconservative how did you vote in 1968, a seminal year, he says lyndon johnson. i'mou ask a conservative -- sorry, 1964, he would say lyndon johnson. and a conservative would say

goldwater. so that is one distinction. >> are you a neoconservative? >> i was born in 1977. the people he is talking about has mostly made their move by them. i think the term means a little less than it used to. it has also come to be used as a term about foreign policy. to the 1980s and became a much more prominent term in the last decade. but i do identify with a lot of .he early neo-conservatives socialied to apply science and politics in a way that led them to conservatism. they tried the empirical. they tried to be concrete. they tried to be constructive. so they were a little less

theoretical and a little more engaged with politics than earlier generations of conservatives. and i am drawn to that. i think it matters that politics the practical. i think it matters that they answer the particular concerns and needs of the country at the moment. and it's the policy oriented. in that respect, i certainly look up to irving kristol as a great intellectual model. a lot of people of my generation do. i don't think that distinguishes conservatives anymore. i don't think that distinction means that much for younger people. they really just learned from those two strands together. and they have combined them in their own thinking and their own practice. younger conservatives are not divided along the same lines. there's not even quite the same division between libertarian and conservative set these to be. although that does exist in many expects -- in many respects. beginning in the 1950s and succeeded in the 1980s is just

the world that we grew up in. so conservatism for us is a bigger tent to begin with. >> who do you most admire in history? i know you are doing a book on edmund burke and on thomas payne. but what book would you go to your shell first to find your views? >> edmund burke is somebody that i admire enormously. think he combines theory and practice in politics and philosophy in a way that is very instructive. his conservatism is a way of tonking that i looked to guide. not always and not in every respects. things have changed a lot durin. irish borne was an he was politician he was born in 1729 and died in 1797. and he was very important in a very eventual timing kurdish politics.

the era of the french revolution come of the american revolution, the great regency crisis. and burke was a voice for a new kind of reform minded conservatism. >> how long was he a member of the british element? >> 32 years. that was really his great arena. he is thought of now is a clinical thinker. he only wrote one book before he entered politics. he wrote a lot of pamphlets and essays and gave a lot of great speeches. an active politician who connected his political practice to political ideas. >> why did you combine him with thomas payne? >> the ideas really that he did they, the argument between burke and pain is the first real instance of the left-right divide that emerged in the era of the french and american revolutions. they were contemporaries. other.ew each the great english language

debate, burke was a staunch opponent of the french revolution. thomas payne was a direct answer to edmund burke. their debate got enormous amount of attention. in theirgue is that worldviews as they laid the -- lay them out more generally, they were the left and the right. this distinction of you start out by being grateful for what works or do you start up by being angry at what doesn't

work and everything that flows from it is very evident and powerfully evident in their writings. they were aware of it themselves. it is a useful way to think of the left and the right for all that has been changed. >> when will we see that book? >> december. it is an extension of a dissertation i wrote. defined. more it tells the story of their debate, breaking it down thematically, the views they fought about, the meaning of choice and obligation and right set of reason, the power of human knowledge and the limits of it. and tries to use their argument decisive because both of them were very engaged in politics at the same time that they were theoretically minded. they use their arguments to think with the left and the right really are or what they were to begin with. >> there is another name attached to you, her top.

tog is a donor to conservative causes. he made his money in wall street over the years and has given a lot to intellectual efforts. mostly on the right and he was very involved in "the new republic." he supports intellectual work. it is the donor who supports me at the ethics and policy center. he supports a lot of other very important titles. >> wendy's thing people like him spend money on this? >> -- why do you think people lichens then money on this? and wonderfulat mystery. it happens the left and on the right tend to advance things

that are not political. people who find themselves with a lot of money and think they thet to give the something to country and they look for things that are most important. very gratefully that they do. it is how our magazine exists and how the think tank in general functions. a lot of washington's intellectual life depends on people like that to support such work. >> who is your favorite liberal? >> my favorite liberal thinker -- you know i'm a a lot of my favorite -- you know, a lot of my favorite liberals work at the brookings institute. llook at somebody like gholston, who is a liberal and involved inpolitics a lot of years, but who thinks about things in ways that are important and responsible and useful and informative.

there are a lot of liberals that i read, critics that i think are worthwhile. and there are some liberal politicians who are, too. >> i have another left of center magazine. "washington monthly, how would ?ou define this magazine >> i read it. i subscribe to it. it is an intellectually steer his magazine -- intellectually serious using. ," youformish conservative can see they had -- he rated all .he conservatives

your score is low. my friend who is rated more highly, we talked about it. i can't think of anything in which we both disagree. it is hard to think what they mean by one of us being more inclined to a reformed conservative and the other not good i don't think that i am more influential than he is. it is a little hard to say what that means. most of the things i argue for are not currently the positions of republican [indiscernible] in that sense, it is hard to say would influence means. that particular profile didn't really define it either. a lot argue for and what of those people who were profiled argue for is a modernization of conservatism, a -- af finding conservative

way of applying conservative ideas to today's problems, families with higher education costs. they really are the problems of the early 1980s. -- thoseink that really are the major problems we have here in if you think of -- we have. if you think of how conservatives from earlier decades got their come i think that is where we begin. -- they beganhow with what are the country's problems? if we did that with reference to today's problems, we would come out with a pretty different agenda. >> i wanted to parse this do.

is a conservative and has some strong things to say conservatives who love ronald reagan would probably disagree. [video clip] attribute the success to the reaganomics is complete we unwarranted. the first 12 years were really the reagan program. so we did have an economy that rebounded because of volcker killed inflation and the deficits were enormous and they stimulated the economy. but they established a precedent for continuous chronic massive peacetime deficits and put the republican party, the old defender of the treasury gates, into the position, that cheney so in note only expressed, deficits don't matter. that was the beginning of the

end. in democracy, if there is not a conservative party that is defending the treasury and taxpayers and fiscal rectitude, you will have a a free lunch competition between tax cutters, the republicans, and spenders, the democrats. >> what do you think? >> i think that is a much too narrow view of the options that we had. again would not have agreed in the sense. he saw the economy in terms of not taxing and spending, but in terms of growth for failure of growth. revolution inn economic policy achieved was the resurgence of growth. growth is the only way out of the kind of episode trap we are in. that there was a failure in the reagan years and in the bush years to contain federal spending. >> why? >> it is difficult to contain federal spending. it is not your only priority. it is difficult to make sure that it happens. it is egypt to achieve other

important things. >> use it -- it is easier to achieve other important things. >> you say that you are scared of the debt. >> it is a very big problem. the trajectory of healthcare problem is a very big because that really becomes impossible to contain in the coming decades, even if it grows at rates lower than what they were t in the last decade. in the long run, the trajectory of medicare spending and medicaid spending is not sustainable. that is a huge problem. and think that the size scope of the debt we have now is not sustainable because, at some point, interest costs become totally uncontrollable and they do not becine -- and you cannot legislate them away. once you owe them, you owe them. but the way to get out of that challenge, first and foremost, is economic growth.

it is very important to reduce federal spending in various ways, but that is not the solution. what reagan did was maintain rates which brought growth back and it succeeded enormously. and it may get the thing possible in the 1980s and the 1990s, which was extraordinarily strong economic growth. that made it possible for the economy to rebound here and there is no question but that should have meant that we turn around and reduce federal spending. the economic growth we had did ring about a budget shortage -- did bring about a budget shortage. we didn't cut spending all that much in the 1990s and we didn't raise taxes all that much. it was economic growth, the boom, that made that possible. at the end of the george w. bush administration, just before the

economic crisis, it seemed like that could happen again. --had a deficit that was it that was a little more than 1% of gdp. load and stopped in her verse and more federal spending was meeting and took place. i think there is more than a choice then be clean -- a choice between where we are and austerity. i think those things are basically the same thing. weterity is what happens if continue down that path. it becomes our only option. for now, we have another option, modernizing our governing is to choose jens, liberating our economy from some of the burdens that it suffers from health care costs, from overregulation and a few other things, and allowing for economic growth. reducing spending is an important part of that, but i don't in cutting spending is the essence of the conservative agenda. the iraq war when

was going to start. they said it would cost about $60 billion and larry lindsey said, no, it will cost $200 billion in and he lost his job. and it has now cost a trillion. >> more than that i am not sure that that is why he left the job. iraqi war was very expensive and the war in afghanistan as well. national defense is the first priority of the national government, the federal government. if the leaders of our government, especially the kind of bipartisan coalition the decided on the iraq war, decides that that needs to be were onlot people who that side then are no longer on that side to but i don't think that thinking of the war through a fiscal lenses the right way to go about it. by the end of the bush did ministry should, deficits -- i of the bushe end

administration, deficits were very low. we are very poorly suited to getting back to growth today. our government lumbers along. our welfare state is very inefficient and drags down the economy, especially in healthcare. it is not suited to create the kind of workers we will need in the future. targeted toare consolidating the economy rather than allowing it to grow. that we have bigger problems. economic growth is basically a potion of two things. it is a faction of population growth and productivity growth. in the -- it is a function of population growth and productivity growth. thee was an explosion of workforce. at the same time, we had these productivity explosions.

one after another, technological advances have allowed us to be more productive durin. our workforce isn't going to go like that anymore because the baby boomers are leaving the workforce, retiring. the only way to get to the growth we had after the war is productivity growth than we have to figure out how to make that possible. it is not the only thing that matters. they kind of social solidarity matters durin. we have to care about people who are very badly harmed by the social cultural effects of the welfare state, the globalization, and other or says that are hard to control. the collapse of marriage, the collapse of the family among the poor. and we have to worry about productivity growth at the same time. that means that national leaders will have very difficult challenges to face and neither party at this point is thinking

about them. >> how would you rate barack obama? , i think -- i think he is not a very good president. first of all, i disagree with the agenda he has tried to advance. i think that is not good for the country. it is an agenda consolidation of the economy rather than of growth. a very poorly thought out economic stimulus, a fairly poorly thought out regulation. i have been opposed to a lot of what happened under obama. i think he has turned out to not have been very well suited to the the chief executive of the federal government, that he doesn't like the management side of his job. he doesn't particularly like the clinical side of his job. he is not all that good at ringing people together. it seems to me that he has not

been the leader that we needed had to do about why our way out of the recession has been so sluggish and so slow. needless to say, i am not a fan. >> who in history are you the biggest fan of? >> what president? >> yeah. >> i am a big fan of abraham lincoln. union and saved the ended slavery at the same time, which would seem impossible to do and almost was. lincoln is just impossible intellectualn his prowess, his rhetoric, his statement she dashes statesmanship, his achievements, just the person we needed at that moment in our country. and it's amazing that he was there. george washington, similarly, was an indispensable man that a lot of able -- a lot of people

called an incredibly impressive figure. i am a huge fan of ronald reagan. i think he helped us get out of a moral slump. he helped give us our confidence back at a time when we needed it and he helped in a very concrete way to get the economy growing and to finish the cold war. but i also have to admire frank and roosevelt, whose domestic policies i disagree with a lot ways. he was also an extraordinary figure when the country needed an extra very year. -- extraordinary figure. editor of "national affairs quarterly tuchma." we thank you very much for being here. >> thank you.

>> for a dvd copy of this program, call 1-877-66 2-7726. or fore transcripts comments, visit us at q&a.org -- and-a.org. , british prime minister david cameron takes questions and the british house of commons. then janet a. napolitano. at 11 p.m. come another chance to see "two and a" with " national affairs" editor. jonathan alter talks about his latest book.

alvarezuber from the and household -- a conversation with the founder of the witness protection program. >> first ladies have a capacity to personify if they so choose. this is the in american women and politics famous or not. ,ne is that they are women real people who actually do things. then there is this secondary capacity of being a personified figure, charismatic figure. many a first lady has realized it is this larger than life. that is something