we have to decide which in-laws to visit. and again, we have to have public hearings all the final decisions need to be put into the public record, there needs to be public voting. but that moment where you're actually trying to craft an innovative solution, where you're trying to explore an idea that is somewhat at odds with the expectations of your party, we need to encourage members of congress to avoid technology from time to time because that's the only way you're going to get to know each other. you're going to hear shortly our commissioner on reform which is the product we're most proud of last year and a lot of the recommendations i've mentioned are going to be addressed. we make a number of suggestions off of how you reform the election process. because it is certainly true that our election process is amplifying the partisanship that i think is now pretty deeply vested in our society.

and so one of the things at the very basic level we need to do is just get more people participating. it's hard to run a good democracy with less than one in five people participating. and what that tends to do is bring out the people who are the most focused and organized and generally the most ideological. and it's going to take a while to shift that around. the political scientists will tell you thing that is don't make sense to me but they're pretty consistent on it that moving to more early voting doesn't actually show an increase in turnout. which again i thought it would. but do you know why we have voting on tuesdays? because about 200 years ago most people liked to go to church and a lot lived too far from county seat to get there too far on monday. so you go to church on sunday, ride your horse and vote on

tuesday. chris rock said do you know why? because they don't want us to vote. there is a strong sentiment that hard working folks who don't have an ability to control their own schedules have a tougher time getting to the polls. we talk about having a national primary day. most people don't even know the primary is happening. this is the nonpresidential election years. so there's a lot we can do. then finally, and this is consistent with the ethos of the bipartisan policy center. we need to strengthen the parties vees a vee the third party group elections. and this of course is somewhat counter intuitive because the parties are the groups that have the bad name. you've got to ask yourself the question, compared to what? what we've done through the mccain fine gold well intended, is limited resource that is can go to parties and made it possible for unlimited resources to go to the dark

money third parties. you should ask senator bennett about his experience. oftentimes the third parties that are supposed to be helping you are actually so aufl in what they're trying to suggest about your opponent that you feel the need to either run against your own supporters or take the blame. so one of the ironic increases in campaign money is candidates fearing that they have to identify themselves more aggressively earlier against their own supporters let alone against the efforts of their opponents. and so congress in the crom bus, the most horrible new word that should never be entered into the english language, did in fact adjust one of the provisions in mccain-feingold to now allow the parties to raise not quite as freely but

almost as freely as the third parties. the other thing is require disclosure of campaign financing. there is no argument against disclosure. scleia has been a strong advocate. the parties have to disclose. the c-4's and, dark money organizations don't. that's another way to level the playing field. so my general scene before turning a little bit to the moment -- and that clock is really not -- i guess -- i've lost track. so there's a lot of practical things. none of them epiphanies but a number of modest steps that congress can take with some support with the public that would get the sst working good enough. in the clinton administration, 50% of the public thought congress was doing a good job. that's good enough. 9% is not good enough. but this is not a country that wants its public to believe,

with 87% enthusiasm, that its government is great. we're a divided country and whoever is not in power is going to be critical. but we can make steps toward that direction. so let me just kind of end with a few words about some of the dynamics which give us some optimism. again, it's a low bar. right? so it takes -- take this with that understanding. having a truly divided government where both parties are accountable to lead is a better system than what we had where we had the congress split and obviously one party in the white house. this is going to obligate the republican party who does not have the power of the presidency to demonstrate its capacity to lead and get things done with much more accountability than i think was plausible when you had a divided congress. another really important factor is the economy is getting better.

one thing we haven't talked much when thinking about importantlyization and digs function is this was a really awful decade for a lot of people. people were deeply hurt. that makes them mad. and it makes them look for someone to blame. and it creates all of the kinds of animus that feed into this kind of importantlyization. i think the tea party really grew out of that kind of economic anger and sense of unfairness. and the economy is getting better. it should make us all a little happier and should make it easier to get things done. the senate is going to flip back almost certainly in two years because in 2016, i think it's 24 of the 33 seats that are up are incumbent republicans. so they have to protect a lot more seats and the general assumption is that barring some dramatic policy change you'll see the senate flip back. that's a good dynamic for reed and mcconnell. any time people think they have

a mandate they act very badly. no one is going to have a mandate in this country for a very long time and the recognition that they'll be changing seats in 24 months is a somewhat productive incentive. and then the last theme that i think we're playing with, is constructive anger. so for the last several years the anger has been coming from the edges and it is almost always true when you have an insurgent movement -- in this case it has been the tea party. it tends to shut things down because -- and i hate the word institutional washington. but the people used to getting stuff done don't know how to respond to that kind of anger. they bring it -- it's always understood that if you had your leader ready to support legislation and the senate was ready to support the legislation, you could round up the votes. that wasn't the case. it was i think the expectation

that you would always have the majority of the majority, so called hastert rule which denny hastert says he never created. the understanding was that you would have to get the majority of the majority. in the last several years it was hard to do. when boehner moved forward without the majority of the majority it strengthened his hand rather than him falling through the ice which was the fear. so i guess the sense that we have is that now the folks who want to get stuff done are getting pissed off. which is what it's going to take. it's going to require the basic rank and file members of the house and senate to say i'm not willing -- this is not why i came here. one senator described his job to me as being a glorified telemarketer who occasionally gets to vote for an assistant secretary of education. they're furious. this is not what they wanted to be doing. and that's going to have to start -- you see these gangs forming, these sort of bipartisan legislative gangs. that's going to have to become part of the culture of the

actual committees. and you're starting to see the polls start to shift a little. while people tend to be polarized the numbers who want to see things get done are growing. so those dynamics, kind of an angry middle, will be useful as we go forward. so i think we're going to have a great couple weeks. the timing couldn't be better. there's a lot in play. this is not an easily predictable couple of years. and we're happy to be working with the washington center and i hope you enjoy our website. thank you. [applause] should we threaten them with questions or have i run over? >> we have a few minutes. >> ok. i can stretch.

>> so i was wondering for the people of anger that you were talking about. if they're not satisfied to congress and what they're not doing, how come there hasn't been like a bill or proposition to make voting day a holiday? i know in belgium where i'm from voting day is a holiday and you have to vote. so i'm pretty sure that if you enforce that here it should help. >> so those ideas have been raised pretty consistently. they have not gotten as much traction as they need to. a couple of things encourage me to believe that they'll start to get taken more seriously.

the first is that the parties for a while thought that the motivation in the edges was good for them. and this is mostly in the last two years the republican party thinking about how the tea party affected them. and they believe that in some cases lower turnout would advantage their candidates. i think two things are happening. one is that the people who are getting elected in those lower turnout elections are not very often the people who work well with the party. and so the party is now looking for a slightly different kind of candidate. there's also a very big debate happening within the republican party about whether it can sustain the perception that it is interested in reducing turnout. that whether you believe that some of these access to ballot laws are designed for voter integrity or you believe that

they have a more electoral motivation who knows what people's intent are. but the appearance of that and the voter base is shrinking is something that i think has a lot of republicans concerned. so whether it's a national holiday, which cost as lot of money because we have to pay the government officials eevep though they don't have to work or moving it to a saturday or having it at the state level more extensive voting periods, i think you're going to have more of that. our pesky constitution prevents mandatory voting. and i would be interested to you talking after -- to talking to you after. i've heard from people in australia that it's not that great because you're forcing people to vote who don't have an interest. so one in five people voting in primaries will not sustain a good democracy. >> thank you. >> you're welcome.

>> i hail from central michigan university. i had a question regarding the earmarks. i know the earmarks tend to be a very controversial issue. i'm just wondering why has such an absence on returning earmarks? because i know that it tends to be a local thing as they're trying to add in something for their particular constituency. but don't local people in national elections vote on national issues? >> so i think i'll start with the end. i don't think a lot of local people vote on purely national issues. i mean, i've never really seen polling which tries to

differentiate. but i have both philosophical and practcal arguments for earmarks. the philosophical arguments that the essentials tension in our government from the very beginning, 1776, was federal versus state. don't want a monarch, don't want an organization. has to balance those two things. and a member of congress seeking to do something that helps them locally is not scurluss. i think the system did get out of hand so it needed -- by the time we did away with it actually there was some pretty good controls in place about everything being noticed and available and the administration having to comment on the projects. i think that's good. but the idea that philosophically we should say that only the president, only the executive branch should be able to decide how to spend the money i don't think is true the way the setup was supposed to work. but pragmatically -- we see this in our own projects.

we'll have a group of people working together on energy policy we call it hanging ornaments on the tree. very often, once somebody gets their thing, even if it's kind of a little thing, into the group, they're in. they are then invested in the whole. and they're almost like policy earmarks in our context. but it's the same for members of congress. once you have your upgraded v.a. hospital in your health care bill, it's your health care bill. so it just matters. if you talk to elected officials, senators lot and darble will auve tell you it's tough to lead when you have no incentives. so if it takes rather useless runway in rural missouri a couple of fire stations that theoretically were not cost beneficial and a nursing home to get entitlement reform, take

the deal. my last little story, because i like the topic we have a civil rights act basically because of earmarks. in the last book on the johnson presidency, he relates the story that the bill was once again stuck in the house rules committee where democratic chairman said it would never see the light of day. johnson needed to go to the republicans to get the bill out of committee. he went to the republican minority leader can and basically in classic johnson fashion started swearing and said, what do you need? and the answer was, a nasa research center at my beloved purdue university. is the purdue university the best place in america to have a nasa research center? who the heck knows. but that's what charles hall eck needed to be able to move

forward and join the majority in a way that could undermine him politically and the country regained some measure of dignity. take the deal. those moments come along. and so i think the greater good is served if we empower folks to act in that, make it easier for them to act in that national interest. >> my question was about the way we conduct primary elections. and i was wondering do you think the kind of shift in the last couple decades from convention style primaries to more direct primary elections has increased partisanship or decreased it? >> it's hard to point to anything in the last decade and say it decreased partisanship. but my view, i think the view of our commission pretty strongly was you should have the most democratic open

possible programs and processes . we've certainly seen in some closed caucus systems people who you would not expect to have broad public support to come out as a candidate. and i can only suggest that you talk to senator bennett who will be here if he is not here already, about the challenges of basically having a 70 plus% approval rating and not getting out of the caucus process. so i think the broader the better. it is now my pleasure to introduce michael thorning who is a policy analyst works at our democracy project and michael has worked on capitol hill for senators bingman and udall, little known fact about michael. we had had our holiday party and took the i want resting chance of doing karaoke and

killed it. so maybe -- if you don't ask questions he might break into song. michael. [applause] >> thank you, jason, for reminding us all about the holiday party karaoke. i'm going to go ahead and bring up our first panelist, we're supposed to have two and senator bennett hasn't been able to join us yet. he's on the way. but the first person i want to bring up is former agriculture secretary dan glickman. a senior fellow at the bipartisan policy center. he cochairs our commission on political reform which we're here to talk about today as well as our nutrition and physical activity initiative and our task force on defense budget and strategy. secretary glickman is currently the executive director of the

aspen institute congressional program which is a nongovernmental nonpartisan education program for members of congress. so you guys are here today learning. we also have programs out there to have members of congress help them do their jobs better. i think this is one of the most interesting jobs he has had. he was previously chairman of the motion picture of america representing hollywood and all those folks in california. and he was also the director of the institute of politics at harvard. before he had all these great jobs he had a career in politics. he served as the agriculture secretary during the clinton administration and then for 18 years in the house of representatives representing the fourth congressional district in kansas. so let's welcome secretary glickman. [applause] >> thank you.

so i just want to start and give some background a little bit on our commission on political reform. it was sort of borne out of the stormy political prns that we're living in. and i think that actually right now we'll introduce the other fellow. introduce senator bennett. [applause] senator bennett is also a senior fellow at the bipartisan center and prior to that served in the u.s. senate for 18 years first being elected in 1993. senator bennett was on the banking committee, the joint economic committee so he has a strong background in national economic issues. he's also a member -- was a member of the appropriations committee. so he has a great understanding of our udgetting process and spending process, which a lot of people don't understand aren't the same process. prior to serving in the senate,

senator bennett was a highly successful entrepreneur. he was the ceo of publicly listed company, franklin quest, and he continues to work sort of in the private sector on entrepreneurial issues. so he has a good understanding of the nexus of those two issues. but one thing i want to bring up two great quotes about senator bennett. he's been praised for two qualities throughout his career. and that's his intellect and his integrity. former president bill clinton said he's a highly intelligent old-fashioned conservative. i don't know if he thinks he's old fashioned. >> i'm older than bill clinton. older and wear nice fashion. >> and senate majority leader harry reid said there was no more honorable member of the senate than senator bennett. i think that was well earned over his career. so we're happy to have him here with us today as well.

so our commission on political reform was really borne out of a stormy political presence i think you all have been watching over the last few years. polarizations at the highest level since its reconstruction. according to a poll that we commissioned with u.s.a. today. we don't mix with our neighbors who aren't -- if we're republicans we don't talk to the democrats in our neighborhood. we don't even live in neighborhoods, maybe even states with democrats. more and more we get our news from sources that are bias or they're ideologically driven. rankor and brinksmanship are at an obviously all-time high. if you don't see it on c-span, we certainly see it on the news networks. and that's really been on display in congress over the last two congresses we've probably had the least productive in the modern era. and not just unable to address

pressing issues but unable to do their basic jobs. struggling to pass budgets struggling to pass appropriations bills, struggling to pay our national debt. these are basic functions congress should be able to do. and not surprisingly their approval rating is at an all-time low. i won't mention any of the other professions that they rank in these things but they're definitely toward the bottom beneath probably some unsavory folks. and i think maybe with even some of you, but i think a lot of citizens there's a sense of apathy. maybe some few tilt. but certainly distrust of the system. it's not working. and so what was borne was a forum for people like these two gentlemen, people whobble that we can transcend that. you know, that these trends are

not permanent if we listen to one another, find common ground we can govern even in this polarized environment. so we put together a 29-member commission. our cochairs were former senate majority leader tom daschle trent lot who also -- we also had oh limb pa snow, dick kempthorn. and senator glickman was one of our do chairs, senator bennett was one of our members and we had a really knockout group of people, former members of congress cabinet branch officials, academic, civic leaders, business leaders, people from all walks of siffic life and went through an 18-month process. went all over the country, california ohio, philadelphia, boston. we had meetings, engaged a whole wide cloth of the american people. and then they had some debates and they had deliberations

they had some arguments, they had things they couldn't agree on. but they were able to compromise and they did find common ground. and the product of that was our report, our blueprint, our bipartisan blueprint for strengthening our democracy. includes 69 recommendations. we're not going through all of them today. but three major areas were formed. reforming congress reforming our election system, and a call to public service. now all these aren't a magic pill. if we enacted them all tomorrow the system is not going to just turn around, although i think there would be some big changes. but as these things go there's always a way to work the system. but these are achieveable steps. they're practical and they can really begin to lower the political temperature and we get our system back to a level which it can function. so i want to start out kind of broad and ask you to -- is our

system broken? are we in control? is there a future? what is the outlook? >> first of all, thanks for allowing us to be here. we capet last year and it's a really great thing. is our system in trouble? well, first of all our system was created almost to ensure gridlock. ok? so imagine this. most countries have either an authoritarian system like the chinese or russians, or else they have a parliamentary system like the british or canadians where the chief executive is also the chief member of the legislature. so the parliament is executive and legislature together. we have this system called separation of powers. so the founding fathers wanted to split authority in government so they created congress and executive and courts. and they said they were all

equal. so if you don't think that's a prescription for gridlock, nothing is. it's like -- they almost created a system that did not have a center of accountability at all. so from the very beginning our system wasn't necessarily designed to be extremely smoothly operating. and there was also great distrust of the king or the executive. and they always worried about the tyranny of the executive so that's why -- by the way they made congress article 1 not the executive article 1. that's a pretty compelling point about where they wanted the ultimate power to reside. then they thought, well, congress could be a tyranny as well. so they split that into two, into house and senate. so our system is kind of designed to have one foot on the brake and one foot on the accelerator at all times. anyway. and it only works if there's trust across the aisle and if there is leadership in the institutions of government. and if congress has rules and

system that is work well and the president works with congress and congress works with the president. and there is a trust between the two branches, the executive and the legislative branch. and i think what's happened in the last several years maybe couple decades -- and i know senator bennett has strong thoughts on this as well, is that the basic system of separation and gridlock is kind of institutionly put into our system. but there are always ways to work around it and one way with you f was regular order, one way is for the president and congress to work together on primary issues. and now you've had a lot of -- i listened to jason talk. you have a lot of pressures on the system that we never had before. massive money into the political system. it really has a monumental impact. we didn't have that 225 years ago. and now when an average congressional contested race is

$5 million and an average senate contested race might be $25 million. just imagine what that does to the political system. and you combine that with 4 hour media and you combine that with social media and all these new things. just all these additional pressures on the system that we just never had before. and instantaneous access is there. so saying that, i don't think the system is going to fall apart. i think our political sments is still very resilient. parts of our system are working much better. states, local units of government are working better. and the congress works when it has to. the last month or two of the session of this year they got some stuff done because they had to. so what it does is puts a much greater premium on leadership at the executive and congressional levels. it acts like leaders. and it puts a more premium on the people to kind of understand what they should and should not expect their government to do.

so i would say that the system is troubled but not deceased and not dead. and it's frankly the people that are going to decide whether the system is resilient enough for us to be a competitive power, economic and political power, in the years to come. >> i'm in agreement with what secretary glickman has had to say. i do want to make these additional comments about it. the ultimate source of power in america is the people. that is different from many other countries. and we are the oldest democracy in the world. the british might argue with that but they had a parliament

before we had a democracy. but they did not have the kind of constraints on the king that they have now. until we showed them the way of allowing the people to ultimately make the decisions. and if you don't think the people are still in charge, and you think outside forces are in charge, just ask jimmy carter. or george h.w. bush. who had all the powers of the presidency at their control, and the people decided they wanted to get rid of them. and they could not maintain their power regardless of all the formal levers of power when the people decided we want somebody else. ultimately, the people and the way people vote determines what's going to happen in american politics. and provides a leveling factor

and a change factor that can take care of the extremes. now, when this report came out from bpc of all the things that should be changed bpc took it to capitol hill. and started showing it to congressional leaders on capitol hill. and one of the leaders they went to, a very appropriately, was senator mcconnell, the republican leader. and senator mcconnell said, look i don't have time to go through it all. will you take it to senator alexander? whom i listen to on these issues. he wasn't being rude. he was just being realistic about the kinds of pressures that a leader has. and the bpc staff said to me, well, you're close to alexander, which is true. will you go with us?

kind of to make sure that alexander would come to the meeting, i guess. i don't think that was necessary. i think lamar would have showed up whether i was there or not. but i we want in with the others and they presented these recommendations. and lamar alexander, who is a student of american politics, and long-time participant he was in the nixon white house. that's where i first met him when i was in the nixon administration. he was governor of tennessee. he's been a university president. he was a cabinet officer. and now he's a senator. there isn't anybody that has a broader background in american politics than lamar alexander. he listened politely to the things we had to say. and then he said picking out one item, he said with the exception of this iten m -- item we could change everything you're asking for and accomplish everything you

want this afternoon. if we had a different majority leader. well we now have a different majority leader. and as i was riding in this morning and got out the newspaper, there was a story on the front page of the "washington post" about mitch mcconnell's goal for the next two years as the new majority leader. -- did any of you see it? i recommend you read it. sum rising one sentence. mitch mcconnell says he wants the republicans to not be scary. between now and 2016. he wants to set the table for the republican nominee in 2016 by demonstrating that the republicans are capable of governing. and he uses the phrase, we don't want to be scary. well, what's he talking about? he's talking about the tea

party. in 2010, which was the wave election of the people saying we don't like what's going on in washington, with the democrats in complete control of the presidency and both houses of congress we want to change the people said that. there are a lot of folks widening that wave with some attitudes that were pretty scary. and here i am, a senate figure, they cost us republicans three senate seats. we were poised to win nevada, delaware, and colorado. where the incumbents, although delaware wasn't incumbent but mike castle is running and he's tremendously popular. the tea party came in. the people did not participate in the primaries to the degree

they should have, and the tea party nominated unelectable nominees in all three states and handed the democrats three seats they would not have otherwise had. in 2012, they handed the democrats three more with scary candidates. in 2010 it was the candidate who ran her campaign, first televised ad saying, i am not a witch. now, that's a really, really jaunty catchy kind of political platform to run on. and then the other guy in 2012 was talking about legitimate rape. another political position i would recommend any of you are thinking of being a candidate you should avoid being in favor of that kind of thing. add it all up. if we had those -- we

republican had those six seats from the two previous elections, thus where we are now at 54 we would at 60. the republicans would be filibuster proof. can you understand why mitch mcconnell is saying we don't want to be scary? going into 2016? now, this is the same mitch mcconnell who said and the democrats left media have been beating him up on this ever since he said it when they said to him back in 2009, what's your primary goal? he says my primary goal is to see to it that barack obama be a one-term president. oh that's terrible. what did you expect him to say as the republican leader? my goal is to reelect barack obama? no. they got all tangled up about the extremes. the people's reaction in the

various elections are causing an intelligent thoughtful political leader to say we've got to move away from the extreme positions. with all of the positions harry reid took for what he made, which the democrats paid for the resulted elections, referring to what secretary glickman said, in the luck who was there on the -- lame duck, who was there on the democratic side leading the effort to make sure we got regular order done and the appropriations process handled in an intelligent matter? harry reid. harry reid and mitch mcconnell, two old pros, sitting down in the senate are saying, ok, the election is order, we have to govern we have to solve the problem.

and harry reid, however much he deserved having been beaten up by the republicans for what he did previously now says ok, mitch, how do we work this out and make this happen? and it was very, very interesting to see how they made it happen. yes, in the senate it was harry reid and mitch mcconnell working together. in the house it was john boehner and steny hoyer. because nancy pelosi said i want no part of it. and steny hoyer, the number two democrat was saying, nancy we have to govern. and who was there with the two from the senate and the two from the house were trying to make it work making phone calls to members of his party saying will you please get in line and help out? barack obama.

barack obama. making common cause. with john boehner and mitch mcconnell. because the people had sent the message that they wanted things to start to work again. and that's where you come in. because you're the people. and what you do to get more folks to participate in intelligent ways is what this effort on the part of the bpc is all about. america first nation to set itself up on the basis, yes, separation of powers, yes grid lock, ultimate source of power. the people. we've had all kinds of problems. we've made all kinds of mistakes. our history is filled with blunders and a lot of things that are really embarrassing. but we have muddled through,

through the decades, and now the centuries, to have produced the strongest most resilient most diverse most powerful economy and country the world has ever known. and i'm a polyiana guy who says we're going to continue to muddle through just fine. >> i guess, if i may just comment. two things. one is, you mentioned i have a background in the movie industry so you've got to go see the movie selma. has anybody seen it yet? it's the story of how the vote rights act of 1965 was adopted. very important movie because it reinforces what the senator was saying. is the ultimate power of the people had is the power to vote. without that power, they lose every other power. the power to have equal treatment under the law, the

power or lack of power to influence law enforcement. just all these other kinds of things. i think it's important. i think one question you ought to ask yourself, however is that without leaders acting like leaders how resilient can our political system be? because you're looking at two folks who in the legislative process lost. and i can speak for senator bennett who is an extraordinary leader who always had his country's interest first and hopefully i did the same way, and but for leaders to be leaders it means leaders have to risk losing. congress was never designed to be a permanent job with seniority and tenure protection. so for the political system to

work, you need leaders that will act like that and get their members to respond accordingly. >> let's talk about congress a little bit. you know you two served both of you 18 years in the house and the senate. but the last two congresses i would venture to guess have been nothing like when you were serving there. what's different? what's happened? >> in the senate harry reid made a conscious decision as the majority leader to protect his vulnerable members. the senate, as you know, only elects a third of its members every election. it's a secure term. and every two years, a third of them are up. so you know in advance who is going to be up in the following year and harry looked ahead to the 2014 election which was

the consequences of the election six years previous, and six years previous had been a very good election for the democrats. and he had an awful lot of democrats up for reelection and only a few republicans. and he said to himself, self- the republicans are going to be offering a whole bunch of amendments to every piece of legislation that comes on the floor that will create a series of tough votes because i'll have to have them vote these amendments down. president obama will want them to vote these amendments down. the republicans will cast the amendments in the most attractive terms. so every amendment that is

voted on will result in a 32nd commercial in the 2014 election saying glickman voted against motherhood and apple pie, without the specifics of the motherhood and apple pie. >> i was the secretary. i would never vote against apple pie. motherhood is another story. >> so he has the authority as the majority leader to determine what bills come on the floor. the majority leader is the traffic cop who says this bill can be voted on, this one i will not bring up. i won't bore you with the details of how that works but that's how it works. so he made the decision for partisan electoral purposes that he was going to protect his members from all of these controversial votes.

the only trouble with that is if you do that, you don't get any bills on the floor. now, that's an exaggeration. but basically the senate that i knew and served in, we would bring up bills, there would be amendments from the opposing party depending on who was in charge, you take a tough vote, be prepared to lose but it was the right thing for the country. you take a tough vote and the process goes forward. and harry said let's try this to see if we can protect all of these vulnerable democrats from tough votes. it turned out it was a mistake. because all of the vulnerable democrats he was trying to protect got beaten up in their campaign for not having done anything and when they did vote

they always voted with the administration so they got these 30-second ads saying kay hagan votes with barack obama 97% of the time. so if you live in north carolina and you don't like barack obama how do you express that? you express that by voting against kay hagan. that's the way it's been done. it started before harry. the other majority leaders have tried that. but it came to a climb max in these last two years to the point that i had members of the senate say to me, a wonderful conversation with a senior liberal democrat who sat me down and said, tell me about your life. tell me about your week now that you're out. what have you done last week? well, there i was at bpc -- and

so forth. he says you want to know my week? we've been in quorum call all week. in other words, the senate has done nothing for all week. we haven't been allowed to be on the floor. mitch mcconnell said when it looked as if he might be the new leader, and lamar told us this he said request i promise if i become the majority leader we will have amendable motions on the floor, and i warn my republican colleagues you will have to take tough votes. i will run the senate the way mike mansfield ran the senate back in the days following lyndon johnson. and lamar said, we in the republican conference said to him, mitch if you do not do

that, we will get a new leader. we insist that you go back to that even though it means exposure for us. now, again, the people spoke in 2014, and now i think harry thinks well, i made a mistake. i happened to like harry reid. he's been a good friend and a very great help for me back in the days when across the aisle you could do that. and i think harry made a decision. it seemed logical to him. he's made a decision now by virtue of what he did in the lame duck to say let's try something else. >> i agree with everything the senator said. i would add a couple things. came in 1976 i ran against an incumbent republican congressman and spent $100,000 total.

today that race would cost at least $5 million and who knows how much outside money would come to the race from places you never even heard of before. so what does that practically mean? well, it means is that as an elected official you spend most of your time raising money. so i used to spend a lot of time on the house floor just going down and listening with john dingell said or what some you know some other -- henry hide. you name the person. if i did that now as a member i would be guilty of malpractice and they would ship me out of the place. what are you doing listening sitting, not raising money? talking. ? so that's a big change. just imagine what a profound change that is to your life. if nothing else, it diminishes the ability of an individual member to become part of the political process. and so that's an enormous change. i would say that as a young

member of congress back in the 1970s and 80s the process was much more open. so i was given the ability to amend bills. open rules. this is a process by which you can actually have an impact on the legislative process. i recall one bill after three mile island. any from pennsylvania? ofpblgt remember the three mile island nuclear accident? so i offered an amendment to require full hch time inspectors from the federal government, every nuclear power plant in the country, and as a freshman that was a really big important thing. it gave me a role in the political process. that's been very difficult to do in recent years. both parties have closed the process down for individual members. it's much tougher in the house because in the senate one senator can still have great power in opening or shutting down the institution. but the house you're one of 435 and the rules of the house kind of give the leadership especially the speaker and the

leaders much more power vis-a-vis the institution than the senate where they still have 100 equals that are able to manage that process. not withstanding that, as we've talked about the last couple of months in the last session people did work together better and there are more open rules in the house in the last few months than we saw before. and that was good. and the president, who himself did not really engage the congress very much, and as a democrat i regretted that the president didn't engage the congress very much at all and he needed to much more. the last couple of months he seems to be engaging the congress much more. and you see that in the -- even in the mitch mcconnell statement wanting to work with the president much more. so there may be some optimistic things that are happening that the system is work -- system will work better. the money is another problem.

whether it will influence -- we had a speaker who said money is the mother's milk of politics. unfortunately it's become the cottage cheese and cream cheese and everything else in the system. it's kind of, you know, there probably are 30 fund raisers today or tomorrow for people. again, that's a bit unique. and so we've got to figure out how to deal with that problem constitutionally in such a way so that the -- what it does is kind of squeezes out average people who aren't part of pacs and aren't part of the political fund-raising system to engage the political system. but not withstanding that there are some positive trends happening because i think the elected officials understand that people are frustrated. their government doesn't seem to be moving on things like immigration, roads suers infrastructure, tax reform, trade. they want to see something happening here. so, you know that's where the system as the senator points

out is reasonably resilient. even with all the problems we've talked about. >> let's switch gears a little bit to something you guys were talking about earlier. let's talk about electoral reform something the commission foe cussed on a lot. something you both have a lot of experience with. both parties seemed to be convinced that the other party is engaged in this sments tick rigging of the system against that or -- the other party thinks the same thing about the other party, that we have jerry mannedering, that we haven't been able to do anything about campaign finance reform. the way primaries work, it's all in a way to game the system for one party's benefit and against the other. >> one thing that the commission focused on was on primaries. you know, the recommendation of a national primary day. what was the thought process behind that? why do we think we need one day across the country? >> you're the classic example. primaries and caucuses.

>> yeah. i lost my seat in the senate without ever getting my name on the ballot. the sments in utah -- system in utah sets up a party convention that screens candidates for the primary. all of the polls showed that if i had been in the primary i would have won renomination quite handly. i had a 70% approval rating among republicans. i was down from the 95 i hadded previously because the tea party hated me for supporting george w. bush on immigration and supporting george w. bush on tarp. i'm a republican. this is a republican president. he happens to be right on both instances. he was six years a border state governor dealing with the border economy. he understands the immigration

problem better than i do living in an interior state in utah and i'm going to vote with him on immigration. but the tea party types all insisted they knew more about the immigration issue than any border state governor knew and the convention kept me off the primary ballot under utah law. i don't tell you that to gain your sympathy because they did me a huge favor. i would have been so frustrated in the four years i've just described that i would be sitting there saying why in the world am i wasting my time doing this? but the point is the founding fatsers did not give us any constitutional basis for regulation of political parties. they didn't like political parties. they were hoping there wouldn't be any political parties. the reason abigail adams said nasty things about thomas

jefferson is that she accused him of being a party man. which of course he was. he was the founder of our first political party. in today's terms it wasn't much of a party but did some very interesting things. his principle party voice was the newspaper that he got the federal government to pay the publisher for. all right. we do not have any constitutional basis for regulating political parties. consequently all of our political law is a combination of state law and party rules. in utah, the party has made the decision they're going to have a convention and state law allows it.

in california, they abolished the primary system that i knew when we lived in california and replaced it with what they call the jungle primary. which is very different from louisiana where mary land rue won the plurality in the primary and by most state law that would have been enough for her to win reelection. but in louisiana she had to have a runoff in order to get 50%. and that's different than the party primary in michigan. so one of the challenges we have is repairing the owe mission of the writers of the constitution and ask ourselves, do we want a federal system controlling the nomination process for president and

dictating to the states the nomination process whereby parties get i happen to think that would be a good idea. it would mean amending the constitution, which i don't like. i vote against constitutional amendments on general principle because i think it is pretty much find the way it is. on this one? i would support some kind of careful analysis of how we recognize in a modern and national state a political process that makes sense. we don't have one now. >> i would make two additional points. i think the average voter turnout and primaries is less than 20%.

imagine 15% of the voters are choosing who your congressman is. that goes to the point that most districts are gerrymandered or district it in a way that they favor one party or the other. there are not very many competitive seats anymore in the congress. maybe 10% or whatever. states are a little different. >> you cannot reroute state lines. >> at least not today. the redistricting process is something we talked about in our report. the rot to be a way to redistrict states on rational bases -- there ought to be a way to redistrict states on rational bases. they have become very safe districts.

that disenfranchises a lot of voters. you don't have quite the ability to influence your congressman. it encourages people on the extremes to control the political process. the right tea party will control the political process for the republicans and the left will do the same on the democrat side. iowa california, and others are looking at this from a legislative perspective. we want to see if we can find different ways to redistrict, rather than letting the people who are elected doing the redistricting. i think that would help. also, ways to get more people to

vote in primaries. primaries are confusing to a lot of voters. that is another thing we have looked at. then the final thing. money is raised in politics and where does it go? 80% of it goes into advertising. most of the advertising is, your opponent is a criminal, he is disgusting, he does terrible things. that has kind of been around for a long time, but when you multiply the amount of money in the political system, you multiply that sort of scary less advertising -- that sort of advertising. younger voters are not

encouraged. the political system does not encourage a lot of people to participate because of what is involved in the campaign process, which discourages turnout and encourages the extremes in the base. that is something we have tried to address and our report. -- in our report. >> it sounds like you two would agree that a lot of people in congress, the rank-and-file members, are getting cut out of the process. this is where we are getting all of this conflict and gridlock. >> as long as the voters see that the government is doing something.

they see nothing happening. no bills passing. there is more happening than you might think is happening from the media. people do need to see that the system is on the level producing results. >> we probably have a lot of people interested in public service. volunteers and rates are dropping off. people are giving less to charity. people are less engaged. what can we do about that? how can we get people more involved in the government? something inspired you both to that. >> it was involuntary. [laughter] it was called the draft. [laughter]

in my day, when i was your age every young man was subject to the draft. i was able to get a deferment from the draft by registering for rotc in college, which meant i was committing to two years three years, whatever, as an officer in the air force after graduation. they said, with those eyes, you could never be a pilot. i said, i had no intention of being a pilot.

they said, we are sorry, we are not going to leave you in rotc. upon graduation, i was number one on the list that the draft board was going to call the next month. so, i immediately joined the utah national guard and that was a seven-year commitment to avoid a two-year commitment. people say, how smart was that? the guard was not full seven years. the guard sent me on active duty for six months and then i had another 6.5 years of going to meetings every monday and two weeks of summer camp. it was a shared experience with every other young man in the

country. when i showed up in california to go through basic training where they fired live ammunition over your head to convince you that they were serious, in my unit for basic training, i had african-americans from the inner city, i had southern rednecks from the deep south, there were a couple of other college graduates along with me who had gotten into this situation, a philosophy major who sat there talking about what did it mean to be sitting there carrying fatigues. it was a common experience that every young american male had.

you could identify with other young men by virtue of that experience, regardless of their other backgrounds. it was a uniting factor in terms of american culture. i don't think we appreciate how significant it was in knitting america together. now, i was fortunate enough to have served in the period just after korea and just before vietnam. so i never heard a shot fired in anger, but looking back on it, i hated it while it was going on. i can hardly wait until it was over. i had a young woman, whom i had my eye to become my wife and the six months on active duty, when i came home, she was wrapped up with somebody else.

>> you did ok, though. [laughter] >> fortunately. and as life would have it, i'm married to her sister. [laughter] >> kept it in the family. >> kept it in the family. [laughter] and i got the right one. [laughter] all right. i think those kinds of shared experiences of service identification with a cause bigger than yourself, focus on something other than your own career for a while are enormously valuable. the more we can find ways to do that, the more we can break down the cultural barriers and some of the political barriers. secretary glickman talks about gerrymandering and he is right

but increasingly, we are finding that americans are gerrymandering themselves. they kind of gather in communities, they migrate into cities or states where they feel comfortable of their own kind and the run reactions -- their own reactions. the experience of some of the grown-up and white utah -- growing up in white utah dealing with somebody who grew up in black new jersey just is not available to either anymore. it is tremendously valuable if you can find some situation where you are shoulder to shoulder with somebody very different than you are, very different from the community in which you live, doing something

different than either one of you has as a career goal for a better community purpose. whatever we can do to find that in a way that is a little less coercive than the draft, i think it would be a very good thing. >> the commission recommends a voluntary national service. everybody would be encouraged from the age of 18-28 to take one year of their life and do a military or nonmilitary option. it could be the military americorps, teach for america, a whole number of things. i think i would go with mandatory service, if i were in charge. mandatory service, not military.

but that is probably not in the cards and i don't think the country would go for that, even though what i think senator bennett talked about is this period of sharing and experiencing something outside of your own comfort zone for a while in your life -- it is just incredible. are any of you thinking about peace corps? americorps? the variety of things -- it could be church related. it does not have to be government related. when you come back, i venture to say that it changes your life. tom brokaw talks about what made the greatest generation the greatest generation. i'm from kansas and we have a member of the greatest generation who was a senator and majority leader for a long time

and his military service had a lot to do with how he viewed life and politics and service and sacrifice. i think it is healthy. to be honest with you, i think this is the most important of the recommendations the commission makes. even though it is not legislatively very feasible. with this recommendation does is says that young people need to have common, shared experiences beyond just their lives. it could go for older people, too. it needs to start with people who are going through the education system initially either after high school or college. i think it would be a healthy thing for america to consider options and alternatives. there is a project called the franklin project headed up by general stanley mcchrystal.

its goal is to get one million young people between the ages of 18 and 28 and two programs -- in two programs and give them something for it -- into programs and give them something for it. some benefit so that they would not to do it -- have to do it for free. >> i think we will turn it over now to the audience, if you have questions. there is a microphone here and one over here. if folks want to line up, we are ready to take questions.

>> speaking about incentives for congress people to take the long view and the hard vote, what do you think is the best solution to incentivizing individual congresspeople to take the long view? >> first of all, nobody is going to do something that deliberately and intentionally causes their loss. that would defy the laws of nature. if i went up and i said wheat programs are bad for this country, my constituents would think i was nuts. i am censored to represent their views and perspectives as much as i can. i am also sent up there to use my on judgment as well. my judgment is that philosophically these jobs were not meant to be permanent jobs

there was meant to be turnover. it does not believe i -- mean i believe in term limits, but it means making decisions that there will not necessarily be 100% agreement on. how do you incentivize that? i think the system is always tense in that area. ultimately, my job became personal integrity and judgment. when i was in the house, bill clinton asked for me to vote -- me to vote for nafta. the polls were 78% no and 21% yes. but i thought, it is probably the right thing to do and i thought i could talk my way out

of it with my constituents anyway. i went ahead and voted for it. i also voted for the crime bill in 1994, which had gun restrictions. guess what? i lost. mo udall talked about it. he said, the citizens have spoken, the pastorates -- the bastards. the people have to encourage their members to try to want to do the right thing and recognize that people are really of two minds of this. people say they want you to do the right thing, but they want you to do what they want to do most of the time. you sometimes have to stick your neck out as a leader.

the turtle never makes progress unless he sticks his neck out. and comes down to personal character, courage, and integrity. >> fortunately, a large percentage -- and i would say in majority -- of the members of congress, regardless of party try to do the right thing regardless of political consequence. their conscience is sufficiently strong. tarp was enormously unpopular. it was enormously essential. you are all too young. [laughter] this was the decision on the part of the treasury department to put $700 billion in support

of the financial system -- attacked as a bailout for big banks by both the far right and the far left. secretary paulson came before the congress with ben bernanke and said, we have four days before the entire financial system melts down worldwide and then ben bernanke said, i have run out of tools. this is chairman of the federal reserve saying, i have no tools left with which to deal with this challenge. the only institution big enough to deal with it is the united states treasury and it is going

to be a very big number. we said, how big? he said, $500 billion. the next day we will wrong, it is $700 billion. chris dodd was the chairman of the banking committee. he called me and said, i want to meet with you tomorrow. i called senator shelby, the ranking member of the banking committee, and he said, i want no part of it. i was next ranking. i called mcconnell. i said, chris has invited me to this, should i go? he said, take judd gregg with you. we decided to take bob corker as well. we walked in.

chris had a couple of democrats. dick durbin and chuck schumer. aarti franklin. in a two-hour period, we put the bill together. a lot more details went into it, but that was basically it. the house rejected it. nancy pelosi said, this is enormously unpopular. republicans are in charge of the house, we will make the republicans pass it with republican votes, so she withheld x number of democratic votes. john boehner said, i'm not playing that game and he withheld the appropriate number of republican votes and the thing failed. the new york stock exchange lost

$1.5 trillion in value in the next 20 minutes, whereupon mcconnell and read -- harry reid took the stage and together said that congress was scheduled to recess and we are not recessing until this has been passed. we will stand to hear and see to it. the collapse on the stock exchange stopped after harry reid and mitch mcconnell took their stand. then talking to the house, ok, nancy pelosi released the democrats she had held back and john boehner said ok and leaned on. it passed the house. it came over to the senate. we made cosmetic changes.

it is now passing the senate by a comfortable margin. it has passed the house. chris dodd, who lost his seat. chris., the chairman -- chris dodd, the chairman, walked across the aisle to gordon smith , the senator from oregon -- and he said, gordon, you are facing a very tough reelection. we all recognize that. we have enough votes to pass this without yours. i recommend, for your reelection in oregon, you vote against it.

that is a democrat talking to a republican. gordon smith said, chris, this is the right thing for the country, it is the thing we ought to be doing, i could not live with my conscience if i voted against it. gordon voted for it, gordon lost. that is the deep american tradition. i think it still holds for all of the other stuff we talk about, get excited about, this is terrible, hannity goes crazy sharpton goes crazy, they yell at us back and forth -- i think the majority of the members of congress on both sides ultimately are in that position. >> two questions at a time and

we will let you both work through them. >> i was touched by your story of being shafted by the tea party. why has it been such a successful movement on the right and why is there not an equivalent on the left? >> i think our elected officials don't accurately represent the populations. 52% women and there are only about 15% or 20% women in

congress and the senate. do you think this needs address and is it even possible? not try to mandate 52% of the cedar women -- of the seats are women, but is it possible to increase participation? with all the respect, most of the representatives are wealthy older, white, christian men. >> i don't meet the wealthy or the christian, but i am older. [laughter] i guarantee it was like 5% 10 years ago. i would not be surprised if it is 40% or 50% in congress in five years. there has been a dramatic increase on both sides and it ought to be that way. redistricting helps that

process, to some extent if it is done fairly. it makes it so that the people voting in congressional districts tend to be more balanced, centrist, independent in the process. i urge you to go see this movie "soma." -- "selma." it is a good example of how the voting rights act is an important part. we now have districts that are one race districts because the voting rates act -- rights act has put the minorities in one congressional district. you might be a will to get two or three minorities as opposed to one if we made this a little more balanced. that is my only perspective. you are gradually seeing that it

is still not equal or perfect, same thing is true in corporate america. it is really beginning to move. that recruitment. you talk to the parties and they are focusing on female recruitment. you have a female, african-american congresswoman in the state of utah now. the other thing -- there is no realty party on the left. there was the occupy america that fell apart. there is elizabeth warren, who speaks the populist messaging now and maybe that will rise into a serious political challenge. i don't really know. my own judgment is that the tea

party was born out of genuine concern about the political system not being responsive, but it just took a radical turn to the right. it is supporting extremist positions on a lot of issues and that is troublesome. but maybe this gary ness will turn the party more to the center. -- scariness will turn the party more to the center. >> i hope so. is elizabeth warren the new ted cruz on the left? she and ted cruz could have swapped manuscripts and read from each other's and sounded alike. you are too young to realize that the democratic party has had its tea party led by a man named george mcgovern.

the vietnam war was a huge mistake and within the democratic party, because the vietnam war got its momentum within the democratic party -- the first major troop commitment was john f. kennedy and the significant escalation of the vietnam war was lyndon johnson -- within the democratic party a perfectly legitimate protest movement was formed. an antiwar protest movement. but it morphed into an anti-american movement. within the democratic party there was a group formed to try to counterbalance the electoral impact of that. the democratic leadership council. one of whose -- is that the

right name? >> yes. >> one of whose leaders was a young governor from arkansas named bill clinton. even though he had been a mcgovernite as a college student, he recognized that was a mistake and he was ultimately the first democrat to win the presidency back after the democratic party had been taken over by the mcgovernites. you could say that jimmy carter won and jimmy carter won because water kate -- watergate and he had his one term and was gone. the republicans won five out of the next six presidential elections. the tea party is the mirror image on the republican side. instead of the war being the thing that triggered it, it was a sense of tremendous frustration that the government is too big, too expensive, and

unresponsive -- and those are all perfectly valid criticisms. just the way the vietnam war -- that was a perfectly valid criticism on the left. just as the people under mcgovern went too far in that direction, and the tea party thing, they have gone too far slipped off the edge of the menu completely into limbaugh land. [laughter] and as a result, they have made themselves irrelevant to the government process. i have said to some of my democratic friends, if we republicans cannot contain that the democrats are going to win five out of the next six presidential elections just the way the republicans did. he comforted me, he said, no bob, our capacity to screw up is

sufficient that you will win more than that. [laughter] we have seen this happen before. america is the only place where the candidates are self-selected. if you have read some of the novels of jeffrey archer, a former member of parliament of great britain about america it is hilarious when he gets to the nominating process because he describes it as if it were the british process, where the party gets to pick who the candidate is. the heroine in his novel -- i've forgotten the name, it doesn't matter -- is chosen by a select group of party officials to run for the senate in illinois.

i'm reading this saying, this is hilarious because that is not the way it is at all. if she wants to run for the senate in illinois, she can run for the senate in illinois by paying the fee and she is there. she is on the ballot. the diversity and the question of balance has a lot to do with how many people are willing to try it. who are of the various groups you are describing. we have tried recruitment. we self select who is going to run. >> but social media and the use

of modern technology has democratized to the american political process. this is something nobody anticipated 30 years ago. that may be the reason we have seen a dramatic upswing in women and minority candidates. that is one of the great things about modern technology. it gives more people access into the political system than just having the parties pick the candidates. >> i think we might only have time to take two more questions. then we will wrap it up. >> and most of the countries where i grew up and lived, we have more than two parties. given how disenchanted the public has become with american politics, may a strong third party might emerge?

do you believe american politics would benefit from more than two parties? thank you. >> my question was related to election reform. you mentioned the low turnout in primaries. do you think in open primaries that those would be a good solution? there was a more expansive coalition that helped set cochran his primary and then when the general election. arguably come without the african-american support that he saw, the tea party guy would have been victorious. >> you are talking about primary roles. >> yes. >> i favor the california jungle primary. everybody's name is on the ballot and the top two go to the general election. everybody can vote for the top

two. one of the top two. in gerrymandered districts, the top two are going to be to democrats. that is why pete stark lost. under the old california system you had the republican who won the republican primary and the democrat who won the democratic party, which was always pete stark. he was absolutely invulnerable. congressman for life. they went to the general primary and the top two names got on the ballot and it was pete stark and another democrat and they voted for the other democrat. i would love to see that in the state of utah. there are many circumstances where it would be to republicans because utah is overwhelmingly republican, but at least democrats would get to choose which republican they preferred.

where now, they don't have a voice at all. i would like to go in that direction. you are talking about a third party? it is not going to happen. [laughter] because -- back to what i commented on earlier -- our whole system is based on state law and party rules. there is no federal basis. state law and party rules have so embedded the two-party system and to the way things are done that a third-party statutorily it faces a hurdle that is virtually impossible to overcome. >> states should be permitted to experiment with this. many states can be independent.

this concept of a republican and democrat voting irrespective of parties may be of a bygone era. they out to be permitted to experiment. -- ought to be permitted to experiment. i'm not sure we want have a third-party, but it is difficult with the way money is raised in this country. it is difficult to get dollars unless you fit into one of these two political systems. we had an interesting race in kansas. pat roberts against an independent. this was an independent leaning democrat who had a lot of money. up until about two weeks before the race was even. this was a long-term incumbent. good friend of mine, actually. it looked like he was losing and then the national party came in, they took over his campaign.

they put in modern principles. modern communications techniques . they put in modern amounts of money and he won. we had a third party a few years ago. his name was ross perot. george h.w. bush, bill clinton and ross perot. at one time, it looked like ross perot could be a factor in that he fizzled. >> he had 40% in the polls at one place and time. >> he talked about aliens and he had a few problems. [laughter] but it is difficult. on the other hand, if the system responded to the people -- if people don't believe the parties are looking up for their interests, we have had third parties before and our current republican party was at one point a different party and it morphed into what it is.

it is not culturally part of the american political system, so it makes it a lot more difficult. >> thank you. let's thank our panelists. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> we will talk to capitol hill reporters about the opening of the 114th congress. we will be joined by incoming house members. plus your facebook comments and tweets. the 114th congress gavels in on tuesday at noon eastern. up next, a look at the history of the u.s. senate chamber. plus, an interview with the late

senator robert byrd. -- the rotunda bridges the capital. when you make your way into the extension, you see a stark contrast in the decorative nature of the old and new. the senate of the 1850's desire to showcase their part of the capital to visitors from around the world. it opened in the winter of 1859. >> i'm always enthralled by the

senate chambers. the walls themselves. if they could speak what could they tell us? what would they tell us? i think of the great men and women who have served their. -- tehrhere. >> there is something special about seeing it when it is empty. it is an empty theater, and some sense. you look at the desks. you imagine the people who stood there. the people who have really had a huge impact on this institution and the american political history. this was the chamber in which they fought their battles. >> the senate is almost a living creature. it has a tempo and an

atmosphereyou can watch it and feel it. if you treat it like you would treat another person, i think it responds well. even when you are trying to make it do something it did not want to do. >> the real role of the senate is supposed to be a forum of the states. there are two senators from every state. each senator's equal to a degree. with any other senator. each senator can speak as long as he or she wishes to speak. there is freedom of speech. it runs deep in english history roman history, even, and colonial and american history. since the constitution came along. freedom of speech. >> the senate chamber opened on

january 4, 1869. members of the senate left their old chamber, which is now the old senate chamber, they walked down the corridor, and into the new chamber. there was excitement enthusiasm about the new space. you go into the senate chamber today and it is hard to really evoke the way that chamber would have looked in the 19th century. it has changed so dramatically. when that chamber first opened, the room was very victorian. highly ornate. filigree and gilding on the walls and a wonderful stained-glass ceiling. the chamber was expanded during the 1850's and it opened because more space was needed. in the 1850's, congress appropriated $100,000 to build

the two new wings and the capitol dome. when you look up from the galleries into the chamber there is a variety of things going on. the layout you see today is similar to the layout and the old senate chamber. but the declaration has changed the same formality and layout has continued. what you have in the center of the room is the dais. that contains the providing officer's desk. -- presiding officer's desk. they oversee what is going on in the chamber. in the galleries, you have the press gallery. up there on the third floor. the press can look down and see what is happening. there is a visitors gallery

diplomats gallery, members gallery. specific areas for people to go to view what is going on on the floor. the room is divided into the republicans and democrats. if you are at the presiding officer's desk looking out for the senate. on the left-hand side would be the republicans and the right would be the democrats. the majority and minority leader are front and center at the front of the room and the center aisle. >> when i walk into the current senate chamber and a c 100 beautifully polished desks, i have a lot of different thoughts. one thought is that those desks are occupied in the latest of a long unbroken chain of senators going back to 1789. there have been over 1880 members of the senate and they have reflected all different shades of opinion and swaths of

american life. >> the senate chamber desks are the most unique as most important pieces in our collection, as first acrid of art furniture -- decorative art furniture. 48 of those were purchased in 1819 at a cost of $34 by thomas constantine. there had been desks prior to that time, but the british marched on washington in the war of 1812 and in 1814, they set fire to the capital. all the desks were destroyed. these desks are beautifully made, mahogany, inlaid veneer. there are even grills on the sides of the feet of the desk and these were used for air

conditioning. cold ice was brought in underground to cool the chamber and these are a way to ventilated in the room. today, we try to preserve that history as curators. we recognize that every senator that sits at the desks and every chamber adds another layer of history. we have the signature inside the desk drawer. >> i used my father's desk. to carve your name was a schoolboy tradition that has gone on for years here. senator colt was the first senator to carve his name in my desk. lyndon johnson had it.

i carved my name in the desk and i kept that desk. there are two dodd names on the desk. the senate chamber, the desks the history of those desks is significant. >> people will see a lot of busts around the senate chamber. they are there because they are presidents of the senate.

they were vice president's of the united state. the vice president is the presiding officer of the senate. for much of their history, that was their prominence and primary role. beginning in the 1890's, the senate passed a resolution commissioning busts to be made of each of the vice president's. the first 17 ring the inside of the chamber and then they are all through the rest of the building. some of the vice president's left the office under a cloud. henry wilson and schuyler colfax were indicated -- implicated in scandals. spiro agnew was forced to resign. there are a number of the people who left, but they are all in

the collection. all of them, successful or unsuccessful, are here. they are object lessons, perhaps , of american politics. some of them are quite spectacular. the statue of theodore roosevelt is quite dynamic, as you would expect it to be. >> above the doors are latin phrases and symbolic imagery. the marble reliefs are by artists that were done in the early 1950's. this was all part of a renovation to the chambers in the late 1940's and 1950. the imagery that you see is patriotism courage, and wisdom. we don't know exactly why the artists selected those three images, but he was given a a lot

of latitude to design what he thought would be appropriate to go in the senate chamber. these are quite lovely pieces. the latin phrases -- god has favored are undertaking. over the west entrance -- a new order of the ages. then you have, in god we trust. finally, over the presiding officer's desk -- one out of many. >> misuse of the holder in the senate has become a fundamental problem. >> you know that i don't want to get too sanctimonious about this , but i do believe in openness in government. i generally don't like secrets of any kind.

i just think life is a lot easier if you live in open book. i thought it was part of the modern era. we are not covered by media. it was only 10 and pencil. it is the electronic age. audio, radio, television. i thought that people who cannot come to washington should have a chance to see and observe what we do. in some respects i think it has adversely affected us. i think we do have more performing for the eye of the camera, but i also think that people on occasion have seen us at our best when the debate does soar to a degree. they see that we work at it and we have legitimate disagreements. it was really kind of simple for me. >> the good of the public is to

hear the debates that are going on. to be a first-hand witness to history. to understand exactly what is occurring, not just by reading the record, but by hearing the voices, watching the faces that are the authors and architects. >>the downside is that it is almost theater. we don't have as many real debates because of the fact that people are aware that they are performing in a very public space. but that they were not before either, but there was a limited audience. that truncates the debate. it has a way of style lysing the debate in a way that deprives people of the real negotiations that are historically a part of any legislative production. >> the rules of the senate perplexed me when i came over

from the house. i got to the senate and i kept looking and watching the institution and saying, this does not make any sense. what are these rules? i want to the parliamentarian and i said, explain to me, how does this work. there are two rules that matter. exhaustion and unanimous consent. if you get the senators exhausted enough, they will agree unanimously to anything. >> the senate is the forum where the people speak and were senators can speak as long as their feet will hold them. if their feet won't hold them, they can sit down and get unanimous consent to speak at their desk. that is the protection of the people's liberties. so long as there is a place

where one can speak as loudly as he wishes and as long as his lungs will last, we can be sure that the people's liberties will endure. >> it was a republican leader of the senate in the 1960's who said, thinking about the members of the senate, what a diverse lot they are, what a chore it is to try to harmonize their discordant voices to bring them all together. >> the senate's great days of success have not been because of the rules were better or worse but the quality of the people who served during that time in understanding the role of the senate, not as a partner with the executive branch or the house, but as a unique place that has a coequal obligation to make sure the people plus voice is heard. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] [captioning performed by the

national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> the 114th congress gavels and today at noon eastern. watch the house live on c-span and the senate live on c-span 2. follow the capitol hill coverage on television, radio, and online. mitch mcconnell will become the next senate majority leader in the new congress, which begins today. up next, to reporters talk about the career of senator mcconnell. they joined us in november after senator mcconnell was reelected to the senate for a sixth term. then, on "washington journal," a preview of the new congress.

>> this week on "q&a," john bresnahan and manu raju share stories about mitch mcconnell, at the first one a republican primary and then won the general election. >> this experiment of government has lasted long enough. [applause] it is time to go in a new direction. [applause] it is time to turn this country around. [cheering & applause]