today. that brings back happy memories also. steve: congressman, we thank you for your time. >> u.s. representative michael capuano of massachusetts is also retiring after serving 10 terms in congress. he recently sat down with c-span for an interview to reflect on his career and time in congress. this is 35 minutes. steve: congressman, when you walk out of the house of representatives for the final time, what will you miss the most? rep. capuano: my friends. i have made some close friends here. when you are in a battle with somebody, you learn to like and respect the people in the battle with you. i have made some very good friends on both sides of the aisle. i will miss the opportunity to

say hello to them on a regular basis. steve: do you remember your first day here in the house? rep. capuano: not really. not clearly. it was mostly the role of having so many people at home. i did not come here as a naïve person. i had significant political experience beforehand. to me, it was just another step in life. steve: why the house? why did you decide to serve? rep. capuano: the job i had before this, i had for nine years, it was a very tough job. i was getting a little tired of it, tired of the battles every day. steve: what was that job? rep. capuano: i was mayor of my city.

it was an older city going through a lot of changes. my natural personality is to fight. and so we had a lot of tough battles and many worked out well. but you get tired of fighting every day. it was coming to an end. and this position opened up. my predecessor decided to retire. i thought maybe i should take a shot at it. steve: what is the biggest challenge to being in the house? what is it like? rep. capuano: for me, it was trying to keep my feet on the trying to keep my feet on the ground at home. we found ways but it was always a challenge. you cannot be there all the time. you have to be here three or four days of the week.

i am a homebody. i like to sit on my front porch. i like to have my coffee at my own kitchen table. for me, it was the institution. i have heard thousands of stories about the good old days. life has changed. it is faster for everyone. it has become more difficult to build relationships outside of the floor and committee hearings. of course, you are arguing about important and passionate things. it is hard to build relationships. you need to put it aside. not to forget it. but to say, the personal stuff. it is different when you are arguing with someone that you respect, and you know their life and their life story than

someone you do not know. i think for me, i have always built my career around personal relationships. this means it is a matter of respect for people that have significantly different opinions than you. steve: the one question we are asking every retiring member is this -- complete the sentence. the state of politics in washington today is what? rep. capuano: i actually think it is probably relatively normal. i know that no one wants to hear that. politics has always been difficult. it has always been confrontational. i am reading a book right now by andrew jackson.

members were caned on the floor of the house. things with the press were always difficult for politicians. i have always been surprised -- for me, politics changes but the basics do not change. and again, just like the rest of life, everyone's life has become faster. you can make an argument that it has become too fast. how do you change that? you cannot take people's cell phones away or internet away. everyone has to learn to struggle with that. i find it interesting to watch the ads on tv. find ways to turn off the internet at dinner. i thought it would be easier to just tell the kids to put down their phones. but the concept is right. people struggling with ways to do that. politics are struggling --

politics is struggling with the same thing. we need to find ways to spend more personal time together. you have to work at it now. it is not like in the good old days when at 5:00, there was no facetime or cell phone and you did not have to raise a bazillion dollars to run tv ads. i don't know if those were better days but i know they aren't coming back so we have to struggle with the problems we face today and try to address them. i am not the guy who has ever lamented the state of politics. it has always been tough. i am always surprised at the number of people that have thought the good old days were genteel. those people do not know the history. steve: let us talk about some of the people you have worked with

including the speakers. dennis hastert, nancy pelosi, john boehner, and now paul ryan. the role of the speaker -- how important is it and how does it reflect the tone of the body or does it? rep. capuano: it is very important but not the only important job. i think america has allowed power to be concentrated too much in too few individuals. i do not blame any president for wanting to accumulate and gather power under themselves. that is human nature. i do think that congress has allowed too much of it to occur starting with the work powers -- the war powers act. i think the same is true with the speakership. i think it is true across the board. i actually believe in the messiness of democracy with a lot of voices having mostly equal say or comparable say.

i also hope it is a pendulum and the pendulum swings back and forth. i think it has swung too far to a concentration of power among too few individuals. steve: you also served with senator ted kennedy. was he really the lion of the senate? rep. capuano: he certainly was. it is kind of hilarious when i hear people say -- politicians serve too long. ted kennedy served for 40 years and no one remembers the first 20. i would argue clearly that individuals -- there are time simply's is where longevity isl important. i do think he was a lion in the

senate. i did not know him when he was younger but when i knew him, he had already learned -- and i would not look across the aisle without compromising your principles -- but you have to make a deal on occasion to get to the finish line. it was not personal. he would bash you for what you believe in but at the end of the day, he would respect you. he embodied that. i think everyone here respected him. steve: what were interactions with him like? rep. capuano: he treated me like a human being. like a colleague as opposed to an underling. he was ted kennedy, the lion of the senate from the kennedy family. he would have had every

possibility to treat you like a punk little kid. do not bother me. he never did that. just the opposite. i never saw him do anything like that to anyone else. he made me feel like i had something to offer. and we were colleagues more than anything else. and that was important. his legacy and the position he was in when i got here -- he certainly could have been different and he was not. steve: you have cast thousands of votes over the years. any regrets? rep. capuano: regrets? no, not one. all of the major roads that i -- major votes that i took i thought were the right votes at the time. i think most of them have turned out to be the right votes even in hindsight. a couple of votes i might change

but nothing critical. i mean i voted against the iraq war, against the patriot act, against note child left behind. -- against no child left behind. even sitting here today, i think they were the right votes based on what has happened since then. no real regrets at all. none. steve: in politics, people like to give people labels. how would you define your ideology? rep. capuano: pragmatic progressive. i don't think anyone has a more progressive record than i do but i also know that i cannot achieve my agenda because i know the majority of america does not share my view. i would like to think that i have balanced that pretty well. knowing when to make a deal and when not to. it is a judgment call. there is no right or wrong. it is what you are comfortable with.

sitting here today, i can to you unequivocally that i have never felt at any moment in politics that i have sold my soul for anything and i am proud of that. i like to vote progressive but i also like to be way more pragmatic. i am not an idealist. being a progressive makes you idealistic but i know i can't get to where the country needs to be because my views are not the majority views. one step at a time, with time, we are heading that way. steve: based on that, where do you see the democratic party going? rep. capuano: don't know. i laugh at this in the sense that both parties are dynamic. i go back to what i said earlier, some people think they run from the top down.

i never thought that. some people would like that to happen. and it might happen for a short period of time but overall, it is from the bottom up. same thing with the democratic or republican party. that being the case, i do not have a clue where they are going. i know in general that we are struggling and stumbling in a progressive approach. and i think that is ok. in the sense that you cannot force your views on everyone. it takes time. for people to embrace the health -- the idea of health care for all. even when they do, the next thing is how do we pay for it? those are fair questions.

those are difficult questions. my answer may not be the same as yours and if i really want to get there, i have to be able to say -- maybe we will not take the three steps forward i would like to take, but maybe one step forward. i have been able to do that in pretty much everything. we have done it in health care, several liberties, human rights. and with the occasional step back like the patriot act on civil liberties -- if i had to take a vote -- i took the vote i thought was right. for the country, i regret that vote. it was a first time that i have seen civil liberties voluntarily given up based on fear. by the general population. we have seen that before with abraham lincoln. fdr did it during wartime, but they quickly? and they got those rights back . this is the first time that i have seen it in american history where we, society, voluntarily gave up certain what i would

consider civil liberties and civil rights based on fear that was, i think, overblown at the time and with results that i still believe have not been worth the cost. steve: you said in the final two years of the clinton presidency and the first two years of the trump presidency -- over the years, did you have a close working relationship with one or two presidents? rep. capuano: no, neither president. each one is different obviously. you had the last two years of the clinton administration. by that time, the hottest issue of the day was over with when i got here. bush was more personal. he made an attempt to reach out to more members, but not everybody. obama did not make an attempt to reach out to almost anybody, and trump has done even worse. it has been shocking to me. again, if the roles were

reversed, i have always believed anybody in any position, i did it when i was mayor, you reach out to everyone and bring them in and have a talk. just once in a while, not every time. in theory, i would argue that any president should be bringing down 10 or 20 members of congress at any time with no agenda just to get to know each other. not all the time. not every night. but you can meet a letter members -- a lot of members that way. build the personal relationship. not that it changes anything, but it might smooth some of the rough edges around here. and i have not seen anyone even tried to do it. george bush tried the most, but not very well. i was told bill clinton did it but that was before i got here. steve: going back to president obama -- you are not alone in saying that he did not do enough to reach out here on capitol hill. why was that? rep. capuano: i don't know. everyone is different. i don't assign reasons. it is a busy job and an important job but i actually think part of the job of doing

anything is again, politics is based on relationships. that is not new. that is old. it is not going to change. therefore, why would you not want to build relationships with as many people as you can? at least try. you would have to ask them that. why they didn't do it. steve: you faced a contentious primary this year. did that surprise you? rep. capuano: not at all. i have been telling people for a while that my constituents were angry. very angry. they are angry at the democratic party for not standing up for certain things. they were angry that donald trump got elected and the way he has governed. everyone wants to look at it as partisanship because it is a shorthanded way. they forget that we have a republican governor in one of the most if not the most democratic states of the country and he is the most popular governors in the country -- was

the most popular and just won an overwhelming victory. partisanship is not it. it is how you do it. my constituents are angry and upset and want change. i knew it would be a tough primary. any candidate in my district would be a tough primary. especially one that could scratch the itch of the more vocal progressives in my district. no surprise at all. steve: the boston globe reported that a number of your colleagues including elizabeth warren did not endorse you in the primary. did that bother you? rep. capuano: i judge everybody, not just politicians, on who they are one they are needed. it is easy to be offended when you do not need a friend.

for instance, over my career i have had colleagues that get in trouble. they do something stupid and get caught. i don't have to judge them. they are judged by others. one of my classmates right now is in jail doing time. he did something really stupid. and he is paying for it. i do not have to hate him for it. i visited him not too long ago because he is my friend. he made a mistake. i hope he has addressed the problems he has. don't need to throw stones at him. so for me, and i know that i have had bad times in my life , the people that i know are the people there when i needed them. so for me, i have never -- the -- never been the darling of the political elite ever. i am not now and never will be. it is not my goal. i have never been the

hand-picked person by any organized group. not the democratic party. not big business. nobody. my whole career has been built on doing it from the street up. endorsements, i have always ught when people -- always la when people come to me for endorsements. look, it is fine, but they do not mean as much as they seem to mean because i don't know anyone that goes to the ballot and says i will vote for him because so and so told me to do it. it is usually because their wife or their little league coach or someone they work with talked about it. it is not because a politician like me said -- let us vote for this guy. never really worried about those things. you want everyone to be with you, but when they are not, you just move on. i don't think they are determinative things. even when i was on the other side of giving an endorsement, i

never thought they were determinant. i don't know how many people i have told that. they won't make much difference. if you think that is what is going to help you to win, you're wrong. you still have to knock on the doors yourself. the answer is no. i have been around for a long time. people know me. they either know me or they don't. you're not going to know me because someone says you should meet the sky. steve: did it hurt you personally? did you just chalk it up to politics? rep. capuano: i just chalked it up to politics if you want to he truth. i have never expected any politician to ever support me. ehe ones who did get a hug positive check mark, but it is toier and political life duck than to stand up. i have always prided myself on being a person that stands up. i have endorsed people. the people i have endorsed over the years, i have told them the truth.

if i endorse you, we are not playing a game. my wife goes the other way, my kids to the other way -- if i endorse in, you are going to get sick of seeing me. because if i am with you, i am with you. that is the way it is. you just jump in. for me, i expect most politicians to -- and i don't want to make anyone upset. for me, it is not negative to not jump in. that includes my opponent. i respect someone who says, i like you, but i voted for this person for this reason. i respect it. ducking, again, anyone who knows me i don't think would use that term to describe me in any capacity. steve: you mentioned your former colleague, anthony weiner. where did you see him?

we are physically is he? rep. capuano: i believe he is in fort devens in massachusetts. steve: how is he? rep. capuano: he seems to be doing well. we did not talk a lot about it. i went to visit him as a friend. i basically talked about whatever he wanted to talk about. my life is more open to him and his is more limited. i figured, just an opportunity to see him. as a politician i am not supposed to say that because of the bad things he did, i get all of that. he paid his price. i don't have to begrudge it to him. i think of him as a good person who made serious mistakes. i hope he can correct his life. what more can i say? as your party prepares to take over the majority, what advice would you give to

democratic leaders, particularly nancy pelosi? rep. capuano: i don't know. i'm not the guy who gives a lot of advice. everybody here is a capable politician. i have always been -- i love you but i don't pay that much attention to the media. you guys are the exception, which is why i am talking to you. you don't do the let's blow it up and watch it blow up thing. pretty much everybody else does, and want to light the fuse blow it up. my idea is don't pay much attention to the media. find something you are willing to lose an election over, if you are not willing to lose an election because every vote is a critical vote -- is there anything you believe in? you don't have to believe in everything. you should not have that on every vote.

for the sake of discussion, war and peace was it. if everybody in my district wanted us to go to war in iraq i still would've voted no. patriot act -- i feel that way about war and the civil liberties, and human rights. i feel strongly about housing and health care but i am more amenable to try to reflect my district. those three happened to reflect my district, but those are a matter of luck. i hope the democrats do not lose that. i wonder if we have it sometimes. i think america wonders. the democratic party is not this monolithic entity. you get a leader when you have a presidential nominee, after that -- the analogy i use is the republicans are like are a pack of dogs and the democrats are a herd of cats.

atublicans are much better following the leader and sticking to script and using the same 100 words. democrats are all over the place, i don't know which is better. i prefer the individualistic mentality as opposed to their group mentality. everybody is different. my hope is that the democrats embrace the breadth of voices i hope we encourage. if not encourage, accept it. i hope that does not change. steve: why is it that you wonder whether your party has that? rep. capuano: there are people in the party who think if you are not like me or don't agree with me then you can't be a good democrat. i am as pro-choice as anybody but i think we should welcome pro-life democrats. if we don't agree on 10% of

items, i don't want you to be the determining vote. a very good friend of mine several years ago, he was the most conservative member of the democratic party for the entire time i was here. really good guy. really good with his heart. voting for his constituency, i would hear on a regular basis when he had trouble with an election from my progressive friends that he wasn't progressive enough. it is mississippi. he is as progressive as you are going to get. he is with us 50% of the time. that is the best you're going to get. if you lose him you will get someone who agrees with us 0% of the time. i will take 50% over 0% every day of the week. that's what gets me in trouble with some of my less pragmatic friends. i don't see any other way to do it. he lost and the person who took his seat is with us precisely 0% of the time. i don't see how that is a

victory for my beliefs. he was pro-life and pro-gun, we did not agree on all of those issues. in the final analysis, we were able to move some of those things forward with him here an when we were able to do so with his successor. steve: we have the new england patriots behind you and the "boston globe" headline. who have the more rabid fans, red sox or patriots? rep. capuano: i don't know, it depends on how good they are doing. [laughter] i am told red sox fans are longer suffering. not lately, and we are going to keep it that way to the best of our ability. i don't know who is more passionate. i love sports. but to me, sports are sports. they are a distraction. one, iood one, a healthy

love it. but i am not the hero worshiper of the world. i have yet to see professional sports players cure cancer or house the poor or get health care for somebody. i enjoy it, i respect it, i love to root for them like everybody else. steve: when you leave the house, what is next for you personally? rep. capuano: i am trying to figure out what i want to do. it really boils down to -- for the first time in my life i have choices. that is not a fair statement because i had a choice of whether to run for congress. if you give me a job, i just do it. i do it 120%. if i was digging ditches and i actually did dig ditches when i

was in college, i was the guy with the backhoe and the jackhammer and anxious to do it. this is the first time i am like , i don't have to do anything. i am at the point my life for many of my contemporaries are retiring. i am trying to struggle with whether i want to keep going that 100 miles per than i have hour always gone or slow down a little bit. that is not an easy decision for me. it is a very difficult decision. i have never had to make it before because it was always 100 miles an hour. i never really thought about it until some of my contemporaries started to retire. it is like, what do you do all day? several of my friends have retired and they kind of like it. which is surprising to me.

i never claimed to be smart when it comes to my career. i do what i think is right and i do it i think is fun. i will try to keep doing that. steve: you have had a couple months since the primary. will you miss being in congress? rep. capuano: i will miss certain aspects of it. the main reason i want to come back was to be in the majority. if you told me last year that there was no way we know for a fact you will not be in the majority, i don't know, there is a lot of people that would say that is enough. beating the minority has gotten worse. will that continue? i don't know. we will see. the potential of using the majority and getting something done was attractive to me. i will miss that opportunity. i will miss my friends. i will not miss the weekly trek down here.

i will not miss the bells going off for me to stop everything i'm doing to go name a post office in kansas. some aspects are true but other aspects i have been doing a long time that i am a little tired of. steve: finally, what will you tell your successor, what should she be doing? rep. capuano: do what she thinks is right. if you do what you think is right, do not overthink it. not everything is clear, but once you come up with knowing you think is the right thing to do, do it. you cannot be right all the time. you cannot please everybody all the time. you can hide in the legislative position. executives cannot hide. you show up every day. if there is a pothole and it is not fixed, it is your fault. legislators can if they choose

to. don't try to hide. stand up and make a decision. once you make the decision, stand by it. if there is nothing you are willing to lose over, you will never make much of a difference. she is not coming in naive. she has been with the city council for a while. job, so youerent have to learn it. i think she will be fine. she does not need my advice too much. steve: any travel plans on your bucket list? rep. capuano: i took a vacation with my wife. i look forward to be able to take vacations when i want to as opposed to when the house is out of session. we are out of session the same time everyone in america is out of session, which means vacation plans get difficult.

there is no bucket list. i like to travel, my wife and i would like to do more of that. no -- there are a couple places we want to go, but not the kind of thing like i have to go there before i die. i have not been to certain places and i want to go. there are some places i want to go back to. we will do that because we have always traveled and we like to travel. not a real bucket list in the sense of things i have to do. i'm not skydiving, scuba diving, none of that stuff. steve: we thank you for your time. rep. capuano: thank you. when the new congress takes office in january, it will have the youngest, most diverse freshman class in recent history. new congress, new leaders.

watch it live on c-span starting january 3. c-span's washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. sunday morning, american conservative union chair discusses the trump presidency and the new congress. also a look at criminal justice reform efforts with georgetown university law professor and author of "memoir of a jailhouse lawyer." and the implications of the brexit about in the united kingdom with the brooks's institution. watch washington journal live. join the discussion. casket bearinghe the remains of president george h.w. bush was brought to the capital to lie in state. vice president mike