tv Charlie Rose PBS November 9, 2016 12:00pm-1:01pm PST
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>> rose: welcome to the program on election take. we turn not to the results of the election but we turn to the challenge facing the next president. america'schallenges. we talk to walter isaacson, jeff greefnld. kurt andersen cokie roberts and doris kearns goodwin. >> we see enormous gaps between men and women, between no, ma'am whites and nonwhites, between college educated and noncollege educated, 97% difference between white evangelicals, and those who do not identify with a register.
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>> each ideologic stripe, on television on radio by the internet is not going to change. >> faust said, the resistance to modernity, all the way through the muslim world now to europe now to the united states, is a major trend to the 21st century. >> so much of the theory about how political parties work even at this stage, has been i think thrown into a cocked hat. not just trump engendered a hostile takeover, not a single wing of the party formed, if they happen to coincide with the republican party itist by accident. >> one of the most important things is to make the american people believe again that people in the political life can do things that will make america better. >> america's future after the election when we continue.
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funding for charlie rose >> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by the following: >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> the thee theodore roosevelt s wouldn't be a good country to live in if not for all. it was an election defined by both some progress and some unprecedented controversy. the race marked the first time a woman hillary clinton secured a major party's nomination for president.
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donald trump's unexpected candidacy royaled the republican party and ignited questions are companies the ideologic spectrum, bitter division that playing our country and how they might influence our future. an esteemed group of panelists joins me now. from boston if the his torn doris kearns. >> ifill: wirch, here in new york, walter isaacson, founder of the aspen institute. jeff greenfield, politico, and kurt andersen, wnyc, and cokie roberts. we are doing this on monday afternoon, before the nation votes on tuesday. we do this not knowing who will be elected president but we do this in the spirit that the problems and the challenges are the same for whoever is elected. we have significant challenges,
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it is an important time, and i've asked these people to come here and think about the future rarmdregardless of who held thel office. i begin with walter isaacson. what do you think walter whoever the new president is what is the list of challenges he or she face? >> one of the things that happens now is really for the first time in our history our parties are to ideologically subdivided and it used to be you know the liberal republicans or conservative democrats or whatever, and you didn't develop a partisan bitterness to the other side. i think we've demonized the other side in politics and that's going to be the thing that has to be healed. you know, it really does demand saying okay i'm going otry to do a team of rivals as doris would say or whatever. and i just think the other thing
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we are seeing now is a rise of populism that's kind of a poised angry populism. we have seen populism ever since andrew jackson to the present. but this is different. >> rose: not what we've seen out of europe coming out of? >> all across europe and the united states you had the notion to the barricades. now from hungary and the czech republic to france to england to the united states. you have a pop list and sometimes nativist result. >> but it's not just partisan divisions. what we see sitting here on monday is enormous gaps between men and women, between whites and nonwhites, between rural and urban, between college educated and noncollege educated. and our last abc pom poll, there were 97 points difference between white evangelicals and
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people who do not identify with a religion. these are great fissures in american society now. >> they have one common element which they are in some sense perhaps not the others, between those who are comfortable in the new world and those who are not. people who are riding surfing this new world and people who are feeling drown by it. they may feel drowned by everything from racial resentment to cultural resentment to the fact that they have been left behind economically. but the sense they have been left behind helps explain in part why throughout this campaign they were so immune to the normal kinds of information that would have driven them from a guy like donald trump. >> that's why so imperative that you should convince them that you are listening. >> one of the pieces of leadership that can happen and i can see the minority of the republican party who were not donald trump supporters, the jeb
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bushes, the mitt romneys of the world, a good number of conservative economists who among other things adhered to a reality based version of the world. to me that's the greatest shock and fear i have, about what this campaign has shown us, and what isn't going to be healed tomorrow or the next day. is this sense that people are entitled to their own facts. that my version of reality is my version of reality because, i want it to be. and we've had a candidate that is donald trump, who has dined off that, who has served that, who has legitimized that, to an extent i didn't really imagine was possible. this is not an altogether new thing, he didn't create it, but he has made it an acceptable posture, that i don't -- i can have my own version of the truth. >> well, a piece of tape where he says something and he says he didn't say it. >> and it doesn't matter. >> rose: let me go to doris
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kearns who joins us, doris you have considered the sense of presidential leadership and what is required and is it possible to heal these divisions that everybody has spoken to? >> well, i think one of the most important things somehow to make the american people believe again that people in preliminary life can do things that will make the country better. i mean you've got this changing america, people have said, a lot of people are frightened by the change by the pace of the change by the change minorities getting more power and more numbers than eventually than whites are going to have. there are answers to some of these things but it's going to depend upon the people of the country believing that politicians ask make a difference -- can make a difference. that's what's lost. when you think democracy, 20% of young people think democracy is not a good thing or pessimistic about the future of the country. winston churchill says,
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democracy is the terrible form of government yet it's better than anything else tried. do something about the inequality the scwiezing middle class but we've had gridlock for such a long period of time, looking at politicians one of the reasons trump won,. >> rose: won the republican nomination? >> won the republican nomination. you have to somehow instill again going to other people whoever winlz able to reach out to the other side show that congress can work again and not be in gridlock just so it can begin to develop that sense that the country can make its own future that's what we've lost and in a country like america that was always the subdividing sign of us that we could make things better. think about fdr when he runs it's that middle of the depression, it's horrible, much worse than anything is now, yet happy days are here again, that's his sign yet this is a contagion. we have to turn it around to our
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normal american optimism again i think. >> rose: jeff greenfield, is head in hands right now. i don't know if he's pessimisti- >> when he came in doris, the country would pretty much let him do anything, if he was a dictator, please go ahead. that is 180° different from where we are now. that is the reason i'm pessimistic. come january whatever the makeup of the congress is, try othink the new president or the congress crossing the line, given pressures from their base is to me to create almost an illusion, i know what the words are that everybody thinks they ought to say but the minute the base of the republican party says to their leadership you've betrayed us before we know what russia is telling us, if
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somebody wants to cross to democratic side, now you're a corporate centrist. >> rose: like you said in the campaign. >> the difference between where the parties were and where they are now and the belief that the other side is not just wrong but evil has permeated this political system and that's why i'm a possess miss. >> i hate to agree. but -- >> there's a first time for everything. >> it's not had a i hate to agree with you but i hate to agree with that set of facts but it's true. we are past mitch mcconnell saying his goal is to have barack obama defeated. and maybe he and paul ryan and hillary clinton will sit down together. i think she certainly if she's elected will reach out to them. i don't think there's any question about that. >> rose: she's hinted at that and telegraphed that. >> but first of all, paul ryan is under attack by his own party and the senate is very much up in the air and it's very hard to
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see people being willing to risk their own political lives in order to do the right thing for the country. >> rose: where did we come to these deep divisions? was it somehow that the congress became polarized and fed off of that and you had engineery man , they had to be moderate more extremist. >> let me say something about cokie's dad. hale boggs was a congressman. he had to represent whites and blacks and suburbanites and labor and everything else. he had to pull together in the early '60s civil rights acts and everything else. after he and then your mother held that seat they redistricted, they had sword of
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a jerry mandatorie gerrymandereu got david duke and you got people who went to jail and that type of thing destroyed the bipartisan ship. >> to that example, also, shows you bob livingston who was the person from the suburban district which had been a third african american before the jerry man derg. sgerrymandering, he voted for martin luther king and all sort of things. he said to the white people who were very conservative, david deuks legislative district, then it became all white it pushed him much further to the right and he'll talk to that. that's what happened, the left has been pushed to the left, right pushed to the right, they don't speak to each other, they don't live in washington. >> the only thing can i say
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something on behalf of optimism? because expectations sore low right now that i think we have to -- so low right now, these problems were created by people. we created these kinds of reportionment things. -- reportionment thing. we can change that. whether the leaders are going to be on the side of both of those things to be changed is another question but i think even doing little things the media will be so happy. supposedly hillary does meet with republicans right away, to say like lyndon johnson every member of the house over to the white house in the first six months of my presidency, maybe it will sort of flood the reality to a little degree or at least give a little bit to it. we got to hope we can't assume we're not going to go to that. >> some will say i won't go to the white house and i certainly
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won't have my picture taken with her. >> well let the invitations go out and let them say i'm not going and let's see what the american people feel about that. there is still a dignity to this office of the presidency that i think we have to hold onto that if it's made known this invitations have gone out, every sunday night you have a sporting event, you drink with those guys, then let's put a list down to people who say no to the president of the united states. >> we are old enough in boston to be nostalgic to the time in louisiana and in washington when it was different. well the thing that is never going to be changed i don't believe and can't be changed by an act of political will is how the media are different today than they were a generation or two ago. the degree to which every ideologic stripe can have its own version of reality reinforced on television, on radio, by the internet, is not going to change. so i don't -- you know, unless
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in some implausible way, americans just stand up and say no, we're going to return to the fair consensus era, i don't think so. i think we're cooked on that -- in that way. >> you can drive this point i think i guess at the end of this we will all be heading for the hemlock. but facts are facts. inauguration day 2009, as robert draper i think recounts, republicans and conservatives met at a washington steak house and said, what are we going to do? we're not going to give him anything. at the face of this obstructionism, the republicans won two mid term sweeps. and so from the point of view of how this plays out, civility is a sign of weakness, to turn john kennedy on his head. the people who now are in yellow and people like norm arnstein and mann have argued this is
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eight symmetric, it is more on one side, that if the republicans see that on the congressional level they have succeeded by doing what doris thought would not be, no we're not going to cooperate, no we're not going to sit down he's a legitimate president, i would love to believe you know if aaron sorkin could write the next six months i would have some hope. >> west wing two. >> i don't see the mechanism. before the hour is over maybe somebody can convince us how do we do this? >> as we have been thinking for the last year and days and hours about the possibility of a trump administration i have often thought well if that were to happen would the democrats remaining, if they controlled the senate or didn't, would they somehow behave differently, than the republicans, in a similar position? would they not be obstruction it's? i don't think we can bet on that. would they suddenly say, we'll
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confirm your supreme court nominations, i don't think so, president trump. nothing needs to last forever but these underlying media conditions which give great incentive to people on the extremes to remain on the extremes. >> media -- >> included altogether. >> well the way out of this which doris can talk to, i think, is almost impossible. but every 50, 75 years, it -- hams which is some major realignment, it happened with teddy roosevelt and taft and split in parties and progressivism. you have a real hunger in america among republicans of the established school of republicans and centrist democrats that says this is wacky and i just -- i haven't been able to figure out how it
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happens. but some realignment of parties -- >> rose: they have done that in london, great britain -- >> you are involved with organizations that are very central to that goal and that is one place that i do see some hope. is that there are now several institutions that are really working to try to punish people for not coming together, as owned to -- i know you haven't been yet but hang in walter, and i think that the -- and i do think that there are some republicans that are fed up that things are not going on. ripples of hope. >> here i go again as rond reagan may have said to me. if you ask the country do you want bipartisanship, do you want a cooperative political
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situation? they say yes they want to watch a new political party, they want to watch documentaries and eat broccoli. how they act in the voting booth hasn't borne that out. disaffection may be sufficient that some other kind of political force can emerge. >> that political force is called women. because women in -- >> how could women as leaders -- >> they do in legislative bodies they do come together and we have lots of data on this, much more than men do. >> because they listen? >> because they cooperate with each other, they particularly do on issues having to do with women children and families but on other issues as well, they talk to each other they listen to each other and they behave. >> are was it you cokie, it's good that you were a parent of a two-year-old because they helped you cover the senate. >> the other thing that affects
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it -- >> i think cokie's right. the number of women who vote are greater than men, the numbers of women who graduate from college are greater, med school, law school, meet the demands of family and working life et cetera. if they get more into politics then maybe there is -- you've just given me another ripple of hope i'm there. >> rose: interesting too, i've traveled around the world from china to europe to russia. they're all asking you what's gone wrong in america. that's their question. >> something jeff said earlier, which resonated to me, faw faust said, many, the resistance to modernity, tall way through both the muslim world now to europe now to the united states, is a major trend to the 21st century. >> but it's -- >> the resistance to modernity?
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>> globalism -- >> rose: beyond radical islamism? >> i think brexit is part of it. >> rose: the global -- >> a lot of it has to do with technology and the fact that the whole world is being affected by technology, at the same time. and, you know, it's like the strum revolution where everybody had to leave the farms and go to the cities or go across the ocean. and everything that they had done was no longer valued, home manufacture particularly, which of course was women's work. and it was -- it was incredibly disruptive to use a modern term. and that's what's happened with technology. and so with people not having the kinds of jobs they used to have, not having the kinds of lives they used to have and combine that with the cultural changes and the demographic changes they look around and say i don't recognize my life. >> and i actually -- >> that's the important point.
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>> rose: hold on doris i'll get to you. >> i asked one of the key economic players in obama's first term all right i'm giving you a magic wand, what do you do with the 50-year-old glaised steel worker and what he said was i can't do anything for that person. his kids i can do something with if we had an apprenticeship program, if we can use the community colleges like in germany i can do something with it. but the people in late middle age who are displaceare going to have lives lesser than they had because the new jobs and he was very candid about this if you want to tell a displaced 55-year-old steel worker i've got a good job for you you're going to be a home health care aid to an 80-year-old woman who is incontinent. that may not be helpful. >> rose: what is that help to that person? >> is that guy right or is are there things you could actually do beyond the kind of piety of
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retraining. thing about the democratic party, 20 years they say yes you have lost your job in this industry but we'll retrain you. >> rose: part of that is because of technology. not only in causing the displacement but also, you've got to learn skills that have to do with things you're not even familiar with. >> and maybe fewer jobs. we have not phased that aspect of technology and automation. we have not discussed this in a political way. not that the the machine overlords are going to take over but this time may be different. >> we don't have any data points that shows that though. it's amazing. >> ask we look -- >> rose: i know you can't see us so it's hard -- >> got the exact riot question but what always surprises me is there are more and more jobs and we've seen this in the numbers recently where we've had enormous amounts of technology -- >> rose: not jobs that peep plan for. >> i don't think the total
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number of jobs ever insistence weaving medicines came in in the 1940s, people would say there would be unemployment and we're seeing it this year. >> to what jeff was saying there's the point of the next generation, the children, the sons of the manufacturing workers who were displaced need to be convinced and it's a great cultural challenge to do so that being a nurse is not a women's job, solely. >> rose: doris, get doris in, yes. >> i just wanted to follow up what cokie said, i think the industrial revolution does give us a parallel to some of the fears we have today. think of it, as you said, people are moving from the farms to the city, lots of immigrants are coming from a broad, we don't even know the country anymore, all that technological change has taken place with telephone and tuition, eventually that got channeled into the progressive
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part of the renal party and teddy roosevelt and change took place in a rational way and things began to feel better. now we've got real similar situation with the technological revolution, with the people feeling the country is changing beyond what they want it to change, fear about that, leadership somehow if it gets mobilized can channel those fears and anxieties in the right direction. those changes were as big to those people as what we're feeling, now yet we somehow move through it. >> rose: beginning of the 20th century when was that? >> late 19th century, beginning of the 20th century. there were strikes in the cities, riots in the cities, marches, unions were just beginning to make their way felt, and there was lots of immigration, lots of resistance from immigration coming from abroad, people were losing the sense of belonging to themselves on a farm, the gap between rich
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and poor had emerged, richest people was some doctor on a hill in your own farm town. it was hugely disorienting and disrupting, yet it got channeled through the leadership through the party structure into positive form. we're feeling it again. >> you are still going to have to live through it. you get the next generation and the next generation and i really think that's the big hope. >> another hopeful data point. if you look at all the polling that goes on, people under 45, certainly under 35 and 30, this great polarization between i can't deal with modernity and the new face of america and i can is not there. >> also we are talking about a majority-minority population. that is a huge change. i live in montgomery county maryland it used to be the whitest of white suburbs, it's now minority, majorities. you have a very different america for young people. >> so put this on the table as
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well because one of the things that i have actually sympathy for the political classes, the nature of what they're dealing with, so you start with the mobilization of, leading up to world war ii, starting in 1940 through 1973, 74. we had the greatest economic expansion and growth broadly, ever. i think annually growth was 4% a year. so if you came out of that, everything was better every year. the christmas club, you put some more money in. you know the home was affordable. and now -- >> particularly if you were a white man. >> granted there were people left out absolutely. that's partly why we are talking about that disaffected class. since 1975 i think annual growth rate over the last four years has been much more like 2%. and how does a political leadership talk to a disaffected group when in fact what you are going to tell them if you are honest is, we can't have that again. >> rose: it's also why they
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have the new term called the new normal. 2% not 4%, nobody thinks it's going to be 4% in the near future. >> basically in 1974 because you picked that day it's sort of when two things happen personal computers come ininto existence and the internet starts to spread. not only a small growth rate for some people it was really, really good and for some people it was bad. >> around the world between people that were riding this new world and i would think to be candid pretty much everybody in this conversation is comfortable with this new world and people who have felt overwhelmed. >> we haven't talked about what this election cycle has done to and within the republican party. now are these fish fis fis
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everythingures that will be coming poorlt,. >> as was hillary clinton. >> exactly. what now and how does the how does the reconsolidating republican standpoint i establid elsewhere -- >> how does all the question of trade go to the question of jobs, that's what it's about, those people are against trade, believing that trade and trade as it is practiced today means the loss of jobs? >> except for new orleans. >> except for the people who are comfortable with modernity, and technology, realize their jobs comes from a part of global park down. >> and facing part of our economy. >> they don't say i'm going to buy cheap stuff at walmart thousand, i'm happy to have no
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job. >> rose: and the idea of globalization. >> that's the other place that the republican party has got to figure itself out on immigration. what trump has done in terms of alienating the hispanics might bury the republican party. we have seen this incredible wonderful turnout of hispanics in the last, over the early voting period. >> rose: it is a significant factor in this election. >> we expect tomorrow it will also be very high. this is right reaction to somebody being offensive to you. go vote. and go say, i'm going to with my vote show you what i think about that. >> annal how long do you think it would take -- >> you look at 2012 when the renal party understood it seemed that they had to break out and reach out to immigrants because this is the future and somehow this took it away from it now. >> go ahead doris. >> can i make one more point?
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it used to be said, montgomery county used to be all white and now it's more diverse. the more they brush up against fellow citizens the more they are willing as we have seen, in a way that it hasn't before, they know them they have seen it then the whole brexit idea where people were living in the place where the others were the others, as we become more diverse, in florida and north carolina and other states, you got to hope that somehow that desire and that fear of the other will lessen. and that has always been the critical thing about america. >> maybe what we need is a new land grant program like lincoln established where you take millennials and move their coffee houses and their bookstores into these rural areas, instead of 160 acres, give them low interest loans. >> rose: we look at populism in china where there's a great
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tension between urban and rural, people from the rural areas want to come to the urban areas to find a job, they have some of the same kinds of tensions. >> the interesting thing is when things happen like this globally and then you get this kind of yearning for the outside and even i've read the bully pulpit and love it, in some ways teddy roosevelt facing this exact same type of period, almost does it as an outsiter, talking about a square deal for the american people. and that's something that donald trump may have done for us which is maybe outsiders especially very wealthyy outsiders, howard schultz or whatever, can say why not me why not me. and it could possibly open the way to new people coming in. >> i think politically a really important point. i for some reason went back and read a once famous play called state of the union. the principal is a businessman,
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spencer tracy. they want him to run for president, he winds up saying i paid for this microphone i'm not going to speak. your cliches. but the idea of an outsider who reached across party lines and talked in a way like the aaron sorkin fantasy. >> together instead of subdivided. >> rose: is that where ronald reagan got that phrase? from new hampshire -- [simultaneous speech] >> maybe it was a hell of a coincidence yon. > -- i don't know.>> the impulsp phenomenon was a hollywood liberal fantasy turned on its said, the outsider -- >> the 1998 film. >> speaking truth to power but in a way that no rational person might recognize as truth. but there's something about that impulse that drove him as close as he may have got ton this job. >> and actually it is a quite
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wonderful american moment the to think about that. whatever happens you know, we are making history here. and the notion that somebody can come from the outside, with every newspaper in the country, with the exception of two, well, you count the ku klux klan, three. >> rose: and be close at the end. >> and all the intelligentci earvetion, and still be so reveeferred and so close to being president if not president i think that tells you something about -- >> rose: what does that tell you? >> that the people actually do govern, the people rule. >> and her yearning for an outsider. >> i'm sorry go ahead. pointersed out that you took donald trump mr. a different form you had something really
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special. it's like someone i know about her ununlamented husband, we had had a great life if only he had been a completely different person. with some sense with trump there is wisdom there. >> rose: actually donald trump said i didn't create this movement, this movement was there and i went and enabled them to sort of see something in me as their spear carrier. >> there is no question that people feel that the political system has let them down. a lot of the people who have supported mr. trump and it has, i mean it hasn't answered the needs of a lot of those people and yet i still worry about the idea that we need to look outside, i mean why can't we hope that somebody who cares about politics and has been a state legislator and maybe been in the military and comes into public office that the political system can produce the people we want otherwise we are just undoing the idea that politics is an honorable advocates. voca.
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someone coming from a military background -- >> rose: is it believing in public service, rather than as politician as a way for ego aggrandizement. >> just in politician or electoral office, they believe in that. i remember cokie you said this a long while ago, people who were in the military in the same numbers that they were after world war ii and the korean war means we don't have that sense of a common mission that people have already accomplished being in the military that they are bringing into public life so maybe there's national service that has to happen. there are things we can do, i don't think we can give up on the political system and just hope for white force guy to -- cre it is always leadership. leadership may come from the ground up -- >> leadership makes a difference.
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>> rose: but in the end it is somebody who has a new idea and grabs the reins of leadership. >> have to let them lead. >> haven't we been in a place before where leadership has been challenged so viscerally and immediately. fdr's first days, everybody said come on we got to pull together because we're in trouble. even going back, one small example. the bitterest supreme court fight we had in my memory is clarence thomas, 55 democrats in the senate. i'm saying -- okay here's the point, here's the one thing that the democrats never even thought about. filibustering, it wasn't done. they could have easily knocked that nomination but 25 years ago, the thought of using that weapon in that way was literally unthinkable. and now it's the way we govern. >> rose: or don't govern. >> so many things we have discovered in this cycle and
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lately, that wasn't done yet, it with wasn't unconstitutional, wasn't legally impermissible but that wasn't done, so much as in this presidential campaign, that's just not done. we have stepped over so many lines in that way. >> i always hate to put too rosy a glass on the past. you know there were lots of things that were done. in fact the house of representatives used to be able to filibuster and on the war of 1812 they were fil filibusterin. and somebody threw a spitoon across the room. and it was probably disgusting -- >> something more than the war of 1812. >> rose: sorry? >> no we needed to. >> rose: i'll preface in saying in a conversation with president obama i quoted him as saying we have got the finest
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military, the best economy the best science we've got the best technology but all of that may not get us there because our politics is so broken. >> one of my favorite journalists, james sallas a few years ago was looking at the fact are we broken? our political system is the single biggest impediment against moving along. >> rose: the academy is strong, military is strong, science strong. >> i think the young people can come in and fix this. >> one of the young people. >> you all can go home. [simultaneous speech] >> because they are so diverse and that's the way the country always renews itself is through wonderful waves immigration of people coming in from everywhere and with new ways of looking at
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things and a deep affection for this country. that they feel very strongly about and i think that's the great hope the continuous waves of immigrants. >> what happens to the disaffected, the people that believe they die? >> a generation goes, we go. all of us go. >> eventually i assume that's right. >> could you have a populist party, that splits off? and we say that these are the angry disaffected populist -- >> native populist. >> bernie sanders. >> you have three parties if possible. the sanders party the reality based party and -- not that sands isn't reality base ided, i don't want to get into that -- based, i don't want to get into that twitter. you have a right wing populist party and you have the hillary
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clinton party. >> but the paul ryan-hillary clinton party. >> rose: let's go back, is the 21st century not going to be an american -- go ahead. >> we have everything going for us. and by the way, you know even unemployment is low our science is great we're creating new ways to -- you know editing the genome with crispers, the whole thing. we're going to change everything and our politics has gotten in the way only because of the structures of politics have fallen apart. the notions of political appears have lost control, the notion of the senate losing control. >> that to me is one of the central lessons of this campaign so much of the theory of how political parties work even in this age i think has been thrown into a cocked hat. the idea that it's not just
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trump engendered a hostile takeover, where i don't think there was a single member of the governing wing of that party that was formed. but none of his follo policy positions, if they happen to agree, its a trip wire. the democratic trip wires would have stopped him, he never would have been the nominee. >> we sort of had that on the democratic part, which is the dnc according to the hacked e-mails, let's help this get done with hillary, and that's a good thing what a party should do. >> i know bernie sanders he's no donald trump. >> we're trying get this over. >> rose: doris. doris. >> the important thing is i think we're on to something important porn which is parties need to reestablish control. if they mean anything at all having some sense of influence on the nominating process. it all happened because of my
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guy teddy roosevelt in 1912, when he wanted to beat taft, he introduced the whole let the people vote and the primary system happened. for a long period of time the primaries went out, they came back in again, yet the superdelegates still supported the party on the democratic side having some powers. the be parties decided to reduce the number of from delegates and they had to vote the way their states voted. i know this doesn't sound democratic but do we want the party leaders if they are going to try the get consensus if they want anything at all to have a little bit of control when the decision was made as to who the nominee is? in 1912 when the fight got so vitriolic or tead and taft, if this is our first experiment in the new primary system, we hope this is our last, this is a mob, people from abroad must be looking at us and blushing in
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what we are, and that could be written today. >> when this more small d democratic system emerged, at the same time, the very same time, that the decline in faith and institutions began unabated. i don't think those are -- >> and the be media happened all three perfect storm. but kurt's point about the decline of faith in institutions also a global thing, i mean in england or great britain you were not supposed to have sort of referenda, pure democracy, things were supposed to be done in parliament. >> and over brexit -- >> they are fighting out who controls things in great britain, is it parliament or is it sort of the referendum like primaries? >> there is a phrase data point, am i correct, piece of information. so if i'm right about this and i think i am, so last year was the
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hottest year on record. that's not an opinion. it doesn't tell you why, who knows what, it turns out that either a significant minority or majority of trump voters do not believe that last year was the hottest year of record which is one step short of saying, two plus two is four? >> there is a lot of data that says the more that you show people data that says vaccines do not cause autism, the less they believe it. we're living in that moment, people have very strong views. >> they are entitled to their opinions. but -- >> rose: famously said, you're entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts. >> it is a release in fact that in this election for the first time polling began, college educated whites, the democratic presidential candidate is winning college educated whites. is that because college
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educatepeople are more able to see the empirical truth than noncollege educated people? >> the notion of announcement ad being able to say brutal bullying things anonymously didn't -- >> rose: it wasn't said anonymous it was said in publicly -- >> not in a dog whistle way. >> rose: the coarseness of our dumbing-down, coarseness. >> one of the trump people, comey said there was nothing on the e-mails. they said on the record, yeah but it damaged her. there was a time when maybe a political report -- judge. >> say it privately. >> we know it wasn't her. >> in terms of getting to the party leaders being in charge it's not going to happen.
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you don't put the toothpaste back in the tube and the more that you have democracy the more that you have democracy. and the ability to -- >> democratic convention in 1968. >> rose: for connecticut. senator from connecticut. >> i'm talk about -- >> 76. >> my father was plat form chairman in '68. >> that's, 68 to 72. >> i think in this point cokie's warning about nostalgia is very useful because back then, the idea that the nominee of the democratic party had never contested in a primary and sailed in on the votes of the leaders that wasn't considered a good thing, that was considered a bug. >> hubert humphrey. >> rose: we have had in the last several years, more conflict between law enforcement
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and african americans. whether it's more or we know more about it. but here is a racial conflict and we just had eight years of an african american president and yet there seems to be a rising of that tension at that level. are we make no progress? >> oh sure we're making progress again, you know, i 30 we do know more about it and i think that what's happening is in police departments around the country, that there's a lot of effort to -- >> rose: and in a lot of these police departments where a lot of this happened the police chief is african american. >> right. but i think there's a lot of realization of this and people making an effort to educate police departments and the citizenry and there's a lot of goodwill around this even though it is -- we're going through a very bad patch on that. >> and i think when -- >> rose: what it has done also is reexamine the legacy of slavery. >> well that's a good thing. >> and the great accomplishments of civil rights as great as they
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were were legalistic accomplishments. a half century later we're still working on it. hugely we are aware of it because everybody has a camera in their pocket and that's a painfully good thing about technology. >> i agree. >> documentary on o.j. simpson, one of the most important points it documents at least through 40 40s where african americans were killed by police without accountability. the o.j. case. i agree with you when everybody has a cell phone we see it more. but the idea this has been a rising phenomenon is belied by the facts. >> but i think it's very important that we know it. >> rose: and something good may come out of it the fact that we know it and recognize it. >> mr. trump said to the african american community things are worse than it's been for you 60,
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70 years ago. that's simply not true. the evens probably happened before without accountability. but more importantly, worse than when they were discriminated against in the south and they couldn't go into a bathroom on the street. i mean we have to not let this shadow of what we imagine is happening overtake the reality of what actually happened. >> rose: you could argue that big city government has failed to address some simmering problems. >> the inner city has problems of education of mobility, of wealth of everything together that makes it hard to deal with the city's problem but things are certainly better than they were 50, 60 years ago. >> the astonishing reduction in violent crime in america in the last 25 years, nobody's benefited more than african americans. >> but what he was saying, he said you've never had it worse, he said it in white communities and he said it in poor white communities and look you and i
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and to some degree you you're younger grew up in the jim crow south, we knew exactly what that was. that was saying, you're still better than them. that's what that was. >> the notion that this brought out racism in our society, that this campaign you were allowed to play on racial hatred that to me is the most shocking and depressing about this campaign. >> rose: one of the questions being asked is did somehow the campaign legitimize the nativist and some of the worst elements. >> yes. that's the part of the republican party -- that is the most shocking that that's what i mean by the trip wire was going off. >> also about women, legitimized feelings about race and women, the course and dialogue allowed all that coming out. people may feel this internally but to say it publicly every night we see it on the internet. that's one of the places i seize pessimistic about this whole
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campaign. >> the whole business of women are weak. and she doesn't even act presidential. >> this campaign has given political correctness a good name. i want to go back and say about, we're better society. >> political correctness we can all site our examples of oh my god too much political correctness but there's a question of civility and decency and don't throw that baby out with the bath water. >> erasing the line of people cultural misappropriation. calling people by retched awful names, that's not political correctness that's decency. >> it may be true that in the 19th century terrible things were said against one another in
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political structure, it wasn't on the internet. my grandchildren have heard things in this last campaign that i didn't want them to know about until they reach a much later age. >> rose: much that we cannot measure at this time. doris, we're out of sometime but i'm with you. , we have all these challenges at least one of us, and i suspect more because of some sense in our belief in the power that, of the individual and the power of the tools that we now have even though these are problems that are very real and problems that are very -- we've been unable to solve and it seems in some ways on the asen aascendantcy. thank you, we'll see you flex time, thank you for joining us. for more about this program and early episodes visit us on
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