even on this in california filling in for tom hartman on the big picture for every friday as you know tom sits down with the big thinker for his major conversations with a great mind segment and this evening we're going to bring you two of those in-depth interviews we're going to begin with the american author and historian thomas frank who spoke to tom about the modern conservative movement as well as the role that it plays in u.s. politics taking away town.

presides conversations with great minds i'm joined by american author journalist and historian who may know more about american culture its effect on politics than anybody else wrote his book the wrecking crew of conservatives rule outlines the evolution of the republican party during the past two centuries and identifies republican party as a source of everything that's wrong with this country it is a book what's the matter with kansas documents the rise of conservative populism and what it means for the future of america the rise of the tea party and the troubles in american politics today as writers are more important than ever joining me now in the studio thomas frank thomas welcome it is good to be here neal thank you the republican party has been around for two so i don't know that's. you know i wouldn't blame everything on them i come from kansas everyone's a republican i help used to be a republican you know and there's

a lot of good republicans in the world like that is the public and robert let's follow up with a republican. the guy that i swiped the title of what's the matter of kansas for it was a republic. there's a lot of good republican fat is stevens was you know he was the head of the radical republicans faction of eight hundred sixty eight i think wrote the fourteenth amendment and and abe lincoln lest we must now it's the conservative movement but there was there was an interesting moment in the hundred eighty s. when grover cleveland was one thousand nine hundred. eighty eight in his annual speech to congress where he said you know the rise of corporate power has become so great that the american worker now feels that he has the iron heel on his on his neck. president grover grover cleveland so you will yes he's usually thought of as being in a very conservative but he was the only democrat who served in that entire here you know but in any case you've been writing about culture history politics for a lot of years i'm i'm curious first of all as a writer myself and i think

a lot of people if i curious curiosity about writers what brought you to writing and then what brought you to the stop us oh my god i think it was probably a film strip i saw about ernest hemingway at the public library in prairie village kansas you know in the seventy's i don't know i like books i like writing but i always have i don't know what to tell you and then i decided i would become a well i mean how i got to where i am today is you know i went through i want to be proud i was going to become a historian i was going to go to graduate school get a ph d. in history i actually did that but i came out in the worst job market for historians have like you know forever i mean it's dreadful and so what's the alternative it turns out of this is this is actually kind of funny when i got out of graduate school in the mid ninety's becoming a journalist looked like a good practical alternative a practical way to earn a living you know today it's journalism is falling apart even faster than academia

but back then you know it made sense. but it's really interesting that the. the connection to writing and the connection. politics you know you were right and historian first and then you started writing. what. book political event set you off and what's a good place you know i don't hear all that most is really about culture culture i swear i want to be a cultural historian you know i was i wrote my first book is about the advertising industry in the one nine hundred sixty s. and should your viewers be curious about the advertising industry in the one nine hundred sixty s. don't watch that one t.v. show read my book i'm telling ok and the book title ever israel's a conquests of cool and the idea of the book is how america went from being so square in the one nine hundred fifty s. to being so hip in the one nine hundred sixty s. and i don't just mean the counterculture you know the kids the hippies i mean the entire culture the commercial culture everything about america became just

massively cool and so i was like how did that happen what what explains that shift and that was that was the idea and you know i was interested in culture and it was in one thousand nine hundred four i i got interested in a strike that was going on in central illinois and it was in decatur it wasn't just one strike it was three air it was every like the entire blue collar population of the city and central illinois was either locked out or out on strike and it was the whole city had essentially been this is not a good word to use is not the right word but they did radicalized their way of looking at the world head completely changed because of this event and i went down there i was covering it for a newspaper of chicago called the chicago reader turning to news weekly and i got very interested in this in the these peoples there the way they understood the world had changed a lot a lot of them had been what we used to call reagan democrats you know they were blue collar people that had voted for ronald reagan because they wanted to see

america be respected in the world you know that sort of thing and look what was happening to them now this was that and they you know they recognize the contradiction and it was this sort of moment of awful enlightenment for them. you know it was a disastrous event in their lives but it was also a moment in lightman and it was a moment of enlightenment for me as well because i suddenly went from you know everything being about culture everything being about the media about the with the rhetoric that we use to being a ha. about manufacturing about work about trade you know this is this is what so much of american life is really about it's merely it's about the money you know it's about the money power and politics if you had to boil it down to one word yes and in fact i mean you know facing a four hundred ninety three million dollar budget shortfall in kansas senator sam brownback with you governor republican has called through a limit at the corporate income tax we're proposing fifteen million bucks in cuts to education. he also wants to eliminate the federal the earned income tax credit

that will throw another sixty five hundred families in his state below the poverty line that's that's so what's still the matter with can't slow it's the things you've got much have gone from bad to worse there i mean what's what is it is that i'm around back is sam brownback you know he's in congress for many years to study one of the freshmen he was first elected the house from the gingrich's freshman and i knew four and then went to the senate and he was always regarded as the kind of conscience of the conservative movement and what you just described those are things that i wouldn't even think that he would put that surprises me that he would do that that he would go that far because you know as republicans go i disagree with the man's politics i mean i disagree with them profoundly but i always thought that he was still he was still a real man he was a bright you know well it's really fascinating sort of a little progress to a good analysis of this couple of days ago and just lately. with you know it was thirteen states and republican governors and in every single case the budget crisis

to a large extent was created by tax breaks for billionaires tax breaks for millionaires . which brings us to i'd like to start with the wrecking crew yeah. i mix your books up in one of them and maybe it's what was the matter with kansas he really kind of got in a bit i thought i thought that i think was reckoned you get into this notion that it all began with nixon and not so much in like he was this evil guy. that was the moment when americans oh wait a minute our government is corrupt you know we can't trust our government and the creepy thing is that that paid off for for the party of nixon for the republican party that this perception this massive cynicism towards government that was spawned by mainly by watergate but also by the vietnam war you know we there daniel ellsberg was on a just just before here a man from from that era who could told you think you know about this. the the

that's where the cynicism cynicism began and what's really creepy about it is that cynicism first chased nixon out of office then elected this sort of massive democratic wave in one nine hundred seventy four and then it sort of congealed into this you know the into the conservatism that we know it is today and then elected ronald reagan and it's just gone on from there cynicism pays massive dividends to conservatives and what's creepy about this is that it's sort of self-fulfilling so conservatives tend to deal in very bad government the government very poorly well not everything they don't i mean they tend to run the military very well ok they do certain things well i would argue would even challenge that the audience seems there are certain things where there where there are outsourcing right if you think outsourcing is a good idea they do it really really well but if the but if you will you know if it's the liberal state that you're concerned about they they run into the ground there so you're going about things like reagan putting bill bennett who who at one

point campaigned for president on the platform of destroying the department of education in charge of the department of education if that's what he did that's actually that's sort of the classic example but the it goes it's much worse than that it's also involves appointing cronies incompetence intentionally well because they don't really care you know because they don't believe in government that's right its government is not important or going to outsource all the all the work anyway there's all this money has been laid around from all these to exactly it so it's a it's a place where people. go to get rich but here in d.c. this is the wrecking crew starts off with a little known fate was a little known fact at the time maybe it's better known now washington d.c. is essentially the richest city in america the washington metro area and then i did a sort of historical you know rundown of that when did that happen how did that happen did it happen because of liberals and the really creepy thing is that you know this washington shoots up in the ranks of american cities in terms of wealth during the reagan years for the president is like a war with government when reagan came into office when they're only like three

hundred seventy registered lobbyists and the say. that this changed massively it's it and it's theirs and then it would be just to finish the story that it shot up again in the bush years and then the financial crisis sort of sealed the fate of new york and san francisco which was a complete comparable cities d.c. is totally had shoulders the richest city in america right now because there's been no downturn here and the industry is number one lobbying a number to outsource all the you know all the government contractors if you know someone a tourist comes on vacation here to see the smithsonian i always suggest in a governing northern virginia or look at the towers in arlington and see where your tax money really goes you know to talk about the contrary contractors you know and and that's. it's it's not just an ideology that or is it is a just it i mean when did this begin in the republican party this whole notion this certainly wasn't the republican party of eisenhower this was an idea i was little

or none of this this this is a this is a whole new if in fact it's not of the order it's either how are the going to initially criticize it remember the military industrial complex he was so concerned about. this this you know there's always been government contracting obviously the government doesn't build its own battleships and stuff like that with a few exceptions. but the under president reagan they appoint something called the grace commission and by the way this oh. all comes from the race yeah that's right . he was the chairman of it and this whole incidentally goes back to the concept of the government being broke this is always the trump card in conservative in conservative governments is that we're broke we have to do something about it and here's what we're going to do about it which is basically a limit your programs but at the same time do these wonderful things for our constituents you know for billionaires for the military contractors that kind of thing so the grace commission suggested outsourcing in privatizing government get

this as a way of saving money this is going to this is going to be more official as the way it's always been. you know it's very very bad of course is that it's there's little . it's the most spectacular boondoggle that's ever been invented and the companies you get on the list the companies that the work is outsourced to the they essentially it's like the k. street project they tie to the republican party you know it's actually very easy to trace now that a lot of the records are open and they hire the right lobbying firms you can you can track all this stuff and i do in the wrecking crew it's isn't fair isn't it isn't to a certain extent the democratic party also jumping on this bandwagon like or at least the conservative wing of it and and and isn't there or wasn't there an obligation when president obama came into office there was implied in his campaign and arguably should be simply implied in his office to say no government isn't bad reagan's rhetoric was wrong and i'll show you how we can make government actually

work you know and i don't recall over the last two years much of that kind of talk i'm very in the office or it that's one of the big disappointments of obama but let me go back to the conservatives real quick and there's one of the one line from the wrecking crew that i that i always like to repeat because it can never get out there enough and it's from a it's from a guy who is the president of the u.s. chamber of congress back in one thousand twenty s and he said in an interview that i found in a very popular magazine from. the late one nine hundred twenty s. the best public servant is the worst one ok this is this is this was the business attitude of the time in and still is today is your best public service in the roaring twenty's the roaring twenty's of that season so it was. nobody's ever said it quite that bluntly since then but you can find echoes and i do in the book i find echoes of this remark right up to the present day i mean conservatives say this sort of thing all the time you don't want competent people in government you don't want because if you if government works if you have smart people in government people who know what they're doing in government works the public will

trust government then you won't have the cynicism you want you know things things will work and then you thought that democrats will be elected you know that it's it will be death for in and they thought you know a slippery slope to communism or something like that and but anyhow you know obama has been a real disappointment along these lines when he was running from when he was running for president i was writing a column for the wall street journal and i used to talk about doing a kind of reverse grace commission let's do a commission that investigates the history of outsourcing and privatizing it and he did it work was it more efficient you know or was it just this kind of so i calculated boondoggle i think we're going to have a commission in your book but let's work let's cover some already is what happened i mean there was a lot of other things that of the financial crisis all that stuff got got wiped out of course more of this in just a second here it's after our break more with thomas frank in our conversations with great minds.

in a park right great. well . whenever government says they are safe and ready for freedom.

they tell martin here broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture.

well go back to conversations with great minds i'm joined by author and cultural historian thomas frank who wrote the books the wrecking crew how conservatives rule and what's the matter with kansas and thomas the i do a radio show from noon to three every day and today i got this email from this guy . it was titled from a conservative who's been mugged and he started out talking about how he'd been voting republican since the late seventy's and he always believed the old joke that a. conservative is a liberal who got mugged and he said the one in a word mugging that caused him to wake up to what has happened to his republican party and why he'll never go back to it that word is wisconsin oh yeah it is there you know we saw the rise of the tea party it seems like i'm in fact i read his letter on the air and it provoked an avalanche of phone calls from self described

conservative republicans saying one woman said i have voted republican i was just there you know in madison always one woman said i have voted republican for over thirty years and that i will vote for a dead dog before i vote for another republican you know what's how is that this shift is not envisioned in your book what's the matter with kansas and it's amazing what's happening and it's also you know it's also. it's it doesn't fit the narrative of the last two years either where everything was going towards the right you know the tea party movement and all that sort of thing although the tea party movement had really captured you know public anger over the bailouts you know the financial crisis the you know catastrophe in the economy and now it's all going the other direction and it's amazing i mean suddenly it's like the reverse of that it's well the people that contacted you know the e-mail that called in very similar to what i was talking about in that decatur story were these are people that voted

republican you know being because they're it's like it's like you buy a consumer product you never think it's going to hurt you you know you think it's always ninety three decatur the other ninety three ninety four yeah and it's but it's the same sort of awful enlightment that i'm talking about are these are these are these are by and large blue collar people who imagine that they were part of the middle class in this country why they measure because that's what they had always been told all their lives that they were the heart and soul of this country that they were they they were the you know the. the bone in the sinew of america they did the work you know they were out there labor day parades and fourth of july parades and waving the flag and volunteered for vietnam and they did all those things that you're supposed to do and yes they voted for ronald reagan you know because you know the iran hostage crisis that kind of thing they have in their mind very good reason for that it for they never did i don't they never thought in a million years that it would come home in the part of the agenda was to ruin the lives of people like them that never would have occurred to them it told this sort

of awful moment and that is what's happening in wisconsin today is people saying that out it sounds almost. can spears conspiracy theory. you know alex jones which to say. the the agenda of the republican party is to destroy the middle class and transfer that wealth i don't know very very rich i don't think you i don't think they think of it that way nobody thinks of it that way and that's that is the one upshot. what's happening to the agenda of the republican party or i should say of the conservative movement like i said there's good republicans out there we should know we shouldn't tar all republicans with the same brush. the agenda of the conservative movement is to destroy organized labor or at least to you know to room as it is today on the democrats already is not exactly present from the center of the middle class you know you know if you can just very little could nobody wants to do that that's. look there is this is this is the classic problem with we live in

a capitalist society and one of the great recurring problems in a capitalist society is short term thinking right companies make decisions based on you know who can credibly short term goals and they wind up doing these terrible things in the long term a new can't have a better example than the financial crisis and that's what this is to nobody you know you talk to talk to a business owner for twenty minutes about organized labor and see what they say about it they hate it they want it to go away they want to die they want to never bother them again but ask them if they want the middle class to still be around and buying their products of course they want that are those two things connected they are and you know we're finding out america today but we didn't know that you know or at least people don't don't know that didn't know that ten years ago. you'll see them and. pointed out that there was there was that a point of disconnect he was that he was the guy that reagan brought in as the resolution trust corporation to to to big through

a thousand banks years in jail when the s n l's melted down and they end up actually making a profit on that government actually really have the resolution for thirty years or twenty years. but he pointed out that there was this substantial change in in the in the thinking of the conservative movement somewhere in the eighty's and and what that change he was it has translated into changes in. see that look like people are sold out as opposed to just you know the old william buckley oh well you know what's printf is through and this is the constitutional as opposed to way of a man i really respect as a writer and i mean i did too i could in fact and i used to love watching firing line when did you know that. it but the it has become basically a free for all. bill simmons has died a year ago brilliant guy but. isn't that the essence

of at least the wrecking crew that this is just become a free for all that it's the thing is that you have it there were there was in there in the early reagan days especially yes there was a lot of principle a lot of the people in the early reagan ministration were highly principled conservatives and what you saw happening in the by the way this is this is a parallel with the simpson thing happen in the conservative movement is that people discover that there's a lot of money to be made in both in the movement and the end in politics and the wrecking crew you sort of jacket remark as my as my character as a sort of what would you say the virgil to guide us through hugo through the inferno and studying his life his life story and here's a guy who i think that it is that there is a sort of in his career this amazing coming together of principle and profit and i think that even by the end you know what he was a sort of his name was synonymous with corruption that he's still regard himself as

a man of principle but his principles were profit ok sure the people that he was that he was not being for i mean the marianas islands where they basically wanted the government to allow them to you know run sweatshops because you could say that that's your free market that's a free market tom and that's how he defended it he defended it on those grounds and on grounds of you know we shouldn't interfere in the you know the sovereignty of these people and that sort of thing. on very on highly. principle grounds and yet there was there was a notion for a long time in the republican party and in the conservative movement even that we should have tariffs or that we should have a national or trade policy that we should defend not just the american worker but the american business and now we see the. american transnational corporations are going to have their best year in twenty years the financial times today. thirty percent of total revenues are produced off shore and g.e. last year fifty percent you know it's an american company you know any you know.

there's a profound change happening. and it is you know it's very distressing time and you're putting me in a really great mood here. with those with those those those facts but i mean let's try to be let's try to be hopeful about this i like to think that what's going on wisconsin might represent a kind of moment of enlightenment maybe people are starting to get it i mean it i'll tell you something i went to the very first tea party rally here in washington d.c. i wrote about it in the wall street journal february of two thousand and nine obama had been in the white house for less than a month and. i could tell it was concerned they were conservatives out there i mean it was it was people from all the different conservative you know magazines and blogs and that sort of thing i mean joe the plumber was there with a megaphone right but there was still something very seductive about that they were out there denouncing the bailouts they were screaming bloody murder about the bill

it's i was mad about the bailouts here were these people doing it and they sort of had me at the very very first i didn't agree with everything they were saying but they said they also they they had the nation i mean they they want to do the good job so my listeners go to go to a cheaper way with the sciences get out of nafta bring our jobs so i mean you know is there are serious what exactly you know it's just let's skip for a second here consider the kind of of just political blundering that allows democrats to not figure that out. ok they could win a lot of these voters over if only they would drop gas to drive. over the road i mean if penn could. just turn away from nafta it was a terrible idea in the first place it was a republican idea you know this is supposed to be the party of leader why can't he walk there there's something there is one in a democrat the democrats they would have split the tea party movement into this disaster this electoral disaster in two thousand and ten wouldn't have happened if they had just obama said in the campaign he wanted to renegotiate nafta oh my god

why don't always you know if you are koreans and they will ride that right intil intill the last democrat is finally beaten you know in our in our last minute or two here you have a new piece in harper's the confessions of glenn beck is here father kaufman but i don't think that's he's problems that fascinating man we don't understand how it is that there is there is on hog yeah that's how he pronounced it that he cobbled moved from left to right in the course of the one nine hundred thirty s. very you know very curious movement and glenn beck this is what i discovered and i wrote about it in harper's magazine there's all these really peculiar echoes of left wing rhetoric in glenn beck's the way glenn beck talks the things that the gospel that he said was it happens all the time but you also see this in the tea party movement in fact you see the cross the board this is a project that i mean it's you know it's the old kind of populist radicals that's

now that's a subject i know a lot about somebody a lot of it well you about the eighteen million we have thirty seconds left you're welcome to go off you know i wish we had those years back a good man sockless jury simpson that would be so. it would it really would any any final thoughts on where america is going now it is you know. it is the things are so up in the air right now you know what's going on in wisconsin is inspiring but at the same time the republicans are. playing the they're playing their cards very well they're defunding the left which you know i talked about at length in the wrecking crew they're playing out their their spring and they know that that's a kind of end game scenario they can crush the democratic party if they play it out so i don't know tom but it will thomas frank thanks so much for being with us on my pleasure.