that's. it. was. a lonely and welcome to cross town peter lavelle republicans and democrats alike tell the american people that they have a stark choice before them in this election year is it really the case does

america's two party system monopolize national politics in crowd out real discussion of political issues and does it really matter who is elected president in november. to cross-talk the us political system i'm joined by nicholas carroll in sacramento he's a journalist and author of walk away from debt for a better future in washington we have bruce fein he is the founder of the lic field group and american freedom agenda and in frankfurt we crossed to christophe on marshall he is the u.s. bureau chief for spiegel all right gentlemen crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want nicholas in sacramento you got up early as for the program so i'm going to go to you first ok i live abroad i've lived abroad for a long time and i've had to explain american politics to foreigners for over two decades it looks like american politics is trivial it's about character and it's not about substance the last debate told us that the last presidential debate how

much substance is there in this election cycle or any election cycle these days in the us i'm having trouble saying because i have trouble staying awake for more than ten minutes of any one debate. i'd say not much from some sort of or if we if we are just starting and there might be a different matter ok well i mean what what what what how do you account for that i mean why is it that way. world is on much to be discussed romney is trying to find a position to settle for the middle or. start to a larger start bar you haven't heard of the bush war and the bush recession. is also the first effort for president which puts sort of in the position that j.f.k. was back at nine hundred sixty the first irish american president it's not talked about but it is an issue so he can't go on the corner fronts of what romney care ok bruce what do you think about that crazy future well i think that it's the reason

why there is such an overlap between the democrats and republicans in part because the electoral system fences out new ideas i was a senior policy adviser to ron paul who was received with great enthusiasm by veterans and with a substantial portion of the republican base even though it challenge the idea of bush cheney empire the assertion of executive profit have to initiate war to stew detain without accusation or try to place people on predator drone assassination lists without any outside review and he was told at the republican convention he couldn't speak unless he agreed to support romney and he had his speech censored by the romney people and you have a very very great difficulty given electoral rules to get on the ballot if you're not a republican or democrat so you have in have this built in headwind but he also another explanation is we have got we've moved from a republic that celebrated

a free speech and individual liberty to one where there's a general consensus across the board of this idea of empire so bush and cheney and obama and romney are basically saying in the same libretto with regard to our need to lead the world who will lead it if we with our great angelic attitude doesn't do so so we think about intervening in syria and we intervene in libya and we got troops and and see i. and uganda and we're fighting wars in afghanistan bleeding over to pakistan and we're in yemen all these places and this is at a staggering cost which is causing the budget deficit we have a national security budget no one's going to rush really into. taking over the entire program and mentioning everything i want to mention so let me go to crystal first so everything is constructed consensus is already constructed before people vote this is essentially what bruce is saying. i totally disagree with bruce and with nicholas i think there's a huge choice a huge difference in the outcome of this election if romney wins if the republicans

win the white house they will also probably keep the majority in the house and wins a majority in the senate and if the republicans control all the important political positions the white house the senate and see house then you will see a huge difference america has a huge dept more than sixteen billion dollars that is more than one hundred percent of g.d.p. and the next four years will be about who pays for that and i can tell you it will be a huge difference whether obama controls the white house or mitt romney controls the white house at the moment in the debates you can see that because both of them are timid to articulate what they want to do at the moment you don't see it in the debate but if you follow how republicans think and how democrats think and that is a huge ideological difference i'm coming from germany a country where most political parties agree they all social democratic parties in the states in the united states where i live already for almost eight years you

have a huge fight at every election whether you want to have less state less taxes or if you think the government is also responsible for the poor ones and that you have to subsidize poor people to let me translate that is different it is a huge difference go ahead jump in bro i think that misses the point he the fact is that we have an area logical debate a sudden degree during the campaign about when it comes. actually governing it's the same old story obama said lots of things during his campaign and then he renounced virtually all of them when he became president and that's what you can expect with mitt romney romney's got five positions on every single issue that he's jumped forward and back and with regard to the youth vote it's historically true very very tiny turnout where that you with vote there they haven't got the the income yet to worry about the taxes that to them the national debt sixteen seventeen trillion is just a number and if you look at the so-called differences between the two even if you

take the most austere budget of paul ryan that's viewed as the most radical it still doesn't lead to a balanced budget till about twenty forty and it's the difference between his budget and obama's is the difference between a twenty five trillion deficit i mean national debt in two thousand and twenty as opposed to twenty three trillion which is trivial with regard to the impact on the economy and the drying up of the funds for investment and otherwise and if you talk about one of the things that romney's going to do that they're going to be repeal mr mr obama's programs there he said nothing about immigration with regard to the amnesty with regard to the health care act he said well i got to keep on twenty six years old you you have preexisting conditions will continue on for those who already have insurance all these things just indicate he's moving around at the margins and if you talk about even when you have a president controlled the congress obama had a democratic congress in his first two years and it is very program just like bush if you're going to nicholas lemann over the last four years the one percent the

so-called one percent have done pretty well the rest of them haven't that's so what's the difference between republican a democrat now. wall street recover goes right to. the core issues of the americans or they're pleased to see the snow is a situation where we have a democracy that is not working world were the reality is that we have a plutocratic we control republic that is working very well indeed. the question is whether obama. will make a shift there and tax the rich this is the basic issue whether we are going to cut and run so this world that we're through with the one percent. it was a staggering amount of debt is a different it's going to be selected there's a word on this is what we're going to jump in we've heard from this is what we have when we have obama who is raising a billion dollars you know and the c.e.o.

you runs these fundraisers fifty sixty one hundred thousand dollars for a dinner i mean he's going out every day getting money from fat cats a billion dollars the most expensive campaign ever one hundred ninety three million dollars in the last month alone and he's not going to be in the hands of the plutocrats it's just people who want them to fund you know the green technologies as opposed to bailing out the banks but it's still the money that calls the tune and when you go up on capitol hill despite the statement that well there really is a huge ideological difference between the republicans and democrats it's not there i'm in washington every single day i'm up and congress two or three times a week and here sometimes the public statements are different but it comes to votes nope they're all in favor of the government growing bigger and bigger and bigger none of them want to ever abolish any particular program and what they do is they fund everybody's goodies by borrowing more money and throwing all of this debt sixteen seventeen twenty trillion dollars on posterity that doesn't have a vote and it's the same script you talk about right now the so-called fiscal cliff

they're plotting right now to kick the ball down the road they'll do a continuing resolution they'll delay intrinsics months or whatever and are you going to fashion here chris them go ahead jump in why will it be different if obama is reelected why. well obama used his majority of which was talking for the first years obama did big things for american politics he did see stimulus program he did say health care reform he did financial market reform he did don't ask don't tell that means how you treat homosexuals in the military he had to disarmament contractors russia about nuclear missiles and he had two new supreme court judges so if you think that is nothing and it just means that america goes the same way as if a republican would be in the white house i would just say you are not watching politics in the united states of course in the second half of his presidency he couldn't continue because the republicans had the majority in congress at least in the house and so it makes

a huge difference but you will see ask people who earn less than fifty thousand a year household money it makes for a huge difference whether the republicans ryan and romney will slash all of those programs or whether in some ways it will continue i agree with you bruce that both parties have no good plan how to cut the deficit that is a big problem but when you come to the question what are they willing to do to cut the deficit then for the republicans it's even worse they want to slash taxes for the rich and obama and the democrats want to raise taxes for the people who can really afford to pay a little bit more ok because of your last word before we go and before we go to the break or hand gentlemen. well the facts are that we don't know what obama would do a second term in the first term is very constrained to a large extent by getting elected in a second term and the other one people overlook is they see obama as a standard mainstream american that they grew up in hawaii in

a very different culture we don't know what barack obama really expects that is quite possible that he's a populist on the scale ok gentlemen we have to go to a short break and after that shot break we'll continue our discussion on the us political system stay starting. and you can. see. wealthy british scientists are saying it's not time to time. markets finance scandals find out what's really happening to the global economy for our no holds barred look at the global financial headlines joining to cause

a report on our team. last chance to be soo much brighter if you need some money from funds to christian some. nice clean stuff totty don't come. by horse. by tractor. by car where the road ends. as a carpenter. you. as a stove setter. as a farmer. as an assistant. as a friend. as a relative delivering post and delivering good. to

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they've. changed the. story. and. welcome after all stuck you know all about the minute we're talking about the u.s. political system. and each. story.

ok bruce about to go back to you i mean why isn't in this campaign and other presidential campaigns we that the americans made in predicting this year don't talk about obama's use of drones incarceration of poverty levels a lot of these these are really serious problems in the united states and i don't see people debating it at a high level. ok why is that why is that shut out of political discussion and everyone's talking about big bird you know i think that's the frightening thing that these major major issues of the rule of law unconstitutionality president being able to put american citizens on assassination list detentions and it will end definitely at guantanamo accusation or trial and he's got secret interpretations of the patriot act that enable him to sweep up all of our e-mails of all of our phone conversations and keep those ca's without any probable cause use surveillance drones and there's virtually no discussion as you you talk about about a fair playing field that are not the one percent that don't get all the government

bailouts whether it's the green technologies that got huge moneys to go bankrupt building solar panels or the big banks they got huge staggering billions of dollars for irresponsibly you know lending money with through fraud on mortgages and whatever and this is where it's frightening because there is a consensus between the republicans and democrats you know nothing happens and when you have an issue that doesn't even make the mainstream debate that's the time to worry that you're headed toward self ruination nicholas what do you think about that because i just mentioned some really major issues affecting you know good deal of the population maybe not the one percent but the presidential candidates don't debate it ok why is that is there some kind of censure not to talk about it a consensus not to talk about these issues nicholas in sacramento go ahead. well one is just journalism having been a stringer and knowing a lot of journalists is there's so much bad news and elections the right now in this year journalists just can't stop writing bad economic news they're tired of

bad news. but i did notice on google trends that the term the great recession has dropped the beginning of the sea or just dropped out of mainstream media so we have to stick should know that the great recession is over and we're in recovery i live in the san joaquin valley where the great recession is going just fine and we're not worried about a. double dip because the first that there's going to strong so right here the water phones are closed about their own public bathrooms their clothes the economy has tanked and it's staying that way and the question really coming up in the second term is or are we going to pull the money out of the rich people's pockets i'm building it for because i'm glad you brought up money kristof i'll go back to you in frankfurt i mean another kind of taboo topic is campaign finance ok where you get your money ok and since two thousand and ten you don't have to say i mean that's even more corrupting of the political system ok i'm a child of of watergate i remember campaign finance was really important you know

and were rules and now they're all gone ok so again that goes back to the one percent and the one percent support romney and obama. well i don't agree it is true is that the american system of financing campaigns is totally strange for us and western europe as it is strange for us and as well i suppose far too little too big money is involved and i think also if there's too much money involved is this corrupting politics in a way but it is not true that these are subjects it's all of the time as a written about it it's talked about in t.v. and residential candidates is scaling it are they discussing it no they're not. yeah ok are the only boys that are getting off of isis which i heard i happen to live in the united states and i can tell you is that people are not all the time only paying attention what's to come to that so there's a much broader but there bathed in the united states in t.v. channels and newspapers almost every day they want to have what impact does it have

when the political parties agree that they like the status quo with campaign financing. i mean there's no matter what the public says it doesn't matter what the probably about but you're not i mean of course you can say is that they all agreed they don't agree so democrats don't like the new law so that you don't have to tell if you are a political organization we're still going to the money they will say you have money they don't tell anybody where they got it from you it's difference how they are you ready for some of the to. campaign the issue of campaign finance has been complicated by a decision of the united states supreme court called citizens united which held that there's a first amendment right for corporations labor unions to spend unlimited amounts of money as long as they don't coordinate it with a particular candidate the coordination is really a joke because they have people who have worked with the candidate for fifty years they know exactly what the candidate once said and then runs these so-called

independent expenditure groups and spends twenty thirty fifty one hundred million dollars it could be an individual like sheldon knaidel said who's put in twenty thirty million to romney's campaign the democrats are a stop from complaining about it because they go get money from the george soros isn't super rich in hollywood and of course the media and some sense and joy is that because where's that money spent on advertising the t.v. advertising you know rates and they make huge amounts of money off of carrying these ads but i want to go back to i think to the central point you made these critical issues not being debated the most important one to me is the president's claim of unilateral authority to go to war whether it's in libya or if you're in iran and yemen. and this the last time there was a serious debate a presidential campaign in one thousand twenty turned on league of nations in the united states and that was an issue over whether the president wilson was going to through the league of nations be able to unilaterally commit the united states to go to war without congressional authorization and when we think these wars cost

trillions of dollars brave men and women dying and at a time when we're running these huge deficits we spending still three hundred fifty million dollars a day in afghanistan bombing rocks you know with that with our soldiers there's a million dollars a cost of a one to one troop sten spending there and with this issue not being debated that because only congress can authorize it we're doomed to do financial bankruptcy because we can't sustain you know permanent war global war everywhere aside from the fact that encroaches on our liberty at home but that's the big issue the president gets to go to war when every feels like it will in the founder of how he's in the constitution for i don't know if i'm going to make was it seems to me that you know obama or the president the united states can go to war against any individual he or she wants now with impunity and i think the republicans and the republicans on sea level problem with that they don't seem to have a problem with that at all i'm talking about drone ruled over as for the war you know may think it is a long time before obamacare morn. go ahead bill i understand it's not

a yes it's certainly not always did it first appear on obama's watch for sure here over you know it's very consistent it's consistent and i wonder if you get watch ok now exactly it's been injured it's been institutionalized in forged into what you would call an executive power doctrine even though it's counter constitutional and the whole reason why is that our founding as a nation over two hundred years ago we debated about half of the time on the constitution as ensuring only congress could get us into war because executive branch had a tendency to magnify danger because that wartime they get all the power the taxes the money the contracts the footprints in the sands of time you know being number one around the world and now we moved in turn that concept on its head and i can guarantee no matter who is in the pray who is in the presidency republican or democrat obama or romney they will go to war because that's their idea of what it means to be the most powerful nation on the world and now not only declare war against individuals but even u.s. citizens are now subject to being declared as objects or subjects of war even when

they haven't committed treason ok chris christie if you're disagreeing go ahead germany there is really going to. not at all eager at some moment to go to war because their heads towards for many years in afghanistan the iraq people are tired of doing it and the presidential candidates know that they are tired of doing it that was the reason why for example in libya they didn't want to commit more than a few as strikes from from above there will be no war on iran so will nobody intervene in syria because america is tired of it so groups you can talk at all all the time hope a little runts they are in reality they are not because they want to win not only this election also the next election and two thirds of the american population is against going to another war so it will not happen. ok the president's go to war irrespective of the population ok nicholas go ahead it's like a matter of jumping go ahead it's worth it or was it a point that obama's words of the road really cheap human error. the bush war was

just the expense of war and you contrast that with libya where the ships were kept offshore and therefore hundreds of tomahawk missiles we know what the bill was. somewhere you know could cost a billion dollars a billion here and a billion there but it was very much cheaper war than afghanistan or iraq was so obama's words he started have been cheaper which is consistent with what the clinton clinton had to short cheap war ok go ahead jump in but but but but that overlooks the fact that the staggering amounts are keeping you know virtually hundreds if not a thousand military bases abroad having a huge you know weapons program or a building ships that tend twelve billion dollars for aircraft carriers that we don't need. aircraft that cost five hundred million dollars a copy it's not just the fighting in the wars preparing to fight a war everywhere in the world the now or so called pivoting towards asia so now china is the next day all right well we don't really enjoy what i said i would do

some more new ground here kristie i mean being a german but living in the united states what do you think of america's cultural wars that galvanizes the the grassroots ok i think there's a number of publicans have made some obvious gaffes about. a number of things from abortion to legal rape eccentrics such i mean it does work in america unfortunately . it is fascinating for european to watch that as a little bit beyond our what we can really understand but you know the interesting thing is people who are exaggerates ideological wars get punished by as a voter as you can see that in the senate races in missouri is that you had a republican senator a candidate who was talking about legal. how it how it could be legal to force a woman to do to sexual activities and even when she gets pregnant that she would not be allowed to have an abortion so there was an uproar in the united states you could see in the polls how female voters were heading to the democrats so yes there

are some strange people who try to force strange subjects into a campaign but when they do so they get punished and i can tell you that's a republican mitt romney who want to keep you complain only about the economy about the unemployment rate and the stuff he is angry when fellow republicans are trying to start but i want to know who are love their ideological republican ruefully germany are going to give you the last word in the program go ahead. there's no doubt that the republicans and the hardcore make these social issues a campaign matter but when they get in governing they just walk away from them i know in my experience in the reagan administration he didn't do anything with regard to roll over his race they were going they do very well rudy debate many thanks and i guess a day in sacramento washington and in frankfurt and thanks to our viewers for watching us here are to see you next time and remember prosperous.

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