when i was a young man a long time ago paul tsongas, the late senator paul tsongas told me the problem with the democratic party as we spend so much time passing out the golden eggs we forget about the health of the goods. to me you have to worry about the health of the goose and grow the economy. if you create more wealth for everybody then you have the ability to deal with income inequality by redistributing some of it. >> host: during the 90s when bill clinton was president we had the third way. and you are part of that, weren't you? part of the forming of the third way? what was that and is it an effective way to govern? >> guest: i think it's the only way to govern and the most effective. the third way actually is in the united states it was called the new democrats. in great written tony blair called it new labor and in germany schroeder called the new middle. essentially, tony blair actually gave the best definition. he said it's not a compromise between liberalism and conservatism. it's the modernization of liberalism but it's constantly modernizing your government. it goes to

or -- i remember he wrote one not too long ago about paul tsongas. now it was about the womanizing question, the bad conduct -- no, the womanizing question something else and paul tsongas, and it was called wine, women and tsong -- t-s-o-n-g. and i almost called him and said, "all right. you win this year." c-span: what about your column, though, that goes out beyond the new york times? do you also write those headlines? >> guest: no, they do that themselves. but the times' ones -- what you see on the times op-ed page, we've done our headlines ourselves. c-span: how long has that been a tradition? >> guest: as long as i know of. i mean, i got to tell you, i was never so blindsided in my life as when i filed my first column, and after i had filed it, the copy editor called me and said, "well, what's your headline?" i said, "wait a minute. i don't write headlines. editors write headlines." but once i got used to it, i got to really like it. c-span: and what about the people that write op-ed pieces? do they get to write their headlines, too? >> guest: n

in the carter white house which didn't know about growth strategies, incidentally -- [laughter] paul tsongas was the chair of one of the subcommittees that we had to report to on the hill. and he pulled me aside one day, and he said the problem with the democratic party is we're so interested in passing out the golden eggs, we forget to worry about the health of the goose. well, if we don't worry about the health of the goose, there's not going to be enough golden eggs to pass out. and this is a problem on both sides of the aisle, because everybody wants to take from government, but nobody wants to give. and the only way you can have a pie that we can expand and, you know, lord knows we belief if many redistribution, we believe in a rollive income tax, we -- progressive income tax, we believe in people who need help should get it. but the only way you're going to do that -- and incidentally, when i say it's pervasive, think about what happens to the stock market every time bernanke even retends that he might cut off the subsidies to the bond market. i mean, you know, those, you know, sort of

paul tsongas once told me the problem with democrats is that we spend so much time worrying about passinget to worry about the health of the goose. in the 1990s, the challenge was to get the goose healthy again so we would have more to pass out. and to me that's the predicate for what is happening now. >> you get bonus points in the show for write bringing up paul tsongas. >> a real tension here. hillary clinton gave a speech to the executives of goldman sachs, she talked about the bank bashing, we need to stop doing that. too mup ch of that. we're too populist right now. and that say real debate here. i don't think you can be the candidate of the party of inequality and tell executives of goldman sachs, things are not as -- >> bill and hillary at the bill de blasio inaugural, and bill trying to -- >> that's the rep. carter, mondale and dukakis not getting in and the horrible losses, they may have been more about the charisma of the messengers than the message itself. with the clintons, one thing i noticed watching bill clinton in the '90s and embracing nafta, which i get it, helped him g