Focus 580; Stand Up Fight Back: Republican Toughs, Democratic Wimps, and the Politics of Revenge

In this first hour of the show we'll be talking about American politics and specifically we'll be talking about the state of the Democratic Party in the United States. And our guest with the show is E.J. Dionne He's a bestselling author. He's a syndicated columnist. He appears twice weekly in The Washington Post and many other newspapers across the country. He is also a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution he's professor at Georgetown University and he is regular commentator on National Public Radio. He is the author of a newly published book which is titled stand up fight back. The subtitle is Republican toughs Democratic wimps and the politics of revenge. The book is published by Simon and Schuster. And in the book he takes us back to the period before the terrorist attacks of 9/11 reminding us that at that time President Bush was not doing well and that the Democrats felt that they were in a position possibly to make gains in the elections in 2002 when the terrorist attacks came on September 11th. Generally speaking. Lot of people Republicans Democrats said let's put partisanship behind us. We all need to stand together and stand behind the president. Mr. Dionne says that instead of carrying on

in that sort of spirit Mr. Bush continued with the kind of partisan politics that he had engaged in before September 11th and the Democrats were very angry. However Dionne says that it wasn't just a case where the Republicans were smarter politically. He says also part of the problem here is the Democrats just didn't know what it was that they stood for and that he argues that if the Democrats are going to be successful in the future they have to be willing for willing to as the title of the book suggest to stand up and to fight back and to be very firm about what it is they believe. That's the kind of argument that he sets out in the book. So we'll talk about that in the first part of the show. And of course people who are listening are welcome to call with questions and comments we just ask people to be brief so that we can get in as many folks as possible and keep the program moving. Anybody's welcome to call 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 and toll free 800 to 2 to WY alone or 9 4 5 5. Mr. DIONNE Hello.

Oh and thank you that was such a wonderful summary of the book I feel like asking you just keep going. Thank you Evan. Oh no you haven't. You're the expert now you've got to do the heavy lifting now here in the program well. Well we much appreciate you being with us and I guess probably it does make sense to to do as you do in the book is to go back and to talk a little bit about what was happening and particularly how things stood for President Bush before September 11th of 2001. Well in the midst of it it now seems back in the mists of time we forget that the most important events of that first part of the Bush presidency was the defection of Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont from the Republican Party to independent status and giving control of the Senate to the Democrats and I think that reflected a frustration on the part of a lot of moderates and with a president who had done a very good job in the campaign sounding moderate it is rhetoric though actually the proposals he put forward both then and then when he got to the White House were not those of a moderate Republican they were those of a very staunchly conservative Republican the polls done in you know August of 2001.

A Gallup did a poll re running the 2000 election. The result was exactly the same 48 percent Bush 48 percent Gore. So the country right more it more or less. Those are those are very close it was basically a split even country. And so that the president really had not lost his base but he hadn't added to it. His approval rating was coming down and then 9/11 came along. And as you said there really was this authentic period of reciprocated bipartisanship. Democrats united behind the president I have a chapter in the book called he is or is he's all we've got. And the chapter heading comes from a conversation I had with a Democratic political consultant very partisan guy. But 10 days after 9/11 and they called him up and I said What do you think of the president these days and he said actually I went into church today to pray that he be successful. He's ours he's all we've got. No I think if the president had stayed on that track and for example had said OK I'm for these tax cuts but in a time of terror we are going to have to spend a lot of money. Let's pull back a little bit on the

tax cut. Let us not have a sharply partisan tone. I think we would be looking at a country that was fairly strongly Republican right now. Instead he made a different choice. His choice was to try to win a majority in the Senate and he used national security in the 2002 campaign in a way that I think helped helps us explain how oddly 9/11 united us more than we had been before and then divided us in a way and more than we have been in this particular section of the book you also talk about the political strategy that the Republicans had. In the 2000 election positioning the president as the compassionate conservative and you said that in fact this was really very shrewd and worked for them. Is that is that posture. Is it done now is there is a no more traction for that or can he still use that now when he's trying to again I say you know I think compassionate conservatism was put in the

closet after 9/11 and replaced by if you will a more marginal conservatism. And I think as the election gets closer with the president coming down in the polls I think his advisors realize that they need to show some movement some feeling which is what compassion is on issues that affect middle income people in less well-off people and they're talking more about health care than they have before so I think they're going to try to rev it up again but I'm not sure it's a slogan that can work twice. Because before he came in he could use it as a slogan to say what he would do no voters have a record to look at and I think one of the strongest criticisms. To be made of the president is on fiscal policies that leave us in a deep hole spend money that doesn't belong to us really belongs to the next generation and gets in the way of doing any number of things that might be useful. For example extending health coverage in the country and that might be popular so I think it's hard to do

this twice. To use compassionate conservatism again. Yeah it's seems to me that you know I hear I continue to hear people say something like you know in Washington today things are more polarized and more partisan than ever. The the only thing is that I feel like I've been hearing people say that ever since the early 90s. And it just seems like every time someone says that and said yes and it's just it's even worse than it was last week. But and it certainly seems to be that now there is the there is a level of anger directed at President Bush by people on the left. That is probably about the same as the level of anger that had been directed at President Clinton by people on the right. And you might seem to make the argument that a lawful lot of that that is anger directed toward the president today has a lot to do with how he conducted himself in the run up to the elections and to. Thousand to what I agree we've been talking about this polarization for a long time and the reason I use the term politics of revenge in the subtitle is I think there's a kind of interaction between on the one hand what the impeachment of President Clinton and then the

controversy over Florida and now a counter-reaction on the other side interrupted by that brief period of national unity after 9/11 and the reason I think it's worse is because a lot of Democrats feel they really did rally to the president was an artificial some Republicans might legitimately say well a bunch of Democrats were afraid to confront the president whether it came out of fear or patriotism or both and I think in many cases it came out of patriotism. A lot of Democrats felt slapped in the face in the book I were count that when the Democrats disagreed with President Bush's version of the homeland security bill a bill by the way he had once opposed and then changed his mind you know endorsed President Bush. She said that the Senate meaning its Democratic majority was not interested in the security of the American people and I certainly don't think that was the vision that Democrats had when they were arguing for their own version of the homeland security bill. And when some Democrats or many Democrats were pushing for greater international support for the Iraq war

President Bush said and I'm quoting him here if I were running for office I'm not sure how I'd explain to the American people say well for me and oh by the way on a matter of national security I'm going to wait for somebody else to act that Chordata kind of reaction in the country you know on the liberal and left side of the spectrum. And that's what the president has to live with now. Maybe you might talk about what happened to Max Cleland because I think that this is emblematic of not only Republican tactics but just the level of anger that has welled up and now seems to be they're operating in the Democratic Party here we had a man senator who was he fought in Vietnam he lost both legs and one of his arms in service during that war and somehow the Republicans saw fit to attack the man for his patriotism in. Lection in 2000 they ran an ad because Max Cleeland wanted the Democratic version of the Homeland Security Bill which had some more civil service and union protections and not the Republican

version. He was criticized for being soft on national security in an ad was run against him that showed pictures of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden now that is guilt by association with a vengeance and to this day when you talk to Democrats in Georgia in Washington a lot of parts of the country just the mere mention of the name Max Cleland creates a kind of rage you could say there's a trinity of people in this book whom I used to try to explain what happened to us a person actually in the second is Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana Mary Landrieu the moderate Democrat in the first round of the election she cast herself really as a Bush Democrat supported the president 76 percent of the time. He has a big. Political system they if you don't get a majority on the first round there's a runoff so she didn't get a majority in November had to run again in December was the only Democrat who could learn from the experience of her fellow Democrats realize there wasn't much percentage in being a Bush Democrat and so she actually went after the president in the second round and she

won the election I interviewed her after the election and she was really furious with the president because she felt that someone was a pro national security pro-defense Democrats who deserve better than she got and she gave me all these quotes and I called my wife after my wife is an Irish-American who taught me that the definition of Irish Alzheimer's is you forget everything except your grudges. And I know that I believe that applies to Cajuns too. After I'd spoken to Mary Landrieu and then the third figure is Howard Dean was the first Democrat to figure out the rage that existed in the party. The problem for Howard Dean is that he gave Democrats a kind of backbone transplant to really the good doctor from Vermont. By the time the primaries came around all Democrats were speed. Being in much tougher terms and so Democrats who had welcomed what Dean had done started looking around for another candidate whom they thought would have a better chance they settled on John Kerry and we'll see how good the Democrats are at the Democratic primary voters are as political pundits in the hall have to run that line by my wife.

See what she says. Our guest E.J. Dionne He is author syndicated columnist regular commentator on National Public Radio on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. He is the author of the new book that lays out this argument that we're discussing here it's titled stand up fight back. And it's published by Simon and Schuster and questions are welcome. 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 by the way. Good i think. Yes or just I've always liked my wife's joke I think perhaps especially in these days I have to say that this is meant with no disrespect for people who have suffered from Alzheimer's or who are treating people who have it but it's simply a line about the power of grudges in public. I would hope that no one would take it that way but sometimes you know if you're suffering. There is something very difficult I think you do deserve respect. Obviously. Well let me go back just for a second to the to the place where you ended up your last comment talking about the initial success of Howard Dean and how his his hard charging sort of style seemed to grab a lot of people and the fact that ultimately once we got round to having primaries it turned out that he wasn't or you know whatever reason he wasn't successful. And

now it's the Democrats have chosen John Kerry and I think that you know a lot of people look at the difference between those two men and are concerned about Mr. Kerry's style his his lack of charisma his kind of ponderous sort of wonkiness nothing against the man but you wonder I'm sure that many Democrats wonder if he's really got the ability to lead the charge in an aggressive kind of way. I'm sure they believe what is going to have to happen if they're going to prevail against President Bush. Well I think one of the reasons that a plurality the Democrats Democrats decided to turn to Kerry is the combination of his own military experience three decorations in Vietnam with the way in which he talked about it during the campaign. I think perhaps his most effective line during the primaries which appealed not only to moderate Democrats but also to some Dean supporters was when he said if President Bush wants to make this an election about

national security I say bring it on and every time Kerry says that Democratic crowds just jump to their feet. So I think Kerry is an interesting character because there were moments when he really does connect. I mean one of the best Kerry events I ever went to was in a small town in New Hampshire right up against the Maine border where Kerry simply was in a gym in a high school and basically led about two or three hundred people at him and answered one question after another and didn't leave until he had answered everyone's questions. And it was a standing in which he managed to combine it if you will the positive side to one career that is to say he actually knew a lot about a lot of issues with a certain directness to the voters. I think he doesn't always capture that and there are times when he has you know his language his rhetoric seems a little too formal for some people. And I think one of the questions would be you know will John Kerry succeed in recapturing that magic moment that he had in the period from before the the Iowa caucuses through

the settling of the primaries. One thing that I have heard more than one pundit say is that when you're in the situation as we are now where you have an incumbent president who is running for reelection that before people start to think very much about the Challenger what they have to do is make up their mind about the incumbent and decide do we want to retain this man should he be reelected and then add if they make that decision if they say no then they really start focusing a lot. Our attention on the challenger now assuming that you think that got to Elsa's is correct. What do you think. And what sort of basis do you think that Americans those who are actually interested in engaging with it and a vote are going to decide whether or not. President Bush deserves another term. Well first of all I agree with that theory I think when there is an incumbent on the ballot elections are as a great political scientist videoke he once said referee Specter referenda that's a hard one to say without garbling it and that people really do. First and foremost vote on the incumbent it's how

Ronald Reagan became president that the voters had decided that they were unhappy with Jimmy Carter. Reagan really didn't grab an election until the last debate when he reassured Americans that he was some worried about whether he was trigger happy or would blow up the world it would be irresponsible. And he used that second debate to say no I'm good enough I'm acceptable if you want to fire Jimmy Carter you can use me to do it and you know. By a 10 percent margin he won over Jimmy Carter so I do think that theory is correct and I think the. The trouble for President Bush now is not on the left obviously liberal Democrats are going to vote against George Bush what you're seeing in the polls is a real Roge and his support among independents and a difficulty he's having in fully rallying moderate Republicans or is a Pew Research Center poll which not only asked Are you for a candidate but it were you for him and won't change your mind. Among independents 40 percent were for Kerry for sure only 32 percent for Bush. That's a real problem among moderate

Republicans. If I recall the number I think it was only 59 percent who were sure they were for Bush at this point. I don't think those voters are deciding on the basis of ideology I think they're deciding on the basis of performance. And I think a lot of Americans are just look at what happened in Iraq over the last several months and say. Do these guys really know what they're doing I think was that kind of question that was in people's heads so therefore I think the key to this election is that there are two keys to this election one is do things settle out. In Iraq today reach a better point. And the second is does this economic recovery penetrate deeply enough into the labor force I think the president's ratings on the economy despite the recent job growth still aren't all that good. Partly because there's a spillover from the reaction to Iraq but partly because we lost a lot of jobs in those four years and I think a lot of people in the middle and at the bottom still haven't felt the effects of the recovery especially in the face of rising health costs and rising gas

costs and so the question is does the economy pend it does the recovery penetrate deeply enough by Election Day. You know of a few Not sure when this was done I guess it was a couple of months ago that someone tossed out this this trial balloon about John McCain running as the candidate for vice president with John Kerry and Rick quickly Mr. McCain brushed on the sides and on and on. I'm not going to do that. But just for that moment. I think some people thought well that's a pretty interesting idea and I'm sure that that maybe there was also a momentary concern among the Republicans that if you know that the issue being that if they lose someone like McCain that they're in in real trouble are they really do you think concerned about the about holding on to more sort of moderate Republicans or are they really mostly concerned about maintaining their base those people who are the most ideological and who are the most to the right.

Well you know I do think they are worried about moderate Republicans. The Bush campaign is advertising on the Golf Channel which if you'll forgive the bad pun is not notoriously a home for swing voters. It's I think that's an indication that they know they need to get some of their Republicans back I am very intrigued by this McCain business McCain actually is an important figure in my book and I deal with him very positively indeed I ask Democrats why did it take a Republican John McCain to make campaign reform such a central issue in American politics. I think that there is also value in a you know in thinking about McCain because I think after 9/11 as I talk about in the book The what we're looking for is a kind of progressive patriotism and certainly having two Vietnam war heroes on the ticket would send a powerful message. If I were to go. Yes I would guess that it won't happen for two reasons One is I'm not sure McCain wants to make the leap himself and secondly I think a lot of Democrats are asking of these very independent minded man whether Democrats are better off having him inside the Republican party causing trouble there rather

than inside the Democratic Party causing trouble for Democrats. We have a number of callers here and we'll get right to it starting with the caller in Belgium nearby community here. Lie number four. Hello. Good morning sir. Good morning. You have not mentioned this concept and it seems to me that the true problem we have with our politics is the fact that there's only two parties two parties make the system run good when it comes to voting and stuff that really can make for a good mix when you want to get. People's opinions pronounced because two parties take diametrically opposed positions and that's just about it. We know this is as the caller knows a very old debate or we are democracies better served with two party systems or multi-party systems. The advantages of a multi-party system is that lots of different groups can find expression for their points of view from way over on the left way over on the right and including some people in the middle. You know many people in the middle. The problem I think with

multi-party systems is how do you put together governments afterwards and what you've seen in countries such as Italy is a notable case where they had such a wide array of parties that it became very difficult to assemble governments and all the negotiations were done by politicians after the election. So the voters were taken out of the equation the one advantage of two party systems is that parties have to build their coalitions before the election and voters can judge. I think I have a better opportunity to judge what this party how this party will look when its in power is it a coalition of the center left or the center right is it. Well out on the left well out on the right. And so I have I have thought about this a lot and have lived in and reported on countries with a variety of political side. Systems on balance I think that the two party systems can actually to actually have benefits that outweigh their problems. There are some interesting proposals out there from advocates of a multi-party system one of which is preferential voting where you could put number one by your favorite candidate and if

he didn't get enough votes your number two choice would then get your ballot that would have done some very interesting things in the 2000 election because one imagines that more Nader voters would have picked Gore rather than Bush. I really don't want to get into that back and why I don't blame you much sooner. Thank you very much. We are at our midpoint Here let me just quickly introduce Again our guest E.J. Dionne. He's a syndicated columnist best selling author. He appears twice weekly in The Washington Post and nearly 100 other papers across the country. He is currently a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and also professor at Georgetown University and as a regular commentator. On National Public Radio his new book is titled stand up fight back. The subtitle is Republican toughs Democratic wimps and the politics of revenge and it's published by Simon and Schuster. I also do want to mention that he's spending some time here over the next couple of weeks traveling around the country talking about the book and if we have people listening in the Chicago area might be interested in hearing him and meeting him. He will be in Chicago on Monday

June 21st for a speech and a signing with the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations. And this is taking place at the Millennium Knickerbocker hotel 5:30 in the afternoon. So if you're up in that area you can certainly do that take advantage of his being there and of course you're interested in the book you just go down the bookstore and look for 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 is the number for here in Champaign Urbana and toll free 800. 2 2 1 4 5 5. Our next caller here is in Kankakee and that would be Line 1. Well it's instructive sometimes to view presidential elections as analogous to prior presidential elections when you compare and contrast for instances of the coming 2004 election with the 1972 and 1992 presidential elections. It is a very interesting let me let me take one point out of the comparison I think it is useful. A lot of people say this will be a very close election. It may well be a close

election down to the wire. But if you look at elections in which incumbents are on the ballot they tend in the end not to be close. You know they can be reasonably close but not very close because in the end voters seem to make a large decision about whether they want to keep the incumbent in as they did with Richard Nixon in 1972 or whether they want to throw the incumbent out as they did in 1980 or in 1992. The comparison in 92 is very interesting obviously because you have an incumbent President Bush in both elections. One big difference is you don't have Ross Perot in this contest I think from the polling if Perot had not been on the ballot. Clinton. He would have won anyway. And in some ways this election is 92 turned on its head because in 1992 the first President Bush was generally admired for the way across party lines for the way he had handled the first Iraq war. But the economy was seen as being in trouble and there was a perceived indifference to

domestic affairs whether that was fair or not that was strong. We held in the electorate this time too. I think President Bush is surprised he's trying to get the discussion back on the economy because foreign policy which he thought would be his great advantage is not so much to his great advantage and I've written that talk about this in the book that the previous president really didn't take out an insurance policy on the possibility of difficulties in Iraq and that the polarization that developed around this war actually came back to hurt him at least in the first six months of this year. OK let's continue next go or follow. That's line three you know reading I think you really resent about George Bush. You know anybody who disagrees with him is the question of patriotism. Specially during the run up of the Iraq war when you didn't agree with him you were from. Against American national security and all these other

things and I find that very rampant in my father was a veteran of World War 2. And you know other people in my family and then in wars and everything else. Where do you come off question my patriotism. I think if a lot of anger were there and you talked about that in the beginning then I think it can be discounted. You know I think the caller is right in the book I talk about how for a period in 2002 the Republicans played a very successful game of Whack a Mole which is anytime a Democrat dared pop up to criticize some aspect of President Bush's policies especially the foreign policy to raise questions about what happened on 9/11 there was somebody wielding a big club with the word patriotism on it and whack that mole right back into the hole. And so I do think there is this sense that you know among a lot of people who are moderates or liberals that you know they have a right to question this is a free country they have a right to question current policies and should not be written off as unpatriotic

if they don't and I think that again to go back to an earlier question I think that did give Kerry some appeal because it's very hard to accuse someone who take two it's taken bullets for the country of being unpatriotic and I think he ends up speaking for a lot of people like this caller who say nope we're not going to take that in this election. Yeah especially when he was for America or for you. There is that. I mean I do find it odd that there was a whole period when people were asking well did Terry earn his third medal legitimately or not. I mean first of all two medals is a lot. And secondly it's just you know to question somebody who actually did serve when you didn't serve I think that does raise questions in the debate. I'm sorry. It cheapens the debate. Right I think. You know I think they backed off that because it's I think they do not if you are an opponent of Kerry's You obviously don't want to spend a lot of time talking about the fact that he did serve in Vietnam for exactly.

I thank you sir. Thank you. Well you know on this question of the president's service there. This is period not very long ago the partly White House was concerned enough about this issues that they thought fit to release the president's service records. Although some people looked at that and said well this really isn't a complete story and you cannot judge from them whether in whether in fact he did serve as as he said. Is that something that you think that the Democrats are likely to continue to try to press on. I think that I think it's one of those issues that will pop up at various moments and I especially think that to the extent the Republicans raise any questions about Kerry's service record it will be inevitable that Democrats try to get the press and the public to revisit some of the questions left by by those service records. Kerry himself has tried to walk this careful line which is on the one hand he'd really like voters to you know notice that he went to Vietnam the president didn't On the other

hand he has also tried to say well Bush did serve in the National Guard. But I think that's something that as voters learn more they're going to make a judgment whatever the details of the bush service and whether he did miss some of these sessions. You know I think voters are going to have that contrast pretty clearly in their head by the time the election rolls around. Let's go to another caller this next person is in MAP toone line too. Hello good morning. I hope when i hope it's a simple historical question Republicans were you know kind of into the negative campaigning mode. There was a chair of the National Republican Committee a few years ago was credited as being the the developer of the modern negative campaign and I'm wondering if you could help me with the name I have water you're thinking of the laid out water. Yes. Thank you very much. The you know the in fairness you know that the Republicans are not alone in running negative campaigns a lot of conservatives out there will remember the

mushroom shaped cloud in an ad that Lyndon Johnson ran against Barry Goldwater you know basically saying that he was going to start a war so it's not unique to one side of politics. But I do think you know if you could look back at the late Lee Atwater who is actually somebody I knew fairly well and was a charming human being but was as tough as nails when it came to running a political campaign he realized that the first President Bush was in a lot of trouble he was running 17 points behind and that the only way to win the election was to really clobber Michael Dukakis on the head and he found a series of issues or at least you might call them that many would say they're not issues you know things like prayer. Governor Dukakis vetoing a bill requiring the Pledge of Allegiance in schools on the grounds of the Supreme Court already said the government couldn't do that. And you know this prison for a while program. And so yes it was a very effective negative campaign run in in 1988. And there is this tendency I mean I am struck by the

fact that Republicans have been very good at saying any negative attacks on US are somehow wrong or unpatriotic. And yet when the time comes they will be you know they will do what is necessary to win and I think that's what you saw in 1988 against Mike Dukakis. The next caller is normal. Number four. Hello. Hello. Yes yes I'd like to talk about the vice presidential pick That's coming up. What do you like your opinion on whether you think it's important to pick a regional candidate for example somebody from the south or from the West to balance the ticket or for it's more important to pick somebody that can articulate their message through the media these days and one person that comes to mind for me is Bill Richardson a Latino from New Mexico I think is very articulate. I like your opinion on that piece and I'll hang up and analysts. All right. Thank you. I think the first rule of the vice presidential choice is more often than not vice presidents virtue rather than help you and so you've got to at least make sure the vice president won't hurt you I think the

last vice president really to help somebody win the presidency was Lyndon Johnson because he helped John Kennedy take Texas in that election. And secondly I think that the this is a very circumstantial thing when Bill Clinton picked Al Gore. It was two Southerners on the ticket. It turned out to be a very successful marriage because they each person reinforced the other. And the Democrats became very competitive in the south a region in which they had not been competitive for a while so I do think it's circumstantial. I'll just go through a few quick names. The Richardson is very interesting because he does have a lot of foreign policy experience. He is Hispanic and three swing states are in the Southwest Nevada Arizona and New Mexico. Dick Gephardt is an interesting figure I was talking to a Republican who worked for Newt Gingrich who was suggesting the Democrats pick Gephardt because he said when we were in the house running against Gephardt as a Democratic leader we went through his whole record and I can assure you we found nothing negative on him because if we had we would have released it. Back then he's a solid

choice. Some people say he's not exciting. John Edwards is of is a very interesting choice and it harkens back to the President Reagan's decision to pick George Bush the person who came in second in the primaries who developed some support in the party. The advantage of Edwards is he gives a party regional balance because he's from North Carolina. And he really is able to articulate a strong message I must say during the primaries I wrote some fairly positive columns on John Edwards because I think he really did capture something with that talk of two Americas one for the privileged and one for the rest of us. I thought it was important because he didn't say it's rich versus poor or worker versus owner. It is the substantial majority of Americans trying to find their way up versus a small number of Americans who have a chance to use government to reinforce power in the society that they already have I think that's an interesting case to make. We'll continue again. Next caller we have a couple people here locally. Next is your bank. Line the one below.

Yeah I'm curious if you include yourself as one of those wimps that we've got to do something about. Yesterday you wrote that Reagan's failures should not be overlooked when you mention the Iran Contra scandal. And you also said that Reagan could be tough but he did not go for divisiveness intolerance or nastiness unquote. But as as really beautifully expressed in democracy you can now for the last couple days where they've been going over Reagan's legacy you have 70000 political killings in El Salvador more than 100000 in Guatemala 30000 killed in the Contra war and Nicaragua. We're really talking about a very well let me let me quote a Medal of Honor winner who gave up his medal in protest. He said when

President Reagan said I am a contrat too. I said that he insulted every American patriot when he referred to these killers of children old men and women as freedom fighters comparable to the founding fathers of our country. To me that's an obscenity. You know I don't see. So I ask you again are you one of these wimps that you had an opportunity yesterday to talk when you actually brought up the topic of Reagan's failures to point out the kind of things that people like Negroponte and and Abrams are continuing now on Iraq. What have you got to say for yourself sir. Thank you for that call. The absence of that I'm not surprised that the caller had that view and I'll tell you what I think. Two things The first is in the immediate days after somebody like Ronald Reagan dying it seems to me appropriate to say what lessons can people learn from him including people who are on the liberal or progressive side

of the political spectrum and there are two there are several points I made in that column. One is that Reagan had a skill because he had been a former Democrat of speaking to Democrats as if he were one and that that was very critical to his success. The second which a caller actually at one point the caller mounted benefit with is that Reagan understood that he was the product of any leader of a movement and that the right managed to create a movement that was more than the sum of its parts. And if Ronald Reagan could learn from FDR about how to do politics progressives could learn a thing or two about Ronald Reagan and the third was to contrast President Reagan with the current the current president where I argued that in two areas Reagan showed a lot more flexibility than George Bush did the first is on taxes where Reagan did cut taxes very deeply. I was against that I've criticized that often. But then he went back and raised taxes twice because the tax cut went too far that's not the kind of flexibility you see now. And I. Think critically. Reagan at the end showed himself to be open to

Gorbachev and in a way that only Nixon could go to China I think it took a cold warrior to say hey wait a minute something is happening in the Soviet Union so the second Reagan if you will as opposed to the first Reagan or maybe in concert with the first Reagan really did help in the Cold War. Now I think that as this argument goes on people are going to speak more and more of the ways in which they disagree with Ronald Reagan I had a friend who came up to me yesterday and said Why are people saying all these good things about rate Ronald Reagan he cut my student loans there will be the controversy over his Central American policy I think this is the first round of a long of a long debate. And so I thought the most useful thing to do initially in the period immediately after his death that column was actually written on Sunday was to ferrite liberals progressives let's figure out what we can learn from Reagan and then as time goes on we're going to have the argument over his historical legacy. We want to jump in here first of all just to remind people we only have about 15 minutes left. And again to introduce our guest E.J. Dionne. He works for The Washington

Post he's his syndicated column that's in the post twice weekly and a lot of other papers. He is also an author his new book is Stand up fight back. It's published by Simon and Schuster. He's also a regular commentator on National Public Radio before we end up out of time completely. One of things I want to ask you to talk about is another. Aspect of the book in which you as we discussed earlier you look back at how the Democrats sort of felt blindsided by the Republicans who in the wake of 9/11 when Democrats were trying to practice a kind of politics of unity that instead the president continued with a kind of really hardball partisan kind of politics. So it partly they may have been outmaneuvered but partly You also say the problem with the Democrats is that they're just too tentative. They're not really willing to stand up and talk about what it is they believe in and that they ought to embrace those kind of key traditional values that Democrats always have embraced. Having said all that what is

what is your advice to the Democratic Party how how should they be. What should they be talking about how should they be talking. What do you have in the book I have two lists one called The Wrong Stuff and one called The Right Stuff and it is true that the one of the core arguments of the book is that Democrats spend so much time saying who they are not that nobody knows who they are. And just to tick off a couple of examples. You know this argument big government versus small government well that's a silly argument. People who are progressive and Democrats believe in Social Security Medicare Medicaid environmental protection worker safety protection as strong as he see there for a pretty big government. So the issue is not big or small government. The issue is whose side is the government going to be on. What kind of regulations are we going to have to make the economy work and to make the economy honest to prevent things like Enron and that goes to another argument they have are you pro-business or anti-business. One of my favorite cartoons is an old New Yorker cartoon where two very wealthy business guys are in their place chairs at the Men's Club saying you know I don't

understand it every time these socialist democrats when I make a pile so the issue is not pro or anti business the issue is again what kind of policies you want to keep business honest or. Another argument they always have populist versus mainstream. You know some Democrats think Al Gore went off the rails when he was briefly populist. Does anybody think that when you attack big oil companies or polluters or HMO some big insurance companies that he lost votes by doing that in a lot of issues the mainstream is populous So I think they need to get rid of a lot of these sort of mold the arguments that are really quite irrelevant and start talking more about how how can government be or you know if individuals are asked to be responsible how can the government be responsible who has a set of whose side is the government on who we want right wing judges making law can't the government promote both personal initiative and self-sufficiency I talk a lot about G.I. Bill politics which encourage the kind of reciprocity that we have an obligation to serve the country and that our government has an obligation to help those who are trying to rise up to to succeed in rising

up. And so I think there is a language which would simultaneously appeal to the caller who s s fair question about what about me on one of the Reagan as well as to moderate voters who are really not right wing who don't want America to become a right wing country and who would prefer a kind of progressivism that would unify us and lift us up together rather than to continue with these sort with the sort of deep economic divisions. The next caller is Urbana I believe. Yes. Three collide two separate items for you Mr. Dion. Sir if you keep track of these things from the Cleveland Saxby campaign in Georgia Scott Howell the guy who did who produced that disgusting commercial of the morphing images. Yes. He's now been hired in Illinois by Republican Jack Ryan. So good luck Barack Obama. It will happen with it will get a laugh in there. I don't know yet but

recent polls indicate that Mr. Obama has a rather large lead of course it's many months until Election Day right now. The second item is a widely different to Mitt to my mind the Bush administration is pretty well slaughtering pollution control and resource conservation rules developed over decades. And it doesn't seem to be getting out except from sources like that. Now with Bill Moyers. And that the risk the Republicans have squandered. Heritage I think probably started by Theodore Roosevelt in the area of our first risk resource conservation and national parks and then later on quite frankly with Nixon for pollution control what's your story on that right Richard Nixon is the person who signed the bill creating the Environmental Protection Agency.

No that's that's right I think of you know in terms of the Obama race it is going to be a very interesting race and I think given that the lead given the lead he has I think you are going to start seeing some some some pretty sharp attacks on him because if things stay as they are Obama looks like he's going to win by a fairly substantial margin in terms of the environmental issue. I think you will you will see this issue emerge more clearly one of the reasons you will is because environmental groups are actually one of the best organized set of organizations on the progressive side of politics I think you know that you have to list them along with organized labor as a major progressive force and what you're already seeing you know in some television advertising for him and other kinds of communications from groups like the Sierra Club in the league for Conservation Voters is an effort to put these issues on the table. And the caller's right these are important issues to moderate Republicans if you look at mater. Republicans for example in the Chicago suburbs. These are unbalanced environmental voters. They are voters who

actually they are Republicans who have been drifting Democratic over the last several elections a lot of these old Republican suburban counties are either turning in much smaller Republican margins than they used to or have actually flipped and are starting to vote modestly Democratic So I think the environment people who are environmentalists are never happy that the issue gets all the attention they would like. But I think it's a very important issue underneath the surface and that these activist groups are going to lift it above the surface. OK thank you. Thanks very much for your call let's go next to Champaign County line to the earlier caller explored what I wanted to do which is the idea you're scolding people for you know living 9 1 1 not to silence people and the Reagan thing is happening and will be watching your column and I'll give you a lead which is to go back to Kerry Kerry's investigation of the Iran Contra connection and also the drug running that was going on with that because I guess the Senate was in

Democratic hands of the time and he was in charge of the commission. Some people point out that he has doesn't have a lot of bills behind his name but he has a lot of commissions and and that was a rather good report and actually you could have drawn the bill's bill of particulars for impeachment of Reagan out of it. So I'll be waiting to see that as time goes by a little bit and we have a decent interval. One thing with this you are in Illinois I'd like to point out again Moyers was cited a stick figure from his show was that in Illinois hires are getting 30 percent less than the job they had before. So what I'm getting at is this economic recovery and we're looking at these jobs figures etc. etc. but it's not making up for what was lost and it's also if you look at the quality of jobs particularly here in Illinois we have good evidence of. How you know really the Reagan Reagan attack on the working class has has run from Rishon

and we're getting people who are tired with much less flexibility much more flexibility which means flexibility for the management of course. I guess there's only a few minutes left and I'm like What are you. Thank you thank you very much you could I think. Things on the record business. If anybody is interested I have a debate on the Reagan legacy on Slate magazine which you can find back in the archives back in 1997 which was they gave me an opportunity say lots of things about the Reagan presidency Secondly I don't think this battle over his legacy is finished yet. I guess I'm old fashioned I think in the very early days after somebody like Reagan dies it's appropriate to be a little more respectful and then we engage in the serious historical and political fight as time goes on Arthur Schlesinger Jr. who is no friend of Reaganism took a similar tack in a in a piece in Newsweek magazine. The question in terms of the economy I do think that what the caller said and what Bill Moyers said helps explain why the Bush's

economic numbers have not improved that much despite these reports of jobs. There's been some study of the nature of the jobs added and they tend to be lower income jobs than the ones that were lost. Secondly we haven't replaced all of the lost jobs in third as I think we talked about earlier. A lot of people don't sense in the middle and at the bottom don't sense that their standard of living has gone up in many cases because of the problems with health care in particular. They're worried that their standard of living has gone down. So I think one of the tests of this election will be whether people in those parts of the economy really begin to feel some benefit of this or not. And it takes a long time for recovery to reach folks who have been really hurt in the previous recession. Another caller this is Rebecca. The line one below didn't Reagan give us the bailout the savings and loan was entering internet for a hundred billion dollars or more. Reagan signed the bill that opened the way for what became the savings and loan problem and then President Bush had to engage in the

bailouts of the actual bailout happened under under President Bush. There wasn't a lot of choice in terms of doing something something to bail out the banks. But the you know the initial law was signed by Reagan. He got passed with bipartisan support and I say OK thank you not to be a wimp about it but that's just the history. Well and I guess to be fair also you have to acknowledge the fact that while we associate deregulation with Reagan the Republicans in fact I believe the deregulation of the banking industry actually started under Jimmy Carter. Well especially with deregulation of the airlines in particular started under Jimmy Carter There's been all the real banking serious banking deregulation happened later and the SNL business happened under Reagan right. Well we're going to have to leave it at that for people who are in the Chicago area. Again I want to mention that E.J. Dionne will be speaking at the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations this actually taking place at the Millennium Knickerbocker hotel. 5:30 in the afternoon on Monday June 21st. Otherwise if you'd like to read the book Stand up fight back published by

Simon and Schuster. You can look at the bookstore. E.J. Dionne appears twice weekly in The Washington Post. A lot of other papers around the country. He's also a regular commentator on National Public Radio Mr. Dionne thanks very much for talking with. Thank you it's great to be with you.