Focus 580; The Radical Center: The Future of American Politics

Selves as being more in the middle have been alienated so they don't want to say that they're one or the other in fact the argues the authors argue that the parties have really positioned themselves and the way that it's next to impossible for them to advocate a kind of centrist agenda which is what they say that they are doing in this book the radical center. So as we talk of course questions comments are welcome I expect some people will either want to agree or disagree or maybe take issue with some of what the guest has to say and that's great. All we ask of callers is that people are brief in their comments so that we can keep things moving along and get in as many different people as possible but anybody is welcome to join us here in Champaign Urbana. The number is 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 and it would be a long distance call use the toll free line will pay for the call that's 800 to 2 2 9. Four five five So again three three three W I allow that switch getting a match the numbers and letters and toll free 800 1:58 WLM. Mr. Lind Hello. Yes thanks for talking with us today.

Thanks for having me appreciate it. Maybe just for a moment just to start in 25 words or less tell us about the New America Foundation would. What is your orientation there and and your kind of agenda. Well it's the most talked about new think tank in Washington we have mostly have fellows in their 20s and 30s and 40s. We try to go beyond the old familiar liberal and conservative worldviews you know try to look at things from high tech to reinventing Social Security from a broadly centrist perspective. Talk about where we are in politics maybe you can amplify a little bit more on this idea that you write about in the book and that is why it is that it seems that an awful lot of people feel estranged from the two major parties and now in increasing numbers don't want to identify with one of the other. Well if you look at the polling data from the last election is quite remarkable according to some polls more than 50 percent of the public so that they were Independents or moderates and did not identify

either with the right or the left or for that matter with the Democrats or Republicans. Ted Halston and I in the Radical Center argue that Americans are quite right to be disaffected with the two parties who are still battling over issues that are 30 years some cases 50 or 75 years old. Liberalism tends to be defined in terms of defending the entitlements that were created during the New Deal period from the 30s to the 60s. Many of which like Social Security and Medicare are very good things but they they radically need to be reinvented to deal with the new fiscal and demographic realities of the 20th century so it's not in the 21st century. So it's not enough simply to keep defending these half century old programs they have to be reinvented. Many conservatives are nostalgic for this period before the new deal in which there was a very small tiny government the United States that's never coming back again and in an advanced high tech society with. Social insurance there's going to be a major federal role in the economy in the society and that's permanent the

conservatives have not yet adapted to this. So we argue not for the squishy center not for splitting the difference as many politicians do between the familiar Republican and Democratic positions but for a third alternative for a new agenda. And we call that agenda the radical center I guess and I'm not I'm not trying to pick a fight here but having and we can talk in some detail but I guess having looked at the issues and considered what seems to be the spectrum of thought in America I think that you're to the right of center does look to me like it's exactly in the center. It's kind of amusing because in our reviews Michael Kazin in the New York Observer left liberal publication said that the ideas in our book were all great ideas but these guys are fooling no one they're really trying to reinvent liberalism. Daniel Kass and commentary a right wing magazine said you know these are terrific ideas but these guys are basically Republicans and they should stop pretending depends on the issues for example we take of what might be conventionally more conservative line on Social Security we think that

there's a room for private investment accounts we agree with the president's commission on that. On the other hand when it comes to K through 12 education we put forth the most radically left wing proposal you might call it for the finance of education in American history we call for national equalization of school funding. We prefer to see that in connection with some degree of choice whether within the public school system like charter schools or a complete school choice system. But we think that the movement within the states in the 1980s and 1990s for intrastate equalization of funding among school districts within a state. The next step beyond that is to get rid of these grotesque disparities in K through 12 financing between states for example Mississippi spends an average of $4000 per student. New Jersey spends $12000 per student that's even adjusting for the price of living differences between the two states. So on some issues we may look more

left on others we may look more right but we don't think in those categories we're trying to look at this on a case by case basis from the point of view of our philosophy which seeks to reconcile fairness which has traditionally been the strength of American liberalism with flexibility which traditionally has been the strength of American libertarianism and conservatism. Well I suppose what all of this the reaction to your blog obviously what all that suggests is that there are some. There's marginal utility in the terms conservative and liberal because they do tend in some sense to be relative that is you know somebody else if you decide are they conservative or liberal Well it also has as limited to what you think you are. And you know so maybe it be true. Maybe it betrays my political bias. It looks like you guys are a little bit to the right of that. But if you look at the polls only about 10 percent of Americans will describe themselves as liberal very small number of the number who describe themselves as you know really rigorously left as a mere fraction of that about twice that many Americans so usually about 20 percent sometimes

25 30 percent of the thing on the poll will call themselves conservative So if you add up those those two groups liberals and conservatives you have a clear majority of Americans who do not feel comfortable with either term. Why. Thing that intrigues me that you also talk about in the book is that you suggest that this kind of the place that we are now. We've been there before in the past and in American politics and that it seems to come at times of great technological change. Well in our book the Radical Center Ted holstered and I argue that the United States has been reinvented twice before once during the Civil War and Reconstruction when Lincoln and his successors transformed the country and moved it from an agrarian society into a successful industrial society. And then during the second industrial revolution of electricity's and cars and hydroelectric power in which Franklin Roosevelt in his New Deal successors between the 30s in the 1960s and

70s. Transformed America once again and created a suburban service sector society and we're still living in the New Deal era. It's kind of falling apart from old age is sort of like the great mansion which at one time was was very new and shiny and now it's just needs to be renovated seriously. So we argue that there will be a third reinvention of the United States of not only the institutions of government but also those of the marketplace and of the private and civil society. At some point in the century probably in the next few decades or at least the next couple of generations what happens historically with these reinventions is that a lot of good ideas for necessary reforms pile up in ordinary times but in peace time and in times of ordinary politics the forces of resistance of the status quo tend to defeat the reform ideas and then there's some huge crisis sometimes it's a domestic crisis like the Great Depression but often it's a military crisis like the Civil War or

World War Two. It opens the floodgates. And so a lot of these ideas that have been dammed up for decades or generations are enacted fairly quickly. People forget that while he was fighting the Civil War Abraham Lincoln pushed through all sorts of things from a tariff policy that promoted industrialization the railroad ization of the west land grant colleges a lot of good ideas that had nothing either to do with secession or with slavery. But that laid the foundation for what we call the second republic of the United States. Franklin Roosevelt his successors like Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson enact it a lot of ideas ranging from Social Security to federal aid for education which had been floating around in since the early 1800s if not from the late 19th century. But before the crises of the Depression and World War Two in the cold war politicians favoring these reforms could not prevail over those with a vested interest in the status quo. So our

purpose in the radical center is not to pray. What's going to happen in the next couple of congressional cycles is to set forth the broad philosophical outlines of an agenda which in the next decade or the next generation could serve as the basis for a new American politics. We have a couple of callers Let me introduce again the guest for this part of focus 580 We're speaking with Michael Lind He is currently senior fellow at the New America Foundation think tank in Washington. He has previously been either editor or staff writer in a number of publications The New Yorker Harper's and the national interest. He's also written for others including New York Times Magazine an Atlantic Monthly he is the co-author of a recently published book it's titled The Radical Center the subtitle The Future of American politics Doubleday is the publisher and we have some callers and would certainly welcome people into the conversation. You want to agree disagree make whatever point you like 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We also have a toll free line go to anywhere you can hear us and that is 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. We have a couple of people here ready to

go start with line 1. Well hi there. Where to start. The copy that was read to introduce I don't know if this is from a fellow's intro or something or whether it's something was written about well but it says that the Democratic and Republican Party have been taken over their extremes. That's why. Maybe opinion of no excuse me it is that is OK if the opinion of the guest I just want to be straight but that's not me that's not your copy OK. That is his opinion yes. What is the Demerol Democratic Leadership Council. What is it what do you make of the fact that when Clinton was governor of Arkansas he was collaborating with Reagan on so-called welfare reform. You know this is absurd. The Democrats have been taken over so that they're not a second party they that's why there's so many independents there's no choice. I'm sure you've heard this before and you probably you know in your Washington think tank you. You're finally

honing your arguments etc. and parry this one quite well and say I'm old and in the way but you know some things don't change. I don't know if you're old enough to remember when Reagan was president. He had a very high popularity rate rating but then when a good poll polling company polled people on his you know policies most people disagreed with him 70 percent of the people in this country were favoring a universal health care plan all along the lines of Canada where you have choice and and it's not like the United Health System in Britain though that's actually still better in a lot of ways than the one here as far as getting. More care to more people. Until Thatcher started crucifying it. But. So that's the that's that's the point I think you're making a very safe and marketable sorts of arguments in the current climate but you can start with telling me what what role you see the

Democratic Leadership Council having in the Democratic Party and how democratic leisure class as we've we've been calling it here. Well it's Mr lend do you think. Well you know I sympathize with your owner. I'm afraid he's part of a small and marginal minority of people on the left in this country. You know people who think that there's no difference between the Democrats and the Republicans and think that the Democrats are too right wing. Make up you know one or two percent of the population as I said about only about 10 percent of the public in polls and this is consistent. These are polls from you know by left and right say that they're liberal in the vast majority of those are sort of moderate liberals. You know the number of people who think of themselves as democratic socialist or as Social Democrats in the European sense are truly miniscule and so I just you know I don't need your sympathy please. The point is that people have very very communitarian policies when you ask them about it they think everybody should have a right to health

care. We have sort of a thing that fourth our own proposal in the Radical Center for universal portable health care it's not a single payer model which we don't think is politically feasible United States it's been tried multiple time right Truman tried to tried to introduce it after world go to Johnson because the idea of Medicare was that after a few years it would start off with old people and then this would you know by the end of the 60s would be the universal. Yeah and it was abandoned medicine program Great Society was a band of people think that it went on for decades it's not true. We do agree with proponents of single payer that health care should be severed completely from your employer and that it should be totally universal. One of the problems with our present employer based health insurance system as you know is that it creates this to tear labor market with it. Distinction between full time workers and contingent workers and of course much of the label labor struggle in the 1990s the U.P.S. strike for example involved corporations Microsoft did the same thing trying to use

contingent workers basically as scabs so that they wouldn't have to pay benefits. Well I don't know what's really radical about your center I'm glad you're advocating map but it will but on the other hand what we're in favor of is a mandatory self insurance with low income people being subsidized by the government. This is a system that's used in Switzerland it's used in Singapore. It's an alternative to this kind of centralized government run Bismarckian. Well you're still dropping a lot of money. Subsidized money into the insurance industry and they're still spending more money turning people down for care than they are giving care and I know that extremely well let somebody else have a shot thanks. Other questions comments are certainly welcome the number here in Champaign Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 to 2 to 9. I guess I don't want to be labor this point but I still want to get their reaction to the to what the caller said about where the Democratic Party was now because if indeed

as you say people with his views are a small minority I guess I don't see how it is that and I don't see any evidence of those people having much of a voice in the Democratic Party. Certainly nothing that would parallel the voice that conservatives know we have in the Republicans agree if you look at Joe Lieberman for example who is a genuine Democratic Leadership Council these are genuine centrist that is deliberately trying to be an alternative to the left wing of the Democratic Party which is associated with an absolutely inflexible position on a public school monopoly of education for example. There you know the Democratic left is totally opposed to school choice and any sort that weakens the public teachers unions who make up about a fifth of the Democratic delegates to Democratic conventions. The Democratic left is rigidly in favor of Rick Perry crude race based and gender based affirmative action programs and the Democratic Leadership Council to their credit I think. His question a lot of these

shibboleths of the Democratic left they have not they have managed to promote a number of their leaders like Bill Clinton and Al Gore However when push comes to shove when it comes to getting the Democratic nomination all of these leaders have essentially had to abandon the DLC position and adopt those of the Jesse Jackson wing of the party of the teachers unions and so on and we saw this with the Joe Lieberman who abandoned one after another of his centrist positions in order to win the blessing of the Democratic left to get the Democratic nomination. So I think the DLC has tried to move the Democratic Party in a more moderate position. However the fact that the nomination of Democratic candidate still depends very solidly on rather small interest groups including public school teachers unions. I think that shows that they failed to take it over at that most they've made a few careers for a few politicians but they're weaker in my view when it comes to the nominations. And that's what we're talking about we're talking with the nominating process and you see the same

thing in the Republican Party. The vast majority of Republican voters are fairly middle of the road so were a lot of Republican politicians and the activists who control the nominations are very very hard line dogmatic economic conservatives and religious right fundamentalists. John McCain was the most popular politician in the country at one point last year. Probably could have won the presidency he could never win the Republican nomination because the religious right opposed him in the far right opposed him in the nominating process. So we do think one of the reasons the American people are frustrated is that relatively small groups of activists who have their own familiar agendas stand between the general electorate which tends to be fairly centrist. That is it's somewhat to the right of the Democratic Party base and somewhat to the left of the Republican Party base. But politicians who share many of their views cannot get nominated because they're too right wing for the Democratic primary

activists and they're too left wing for the Republican primary activists. Well let's go on that we have other callers let's go next to line number two. Person in line. Hello good morning. Just so you know where I'm coming from a little bit. I kind of align myself for the green or Natural Capitalism a certain vein of Paul Hawken and 100 Lovins But Ted hosted my co-author is an old online friend of hers. OK but you know I guess I I find your premis very skeptical of the idea that you know that the the Democrats have been captured by the left. And I would say that why some people don't line themselves with either political party and in fact you know half people don't even bother to participate at the consumer level of voting in the political process processes because and I think rightly so they see both parties as truly aligning themselves

with the interests of corporate elites and not really having their interest in you know in heart. Well that's true of some. There are obviously disaffected voters including some of the supporters of Ralph Nader for example who think that the Democrats are not left wing enough for their taste. They're a tiny minority of talking about people who are politically engaged. When you're talking about people who you know follow Nader I'm TAWS saying that you know there's a whole lot more people half the population in this country of voting age doesn't even bother to go to the polls. They don't Dennis fi with the political process because they don't think that it really is doing anything in their interests like for a few entirely about this and as a matter of fact in the Radical Center Tonight I propose a way to help solve that problem which we think is even more important in campaign finance reform which we support very vigorously but we don't think campaign finance reform

is enough. We propose that the U.S. like most democracies in the world that they adopt some form of choice in voting. Also known as proportional representation in which third votes for third party and fourth party candidates do not are not wasted votes as they are under our First Past the Post are winner take all electoral rule for example under our system. If you vote for Nader but you prefer Gore to Bush then by voting for Nader you're you're basically helping Bush and hurting Gore. There's an alternate system called instant runoff voting where in an election with more than two candidates you can list the candidates in order of preference for example the last election. If you have Gore Bush Nader you could but one or two or three next to each of their names in the candidate with the fewest votes gets eliminated but the second choice votes that candidates voters are then reassigned instantly and mathematically by computers to one of the two the two remaining top candidates at exactly the same principle as a runoff election. But you don't have the runoff election two weeks or

six weeks later you don't spend millions of dollars doing it. People don't go back to the polls. You can do it all with the same ballot. And this is done for example to elect the president of the Republic of Ireland it's used in Australia and it's on the ballot in San Francisco in March. They're having a ballot initiative as to whether to elect their city leaders by means of instant runoff voting. So so we agree wholeheartedly with the idea that a lot of Americans find no candidates and no parties that represent their own particular mixture of concerns and issues. And in fact that is we argue in the book the radical center. The primary reason for the alienation of American voters from voting is not because of corrupt campaign contributions and so on. That's a problem to be sure but you know corporations and rich individuals had much more corrupt control of the process in the old days than they do now and yet people showed up for voting. The real problem is a lack of choice. That is the two options that are offered again and again and again simply don't

satisfy a growing number of the American people and if you look in an international perspective countries that have three party and four party systems have very very high voter turnout. Countries that have stable two party systems with winner take all rules like the United States and Britain have the lowest voter turnout in the in the world. So we think that instant runoff voting as a way of making a part of the votes for third party candidates and also for independents would would revitalize voting in America and people would finally have a chance to say that my vote counts. Well I still think the money controls the choices that we have in politics more than anything else and I'd like to let me challenge you on that. Democrats let me challenge you on that. I just said I'd like to see are you going to get the Democrats and the Republicans to agree to give up their monopoly on the process by allowing the system that would

encourage third and fourth parties. Well look it's simply not the case that billionaires and corporations can get their candidate let's assume they have their candidate their front man elected anywhere in the United States that's just not the case voters do count and voters do have preferences in these preferences vary among groups. You know liberal interest groups could spend billions and billions of dollars. And yet they cannot elect a liberal from a white conservative district in Mississippi because it doesn't matter how much money you spend you know. You could spend countless amounts of money without electing a right wing Republican. You know from Berkeley. So there's limits it's true that there's what Jamie Raskin called the wealth primary that is the ability to raise funds not only from rich individuals and corporations but also from liberal interest groups for example like the unions does weed out a lot of candidates who potentially would be very good candidates.

And that's why we favor campaign finance reform and the quickest and simplest version of that it's most likely to work is free media access particularly the broadcast media in television and radio as a condition for TV and radio licenses byssus opposed violently by the telecom industry because it would lose a lot of advertising revenue. But we make the case that since this is a public. Service or of the act you know access to the airwaves is given away conditionally to these profit making corporations they should be required to give equal time to everyone who's on the ballot anyway and that could do more to break open public debate and we get far more candidates who don't have to mortgage themselves to special interests including liberal special interests like the teachers unions or the AFL CIO in advance of getting nominated. However having said that you know there are you know

money is not the only factor in American politics I mean religion is a factor. The country the electorate is very polarized along racial lines. There are big regional differences you know between the two coasts in the Rocky Mountains and the south and the Midwest. So I just think reforming American politics it can't be reduced simply to getting money out of the system that's a first step but it's not going to create a panacea. Well that's the first radical idea I've heard you. There's that of free media which I'm for the candidates which I am wholeheartedly in favor of. But once again I'd like to see how you're going to get that passed. Thanks. Well we're a little bit past the midpoint here of the show and I want to again introduce our guest and get some more callers. We're speaking with Michael Lind. He is a senior fellow at the New America. Nation a Washington based think tank he's also been a rare writer editor staff writer for The New Yorker Harper's and the national interest he's also written for other publications. He's the co-author along with Ted Ted who is president and

CEO of the New America Foundation They're the co-authors of this book we mentioned it's titled The Radical Center the future of American politics. Doubleday is the publisher in which he and his co-author make the argument as I mentioned the beginning of the program that the two parties have in terms of their leadership their ideology have embraced the extremes leaving most voters somewhere in the middle unwilling or unable to identify with either. That is why they would say that most people now done a find themselves as independents more than identify as either Democrats or Republicans and they lay out their idea for a new agenda in the book. So if you're interested you can look at it and of course questions comments You're welcome. 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 here in Champaign-Urbana. And toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 the next caller in line is on line 3. Hello. Yes it seems to me that you are it would it would really help us I'm sorry I don't mean to ask you to shout but if you could speak up because you're going to faint right it might be partly the connection.

It seems to me that your first caller put its finger on a problem with your face it's that only 10 percent of the citizens consider themselves liberal. But I think this is more a matter of semantic loading and then of thinking if you and this is been done if you play the same people for their political views you find that a very large number are actually polluting the liberal views although they do not consider themselves a liberal and I think this is simply a matter of the. What with this salt upon the word liberal over the last 30 years. Where does come to be synonymous. Too many people probably a majority of Americans as communist. Well there's some truth. And you're exactly right because when you break the issues down for most people. And again we're not trying to suggest that the majority is necessarily right I mean the majority may be wrong about things and minorities may be correct but but if you look at them in the

biggest group in the American population tends to take a fairly liberal views on economic matters on things like the minimum wage on not on Social Security benefits being guaranteed however they're provided on the spending for public education that sort of thing. This doesn't necessarily help liberal Democrats however because the same group tends to be fairly conservative or at least slightly to the right of center on a lot of social issues ranging from school prayer which majorities favor overwhelming majorities of white Americans who are still some like 75 percent of the population are deeply opposed to racial preferences. When Affirmative action is defined that way there's been a consistent majority for 30 years in favor of substantial cuts in immigration. So look for populist views rather than what I view but I think that the largest single group in the in the electorate probably would fit into this populist category that somewhat to the right of center

socially and somewhat to the left of center economically and it's not represented really in either of the two parties. You've got sort of Pat Buchanan you know to a certain extent with the Republicans. And there used to be people like you Tom Harken and and so one of them one of the Democrats but essentially the Democrats have become a consistently socially liberal socially economically liberal party. I think part of the problem and any political discussions we've completely debased the term liberal in this country since the 1930s. I see a few Democrats on the I hate to use the term left wing who are progressive liberals. I don't see any proof left. And a majority of the remainder as being classical liberals. Well of course liberal itself was kind of stolen by Franklin Roosevelt in the New Dealers from Herbert Hoover because you know Hoover the Federal Reserve. This was

Taft. Yeah. So now we call the classical liberals libertarians. And liberal in the United States since the 30s has has had two meanings from the 30s to the 60s. It meant what in Europe would be called social democrat. You know were essentially somewhat in favor of a substantial welfare state. Middle class and title meant state a social contract for an industrial society. And that was was and remains very popular that kind of liberalism where you have a somewhat redistributionist social welfare state. It's more popular when the middle class gets the benefits than when poor people get the benefits but it's still very popular. Then beginning with the new left in the 1060 1070 a lot of identity politics issues race gender sex tended to define liberalism. And then you've got a kind of cultural liberalism. So you're quite right it's a very sticky term. And you know depending on who's

speaking you're talking in terms of his own 1930s economic liberalism which means Social Security Medicare federal aid to education we're you know it's the gay rights pro-choice. You know multicultural issues which form a different complex that I'm calling cultural liberalism. But you see the same confusion on the right because there's the same distinction between the cultural or social conservatives such as the religious right many of whom are by no means economic libertarians a lot of Baptists and Pentecostalists if you look at the polls. I hate big business and big banking just as much as people on the left. They tend to be sort of William Jennings Bryan populists and then on the other hand you have the economic right the so-called economic conservatives many of whom are completely secular you know pro-gay rights pro-choice when it comes to abortion and they have purely an alliance of convenience with these populist religious right activists. So I think both liberalism and conservatism in modern American

politics have this ambiguity between their economic aspects and their cultural aspects. I would agree with your analysis there completely. The term conservative in this country with absolutely meaningless today because as you point out it's at least three groups of fundamentalist religion. Traditional or classical liberals of the old school. And the real conservatives who are almost 100 percent Democrat. At 50 or 60 years ago what we argue in the radical center that the contemporary right really isn't so much conservative is counter-revolutionary. That is they want to actually overthrow these two successful revolutions of the 1030 which created the modern expanded federal government and the cultural revolution of the 1960s which led to feminism to much greater social tolerance racial integration and so on and so that both the kinds of cultural

conservatives and the economic conservatives tend to have a utopia which is really can never be recovered in the 21st century you know that a lot of them want to go back to the Calvin Coolidge America of the one thousand twenty years in terms of economics where there's a truly minimal federal government. The cultural conservatives some of them the more moderate ones say they want to go back to the family values of the 1950s which you just can't do in a society where the demography has been transformed by more independent elderly people by the liberation of women from the household work is their only option or menial clerical tasks. So we think even this or that should satisfy you. Not a conservative in disguise we think the 21st century presents us with radically new social conditions as well as economic crises and technological opportunities. And if we really should should just think on a case by case basis what are our goals. You know we want old people

to live in comfort in dignity. We don't want any child to be punished when it comes to education on the basis of residence or parental income. We want everyone we want there to be no distinction between contingent workers and full time workers so that if you lose your job you should not lose your benefits. And these are the goals. Now Ted Hall stood on the radical center have put forth certain proposals for reaching these that we think are the best but you know we're not the last word on this you know that the methods are debatable. But I do think that we could have a consensus on what goals we want and we can also have a consensus and this will be more resisted by people defending the old order saying that increasingly a lot of methods for reaching those goals which once made sense don't make sense anymore and current conditions for example Social Security made perfect sense as an intergenerational transfer program from young workers to retirees when there were 15 young workers for every one retiree.

In the 21st century and presumably the 22nd in the 23rd you know that the graying of America and other industrial democracies is a permanent shift. When you get societies like Germany Japan and like United States a few decades in the future where the median age is 40. And you know there's a ratio of one or two workers to every retiree. You know Franklin Roosevelt if he were alive today would not have made Social Security a pure transfer program from young workers to retirees you know it just would have made no sense given today's conditions. So it's not that we're repudiating the work done by people we admire. Like many of the new dealers including Republicans like Eisenhower who were modern Republicans and accepted the changes that the New Deal wrought We simply think that many of these good goals these enduring values have to be sought by new means. We just have 10 minutes left. I hope the caller will forgive me for jumping in the lines are full I won't try to include some other folks

in the time that we have left. Let me just real quick again introduce our guest We're speaking with Michael Landy he is the co-author along with Ted Hall stead of the book the radical center the future of American politics published by Doubleday So if you're interested in learning more about how they see things you go and take a look at the book. We do have several people will try to get in in as many as we can the next person. Line is line number one. Yeah I'm a little disappointed. You're the same fellow that spoke a few years ago about the overclass and. I really liked your take on current politics fags then. To quote an article in The New York Times. A couple years ago you apparently you thought was what's really going on is there's a university trained professional over a class that has managed to suppress discussion of class

conflicts that are as powerful as ever. And you say that disagreements over so are it. According to this reviewer disagreements over so-called wedge issues Mr. Lindh maintains are a ruse aimed at making the rest of the nation believe there is a debate going on. Two questions one related to this and then another one on a separate issue I was wondering have you. Have you kind of Bandon step on that concept entirely or do you think that you know that that kind of approaches just isn't going to work. Or what is that. Have you ever refuted those ideas to your own mind or what. No my book The Next American nation in which I analyze the increasing power and authority of elite

college educated people in all aspects of American society I stand by that analysis I think it's been confirmed within both parties as as the more populist or working class oriented wings of of both parties have tended to wither away in the course of the 1990s. However having said that in 1905 it was my purpose. It certainly wasn't my coauthors purpose to repeat what I said. The point of our book the radical center is not to engage in that kind of sociological analysis is to suggest a practical program which would achieve what remain my goals which are creating an America that's fair and dynamic and it particularly addresses the interests of Americans who are left out by the present elite dominated system for example contingent workers who don't get health benefits. Kids from poor families are in port geographic areas who were victimized by our system of school finance. So I see this is as

perfectly compatible. A number of our proposals obviously you know you have to read the book to see we can't go over the whole book and in an hour. But every one of our proposals we try to. Move away from a system rigged in favor of the already affluent to one that is more fair while remaining our commitment to a dynamic market economy which was also the commitment of New Deal liberals and progressives. They were not socialist. They they wanted to have a flourishing market economy as well as generous entitlements I'll give an example one thing we propose. It is replacing the vast majority of tax loopholes and tax expenditures which almost by definition benefit very wealthy people. If you have a social program like the home mortgage interest deduction which is limited to people who pay income tax theirs and most working poor and poor people do not make

enough money under the present tax system to pay income tax so they're not eligible for it. At the same time in some cases the higher your income the greater a tax subsidy you get from the government which is just insane and immoral. So Ted Olson eyeing the radical center proposal we think is a very gala Tarion approach to the tax code where you eliminate all you consolidate all of the existing tax loopholes for education for housing for other purposes. Transportation consolidate them into a handful of refundable tax credits that all people including poor people can get that will be exactly the same amount for everybody which obviously means much more to poor people than it does to wealthy people. There will have to be quick because we're pretty. That sounded very good. But let me just quickly ask you how does your foundation come down on the executive order 1 3 2 3 3.

It's more towards trying to get rid of the Presidential Records Act you know making it making it very difficult to get ahold of of Reagan and this both Bush's presidential record. Our foundation has no party line that that's one of the reasons we're more dynamic than some of our competitors that is you know people don't look over their shoulders we have a number of fellows we now have about two dozen fellows who are completely free to write whatever they want. So we have no party line and to my knowledge no fellow has a written about any of these things and I'm not familiar with the issue frankly my own prejudice is in favor of declassifying material because classification you know tends to protect politicians and bureaucrats from embarrassment and they in the U.S. you know the public interest as an excuse. Having said that I do think that in certain areas of foreign policy where you're you're dealing with material even if it's 20 or 30 years ago but you have say a foreign government official or still in power and could be subject to reprisal. You know

one of the. Dark sides of diplomacy is that you have to deal with with very unsavory regimes and there may be a case for keeping some things classified you know for 30 or 40 or even even 50 years in very sensitive foreign policy areas but certainly when it comes to domestic policy you know the the the there has to be a rebuttable presumption in favor of letting the Republic see what you know our elected officials and the bureaucrats whom we pay are up to. I'm going to try to get one more go here line to you got to be real quick the caller please. OK great topic. And I don't know which way you lean but you're very moderate and well-spoken. My concern and I'll just express my concern and listen to your answer is the proportional representation as it currently stands leaves two parties picking powerful politicians who aren't accountable to the local electorate. So at least in the

European and Canadian model so how would you make as part of your proportional representation. How would people still be accountable to local electorate which I think is the beauty of our American system. And thank you. Mr. Glenn I give you about a minute. OK well that's very good question. There's a difference between choice voting systems or proportional representation systems that elect single individuals. For example governors and presidents and even representatives and those which elect whole teams of multiple members in multi-member legislative districts. We don't propose multi member districts in the United States although I think that is an idea that might come. What we propose is a system instant runoff voting for members of the House and the Senate as well as for governors and presidents and Mayors which would create more support within that district for an individual who would have to get a majority of second choice as well as first choice votes to be elected in a three or four way race. But it would retain the American tradition of a single representative for a single district.

Well there will have to leave it because we've used the time Mr. Lynn we want to say thanks very much for talking with us. Our guest Michael Lind along with Ted Hall staed they are the authors of the radical center the future of American politics if you want to read the book. It's out now in bookstores it is published by Doubleday.