Bill Moyers Journal; 701; Aftermath

BILL MOYERS' JOURNAL

"Aftermath"

November 7, 1980

MOYERS: Last Tuesday, the nation surprised itself. And now we're still trying to sort it all out. Are we at the top of a new page in American political history - as some have said this –week? Does Governor Reagan's powerful showing signify a citizenry certain it wants less from government or a citizenry angry at how little of Washington's promise has been delivered? Even the corporate community seems confused. Wednesday, the stock market soared. Thursday, it sank. Yesterday, at his first press conference as president-elect, Governor Reagan gave a masterful performance of due deliberation, while in Washington, two generations of natives of the New Deal, uncertain at whether those forces gathering across the river are Christian missionaries from the southern steps or barbarians out of the west, were still stunned at the prospect of unanswered phone calls, strange faces and stranger ideas on Capitol Hill and Donny and Marie Osmond at the White House. will help us in the aftermath to perceive what

Perhaps in this hour, my guests — opinionated and fine observers all - happened and what's likely to come.

I'm Bill Moyers.

MOYERS: After nine weeks of covering this campaign, mostly on the road, I'm gonna just sit here between now historians, philosophers, journalists, citizens and the inauguration and talk with some people about its aftermath a lot of people who have different thoughts about where we are at this point in our history. All of my guests this hour are associated with journals of opinion and none are timid about their own convictions, irrespective of how wrong each may have occasionally been during certain moments of inflammatory indignation. Midge Decter, I met you years ago when you were an editor at Harper's. Since then you've been writing widely about a variety of subjects: including and most often western political values and totalitarianism. How would you describe yourself politically?

MIDGE DECTER: Well, if I had to characterize myself politically at this moment, I would say that I am a member of that group who feels that American society in particular and western democracy in general are in a greater state of crisis than any I remember in my adult life. And that we are a group of people determined that the time has come for the United States to begin to defend itself and its friends and allies, both materially, by growing spiritually, by beginning to rebuild militarily strong, and - if I can be permitted the word in a political discussion of the values and virtues - very great virtues and unparallelled virtues - to the sense society.

―

MOYERS: Victor Navasky, you helped to found that marvelous humor magazine, Monocle, back in the '60s. You became the editor of the New York Times' Sunday Magazine and now you're the editor of The Nation. What's your political identity?

VICTOR NAVASKY, Editor, The Nation: I was an editor on The New York Times' Sunday Magazine. That's part of my identity. Well, let's see. I am what is known as a First Amendment absolutist. I am a sentimental unreconstructed integrationist. Unlike Midge Decter, I'd rather take the risks of disarmament than the risks of arms race. I am a worrier about the power of the multinational corporations and paranoid about nuclear energy which I suspect will be decentralized. I'm for banning the bomb and a seeker after some form of socialism that works on a human scale.

MOYERS: Robert Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., you're the editor of The American Spectator and you write a column eve week for The Washington Post—

R. EMMETT TYRRELL, JR., Editor-In-Chief, The American Spectator: And King Features.

MOYERS: What is your political credit card?

TYRRELL: Well, I'm not very comfortable with them and I don't consider myself a rigorist. I don't consider myself sectarian. I'm perfectly comfortable with the average American's point of view and I like to opt out when you are talking about political labels. I'd let other people freely call me what they wish. They can call me anything from liberal to conservative to imbecilic. It doesn't bother me. But—

MOYERS: Have you been called liberal?

TYRRELL: I've been called imbecilic.

MOYERS: Erwin Knoll, our paths crossed many years ago when you were a reporter for The Washington Post and then Newhouse Newspapers. And now you're the editor of The Progressive Magazine. Where are you politically?

ERWIN KNOLL, Editor, Progressive Magazine: Well, I'm very comfortable being on the left of this group. I don't much like labels but I'm very happy to be called a progressive. I'm comfortable being called a radical and want to remind you that radical means getting down to the roots. That's the classic meaning of the word. I think we need very fundamental structural change in our society. I'm very troubled by an economic order that gives higher priority to profits than to human beings and their needs. I'm very troubled by an arms race that I regard as a lunatic process and an inordinately dangerous one. I think we need very basic change in our society and not the kind of change, if any, which Tuesday's election returns portend.

MOYERS: Lewis Lapham. From The San Francisco Examiner to The New York Herald Tribune, you have finally come to rest, such as it is, as the editor of Harper's. What about your political odyssey? How do you describe yourself today?

LEWIS LAPHAM, Editor, Harper's: I would say I was suspicious of politicians and a student of politics. I enjoy thinking about it and writing about it. I have very little use for most of the slogans that get passed around as political wisdom. And I'm curious to know how the system works. And I leave it to others to make manifestos. I've been called everything from a communist to a radical to a fascist to a front for the oil companies to an anti-environmentalist and so forth. But I don't make manifestos. Bill. I prefer to talk about what I see.

MOYERS: Well, with that self-description, let's begin with what you saw Tuesday.

LAPHAM: Well, I saw the election as a feeling of resentment, anger, hostility, frustration, impatience on the part of the electorate. It seemed to me to be an anti-vote against big government, against abortion, against Russians. against whatever was troubling people against inflation, against unemployment. And it was an expression of sentiment, I think: throw the rascals out and let's hope for the best. We don't like what it is and maybe we can do better. And a feeling of frustration and anger.

MOYERS: Bob?

TYRRELL: Well, I think it was a historic election in that the— a whole elite revealed how out of touch it was with reality. I think Senator Paul Tsongas stated the same thing. I think he was right on the money when he said that his defeated liberal friends had— their dogmas no longer corresponded with reality. I think that's true. And I think the TV medium the journalists of television showed in their fatuous way, in their surprise, in their utter astonishment on November 4th, that they, too, had lost touch with reality, that they seemed to think the American people were going to continue to tolerate the intolerable. Most TV commentators are historical illiterates and—

MOYERS: Getting mighty personal, here, early in this hour.

TYRRELL: Well, I didn't mean to be personal. But nonetheless, there you are. They sat there blank-faced. And there was that horrible thought in all their minds amongst the philistines in the newsroom that there was going to be nothing but dead silence rather than the usual, the maundering that goes on – because they simply had forgotten that an American president who so botches the economy and so botches foreign policy and then goes on to lose a debate and to make the terrible hash he made of the political campaign. To think that that kind of a man was then going to go on and win or make a close race of it I think shows that they were indeed deluded by their own puzzling commentary back and forth, by their own fatuous beliefs.

NAVASKY: Well, I associate myself with some of your attitudes towards television commentary. But then, it seems to me you've accepted their arithmetic, which I don't accept at all. My arithmetic tells me 48 percent of the people. mostly black, mostly hispanic, students, poor, didn't vote in this election. If you add to those people the however many percent candidates

seven-between three and seven - I haven't seen the final numbers who voted for third part Anderson, Clark. Commoner, McReynolds, Gus Hall, whomever, and what you get is a majority of the people in this country rejecting the two-party system. And the so-called Reagan landslide, to me is 26 percent of the people who ought to have voted in this election not the 52 that he got because half of them didn't vote. And cf that 26 percent, my feeling is you`re absolutely right. Half of them rejected Carter. So what the conservative think then comes down to is 13 percent. then you say, well, how did they knock off McGovern? How did they knock off Church? How did they knock off-well, they are smarter media manipulators than we are. They picked single-issue candidates and they used it to punish decency in those particular states. They did it in New York against Elizabet Holtzman. So I have a whole- so I think you have accepted, Mr Tyrrell, the media arithmetic while turning your eye on their history, which I—

DECTER: I think there's something very wrong with that argument. It's an argument we hear every single presidential election year about the people who didn't vote.

NAVASKY: Right.

DECTER: And your presumption is that the people who didn't vote, had they voted, would have voted your way. That's the implication in what you say. There's no reason to think this. There is much reason and much evidence fc the fact that had they voted, their vote would have split percentagewise pretty much the same way—

NAVASKY: I agree with you—

DECTER: -as the voters.

NAVASKY: I don't make that presumption. I think it is the task of people like Barry Commoner and others to— an people who were within the Democratic Party and find it not working as an institution, either to convert that structure into something which can address issues that will speak to this 48, 50 percent of the people who gave up on the two-party system. Or they're going to be stuck with the situation that you have, which I think is—

KNOLL: I think the picture is quite right. The non-voters' party is the largest party in America. And it's been growing every four years since 1960. These are not people who are bad citizens. They're not apathetic. They're not indifferent. You've had some of them on the air, Bill. You've interviewed them. They're people who are deeply concerned about their situation and about the situation of the country but who don't feel that the political choice offered to them, that the political system that we operate in this country addresses their needs. And I believe they're right. I don't believe there was a great choice offered to those people in this past election. There was a vast rhetorical: gulf that separated Reagan and Carter. I think we're going to see in the next few months those people who had the greatest enthusiasm and fervor for Reagan those people of the— of what's called the New Right, the Moral Majority, whatever - are going to be the most bitterly disappointed and frustrated people in America.

MOYERS: Why?

KNOLL: Because Reagan is not going to be able to deliver on that myth that constituted the foundation of his campaign, that myth that a great many of those Americans who did vote found terribly attractive, the myth that you- if you have free enterprise, unfettered by government and by taxation, it's going to create prosperity for all us. Not going to happen. Gonna have more inflation, gonna have more unemployment. The myth that the United States in the 1980s can wield the big stick and again be the superpower in the world and have its way everywhere in the world so that no Ayatollah, no Castro, no Qaddafi can possibly interfere with the Pax Americana. Can't happen. Can't have that.

MOYERS: Why? If things are not going to change from where you sit, why are they not going to change? Why is Reagan going to be impotent?

KNOLL: Because the realities are what they are. Because the only way the United States can wield that big stick and exercise hegemony all over the world is by using nuclear bombs. And I'm hoping that this coming administration will not be lunatic enough to start dropping nuclear bombs. But that's the only way to do it.

MOYERS: I'd be surprised if Midge Decter agreed with you because she wrote recently in Bob Tyrrell' publication. The American Spectator. “I speak here of the desire, even the passionate demand, to see the United States restored to its former status as a great and rich and respected world power the desire that has come to be called in the always over-hasty language of opinion-tracking 'the new nationalism' or 'the new patriotism'.”

DECTER: Yes, I disagree, of course, entirely, with you. And I would like to get back to something Lewis said, however. I don't agree that the voters were showing their bitterness and resentment and anger and frustration and all those things. To be sure, they certainly were— must have been angry and frustrated. I was, myself. But I do think that there was a positive message in that vote. Very often- one of the things that's very often not understood is that what are considered to be negative gestures are often very positive statements. To vote against something is not necessarily negative. And the demand that the United States become powerful again as powerful as it was in the 1950s cannot be dismissed by calling it hegemonism. The demand for the United States to become powerful on the part of the American people is the demand, a) that a certain kind of order and peace and the possibility for peace be restored in the world. It is not- it is not an irrational point of view to believe that you keep the peace by being strong, not by being weak and the people who are for-

TYRRELL: You don't have to leap to nuclear weaponry every time you discuss a strong foreign policy. Strong foreign policies were carried out by John Quincy Adams and John Quincy Adams had no bombs and very few ships. And one other point: you draw so much eloquence out of the reticence of those 48 percent that didn't vote. I think that's a very self-fulfilling analysis that out of about half-out of the 48 percent of the people that don't do something, we can all attribute almost anything to them, can't we?

TYRRELL: Maybe there were baseball fans tired of the World Series. I'd like to make the case for it. But at any rate and I mean, this constant concern- this constant leaping in the discussion of foreign, the discussion of defense leaping to the great mushroom cloud strikes me as obsessive.

KNOLL: I think it may be a difficult point to get across in the next four years but the world has changed some since John Quincy Adams' administration.

DECTER: We won't have a hard time with that, I promise you.

KNOLL: There has been a fundamental change and I think the dramatic change that lies behind the economic distress as well as that feeling of profound unease about the diminishing role of the United States. And that is the fact that we consume a huge and totally disproportionate share of the world's resources. And most of the people in the world are increasingly restive about that fact. They don't like it. And they are doing things about it. Our OPEC is only the most obvious example. And people want to get paid more for their resources. We've lived off them for a long time. People want to have more say about how their resources are allocated and how they lead their lives and what kind of societies they have, what kind of economies they have. And the United States is not going to be able to impose its will it can't do it now and it can't do it under Reagan and it can't do it in any way around the world except by the threat and reality of annihilation. That we still have the power to do.

NAVASKY: I think, excuse me, that there's another way in which the world has changed internally in our country, which is that our economy has changed. It used to be that there was a clear choice. And I think there was a clear choice in the '50s and '60s. And I think conservatives and liberals both agreed on what that choice was. The choice was, do you what is the enemy? Is the enemy unemployment or is the enemy inflation? And the way you fight inflation is you increase unemployment. Our economy doesn't work that way anymore. And there are a number of economists who are working on the venue who argue – and I think persuasively and the figures are on their side there are four areas that cause our inflation and the old remedies of the Democrats, the New Deal Democrats, the Cold War liberal Democrats, don't work anymore, and that the four areas are basically fuel, health, housing and energy-and-food, fuel, health and housing. And that in each of those areas, you have to look at the role of the giant corporations and you've got to think about as Erwin talked before about · - restructuring the economy to aim at those areas. Now, when Midge says she wants to go back to the days when we were a great power, it seems to me that that's a- that there was that message in this election. I agree with you. But that was yearning for the days of the happy ending which our Hollywood president represents. But when you think about what was happening in the '50s domestically, things weren't that happy here. That was what is technically known as the McCarthy period in this country.

TYRRELL: By you.

NAVASKY: Things — just a minute — things were pretty awful at home. We also were at war in Korea during those years. That was not a happy time for the people who were fighting over there. It wasn't a happy time in Asia. And so I think there's a false nostalgia in that vote. And I don't disagree with it.

DECTER: I think there's no nostalgia whatsoever in that vote. That is an entirely skewed and distorted description of the '50s. Nor is there any nostalgia in what I am talking about. The truth is that western Europe and what we know of democratic civilization was protected by the might of American arms. It was protected from being overtaken by the most barbaric civilization of— or perhaps, if you will, the second most barbaric civilization in modern times. It was American power that stood between the peoples of the West and Soviet barbarism. And I would like also to answer you on the question of how the United States—

LAPHAM: Wait a minute, Midge. Wait. Wait. Wait. It still is protected, isn't it?

DECTER: Well, it is—

LAPHAM: I mean, is Paris overrun?

DECTER: No, Paris is certainly not overrun.

LAPHAM: Is Berlin overrun?

DECTER: It is being protected but it is being threatened. It is certainly in a condition of greater threat. But I also want to address myself—

MOYERS: Before you do that— answer Lewis before you do that. What would you do so we can be specific — what would you have President Reagan do that has not been done that would reinforce your faith that we were going to continue to be what you want us to be without using going to war?

DECTER: What I would have President Reagan do and what I believe President Reagan will do – find me feeling rather cheerful at this moment, and what I think is our absolute first priority beyond anything else is conventional as well as nuclear. That is what I that I think he will rebuild the military defenses of this country. Until he does that, there is no credible way- I think if he does that, he will encourage our allies not to be in the condition they're in at the moment which is extremely nervously trying to figure out how far they have to accommodate the Soviet Union in order to be able to maintain their supplies of oil without which they cannot survive. If this country becomes militarily strong again, I believe this will encourage the Europeans to stand up and perhaps begin to defend themselves.

NAVASKY:-Russians to be militarily stronger?

DECTER: No. The Russians have been making themselves militarily strong. The Russians have engaged in the largest peacetime military buildup in the history of the world. We know that now. This is beyond dispute. Nobody disputes this fact.

NAVASKY: Are they going to stop? Are they going to stop because we build up our conventional forces and our nuclear arsenal?

TYRRELL: Well, such a creaking economy as the Soviet's have, they can't go on forever.

KNOLL: Well, with such a creaking economy as we have. I suspect we can't go on forever, either.

LAPHAM: I don't understand what country any of the people here think we're living in.

MOYERS: Go ahead, Lewis.

LAPHAM: The United States spends and has been spending throughout the Carter administration $300 million a day on weapons. It is without question the most powerful country in the world still despite the propaganda about the Soviet Union-

DECTER: No, it is not.

LAPHAM: You people do not travel very much abroad. You don't look at the United States from another perspective. I don't think you have a realistic sense of what kind of power the United States has.

TYRRELL: Well, talk to Jean Francois Revel about-

LAPHAM: I can talk to-

TYRRELL: Well, I mean, but you just pointed out that we don't travel very much abroad. As a matter of fact, we publish French, English and Italian writers regularly. And the French, English and Italian writers I publish, particularly in France and Italy are people who historically were of the left. Olivier Todd was opposed to the war in Vietnam. And such people are very concerned about the weakness of the United States. Helmut Schmidt and his Germans are concerned. The French and Giscard—

LAPHAM: Bob, they're not concerned enough to spend their own money.

TYRRELL: That's a little different.

DECTER: Oh, no. It's exactly the opposite. No, it's exactly the opposite, Lewis. I think they are so concerned that they don't spend their own money. It is exactly the opposite.

TYRRELL: You know, Lewis, nations, as you know, don't operate— countries like France and countries like West Germany don't simply operate at the orchestration of an editor. I mean, you can get what you want in Harper's and I can get what I want in The American Spectator. But as a matter of fact, Giscard can't get what he wants at the simple drop of a hat or the signature of his majestic right arm.

KNOLL: We're talking about the arms race as if it were a basketball game with a point spread that matters.

TYRRELL: Nonsense.

KNOLL: This whole discussion of who's ahead and who's behind strikes me as utterly absurd. The United States has today somewhere between 25 and 30 thousand thermonuclear warheads — enough to destroy every human being on the surface of the globe at least a dozen times over, maybe more. Since the end of World War II, we have spent more than $2 trillion on this quest for national security. And now you folks tell me we are less secure than ever before. If we spend $2 trillion dollars more in the next ten years and we very well might; we probably will- - we will be even less secure than we are today because there is no way to buy that kind of evanescent security that people seem to be looking for by buying more bonds. We have more than enough now.

MOYERS: But if Ronald Reagan hues to his platform and political rhetoric, he intends to spend more money. The Congress intends to spend more money. What do you think will be the consequences of that?

KNOLL: Well, further inflation, further dislocation of the economy. Of course, a response by the Soviets will accelerate their own arms race even more so that we'll both be in an ever more dangerous situation. Because where the weapons exist, there's always the temptation to bring them into play. I'm not impressed by the argument that we're strengthening conventional rather than nuclear forces because it's NATO policy that if we get involved in a conventional war and things aren't going too well, we are prepared to strike first with nuclear weapons. And it escalates from there on so that within a half hour on some pleasant Sunday afternoon, several hundred million people in the United States and the Soviet Union and western Europe can be destroyed by nuclear weapons. This is an insane process and we're accelerating it. We're saying, "Hey, we haven't marched close enough to the brink of catastrophe. Let's walk all the way to the edge."

NAVASKY: You know, Erwin, that's why The Nation, even though we preferred Barry Commoner's program. supported Jimmy Carter. I mean, we advised our readers, vote for Carter where you must and for Commoner where you can.

KNOLL: And the reason The Progressive did not advise to do that is because we didn't see the difference because we thought Carter had already done way too much to accelerate that arms race.

MOYERS: I promised Bob the floor, so-

TYRRELL: You've kept your promises, Bill. And I'm proud of you.

MOYERS: I'm not in politics.

TYRRELL: You know, this mechanistic discussion of politics and strategy that Erwin and Victor enter into is what I or this evening and that's why I feel that sitting—maybe right here or on Erwin's lap - expected to hear today ought to be the editor of the American Opinion Magazine of the John Birch Society. They too have this way of looking at things. But the truth of the matter is, of course. that politics is more complicated. And the truth of the matter is, you can line up all the statistics about how many tanks we've built since World War II and how many missiles we've built since World War II. And it's all kind of meaningless when you're told that the SS-20. the Soviet's the SS-18, the Soviet's great intercontinental ballistic missile, can now be dropped within two to three hundred yards of our hardened missile sites, many of which were built to withstand attack— an attack from a half mile away but not from that short a distance. Now, you can say, of course, you can go up to the head of the Ferrari racing team and you can say, “Look, why are you building faster and faster Ferraris? We've built— you've built so many Ferraris. I'm from Porsche and I've built so many Porches since 1948. I have museums filled with them." Well, the reason is that the latest Ferrari is faster than the latest Porsche and faster than all the Porches in the museums.

KNOLL: I agree. We could spend those more trillions of dollars and instead of devastating the Russians in a half hour, we can do it in 21 minutes. And they can do it to us in 21 minutes.

DECTER: Erwin, why do we have to devastate? them. Why can't we- Bob, one second. Because, see, I think you're granting Erwin too much. There is an arms race. We are in it. Not by our own volition. We have opted for too long to pretend a la Lewis that there is that excuse me. If we have not granted it, there is an arms race and it is the Soviet Union that has been unilaterally racing while we have not been racing.

KNOLL: That's not so.

DECTER: And there is something very—

KNOLL: What am I paying all my tax money for if we haven't been racing?

DECTER: You know very well what you've been paying your tax money for and you've been paying your tax money for a good many more things than for nuclear weapons. But there is a very important point to be made here which is that nuclear weapons- the nuclear arsenal of the Soviet Union, which have been growing by leaps and bounds as we know and as nobody denies. Lewis Lapham is the only one I know who argues anymore that there is not an imbalance in this- in power as between us and the Soviet Union. I don't know anybody else who maintains that position anymore. But I don't know anybody who actually― can citet evidence. The Soviet Union has used its military might not in plans to bomb the United States. And the United States would its military might not with threats to bomb the Soviet Union. Military might has been used as a means of political intimidation. Your western Europe is already considerably politically intimidated by Soviet power. The United States of America, particularly the Carter administration, has been considerably intimidated by the existence of Soviet power. And I don't see that the Soviet Union has, in the last few years, shown itself in the least bit intimidated by American power.

MOYERS: Are you cheerful because-

DECTOR: As witness to the invasion of Afghanistan, a thing that would not have happened if the Soviets-had felt arrogantly serene that we no longer had the power to intimidate them.

MOYERS: Are you cheerful because you think Ronald Reagan, as president, will not be intimidated?

DECTER: I am cheerful because I think that Ronald Reagan, as president, will begin the process which is necessary for rebuilding American strength. It is a process, by the way, which is not by itself enough because something has to happen. Something has to happen internally. Obviously a lot of bombs simply piled up do not a policy make. One of the things that has to happen internally, it seems to me, is that a demoralized country has to be and it's very easy to make re-moralized. And I think whether Ronald Reagan is the man or not

- I don't know that Ronald Reagan is the man who is— and I don't know predictions; I don't make predictions. The American public is so stupid as to think that they're going along for a happy ending like a Reagan movie. But I think that the American people were saying it is time to take ourselves in hand. And they were saying something. There was a cultural message in that election. And the cultural message is, we are not a rotten, lousy, exploitative society which deserves to be punished any longer for our sins in Vietnam, and who have to walk a feeling guilty toward the Third World. We have not been doing- we have not been behaving toward the Third World as you describe and it is time for us, now, to decide that we are not— we not only have to defend ourselves but, damnit, we are entitled to defend ourselves. And we are entitled to value ourselves.

MOYERS: Are we a good country? Lewis?

LAPHAM: Of course we're a good country and we are not a demoralized country. I mean, the nonsense that Midge is talking about is the nonsense of the chic New York intellectual who have for years been saying. "Oh, woe is us; oh, poor unhappy, miserable, tiny, dwarflike victim United States. It's-

DECTOR: You are one of the New York intellectuals and I think in your magazine one has read many things against― many, many attacks on the quality and nature of American society.

LAPHAM: But that's not demoralized. I mean attack— you attack because the nature of democracy is vigor and conflict and attack.

MOYERS: One thing Lewis said recently in his magazine was. The tenuousness of the Pax Americana can be deduced from the hesitant efforts exerted to preserve it. An empire was all well and good as long as it didn't cost too much and as long as too many people didn't get killed." And I take from that, Lewis, that you think we are bringing our horns in some because we don't want to keep them out there anymore.

LAPHAM: I don't think the United States is an imperial nation. I don't think it ever has been an imperial nation. I don't think that the great golden age that Midge points to existed. Her idea of security and power, to me, is a magical one where she― I mean, she— you know— I really don't understand what her notion of American power is unless it's godlike.

MOYERS: Well, she talks about spirituality— she talks about re-moralization.

DECTER: That was— I don't think the United States is an imperial power, either, nor do I think it was behaving in an imperial fashion when I said it exercising—

KNOLL: Well, I disagree on that but I wouldn't—

NAVASKY: But I want to say one thing. It seems to me that we don't learn anything from history? What you're saying, it seems to me, is an argument that was made 30 years ago, that the Soviet Union was in charge of the international monolithic communist conspiracy. It included China. It included one half of the world and that we were the defenders of the free world which was an imperial obligation that we had. And that— we tried that. And we tried to operate on those assumptions. And they didn't work abroad and they didn't work at home. Because at home what the cost we paid for that was internal repression as the fight for uniting against this totalitarian international communist conspiracy. No one has mentioned China. No one has mentioned the Third World. There have been changes in the last 30 years. And that view turned out to be wrong then. There was no international communist conspiracy. There were nationalisms all over the world. And these nationalisms that are expressing themselves in the Third World are the future. And it's something that the policy that you're describing, if we don't blow ourselves up in the process, doesn't take into account. And I don't understand—

DECTER: I think it's childish to say that.

KNOLL: I wouldn't want to leave viewers with the impression that's been created here for the last four years. The Carter administration has been dismantling the military establishment while the Soviet Union`s has been - is adding either two or three growing, as we said, by leaps and bounds. The United States today — this very Friday · thermonuclear devices to its arsenal. It does that every single day of the year. A thousand bombs a year. Each of them bigger than the bomb that destroyed Nagasaki. Each of them bigger than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. This is an immense catastrophic overkill capacity and it's just flushing money down the drain. And these conservative the biggest chunk of government and people who tell us they want less government and that they want lower taxes the biggest chunk of taxes is going down that sewer. It's total waste and what's even worse than total waste, it's inordinately dangerous waste. huge mounds of nuclear weapons

TYRRELL: In the meantime, while you have your eyes on those figures we've for the four years been talking in different vernacular every year about a rapid deployment force which the scamp in the White House has now developed and is capable of dropping itself into the Middle East within six months. Some rapid deployment force.

KNOLL: What do we own in the Middle East that we have to send a rapid deployment force to protect?

TYRRELL: We don't have to own anything. I really find this quite extraordinary. What is it we have in the Middle East? What we have in

DECTER: Excuse me. What we have in the Middle East is the lifeblood of our western European allies, friends and The Middle East is now being encircled bit by bit by the dependents. That's what we have in Middle East - Soviet Union. It needn't be an international communist conspiracy. I mean, you see,—

LAPHAM: You're too imperial.

DECTER: No, you can characterize—

LAPHAM: That's what I believe.

DECTER: You can characterize these things in that kind of language but it doesn't alter the reality which is that the Persian Gulf is being surrounded by the Soviet Union bit by bit. We have been so unable to respond to this aggressive movement on the part of the Soviet Union that we were unable even to defend our own embassy. We have been unable to extract American citizens who have been kidnapped by thugs.

KNOLL: We didn't extract them from China in 1949, either.

DECTER: The fact that the Soviet Union and China are--that what was once a huge monolith has split up is not the point here. Of course, if you listen to the Chinese, the Chinese would make what I'm saying sound pale. TI Chinese think that we are absolutely absurd—

MOYERS: Let me bring this back to the election on Tuesday.

DECTER: -to allow ourselves to have reached this point.

MOYERS: Let me bring this back to the election on Tuesday. Whatever one thinks about it, that party which elected itself a president — elected a president of the country. I deduce from what some of you have said that he is not going to be president of all the people even if he is president of his party. But we do have a president. His name is Ronald Reagan. And right before the election you wrote [speaking to Tyrrell], “Our next president faces four great challenges. He must preserve personal freedom, defend American interests without war, revive prosperity and prosperity must be extended to the poor of the inner cities, particularly the black youths who are leaving school and entering the dreary world of the perpetually unemployed. Of our three candidates," you said, "Reagan is most likely to meet these challenges.” And I'd like to know, in particular, why you think Reagan is the one.

TYRRELL: Will this affect my chances of a cabinet position, do you think?

MOYERS: I'm not making those choices.

TYRRELL: Well, I think that take-

MOYERS: Take prosperity. Why prosperity? Why do you think Reagan is the one to revive the prosperous country?

TYRRELL: Well, of the two major candidates, he was the only one that showed any understanding of economy Jimmy never did have any understanding of economics. And I am persuaded that a tax cut would, indeed, in the prosperity of the American people, giving them much more discretionary income and much more to do wi might add that the middle classes and the lower classes ought to benefit most in these terms because they ha discretionary income and are more tightly pinched in terms of the important staples of life by high taxes, than upper classes.

MOYERS: So you think Reagan's proposals on cutting taxes if you can get it through the House and the Senate answer?

TYRRELL: Well, no, it's not the answer. I mean, that's- Bill, you know I know you don't mean it to sound as simple as it is. But that's a simple question. No, economics is more complicated. But that's one answer. That's one thing that has to be done. We have to get rid of some of the regulations that are making it so difficult for big people and little people to practice enterprise in this country. And I think that particularly with respect to the poor blacks in the city and I'm talking about the poor, not the middle class black, the underclass, as Carl Gershwin has referred to it recently. Something has to be done for those people. They have to get― these young kids in particular have got to be able to get into the American economic system and in on the action. One thing that's rarely said in America is what's so is a good word for work. But you know work is a very good thing in and of itself. And young people need work. They need something to do other than standing on a corner playing basketball.

MOYERS: Well, what's Reagan going to mean to that, Bob?

TYRRELL: Well, I'm persuaded that stuff like eliminating the minimum wage law or at least having a two-tier minimum wage law that would allow you to hire young people would be very, very helpful to young people. You know, it happens all the time. I was talking recently to a woman who had a terrific car wash and I'd go in there with my car and a mob of kids would come out and clean that car off- do all the menial tasks that go with that car wash. And they were oddly cheerful about it all. It was only the older guys that looked like they were— by that, I mean men in their 30s that looked like they were zonked out. And I came in about— in fact, the car wash was shown in the movie Breaking Away· a terrific place. And I came in there and for about the last six months, it's been abandoned. So I asked the other day, I asked this lady, I said she's not political, she's apolitical — I said, "Why do I have to now go through a mechanized car wash with no kids and these machines that beat hell out of my car?" And she said. "Well, I just couldn't afford to pay the minimum wage. We had to get rid of all these kids. And it was great fun for us all. And we used to have Thanksgiving dinner and all that stuff, you know." And the kids were all out of work.

KNOLL: I think this is typical of the kind of superficial discussion we've had through the campaign of basic issues. That two-tiered minimum wage or abolishing the minimum wage. Sure, I think it would provide jobs for a lot of young kids who are now not able to find work. It would not create a single job except maybe for that car wash in Bloomington, Indiana. What it would mean would be that people who are now earning three or four or five bucks an hour would be fired to be replaced by people who could be hired at two dollars an hour. Reducing the minimum wage doesn't create jobs. It just creates opportunities for employers to maximize their profits by bringing in lower wage earners and firing those who will now have to be paid the minimum wage.

TYRRELL: Now that you've gotten so sophisticated, let's report that there's hardly any economic evidence to indicate to support what Erwin just said. We've looked for it. My managing editor tried to support the contention of Erwin Knoll and you just simply cannot find economic data supporting that contention.

NAVASKY: Well, that's going to be the test, it seems to me, of the Reagan presidency because when he promises to get the government off our backs, what he's saying is, he's going to turn it over to these giant corporations. If you think that's the way that black kids are going to get to go to work in the ghetto, we'll find out in the next four years. My question would be, why do you assume, if we talk now about the voting party rather than the non-voting party. Why do you assume that the blacks who were the only group who stayed together, didn't know what they were doing when they voted for a Democratic administration in numbers of over 90 percent?

TYRRELL: I never made the assumption.

NAVASKY: Well, you did in saying that the Reagan presidency would be the best for that group of people.

MOYERS: But there is something here, Victor, that the blacks did stay with the Democratic Party with Jimmy Carter, those who voted, irrespective of the fact that all of those programs which had been in place for so long haven't worked.

NAVASKY: That's right.

MOYERS: And I'm asking you if there really wasn't something more substantial to what happened on Tuesday, in the decision of a substantial number of the American people that we don't want to turn our backs on the New Deal. We don't want to take out the safety net that we've put down. But liberalism, as the cliche goes, has run out of ideas, has run out of steam. And if we're going to move on to deal with these problems, it's going to take more than dealing

with the minimum wage and more than voting more programs under the New Deal.

NAVASKY: I think liberalism which I would define as centralism

MOYERS: Mainly government programs.

NAVASKY: Centerism has run out of steam and hasn't worked. And we're now gonna get a chance to try free enterprise, so-called. And rightism. Whatever you want to call it — Reaganism. And when that doesn't work, the question is, what will we try next? And will we try something further to the right of Reagan? Because there is now a contest going on within his people. within his party and within what will be his administration for his programs and for his soul, as it were. And I guess it's a challenge of people who care about these things to make sure that the alternative to Reaganism. when that doesn't work, isn't an alternative on the right but at last—

MOYERS: But not Ted Kennedy?

NAVASKY: But at last you get a—-- well, I don't know them.

MOYERS: No, I'm saying, are you saying that it—the alternative to Reagan if you don't go to the right is not Ted Kennedy?

NAVASKY: Well, that's right because Ted Kennedy stands for the best of what the New Deal had to offer. And that's not good enough.

DECTER: Could we, before we face the defeat of Reaganism, and I think if we expect—

NAVASKY: It won't be long.

DECTER: I think if we expect that Reagan is going to alter the economic problems of this society with a magic wand, we will certainly look forward to that very quickly. But before we get to the end of the Reagan administration, and so on, I think that there's something in the near term that we ought to be discussing. First of all, I really do think it's time to stop with the wholesale caricaturing of everything. Reagan says he wants to get the government off people's backs. And you say that means he wants the corporations on their backs.

NAVASKY: I say it's time for him to stop talking like that.

DECTER: Excuse me. What he was saying — again, I am not- I do not believe that there is a magic wand in the Reagan administration. But one of the arguments he was making was an argument not so, as I understand it. dissimilar to yours, which is that getting federal government off people's backs is going to return some strength to local initiatives, to communities and so on, that you were talking about. That's first of all. You don't have to jump from the federal government to the corporation because there have been a lot of intermediary levels, not only of government but of institutional arrangement, that have been ridden rough-shod over by liberalism you call it centerism. I suppose from a perspective on the far left, it could be called the center. I would call it, I would call it leftism left liberalism. These things have indeed failed. But there is something else that you have to deal with when you're dealing with, say, the inner city youths, who are unemployed. And it's a subject that is— you get your scalp taken off for mentioning. But part of the difficulty about that youth is that it is unemployable. A very, very large shockingly large — numbers of those kids are unemployable. And something has to be done to deal with that. Now, that is a very long and complicated question. However, there is something in what Bob said, namely, one of the things that has to happen is that we have to bring to an end the idea which has been floating around, was introduced by the radicalism of the '60s- I know because I had a hand in it; we all did and has now kind of settled into the society, that this society is a racket. It's a racket. Work is— it's not only that the work ethic has been undermined and that work is a racket- everything is a racket. It's a fake. It's a phony. If you work, they just exploit you and there are all kinds of opportunities for getting around things and so on. And this whole- part of the problem of the education of the inner city youth who is unemployable is the idea that this society is corrupt and that the notion that you do an honest day's work and get an honest day's pay. I mean, doesn't that sound archaic to you? Doesn't it make you laugh?

MOYERS: Let Victor— let him answer.

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NAVASKY: What interests me is that the same people — and I'll include you for the purposes of this discussion and if I'm wrong. tell me the same people who make the argument that the inner city youth are unemployable also argue against affirmative action on behalf of the inner city youth and quotas and—

DECTER: Absolutely. That doesn't make him employable.

NAVASKY: What do you do? Where do you go from there? What is the evidence?

DECTER: That doesn't make them unemployable at all. Affirmative action. Affirmative action has done nothing whatsoever for inner city youth. That is absolute— that is absurdity. Affirmative action has taken care of the middle class. It has provided employment for the people who administer it. And it has taken care of middle class—

NAVASKY: It has been because there's been a flea on a dog's tail worthy of affirmative action for these kids.

MOYERS: But you're not going to get any more of it. Victor, with Strom Thurmond heading the Judiciary Committee and Jake Garn heading the Banking and Urban—

DECTER: -because the American public is against it, it has not liked it. It has been against it.

NAVASKY: That's right.

DECTER: And not on grounds of wanting to keep ghetto youth out but because it violates a principle that people believe in.

TYRRELL: A liberal principle. A liberal principle of equal opportunity.

DECTOR: And that's why they're against it.

TYRRELL: Another problem with what you said is you say, well, we've tried liberalism, now we're going to cashier liberalism and we're going to go on to the right or something. And again, that's not the way societies worked. Victor. That's not the way history, which you made a claim for the study of history a bit ago - - that's not the way that works. We have liberalism. It's made its mark on America. It's given us all appreciation of some welfare for the poor. It has given us all an appreciation of equal opportunity. And affirmative action isn't equal opportunity. It's a spike in the heart of liberalism. We're going to go on. We have had liberalism. We have liberalism now and we're going to go on and build on liberalism. We're— rather, we're going to make some of those― the problems with liberalism. We're going to try to resolve some of the problems with liberalism.

MOYERS: All of you are talking as if the economy is a matter of what we do in Washington with government policies as if we existed in isolation from OPEC and the Third World and the movement of jobs to Mexico and Taiwan where they don't have to pay a minimum wage, even. And it sounds as if, you know, this election took place in one place at one time for one country in isolation from the world around it.

NAVASKY: Well, I think that's right but I think that Erwin's candidate is the only one who addressed that issue.

MOYERS: And that was?

NAVASKY: That was Barry Commoner.

MOYERS: And he got 250.000 votes. Now, come on, be realistic

.

KNOLL: How often did folks watching CBS. NBC. ABC or reading their papers even get any inkling of what he had to say? But I'm not campaigning for Barry Commoner.

MOYERS: Well, what are you saying? Are you saying that because of the structure of media power in this country. ideas do not get considered in selecting others?

KNOLL: Well, of course, does that even need saying? But the point I wanted to make, getting back to the question you raised, about the external forces that shape our economy and obviously they do. I think perhaps the most pernicious effect of this quadrennial exercise we go through in electing a president is that it reinforces the notion among millions and millions of Americans that these are things within the president's control. The president— presidential candidates themselves foster the notion that they're going to change things when they get to Washington.

My prediction for the Reagan administration is that very little will change because very little is actually within the discretion of the President of the United States. Very little is within the discretion of the political people in Washington. The economy has its own logic and its own control mechanisms and until we get to making structural changes. that diminish corporate decision-making power. Reagan is going to do exactly what Carter did on the basic questions.

may be from afar.

MOYERS: You may be able in your publications to add a page but I can't add a minute to an hour. And the time has gone. Those of you who've been watching can follow this discussion though The American Spectator. The Progressive. Harper's Magazine, Commentary, and other publications for which Miss Decter writes, and The Nation.

Thanks to each of you for coming.

I'm Bill Moyers.