A Washington veteran explains our dysfunctional national capital. Excerpt from “What’s Going on in Washington,” July 17, 2013.

DAVID GERGEN, Political Analyst, CNN; Professor and Director, Center for Public Leadership, Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government

 

DAVID GERGEN: I don’t think there’s anybody in the room who can remember a time when the country’s problems seemed more pressing or bigger and when our capacity to solve them through the political process seemed smaller. It is very disheartening. I come to you as someone who’s pretty pessimistic about the short term. I think the next few years are going to be a little bit like the last few years: not very productive, dissatisfying, disillusioning, cynical. But I also come to you as someone who’s a long-term optimist. I see signs of hope out there and we shouldn’t despair or walk away from the public square. If anything, these are times that call for more energy and more engagement because the way we’re going to pull ourselves out of this is more citizen engagement and an insistence that things can be better than what we’re seeing.

With regard to President Obama, I was one of those who shared high hopes for his presidency. I continue to hope that he succeeds. As someone who has had the privilege of being in the White House, what one rapidly learns there is that there’s a fraternity of people who have worked in the White House over the years who have come to see the presidency in the same way even though they’re of different backgrounds and different persuasions, and that is that it’s important for the country − we only have one president at the time − and it’s important for the country that that person succeed, that the world sees a functioning democracy, that we feel that we can tell our children and grandchildren that there is someone we can look up to who is getting things done on behalf of the country. So I’d like him to succeed. I think some of the things he has done for our country have been very much in our best interest. I have been increasingly uncomfortable with the paralysis in Washington, and I must say I think it’s only fair [to say] that much of the difficulty he has faced has not been of his own doing, but has come from the other party.

Unhappy as I am with Obama, I am equally unhappy with the Republican Party. This is not the party that I knew when I first went to work in the White House back in the early 1970s. I can tell you that the presidents I have known over the years on the Republican side – I dare say most of them would have a very difficult time winning the nomination of the party in today’s current environment. I can tell you Richard Nixon would not have won the nomination of this party, because he was too liberal. Gerry Ford certainly would not have won the nomination of this party. Ronald Reagan would have been suspect; he did sign an abortion bill here in California; he did raise taxes here in California. Those are verboten in the modern Republican Party. I can guarantee you George H.W. Bush would not have been able to win the nomination in this party. And even George W. would have probably run into some [trouble.] Look how at odds he is with the party over immigration today. I congratulate him for speaking out this week on the immigration bill; I think he made the right arguments. This was the first time he’s really taken a position since he left the presidency. 

In both parties there have always been more extreme elements. But normally, politics in this country, as we say in Washington, is played between the 40-yard lines. You don’t play down at one end of the field or the other end of the field. It tends to be played between the 40-yard lines, and the people who make things work are those who are willing to work across the aisle and work with others.

That’s the tradition that the Second World War generation left us; that was the generation that I went to work for originally; that’s the generation I now miss in public life, because I think things have not been the same since they started leaving the stage. Among other things, when I went to Washington, 78 percent of members of Congress were veterans; today it’s down to around 35 percent. But more than that, we had seven presidents in a row from President Kennedy on through President H. W. Bush – seven presidents, Democratic and Republican – who were veterans of the World War II era. And when they got to Washington some were strong Democrats, some were strong Republicans, but they thought of themselves as first and foremost strong Americans. And that made a big difference in how they legislated, how they got together.

We’ve lost that perspective with this new generation of politics. We’ve got a generation that did not grow up with a war that united us. Many of us came of age with a war that put an axe right down the middle of our generation − Vietnam split us apart; the culture wars split us apart. There were many great things about the ’60s and ’70s, but they left us splintered. We haven’t yet healed.  We will, but it’s going to take some time. And this generation that is in power now has been used to divisiveness since they were coming of age, and they live off divisiveness; they specialize in it; they get votes because of it; they raise money because of it. It serves their personal interest while it hurts the national interest a great deal.

From the 1930s on, there were three presidents who stand out for their legislative achievements. One was Franklin Roosevelt, another was Lyndon Johnson and, to create balance, I would say the third is Ronald Reagan. What characterized all three was that they were very extroverted men who loved the arena. They loved the banging that goes in politics. Politics is a contact sport, and you either have to like it or you shouldn’t be doing it.

So let’s look at President Obama and his second term. A lot of us thought that if tradition held, the president would have a year to a year and a half to govern domestically. The window is small, but there is a window in your second term when you return – after all, you’ve beaten the opposition twice – and there’s a deep reservoir of support out there and you can take advantage of it and get things done. After that, people start turning toward the first midterm elections. After that, they start turning toward the general election two years later, they start looking over your shoulder as president and you can get very little done domestically. It’s hard; it can be done, but it’s hard. Most second terms have, frankly, been much, much weaker because of that. So most presidents after that year-and-a-half or so turn to international affairs because, even though they’re weaker at home, they still retain the title of commander in chief of the most important military country in the world and the most powerful nation and largest economy, etc. That gives you a lot of inherent power on the international stage. Ronald Reagan had two not very productive first years in his second term, but his last two years were highly productive, mostly on the international relations side. He got a lot done with the Soviets in his last two years. That seemed to be probably what we were facing then. But we’re six months in out of forty-eight and it appears that the wind is going out of [President Obama’s] sails. He’s having a really, really hard time commanding the national stage. There are a lot of reasons for that.

It’s also true that in the second term you often get hit with scandals. Things build up in the first term that people don’t know about; you can bottle them up until the second term when things start spilling out. I worked for Nixon, so I know what can come spilling out. Little did I know then, but I was working for the mafia. [Laughter.] It wasn’t really that bad, but there was an element in there, a reality I had no clue about. With Obama, there hasn’t been anything like Watergate, but there have been a lot of little things that have hit him at the wrong time and taken the national attention away from “Where are we going” to “Oh my God, what happened?” That’s all the way down to Snowden, but we have the IRS in particular and a number of these surprises that have gotten in his way. Another big surprise was that – I don’t think they understood inside how overexposed he was in terms of television and the media in the first two or three years of the presidency. What we’re seeing now is that people have heard a lot from him and they see dysfunction within the government and now people are bored with it, because it’s been the same story for a few years now. It’s a boring story, because nothing really changes. It’s like watching grass not grow. [Laughter.]

Coming into the second term, [the Obama administration’s] real hope was that they could get a couple of things done early on domestically – they could get a budget agreement, they could get immigration done and gun control. Then they would pivot internationally, get out of Afghanistan and Iraq and pull out a bit from the Middle East and pivot toward Asia. We’d put more ships in the water and try to build up trade relationships and make sure it’s a stable neighborhood as China gets stronger.

Unfortunately, the Middle East turns out to be like tarpaper. There’s turmoil almost everywhere you turn in the Middle East, whether you look at Egypt or Syria – and President Obama doesn’t want us to play a lead role in any of it. Instead of wanting to be an architect in a new order, he wants to be cautious. And I don’t blame him; who does know what exactly to do in Egypt and whom you want to support and whatnot?

You do have to be pretty clearheaded about your goals, but it’s tough and he’s having a hard time. So if you look at it overall, we’re looking at a situation where in the next three years we’ll make some modest headway, but pretty soon we’ll ask if Hillary is really going to do this or not – or Jeb Bush, or really Rand Paul, or anyone. If Hillary goes, I think she’s going to be the strong favorite to win. I think a lot depends on her health, but I think she’s healthy – really though, who knows?

I assume she wants to do it and I can tell you that Bill wants her to do it. [Laughter.] I’m a big Bill Clinton fan, and I think he’s been marvelously disciplined. He’s really let her take her turn and ever since he took that position – everyone said he would interfere when she became secretary of state, but he really kept his mouth shut and let things be. But here we are, and I think she’s a very, very popular person. One thing she would do is heal the rift between the business community and the White House; that ought to be addressed, too. It’s not just about Congress and the White House; it’s also about the degree of uncertainty and the rift that’s developed that’s deeper than it should be.

 

Question and answer session with Mary Marcy, President, Dominican University of California; Member, Commonwealth Club Board of Governors

 

MARY MARCY: You just mentioned Bill Clinton in the context of Hillary. All of the descriptions you had of FDR and Reagan were very much descriptions of Bill Clinton as well – loves the game of politics, very gregarious, very interested in talking to both sides. But you didn’t put Clinton in that list of great presidents of the 20th century.

GERGEN: Well after two Democrats, I needed to get one Republican. [Laughter.] As a political scientist, as you know, most people like groups of three. I do think that one thing Clinton proves is that even when a Congress is hostile, if you play things right you have a decent shot of getting things done. Bill Clinton had a hostile Republican Congress in his second term; they impeached him! It’s worth remembering that, and yet the same man who was impeached by a Republican Congress got welfare reform done and got four straight balanced budgets done, working with Newt Gingrich. Gingrich was no slouch as an opposition figure. I don’t think just because there’s opposition you can’t get something done.

MARCY: What do you think about the [Supreme Court’s] Voting Rights Act decision? You were born and raised in North Carolina – has the world changed that much since the Voting Rights Act was originally written?

GERGEN: Yes. This is not politically popular to say, but I would approach the voting rights decision by the courts with some caution. Under the Constitution, all states are to be created equally. Now, we did have a group of states that was engaged in outrageous practices and it was important to have the Voting Rights Act passed to correct those practices; it was exactly the right thing. One of the biggest gifts Lyndon Johnson gave to this country was the passage of the 1964-65 civil rights bills. They were milestones. But, in most of the states things have changed. So why should they be held up as examples of egregious behavior when the egregious behavior is no longer there? The New York Times doesn’t like to say this, but the gap between black and white voting is bigger in Massachusetts than anywhere else. If there are bad practices going on, they ought to be hammered; we ought to come down really, really strong. But there is something wrong to say to Mississippi and Alabama and some of these other states, “No matter what you do, we’re always going to hold you at fault. We’re going to always say you’re basically racist no matter what you do.” That’s not fair to the good folks in those states who have come a long, long way.

MARCY: You have an extraordinary record of public service and also supporting and mentoring service programs for young people. So given the influence of service in the history or success of great presidents, what is your opinion on mandatory service for all Americans for at least two years – not military service but simply service?

GERGEN: I’m a very strong advocate for national service. The general Stanley McChrystal, who came back from Afghanistan and is now teaching at Yale, just took charge of the Franklin Project out of the Aspen Institute. I’m on the advisory board. We had a big gathering with 250 heads of major nonprofits – a lot of social entrepreneurs – who came to Aspen about three or four weeks ago. We were there for about two days and I came away very, very encouraged. There’s a strong desire on the part of a lot of interesting and influential people to create more opportunities for national service.

The goal of the Franklin Project is to create one million opportunities for service for people between the ages of 18 and 24. That would mean one-quarter of the cohort would have a great opportunity for service. That would also mean greatly expanding what we do. Not only in education, but there would be a health corps and a legal corps. In New Orleans, for example, they’ve turned a lot of things around, but there are still strong crime problems and 60 to 70 arrests every night. They don’t have lawyers to represent those people who are nailed every night, and they could use about 60 or 70 young lawyers who can spend a year and come in and work through to get a better, fairer system. That happens to be a really good deal. We’re graduating twice as many people from law school every year as there are jobs. We’ve got a mismatch going on right now, and that’s one of the reasons there’s a lot of pressure on law schools to change their curriculums, maybe making it two years, etc. But they’re business models. Law schools have to have three years and big classes, but it’s not fair to the kids. A legal corps would enable a lot of young people to go off and get experience for a year or two in service, prove themselves, and then they will be in better position to be hired by law firms or start their own businesses. 

Let me segue out of that to a general proposition. I just want to tell you that the people who are in the upper reaches of the millennial generation are the finest, most promising group since World War II. There are people who are just so impressive and care so much about the country and are talented and truly want to make a difference. They do not particularly want to go work for the national government, and who can blame them? They want to make a difference, not just be in a place where power is misused. They come in two different forms. One is the people coming through who really believe in social service and want to be in the political arena. Wendy Kopp started Teach for America back in 1989 and, by the way, she got the initial money to start from the Gap. She asked young people to go teach in the toughest urban and rural schools in the country for two years after finishing college. This year she has 4,700 new corps members out, and she had 48,000 applications; 10-to-1 is pretty hard to get into. At Harvard four years ago, 9 percent of our graduating seniors applied for Teach for America; this last year one out of every five Harvard students said, “I don’t want to go to Wall Street. I want to go teach eighth grade in the Bronx.” That is a huge change, and these kids are not just improving their resumes; 60 percent stay involved in public education reform. Many of them go off to charter schools; they are full of Teach for America people.

There’s another group that comes along, and they’re not the only wonderful group, but this group coming through is a silver lining of 12 years of war. The men and women coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan who take off their uniforms and want to pitch in and help rebuild America. Another board I’ve joined recently is for something called The Mission Continues, run by Eric Greitens in St. Louis. Greitens was a philosophy major at Duke, thought it was too cushy and left to become a boxer. He won several titles before winning a Rhodes scholarship and going off to get a Ph.D. from Oxford. Eric then became a humanitarian and went to Rwanda and Bosnia and was really doing good work before he decided he wanted to do something tougher. So he signed up with the Navy SEALS for four tours. This guy could do anything he wants in life, and he started a nonprofit for veterans who are disabled in one way or another. They went overseas with a sense of mission for the country, and now they don’t have one because they were shot up and demoralized.

He started his organization because he knows that the country needs these men and women to succeed back home. The Mission Continues [is] doing fabulous work. Well, I see these kids joining up with the social entrepreneurs in favor of national service saying, “How do we do this across the board?” We had a young man who just graduated this year from Harvard who, when he finished high school, went off and joined the Marine Corps as an enlisted guy. They turned him into a sniper and he had four tours in Iraq. That can be really traumatizing being a sniper; there’s a very high PTSD and disability rate for snipers. He came back healthy, signed up and went to Harvard and just finished. Do you know what he’s going to be doing this fall? He’s going to be teaching the eighth grade in Chicago for Teach for America. That is what I see in this younger generation. That’s one of the big, big reasons why I’m excited for the future. We need to help these young people by giving them opportunities, the education they deserve and the encouragement they deserve.

MARCY: A number of people in the audience want to peek behind the curtain at CNN. One person wants to know whether the people who yell at each other on TV yell at each other when the cameras are off.

GERGEN: Well, whom are you talking about? [Laughter.] No, at least at CNN actually I’ve found it very civil. It’s funny; there were one or two individuals – I can think of one in particular – who were uncivil, but on Twitter. He didn’t go behind a curtain; he was just full out there saying things about his colleagues. That’s not what we were all hoping to build there.

CNN has been going through difficult challenges; everybody knows that. We were way up in 2008 during the election cycle. We had the biggest audience on election night, including over on the networks. After President Obama got elected and things were so polarized, we found that a lot of the conservative audience went over to Fox and a lot of the liberal audience went to MSNBC. That left CNN trying to be non-partisan and representative of both points of view, but people said they wanted more fire, more opinion. So we have a new leader now named Jeff Zucker, and he’s trying to experiment with a lot of things and the numbers are going up. MSNBC is now taking a slide.