Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but after my last interview
Speaker 1: with George will I can't seem to get enough of
Speaker 1: conservative commentary. This week, we're at Joe's Pub at the
Speaker 1: Public Theater in Lower Manhattan for the Public Forum, a
Speaker 1: series of conversations pairing someone like me. I've been connected
Speaker 1: to the public in various ways over the years with
Speaker 1: a voice from outside the world of theater. Today, I'll
Speaker 1: be speaking with one of the leading public intellectuals of
Speaker 1: our time. David Brooks is a writer whose political opinions
Speaker 1: and judgment are so revered that he often gets calls
Speaker 1: from the White House in anticipation of a column. At
Speaker 1: the same time, he's also willing to say things like, quote,
Speaker 1: every kid should take a course on how to choose
Speaker 1: a marriage partner. Unquote. Few topics are off limits to Brooks.
Speaker 1: He's been a New York Times op ed columnists since
Speaker 1: two thousand three. He's known as a conserve bit of voice.
Speaker 1: Brooks was a senior editor at The Weekly Standard, but
Speaker 1: former Obama advisor David Axelrod described him as a true
Speaker 1: public thinker. I was lucky to have David Brooks joined
Speaker 1: me on stage in New York City. Joe's Pub is cozy.
Speaker 1: It seats just under two hundred people who are eating
Speaker 1: and drinking throughout the program. The pub sits right on
Speaker 1: top of the subway. Sometimes you can hear and feel
Speaker 1: the train rumble. Below. Take a listen to some of
Speaker 1: my conversation with David Brooks, recorded last week on October
Speaker 1: one at Joe's Pub as part of the Public Theater's
Speaker 1: Public Forum series. Thank you all for coming, by the way,
Speaker 1: I didn't. I don't have as much time to read
Speaker 1: the op ed page of the New York Times as
Speaker 1: i'd like to these days because of my schedule, so
Speaker 1: I thought to make it easy, I would just invite
Speaker 1: someone and hang out with someone right for the otbed
Speaker 1: page and kind of get a whole kind of, uh,
Speaker 1: the background of what I've been missing in political opinion.
Speaker 1: But thank you very much to David Brooks, and I
Speaker 1: haven't in thirty rock and months, so you better hurry
Speaker 1: because we're off the air. Um Anyway, I just wanted
Speaker 1: to begin by asking you just first to describe your
Speaker 1: own background and where you grew up and what was
Speaker 1: politics in your life when you were in a high
Speaker 1: school and beyond as an undergraduate. So I grew up
Speaker 1: here in Stivesontown, not too far away from here. I
Speaker 1: grew up in a somewhat left wing background. When I
Speaker 1: was five and my parents took me to a b
Speaker 1: in Uh in Central Park, where it explains everything else
Speaker 1: hippies would go to just you know, be Uh. And
Speaker 1: so one of the things they did was they set
Speaker 1: a garbage can on fire and threw their wallets into
Speaker 1: it to demonstrate their liberation for money and material things.
Speaker 1: And I was five and I saw a five dollar
Speaker 1: bill on fire in the garbage can, and I ran
Speaker 1: up and grabbed it and ran away. And so that
Speaker 1: was my first step over to the right. And then
Speaker 1: even closer to here, I my father was teaching an
Speaker 1: n y U. I went to Grace Church School, where
Speaker 1: I was part of the all Jewish boys doving in choir.
Speaker 1: So we were about fifty Jewish and we'd sing the hymns,
Speaker 1: but we wouldn't say the word Jesus to swear it
Speaker 1: with our religion. So the volume would drop and then
Speaker 1: it would come back up. And so I grew up here,
Speaker 1: went to Philadelphia Uh. Then went to college at the
Speaker 1: Chicago the school where Fund goes to die. Um, what
Speaker 1: did your dad teach it? He taught English literature. We
Speaker 1: were part of a culture in New York Jewish circles.
Speaker 1: The culture was called think Yiddish, act British, and so
Speaker 1: you were very anglophilic. And so he taught Victorian literature.
Speaker 1: And actually this is true in my grandfather's generation. All
Speaker 1: the Jews wanted to fit in, so they gave themselves
Speaker 1: names which they thought were super English, so nobody would
Speaker 1: think they were Jewish. Well, no, they picked Irving, Sydney Milton,
Speaker 1: and so it didn't really work out. What did you
Speaker 1: study at Chicago? I studied hit American history. The other
Speaker 1: thing about Chicago was, if I can get this right,
Speaker 1: it's a Baptist school where atheist professors teach Jewish students. St.
Speaker 1: Thomas Aquinas and so. But actually I began to turn there.
Speaker 1: So how did that evolve when you're in Chicago? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So I was a lefty and I was assigned a
Speaker 1: book called The Reflections and the Revolution in France by
Speaker 1: Edmond Burgh. And here's a guy saying, you know, you
Speaker 1: really shouldn't think for yourself the power of reason is weak.
Speaker 1: Well you should do is rely on the just prejudices
Speaker 1: that have survived the test of time. And I just
Speaker 1: loathed that book, that idea, because that I want to
Speaker 1: think for myself. I want to come up with my
Speaker 1: own ideas. But as I got older, and especially I
Speaker 1: became a police reporter covering crime, murders and rapes in
Speaker 1: the South Side of Chicago, I began to see that
Speaker 1: he's right. Our power of reason is weak. And part
Speaker 1: of the core of my conservatism is a phrase epistemological modesty.
Speaker 1: The world is incredibly complicated. We can't know much about it.
Speaker 1: We should be very suspicious that we can plan. And
Speaker 1: then I covered really a horrible housing projects in Chicago,
Speaker 1: Cabrini Green and others and legendary. Yeah, And so to me,
Speaker 1: they were part of the unintended consequences of pretty bad
Speaker 1: welfare policy, which enabled families to break up and and
Speaker 1: tore down good neighborhoods. What year was that when you
Speaker 1: were That was the early eighties, And so I became
Speaker 1: more conservative of a certain story. And would you say
Speaker 1: that alone like kind of failed urban policy, I mean
Speaker 1: it was part. I mean it was partly. I mean
Speaker 1: it was a period incredible social decay. I mean you
Speaker 1: look at all the social indicators they really starting a
Speaker 1: seventy they just collapsed, divorced, drugs, crime, And so you're
Speaker 1: growing up in that and you think what's going wrong?
Speaker 1: But did you think that I'm sorry for spitting on you,
Speaker 1: even from this distance. I'm used to it, and I
Speaker 1: would never spit on you intentionally. I would just say
Speaker 1: the do you think that people that are more left
Speaker 1: leaning they're the ones whould say drugs, divorced crime, or
Speaker 1: the results of other failed social policies, and those policies
Speaker 1: proceeded that that those things are are symptoms of something
Speaker 1: which has failed, of public policies in terms of jobs
Speaker 1: and fairer taxes. And did you think that some of
Speaker 1: the problems that we're facing our society in the sixties
Speaker 1: and seventies and were the results of other bad policies
Speaker 1: that might have some conservative things on them as well.
Speaker 1: I've gotten more educated about it since, and I think
Speaker 1: the sort of the classic more liberal position is William
Speaker 1: Julius Wilson, the sociologist at Harvard. He said the real
Speaker 1: problem was all the urban jobs went away and when
Speaker 1: the jobs went wait for the working class, then the
Speaker 1: social decay came, and I think there's a lot of
Speaker 1: truth to that. I would say there was also a
Speaker 1: breakdown in social Moray's they should stick around in hand,
Speaker 1: and that's exactly my view now that they became a spiral.
Speaker 1: And so now you know, I had a conversation with
Speaker 1: I always have conversations with, let's say, senior administration officials,
Speaker 1: and I say, you know, the breakdown of the family.
Speaker 1: Kids are born out of wedlock. Right now, if that
Speaker 1: remain it's true, and every we all know people who
Speaker 1: are born with single parents and they're doing great, but
Speaker 1: the odds are higher. And so I say with if
Speaker 1: that remains true, then thirty years from now, we'll have
Speaker 1: more inequality than we do now, and the skills gap
Speaker 1: will be greater from that fact alone. So why don't
Speaker 1: you take on family policy? And if you're gonna do
Speaker 1: it right, you got to do it in two ways. One,
Speaker 1: you've got to encourage people to get married and stay
Speaker 1: married or not have kids until they get married. But
Speaker 1: you also got to make give men money so they're
Speaker 1: worth marrying. And that's basically the problem. You've got to
Speaker 1: give them earning come tax credit or some other wage
Speaker 1: subsidy you gotta do you mean also give women money
Speaker 1: so they're worth married. Not well, now see, yes you
Speaker 1: did mean that. You just don't know it, but you
Speaker 1: did mean. We're here. Don't try to make me popular.
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to make you more popular than when
Speaker 1: I think one of the reasons why the marriage has
Speaker 1: fallen apart it's mostly I think on the male side.
Speaker 1: When you talk about, you know, the decay of the
Speaker 1: family and stuff, and then you talk about I mean,
Speaker 1: do you have any particular opinions about birth control? So well,
Speaker 1: I might have a little different view. I mean, first,
Speaker 1: on social issues, I'm still as left wing as the
Speaker 1: day is long. On the I'm I'm not only for example,
Speaker 1: well so I'm not only for supporting gay marriage, I'm
Speaker 1: for coercing gay marriage. I mean, I think we should say,
Speaker 1: are you guys married yet? Are you married yet? You
Speaker 1: guys can get married, but say on in Africa. You know,
Speaker 1: I was at a village in Mozambique a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago where there were no adults. There was grandparents
Speaker 1: and kids. All the adults were dead from AIDS, and
Speaker 1: so you asked the grandparents, are the kids replicating the
Speaker 1: behaviors that killed their parents after they nursed them to
Speaker 1: their deaths? And they said yes, they're doing all the
Speaker 1: same stuff. And so the question becomes, how do you
Speaker 1: change that behavior? And the short answer is you give
Speaker 1: contraception and you try to change behavior by lectures at
Speaker 1: the same time. But who's been most effective at changing
Speaker 1: behavior in my experience, it's not us Westerners with our
Speaker 1: technical expertise, it's the Church. And the Church will say
Speaker 1: it's about your soul, here's how you should live. And
Speaker 1: one of the reasons so many the religions there, the
Speaker 1: Protestants and the Catholics are so incredibly conservative, is because
Speaker 1: they need that ammunition to change behavior. And if you
Speaker 1: don't follow these rules, your souls is damned. That I
Speaker 1: find pretty persuasive as a way to get people to
Speaker 1: change their behavior when you're living with a life threatening disease.
Speaker 1: But they haven't been successful. Well, it's when the Catholics
Speaker 1: are opposed, I mean the Catholics in terms of the brass,
Speaker 1: if you will, of the Catholic Church. They're opposed to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's yeah, I think you're absolutely right about that. I
Speaker 1: guess my point is they're opposed in theory. But you
Speaker 1: go into a Catholic mission in in the maybe or anywhere,
Speaker 1: and the rubbers are sitting right there on the table.
Speaker 1: They don't have the luxury of being abstract about this,
Speaker 1: and they say, if you gotta thirteen year old kid
Speaker 1: who comes in, you preach abstinence. If you had an
Speaker 1: eighteen year old, you can hand him a rubber. I
Speaker 1: want to make out that check. I want to pay
Speaker 1: to the Order of the Vatican ten thou dollars and
Speaker 1: in the memo for rubbers, and to see to see
Speaker 1: what happens now from Cabrini Green, where do you go?
Speaker 1: What happens? How much longer? So we all have these
Speaker 1: weird things that happened in our lives. While I was
Speaker 1: in at college, I wrote a humor column, which is
Speaker 1: hard to believe if anybody reads my current column, I know, uh,
Speaker 1: I think you still write a humor college? Yeah, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you. So I'm just pretty funny, yeah that. And
Speaker 1: then I was trying to be funny, and so William F.
Speaker 1: Buckley came to campus and I wrote a piece calling
Speaker 1: him a name dropping blowhard basically, And so I said,
Speaker 1: you know, he wrote the first three volumes of his
Speaker 1: memoirs in the day of his birth. All of human
Speaker 1: history up to Buckley was glorious dawn. And then he
Speaker 1: in college, he founded two magazines, one called The National Buckley,
Speaker 1: one called the Buckley Review, which he emerged to form
Speaker 1: the Buckley Buckley. And so it was all just one
Speaker 1: joke after another. And he came to campus and he
Speaker 1: gave a talk to the student body and he said,
Speaker 1: David Brookster, if you're in the audience, I want to
Speaker 1: give you a job. And so that was my big break. Now,
Speaker 1: sadly I wasn't in the audience, and I and I
Speaker 1: and I wasn't that conservative. But three years later I
Speaker 1: was drifting a little bit up the right and I
Speaker 1: called him up and I said, is that job still open?
Speaker 1: And he said yeah. And so literally, from twenty four
Speaker 1: hours I was covering a murder on the West Side
Speaker 1: of Chicago. Twenty four hours later I was up in
Speaker 1: his Park Avenue apartment having dinner with finger bowls. Uh,
Speaker 1: and I, you know, I thought it was a watery soup.
Speaker 1: And but so when you get when you became his
Speaker 1: associate editor, you became a pseudo sung for a year
Speaker 1: and a half. So he took me yachting, he took
Speaker 1: me to bout concerts, he asked my opinion, and so
Speaker 1: it was one of those magical experiences where a guy
Speaker 1: who's a real mentor and so I worked in National
Speaker 1: View for a year and a half and he was
Speaker 1: would you admire most about him? There's many people who
Speaker 1: worked with have worked with him, have speak glowingly about him.
Speaker 1: But by the way, incredibly diverse group of people, Joan
Speaker 1: Diddy and John Leonard, a lot of people, and so
Speaker 1: his greatest capacity was his capacity for friendship. If you
Speaker 1: went over his house for dinner. First of all, there
Speaker 1: were not that many conservatives there. There were not many
Speaker 1: political people. It was writers mostly. Anatol Broyard, a literate critic,
Speaker 1: was yeah, and so we we never talked about what
Speaker 1: the tax policy was. It was what Dostoevsky had written
Speaker 1: about this. One of his biographers estimated he wrote more
Speaker 1: personal letters than anybody else in the twentieth century. He
Speaker 1: was one of these guys his brain just couldn't stop
Speaker 1: output had to become and he wrote all these letters,
Speaker 1: cultivated all these friendships, and so it was an intoxicating
Speaker 1: experience to him based in d C or here here.
Speaker 1: How long were you with him? About eighteen months? And
Speaker 1: what happened? So then he sends me off to start
Speaker 1: my career and I went and became a movie critic
Speaker 1: at the Washington Times, and then I came became a
Speaker 1: book review editor at the Wall Street Journal and then
Speaker 1: a movie critic for the Wall Street Journal in the
Speaker 1: Washington Times. When you were doing the movie criticism and
Speaker 1: the Messiah, yeah, the Reverence, the late late he was
Speaker 1: a big movie fans. I'm young Moon. Yeah, like we
Speaker 1: were like a Jennifer Anniston fan. When was his ill,
Speaker 1: it was more Hunt for October that Actually he funded
Speaker 1: a movie. He funded Pearl Harbor. He funded some movie
Speaker 1: that bomb, And so I was in Pearl Harbor. I
Speaker 1: did bomb. But thank you, thank you well if you
Speaker 1: asked me for Reverend, what was it like writing movie
Speaker 1: criticism for for I mean, the Washington Times is a
Speaker 1: is a very very conservative paper. Yeah, I must say,
Speaker 1: when I was there, we had a very talented staff.
Speaker 1: So Malcolm Ladwell was one of my co authors. And
Speaker 1: so when you weren't touch you you were free to
Speaker 1: write whatever you would And I had the best interview
Speaker 1: of my life until this one. It was with Jackie
Speaker 1: Gleason and he was just about the funniest person I
Speaker 1: ever met in my life. When when you wrote movie criticism,
Speaker 1: was it the classic thing where like the movie critic
Speaker 1: died and you were writing the gardening column and somebody said, kid,
Speaker 1: you're the movie critic. When that happened to me at
Speaker 1: the film well, I kind of resent right now that
Speaker 1: you were a movie critic for the Washington Times because
Speaker 1: what was your background in film? You're recovering murders in
Speaker 1: Careeny Green? I had a PhD in film from USC
Speaker 1: and no, I didn't because of my rich social life
Speaker 1: at the Chicago I saw a movie almost every night.
Speaker 1: Uh and so I recall in one eleven week period,
Speaker 1: I saw seventy seven movies, and I for kidding, I
Speaker 1: would do my homework from seven and nine to go
Speaker 1: to the move of the student thing with outstanding film thing,
Speaker 1: I'd go and then I'd go to the bar. That
Speaker 1: was my life and friend, Yeah, I did that lasted
Speaker 1: eight team was why did that end? Because I got
Speaker 1: a hired by the Wall Street Journal to come up here. Okay,
Speaker 1: so how do you how do you How do you
Speaker 1: go from the Washington Times writing film to the journal
Speaker 1: Because I got towards a good piece of advice. And
Speaker 1: I don't know if you followed this. But never say
Speaker 1: no to anything. Say yes everything, at least at a
Speaker 1: certain point in your life. I said yes to Pearl Harbor,
Speaker 1: and I have to beg to different. I said yes
Speaker 1: to a lot of things I shouldn't said yes. Yes
Speaker 1: were the creato with my businesses? Say no until you
Speaker 1: have to say yes? Who never said no? One who
Speaker 1: rang your bell for the Wall Street Journal? Who came
Speaker 1: after somebody asked me to do a piece on economics,
Speaker 1: And because of my deep background and film, I wrote
Speaker 1: an essay on economics. Uh and and the editor of
Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal saw it and liked it and
Speaker 1: and called me up and said, we need a book
Speaker 1: of your editor. So I edited the book of your section.
Speaker 1: And then I went out from from New York. And
Speaker 1: then I went out and covered the decline in Soviet Union.
Speaker 1: For five years. I was in covering half the world. Yes,
Speaker 1: I lived in Brussels, but I covered the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1: Um and Della coming out of prison married at the time,
Speaker 1: I was married at the time. You have a very
Speaker 1: patient wife. If I told my wife we were moving
Speaker 1: back to Brussels, she would put an axe in my head. Right,
Speaker 1: so you're at the Journal for how long? For nine years?
Speaker 1: And then where do you go? So then I go
Speaker 1: to the Weekly Standard of Conservative magazine owned by Rupert Murdack.
Speaker 1: At that point, what was that like? That was the
Speaker 1: best experience A lot like Buckley. People say, people who
Speaker 1: know Murda personally, and they all say that he's like Buckley.
Speaker 1: He's this very charming, very you know, uh, devoted to
Speaker 1: his friends, you know very was he that way when
Speaker 1: you work with him? I confess I never talked to him,
Speaker 1: and the one time I did was at a party.
Speaker 1: Any mumbled. I couldn't understand what he was saying. But
Speaker 1: you know the problem with writing, especially my current job,
Speaker 1: it's solitary, and so at the magazine it was all
Speaker 1: my friends getting together, right a magazine. I was here
Speaker 1: for a panel about a year or two ago, and
Speaker 1: we were backstage and it was like I was my
Speaker 1: little glimpse of the theater world. It was like group
Speaker 1: hugs and I remember there was even tissues out on
Speaker 1: stage here in case we started crying and and and
Speaker 1: and believe me, if you go to the Brookings Institution
Speaker 1: and you're you're doing a panel on tax policy, there's
Speaker 1: not a lot of group hugging. Uh. And so I
Speaker 1: sort of at the magazine was my closest experience to
Speaker 1: being part of a team, putting on something together as
Speaker 1: a group, And so I really like that. Well, being
Speaker 1: on a team that way and being and having that
Speaker 1: kind of collegiality with people is really Um, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: come and do a play in New York in February
Speaker 1: only because it means like I'm literally starving for the
Speaker 1: oxygen of being part of an ensemble and being part
Speaker 1: of a work where the best work is done when
Speaker 1: we all do it together and integrated together. Now, if
Speaker 1: you're in the theater, can you put on a good production?
Speaker 1: If people don't like each other, do they have to do?
Speaker 1: People have to purse genuinely like in the theater because more,
Speaker 1: presumably more thought goes into the piece. Like whether we
Speaker 1: did street Car on Broad Bay and Greg Moser said
Speaker 1: the great line, he's it, but we know the material works.
Speaker 1: If we bomb, it's us it's like we know, like
Speaker 1: we did revivals. If you do original pieces, it's different.
Speaker 1: But then from Weekly Standard, what happens? We're there for?
Speaker 1: How long? I was there also for nine years? Nine years?
Speaker 1: What do evolved you during that We were you traveling
Speaker 1: all around the world at that time. I'm mostly a
Speaker 1: little I did a lot of Middle East stuff and
Speaker 1: I wrote a book called Bobo that was nineties six
Speaker 1: to two thou three or if I've got the numbers right,
Speaker 1: ninety Weekly Standard when nine eleven happens, Yes, you're a
Speaker 1: Weekly Standard. At the end of the Clinton years and
Speaker 1: the beginning of the Bush years and nine eleven and
Speaker 1: the war, Yes, you're turned. When I was just joined
Speaker 1: the Times somewhere, we were there doing the Clinton if
Speaker 1: I mean think about that, You're there doing the Clinton impeachment.
Speaker 1: Bush is elected nine eleven, the war in iraqis declared.
Speaker 1: How did your politics evolved during that time? Well? I
Speaker 1: married Ken Starr's daughter, and no I didn't. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say this, and it's not to curry favor, but
Speaker 1: it's on the record if you go back. I was
Speaker 1: doing a show called The News Hour on PBS, which
Speaker 1: I still do and on NPR, and all things considered,
Speaker 1: I was not a big impeach Clinton. Guy, I'm basically
Speaker 1: a believer. I'm sort of an older style of conservative
Speaker 1: that human nature is extremely complicated and flawed and a
Speaker 1: lot of people do a lot of horrible things, but
Speaker 1: they can still be served their purpose in society. Yeah,
Speaker 1: um um. Having said that, to turn it the other way,
Speaker 1: I definitely supported the war yellow Cake, all of it.
Speaker 1: And even even with all the valerie, all that hocus pocus,
Speaker 1: is still supported attacking Iraq. Yes, so, I basically, and
Speaker 1: I covered the Middle East a bunch. I basically thought,
Speaker 1: you drive through all towns in Jordan and Egypt and
Speaker 1: it's just deadly dull, and these people have no lives
Speaker 1: and no prospects because they live in stagnant societies overseen
Speaker 1: by oligarchs or worse, dictators in the case of some
Speaker 1: were absolutely true. But I thought, if that part of
Speaker 1: the region is ever going to be healthy, they have
Speaker 1: to have normal societies where young men and women can
Speaker 1: rise and have normal lives. And do you believe that
Speaker 1: in pursuit of having that normal society, in pursuit of
Speaker 1: because whenever anybody says they want to uh, this was about,
Speaker 1: you know, exporting democracy to an area and so forth.
Speaker 1: I mean, I support that in theory, but I think
Speaker 1: that in practice with the Bush administration, that was complete bullshit.
Speaker 1: Um they they had they I mean, I just for
Speaker 1: one I never for one second, I bet everything I
Speaker 1: own that Dick Cheney doesn't roll over in bed and
Speaker 1: his wife says, Dick, what's wrong, Darling, And Janey says, God,
Speaker 1: I can't sleep. I just I've got to export democracy
Speaker 1: to the Middle East. We just got to get this
Speaker 1: thing done. I really, I care so much about these
Speaker 1: people like Lee and I'm sorry, let me get up
Speaker 1: and go get a glass of water. I've got to
Speaker 1: think it is uh So, I mean to me, Iraq
Speaker 1: was about what we ultimately got to and this was
Speaker 1: you know, now the war had moved on to Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: and the press had moved on to Afghanistan, but was
Speaker 1: under report it was they lifted the ban on the U.
Speaker 1: S Oil companies coming in and pumping oil there, which
Speaker 1: was their ultimate goal. Right, So first of all, you
Speaker 1: disagree that that happened, you just agree that was the
Speaker 1: goal that I didn't agree that was the goal. I
Speaker 1: don't know anybody in the oil business who wants instability.
Speaker 1: Saddan was pumping oil. They had a stable market. That's
Speaker 1: what they wanted. I never heard of any oil company,
Speaker 1: anybody in the energy business lobbying, and it was a
Speaker 1: oil if. If Saddam was pumping oil, and we knew
Speaker 1: that he wasn't making weapons of mass destruction, you still
Speaker 1: don't think he might have been. I think we thought
Speaker 1: that at the time. So here so I would say
Speaker 1: there were multiple schools within the bushop and sustration. There
Speaker 1: was the Cheney Rumsfield school, who didn't you're right, did
Speaker 1: not care about democracy. They were afraid of the weapons
Speaker 1: of mass destruction. They were afraid that he would pass
Speaker 1: them off to some terror group and they bought They
Speaker 1: both yes, that that that he might he he wanted
Speaker 1: to do it. He wanted to pass them off, and
Speaker 1: so did the Clinton administration, by the way, and so
Speaker 1: that was their reasoning. They did not want to establish democracy.
Speaker 1: They wanted to get in, take him out, get out
Speaker 1: of there. The other people, I think, mostly including President Bush,
Speaker 1: but a lot of other people like wolf Wits, they
Speaker 1: wanted to do the human rights and democracy thing. And
Speaker 1: so I think those are the two factions and the
Speaker 1: problem was faction democracy and human rights champion the war faction,
Speaker 1: let's get out, fought the war or planned the war,
Speaker 1: and as a result, it was a big screw up.
Speaker 1: You know, the war has had a huge effect on
Speaker 1: me in the year since. And so I mentioned Edmund
Speaker 1: Burke earlier to be careful, you can plan because societies
Speaker 1: are extremely complicated. And so I'm sitting there, I'm torn.
Speaker 1: Before the war, I'm thinking, I really think we need
Speaker 1: to help promote normal societies, not democracies, just normal societies.
Speaker 1: But then Edwin Burke teaches me, don't go in there.
Speaker 1: It's way more complicated than you think. And so I
Speaker 1: have this little internal debate, and I wrote a column
Speaker 1: at the time said all these concerns. Burke wouldn't like this.
Speaker 1: Burke wouldn't like this, and then the last paragraph I said,
Speaker 1: but we got to do it anyway. And so I
Speaker 1: think that last paragraph was probably wrong. And I know
Speaker 1: this is a bogus question, but I'll ask you winning
Speaker 1: because I think you have an interesting answer to this.
Speaker 1: And then if we had it to do over again,
Speaker 1: what would you do differently? Would you go to Pakistan instead?
Speaker 1: I know I would, Yeah, I wouldn't go there. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't say from the beginning back in three, I
Speaker 1: would have gone to Pakistan first because that's where the
Speaker 1: old were. Ultimately we were going to get Rock is complicated.
Speaker 1: Rocks was not behind nine eleven, and Iraq was not
Speaker 1: a training ground of al Qaeda for what the stated
Speaker 1: purposes of the attack in two thousand three were, Pakistan
Speaker 1: would have been the better place to go. Correct that
Speaker 1: that's certainly potentially yeah, I mean it's worth pointing out
Speaker 1: that more Iraqis died in the ten years before the
Speaker 1: American invasion of Rock than the ten years after. It
Speaker 1: was a pretty horrible regime. Uh, if we're gonna be
Speaker 1: worried about horrible regimes, we could be. But it was
Speaker 1: a horrible It was an exporting regime. I mean, it
Speaker 1: was monstrous. What do you think it needs to happen?
Speaker 1: You know? So I've been humbled since then about what
Speaker 1: we can achieve, and I you know, it took me
Speaker 1: some multiple stages. Even in Afghanistan. I've been there a
Speaker 1: couple of times, and you would go there and the
Speaker 1: people in the n g O S at the u
Speaker 1: N they really believed in the nation building part when
Speaker 1: I was there, and even that hasn't worked. It's just
Speaker 1: cultures are really hard. I was interviewing a Bush administration official,
Speaker 1: and I can't tell you who she was because we
Speaker 1: were off the record, but I once asked her, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, did you guys got to get the culture
Speaker 1: of a rock wrong? And she said, I don't really
Speaker 1: believe in culture. I think you changed the institutions of
Speaker 1: a society, change the society. But that's wrong, that's wrong.
Speaker 1: Cultures are really hard to change. One of my favorite quotes,
Speaker 1: by the way, it's by Daniel Patrick moynihan, which was,
Speaker 1: if I can remember correctly, this central conservative truth is
Speaker 1: the culture matters most. The central liberal truth is that
Speaker 1: government can change culture. And I think that's generally true,
Speaker 1: but you have to do it very slowly and cautiously,
Speaker 1: I think in my lifetime, and I could be wrong,
Speaker 1: because I want to switch to the current election. What's
Speaker 1: your assessment of what do you think the American military
Speaker 1: there are are military policy should be in what you
Speaker 1: predicted might be in a Romney administration if he wins
Speaker 1: in a couple of weeks, or if Obama continues changed.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't romanticize how popular we were Nixon whe he
Speaker 1: was vice president to Latin America and they had a
Speaker 1: riot and nearly killed him. We were nine. I think
Speaker 1: we're popular pre nineteen sixty. I'm saying during this during Vietnam,
Speaker 1: it all sort of all the wheels, sort of people
Speaker 1: never like number one. I was at Camden Yards where
Speaker 1: the Orioles play, and there was a Yankee head in
Speaker 1: the parking lot, and on the way out of the game,
Speaker 1: the fans started kicking the Yankee hat and a crowd gathered,
Speaker 1: all of them kicking and chanting at this Yankee hut.
Speaker 1: If you're the Yankees, you're not going to be popular. Um. Nonetheless,
Speaker 1: I I happen to think we're in a period of
Speaker 1: relative bipartisanship on foreign policy. No matter whether Obama wins
Speaker 1: or Omney wins, we are unpopular. You're right about that.
Speaker 1: We're usually less unpopular than whoever the local power is.
Speaker 1: So the Japanese and the Koreans definitely want us around
Speaker 1: a world off the Chinese, the Central Europeans definitely want
Speaker 1: us around a world off the Russians. And so I
Speaker 1: think our role will be to you know, we're not
Speaker 1: going to be going abroad and doing a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff our self confidences and there are exactly. But I
Speaker 1: do think we still have a role to just try
Speaker 1: to stabilize the world and to keep various regional hegemon's
Speaker 1: from taking over. So let's let's talk about the election.
Speaker 1: Um uh. And I wanted to ask you, you know,
Speaker 1: for me, in my lifetime, I remember and this again,
Speaker 1: this is my recollection of it. I could be I'm
Speaker 1: not saying this is a fact, but in my lifetime,
Speaker 1: there was a way that the Democrats behaved, and there
Speaker 1: was a way that the Republicans behaved during the nominating
Speaker 1: process and beyond they seem to have switched places of
Speaker 1: the last ten or twelve years. Why are the Republicans
Speaker 1: now like the Democrats and they're just fumbling the ball
Speaker 1: inside the red zone here? What the hell's going on?
Speaker 1: Because Obama was there is for the taking? Do you agree?
Speaker 1: I completely agree. I mean, if you ask people as
Speaker 1: a country head in the right direction, thirty six percent
Speaker 1: say yes, should Obama be reelected? Say yes? Should have
Speaker 1: been able to beat this guy? What happened may still well,
Speaker 1: you know, I I do think the people who happen
Speaker 1: to be hired by Romney or not the a team
Speaker 1: and that's that would be the consensus in Washington. There
Speaker 1: was an A team and he didn't want them. Why
Speaker 1: do you get him lolco he didn't know? I think
Speaker 1: he didn't generally didn't know who the A team was.
Speaker 1: But I think you could take Carl Rove, Michael Deaver
Speaker 1: and Nicola mckiavelli put him up in Boston. They still
Speaker 1: couldn't run a good campaign with this guy. It's always
Speaker 1: the candidate. Reagan knew who he was, Romney knows who
Speaker 1: he is, but he's not running as that guy. And
Speaker 1: he's not that great an actor, so he's uh, and
Speaker 1: so he's faking. I think he's genuinely a non ideological
Speaker 1: guy running and it look like Marlon Brand, you know,
Speaker 1: by the way. You know what. One of the really
Speaker 1: interesting conversations I once had with Bush w was, you know,
Speaker 1: when you do a press conference, you walk out of
Speaker 1: the hallway and then you walk up to the party
Speaker 1: about thirty yards and you're on national TV. That walk
Speaker 1: And he once spent about five minutes describing to me
Speaker 1: how you do that walk, where you put your hands,
Speaker 1: how you stride, had taught it all through and there's
Speaker 1: just some level of acting. I guess how you present yourself. Um,
Speaker 1: Romney is pretending to be much more ideological than he
Speaker 1: really is. He don't think he really engages himself. He's
Speaker 1: pretending to be much more that he's just not being
Speaker 1: true to himself, and that's coming through, that's leaking out.
Speaker 1: I genuinely think you can't fake it. I once got
Speaker 1: to have dinner with Tom Clancy when I was Book
Speaker 1: of Your editor, and he like him really I this
Speaker 1: was my one and only meeting, okay, and my memory
Speaker 1: of that dinner was he just got on a battleship
Speaker 1: and seeing a new weapons system and he was really excited.
Speaker 1: He was it was fascinating to him. And as he
Speaker 1: was enthusing about it, I was thinking, you can't fake
Speaker 1: that unless you feel that, you can't write Tom Clancy novels.
Speaker 1: And so Mitt Romney is pretending to be a tea
Speaker 1: party guy, just not who he is. And so as
Speaker 1: a result, sometimes he gets too hard core, he steps
Speaker 1: on it too strong. Sometimes he pulls back. You know,
Speaker 1: I would just wish. I think he'll spend the rest
Speaker 1: of his life, assuming he loses UM, regretting that he
Speaker 1: didn't run as himself. Now, the interesting when you talk
Speaker 1: about running as yourself. And this may be a very
Speaker 1: naive question because I don't I really don't know how
Speaker 1: these things work. Why don't people who are running with
Speaker 1: the and the GOP. Now, I mean, Bush is a
Speaker 1: born again Christian and he operated from that vantage point
Speaker 1: as such. Romney, of course, is not a born again Christian.
Speaker 1: He's have a different faith. I think that there's a
Speaker 1: there's there's a critical element in our society who they're
Speaker 1: not so clear about Obama and they're waiting to be wooed,
Speaker 1: but they're not going to be wooed by an ultra
Speaker 1: right wing observative crowd, especially on social issues. And I
Speaker 1: think that that the Republican candidate who would come in
Speaker 1: This is just an opinion. The Republican candidate would come
Speaker 1: in and tamed the conservative right wing, who got the
Speaker 1: heads of six or eighty of these groups in the
Speaker 1: room and said, you gotta shut up and don't be
Speaker 1: behind me squawking like some kind of a course until
Speaker 1: I think this thing is over. I gotta get out
Speaker 1: there and I gotta play this a little more moderately,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna win. As long as you just tone
Speaker 1: it down, we're gonna win. They don't do that. But
Speaker 1: don't you think it's going to cost him the election? Yes?
Speaker 1: Well I think it's already cost him a bunch of
Speaker 1: Senate seats and could cost them a bunch more. And
Speaker 1: so you know, of course, from where I stand, i'd
Speaker 1: much rather they ran am much more. What's the guy's
Speaker 1: name in Missouri? Why isn't he gone? How the hell that?
Speaker 1: You may win? You may win, he may win. You
Speaker 1: think he'll be Claire? He's about right now? Yeah, um
Speaker 1: is there is a funny state. It's it's going the
Speaker 1: other way funny. That's an interesting word. Legitimate. One of
Speaker 1: the odd things about why he's losing right now is
Speaker 1: that he's losing like two nationally, but by ten even
Speaker 1: in these key swing states, which is why he's really behind.
Speaker 1: So why is that? Why is there a dis junction?
Speaker 1: It's because the Obama administration has gone brilliantly after they
Speaker 1: know they can't win white working class men, but they've
Speaker 1: hit white working class women. They've run these brilliant ads
Speaker 1: on Judge Judy, on Dr Phil and it's all this
Speaker 1: guy is rich, he does not get you. And they
Speaker 1: started with Baine, they unfolded with Medicare and so if
Speaker 1: you look at the polling white working class women nationwide
Speaker 1: maybe about UM support Obama in the swing states where
Speaker 1: they're seeing these ads, it's and that's the margin right there.
Speaker 1: And so his problem, I think it is not so
Speaker 1: much ideology. It's that he's just a rich guy, doesn't
Speaker 1: get you. I've defended him on this because people say that,
Speaker 1: you know, he's got a house in San Diego where
Speaker 1: he has a garage with elevators, and I've tried to
Speaker 1: point out that he has many other houses where the
Speaker 1: garages do not have elevators, and it's not fair, but
Speaker 1: but he needs. But you know, I think it's essentially
Speaker 1: it's he would be running more right than me. But
Speaker 1: I think he'd be winning if he were a candidate
Speaker 1: who related right. Um the what's your opinion of campaign
Speaker 1: finance reform? As you see the numbers pile up now,
Speaker 1: it will be a record again in terms of spending
Speaker 1: in a presidential race, what's your opinion of campaign finance reform?
Speaker 1: So I'm for for reform. I think our system. What
Speaker 1: style of reform would you favor of what you've seen? Well,
Speaker 1: I I've grown tired and exhausted by changing the rules
Speaker 1: here and there. I think you either got to go
Speaker 1: to full disclosure, complete disclosure or full public finance, just
Speaker 1: one or the other because where we are now and
Speaker 1: to me, the you know, say, for example, on tax reform,
Speaker 1: I'm a big believer we have to simplify the tax code.
Speaker 1: But if every little provision in the tax code has
Speaker 1: some special shows who can drop five million dollars in
Speaker 1: a congressional district, There's no way we're going to do that.
Speaker 1: I would you simplify the tax code. I would eliminate
Speaker 1: essentially a flat tax. Well, you know, there's a consensus
Speaker 1: I would do what Simpson Bowl suggests get rid of.
Speaker 1: I would cap the mortgage in deduction, a lot of
Speaker 1: the deductions for people learning, say above one fifty and
Speaker 1: then lower what is it now a million? Well, what
Speaker 1: I do is, I'd say, if you say you're in
Speaker 1: over two dollars, you can only take so many deductions.
Speaker 1: And how you want to partial out your deductions that's
Speaker 1: fined by you charitable deductions. Yeah, I might. I want
Speaker 1: to preserve that one. I've believe in that one. But
Speaker 1: but having said that, I think that Bush tax cuts
Speaker 1: should be repealed top to Botta, the middle class parts
Speaker 1: all the um because you can tax the rich to
Speaker 1: forever until this island is empty and you will not
Speaker 1: raise enough money to pay. People always threaten they're going
Speaker 1: to leave, but they really don't leave it. They say
Speaker 1: they're always about to go to Canada. Maybe they moved
Speaker 1: to Brooklyn Um. What do you think of term limits?
Speaker 1: Definitely against them, you are y they empower staffs. It's
Speaker 1: also politics is really hard, and legislation is really hard,
Speaker 1: and things take a long time to learn. One of
Speaker 1: the things I'm in favor of term limits. Now you
Speaker 1: are in the Congress, I am man if you're in
Speaker 1: and out in four years. First of all, you're thinking
Speaker 1: about your next job right away. Second to permanent staff
Speaker 1: just takes over. I don't think anybody should serve in
Speaker 1: the Congress for more than twelve years. More importantly, you
Speaker 1: have to have one of the other. You either have
Speaker 1: to have the campaign finis formative level of it's meaningful.
Speaker 1: You have to have the term limits because right now,
Speaker 1: my friends who work in Washington, the old I mean,
Speaker 1: this was nauseating enough right when you think it can't
Speaker 1: get any more disgusting, My friends who will work on
Speaker 1: the Hill told me that these men and women in
Speaker 1: the US Senate has been one full day, one full
Speaker 1: day out of five days on the phone raising money.
Speaker 1: All they do is they don't do any Senate business
Speaker 1: one day out of the week. Our friends said to me,
Speaker 1: in the last six years, it's become two full days.
Speaker 1: They're on the phone two days out of five. That
Speaker 1: to be any work that you sent them to do.
Speaker 1: And then they're raising money for their campaigns. That's a
Speaker 1: cent that's a crime. That makes me six So I
Speaker 1: think that to me two six year terms and get
Speaker 1: him out of there. And I'm a liberal. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think the problem is more tribalism than money. We haven't
Speaker 1: had tax reform, we haven't had complicated legislation with hospible
Speaker 1: exception of healthcare, because we don't have the legislative skills
Speaker 1: of a Lyndon Johnson. People just don't how to do it.
Speaker 1: Like I cover tax reform, there was a guy named Packwood,
Speaker 1: Bob Packwood, Dan Rostenkowski, Uh, both of whom had accursed
Speaker 1: to me either went to jail or resigned in disgrace.
Speaker 1: But but but they knew how to legislate. They were
Speaker 1: really good at Bill Bradley, and that takes time. You
Speaker 1: gotta learn to do that. And by the way, I
Speaker 1: think the people in their first year are just as
Speaker 1: money grubber as the people in the thirty second here.
Speaker 1: But I wanted to just finish by asking you that
Speaker 1: you also, UM, you wrote a book, or you wrote
Speaker 1: a segment of your book about marriage. What was your
Speaker 1: I wrote a book called The Social Animal, which is
Speaker 1: really a compendium of the research on unconscious processes and
Speaker 1: what leads to happiness. Motivated you to write that book? Well,
Speaker 1: the short ans the official answer is that I wanted
Speaker 1: to know why kids drop out of high school. And
Speaker 1: it turns out the factors are determined very early and
Speaker 1: within the first eighteen months of life. You can take
Speaker 1: a look at a kid who's eighteen months how the
Speaker 1: kid relates to mom and predict with seventy seven percent
Speaker 1: accuracy who's going to graduate from high school. There are
Speaker 1: certain emotional attachments, so kid who can form an attachment
Speaker 1: early on is going to know how to form an
Speaker 1: attachment with teachers and peers, life is going to be okay.
Speaker 1: If you can't form attachments, UM, life will be very frustrating.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean you're determined, you're sentenced it to life
Speaker 1: of eighteen months. You can have a mentor later on
Speaker 1: that will change you, but those early formations are really important.
Speaker 1: You've been married to the same movement for how many years? Uh?
Speaker 1: Twenty six years? What's the secret? Uh? And it's got read,
Speaker 1: got real. I'm not smart on this, but I did
Speaker 1: read a really good blog post on this. H My
Speaker 1: wife would kill me if I started giving advice on
Speaker 1: how to do this. Marry someone really patient. But I
Speaker 1: read this blog post and one of the pieces of
Speaker 1: advice was brag about your spouse and let them over
Speaker 1: hear you. That seems like very good advice. Another one
Speaker 1: to be so advice she gave was sometimes they tell
Speaker 1: you, you you know, never go to bed mad. Sometimes you
Speaker 1: just got to go to bed, go to sleep, sleep
Speaker 1: on it, cook breakfast for the other person. Sometimes you
Speaker 1: just go to sleep. And this struck me as very
Speaker 1: realistic advice. But you know, the part of what the
Speaker 1: book was about was the first time we find our mates,
Speaker 1: and so a lot of it, a lot of his
Speaker 1: uncome what a critical decision he was saying, because I
Speaker 1: feel the same way. I mean, I wrote a book
Speaker 1: about that. Was a critique of the family law system
Speaker 1: and the divorce system when I got divorced, and how
Speaker 1: it was just being thrown into this quicksand it was
Speaker 1: just so painful and so agonizing and I and I
Speaker 1: say that to but all the time, I say, this
Speaker 1: decision is it is fundamentally the most critical decision you're
Speaker 1: gonna make in your life. Who you I mean, if
Speaker 1: you're of that mind to marry and and and to
Speaker 1: and to make that kind of a home with someone
Speaker 1: and make it legal, and and the and the and
Speaker 1: the criteria with which people use to get married. Now,
Speaker 1: my dear friend who left the country for several years.
Speaker 1: He's a he's an artist, and he and his wife,
Speaker 1: after running an art gallery in New York for many years,
Speaker 1: they just took off and they went to the Italian
Speaker 1: countryside or something. He was gone for like nine years.
Speaker 1: And I said, what's one thing you noticed? He says,
Speaker 1: all these kids were these devices in their hands. He said,
Speaker 1: I came home and they have all these devices in
Speaker 1: their hands. And I said, yeah, that really is alarming,
Speaker 1: is And he says, he says, these kids will never
Speaker 1: get to know each other in real time. He said,
Speaker 1: they're never going to stare into each other's eyes over
Speaker 1: a table with a checkered tablecloth and a candle shoved
Speaker 1: into a bottle of mattouse. He goes, he said, eating
Speaker 1: a really shitty Italian meal, but over the course of
Speaker 1: a couple of hours, really get to know each other
Speaker 1: in real time. Everybody's so hurried. Is such a hurry
Speaker 1: to get to the fast? No, he said to me,
Speaker 1: that's created this horrible mechanism for intimacy in our society. Well,
Speaker 1: so the I go go to college. As I tell kids,
Speaker 1: if you have a great career in a crappy marriage,
Speaker 1: you'll be miserable. If you have a crappy career in
Speaker 1: a great marriage, you'll be happy. So every course you
Speaker 1: take in college should be about who to marry. So
Speaker 1: like you should take literature courses, theater courses, science courses.
Speaker 1: Think hard about this one. They look at me like
Speaker 1: I'm crazy, But that that is absolutely true. So if
Speaker 1: you want to know what correlates to happiness, money correlates
Speaker 1: a little, but when you hit a certain point it stops.
Speaker 1: Age correlates to happiness. So people in their twenties are happy,
Speaker 1: and then they go through a shallow you shaped curve.
Speaker 1: And the native of happiness for the average person who's
Speaker 1: aged forty seven, and that's called having teenage children. And
Speaker 1: then and then they hitched it on the spot on
Speaker 1: the peak happiness is the first ten years after retirement.
Speaker 1: But the people who are happy, marriage is equal to
Speaker 1: doubling your income. Having a good marriage produces the same
Speaker 1: happiness gains doubling your income. I tell people that the
Speaker 1: rule in marriage is the rule that I failed to
Speaker 1: apply in my movie career, which is just say no
Speaker 1: until you have to say until you meet that woman
Speaker 1: where you seeing your stuff, she's out there and the
Speaker 1: idea that she's out there and I don't have her,
Speaker 1: it just drives you in. Say you have to have
Speaker 1: right then you marry her. Until you feel that way,
Speaker 1: then maybe you just have to take your tom We're
Speaker 1: going to take some questions. I think yes. One audience
Speaker 1: member asked about the gridlock in Washington and wondered about
Speaker 1: a pathway to resolve that problem. This was brookes response.
Speaker 1: You know, say, when you were at g W if
Speaker 1: you ask people do you trust government, you're the right
Speaker 1: thing most of the time in those days said yes,
Speaker 1: said yes. Now if you ask people. Do you trust
Speaker 1: government to the right thing? Most of the time it's
Speaker 1: or nine percent, and so there's just no trust that
Speaker 1: government can do the you know, the big things. And
Speaker 1: so I'm in favor of doing some big things. I
Speaker 1: would if you know, my tru others, we would have
Speaker 1: just this big human capital agenda where we do a
Speaker 1: lot of our early childhood alternative energy. Would that be
Speaker 1: one of them? Well, I think that would be one
Speaker 1: of them. I'm you know, I happen to think fracking
Speaker 1: is a good thing. Why why Why? Because I think
Speaker 1: it provides us cheaper energy that's much cleaner than coal
Speaker 1: and oil. Let's talk about that, because fracking where and
Speaker 1: you can. I love to hear your your opinion and
Speaker 1: or your facts for that matter, because everybody seems like
Speaker 1: I've got my own set everybody has their own set
Speaker 1: of facts about fracking, because I'm very anti fracking, because
Speaker 1: I mean, of course, the natural gas being cleaner than
Speaker 1: coal thing is is? Is it given? But I mean,
Speaker 1: we can't have a Price Anderson Act for the natural
Speaker 1: gas industry where if they spoil all the water in
Speaker 1: the southern tier of the state of New York in
Speaker 1: these designated zones, I mean, Andrew Cuomo is going to say,
Speaker 1: here's a zone, and I'm being very good about it.
Speaker 1: But it's basically like everybody raise your hand and wants
Speaker 1: to have fracking down in the southern tier of New
Speaker 1: York and those Binghamton adjacent areas that wanted, He's gonna
Speaker 1: probably let them have it. And then when all that
Speaker 1: water gets screwed up, if it does, if all that
Speaker 1: water gets contemnated, who are they going to come to
Speaker 1: to clean up that water? Who are they going to
Speaker 1: hand the bill to to clean up that water. You
Speaker 1: want to say that burning natural gas is cleaner than oil,
Speaker 1: I agree with you, But the same argument goes with nukes.
Speaker 1: The nuclear industry will sit there before Night eleven, before
Speaker 1: we got into the terrorists target issue, they were sitting
Speaker 1: there going, well, you know, you're like a mountain. We
Speaker 1: don't know and the stuff's just gonna sit there in
Speaker 1: a pile and we're gonna haven't figured it out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but co nuclear is cleaner than oil, I mean coal.
Speaker 1: Everybody just keeps saying it's cleaner than coal. But I'm saying,
Speaker 1: what happens if the water issue becomes a big let alone,
Speaker 1: all the stuff that Bobby Kennedy riffs on about the
Speaker 1: roads they're gonna build and who's gonna be They mean,
Speaker 1: they got trucks going up there now that are smashing
Speaker 1: all the roads to pieces. And you think those natural
Speaker 1: gas companies are gonna pay for it. Here's the ps
Speaker 1: I don't mean to mug you here now, but here's
Speaker 1: the But here's the ps L n G is building
Speaker 1: all these sports right now on the East coast, and
Speaker 1: is that gas? I mean all these companies that are
Speaker 1: fracting saying we're gonna go down into the southern tier
Speaker 1: of New York and up in Ohio and northern Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna blow all these holes in the ground
Speaker 1: and maybe risk having some earthquakes and maybe spoiling all
Speaker 1: these trillions of gablets of war because we're gonna get
Speaker 1: this gas, which is going to lower the price of
Speaker 1: natural gas and fuel here in the United States. Bullshit,
Speaker 1: they're gonna pipe that stuff to the coast and put
Speaker 1: it on tankers and put it on the market and
Speaker 1: go sell it to the Chinese or sell it on
Speaker 1: the open market. It's not going to lower the cost
Speaker 1: of energy here. So why are you in favor of
Speaker 1: fract Let me get my pad. I guess I want
Speaker 1: to hear your opinion first. No, but I just I'm
Speaker 1: burning on this issue. So I'm where President Obama is,
Speaker 1: So I'm a good Democrat on this issue and where
Speaker 1: I think the Republicans. And so basically, there's been a
Speaker 1: ton of research done on this, and like every single
Speaker 1: energy source, it has costs and it has environmental costs.
Speaker 1: The benefits to fracking that I saw a Yale study
Speaker 1: on this are measured in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
Speaker 1: The costs, including what you just mentioned, are measured in
Speaker 1: the hundred millions of dollars. So you can take some
Speaker 1: of the benefits and regulated. And the report that calculated
Speaker 1: those courts was written by who it was Yale University,
Speaker 1: I don't know, some scholars, so a very fine institution.
Speaker 1: And so basically, if you are if you think the
Speaker 1: there is one price of gas in the world, there
Speaker 1: is one price of oil in the world. So it
Speaker 1: will if we lower the if no matter, if we
Speaker 1: increase the supply tremendously, which is what's happening. The cost
Speaker 1: is going down. If you're making twenty five dollars a
Speaker 1: year or thirty five thousand dollars a year. It really
Speaker 1: actually kind of matters to you if you're sitting out
Speaker 1: there in western Pennsylvania or South Dakota or North Dakota
Speaker 1: without a job, it kind of matters to you that
Speaker 1: there's a fifty buck an hour job to you if
Speaker 1: you want there to be a working class But but
Speaker 1: but it's but it's proven that it's a fifty buck
Speaker 1: an hour job up in the southern tier of New
Speaker 1: York and up in northern Pennsylvania for people that are
Speaker 1: coming from Oklahoma, in Texas and Louisiana, none of those
Speaker 1: people that are getting the high paying jobs are from
Speaker 1: that area. They're bringing gas people down from the South
Speaker 1: and bringing them up there. You go up to the
Speaker 1: fracking zones in New York and all the license plates
Speaker 1: are from down south, and they're gonna take that job,
Speaker 1: and they're gonna take that money. They're gonna spend it up,
Speaker 1: they're gonna spend it on to cigarettes up there, and
Speaker 1: then they're gonna go home. There are a a lot of
Speaker 1: condom but coming to condoms, the big if you if
Speaker 1: you go to the North Dakota, you're pulling on McDonald's
Speaker 1: and you push the button in the drive through, you
Speaker 1: are talking to somebody from Texas because they cannot find
Speaker 1: anybody work at McDonald's in the drive through because everyone's
Speaker 1: out in the oil fields or in the gas fields,
Speaker 1: and those places are becoming I don't care, but but
Speaker 1: I'm saying that this is sure, they're costs, and sure
Speaker 1: it has to be regular. And by the way, the
Speaker 1: responsible gas companies want to regulated. They don't want their response.
Speaker 1: But the many you talk about them, I mean, and
Speaker 1: then again, and I know that there's a there's a
Speaker 1: there's a good uh cover for this. I mean, I've
Speaker 1: heard it before, but the many you talk about, well,
Speaker 1: the it's hundreds of billions and benefits and its hundreds
Speaker 1: of millions in costs, and it's cleaner than cold. And
Speaker 1: I want to say, I go, then why are we
Speaker 1: going renewable? All my friends who work in renewable say,
Speaker 1: if you build Derek's on the Great Lakes for wind turbine,
Speaker 1: we have enough power for wind turbines on the Great Lakes.
Speaker 1: On Derrick's. They would build on the Great Lakes, floating
Speaker 1: Derrick's on the Great Lakes and would power one third
Speaker 1: of the country. And if you put photo voltaic elements
Speaker 1: in the southwestern United States, you power another quarter of
Speaker 1: the country with photovoltaic. And if you want to get
Speaker 1: serious about cutting costs to the Americans energy independence, we
Speaker 1: need to have the Apollo project of renewable energy. Why
Speaker 1: don't they spend any money on that? Forget about cylindro,
Speaker 1: What do you think about that? Because I think gas
Speaker 1: is gateway to those renewables. We are not there yet.
Speaker 1: It is just simply not competitive. Where will we be
Speaker 1: there and how do we get there? Which we have
Speaker 1: to have more technological advance so they're economically competitive. They
Speaker 1: are simply not economically but the government has to. China
Speaker 1: is now closing down their renewables because even they with
Speaker 1: the massive subsidies, cannot exploit They've run out of place
Speaker 1: the export two. They just can't afford it. These renewable
Speaker 1: industries are growing, They're going to be the future, but
Speaker 1: it's gonna take a little while to get to there.
Speaker 1: When until we pumped the last drop of gas out
Speaker 1: of the ground. No, well, it'll it'll probably be a
Speaker 1: tooth course thing. As renewables get cheaper, they'll come down
Speaker 1: to a market price and as gas becomes Dear little Rosa,
Speaker 1: I think that, you know, I think that the government
Speaker 1: has to make renewables cheaper by investing that money themselves
Speaker 1: to to kick start that program. Um, the last thing
Speaker 1: I want to say before we go is that you know,
Speaker 1: one thing I'm mindful of is as Obama's term uh
Speaker 1: may end. I mean, who knows what's gonna happen. We
Speaker 1: really don't know what's gonna happen. We live in that
Speaker 1: world now where you know, if the election were called now,
Speaker 1: they're sing Obama would win, but they don't know what's
Speaker 1: going to happen. And if Obama we're gone. What I
Speaker 1: didn't want to ask you is what do you think
Speaker 1: would have been different in Hillary clinton administration if she
Speaker 1: had been president? And what do you think will will
Speaker 1: become of Hillary Clinton now in her career? Henceport let
Speaker 1: me ask the answer the second one. I think it
Speaker 1: had to first. Um, First of all, I think the
Speaker 1: Democrats have a reasonably weak bench for no matter who
Speaker 1: whether he wins or not, so I think there would
Speaker 1: be a big draft Hillary movement. I don't think at
Speaker 1: the moment from what I understand that people who really
Speaker 1: know her that she's of a mind to do that
Speaker 1: right now, she's tired, but a few years of resting,
Speaker 1: I think the opportunity will be It's tough to not
Speaker 1: be the first woman president, so I would I think
Speaker 1: she still has a future in Parkers. They're just aren
Speaker 1: a lot of Democrats who are sort of obvious candidates.
Speaker 1: As for the difference, there's some who view themselves as
Speaker 1: obvious candidates every Democrat in the U. S. Senate, but
Speaker 1: that but as for the difference is one of the things.
Speaker 1: I'm a big personal admirable Obama. I've known him for
Speaker 1: a long time. I have covered him and spoken him
Speaker 1: a lot. But one of his weaknesses that I think
Speaker 1: she would have done a better job is personal relationships
Speaker 1: with fellow Democrats and so antiseptic. They say, you know
Speaker 1: when you um, you know, most politicians they you know,
Speaker 1: they grab you, they rub your cheek, They just they
Speaker 1: invade your personal stay to him. Um that you know,
Speaker 1: you've spent a lot of time around them. They're just
Speaker 1: animalistic in there. But they connect Obama, you know, with
Speaker 1: the staff. They'll they'll say, you're going to such and
Speaker 1: such a city, why don't you call the mayor up
Speaker 1: and invite him to ride with you from the airport downtown.
Speaker 1: Let's say I don't want to do that. I don't
Speaker 1: want to do that, and the friends and then but
Speaker 1: he really, but he really won't He just in my view,
Speaker 1: he has a writer's person lity. He likes the solitary
Speaker 1: time to think, and so he just doesn't do that.
Speaker 1: And even going up to the Hill. There was a
Speaker 1: call that was made to the White House and a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago they wanted to send him up
Speaker 1: to lobby for a peace of legislation. The centators called
Speaker 1: up and said, don't send him. He doesn't like us.
Speaker 1: We know it's it won't help. That's a bad place
Speaker 1: to be when it seems when you're told premptively that
Speaker 1: it's undoable. So I think she would have been a
Speaker 1: little bit, don't She wouldn't have been as great as
Speaker 1: her husband that one of the people in his administration.
Speaker 1: Obama doesn't make the call to the hill. Clinton would
Speaker 1: make sit there and make thirty two calls in a row.
Speaker 1: His problem was his position on call thirty two was
Speaker 1: eighty degrees from where it was on call one. But
Speaker 1: but he would make the calls. And so I do
Speaker 1: think she would have um done the inside She's done
Speaker 1: a good job in the position she's in them, Yes,
Speaker 1: I do. I think she's been a great Secretary of State,
Speaker 1: great secretary. I wanted to end by saying, and I
Speaker 1: mean this sincerely, not only are you the most likable
Speaker 1: when charming conservative I've ever met, here, by far the
Speaker 1: most likable when charming writer for The New York Times
Speaker 1: I've ever so thank you very much for coming. Thanks
Speaker 1: to the Public Theater and to Jeremy McCarter of the
Speaker 1: Public Forum. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to
Speaker 1: Here's the thing.