HEFFNER: I'm Alexander Heffner, your host on The Open Mind.
It would be difficult to imagine a more erudite
veteran of the US Congress than our guest today.
38 year veteran, John Lawrence,
served most recently as Chief of Staff to Speaker,
leader Nancy Pelosi.
Visiting professor at the University of California's
Washington Center, Lawrence joins the cohort
of distinguished Open Mind congressional observers
over the past several years.
Former Biden chief of staff and Senator Ted Kaufman
Senators Bradley and Frist, the list continues.
John Lawrence is author of the Johns Hopkins
University Press volume, "The Class of '74:
Congress after Watergate and the Roots
of Partisanship." "To understand the highly
polarized political environment that now
pervades the House and American politics,"
John Lawrence writes, "we must examine the complex
politics that emerged in the wake of Watergate.
A different kind of Congress," Lawrence
contends, "brought more reform to archaic House
procedures, it brought generational change,
emerging of the external activities of the streets,
the campus, civil rights, anti-war movements,
the battles for women's rights,
and consumer protection, the drive for energy
innovation and transparent government."
And I want to ask John now to expound on this
central thesis and on the lasting impact of this class of 1974.
LAWRENCE: There really are two major themes
that run through this book.
One is that the Class of '74 are a very diverse
group of people, some of whom came out of
traditional politics, some of whom as you mentioned
came out of the politics of the street,
the student movement, the anti-war movement,
the consumer rights movement,
confronted an institution that was very top-heavy,
very autocratic, dominated to a large extent by
southern conservatives who,
because of the seniority system,
controlled the process, in some cases even more so
than the speaker and the elected leadership.
And this is a group that came to Washington not so
much to reform congress, 'cause a lot of them
didn't really know about the organizational dynamics.
They basically came down over the war in Vietnam
they told me when I interviewed over 40 of them.
But once there, they hooked up with a group of
frustrated reformers who had been trying to
challenge the seniority system,
diversify power, open up the processes of congress
to make it more transparent.
And they provided the key numbers that were needed
to effectuate those reforms,
and that did disseminate power and allowed
for the institution to operate in a much
more responsive and open way.
So in that way the reforms that they helped
to achieve really made congress more open
and accountable as well as an institution
that was able to reflect the changing agendas of the American people.
The other part of the book however,
also talks about how making the congress
more open, particularly in the context of other
changes that were taking place in American society
and in American politics, combined to promote and
encourage and support a new level of partisanship
that divides America pretty dramatically
by the late 1980s, early 1990s and has come to really
dominate American politics today.
HEFFNER: And that disconnect that we
experience today is largely a function of the
human disconnect, the absence of interaction
among members who are so frequently going back to
their districts instead of engaging with each other?
Or does it reflect a broader societal trend do you think?
LAWRENCE: I think it's much deeper than that
and I'm, as an historian I'm careful about single
factor analysis.
The loss of the individual contact that you mention
is mentioned by members themselves
and by historians and political scientists.
I would not discount that the invention of jet
airplanes, the Tuesday to Thursday club,
the competitiveness of elections that force
members to go back to their districts,
those are all serious consequences,
and you don't see the same level of human interaction.
You know when he was president of the United States, George H. W. Bush,
used to still come up to the House and play
handball in the House gym. Just to fraternize.
Just to hang out and talk to people in a
non-political, non-ideological way,
and that really helped.
I had that kind of relationship with John Boehner.
And because I worked with him for many years before
I ended up in the Speaker's office or he
ended up as the Republican leader.
And it helped particularly when we got into a crisis
in 2008 and we had to have lines of communication
that one can only imagine could exist today.
But there are other issues that go much deeper
than the loss of the personal relationship,
and that has to do with changes in the media which
became much more ideological,
changes in campaign finance and particularly
the rise of outside spending.
And then structurally in American politics as the
Republican party revived in the south and the
parties came more into parity,
the competitiveness for control,
the fight for control, which was not a factor
for much of the 20th century, really exacerbated
the level of partisanship and
the lack of desire to find common ground.
HEFFNER: So the opposite could have or should have
occurred, right, if you talk about the erosion of
our democratic norms, the response being the
election of reform oriented congressional
office holders who wanna seek a consensus around
clean transparent government in the
aftermath of Watergate.
It reconstituted or precipitated a new
generation of polarization.
Why did the opposite not happen?
I mean you say that there were unintended
consequences of the reform.
LAWRENCE: One of the reasons is that you do
have these dramatic changes taking place in
the 1970s, and one of the most significant changes
is that the Republican party which is considered
to be almost a permanent minority.
As late as the late 1980s, even the early 1990s.
People are still writing books saying the
Republicans are the permanent minority,
but with the growth of the party in the south,
in the revival of the Goldwater years.
In the rise of evangelicism,
the, but the movement of conservative white voters
into the south as black voters are moving into
the Democratic party after the Voting Rights Act
and the Civil Rights Act.
You really see these lines starting to harden.
And issues that are chosen are chosen specifically
for the purpose of highlighting the
differences between the parties.
So in effect, you lose most of the liberal to
moderate Republicans, you lose most of the
conservative to moderate Democrats,
you have what political scientists call
realignment, or the sorting of the parties,
and there's just not, there's just not much
opportunity for cooperation.
One of the most dramatic indications I can tell
you, there's a study that looked at the House of
Representatives from the 1970s to the current day.
In the 1970s, out of the 435 people in the House
of Representatives, in the 1970s,
there were about 240 of them,
that's a majority, who constituted a middle ground.
And about 29 out of the Senate.
That is, they moved back and forth between the parties.
Twenty years later, that number in the House
had dropped to nine, and to three in the Senate.
Today there's none.
There's really nobody in that center.
The center is sort of like they say in Texas,
the only body in the center of the road
is a yellow line and a dead armadillo.
You go to the center in American politics today, you die.
You become the target.
HEFFNER: In order to understand how we correct
course today, we have to understand why '74,
the class of '74 and subsequent classes were
unable to accomplish what we might seek to
accomplish now in the moderation of our
discourse in politics.
LAWRENCE: Because things were very different then.
You had a greater ideological breadth within
the two parties as I was mentioning.
So when we would write environmental legislation
or civil rights legislation or legislation
on women or children, we would be able to cross
party lines because there were people who were
prepared to do that, there were moderate to liberal
republicans in the northeast and in the
midwest, there were liberal Democrats and
moderate Democrats in the south.
Many of the people who were elected in 1974 are
very progressive white Democrats in the south,
but as the Republican party becomes more
competitive, those repub, those more conservative
Democratic voters are starting to move back
to a more revitalized and competitive Republican party.
They abandoned the Democratic Party.
The Democratic Party becomes more liberal nationally.
And they, people move to the issues that prove more divisive.
I think one of the key points however,
Alexander, I, certainly focus on here is that we
have seen such a drop-off on this effort to reassert
congress as a co-equal branch of government
which was one of the key characteristics,
both of the class of '74 and the Congress
on a bipartisan basis in that era.
Earlier the Congress had lost so much of its power
to the Executive Branch that Senator Joe Clark
of Pennsylvania wrote a book called "The Sapless
Branch" of government" in the mid 1960s.
Both Democrats and Republicans joined
together to pass the War Powers Resolution in 1973,
to pass the Budget and Impoundment Act in 1974
to claw back some of this power from a too active,
too assertive Presidency.
And one of the major reforms that the class
of '74 helped to support was the rise of an aggressive
oversight process in the Congress that would hold
the Executive Branch accountable for how money
was spent, and how programs operated.
Unfortunately what we've seen is the real
poetization of oversight.
Where it becomes more of a gotcha operation,
the same way many of the opportunities to amend
legislation and committee on the floor have become
gotcha operations.
And both on the Democratic side and I think it's fair
to say on the Republican side.
HEFFNER: But now we see the complete relinquished
oversight on the Republicans who were
adamantly objecting to Obama Administration
policy and withdrew entirely very few
Republicans in the House if any,
I can think of one or two who are critical
of the EPA administrator who's ensnared in a number of scandals.
It did not coerce or force these congressional office
holders to take on that oversight.
And so the legislation itself that was
responsible for that reform requires the human
beings who are going to execute it.
Now we see that's diminished if not entirely
disappeared in 2018.
LAWRENCE: I do think both sides probably have
suffered from an unwillingness to exercise
that oversight responsibility when their
own party occupies the White House.
I think that was the case when Democrats were in
control of Congress and President Obama was
in the White House.
He had enough opposition I think we felt,
from the Republicans he didn't need more from us.
In the current case of course one can only
imagine if any number of these current issues were
circulating and the parties were in different
control of House and Senate and the White House
that there should be really an aggressive investigation.
Certainly for no other, no other issue than the fact
that you have large numbers of people in the
white house without security clearances,
with potential questions about conflict of
interest, having classified information
and virtually nothing coming from the Congress.
HEFFNER: Let's talk about 2018.
LAWRENCE: Okay.
HEFFNER: You were responsible for the
messaging in the 2006 gains that the Democrats made,
which were pretty remarkable given where
they stood prior to '06.
And of course you spearheaded communications
during your tenure as Chief of Staff,
to Speaker Pelosi, leader Pelosi.
How would you assess the Democratic messaging in
anticipation of 2018.
LAWRENCE: Let me first say there are lots of other
people who were involved so I wouldn't want to
over-claim responsibility for the successful efforts.
But what we did do in 2005,
2006, which was successful,
was to make a really aggressive effort to
identify those issues that would keep the Democratic
Caucus together and that would equally
differentiate us from the Republican party
and in that particular case we also were assisted
by President Bush who had unpopular wars that he
was, that he was prosecuting Democrats
that strongly opposed those wars for the most part.
And he also had a disastrous proposal to
begin privatization of social security.
So when you do this kind of messaging,
there's really are those two, you have those two goals.
One is find issues which are going to keep your
people as tightly together as possible,
and that's not always easy,
John Boehner used to refer to the difficulty of
keeping his group together as trying to keep frogs
in a wheelbarrow. And it's tough.
But you also have to differentiate from the other party.
I think it's still the Democrats are evolving
that strategy for 2018.
We were very successful in that we not only kept
Democrats in the House together,
we had a Democratic and Senate joint message in
two 2005, 2006, the Six for '06 New Direction.
I think the Democrats are focusing right now
on particularly economic issues,
on issues of ethics, and I think also just on issues
of the Congress being revitalized as a working
representative body, and I suspect that as we get
closer into the election season you'll see those
messages clearer.
At the same time I think there will be a real
desire to let individual members of the House
run the races they need to run.
And raise voices the way, their voices the way they
need to be raised as we just saw in the
Pennsylvania 18 race, Congressman Lamb
had slightly different takes on gun policy
or on choice issues, I, you know I think,
you think back to the Ronald Reagan Big Ten
Republican concept, you're going to have to be able
to reach out to those kinds of regions in the
Democratic Party and in the country if you're
gonna get to the majority.
Mrs. Pelosi always says, if we don't have 2018
votes, we're just having a conversation so,
you know we've already got all the liberal seats,
you gotta figure out a way to appeal to a far more
diverse and divergent views that still are
prepared to identify as Democrats.
HEFFNER: Doug Jones was another case.
LAWRENCE: Yes.
HEFFNER: In his election, there was a candidate he
opposed who was analogous to Donald Trump in his
moral corruption and the decline of our morality
enabled Jones to assert himself as the
conservative or the law and order Democrat.
LAWRENCE: The Alabama Senate race had many
unique features as you pointed out,
but the one that I think is very salient for the
2018 general election is the low Republican turnout.
I think that a major factor this fall will be
whether or not Republican voters look at both the
Trump Administration and the role that their
members of congress and senators are playing visa
vie the policies of that administration and the
ethics of that administration.
And make a determination whether or not they wanna
go to the polls to support people who are giving that
that level of, of, acquiescence to the Trump
agenda and to the Trump Administration.
And there are many many seats throughout
the country notwithstanding gerrymandering,
where a falloff of five or seven percent of the
Republican vote is going to be disastrous.
So a major factor here is gonna be,
do Republican voters really want to go to the
polls and say notwithstanding all the
scandals, notwithstanding all the economic
vicissitudes, not taking into account cuts against
the EPA or against education,
I'm still willing to go and say I don't need a
check on that administration.
What I think is more likely is that a lot of
Republican voters are gonna say either
I'm prepared to go over and support a reasonable
Democratic alternative, or that many of them are
simply not going to are going to vote with their
feet and not vote; not that that's my preference,
I always like to see people come out and vote,
but that's a major determinant,
especially, in off-year elections,
as to whether or not you're giving a vote of
approval or a vote of disapproval or simply
abstaining on the current administration.
HEFFNER: Contrasts are important and the reality
for the Democrats is they have leaders,
Nancy Pelosi your old boss and Chuck Schumer,
who don't represent, at least visually,
and somewhat rhetorically too,
the next generation of voters who were really
decisive in some of these special elections,
especially the ones we mention but,
the gubernatorial election in Virginia,
is it important at some point for the Speaker,
former Speaker, leader, to signal that she would like
to hand the party to a young gun who will take
control of this agenda and when do you think
that should happen if it should happen?
LAWRENCE: Well I think there are a couple of key
points to think about.
One is, it's important that Democrats not simply
accept the Republican characterization of Leader
Pelosi and say it's time for her to move on.
I mean, she is elected in a secret vote by the
Democratic Caucus, because the members of the caucus
feel that she is the right person to lead them.
She provides organizational structure,
she provides messaging, she provides fundraising,
there are reasons that they choose in a closed
vote to select her.
And just to say she's ineffective or she's been
there too long or she's that's sort of buying into
the Republican frame.
HEFFNER: And notice John I didn't say any
of those things, right.
LAWRENCE: No I know, but you know a lot of people
do and they say you know it's time to have someone
there who's not as divisive...
HEFFNER: Right,
LAWRENCE: And I say you mean like when Tip O'Neill
was there and Congressman LeBoutillier of Long Island
referred to him as fat and loaded and out of control.
Whoever is in charge is going to become a target,
let's realize that.
HEFFNER: That's true.
But the contrast is the point that may be important.
LAWRENCE: Well I think the other part which they
could do a better job frankly of communicating
is how assiduously Mrs. Pelosi has for example
elevated younger members and minority members
in particular, women, the Democratic caucus is a
majority minority caucus.
And, she goes through every two years when
they're reorganizing and putting people into key
committee positions so they start gaining
seniority and they start moving up and if you were
to look at a chart of who the sub-committee chairman
and the committee chairman on the Democratic side
are, you would see a vastly diverse group of people.
And this is the next generation.
They are moving up, and they will in all
likelihood I think be the next generation of
leadership for the party. When that occurs?
You know it's hard for me to predict.
It'll be when the Democratic Caucus makes that decision.
The one thing I think I can say with absolute
certainty and I, you know I don't,
I learned a long time never to speak for your
boss in politics and certainly not for
Leader Pelosi, but the one thing I can certainly
say is that she is far more concerned about winning
the majority than she is about ensuring that she
remains the Democratic party leader.
HEFFNER: I want to compress strategy for '18,
and differentiate it from '20.
If you look at the strategy for a
pro-democracy American presidential candidate in
'20, you think of someone who is acknowledging that
Making America Great to Donald Trump was making it
greatly authoritarian, or wanna be authoritarian.
That is his conception of great.
And there's almost a sense that we need
to come back to normalcy. You know, normality.
Whichever you prefer you're a historian
so you get that reference. Come back to normal.
Bring back normal. Is that a message for '18 and/or '20?
LAWRENCE: Well I think absolutely it is.
I think the most important issue that's going to
resonate with voters is, are you taking care
of the basic needs of the country and what is good
for me and what is good for my family.
Look, we have, we've got real serious challenges
facing the country, certainly in the
international level on a security level,
but also domestically even though we have a reviving
economy it moves in spurts and it obviously
the disparity of income and the disparity of wealth
are enormously important issues.
And I think that voters want to see a party that
steps forward and addresses those issues
as opposed to this manufactured crisis which
we just seem to have from day to day.
In a sense it doesn't really matter that much
if you share the broad conservative agenda.
I'm not sure the broad conservative agenda
for example was served by a 1.3 trillion dollar
deficit, that was needlessly created
or by a tax bill that created a 1.5 trillion dollar deficit.
A lot of Republicans I know say,
you know that doesn't have anything to do with why
I'm a conservative, or why I'm a Republican.
But I think people also look at these other vast
areas whether it's climate change or whether or not
it's modernization of the military or whether it's
affordability of higher education or preserving healthcare.
These are the issues that people live with day to day.
And instead they see ranting and raving
and people moving in and out of office and scandal ...
HEFFNER: Nonsense. They see nonsense.
Bring back sense and...
LAWRENCE: And so I think that's exactly right.
HEFFNER: And how is that a competing strategy to what
I've long said, Leader Pelosi and Schumer should
do if not the 2020 presidential candidate who
opposes Donald Trump which is on the issue of infrastructure.
Go to all of the bridges and tunnels and roadways
and schools that he promised would be
refurbished, renovated, revitalized,
and say this didn't happen.
Don the Con is really what this was.
Is that a strategy for '18 midterm candidates?
Or is that more effective as a strategy for a 2020
presidential candidate.
LAWRENCE: I think it's a major issue for 2018.
I'm going back over the notes that I kept when
I was the chief of staff to the speaker,
and I see back as early as 2006,
2007, Democrats are talking about infrastructure.
Now unfortunately at that point we had an economic collapse.
And we did pass legislation,
a stimulus bill that provided tens of billions
of dollars for infrastructure.
It's spending out over a long period of time.
But there hasn't been that big infrastructure,
step forward that you were talking about that would
combine both in terms of jobs,
but also in terms of improving trade and
improving transportation for the American public.
I think that's a vitally important area both
economically and in terms of individuals jobs
that people ought to speak to, but you know the point
I would pick up on that you mentioned is,
the congress should not be waiting around
for the president to send an infrastructure.
There is a transportation and infrastructure.
There is a transportation and infrastructure
committee there is an appropriations committee.
And instead what you see is Paul Ryan saying well
I'm going to wait to see what the president sends us.
No, that's not the way the system is supposed to work.
HEFFNER: It is not, it's not the greatest
deliberative, well it's second place, right?
The Senate is the greatest deliberative body, but,
LAWRENCE: Perhaps.
HEFFNER: Neither is deliberative anymore.
That's the problem. It's not greatly deliberative,
it's not deliberative at all because Paul Ryan,
Speaker Ryan refuses to have an open discourse in the House.
LAWRENCE: Right and even when we had the Democrats
in control of the White House and in control of
the House and Senate, I was in those meetings,
believe me, there was a very vigorous back
and forth between Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi,
and it was not simply waiting to defer and see
what the president sends us.
The only other point I would make is this,
HEFFNER: Yeah,
LAWRENCE: People say well this system isn't capable of doing that.
And I would just remind viewers and I remind my
classes and other people I speak with,
ten years ago the United States faced the most
serious economic crisis since the great depression.
And a Republican administration and a
Democratic speaker and congress,
and in fact a speaker who was highly critical
of the administration specifically on the lack
of regulation of the financial services
industry which caused the collapse.
Nevertheless in a highly partisan environment,
six weeks before an election,
were able to come together and figure out a way
to pass legislation that arguably saved the
American economy and the western economy.
My bottom line point is, it's not the institution,
it's the people who are running the institution,
and their attitudes.
And that is the majority, that's just the way the
congress is set up, the majority establishes the
tone, and the majority establishes the agenda.
And if you're not satisfied with that,
then you have to change the people who are going to,
who are running...
HEFFNER: Right and you have to counterpunch.
And I'm thinking of that meeting that Pelosi
and Schumer did not attend where there were placards
with their names and they were absent.
I'm thinking to myself well they should go to all
of those bridges and roads and...
LAWRENCE: Ports and airports, yes.
HEFFNER: Ports, airports, and say,
you sold us a bill of goods and nothing came of it.
LAWRENCE: Absolutely.
You squandered that money on the top one tenth of one percent.
HEFFNER: Right.
LAWRENCE: You gave them a tax break.
HEFFNER: And you're no builder, you're no builder.
LAWRENCE: Apparently.
HEFFNER: John, talk about the '74 Class,
they were some constructors and builders.
And we appreciate you being here today.
LAWRENCE: Thank you so much,
I really enjoyed it.
HEFFNER: And thanks to you in the audience.
I hope you join us again next time
for a thoughtful excursion into the world of ideas.
Until then, keep an open mind.
Please visit The Open Mind website at
Thirteen.org/OpenMind to view this program online
or to access over 1,500 other interviews.
And do check us out on Twitter and Facebook
@OpenMindTV for updates on future programming.
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