Bill Bradley - I wish C-Span had a video archive

I suggest that if you have the interest in politics or government or Bill Bradley that you catch C-Span 2 tonight at 9:00 pm. I caught a repeat last night and was impressed with Bradley. I know Bradley is smart even if somewhat of an unemotional speaker. I looked today to see if C-Span had a video archive but so far have been unsuccessful.

A former Republican Congressman conducts (sorry his name escapes me right now but he is the Iowan Republican defeated last year) the C-Span 2 interview which is part of Bradley's book tour. Today's New York Times reviews the book,THE NEW AMERICAN STORY (Random House priced at $25.95.) . Here is part of the review:

But most of his suggestions are grounded in an appealing mix of idealism and common sense, and the result is a thoughtful, incisive book animated by an eagerness to grapple with an array of middle-class concerns that bridge red- and blue-state America.

Contesting the popular notion that the country is deeply polarized, Mr. Bradley cites a 2000 study showing that 52 percent of red-state voters want gun control, 70 percent of blue-state voters favor the death penalty and 62 percent of red-state voters say there should be no job discrimination against gays. He goes on to argue that the growing power of special interest groups — enhanced by the gerrymandering of Congressional districts, the media’s fascination with noisy partisanship and candidates’ susceptibility to lobbyists — is corroding the political process.

Bradley hits on a lot of my concerns. On television he mentioned the capture of the political process by consultants. That the candidates want to push the big issues but consultants tell them that to win they need to push the small issues, that honesty is not the best policy for winning.

I ask if there is a conspiracy of consultants only in partial jest. I see McCain shrinking from his status as maverick as he pledges fealty to the powers to be in his party. We see the results of this consultant driven politics with the vacuity presently living in the White House but I think our Governor presents another exhibit against political consultancy. So far, he has proven himself capable of presenting an image for the electorate but no idea or capability for governing.

More from the Time's review:

Mr. Bradley ends this perspicacious book by calling for a new kind of politics that would transcend red-state/blue-state partisanship, and that would emphasize consensus over what “purists” on both the left and right put at the top of their agendas.

“I believe,” he concludes, “that in a world in which activists and political consultants focus on peripheral issues — even in a world in which few elections are legitimately contested and money seems a necessary evil — the political party that emphasizes what 70 percent of the people care about will be in power for a generation.”

Does that 70 percent want American imperialism? Especially the sort implemented by Bush and the neo-cons? I do not think so.

On the other hand, we have been bombarded with terrorism intended to keep us so fearful that we welcome loss of freedom and increased Presidential power. So have the Republicans kept control of the country for the past 5 years. That is why we have a military budget exceeding our nearest competitors.

The Nation published a long essay reviewing several books and comes to the conclusion that we do not care about the Imperial Presidency:

But in their contempt for politicians and journalists, Americans should not be too quick to let themselves off the hook. Any serious effort to reduce the presidency to its pre-imperial proportions would imply rethinking the premises of US foreign policy, based on self-aggrandizing assumptions about American wisdom, competence and prerogatives and about the capacity of others to manage their own affairs. Given our chronic inability--or is it unwillingness?--to see the world as it is and to see ourselves as we really are, such a reassessment seems exceedingly unlikely. In an age of the citizen as consumer-spectator, Americans care enough to complain, but not nearly enough to act. Long live the emperor.

Take time to think on these things. Bush may hopefully cap the semiwarrior state outlined in The Nation essay. We really are not good at this sort of thing and this Administration shows just incompetent we are at playing policeman for the world.

I do not know if Zbigniew Brzezinski fits into The Nation's definition of semiwarrior. I remember how his hardnosed attitude towards the Soviets frightened those used to Kissinger's more subtle style until overshadowed by Reagan's even more frightening talk of an even evil empire. Brzezinski also has a book reviewed in today's New York Times.

As Brzezinski sees it, the first Bush administration did not capitalize on America’s victory in the cold war. George H. W. Bush helped ensure that the Soviet Union expired peacefully, that Germany was reunified and that an international coalition expelled Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. But, Brzezinski believes, much more could, and should, have been done: “America’s unique political influence and moral legitimacy were not strategically applied to either transform Russia or pacify the Middle East.” Bush, he says, should have pushed Israel far more forcefully to reach a permanent accommodation with the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat.

He sounds like he also belongs in the semiwarrior camp until this paragraph when we get a reminder of an idea the current President stole from Jimmy Carter and twisted his own way:

Carter’s great accomplishment was to put human rights at the center of American foreign policy, and it is here that Brzezinski is at his best. In his last chapter, he boldly seeks to restore America’s moral authority by redeeming the idea of democratization and regime change from the battering it has received at the hands of the Bush administration. He sees a “global political awakening” centered on a drive for “universal human dignity,” which, he says, is rendering Bush’s martial fervor both anachronistic and self-defeating. Retreating into a fearful garrison state will only compound America’s problems. The “nearly universal access to radio, television and the Internet,” Brzezinski writes, “is creating a community of shared resentments and envy that ... poses a challenge to both existing states and the global hierarchy, on top of which America still perches.” Brzezinski’s final warning, then, is that America must address those shared resentments or risk signing its death warrant as a superpower.

Ask what has all this paranoia and fear mongering has accomplished for our country. Ask if we are really better off with our military budget and far flung military commitments. Ask just who the hell benefits from our obese military budget. Ask if there are not better ways to accomplish our national goals with different methods. Ask why we use our brawn instead of our brains. Ask how we can win a war of ideas with bullets. Ask if anyone advocating war really wants to win this war and if not then why.

For in the end, we the people must assert what we want this country to be and we are at fault for the country's faults. The Republican bromide about individual responsibility is true even if the leaders of that party evade responsibility with reckless abandon. We do need to ask questions, we do need to think,about all matters big and small that we call political. I have a sister who evades politics because it is too complicated for her. We cannot fall back on such excuses for thinking on and making hard choices about public matters. We must stop letting politicians treating us as fools. Consider this passage from the New York Times' review of Jeffrey Feldman's FRAMING THE DEBATE: Famous Presidential Speeches and How Progressives Can Use Them to Change the Conversation (and Win Elections):

Back in 1990, Newt Gingrich sent his Republican colleagues a list of words to use to describe their Democratic opponents: “sick,” “pathetic,” “bizarre,” “traitors” and “corrupt” were some of the choicest. Getting the party on message helped the Republicans win in 1994, but Gingrich’s memo was a disaster for our political culture: it enshrined as demonstrated truth the idea that winning elections in America is all a game of spin and wordplay — a game Republicans happened to be better at than Democrats. Weirdly, even after last November’s Democratic rout, we’re still living in Newt’s world. “Those Republican ‘magic words’ ” that blind voters, according to the blogger Jeffrey Feldman, are still the big threat to Democrats’ electoral success — and, to help the left, he offers a rhetoric handbook, “Framing the Debate,” based on the Democratic strategist George Lakoff’s ideas about politics and language.

The New York Times reviewer attacks the idea that we are like Pavlov's dogs - drooling idiots responding to key words. Unless you think we are better with leaders treating us like Pavlov's dogs, I feel you will agree with the reviewer that such books and ideas are exercises in cynicism.

I find the Democratic Party feeling the need to emulate Republican strategy as a loss of faith in the people. Bradley still has that faith.