Government 101 -- The U.S. System of Checks and Balances

9:00 A.M. EST 

MR. DENIG: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Washington Foreign Press Center. I realize we have a very mixed audience this morning. We have not only Washingtonians, but New Yorkers, as well, and I want to let you all know that you are very welcome.

This is a little bit of an experiment on our part, running this course on Government 101, and I want to compliment Margaret Hollwill in organizing it. And if it goes as well as we hope it will, we will try to reschedule this roughly every six months so that we can spread this to more and more journalists.

This is the kind of course, frankly, that I would love to take myself, if time permitted, and get to go to the places and hear the things and talk to the folks that you will have the opportunity to do so. So I wish you a great deal of intellectual and other pleasure over the next two days.

Well, just to make sure that you realize what an intellectual pleasure this is, we have an absolutely gourmet feast for you at the beginning of the two days, and that's none other than Political Scientist James Thurber, who is Director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies and a longtime professor at American University.

I think that many of you know that he has written many books and many articles, particularly on Congress, but also on Congressional-Presidential relations, aspects of reform of government finance and so forth. So he is just the man to give you an initial overview. And after that, he'll be delighted to take any questions you have. So please, join me in welcoming Professor Thurber.

PROFESSOR THURBER: Good morning. It's my pleasure to be here. When you mentioned there were a few people from New York, I just remembered when I was 18, I hitchhiked from Oregon to New York and then went to Europe and Africa for a year. When I hit New York, it was the strangest place. It was stranger than France, you know? It was like a foreign country, so I'm pleased to have some foreign representatives from New York here.

I have the enviable task of giving you an introduction to American politics in about one hour and then leaving plenty of time for questions and comments. And as I drove in today, I listened to the radio as you did, NPR, and I heard news of downtown Baghdad, and it reminded me of something very fundamental about most nations and our nation.

And if you hit the first slide, that is: Nations balance order versus freedom.

If I had a family in downtown Baghdad right now, I would be very concerned about order, about being able to walk on the streets without fear, having my business without fear. All leaders in the world -- whether they are in Germany, the United States, Afghanistan, Cuba, whatever, People's Republic of China -- balance order versus freedom.

In order to understand our system you have to go back, obviously, to this architecture of how our government works, in theory, through our Constitution. And we tend to lean towards freedom over order, although there are battles over that today, with the Patriot Act, for example.

We, who do I mean, "we?" White, male property owners, on the basis of our revolution, wanted what? They wanted profit. They wanted lower taxes. This is the theme of the 2000 Campaign from George W. Bush. They wanted the devolution of power from King George to the localities, devolution of power to states and localities here in the United States -- right now. They wanted protection of property. They wanted liberty. They wanted freedom. And they created a Constitution that failed.

I helped write part of the constitution for Ukraine to help give the Rada more power vis-à-vis Kuchma. And they keep saying, "Well, it's failing, it's failing." And I keep saying, "Well, you know, ours failed the first ten years, too. And then we went to Philadelphia and we created this new constitution that divides power fundamentally in every way that you can think of, creating a unique, and I'm not saying better, but a unique and exceptional form of democracy, exceptional in the sense that first of all, we have --

If you hit the slide -- I usually do this myself. I'm not used to having assistants do this. Sorry.

As you know, we have a separation of powers. Now, in separation of powers, do you know it? It's the courts have a certain power to review what the administration can do and whether an act of Congress is constitutional; and the executive branch may not spend money unless it's been authorized and appropriated.

There's a guy by the name of Ollie North. How many of you remember the name Ollie North? Okay. Ollie North was a guy who spent money in the White House because somebody told him to, or he did it himself without it being authorized and appropriated. It was a fundamental constitutional problem because the power of the purse is with Congress. The power to control spending is with Congress. Therefore, when you have a war against Iraq, you have to go to Congress and get a resolution, but also get money authorized and appropriated. And if you don't, you're breaking the Constitution.

However, I want to talk about separation of powers differently. This is not in the Constitution. The separation of powers creates conflict on purpose, because of the way people are elected. If you think about the way people are elected in your countries, it fundamentally influences the way they behave.

Fidel or Raoul get elected with 93 percent turnout in the elections. They are the only candidates and they and the government are the same people. It's an iron triangle. In the United States, the president gets elected separately, trying to build a coalition of 271 Electoral College votes, right? Electoral college is an odd deal. I don't want to go into it at this point. It's not going to change. There's not going to be a constitutional amendment, but it is made up of the number of representatives in a state, plus two senators. And that is 55 in California; 55 because they have 53 members of Congress and two senators.

Well, you build this 271, right? And you build a national coalition. What you do in an election, and I've taught at a campaign management institute for 20 years, so I have moles -- I'm sorry to use that term at the State Department here, but moles in all the campaigns, former students that, you know, they run the Bush campaign, the Gore campaign, they -- now all these nine other campaigns, and they tell me what goes on.

And what they do is they try to deliver the base of the party -- the base voters. The base was delivered by George W. Bush at 93 percent, and it was 83 percent for Gore. Then they go for the swing voters. Swing voters, who are the swing voters in the United States? They are single women with children. That's the face of poverty in the United States, also. And Bush, in order to get the 271, had the mantra of, "I want to lower taxes. We're going to have more profits for business. We're going to get 'guv'ment' off the back of business. You know, like off the back of Enron, and WorldCom and other businesses like that.

The people from New York should laugh loudly when my jokes come out. Okay, never mind. (Laughter.)

Yeah, we've got to deregulate, we've got to protect property -- unless we're going to take the property and run a pipeline through it or something -- and beyond that, what did he do? He moved to the middle, where voters are in the United States. Most voters are in the middle. They have a bell-shaped curve of voters. Rational candidates move to the middle and try to capture the modal voter. And he did that beyond delivering the base by saying, "I'm going to do something about education reform."

And he moved so fast through the middle, he dropped vouchers, which was something that the far right wanted. He also pushed testing. Testing was anathema to the Republican Party until he came along. He grabbed Kennedy's hand, took him to the White House with his dogs, Splash and Sonny, and they watched movies and had popcorn, and they came out with an education reform bill. They came to the middle, appealing to women.

He tried to come to the middle on the Patient's Bill of Rights. Now, the Patient's Bill of Rights has been in deadlock for 12 years. Why? Because you've got very strong lawyers pumping millions into the campaigns on one side, and we've got the producers of health care on the other side saying, "Hey, we don't want to be -- have these suits, these lawsuits." We're in deadlock.

We're in deadlock, in fact, on a whole lot of major issues. We have a pluralist system, which means that groups grow. They've battled with each other, but they've battled to deadlock. We've got hyperpluralism, something I write about. Nobody writes about it yet, but hyperpluralism -- extreme pluralism deadlock in this system over healthcare, over environment -- we've been going 13 years on the toxic waste bill, the Superfund bill where you've got industry on one side fighting environmentalists on the other, state and local governments, the insurance companies, we've got Tony Soprano and the mafia in there, you know, fighting as they ship it from New Jersey to West Virginia, so the mafia's involved.

It's deadlock. They can't make a decision. And that's going to happen with the Clean Air Act Amendments that are coming up this session that you may cover, maybe not -- but back to George W. Bush. He moved to the middle on healthcare saying, "We're going to have bipartisanship. We're going to all hold hands and sign 'Kumbaya' in Washington, and everybody's going to get along."

Well, he ran into the House of Representatives. In the House of Representatives, Republicans are controlled by Southerners. They've taken the place of the old Dixiecrats. Now, Dixiecrats are segregationist Southerners that were Democrats that had this oddball coalition, the New Deal Coalition, for years until it started breaking up after the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 allowed African-Americans to register in the South. They did. We had a revolution. They started electing people locally to city council in Selma and Montgomery, where Martin Luther King marched to sheriff, to judge, but at a higher level of aggregation because of redistricting because of the merger of census data with election data every ten years and sophisticated redistricting. The Republicans in the South have redistricted it at the congressional level to have a majority of the seats from the South that are Republican. We had regional Southern -- incremental, over time, '65 to present -- realignment.

Realigning the election is very important in any political system. The major realigning election in our history was FDR's first election, where a massive number of Republicans shifted, became Democratic. tThe New Deal Coalition is breaking up now -- now the South is Republican. 19 members in the House used to Democrats -- Senator Lott, that distinguished senator from the South who had those wonderful words to say about Strom Thurmond. Strom Thurmond was a segregationist. That the guy who I worked for -- you've got to know where I come from -- I used to work for that socialist, Hubert Humphrey, from the People's Republic of Minnesota, okay? And Humphrey, in 1948, gave a speech in the Democratic National Convention that said that Strom Thurmond should not be seated in the Democratic Party.

It's 1948. Strom Thurmond was not seated at the National Convention. He walked out into the Republican Party, and he was praised by Senator Lott. That tells you something about the Republicans in the South right now. Senator Lott, as I said, used to be a Democrat.

The realignment of those districts in the South creates a leadership in the House of Representatives that's too far to the right. They can't compromise. It's against their philosophy. They didn't lose the Civil War if you talk to them.

Federalism is another way to look at how structures are set up. Federalism is a fight over how much power the states and localities will have versus the federal government. In the South they want total power. They want to pollute. They want to do all kinds of stuff. They don't want the federal government to tell them what to do in their schools, and they are controlling the leadership, except for the Speaker, we've got the distinguished insect -- never mind. I won't go into these jokes.

We've got Tom DeLay in the House of Representatives, who is pushing an agenda that's very far to the right. The President has to appeal to that right constituency to deliver the base of his party. But then, he has to move over to the middle and get the swing voters. He's doing it right now with the Prescription Drug Bill.

Okay, what's that about? He says, "I'm going to do something about the cost of prescription drugs for the aged," appealing to women, because only women in our society care about their parents, you know that. Never mind. Tough group! Some men do, but you know, women tend to take care of their parents and so it's an appeal to that group. And that's what's going on right now. He wants to get that through, this particular bill through, so he can say that he's doing something about women who are making a decision about paying for pharmaceuticals versus food. The face of poverty in retirement is women -- widows who are making some tough decisions, so this bill, theoretically, will do something about that.

He also moved to the middle on a variety of other things: on environment, but it turns out, on environment he's deregulating, you know? He's going in the opposite direction of what he said he was going to do in the election.

Now, those of you that looked at this oddball election and think that we need election observers in the United States, not in Pakistan, you should know that -- you should remember that Gore didn't take his own state, and he didn't allow Clinton to campaign enough to take Arkansas. 97,000 people in Florida voted for the Green Party -- Ralph Nader -- and they didn't run one ad towards those 97,000.

My moles were in his -- on his staff. One of them tried to persuade him to recount all the counties rather than cherry-pick four counties. If they had recounted all the counties in Florida, he would have won. So he made a lot of strategic errors. And it was a perfect campaign on the other side with the help of, you know, some outsiders maybe, some would say, in terms of George W. Bush.

Separation of powers means that presidents get elected at a national campaign. House members get elected in homogenous districts. There are 435 of them, right? Homogenous -- easy to represent. For 75 of them, all you have to do is steam up a mirror to get reelected, meaning (audibly exhales) to show you're alive, because nobody runs against them in the primary or the general election. Only 30 seats were competitive out of 435. 30 seats are where people won by 55 percent or more. I mean, that's ridiculous. It's -- the Politburo is more competitive in Havana than the House of Representatives.

And then you add the money. Follow the money. There's a ten to one advantage of money for incumbents versus non-incumbents. Sometimes it's 100 to one. The real election is how much money you bring in before the primary to scare the hell out of everybody that's a quality candidate. And Schumer in New York right now, is running for the Senate. He has a $15-million war chest.

Now, Kerry, running for the presidency's got $8.1 [million].

QUESTION: (Inaudible).

PROFESSOR THURBER: Yeah, right. There's some exceptions. New York is very competitive. You need a lot of money. The point up here if you didn't hear it is: he beat somebody with more money. And you know, there was this guy, he was a stamp-collector from Chicago. His name was Rostenkowski who had $1.5 million, and he had a kid run against him at $110 [million] but, you know, they didn't want to elect an indicted felon. So, you know, he lost. So you know, controversy does beat some people. But it's the exception rather than the rule.

98.5 percent of those who stood for reelection in the House of Representatives got reelected last time, five lost in the general, four in the primary. One of them was Connie Morella out here in the, Montgomery County, in the suburbs. She lost. She was one of the five which we watched very closely. Van Hollen was the person that won.

We have a Senate that gets elected differently than the House. It's every six years rather than every two years. We've got the constant reelection in the House. We have a Tuesday-Thursday Club on the Hill, meaning that every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, they fly back to Monterey, California -- if that's where they are from -- they are there Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, come back on the redeye, and then they try to legislate. And they have no votes before 2:00 on Tuesday, and no later than 3:00 on Thursday these days.

I was on the Hill yesterday talking to a couple of members about this because I think, you know, this is wrong. And why? Because they're home, bringing in the money. They are home having town meetings. They are home making sure that they can get reelected even though they are getting reelected at 80 percent.

The Senate is different. It's more competitive. You represent heterogeneous districts and states. When you represent New York -- I'm going to pick on New York, okay? When you represent New York, you've got to compromise your basic philosophy sometimes, because you've got to reach out to all of the population.

You know, Hillary compromised. She ran away from Bill, and then she -- tough group. Anyway, (laughter) she has the "Manhattan Marshas" who live out in the Hamptons, but if you go north in New York, you hit Republican territory. What do you do? You compromise. The first bill she introduced was a bill to help six counties in upstate New York that had low unemployment that were Republican counties. She's reaching out.

If you're Boxer and Feinstein, two senators from California, from the People's Republic of San Francisco, right? What do you have? You've got a state that has a fault line down the middle. From San Jose north you've got all the pot-smoking, growing, tree-hugging socialists up there that are Democrats. And south of that line it's a mixture. In the valley of the farmers, you've got the Republicans. You've got L.A. -- 240 different languages, it's Democratic territory. You've got the rising power of Latinos -- 40 percent in California, 50 percent - 2010. Watch demographics to understand American politics.

Now, I was on a panel with the head of the Lower House, a Latino guy, in California about three months ago, and he said, "Jim, you know what we call this Latino power?" And I said, "No." And he says, "We call it coming home." And I said, "Coming home?" He says, "Yeah, we used to own it. We're just going to take it back." Because Mexico used to own it, of course, and they are taking it back politically in California, in Arizona, in New Mexico, where you have a Latino governor who's going to run for the presidency against Hillary -- mark my words -- in 2008, and Mr. Richardson in Texas. And of course there's -- 63 percent of Latinos voted Democratic. But then there's the Cubans, you know?

The Cubans. The Cubans are Republicans. Let me tell you that if Cuba changed states, I don't think they would be Republican anymore. And the Democrats have got a problem with this though, because many Latinos are pro-life, and the base of their party is pro-choice, so they've got a little problem there.

The Senate, then, if you're from California, you run in 23 media markets. It costs a lot of money. But you moderate. You moderate to those socialists up north, I'm saying, for extremes -- to keep you awake. And the, you know, sort of the Aryan Nation types down South, and the rugged individualists to the east of the mountains -- all these farmers that run around with pickups with rifles in the back and NRA stickers to define their manhood and womanhood -- that's Republican territory. You reach out to those people by moderating. So Feinstein and Boxer do not go to the John Wayne Airport in Orange County and have a rally for gay marriages as they would in San Francisco. They moderate.

The Senate is made up with 100 people that moderate in order to get elected also influences the way you behave. Is something wrong? Oh, okay. Oh, okay. Thanks. That's cool. Thank you very much.

So the Senate has all these people that moderate, and you've heard this expression: "The Senate is like a saucer that receives the hot ire of the House of Representatives, and it cools it as it did with the Contract with America." Only two Senators signed up for the Contract. Only two items out of the Contract passed the Senate. It absorbed that heat like a pillow.

Now, you come from bicameral systems, some of you, but they are really not bicameral systems. If you're from the United Kingdom, for example, the Lower House, the House of Commons, is where the power is. The Upper House is called "The House of Droolers." They're asleep, drooling on their ties. They don't do anything. In the Netherlands, the Tweede Kamer is where the power is. And in India, The Lok Sabha is where the power is. It's not equal.

We have equal power, and you saw what happened on this tax bill if you were here in town. The President wanted $736 billion. You know, he had a little idea about, "It's the economy, stupid. You want to do something about it?" Went to the House -- $550 billion. Went to the Senate -- $350 billion. And Olympia Snow from Maine, a Republican, a moderate, said -- she sits on the finance committee, the tax committee -- she said, "I'm not going to let this bill out of committee unless it's $350 [billion.]" That's what they got -- $350 [billion.] And the compromise was a little over $350 [billion.] That shows you the power of representation, and it shows you the problem of the Republican Party in the Senate; control by Republicans from the South.

Now Lott was an unreconstructed sort of rough guy on the conservative side. Frist, he's pretty, he can speak well, he's a doc. Everybody loves him. But he's real conservative, too, folks. And he cannot move over to pick up the Olympia Snows, the Voinoviches, and John McCain, the loose cannon on the deck of the Republican Party. He can't control him. And so the Republicans have a real problem. They have a tie, basically, in the Senate. Plus you need 60 votes to govern. And that's what this battle over the filibuster is all about. Now, let me explain.

In the Senate, there's a thing called a filibuster -- unlimited debate. Why do we have it? Well, it's a strange thing. It's so that intense minorities -- on the left, the right, the middle, wherever -- they can stop things. Like, if you're from Nevada and you don't want Yucca Mountain to occur. What's Yucca Mountain? Yucca Mountain is a place where we're characterizing the site for high-level radioactive waste, 110 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

If you're from Nevada, you do absolutely everything to kill Yucca Mountain. You use the filibuster, and it has nothing to do with left or right. It has to do with, "I don't want to receive this nuclear waste, which is stopping the development of nuclear power in the United States, which is 22 percent of our electricity in the United States," a serious thing. They can -- they've stopped it for years. Well, the latest round, they didn't stop it.

You can use the filibuster for a variety of things. You can use it to stop Miguel Estrada from being considered as the judge. In the judicial system he's a pretty conservative guy. The Republicans like him. The Democrats don't. They've had six votes on Miguel Estrada, and Frist has had it. He said, "Okay, we're going to change the filibuster rule from 60 votes to cloture," the cloture vote meaning once you get 60 votes, you go to the next step and consider the guy or the bill and you, you know, the filibuster's over.

He wants to change it from 60 first vote, 57, 54, 51 for a majority. It's not going to happen, folks, because you need 67 votes in the Senate to change rules. There's no way they've got 67 votes. So he's doing it -- by the way, just the inside politics -- it's probably too much -- he's doing it because you know why? Because the Republicans from the South don't trust him because the President was too unsure in selecting him and secondly, he waffles, okay? Waffle? Okay, he collapsed on the issue of taxes. He went along with the $350 and the Republicans from the South said, "Hey, he's soft in his shoes, you know, why is he doing that?"

So now he's appealing to the Southern Republicans by saying, "Well, we're going to get rid of the filibuster so that when we really have the battle for the two coming up on the Supreme Court, we'll be able to handle this." Well, it's not going to happen. It was a symbolic action.

The point of separation of powers is, then, the way you're elected in the Senate, the House, the Presidency -- creates rivals for power. And it's very slow -- agonizing, thank God, if you don't like what the President's doing or the House or the Senate.

We have true bicameralism; we have federalism -- fights from states and localities over how much power they will have. And then we have First Amendment rights. The United States fights wars over (inaudible) and First Amendment rights. What is it? First Amendment Rights allows challenges to tyrants, to people in power; freedom of speech. It scares the hell out of Nazarbayev.

I've been to Kazakhstan a couple times, met with him six times -- a very interesting guy. We talked about Democratization. Thank you, State Department. And he said -- at the end we got along pretty well -- he said, "Jim," he said, you know, "I like this party system you've got and I like the bicameralism;" they have a unicameral thing, "but, you know, I don't like these First Amendment Rights." (Laughter.)

Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom to petition government for grievances, freedom of the press: boy that scares them. Freedom of religion -- what does that do? It creates groups. It creates groups in the United States that challenge power. You may not like the groups -- the NRA, I don't like the NRA -- or you might not like them if they are pro-life and, you know, intrude in people's lives. But they have the right to organize. You mention anything in this room -- shoes, socks, wool, electricity, water or whatever -- there's a group, there's 10,000 groups in Washington, D.C. 80,000 people in the interest group business in this metropolitan area not only lobbying the Hill -- 14,500 registered lobbyists -- but selling stuff.

Boeing aircraft says, "Yeah! Use overwhelming force against Saddam, but buy our stuff!" You know, and the promulgation of rules and regulations out of agencies -- lots of lobbyists there. The law firms around here never go to court, they are lobbying!

Tommy Boggs, who's a major lobbyist in town, said there are 100,000 lobbyists. I didn't believe him, so I had a Ph.D. student count. We had a good methodology. We came out with a little over 80,000 in the business, meaning the AARP, American Association of Retired Persons -- 32 million people in America belong to it. You can belong after age 50, and by the way, we're going to find Saddam Hussein soon because he's turning 50 and the AARP will know where he is, you know, because they (laughter). And Usama bin Laden, also, we're going to find when he turns 50. But that group has 350 people working for it -- only four registered lobbyists. They are doing grassroots. They have a website -- a website that if Kennedy orders something in the hallway after the debate yesterday -- he was on the floor, I watched him on the floor yesterday on this pharmaceutical thing -- as he said something to his staff, somebody hears it, it goes up on the website.

My 90-year-old mother in Oregon is sitting there playing solitaire, she switches over the AARP site and there's a letter already written complaining to Kennedy and to her Senator, Smith, and whoever -- that she's against what he said in terms of the compromises -- very hard. They have a magazine. You pay eight bucks for this magazine. It has Tina Turner on the cover and Mick Jagger, appealing to a particular generation these days. And that eight dollars gives them the right to watch 38 percent of the entire budget of the federal government.

Now, there are dozens, there are hundreds of groups like that that are very powerful. They have to be at the table. We have weak parties that do not control recruitment. Follow the money. The money comes from specialized interest in the United States, not parties. And I know we have Campaign Finance Reform, if the Supreme Court sustains it, then the money will be shifted in other ways, but we'll cut off soft money and issue ads with that, but it's still going to be there from the private sector. Now, are they investing in democracy, in deliberation? They're investing in access, access -- excess too, sometimes -- access to policymakers.

Now, you come from countries where -- some of you -- where there's bribes, and then you come and ask me, and I've had this asked for the last 25 years, "Well, what's the difference between campaign finance and the way you do it, and bribery?" Well, ours is transparent, theoretically, and open, and it's legal to give money in a particular way. And yet in both cases, the norm of reciprocity is very important. Think about the norm of reciprocity in your life. Hopefully, love is the first norm. Right? The second norm is reciprocity. "I'll help you if you help me." That's the way American politics run. "If you hurt me, I'm going to remember and I'm going to -- I'm not going to get mad, but I'm going to get back at you."

I know a lot about the B-2 aircraft, you know a lot about sugar subsidies; we'll exchange information on this on the Hill. I've worked on the Hill for a while. The Hill is Jenkins Hill. It's an old farm. That's where our capital is. We call it the Hill. Work on the Hill as a staff member for a while, and then you move down here to K Street and L Street and M Street and become a lobbyist. Now, you used to hire the people that were on the Hill. Now you go back and talk to them. Will they not talk to you? You know they're going to talk to you.

So there's a network of people structured around a whole lot of different issues in this system based upon pluralism, and then fully lubricated with money through the permanent campaign. Now, what's the permanent campaign? Political scientists in the United States write about the permanent campaign. You do not have the permanent campaign in any of your countries, probably, and that is this. Let me compare it to the old days. I worked for Humphrey in '73 to '75, during Watergate -- an interesting time, energy crisis during that period. We had this quaint thing, you'd have an election. The next day after the election, Humphrey would get together with Goldwater, a Republican, or Dirksen, a Republican, and they'd talk about governing. Gee, isn't that interesting?

Now, the next day we have a fundraiser. Each party gets together and figures out what the wedge issues are, the issues that will help elect or defeat a few more people to take a majority in the House and the Senate because their votes were tied, and the patient's bill of rights is one those things. It's an issue that they don't want to resolve because it helps define the parties, but it also pumps in a lot of money, baby, hundreds of millions of dollars. Bankruptcy bill? It's been deadlocked for eight years over what? Over pro-choice -- pro-life provision in it -- in a bankruptcy bill, okay?

And what does that do? It appeals to the base of the Republican and Democratic Party, but also, bankers have a lot of money, a lot of money pumping into both sides on this issue to make sure that it comes out right. The permanent campaign is expensive. It cost $3 billion -- billion -- in 2000. If you add up all the issue ad money, $23 million came from the NRA. They ran these issue ads on television, and as long as you don't, say, vote for or vote against a candidate, you can run as many as you want.

So, in West Virginia, where Gore lost and Robert C. Byrd, a Democrat, won by 83 percent, they ran an ad that said, "Gore is going to take your guns away from you. You can't run around with them in your pickups anymore." Right? That's a West Virginia accent, for those of you from other countries.

And, you know, guess what? He lost overwhelmingly because guns are very important. And that's part of this $3 billion, but also the cost of all the primary election candidates, the general election candidates, all of the candidates in the House and the Senate, it's very costly. It's costly because they're hustling money all the time also.

Let's go to the next slide.

If you look at change, and I'm talking about stability, factors of stability in our system and factors of change, I've just talked about some factors of stability. If you look at change, I've talked about the breakup of the solid Democratic South. It's now Republican. That is not going to change. And in fact, probably, the House and the Senate will be dominated by Republicans for quite a while until demographics change. Demographics are beginning to change. More Latinos, but also African-Americans, are moving back to the South. They moved out of the South for many years. The last census shows they're moving back in. That will change eventually.

We have divided party government. You do not have divided party government in your parliamentary systems, if you've got one, because in a parliamentary system, what do you have? You've got a party that controls recruitment in the party, says where you can run. I used to live in Hampstead, in London, years ago, and I knew that the person that ran for the Labour Party in Hampstead was always going to win. They didn't even need to live there. You don't even need to live in your district. Here, you do. And they control recruitment. The House of Commons elected the Labour Party, the Labour Party selects the prime minister, and you have unified party government and leadership.

We have individualism and weak leaders because most of the time we have divided party government, meaning a different party is in the White House, the House and the Senate. 92 percent of the time, from '81 to 2004, is divided, different parties controlling things. Now it's unified, but it's basically tied in the Senate, so you can't really push things that are real radical, except for tax cuts.

It makes a difference. Bill Clinton had an 83 percent batting average, a presidential sport score. In other words, it's a score that political scientists have for what he wanted he got in the House and the Senate the first two years when he had unified party government. He lost it. He went too far on the healthcare thing. He lost the House and the Senate. It dropped to 38 percent the next six years, and so he had to use politics by other means like, executive order and threatening vetoes and things like this.

We have partisan polarization of Congress. What's that mean? It means it's so extreme that the Republicans criticized one of their colleagues for going to a wedding of a Democrat. It's ridiculous. Americans are not that way, generally, and they don't like it. In the polls, they don't like this extreme partisanship. But they've got it and it's mean-spirited. We've got close presidential elections. What was the mandate from the last election when the President didn't get -- he got fewer votes than the other guy, than Gore? It's to be moderate. However, he wasn't moderate on taxes. He came through with a $1.3 trillion tax cut, the first thing that he did.

He used, by the way, campaign techniques. When he governed, he went to the grassroots, meaning out to the districts, to put pressure on the members to go along with him. Presidents need to do that because we have weak parties that do not have discipline. They can't discipline people on the Hill. They've got to go to the districts. He was out of the -- pardon me, out of Washington 26 days out of the first 100 days to push his agenda in his administration. Remember? We had the tax week, the education reform week, we had increased defense expenditures week, we had the space-based initiative, you know, missile defense and other programs like that.

They are quick. Some of you are getting them. We have narrow majorities in Congress, basically tied. We've got a decline of civility and comity. In the old days, you know, during Watergate -- I keep thinking about Watergate. I was there, I was a kid. I didn't really understand how important it was. I knew it was important. Humphrey lost, you know, the Presidency, and he was this Senator and I was working for him. He'd go to the floor and very respectfully talk about the institution of the Presidency and what was happening as a result of Watergate and Nixon. And Dirksen, the Republican Minority Leader, would debate him and Goldwater. And then they'd leave the floor and Humphrey and Goldwater would go to Humphrey's office together and they'd have a little single malt scotch -- 15 years or older -- and sit there and figure out -- and Goldwater was an old salt, he says, "What in the hell are we going to do about that crazy guy in the White House?" This is a Republican.

Now think about -- think about Clinton. Everybody knew he did it. In the United States a lot of people thought it was disgusting and he should be impeached. He was impeached in the House; he was indicted. But every kid in America knew he wasn't going to get convicted. Why go through it -- a whole year and a half of agony and angst and anomie?

They did it, in my opinion, because they weren't getting together and talking with each other. Newt Gingrich, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, bragged that he never got together in a room alone with the Minority Leader -- never talked to him alone. You can't govern that way, in my opinion, in the United States. You've got to get together and have more civility and comity. We don't have it.

Hit it, please. Keep hitting it. Keep hitting it. Keep going. Keep going. Okay, stop.

I talked about those other things a little bit earlier and in general reference that are in your handouts. If you want to understand Washington, D.C. and politics nationally, you have to understand the keystones to Washington. Presidents don't agree with this, but the keystone to Washington and the Washington establishment is Congress -- the people's body. So you have to understand a little bit more about it -- some of you do -- and if you look at the House and the Senate and the major differences between them, size is a very important thing. 435 in the House means you have to have very formal rules. You all read The Washington Post yesterday and the importance of the Rules Committee. The Rules Committee in the House is the traffic cop for all legislation. If you want to kill something in the Rules Committee before the bill goes to the floor, you're going to win.

There have only been 12 bills that have come off a thing called the "Discharge Calendar," discharging a bill from a committee directly to the floor. It takes a majority of the members signing a petition, and six separate votes to get it to the floor. The Rules Committee is 2 to 1 plus 1 -- two Republicans to every one Democrat, plus one more Republican. It is part of the leadership.

So in order to understand, the House has very formal rules and the Rules Committee sets it. And the Rules Committee sets the rules of debate on the floor of the House. And, for example, they can have closed rules, no amendments. The tax bill from the President had no amendments allowed on the floor. It's up or down on the thing. Now, think about that compared to people being able to alter it slightly. That's power, baby. And the people from the South controlled civil rights for a hundred years, if you're African American, but 18 years they held up the Civil Rights Bill in the Rules Committee -- 18 straight years -- wouldn't let it out until Martin Luther King marched on Selma and Montgomery and did a bank shot. He, through that activity and through the media, got the soul of America to put pressure on LBJ, an old segregationist who was in the White House, who then put pressure on the House of Representatives to add three more people to the Rules Committee, and within two months the Civil Rights bill passed because they added three liberals.

The Rules Committee is important, and it's important because it structures debate. It structures what you can do. Less flexible rules in the House because of size -- narrow constituencies. Bimodal distribution of ideology, I've talked about the far right, the Republicans. There's nobody in the middle anymore. You've got a bunch of socialists on the left side, or, you know, union people -- Gephardt -- that can go against his own President on NAFTA and trade with China and get away with it. You can't do that in a parliamentary system. And on the far right you've got Newt Gingrich helping to defeat Bush, Sr. by saying he raised taxes. Get rid of him. Nobody in the middle, so when the President wanted to have bipartisanship, he started moving to the middle, there was nobody there. He looked around. Nobody was covering his back, so to speak.

In the Senate we have broader constituencies, more flexible rules. You have the rule of the -- you can have a filibuster -- unlimited debate. We talked about that. The cloture vote cuts it off. You need 60 votes to govern. But you also have no rule of germaneness on amendments. What's that mean, germane? It means it has to be related to the topic of the bill. So you have a pro-choice, pro-life rider on a bankruptcy bill. You have a little rider to send more money up to West Virginia, where Robert C. Byrd, the Ranking on Appropriations, does all kinds of things on appropriation bills to make sure that things to go West Virginia.

I've got a hundred moles on the Hill, too, former students. One of them works for Bobby Byrd, a key person on Appropriations. And Peter Kefauver called laughing and says, "The senator has changed his subcommittee from (inaudible) to "Security R Us." In the future they're going to bill a lot of stuff up there because he's getting on the subcommittee to put an amendment, non-germane, to make sure that it gets shipped up to West Virginia. We have more policy generalists in the Senate, meaning they have more committee assignments than in the House.

Committees are where the action is on the Hill, and the Hill is where the action is in Washington to a great extent -- unless you're doing defense, intelligence stuff that is fairly closed, and foreign affairs. Policy generalists mean that they rely more on staff. Staff is very important. And you go up there and you see a lot of kids that look like staff. One of the reasons that they're so young is they don't pay them very much. But the real staff is older people who have been there for years. I've done a study of staff, and on the prestigious committees like the appropriations committees -- those are the committees that appropriate money for things -- the average service is 12 and a half years, some of them 20 years. You don't see these people. They don't want to talk to you. They're doing the work behind the scenes.

And the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in the House and the Senate, the Armed Services Committee, the Rules Committee and Ways and Means and Finance -- those are the most important committees. Those people have adults. Some of the others have youngsters that come down and stay for four years, then get a law degree and go to K Street, L Street, M Street or something, to become lobbyists.

In the House, you have more policy specialists. You've got specialists on mohair subsidies. You don't even know what mohair is. I didn't know what it is either. It's, you know, it's grown on goats, okay? We had this porky bill called the Ag bill that came through -- $236 billion that upset our relationships with the EU and trade in the world, but you name the subsidy, there's some damn -- I mean, name the crop, there's a subsidy: rice, sugar, winter wheat, pork bellies, mohair.

Now, there's a mohair specialist on the Hill and a couple of staffers. There's somebody who knows about nuclear power plants. There's several. You have these specialists. They have fewer committee assignments in the House, so you become a specialist and you rely less on staff as a result of that.

And so senators give a lot of power to staff. Kennedy has 103 staff members. Why? Because he has so many committee assignments and he comes from a populous state and staff on the Senate is based upon the population of the state. In the House, you have about 650,000 people. You have 24 staff members, 22 permanent and two part-time if you have a full complement.

But they only have about a million-dollar budget per year in the House, and one mailing -- one mailing costs almost $100,000. And so, you know, they don't have -- a million dollars seems like a lot, but if you've got all those staff members and lots of mailings, and you rent two offices out in your district -- Udall in New Mexico has six offices in his district -- you run out of the money real fast.

Hit it, please.

If you look at sources of stability, let's look at congressional stability. We've looked at these: terms of office, two in the House, six in the Senate. Six years -- you can relax for a couple years, but you've got to bring in $4,000 per day every day for six years to spend the average amount of money in a campaign.

Now, watch the South Dakota race. This is going to be a great race. South Dakota, they got a lot of prairie dogs -- they're all sick out there -- but they also have got a couple candidates that are going to have millions of dollars spent. Now, the citizens in South Dakota are so sick of these ads and these fliers that they are saying, "Just give us $3,000 each and say to hell with it, we'll go, you know, we'll go vote," because it's going to cost that much -- three-four thousand dollars per citizen in this next race. Because why? Because Daschle is on the -- he's in the crosshairs, baby, of the Republican Party. They're trying to get him, okay? They're going to spend lots of money to get rid of Daschle.

Six years -- yeah, you can relax for a couple years, but you're constantly running for reelection. Party is important in the United States in the following way: it doesn't have a lot of discipline but the majority party always selects the chairs of the committees and the subcommittees. It's never the minority party.

Hit it, please.

Committees are where the actions get done in terms of laws, oversight. It's where the work gets done. If you want to understand American politics at the federal level, you'd better understand the congressional committee system. There are about 350 of them -- committees and subcommittees. There are 88 committees and subcommittees on Homeland Security.

I've been asked by the Select Committee on Homeland Security to appear before them on June 24th. You can come up and write a story about it if you want. And they want me to come up with a plan for consolidating jurisdictions from about 40 committees into one committee. Now, do you think that the chairman of the Commerce committee and John Dingle are going to give up turf? Okay, turf, what's that? Turf is the jurisdiction to deal with something, right?

Nobody wants to give up turf, power. You don't want -- you know, if a new reporter came for your paper or came in here and they said, "Okay, now you're going to split everything in half." You don't want to do that unless you're overworked. So it's going to be a wonderful bloodbath up there. I love it -- to watch this battle over turf to create a new Department of Homeland Security Committee. There's a select committee now. It only has oversight authority. It cannot legislate. There's a difference between those two things.

These committees have all new leadership because you have term limits on the chairs in the House of Representatives, meaning they can only -- they can only serve three terms, six years, and then you elect -- secret ballot -- a new chair. Now those are a wonder to watch. The chairman of the Ways and Means committee, the tax committee that handles trade taxes, Medicare, Medicaid, social security -- a powerful committee -- his name is Thomas. He spent $580,000 from the leadership political action committee, distributed it with his colleagues among the Republicans to get elected. He was number five in seniority. That's not the most senior to get elected chairman of this committee.

Where'd he get the money? He got the money from the industry that comes to him to get tax breaks. No conflict of interest there. You know, they are just simply investing in a good leader of that committee.

The Senate has all new leaders. Democrats used to be the chairs of all the committees except we had Jeffords, an Independent from Vermont who changed parties, and therefore, the entire structure of the Senate changed. Remember? He was given, as part of the deal, chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. That's rare.

We have -- each committee is different. People try to get on committees that help them get reelected. So you come from an Ag state, you get on the Agriculture Committee. Now, the Ag Committees -- do you think the consumers are sitting on the Ag Committees? No way, baby. It's the producers of food and fiber in America that want -- you know, they want deals. They want to be able to make money. They want subsidies for their crops to make sure that, you know, that they don't go broke. You know, family farms, small family farms like Archer Daniels Midland, and others like that. They want breaks. Whoa, tough group!

These committees differ in terms of geographic representation. Some are western committees. Energy and Natural Resources Committee, now this is another wonder, and I'm from the west, I'm from Oregon. And I know this committee because westerners try to get on this committee because -- they get on it because it deals with public land and also hydropower and also other things. And so Rostenkowski is now -- I mean, pardon me, Merkowski -- no, not Merkowski -- I'll get to it later.

The former chair of the committee, when he was a Republican is now Governor of Alaska, and he gets on it because 99 percent of Alaska is public land. And he gets on that committee because it deals with public land. And right now the battle is to open up the Tsongas Watershed in Alaska to cut more logs to send to Japan -- or whatever, you know? And he wants that. He used to be on the committee. Now his daughter's on that committee to deal with that.

If you're from Nevada, 93 percent of the landmass is public land and you want to kill Yucca Mountain if you're from Oregon, Washington; and 50 percent of those states are public land. You want to make sure that California doesn't steal your kilowatts, you know, from the Columbia River Basin. "Hell with California!" That's what we say up there. You know, they come up and ruin our land. They "Californicate" everything and we, you know, we don't like it. And so you get on the committee to stop California from ripping off water and kilowatts. So that committee is westerners.

Now the east's committee -- Environment and Public Works -- what do they care about? Well, if you're from Vermont, you're from Maine, you're from Connecticut, you care about those baby caribou up there on the Arctic National Wilderness Reserve and the mosquitoes and everything up there. You don't want to drill up there. But you care about acid precipitation that's coming down and killing the trees and the lakes. So even if you're a Republican -- (phone rings) you get an "F" for the class. That's all right. Don't worry about it (laughter). So what do you do? You want more intervention by the federal government to clean up the air.

You know, they say, "Okay, shut down these plants and clean them up in Ohio." And Ohio says, "It's not coming from our plants, it's coming from cows in Iowa," or some damn thing. You know, and so they want intervention. These are easterners that dominate that committee and you know, when you grow up in Oregon, by the way, anybody east of Boise is from "back east." Right? And you don't trust them. They don't work back east. They just sell stock and stuff, you know? (Laughter.)

And so these back-easterners come out to Oregon, they buy their Patagonia parkas and new boots from REI, and they walk around a little bit and they -- they want to regulate us! Well, to hell with these easterners! They want to shut down my plywood mill! "No, you can't shut down this plywood mill! We want to continue to cut trees. No trees left, but we want to continue to cut trees!" So you have this battle between east and west.

Then you have the Armed Services Committees. What are they? They are full-employment committees for districts and states. Let me give you an example. Norm Dicks from Bremerton, Washington, on Puget Sound, across Puget Sound in the state of Washington, from Seattle: If you go out there, Norm's a great guy. I knew him when he was a staff member on the House side. We were staffers together. He's now a member of the House. He's the Ranking on Defense Appropriations. Okay? That district that he has, if you take the ferry across Puget Sound, you'd better wear hip boots. You know those rubber boots? Because you are going to sink into Puget Sound because of the military facilities that are sinking his entire district, because he's got the submarine base up there at Bangor; on Hood Canal he's got Fort Lewis; he's got McCord Air Force Base; he's got Bremerton Naval Yards, and he sets aside with an earmark -- do you all know what an earmark is? No. You don't know what an earmark is.

Earmark is a little mark on a cow or a pig that says who owns it. Now, we use the expression in an appropriation bill, a money bill, of an "earmark," that says, "This money belongs to Norm Dicks' district." He put an earmark in for a MedEvac aircraft -- triple seven Boeing medical aircraft in for Boeing aircraft, sole source, not competition, to build this aircraft in the latest appropriation bill telling his citizens, showing his citizens in Bremerton, Washington -- "I Love Ya. You know, Boeing's shutting down a little bit on the civilian side so, you know, we need to ramp up the military side." And he gets reelected at 85 percent.

Now, everybody's that way on these Armed Services committees. They want to have facilities that bring jobs, even Olympia Snow -- Bath Ship -- seven new destroyers, right? And they threatened those destroyers on this tax bill, the President did. But she got through it all right. They are still going to Bath Ship. That's a big deal. Bath Ship in Maine hires a lot of people, and that helps her get reelected.

These committees operate independently. They contribute fundamentally to policy fragmentation. 26 committees deal with energy, 21 with the environment, 88 with Homeland Security. It's highly decentralized. And in order to understand it, you have to understand who has jurisdiction over those things.

Go back to the last slide, please. If you -- the next, the next one back. Thanks.

If you want to understand the committee system and Washington generally, as I mentioned, you've got to understand reciprocity. "I'll help you if you'll help me," but it's also division of labor. We have division of labor on the Hill. There's some people that know Armed Services, some Agriculture, et cetera, and it's a form of functional specialization. It's like neo-corporatism in Hungary or something. Right? No. Neo-corporatism is sort of -- I'm getting Nazi stuff -- no. It's -- but neo-corporatism is based upon that. It's a function in society is represented. Okay?

You build roads, people represent that; you have nuclear power plants, they represent that; you're an educator, they represent that. That's the informal way of our pluralist system working. We have functional representation going on at the state level, the local level, at the national level, meaning that after you get elected based upon population and geography, the way it works is you get on the Ag Committee and you become a functional specialist for mohair. You're the mohair person. And everybody that wants to have mohair policy knows you; you're the "go to" person.

Now hit it a couple of times. That's -- maybe three times.

This is the budget of the United States. It dominates American politics. You'll see a lot in the paper about the budget. Let me just very simply talk about it and say that it's $2.1 trillion in FY, fiscal year, which began October 1 and goes to the end of September. Most of it is uncontrollable, meaning we have entitlement programs or social programs plus net interest that lock the budget into just giving money to people that meet a particular criteria -- like you're old, you're a vet, you live below the poverty line, you have certain problems, learning problems -- you get a certain amount of money in schools.

Net interest. Net interest is paid on the debt. The debt is almost $6 trillion at this point. But its percent of GDP, it's been going down because of Clinton. Now it's going to go back up because we're facing a $400 billion deficit. And we've got this "Alice in Wonderland" deal going on. I mean, think about it.

The Republicans used to really worry about the debt and the deficit. Have you seen them complaining about the deficit at this point? No. The Democrats are the fiscal conservatives very worried about the deficit. It's going to be the largest deficit as percent of GDP since World War II. And next year it may be $500 billion.

That's great. My grandchildren can pay it off. You know, I don't have to worry about it. Maybe they won't get any social security or Medicare. Who cares? You know, let's just do it right now. Let's give everybody a tax break, get the economy stimulated.

Over here we have these things called "Discretionary Money." Okay? It means theoretically, you can control it -- 16 percent defense, under Reagan it was 29 percent. When The Wall went down, we didn't have this clear external threat that was perceived in the United States. The Soviet Union, everybody thought it was a threat except for people in Berkeley, California, and Cambridge, Massachusetts. You know, everybody, you know, they had this bipartisan agreement for years in our policy that the Soviet Union was a threat.

The Wall went down. Symbolically, we didn't have the threat, so we cut the hell out of the budget for defense -- went from 29 percent to 16 percent. It's going back up slightly right now. But, you know, most of it is uncontrollable. Why? Because of long-term contracts.

The average contract in defense is eight years. You cut off that contract halfway, you get sued, like with the A-12 naval aircraft. It costs -- it's costing $3 billion in suits to the Defense Department because Mr. Cheney, who was then Secretary of Defense, cut the contract off early. He didn't like it. You build a Seawolf submarine -- it takes eight years. You cut that off, you get sued. So previous presidents have made decisions. Clinton made a decision that's locking this President into spending. And on the domestic side, much of it is uncontrollable, also, because of highways. Look at these damn roads in Washington. Every damn road is getting redone. You can't even get down here from the mosque, where I live. Right?

I mean, it takes 45 minutes because you're locked in on building roads. Those are long-term contracts. Much of the 18 percent, pardon me, are long-term contracts for roads, for buildings, for grants and contracts to states and localities. So I argue, and others at OMB, Office of Management and Budget, say that it's really only 10 percent of the budget is controllable from year-to-year.

Hit it.

If you look -- in conclusion -- very quickly, at decision-making in Washington, it's not all the same. The structure I've given you, but the nature of the issue, drives different kinds of politics. We've had tsunamis that have rolled through our country over the last couple of years.

Macro-politics. Macro-politics is defined as politics that will help elect and defeat people, or they think that it will elect and defeat people. The Great -- World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, Vietnam, Desert Storm 1991 War, 9/11, the Iraqi War, these are big issues, and the members are worried about them because they think that they're going to get elected and defeated on the Macro-politics.

We also have Micro-politics, non-transparent; you can't see it, strong individuals intervening. Now, my mother thinks that's the way politics is. All you have to do is bring the money in in a black bag. You get what you want. It's not quite that easy, Mom, but it does happen.

Dwayne Andreas used to be the President of Archer Daniels Midland, the first lobbyist I ever met, did bring the money in in a black bag. (Laughter.) And what did he want? He wanted to be able to have Humphrey feed the world. Humphrey worried about feeding the world, PL, Public Law 480. You know, he worried about people starving. And who wanted to ship it? Archer Daniels Midland, Dwayne Andreas. He's still around.

He wants to have everybody mix their fuel with ethanol. So he spent $1.7 million in the last election for the Republicans; $1.7 million for the Democrats, exactly, in soft money, to get a tax break for the construction of ethanol plants in the United States, and also pushed Daschle, as well as the Republicans in the Midwest, to mix the fuel up to 30 percent with ethanol, which comes from corn. Why? He has a lot of excess corn. Plus, he has 75 percent of the ethanol plants in the United States -- classic Micro-politics.

But Washington generally works around what I call "subsystems." Okay, I'm sorry. It's a political "sciencey" term. But it's -- the relationship hit about three of them; one, two, that's it. It's the relationship of Authorization Committees like Armed Services, the Appropriation Committees that appropriate money for it; if it's a tax bill, the Tax Committees and their subcommittees. The interest groups that are structured around that issue, you can map these things, who's involved with them, and they have political action committees under existing campaign finance law. They can funnel money up to a certain level, $10,000 per candidate now. It'll be $20[, 000] under the Campaign Finance Reform.

The Executive Office of the President, the White House, there's 1,700 people in the Executive Office of the President in the White House, plus 350 interns. Yes, they still have interns up there.

And they watch each of these areas, especially OMB, the Office of Management and Budget, which has 531 people, and the administrative agencies or agency, there are 22 of them in the new Department of Homeland Security. So I say "agencies."

You interested in border stuff? There's about six of them dealing with borders. And state and local government is involved. State and local government, in fact, is very involved in Homeland Security because the first responders are the cops and the firemen, and the mayors and the hospitals -- that's Homeland Security in America -- and they're very powerful. They're coming to Washington right now asking for more money for more equipment.

I call them the pigs that come to the trough for full funding in Washington, the public interest groups. They represent a wider public, the publics of the states, the publics of the counties, NACO (National Association of Counties), 3,300 counties. They're very powerful. And then who covers it? Not you. You know where you can get the great stories, in my opinion, is read. Read the specialized media. There are 5,000 newsletters. There are maybe 10,000 websites. My students don't even know there is a library anymore. They go the web, as you do, and you look up "Yucca Mountain." You can find there are several publications that deal with high-level radioactive waste. One of them is -- and I read it regularly because I write about this a lot -- it's called Nuclear Waste.

Now it's not very interesting to you, but it's a very efficient way to get information from the specialized media. In fact, the specialized media drives, in fact, the agenda sometimes in the general media. You look at CQ, Congressional Quarterly, National Journal, they're more general, but they're specialized also in a sense. You look at the articles there, and then a week later you can see articles on the centralization of power in the House of Representatives in a general newspaper. I think it influences people.

The Hill, another specialized vehicle covering the Hill, or Roll Call. I read all of those all the time in order to figure out what's going on. So the specialized media covers it.

Hit the last one please.

And in conclusion, I would say that contemporary politics in America -- and I started out with this -- has a problem. We have little consensus about what the threats are and problems domestically. In health care, what is it? Is it cost control? Is it finance? Is it access to the system? It's all those things, none of those things, one of those things? It depends on who you are.

Secondly, if you can't get consensus about what the threat and the problem is, and that's --the definition of government is rank ordering problems that are public and dealing with them with solutions. If you can't get a consensus on problems, we don't have a consensus on solutions. We've got deadlock. And we've got deadlock because we've got very strong interest groups that disagree in this pluralist system. We're selling pluralism around the world, the State Department is, right?

Well, we've got pluralism, all right. Here in the United States we've got hyper pluralism. We've got deadlock, baby. And we've got limited resources in the budget, even though we had surplus under that liberal, Mr. Clinton. He had surpluses for four years. Remember? That was a time when Americans had 401(k)s. We now have 101(k)s, and there's no central core of leadership.

On Homeland Security, is it Governor Ridge? Is it Ashcroft? He's a scary guy. Or is it the CIA, or is it the FBI, or is it the President, or, you know, who is it? Is it a local mayor, where something happens? Where is this core of author-- of leadership?

We've got individualism dominating. We've got Micro-politics, individual interventions and incremental pluralist subsystems dominating things unless there is a crisis that exists. When there is a crisis and we have consensus, we come together as we did for about 10 days after 9/11. Then after that, we went into a battle over airport security.

Let's open it up to Q&A.

Yes.

QUESTION: Is this the system you want to export to Iraq? Is this reasonable?

(Laughter.)

MR. THURBER: I don't want to export anything to Iraq. I was against the war in Iraq, so why would I want to export this? I mean, I think Iraq is turning into Beirut, okay? Baghdad is. And that's what I thought ahead of time. So don't ask me about Iraq. And, you know, I'm dangerous. I'm saying stuff that the State Department doesn't want me to say, probably, but I don't give a damn. I'm old, you know?

No, I don't want to -- look, the reason I went to Kazakhstan and Ukraine and Cuba on the taxpayers' dollars is I like to travel and meet interesting people, you know? And, you know, I'll tell them about America. They can make up their minds about what's best for them. No, I don't want to export this to Iraq.

Yeah, okay, another question. I'm sorry, folks from the State Department, but, you know, go ahead.

QUESTION: What has the combination of 9/11 and the, say, power ambitions of the Bush administration meant for possibly shifting the balance of power to the Executive Branch?

MR. THURBER: Well, 9/11 saved the presidency of George Bush. Remember, just before that, Jeffords changed and the Democrats were controlling. He was going down in the polls, and then we had the rally effect. The rally effects were there and every time he goes down in the polls, we're going to have a Code Orange. No, never mind.

(Laughter.)

Sorry. You guys, these are reporters -- God, I shouldn't do that because you'll quote me and it will be in downtown Tokyo or some damn thing.

No. You know, when there is an emergency or something, it goes back up, right? He's pretty popular but if you'll look at the tracking polls on the economy, he's not doing very well at all. And in the end, it's "It's the economy, stupid."

Whether you are in the UK or here or whatever -- we have got all kinds of people who have -- who have gotten tenure at Princeton, Harvard and Stanford -- those are good places -- showing in these econometric models that incumbents lose when the economy is bad. Duh. Right? Okay. He has to deal with the economy. His father didn't. He's dealing with it through a tax cut. He is putting everything -- he is putting all the chips out there on a tax cut.

Now, if it doesn't turn around and there is a strong candidate, a strong horse in the other race -- that's a big "if" -- he's going to have a race. But we'll see. There's more registered Democrats, still, in the United States.

QUESTION: You haven't seen, in terms of shifting the power from Congress towards the presidency, right?

MR. THURBER: If that's the question, I'm sorry. I misinterpreted it, I -- yeah, sure. Creating a Department of Homeland Security that doesn't have the same Civil Service rules, also passing the Patriot Act. I have Pakistani friends -- scientists that have been here for years -- that have had knocks on their doors. You all have heard of this, too. And, you know, "You have a funny name."

You know, and it's almost that crude and ham-handed, and they are allowed to do some of this stuff under the -- under the Patriot Act, which gives more power to the Executive Branch, which, I think, is dangerous for freedom and liberty and individual privacy. He also has more power when it comes to Homeland Security because, you know, when people are worried about the security, they give more power to the government to do things, which takes freedom away from people sometimes, for good or bad.

There is this thing called the balance between Congress and the President. I approach it slightly differently. It depends on the issue. He doesn't have that much power over tax cuts. Did you notice? He doesn't have -- although it was his agenda. He does not have that much power over pharmaceuticals. He doesn't have that much power over a whole lot of domestic things. So look at the issue, then make the judgment. He's got more power in terms of use of force overseas, going to war, and more power in Homeland Security.

Let's take a couple more questions. Yes, sir.

QUESTION: How intelligent is George Bush? And is --

MR. THURBER: Are you a Brit? Are you --

QUESTION: I'm an Australian.

MR. THURBER: Australian. Oh, good. That's better.

QUESTION: And is he politically astute, or is it just Carl Rove who is doing the whole damn thing?

MR. THURBER: Presidencies have a way of bringing the best out of people. He's not dumb. We all had the jokes at the beginning, you know, he didn't know the name of the leader of Pakistan. And, gee, all of a sudden you needed to go to Pakistan and have a coalition with the guy. He had only traveled to three countries; one of them was Mexico, twice, before he became president. He is the most -- he was the most insulated person, in terms of international things, but the international events have forced him to learn quickly. He's willing to learn.

Carl Rove is smart. Carl Rove is going to do a great job in this campaign. Carl Rove, probably, is telling him to be for the ban on assault weapons, even though the President said that he would not do that. And he went against the NRA a couple of weeks ago. It won't pass the House anyway, and it'll lapse in the ban. So we will all have Uzzis and stuff, it will be great.

But he said that to appeal to the -- to single women -- or pardon me -- women in the United States; 89% of the Democratic women are for more gun control; 67% of Republican women are for -- he's no fool in terms of reaching out. He's surrounded himself by some very smart people. I disagree with them. I mean Wolfowitz is scary. Sorry.

QUESTION: (Inaudible.)

MR. THURBER: Not in your department, I know. You're having this little problem. You know, and Rumsfeld is smart and Cheney is smart, and he wasn't worried about that, so that's -- that's smart to do that.

If he debated the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, I think he'd lose at the Oxford Union. He's not very articulate compared to some other leaders in the world, in my opinion. I don't know how smart he is. He's smart enough to get elected. He's smart enough to stay high in the polls. He's smart enough to deregulate. He's smart enough to shrink taxes that, therefore, will shrink state government and federal government. That's philosophically what he believes in. I disagree with it. You know, cutting off the fuel, taxes, is a way to shrink government. And I think that's what Reagan did, and I think that's what he's doing, and it's pretty smart.

Okay. Yes, ma'am.

You'd better not show this tape to anybody. For your sake, not mine.

(Laughter.)

QUESTION: Mr. Thurber, as you mentioned very briefly, lobbying --

MR. THURBER: Yes.

QUESTION: -- during your speech, and I just want to know how far -- what did that means, lobbying in the political life here in the United States? Because I am coming from a country, in Venezuela, that it is calling trafficking of influence, and this is punishment. It can be punishment. And I just want to know how far, what is allow, what is forbidden? How far you can go? Thank you.

MR. THURBER: The Lobby Registration Act of 1993 replaced a 1946 Act that regulated lobbying. And '93 Act makes it much more difficult. But lobbying is a reference to the lobbies on the outside of the House and the Senate, where in the old days, and still today, you stand there waiting for a Senator to come off the floor into the lobby to talk to them about your issue.

Now it's much more sophisticated. Lobbying in the United States, highly -- it's highly regulated and transparent in terms of what you spend to try to influence people, and you can't give money directly to people. There's a gift ban in the House and the Senate of $50 in the Senate and $15 in the House. Gifts, you cannot give them gifts more than that value, although there's all kinds of ways around it and I'll tell you about that later.

But lobbying in the United States is not only direct lobbying. And in that case, what do you need? You need knowledge and expertise. That is the currency of influence. Okay? But in order to get in to talk to somebody, you have to give them campaign contributions sometimes. But also, more importantly, you have to have grassroots, Astroturf, and top roots, okay?

Grassroots. That's the people out there putting pressure on a member to do something. AARP is very good at that. They can -- they can mobilize people very quickly.

Astroturf. Fake grassroots. You hire firms like Jack Bonner here. They call out to the district and people in the district call back to the member to put pressure on them.

Toproots. You get the leaders of groups, which is very effective in the districts, you know, at the top, to put pressure from 75 Boeing Aircraft facilities in the United States to call people from the 75 districts to say, "We really want you to attack Saddam and use force against Saddam. So we want you to vote our way." That's toproots.

You also need to have advertising, frequently -- television adver -- you live in this area, there are all kinds of television advertisements right now about pharmaceuticals, about this Medicare bill. They're called "issue ads." And you have a variety of other ways of lobbying.

Lobbying includes all forms of trying to influence public policy, not only on the Hill, but also with agencies trying to influence the regulations, trying to influence whether the United States puts more pressure on Venezuelan leadership or not, that's lobbying. It's good. But I think it needs to be transparent and open, so we know exactly who's doing what.

And I think we have to have serious limits on what -- on the way people use money. But this town is full of people trying to influence public policy. That's lobbying. You know, in the Executive Branch, the Hill, even in the courts. The battle over the new selection of Supreme Court Justices will be a lobbying battle, a public opinion lobbying battle, putting pressure on members to do one thing or the other.

I have time for one more question. Yes, right here, sir, in the middle.

Sorry, I have to run. I have got a Ph.D. comprehensive exam that I have to sit in on. This is more fun -- at 11:00.

QUESTION: Thank you. Coming back to the democracy and the functioning of the democracy. How long, indeed, do you think the whole gerrymandering thing can go on until you have a kind of socialist elections?

MR. THURBER: Socialist?

QUESTION: Well, you have --

MR. THURBER: Mr. Sheriff, get this guy out of here.

QUESTION: You have assured places like you mentioned in the House of Representatives and the recent case in Texas. I mean, how crazy can it go?

MR. THURBER: Well, the major crisis is this -- to our democracy right now -- one major crisis, and that is we have redistricted so successfully in the House of Representatives that only 30 seats are competitive. There wasn't a single seat in California that was competitive, even Condit's seat -- you know, the distinguished former member of Congress that left.

Because of what? I redistricted the state of Washington in 1972, used a computer for the first time in the United States. A couple of other states did at the same time. And let me tell you, you can merge census data with election data and figure out who's going to win and who's going to lose and still have compact, equal districts that are contiguous, not weird ones like, you know, in North Carolina around the Highway 95. You can do it, and they have done it. And that's what they were doing in Texas so that the members of the Texas legislature left so they wouldn't have a quorum. It seems funny, but it's very important because what will happen is they'll redistrict -- the Republicans will -- Austin, and they'll get two, maybe three more seats in the House of Representatives. That's very important to the House of Representatives.

How far will it go? I don't know. I think it's a crisis. I think we should have more -- I like competition. I don't want to go to a soccer game knowing full well that Spain's going to win. You know, I want -- I want competition in elections also. We don't have it. It's turning voters off. They're looking at these two people, "Who are these two jerks? And this jerk's going to win; we know that. Why vote?"

So it's a crisis. How far will it go before we have a Socialist reaction? I don't know if we'll have a Socialist reaction, but --

QUESTION: You have socialist-type election.

MR. THURBER: A socialist-type election. I don't know what the hell that is but --

QUESTION: I mean assured candidates, like you do --

MR. THURBER: Oh, oh, oh, okay, yeah, yeah. The party assures them -- yeah, yeah, okay, I got it. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you, sir.

Well, we've got 100 political parties in the United States, and they are very different. They control the recruitment, meaning Democrats and Republican Party in the House and the Senate. The state of Washington, the Republicans are very different than the state of Alabama Republicans. They will control access to the ballots. They will control the redistricting.

If the local people disagree with it in the states, there will be a reaction. And there has been in some states, and they have gone to commissions to redistrict. That's how it'll happen. It won't happen nationally. Parties are very weak in terms of controlling recruitment. Like, in a Socialist Party, they control recruitment. They don't -- there's a lot of self-recruitment in the United States. 110 millionaires in the House -- I mean self-recruited. "I've got plenty of money. I'm going to run, and to hell with the party, to hell with the President." And that's individualism. That's where we're going -- redistricting safe districts and individualism. And with that, I've got to go.

Thank you very much. Bye.

MR. DENIG: Professor Thurber, thank you very much. Really appreciate it.

MR. THURBER: Yeah.

QUESTION: (Inaudible.)

MR. THURBER: Yeah, as long as it is not a three-parter.

QUESTION: How do you feel the suggestion of Clinton of changing the 22nd Amendment?

MR. THURBER: It's not going to happen. How do I see him talking about this? Of course, he'd love to be President again, but it's not -- we are not going to have that amendment changed, so don't even write a story about it.

(Laughter.)

It's just not going to happen. And we're not going to change the Electoral College either. And, you know, there are lots of things like that. They're non-starters. If your editor tells you to write about it, just say that you have talked to all the experts and it's not going to happen.

(Laughter and applause.)