Senator Joseph I. Lieberman Discusses In Praise of Public Life

Thursday, April 13, 2000

Unedited transcript prepared from a tape recording.

Proceedings:

MR. ORNSTEIN: --delighted to be hosting you. Actually, the rubric for this luncheon sponsorship is the Transition To Governing Project, a project which we are doing here, at AEI, in conjunction with The Brookings Institution and Tom Mann. Our goal is to try and create more of a focus on governing, both during the campaign, through the transition, and then moving us a little bit away from the permanent campaign, towards a greater focus on governing throughout the course of the year, and that means bringing a greater sensitivity to the value of public service, including focusing on nominations and appointments and confirmations, as well as the broader questions of how we can get and keep good people in public life.

So it is absolutely appropriate that we take one of the best people we have in public life and showcase the wonderful new book that he has written, "In Praise Of Public Life."

I've had many crusades over the last number of years, but for the last eight, at the top of my agenda, I'm not alone, even in this room in this, has been trying to get Joe Lieberman on a national ticket. I tried, in 1992, without success, and this year, I actually had some success. I got him on the ticket with Al Franken, and another book, "Why Not Me?." We balanced the ticket, a reformed Jew at the top and a Orthodox Jew in the number two spot, and in that book, he ascends to the presidency, and as a consequence, the XXII Amendment is repealed, and it carries on well into the millennium.

I'm trying in other venues as well. I saw Jack Kemp last night, and he said, "Well, who's your choice for running mate for Al Gore?" I said, "Joe Lieberman." He said, "Well, who's your choice for running mate for George W. Bush?" I said, "Joe Lieberman."

[Laughter.]

MR. ORNSTEIN: I said if we're really gonna make this process work better, he'll be on both tickets, simultaneously, and we'll see if that advice is taken, if my track record with either of the two holds true. Then we will actually be welcoming Joe back to his third term in the Senate.
If there is one sure thing in American politics, assuming he is not on a national ticket, it is that he will be reelected to his third consecutive term in Connecticut this year, moving forward in what has been a, just an absolutely wonderful Senate career, where he has become, really, the center of American politics in so many ways. He has had, as many of us have, a passion for public service, and moving on the crusade to try and make sure that others have it as well, during a climate, a very corrosive climate, which makes it very difficult.

So this book comes as a particularly wonderful gift to those of us who have also been pursuing this crusade, and I hope you will read it, he hopes you will buy it. We have copies outside, for that purpose, and now we'll hear about it from Joe Lieberman.

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: Thank you so much, Norm. Thanks, everybody. Thanks, everybody. I'm delighted to be here. Thank you. Norm's been a dear friend, source o f good judgment, good humor, and many, many insights that have helped me in my career. Thank you. I used to say that this business about being mentioned for Vice President was flattering and it makes my mother proud. Now I say it's flattering and it makes my mother and Norm Ornstein proud.

But it's all--I have no further ambition because Al Franken realized all of our dreams, and the wonderful denouement of it all is that Al, after being elected, with me balancing his ticket, declares himself insane, and then turns the Government over to me. Anyway--

[Laughter.]

MR. : [inaudible].

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: Yeah.

I saw Kemp this morning, actually, and he said that he was beginning to think I had a better chance of being chosen by Bush than by Gore, so I don't know.

[Laughter.]

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: Anyway, I'm delighted to be here. I am going back--I was telling my distinguished company at the table, that we are having two votes on the marriage penalty, and at 2:00 p.m. One of my colleagues got up on our caucus discussion on this, on Tuesday, and said that he already thought that marriage was enough of a penalty.

[Laughter.]

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: I will not tell you his name!

Anyway, it's great to be at AEI. Thanks to the Transition Project, it seems like a nice fit and let me just say a few words about the book, and then I'll be glad to answer any questions about it or anything else. I'm glad to be here at AEI. AEI was one of the first places I got to know when I arrived, and through its various members it's probably my longest-lasting supporter! Although he remains dispassionate and independent, Ben Wattenberg, who I met when I--well, we were both very young--back in Stamford, Connecticut. It's great to see Ben.

This book--incidentally, this is a bit of an odd audience to be talking about this book to, because the whole theme of the book is an appeal for the value, the honor, and the necessity of public life, and this is a room filled with people who I think really already, by your own lives, have shown that you understand that.

So if there ever was an occasion where one would be preaching to a congregation of believers, I would take this to be the case.

I have written four previous books, which sold, probably, a cumulative total of about a hundred. Those were ones that I thought of. This one is selling much better because I didn't think of it, and I got a call from someone whose name you may know, maybe you know her--Alice Mayhew [ph], at Simon & Schuster, more than a year ago, and she said, you know, I've had this book in my mind and I think maybe you're the person to write it. She's an editor there, as you know, or the senior editor, I guess, and I want somebody to write in--she didn't say "in praise of public life," but about public life, and to respond to the broad cynicism about it, and sort of simple, and in her opinion, wrongheaded solutions, like term limits.

She said, you know, you seem to--you've been in it a while, you seem to enjoy it. I think she said to me, "You seem to have preserved your integrity."

[Laughter.]

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: I think she said that. But it was close.

So I--so why don't you write about it, and describe through your own life, and your own conclusions, and--Lita, I didn't see you there. I didn't know there was a genuine Connecticut reporter here. Welcome. Lita Baldor of the New Haven Register.

So of course I was thrilled because this comes from within side me, it is the life I've led, and so the book really was a "labor of love," and I have been in it now--I've been in office, off and on, for three decades. So from this perspective, I can look back some, and in a personal sense, I feel very grateful that I made the career choice that I did.

I look back with a real sense of satisfaction and pride, and support of the institutions that I've been part of, though Lord knows, there have been moments of frustration, even anger, about what they have not done at a given time, or how they have done something.

I begin the book--it seems ethnically appropriate--in a dialogue with--who else?--my mother, and I've called her, on a given evening, and she's read an angry letter to the Stamford Advocate about me, and her question to me is, "Sweetheart, do you need this?" You know.

[Laughter.]

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: My answer is, "Yes, I do, Mom, and I love it." Of course she knows that's going to be my answer, and of course I believe she's proud of it. And the book is a response to "Why do you need it?" "Why are you proud of it?"

I take off from some objective indicators, which is the terrible decline in voter turnout in our country. 49 percent in 1996, the last presidential election, which was the lowest since, I believe, 1924. 1998 congressional elections, the turnout was 36 percent, which was the lowest since '42. So these are real objective indicators of--you know, part of the mystery is we don't know exactly why people are not voting, but--or maybe some of you have studied this. You can tell me. Some of it may be that times are so good, right now, that people are not compelled, don't have a motive, but, clearly, a lot of it is disaffection, distrust, that is, anger that has led to disaffection.

The other jump-off point is more subjective and anecdotal, which is the continuing conversations I have with my student interns, and I contrast them with my days as an intern, but I ask them about whether they're thinking about going into politics. Some of them say that they are, and then I ask them about their colleagues at college, and they say very few are.

And why not? Because politics is nasty, it's expensive, it's too partisan, and you don't have any privacy. Four pretty good arguments. I mean, four arguments that reflect too much reality, and I contrast it with 1963, when I came down here, and I was privileged to be an intern, college intern for Senator Abe Ribicoff, one of my Senators, and of course there was the Kennedy administration, the air was full of the appeal to public service. There was a real sense of excitement and awe about it, and just, I suppose, millions of people of roughly my generation, were interested in spending some part of their lives in public service.

So the book is a response to these two facts, not only to my mother, and I proceed to tell my story about how I got into it, the fights I've had, the two major victories in my career, electively, one in 1970, my first race, when I ran against an incumbent Democratic state senate majority leader in one, and the Democratic primary, and then the second big jump, in 1988, when I ran against Senator Weicker, in a very close contest. I use these as examples of how the system is open, how an outsider, or at least a person who is not at the center of power can organize, in 1970, really, in a kind of "children's crusade," because all the organization and the pros were against me, to--if you have a message and you're able to convey it, and you're willing to go through the ardor of raising money to facilitate that conveyance, you can turn the power structure around.

I also talk about some of the ways I've worked as a state senator, first, then as attorney general, and then as United States Senator, to try to get things done, and, to a certain extent, how you get things done, and why, in the midst of the growing sense of cynicism, and sense that nothing happens, why you still can get things done in Government, and why they're good. They're good for people, and the feeling that I've had, that while people, at some level, disdain public service, and sometimes those who are in it, a lot of them need us and they come to us for help, because they can't go anywhere else, and we try our best to give it, and sometimes actually succeed.
I talk about some of those complaints that the interns reflected, and the low voter turnout statistics, and what we can do about it, and just to make a very long story short because I don't want to deprive you of reading what is already a fairly short book, the--that's what my mother-in-law said. "Gee, I thought it would be a larger book."

[Laughter.]

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: You know, the reform, the regeneration, in a sense, the, almost the purification, has to begin with those of us who are privileged to serve. We have to deal with some of the ills that affect the system, such as the excess of money, and the amount of time we spend on it, the, you know, pervasive partisanship, and the sort of nastiness of the way campaigns are conducted. But, in the end, the answer--I quote everybody's hero, and mine, too--Teddy Roosevelt--that, you know, in a democracy, the Government is us--you and I--and it's we who can change it, and it's an appeal for people to, as I say it briefly at the end, at least to vote, at best to serve--part time, full time, elective office, civil service, appointive office. Lord knows, there's plenty of opportunities.

Our country needs it. I mean, by comparison, I was struck, a couple of months ago, at the parliamentary elections in Iran, to read that more than 80 percent of the voters turned out, and when we had 36 percent in the 1998 elections. I suppose, again you could say that they have more reason to turn out because they're more upset with the status quo. But, still, something is lacking here, that's eating away at this great democracy of ours.

So that's the pitch, by somebody who, after all these years, is proud to be in public service, feel some satisfaction, and looks forward to, with the help of the people of Connecticut, at least, to--

[Laughter.]

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: I don't want to depress Norm! --to stay in it for a while. That's my invocation. I'd be glad to answer any questions about the book, or anything else going on, here or there. Yes?

MR. : Sir, can you talk a little bit about the mental process, or perhaps the mental agony of, leading up to your remarks against Clinton in the early stages, and whether you felt any vindictiveness since.

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: Well, I talk a very little bit about this in the book 'cause my editor really said, "I don't want this to be a book about you and Clinton. This is a book about public life."

You know, I've known him since 1970, as some of you may know, when, in that first campaign for state senator, he was a student at Yale Law School, Bill Clinton, and actually walked into my campaign headquarters and volunteered.

I always like to say that this shows that even at a young age, he had extraordinarily good political judgment.

[Laughter.]

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: But, anyway, he did. People say, "Do you really remember him?" "I do remember him." "Did you think he would be President?" "Oh, of course."

[Laughter.]

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: You know, he was like a bunch of other, over the years, students who've been good enough to come in and volunteer in my campaign.

So then I got to see him again, when I got elected to the Senate, we both were active in the Democratic Leadership Council. He was chairman. He went on to sort of run with the DLC platform. I supported him. I was, I think, the first Senator, outside of Arkansas, to endorse his candidacy. I had the brilliance to endorse him two days before the Gennifer Flowers episode became public.

My colleagues in the Senate, needless to say, were congratulating on my brilliance at this endorsement. But I had the last laugh so--in '91.

You know, I'm very proud of a lot of the things that he's done, and it's been an extraordinarily productive presidency, in many, many ways.

So this was all a--the whole Lewinsky thing was a real trauma, and like a lot of other people, I went through the, you know, the fairness of saying, throughout the year, "If this is what he says, I believe him."

So when on that night in August, after he'd testified at the grand jury and then gave that brief speech to the country, I was really wounded. It sounds, in some ways, naive, but I can just tell you that I wasn't. I felt his admissions that night were really not adequate to what had happened, both in terms of the relationship and his failure to tell the truth about it, and, you know, I "stewed" on it, and I happen to have been away then. I was in Madison. Not too far away. We took a beach house in Madison, Connecticut. We live in New Haven. My whole family was there. My four kids and my wife, and the aforementioned mother. We spoke a lot about this, and the only defender of Clinton at the table was, needless to say, my mother.

"Sweetheart, everybody makes a mistake; give him another chance." You know.

[Laughter.]

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: But the kids really moved me. They were all--and they ranged, you know, at that point, from, I suppose ten to thirty, and they were really wounded, in different ways.

I actually spoke to him a few times, which I don't really want to talk about, but, I don't know, I still felt that this--you know--just for--to be honest with myself about how I felt about it, but also because I just thought it wasn't going to get better unless somebody who was a Democrat, and even a supporter, got up and talked about what, the reality of what had happened, and the consequences of it.

I also dealt, as I do in this book, with the notion that fair, or not, if you're in public life today, you really don't have a private life. But you have to be--we're on notice of that and we have to accept the consequences of behavior in our private life, or we wouldn't be proud to have become, as it did in this case, globally public, instantaneously.

So it was a very hard thing to do. I don't have any regrets about doing it. You know, in some measure, I hope that it helped. Somebody in the White House called me about three days later--not the President--and said that what I'm about to say to you is not an opinion universally held at the White House.

I believe that you helped by "lancing the boil." Well, who knows? The President and I, about a week later, had a long conversation. He called me about it. Very personal, almost spiritual. You know, my own feeling is that--this was quite apart from the impeachment and all the rest--that, you know, he's--he made a mistake, he acknowledged it, he's tried to deal with it, in a theological sense, I think you could say he's gone through a sort of process of repentance.

You know, you hope for the best. But, I mean, it's part of the historic record, so that, in some ways, is one of the most lasting and telling things that's happened.

I haven't--for those of you who know him, I think you'll not be surprised to hear--you know, you always, I suppose, wonder what is he thinking, but I have never felt any vindictiveness from him about this. We still talk quite a lot, and, you know, we've sort of gone on.

Yes?

MR. LIGHT: There are actually several different people in this room working on projects designed to strengthen the public service or support reform.

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: Yes.

MR. LIGHT: I'm at Brookings. Paul Light.

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: Oh, I know you. Now I see you out there.

MR. LIGHT: I actually have a copy of my book on the public service. It's on its way to remainder tables all over America.

[Laughter.]

MR. LIGHT: So congratulations on your book. That's terrific. We've got Tom and Norm who are doing the Transition To Governing Project, Pat McGinness [ph] from the Council for Excellence in Government, who's working with us on the presidential appointments project with Frank Raines and Nancy Kassebaum. We've got some people--

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: Great.

MR. LIGHT: --who are really totally committed to making public service easier in this country. I guess the question to you and to Senator Thompson would be how can we make it more attractive for you as an issue, to get your colleagues in the Senate to actually take the lead in repairing some of the problems in the public service right now.

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: Well, we should go at it again. I remember, we have a meeting once with Fred Thompson on this, and, you know, this is part of the classic senatorial problem of divided attention, so much going on, that you don't always get to focus on what you want to focus on, or you can't do too many things at once.

But I'm really interested, and I guess--I have no "magic" here. This is not a, you know, a big headline, or as Alan Simpson used to say, "This will not be a nine camera press conference."

[Laughter.]

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: But it is very important. The work that you're doing is very important, and I tell you--Fred Thompson has a--he and I have become, you know, quite close, and he has a, what I say is a very attractive quality, which is that he actually does get seized by, and spends a lot of time on matters that are self-evidently not high profile, because they engage his interest.

So I think we ought to try to go back to him and see if we can engage his interest on this. We've done some things together that are close, about, you know, governmental management. We've been doing some work together on governmental information technology security on the preform results in performance, kind of budgeting in Government, and assessments.

So we ought to do that soon. You've been trying, though, haven't you?

MR. : [inaudible].

[Laughter.]

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: All right. So what you're really asking me to do is sort of tug at Fred's jacket. Yeah. You know, it's not easy being Fred's ranking Democrat, incidentally. Norman puts me in a humorous frame of mind. But here's the kind of problem I have.
About three weeks ago, I'm doing an early morning call-in to a New Haven radio station and I'm talking about a hearing that we're going to do that day, and I said Senator Fred Thompson, Chairman, and I, are going to do the hearing.

The next question from the guy is, "Senator, what's your favorite Fred Thompson movie?"

[Laughter.]

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: I said, you know, "Don't you want to talk about the hearing?"

[Laughter.]

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: Well, "The Hunt For Red October" was the answer.

Yes?

MS. McGINNIS: I'm Pat McGinnis from the Council for Excellence in Government, and I'll follow up, and ask, what would you do, or what would you change in order to attract young people--let's take the children from age 10 to 30 you talked about--into public service?

Because I see, as you do, on college campuses, and in conversations with young people, that there is less interest.

What will it take to change that, in your view?

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: The interesting thing, that I didn't add, that I talk about a bit in the book, is that from all the indicators I've seen, the student generation today is quite interested in service, that more of them are going into teaching, more of them are going into other service work and service professions. But not as many, as far as I can tell, interested in going into government service, and certainly not elective service.

You know, part of it is what I try, in a small way to do in the book, which is that we have to make the case. We have to make the case, that if you're concerned about the quality of education or the quality of health care, or the environment, or whatever you're concerned about, young person--government is another way to make it better.

In some ways, if it works, the most consequential way to make it better. So some of it is the argument. A lot of it is what kind of role models do we, those of us who are in public life, constitute for those who are younger and may be thinking about it, both in terms of--as individuals, but, also, in terms of the institution, the process.

I mean, do we--when they see us on TV, do we tend to spend too much time screaming at each other? what a great Washington pundit, who I quote in the book, referred to as the "crossfireization of our politics," Norman. But it's true. And then the nature of campaign advertising just exacerbates that and probably does it more consequentially, because so much money is spent on it, and commercials do move public opinion, and so many commercials are the candidates attacking one another, or their records, which of course has been part of politics since it began.

But, you know, it's one, the way you do it, and, two, there's this added intensity of the electronic media that gets conveyed.

I always use this homely metaphor, which is that, you know, if Walmart used all its advertising budget to attack K-Mart, and K-Mart used all its advertising budget to attack Walmart, the net effect would be that fewer people would shop at either store. They'd go to some third place. That's part of what's going on. So I think we have to think about those consequences, and then, in a broader sense, to produce, to respond to people's aspirations, reflect their values in what we do as executives in government or as legislators.

There really is--and then the other part of it is just to try to get as many young people as we can to come and take a look at it, because I do find that the interns generally leave with a better opinion than they came with, because there is still, thank God, an excitement about the place, you know, and a lot of times, things are getting done that are beneath the level of the political combat that goes on.

Yes, Jim? Congressman.

MR. SLATTERY: [inaudible] when we were growing up, there were three very compelling issues of the day--the civil rights movement, war and peace in Vietnam, the women's movement, and all of those issues had a moral edge to them, that was very compelling, and they also all demanded direct Federal Government involvement to respond to.

I guess as I look at this, I question, today, where that one real issue is that ignites some moral passion, if you will, among especially the young, that compels them to get involved and take an interest.

It seems to me that, you know, before we sort of condemn the public, we ought to look more at the historic situation that we're in as a country and identify those issues that really do demand direct Federal Government involvement, and we're talking about today, that can really excite the public, if you will.

But I think it's important for us to recognize that--

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: Interesting. No; it's good question.

MR. SLATTERY: --the historic situation today is so much different. I'm just curious--

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: Yeah. It reminds me of a conversation I was in a couple of months ago, it was on a TV show, and Gary Wills was one of the guests, and I guess it was Charlie Rose's show, and Charlie asked--it was the night of the State of the Union. Do we think that President Clinton will be seen as a great President? Gary's answer was interesting, which was that though the President has done a lot of things, that the great Presidents, in the eyes of history, are those who have served at times of great national crisis, and though this President has been very productive, fortunately, he has not served at a time of great national, or international crisis, and, in some sense, that's reflected in your question.

I would say, and I do argue somewhat in the book, that some of the great accomplishments of the last decade, or so, in Government, have had a values and moral component to them. I mean, even the balanced budget, which seems fiscal, has to do with a responsibility, you know, with living--the traditional American value of living with your means.

The welfare reform has to do with the value of work, and whether the Government encourages work. The same with the whole anti-crime approach. These are now bipartisan acts of Government that have succeeded in the last seven or eight, or more, years.

The anti-crime movement has been about whether the justice system holds those who are guilty accountable, who commit crimes, and protects those who are victims, and innocent, and, internationally, you know, of course I would argue--and I don't want to spend the time here--that, for instance, the Gulf War, involvement in Bosnia and Kosovo, are great moral undertakings.

But I hear your point, and the two answers that come to mind--and I don't know if they're as galvanizing as, for instance, the great civil rights movement was when we were coming into this. Our first, the pivotal, this critical struggle to improve our system of public education.

I mean, that's really--talk about saving lives. That's where it's going to happen. The second is really more economics, and is, What do we do together--this is really tough--to arise up the bottom 15 to 20 percent of the American people, who really are outside this, you know, the rising tide? There are a lot of interesting ideas to do that, again, maybe more complicated than the clear right and wrong of the civil rights movement.

But the other one that I think does appeal to the kids, and because there is a sense of right and wrong, maybe more clearly than in fact is the case, it's about the environment movement, and rising--of course we've accomplished a lot in the last three decades in this area, but enormous problems, like global climate change, or our energy dependence, I think have the potential--I find, when I talk to kids, that this still "grabs them," and that has the potential.

I suppose the answer is we shouldn't pray for a crisis that's large enough, but that's one way--Lloyd, and then I'll come to Steve.

MR. CUTLER: Joe, would you give us your thoughts about divided Government, one party having control of the White House and the other party having control of Congress, which hardly ever happened until about the 1950's, and now happens most of the time. Do you think it's a good thing? A bad thing? Do you think it happens by accident, because people cross party lines to vote for the congressional candidate that they like? Or do you agree with "Tip", that they really want us to be divided this way?

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: Yeah. I have a--

MR. CUTLER: One side watch the other.

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: You know, I don't know what the political scientists say about this, but I have a hard time believing that a significant number of people go to the polls wanting divided government. I think it just happens by their personal choices, and, you know, that's democracy. But there's no question--and it's very important to be reminded of what you reminded us of, which is that this has not been the norm in American history, and it certainly wasn't in this century, until fairly recently, or in the last century. That's right; we're in a new century.

There's no question, that it would be a lot easier, and probably more productive, if the Government were not divided, particularly in a climate that is increasingly partisan. You know, you could do--I was just talking a walk with Fritz Hollings before, we were talking about a foreign policy matter, and he saying, you know, when he came to the Senate, Senate Republican and Democrat leaders would probably have gotten together on this and figured out what was best for the country, and taken care of it, and that doesn't happen a lot anymore. There are a lot of reasons for that. Just to go to the very heart of the project that you're talking about--campaigning is full time. I mean, legislating becomes campaigning by another name, and you're lucky when something breaks through that, or sometimes it breaks through it because of campaigning, because people feel the proximity of an election, and want to get something done.
So, you know, bottom line, if I had my druthers, because the founders, in their brilliance, worked so many checks and balances into the system already, that I think the Government would be more productive, if it were not divided.

This presumes, of course, that it would be a Democratic gov--

[Laughter.]

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: Steve.

MR. SOLARZ: Steve Solarz, a former colleague of the Senator's.

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: Great to see you; thank you.

MR. SOLARZ: Joe, you've championed the cause of family values, but you've also been very sensitive to the reality of repression in Cuba, which, as you might imagine, is a prelude to a question about how you would square the circle on the Elian Gonzalez affair, and what you think ought to be done, and how it should be handled.

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: I'm so glad you asked!

[Laughter.]

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: This is one of those moments where, I remember, when I was attorney general, we used to come to Washington once a year for a conference, and every year or two we'd get to see President Reagan. It was during the '80s. He taught us, oh, many things, but one of the great things--we'd go around the room asking questions, and if you asked him a question he didn't want to answer, he said thanks.

[Laughter.]

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: You know, the nod of the head, and he went on to the next question.

You know, there's no good or easy answer to this. First, just to say the obvious, and try to do this and not take the rest of the time, the child has been through a tragedy, and so how do you square this in terms of where he is, and what's the best for him? You know, I've been troubled, as this has gone on, to learn, as maybe a lot of people have, about how the immigration law handles these cases, because we have wanted, and the Vice President's gotten in trouble for saying this--because our natural instinct was to view this as a custody matter, and to say, therefore, in the tradition of our courts--and this was, you know, argued over the years as a great reform by people at Yale, for instance, Al Solnit, and others like that, that the standard had to be--it was a child psychiatrist--had to be the best interests of the child. Nowhere is that--Doris Meissner was in to Democratic Caucus a couple of weeks ago, and we asked her about it, and she said she can't really consider the best interests of the child. That she has to just determine whether there is a father and he speaks for the child.

I suppose you could squeeze in "best interests" there.

So I kept hoping that somewhere, somebody would do that, particularly since this poor kid had obviously bonded with this young cousin of his in Florida. But that's not gonna happen and, now, I think it's--I mean, in the best of all worlds--look, I was troubled here, too, by the obvious fact that one of my muses and mentors, Charles Krauthammer, wrote about, early on this, which he doesn't know that I really read his columns, but it was troubling, wasn't it? and should have lead us--what would be the normal paternal instinct? Get on the next plane and come to Florida. Why didn't he? I mean, I don't want to presume he's a heartless father. I assume he's not. It's because he lived in Cuba, where he--they wouldn't let him.

And it all--he became a pawn. I don't know. What would--the best of my--I think you have to give a presumption in favor of the father. What was my dream? That there be--that the father come to Florida and live, stay here with the child, and bring his family here, and that's not going to happen.

I must say that as I think about the prosect of the child going back to Cuba, I have genuine internal pangs about it, and part of this--and this is--I don't know whether this is fair or not. I've been thinking about my grandparents' generation, which was the immigrant generation, and, you know, many of them came over alone. You know, the men would usually come over first, to try to earn a living, and they would often bring teenage children with them because they could work. They were another source of income.

I talked to my mom about this, but I'm sure it's true. If the father had died, and one or two of the kids were here--believe me--the last thing the grandmother back in Europe would have said is, "Oh, send the children back to Europe." This was the land of dreams and opportunity and life wasn't so good over there. Probably better--forgive me--than it is in Cuba for a lot of people, in terms of freedom; but not so good.

So I was torn, as everybody else was, by this. I just didn't think it was as easy an answer as a lot of people made, which is, "Oh, send him back to the father." Because I think you have to wonder about the best interests of the child.

Now, of course, now that he's bonded with this woman, and he's gone through a trauma now. Not everybody's--he got caught in a lot of politics and I think, now, a lot of personal emotion by the family, that clearly has to get accustomed to the fact that they have to give him up, and I think now we should just hope and pray that it happens as peacefully as possible, so that the child is not further traumatized.

Yes? Nice to see you.

MR. : I have a related question. [inaudible] why we vote so little, and it's strange--I think it's fair--my colleagues in political science and I--th at the work done on this, I think, is no good, that is, it doesn't really address the question. It measures it. It gets all kinds of issues.

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: Yeah; interesting.

MR. : But looking at people, how they view this thing--but you know, if you look comparatively, and I think all these things will be handled comparatively, was one other country which is as low as we are--Switzerland. Curiously, only 50 percent vote in Switzerland. I don't have the foggiest idea why. I mean, I argue these are two countries where people are most satisfied, or--or not.

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: Yeah; maybe.

MR. : But another country comes in on the state. The French are the most status country in the West. When you ask people to, what they think of words, the word bureaucrat, you get--60 percent think it's a great--you know, it's positive, and the French, when you ask, What do you want your kids to be? the majority of the French say work for the government, be a civil servant. The Grandes Ecoles have, you know, the highest--

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: Right.

MR. : --status, whereas here, it's just the opposite. Now what--you know, whether that tells us whether we can do anything, or not do anything. But I think one really should try to look at this in terms of other countries, and not just, you know, say, okay, we're not doing that well.
I have to say--and I'll ask you the $64 question--why do people hate Bill Clinton? This is something I don't understand. I mean, I don't like him; but that's another question.

[Laughter.]

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: But you know why you don't like him.

MR. : Right.

[Laughter.]

MR. : But the whole thing of this intensity. You know, somebody made this point the other day. You know, Roosevelt aroused a great intensity, and it's logical, among the people that didn't like him. But Clinton's been a centrist, basically. He's accomplished certain things, hasn't accomplished other things.

You know, maybe he threatens values. But almost from the start, you had a lot of the people who were against him, who felt, you know, deeply against him, and I don't know if you have any theory as to why--what arouses such hatred--

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: Well, it's a tough one. You know, we're not going to see his like in American politics for quite a while. He's an enormously talented individual, and why he--there's a certain number of people who just, in some sense, I think, never accepted the legitimacy of his presidency. So when he stumbled in the Lewinsky matter, they--it wasn't even, for a lot of them, a new feeling. It just confirmed their worst feelings about him, and I don't--it's hard for me to know. Now there are a certain number--that's why we had this--there were a certain number of people, at that point, who were--of course whose respect for him dropped, enormously, but they still supported his presidency.

Remember, he had these--over 60 percent still gave him favorables as President while his personal trust ratings were down in the teens.

You know, I find, when people meet him, even those who really don't like him, they come away feeling, gee, he's--you know--they have a hard time dealing with it because he's such an extraordinary communicator, interactor with people. I think that probably will have to be left to the great novelists of the next period of time, sort of somebody who did--you know--maybe Robert Penn Warren is not the right metaphor, but somebody of that talent.

Tom?

MR. : Senator, back to--

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: Joe Klein has a new novel--you're right. "Primary Colors" was an interesting book; it was a helpful book in understanding.

Yes?

MR. : Senator, back to the public service, one disincentive is the criminalization of politics, the extent to which sort of philosophical and partisan differences are fought over, not in elections, but in courtrooms and congressional committees. It's sort of criminal investigation. It's the use of civil litigation in the discovery process to kind of wage "guerilla war," and the assumption that people in public life are venal.

Do you agree with that, that that's become a reality of American politics, and can you see any way of doing anything about it?

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: Well, again, there's bene this sort of "healthy tension" and a kind of "healthy skepticism" among the American people about their leaders for as long as the country has existed. But the criminalization and the partisanship, and the intensity of television advertising, and attack, and 24-hour news channels, et cetera, et cetera, has made it all worse, and diminished, I think, public feeling toward politicians even further.

Although, you know, the public really does--there is still some of the "I hate Congress but I love my congressman attitude," because they see their congressman, or even, perish the thought, their Senator, and so they distinguish from the mass.

But as an institution, we suffer. You know, this is us. I mean, we need some mediation here, some arms control discussion. We need a SALT IV for elected officials.

There have to be limits. You know, obviously, if people are doing something that appears to be illegal, they ought to be pursued, but to use the law, and even the congressional investigative process, not only--it demeans both of those great institutions but also demeans our politics and our democracy. Again, you know, it's T.R.'s--it's us--and we're going to have to self-correct.

Ben?

MR. WATTENBERG: Beyond the perception of a lack of credibility, I mean, the line you're hearing now is, "He'll say anything to get elected."

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: Right.

MR. WATTENBERG: And in point of fact they're just musing about--while I was sitting here, I mean, two former colleagues of yours, who, in their earlier incarnation would have been perceived to be Liebermanesque--that would be Vice President Gore and Senator Bradley--and they're pretty well-established as to where their views were, got into this presidential primary race and suddenly ended up well to the left of the Democratic Party, which is not where they were for their entire careers, and it just feeds this kind of thing, and says--now my question is, having made my speech--Is this happening more often, more intensely, than before? and seeing as you have the answer to these, What do you do about it? which is not an easy question.

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: Well, of course it's always happened, particularly when you're talking about a nominating process, that there's a tendency, certainly in modern times, for candidates in both parties, and Governor Bush went through this in the recently concluded Republican presidential primaries, to get pulled to the margins, and then to try to scamper back.
Sometimes, when you get pulled to the margins, to get your base vote out on a primary, you're leaving positions that you've traditionally held, and that creates--it may bring out your vote but it creates skepticism or cynicism.

I mean, part of the story here, and it's true in terms of the active groups in Congress, but in elections, as we diminish voter turnout, it means that those who are truly zealous about their position, who do continue to come out and vote, or lobby Congress, become a larger proportion of those who are voting. So their position is reflected, disproportionately. You know, it's easy enough for me to say--maybe the answer is not to run for national office!

It's easy enough for me to say that, you know, you don't have to--you shouldn't do this in a primary. It's harder, when you're in the midst of it. But I must say that I do think the public understands the difference, and, you know, there's some--now I'm going to speak very pragmatically, leaving truth and justice aside.

There's political strength in being consistent and continuing to "do your own thing," and look--here's the most recent example. John McCain. Part of his glamour, his attraction, although, unfortunately, not to enough Republicans, was--but a significant number, and clearly a lot of Democrats and Independent--was that he looked like "the real thing." The more unconventional he was, the more people liked it, because they're yearning for that kind of truth and consistency. So you hope that there's some self-corrective.

[start side B.]

MR. : There appears to be sharply increasing grassroots interest in gun control.

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: Yes.

MR. : I'm just wondering, taking off from what Jim Slattery asked you earlier, whether that's the type of issue which demands Government intervention, that could be an attraction for young people thinking about public service?

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: Yeah; it might. It could also lead them to soon become very frustrated, because this is a classic example of where a relatively small number of people in the NRA, particularly have a disproportionate influence on the process.

I mean, I've seen polls, and probably you have, if you ask gun owners in the country about whether they support various forms of gun control, about the only one a majority doesn't support is confiscation, which is, I suppose, self-evident.

Now the tide is also rising here, and we'll see what happens. But in Congress, it just all gets boxed up. Now I say all that to say--look--I mean, I have this caveat. It's very important to make it harder for people who shouldn't have guns, including kids, not to get them, but we're not going to have a perfectly safe society, if that happens. We're still going to have people who have--you know, it was a long time ago that Cain killed his brother Abel, so this is part of our nature, and it's going to take a lot of other things to control people's behavior, and including one of my favorite targets, which is the messages about violence, that the media--that the entertainment culture sends to our kids.

To me, it seems just self-evident, that the harder it is for people who shouldn't have guns to get them, the less people who are going to get killed or wounded.

Tom?

MR. KOROLOGOS: Tom Korologos, Greeks for Lieberman.

[Laughter.]

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: Thank you!

MR. KOROLOGOS: This cynicism, this lack of interest, without giving away the ending of your book--and I promise to read it--

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: Thank you

MR. KOROLOGOS: --what do you conclude? Is it going to get better, or is it going to--is the trend line going to be down? Is it going to be up? What do you say in the last pages--

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: You know, I am, by nature, an optimist, but my conclusion is with an appeal. It's not with a conclusion. In other words, I think it's in the balance. But it's up to us. That's really the end of it. That I go back to a Talmudic expression, which is, you know, the day is short and there's much work to be done. None of us--we don't have to--we're not under an obligation to complete the work, but neither can we desist from it.

In other words, we've all got to play our part, to the extent that we're able. So I think it's an open question. You know, I'm not a pessimist about the future of America, but I think it's a question of whether it's going to be better or worse, and it's going to be better if more people, and more good people get involved in public life.

Yes, Alton?

MR. FRYE: Alton Frye of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Senator, I want to lead you back to a theme you strike in the book, apparently, and mentioned in response to an earlier question. That in public life today there is no private life.

If you think not only of President Clinton's disillusioning example to the country, but back over quite a few years--the Gary Hart episode, Jack Kennedy's behavior, on the other side, Dan Burton's private confessions, and the Speakers, and Bob Livingston's--there's a whole host of things--not all of which are sexual--Tom Dodd's putting a roof on his house with campaign money--suggests a kind of imperviousness to harm, that people often acquire when they reach lofty positions of power.

Hubris, I guess, is a not exactly inaccurate term for that.

My question is since no longer will we see the pattern applied to Jack Kennedy of putting these kinds of issues out of bounds for media coverage, the likelihood is that if it can be discovered, it will be reported--is the standard you state--no private life in public life, one that in fact you think will be a realistic self-disciplining standard for those who serve in elective office? Or are we going to in fact always be bifurcated on this issue, so that those who reach high office may find themselves tempted to believe that having achieved so much, no harm can come to them in these matters?

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: That's a very interesting and a big question. I mean I'll begin to share with you sort of a poignant question that I asked myself in the process of writing this book, because Kennedy was my hero.

If the news coverage standards were, in his time, what they are today, would he have still been the hero that galvanized my generation to public service? That's a very perplexing question. The answer is probably not, which would be, you know, really unfortunate. But part of my premise here is that we've got to be realistic. There may be--journalistic, media standards of coverage may change somewhat over time, and one certainly hopes that some of the "mad dash" that occurred, particularly during the impeachment proceeding, when, particularly because of the Internet access for news, that when people were really running with stories, before they had what has been, I gather, a traditional journalistic rule of having, you know, credible sources, or double sources, before it was a tough one--hopefully that--there is some self-discipline going on there and I know there's a lot of discussion about that in the journalistic community.

But I think you've got to start with the premise that everything you do in public life is going to--if you're in public life, everything you do in your life can be public. You know, we're all on notice, so it's hubris, or it's some sort of mental block, because, you know, there have been enough episodes, in recent times, that--but where people know that these things do become public.
I suppose that you'd have to say that in the near future, probably, people will not demonstrate such hubris in public life, but we're-- politicians are people, people are imperfect. They are not only imperfect--we are not only imperfect, in the sense that we will make mistakes, but we will make mistakes even though, rationally, we know, or should know, that they could get us into enormous difficulty in our careers to which we have given such effort and devotion.

So there's no logic to it, and, you know, in one sense, although this could be clearly overdone, you know, this is--because I do believe that people in public life, particularly those at the higher levels, are inevitably role models, and their behavior, including private behavior, if it becomes public, has great consequences on other's behavior, values in a society, then overall, in so far as this more modern intrusiveness of the media into public life encourages imperfect humans in high office to try to behave better, it's probably better for the country.

But it's painful, and, you know, we'll see.

Yes? Maybe one more question. Yes? It's been quite a workout.

MR. MANN: Senator, thank you. My name is Paul Mann. I'm a reporter, here, in town. I want to go back to two things that you've said. You've mentioned the difficulty of working in the Senate because of divided attention and you also mentioned that legislating is campaigning by another name.

How much would the institutional behavior of the Senate improve if you and your colleagues had all or most of the time at your disposal now that you spend on fund-raising? In other words, talk about how the time spent raising funds, rather than the amounts of money involved, affect your effectiveness as a legislator.

Because it seems to me that the time wasted or spent doesn't really get very much attention.

SENATOR LIEBERMAN: No; it's a good point. I think it would affect it somewhat but it's not the cure-all for that problem, because assuming that you're not control--I mean, unless you had some controls on the amount of money that's raised and spent, which, under the current constitutional framework, it's hard to do--fund-raising takes a lot of time. It's one of the worst parts of it.

I mean, the way the post-Watergate reforms worked, they actually weren't too bad in terms of distorting the system.

There were limits on how much you could raise from any individual or PAC. But the worst part of it was the money, the time to get the money, and, incidentally, it would either take from your work in the Senate, or from this third element of your life, which hopefully is important, which is your personal life, your family life.

So I think it would make for--if you spend less time on fund-raising than we do, it would make for happier, more balanced individuals, who might be better members of Congress. The time factor is not at the heart of what ails Congress. A lot of it has to do, first, with what we do with the money we raise, which is to tend to attack each other, in the sense that we're in a constant campaign because, you know, people are watching and we're appealing, constantly, to the public.

So I can't tell you the number of times, and both parties posture on a given issue--incidentally, so often I feel nobody's watching, so I wonder why is this happening? And those who are watching actually think less of the institution because of what we're doing, though you'd think if we were rational, we're doing this because we're attempting--forget ideology--to raise our popularity. The effect is I think we lower our popularity.

So, yeah, it would help, but I think--maybe my answer surprises you--it would help most to reduce the stress and create slightly more peace of mind, perhaps--and this is one of my wife's favorite lines, and it's an important one, and I forgot the occasion when she said it to me, but I must have needed it at the time.

She said, "Remember, being a Senator is just your job. It's not you." Good point. It's a great job, it's an honor to have the job, but when you start thinking "you" is "The Senator," you got a problem, and of course you're probably going to end up not being as good a Senator as you should be either.

This has been a very stimulating conversation. Thank you all for what you do for public life in our country. Let's work together to get more people involved.

MR. ORNSTEIN: Thank you, Joe. I want to acknowledge John Fortier who did an enormous to put this together, and Christian Cook, who is a great athlete, which is not the only reason we hired him, running around the room, but helped so much, too. I want to mention, you've got this flier for one other thing we're doing with this project, a discussion of Fred Greenstein's, a professor at Princeton, new book, "The Presidential Difference." We'll talk about the quality of leadership that help one govern as we approach the next campaign.

I hope you will all read this book. I hope you will all buy this book. I hope you will write about this book, those of you who write for a living, and I hope that you will also join us--Tom Mann, Paul Light, Pat McGinnis, and the others in this room, who are going to really try our best to do something, legislatively, in a broader public sense, and in every other way we can think of to reduce the wrongheaded and ridiculous barriers that now exist to public service, both in that broader climate, the corrosiveness that exists in laws involving hurdles that do not bring us better ethical conduct among government officials, but, rather, just simply discourage people from ever even considering public service.

At this moment, when we have an open presidential contest, where it's not clear who's going to win, we have an incredible window to bring both parties together. There is a natural interest perhaps in doing something, and we've got to act now, and we enlist you all in that effort, and we'll be led by our able general, Senator Lieberman. Thank you.

[END OF RECORDED SEGMENT.]