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Mickey Edwards On Democracy's 'Cancer'

 

 

In his 16 years in Congress, Republican Mickey Edwards came to a strong conclusion: Political parties are the "cancer at the heart of our democracy," he tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross.

 

In his new book, "The Parties Versus the People", the former Republican congressman from Oklahoma details how party leaders have too much control over who runs for office, what bills make it to the floor and how lawmakers vote.

 

"The problem is that when you come down to casting a vote, you're unable to reach a compromise — to sit down and talk it through and find out where there are areas of common ground so that you can build bridges and you can fund the military and you can do the things that a government has to do," he says. "When you're making those decisions based on your party membership, based on what you have decided is going to help your club win the next election, then you're really doing a disservice to your country and you're really being dishonest to your oath of office."

 

Edwards cites the selection of committee chairmanships as a way to enforce partisanship rather than good governance. He says he has been in the room and watched discussions about "whether or not A or B ought to be on Ways and Means or Appropriations or the Labor Committee, and somebody will say, 'No, we are not going to put that person on that committee because' — whatever his or her constituency or personal views or expertise — 'that person is not going to stick to the party line on the issues that are part of our platform, that are part of our agenda.' "

 

Edwards says party primaries are a major reason why Congress consists of politicians who are committed to sticking with a particular ideology and are unwilling to compromise. The most ideological and partisan candidates tend to succeed in party primaries, Edwards says.

 

"We're allowing the clubs — narrow subsets of population — to dictate to the general public when they go to the polls in November about who their choices can be," he says.

 

Edwards served as chairman of the House Republican leadership's policy committee. He currently teaches at George Washington University and is co-founder of the group No Labels.

 

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Interview Highlights

 

On the negative influence of parties on American politics

 

"The parties have become so dominant in determining how individual members of Congress vote that it doesn't really matter what the issue is. It doesn't matter whether you're talking about a stimulus plan, a budget, a confirmation of a Supreme Court justice — on almost every major issue now, all the Democrats are on one side; all the Republicans are on the other side. And it's obvious that they're not really analyzing the issue in terms of what information they've been able to get, what their own analysis is — but, 'Where does my party stand? Because my goal here is to be true to my party, to defeat the other party.' And there is no way that you can actually manage a government of 300 million people with people in Congress, or in state legislatures as well, who are unable and unwilling to really look at the issues in front of them, figure out what needs to be done and take the oath of office seriously."

 

On his experience with redistricting

 

"I'm from Oklahoma City — pretty good-sized city — and I'm very much an urban guy. I was the first Republican elected from my Congressional district since 1928, and my district was three-quarters Democrats. And so, when I won as a Republican, it drove the Democrats crazy. And, by the way, when I say this, Republicans are just as bad about this as Democrats are. So ... because they couldn't beat me, the Legislature decided to redraw my Congressional district from Oklahoma City instead, all the way up to the Kansas border, halfway across to the Arkansas border, a big upside-down L. And Mickey Edwards, the 'city guy,' was now representing wee farmers, cattle ranchers, small-town merchants. And I tried really hard, but I could not be an articulate advocate of their concerns."

 

On Newt Gingrich and his impact on partisan politics

 

"Newt Gingrich actually did a lot to change the nature of Congress in making it more — there'd always been partisanship, but nonstop partisanship, partisan on every issue, bringing issues to the floor that had no chance of passage, but only to embarrass members or to put them at odds either with their party leadership or the folks back home . [it started] the process of requiring individual members to raise what's now $300,000 a year besides their own election campaigns just to knock off the opponent. So Newt began this process of, 'You look at somebody on the other side not as a fellow member of Congress, but as an enemy to be vanquished.' "

 

 

 

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"Your cellphone is a tracking device collecting a lot more information about you than you may think, says ProPublica investigative reporter Peter Maass.

 

"They are collecting where we are — not just at one particular moment in the day, but at virtually every moment of the day," Maass tells Fresh Air's Dave Davies. "They are also taking note of what we are buying, how we're purchasing it, how often we're purchasing it.

 

Cell data is also very useful to law enforcement during the course of an investigation and, Maass says, not difficult to access. A report released in July by Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., revealed that wireless carriers responded to more than 1.3 million cell data requests from law enforcement in 2011."

 

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Great speeches by Bill Clinton and Michelle Obama.

I thought so as well

 

 

There are certain customary, unwritten privleges the President has I read in such an article. Presidents have yelled at and screamed at Congressmen and Governors on occasion. You sit there and take it. Usually your own party but sometimes the opposition party. Johnson was infamous for it. Nixon would do it. Years ago, FDR and Truman would do it. Its not done often but it is done. Whenever the President's secretary calls you drop everything, personal calls, meetings, etc. to take the call this article said. However, this article said that for the first time ever Republican congressman would sometimes not take the call and have their assisstants say they are busy and they will call him back. The yelling of liar, the governor with her finger pointing in his face. Military personnel doing the same. Its never been done before to any President, even the worse.

 

This blatant disrespect is unsettling. One has to ask why only Obama?

must be a sign of the times we live in, no more respect for any authorithy at all.....

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FACT CHECK: Obama and the phantom peace dividend

 

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama laid claim to a peace dividend that doesn't exist when he told the nation he wants to use money saved by ending wars to build highways, schools and bridges.

 

The wars were largely financed by borrowing, so there is no ready pile of cash to be diverted to anything else.

 

The claim was one of several by Obama in his acceptance speech Thursday at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., and by Vice President Joe Biden in earlier remarks that did not match the facts.

 

OBAMA: "I'll use the money we're no longer spending on war to pay down our debt and put more people back to work—rebuilding roads and bridges, schools and runways. After two wars that have cost us thousands of lives and over a trillion dollars, it's time to do some nation-building right here at home."

 

THE FACTS: The idea of taking war savings to pay for other programs is budgetary sleight of hand, given that the wars were paid for with increased debt. Obama can essentially "pay down our debt," as he said, by borrowing less now that war is ending. But he still must borrow to do the extra "nation-building" he envisions.

 

He made a similar statement in his State of the Union address, and it is no less misleading now than in January. And the savings appear to be based at least in part on inflated war spending estimates for future years.

 

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"In 1996 Fox News was launched during the early stages of America’s great political polarization, which has since deepened into a political ice age. Fox News is the love child of cable news and political polarization. This child has demonstrated an amazing ability to make money for its parents, which is why media polarization is all the rage now. The deadly side effect from all the media polarization in our environment is reinforcing and deepening of political polarization. This is a good thing for Fox News as they need to keep the country divided in order to keep those profits rolling in."

 

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"In 1996 Fox News was launched during the early stages of America’s great political polarization, which has since deepened into a political ice age. Fox News is the love child of cable news and political polarization. This child has demonstrated an amazing ability to make money for its parents, which is why media polarization is all the rage now. The deadly side effect from all the media polarization in our environment is reinforcing and deepening of political polarization. This is a good thing for Fox News as they need to keep the country divided in order to keep those profits rolling in."

 

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No argument about that. I can't remember another election that divided people so irrevocably as this one. And your quoting a liberal news service shows that. It is no more unbiased than Fox News is.

 

The last election was reasonably decent, compared to this one.

 

 

 

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