(00:00:00) Chauncey to try to characterize an audience and so I won't but I will go so far as to say that this audience is perhaps somewhat older than for some of the other politically oriented speakers who have been here. Well, let's take for example Jimmy Carter Billy Bronte some of those folk but it's still quite a mixture a lot of students naturally as you would expect from the University setting follow a couple of minutes ago. I chatted with a young woman who is a former University student and her mother and I think you know Paula from reading the editorial pages that George Will in the past couple of days is taken a very outspoken stance in his column on the TWA hostage incident in the Middle East and I think if I recall correctly George Will was advocating that President Reagan takes some Swift action to in a military fashion (00:00:52) to leave use the word retaliation. Yes, I think that's right. Anyway, I spoke with Jennifer (00:00:57) sword of Eden Prairie and her Mother Barbara Morton from Minnetonka a couple of minutes ago to ask them about their opinion as you might suspect because they are here they very much support George Will's point of view and here is Jennifer Stewart. I think that definitely is there should be military action there shouldn't be any reason that people think that they should be able to to terrorize America and not pay for it whether I really feel it's sad but those are innocent victims on the airplane if we invoked are and and forth and kill innocent people in their country. Maybe they'll be more pressure on those radical groups not to behave that way. Well, I think we've got to trust our president. I really do II don't it's so easy to say and I'd like to go in there and you know do be very radical 2, but I think we must trust him he is on the inside but when we get them back, I hope he goes for it was the voice of Barbara Martin Paula and before her daughter Jennifer (00:01:54) Seward, you know, Dan it was interesting in reading that article that appeared yesterday in the Minneapolis paper are rather in his column that George will even seem to be taking President Reagan to task a little bit for failing to do something. He had a very staunch supporter of President Reagan and has said L at the end of the column said that well the administration should at least just keep their mouths shut if they're not going to do anything at all. So even a little bit of a backlash against the Reagan (00:02:23) Administration exactly. That's how I read it to. In fact, I thought he came down quite hard on the Reagan Administration George Will. I don't think we risk giving away too much biographical information that you'll hear in the introduction. From Vivian Nelson from the Humphrey Institute in just a moment, but he has been described as a debating coach for Ronald Reagan and as close personal association with the administration George Will's wife Madeline holds a federal job and under secretary in the Department of Education. And that's all you know, sounds very cozy. But of course George Will has I think Illustrated many times is fairly independent political point of view the Impala if you're interested in a little bit of the surroundings and what goes on I saw George will now that may not sound like much I saw George will be backstage a few minutes ago. He's wearing a dark suit. I think he had on a black bow tie white shirt and his his standard glasses that he's become famous for in the picture that associated with him in his Newsweek column. And so he's back there and what's called The Green Room hobnobbing and rubbing elbows with some local politico's and hanging out and sipping a Life's tea and they're all getting ready for what will be a 1215 start time for his topic a conservative looks at the Reagan years of all I missed the last part of your newscast because we are setting up here but has there been no late word on the TWA hostage (00:03:51) incident? Well, there has been before we go on to much further than I do want to mention perhaps you don't even know it but we are not broadcasting at our normal high quality this afternoon. We've had a little bit of a technical problem with the line from Minneapolis. And so we are coming to you over the telephone here sounds pretty good for a telephone line. I think. Okay. Yeah. Sure. I could we pay our phone bill this month. I don't know we might have to have a little confrontation about that their consultation a consultation that the better that's a better approach to the phone company, right? But anyway, hopefully some somewhere along the line during the hour here. We will get onto our high quality broadcast line our broadcast Loop we call it in. Yes. Yes. So anyway, but going back to what you were talking about. The the TWA hijack situation. Nabih berri has made another demand as you know, that the Israelis released 31, she eyed prisoners this morning. They said it was not part of the hostage situation that had been planned for several months and they were going to be releasing prisoners over a long period of time. However, it appears to other analysts. Of course that yes. In fact these prisoners were released just as the since that is one of the conditions for the release of the Americans to release more than 700 of these Shiite prisoners. However, even it sounds though, even if all those prisoners were released there still would not be satisfaction on the part of the Shiite leaders. Nabih berri said today that now they want all us warships out of the Eastern Mediterranean area before any of those hostages are going to be released and as far as any reaction from the Reagan Administration that maybe they're taking George Will's advice. They haven't really said, Anything today, at least it's been coming across the news wires. So it doesn't look like a very promising situation there. Nobody's moving on any side and there was worried that the TWA pilot had become ill but I'd heard earlier and the doctor had been in to see him. He was suffering from severe stomach pains, but beyond that whether he is going to be released no word yet on that. So once again, well, it seems like whatever George Will has to say about the situation what he would have said yesterday is probably the same thing today because they're simply been no real change at least as far as the public is (00:06:14) aware. Well, I can give you another audience report all out again the amazement in my voice. I don't know if it if you can hear it. But in fact now the balcony is filling for this George will the Humphrey Institute took something of a calculated gamble on inviting a political columnist as opposed to their usual bill of fare for these Carlson. Teachers usual bill of fare being ahead of State former head of state or some other quite High office holder and George Will well a journalist, you know and perhaps in the eyes of some something of a letdown something of a Comedown. Well, they didn't think so at all and I think their gamble is perhaps paying off because in fact the auditorium is filling up quite nicely probably about three thousand people here on this very nice day and that is what is happening were about a minute away from the beginning of George Will speech but they must have a fresh glass full of iced tea back there that they're all coughing because so far. Nobody has marched out on stage. There's quite a little parade that occurs as they all come out and now they're just moving aside the big heavy these curtains must weigh about three tongues just for a section now, they're moving aside the heavy stage curtains. George Will is in the lead. Yes. I was right he is wearing the dark profile just entering the stage now onto the stage with (00:07:35) The folks and we'll be hearing from chairman of the Board of Regents for making $70,000 in velocity during the introduction from Vivian Jenkins (00:07:43) Nelson. The app of the University of Minnesota and it's Hubert H Humphrey Institute of public affairs. I want to welcome you to this fifteenth lecture in our ongoing distinguished Carlson lecture series The Carlson lectures bring together many different groups under north roads roof. These are special times when students and faculty from all parts of the University join with people from the larger Community to learn more about the complex political and economic issues that confront Us in the latter part of the 20th century. I want to acknowledge members of the audience for taking their citizenship. So seriously, I also want to acknowledge the generosity of Kurt Carlson a longtime friend of Hubert Humphrey and the University of Minnesota for making this lecture series possible. Thanks to Kurt support to date this university has enjoyed firsthand exposure to the insights of 14 distinguished figures who may have made their Mark in the public Arena both at home and abroad certainly such a description applies to today's guest George. Whoa is a Pulitzer prize-winning columnist for Newsweek and the Washington. Most writers group he has written on a wide variety of subjects ranging from politics to baseball his reputation as a conservative with a conscience and his Unique Style have earned him numerous journalism Awards and the respect of a large National audience in a review of Wills. Most recent book statecraft as soulcraft Michael Jace and L said a political commentator with a reflective bent. Mr. Will stands Out Among the columnist as the most elegant voice of contemporary conservative political philosophy. It is now my pleasure to invite Vivian Jenkins Nelson administrative director of the Hubert Humphrey Institute of public affairs to introduce formerly our most distinguished speaker. Mrs. Nelson. Good afternoon, before I introduce, dr. Will I would like to announce that audiotapes of this lecture will be available from the Humphrey Institute at a cost of 7 dollars. Please call the external relations office at 3769783 for further information. I will repeat that number at the end of the lecture questions for doctor will should be written on the paper. You have been provided with and passed to the end of the row where the ushers will collect them and bring them to the podium. It is my privilege to introduce. Dr. Will to you Doctor will was born in Champaign, Illinois. The child of Educators. His mother was a high school teacher and his father a philosophy professor at the University of Illinois. I am always fascinated by the childhood passions of famous people and I discovered that. Dr. Wills was baseball my research has revealed that he had a distinguished career in Little League. And that he played for the Middendorf Funeral Home Panthers. I am told that their team color was black. Doctor will attended Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. His college career was notable for a number of reasons the first of which is that he met his wife Madeline at college and the second that he had allegedly liberal-leaning. He graduated in 1962 with a degree in religion and headed for Oxford University. It was at Oxford that he by his own account became a conservative why doctor will points to to conserve conservative heisting experiences while at Oxford a visit to the Berlin wall and the irrational intrusions of the British government in British life in 1964. He returned home and three years later earned a PhD in political science at Princeton University. The wheels are married in 1967. He taught at Michigan State and he's lensing and at the University of Toronto. In 1970. He joined the staff of Senator Gordon a lot a Colorado Republican as a speech writer and researcher doctor will soon became the Washington editor for William F Buckley National Review as a speech writer and a researcher. I'm sorry. He joined the the he was the editor for the National Review which is the leading Journal of ideas and political commentary. He has been a regular Newsweek columnist since 1976 riding on a wide diversity of subjects ranging from politics and not surprisingly to baseball. His witty erudite style has earned him numerous journalism Awards and public Acclaim Alastair cook describes his style as precise and graceful a Rapier handled by a gentleman. I find him more than witty. I find him funny reading his essay on Russell long, which is entitled The Serenity of chromosomes. I laughed out loud and I annoyed my husband by waking him up to read him the good parts. George Will's newspaper column is syndicated by The Washington Post writers group to more than 460 newspapers. He won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in his 1976 newspaper columns. He has been honored by the national magazine awards the national Headliners Awards and has earned a 1980s Hillary an award for editorial writing in January of this year the Washington journalism review named him best writer any subject. He does indeed right? Well on many subjects in this year of remembrance of the 40th anniversary of the Holocaust to of his essays on famous victims namely on the Frank and a Levi's they'll stand among the very best. He has been called a conservative with a conscience and writing about the Holocaust doctor will describes it as not just the central event of the 20th century. It was the hinge of modern history without sentimentalizing or trivializing the suffering of a Holocaust victims doctor. Will Prix the modern illusion that man becomes better as he becomes more clever further. He reminds us that the Holocaust like most modern atrocities was an act of idealism. He did not make economic sense and it hindered the German war effort, but it was a categorical imperative for Hitler and hence worth all the trouble. I recommend to you his several Publications which deal with these and many other commentaries on issues manners and people to collections of his news wig and newspaper columns have been published in 1978 the pursuit of happiness and Sobering thoughts and in 1982 the pursuit of virtue and other Tory Notions a third book entitled statecraft as soulcraft originally appeared as the God can lecture at the John F Kennedy School of government at Harvard in addition to his newspaper and magazine writing doctor will is also a network broadcast commentator. He is a contributing analyst with ABC News. He appears frequently as a commentator on World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. And on Nightline was Ted Koppel. He has been a regular member of ABC Sunday morning this week with David Brinkley. There are many more intriguing things about. Dr. George F. Will then there is time to explore you may wonder what famous Conservative Republican irked him enough to say. People who lie about history deserve to be forgotten by it or what convinced him that there are gorillas in the kitchen and porcupines in the pantry of the wills home to these and other naughty questions of our day. I give you. Dr. Georgia will whose address is entitled a conservative look at the Reagan years, dr. Evil. I want to thank you for that kind and gracious introduction. I'd only correct it by saying that baseball was not my childhood passion. It's my continuing Obsession it it is the case that in college. I was more liberal inclination or two explanations for that. One is First Corinthians about putting away. Childish things and the second is the second is that I was the director of students for Kennedy when I was in college at my college, but then I always campaign for the candidate who's campaigning on a missile Gap. I don't want to say too much here in Minnesota because as you know, when you leave Reagan's Washington and they say where you're going and you see Minnesota they say do you have your passport but I feel very much as a Washingtonian and as a son of the middle west at home here as a Washingtonian because I live in a city in which there is an unfilled and unfillable void. The void left by Hubert Humphrey A wise man once said that it takes a very large man to take up space even when he's gone and Hubert Humphrey is such a man and his much missed except in the power of His example that continues to animate a good many men and women of both parties as a child of the middle west by sold programs at the University of Illinois to get into the stadium to watch Paul Gill play football, one of the abiding mysteries of my life. And when I have not yet solved is what the devildis Caillou Mommy mean. I've I must say I haven't been called doctor. Well so many times since I escaped from academic life reminds me of the great moment when Pat Moynihan was running to get the Democratic nomination to run against Jim Buckley in the primary and Buckley at his headquarters at nights and I'm looking forward to running against Professor Moynihan and I'm sure Professor Moynihan will conduct an honorable campaign and Professor Moynihan will be a credit to his party and they immediately switch to the Democratic headquarters and they said Pat the gym Buckley's over there calling you Professor Moynihan Moynihan Jewel up to his full height and said, ah the mudslinging has begun but as As someone academically and trained and philosophically inclined I want to talk to you today go in from the very practical to the quite philosophical and metaphysical starting with the most practical matter confronting us, which is the matter of government action particularly with regard to the deficit and taxes. But only using that to make a point about the nature of the modern State and the I believe threat to our understanding of the democratic Doctrine in the United States 1985 is a terrifically momentous year in this country. Usually we reserve the word momentous for years in which there are elections but there is something more momentous than an election and it is this in 1985. We are going to decide whether this democracy can come to terms with the mismatched that is a menace to the good health of all democracies the mismatch between the hair-trigger Readiness to spend and the severe reluctance to tax efficiently. to pay for our spending and second we're going to demonstrate whether and to what extent a modern developed industrial complicated democracy can move substantially in any direction or whether or not it is the case in this I'm afraid is Wills law of modern politics at the Modern state is inherently conservative not conservative in an ideological sense, but conservative only in the sense that it cannot do very much dramatic in any direction yet like Gulliver among the lilliputians is tied down by a thousand threads not one of them substantial but cumulatively immobilizing Let me begin at the beginning here begin where everyone is worrying about this chicken coming home to roost called the deficit. I think that explains why the Democratic party, although it has lost four of the last five elections won only 18% of the electoral votes in the last four elections is nevertheless quite cheerful about not being in power while the chickens are coming home to roost the Democrats have an amazing savoir-faire in the face of Calamity. They deserve the John Jacob Astor trophy so named by me for the little known fact that Astor was on the Titanic. and he was he was sitting in the first class Lounge having a drink when it hit the iceberg and he turned to the steward and said I sent for ice but this is ridiculous and it is now that Ronald Reagan is going to learn the truth of Ed Lee Stevenson's remark that America is a great and wonderful country in which any child can grow up to be president and that's just the risk you take The risk became apparent immediately after the election when the president turned to the rapidly aging men and women who man the budget office and gave them three instructions. He said cut the deficit as a percentage of the gross national product one percentage point a year for three years from five and a half to two and a half percent do so without raising taxes and do so without touching Social Security which cause Paul McCracken a Conservative Republican economists to say that's like telling people to go swimming, but do not go near the water. And the reason why that is so is very clear. The federal budget has only four components defense interest on previous debt entitlement programs and everything else on defense. The president wants more not less. Interest isn't optional you have to pay it in it by the way not defense is the most rapidly growing portion of the federal budget entitlements. There are in the metropolitan area of Washington about three million people exactly 537 of them are there because they won an election. And all 537 of them have more or less promised not to touch entitlement programs because they are now viewed as matters of Rights subject to which I will return that leaves everything else give the president whose line item veto give him a long night and a long sharp pencil and let him spend the whole night turning it into a short dull pencil vetoing everything in the fourth component of the budget all discretionary spending in the government closed Amtrak close the FBI closed the National Park Service fire the Customs officers disband the VA hospitals Public Health Service everything and you will still have a substantial deficit. Why because the discretionary portion of the budget is about 16% And the reason the American people are so happy today is that they're getting a dollars worth of government and only being charged 76 cents for it, which is a very good deal if you can keep it up. I do not believe you can keep it up. I believe it. We're testing in 1985 or the limits of the possible particularly the possible in terms of budget cutting that which is politically possible in terms of cutting domestic spending and that which is prudentially permitted in terms of cutting defense spending. And the conclusion I've come to is very clear. And I will burden you with it early and get it over with. I'm believe every public speaker up to have a clear memorable point I take as my model in this regard. By the way, the late Conrad Hilton who was on The Tonight Show one night with Johnny Carson. And Carson said, mr. Hilton, your giant of American attainment of Legend of our entrepreneurial culture hotels bearing your name all over the world. Turn to that camera right over there. Look America in the eye and till your fellow countrymen the thing you'd most like to tell them based on your life's work. Hilton like a great Trooper turn to the camera looked America in the eye and said please put the curtain inside the tub yet lack the kind of metaphysical sweep, but it was very practical. My practical point is that we as a society are under taxed. Under text not because taxes are fun. Not because they're inherently good not because they're good for us. But because after four and a half years of a Conservative Republican Administration, it is clear beyond peradventure the bills that we as a society are determined to run up and it is equally clear that given reasonable assumptions about economic growth even optimistic assumptions. We cannot grow our way to a balanced budget with the Revenue code as it now exists. Now that is not the lesson we were supposed to be getting but we've learned three subsidiary lessons in the Reagan years that are worth going over. The first lesson is that the American people are not nearly as conservative as they say they are or at least not conservative in the way they say they are Americans illustrate what exists I believe in any democracy a gap between the real and the rhetorical expectations of the country how they talk and how when push comes to shove they really expect to be governed. Americans complain mightily about big government but one in six complaining Americans who works works for government one in seven complaining Americans about big government is a social security beneficiary Social Security being a the biggest and be the most popular component of big government. 1/3 1/2 of America's families this year will receive some form of transfer payment or other from government all the while complaining about big government. That is why in America conservatism is the prayerful belief that it is time to cut. My neighbor's subsidy. But it turns out we're all subsidized because the American people have a voracious appetite for government. They just have a negligible willingness to pay for it, which is that mismatch that is built into the democratic system everywhere and gives a permanent inflationary bias to democratic government everywhere. Second lesson, we've learned in the four and a half years. Is it is neither military nor waste Fraud and Abuse. That is the problem. Most Americans believe it is waste Fraud and Abuse because the Republican party which I am an adherent has told them sell for 30 years, but it's not true. I have travelled in 40 states in the last election. And about sometime in the meeting some guy gets up in the back of the rooms a sit-down will we know why the budgets out of balance? It's because I was in Kroger's the other day. And the woman in front of me were in a black chiffon dress and pearls and carrying a poodle. Bought a prime rib roast with food stamps and got into a Lincoln. I've heard about that woman right down to the poodle in 40 States. And if we could arrest that woman we could balance the budget but she is not the problem. The problem is the middle class. The problem is that in a middle-class Nation the middle class gets what it wants and it wants a great deal from government. The problem is that in a great 25-year period of burgeoning economic growth when the going was good and the generation of revenues to the government even a constant tax rates was effortless a period beginning roughly with 1948 the Marshall Plan in the beginning of post-war recovery and running through 1973 the Yom Kippur War in the revolution and energy prices and the Slowdown of industrial growth around the world and that 25 year period we translated the concept of civil rights into the doctrine of economic entitlements. Making enormous calls on the future productivity of this country and Promises to ourselves. Careless about the cumulative impact of those promises and the suppressive effect. They might have on the energy of the private sector which in the end must pay the bills. And careless about a demographic fact, whoever said demography is Destiny had it right in the great demographic fact, not just about our democracy, but about most comparable democracies is that the population is aging and the elderly are the disproportionate consumers of transfer payments, particularly pensions and Medical Care. You really want to be depressed think of this all over America all over the world men and women and white smocks scientists in Laboratories are making serious progress toward the conquest of degenerative diseases. If we do not die when David Stockman says as good citizens we ought to die. All the Actuarial tables on which our public and private pensions and Retirement Systems and medical programs are based are blown away. It is very easy in the course of a generation to add four or five years to the life expectancy of the American people. That by the way explains one of the little traditions in Washington, which is that every five years we fix social security for 50 years. the new math But what are we going to do about this mismatch? It is terribly difficult getting people to come to terms with the fact. We have a kind of cultural bias in this country. We are not used to deferring gratifications. We're not used to Thrift any longer. We're not used to pain as we go. We have a consumer culture now consuming government goods and services on the installment plan. Well, they've been lots of suggestions for dealing with one of these ways of dealing with the deficit was to Outlaw yet. It works so well with Jim we thought we would remember the Constitution. You've sort of the amend the Constitution to what it doesn't really require a balanced budget. It just says Congress must pass an imbalanced budget with an extra large majority, which they've been doing for 200 years. So, I don't know if the excitement's about it also has another big loophole. It says this of course does not apply in an emergency. Well, it better not I mean suppose what happens at toward the end of September when the fiscal year is ending and you see you're not going to balance the budget is the Supreme Court going to intervene and in join the mailing out of Social Security checks. Pat moynihan's is no here's what will happen. Since it says you don't have to balance. The budget in time of War will have an arrangement with Iceland. and second week of September every year Iceland will declare war shots will be fired. No one will get hurt Iceland will surrender and get foreign aid. So it'll be a bonanza Dyson but Point clearly is you cannot cure a basic cultural and systemic problem with words on parchment. Well other people say, well we haven't really gotten serious about budget-cutting. What we're going to do is we're going to come the magic words. We're going to give them Peter Grace the grace commission report. I don't know if you know about the president whenever you raise this issue with him. He was Peter Grace has all the answers go read the book. they're actually two million pages of documentation for the 47 volumes that were distilled into the one volume that the president hasn't read and it is It contains 2478 proposals for balancing the budget don't get me wrong. There are lots of important and interesting ways in which we can save money. But again, this is not waste Fraud and Abuse. There's just a different different view of the kind of government. We ought to have it's arguable but it's not waste Fraud and Abuse, for example, the big-ticket item 11 percent of the savings the grace commission proposes come from one Action cutting federal pensions. Well, why didn't we all think of that? We didn't because federal pensions like the rest of the welfare state we have was not imposed on the American people surreptitiously in the dead of night in 1937. It represents the churning of muscular interest groups and of interesting Equity arguments that have occurred in Washington for 50 years the government we have today is no accident and no conspiracy. It represents cumulative demands mediated by Men and women in Congress and it will not go away. That's why you can't do so we'll cut the defense budget. Oh, wait a minute. 57% of the defense budget is paying retirement very little to strategic weapons programs. Furthermore Every Spring Congress votes low ceilings on defense and they take deep bowels to the country and then they go right through the ceilings in the fall. Why because sometime between March and October the Senators discover that an aircraft carrier is not made in one state Pentagon in stupid. It's made in 30 States. Suddenly. They're sixty Senators for aircraft carriers. I for one am very glad. I wish the president would ask for much more. Point of fact he's cut this year's defense request fifty four billion dollars in just 12 months. And if he had got every penny he originally asked for every penny by the time he got it. We would still have been spending not just substantially less than the Soviet Union as a percentage of GNP, but substantially less than we were spending under Eisenhower and Kennedy before the Vietnam build up. Peter gray says never mind. We got all other places we can cut the budget now, maybe we could save as He suggests. We could say 90 million dollars every three years by putting soy extender in the ground beef in school lunch programs may be a good idea. Maybe not a good idea, but it's not a question of waste Fraud and Abuse. It's a policy Choice. That's the point. Let me give you one illustration of where the problems come in one very sensible Grace commission proposal was. Charge Market rates for the electricity. The federal government is generating out west under the federal power authorities as it is, they're generating it and selling it under depression-era contracts at a simple cost recovery basis. That means that 1/3 1/6 what private customers are paying from private utilities get for the federal government eight billion dollars. Every three years good idea good idea Trouble Is Congress saw this coming? They said the Hoover Dam contract comes up to 50 year contract started in 37 comes up in 87 but to vote on it real quick. How many for Peter Grace how many for continuing to subsidize our constituents? Well, obviously Peter Grace was blown away in a tornado. That's not the interesting point. The interesting point. Is that every senator from west of the Missouri River all those hairy-chested Marlboro Man Sagebrush Rebellion Goldwater table thumping conservatives every one of them voted against Peter Grace. Not just because they didn't want to raise their constituents electricity bills, but because they saw the evil principle at work the government starts charging Market rates for its benefits. Where will it stop? Next thing, you know, it'll start charging the real value of the water given to Western ranchers the real value of grazing fees on public lands. Pretty soon you begin to get the picture and it is this. compared to a western farmer compared to a Rancher compared to America's Cowboy so-called the average inner-city welfare mother is the sole of self-reliance because in this country the subsidy The subsidies go to the strong in the country and they are the middle class and that's why it's so hard to cut the budget the same is true about tax reform. Of course, we have a complicated text program. I don't have to think that's terrible. Every line in the tax code is a social program unlike many others these work. They actually get people to use their money in ways the government considers rightly or wrongly to be in the public interest. But you saw what happens you see what happens the minute you proposed tax reform all the interest the government creates client groups by giving benefits in the client groups, then organize get representation in Washington to defend and if possible expand their benefits, My favourite bit of tax reform this year was in the first treasury proposal before they modified it for political reasons number of things in there. They said we ought to tax non-cash compensation as income, which it is. For example, they said we ought to taxes income. The parsonage has given by the congregations to 37,000 Protestant ministers in this country. Would raise a hundred ninety million dollars a year for the government if you taxed that at this value as income. Then they thought about it and said that means have to put a hundred ninety million dollars in the collection plates just to keep the pastures where they have been. And someone said what are we going to do the Monday morning after they've been 37,000 Hellfire and brimstone sermons on the subject and they surrendered in advance now usually the surrender takes a little longer. Everyone said we must get rid of the three-martini lunch The Defenders of the three-martini lunch are not fat cats grown fat on too much gin and not enough for move. the real important Defenders of business spending in restaurants and entertainment of the hotel and restaurant workers employees unions. Restaurants in the United States and hotels are the principal for most employers of minorities and unskilled workers Democrats. Historically Democratic constituency, that's why you're going to see little fiddling around with that. By the time it gets to car does the same things true in baseball. This is getting serious. probably don't apply to the twins, but but teams that are teams that have real stars have to worry because 40 46 percent of all the tickets sold to Major League Baseball are sold as deductible business expenses un that George Dave Winfield native Minnesota, at least it's cool here. I believe cannot live in the managed manner to which he has become accustomed. You drop the bottom right out from under professional sports and interesting ways. The point is as Grace Finds out as tax reformers find out independent of whether you'd want to implement their programs. If we were starting fresh with a fresh continent as we did 200 years ago, which you find now is that the government is so woven into the social life and the expectations of enormous groups and industries that it is extremely hard to move fast with it without doing horrendous damage. Which is why as I say the government is inherently conservative in practice. Now that may sound like a gloomy message and I confess to having some gloomy view of the world. He grew up to be a cub fan this comes from naturally and I'd say that even if they haven't lost 12 in a row. I subscribe to the Ohio in 1895 theory of History so named by me for the little known fact that in Ohio and 1895. There were just two automobiles. And they collided that is a variant of the buttered side down Siri, which is that the chance of the bread Falling buttered-side Down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet, but I won't go with you on this. Let me bring these thoughts together. Now, we have trouble with a deficit of a cultural problem, but let's bring politics into this. In 1984 exactly one candidate on the Democratic side gave exactly one speech that an intelligent person could listen to without wincing and it was Fritz Hollings who got tired of hearing the other candidates say Ronald Reagan's a lousy leader doesn't know what he's doing and Hollings gave a speech in which he said Democrats are to wake up and understand that Reagan is a terrific leader knows exactly what he's doing and the key said Hollins is to understand a Ronald Reagan loves his deficits. And the key to understanding that is that he knows that Holly's that if you run deficits of this size for three or four years, you will change the conversation of this country for a generation. And it has happened the most interesting fact about the Democratic campaigns in 1984 was that it reminded me of the Sherlock Holmes story in which the crucial clue was the dog that didn't bark most interesting thing about those campaigns was what they didn't say, but one Democratic candidate campaign the way all Democrats have traditionally campaign for some enrichment of the entitlement structure of the Post New Deal welfare state in a way. That's kind of been one that's over. Now. You wouldn't notice that there's a consensus in the country because of Journalism journalism is probably always a net subtraction from understanding but it it certainly is when the story is consensus not conflict journalism covers conflict very well telegenic personalize it to exciting consensus is boring. However, there's a terrific consensus in the country. The house and the Senate budget resolutions differ as to how we ought to cut domestic spending, but they agree that we ought to cut domestic spending. There's agreement that we got to rearm difference about the degree as a kind of working of the political process producing a kind of consensus. But what's really yet to die is the Republican belief in the self-financing tax cut. That is the principal remaining impediment. That is the key to the supply side idea was that you could cut taxes strategically and it's not a dumb Theory. It's happened before that. You can get increased revenues from decreased rates that you cut rates and so stimulate business activity that you get more revenues from lower taxes. That's a good idea, but we sort of went out a little fast. By which I mean the following someone oughta write a doctoral dissertation here University on the sociology of the supply-side idea. It's fascinating one usually when it's partly because the Republican Party came to ideas rather late in life. If it used to be a party that had no it was you know party is a bluff Florida farm implements salesman and Flagstaff, Arizona good tough no-nonsense on ideological business people with no truck with untested new ideas. Part tested old ideas just in care about ideas. But then sometime in the 1970s it became the party of assistant professors that used to be the Democrats problem. But what happened usually see when an idea seeps into politics it does just that it seeps in slowly a great man such as Keynes right the Great Book track the general theory and there are graduate students and seminars and it's chewed over in the learning journals and slowly modified in form. It gets into the political culture. It's not what happened with the supply-side idea and assistant professor in Southern California a drew a curve on a napkin and a Washington restaurant. Call the Laffer Curve and a Wall Street Journal reporter Reddit read the napkin and put it in the Wall Street Journal in the candidate read The Wall Street Journal and boom. It was right at the center of American politics. And you have to remember of Ronald Reagan what Cardinal Wolsey said of Henry the 8th. He said be very careful what you put in his head. You'll never get it out particularly. He's no different than anyone else who's in the business and particularly if it's a seductive idea such as a self-financing tax cut that obviates all the difficult needs for choices. That's why he campaigned in 1984 virtually not mentioning any domestics program Cuts going to do it with waste Fraud and Abuse and with rapid economic growth and still we cling to that still we cling to the hope that the fundamental problem of our political culture of the mismatch between appetites and the willingness to pay can be solved by rapid economic growth. Look if you make enough assumptions, you can get there if you assume longer and more rapid growth than ever before in our history accompanied by plummeting interest rates, if you make enough interesting assumptions, you can assume that it reminds me of what was David Stockman's favorite joke until it became National policy and it is the it's the story of the politician and The Economist who are walking across a field and they fall into a deep pit with very steep sides. And the politicians is gosh. We can't get out and The Economist says not to worry. We'll just assume a ladder now if you make enough assumptions all will be well, but at the bottom of our problem. Is not the budget process Pat moynihan's is that's an oxymoron budget process. But anyway, it's not the budget process that's at fault and it's not this president or that Congress. The problem is with this political culture of a country that is slightly too easy and it's conscience about thinking only about the pursuit of private self interest in the public Arena about bending Public Power to private purposes. We have I think degraded the Democratic dogma and if you want to know how just train your ear to listen during the next political campaign For the candidates using the word responsive everyone promises to be responsive when in fact, the problem is our government has a hair-trigger responsiveness. What it needs is a capacity to not respond to say no to say wait to say not so much. That is after all the precondition of leadership leadership is the ability to inflict pain and get away with it. You hope short-term pain for what you hope will be long-term gain, but it is the ability to have some discomfort in the longer and larger National interest. The inability to do this is written all over. One understand how your government works do not read. The Constitution has nothing to do with it. Read the Washington telephone directory. particularly those pages that begin National Association of those are some of the 2,500 trade groups and other lobbies represented in Washington after government and then publishing in all its forms. They are the third largest employer group in Washington, you know, the big ones the National Association of Manufacturers National Association of broadcasters. You may not be familiar with the national crushed stone Association. Where the National Ice Association. or the National Association of truck stop operators the director of that is Ron Ziegler, by the way. It's called water seeking its own level. But we have of you walk down K Street in Washington. I'm not recommending that Lord knows but if you do you'll see all those glass buildings and behind every pane of glass there. The three elements of modern government is a telephone a fluorescent lamp and a lawyer. And they're there to represent every group discreet enough insular enough to be organized and intense see democracy is not about numbers. You must get over that it's about intensity think of this we have in this country 230 million hamburger eaters 260. If you count the illegal immigrants, we have a few hundred thousand cattle raisers yet. We have meet import quotas to hold up the price of am Burger. because the few hundred thousand are organized attentive and intense about public policy as it reflects beef and the other people are not and this degradation of the democratic Dogma is not a Republican or a Democratic failing its bipartisan the worst example, I can give you of it came from for Jerry Ford shortly after he became president during the energy crisis and at a press conference. He was asked if he favored a stiff tax on a gallon of gasoline as a form of price rationing to dampen demand. Jerry Ford said yesterday. I saw a pool. That showed that 81 percent of the American people do not want. To pay more for a gallon of gasoline. George Gallup has gotten rich. I might say parenthetically showing that people do not want to pay more for a gallon of gasoline ABC television, which I am associated. It's uniquely qualified to bring you the world. We say so ourselves. Did a poll after the president gave his tax speech in which he said 82 percent of the American people want a fairer tax code. I want to meet the other 18. Anyway, Jerry Ford said in answer that question. He said yesterday. I saw a poll shows that 81 percent of the American people do not want to pay more for a gallon of gasoline. And therefore he continued I am on Solid Ground in opposing it. Well all ground seems solid when you're here is to it. And as Churchill said it is difficult to look up to someone in that position, but it is technically increasingly the position that our government is in As a matter of philosophy. How did we get to this this celebration of this kind of purse mad Pursuit Of Interest by factions some give you a brief tour of the history of political philosophy in 30 seconds. before America came along all political philosophers were agreed that if it was an enormous if If democracy were to be possible anywhere It could only exist in a small face to face Society. Like Russo's Geneva or Pericles Athens a small community. You could walk across in half a day. Because in large communities you would have factions and factions were the enemy of democracy. The American Founders and particularly James Madison said they got it exactly wrong the more factions the better. And they arrived at that conclusion and its corollary conclusion that what we want is an extensive Republic. Through a simple catechism. They said what is the worst evil to which politics gives rise. The answer is tyranny to what form of tyranny are democracies pray. The tyranny of the majority solution don't have majorities have shifting coalition's of minorities never a stable and potentially tyrannical majority the way to do that is to have a government defined as it is in the Federalist Papers as existing to protect the quote different and unequal capacities of acquiring property. So that you shall have in the language of Federalist 10 a saving multiplicity of factions, the more the merrier the bigger the better, which is why Thomas Jefferson given a chance through overall his Notions about the constricted power of the presidency and on his own hook bought the Louisiana Purchase when offered simply to expand the country more room for more factions. You ever ask yourself this? Why was it? That in the middle of the 1770s. when there were 3 million free Americans eighty percent of them living within 20 miles of Atlantic Tidewater with their backs to an unexplored continent. Why is it when the head they formed their first Congress? They called it a Continental Congress. It's hot spot. But they knew where they were going. They were going to California. It made perfect sense because they're going to have a big extensive Republic a republic given maximum scope. The pursuit of interest in organized factions where we've got the results now may have worked fairly well in a small rural society, which we had into remarkably interest recently, but that political rhetoric that political philosophy that understanding of our political duties is to thin and attenuated the do justice to what is required in the kind of complicated society in which we now live. I think we must do better. I think we need a new rhetoric that leads people to a higher understanding to a more guilty conscience about using their private organizations to Bend Public Power to their purposes and until we get properly frightened by the consequences of not doing so we're going to have to have more and more people trying to get more and more of their fellow countrymen feeling more and more reluctant to take advantage of the system as we are now all gifted at taking advantage of it. Now. I've talked it extravagant length. I'm sorry. I don't mind those of you who are looking at your watches you who are holding them up to your ears telling me something so lest I leave you on a despairing moat. I want to give a more optimistic picture and that is this I've talked minute to go back consensus. How it has moved substantially in this country and how our political system is. I believe working. It's generating intelligent men and women in the model of Hubert Humphrey not his equal but in His image It is producing decent public spirited people in and out of government who are churning in this wonderful conversation we have of which journalism is a small but entertaining part churning to a kind of consensus very intelligent extremely moderate. And there's no other system in the world as capable of exerting as educational effect at his high level of argument. Does the United States system and that is why in the end? I do not believe the public as I know it. Is going to walk off any Cliffs it will come close and it will terrify us on occasion. But in fact, we're going to see the capacity for moderation reasserting itself. So if I wanted to close as I do on a cheerful note, I would be on the words of a great social thinker arguably the greatest Institute Oakville. I mean, of course Yogi Berra who True story he was sitting in the Dugout one day and someone came up and said Yogi the people of Dublin Ireland Catholic Ireland have just elected a Jewish mayor and Yogi said, ah only in America. On that note I shall subside. I thank you very much for inviting me to be part of this distinguished series and I welcome your questions columnist. George will just taking a sip of water now and Vivian Nelson stepping through the microphone by his side of in Jenkins Nelson from the Humphrey Institute moderator for a short question and answer period with the following would last about 20 minutes or so. Thank you for a very insightful and entertaining speech I would like to thank the college Republicans the young deer Fellers and the public affairs Student Association at the Humphrey Institute for volunteering to be Usher's for today's event. Once more audiotapes of a conservative looks at the Reagan years are available at a cost of 7 dollars. Please call the Humphreys in external relations office at 3769783. That's 3769783 for further information. For those of you. We were not able to contact this afternoon's question and answer session and Coffman Union has been canceled doctor will need to leave early to attend a meeting in Chicago. And now we start the question and answer part. The first question is what are the most important lessons that presidential candidates in 1988 should learn have learned from Ray. What are the odds that they will have learned them the source of Ronald Reagan's political strength, which is what's going to interest people who want his job is that he has had a clear defined public personality and has taken great care and not to muddy the picture the American people it is now clear. No, they don't I don't understand M1. They don't understand the velocity of money. They don't understand what a Merv is or how many are on a trident submarine what they know. Is it as the world becomes more complicated two things happen the stakes of our politics have risen and the need to Simply defer and depend on your trust in your national leaders rather than your comprehension of the minutest details of public policy Ronald Reagan understood this perfectly and understood the extent to which our elections are referenda on character. And that doesn't mean character independent of issues. Not at all. But character defined in terms of clearly held obviously passionately felt issues that I think is what candidates are looking for going to want to replicate in 1988. Did you feel you were undertaxed before you made a seven-figure income? That's a very fair question and I think if I didn't have a surplus I wouldn't say what I say is easily but I'd say it as insistently because remember it is not people with six and seven figure incomes who are getting their disproportionate share of a government. It is the middle class American with a fairly small margin for economic pleasure. Who is the beneficiary of this? That's what makes it dramatic. You can't tax Peter to pay for Paul in this country for very long. It comes back to the middle class Russell long as a taxpayer Russell long said that tax reform is always don't tax. You don't tax me tax the fellow behind the tree, but it won't work. It won't work. If in the middle class country like this the middle class pays the bills just as the middle class gets the benefits and and it's simply a matter of bringing them into line. No sense in which a country as wealthy as ours can't afford more than 19 percent of gross national product to the government. And which clear we're going to spend 23 percent. What is your opinion of the recent Doonesbury cartoon series involving Frank Sinatra and the president as mr. Trudeau violated any ethical principles. If so, which one well I don't hang on Doonesbury is every word. So I may not have gone all that sort of tuned out when I was the feature of six or seven of his at one point. I have no particular brief for Frank Sinatra the frenzied keeps but it does seem to me that Trudeau sailed fairly close to the wind in presuming people who may be unsavory in some aesthetic and maybe even juridical sense, but who simply have not been convicted of the things he rather cheerfully accused them of and it seemed to me like an easy target in a world with bigger and more worthy ones. Was President Reagan's re-election in 1984 more and endorsement of the personality than a sign of politically conservative growth? I think was a sign of both the first answer. I gave it touches this it was an affirmation of character. It was a statement that the Rival candidate was not meeting the conception of national leadership that the public had in mind. It was clearly a referendum. I'm sorry to say on the subject of taxes, which really close that issue for at least three or four years. But basically it was a mixture didn't see people have got this wrong. They say, well Ronald Reagan has this magic smile and he sort of seduces the country and he therefore he's the Teflon president to nothing sticks. That's not true in 1982 the middle of the recession when his policies were thought to be not working. He fell as low in the polls as Jimmy Carter had fallen the American people are not fools. When I say they're voting on character, I'm not saying they're fooled by Cosmetics. It's not the same thing the American people want performance and they want trustworthiness and both of them came together and their judgment in 1984. Why is it when Jimmy Carter made a mistake the Press ripped him apart and the public grew too vehemently dislike him and when Reagan makes blunders, they are discarded like Deadwood. I think I and I know the president would disagree that that's a fair characterization of the press treatment of him. There is the sense in which in this is another lesson of our recent politics and that is a president who is light who is is and is seen to be a genuinely nice person. Thereby acquires a kind of cushion in the public. The public was a well not working but he's I can't help it. I like him. They say he's all right, and he's trying and he's a good citizen. Jimmy Carter was treated differently in part because he was too many people myself. Off including insufferably Pious and was viewed as not a very generous kind and forgiving person and therefore got all the charity. He showed in one of your syndicated columns in the fall of 1980. You wrote twice now Americans have said emphatically that they do not want a McGovern night president. They set it 1972 and in 1980 when they had learned that they had one in office. I looked very hard for any satiric intent, but could find none apparent. Do you really believe that Jimmy Carter was a McGovern clone. Do you think McGovern nights are still in control of the democratic party or is it just that all Democrats look alike? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes and no. I am frantically believe that Jimmy Carter was McGovern itin inclinations and foreign policy. That is he was a his impulses were toward the new isolationism the old isolationism in the 20s was the belief that the United States should stay out of the world because we're too good for the world and McGovern I'd isolationism is the United States should stay out of the world because the world is too good for us that we are the problem or a spreader of violence and poverty and all their other rubbish around the world. I believe Carter subscribe to that. I believe he subscribed with sentimental view on McGovern night view of the efficacy of the United States example, the power of Institutions like the United Nations and the world Court as a substitute for the real traditional sinews of National Power. There are other Democrats you don't see them at the Democratic Convention had to stay up pretty later. Get up pretty early to see Lloyd bentsen under child's of Florida Senator born of Oklahoma people like this Sam Nunn of Georgia. The the Jackson scoop Jackson wing of the party is alive and small, but well and I believe the return to National Health of the democratic party requires returning to the Roosevelt Kennedy Truman Johnson and Hubert Humphrey positions on foreign policy, which combined kind of weird really took foreign policy off the liberal conservative Continuum in an unsentimental appraisal of the world. Do you feel that greater political variety should exist what effect could political sages with access to the nation's ear as you haven't Paving the way for stronger political parties other than Republican and Democrat. I think the they are strong systemic weaknesses in our party system that are pretty immune to the x or tations that people like I can give the principal one of which being that the parties are so weak now and so cut off as the sources of fundraising that everyone who goes into politics does so now as an entrepreneur forming his own staff ginning up his own fundraising mechanism when with no felt obligation or loyalty to any larger group, it makes for a kind of a domestic politics. It makes Congress and to a committee of 535 interpreters, which is very hard to move and how you reverse it. I don't quite know but one way you don't reverse it. It seems to me is with Public financing one of the reasons. I'm a skeptical about public financing of political campaigns is that it removes the last great function of the political parties. I am a school-age child and I think that soy burgers are disgusting. Could you please explain why we have to eat it and why the school still call them hamburgers in the menus? That's an excellent question. I if Reagan did that write him a letter and that's exactly the kind of letter of get on television. I can't imagine eating one of those things. What do you see as Reagan's view towards women's rights? He's all in favor of some of his best friends are women and mine too. What we have in this country is this is an example the women's issues and example of how if you capture the vocabulary, then you've captured the agenda on the right. Once the conservatives got National Health Service stigmatized as socialized medicine. The argument was over that was the end of that and on the on the left now it is the the semantic conscription has been who's for women's rights and who's against but they Define women's rights in terms of comparable worth which itself is a kind of semantics sleight of hand because it means something rather different than equal pay for equal work and there's a whole argument about what agenda is that the definite article the women's agenda and you have all kinds of groups like The National Organization for Women who in the 12 months before a national election. And enjoy an enormous Vogue that clutter up the Sunday morning talk shows presuming to speak for 51% of the population. And that's preposterous. I would point out. You know, there was last year one huge gender gap in our politics. And that was the Democrats couldn't carry white males just couldn't get their votes. And that was the gender gap in spite of all the nonsense about the gender gap Ronald and and the Geraldine Ferraro phenomenon, Ronald Reagan carried women italian-americans. and her District in Queens I mean, it seems to me that women again women like the rest of the American elected or not fools and they cut through all the people presuming to speak for them and made a judgment on the large National interest of the country rather than on women's issues Farm issues. I don't think that's how people behave when they go into voting booths. I don't think they go in as women are farmers. They met when voting for a congressman met for a state legislature met for a senator, but the evidence is overwhelming that when people vote for president, they are in a very serious mood and it is not serious to say I'm voting as a farmer or I am voting as a woman hits people vote As Americans. Thank God for small favors. In many of your articles regarding arms control and the Soviet Union you say in essence that we should not trust the Russians and that it is futile to negotiate any Arms Control agreement because it cannot be verified in a closed society as Russia's what then is your solution to the growing nuclear threat. Well my solution to the dealing with the Soviet Union is to keep your powder dry and have lots of powder. I wish I could give you a more sanguine answer but there isn't any we've had a cold war with the Soviet Union since 1917. We're going to have a cold war for just as long into the future and it will behooves us as adults to wish otherwise to allow our wishes to be the father of our thoughts. I am opposed to the Arms Control process. Not just because verification is difficult, which it is not just because the Soviet Union cheats comprehensively which it does. I'm opposed to it because a there is an asymmetry in the process. There is no domestic opinion in the Soviet Union pushing their leaders to get agreements to get signed pieces of papers to prove progress. There is in a democracy. There is a constant sentimental belief on the part of the American people. It's goes back to our the importance of a written constitution in our lives a belief that you can tame an unruly world. You can make the world safe by negotiating even with people who do not believe in splitting the difference. It would make sense controlling arms. If we had people whose basic objective on the other side was to live in peace with us. I do not believe that peaceful coexistence is the business the Soviet Union is in furthermore. It seems to me the history of Arms Control is unambiguous. It is never controlled arms know. We got a pocket Battleship out. That was that's product of Arms Control. We got together and we regulated the size. The number of Battleship size holes Nations could have what they do. They went out and manage to pack the Firepower of a battleship into a smaller home. We call them pocket battleships we have today the MX not very good weapon. Not the way I'd prefer to spend money I'd vote for it, but it's not the sensible way to structure your deterrent. It's a big vulnerable missile with lots of warheads on top of it. That is a monument to Arms Control. Because insult one. How do you in order to have arms control have to count things that will let's count holes in the ground launchers. That's what we read. We didn't regulate missiles and so on regulating launchers the holes in the ground, but you can only have a few then you're going to have the biggest ones possible with the maximum number of warheads on them of vulnerable hair-trigger missile that makes deterrence less stable, which I think is the general effect of Arms Control. Do you do you sometimes get frustrated at getting interrupted on this week with David Brinkley know it's like you hardly ever get to express your ideas fully and God knows it frustrates me. Well, I do you secretly think (01:15:08) Sam Donaldson has more (01:15:13) fans because he gets to talk more on the Brinkley show than you. Well I uh, is there a lot of people out there to think I get to express myself far to fully And I certainly have no feeling that that I don't get a fair crack on that show. If I don't it's my fault that's you know, it's a show where they want give and take and if you don't want to be interrupted shouldn't play it. If you don't want to tackle, you shouldn't play football. But if I'm not getting it said that's my fault. How should we prevent public educational institutions such as the University of Minnesota from becoming Havens for Elites. The reduction in financial aid for middle-class families will no doubt have this effect. Well, I'm not convinced that that's going to have that effect. I want to see that again. This is one of those marginal changes in social policy that has produced a disproportionate rhetorical Outburst. The president's proposals on student. Aid. I think might turn the clock all the way back to something like 1970 and 1975. When as I recall America was not thought to have been in the Dark Ages or groaning under the Yoke of tyranny. It is simply rhetorical hyperbole for people to say. Oh, this is a major reversal of educational policy. It's nothing of the sort and it is the kind of rhetorical excess that has made it frankly very easy for Ronald Reagan to get his way and has made liberalism in the United States seem tinian unconvincing in recent years as to let me say a word. How about a word in your question? I certainly hope the University of Minnesota has been is today and will forever be a Haven for Elites. The question in the United States is not whether Elite show rule. It's which Elites show Rule and if an institution such as this does not set out to be consciously and proudly the the hotbed of elitism. I don't know what his purpose is the fact is that a terrible thing happened in this country when they went elitism became an epithet. It seems to me a lie doesn't means Excellence. It means standards to which not everyone can rise. And as I say if Minnesota wants to get out of that business, it should turn the money back in. All right, we're getting close to the close of our program and we're on the air as you know, so we're going to try and get off in good order. Please comment on the establishment of a permanent underclass that's Republican party and other conservatives are contributing to putting aside which not easy to do the tendentious - of the question The Establishment. It is a peculiar social analysis that believes that an underclass in the United States was established in 1981. We've had one for a very long time we've had one has all industrial societies have but ours has the special complications, but attend a multi-ethnic society clearly the complexity of the modern economy in the educational demands that it places upon prospective. Is combined with the collapse of inner-city Education to which administration's prior to the Reagan Administration get a full measure of credit all of these things combined to produce a problem to which no honest American claims to have an answer now on a store clear-thinking American some honest and Confused Americans do it as a national tragedy. It's a it's a problem for which we simply do not know the levers of public policy that can move us off dead center. And again, the beginning of wisdom is to tone down the rhetoric and the finger-pointing and the specious history and banal social analysis and stop talking as though this thing happened day before yesterday. It's been with us a long time and is going to be with us for very much longer. Our last question is actually two questions. I'm going to combine. How do you like being a cult figure and would you explain your interesting sartorial preference for bow ties? Hi. I didn't know I was a cult figure, but I welcome that I've got I think it's about time rip. With regard to bowties. I don't wear them all the time, but it's interesting. You do something different one time in 10 people think you always wear them. I started wearing them in the 1960s because neckties like politics culture art. Everything else was disgusting in the 1960s and the tiles got very wide and no sensible person would wear one. I also wore them as a sign of solidarity with Pat Moynihan at the UN for a while, but then he ran against Jim Buckley and I quit wearing them for a while, but I just think they're they're excellent. And when we get more Americans wearing bow ties and get rid of the designated hitter rule, I think conservatism would have one question answer session than the Northrop Auditorium organ. 3550 is our live coverage call me cord with a frame of University of Minnesota Minneapolis. This is Dan Olson reporting with technical direction from Todd Gordon flow turning it back to Paula Schroeder at the (01:20:56) studio. Thank you, Dan. Well, it is 27 minutes past one o'clock of quite a bit later than usual for the end of midday. However, we trust that you enjoyed today's live addressed by address rather by columnist George will tomorrow on midday at noon Arnold is mock. The outgoing director of Graduate Studies at the University of Minnesota School of Journalism will answer your questions about journalism in Minnesota. And that's tomorrow at noon on. Midday. This has been midday on Minnesota Public Radio technical direction today by Dave sleep. I'm Paula Schroeder. This is the news and information service of Minnesota Public Radio. Ksjn Minneapolis st. Paul.