Ezra Klein: So let’s start with poverty.
Scholars have estimated or found that the
number of American families living in extreme
poverty, under $2 in cash income, has skyrocketed
in the last 20 years.
You have about 1.5 million families and 3
million children.
Given how many children are now in that condition,
should we be following the model of countries
— like Sweden, Germany, and now Canada under
Trudeau — that have a universal child allowance
to cut or eliminate child poverty?
Hillary Clinton: Well, this is a very personal
and important issue to me — because, as
you know, I started out my work as a lawyer
for the Children’s Defense Fund.
And I have been focused on child poverty and
what we can do to alleviate it for a very
long time.
I would just slightly amend your question,
because we were making progress in the ’90s.
We had more people lifted out of poverty.
We had a 33 percent increase in the African-American
family income.
We were on the right track.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have been
looking at more ways to lift more kids out
of poverty, but we were on the right trajectory
— and, unfortunately, we changed direction.
We had policies that I think contributed greatly
to the increase in childhood poverty, starting
in 2001, the Great Recession being the worst
of those.
But there were also policy decisions, regulatory
changes — providing more leeway to the states,
so that they did not have either the requirement
or the incentive to continue lifting people,
particularly kids, out of poverty.
So we’ve got a big problem, and it’s a
problem that’s a reflection on our political
as well as our economic systems.
And I do think we should focus on how we’re
going to support more families, and there
are a number of inputs.
But trying to create more financial support
is something that we should look at.
I’m not ready to adopt a plan that comes
from some other country, because we have to
look to see how we would do anything in our
federal system — and how it would be workable
and what the cost-benefit analysis might be.
But while we’re looking at how we lift incomes
— which is the defining economic challenge
that we have for working, middle-class, and
poor families — we need to do much more
to provide the proven interventions in early
childhood education that help families, even
poor families, know more about how to better
prepare their kids.
We need to do more with nutrition — and
we’re making progress with health care thanks
to SCHIP [the State Children’s Health Insurance
Program] and the Affordable Care Act.
So it’s not just a decision about whether
or not to increase the child tax credit or
some other means of providing a greater financial
safety net.
It’s also what we can do to really support
families.
And I think we have to move on both tracks.
EK: But to ask a big-picture question about
that policy shift: Something a lot of poverty
scholars argue to me is that we made a very
big change toward trying to support the working
poor — welfare reform was, of course, part
of that.
It went, from in the numbers I’ve seen,
from bringing a million of these families
out of poverty to around 300,000 in more recent
years.
But the expansion of the EITC [earned income
tax credit], other things we’ve seen — do
you think we do too little now to support
the poor who for, whatever reason, cannot
find or cannot keep a job?
HC: I do.
I know there’s a big debate — and it’s
an, important debate — about welfare reform.
Because when welfare reform was passed, there
was an expectation — certainly on my part,
and I think on the part of many who had supported
it — that there would be an expectation,
in fact a requirement, that states would have
to be contributing to the broadest possible
safety net, particularly in economic downturns.
So that we wouldn’t help the working poor,
particularly through the EITC — which I
think is one of the best anti-poverty programs
that we have devised — we would not be doing
it at the expense of the poor.
We would also be providing a continuing safety
net for the poor.
And that’s one of the programs that I was
referring to when I said that after 2001,
there were a lot of decisions made that basically
did not carry on what had been not just the
spirit but also the requirements in the law,
because we had set the base payment at the
highest possible rate and expected states
to do that.
So we are back to a serious problem of poverty,
and I think we have to do much more to target
federal programs to the poorest, where intergenerational
poverty is once again a cycle.
Congressman Jim Clyburn has a creative idea
called the 10-20-30 approach, where you woul’d
put a percentage of federal funds — 10 percent
of federal funds — in those communities
that are most impoverished and have been for
30 years.
So I think we’ have got to address really
systemic, generational poverty differently.
We still have to lift up working people, we
have to make it worth everyone’s while to
work, we have to create more good jobs, we
have to have the training pipeline there.
But we are now, unfortunately, back having
to face poverty that we thought we had a better
approach toward ending than it turns out — given
the change in administrations and attitudes
— that we did.
EK: Let me ask you about how to pay for that.
So I looked at the Treasury’s real daily
yield curve website today, as I do every morning
when I get out of bed.
And short-term interest rates on US government
debt are negative; they will pay us to take
money.
That is how much the market wants more US
government debt.
Should we be taking the markets up on this
offer of free money?
Should we be doing more short-term deficit
spending for infrastructure, for poverty,
for middle-class tax cuts — and worrying
less in the near-term about deficits?
HC: I think we have missed an opportunity
over the last eight years to make some big
bets on America — to make some investments
with, as you say, money that is as low in
terms of interest rates as it’s ever going
to be.
I have put forth ways of paying for all the
investments that I make, because we do have
the entitlement issues out there that we can’t
ignore.
But we are failing to make investments that
will make us richer and stronger in the future.
And that’s where I think our biggest gap
is.
I think it’s important that we look for
ways to pay for our investments.
But I think there can be short-term decisions
about the kind of federal dollars that are
available now, with a revenue stream to pay
them back in the future that would bridge
the gap if we can’t do everything we need
to do to really give the economy and job creation
the kind of boost that it needs.
But I’m not going to commit myself to that
because I would like first to figure out what
we’re going to do, because I think we’ve
had a period where the gains have gone to
the wealthy.
The Great Recession wiped out $13 trillion
in family wealth.
And a lot of people have come back roaring
— they are doing better than ever, corporate
profits are up, whereas so many Americans
are stalled or have fallen backward.
Real family income hasn’t moved.
In fact, it’s below where it was in 1999
and 2000.
So we do have a problem.
It’s a real problem.
Because we are a 70 percent consumption economy,
so we’ve got to get more growth going.
And the best way to do that is to invest in
these jobs, and I think we can pay for what
we need to do through raising taxes on the
wealthy and making it clear that there’s
a commitment to these investments if we’re
going to grow the economy, which will benefit
everybody.
EK: So that’s interesting.
I’ve not heard you say it that way before.
So part of the argument of doing pay-fors
in the near term is not just balancing the
budget or reducing the deficit but also bringing
a distributional fairness to the aftermath
of the recession.
HC: That’s right.
Last summer, I gave two economic speeches
which called for strong growth, fair growth,
and long-term growth.
And I think the three go together.
It is important that we look at how they can
converge, because I do believe we’ve got
to grow the economy.
I’m an economic growth Democrat, so I believe
that.
But we also have to make it fairer, and part
of the way we make it fairer is by shifting
some of the tax burden onto those who have
done really well despite all of the macro-
and microeconomic ups and downs in the global
economy and here at home.
And that’s why the Buffett Rule; that’s
why a fair share surcharge on incomes above
$5 million; that’s why closing the loopholes,
like the carried interest loophole.
It’s not just a symbolic effort to say,
“Hey, we gotta get rid of the gimmicks and
the games.”
It’s also to get money to do what we need
to do to lift the bottom and the middle up.
And it is a way of making clear that growth
and fairness have to go together.
EK: I think it’s probably an understatement
at this point to say that immigration has
been a big part of this year’s campaign.
We talk a lot about the folks who are already
here — the roughly 11 million unauthorized
immigrants who are already here.
And I know you’re supportive of comprehensive
immigration reform.
But in the broader question around immigration
and the economy, the economic data I’ve
seen suggests pretty straightforwardly that
immigrants are good for the US economy; particularly
they are as the population ages.
So do you think it’d be good for the economy
to double or triple the number of people who
could come here legally?
HC: I think we have to deal with first things
first.
It is certainly the case that immigration
has been and continues to be good for our
economy.
Immigrants start businesses at a faster rate;
they seem to grow those businesses more successfully;
they do fill certain gaps in skills and knowledge
that are good for the overall economy.
But I think there are three big problems we
have to address.
One is just the human cost of those 11 million
undocumented immigrants.
I have met many of them — in fact, we all
have, whether we acknowledge it or not.
And these are hardworking people.
These are people who are contributing already
to the economy, whose children are in schools,
who are really absolutely committed to the
American dream.
The little girl I met in Las Vegas who is
living in fear that her parents are going
to be deported, with stomachaches and all
kinds of physical ailments, and she should
be a kid and she should be enjoying school
and learning and deciding what she’s going
to do.
So I do think we have to be very understanding
and accepting of the human stories that are
behind these statistics that people like Donald
Trump throw around.
I think also, though, there’s a lot of evidence
that moving toward comprehensive immigration
reform with a path to citizenship would be
good for our economy.
We already know that undocumented workers
are putting about $12 billion into the Social
Security trust fund with no anticipation at
this point that they’ll ever get anything
out.
They’re paying payroll taxes; they’re
paying other forms of taxes — state and
local as well as federal.
So we do have a productive part of our economy,
and most of the analysts that I have seen
suggest that this idea of deporting everybody
would be a severe blow to the economy.
That it would cost millions of jobs, that
it would depress economic growth.
There’s a moral, humanitarian kind of “American
values” argument, and there’s an economic
argument.
I think it would be very difficult to do anything
on immigration until we make the decision
that there will be comprehensive immigration
reform.
Because otherwise we are mixing up a lot of
the concerns about immigration in a way that
I think will hurt both the side of immigration
about people who fill jobs we need, particularly
high-value jobs, and the people who are here
living in fear that someone’s going to round
them up and deport them.
I think we have to look at all of these issues.
The idea of a comprehensive immigration reform
with a path to citizenship that I would envision
is one that would deal with a lot of these
concerns, not just the 11 million people here:
how we would regularize them, what kind of
steps they’d have to go through.
Because I believe they do have to meet certain
standards if they’re going to be on a path
to citizenship.
But I don’t want to mix that with other
kinds of changes in visas and other concerns
that particularly high-value technical companies
have.
In fact, I think keeping the pressure on them
helps us resolve the bigger problem, and then
we can look to see what else, if anything,
can and should be done.
But I would also add one of the biggest complaints
I hear around the country is how callous and
insensitive American corporations have become
to American workers who have skills that are
ones that should make them employable.
The many stories of people training their
replacements from some foreign country are
heartbreaking, and it is obviously a cost-cutting
measure to be able to pay people less than
you would pay an American worker.
I think it’s also a very unfair and sad
commentary that we don’t want to invest
in training American workers because that’s
just “time-consuming.”
And it’s a cost — so even if they could
do what we’re wanting them to do, it’s
just easier to get someone who will be largely
compliant because they want to stay in the
country.
And that’s just wrong.
So there’s work we have to do on all sides
of the immigration debate, and I want to see
companies have to do more to employ already
qualified Americans.
EK: Why do you think it is that it is so intuitive
to people, or so intuitive to many people,
that there is a zero-sum competition with
immigrants for jobs?
As you said, that’s not what the economic
evidence shows, but it’s powering a lot
of politics in this country.
HC: I think it’s because everybody with
six degrees of separation either knows or
thinks they know someone who knows somebody
who lost a job to an undocumented worker or
to a worker brought over on a visa to do their
job.
There’s just a lot of churn that suggests
this is a real problem.
Now, the argument that I have been making
is: Look, part of the reason why Americans
are agitated about immigration is because
they do believe their jobs are being taken
out from under them — and there is an unlevel
playing field — because if you are employing
undocumented workers, and no one is holding
you accountable — which we haven’t, we
haven’t enforced those laws in a very comprehensive
way — then it’s easy to undercut the market
and to say, “Hey, roofer, come down, I’m
substituting this man for you.
Goodbye.
Thank you very much.
Here’s your last paycheck.”
Because the man they’re putting up there
will cost maybe as little as a tenth of the
price as the guy who was on the roof.
So I think it’s real.
It’s hard to argue an economic, analytics
abstraction — that, you know, really it’s
not that much job displacement; and, you know,
the overall economy is better; and they’re
making these investments in Social Security
trust funds — it’s really hard when you’re
the one who has lost the job.
When you are at Disney in Orlando and you’re
told to retrain your successors and then kicked
out the door.
Or when you’re on a construction site, and
all of a sudden you show up the next morning
and they tell you they don’t need you anymore
because they’ve picked up a bunch of folks
at a job corner in the neighborhood.
So there’s enough real-world experience
that gives people the anxiety that we’re
seeing in the political environment.
Is it a big job displacement?
No.
But is it something?
Yes.
Is it something that is painful and personally
hurtful to somebody you know, maybe not you
but someone down the line?
Absolutely.
And I think it’s a mistake to just make
the economic argument.
I think it’s important that we see the undocumented
as people with real stories, with kids who
are going to school, with people working 70
to 80 hours a week to have a good life.
But it’s also important we see the other
side of the story, with people who feel doubly
hammered.
They feel hammered by global competition,
particularly from China taking their jobs,
and then they feel hammered from within by
employers who are willing to hire undocumented
workers and never get held accountable for
it.
EK: During the debates with Sen. Sanders,
you guys clashed on free college.
And you made the argument that you did not
want to be subsidizing the tuition of Donald
Trump’s children, and fair enough.
But that argument could also be made on public
elementary school, on public high school,
on public libraries.
So how do you think about when a policy should
be universal in nature and when it should
be specifically targeted at the needy?
HC: I think about that in the following way:
We have always had a mixed public-private
higher education system.
And although we do have private schools within
elementary and secondary education, they have
not been as big a factor as private higher
education has been.
So what we’re really talking about already
is a hybrid system.
Because even Sen. Sanders is not talking about
subsidizing private higher education.
And I think that’s a significant difference.
The cost of higher education has always been
an individual family responsibility aided
by scholarships, grants, work-study programs
— the whole mix of ways we enable people
to go to college.
But we don’t pretend we’re going to do
anything for those who choose a private college.
Now we let the GI Bill go to either public
or private schools; we let Pell Grants go
to public or private schools.
So we do help to subsidize individuals at
private colleges or universities, but we have
never taken the position that there is no
difference between the two of them.
Just like we have a big fight — as you know,
all the time — in federal and state legislatures
about: Will we subsidize private elementary
and secondary education?
And with very few exceptions, the answer has
been no.
That we do believe in the importance of a
public education system, so we have adopted
these approaches.
I had several concerns about Sen. Sanders’s
program.
I thought it was hard to justify claiming
it was free when it was going to have to be
paid for by state governments, by a lot of
state governments — up to a third of the
cost — that were not particularly well-known
for supporting higher education.
They’ve in fact been disinvesting.
And I think it’s more important that we
incentivize reinvestment in public higher
education.
So rather than holding out the promise of
free college — which wasn’t really free;
it was going to be paid for by state and federal
dollars — I think it’s important that
we say: We’re going to subsidize as far
as we can responsibly go, but we’re going
to expect states to reinvest in higher education.
And I know the arguments that have been made,
and he was an eloquent advocate for the argument
that it should be like Social Security.
It never has been; it’s not how we view
it; and it would be incredibly expensive to
do that as he had proposed.
And even he relied on states which had been
disinvesting, and we need to reverse that
so they start investing.
So I want to go as high up the income scale
as I can to make sure that middle-class, working,
and poor families don’t have to borrow money
to go to college.
But I don’t want to add the cost of subsidizing
me, or subsidizing Donald Trump, at this point.
I don’t think that’s a sensible way for
us to approach this.
EK: To ask about another interesting fissure
from the primary: You often said that your
preference was that we built on Obamacare
to get to true universal coverage.
And I’ve read your plan around Obamacare,
and it doesn’t do that yet.
So what would be your approach for taking
that program from the roughly 90 percent covered
that it’s at now to 100 percent?
HC: Well, let’s celebrate that we’re at
90 percent coverage.
And I think that is one of the differences:
I see the glass at 90 percent full, not empty.
And starting over again — either by repealing
it, as the Republicans advocate, or by coming
up with a whole new plan.
So I think it’s tremendous.
There was a new Robert Wood Johnson study
that pointed out that just in the five years
it’s been implemented, health care spending
has gone down $2.6 trillion from the projection
that it originally thought it would increase
by.
So we are really making progress, and I think
it is important to build on that progress.
We have 20 million people who are now in the
Affordable Care system.
We’ve expanded Medicaid, which I want to
see expanded in every state that hasn’t,
because I think that was an ideological rather
than economic or moral decision, and I want
us to build on the Affordable Care Act.
Now, how are we going to do that?
We’re going to have to be clear about the
competition that is needed to keep costs more
reasonable.
It is going to require us to take a hard look
at premiums, copays, deductibles, and see
what we can do to limit the kind of additional
costs — particularly for prescription drugs
— that policyholders have under the exchanges.
We have got to encourage more competition.
Not just by working with the existing insurers
but really trying to open the door — more
successfully than was achieved — to other
forms of insurance.
The cooperative insurance plan hasn’t worked
in most places, but it’s worked in some
places.
What are the lessons we can learn from that?
So I’m actually very excited about this,
and I think we will get to 100 percent coverage,
and I think we will do it by building on what
people are now accepting by spending their
own dollars and by our subsidies of those.
And it is a much more acceptable, less disruptive
approach than starting over and trying to
impose a single-payer system — because,
remember, the vast majority of Americans are
getting their health insurance through their
employment.
There’s very little evidence they are unsatisfied
by it.
I certainly saw that firsthand when I was
working on this back in ’93 and ’94, and
I favor a public option so we can try to lower
the costs even further for people who have
a larger risk of bad health problems.
EK: Should that public option be able to link
with Medicare to bargain down prices?
HC: I think it’s going to be something we’ll
have to look at.
I have long been in favor of giving Medicare
the authority to bargain.
And I voted for it; I’ve spoken out for
it—
EK: You mean on prescription drugs?
HC: On prescription drugs.
And if it were to be a broader public option,
maybe there as well.
Because it is clear that we don’t have enough
bargaining power yet to deal with some of
the big cost drivers, like prescription drugs,
that are still not reacting the way we had
hoped that they would.
In fact, there’s a lot of new gimmicks to
try to drive up the cost of prescription drugs.
But I’m actually optimistic.
I think we’re on the right track with the
Affordable Care Act.
And of course we’re going to have to make
adjustments.
We did with every other program that people
now defend and love, and we’ll have to do
it with the Affordable Care Act.
EK: So we’ve talked about a number of policies
here — not so much about how to get them
done.
What are the qualities you think you possess
that are needed for an effective presidency
that aren’t rewarded or revealed by the
campaign trail?
HC: Well, I think a lot of governing is the
slow, hard boring of hard boards.
I don’t think there’s anything sexy, exciting,
or headline-grabbing about it.
I think it is getting up every day, building
the relationships, finding whatever sliver
of common ground you can occupy, never, ever
giving up in continuing to reach out even
to people who are sworn political partisan
adversaries.
I’ve seen it work.
I’ve seen it work.
And I’ve been part of seeing it and making
it work.
I really believe there’s no shortcut; there’s
no quick answer.
Now, if there’s a major national disaster,
then — like the Great Recession — you
could get things done that you couldn’t
otherwise.
And you have to seize those moments, and I
think President Obama did that.
But I think you’ve got to try to push forward
as many different issues as you can all at
the same time, because you never know what’s
going to turn the tide.
So I just think it’s that getting up every
day and working on it.
It is not flashy, and you don’t telegraph
everything you’re doing, because that would
be breaching the relationship and the negotiation
that you may be involved in.
I certainly saw my husband do it, and he did
it with people who were trying to destroy
him.
Every single day, he’d meet with them at
night; they’d hammer out deals; they would
negotiate over very difficult things; they’d
shut the government down; he’d veto them;
they’d come back.
You just keep going.
Because we’re dealing with a hyperpartisan
opposition who has decided their ideology
is more important than actually getting results
— either for their constituents or for their
country.
They really have put ideology above everything
else, and I don’t know all the reasons — I’m
going to wait for a smart political scientist
to explain it all to me — but it makes the
negotiating harder.
Back in the ’90s, after criticizing Bill
all day, Newt Gingrich would come over to
the White House at 9 o’clock and they’d
negotiate for a couple of hours.
And certainly with the work that I did on
the Children’s Health Insurance Program
and the work I did as a senator — I worked
with people who were very much political opponents,
but we found that common ground.
And the same as secretary of state.
I had to round up, I think, 13 Republicans
to pass the New START treaty.
And you just keep working at it.
It takes a lot of effort, but if you’re
persistent you can get things done.
EK: The background for that is a real structural
rise in partisanship and division.
Barack Obama is the most polarizing president
since we began polling; before him, it was
George Bush; before him, Bill Clinton.
Both you and Donald Trump begin as the least
favorably viewed major party nominees since
we began polling.
What do you think are the background drivers
of the higher polarization, higher bitterness,
that seems to afflict politicians of both
parties now?
HC: I think there are a number of factors.
Again, I’m not sure I totally understand
it all.
The media environment — particularly the
social media environment — drives negativity.
It’s what captures eyeballs.
It’s what gets people to tune in or log
on.
It is just human nature.
Saying something negative about somebody,
whether it was a negative ad 30 years ago
or a negative tweet or other allegations today
— there’s just a really rich environment
for that to capture people’s minds and change
their attitudes.
There’s a lot of behavioral science that
if you attack someone endlessly — even if
none of what you say is true — the very
fact of attacking that person raises doubts
and creates a negative perspective.
As someone Exhibit A on that — since it
has been a long time that I’ve been in that
position — I get that.
I get it.
And it’s always amusing to me that when
I have a job, I have really high approval
ratings; when I’m actually doing the work,
I get reelected with 67 percent of the vote
running for reelection in the Senate.
When I’m secretary of state, I have [a]
66 percent approval rating.
And then I seek a job, I run for a job, and
all of the discredited negativity comes out
again, and all of these arguments and attacks
start up.
So it seems to be part of the political climate
now that is just going to have to be dealt
with.
But I am really confident that I can break
through that and I can continue to build an
electoral victory in November.
And then once I’m doing the job, we’ll
be back to people viewing me as the person
doing the job instead of the person seeking
the job.
Look, I’m not making any special plea, because
it’s just reality.
But every recent study has shown that if you
take all of the media and all of the Republicans
and all of the independent expenditures, tens
of millions of dollars of negative attacks
have been run against me.
And that’s just something I’ve learned
to live with, and I don’t pay a lot of attention
to it anymore.
EK: Do you think you get pulled along that
substream?
I think here of the debate when you say you
were proud of having Republicans as enemies.
Do you think part of this environment has
put you in a place of feeding it and running
more negative campaigns?
HC: Not very much.
I mean, you can go back and look at how I’ve
worked with Republicans, and I think I have
a very strong base of relationships with them
and evidence of that.
But, you know, they say terrible things about
me, much worse than anything I’ve ever said
about them.
That just seems to bea part of the political
back and forth now — to appeal to your base,
to appeal to the ideologues who support you.
We have become so divided, and we’ve got
to try to get people back listening to each
other and trying to roll up our sleeves and
solve these problems that we face, and I think
we can do that.
EK: I know we have to let you go, and I’ll
ask you this one final question.
What are three books that have influenced
how you think about policy that you think
everyone should read?
HC: Oh, my gosh, there are so many I’ve
read over the years.
I wrote one called It Takes a Village, which
I highly recommend—
EK: You can’t plug your own book.
HC: [Laughs] I think there’s a lot of wisdom
in Bob Putnam’s latest book, Our Kids.
I think there’s a really great story that
he tells about going back to the town he grew
up in outside of Cleveland, where kids of
all different backgrounds, economic family
standing, and they’re all together and everyone
was in it together.
And there was so little distinction, and there
was so much economic integration in that small
town.
Now he goes back to it, and it’s so divided.
It’s divided on income; it’s divided on
race; it’s just a very different environment.
And winners and losers are preordained at
a very early age.
So I think that’s a book that people should
read right now.
I think that a lot of Christopher Lasch’s
work and Alan Wolfe’s work and Habits of
the Heart — that wonderful old sociological
work that was led by Robert Bellah — are
also really helpful.
Because we need to be reminded of what is
unique about the American experience.
De Tocqueville saw it.
Habits of the Heart came from his writings,
and you can see how more difficult it is in
a 24/7, 360-degree media environment to find
the time to think, to breathe, to spend relaxation
hours getting to know people.
We just don’t do that.
We don’t build relationships; we don’t,
on the Republican-Democratic divide in Washington,
spend any time with each other — even less
than what I did when I was there, and that
wasn’t that long ago.
So I think looking at writings both by political
scientists and sociologists about how America
worked well and trying to sort through what
did we lose that has made it so hard for people
to even listen to each other.
And I do think — and I keep saying this,
because I believe it — I think the media
environment where people are rewarded for
being outrageous, for yelling at each other,
for saying things that are untrue without
being held accountable for it has contributed
to this attitude of divisiveness and separation.
And I regret that.
I think people — maybe it’s not the media’s
role to say, “Well, wait a minute, that’s
just not right.”
I mean, it was shocking when CNN fact-checked
some of Donald Trump’s sayings the other
day.
But it’s hard for the average viewer or
listener to do that himself, and there is
no guide any longer.
It’s just not easy to sort out what you’re
being told.
And if people are being addressed in their
fear — as opposed to their openness, their
tolerance, their hopefulness — it just creates
an even more hardened view about whether we
can work with each other or not.
And I worry about that; I worry it is undermining
our democracy.
A democracy relies on the glue of trust.
You don’t have to agree with me, but I do
have to believe, whether it’s an economic
transaction or my vote, that there’s a certain
expectation.
That, yeah, there are people who go off the
rails — everybody’s not what they pretend
to be, we all know that — but in general
there’s got to be that rock-solid belief
that this transaction between us as voters
and citizens rests on something deep and sacred.
And I don’t know how we get back to that.
EK: To ask just one more follow-up, and then
I swear I’ll let you go.
The invocation of trust there I think is really
interesting.
You bring up the media.
We are one of many institutions that the public,
if you look at the polling, has lost trust
in tremendously over the last 50 years.
They’ve lost trust in their politicians;
they’ve lost trust in business; they’ve
lost trust in the media.
So when you say that there are gatekeepers
who should fact-check — and at Vox we do
a lot of fact-checking — but one issue is
that people don’t listen anymore.
Why do you think there’s been such a systemic
loss of trust across so many different institutions
all at once?
How do you explain that change in America?
HC: Well, because I really believe that none
of us have done what we should have done in
being really straightforward about what we
know and what we don’t know.
And being willing to say, “We reported that
story last week; it turns out we were wrong.”
Or, “We didn’t tell you everything you
might have needed to make a decision.”
I’ve argued with network executives for
25 years that somebody is going to really
figure out that running a news program where
you actually say, “Hey, we got that wrong,”
or, “I’m not so sure what he just said
was right, and I don’t think it is and let
me tell you why, and here’s the evidence
to that effect,” where someone is trying
to pull the curtain back as opposed to everyone
going back to their corners, whether it’s
ratings or whether it’s an ideological position
— that’s really what we’re about.
As opposed to, “We have a really solemn
responsibility, and we’re going to level
with you.
You may not like what you hear, but we’re
going to try to the best of our ability not
to get it wrong.
And when we do, we’re going to be the first
to tell you.”
I think politicians — look at the nonsense
that people say running for office, just ridiculous
stuff, and they get away with it because there’s
no big gong that rings; “Oh, my God, look
what so-and-so just said.”
But there should be some reward for trying
to get it right and for trying to correct
it when you get it wrong.
And maybe it’s too threatening — whether
you’re in politics, business, media, wherever
you are — maybe it’s just too threatening
to admit that.
I don’t know how we’re going to rebuild
the trust, because it really starts with saying,
“Hey, I made a mistake,” or, “I didn’t
get it right,” or, “Hey, I’ve got more
information, and let me tell you,” and just
doing it in a very matter-of-fact way.
