RS: Now, a Democrat couldn't have gone to China and end this whole ridiculous phase of the Cold War. It took a Republican. Well, by the same token, Republicans could not have deregulated Wall Street. [Laughs] It took a Democrat.
TF: Right. That's right. It takes a -- I believe one of the people I quote in the book says that: "It takes a Democrat" to do some of these things. And what he was specifically talking about is something that the public to this day still doesn't know about, which was Bill Clinton's effort to privatize Social Security.
RS: I want to give a proper introduction to your book. [Laughter] I'm talking with Thomas Frank. The book is called "Listen, Liberal." And I just want to quote from a blurb on the jacket about it. "Departing from the usual line that our raging inequality is solely the fault of greedy, heartless Republicans" -- who were exposed, by the way, by Frank in a previous book -- "Frank baldly states that Democrats bear no small part of the responsibility. And not just for inequality: the prison spree, the free trade agreements that cost so many Americans their jobs, deregulation, a free ride for Wall Street -- it's time, Frank says, for Democrats to own up to their part in this country's downward slide." And now you're bringing up one that your book actually goes into in a way that hasn't -- the whole deal with Gingrich and Bill Clinton over destroying Social Security.
TF: If listeners can remember the late 1990s, there was this kind of mania for privatizing Social Security and investing it in the stock market. And what we now know, thanks to the work of a historian, is that in fact Clinton and Gingrich, who were, we at the time thought were these sort of mortal enemies, right, these political opposites, were in fact fully in agreement on a scheme to privatize Social Security. And they met secretly -- there's photographs of them meeting -- they met secretly, they talked it over, they came up with a plan. And Clinton started on their plan; he announced, you know, that he was going to, you know, I forget how he put it, that he was going to save Social Security or something like that, by which he meant privatize it. And then they were [laughs] so rudely interrupted by the Monica Lewinsky scandal, right? Which came along the next day and polarized the country, and polarized Washington; so, you know, so finally put Republicans in one corner and Democrats in another, that Clinton and Gingrich could not, they couldn't have any kind of consensus activity. Or, no -- that was the end of triangulation, let's put it that way. So it never happened; it never happened, thanks to Monica Lewinsky.
RS: One of the arguments I had in my own career that I have some doubt about was with Christopher Hitchens, who had been a good friend of mine for a long time. And I still strongly disagree with his support of the Iraq war, which was a betrayal of his ideas. But I remember around the Monica Lewinsky thing, I went soft on the Clintons. And I was writing columns for the L.A. Times, and you know, I felt, as you say in your book, "Hillary Clinton is not a callous or haughty woman" -- this is what I felt about Bill also -- "She has much to recommend her for the nation's highest office: for one thing, her knowledge of Washington; for another, the Republican vendetta against her, which is so vindictive and so unfair that I myself might vote for her in November." Now, I read that, I thought, my goodness, that's the folly I descended into. Because when this vast right-wing conspiracy was attacking Bill Clinton, I got a little soft in the head, and ah --
TF: But wait a minute! But that's exactly what we all felt. It was so unfair, and so vindictive. You remember what that was like!
RS: Yes.
TF: The impeachment committee -- oh, my God. It was ridiculous! [Laughs]
RS: I understand --
TF: It was the one moment when I liked Bill Clinton, you know! [Laughs]
RS: That's exactly, that's exactly my problem that I'm confessing to you. And so I actually wrote a column saying that Bill Clinton will be remembered as a very good president -- I might have even said great president -- I said "right of center," I did say that; but someone in the Eisenhower mold, and so forth. Having now done three books on the record, really, of Clinton, I realize I was so unfair to Eisenhower --
TF: [Laughs] That's good, that's good, I like that.
RS: -- who was a genuine -- no, really, a genuine, sincere, ah, moderate --
TF: Yeah, a Kansan, a good man.
RS: -- yes. In fact, he brought, you know, Khrushchev, end of the Cold War, to -- not Kansas, but I guess it was Iowa, was it?
TF: That's right, that's a famous, very famous, yeah, that's a famous story. And Khrushchev made fun of tail fins on cars -- do you remember this? [Laughs] Among other things.
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