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Feb. 8, 2025 02:37-03:28 - CSPAN
50:56
Washington Journal Casey Burgat
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reginald dwayne betts ▲ ● ▼
You know, the judge might have been under no illusion that sending me to prison will help, but he did say I could get something out of it if I tried.
And I think that this is a testament, not just that I got something out of it, but that I came home to a world where it might feel overwhelming.
It might feel like it is absolutely hard to make a way when you have hurt somebody in the past.
But I also came to a world that has radically changed and shifted and created more and more opportunities for people to reflect on the ways in which they've changed and to be welcomed back into what I like to think of as King Say, the beloved community.
unidentified
Reginald Duane Betts, Sunday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A. You can listen to Q&A and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app.
Democracy.
It isn't just an idea.
It's a process.
A process shaped by leaders elected to the highest offices and entrusted to a select few with guarding its basic principles.
It's where debates unfold, decisions are made, and the nation's course is charted.
Democracy in real time.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
This is your government at work.
unidentified
This is C-SPAN, giving you your democracy unfiltered.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Casey Burgett joins us now.
He's the author of the new book, We Hold These Truths, with, as you'll notice, truths in quotation marks.
The subtitle, How to Spot the Myths That Are Holding America Back.
Casey Burgett, what are some of the truths that you believe are actually myths or even outright lies?
unidentified
Where do we begin, John?
Thanks for having me, and I really appreciate the quotes emphasis there because there are a lot of myths within our system that sometimes we fall for on accident and sometimes they're put on us on purpose from politicians, the lobbying shops.
This all matters.
And so the myths are permeating our systems all the way from the Supreme Court to lobbyist campaign finance, what members of Congress do, the filibuster term limits.
It's a wide list.
So tell me where you want to start and let's jump in.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Give me an example of one of those myths.
unidentified
One of those is term limits.
I mean, this is my baby that it frustrates me to no end.
Where term limits to kick out members of Congress out after a certain period of time just will empower the wrong people, right?
If you're frustrated that the president is too powerful, that unelected bureaucrats are too powerful, lobbyists are too powerful, term limits will exacerbate that power dynamic and make polarization work all at the same time.
So stop wanting it.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Another myth that you talk about in this book, that members of Congress don't do anything.
unidentified
Yeah, it's true.
I often hear from my friends back home about members of Congress, they're always on racist and they're picturing them out on the playground playing freeze tag or something, but that ain't it.
When members of Congress go back home, they're often working more hours than they even do in D.C.
And when they are in D.C., their blocks of scheduling are 15 minutes at a time where they're constantly racing from hearings to subcommittee meetings, back to meet with constituents.
This is a really demanding job and to undermine it by saying that they're not doing anything just because they're not doing what you want them to do is a really uneffective way to think about Congress and it matters that it makes us distrust it and think that it's not working the way that it should.
There are reasons it's not working, but it's not that one.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
How about this one?
Bipartisanship is dead, something we hear when viewers call in?
unidentified
100%.
And this is what I hear from my drunk uncle at Thanksgiving too, right?
That they need to work together.
That all we, there's there's solutions out there, there's common sense solutions, and they just purposefully choose not to work for each other.
That's sometimes true, but if you get a law, like we're about ready to have another funding government shutdown fight here, and Republicans are going to need Democratic support.
If you get a law, you're going to need bipartisan support, right?
Even with unified government with Republicans in the House, Republicans in the Senate, and obviously Donald Trump in the White House, often these big bills that have meaningful differences in people's lives, they're going to need Democratic support to get it done.
And when you look at the data, the bills that becomes laws are the ones that you have that bipartisan support.
Which means when members of Congress are trying to go it alone, when they're only trying to go with their own party, they're not going to get the law.
They want the issue.
They want the fight, and we should be able to spot the difference.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
There's another dozen or so myths that Casey Burgitt talks about in his new book, We Hold These Truths.
Why did you feel like you needed to write this book now?
unidentified
To be honest with you, it needed to be written a long time ago.
And now it's finally, it's a good time to look at the way of the world where we turn on the news and all of a sudden the things that we took for granted for so long, like Congress appropriates the money, Congress has the power of the purse.
Today you flip on any news channel, you're talking about President Donald Trump taking over the power of the purse.
And so there's just a wholesale lack of civics education in this country where almost a quarter of our citizens can't name the three branches of government.
That's bad.
That ain't good.
And it leaves us vulnerable to politicians taking advantage of that ignorance and then using it to their own political ends.
All of that is bad for institutions.
It's bad for trust in government.
And we need to increase trust right now way more than we need to have these partisan fights.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Who'd you work with to write this book?
unidentified
Almost everybody.
Like this was the fun part is going to find practitioners.
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼
We could write this book on our own or I could sit down and write this book on my own, but I didn't want to do that.
unidentified
I wanted to go get people who live these jobs, including former members of Congress.
We have academics.
We have President Trump's former White House Communications Director to not only point out the bipartisanship of these myths, but also that people can tell their stories from the day-to-day lives that they've led living them out.
And some of them are honest saying, yeah, I actually take advantage of this, people not knowing the truth of this.
Campaign Finance is one of those examples.
So I went and got an all-star team of former representatives, the smartest and most accessible academics out there, and then some really good practitioners who've actually lived and worked these jobs every single day.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Who's Steve Vladek and why does he believe it's a myth that the Supreme Court has become politicized?
unidentified
Steve Vladek is one of the main voices on Supreme Court decisions where he explains exactly what's going behind.
He has an incredibly popular book called The Shadow Docket.
If you haven't read it, go check it out.
And he just explains the power behind the power of the Supreme Court.
And that myth that the Supreme Court has become too politicized breaks down the idea that the Supreme Court has ever not been politicized.
I mean, it is, the nominees are put forward by political actors and presidents.
They're confirmed by political actors in senators.
And then they decide political questions.
And so if you're frustrated about the Supreme Court, and you should be, there's a lot of reasons to be frustrated about how it works, how it conducts its business, how non-transparent it is, then the only branch of government that can actually change it, whether it's the number of opening up Supreme Court hearings, the number of justices on the course, is Congress.
So you're going to need political actors to get involved in the politics of Supreme Court, even though you want to think about it as this neutral arbiter.
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼
It never has been, never will be, and we should be honest about that.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Who's Matt Fuller?
And why does he think that it's a myth that the media wants to polarize us?
unidentified
Matt Fuller is now the Washington editor for Notice, where he's a longtime Capitol Hill beat reporter.
He talks, he has a really interesting connection with a lot of Tea Party members where members of Congress look to Matt and they have really, really good, honest conversations.
And his chapter is about the myth of media polarization, that the media is kind of an easy scapegoat, that you can't trust us.
We now see literal presidential campaigns calling the media the enemy of the people.
That ain't good.
That's a reminiscent of Nixon days to foster distrust in those that are meant to give you the news.
And the myth there with the media is that we kind of get what we want, right?
Like this is the Netflix generation, that you don't just get in your feeds random bits of news information.
We select it, and algorithms are meant to make it more and more dialed into exactly what we want.
So the myths are that, one, the media is this all-encompassing being that goes from the New York Times to some teenager with a phone in his basement.
That ain't the media.
There are very, very different standards about what they're able to report on, the levels of fact-checking that go into.
Media sources are subject to libel laws where a lot of things within social media are not subject to those two.
And then that it wants to polarize us.
The people I know in the media want to tell you the truth.
They want to tell you the stories.
They want to tell you, they don't want to tell you only good news.
That's a misconception.
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼
But they want to tell you what's happening behind the scenes.
unidentified
And I'm glad that they're there as a watchdog of American government.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Kind of you to say the words dialed in.
Let me give the phone numbers for viewers to join us this morning.
As usual, split by political party.
Republicans, it's 202-748-8001.
Democrats, 202-748-8000.
Independents, 202-748-8002.
Casey Bergen with us until the top of the hour and taking your phone calls this morning.
For viewers that don't know your background, though you've been on C-SPAN plenty of times, how have you been around this institution?
How long?
And where have you worked?
unidentified
Yeah, I love C-SPAN.
You guys are my favorite nerds out there.
So before I got a PhD in American government with a focus on Congress, while I was finishing that up, I worked at the Congressional Research Service, which if viewers don't know is Congress's private nonpartisan think tank.
And there I focused on issues of congressional reform, making politics work a little bit better with a focus on the first branch of government.
I worked at some think tanks around town doing the same thing but in a more public way.
And now I lead the master's program in legislative affairs at George Washington University because I always love the teaching side too.
So I have a good home now at GW and can still think, write, and talk about the things that matter to me and fixing some political problems is high atop that list.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
And time to write a book.
We hold these truths, how to spot the myths that are holding America back.
A quote from that book, The Tough to Swallow Truth About Our Politics is that there are no quick fixes to our big problems and we have big problems, many.
But there is no savior candidate with the cure-all political platform coming to rescue us and expecting one is actually perpetuating our dysfunction.
The sooner we accept this, the sooner we can have the necessary and honest conversations on what to do about it, and the sooner we, the people, can return from our cliff edge of futility and engage in solutions because there are things we can do, lots of them.
What are those things that we can do?
unidentified
Dang, that sounded good.
John, did I write?
That's awesome.
Thank you for reading that.
There's a lot we can do, but the point is that we need to stop falling for this I alone can fix it mentality, right?
And we see this playing out in the first couple weeks of the Trump administration in a way that we haven't seen before so explicitly, where we just think that if we get one more law, if we get our candidate elected into office, if we remove campaign finance perversions, then all of a sudden all these things that are at our core pretty broken.
It's not true.
And to keep falling for that is kind of perpetuating this doom loop of a cycle that we keep finding ourselves in, leading to the cynicism that makes people step out rather than step in.
And we need more people to step in.
And so, a lot of those solutions, as much as I want to say, all you have to do is this one, two, three.
Anyone that is telling you one, two, three, alarm bells should be going off in your head that maybe they're trying to take advantage of the simplistic solutions that just simply won't solve all of our problems.
So, checking who your media sources are.
When you're talking about politics with your friends, which you probably need to do more often, we try to avoid them all the times.
But go find a friend who doesn't think like you do.
And then try to get to why they think that instead of trying to convince them that they're wrong or dumb or misguided.
Those aren't helpful conversations.
But even when you talk about news sources, when you say, I saw a thing that, don't say that.
Say where you got your information, because even if you have to say it out loud, you're going to check yourself in a way where you don't just say, Hey, I saw on Reddit or I saw on Joe Rogan, right?
That's different than saying, I saw a report from the CDC, that I saw a report from the New York Times.
Say your sources in your conversation.
And I bet you will be surprised at where you're equating one to the other.
They're not the same thing.
The other thing that you need to get involved and then get involved can take a lot of different forms, right?
Start a book club.
Start a conversation.
Go to a city council meeting.
Stop paying attention to the national politics where ironically you have the least amount of impact and start paying attention to your local politics where they'll love for you to show up.
They're begging for people to be interested in.
Plus, if you want politics to be a hobby and entertaining like wrestling, go to a city council meeting.
Those things are wild.
I really, really recommend it.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Let me let you chat with some callers.
This is Barbara out of Pennsylvania.
Line for Democrats.
Good morning.
You're up first with Casey Burgitt.
unidentified
Hi.
Hi.
Okay, so I'm listening to what you're saying.
And here are a couple thoughts.
First of all, we don't teach social studies anymore in a lot of the schools.
And people don't know where to search for trusted information.
Then they don't trust documented information from government sources.
We have 21% or one out of five people in the country that are actually illiterate.
They can't read.
And then you have the Project 2025 that wants to eliminate the Department of Education and replace it with people that don't even have a teaching degree.
And there's one more thought.
I remember, and people can Google this.
Trump said to a group of Israeli people that he quote loves the poorly educated.
And they cheered.
This is what we're dealing with.
So thanks for listening.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
That's Barbara in Pennsylvania.
Casey Burgitt.
unidentified
Barbara, thank you.
And you're right on.
We do teach social studies, but what we don't teach, if you've talked to previous generations, what we don't teach is civics.
It's one thing to know the organization of Congress and the House versus the Senate.
It's another thing to know the date of when the Declaration of Independence was signed.
But it's a very, very different thing to be an active participant in our democracy, right?
To show up to meetings, to read a ballot, to understand the power structures between who has decisions over what authority right now.
That's being, that's a civics lesson.
And we need to reinstitute civics in the classrooms.
And I like to think of this book as kind of that parting or that entry point into our civics education, knowing that it's not in our classrooms anymore.
And so I'm right with you, Barbara, that we need to kind of reorient ourselves to teach folks before they become voters how to become a voter.
It's really backwards to think that we just send 18-year-olds out into the world without the training to be an active participant in our democracy.
So I'm right there with you.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Do we need to just get back to the founders and their infinite wisdom?
unidentified
John, that's a good transition.
That's chapter one in the book where it takes down the myth that the founders had everything decided for us back in 1787, right?
That we don't need to update our government because they had it all right and all we need to do is follow their instincts, follow their lessons.
And this is one of those instances in politics, this is often true, where two things can be true at the same time.
They were geniuses and we can still improve their work product, right?
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼
And the irony here is that they gave us a method to do that.
They were under no illusions that they had every answer for their time, let alone in 250 years when we have Bitcoin and Google and Amazon, things they couldn't even comprehend.
unidentified
And they left us a way to update our system through the amendment structure and Congress to make sure that we have a functioning democracy in the time in which we live.
And we need to take advantage of that more often than we have.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
The caller, Barbara, had mentioned that people don't know where to go for trusted information.
You worked at the Congressional Research Service.
When members of Congress have a question about an issue, they turn to the Congressional Research Service, CRS, as it's known on Capitol Hill.
Where did you go for trusted information?
What advice would you give to the people that Barbara is worried about?
unidentified
Yeah, this is where that media chapter really comes back into play.
So government data is very trustworthy.
And start looking at the sources where people cite, right?
And so on the media side, when you look at those big legacy media, I know they're getting trashed all about town right now, but when the legacy media sources report a story, we should be educated about how many levels of fact-checking go into getting a story reported out.
This ain't a blog, right?
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼
These are people's careers where if they report misinformation, especially if they do it on purpose for some sort of partisan slant, their career is over.
unidentified
That's a very, very different calculation than just throwing something up on Wikipedia, throwing something up on a blog where your opinion is intermersed with fact.
Those news sources where it is legacy media.
And don't confuse cable news with news, right?
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼
Cable news is right there in the name where they've literally argued in court with Fox News saying we're an entertainment company.
unidentified
And knowing that as you select these news channels takes a lot of, puts some onus back on us, the consumers, because they're giving us what they want.
In a profit-driven model, they're not going to give us what we don't want.
That's how they go out of business.
They're giving us what we've proven to want.
And we like the salacious.
We like the dramatic.
We like the partisan fights where we pretend we don't and we tell our friends we don't.
But our consumption habits are telling a different story.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
To Texas, this is Andrea Independent.
Good morning.
You're on with Casey Burgett.
unidentified
Good morning.
Mr. Cassie, I just want to say thank you, God, for coming on this channel.
So serious.
This is my second time calling in.
And my first time, I actually talked to John, and I was talking about how American people are so ignorant with voting and that they don't know the basics, which is what you had already cited, which is the three branches of government.
So I just appreciate you reiterating that.
I had written a lot of stuff down, but I know I don't want John to cut me off.
So let me just get to this point.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
I won't cut you off, Andrea.
unidentified
So you have said a lot of stuff, which my question that I had came out, but I'm going to ask you anyway, because I want you to reiterate it because as we know, people don't hear you until you say it at least three times.
So I wanted to ask you to, can you share with us how we can become actively involved in this political Democracy, or I don't want to offend nobody,
this republic democracy that we have, and also how people can help themselves to discern between where they are being, they are falling into a tribal group versus an educated citizen.
No, I appreciate it, and I appreciate the kind words at the top.
And I'm going to take the second part first because it's actually a chapter within the book where we like to claim political independence, right?
I vote the issues, not the party.
And whichever candidate speaks to my issues, I'm willing to jump from D to R to I so long as I'm finding that right person.
The data don't support that.
We actually, even when we claim political independence, we are much, much more likely to reverse engineer our vote to support the conclusions we already came to the ballot box with, right?
We're willing to explain some behavior from political parties that we support when we're willing to blame political actors in the other party for doing the exact same thing, right?
We are not equal and we're not showing up to the table with this pros and cons listed to ultimately decide who our candidate is.
We are partisan beings and it's important to recognize that so that then we can do what my best recommendation is for people who are struggling to get involved.
And the first thing you can do is just pause, right?
To not respond emotionally, not respond out of defense of defending your position or your candidate or your party, but actually try to hear people.
When you ask questions, that's very different.
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼
When you end sentences with a question mark rather than an exclamation point, different conversations start happening.
unidentified
And you'd be surprised with people with whom you'd fundamentally disagree with, who you never gave a chance before.
You start hearing them, you hear who they are and why they came to those conclusions.
That's a much different conversation.
And if we can make that snowball, where my conversation with her and him turns into one that I'm having with 20 people, imagine how many people we can reach instead of starting yelling at.
That's just a different model to follow.
And it just starts with something as simple as pausing.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
What's your opinion of the filibuster?
unidentified
My personal one?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Sure.
unidentified
So the filibuster is one of the biggest misconceptions out there, right?
Where we picture like the Jimmy Stewart, Mr. Smith goes to Washington, where there's this principled lawmaker standing on the Senate floor and just making this really emotional appeal to stop a piece of legislation from happening, okay?
That's what people think is happening when things are filibustered.
That's not what happens in 2025.
The filibuster has taken a very, very different tone and method right now where it is used to block legislation from ever receiving a vote, right?
So right now, the filibuster in the Senate is actually assumed.
It's assumed, where you don't even see someone going to the floor to actually make that speech on the floor of reading Charles Dickens or a chicken noodle soup recipe.
They don't even have to go to the floor at all.
It's assumed.
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼
The last time we had a talking filibuster was Ted Cruz almost a decade ago.
unidentified
So the filibuster, when we think of that it forces politicians to the table to compromise to get over that super majority threshold of 60 votes in the Senate, it doesn't happen, right?
Right now it's just used as this cudgel to keep things off the floor so that we never have to take these tough votes.
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼
Voting exposes people.
unidentified
It puts people where they stand and it makes people and especially voters know what does my politician think?
When you don't vote, you can talk out of both sides of your mouth and politicians love that because they can take advantage of being able to tell this audience this thing and this audience this thing and there's no vote with their name attached to it to back it up.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Down to Port Charlotte, Florida, this is Fred Republican.
Good morning.
You're on with Casey Burgett.
unidentified
Well, good morning and thank you very much.
Casey, I have one quick question.
Is it myth or truth that members of Congress and Senate partake in insider trading?
Thank you very much.
Insider trading.
I don't know.
I don't have any firsthand account of members of Congress trading on information.
But what I will say is that when you talk to everyday Americans and say, should members of Congress be able to trade stocks on industries and companies they oversee, they're often privy to top secret information before the public is, if the public ever is.
That just creates even the appearance of a conflict of interest that I think members of Congress should be wise to respond to.
So do I have personal instances of members of Congress trading or profiting on the information they have before the public does?
No.
But I still think that even the appearance of that conflict of impropriety just gives reason for people to distrust in an institution at a time when we need to raise the trust levels as high as we can get.
So that stock act, the thing that they've been debating for a couple Congresses now, I think they'd be wise to bring it up and respond to people's immediate distrust of a system.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Who's Steve Israel and why is he writing the chapter on the myth of politicians being bought and paid for?
unidentified
Yeah, the campaign finance one, this is the one that a lot of folks are going to want to talk about when we get outside the Trump news cycle.
So in probably 12 years from now.
But Steve Israel is a longtime member of Congress from New York, and he wrote that chapter because he actually led the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, where it is elected members for Democratic candidates.
And his job was to go recruit candidates and mostly to fundraise for those candidates to run for congressional seats.
So he was literally the one in the room telling people to dial for dollars and that you have to meet your quotas.
And this is the amount of money it's going to take for you to win your seat and then especially come back after you won that first election.
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼
So he's the perfect person to write about what the incentives are to raise a lot of money in politics, but also where the actual influence is.
unidentified
We think that it's a you're buying your seat to get in, right?
Or that people are showing up with these brown paper bags like in an LBJ memoir and buying votes.
That's not where the money influence is.
It's kind of this mutually assured destruction, this Cold War mentality between R's and D's that we have to raise more than you.
If you raise 100 million, we have to raise 101 million.
And it's not necessarily buying votes at all.
They're not changing their voting behavior, but more just raising a bunch of money because the other side's going to do it too.
And these campaigns are really expensive.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
About 20 minutes left with Casey Burgett, George Washington University professor and author of the book, We Hold These Truths: How to Spot the Myths That Are Holding America Back.
We'll head to the Keystone State.
This is Ernie Independent.
Good morning.
unidentified
Hey, good morning, John.
I have two premises here that I want to object to all the rhetoric that Casey is spilling out tonight or today.
One is he's omitting that there's a thing called censorship.
People cannot say what they really want to say anywhere because they get cut off.
And on top of that, there's an old adage that the fish rots from the head down.
He's telling you to go to your city council.
Pirates is not so from the bottom up.
Forget about that.
That's a myth there.
The other thing that he's omitting is ownership.
All these media formats and all these channels and newspapers that he cited, 90% of them are owned by one tribe of people who have a monopoly on what we're going to hear and see on TV.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Casey Burgett.
unidentified
Yeah, the censorship question.
I like that we can call in and voice our opinions while still claiming that we're being censored at the same time.
So we need to check our media, right?
And the point that we need to make is that we get what we want, and we shouldn't equate blogs and sub stacks with the news organizations who literally have to be subject to libel laws for reporting misinformation.
So I get the frustration with the media.
We're literally told, speaking of rotting from the top down, we're told by politicians not to trust the news sources unless they agree with us.
And then they start putting out those and recommending those with clear partisan slants because they're obviously more favorable reporting.
So there are some misunderstandings about what it takes to be a member of the media and what laws and requirements they are in terms of reporting their stories.
And that's something that the media needs to get their message out better so that people do trust us and we can't keep falling for this.
Trust them, but not that person type of media reporting.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Cleveland, Ohio, this is Laura, Line for Democrats.
Good morning.
unidentified
Yes, good morning.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
You're on with Casey Burgitt.
unidentified
Go ahead.
Yes, good morning.
I have a couple questions.
One is about January 6th people that were let out of jail.
Were any of those people charged with, I think it's called cessation, you know, treason, like against the federal government tradition, whatever it's called?
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
A question on January 6th, Casey Burgitt.
Do you address that in your book?
unidentified
I don't take on January 6th at all, but I will say personally, I live about par five away from the Capitol, and this affected us, this community.
People actually live in this area.
And to say nothing of the, I know some members of Congress, I know a lot of staffers, and then especially the police officers who were there.
And this is a personal thing for a lot of folks who lived through that event, though.
I know that it can be an abstraction, something that just will go down in the history books.
That wasn't that way for us that day.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
This is Rich in Wisconsin Independent.
Good morning.
unidentified
Good morning, Casey.
Hey, question.
A couple topics.
I just want to breeze over quickly.
So when Barack Obama used the five eyes in the Intel community to spy on Hillary's opposition after they had found that she had this private server and then everybody in his cabinet was communicating with her over that server, which means that he had knowledge of it.
Wouldn't that make him complicit in, I don't know, if somebody was getting that information and then for them to go after Trump for asking questions about the money laundering through Zelensky in Ukraine after they started the coup in 2014 and then they impeached him for it.
And then Joe Biden pardoned everybody who set him up for the phone call that they impeached him for.
And then when they couldn't get him that route, they took him to court in favorable jurisdictions with people that came out of the Justice Department.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
A lot of topics there, Casey Burgett.
unidentified
Yeah, and I'm going to avoid almost all of them because the point of this book is not to be they did this so we can do this or what about ism that is just incredibly unhelpful.
You'll never win those debates and they shouldn't be debates in the first place.
This book, the purpose of this book at this time is to talk about what we think is wrong and what is actually wrong.
Because I think any caller and I can agree that there are a lot of things that we can and should do on policy fronts, right?
From education to healthcare to immigration to climate change.
There are things we must do in 2025, but we can't get there because we're distracted and having the wrong conversations over and over and over again.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
What about the pardon power?
Is that a conversation we should be having?
unidentified
Sure.
But the Constitution does give the president the pardon power.
So to change it, it's a conversation worth having, would take a constitutional amendment.
There is a route to do that.
And it should be kept in mind that the pardon power was given to a president at a time where there wasn't all of these layers of court cases that you can appeal.
This was kind of a break class in case of emergency type power that obviously presidents, as their want to do, have extended and extended and extended, right?
And so now we're having conversations that the founders never had in their brains as a potential.
So if we want to change it and we're worried about it, there are routes to ameliate those concerns with a constitutional amendment.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
To the natural state, this is Willie in Arkansas.
Democrat, good morning.
You're next.
unidentified
Yeah, my question is, all the stuff you say, you know, we have learned through the books, civics, and social studies and stuff.
Now, we learned all that back in the day.
Okay.
Now, they got, you know.
My question is, they got, you know, somebody doing something different here lately to what we learned.
Why call?
With some of the stuff that, you know, the same stuff we learned back in the days, we can't, it don't associate with us today.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Question about education again, Casey Bergen?
unidentified
Yeah, it's the same point, right?
That civics is different than history, and civics is different than government, even.
One is an active participation requirement or knowledge, and one is kind of just knowing the theory behind it.
Theory and practice are a very, very different thing.
And we should expect people to just know the theory and then go out and be a good player.
It doesn't work like that.
We should get people involved.
And the younger, just like learning a language, the better, right?
How to read a ballot.
We in the United States have an incredible number of elections, right?
Which means we're constantly facing this high-stakes emotion of showing up, deciding to get out, knowing what our city council does versus our mayor versus our state legislature.
There's a lot to learn.
And to pretend that it's simple or that the minute you turn 18, that you're ready to go do that and decide things for not only now, but in decades from now, generations from now, is just not a helpful way of conducting a government that requires the participation and the knowledge of its citizens, right?
So if we want to have a government that requires the knowledge of its citizens, then let's educate our citizens in what it takes to have such a government.
And that takes a lot of practice, and we should be purposeful about that instead of just pretending that the minute you turn 18, you're ready to go make decisions about everyone's future.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Houston Roberto, Independent, good morning.
unidentified
Perfect timing.
I'm a retired history government teacher, civics teacher, and what you're missing, and all of your guests miss this point, you have to practice democracy at your level.
So I was a student council sponsor in high school in two different schools here in Houston.
That's very important.
I was in student council when I was in second grade, and I was elected treasurer.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, recording secretary.
Guess what?
I vote every time.
You have to practice it.
You just can't keep saying, take civics class.
Listen to what's being said.
Three forms of government in the United States.
All that goes in one ear, out the other.
You've got to practice.
The other thing is, and I, and I, John, I hope you keep this number.
It's a number you can call to get the name and telephone number of your representative and your senators.
That's how you get involved.
call these offices, 202-224-3121, and my question is to you, I think Trump is losing it.
We have an amendment to the Constitution.
It was not used against Biden.
I think eventually, because he only had four long years, I don't think it's going to last.
We need the vice president to take over within the four years.
So that has not been implemented.
How do we implement that?
So thank you.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Mr. Roberto in Houston, the number, he gave out the number to the Capitol switchboard here in Washington, D.C., which you can get your member of Congress and call their offices directly.
Casey Burgitt, to what he said.
unidentified
Amen to the first part about what he's saying, that practice is actually a key here, that it's not even enough to learn civics.
You got to do civics.
It's an active thing.
And that means literally showing up, right?
One of the biggest barriers to entry is kind of the fear of the unknown or the fear that I might make a mistake or I don't know what I think about this politician or this candidate or this policy.
So therefore, I'll take a step back.
No, it's got to be the other way around.
And he's exactly right, that you need to show up early.
You see it in practice before you're ever being called on to be a decider, right?
It's really helpful to see it and even mock it up in our classrooms and in our participation at the most local level.
So completely agree with that.
With the 25th Amendment question to basically have the cabinet kick out the sitting president of the United States and elevating the vice president, that's a route.
That's an available option.
It's a pretty dangerous one.
There's a slippery slope out there to catch that.
But the route is used or the route is available.
If the cabinet thinks that the president of the United States is unfit for the job, they have that ability to do that, to elevate JD Vance in this instance.
There was conversation about that, obviously, in Biden's administration and then even in Trump's first term.
But right now we don't see that as a likely scenario.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Coming back to the chapters of your book, who's Jane McManus and what did you ask Jane McManus to write about?
unidentified
Yeah, this is the chapter that is not like the others, right?
The myth is that sport, keep your politics out of my sports, right?
And the underlying assumption there is that people are often frustrated when they turn on the TV and an athlete is making a political statement or making their stance heard.
You can remember Colin Kaepernick kneeling at the national anthem, obviously intermingling sports and politics.
But sports and politics have always been connected.
Not only because athletes are some of the most revered people in the United States who have a genuine platform and they should be able to use it just like we expect anyone else, but also that sports conversations often precede political conversations, right?
When we think about the black athletes raising the fist within the games against Hitler, these conversations can often foster a faster way to process a lot of the things that we're struggling with culturally.
And given the amount of love and attention and support we give our sports figures, going back to the days of Roman emperors, sports and politics have always been intermingled.
You don't have to shove it down your throats when you're watching the Super Bowl, but they should be recognized as kind of this helpful platform that not only sports figures can use, but we can use to bring ourselves together when it's oftentimes really hard to see each other outside of their party labels.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
These myths that your book focuses on, did they all start around the same time?
Are these something that myths that have emerged in just the past couple decades?
Or have we been dealing with a lot of these myths for the entirety of this experiment that is happening in the United States of America?
unidentified
It's a good question.
And it's individualistic to each of these myths.
But what I will say right now is that the trajectory of them is getting worse and not better.
We're falling for them more.
In fact, we're even using them as defenses of what we believe and who we support rather than checking our assumptions, right?
And as my therapist wife will tell you, that if you want to make genuine change, you can't start at the conclusion.
You got to start at the beginning.
What are you getting wrong about how you see the world?
And then you can have some helpful conversations about what to do about it.
And so a lot of these things are actually been weaponized by political parties and politicians who use the ignorance of voters because it, ironically, puts them in office, right?
So you run against Congress to win a seat in Congress.
You run against the administrative state to control the administrative state.
It's kind of this perverse incentive.
And actually, to be able to point and say, this is who to blame, even though it's never that simple.
That's a way to garner support for yourself and your position.
So blame lobbyists, blame campaign finance, blame term limits.
All these things can be used to accumulate political power and ultimately mold the government and policy in your image.
It's a tough, tough, tough doom loop that we need to escape from.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Is this your first book?
unidentified
This is my first book people will read, right?
I've written a book on Congress and how it really works, but it's for an academic setting.
This is purposely for people.
It's supposed to be accessible.
It's supposed to use stories to make the points.
It's supposed to use people who you've heard of to kind of put them within the mist themselves to see where they're kind of taking advantage of the American voter ignorance out there.
But I'm hopeful that this is kind of seen as like an entry point into understanding government where I know that it's incredibly easy to step back from because there's just so much information out there.
This is an evergreen book.
Yes, it's applicable right now, but it will be applicable in two years from now, four years from now.
So you should use it as kind of this resource that you don't need to open it up on page one and crank through all the myths at any one time.
You can kind of go chapter by chapter of what's of interest to you or even what's dominating the news headlines today.
They're all applicable.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
What's the most interesting myth to you that we haven't gotten to yet?
unidentified
Hmm.
I think lobbyists is a big one.
There's a lot of misconceptions about lobbyists and everyone has kind of this house of cards mentality where again, they're showing up on Capitol Hill, bribing people, bribing members of Congress.
And what lobbyists do, their power, it doesn't come from money, which is what most people think.
It's actually information, where members of Congress and their staffers really struggle.
They don't struggle with access to information.
They struggle with the processing of information, right?
To be able to decide and write legislation on a Tuesday that has Ukraine aid in it, whether we're shuttering USAID tariffs, who knows all of that stuff to the degree to which we expect members of Congress.
So they're just inundated with information, and Congress really lacks the capacity to process that information in a way that makes them effective at their jobs.
And when you don't know the answer to something, you do what any of us do.
You Google it probably first, and then when that doesn't work, you go find someone who does know that information.
And who does in federal politics?
That's lobbyists.
Lobbyists' information.
And so we think of them as really influential because they're money.
It's because of their information.
So we should have conversations about access problems with lobbyists because there are huge discrepancies between the haves and the have-nots.
And that lobbyists, you're not showing up on Capitol Hill, or at least most people aren't showing up on Capitol Hill to lobby directly.
casey burgat ▲ ● ▼
Meaning that if you want someone to get in members of Congress's ear about an issue you care about, you're going to need an intermediary.
unidentified
Those are lobbyists.
So you love the lobbyists who are advocating for things you believe in.
And it's easy to hate the lobbyists who are advocating against things you don't.
It's just a misunderstanding of how the system works.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Time for a couple more calls with Casey Burgett.
This is James New Jersey Republican.
Good morning.
unidentified
Yes, I just have a quick question for the professor.
I've been watching these Senate hearings over the last couple of weeks.
And it just occurred to me, seeing all the grandstanding and showboating, it's not just the Dems, it's the Republicans too.
This will never happen, but how about we not televise these hearings publicly?
The Supreme Court does not televise their hearings publicly, and we've done all right with that.
It's actually a really good question, and this is something there's been this debate since the 70s.
Post-Watergate is when they flipped on the cameras, and that was to get around the distrust of the government that was happening at that time, that sunshine is the best disinfective, right?
But actually, we've seen some perverse incentives for some unintended consequences when you flip on the cameras, as the caller noted, that they're going to play to the cameras, that they can reach millions of people by creating a viral moment, which means there's an incentive to go create a viral moment, not only to raise your brand, but also fundraise to be known as this type of question lawmaker.
And so, there's been a growing debate of have we gone too far with our public transparency.
And so, your question gets down to the root of like, does the public have a right to know what's going on within these committee hearings, with on the floor of the House?
Should we have privatized votes?
And this gets to a long-standing debate about privacy, transparency, and is there such thing as too much transparency where you start incentivizing the wrong behaviors that, as the caller mentioned, it's pretty undeniable when you flip on a committee confirmation hearing to not see those that are really trying to be very public in their questioning to create a brand for themselves instead of trying to get at the root of the question and have a good faith back and forth with these nominees.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Do you think personally that there's such thing as too much transparency?
This network has for years tried to put cameras in the Supreme Court, and we every day try to put cameras in as many hearings as possible.
We have meetings every day about which hearings we think we can cover with limited resources to show the public what's happening on Capitol Hill.
unidentified
Yeah, I'm sympathetic to the transparency debate, but at the end of the day, I think that if I have to choose, and it's really hard to have a middle ground solution here, right?
If I had to choose between I want knowing what my members of Congress are doing and voting on and saying versus not, I'm going to choose knowing every single time, right?
That I think that too much distrust can be weaponized when you close the cameras off, and to say nothing of that we want our people to be involved, and to be involved means seeing it in action.
I'd rather know that.
And to me, at the end of the day, if you're taking a different vote because the cameras are on versus off, then you don't deserve the job in the first place.
If your name is going to be attached to it, then stand up, put your chest out, and put your name attached to it.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Time for maybe one more phone call.
This is Bridgetta in Maryland.
Democrat, good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
I was wondering what your thoughts are on Elon Musk's staff.
They've been plugging into hard drives inside the Office of Personnel Management, Treasury Department, and the General Services Administration, and it doesn't seem like anyone is reporting on this.
And I would like to get your opinion.
So this, I mean, the Elon and Doge question is kind of the final boss of a lot of these misplaying out, a fundamental misunderstanding of presidential power and who has the power of the purse, which is unquestionably, constitutionally, Congress.
And so Congress needs to step up and say, hey, I support you, even Republicans in Congress.
I support you, President.
Even I support you, Donald Trump, but this isn't how it's supposed to work, right?
So Congress needs to step up and make its play, its place known as just a constitutional separation of powers instrument, because it was not supposed to work like this, where you have a private citizen.
He has not been appointed to anything official.
Doge isn't even, it's this in this in-between place of a government agency, a quasi-government agency, but there's been no act of Congress to establish it, authorize it, let alone fund it.
So this is where you get to, if the president just says it's so, then all of a sudden right now in this nationalized political moment we're in, we kind of just accept it, or at least his supporters do.
That's not the way it's supposed to work, and members of Congress, especially on the Republican side, need to recognize that and be vocal about that.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
The book is We Hold These Truths, How to Spot the Myths That Are Holding America Back.
The author is Casey Burgett, and we always appreciate your time on C-SPAN.
unidentified
I appreciate you, John.
Thank you.
C-SPAN's Washington Journal, our live forum involving you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy from Washington and across the country.
Coming up this morning, the American Enterprise Institute's Frederick Hess and the Education Law Center's Robert Kim discuss the Trump administration and education policy.
Then attorney Mark Zayd, who focuses on national security and federal employment, looks at current efforts to reduce the number of government workers.
C-SPAN's Washington Journal, join in the conversation live at 7 Eastern this morning on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now or online at c-SPAN.org.
Next week, on the C-SPAN networks, the House and Senate are in session.
The House will consider legislation establishing new penalties for evading U.S. Border Patrol agents in car chases.
The Senate continues voting on President Trump's cabinet nominees, including Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services Secretary.
The chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, will give the semi-annual monetary policy report before two committees, first on Tuesday before the Senate Banking Committee, and then on Wednesday before the House Financial Services Committee.
Also, C-SPAN continues our comprehensive coverage of confirmation hearings for President-elect Trump's cabinet nominees.
The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee will hold hearings for two cabinet nominees.
On Wednesday, former Oregon Republican Congresswoman Laurie Chavez-DeReamer, the nominee for Secretary of Labor.
And on Thursday, for former businesswoman Linda McMahon, who's a nominee for Secretary of Education.
Also on Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee will vote on the nomination of Kash Patel for director of the FBI.
Watch live on the C-SPAN networks or on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app.
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C-SPAN.
Democracy unfiltered.
Sunday night on C-SPAN's Q&A, ex-convict, award-winning poet, and Yale Law School graduate Reginald Dwayne Betts is our guest.
He wrote the afterword for a new commemorative edition of Dr. King's Letter from Birmingham Jail and talks about the book and the work done by Freedom Reads, an organization he founded that builds libraries in prisons.
reginald dwayne betts ▲ ● ▼
You know, the judge might have been under no illusion that sending me to prison will help, but he did say I could get something out of it if I tried.
And I think that this is a testament, not just that I got something out of it, but that I came home to a world where it might feel overwhelming.
It might feel like it is absolutely hard to make a way when you have hurt somebody in the past.
But I also came to a world that has radically changed and shifted and created more and more opportunities for people to Reflect on the ways in which they've changed and to be welcomed back into what I like to think of as King Stay, the beloved community.
unidentified
Reginald Duane Betts, Sunday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's QA.
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