Speaking of America, you held these conversations at the Library of Congress. The idea was that behind closed doors, you can maybe get some of these folks in Washington to open up and talk about things in a way that they wouldn't do publicly. What did that actually teach you about Washington?
Well, Washington, when I first went to Washington in the seventies, a good legislator was thought to be somebody who was bipartisan, get people from both sides to work together. Today, that's kind of out of favor. You're either all Democrat or all Republican in terms of votes, rarely have bipartisanship. About a dozen years ago, I thought if I could host a dinner for members of Congress with no press there to see what they were, they were sitting with people from the opposite party, the members might come and enjoy it. And so now I've been doing this for about a dozen years, and members really like it because we'd have experts coming in. I'll talk about American history. I interview them, then the members can ask questions. And the members sit with people from the opposite party in the opposite house, and they seem to like it.
So, well, I guess that's my question. When we talk about the decline in bipartisanship, is that real, or is that just what we see in public? Meaning, behind closed doors... Because there's always this, these anecdotes you hear that behind closed doors, some of these people are a lot friendlier with each other than what you see in public.
Well, behind closed doors, they do have some relationships that are better than what you might appear in the press. But basically, what's happened is fundraising is almost everything that matters in Washington these days. You raise money from the far left, the far right. Nobody raises money saying, 'I'm gonna go to Washington. I'm gonna do what's right for the country. I'm gonna be right down the middle.' That doesn't raise any money. And so if you're gonna raise money from the far left or the far right, you have to be seen as very partisan, and that's an unfortunate system we have. Members don't like it, but that's the system we have.
How do you think we grow out of that or break that? Do you see any hope anytime soon for that?
Typically, when things change in Washington, you have a big scandal of some type. So if there's some kind of scandal in fundraising, perhaps that could happen. But right now, I don't think it's gonna happen. As long as the Supreme Court continues to hold the view that if you give money to a candidate, that's like free speech, it's just your speech right, we're not gonna change anything. And I think a constitutional amendment to change is unlikely.
Well, I mean, there are a lot of scandals going on in Washington these days, so maybe that boils over into something.
No. Plenty of... There's lack of scandals, but in terms of a scandal relating to fundraising...
If there was a fundraising scandal, maybe it would change. But I think members remember, we also have a system in Washington where if you raise a lot of money and you don't use it, you can keep it for political purposes the rest of your life.
It used to be you could keep it for any purpose. But when you have a super PAC or PAC and you have hundreds of millions of dollars in it and you leave office, you can keep that money more or less for political purposes.
There are some people, when they look at the divisions that we see in politics, this also has to do with some of the angst by the voters themselves and the idea that there are a lot of voters out there that don't really see the American dream as achievable. And that's created some of the polarization. They've gravitated to the far right or to the far left because to them, that might be the answer.
The American dream was a phrase invented by a writer in 1936. It meant you could work your way up from the bottom to the top. Today, sadly, more people outside the United States come to the United States believing in that than people born here believe in it. So we have 55,000,000 immigrants in the country, and most of them came because they believe in the American dream. Many people at the bottom of the socioeconomic structure in this country don't really believe in the American dream so much anymore. And as a result, the American dream has withered on the vine for many people.
Well, but what's happening now? I mean, we're deporting a lot of the immigrants. We're not letting new immigrants in. I mean, I know there's a party right now that sees that as a potential solution to our problems. Does that create new problems, or does it create a better solution?
For a country to keep its population the same, women of childbearing age need to have on average 2.1 children in their childbearing years. We're down at 1.6. So that means the population is going down without immigration. And when populations go down everywhere in the world, GDP goes down. Nobody has a higher GDP when their population is going down. So at some point, the country will recognize without immigrants coming in, and without women reproducing at the level you need to, we can't possibly have our GDP increase.
I do have to ask you. I mean, you've obviously been steeped in Washington for years. You left the board of the Kennedy Center when that became a political football. I lived in Washington for years, went to the Kennedy Center numerous times. It is about as nonpartisan as everything you want to be as an American. Do you think there's any hope we get that back for the Kennedy Center and some of the other cultural institutions?
