15 Departing Congress Members Tell The Newbies What To Expect | VICE News Tonight Special (HBO)

[Music] [Applause] you have to think of this as your exit interview when we deep closing thoughts your obituary wow that's a little creepy do you need a hug should we hold a hug should we hug it out come on I don't believe I've ever had this many cameras in my office once you've arrived yeah as I'm leaving around there are all these new freshmen members of Congress coming to town what advice do you have them this is a meritocracy do not be a generalist be a specialists put your big-girl pants on and don't let the suckers get you down I need you to be my Yoda what can you teach me about how Washington works you can't get run over if you use the tongue what does that mean that means that there no reporters in the time when you're here and he do got your politics it's become a bloodsport every vote is a 30-second commercial so every vote can will be used against you absolutely if you can't have everything you want it compromises such a dirty word then you can't win I told you I'm never running another what advice would you give don't tweet don't come here thinking you're gonna change the world overnight if you thank you I have all the answers your ego is the first thing you'll lose if you're not at the table you're on the menu if I told you that I was running for Congress what advice would don't my name is alexandra pelosi i know a thing or two about congress my grandfather was a congressman and my mother's been here for 30 years she's about to be Speaker of the House again I've spent a lot of time here and I really respect this place but lately all we've been hearing about is how dysfunctional Congress is it just keeps shutting down so in an attempt to get a better understanding of how Congress works I asked the congressmen and women who are leaving their posts to explain how the game is played would you recommend this job to a friend [Music] if you loved this job so much why are you quitting you know 30 years is a long time I'm ready to try something new I got elected I think I was 37 years old and now I'm I feel like I'm 77 years old when did you come here in 82 why'd you stay so long oh because I enjoy it how can you not like this place oh I can give you a lot of reasons really debated whether to run again this time or not and then there's I'm sure you know I had private episode in my life that I'm not proud of what is the moment you're like I'm just done with this after you're here a couple of terms you start thinking about that I could find a cure for cancer they would accuse me of putting doctors out of work I know I'll personally be analyzing my loss for some time to come I struggled with it I have to say your having been elected as a first woman in 25 years from Massachusetts I was very proud of that how do you feel leaving Congress how does it feel I'm the happiest girl in the whole USA so why are you leaving this job because I'm running for president other congressmen have told us that Congress is like high school well they say that it's like high school where you have the popular kids and we have the Nerds what clique are you in not the geeks not the coolest kids the quiet crowd the Nerds no not the Nerds cool kids you're the cool kid I think so I wouldn't be in like I wouldn't be with the Nerds I don't think idea what do you think I would probably I'm Maura the Pep Squad politics is a team sport and there are only two teams and you're the leader of one of those teams so how do you get people to vote the way you want them develop my organizing theory on how to organize a majority a team is to get people ahead of time to agree to the vision the principles and then the agenda that flows from that don't get role what does that mean don't get rolled don't get rolled means when leadership has an initiative you'll get all kinds of pressure to vote in a way that you may not be comfortable with and if you have a district agenda and it does not fit for the district don't get rolled have you ever been rolled I had a situation one time very early on where I was going to be this staunch opponent of voting for a debt limit so I had this plan I was gonna go over there I was gonna go into this backdoor over by the men's bathroom I'm gonna go vote no and I'm gonna run I literally put the card in there's nobody in the room and behind me is just like what are you doing it was like literally Darth Vader behind my back I turn around and there's Boehner I'm like where the hell did you come from he goes you know the right vote for you is a yes and so I changed my vote and I got rolled the analogy I use here in the house we play rugby in the house they play golf over in the Senate if you want to move the ball you have to do it as a team so more the only thing I've learned from being on Capitol Hill is that you have to kiss up to the leadership and play nice and maybe you'll get something very small accomplished when I got here I said great where is the change meeting I don't see anywhere in the agenda where our class gets to put their imprimatur I'm the next Congress of the United States Oh Dan Rostenkowski the chairman of the the claims gonna have a stroke he said don't know where the bathroom is you have to put his imprimatur and one after another it was like squash smash don't get out of line [Music] how is this jump changed since you got here I just think the political atmosphere has become so charged less interaction between Democrats Republicans now more than ever for me I saw the changes starting in the early to mid-2000s a lot of stuff was said and done at the time that really went after members sort of personally young members of Congress and they come in here really animated really excited they get too passionate to the point where they make it personal and you don't advance your cause by being personal and being too emotional imagine trying to do a business deal but before you sat down to the business deal you spent like a week saying how horrible the person you're trying to do a business deal is you know that they're liars they're unethical they're not Americans and then you said well let's try to work together on something was there a moment that you realized wow this has changed the state of the union that used to be just wow what a magical night and then it's become a political circus where you stand up and applaud if you're a Republican with a Republican present it's a Democrat we're a Democratic president everything just became a theater not really even good theater it was off off-broadway yeah we do it to them they do it to us and I think we've both been successful to some degree in trying to tear down each other's leaders who started it flip a coin Democrats will tell you Republicans did Republicans will tell you Democrats did [Music] fight for what you believe in but don't impugn other people's motives if you get personal than those moments that arrive where you have to get things done on a bipartisan basis you'll lose that moment when people have tough elections you get then very conservative Republicans and very liberal Democrats and people now think of compromises a four-letter word we have tea party and then you have Republicans that have been here and they're not necessarily on the same page so we end up voting against each other a lot if you take on your own party whose the first thing people are going to accuse you of betrayal and treason and saying why are you doing this to us what was the moment that you said this place is broken I came here with this idea of doing a big bipartisan infrastructure bill I would go to so many members and say you know this is how I think it should work and they're like hey that's a great idea but you know you got so-and-so on that bill and I'm like well yeah it's bipartisan bill that's we're trying to do and then they'll say can you get back to me after my primary you know I could sit here all day and lament about like our friends across the aisle and you know they're not bad people but it's gotten to the point where or if you're seeing socially with them or whatever I mean it just wouldn't be a good deal so you're not allowed to be seen after hours with any Democrats when I first got up here I was in the army with a member from Philadelphia we went through basic training together we taught at West Point together I think I didn't actually didn't even know he's a Democrat I don't know if he knew I was Republican and we went out to dinner when I first got elected and I saw other members of my conference in leadership and the next day they told me you know what were you doing with that guy so I'm like oh here in the army tier they're like oh hmm okay like they were trying to figure out a way around this ever happening again do you have any Republican friends yes yeah I do I mean real friends well I wouldn't say real friends in the sense that we go out to dinner and anything like that I think that changed when we all stopped living here many years ago we lived here in our neighborhood was people with members of Congress people hung out here more it's like a commuter school and before it was a residential college when you structure the workweek to only be here Monday to Thursday Tuesday to Friday you just don't have that opportunity the days are intense you work hard and then you make your way right back home why did they change the workweek you have to ask mr. Gingrich Gingrich said don't have your family's here and you're going to get Potomac fever if you're here too much if we're running the place in a way so that we're never here and we're always trying to act like mayors in our districts it doesn't actually serve the interest of the American people the fact that like 100 members of Congress sleep in their offices I live in my office so I'm sitting on your bed right now this is really not as creepy as it might sound so this is your home yeah this is my home I'm only five six the sofa is almost over six feet long and how about the hygiene for a lady living in your office you know um I'm no different than the boys there's a shower in the building over I get up at 5:00 a.m. early so I don't have to run into anyone do you think who would be better for Congress if all the congressmen had to live in Washington you know I'm of a mixed mind on that I think there's value and being back in our districts as often as we are but there's a responsibility to the work here too I don't know that there's ever enough time really there's 365 nights in a year I spend less than 100 of them here nobody talks to you about whether you need a district agenda or a Beltway agenda because if you think you're running for Congress and you're going to be Speaker of the House some day you don't have a district agenda you've got a Beltway agenda for Alexandria Ocasio Cortez a stunning result knocking off one of the top House Democrat ten term incumbent Joe Crowley you also see a person you have Hillary coming out of the back of your head literally she's coming out of the back of your head do you think that the reason you lost your primary is because you were too close to the leadership and too close to the democratic party establishment I think that that may have been the association with be coming to Washington you know to focus on what was happening in terms of my career in the leadership I think to some degree I did become more disconnected from my district than I should have Mayberry started I was focusing on Washington and the rise in Washington itself and now neither has worked out for me when you come here the first thing you are taught is your committee assignment is everything to you and then a lot of people spend their first years here try to get out of the not so important committees that they got appointed to so what committees limits did you get when you got here I was on transportation and infrastructure and Veterans Affairs what did you want energy and commerce s when I got my second term would you your second term another gene Commerce ask me what I did my first term go ahead everything that I needed to do to get on energy and commerce somehow they found out I was from Queens and I found myself on the far she subcommittee not a single forest in my district so most people they come in and get some really bad assignment but you got a good committee assignment how did you get a good committee assignment I beat a Democrat so if you beat a Democrat you get a good committee assignment when you yeah flip a seat your leadership rewards you for that you can be a superstar that's one way that's usually the way superstars are viewing it between people spend a lot of money and give it to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee so that they can get good comedians I'm in Rahm Emmanuel's the Mayor of the City of Chicago when he got here he like rose immediately and skyrocketed into leadership I'm gonna tell you the one word that let him money what's the worst part about this job the two-year election cycle that's the worst part you know you get a good year into it then you spend your second year kind of focusing on reelection the amounts of money of the candidates have to raise today is orders of magnitude more we have quotas then you don't have to raise the money just for yourself you have to raise the money for your national political campaign committee I'm not gonna get a big fat check from these corporations or whoever it is some PAC because I'm on Foreign Affairs and I'm on Intelligence those are my committees nobody's funding those so I I do it all year round from little group to little group you're a Republican in a democratic seat pretty much so they're always coming after you always then you have to raise a lot of money yes I always say bring your biggest argument that your biggest check people have this sense here that there's too much money the challenge for members of Congress is just you have to be in so many places at once I feel like every member of Congress has said the worst part is raising that that's what I mean when I say travel are you good at deily for dollars not as good as your mother the most frustrating part about being here and doing interviews with Democrats and Republicans is they all say can't we all get along we're not spitting on each other in the hallways wouldn't it be nice if someone took responsibility yeah tell that to the operatives I mean it's not like the politicians aren't the ones cutting the ads there's reasons to be disgusted by the wash of money because there are very wealthy special interests that are at the table you have these groups that have these scorecards and these scorecards will determine whether or not you're truly a conservative and if you vote the wrong way your score could be reflected and then these scores are emailed out to you know your constituents to show Tom Rooney really not a conservative we have trackers and I probably should say what trackers are I had a tracker assigned to me nah stop for several elections so they were amazing I mean they would literally jump out of bushes jump up from the side of your car so if you're running for Congress in the swing district you can expect to have a stalker a track or following you everywhere you go recording every word that comes everywhere everywhere we just don't grind the government to a halt just because you know it might score some political points with some think-tank up here that's run by a bunch of twenty five-year-old kids that like get off on like you know who government's gonna shut down and we did the scorecard to make like these twenty members do that I mean that that's the kind of I will not miss at all who the hell gives a when you were running you said you were for term limits so you said you only must face six terms and you ended up staying twelve yes why so when you're running you have no idea of what you might be able to do for the district and how all of it unfolds and how you get a result you don't know who to trust you don't know how it works I just had a couple projects completed one that I worked on for twenty years so if you think you're going to get here and snap your fingers and flip a light switch and get something done you've got a rude awakening coming you get to a point here where you're about to break through and kind of get on leadership but the people that are up there don't leave and so they move around from committee chair at a committee chair and it's like musical chairs from the most senior people and then those of us that are ready to be like okay we've been here ten years now it's time for us to deliver and then you hit like this ceiling this place is very Darwinian it's very survival of the fittest how have you managed to survive so long Oh first of all I think it mattered immensely that my brother was here after he left I had a push-button phone of course you don't have these anymore and one of the buttons is curl and it took me weeks to stop pushing the karo button you know one of the other reasons I thought it was time to move on was watching the hearing of Mark Zuckerberg and seeing how our senators struggled so with the whole just how does it all work how does Facebook work how did it didn't even know how to ask questions how do you sustain a business model in which users don't pay for your service the senator we run ads I say I think one of the great changes we need is more people who sort of intuitively understand these new forces at work so that we can engage in meaningful oversight that really addresses them in a way that's knowledgeable and not sort of forced upon us when you see members of Congress interacting they all seem to get along if you turn on cable news yep they're killing each other exactly when these microphones are turned off we're not screaming at each other there are whole cottage industries profiting from polarization and so what happens is the country and Congress becomes sort of a product of that I don't think that the cable news industry is helping American people come together but that's not their job they're selling entertainment they're trying to make a buck people want to see people fight and if you see somebody fighting on fox or CNN or MSNBC it's more entertaining I'm watching cable news I never hear a guy say that's a great guy I love working with if you're holding hands and singing Kumbaya it's just not you know it doesn't sell that's probably why you're not booked on cable that's that's probably it I'm listening to the radio and I'll hear somebody say and today in Congress this is what happens but damn their drive off the road I'm yelling at the radio I was there that's not what happened you know when people come up to me in the grocery store sometimes I think what are you talking about well then you turn on you go oh oh that's what they've been talking about all day I'm not sure I knew that some of that was just some people stick it's up to us to be smart enough to know you know that we are watching entertainment and if you want to see a different view then read a different publication just for kicks how much of an impact does social media have on this job I'm one of these people who thinks more transparency the better so I think social media is provided a lot more transparency around things technology in my opinion is a massive blessing but it also comes with detriments you know when you see the anonymous comments is go Wow do their moms know they talk like it's instant that someone is talking about it I've told my wife from the beginning don't read you know Facebook how does it feel to have your personal life all over the internet doesn't feel good I'm accountable for my actions it's nobody's fault but my own hopefully my legacy is more than that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 basically created an open free internet wait so you were on the committee that invented the internet and in the end the Internet was what destroyed you I was well that's one way to it didn't destroy me it did it did damage me but the Internet itself is not the culprit the culprit was what I did what's it like to be a woman in this business I think there's some advantages and some disadvantages I'm tougher than most men so I don't care if it's a little rough and tumble sometimes as you come from the hall into the floor of the house it's like going from the playing field to the locker room the only thing that's not happening is the snapping of towels what are the man's planning at every committee hearing inevitably a woman will start to speak and then a male member will interrupt as if she is incapable of expressing her thought in her opinion I'm deeply disappointed my good lady from war she doesn't know damn thing what she's talking about if a double standard and you know too often I think historically you saw women second-guess themselves out of seeking office so one of the things I'm so grateful for it is that something is changing and we're seeing that across this country and as they're running they're winning when I got here there were 30 women in Congress now we have a record number over a hundred and more coming and that's good for society it's good for the nation and it's good for all the little girls out there to think hey you know I could do that [Applause] [Music] no matter who's in power everybody hates Congress why Congress is always sort of the butt of the joke sort of whatever is going wrong or whatever whatever fear anger there's out there in the country if Congress hasn't done something you to fix it it's not gonna be real popular when you look back historically you see Medicare you see Medicaid you see Social Security we did the Affordable Care Act I can't really think of much that Congress has accomplished since then Congress has a terrible approval rating people think politicians are all a bunch of liars our politicians a bunch of liars you learn who to trust who not to trust it's a job that if you take you will become a controversial person no matter what happens the job of a speaker requires you saying no more than saying yes I'm having to discipline your own side so that you can make things work you will have people upset with your decisions and there'll be people who just don't like you how many people hate you because of your job I don't think anybody hates me on the Internet I'm not sure that's true I was talking to a four-star general the other day he says you know what I learned about our system of government bad ideas die and good ideas just take time that was true a hundred years ago it's true today we got a lot of anger in this country and it's on all sides it's not just members of Congress I think we're a direct reflection of the American people I think I think there's some silver lining okay what's the silver lining when things begin to move to the bottom there is a reaction and I think in some respects we've hit bottom and I think it's moving up bipartisanship is not an end in and of itself it's a means to an end the end is actually to do things that really matter in people's lives this place was designed right so that you need significant buying among the American people to get anything done the founding fathers didn't want a powerful central government and there's a lot of wisdom in that because I think they were more worried about some bad people doing a lot of things quickly than they were about what we have now which is gridlock maybe they wanted it to be so hard that it would be so difficult for anything to just some fad happen quickly so that nothing really bad could ever happen nothing great could happen either unless there's this groundswell of support for about 80% of what we do around here is actually bipartisan gets bipartisan support and votes and I would argue that our system with a bicameral legislature and a separate presidency along with the Supreme Court that system works better than any other type of democracy we should shouldn't so short this institution and we shouldn't so short the American public this institution has to become better and the public has to become more involved both you've acquired a lot of crap my staff says it's like sort of a TGI Fridays that I should have like a guitar like nailed to the wall I don't even know what's in half these boxes if I was really important I could donate them to a college and something like that but I don't think there's a cop maybe my high school would take this stuff one thing that I tried to collect over the years is that any member of Congress that's written a book I bought the book and had them sign it so Democrats and Republicans I haven't seen a copy of Nancy Pelosi's know your power yeah I don't have that one [Music] you

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Keywords: VICE News, VICE News Tonight, VICE on HBO, news, vice video, vice news 2018, luis v gutierrez, vice congress, goodbye congress, vice news tonight special report, Nancy Pelosi, midterms 2018, american politics, vice news politics, alexandra pelosi documentary hbo, paul ryan interview, vice news tonight special 2019, vice on HBO 2018, rep. john delaney, rep lynn jenkins, vice news documentaries 2018, congress exit, new congress members, alexandria ocasio-cortez

Id: 3gQbt0h5UQk

Length: 26min 26sec (1586 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 14 2019