- [Woman] This program is a presentation of UCTV for educational
and noncommercial use only. (exciting music) - Welcome to a Conversation with History. I'm Harry Kreisler in the Institute of International Studies. Our guest today is Robert Reich who is the Chancellor's
Professor of Public Policy at UC Berkeley. He has served in three
national administrations. Most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written 13 books, including the Work of Nations,
Locked in the Cabinet, Supercapitalism, and his most
recent book is Aftershock. Bob, welcome to our program. - Thank you, Harry. - [Harry] Where were you born and raised? - I was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania. I was raised in South Salem, New York. Little town about 60 miles
north of New York City. At that time, farm country. My friends were mostly farmers. My father had a little
woman's clothing shop. - And, looking back, how
do you think your parents shaped your thinking about the world? - Well, my father, for most of that time, was a Republican. Rockefeller Republican. A liberal Republican. An oxymoron today. There aren't any liberal Republicans left. He was very concerned
about the budget deficit. I remember the first thing he told me when I must have been
about four years old. He said, "Bobby, you and your children and your grandchildren
will be repaying the debt that Franklin D. Roosevelt created." And I had no idea what a debt was, but I was scared to death. But my boys have never
mentioned FDR's debt. And I have a new granddaughter who has not yet talked about it. So, I don't think that my father was right in that instance. Although he was right about most things. And my mother didn't have
strong political beliefs one way or another. But she had a very strong
kind of moral compass in terms of what was right and wrong and kind of social responsibility. - And was there discussion of politics around the dinner table? - Not much. The big issue we talked
about around the dinner table was the sales of blouses
and slacks and brassieres. - But I believe I read somewhere that your grandmother was a real organizer in the small community that she lived. - Oh, she was. My mother's mother was
a tremendous organizer. Community organizer. I don't think she would style herself as a community organizer. But, wherever she went, if something didn't seem right to her or the community needed to do something, she'd just get everybody involved. - Where were you educated? - Public high school in South Salem. Actually Cross River, New York. John Jay High School. Louisborough Elementary
School before that. Wonderful little public elementary school. Miss Bouton's Nursery School before that. Not a good experience. (laughter) And then, after high school,
I went to Dartmouth College. After that, I was fortunate enough to get a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford. And then I went to law school at Yale. - And when were you bitten
by the economics bug? - I was always fascinated by economics. Not so much as economics, per se. But as sort of one key into understanding, you might say, the
macroorganization of society. Law and political science,
politics, economics. It all was very interesting to me, because I really wanted to
understand the substructure. I mean, what was the system
that held us together or didn't held us together? And that was from a very early age. I had some very brilliant
teachers, in retrospect, who got me interested in all this. And then, the summer
before I went to college, one friend, a mentor a few years older, who had been very involved in civil rights went to Mississippi and he was murdered trying to register Black voters. - This was Schwerner? - Mickey Schwerner. And I think kind of shocked
me into the realization that these issues that I had been playing with were not really playthings. They were very large questions. Life and death struggles going on in terms of civil rights. And then, after that,
Vietnam and so forth. Remember, this is an era
of Martin Luther King. John F. Kennedy had been president. Bobby Kennedy. I was not alone. I think most people who were my age were bitten by this bug. That society had wrongs. And it was our obligation
to try to right them. - Just a side point here, 'cause one of the things that
emerges in your many works is your skills as a writer. Where did you hone that craft as a writer? Did this... Where did you learn to write so well? Is it just a natural gift? - Well, you're very kind to say, ask that question or to
make that implication. I always wrote, even,
I remember, as a child. Six, seven, eight years old. I was always writing. I can't say... I can't point to a particular influence. I can't say that there was anything that I felt was particularly unusual about it. I just always enjoyed writing. I don't think there was a time when I didn't feel like I had to write. - What about your sense of humor? That's the other thing
that really stands out. Did you always have that or
can you pinpoint a source? - Let's see, my father, who,
by the way, just turned 97. And he still is very funny. He's very... In fact, he's getting funnier. Intentionally, not unintentionally. I mean, there's some 97 year olds who are unintentionally funny. But he is really very funny. He's very sarcastic, but
with a real glint in his eye. So, I credit him with a lot of that. And his father was, also, very funny. It wasn't jokes. But there was a kind of sardonic humor. Not slapstick. But exaggeration sometimes. And, again, a kind of
friendly, good natured sarcasm that I grew up with. - Now, when did you meet the Clintons? Bill you met when you
were a Rhodes Scholar? - Yes, in those days,
we took a boat together. A ship across the Atlantic. It disembarked from New York. I mean, embarked from New York. Went to London ultimately. And it was a miserable
journey that October. I don't recommend anybody
cross the Atlantic, if they can avoid it, by ship. I don't know why we all did it. That was the tradition. I guess that's how you met
the other Rhodes Scholars. And Bill Clinton... I got terribly seasick,
as I think most of us did. And there was a knock on my door. And he appeared there with
chicken soup in one hand and some crackers in the other. And he said, "I hear you
weren't feeling too well." I didn't know him at all. I met him very briefly in New York. And we started a friendship. He did not say, at that
time, "I feel your pain." That came later for him. But we enjoyed talking. Talking with Bill Clinton in those days was very much like
talking with Bill Clinton later in my life. It wasn't really talking with. It was listening to. He was a great recounter,
great storyteller. He basically wanted... He loved audiences. And I was delighted to
give him an audience. I was amazed at that time. I mean, on that trip, he told me that he planned to become governor of Arkansas. Now, for a 22 year old... I mean, I didn't know what
I was doing next week. And the idea that he had already plotted at least the beginning
of a political career struck me as absolutely amazing. - And then you met Hillary
at the Yale Law School where both you and Bill attended? - Actually, I'd known Hillary before. I met her when she was an
undergraduate at Wellesley. And I was an undergraduate at Dartmouth I think a year ahead of her. I had forgotten this. During the presidential campaign, when she ran in the Democratic primary, some reporter from the
New York Times called me and said he had found some
of her undergraduate letters alluding to the fact she
had come up to Dartmouth as my date. I completely forgot. It was not, obviously, terribly memorable. But the reporter asked me, "Is there anything you can
remember about that occasion?" And I just... First of all, I was
stunned that it happened. And I thought back. It gradually dawned on me
that we did go to a movie. She was president of her freshmen class. I was president of my sophomore class. I think I had ensnared her to come up by talking about it as
a presidential summit. I was very clever in those days. And the only thing I
could say to the reporter was she wanted an inordinate amount of butter on her popcorn. Which I thought I did it tongue in cheek. And then there was a long pause. And I thought "Hello,
are you still there?" He said, "I'm just writing this down." And it appeared in the New York Times. - And, looking back... - The quality of the
American political reporting. - How do you compare Bill and Hillary as policy wonks and as politicians? - Well, that's a very
complicated question, Harry. Bill is just a huge extrovert. I mean, you have to be a wild
extrovert to enjoy politics. And, by that, I mean
every human interaction has to give you more energy
than you put into it. So that, by the end of a day, after you've talked or shaken hands with thousands of people, you actually end up with more
energy than at the start. I could never do that. I once ran for office. And I would be exhausted
by the end of the day. So, he's, really, he's an extrovert. He loves to, as I said
before, tell stories. He loves to interact. He has a voracious appetite and energy. A little bit undisciplined. That's not a new insight. Many of his biographers have found that. Hillary is much more disciplined. She's a linear thinker. He's kind of surveys the terrain. She is careful about her time. She listens much more carefully. I would say, overall, she is
not only more disciplined, but, I dare say, although
she's an extrovert, she's not nearly as much of one. - Were these differences
apparent when they were both students with you
at the Yale Law School? Or do these insights come later? - Well, I wouldn't have been able to talk with as much certainty about them. You know, at the age of 22, 23, all of these things are embryonic. Their tendencies, I think
I would have said then that she, in terms of sheer
intellectual firepower, she was probably ahead of Bill Clinton. - When you teach in the
School of Public Policy here, what do you teach your students is the difference between
policy and politics? - I try to integrate the two. That is, I've been a policy
official, let's put it that way, in Washington three times. Actually four times. Once under Robert Bork in
the Ford administration. I argued Supreme Court cases and I reviewed Supreme Court briefs. And then, in the Carter administration, I was director of policy planning for the Federal Trade Commission. And then I came in as Bill
Clinton's secretary of labor. And I've had advisory roles since then. And what I've learned about policy making is you cannot separate it from politics. There's a kind of hubris
that some policy makers have that, somehow, it's all about
finding the best policy. And then doing end runs
around democracy and politics to get it done. I think that's hubris,
because I think democracy really does have a lot to
tell us as policy makers. Politics has a lot to tell us about what is the nature of the good. It's not just analysis. - Let me show your book, 'cause I went back for
this interview and read, and I recommend very highly,
Locked in the Cabinet. The story of your tenure in
the Clinton administration. And I guess what I want to ask you is what did you learn about
the interface between theory and practice as you took the role of secretary of the labor? Were you surprised as
you learned these things about this idealism, this theory when the tire hits the road? - Well, I didn't learn that. I didn't learn that
idealism is sort of foolish or has to take a backseat. I thought quite the contrary. It was very important to
hold onto your ideals. Because there are such powerful headwinds constantly forcing you into
some sort of compromise that, unless you remember your ideals and go back to them like
you go back to a well, you can easily be completely sidetracked. You can be worse than sidetracked. You can be just off in a ditch. So, idealism is very important. I had been teaching kind of public policy at the Kennedy School
at Harvard for 12 years before I took the labor secretary job. So, I had a wealth of theory and, let's put it this way, what one teaches in public policy schools behind me. The biggest surprise, I think, Harry, was how exhausting those jobs are. Nobody, I mean, I never taught about how to maintain your energy. Not just idealism, but
just stay fully functioning and not be torn apart
by all of these forces. And not come home late at
night and just be overwhelmed. Resilience, physical
and mental resilience, is tremendously important if
you wanna make a difference. Now, believe me, there
are people in Washington, I'm sad to say, who like the job title or like having the power
who don't take the jobs, perhaps, as seriously as they should. Washington is a funny town, Harry. It's a town where people don't take issues as seriously as they should. In many instances, take
themselves too seriously. I tried desperately to do the opposite. I tried not to take myself too seriously, but to take the issues really seriously. - You write, in Locked in the Cabinet... Let me read you. Politicians cannot be pure by definition. Their motives are always mixed. Ambition, power, public adulation always figure in somehow. Means get confused within. And now you're talking about Bill Clinton. Will Bill stick to his ideals in the pinch or will I find myself compromised simply by virtue of being
connected to his compromises? Sort of an insightful view of politics and where things might go. Do you still stick with that description? - Well, yes, in the sense that there is a continuous tug
between means and ends to the point where some
people in political life simply lose track. It all becomes means. They forget what the ends are. This is what I was
referring to a moment ago when I said just reminding
yourself of your ideals, reminding yourself why you're there. Because, unless you have the capacity to continuously refresh
that deep understanding, then you can become trapped in the means. Then you can become trapped
in subtle ulterior motives that gradually take over your brain. - When I read your account of those years and the influence of Reuben and Greenspan, I had the following thought which was whenever a liberal is elected president or somebody that the progressives might put a great deal aside, your book should be required reading to lower the expectations of the change that you hope they're going
to be able to bring about. So, I guess my question is this. Because you had experienced this, were you less surprised by
some of the disappointments that progressives felt
about President Obama when he dealt with the crisis? - Well, I think that, regardless of where you are
on the political spectrum... I think there are many conservatives who are continuously disappointed
by Republican presidents. The fact of the matter is that presidents have a very
difficult time leading. As that old metaphor goes, it's like drinking out of a fire hose. You're lucky if you can even take a gulp. Let alone find your balance. Nothing good happens in
Washington, in my experience. Unless people outside Washington are mobilized and energized and activated and pushing on elected leaders. Even a president with the best of motives, if there is not that pressure, if all the pressure is coming
from, say, corporations or very wealthy people who are supporting through campaign donations, then that president is
not going to be able to overcome that powerful trajectory. There is nothing more important than organizing, mobilizing, activating, energizing people who share your views if you want the people in
Washington to act on those views. - Now, as secretary of labor, how did you try to mobilize constituencies for the programs that you sought? Was it only the labor
unions you could turn to to get the kind of policies that you were advocating in the administration? For example, training of workers for new kinds of jobs and so on. - Well, it was difficult to
mobilize from Washington. That's my point. I used every possible
handle lever I could. You know, I traipsed around
the capitol every day talking to members of Congress. I met with every interest
group you can imagine. I went out into the
country, talked to people. I tried to use the media a lot. Talk shows. In terms of just making the arguments. But I, personally, as a cabinet official, could not go out and organize people. I mean, they had to take
that responsibility. So, for example, the day that Bill Clinton signed his welfare bill, which I thought was, at the time... And I still worry about it. I thought it was wrong. I think that it still subjects too many people to the
vagaries of the economy. And we need some fundamental safety net that is not there now. The day he signed that, I expected, as I walked
out of the White House, to see some people on the streets. Everybody knew he was going
to make a decision that day. And I don't mean signing it. I mean the day he made the decision. He signed it subsequently. Everybody knew. The papers were filled with the fact that this was the day he was
making this decision. He was meeting with his cabinet. We all were going to have our say. But, on the streets of
Washington, there was nobody. I walked up Pennsylvania Avenue, Harry, and I will never forget the silence. Deafening silence. And I thought to myself, "Well, it's foreordained, you know." The advocates for the poor and the poor... There is no national
association of poor people in this country. How are we ever going
to do the right thing by the nation's poor? - As I read Locked in the Cabinet, the thought that came to my mind that was were you the George
Ball of domestic policy? And I should remind our younger audience that George Ball opposed the Vietnam War. And he was sort of
integrated into the process in such a way that, when they would go around the table in the Johnson administration
to talk about the war, he would get a time to be listened to, but nobody was really listening. Was that your dilemma? What was the frustration like? - Well, one has to be very careful not to fall into the George Ball trap. Because, if you are predictable in what you are going to say, you can easily be marginalized. People will stop listening. You have to be true to your own values, but take every opportunity
to be unpredictable. That is, to come out... Again, true to your own values. With something that
people find interesting or a little bit different
than they would have expected. Otherwise, nobody's gonna listen. And there was that potential problem. I mean, I found myself, certainly after several
years in that office, as a fairly lonely voice. I tried to make alliances
with others in the cabinet and other in government who
shared my views, my values, which I thought at the
time, and I still believe, were basically correct. We have to build the wages and incomes of working people in this country. They have been stagnating for 30 years. The rich are getting richer. I'm talking about people at the very top. I'm not blaming them. But we are becoming a less
and less equal society. And I saw it beginning to happen. And I wanted to do everything I could to enlist others in the mission
of reversing that trend. And it was very frustrating not to have many allies. - It's interesting, as I
re-read Locked in the Cabinet, it was quite amazing
how many of the issues that have come up now in trying to understand the
Great Recession, as you call it, the issues were there back then. I mean, the economy hadn't collapsed. But the problems of the
structural inequality and so on. Let's talk now about your
argument in Aftershock. And then I guess I just
read your paperback edition of Supercapitalism is coming out, so I'll show that. - [Bob] Oh, you show everything. - Yeah, yeah, that's right. - Actually, the paperback
of Aftershock is coming out very, very shortly. Supercapitalism has been out already. But, sometimes, writing
a book has its own, for me, pleasure. Marketing a book is not
particularly pleasurable. I really feel like... - Chalmers Johnson, the
late Chalmers Johnson tole me to show the books. So, we're doing that. So, you're really making an argument about structural changes in the economy. You're trying to tell us that what happened was not the
result of a business cycle, but rather sort of basic changes. Help us understand it. Because we had a great
prosperity and we lost it. Why? - The Great Prosperity,
as I define the period after the Second World War that went on for about 30
years, was not perfect. There was a struggle to
bring women into the economy, to bring Blacks and
minorities into the economy. But at least we were struggling. At least we were making every effort. And it was a period of time in which people in the bottom 20%,
bottom 40% of the income ladder actually saw their incomes double. Sometimes better than that. There was a great deal of upward mobility. We, as a country, invested
in education like mad. We invested in infrastructure. The National Defense Highway Act. We dedicated ourselves to the
ideal of equal opportunity. And we actually began
moving in that direction. We had a marginal income tax
on the top income earners during the Eisenhower administration. 91%. Nobody would have
accused Dwight Eisenhower of being a socialist. I assure you. But then we reversed course. We reversed course for
a number of reasons. And it happened in the
late '70s and early '80s. Partly it was because globalization, technological change began to take away a lot of the good jobs. It began to undermine unions. These forces... I'm not in favor of protectionism. I'm not in favor of being a neo-Luddite and smashing all the machinery. But we, as a nation, did not
adapt to these new forces. We didn't adapt our workforces
to these new forces. We didn't Adapt our tax systems. We didn't provide wage subsidies. We didn't provide different
kinds of safety nets. We basically allowed all this to happen and we turned our back on all of it. We unleashed Wall Street. We privatized. We deregulated. We actually made the situation more perilous for American workers beginning in the late
'70s and early 1980s. We lowered marginal income
taxes on the very rich. We found ourselves, not surprisingly, with structural budget deficits. We pulled in our horns
with regard to programs that were so important to
average working people. And we made a bad situation far worse. When the sad irony is that, if we had understood what was happening and if we had the right leadership, we could have, it seems to me, enabled the vast majority of Americans to prosper in this new world. - The argument, as I understand
it, in Supercapitalism is that, during this
period from the '70s on, what you had was we put a lot in making the investor and the consumer better off. So, there were a lot of aspects to the technological and economic changes that you see as positive and as benefiting the consumer and the investor. But the citizen was left behind, because what you call supercapitalism
overwhelmed democracy. - The citizen and the worker
were both left behind. We are both workers and citizens. So, as consumers and to the
extent there were investors, we did wonderfully well. We had the world. We had new technologies. But, as citizens and as working people, we were overwhelmed. Many of us lost ground. Most of us stagnated in terms of if you adjust for inflation. And politics became overwhelmed, in turn, by money from the very wealthy
and from big corporations. So that the power structure of our society was no longer capable of responding to the needs of us as
citizens and as workers. And not only did that cause problems in terms of stagnating
wages and everything else, but what I began to realize is that it was a dead end strategy. It was a dangerous strategy. The only way most people could maintain their living standards was by, first, having wives and mothers go into the paid workforce. And then everybody working longer hours. And then, finally, going deeper and deeper
and deeper into debt. Which seemed painless as long as housing values were going up. You could have home equity loans. You could refinance your home. But, inevitably, that
debt bubble would burst. And that is what happened to
bring on the Great Recession. The Wall Street's excesses, Harry, were the proximate cause. But the underlying cause was that we just couldn't keep up
this charade any longer of the vast middle class and working class having enough money to maintain
their living standards. And, when that debt
bubble really did burst, people could no longer spend. If they could no longer spend, the wheels of commerce basically
come grinding to a halt. Unemployment goes skyrocketing. You have to rely more and
more on foreign markets. And that's where we are today. We're not really coming out
of this Great Recession. This is the most anemic recovery from the deepest recession we've had since the Great Depression. - And the key to understanding the change is the enormous inequality in income which developed over this period? - Yes, in the 1970s, by the late 1970s, the top 1% by income was getting
about 9% of total income. But then income began concentrating
more and more and more. Partly because globalization. Partly because technology. Partly, therefore,
because all the advantages adhered to people with the right education and right connections. But it was more than that. It was also a lot of money flowing to Wall Street and to CEOs. So that, by 2007, almost a quarter of all the nation's income... Remember it had been 9% in the late '70s. By 2007, 23.5% of the nation's
income went to the top 1%. During this 30 year period, they doubled their share
of the nation's income. If you look at the top 1/10 of 1%, they tripled their share. Everybody else basically stagnated. Adjusted for inflation. The only way others could
maintain their standard of living, as I said, was by going deeper and deeper and deeper into debt, which is not a sustainable strategy. But, you see, you can't
keep an economy going on the basis of the spending
of people at the top. They just don't... For one, they don't spend enough. I mean, being rich means you already have most of what you want. - In the book, you make
the point, in Aftershock, that we need to relearn the lessons that we learned in the aftermath
of the Great Depression. And you focus on the head
of the Federal Reserve appointed by Roosevelt
who basically saw that you need to have demand
to match mass production. - Marriner Eccles. His name is on the Federal
Reserve building in Washington. It is the Eccles Building. He was the Federal Reserve
chair from 1934 to 1948. And he understood the economy. Earlier and better than
Roosevelt or John Maynard Keynes or any of the advisors. Rexford Tugwell. I mean, he was saying,
Marriner Eccles in 1933, January of '33, before
Roosevelt even got there... He was saying, "Look, we've
got to restructure the economy so that average working people get a larger share of the benefits of the growth of the economy." Roosevelt put many of
those ideas into effect. You had the National Labor Relations Act. Really empowering labor unions. Requiring employers to
bargain in good faith. You had a minimum wage,
a 40 hour work week. With time and a half for overtime. Social security, unemployment insurance. All the things we take for granted today. The foundation's laid in that period. And then, on top of that,
major public investments, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s in infrastructure and education. You had a high income
tax on people at the top to finance a lot of this. You had huge economic growth. But, again, it was economic
growth widely shared. Widely shared. Which sustained itself and meant that most people could, again,
turn around and buy. But it was not just consumption and consumption
and consumption. It was also public goods. Public goods. Again, parks and playgrounds
and public highways and public transportation
and public schools and great universities that
were public universities. Like the one we are
privileged to be a part of. And that's how we created a period of unbridled prosperity. - Your three books really
can help us walk through this period of drastic changes where we went from the Great Prosperity to the present dilemma. And I wanna ask you. What makes the difference in
whether things can change? First thing that comes to mind. Is it the personnel that
the presidents appoint that are so influential? Is it the ideas that
have developed so that... We have to worry about deficits. We have to worry about things that keep us from focusing on the issues that you're trying to raise. - Well, for one thing,
it is the personnel, which are a function of
the president's values. Number two, it is the dominant idea or the dominant ideas at a given time in terms of what is the essential problem, what is the deep problem. Third, it's what people out
there are concerned about. What they're hollering about. You know, is there a movement
out there in the public to do something about something? And, finally, and this is the
toughest thing to understand. I go back and forth as somebody who is very interested in
political and economic history. I'm trying to understand. It's almost the zeitgeist. It's something that is deeper than the two or three or
four year period marking a presidential term of office. It's something that characterizes an era. Attitudes, understandings, assumptions. - So, deficits are important. Deregulation must be done
to unleash capitalism. Those kinds of ideas. - Well, those ideas. Worrying about deficits. You know, they've been
around for a long time. I mean, even when Franklin D.
Roosevelt became president, he promised, first thing he promised was to balance the budget. That's what Herbert Hoover tried to do. I mean, it had no bearing at all on getting out of the Depression. In fact, trying to balance the budget when you have that much
underutilized capacity is the last thing you wanna do. I mean, government is the
spender of last resort. But he didn't understand that. And it's very easy to,
particularly in times of stress, to analogize a family budget
to the nation's budget. And say, "Okay, the
reason we're in trouble is we spent too much. That's the reason a family's in trouble. They lived beyond their means. And so, we, as a nation,
have lived beyond our means." But you see the same theme cropping up every 15, 20, 30 years. And the Republicans, of
course, since Ronald Reagan and, in England, Margaret Thatcher, have really glommed onto that. Barry Goldwater talked about that. But, of course, experience
should teach us otherwise. The same thing about privatization. Privatization has been
a conservative theme, major theme, for 50, 60, 70 years. You see Herbert Hoover talking about it. But then it gains prominence in 1980. Ronald Reagan, in terms of his values, his abilities to communicate to people who he brought along. The exhaustion of Keynesianism. I mean, remember, by the late '70s, we had double digit inflation. Nobody believed in Keynesianism
any longer or seemingly. It just seemed like we
were in a terrible state. Stagflation. So, we were prepared to
believe something else. Privatization and deregulation seemed like it would deliver us. Lower taxes on the wealthy will
have trickle down benefits. All of that proved to
be just a pipe dream. But the country was ready for it. - In the Clinton administration, you describe in your book
the idea that was afoot among the politicos that we
have to worry about the center. We have to find the center. And you make the interesting point that, if you're a leader, you
don't act from the center. You're actually moving the center. Today, we talk about marshaling the support of the independents. And that, really, I
think you're suggesting locks us in to not moving
to a new set of ideas. - Well, a true leader cannot
lead people to the center, 'cause they're already there. I mean, you can't lead people to where they already are. Because they are already there. It's not very profound. If you want to lead, you
can't look at the polls. You've got to lead the polls. You've got to change the polls. And we have presidents like Ronald Reagan or even George W. Bush
who have very strong ideas and who essentially say, partly because they are
pigheaded and very stubborn and will not listen to
their political advisors, they say, "Well, I don't care. I believe this and I'm gonna
lead people in this direction." And a lot of people come along. On the other hand, we have presidents, very intelligent presidents... I mean, Bill Clinton is one. And Barack Obama is an
extraordinarily intelligent man. But they are so intelligent that they see too many sides of an issue. And, therefore, they're willing to listen to the political advisors who say, "Well, the public, really, is over here. You can't go there. This is where you have to go, because this is where the public is." And they, therefore, lose, by default, their capacity to lead. - You look at sort of the
opportunities for change and you focus a lot on the
backlash that's building. People resenting the
change in their status. They're looking at how the
wealthy are doing very well. They resent the way the rules of the game seem to be written to, really, not do justice to what the expectations of the middle class and so on. So, my understanding,
and please correct me, is that you really see it important to educate the people who
are the great beneficiaries of the present system to
see this backlash coming and change their ways. Is that fair? - Well, I would say
it's slightly different. That is there's a lot of anger out there. The Tea Party was born out of anger toward the bailout of Wall Street. It's very interesting to me that we had many people on
the left who were furious about the bailout of Wall Street. Many people on the so-called right. But that bailout, for many
so-called Tea Partiers, became emblematic of the fact
you can't trust government. You can't trust big business. You can't trust Wall Street. But you can't trust government in part because government's going to be co-opted by big business and Wall Street. And what you want is a small government to avoid that kind of co-optation. And, on the surface of it,
that's not totally illogical. The problem there is, if
you don't have government, all you have left is big
business and Wall Street. And then you have total co-optation. You have no potential
countervailing power. But, when people are that angry, Harry, I think that they are willing
to listen to demagogues who use their anger and direct
it in all kinds of places. Toward people who become,
essentially, scapegoats. Whether we're talking about immigrants. Extraordinary anti-immigrant
feeling in this country now. The Chinese, to some
extent, are scapegoats. Public employees have become scapegoats. Unionized workers. The anger is looking for people. Looking for groups. And, to that extent, it
can be very dangerous for a society. The rich are not immune. And so, what I've argued and
I argue in Aftershock is that, in economic terms, the very, very rich actually have more to gain from having a smaller share of
a rapidly growing economy than a big share of an
economy that's anemic because there's not enough demand. Because the middle class doesn't have the purchasing power to
keep the economy going. And, by the same token, the rich have much more
to gain from an economy and a politics that are
based on collaboration and more goodwill than they do from an economy and a politics that succumbs to partisanship, rancor, anger. Not just because the
rich themselves could be the victims of anger. But, no, more because
a kind of society that is that fractured cannot, by definition, do what it needs to do
to make itself whole. To embrace progress. To adapt to a different world. - What will push us to see this reality in a way that changes the system? I don't yet see myself the vehicle that will make this possible. The political leadership seems to be focused on the independents. And not moving from the center. And the unions, as you point out, do not have the power in society that they had during the Great Prosperity. So, on the one hand, we're moving toward educating the public about issues. On the other hand, we have
this emerging backlash. What will make the difference so that we'll come up with the kinds of solutions that you're talking about? You propose a reversed income tax, higher marginal tax rates on the wealthy, a re-employment system, college loans linked
to subsequent earnings, Medicare for all. I mean, it's all very clear
what lies behind your argument. But how do you see that happening? - Well, let me just say,
I don't think we face a dearth of ideas on the left
or the right or anywhere. I mean, there are ideas out there. I think the real question
is political will. That's what you're asking. I, in my experience, have been surprised at moments at which the public seems to be galvanized by something. It may be deficit reduction. It may be anger at Wall Street. It may be disgust with the Vietnam War. It may be civil rights. Whatever it is, there is a tipping point. A set of tipping points. Where the public does become galvanized. Positively or negatively. And those are opportunities. I think, after Wall
Street began to implode at the end of 2008, just as Barack Obama
was becoming president, that was a real opportunity. Let's call it a teaching opportunity, a learning opportunity. But it was more than that. And the public was really
open to an explanation. And desperately wanted one and needed one for what was happening and where Barack Obama, the
new president, would lead them. I don't think he fully took
advantage of that moment. When will the next moment be? Very difficult to tell. My great fear is that we stay in the gravitational pull of the
Great Recession for years. High unemployment, anemic economic growth, a kind of angry, disgruntled politics. And we never, or we don't for many years, get to the point where
the public understands, is given a narrative, is
given a kind of picture of what happened, why it
happened, and where we need to go. One of the most important
things a president can do is to provide that clear narrative. And, although I have tremendous admiration for President Obama, he has not done that. - One final question, Bob. If students are watching this program and they actually believe
in progressive ideals and would like to see them implemented, how would you advise them
to prepare for the future? - Well, whether they're interested in progressive ideals or not, I mean, in terms of my capacity
as a professor at Berkeley, I do not try to make students believe something that they don't believe. I don't try to inject them
with progressive ideals. I want them to think hard. I want them to question their assumptions. Often, in class, I play devil's advocate and I'm the conservative. My responsibility here at
Berkeley is to get them to give up their conventional views that are not based on hard thought and to really shake them up so that they think much more profoundly
about important issues. But I would like them
to go into public life. I do think that public
service is important. Regardless of what their values are. And I do urge them, whether it's some aspect of a
portfolio, of their careers, their days, their weeks, whether it's a matter
of running for office or becoming a legislative
aide or becoming an officer or an activist in a not for profit or an advocate, an organizer, I ask them to take an active role. For the good of the country. For their own good. - Bob, on that note, I'm
gonna show one of your books. Robert Reich Aftershock. But I do wanna say that I recommend, also, Locked in the Cabinet. Which I think is still a great read. Thank you very much for
taking the time to be here. - Thank you, Harry. - And it was a great pleasure to have you. - [Bob] My pleasure. - And thank you very much for joining us for this Conversation with History. (exciting music)
