Rubin & O'Neill on Politicians

[TatonkaJames]

Transcript;

http://www6.lexisnexis.com/publisher/EndUser?Action=UserDisplayFullDocument&orgId=574&topicId=100007219&docId=l:1237492970&isRss=true

Video;

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/podcasts/fareedzakaria/site/2010/08/08/gps.podcast.8.08.cnn

ZAKARIA: How worried are you about this issue of Republicans and Democrats finding it impossible to come together?

O'NEILL: You know, in a perverse way it may be a blessing, because if they could agree on something, it would probably be negative to the people.

You know, I agree with Bob. I first went to the Executive Office Building next to the White House in 1967, when Lyndon Johnson was president, and I've been in and out of that place now since 1967.

I think it is really tragic what happened to our political system and its inability to have even a civil conversation so that just as you point out, Fareed, the Republicans abandoned the idea of this presidential commission to struggle with these fiscal issues. What kind -- that's insane. Right? I mean, it's really hard to understand how -- what seemingly are otherwise intelligent people could participate in this folly when the country's at risk.

I just came back from China about 10 days ago. You know, you may not like everything that's going on there, but boy, they've got the wind in their sails and they're growing like 10 percent and 11 percent a year, which is good for their people at the end of the day.

Hey, we need to stay on top of the world, and we deserve to do that if we can get our act together. But we're not -- our political system really tragically broken right now.

RUBIN: But I think it's more -- can I just say one thing, Fareed? I think it's more than just a question of Republicans and Democrats working together. I think we need to have a willingness to make politically hard decisions.

You know, Thomas Jefferson said -- and this is a paraphrase, not a quote -- that in a democracy, elected officials only make difficult decisions if they're held accountable by an informed public. An informed public is a function of the interests of the people themselves, and it's a function of the media and the content of the media.

I actually think Obama has done a lot given the circumstances in which he has been operating. But he now faces these enormously complex issues we've just discussed. And I think we've all got to try to find some way to help make this system work better.

ZAKARIA: Well, at the very least, we had a civilized conversation.