Performance Interview with David Boren.

Q:  What worries you most about America today?
A:  As Americans, we are not focused enough on the decisions that will determine our future. We seem to assume that we will always be the leading nation in the world with secure and meaningful lives. With only 6 percent of the world’s population and with the economies of other nations growing more rapidly, our future leadership role is by no means guaranteed. We need leaders who will tell us what we need to hear, not just what we want to hear. We need to be awakened to the challenges we face. As citizens, we need to reduce our distractions with celebrity and entertainment and roll up our sleeves to do whatever is necessary to assume a better future for our children and grandchildren.
Q:  Why has the attitude of the rest of the world become so negative about the United States?
A:  How the rest of the world views the United States has indeed changed dramatically in the last five or six years. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the world had a tremendous reservoir of respect and admiration for our country. Today, the large majority of people are negative, even in countries that have been our longtime friends and allies. This negative view could not come at a worse time. Increasingly, our economic well-being and jobs here at home depend upon our relationships with other countries. Our security depends upon sharing military burdens, pooling intelligence resources and cooperating to fight crime and health epidemics. Polling data indicates that allies find us arrogant. We have not learned to listen well. Other nations view us as uninterested in their advice and their national problems. We must make rebuilding our partnership with the rest of the world a top national priority. We must find new ways to work together through new institutions such as an international peace corps and a multinational inspection force to stop the spread of dangerous weapons.
Q:  You express grave concern about Americans’ lack of knowledge of their own history. Why is understanding our history so important?
A:  A nation cannot remain great unless it understands how it became great in the first place. We cannot preserve our freedom and democracy and our own basic rights unless we know how they evolved and how our own historical experience shaped them. When polling data indicates that half of our high school students don’t know on which side we fought in World War II, and when a substantial part of our population believes that the president can suspend our constitution anytime he decides to do so, our future is put at risk. We have a crisis in citizenship caused by ignorance of our own history and of our political system. History and government should be required courses in schools and colleges. Students will not learn what they are not taught.
Q:  If our middle class continues to shrink in size, what impact will it have on the health of our society?
A:  No society has remained stable without a strong middle class. A country that is sharply divided between a small group of very wealthy people and a very large number of very poor people is a country headed for adverse bitterness and loss of freedom. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said it best many years ago. “You can have a democracy and a society sharply divided between the rich and the poor,” he said, “but you cannot have both very long.” For the past 20 years, our middle class has been shrinking in size. Not since 1929 has the wealth of our country been concentrated in so few hands. While the middle class has fewer resources, the cost of what is necessary for them to succeed, including health care and higher education, keeps skyrocketing. We must help the middle class start to grow and prosper again before it’s too late!
Q:  How is the flood of money coming into American politics affecting our political system?
A:  What would we do if we woke up to newspaper headlines and television and Internet announcements that a small group had taken over Congress and the White House by bribing all of our public officials? What would we do if we realized that the most important decisions of our government, including the tax burdens placed on us, were largely the result of these political briberies? I would like to think there would be a march on Washington to demand a stop to the payoffs. In many ways, that is exactly what is happening, but it’s more subtle. Campaign contributions and spending are more than ten times what they were less than 30 years ago. More successful candidates for Congress now don’t even get most of their contributions from people from their home states or districts. Grassroots democracy is being destroyed. Cynicism about politics and politicians is at an all-time high. Four out of every five young persons no longer believe that elected officials really care about representing them. The money chase is threatening the survival of our political system.
Q:  How can we stop the extreme partisanship that prevents us from coming together to solve problems?
A:  George Washington warned us early in our nationhood about the dangers that come with extreme partisanship. Candidates are using the campaign strategy of pushing emotional hot buttons to distract us instead of working to create the kinds of civil and reasonable discussions that bring us together to solve problems. We would never have won the Cold War if Democrats and Republicans had not put the interests of our nation ahead of the short-term interests of their own parties in the next election. We need more bipartisan working groups in Congress and less power exercised by the party consensus. Perhaps it’s even time to consider a “time-out” from the partisan blame game. An independent president could put the best Democrats and Republicans in a single American cabinet to work together to solve our problems just as Churchill did with a unity cabinet during World War II. Once the cycle of increased partisanship is broken, we could then return to the traditional two-party system, which has served us well during most of our history.
Q:  Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future of our country?
A:  It’s vitally important that all of us as Americans embrace our future with all its possibilities. Many historians and social scientists have said that the health and strength of a nation or society can be judged by the way its people feel about their future. By that measure, America is in trouble. For the first time in our history, almost two-thirds of our people are no longer certain that our children will have lives as good as our own. While the challenges we face are great, we have faced even greater challenges in the past and overcome them. We should reread the history of the year 1776 to learn how Americans faced challenges to the very existence of our nation. No people are more creative. No people have a better record of problem solving once we identify the problems we face. The whole purpose of this letter to America is to wake us up to the real problems. I have every confidence that once we come to understand our challenges, we will meet them successfully. To me, pessimism is un-American! As an American, I believe in our future!