- Thank you very much for being with us.
- I'm very happy to be with you.
- One of the points that you make in "Whistlestop"
is that things aren't necessarily better or worse
in the past than they are today.
Does that thesis still hold as you sit here
in the summer of 2017?
- It's a great question, because the past,
it's all been figured out and then the wrinkles are removed,
and you know what led to what,
and things have been resolved.
We're in the time of unresolution at the moment.
President Trump has come to Washington
with a revolutionary design for rewiring Washington,
and that's true both in the structure
of the way the city works and its policies.
People right now feel anxious.
Democrats certainly do.
Some Republicans do.
But we're nowhere near, say, 1968
where you had two major assassinations,
a war going on overseas, riots in the major big cities.
The entire American structure seemed up for grabs.
It was a less partisan time then than now.
And yet it was much worse in terms
of those shocking moments.
So that to me is one of the benefits
of both studying history and writing about it,
is that whatever we may be feeling in the present moment,
there are always other moments to give you
the kind of context and a little bit of a breath
so that we don't over analyze what's happening
in the moment and miss the fact
that there are these patterns.
- Given your reading of history
what is the one essential dimension of democracy
that is most important and yet most under threat right now?
- I think, well, one that I'm focused on at the moment,
which may be, is this idea
of motive questioning on either side,
which is that it was in the past in the case
that people were generally engaged in a common pursuit,
which was to do the best things for the people
in the name of the people who had elected you.
Obviously, in private dealings there were people
who would question the motives of their opposition.
But it was not the starting point of affairs.
You did not immediately begin with a questioning
of motives of your opponent or of the press,
that you gave them – Ronald Reagan used to say about liberals,
"It's not that we don't like them.
"It's just that their ideas are wrong."
That's fine.
Ideas are wrong.
We're gonna have a battle of ideas.
That battle can't take place if everybody,
not only is questioning the motives,
but has the most corrosive view of the motives
of the other person.
So that makes it hard to make legislation.
It makes it hard to read something in the paper
and take the facts in or take the reporting in
in the generous spirit that we would expect people
to have when they interact with each other.
As a result of corroding the political space
it also corrodes the way in which we deal with each other.
I mean, that's the worry,
is that what we see in our public life
then if we don't have mediating institutions,
if we're not going to Mass,
if we're not living by some kind of code,
the code that gets past on through osmosis
is one of conflict and motive questioning,
and not giving the other person the benefit of the doubt,
and just getting rid of the fellow feeling
that should be a part of a community,
whether it's a small community
or the community of America.
So that connection with common purpose
no matter what party you're from
seems to be in real threat.
The way you would rescue from that
is for a public official to come out
and be a model or for some leader in American life
to be a model for how you behave.
For how you treat your opponent,
or how you take complicated issues and talk about them.
But in the way that politics is now talked about
in either the news cycle or in social media
it squeezes those people out.
The loudest, meanest voices are elevated,
and the voices of restraint are marginalized
or they're seen as naive or they go off
and they do something else.
They absent themselves from politics entirely
and go work on something else because it's more rewarding.
- One of the ways that you keep yourself balanced,
you've talked about this publicly, is your faith.
I read somewhere that you go to the 5:15 vigil mMss
at Holy Trinity in Georgetown.
- I do, although then now Holy Trinity, thank goodness,
there's a 1:15 on Sunday and a 5:30 on Sunday.
So it's available to me at all different times.
- So how is that weekly worship part of your preparation
for what you do on Sunday morning?
- I go to the church I went to when I was a kid growing up.
So for me that's the first thing.
There is purely that experiential thing,
but also Mass, for me, is a specific place,
and since I go with my family too I start to see it
through their eyes, my children in particular,
it's a place to be contemplative.
It's a place to put things back
in the right perspective personally,
but also politically.
It's the place to stay in touch with that community.
The biggest largest community, not just Washington D.C.
Not just the country, but mankind.
That is a wonderful balance to what we see
basically everyday.
And if you think perhaps the biggest lesson
is to do unto others as you would have them do unto you,
or to not judge,
those are pretty good things to remember in Washington.
That doesn't mean you're not skeptical, obviously.
But it means that your first instinct
is not to immediately judge the person
and then go from there,
which as a journalist is not what you're supposed to do.
As a journalist it's a clean slate,
and then you build based on what you've learned.
So that crust of cynicism that builds up over time
you can break that away quite easily
by not only remembering the lessons of Jesus,
but also the primary lesson of our own failings.
And if you're really aware of your own failings
and your own sins then that makes it pretty easy to not,
or it should, not immediately judge people
without having done your homework in your reporting.
- That's really an extraordinary point of continuity
in your life, to belong to the same worship community
that you belonged to as a kid.
You've actually talked about your mother,
and your relationship with your mother,
a complicated relationship,
but you credit her and your father
with giving you this gift of faith.
What was it that they gave you that made the difference?
- It's a great question.
My mother, she, growing up,
went to Mass everyday with her mother.
And then she went to Clarke College
and studied with the nuns for a couple of years.
So it was knit into her life,
and it was not just on Sundays,
which has also been very important to me
in just some of the reading that I do,
and in this last campaign when you can't make it to Mass,
if you're traveling on Sunday.
So I think it was the continuity in the day-to-day
that was important.
And I think also, again, the ritual of it.
I mean, it's extraordinary that our children
will go to mass with us on Sunday because they're teenagers
and they want to be doing different things.
And yet, because I think it's a part of the tradition
that we have in our family, even if they're not listening
to the homily or the readings as much as their father
might want them to, they know it's important.
And to be engaged as a family in something
that's important has meaning and has value,
and then it's there and you can pick it up
as you get a little bit older as I think I did.
I mean, there were times
where, when I lived with my father,
Holy Trinity was just a few blocks away,
and then I went to Mass by myself.
I don't really remember why.
And that's also to be in the presence of grace.
That's all you gotta do.
And of course it's an act of worship,
whether you do it, you're feeling perfectly recollected
or you're feeling moved, it doesn't matter.
You are participating in,
ritual isn't the right word that I mean,
but you're participating in that thing
that gives you meaning.
So they gave that to me
in a way that it's hard to articulate,
but nevertheless is there.
That pull is there.
Even though my dad sometimes left right after Communion.
- That's a big no-no.
- Yeah, I know, I know.
We now stay until the very end.
Not all traditions were passed on.
- That's interesting to me because the Mass is,
of course, it's a pull, it attracts you,
but it's also a push in a sense.
The Mass is about mission.
It's about coming together in this community
and gathering the spiritual resources we need
to then go out into the world and do what we need to do.
- Exactly, and to do it mindful of the lessons
you've picked up on Sunday or of the mission,
in the general mission,
which is articulated so nicely in the Gospels.
That is making it a more permanent part,
this is not something I've quite pulled the kids into yet,
but my wife, who's not a Catholic,
is nevertheless teaches Sunday School
and is also a person of faith,
and so the idea of it being a part of your daily regimen,
the daily part of your mindset,
is very helpful and Mass kind of,
if you haven't been doing your readings
or you're whatever, distracted,
it just reminds you of that mission,
not just that you're supposed to go there,
but you're supposed to go forth from there.
And it's really necessary.
I found it in this – in campaigns in general,
because they're quite destabilizing in terms
of just your life.
One of the very stabilizing things about this job
in addition to the many wonderful things about it
is I always have to be in Washington on Sunday.
So even though I'm missing the normal Mass I would go to,
I am at least in town.
I used to be on the road quite a lot on Sundays,
and so you try and find a church if you can,
or you're on the plane or something.
That can be quite destabilizing,
and as you fall out of those routines
you miss it even if it's not in some grand way.
You do miss it.
- You're obviously a journalist that feels
comfortable talking about his faith in a public space.
Not every journalist would do that.
How do people react to that?
- There are a lot of journalists who are people of faith.
One of the things that I worry about
is talking about faith in a way that would,
I mean, obviously there's,
one is mindful of the lesson of the hypocrites, right?
So for me the most important part of faith
continues to come back to the question of pride
and humility and so that's tricky,
because there are a lot of people
who are publicly pious and that's not a judgment.
It's just something that I want to avoid,
because for me my faith reminds me of how
How far short of a person who might have
a real reason to be publicly pious.
So it's quite complicated.
But on the other hand I have friends in journalism
and other public people who are people of faith
and whose ability to talk about faith publicly
but also in private conversation is a real model,
and is a real,
is something really to behold,
and quite affirming because they found a way
to have it be a part of their life
and so you don't feel like you're over here
in some strange place given the community that we're in.
But there are lots of people of faith in journalism,
although I think probably some people out in the country
might think maybe that's not the case.
- Did you get a chance to see Pope Francis
when he was here in Washington?
- No, no, I didn't.
I did interview Speaker Boehner afterwards,
because this was the fulfillment of many, many, many
years long effort by Speaker Boehner to get the Holy Father
to come to Congress and so he was here,
and then he resigned right after that. And I said,
"After meeting the Pope did you feel as though"
and I did a short and probably not very good
explanation of the Holy Spirit but I said,
"Were you moved by the Holy Spirit to then
"decide it was time to go?"
And he sort of mumbled through something,
and then he called me about a week later and he said,
"You know, after you asked me that question,
"I thought about it and I thought about," and he said
"I think that was the case."
So for him the visit was a real turning point
and it was really fascinating.
When he called he was really enthusiastic
about explaining how this had come to him.
So that was a neat,
that was very early in my time here.
So that was an interesting way to start,
having that kind of conversation,
which isn't what we usually talk about at the table.
- Thank you.
- Thank you.
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