E-mail a friendRep. Maxine Waters
airdate October 7, 2008
Rep. Maxine Waters' district includes a large part of South Central L.A.—an area that caught the nation's attention during the '92 riots. A member of Congress since '91, she tackles difficult and often controversial issues with a no-nonsense, no-holds-barred style. Enjoying a broad cross section of support from diverse communities, Waters is praised by African American entrepreneurs for her work to expand procurement opportunities, is active in the women's movement and supportive of the hip-hop music community.
Panelists discuss whether the town hall format helped or hurt Sens. McCain and Obama in their second presidential debate. (1:54)
Full interview. (22:12)
Rep. Maxine Waters
[Clip]
Tavis: Ouch. John McCain and Barack Obama trading barbs tonight over tax policy in the second of their three presidential debates. We are live here in Los Angeles for reaction and analysis with a terrific group. First up, nine-term California Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who is a senior member of the House Financial Services Committee, which, of course, has been at the center of the economic storm over the past several weeks.
Mickey Kaus is a columnist for "Slate" and creator of "Slate's" widely read political blog, "Kaus Files." And Gregory Rodriguez, columnist for "The Los Angeles Times" and author of the critically acclaimed book "Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans and Vagabonds," and no, the book is not about Wall Street bankers. The subtitle, in fact, is "Mexican Immigration and the Future of Race in America." Delighted to have you all on the program.
Rep. Maxine Waters: Delighted to be here.
Gregory Rodriguez: Thanks for having us.
Tavis: Let me start with a confession - I did not do post-debate analysis on this program after the first debate, I did not do post-debate analysis after the Palin-Biden debate, and I did not do it for two reasons. Number one, I quite frankly am sick of the spin cycle, because I find that what happens on the stage is, these days, increasingly less important than the spin cycle that happens in the 24, 36 hours after it. I didn't want to be a part of that, number one.
But number two, I decided to do this show tonight in part because I kept seeing stuff that wasn't coming up. So when I am watching this spin stuff, I'm like "But nobody's raising this issue and that issue." I want to get to some of that tonight, but I wanted to start with a confession about why I didn't do post-debate analysis the first two times, because I hate the spin cycle that happens 24 hours after, and here I am caught up in it now for the next 23 minutes, so let's go.
Let me start by asking you, Gregory, whether or not, that said, the format tonight made a difference in the performance of either man? A conversation heretofore about the format playing best to John McCain. Let's talk about the format first.
Rodriguez: You know what? I expected John McCain to do much better than he did. He usually has - he's better equipped, usually, to feel the audience's pain, if you will. He's better at connecting, he's better at emoting than Obama is. But you know what? Tonight it didn't work. For me, Obama - the format really accentuated the age difference, and Obama seemed fluid, he seemed younger, he seemed more nimble, and I think the format really, for all the prognostication beforehand, I think the format really favored Obama because of his youth.
Tavis: Mickey, did the format allow us - Gregory's point notwithstanding - did the format allow us to understand better, to learn any more in detail about either of these men's policies?
Mickey Kaus: A little bit, but not as much as a format that allowed more give-and-take and more questions about more topics would have done. I thought it was a very arid format, a sort of dry format. There was no Laughter People were cracking jokes that were actually funny, and the audience wasn't laughing because they were in this sort of distant, somber mood. I think it reflects poorly on McCain that he wanted to have 20 or 30 of these around the country, because it's not a very good format.
Tavis: Congresswoman, for you, a quick question about the format - did it make a difference to you as compared to the first debate?
Waters: Not really. It wasn't a real town hall meeting. Real town hall meetings are people who are not selected; they are not there because you have space for 10 people. You do have give-and-take. People jump up in the audience and yell a question out, they challenge you. So these are not real town hall meetings, these are fake town hall meetings.
Tavis: (Laughter) Don't believe the hype. Two questions to you, Congresswoman, about this fake town hall meeting, as you put it, tonight, in no particular order. One, were you happy with the increased conversation about the economy as compared to the first debate, since it was billed, the first one was, as a debate about foreign policy. So were you, as a member of the committee, the all-important committee in the House, happy about - did you see anything, did you learn anything about their positions on the economic crisis, number one.
And number two, what does it mean that with all the talk we saw from both of them tonight, both of them voted for the bailout package? Does that mean anything?
Waters: Sure, it means a lot. First of all, we have not had enough conversation about what took place around this $700 bailout package or rescue plan -
Tavis: Seven hundred billion dollar, you mean.
Waters: Seven hundred billion dollars.
Tavis: I knew what you meant, yeah. I wish it was $700.
Waters: I do, too. Seven hundred billion dollar plan. And tonight you didn't get enough discussion on it. The centerpiece of this plan is the buy-out - the purchase of the toxic paper, the bad subprime loans that are held in all of these institutions, and the modification of them. The workout - how will we work them out after we buy them up?
We can write down the principal, we can write down the interest, we could get rid of the resetting of these loans, these adjustable rate mortgages, and we can stretch them out to 30 years. We can refinance them with FHA. That was not discussed. We haven't heard enough discussion about that, period, in the media, but that is the centerpiece of this plan.
Tavis: Mickey, did you learn anything about the bailout process where McCain and Obama are concerned? Let me ask two questions for you - same thing, two questions. Did you learn anything about it, number one, and number two, might John McCain specifically, because Obama is in the lead in most of these polls, might John McCain have been served better, particularly given his conversation tonight about being against earmarks, might he have done better to roll the dice, to stand up boldly, put another way, and to say, "I am not voting for this bailout plan. It's got $150 billion that my Senate body tacked on and on behalf of the American people I'm not gonna sign something that they've added $150 billion of your taxpayer money on in pork barrel spending.
"It's what I've fought my whole career against in Washington - I'm not voting for it." Might that have helped him pick up this ground that he's losing?
Kaus: I think it might have, and there were some people, like Dick Morris, who urged him to do that. And I think he was trapped because he pulled this stunt where he suspended his campaign and flew to Washington to save the bailout bill, and then for him to turn around and vote against it and say, "Well, I didn't do a very good job of selling it; in fact, it's a bad bill," he couldn't do that.
Tavis: But that was before they added on the $150 billion on top of the 700.
Kaus: Right, but -
Tavis: That could have been his line of logic.
Kaus: But then he would have to say, "I flew to Washington to make the bill better and in fact the bill got worse." (Laughter) I thought he trapped himself. And also, he probably really believes it, because he seems to be sort of a - for all his maverickness, he goes along with the establishment wisdom on this.
I thought it was interesting that he proposed this really expensive-sounding bill to buy up every bad mortgage in America after attacking Obama for spending. Now, maybe it's a good bill, maybe it's some of what you were talking about, about letting people, like, lower the value of their house and pay off a smaller amount, but it's very expensive.
Waters: Well, but that's what the bill really is. The bill is a bill that is going to buy up what is referred to as the toxic paper - these subprime loans, adjustable rate - all of the exotic products that went into creating this economic crisis that we're in. The alt A loans, the no documentation loans, the interest-only loans, the adjustable rates. That's what's stuck now where people cannot afford to pay their mortgages.
That's the centerpiece of the bill. And let me tell you why they both voted for this bill - in addition to wanting to do something about stopping the stem of foreclosures and allowing people to stay in their homes, small businesses are getting killed out there. They cannot borrow money to make the payroll and for inventory.
And so what you see businesses already starting to close down. There is an absolute freeze on credit, and so they know that if this continues and small businesses, which are the most job-intensive entities in our society, if they close down, then we really are in trouble.
But added to that, a few days after people screamed about this bill and they started to learn that 401Ks and retirement plans were at stake, then people started to change their minds. The calls to our offices started to change, because people saw the connection between this economic meltdown and their own future interests.
Tavis: And yet, Gregory, with all that said, with all due respect to my Congresswoman Maxine Waters, whose district I do, in fact, live in, (laughter) with all due respect to her, the markets still tanked today after the bailout; we're still tanking. The world economy is more worried now than they were when we passed this thing.
That's growing; read your papers, watch the news - that's getting worse. Against that backdrop, did you - do you think the American people learned any more tonight about this? Do they feel any better about this situation that both of these guys voted for, courtesy of this debate?
Rodriguez: Absolutely not, but I'm not an optimist; I don't expect them to be explaining difficult legislation. To answer your previous question of Mickey, why would John McCain want to keep this issue alive, he really does want to turn the page and for him to have come out against the bill post-facto would have been a disaster, I think.
I think he wants to move beyond it, and to the extent to which they can avoid the details and not tell us what it's about, the better it is for them. So I don't really - I think, actually, the person who did a better job in this debate explaining the basics, whether it's true or false, was Obama. He explained things in a greater detail than we've ever expected, we've ever seen Obama do.
And McCain, while he stayed more on a tack, Obama spent most of his time being specific and explaining in a way that we've been waiting for him to do for a year and a half.
Tavis: You've got the rich, you've got the middle class, you've got the working poor, and you've got the very poor. What is it about both of these gentlemen that will not allow them in any debate to even say the word "poverty?"
Rodriguez: Because they're looking to win votes, and working poor and the poor in general vote at lesser rates than do middle class people. It's simply efficacy, it's efficiency, it's going for the voter who's most likely to vote. That's what every congressional candidate does.
Tavis: Mickey, efficacy, efficiency, or cowardice?
Waters: No, no, no, not every congressional congressperson does that. (Laughter)
Tavis: I hear your point - let me ask -
Waters: I am known as a tax-and-spend liberal. Now, that's what people don't want to be known as because if Obama or McCain - and he won't be - become known as a tax-and-spend liberal, then that automatically takes them out of what would be considered serious politics.
Tavis: So Mickey, I understand strategically the point that Gregory is making, but is that, with all due respect to Gregory, efficacy, efficiency, or cowardice, particularly at a time when the working poor are the ones who are looking for these answers who make up many of these undecideds?
Kaus: Well, it's interesting. I agree it's been a missing component and I think it's for tactical reasons, but I was a supporter of Welfare reform in the late '90s and that was supposed to enable you to talk about the working poor, because we weren't giving money to people who didn't work, we were only helping people who worked.
So it was supposed to usher in this era of spending, where we could actually spend on the working poor because it would only go to workers. That doesn't seem to have happened, at least to judge from this debate, and that's disappointing.
Tavis: Did you think, Mickey, tonight, that for all the talk we heard about how aggressive John McCain was going to be, I thought he was certainly much more aggressive - and here's my definition, I was a college debater for four years; that's how I got through college on a scholarship. So I'm paying very close attention to the details of the debate strategy.
Every single time McCain - darn near every single time that he got asked a question, maybe every single time, he tied into his answer a critique of Obama - every time. He gave you his position somewhere in there, but he tied into every answer he gave a critique of Obama. Obama did that more tonight than he did in the first debate, but not as aggressive as McCain was. Did that make a difference for you or for anybody else, you think? Or did you not see it that way?
Kaus: No, he definitely did that, and the question is did he come off like an angry little man who was not the steady hand on the tiller that he was advertising? (Laughter) And I think he did - it's very hard for him to pull off. I don't know how he could have pulled it off, but I don't think he did.
Rodriguez: You don't think he came off as the steady hand?
Kaus: No, I don't think he pulled it off. I don't think he came off as the steady hand on the tiller.
Rodriguez: I agree completely.
Tavis: You don't think so?
Rodriguez: No, I think he really destabilized himself. The more he came out - and he kept on missing punches. And the fact that we don't hear the oohs and ahhs in the audience, and you mentioned the fact that we don't hear - we weren't laughing at jokes, there was this vacuum quality to this debate, and so some of these punches may have hit - I don't think we would have known it somehow.
Tavis: Congresswoman, in the first debate, the question was whether or not Barack Obama could show that he was not Bambi, that he wasn't a patsy, that he wasn't going to be pushed around, specifically on the issue of foreign policy. Did he know his stuff? I think we all agree - this is not an endorsement, but I think we all agree that he certainly showed that he could handle himself in a foreign policy debate.
Did he pick up on that tonight? Did he build up on that? Did he fall back on that? Assess tonight how he did on the foreign policy question.
Waters: I thought he was very, very good on the foreign policy question. I think he discusses where we went wrong in Afghanistan better than anybody. I also like the fact that he understands that Musharraf was double-dealing, that we were paying him billions of dollars, supposedly our friend, when in fact he knows what's going on on that border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
He knows that's where al Qaeda thrives. He knows where the black market is going on and where the weapons are being traded and bought and sold and all of that. Yet we hung on to him and the people finally said enough is enough. And I think that Obama has been very, very good in pointing that out, and also pointing out we took our eye off the ball with Afghanistan.
We spent all of this time, all of this money in Iran and as a matter of fact al Qaeda has resurfaced, reorganizing up in Afghanistan and the Taliban, and that's where the real problems of the future are.
Tavis: Mickey, let me start with you; I want to ask you and Gregory this question specifically because you are reporters and you are writers - a blogger, in your case. What's your sense - give me some sense of what you think some of the headlines - because this is what you guys are going to be doing yourselves - what's your sense of what some of the headlines are going to be tomorrow?
And the second part of that question is what, for you, do you think is going to be missed that ought to be more focused on in these headlines?
Kaus: I think the headline is going to be McCain on the attack, did he do enough to change the game - no, he didn't. Obama seemed cool, people were just looking for him to pass the threshold of coolness; he passed it. What's missing is the extent to which I thought McCain is willing to do a desperate pander with this plan to bail out every homeowner in America.
That seems - that's the elephant in the room, in terms of money, I think - unless it's - if it's already in the bailout, then I'm wrong.
Waters: It's in the bill. It's in the bill.
Kaus: Okay, if it's already there, then I'm wrong.
Waters: That's what the bill is, yeah. (Laughter)
Tavis: Too late, Mickey.
Kaus: All right.
Tavis: It's in the bill.
Kaus: She knows what's in the bill, so.
Tavis: What's your sense of what the media - I mentioned earlier that I'm still bothered by the fact that we can't get to a conversation about poverty in America, so I'm out there with my assessment, for what it's worth or not worth. What's your assessment of what ought to be covered tomorrow that wasn't covered in this debate or didn't have enough time spent on it or the media's just going to gloss over it to get to McCain on the attack?
Kaus: It missed the character issues. It missed - it was all these sort of "Time" magazine sort of editorial board issues and not how does Obama make a decision, does he have experience, is McCain hot-tempered - all the things that are going to affect the future crises that we don't know about.
Tavis: The character question.
Kaus: Yeah.
Tavis: Gregory?
Rodriguez: I think the question that was missed and the headlines will miss it was that one question that started to go out, which was how can we trust either of you with our money if both of your parties created this mess? (Unintelligible) both of these men voting for this legislation and why they did, and I think people - Brokaw could have bored more into their role and the legislature's and Congress's role in creating this mess.
As far as the positive headline, I think it would be not only McCain's attacks but Obama's ability to preempt those attacks. I think that was the story of the night, that Obama came out ready and I think for that reason, McCain's attacks fell short.
Tavis: Did this conversation tonight change anybody's mind about anything where these guys are concerned?
Waters: I don't think so. We heard their themes over and over again. We've heard them before. They were not put forth in any new, creative way. I think what was missed tonight was a real discussion about the economy. You have not heard the candidates talk about what they would do. You hear them talk about deregulation in a general way; you don't hear them talk about consolidation of the regulatory agencies, you don't hear them talking about what's wrong with short-selling on Wall Street.
You don't really hear any in-depth discussion about what one would do to really change the way Wall Street works. You didn't hear any discussion about what they're going to do with Fannie and Freddie except use it kind of as a political issue to say those were the bad people.
Is it going to become privatized? Will it still be a GSE, a government-sponsored enterprise? I haven't heard any discussion about what would be done to change what is happening economically in this country.
Tavis: I'm sure, Mickey, I'll get some hate mail for this tomorrow, maybe in the next few minutes, for even asking this question -
Kaus: Maybe from Mickey.
Tavis: Maybe from Mickey, yeah. (Laughter) May get dogged in his blog, "Kaus Files." That said, let me ask it anyway, or say it anyway. I am always troubled at this point in the campaign when the choices are this stark, for me, at least. I'm always troubled by how anybody can truly be undecided at this point in the game. I can never for the life of me understand how people are undecided at this point in the game.
So two questions to you, because you're much brighter than I am. Tell me, number one, how anybody is undecided at this point, number one, and what are they looking for to help them vote for or against the other guy?
Kaus: I was undecided at this point in the 2000 election and I wrote a bit series about making up my mind and making up (unintelligible).
Tavis: Who ran in 2000?
Kaus: Gore and Bush.
Tavis: Oh, give me a break, Mickey. I should kick you off this show, man. (Laughter) You were four weeks out from Election Day and you were undecided about Gore and Bush?
Kaus: I was wrong about Bush, I thought Bush was a different person than we actually elected. But it's because the Democratic Party, I worry about the interest groups having too much power and will the president have the character to stand up against the Democratic interest groups. The Republicans, I worry about that the business interest groups will have too much power and they'll be too trapped into their free market ideology, and you have to make a judgment as to which is the bigger threat. That's why I end up undecided, and usually wrongly undecided, but this time I have a harder time seeing it.
Tavis: But what - Gregory, do you have any sense of what people are undecided about at this point?
Rodriguez: You know what? There's so much crosstalk and so many accusations on both sides I think people are looking for - I think Mickey tends to - they're looking for the character issue. They're looking at who to believe. Is Obama really going to tax us? Is he really going to do it, or is he really not? And I think the crosstalk only confuses people.
Tavis: So did McCain gain any ground tonight in trying to plant doubt in the minds of the undecideds about Obama's truthiness, as somebody once put it?
Rodriguez: (Laughs) Colbert.
Tavis: Yeah.
Rodriguez: I think really he didn't. I think he meant to, but again, the surprising thing for me was the extent to which Obama was specific, like he never is - normally, he's not - and the extent to which he preempted a lot of those attacks by coming out more aggressively. He started the aggression, if you will, before McCain did tonight.
Kaus: Obama's problem is that he's strange to people. He spent a lot of time in a foreign country, he's unusual. And to the extent that all McCain's attacks were just saying, "Oh, you're just an - another liberal," well, people know liberals. They can deal with liberals. He wasn't painting him as strange in any way, so it was ineffective.
Tavis: Congresswoman, for -
Rodriguez: Except for when he said that (unintelligible) - when he said "that."
Tavis: Yeah, "that one."
Rodriguez: When he referred to Obama as "that one."
Tavis: Let me ask a question about that. Let me ask a question about that. I know I'm giving - I've interviewed him any number of times in my career on radio and television. I am going to give Senator McCain, for the moment, at least, the benefit of the doubt on that comment, just as I did some years ago with Ross Perot - you recall famously Ross Perot in the debate with Al Gore on the Larry King program kept saying in one of the debates kept saying "you people."
Kept using that phrase, Congresswoman, "you people," talking about Black people. Kept saying it. It wasn't a debate; it was actually a speech he gave. I'm remembering this now. He gives a speech talking to Black people, and he kept saying "you people, you people."
Now, I gave Ross Perot the benefit of the doubt. Kind of stuck on stupid to talk to Black folk and say, "you people," but I gave him the benefit of the doubt. I'm wondering, though, Gregory, to your point, whether or not tomorrow we're going to see some serious commentary with racial overtones about him referring to Obama twice as "that one."
Rodriguez: As you mentioned earlier, he said it so quickly I don't know if people are going to seize - we seized on it because we were asked to watch and I didn't go to the kitchen, I didn't go to the bathroom during the debate, so I was watching more intently, I think, than the average American. So I don't know if anybody's going to obsess on it.
Tavis: Mickey?
Kaus: We'll hear about it.
Tavis: We will?
Kaus: Well, yeah, it's going to be captured on YouTube and people are going to rebroadcast it. I think it'll be a big deal.
Tavis: Would that be unfair to them, to accuse them of playing the race card for using the phrase "that one?"
Kaus: Yes, I think McCain was just being an old codger and not being - there was no real racial overtone, he just didn't want to say Obama's name. He was scared to say Obama's name.
Rodriguez: You don't have to infuse race in it to say that it was nasty. There's certain - it's demonizing when you say "that one."
Waters: Well, let me just say that I understand that the press, particularly in one situation, decided that they didn't want to be the ones to interject race. That if it was not done by the campaigns, they did not want to go down that road.
Tavis: But they have, post-racial, race-neutral, race-transcendent, politics agreements - they've been doing it all along, but I digress; my time is up. Congresswoman, nice to have you on the program; thank you.
Waters: Great, thank you, thank you.
Tavis: Mickey, thanks for coming in, even though you did what you did in 2000, undecided.
Kaus: Thanks. (Laughter)
Tavis: And Gregory, nice to see you as well.
Rodriguez: All right.
Back to October 7, 2008