E-mail a friendJoe Scarborough
airdate June 10, 2009
Joe Scarborough co-hosts MSNBC's Morning Joe. From '94-'01, he represented Florida in Congress, with assignments that included the Judiciary and Armed Services Committees. He was also one of the GOP freshmen legislators dubbed the "New Federalists." After leaving office, he served on President Bush's Council on the 21st Century Workforce and practiced law with Florida's oldest firm. Scarborough was publisher-editor of The Florida Sun newspaper and is author of Rome Wasn't Burnt in a Day and The Last Best Hope.
TV host weighs in on the similarities between Presidents Reagan and Obama. (1:47)
Full interview. (12:54)
Joe Scarborough
Tavis: Joe Scarborough is a former U.S. congressman from Florida who of course now hosts MSNBC's popular morning program, "Morning Joe." In his new book, "The Last, Best Hope: Restoring Conservatism and America's Promise," he talks about how to turn this party around. He joins us tonight from New York. Joe, nice to have you on the program.
Joe Scarborough: Great to be with you, Tavis.
Tavis: So I'm reading "USA Today" today and I open it up and bam, right there on the front cover -- I knew we had you on the program; you were already booked here. But our timing could not be more propitious, because Susan Page has a great story on the front page of the paper -- you see it on your screen there -- "Who Speaks for the GOP? As the party searches for its voice, poll finds it has no clear identity." Your timing -- their timing -- couldn't be any better.
Scarborough: Well, it is -- it's a great time to start having a discussion about what conservatism means, because you've got an awful lot of people talking about well, who's the next leader going to be in 2012; I'm saying that's not really relevant until conservatives figure out who they are.
If being conservative means taking $155 billion surplus, which Republicans had in 2001, and turning it into a $1.5 trillion deficit, which is what George Bush left the country with, well, I don't think there are many Americans that are going to consider that conservative.
The military adventurism over the past eight years, where you had a president who ran in 2000, he talked about a humbled, restrained foreign policy -- sounds a lot like General Colin Powell. But yet four years later, the second inauguration, Tavis, remember what he said?
He said, we're going to, quote, "end tyranny across the globe." And he's going to do it on the backs of U.S. soldiers and Marines. That's not conservative, that's not restrained. That's Wilsonian, it's utopian.
But I think the main message my book has for conservatives, and I basically say whether you want to agree with me or not, I really don't care. I'm telling you, this is the future. Decide whether you want to go in this direction or not. I talked about temperament. Look at a lot of those faces on the front page of the "USA Today," and there are a lot of people that aren't beloved with
Middle America.
It used to be that conservatism loathed ideology and harshness. Edmund Burke, the founder of conservatism, hated ideology, hated rigid dogma. Russell Kirk, who wrote "The Conservative Mind," a landmark book in the '50s, the same thing. Even William F. Buckley said, before he died, when he said George W. Bush wasn't a conservative, he said, we conservatives are supposed to be captives of reality, and that's somehow gotten away from us.
So Tavis, we as a party are going to have to figure out what we stand for, and if it's wasteful spending, if it's military recklessness, if it's 4 percent of the population spending 25 percent of the world's energy resources and being proud of it, that just doesn't sound too conservative to me, and I guess it doesn't sound conservative to you or most Americans.
Tavis: Tell me what you mean by temperament a little bit more.
Scarborough: Well, conservatives love talking about Ronald Reagan. You always hear every conservative, "Oh, we need to be like Reagan." And they talk about Reagan's ideology but they forget Reagan's temperament.
I draw a line directly from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama in this department. These are two gentlemen who are really, if you look at their ideology, they're outside the mainstream of Middle American political thought. I think Ronald Reagan was a little more conservative than most Americans; I think Barack Obama is a little more liberal than most Americans.
But both of them figured out where America was temperamentally, and when the Democrats seemed too radical after the '60s and some of the things that went on in the '70s, Reagan was calm and he was assured, he didn't raise his voice.
I always say to my Republican friends, if Reagan were alive today, he wouldn't be calling Barack Obama a communist. He wouldn't be calling the next Supreme Court justice a racist. Are you serious? Do you think (laughter) you're going to win votes this way?
And then I go on to say, there's a reason why Barack Obama, who we all talk about how liberal he is, there's a reason why Americans trust him, and it's the same reason that they trusted Reagan -- because he's cool, he's in control, and temperamentally, he's sound. Americans want that type of leadership now in an uncertain world.
We've gotten away from that as a Republican Party. We're defined by rigid ideologies and we're defined by people that -- I'm sorry, it's just the truth -- have spent the past eight years insulting their opponents.
Tavis: As was evidenced by this big fundraising effort the other night for the Republican Party, the two persons who most can bring in the bucks right about now for the GOP -- Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin. If those are the persons who show up at these fundraisers and are known now for bringing in the biggest bucks and these, on the cover of "USA Today," are the faces -- older White males, let's be frank about it -- who are now the face of the party to the extent there is one, how do you sell that? What do you do with that?
Scarborough: Well, I believe in a big tent. We need Newt Gingrich in our party, we need Sarah Palin in our party, we need Dick Cheney in our party. But that's only one side of it. Tavis, think about it -- 1994, when I got into Congress, we Republicans owned New England. You could go state by state and we had Republicans owning those congressional districts.
Today, there's not a single person in New England, not one, that is represented by a Republican in the House of Representatives. Why? Because this party, my party, it seems like we have trapped ourselves with leaders who are from the South that talk alike, that think alike, that act alike.
This debate over whether Colin Powell should be a Republican or not, and you've got people saying you don't want a general, a war hero that's got a 70 percent approval rating, in your party, my argument is this -- hey, guys that look like me, talk like me, walk like me? We can win in Florida and Georgia and Alabama and Mississippi every day of the week, but if you want to win in Connecticut again, if you want to win in Maine again, if you want to win Washington state again, if you want to start winning in Colorado again, you need to look to people like Colin Powell -- people that are more moderate.
More moderate than me on domestic issues, but just right on foreign policy. For some reason, that's hard for some conservatives to figure out. Republicans need to figure it out, or they're going to be in the minority for a long, long time.
Tavis: So you were sounding a clarion call, and with all due respect to you, you ain't the first person to make these observations, to share these observations, and yet, I'm curious as to where you see the evidence that people are listening, that the leaders, the elected officials in your party are getting it, because I don't see that evidence as yet>
Scarborough: You know, Tavis, I am starting to see some evidence of it. The other night -- you talked about the fundraiser. I was one of the first guys, and I think I can deliver this message that I talk about in my book because in Congress I was a conservative's conservative. I'm small government conservative, I've been socially conservative, I've been domestically, foreign policy -- but I deliver this message and say hey, we need to calm down.
We need to back up and look at how we're projecting ourselves to America. And what I found is this: You now have Charles Krauthammer that's writing columns scolding Republicans, saying, "Stop calling Sotomayor a racist." You had Newt Gingrich the other night, and I'll tell you what -- I didn't hear anybody saying this when I started saying it about Colin Powell as a conservative -- about a month ago, when I was attacked by Rush Limbaugh and some other conservative radio talk show hosts for doing it, but you had Newt Gingrich saying in front of this group, "The party has to be big enough for Colin Powell and Dick Cheney."
That's what I was saying weeks ago, what I was saying months ago. I think we're starting to get it. I hope we're starting to get it. But you know what? The proof's going to be in the pudding. Who are we going to nominate in 2012? Is it somebody that can win outside of the Deep South? Is it somebody that can carry Connecticut, Nevada, Washington state? We'll see.
Tavis: You raised this, so let me follow you there. You raised it, and for that matter, his is the biggest face on this, again, "USA Today" cover today. The bottom line is, with all due respect to "Morning Joe," I love the program, love being on it when you invite me on, but Rush has the biggest mouth, he's got the biggest microphone, he's got the biggest audience, he can make the biggest dent, one could argue, whether he's attacking you or Colin Powell or anybody else. What do you do about that?
Scarborough: If you listen to him, you sit there and you laugh, and maybe he'll tell you something that helps you learn. But you realize that Rush Limbaugh's not an elected leader. I like listening to him. He's an entertaining guy, but Jon Stewart's an entertaining guy. They're both entertainers.
Tavis: But Limbaugh's influencing millions, though, Joe. He's got a whole lot more listeners than Stewart has viewers.
Scarborough: He does. He does, but at the same time, remember, Rush Limbaugh spent the Republican primary this past year trying to kill John McCain politically. Limbaugh did, Sean Hannity did, Mark Levin did, Laura Ingraham did --
Tavis: And they wounded him in the process, that's my point.
Scarborough: Nah, I don't think so. The Republican primary voters voted for John McCain anyway. A lot of people like Rush Limbaugh. He inspires the base. Rush Limbaugh helped me in 1994 because he inspired the base to get out there and vote.
But I think there are a lot of people that give him a little bit too much credit in the
mainstream media, give him a little too much power. I don't think he's got the power that he had back in 1994 or even throughout the 1990s. He's still a strong, effective voice, but listen, this guy's an entertainer and he knows it. That's why he's got so many listeners.
Tavis: Let me ask you, having written this book, "The Last, Best Hope," whether or not you're hopeful, and if you are, hopeful if what happens over what timeframe, over what time period?
Scarborough: Hopeful for what, the conservative movement, the Republican Party, America, what?
Tavis: Yes. All of the above. (Laughter.)
Scarborough: All of the above. Well --
Tavis: Connect them up for me.
Scarborough: It's a little more complicated than just saying if the conservative movement revives itself, everything's going to be okay again. What I learned in the 1990s was -- I got into Congress in '94 and I was 30, 31 years old. I thought I had all the answers, and I couldn't stand Bill Clinton. I learned a lot of lessons about -- I was not -- my temperament was not so great in the 1990s. (Laughter.)
But as I look back on that experience, every time I flinch it's about when I got angry or when I -- I think we can all say this about when we were younger, doing things that we wish we hadn't done. But I look back and I see how Bill Clinton -- here's a guy that didn't like us any more than we liked him, and yet we worked together, we balanced the budget, we passed Welfare reform, we presided over a very strong economy, you had Republicans and Democrats and we had that creative friction, and great things happened.
I'll tell you -- the thing that scares me more than anything, Tavis, and I've seen it with my own party over the past eight years, I'm seeing it with Democrats right now, what scares me is when one party or one political faction has unchecked power. It was bad for Bill Clinton in '93 and '94. It was bad for the Republicans over the past eight years. I suspect that we may see a leveling win in 2010.
So what am I hopeful -- I'm hopeful that some conservatives will learn lessons from this book, they'll use it as a guide when they run in 2010, and we'll have a bit more balance in Washington, D.C., and when we Republicans went to Washington in 1994 we actually helped revive Bill Clinton's presidency. I think a little bit of creative friction might not be bad for President Obama either.
Tavis: Like him or loathe him, agree or disagree, he's one of the best on television at making you think. His name, of course -- Joe Scarborough, the host of "Morning Joe."
Scarborough: Oh, I hope nobody loathes me, Tavis. (Laughter.) Who would loathe me?
Tavis: I certainly don't. I certainly don't.
Scarborough: (Laughs.) Thanks.
Tavis: The new book is called "The Last, Best Hope: Restoring Conservatism and America's Promise." Joe, honor to have you on. Thanks for the insight, thanks for the book.
Scarborough: Oh, it's always great talking to you. An honor to be here, thank you.
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