Former Sen. Bill Bradley: We Must 'Do Better' to Fix Washington

POLITICS -- May 16, 2012 at 6:31 PM EDT

Former Sen. Bill Bradley: We Must 'Do Better' to Fix Washington

Sen. Bill Bradley, the former presidential candidate and Democratic senator from New Jersey, talked with Judy Woodruff about his new book, "We Can All Do Better."

Bradley said the media, money in politics and a hyperpartisan Congress are all partially at fault when it comes to the dysfunction in Washington. In the book, Bradley calls for responsible action from ordinary citizens to instigate political change.

Woodruff recently sat down with Bradley to talk about a topic that has gotten a lot of attention: gridlock.

Woodruff asked if the problem can be fixed, and Bradley took on a hopeful note.

Bradley said:

I had a lot of people coming up to me saying that they were losing hope.

And so I wanted to write a book that would hopefully restore hope and give people a sense of the problems we've faced in the past and how we've overcome them -- wars and depressions and failures of democracy -- and then remind them that there's a goodness in the American people. That's something we can build on.

... I think politics in its best sense can celebrate the best of all of us. I think we have a systemic problem with our democracy -- two major systemic problems. One is the way we draw congressional district lines: gerrymandering. The other is the role of money in politics.

And those are the two things we need to address in order to liberate our politics and our government so that it can do the things that the majority of the people want to have done.

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