P took control of the United States House of Representatives.

Today's guest cuts through the headlines and the talking points to help us understand what has changed in Washington since the end of 2022 and what has stayed the same.

He's Steve Scully, this week on "Story in the Public Square."

(upbeat music) (moves to soft upbeat music) Hello, and welcome to a "Story in the Public Square," where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes from the Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

- And I'm G. Wayne Miller, also at Salve's Pell Center.

- This week we're joined by Steve Scully, senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center and host of "The Briefing" on Sirius XM's POTUS channel.

Steve, thank you so much for being with us today.

- So glad to be with both of you.

Thank you very much.

- You know, we're gonna turn the tables on you a little bit here today and have you answer the questions rather than ask them.

But, you know, you've had a remarkable 40-year career in broadcast journalism.

I'm wondering, if you think back to your earliest days, is there anything about the industry then that you miss that was still with us today?

- Oh boy, yeah, and look, I'd like to think I'm still just getting started.

So the industry has changed so much, but again, gonna be with you.

You know, when I was doing the C-SPAN column programs, often it would say longtime listener, first time caller.

(Jim laughs) So I'm going to be a longtime admirer of both of you, this program, and what you do, and a first time guest.

Look, it has changed significantly.

We have a fractured, we have a polarized media.

The good news is there is more news and information out there than ever before.

The bad news is there's more news and misinformation out there than ever before.

So, look, when I first started, cable was very much in its infancy.

MSNBC and Fox had not even started, nobody heard of podcasts back in the early and mid-1980s, and it was a very different media environment.

In many ways, it was a good environment because people would have only a couple of sources of news and information.

We were all getting the same material.

Now it is very disparate.

The problem, I think, is that people need to mix up what I call their media diet, because what happens, and I'm from a very large family so I have Rachel Maddow in my family and I've got Tucker Carlson and my family, and it's hard to convince those on one side of the aisle or the other to understand what the other side is presenting.

You tend to gravitate towards your own silo, your own media environment, your own person who reinforces your point of view rather than getting all of the information and then making up your own mind.

- You know, we're in the middle of a still-unfolding, I don't whether if it's scandal or process of discovery the Dominion lawsuit, and all of these texts that have come out of Fox News really reveals that this is an organization that is advancing a narrative with hosts that are playing characters and not really reporting the news.

When you think about that aspect, of broadcast cable journalism, anyways, you know, is this something where there needs to be maybe a revisiting of regulation for the cable industry in terms of what it contributes to the health of the republic?

- I don't think regulation, Jim, is necessary.

I think that we can sort this out.

But look, I've had the chance over the years to teach on college campuses, and I devote one of the classes to that landmark decision in 1964, "Times" v Sullivan.

Remember, actual malice, reckless, and disregard for the truth.

And that really is what is the centerpiece of the Dominion Voting System, a 1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox News.

And what you have are the words of Rupert Murdoch and Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity saying something very different privately than they're saying publicly and a real concern that it's the audience they're worried about, not the facts.

That to me is the fundamental issue at stake and that is, I think, a grave disservice to journalism in general.

Look, they are opinion journalists, I understand that.

But, you know, to quote many senators including Daniel Patrick Moynihan, "You have a right to your own opinion, but not to your own set of facts."

And the facts bore out that Fox was right.

They called the election first for Arizona.

And yet, they were more worried about Donald Trump and the audience.

And that, to me, is really, really disconcerting.

- So Steve, we're taping this in mid-March, about three months into the GOP-controlled House.

What has changed on the Hill and what is the same?

- Well, what is the same is, if you watch cable television, it's the noise that gets so much attention, the Marjorie Taylor Greenes, the AOCs, the Matt Gaetzs, the George Santos.

And that's fine, because that is part of the storyline.

What I can tell you is that it may seem bad from the outside, but there are things that are getting done.

And I'll give you one example, Hakeem Jeffries, the democratic leader, and the speaker, Kevin McCarthy, are actually talking to each other.

Now, I know that's a low bar, (Jim and G. Wayne laugh) but the fact that they're communicating with each other is a good sign, and the fact that, you know, Leader McConnell and Leader Schumer, polar opposites, are having the conversations on issues that are coming before the Senate.

So they are getting things done.

We're getting progress on PEPFAR, certainly the infrastructure bill to pass last year.

The debt ceiling, despite all the noise, I really do believe that both sides will come together and raise the debt ceiling.

The Bipartisan Policy Center is working with the treasury on when that date will be.

I think we're looking probably late summer, maybe August or early September.

And again, that will depend on tax returns and the like.

But there are things that can and will get done, not as much as what we saw in 2021 and '22 because of divided Congress, but if you kind of break away from the noise and look at the facts, I think it would encourage more people who are used to "Schoolhouse Rock!"

getting things done and passing a bill, they are getting things done.

- So what you're describing is a degree of cooperation.

Did you expect that after the November elections?

Is this a surprise to you, in other words?

- Well, not only the November election, but the 15-round vote of Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

It is a very divided Congress, And you know, I remember talking to Cokie Roberts, and boy do we miss her, saying that members of Congress, freshman and sophomore members, they would, you know, sit quietly in the back and follow the leaders.

Well, they don't need to do that today, to go back to Jim's point, because of cable television.

Because of Fox News and MSNBC and Twitter and social media, they have a platform that they never had before.

And we're not gonna go back to those days.

So I don't wanna be pollyannish and say, you know, "Oh, in the good old days, this is how it was done."

But the fact is that, because of the environment that we're in today, it is harder to cross the political aisle.

And there are two big reasons for that.

Number one is because of the amount of money being spent in campaigns, and number two, let's be honest, gerrymandering, because a candidate for the House in particular, but even in the Senate, is more worried about a primary challenge than a general election challenge.

And so what is the political incentive for those members?

And again, most come to Congress to try to get things done in their own political lane, but it is very hard to cross the aisle when you have congressional districts that are carved up more for the primary than the general.

- So, Steve, if we have this right, you have interviewed every American president since Gerald Ford.

- Correct.

Not while they were all in the White House.

Some were after the White House.

I'm not quite that old yet.

- (laughs) Okay, but still, this puts you in very, very rare company.

What leaps out at you from all of those interviews?

You probably could do the rest of the show with highlights, but give us a few.

- So I can tell you interviewing Donald Trump was very hard because you would ask one question, he'd go off in 10 different directions and there would be multiple stories out of that interview.

Interviewing Barack Obama was a big challenge because you would ask one question, and 8 to 10 minutes later, you would get a very professorial answer from him because he is a former law professor.

You always remember the interviews with a president, whether they're in the White House or outside the White House.

I remember sitting down with Jimmy Carter at his library in Atlanta, Georgia, talking about the Camp David Peace Accords and telling the story about how it literally almost came apart before they reached that agreement in mid-September of 1978.

I interviewed Gerald Ford in Philadelphia in 2000.

It was the 60th anniversary of Wendell Willkie accepting the nomination in Philadelphia and a young Republican from Michigan by the name of Gerald Ford was at the convention.

He, of course, went on to become a member of Congress and then president.

During the interview itself, he literally had a mini-stroke in Philadelphia.

We were talking about threats from Iran, and then he pivoted to talk about onions.

It was really kind of a bizarre moment.

I had no idea what was happening.

It was a TMI.

He snapped out of it, shook hands, left, and then later that evening was sent to the hospital because he had another TMI and a stroke.

But I have to tell you, out of all the interviews, and I've done them all, one that stands out, and it kind of goes back to our opening conversation, was with President George W. Bush.

So let me set the stage.

It was the second-to-last interview that he was conducting before he left the White House.

The final interview was with Brit Hume on Fox News.

We sat down with him in mid-December.

I asked for two things.

We wanted to do it in the Oval Office because of the majesty of that room, and I asked for the time, not 10 minutes, we wanted more.

We had a half hour, which is golden any time you'd interview a president.

And we got there early, we're set up.

Dick Cheney walks out of the dining room with the president and George W. Bush says, you know, "Dick, you know Steve Scully and the CSPAN crew."

And Dick Cheney kind of grunted and walked out into the Rose Garden.

Bush looked at me and said, "I guess he didn't like his lunch."

(indistinct) (Jim and G. Wayne laugh) That was the lunch in which he said, "I'm not gonna pardon Scooter Libby."

That came out later in the book, so I had no idea what the lunch was all about.

But then fast forward, two of my mentors, Brian Lamb of C-SPAN and Tim Russert, on how to do an interview.

And so how do you get something different from an interview?

You two are masters at this.

You wanna have a conversation.

So what I did is I went back to George W. Bush mid-December of 2000.

We all remember Bush v Gore, that protracted campaign of that year.

He is president because of the 5-4 decision of the US Supreme Court.

And George W. Bush in Austin, Texas said, "I wanna be the president that brings the country together, that binds the wounds after deep divisions of this political year and represent all Americans."

I'm paraphrasing, but that's basically what he said.

So I asked him a very simple question.

I said, "Mr. President, what happened?"

And I had to tell you, it was like the air came out of the Oval Office.

He kind of slunched back in his chair.

He looked around and he said, "I guess I was a more hopeful person back then."

And think where we are today compared to 2008.

We were polarized back then, we're even more polarized in 2023.

- You know, Steve, that's a remarkable story.

And I'm often struck by the fact that, I think a lot of times if you just watch the news or you read the paper, we sometimes forget that the politicians that we're reading about are people too.

And sometimes the face they put on in public doesn't reflect the struggles and the challenges that they're facing behind the scenes.

And I think you get probably got a little bit of a glimpse of that in the interview with President Bush.

But President Biden also ran promising return to a more bipartisan, inclusive approach to governing.

How's he doing so far?

- You know, I think, again, if you take away some of the rhetoric of what we're hearing, he has two challenges: how does he placate the base, the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, and yet bridge the divide?

It doesn't matter what he does, he's gonna get beat up on Fox News and Newsmax and One America News.

It is hard right now in the hot cauldron of politics to really say how is he doing?

I think he is trying to bridge the divide.

And I gotta be honest with you, when Donald Trump was elected president, I thought he also could have done that because he was in a unique position where he wasn't wed to a political ideology.

He was a businessman, to try to get things done.

Ironically, it was Joe Biden who got infrastructure done, Joe Biden, who is now facing the wrath of liberals when it comes to the drilling that now will take place in Alaska for ConocoPhillips.

I think he is trying, but I think, in today's hyperpartisan environment, no matter what he says... You know, in a recent speech he talked about, you know, enforcing gun laws, everything within the law, and trying to force Congress to pass things.

And I was watching on Newsmax and they're touting that, you know, he's trying to take away your guns.

It is hard because every word, every nuance is parsed.

We'll judge, I guess, you know, 5, 10 years from now how well he did, but I think infrastructure is a huge, huge victory and we'll see the benefits of that over the next 8 to 10 years.

- So, Steve, (clears throat) excuse me, in addition to your Sirius XM show, you're a senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

- Yeah.

- Two questions here, for those in the audience who don't know what that is, what is the center and what value is there still to bipartisanship?

So two questions for the price of one.

- You got it, well, the center began about 18 years ago when Democratic and Republican leaders, including Tom Daschle and Bob Dole, got together and said, "In our political environment, we wanna have that fierce debate, and then we wanna look for compromise to get things done."

So they created the agency.

In many ways, what we try to do at C-SPAN, which is to present all points of view.

So what we look for is where we can find the common agreement on many of these issues.

Bipartisanship is alive and well.

It is struggling because of what you might see on, you know, social media or what you might see on cable television.

It doesn't always generate the news and the headlines, but we work really hard on a lot of the issues that affect many Americans, you know, PEPFAR and energy issues and working on the X Date for the debt ceiling and immigration, healthcare issues, and how can we bridge the divide between Democrats and Republicans?

And I'll give you two very specific examples, if I can.

The one example, I mentioned Cokie Roberts who talked about how, back in the '50s and '60s and '70s, members of Congress lived in Washington, they understood each other's families.

They don't do that today.

They come in Monday or Tuesday, they leave Thursday.

We have a program in which we have Democratic and Republican members of Congress who travel to each other's districts to get to know each other.

I just did a town hall meeting with Congressman Bacon, a conservative Republican, and Congressman Carbajal from California, a progressive Democrat.

They didn't know each other before they exchange each other's congressional visits, and now they're good friends.

They don't agree on a lot, but they understand each other.

The second thing that we're doing is a Senate project, which is, the first one actually took place in Boston at the EMK Institute with two senators, Bernie Sanders and Lindsey Graham.

We did a second debate in Washington.

We're planning three debates this year.

And the goal is to have that debate.

We're not trying to quell partisan divide.

That is what the foundation of the country is all about.

That's what Hamilton and Franklin and Jefferson and Washington wanted.

But also, there had to be a compromise at the end of the day.

So we have the two senators, incumbent sitting senators debate three or four major topics.

And then, at the end, are there areas of agreement?

There may be, there may not be, but all we wanna do is foster that environment where we can bring two sides together or multiple sides together and hammer out agreements when there can be agreements.

- That's hugely important work, Steve.

You know, I pay pretty close attention to American politics, or at least I like to think I do.

And if I had a magic wand, the one issue that really frustrates me in the coverage of American politics is the near obsession that some outlets and some journalists in particular have in focusing on the horse race, who's up, who's down, which candidate is leading, instead of actually getting into a discussion of the issues and the debates.

Now, on your show, "The Briefing," I am always amazed at the depth that you get into with your guests talking about the actual issues that are at play in Washington.

But why don't more journalists focus on the issues rather than the horse race?

- Oh, it's very simple, ratings.

I mean, let's be honest, what's gonna drive the ratings?

I think CNN is, to its credit, trying very hard to do just that, to kind of get away from opinion journalism.

NewsNation is also trying to do that.

We do that every day on Sirius XM.

You're gonna hear Michael Smerconish and Steve Scully and Laura Coates and Dan Abrams and Julie Mason.

And we all come to the table with different sets of expertise.

And, look, we all have opinions, but, you know, I'm reminded, and I learned this in journalism school, as others have, don't tell me what you think, tell me what you know.

And that's what I try to do on the program every day.

It's interesting though, because I do wear two different hats.

I took over the program, you know, because of some changes at Sirius XM they asked me to do the show.

So I get up in the morning preparing, as a news person, what's driving the day, you know?

And sometimes it is Marjorie Taylor Greene or it is the infighting within the Democratic or Republican Party.

We're seeing that right now over Ukraine with Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump and then what I would call the Reagan wing of the party.

And then I go to meetings in the morning about how we're coming together on some of these issues and then I go down the hall and do the program for two hours, putting on my journalism hat.

And then, at 2:05, I'm done with that, back in my office looking for areas of common agreement.

So it really is a really interesting juxtaposition.

It's fun, it's interesting, it's lively.

The days are quick and interesting, but I just thought to myself, "Wow, I'm really looking at this from two different prisms in what I do five days a week."

- You know, you mentioned the split, the emerging split between at least the Republican presidential candidates and the Democrats over support for Ukraine.

Of all the issues that I thought that we would see daylight on between Democrats and Republicans, this was not at the top of my list.

Have you been surprised that particularly Ron DeSantis and others are talking about this, about the war in Ukraine as a territorial dispute, that the United States shouldn't be supporting Ukraine?

Has that sort of positioning by these members of the GOP surprised you as much as it surprised me?

- It has shocked me.

In getting ready for today's show, I was thinking just to that very point.

I mean, you go back into the 1930s and the 1940s when FDR was elected to a unprecedented third term before Pearl Harbor And you had the Charles Lindbergh, the America First wing of the country that really did not wanna get involved in the war.

And then we moved from, you know, the Eisenhowers and the Nixons and the Reagans and the Bush family that really espoused a much more globalist point of view, especially after 9/11.

And you can argue about the war in Iraq, but we really are dealing with, I think, a generational shift within the Republican Party.

I will be honest, after Donald Trump lost the election and after witnessing what happened on January 6th, as we all did, I really thought the party was gonna move beyond the Trump wing and kind of move into a new generation.

Bottom line, we are going from the party of Eisenhower and Nixon and Reagan and Bush to a party that really is having the internal debate between what I would call the Reagan wing, the more globalist view, and the more isolationist view of Donald Trump and now Ron DeSantis.

So it is fascinating, and this is gonna continue to unfold well into 2024.

- So, Steve, you went to journalism school, you've been a journalist ever since you started in local journalism and broadcast journalism, but you have had a lens on a perspective on journalism in general.

What do you make of the growing number of news deserts and ghost papers in terms of the effect on local coverage and local democracy?

- It's dispiriting.

Look, I know you worked at "The Providence Journal."

I just did an interview last week with Jonathan Salant, who was the only reporter in Washington for the Newark "Star-Ledger," and I am reminded, as somebody who grew up in Pennsylvania, really, you talk about a news desert in Harrisburg covering state government, and we're seeing that in state capitals across the country and we're seeing it in newspapers across the country.

Look, "The Washington Post" and "The New York Times," "The Wall Street Journal," they're gonna be fine.

They do great work each and every day.

But it it is really troubling when the role of journalists is to hold elected officials accountable and it's now the bottom line of these conglomerates that are running these newspapers that care more about ads and distribution and not about shoe-leather journalism.

And it is troubling, it is discouraging.

I can tell you, though, Axios and others are trying to fill in that void.

So in this gap, I think we're gonna see others rise to the occasion.

But there's no question, as we see newspapers really die on the vines in so many cities across the country, it is trouble troubling because that's what our democracy needs.

- So, Steve, you mentioned rise to the occasion, I actually left "The Providence Journal" after many years in November to become co-founder with Jim and director of oceanstatestories.org, which is based at the Pell Center.

And we launched on February 8th.

And we like to think that, you know, we're an example of that non-traditional news outlet.

We are supported entirely by contributions from, you know, generous individuals and organizations.

We're non-partisan, we're free.

Do you think that is the model going forward?

We are certainly not alone.

I mean, even in just in the market in New England, there are many other groups like ours that are dedicated to local coverage and local journalism.

Is that the model going forward as these larger chains to get smaller and smaller and close their papers and do other pretty terrible things?

- It is, and it has to be the model because you're not gonna generate the type of ad revenue that businesses and stockholders are gonna expect from these news organizations.

But in this gap, in this void, and we're seeing it, you know, in Annapolis, Maryland, in my hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania, we're seeing other news organizations kind of rise to the occasion.

The challenge, though, is do they have the resources and the expertise to really go after what I think good journalists need to do?

That is the real challenge.

Just one side note, 'cause you mentioned being at the Pell Center, my very first person that I met when I came to American University was Senator Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island.

He was the speaker my first week on campus, and I was just blown away by his expertise, his grace, his New England charm.

And so I just have to add that one note, that very first senator, Claiborne Powell.

- New England and charm may have never been used together before, but I know exactly what you're talking about.

(G. Wayne laughs) - (indistinct) been charming.

- He was a remarkable man.

Steve, we've got about two minutes left in the show here, but we need to turn our attention, as distant as it might seem, to the looming 2024 presidential election.

What's your take of the field as it's emerging on the GOP side?

And do you have a sense of when, again, we're taping this in mid-March, president Biden might make a decision?

- So I don't think the president is in any rush to announce, but my guess is we'll see it probably in May or June, not before that.

I think he has some things that he wants to accomplish.

He's got some significant events coming up in April, including a state visit by the South Korean president.

I do think he's gonna face, you know, some minor challenges within the Democratic Party.

And again, let's be honest, the Republican primary is, at the moment, a two-person race between Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump.

But it's going to change and evolve.

We talked about the situation in Ukraine and how Republicans are really having an internal debate and maybe even divisions over foreign policy, so that's really gonna drive a lot of this, Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, others in the Republican race.

The one thing I would say is keep an eye on how many are in the race leading up to New Hampshire, because Republicans want to take a page, I think, from what the Democrats did in 2020 to make sure there are not 8, 9, 10 candidates that could give Donald Trump the nomination.

For those opposed to the former president, they're gonna look for ways to try to narrow the field to make it a two or three person race.

So that's my one prediction.

Who those people are outside of Donald Trump, we don't know yet.

- Steve, we could talk to you all day, and folks who wanna hear more from you ought to be tuning in to "The Briefing" on Sirius XM POTUS or following your work at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

But thank you so much for being with us.

- My great pleasure.

Thanks for what you do and the way we're able to tell stories.

So it was a true honor.

I appreciate it.

- Thanks, Steve.

That's all the time we have this week, but if you wanna know more about "Story in the Public Square," you can find us on social media or visit pellcenter.org where we can always catch up on previous episodes.

For G. Wayne Miller, I'm Jim Ludes asking you to join us again next time for more "Story in the Public Square."

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