An Icon of the Press
Edited by Mark D. Paustenbach & Daniel J. O'Connor
Norman J. Ornstein, a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, is a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research and election analyst for CBS News. He is also co-chair of the President's Advisory Committee on the Public Interest Obligations of Digital Television Broadcasters. Mr. Ornstein is also currently leading a coalition of scholars and others in a major effort to reform the campaign financing system. Known to some as "the nation's hottest pundit,"Mr. Ornstein writes regularly for USA Today as a member of its Board of Contributors. His columns appear in major newspapers and magazines, and he frequently appears on prominent television programs. Mr. Ornstein has also written several books on the federal budget and the shaping of American health policy. The Political Affairs Reader caught up with Dr. Ornstein in January. We would like to thank him for his time.
PAR: You are the co-chair of the President's Advisory Committee on the Obligations of Digital Broadcasters, which was formed to spur discussion on the public interest rules of the emerging Digital TV industry. What do you see as the mission of your committee, and how did you originally become interested in the industry?
Ornstein: Well, it started out being a broad mission, but it started out with a fairly narrow impetus. The President announced the formation of this-he did it by an Executive Order- a year ago March, at a conference on free TV time for political campaigns, part of Campaign Finance reform. And when he announced the chairs, he did so on a Saturday morning radio address that was devoted to campaign finance reform. And I was clearly picked because of my long standing interest and involvement in that issue. But, the Executive Order gave us a much broader mandate. And of course where it came from really was Congress made this decision in the Telecommunications Act of 1996, in effect, to give broadcasters this very valuable part of the broadcast spectrum to create digital television. A lot of people-me included, Bob Dole included-thought that we should have auctioned off that spectrum the same as we have auctioned off in recent years many other parts of the communications spectrum. You know, it's a market approach, and it's the wave of the past and the future. I wouldn't have just done a straight forward auction to just anybody. I would have put some rules in place. I would have had some public interests standards there and then people would have take them into account when they made their prices. But it struck me as the most efficient way and the best way to preserve and protect the public. But they didn't do that, and of course it's because broadcasters put tremendous lobbying pressure on Congress to just give them this spectrum. The idea was, it would be in the end, at least the rationale they used was, a one for one exchange. And there's something to this, although not everything. It was going to be in the public interest to have digital television, in particular to have high definition television. And if you've seen these pictures, they'll just blow you away. That we would lead broadcasters this digital spectrum to give them time to make this transition-because it is a very expensive transition. And you got to have all new equipment and -it's quite complicated to do this. And the public isn't going to just jump on to this because they'll have to pay for it. And then, when they have the digital in place, they'll give back their existing channels, and we can auction those off and get some return on them. And what the public will get in return is we'd exchange one lousy analog picture for one fabulous, quality high definition picture. And even the standard digital picture is better. One because there's no ghosting or any other problems of that sort. But, there was an understanding that there might be some public interest obligations in return. Some costs. So, this was a way to try to explore all of those things with some significant focus on the free TV aspect of it.
PAR: Your committee released its final report in December. I was wondering if you could discuss briefly your findings?
Ornstein: The politics of this were very interesting because basically when the President made the Executive Order, there were supposed to be no more than 15 members on this committee. There ended up being 22. And that's a natural kind of thing that happens to you when you create an advisory committee of this sort. First of all, every member of Congress, every Senator, calls the President and says, "Boy, do I have some great members for you." Every group in this society says "we want to be represented." And there's tremendous pressure to increase the size. So we had an expanded committee-the larger the committee the more difficult it is to come to an agreement on anything. But also we had a committee that included in its 22 members, 7 or 8 broadcasters. They didn't make a majority, but by putting a lot of broadcasters on the committee, the administration was sending a fairly clear signal that they wanted to find some consensus here. And I made sure that was what the White House wanted. To reach consensus meant you had to be creative in pulling broadcasters in and finding ways in which they could agree with some of the public interest people who have been traditionally very much at odds with them. And so we went through a lengthy process having a number of meetings and hearings-we brought in witnesses, we looked at the history of public interest obligations of broadcasters, we looked at the genesis of digital television-the technical aspects of it-what it could do, when it was likely to do it, and then we tried to weigh all those things. We came up with really a menu of approaches. Suggested that wherever possible we move away from the traditional command and control regulation framework that existed before but also recognizing that the market itself wasn't going to keep the public interest at heart-that you need something more. And so we have within our recommendations some calls for mandatory minimum public interest requirements for broadcasters, something that's very important I believe, mandatory disclosures by broadcasting of all the public interest activities that they do so that in a local community, for example, if you're Portland, Maine, you'll be able to find out what you're broadcast stations are doing. When they say "Oh, we're doing a lot in public interest," you'll be able to see how many public service announcements and at what hours-are they just running at 3 o'clock in the morning, or are they doing as they're supposed to and running them throughout the day, and what are they doing to promote political discourse and so on. Then there can be at least public pressure brought to bear. We call for a return to a voluntary code of conduct by broadcasters-they say they can do these things on their own and let them have what they did have for 40 years and withdrew a few years back because of an anti-trust question which is not difficult to resolve. And then you can have an voluntary code and then you can give broadcasters a seal of approval to show that they're in fact meeting the code of conduct or if they're not, then people will know that as well. The broadcast industry, the National Association of Broadcasters, has resisted this, which is baffling to me. And then a series of recommendations that will promote the different kinds of disclosure and protect the public's interest, including, since this was, in its rationale, supposed to be a one for one exchange, but with digital television you can run multiple pictures, multiple channels if they do run multiple channels, and it becomes a windfall for broadcasters, then they should pay some fees or provide space along with programming to promote the public interest or give in time contributions like free time. We call for broadcasters to voluntarily to start with, to give 5 minutes a night of candidate-centered discourse within 30 days before an election. And something with broadcasters in our panel we though was a good idea. We also offer a challenge in effect from broadcasters to Congress, but it's also from our panel to broadcasters, broadcasters saying to Congress "we shouldn't be the only one's doing campaign finance reform. But, if you be a part of it, we'll play our role. We'll make our sacrifice." And so we'll see if Congress acts. And then if Congress begins to act the broadcasters pledge is an empty one or a full one. The 5/30 day thing I'm very enthusiastic about because I believe it can be a win/win situation-5 minutes a night for 30 nights. And this is spread across a night that we define as 5:30 PM to 11:35 PM. So it encompasses for a lot of stations is on early new cast all the way through a late news cast, what we're asking broadcasters to do here is to say in that 30 days: you pick the races that you think are significant in your area. You pick the formats. You want to give them a minute of free time to get a message across or answer a question you pose-fine. You want to do a mini-debate-2 to 3 minutes-great. You want to have your anchors ask question for a minute or two-that's fine too. Be creative with formats. Just do that. You don't have to give up a second of commercial time or money to do it. But you can if you want. You can spread it in the newscasts-integrate it that way-or do it in any other format but if you think about it, if every channel did this over 30 days, you pick probably 5 to 6 races that matter: local, state, national, you'd have candidates who now get no message across having multiple opportunities. And stations have every incentive to make it interesting. So it would be a very, very substantial addition to the discourse at little cost to them. And now we'll see yet again if broadcasters will do even the minimal things they promised they would do. So that's what out there. Some of these steps that we've recommended-there're others, including a very important education one-some that would require action by Congress. Some by the FCC, now we'll see what happens.
PAR: I wanted to ask you a few quick questions about your thought's on President Clinton's State of the Union address. He made many different proposal's in his speech. One of those was a USAccount, as a way to encourage people to save and plan for retirement. You have been advocate of portable pension plans, so that people could take those plans with them when they change jobs. Could you comment on the President's proposal and discuss whether or not you think it's a good idea?
Ornstein: I do think that it's a good idea. Of course, if you ad this kind of USAccount, it doesn't take away the importance of letting people who also have 401K plans or other pensions plans having some portability because people changes jobs very frequently, but these things of course are with you whatever kind of job you have. That, there would be a subsidy for lower income people who otherwise might not have the ability to save, have the disposable income to save, I think that's a very good thing as well. I think this encourages savings. I would add another element to it: and I'm surprised the President didn't to begin with but I think it's very good way to expand this-especially to make it more bipartisan-and that's something I've also written about called KidSave. This is a proposal that was originally put forward by Senators Bob Kerrey and Joe Liberman and endorsed also by Pat Monihan. A number of Republicans have also endorsed it. The idea is this: there are 4 million children in America every year. We would take a very small slice of payroll tax, and for every child born in America, you'd put $1000 into a separate savings account. Then, for the next 5 years, for the first 5 years of that kid's life, another $500 a year would go in. That would be done for parents, middle class and wealthier parents, the option of taking the $500 tax credit they now get for children and converting that into their savings account, or for lower income people you could do it through a subsidy. What it would mean is that for every kid born in America, at the age of 5, there would $3500 in their savings account. That accumulates by any even conservative standards to, in today's dollars, about $350,000 by the age of 65. And it doesn't cost very much to do this because it's only 4 million people. That doesn't have an immediate effect, it doesn't really have a terrific impact until 60 years or so from now but since what we're looking at is the long term health of the system, it would have an additional piece added on. And I think it has the wonderful benefit of giving every body, every child in this country, a piece of the action. So I'd add that part, and I think there are lots of ways in which you can encourage savings and also provide some additional benefits to the system. It's not a substitute for Social Security, but as the President has noted, it's a way of giving people something more, additional protection beyond Social Security, and in effect giving everybody an individual retirement account. So it's not just reserved for the more privileged class. PAR: The President also outlined some ideas or ways in which we can save Social Security. I know that you have been a proponent of trying to streamline or fix Social Security. Could you discuss the feasibility of these new proposals? Ornstein: They're a starting point, and as a starting point as an olive branch to the Republicans, I think they're terrific. As an end point, I'm not so sure. Among other things, I don't believe we should resolve the Social Security issue simply by relying on the surplus. Part of the reason for that is that these entitlement programs now already overwhelmingly dominate the budget. This will make them dominate the budget even more. What the President has proposed involves no reform of the payroll tax which I think is an terrible tax. You know, if you take into account the Medicaid and Social Secuirty portions of it, it's about a 15% tax that's an attributively progressive one. It's a tax with an income limit, with a flat rate, and it's only on wages and salaries, it's not on other types of income. And it's a tax on jobs. So I prefer to have a lower payroll tax or to switch the tax base of Social Security some. At the same time, I think we have to be realistic. Looking in the long run, we're not going to solve the Social Security problem without streamlining the program, and that means some, not great, but modest, sacrifices on the part of people. And the only part of the President's plan that really makes me more uneasy is that there is, no suggestion there that all of us are going to tighten our belts a little bit-not a lot, not even a full notch, but we should be looking towards extending the retirement age a little bit, reducing a little bit the benefits of early retirement, and probably making sure that you keep taxation on benefits over a certain level. Social Security should be a safety net for people, and if you do those things, especially given that we can't be certain what level of surpluses we're going to have you're going to have much greater opportunity to be assured you're going to save the system. If you don't, you'll send the signal that all this can be done in a painless fashion, it's the wrong signal to send. As for investing some portion of the trust fund in the markets, I understand the concerns of Greenspan, I'm not as troubled by it, because in principle I think you can establish a safeguarded system. You don't want to endorse it until you see all the details, but frankly, if say you're going to invest no more than 15% and you do it in a fashion that clearly mandates you can only do it in broad indexed funds and not just looking at the Standard and Poore's 500 because that's larger stocks, but you spread it among larger and smaller markets, then I think you can probably get the benefits here without any of the detriments. But it's not a cure all at all.
PAR: I wanted to thank you again for taking the time to meet with me. I just have a few more quick questions.
Ornstein: Don't you want to know what Tony Corrado was REALLY like as an undergraduate?
PAR: Sure, go ahead.
Ornstein: Tony was a student of mine at Catholic University many years ago. I can tell you that even back then, it was clear that he was going to be a terrific addition to the political science community. So, Colby is very fortunate to have one of my favorite former students.
PAR: Before the impeachment vote in the house, you wrote an editorial in the New York Times, where you noted that both the Democrats and the Republicans had the potential to either capitalize or stumble politically on the "public, open-door" nature of the proceedings? Whom would you consider the winners and the losers, now that the vote has taken place?
Ornstein: To me it's clear the Republicans are big losers here. I think they've made terrible mistakes along the way. After I wrote that piece in the Times I wrote another piece in Roll Call that compared the way the House handled the Gingrich investigation which was their first action in the 105th Congress and the President's impeachment proceeding which was the last action. So they were bookends in this Congress. With the Gingrich case, the institution almost imploded. They went to the edge of the abyss but then they stepped back from it. There were several reasons for this. One, they, from the very beginning of the formal deliberations, at least recognized that it was going to be a disaster for them unless they moved to make it bipartisan in a formal way. So they formally created a subgroup, four Republicans and two democrats, explicitly picking people who are known to be reasonable, even if they had very distinct ideologies. And that almost ensured that this would be bipartisan. That was one thing. Two, they had the in effect their own consul who was a combination of the majority or institutional consul and the independent consul, Jim Cole, who was prudent and careful not a missionary, and clearly trying to work out the best way with deliberative due process. Three, they kept things basically including all the information, the allegations, their record, behind closed doors. And working through that, they were able to, despite all the hurricanes swirling around them, come up with what was a balanced recommendation. The circumstances interestingly are staggeringly parallel. We had allegations of repeated lying in front of the investigative body. There was an obstruction of justice charge basically that was uncovered by an illegal taping of a phone call that involved Gingrich basically reneging on a pledge not to try to influence his own colleagues in cohoots with the rest of his leaders doing this. If members had wanted to, if the Democrats had wanted to, and they had lots of reasons to-deep animosity toward Gingrich-pushed this to the limit, they probably could have forced him out of office, certainly pushed him from the Speakership. Both the cost would have been enormous. And if Republicans had stonewalled this completely, they could have emerged with no significant punishment on a party line vote. But the cost also would have been enormous. So they worked out a reasonable balance here and emerged from it stronger. This time around they did none of those three things. They decided to release all the information to the public which was one for only one reason: it was to try and have a political gain before the election, believing that when they got Starr's referral, without even looking at, sent it to the public-that they cause a great revulsion against Clinton and The Democrats. It backfired. But once they did that, everything was out there, it became almost impossible to put that genie back in the bottle. And then among other things the conservative base was going to put even more pressure on them. Instead of creating some subgroup within the Judiciary Committee, consisting of people who could have, because of their relations with members in the other party, reached some kind of balanced agreement. If Hyde, for example, put together a subgroup consisting of, say, Asa Hutchinson and Jim Rogan, along with Howard Berman and Bill Belahunt, and said: "you guys go through the evidence. We're not going to release this to the public. We'll all look at it but you go trough the evidence, you see what seems to be an appropriate balance, and we want an unanimous agreement from the 4 of you." They would have probably gotten one, and it wold have been: "This guy deserves a very severe rebuke, but this is short of 'High Crimes and misdemeanors.' And we can't be sure if there's enough of a question mark about the evidence. " They didn't do that, obviously. And then, a very significant component, besides Ken Starr who clearly was out of control, Hyde brought in David Schippers who overstepped the bounds of a staff member and a consul more than anybody I've seen in 30 years of watching Congress. He became a major crusader. And I think when we look back in this and try to figure out what went wrong in the House, Schippers was as responsible for it as anyone else. But as a consequence, the Republican party has caused untold damage to itself and will continue to as we go through this. You know, a good part of the reason this trial has gone on as long as it has is because the Senate Republicans are trying to clean up a little of the mess that has been left by their House brethren. And in effect, the case that they brought seems, after the White House rebuttal, seems shaky enough, and having done this on a purely partisan vote-virtually partisan vote-right before the Congress ended, their most significant article-the obstruction of justice one-passed by a margin small enough that it clearly would have failed had it been done in this new Congress. Done after the election. They caused great damage is going to be felt internally because I'm absolutely convinced that when all this over, assuming that Bill Clinton stays in office, that there'll be a lot of blood letting within the Republican party, it's going to be a "who lost China" kind of debate, and they're going to suffer among voters as well. The image is going to be they put the needs of the nation aside in their single minded desire to get Bill Clinton Now at the same time, Bill Clinton caused plenty of damage to his own Democratic Party, through all of this. And, to the one goal which is to move away from all this-call it the politics of personal destruction-the opposition was there to do this because without the Lewinsky business, Starr would have come up empty. And all of these investigations would have looked terrible. And there would have been a bipartisan opportunity to look at the Independent Counsel Act and all these other statutes and all of the processes and say "enough is enough." Now it's going to be harder to do that.
PAR: In the aforementioned article in the New York Times article you noted that in the Watergate years, "only through a lengthy, deliberative process was a bipartisan consensus forged, convincing most Americans that the impeachment inquiry was both legitimate and appropriate". Because of the partisan nature of the votes that have taken place so far, do you think that the American public will ever see this process as legitimate?
Ornstein: Some of that depends on how the Senate concludes this. Can we get a soft landing out of it and they take it far enough that people see that they actually did it in a relatively thorough way, but not so far that it looks like it was extended for no good reason? Can it emerge in a bipartisan fashion? The action by the House Republicans over the last few days turning to Starr to get to Lewinsky, really did cause the possibility of having the Senate fall apart. It was ejecting a virus into them. But, of course, part of the irony here is that as that Times piece suggested, the Republicans deliberately, from the beginning, tried to use a public approach. They thought, they were convinced in their bones, the American people would turn on Bill Clinton when they saw all this evidence. And they were shocked when it turned out to be the opposite. Then they tried to jump and said "oh, well we want to be deliberative." But they were the ones who got this process started in that fashion, and, you know, you reap what you sow, in many ways. Now it becomes more difficult. The Senate has a chance in the next short while to at least get us out of this where people can say "well thank God no permanent damage was caused." But, it's not going to be easy to do that, especially to do it in a way where you could then turn around and start working on policy.