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Parker Spitzer
Inflammatory Political Rhetoric on the Rise?; FBI Targets Mob in Major Sweep; Ronald Reagan at 100
Aired January 20, 2011 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KATHLEEN PARKER, CO-HOST: Good evening. I'm Kathleen Parker.
ELIOT SPITZER, CO-HOST: And I'm Eliot Spitzer. Welcome to the program. Here are the questions we're drilling down on tonight. Religious intolerance, racial mockery, accusations of Nazi tactics -- the inflammatory language never ends, even after the Tucson shootings and calls for everyone to turn down the harsh rhetoric. But has it grown even worse?
Plus, one of the biggest Mafia busts ever, over 120 arrested. But it's been a long time since "The Godfather" came out. Do we now have an entirely different kind of Mafia?
And new questions about Ronald Reagan. Did he have Alzheimer's disease while he was in the White House? His son gives us the whole story.
But first, our top story. For the past few weeks, ever since the awful shootings in Tucson, this country's been looking inward, wondering if the tone of our political rhetoric might have triggered the violence. So tonight, we want to take a closer look at it, zeroing in on a couple of examples of where it's gone wrong, really wrong. And I'm talking about incidents that occurred after we learned about what happened in Tucson.
PARKER: A mere two hours after being sworn into office as governor, Republican Robert Bentley gave a speech at the very church where Martin Luther King once preached. It was, incidentally, Martin Luther King Day. And from the pulpit, the new Alabama governor said -- and I quote -- "Anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother, and you're not my sister, and I want to be your brother."
SPITZER: Sounds to me and to a lot of other folks like he's saying, If you're not Christian, you should be. News of the governor's remarks traveled fast, and by Wednesday, he apologized.
And then there's Rush Limbaugh. Yesterday on his radio show, he did his imitation of China's president, Hu Jintao. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RUSH LIMBAUGH, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: Hu Jintao -- he was speaking, and they weren't translating. They normally translate every couple of words. But Hu Jintao was just going -- [GIBBERISH] Nobody was translating. But that's the closest I can get to it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SPITZER: Wow. How do you even react to that? Here to talk about this and other examples of toxic rhetoric, CNN contributor John Avlon. John, thanks for being here.
JOHN AVLON, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: A pleasure.
PARKER: All right, John, we just heard Rush Limbaugh. We know that he's an entertainer. He's not a spokesman for the state. But really.
AVLON: Yes, but really. I mean, you know, talk about reinforcing every negative stereotype in the book. But that's his game. And again, you can argue that Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer, the problem is he's also a political leader. He's a political leader without real responsibilities. And we are living in a time where politics is following the talk radio model, conflict, tension, fear and resentment. And politicians are acting like talk radio host, in which there is no such thing as too extreme. So that's part of the cycle we're in right now, the cycle of incitement.
SPITZER: Doesn't he have to make a choice? In other words, when comedians do certain things, they are given greater latitude. But as you just pointed out, Rush Limbaugh's not a comedian. Rush Limbaugh was using that stereotype, that mockery to make a point, to be disdainful, to put down, and to do things that are heinous, that are just bad.
PARKER: Well, and he would argue, though, Look, I'm an entertainer. I'm a radio personality. I represent no one. I'm -- you know, yes, he's been granted a great leadership position. I'm just playing devil's advocate here.
AVLON: Sure. Sure. I got you.
PARKER: By the White House, by the way. And you know, so I think he can defend himself to the extent that he's not representing anyone except himself. But it was embarrassing, and it was goofy and it was just bad form. Can we just -- can we condemn him on that basis?
AVLON: Oh, yes.
(LAUGHTER)
AVLON: I mean, that shouldn't be a long ball. But I mean, here's the thing, is that Rush Limbaugh -- he has a huge amount of influence in the contemporary Republican Party and conservative circles of debate. And the problem is, is that folks are very quick to excuse the inexcusable when it comes from their side. That's the problem with our politics today. We really want to reset our politics, we need folks to step up and criticize extremism on their own side, like William F. Buckley did, criticizing the John Birch Society back in the early 1960s. We haven't seen that lately. It's a lack of courage.
PARKER: Well, nobody wants to criticize Rush Limbaugh. We've seen what happens when you do.
AVLON: That's right.
PARKER: All right, let's go to the governor.
(CROSSTALK)
SPITZER: That's why he doesn't see himself as an entertainer. And I think you just made the critical point, John. The self- criticism needs to be self-criticism. It's easy to throw it across the aisle. It's easy for me to criticize, you know, Rush Limbaugh. We also, as Democrats -- and I'm going to be a little partisan for the right reason -- have to be quick to say when Democrats have also crossed that line, if, in fact, we're going to bring it back to the middle.
But I think Rush Limbaugh really has got to acknowledge that that sort of commentary is just wrong. To mock a foreign leader, let alone the racial stereotyping, but to mock a foreign leader when he knows he's one of the two or three most powerful people in the Republican Party, just doesn't speak well for our nation. I don't think it's good for us.
(CROSSTALK)
PARKER: Well, let's see where he goes with that. But how about governor of Alabama and making this very Christian statement to a -- obviously, to the choir. He was preaching to the choir, clearly.
AVLON: Yes, he was preaching to the choir.
PARKER: But very exclusionary. You know, I don't -- he explained it after he apologized. He said, Look, I was speaking to people like me, who understand. People in Alabama get it. But I've lived in Alabama, and not everybody gets it.
AVLON: No. I mean, clearly, he's not used to being governor yet, right? I mean, he was speaking as a deacon, as an evangelical. He was not speaking in his new role, which is the higher responsibility to represent all people. That's the inclusive responsibility of leadership in a democratic society.
And look, we've had a whole string of these things, right? I mean, we -- you know, every day, every week over the last two years, we've seen examples of the cycle of incitement. Sometimes it's stupid, idiotic, you know, innocent comments that are relatively innocent. Sometimes it's really people throwing bombs. But it's a cycle of incitement. It feeds off itself. And that's what we really -- if we really want to reset, that's what we really need to do, is learn that lesson.
SPITZER: Let's not forget that these comments probably have been made all through our history. PARKER: Sure, they have.
SPITZER: And I'm not saying this to justify any of the comments. I'm thinking back to Richard Nixon's tapes, for instance, which are only now beginning to come to light...
AVLON: Richard Nixon (INAUDIBLE)
SPITZER: ... in which -- yes, I mean, his tapes are just full of a litany of abusive, derogatory, racist comments about African- Americans, about Jews, about virtually every ethnicity one can imagine. That's sitting in the Oval Office.
And again, this is just to put into historical context. One of the realities we have to deal with is that with microphones everywhere, with the Internet, hardly any individual comment can go unexamined. And therefore, additional sensitivity is required by those who are making the comments that will be heard.
AVLON: That's right. I mean -- but I mean, I think there's an obligation to be better. I mean, of course, politics ain't beanbag. We all know that people are not innocent. And you know, it's become very fashionable lately, I've noticed, for some folks to say, Oh, gee, but Adams and Jefferson were saying terrible things about each other all the time. But I think that ends up excusing -- that creates the highway to excuse the inexcusable.
It's the anniversary of JFK's speech. It's the anniversary of Reagan's inaugural. We've had the anniversary of MLK Day. Those remembrances are supposed to, I think, help us adjust our expectations upward. We have to live up to those better angels of our nature in American history. And when we constantly play to the lowest common denominator, as I think -- it gets rewarded today because it gets the oxygen of attention.
PARKER: Yes.
AVLON: And that degrades our whole discourse.
PARKER: Well, it would be nice if rhetoric were elevating.
AVLON: Wouldn't it?
PARKER: Yes. I mean, I would vote for that person, right? I know you want to be even-handed here, Eliot.
SPITZER: No, not really, but...
(LAUGHTER)
SPITZER: But because John is here begging me to be even-handed, of course, I will be because, you know, we're good to our guests.
(LAUGHTER)
SPITZER: But I wanted to reflect for a moment on your other observation. We shouldn't forget -- talk about good rhetoric, it is the 50th anniversary of that brilliant speech by JFK at his inaugural, and also the often overlooked Eisenhower speech about the military- industrial complex on his way out, his farewell speech, that was just as important, if not more important. But anyway...
PARKER: Could you give us little...
SPITZER: No. I didn't...
(LAUGHTER)
SPITZER: But not that lose the train of thought about this speech we shouldn't be participating in, to be even-handed -- for you, John -- another politician whose rhetoric is getting a lot of criticism, and rightly so, Steve Cohen, Democrat, who compared the Republican attacks about health care to the Nazis and to Joe (SIC) Goebbels, who was the heinous propagandist for the Nazi regime. Again, one step at least beyond -- one giant step beyond any sort of metaphor that should be used in the sort of ideological combat we're involved in.
But let's take a listen. I think we have it on tape. And then we can talk about it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. STEVE COHEN (D), TENNESSEE: They say it's a government takeover of health care -- a big lie, just like Goebbels. You say it enough, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, and eventually, people believe it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SPITZER: All right, John, react to that one.
AVLON: Well, look, first of all, it came a couple days after he'd penned an op-ed calling for greater civility. That's count one. Hypocrisy is the unforgivable sin. Count two is that he refused to apologize right away. I mean, this is not -- this is not a complicated case here, right? I mean, Hitler is Hitler. The Holocaust is the Holocaust. And we need to sort of reground our American political debate. When folks start throwing around that kind of language, making these comparisons, it degrades everybody, and it's idiotic. I mean, you know, it's like...
(CROSSTALK)
AVLON: ... tyranny and oppression in American politics.
PARKER: I agree with you to a degree. And I'm not defending anybody's speech here. I think -- first of all, I think any time you bring up Hitler or the Nazis, you're disqualified from further conversation. You don't get to participate because it's just...
(CROSSTALK)
PARKER: It's bad thinking. But you know, he was talking about the saying that if you...
SPITZER: The big lie.
PARKER: ... repeat a lie over and over and over again, it becomes the truth. I don't think he was necessarily saying Republicans are Nazis. Come on.
AVLON: No, I -- I mean, he was -- that was his defense, right, is that he was making a metaphor about the big lie. And the big lie is a powerful concept. But still, you've got to be better than that. You've got to think bigger than that. And it's not like -- you know, we've had -- that's a pretty mild example of some of the rhetoric we've seen from congressmen recently, Democrats and Republicans, right? Trent Franks called President Obama the enemy of humanity. Alan Grayson called the Republicans the enemy of peace. We got to remember that our political opponents are not our personal enemies. We've forgotten that in our politics today, and that's part of that cycle of incitement. It encourages it.
PARKER: OK, soaring rhetoric from John Avlon.
(LAUGHTER)
PARKER: Thank you, John, for being with us.
SPITZER: Thank you.
PARKER: When we come back, new details on the FBI bust that nabbed more than 100 alleged mobsters today. A mob fighter and a former mob lawyer tell us what the mob has become.
But first, intolerance is nothing new. Here's an example from the old Jewish quarter in Cordoba, Spain.
(VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SPITZER: "The Godfather," "Goodfellas," "The Sopranos" -- organized crime has been part of pop culture for so long, we almost forget it's real -- until today. In a dramatic pre-dawn sweep, FBI and local law enforcement agents rounded up 121 alleged mobsters in one of the largest single-day Mafia busts in history.
PARKER: Charges range from classic mob hits to racketeering and extortion of the Longshoremen's Union, the same corrupt organization featured in "On the Waterfront," the Academy Award-winning Marlon Brando film from 1954.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Isn't it simple as one, two, three? One, the working conditions are bad. Two, they're bad because the mob does the hiring. And three, the only way we can break the mob is to stop letting them get away with murder.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PARKER: Attorney General Eric Holder announced the arrests in Brooklyn this morning.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ERIC HOLDER, ATTORNEY GENERAL: Members and associates of La Costa Nostra are among the most dangerous criminals in our country. The very oath of allegiance sworn by these Mafia members during their initiation ceremony binds them to a life of crime.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SPITZER: Joining us now, two of New York City's most experienced lawyers, Ron Fischetti, a practicing defense attorney whose clients have included Gene (ph) Gotti, brother of "Teflon don" John Gotti, and Ed McDonald, who as attorney in charge of the Organized Crime Strike Force in New York, supervised of some of the Justice Department's most important cases. And you may remember Ed from the movie "Goodfellas," in which he played himself.
Welcome to both of you. Has the mob's influence been diminished? Is this the mob of 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago? Has it evolved in any way?
RONALD FISCHETTI, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Oh, I think it's evolved. I mean...
SPITZER: Or devolved.
FISCHETTI: ... devolved, without any question. Back in the day, as you know, when you had John Gotti, before that, Paul Castellano and people like that, there was a structure. Now there are many of those people who are considered bosses who are represented by prosecutors because they're cooperating. So...
SPITZER: Oh, come on.
FISCHETTI: And Ed can tell you about that. So it's not the same mob at all, in my judgment.
EDWARD MCDONALD, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: I think that the subject matter of these indictments really tells the story. There's some mention of the Longshoremen's Association Union, and there's another union, the Concrete Workers Union, but these are very, very smell components of the overall indictment scheme today.
In the '80s and the '90s, when the Justice Department went after the mob, the core of all the major cases involved labor racketeering, control of labor unions, involvement, if not control, over industries. You don't see that here because that's been pretty much eliminated because of what the Justice Department's been doing for the last 20 or 25 years.
SPITZER: Well, I just got to amend that. And state prosecutors.
(CROSSTALK)
SPITZER: But I think that the critical point is the one you just made, which is there was about a 15 or 20-year period where the mob -- what I called it, the white-collarization of the mob. They understood the way to make big money was not the street level extortion, gambling, and even drugs, but to get into industries and organize them horizontally, create monopoly power, so to take -- put a lock grip around concrete or the fish market or trucking.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Brokerage houses.
SPITZER: Brokerage houses. That's right.
(CROSSTALK)
SPITZER: Penny stocks.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Penny stocks.
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You don't see that anymore.
SPITZER: But why not? Is that prosecutions (INAUDIBLE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, there's no question prosecution has had a major, major effect on that. But these are street crimes and...
SPITZER: The ones in these indictments today. And there are a lot of them. Look at...
(CROSSTALK)
SPITZER: ... a lot of pages.
PARKER: What are they? What are some of the indictments in here? What are they charging...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, they're charging with extortion, with gambling. A lot of it is gambling that they have there. Let me make a little prediction, if I can.
SPITZER: Sure.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm on a panel that appoints lawyers to represent indigent people, CJA panel, Criminal Justice Act. You watch, when these cases come to trial, how many of these individuals are represented by CJA lawyers. Not the lawyers like I had in my day -- Gerry Sharkel (ph), Jimmy LaRosa (ph), Jay Goldberg (ph), people that we know. We're not doing that anymore.
SPITZER: Right.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So to a large extent, in my opinion, organized crime is completely different.
SPITZER: These cases kind of a throwback to 25, 30 years ago then?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, 40, 50 years ago.
(CROSSTALK)
SPITZER: In terms of what you're seeing charged.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These involve a lot of narcotics cases.
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The major organized crime figures in the '80s and in the '90s were not engaged in narcotics trafficking, for the most part. There were exceptions occasionally because it was a lot of money involved. But for the most part, they were making enough money in sort of legitimate business.
PARKER: Eliot, I got to get you to tell a story that you told us at our meeting this morning.
(CROSSTALK)
PARKER: You were wiretapping somebody.
SPITZER: Well, pursuant to court order, we had...
(LAUGHTER)
SPITZER: Let me get that out there. The evidence was admitted in court later at the trial. And we had a bug and wiretaps in Tommy Gambino's office and -- the son of Carlo. He and Joe Gambino shared a desk (INAUDIBLE) they called them a partners' desk. And they were talking -- I used to listen to these hours of their conversations, and most of it -- and as you say, most of it was boring. They were running a trucking company.
Put that aside. One day, Tommy leans over to Joe and says, Do you remember what Dad told us? Dad being Carlo Gambino, like, the don of all dons. And I'm thinking we're going to get the most important piece of organized crime lore ever. Tommy says to Joe, Remember what Dad said? You've got to have a Jewish accountant.
(LAUGHTER)
SPITZER: But, he continues, you've got to watch them.
(LAUGHTER)
SPITZER: Here it is. I thought this was bad ethnic humor. This is Tommy Gambino to Joe Gambino. So I don't know. Go figure. Go figure. So what happens now? I mean, Does organized crime -- I mean, this is serious stuff. We shouldn't laugh too much. There's a murder in these indictments. People have been killed, are being killed by organized crime. Does organized crime shift -- who takes over now? Does it become a different ethnicity? What happens? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, this -- look, I don't want to cast aspersions on Italian-Americans. Italian-Americans are moving, have moved into the American mainstream, the economic mainstream. You know, talented, bright Italian-Americans don't have to go into the mob, like they might have thought they had to do in the 1930s and the 1940s. They can do anything today because I think that the amount of discrimination has been eliminated, if not reduced to the point of elimination.
But there are still kids who are wannabes. They want to get into this stuff. So there's going to be people in the ranks who are going to want to move up, continue to do this kind of stuff. If law enforcement keeps hammering away, they're going to be effective. At the same time, you're having demographic shifts and you're having people in this particular ethnic group that now have so many other opportunities that only fools are going to be involved in organized crime. And it's going to be recognized -- it is recognized in these communities, where the kids are now going to Ivy League colleges and going to great law schools and medical schools.
So that's what -- that, along with the change in demographics, the change in American life and the acceptability of different ethnic groups as they move into the -- they've come into the United States over the last 100 years, that coupled with the war that law enforcement has waged effectively is really going to eliminate the mob in the next 20 or 30 years. There'll still be a weakened group of people who are going to continue to participate in these families, however.
PARKER: Well, you played yourself in "Goodfellas," right? But we seem to have this romantic attachment to the mob, even though it is an illegal organization and they do horrible things. We seem to -- I don't know if any other ethnic group can pull it off the same way that the Italians did. There's something about the whole culture, as you say, the food. It's all wrapped up into one idea in the American mind.
FISCHETTI: Well, I guess I can say it. Italian-Americans have charm.
(LAUGHTER)
FISCHETTI: I think so, a lot of charm. I think the media had something to do with it, too. I think -- I remember when "The Godfather" came out, and I remember that people I represented and other people who represented people who are in organized crime -- everyone went to see that movie. Everyone looked like that. Everyone spoke like that. And then you had other movies like that.
But now, except for "The Sopranos," I mean, which really has an impact, I don't think it's being glamorized the way it was years and years ago, so that people wouldn't be wannabes and want to hang out at social clubs, which had been closed down because of prosecutions, to be a person like that, to look up to a person who basically is someone in, quote, "organized crime." So I think it has diminished completely. SPITZER: I want to come back to something that is serious and important, which is what Ed alluded to, which is when organized crime did have its tentacles into unions, in particular. There was a convergence -- politics, unions, business, organized crime. And what you saw was people's lives -- this was portrayed in "On the Waterfront." People couldn't get jobs if they didn't kick back part of their salary to the local mob figure, boss, underboss, whomever it may have been.
The pension funds were raided and were sort of -- funds were secreted out of those pension funds so that people who deserved them didn't get them. Real harm was done to many, many, many people by this organized crime control. So the prosecutions that Ed brought, Justice brought, sort of unraveled that, untangled that. (INAUDIBLE) something critically important, which is why these indictments seem to be basically back to the street-level extortion cases, seriously important prosecutions to bring, but somehow not as systemic, perhaps, as the cases you brought. I think that's...
MCDONALD: I think there's no question about that. I mean, these are basically street crimes, even though they include a murder. I mean, when you talk about the movies that you've seen like "Casino" and movies like that, when the mob controlled Atlantic City and controlled the waterfront and controlled unions, that just doesn't happen anymore. You don't see that anymore. These are basically street crimes. A lot of good publicity for the FBI, though, and Eric Holder.
SPITZER: That's right.
MCDONALD: And that's all right.
SPITZER: All right, Edward McDonald, Ronald Fischetti, thank you both so much for joining us. Great conversation.
MCDONALD: Thank you.
FISCHETTI: Thanks.
SPITZER: Coming up: Today's the 30th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's inauguration, and he's more popular than ever. But has the GOP distorted his legacy? We'll ask his son, Ron, just ahead.
But first, what's in a name? If you're a made man, it means a lot.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PARKER: Ronald Reagan was sworn into office 30 years ago today, and his popularity continues to soar. A new CNN poll shows the Gipper ranks just third, behind only JFK -- John F. Kennedy, that is -- and Bill Clinton as America's favorite modern president.
SPITZER: For many, he's the president who single-handedly ended the cold war, jump-started the economy, and renewed the nation's pride. But like most stories, Ronald Reagan's may be more complicated than we remember.
PARKER: One man has unique insight into the president. He even shares his name. This February 6 would have been Reagan's 100th birthday, and to mark the occasion comes the book "My Father at 100." We spoke earlier with its author, Ron Reagan.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RON REAGAN, AUTHOR, "MY FATHER AT 100": Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.
PARKER: You look a little bit like this fellow named President Reagan.
REAGAN: Oh, I'm nowhere near as good-looking as he was!
PARKER: Well, I would never say that. We have to start with a controversy that you've created...
REAGAN: Yes, yes. Apparently.
SPITZER: ... with this book. Yes. You mentioned briefly that you think your father's Alzheimer's disease, which was announced officially in 1994...
REAGAN: Yes.
PARKER: ... may have begun when he was in office.
REAGAN: I think that's a deduction that's likely. Given what we now know about Alzheimer's, that, in fact, it's a process that unfolds for years, or even decades before identifiable symptoms arise, given when he was finally diagnosed and the proximity to his presidency, it's likely that the disease itself was present during the presidency.
Now, that's not to say, though, that he suffered from dementia. That's a symptom of the disease that comes along later, and I mention specifically in the book that I saw no signs like that.
PARKER: Right, and...
REAGAN: But I assume that the disease must have been present, and I've talked to physicians who confirm that that's a likelihood.
PARKER: But you think that if he had known that when he was in office, he would have left?
REAGAN: Well, I think so. I mean, I think that's a reasonable supposition, that if somebody tells you -- you're president of the United States or in any executive position, somebody says you have a terminal illness that's attacking your brain, even if you don't feel symptoms at the time, you're probably going to step down. And certainly, if it had become public, he would have had to.
PARKER: Well, but you've been attacked by your brother for having brought this up. REAGAN: Yes. Yes. I saw this tweet that he tweeted about me being an embarrassment to my father and to my mother. I spoke with my mother the night before last. You know, I said to her, Given that, I'm sure I'm going to be asked if you've read the book and what you think. So what should I tell them? Because I don't want to put words in your mouth, unlike some other people. And so she said, Well, you tell them that I read it. I loved it. It made me cry, and I'm very proud of you.
PARKER: Aw! All right. Well, that's the final word on that.
REAGAN: I guess so.
SPITZER: And she's doing well?
REAGAN: Yes, she's doing very well. She'll be 90 July 6th, by the way...
SPITZER: Wonderful.
REAGAN: And she's sharp as a tack.
SPITZER: Switch gears to politics. And your dad, as we said in the intro, is invoked incessantly by Republicans. He is the iconic figure of the Republican Party. Everybody wants to follow in his footsteps. Even though people fundamentally disagreed with much he did, he is now this figure who is larger than life. Do you ever respond to this and say, No, the things you're saying are nowhere near what he believed? And do you look at issues that the Republican Party now stands for or claims to stand for and say, Wait, my dad doesn't believe that?
REAGAN: Well, I don't go issue by issue, and I can't speak for him in terms of modern issues now. He's been dead for a while and out of public life for many decades now. I don't know what he would feel about the Tea Party, let's say, or Sarah Palin.
PARKER: Oh, come on!
REAGAN: I can only...
(CROSSTALK)
REAGAN: I don't want to put words in his mouth, you know?
SPITZER: But he was more flexible, it sounds to me, as you're describing him now. He was a more flexible thinker...
REAGAN: Yes.
PARKER: ... than the current Republican Party is, which is very much dogmatic along -- down -- straight down the line.
REAGAN: More flexible and also more civil. I mean, he was not a man -- he was a gentleman and I think he would -- one thing I feel comfortable saying is that he would be very distressed by the level of vitriol now that we see, you know, going back and forth, and particularly directed, for instance, at the White House. He just -- he did not like that. That would make him very uncomfortable, and I think he would think it was unworthy of the country.
PARKER: You all were very different. I mean, he was the cowboy. You were the dancer. You disagree -- you're completely on opposite sides politically.
REAGAN: Well, in most things, not all things. But yes, fair enough.
PARKER: Generally speaking.
REAGAN: Yes, sure.
PARKER: So do you feel like you were reacting to him as son to father?
REAGAN: You mean, by becoming a liberal as opposed to conservative?
PARKER: Just becoming sort of different. You were really a pendulum swing from him.
REAGAN: If I thought that I wouldn't have any trouble admitting it, but I really don't. I've always had a sense from as long as I can remember that I was myself. I didn't wake up in the morning and look in the mirror and say, I'm the president's son or Ronald Reagan's son. I'm me. And so from a very early age, if I disagreed with him, we'd disagree, and I'd stick to my guns, which could be frustrating at times.
SPITZER: Did you ever, when he was in office, try to sit down with him and influence policy?
REAGAN: Not to a major extent, but, for instance, on the AIDS issue, you know, I began to get the feeling that they're really dragging their feet here, and we've got a major crisis on their hands. And he doesn't seem to quite get how serious this is. After, remember, the presidents are in kind of a bubble, and they rely on aides and things to bring them information, and the AIDS crisis was mostly affecting gay men and IV drug users.
PARKER: Right.
REAGAN: -- not a big Republican constituency.
PARKER: You were very upset with him, too, in that period. I remember well.
REAGAN: Yes, indeed. And so I remember my mother and I both talking to him about that and how serious this was. Of course, Rock Hudson, you know, becoming HIV positive and eventually dying, that brought it home. That made it a personal kind of thing for him, and that was important.
PARKER: But you write in your book about a point where you went to the White House to talk to him about the Iran-contra.
REAGAN: Yes. Iran-contra, yes. Similarly, I would see him on TV, of course, and it seemed to me that he's, you know, he's a week behind the news cycle here. We all know that it really was arms for hostages. Why is he clinging to this idea that, because it kind of went through Israel and into Iran, that it wasn't? And so I went there thinking, you know, I wanted to help. I didn't know how. But I just wanted to kind of shake him a little bit and say, you know, come on, you've got to get with this now.
PARKER: How did he react to that?
REAGAN: Well, I found him to be, you know action off his stride at the time. And people who worked in the White House had mentioned, if there was a low point for him, it was this. I think he was most upset by the idea that the public thought that he was lying to them, that he was being dishonest. Of course, he wasn't really. He was saying things that weren't really true ultimately, but he convinced himself --
SPITZER: He didn't know them to be false.
REAGAN: Yes. He convinced himself they were true.
SPITZER: There's no question you did not live within the bubble. You didn't try to say the White House is my playground. I'm the president's son. Just the opposite, you went out and created your own life. One thing you did get to do though was host "SNL," "Saturday Night Live." You know, who knows whether that would have -- in fact, I think we've got a clip of it here.
REAGAN: I think you do.
SPITZER: Mysteriously, we dug that out of the archives. Let's take a look. Here we go. Famous moment for you, no doubt.
Can we run this clip? There we go.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MUSIC: Just take those old records off the shelf. Just take those old records off the shelf.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REAGAN: I'm doing all right. That's what I'm good at.
SPITZER: The movie came out, I was in law school, I think the early '80s. Is this right?
REAGAN: Yes, I think so.
SPITZER: So this affected all of us. Was that a great moment for you?
REAGAN: It was a lot of fun. I was initially reluctant to do it because I didn't want to be making fun of my father and using me to do it.
SPITZER: Right.
REAGAN: But Lorne Michaels assured me no, you'll have veto on anything that's, you know, over the top.
SPITZER: And reaction from the president?
REAGAN: Mystification. They haven't seen the movie, and all they could think of is why is he in his underwear?
PARKER: Why is he in his underwear.
REAGAN: Why would he be wearing underwear.
SPITZER: Ron Reagan, thanks so much for being here.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PARKER: Moral of the story, keep your britches on.
OK. Well, today also marks the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's inauguration. We'll be right back with an update on Congressman Gabrielle Giffords. But first, one more note on President Reagan. A story about the "gipper" and a pair of tennis shoes.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SPITZER: Tonight, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is wrapping up her hospital stay in Tucson just 12 days after the shooting rampage that threatened her life and took six others. Today, doctors even took her outside to do her physical therapy, and tomorrow she'll move to a rehab facility in Houston. Speaking alongside her doctors today, husband Mark Kelly told reporters he's hopeful she'll make a full recovery.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARK KELLY, CONGRESSWOMAN GIFFORDS' HUSBAND: She's a strong person, a fighter. I mean, she is a fighter like, you know, nobody else that I know. So I am extremely confident that she's going to be back here and back at work soon. I've been telling the hospital staff that they should expect to see her walking through these halls and into the ICU within a couple months. I'm sure of that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SPITZER: Continuing amazing news. Of course, during her hospital stay, the congresswoman did miss a major vote on Capitol Hill, the repeal of health care reform. Despite a 245-189 vote margin, it's widely acknowledged the Republican-led effort to dismantle President Obama's signature bill has no hope of passing the Senate or, for that matter, the president's veto. But it is a symbolic slap in the face of Democrats. And while Congresswoman Giffords wasn't there to defend health care reform, she did play a dramatic part in the debate. Take a listen. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. JANE HARMAN (D), CALIFORNIA: But let me highlight one more issue brought into stark relief by the recent rampage in Tucson. Our colleague, Gabby Giffords, and other shooting victims received topnotch timely care at the University of Arizona Medical Center's Level I trauma facility. Such facilities give victims with severe injuries a 25 percent greater chance of survival. The law the House is poised to repeal expands Level I trauma care through Medicaid and discretionary grants. My district is home to the Harbor UCLA Medical.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SPITZER: Among the items the House wants repealed, a section authorizing $224 million in funding to keep hospital trauma facilities open. It's right here on the bill in pages 400 through 407. The trauma grants would, and I quote, "provide emergency relief to ensure the continued and future availability of trauma services."
PARKER: Ironically, it's a concern Gabby Giffords herself had. As Giffords' husband Mark Kelly told ABC's Diane Sawyer Tuesday night, it was Giffords who fought to keep Arizona's University Medical Center trauma facility open when it was facing severe funding shortages.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DIANE SAWYER, HOST: She restored the trauma center, the one that saved her life?
MARK KELLY, CONGRESSWOMAN GIFFORDS' HUSBAND: Yes. And, you know, if that didn't happen, she would not have survived this.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PARKER: Now, obviously Giffords was able to save the trauma center without the help of the health care reform bill, but other state facilities remain vulnerable. The facility that saved Giffords is a Level I trauma center, which means it has specialists available 24/7. It also has a training program for doctors. Right now, there are fewer than 200 of these throughout the country, and that means, when a trauma facility like this closes, it could have life and death impact on millions of Americans.
Just one example, Atlanta's Grady Memorial Hospital is the only Level I trauma center within a 100-mile radius of Atlanta. The hospital has faced a financial crisis in recent years and relied on short term transfusions of cash to keep it open. If it had closed, Georgia would be facing a trauma care crisis. The health care bill has a $10 million emergency fund to stabilize hospitals in distress like Grady.
SPITZER: When we come back, the spirit of revolution spreads in the Middle East. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) SPITZER: Tonight, fanning the flames of revolution. Arabs throughout the Middle East today continued to struggle under the thumb of autocratic rulers. In secular and religious states alike, millions are denied basic human rights and the very concept of freedom remains a distant dream. But a recent uprising in the tiny North African country of Tunisia is offering even the most repressed new hope. There the former president was chased from office after a massive outpouring of anger over his corrupt and some say brutal rule.
Joining us to discuss whether this unrest might spread to other countries in the Middle East, James Traub, contributing writer for the "New York Times" magazine.
James, welcome.
JAMES TRAUB, "NEW YORK TIMES" MAGAZINE: Happy to be here.
PARKER: Nice to see you back on the continent, James.
TRAUB: Thank you so much.
PARKER: As we say. So just start at the beginning. Give us the basics. What happened in Tunisia? What's going on?
TRAUB: Well, I think what's interesting is nobody would have said before hand, Tunisia, that's the country that's going to blow up because in some ways it seemed like a model. It was a relatively middle class and prosperous country. But at the same time, it was an extremely brutal and repressive country, as you said. And there was, I think always just underneath this seething thing and what was striking is that it just took a spark.
Now, had there not been a spark, which was quite literally, alas, a person setting himself on fire, maybe nothing would have happened. We don't know. But I think what frightens other regimes now is they think, what if there was some spark here? Is the situation here in Egypt or Algeria so different from the situation in Tunisia that what happened there won't happen here?
SPITZER: One of the questions about what's happening in Tunisia, and Tunisia had been a staunch ally of the United States and Europe in all the anti-terrorism efforts, and that's why western countries were so dependent upon the government of former President Ben Ali. Is this a middle class revolution of an educated middle class? Is this an uprising of the poor? Is this an Islamist revolution? What can we make of it thus far, if we know?
TRAUB: One thing it clearly is not Islamist. That's an interesting thing that this is probably the least Islamist of the Middle Eastern and Northern African countries. It is a more middle class country, but only marginally so. You shouldn't think of Tunisia as a middle class country.
The reason this happened is that all sectors of the country joined together. They were all unified by their rage at the Ben Ali administration, by its corruption and by its relative economic failures. So I think it would be a mistake to say, you know what, it won't happen elsewhere because the Tunisians already had middle class aspirations, and those don't exist in other countries. No, I think it's more that you had a figure who was so universally despised and had so little legitimacy that once something happened to set off people's anger, there was no -- he had no place to stop. No place to back up to.
PARKER: Are there similar conditions in other countries? Is there another leader that's so despised by so many that that could possibly -- that same spark could set it off?
TRAUB: Let me answer that in a very qualified way because, if you look at the big country that we all think about all the time, and that's Egypt, you have a president who is maybe not hated as violently, but is universally unpopular. And, of course, I mean Hosni Mubarak, the 82-year-old and increasingly frail president who now seems prepared to run for yet another term this fall. He has almost no legitimacy inside Egypt. And it's a police state in many ways, deep unhappiness, deep frustration. There the military is much more effective at repressing dissent than the Tunisian military was, which actually played a relatively stand-off role. And so my guess is not so much that the level of unhappiness is less, it's that the mechanisms of repression are more effective in Egypt than they are in Tunisia.
SPITZER: To come back to Tunisia for a minute, the last time we saw a popular uprising like this, or maybe certainly you think back to Iran, where you have popular uprising, overthrow of the shah and a violently anti-American government that came into power.
TRAUB: Right.
SPITZER: Will the new government in Tunisia will get us as friend or foe? Will they be friendly to our counterterrorism efforts? Do we have any idea?
TRAUB: My sense from what I've been just reading and seeing in the last couple of days is that the folks who are now the activists there -- by the way, there's not a party. There's not an organization. It's people in the street. They are intellectuals, but it's really a leaderless movement. There's a strong sentiment we don't want to have this hijacked by any western force. We're going to do this on our own. But that's quite separate from saying are they anti-American? I think the answer to that is no. And I think that both the United States and probably also France, other western countries are going to have an opportunity to try to help Tunisia with its transition, we hope, to Democratic rule. And if we do that right, I think we can put ourselves in a better place in regard to the Tunisians.
PARKER: Before he we put Tunisia to rest, can I just get back to that spark for a minute?
TRAUB: Yes.
PARKER: That literal spark. TRAUB: Yes.
PARKER: It's such a strange, such a bizarre thing for people to set themselves on fire. Certainly to us.
TRAUB: Right.
PARKER: But what goes on with that?
TRAUB: Yes, so we should talk about that because it's not just -- there was this one man who did this, who's a 50-year-old vendor, who, by the way, was university educated, deeply frustrated about not having employment. Since then, it's become this terrifying copycat thing. Four people in Egypt, several in Mauritania, in Algeria. So where does this come from?
Now, the act of committing suicide as a political protest is something which Southeast Asian Buddhists did. We remember this from the war in Vietnam. Not at all in the Middle Eastern tradition. What I tend to think, though, and this is sort of part of a pity of it all, is that jihadism has sanctified the act of suicide as a moral act in such a way that people who are thinking what is the most supreme act I can do to bring protest out of the people? They think suicide.
Now, you might say there's something almost touching about the act of suicide, which seeks not to harm others, which is what we're always so terrified of, but only to destroy yourself. That's selflessness, I think, has a terrible moral power. It does.
PARKER: Yes. Frightening.
SPITZER: All right, James. Fascinating, no doubt. This story will continue. And we'll have you here to pursue it.
PARKER: Coming up, Ben Stein and what it will take to improve this economy. Don't go away.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SPITZER: A poll that will appear on the front page of "The New York Times" in the morning points out a dangerous paradox in American economic thinking, and here it is. Americans strongly favor cutting the budget. They just don't want cuts in the big programs where, of course, all the big money goes.
Joining us to talk about this, economist and friend of our program and America's favorite economic professor, Ben Stein.
Welcome, Ben.
PARKER: Ben Stein, it's always great to talk to you.
BEN STEIN, ECONOMIST: How are you, sir?
PARKER: Hi.
STEIN: Nice to talk to you both.
PARKER: You get both of us tonight.
STEIN: I'm very honored. Very honored indeed.
SPITZER: So, Ben, I want to put up a chart that's going to show the public where all the money goes because we've got a federal budget of about $3.8 trillion. $2.3 trillion of it is, you know, people who've studied this know goes to social security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense, and interest. And of that $2.3 trillion, about $900 billion is defense. You were on this show a couple days ago. We had a good conversation. You don't want to cut defense even though, bizarrely, the public does. Where would you cut? How would you square this paradox?
STEIN: We're not going to be able to square it, Eliot, without raising taxes. What's going to have to happen is a couple of things. One, we're going to have to get serious about it and not kick the can down the road the way we've been doing it for a long time. Secondly, we're going to have to do is raise taxes on the wealthy.
I hate to say that. I dislike taxes as much as the next man or woman. We're going to have to cut entitlements for the wealthy for both social security and Medicare. It is just plain wrong that millionaires, multimillionaires, billionaires get the same social security benefits as people who just retired from working in a coal mine. There's going to have -- this "Never Never Land" that the Republicans put us in on the tax cuts and that the Democrats put us in with their spending spree is going to have to come to an end. We've got to wake up. We're in a dream. We've got to wake up. It's becoming a nightmare. Wake up.
PARKER: Ben, nobody wants to wake up. This very same poll shows that seven of 10 Americans think that the deficit is a, quote, "very serious problem," but they don't want to raise taxes. So those aren't all the millionaires.
STEIN: Right. And nobody wants to raise taxes. I hate paying my taxes. I get a heartburn. I have to take lots of Tums when I pay my taxes. But I -- but we have to do it. I mean, we just have obligated ourselves to spend an enormous amount of money. There's very little that can be cut. Discretionary spending is very small. And as you pointed out earlier in the show, it tends to be on heartbreak items like trauma care centers. We're going to have to raise taxes.
I don't know if we have to do it tomorrow. The budget deficit is not as serious a crisis right now as people are making out. But it will become a very serious crisis. The earlier we address it, the better off we'll be. We've just got to bite the bullet and do something about it. We've got to -- it's going to have to be done by the wealthy. I hate to say that because Eliot is my friend and he's wealthy. But I'd like to see it -- I'd like to see it happen.
SPITZER: You're raising my taxes then, and you know what, I agree with you 100 percent. But you also said something else very important, the means testing, as we would technically call it of the benefits and social security, Medicare. So if you're richer, you don't get all the benefits that people who are less wealthy get. These are the things that were in the Bowles-Simpson report, Ben, am I correct? And it seems to have gone nowhere on Capitol Hill.
STEIN: They've gone absolutely nowhere. And I must say why the Republican Party is so hell bent against raising taxes on the wealthy is a mystery to me. The wealthy don't tend to be Republicans. I would understand if the Republicans wanted to keep taxes low on people in the oil business because those people are Republicans. But the really wealthy in this country are in the investment banking business, and they're Democrats. So why are Republicans so eager to keep their taxes low? I don't understand that.
SPITZER: Well, look, I don't know if they're Democrats or Republicans, but I do agree with you as a pure matter of economic theory. Frankly, you know, Ben, if I'm right, I think you're a Republican. You're a conservative economic theorist and you're the only one I know out there. There are some others dealing with the reality saying you simply can't close this gap unless you somehow pay the bill, and they're not willing either to raise the taxes or do any cuts. And so you can't square that circle. It just doesn't -- the numbers don't add up. So what do you hope President Obama says in the State of the Union speech in a few days?
STEIN: I'd like him to say that the idea that you can get enough revenue by cutting taxes to overcome the budget deficit problems turned out to be a mirage. It's not going to happen. It's not going to be a painless process. There is going to be pain. We're going to try to put the pain on those who can most bear it, namely the wealthy, but it's got to be done. Otherwise, what's going to happen to our children?
What kind of world are we leaving our grandchildren? Dwight Eisenhower said we cannot leave our grandchildren saddled with debt. We're leaving our grandchildren saddled with enormous debts owed to China. We don't want China to own us. We do not want China to own the United States of America. They're great people. They're talented people. I love their food. But we don't want them to own the United States of America. We're going to have to get tough with ourselves. I hate doing it. I'm a spend thrift myself, but we've got to do it.
PARKER: So, Ben, just to be clear. You're a Republican. You're a conservative. But you do not buy into the argument that the Republicans have made that you don't raise taxes during a recession.
STEIN: No, I don't think we should raise taxes during a recession, but the recession, it seems to me, is little by little ending. And we could raise taxes at the very high end right now.
Look, there are so many people who make $5 million a year. There are so many people who make $10 million a year. You can raise their taxes. They're still going to have their Bentley. They're still going to have their fur coats. They're still going to have their 10- carat diamonds. They'll be perfectly happy. We know we're not going to be imposing burdens on them. There are so many rich people in this country. We can raise their taxes right now.
PARKER: All right. All right. Ben Stein, thank you so much. It's always wonderful to have you on the show.
STEIN: Thank you.
SPITZER: All right. Good night from New York. "PIERS MORGAN TONIGHT" starts right now.
