Moyers on Charlie Rose

More Moyers

From an interview on Democracy Now:

AMY GOODMAN: This is a moment, on a night like this, that everyone is watching. They want to see, you know, who’s won. But for those many, many hours, it’s only about the horse race. I don’t think I heard the word “war” once. I don’t think I heard, as I flipped from channel to channel, the word “healthcare.” I didn’t hear the issues discussed. It was all about the percentage points. And it went on, not just for a thirty-second summary of, you know, who was ahead and who was behind, but for hour after hour.

BILL MOYERS: Well, no. The main reason I put this book out, Moyers on Democracy, is because we are facing—you know, democracy is always a story of narrow escapes, and we may be running out of luck, because we’ve always thought the present was better than the—generally thought the present was better than the past and the future will be better than the present. All bets are off now, because we are not—our politics can create problems our policies can then not solve. Start a war, can’t finish it. Spend $2 trillion on healthcare, but can’t fix it. Infrastructure crumbling, highways full of potholes, can’t do anything about it.

These fundamental structural issues of American democracy are not being addressed by this campaign, even in the best of times, when it’s not just a horse race, when they’re on the Sunday morning talk shows, when they’re making speeches. They are so appealing to the particular interest of people, of groups, that they cannot take on—they’re not taking on the large issue. Obama talks about change. Hillary Clinton talks about, you know, a populist message. But neither one of them seem to me—and nor does John McCain—none of these three seem to me to be grasping what’s fundamentally at stake in this country, which is a system that is now dysfunctional. And so many powerful interests have a stake in maintaining the dysfunction that it’s almost impossible to change it.

That is the moment—this is the moment in which if we don’t solve that structural issue of our politics, we are in real trouble. And I don’t like to say that, because I have five grandchildren, and the future is theirs, not mine. But this is what we’re not hearing. This is what the system is not going to deal with in November. And it’s a very troubling reality.

...

AMY GOODMAN: What did you think of the ABC debate in Pennsylvania with the news anchors going for the first forty-five minutes—really going at Obama around issues, everything from pastors to pins, lapel pins?

BILL MOYERS: I thought it was a great exercise in irrelevance. Going back to one of your earlier questions, we never really—we rarely probe these candidates on what they would do about the fundamental systemic issues facing America. It has become a horse race in the media and on the campaign. That’s inevitable in some respects. But I was really sad to see our craft reduced to that kind of petty and parochial concerns. These debates, moderated and mediated by the press, have really become about the press. The Sunday morning talk shows are all about themselves. They’re not really about what’s happening—they’re not trying to help the people in Dubuque or Dallas or Des Moines get an understanding of the candidates.

...

AMY GOODMAN: Why do you think these candidates, the leading candidates of the Democratic supposedly opposition party, do not call for an immediate end to the war, do not call for single-payer healthcare?

BILL MOYERS: Because the media doesn’t allow complicated thought to be articulated in ways that enlighten instead of misinform people. Partisans seize upon these sound bites and turn them into—seize upon these speeches, take the sound bites and turn them against the candidates. It’s fear. It’s fear of being misquoted. It’s fear of having your ideas misappropriated.

The full transcript of this interview can be found on Democracy Now's website.

All five parts of the video interview can also be found here.

It's well worth your time.

update:

Moyers appeared on Charlie Rose's show Thursday night. Unfortunately I haven't been able to get a transcript or video link yet—there were some very good moments—so I'll post as soon as I find something. I actually started to transcribe part of it myself, but due to some technical difficulties I lost the recording. (damn you TiVo!) Until then keep an eye on these two sites:

official Charlie Rose site

Charlie Rose YouTube site