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On Barack Obama and the issues politicians need to address (3:29).
 

Tavis: Tonight, though, I am honored to welcome to this program Bill Bradley, the former three-term Senator from New Jersey. Mounted his own bid for the White House back in 2000. Before entering politics, he of course enjoyed a hall of fame career in the NBA. In college at Princeton he was a three-time All-American and helped lead the U.S. men's basketball team to a gold medal at the '64 summer games.

He now hosts his own radio show on Sirius called "American Voices with Bill Bradley." His new book is called "The New American Story." Senator Bradley, nice to have you here (laughs).

Sen. Bill Bradley: Good to be here.

Tavis: (Laughs) You gotta stop being so lazy, man. I want you to make something of yourself one day.

Bradley: Well, I'm doing my best. That's why I'm on the show.

Tavis: Yeah (laughs). I'm glad to have you here. The title of this book begs - I'm looking forward to our conversation on the radio this weekend on my PRI program - but the title of this book, "The New American Story," I think begs the obvious question what is the old American story?

Bradley: Well, we've been in the grip of the old American story, and we've been in the grip for the last six years, maybe even longer. It's a story about fear, lack of compassion, America-only policies abroad. It's a story that has a belief in unlimited individual possibilities but severely limited collective possibilities. It's essentially a can't-do story.

We can't make Social Security solvent in the long term, we can't provide health insurance for everybody, we can't break our addiction to oil. And the point about the old story is it's fundamentally untrue. That is not who America is. We are a can-do society, we've had a can-do leadership, and what we need is a new story. The story we've been told is false, and that's why I wrote the book, to provide a new American story.

Tavis: I can hear someone who might be interested in parsing your words - picking apart what you've just said, dissecting it - suggesting that Bill Bradley is wrong. The old American story can never be a story about America as a nation that can't do. How dare he suggest that that's the old story - that we can't do, that we can't accomplish.

Bradley: Well, that's the story we've been told for the last six years. Have you heard anything about solving Social Security for the long term, providing people with healthcare, doing something about the savings crisis, breaking our addiction to oil? No, you haven't. The old, old story is more similar to the new story. It's who we are as a people.

Ask yourself, Tavis, when you think about America, when do you get a tear in your eye? Or when do you get a lump in your throat? Is it when we've created the millionth millionaire and invaded yet another overmatched country? Or is it when we've moved our collective humanity a few feet forward with civil rights legislation, or when we've seen some segment of our population - say the elderly - in real trouble and pass Social Security and Medicare?

Or is it when we've taken a look at cities like Pittsburgh, choked with pollution, and said, "We can clean this up" and we do, and we succeed? Is it when we fight wars where we're really threatened and people give their lives because they believe in the country? I think it is those moments where we are proudest of our country, and those are the moments that bring tears to my eyes.

Tavis: It occurs to me as I listen to you now, Senator Bradley, that selling a message of optimism to America is fundamentally different and much easier, it seems to me, than being willing to be a truth-teller where talking to the American people is concerned. What is the difference, and why do we have more folk in the former category and so few in the latter?

Bradley: Yeah, well, the basic premise of "The New American Story" is you put country ahead of party and you tell people the truth about our national circumstance. And then when you tell people the truth about our national circumstance, there are answers. For example, we are fighting our second war in 15 years, in part related to oil.

That is the truth. You can ignore it, you can not care about it, but that is the truth. Once you say that, there is an answer to this problem. Instead of devoting more hundreds of billions of dollars to wars to protect our dependence on oil, why not break that dependence on oil? And you know how we could do that? Very simply. If we simply had the same mileage standards in this country as they have in Europe - 45 miles a gallon instead of 25 - we would import no oil from OPEC.

Let me repeat: no oil from OPEC. Which means that with one piece of legislation, we could take a major step forward in breaking that dependence.

Tavis: So speaking of the story, the old story that the Bush administration has been selling us for six years - and I don't ask this question out of any particular naïveté - but why, then, to your point about being a truth-teller, saying that it is about what it is, why does this particular president then choose to tell us it's about regime change, it's about WMDs - and he's waffled on those two stories, even - rather than saying, "Hey, ya'll, it's about oil?"

Bradley: Well, because he wants to hide that fact, and he also doesn't want to ask the American people to do what we have to do in order to get off of oil. There's making mileage standards 45 miles to the gallon; there's also individual Americans making the decision not to buy a fuel-wasting Hummer or SUV, to buy a more fuel-efficient car.

And I think the old story embodied in the president's message is one that, as I said, is about fear - we've lived that for a couple of years, all these red alerts. It's about lack of compassion. He was supposed to be the compassionate president, but in fact has done nothing to try to make sure everybody has health insurance in America.

And it's about America-only policies abroad. You can't form foreign policy unilaterally. Foreign policy's a team sport, and the last six years we've been set back very far because of his desire to pursue a unilateral policy.

Tavis: I liked you when you ran because you were a truth-teller, and as I listen to you talk now, it occurs to me to ask whether or not your notion of our needing more truth-tellers notwithstanding, whether or not the American people want to be told the truth. Whether they can handle it. I think it - what's the line? "A Few Good Men" - "You can't handle the truth."

I wonder whether or not the American people can handle being told the truth, and I ask that against this reality: when you did that - I hate to remind you of this - you're not President Bill Bradley, your former Senator Bill Bradley.

Bradley: Right, I had a line in my stump speech - you probably heard it, I gave it a thousand times. I said, "The premise of my campaign is you can tell people exactly what you believe, and win." Well, (laughter) I'm not sure. But maybe it was me. I think maybe it was me. I think it's possible to do that, and I think the American people are ready for the truth.

They're tired of politicians denying what everybody confronts every day. Everybody's out there trying to get a good job with good pay, they're worrying about how are they gonna save enough so they have a good pension, they're worried about will Social Security be there, they're worried about is my kid getting a good education, is he gonna be a contributing member in the 21st century and help America thrive? Or are we gonna get further and further behind?

And politics needs to address those issues, not that abortion, gay rights, gun control, stem cell research. All these things are important to some people, but what's important to everybody is jobs, health, education, and pensions and that's what we have to address.

Tavis: Let me challenge you on that, respectfully, and I challenge you on that in this regard - and I say this in love. Barack Obama is a personal friend. I have known him before he became the rock star that he is. I don't know why we keep calling him a rock star. Why can't he be an R&B star? He is a brother. Why he gotta be a rock star? Anyway, before he became -

Bradley: Well, we can start it here. We'll call him an R&B -

Tavis: Yeah, we'll call him an R&B star instead of a rock star. But whatever you want to call Barack Obama, I want to challenge your thesis about the fact that they're ready to be told the truth and maybe you weren't the right person. I'm not so sure that's true. Barack Obama has raised as much money, practically, as Hillary Clinton.

This is an African American who's raising that kind of money. The hopes and dreams and aspirations of thousands - tens of thousands of Americans; you saw the numbers. Hillary and Bill have a 250,000-person database. In three months, this cat has a 100,000-person database, $100 or less per person. That totals 90 percent of his money. No PAC money, no lobbyist money. You know the story. This cat is raising money from all sorts of Americans.

Bradley: So what does that tell you?

Tavis: It tells me - here's my point - he ain't said nothing yet. I love Barack, but it's the charisma that's got people excited about what he can bring and you're telling me they wanna be told the truth. He ain't told them nothing yet, and they're throwing money at the guy.

Bradley: Well, it's early in the campaign. I think Barack has touched a nerve in America.

Tavis: Indeed he has.

Bradley: I tried to touch it in 2000; he's doing a better job. And it's a nerve about we can have a better country. All of us can have a better country. Hope can be alive in all of our lives.

Tavis: But that (unintelligible) my point -

Bradley: That's what he's saying.

Tavis: But my point, Senator, is that's what you're talking about earlier. That's the optimism part of the message.

Bradley: Absolutely.

Tavis: When he gets around to telling the truth, what's going to happen?

Bradley: Well, I think what he's got to do - he's not going to be elected president unless he's able to tell people three or four things that he's gonna do. He needs some beef. And the second thing he can do - and he's uniquely in a position to do it, if he chooses - he has all this light shined on him now. As you say, rock star. He gets 20,000 people -

Tavis: R&B star.

Bradley: R&B Star. He gets (laughter) 20,000 people at a speech. Well, when the people shine a light on you as much as they're shining on him, what he can do is reflect that light back on the people, and in doing so empower them so that they realize they're really in control of the country's destiny. And you can either have - 20,000 people is pretty impressive, but what would impress me more is if there were 5,000 meet-ups where people get together and talk about the ideas that he has.

The specific proposals. There are 5,000 meet-ups with 100 people at a meet-up, you then have a movement. And he has the beginning of that because so many people have contributed over the Internet. The Internet powers him. It is the ultimate challenger's benefit, to be able to use the Internet.

Tavis: Let me ask you a question about this notion that you talk so provocatively and poignantly about in this "New American Story." And I don't ask this question, again, out of any naïveté, but do the American people really control - do the American people really control the destiny of this nation? You're making a huge assumption that the American people control it, and I could argue that we don't; that corporations do.

Bradley: Sure, sure, sure, I know the argument. The American people can control their future. What's the first obligation of citizenship? To vote. Well, we're 139th in the world in terms of voter turnout. Number one is Italy with 92 percent. We're under 50 percent.

Tavis: Why?

Bradley: Well, if you ask people who don't vote and say, "Why don't you vote?" you find that the number one reason - not that there aren't other reasons; politicians don't tell the truth, or they don't do anything. But the number one reason is work. I gotta work two jobs.

Tavis: It's on Tuesday.

Bradley: Let me ask you a question. Why is it on Tuesday, Tavis?

Tavis: I happen to know this.

Bradley: (Laughs) Yeah, because you read the book.

Tavis: I read the book. I know it's on Tuesday (laughs) because back in the day when they established the day we were going to vote, the farmers couldn't get there until Tuesday. You can tell the whole story, but Tuesday was the best day for farmers to get there, and that's why these many years later we still vote on Tuesday.

Bradley: And Sunday was the Sabbath, and Wednesday was a market day, so we ended up with Tuesday. That was 250 years ago. I didn't see any horse and buggies (laughter) outside the studio today, right? Well, so there's a simple answer to that problem. Move Election Day from Tuesday to making it Saturday and Sunday.

No conflict with work, 48 hours of potential voting. Bring your kids to the polls, inculcating them early the habit of being a citizen and fulfilling that vote. The biggest change in American politics - really the biggest change since women got the right to vote in the early 20th century - would be to increase voter turnout in America from 50 percent to 80 percent.

You get that other 30 percent of the people voting, you're gonna find that politicians are paying more attention because more people are voting. You power that with the Internet. For example, what do people need? They need information in order to hold politicians accountable. But let me ask you, you know the budget is $2.6 trillion. You know what it consists of?

Most people don't know what it consists of, and it's totally inaccessible unless you're inside the Beltway, in particular rooms, writing. Well, the federal budget will be - key word accessible - on the Internet within a year or two, which means you can go to the budget, type in "breast cancer" or "bridges" and find where in the budget this money is being spent.

Link to the debate on the floor of the House or Senate about it, link to votes, link to contributions. Suddenly, you as a citizen have got something. You've got what you didn't have before: information that allows you to judge whether the person that you've elected is thinking of the whole or thinking of the narrow interest. But in order to do that, you as a citizen have to be disinterested.

You can't be thinking only of yourself, you can't be thinking only of your group. You've gotta be thinking of the whole, the country, which is the essence of citizenship.

Tavis: I know there are a thousand answers to this question, so it's a loaded question, so you go any way you wanna go with it. Most principally, where do you think we got off track? As a nation, where did we go wrong?

Bradley: I think the problem really came when Democrats decided that we couldn't do big things. All the things I've talked about that puts a lump in your throat, right? The big things - civil rights legislation, Social Security, Medicare - the kind of things that made America - somebody had to step up to the plate. Franklin Roosevelt had to step up to the plate and say, "We're gonna do this."

Lyndon Johnson had to step up to the plate, "We're gonna do something very big," right? And I think that in the last 15, 20 years Democrats have decided well, we've gotta do small things. We've gotta do small things.

Tavis: Why -

Bradley: And we've gotta do small things because we don't have the courage of our convictions. I think that what we need to do is get back on track - again, this is from a Democratic perspective - we need to get back on track, we need to say, “Okay, what are our values? Freedom and obligation. Opportunity and security. What are our convictions?”

That anybody in America who works ought to be able to support his or her family. That foreign policy is a team sport. That tolerance is common sense in a pluralistic society. That when you have a great idea and you succeed, you should be able to make a lot of money, but if you fall by the wayside, somebody's gotta reach down in the government to try to help you get back on track.

And those, then, would narrow down to specific policies. Those convictions, those values, to specific policies. Everybody have health insurance, national standards in education, pay teachers more but make them more accountable, give everybody a $5,000 birthright account which will go to $300,000 by the time they're 70 years of age.

Do what I suggested on breaking the oil habit. There you are. You now have a brand that is a fighting faith. It's not simply something your pollster and your political consultant concocted so you could reach a segment of the population and get elected. And also just as important, then you would have something that you were gonna do, and the people would have given you a mandate.

Tavis: To your point about targeting - micro-targeting, in fact, certain segments of the population, what do you make of this - you talk about it in the text - this whole notion of red versus blue in America? We see that and hear it all the time.

Bradley: Well, I think it's the biggest lie perpetrated on the American public in the last 30 years. When you go to your kid's Little League baseball game, you don't say to the person sitting next to you, "I wonder if he or she is red or blue?" You say, "Well, that's the parent of the shortstop," right? And if you look at statistics, in 2004, 23 states, the losing party got more than 45 percent.

If you complicate matters a little bit more, in red states 62 percent of the people say there shouldn't be discrimination against gays. In blue states, 70 percent of people are for the death penalty. Americans have a lot more in common than the media and the political elites would allow you to believe. Every American wants a good life for their family, they want to be proud of their country, they want it to live up to its ideals.

They want to have a good job with good pay, they want to have healthcare for their family, they want a good education for their kids, and they wanna have a secure pension. That is what we need to focus on, not the fringe parts of the campaign that happen too often because of interest groups.

Tavis: Anything at this point that makes you hopeful that the conversation that you lay out in the book that we ought to be having can, in fact, find some traction?

Bradley: Yeah. I think the Obama campaign is a good example of peoples' yearning. I also just find in moving around on this book tour, people are calling constantly and saying, "This makes common sense." What I wanna do with this book is say, "Can't we get general agreement in this country that these are the things that should happen?"

If you've got a different way than I suggest in the book to make sure everybody has health insurance, fine. Bring it on, put it out there. But don't tell me healthcare shouldn't be a right in America. So you build a consensus and then what you do is you say, "It's in your hands, people." You stay informed. But I can tell you one thing: I have great optimism that we can do this.

Let me just tell you one story. Jody Williams, a woman in Vermont, 1991 she gets together with a Vietnam veteran and a German who was the head of a German nonprofit. They have an idea. That idea is we ought to ban landmines worldwide. These are just three people. They start reaching out to church groups, human rights groups; they start to build a little constituency.

They reach out to this government, that government. Slowly, slowly. By 1996, the Ottawa Treaty banning landmines was signed by 154 countries and they received the Nobel Prize. Well, if three people - just average people - can get landmines banned worldwide, imagine what Americans can do if they realize their power and they realize that we can't hold our head high as long as 47 million people don't have health insurance.

That we can't hold our heads high as long as our school systems are not delivering the education that people need to be thriving in the 21st century. And it's not something that I'm gonna give people. It's not something you're gonna give people. It's something people find themselves when they interact and they develop this believe. That's why I'm saying in Barack, 5,000 meet-ups at 100 people at a meet-up, that's a movement. That's what brings change.

Tavis: Let me ask you, to the issue of health insurance, since you went there, whether or not you're hopeful that that issue this time around will get seriously considered, get seriously placed on the table. And I ask that, again, because we know just weeks ago at least the Democratic candidates were in Las Vegas for a whole conversation about healthcare.

I don't know if Newt Gingrich is gonna get in the race or not, but Newt has been talking about healthcare. I don't know what the Republicans are gonna say about it. But I wonder whether this time around you think that issue of universal coverage will get some serious consideration?

Bradley: Well, I certainly hope so. I say to date the only candidate who has laid out a specific program is John Edwards.

Tavis: John Edwards, yeah.

Bradley: He's the only one that's laid out a specific program. And it's not just a matter of making sure everybody has health insurance, but you also have to deal with some of the ugly facts of our healthcare system. For example, medical errors, wrong dosages, mistakes made by nurses, doctors. The number of people who die in hospitals in America today because of medical errors is the equivalent of a 747 airplane crashing every day.

And why is that? Because there's no incentive for anybody to say, “Yeah, I gave the wrong dosage.” Yeah, why? 'Cause they're gonna get sued. And so what I suggest is you say there's a premium put on admitting your mistake. If you admit your mistake and within a month or so there are places put in to correct that mistake you get a little relief from the possibility of a lawsuit.

And thereby we begin to see where the mistakes - a lot of the times in hospitals people make the same mistake over and over and over and over. That's because they don't tell anybody else. You can change it with a very simple thing. So you do universal health insurance, you go at medical errors, and you begin to have what's called value-based medicine.

Which is for every dollar you invest, you judge the outcome. You ought to be able to go to any hospital in America and find out how many people who had heart operations there died in the first year after the operation. You ought to be able to go to any hospital in America and say, “Well, people who had hip replacements like I'm going to have to get,” right?

Well, how many people had an active life when you're five years, eight years after? Then you can make some decisions. And the government helps you pay for that if you don't have the money, or you go single payer system and the government takes it off the back of the private sector.

Tavis: I wanna go back to something else you raised earlier in this conversation, Senator, because at the end of this conversation, about three minutes from now, I wanna make sure that the conversation was not just useful but useful in a practical sort of way. The issue you raised earlier about why we vote on Tuesday seems to me something worth going back to get because it can have a practical application to it.

So for everyday people watching right now who think that makes perfect sense - and I'm one of those persons - that we ought not to vote on Tuesday, it'd make a lot more sense on Saturday and Sunday, the turnout would go up dramatically, it just makes sense, how would something like that - you've been in the United States Senate - how would something like that practically come to life by everyday people?

Bradley: You go to WhyTuesday.org or WhyTuesday.com, I forget which one it is, and you begin to organize around that. And you begin to ask your politician - your congressman, your senator, every time you see him, "Why can't we move it to the weekend?" That's what happens. People respond to this incredible thing, particularly when this incredible push by voters, particularly when it's such a common sense notion.

Most politicians will say, "Hm, I didn't think of that." Now maybe there'll be some people who'll say, "Well, I don't think my party would be advantaged if we had an electorate increase from 50 to 80 percent." But then they're put in an intolerable position of defending less democracy in supposedly the greatest democracy of the world.

Tavis: Tell me finally whether or not you might consider doing politics again, and I ask that only because you said earlier - you're very modest - you said earlier that maybe you weren't the right guy. Maybe it's not that you weren't the right guy. Maybe the time was wrong. As you well know, being a great basketball player, timing is everything. So might you consider something in that realm again?

Bradley: Tavis, I think my days in elective office are behind me, but my commitment to the people and my love of the American people and all of our diversity and my love of the land is far from over. That's what the whole American voice is about. That's what "The New American Story" is about. To try to inspire people to realize we're in control of our destiny. I'll be at the front of the parade leading that, if it's possible.

Tavis: "The New American Story" is the new book by former New Jersey Senator, former president candidate Bill Bradley. Senator, always an honor to talk to you. I'm glad to have you here.

Bradley: Oh, it was great to see you again.

Tavis: Nice to see you, thank you, sir.

Bradley: Enjoyed it.