Bob Schieffer: ‘Partisan Divide Is Deeper’ Than Ever (VIDEO)
Legendary CBS News broadcaster Bob Schieffer moderated the final Obama-Romney presidential debate on foreign policy, Monday, October 22. Although Schieffer is receiving criticism for not keeping the candidates on topic and moderating with a “light hand,” he ended the debate with sound advice from his mother. “Go vote. It will make you feel big and strong,” he said.
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Having covered Washington as a journalist for more than 40 years, Schieffer knows it inside and out. How has it changed? And for better or worse? Watch Schieffer tell genConnect below:
“How it has evolved, sadly, is it’s become much more partisan, and much more bitter,” Schieffer said of Washington. “The partisan divide is deeper than it’s ever been.”
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Whereas Republicans and Democrats used to socialize together and leave partisan bickering on the Senate and House floors, now, that partisanship now seems to seep into every aspect of lawmakers’ professional lives.
“We now have a conversation among strangers – they just don’t know each other anymore,” Scheiffer said. Add the fact, Schieffer said, that it costs so much money to run for Congress these days, and the consistent negotiations with interest groups to get elected and re-elected, that their priorities that are not on making friends with the other side. So will this hyper-partisanship change anytime soon?
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“The good thing about America is, when our back is to the wall, we always find a way,” Scheiffer said. “But I don’t know a way out of this right now.”
genConnect is credentialed press at the 2012 Aspen Ideas Festival in Aspen, Colo., where we are interviewing the premier speakers and attendees at the conference. For more of our video interviews and articles from the Ideas Festival, click here.
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