Basie’s Jonathan Singer has another enterprising original interview on his site. This time it’s with former GOP Washington state Senator Slade Gorton and he did it via email.
As with any of Singer’s interviews, it should be read in full. Here are a few highlights (we will limit it to the questions on the nuclear option. He also talks about Social Security reform).
First, the significance:
After leaving the Senate in 2001, Gorton served on the National Commission on Federal Election Reform and the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, where he and his fellow commissioners were charged with preparing “a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the” September 11, 2001 attacks.
So it’s timely indeed.
Jonathan Singer: The State Department recently found that terrorist incidents in the world tripled last year to 655 serious attacks. USA Today reports that Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton are concerned that the nation isn’t moving quickly enough to protect against terrorism. Are we getting safer or lest safe? What more can be done?
Senator Slade Gorton: We have come a long way; remember that there have been no terrorist incidents in the US since 9/11. Still, reforms in the bureaucracy are slow, and Congress has not reformed its own oversight structure at all. The Markle Foundation has done detailed work on this subject.
And then this on the nuclear option:
Singer: The Senate seems primed to invoke the nuclear or constitutional option. As someone who spent time in the Senate as both a member of the majority and the minority, what’s your feeling on the possible move?
Gorton: I regret the necessity of changing Senate rules on extended debate. I hope for a compromise that will retain those rights and allow votes on all Presidential nominees. But in the absence of such an agreement, it would be disastrous to change the processes of two hundred years and begin a system in which confirmation requires sixty votes. The “nuclear option” is a bad idea, but the present position of the Democrats is far worse.
NOTE: Singer’s blog is great (check out his redesign) and we note from it that he is also now doing a diary on Daily Kos. But he is a real independent thinker and the interviews he’s doing for his site are highly professional.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.