Bob Herbert
SHERMAN, SCOTT
Bob Herbert BY SCOTT SHERMAN Like Jacob Riis, whose 1890 book, How the Other Half Lives, exposed the "volcano under the city" of New York, Bob Herbert writes about America's lost and forgotten....
...Murder is the line that you should not be allowed to cross, and if you cross it, you get one shot and that's it...
...What is, is...
...If Bill Clinton had been a very strong leader, the country would have followed him...
...Q: You can't blame the labor movement...
...If you go out into the streets with a notebook and a pen and talk to people, you will get stories...
...We are actively provoking disaster.9 Q: Not long ago you quoted the following from Kevin Phillips's book, The Politics of Rich and Poor, the historical role of the Republican Party has been "to tilt power, policy, wealth, and income toward the richest portions of the population...
...That was his biggest applause line during the Presidential campaign...
...I tend to appear more liberal than I really am because of the political climate that is prevailing right now...
...Labor, to such a great extent, was complicit in its own demise...
...We tend to overcome these enormous problems...
...We are contributing, with the current policies, to a sense of hopelessness and despair...
...But you seem exasperated by them...
...It is also easy in this business to become cynical...
...The global realignment of work and wealth is, if anything, the bigger culprit...
...Q: How does it make you feel when Democrats and Republicans talk about finding "common ground" on welfare reform...
...If it becomes clear what is going on, it's a little bit easier to begin to search for solutions...
...Rosenthal recently wrote a column in The New York Times entitled, "American Class Struggle," in which he criticized the Republican plans to do away with the safety net...
...And I have written that people often vote against their own interests...
...Herbert: I don't know why workers put up with it...
...Q: What if the Democratic Party's problems go beyond the question of leadership...
...I just can't say enough how important I think the idea of strong leadership in the Democratic Party is...
...And then it is crafted into 750 words...
...riots for NBC, and one of the things that struck me was the extent to which enormous weapons depots—not gun shops, gun warehouses—were looted, people just went in and stole the guns and the ammunition...
...Q: How so...
...He won the Michigan primary and came to New York and was sabotaged by Mayor Koch and others...
...Q: The Clinton Administration supported anti-scab legislation in July, but it fought much harder for NAFTA...
...Q: You have very little to say in the column about the politics of the labor movement...
...There has not been a great deal of moral leadership shown by the Democrats for many years...
...If we had it, these issues could be clarified for the public, and I think the public would respond...
...Herbert: If I were to look back at old columns and saw a few well-crafted paragraphs, that would make me smile, ?: It seems to me that you frequently pull your punches...
...It's very gratifying...
...It will be cost-effective in the long run...
...The potential for devastation and riots is greater now than it was in past years...
...They need to make clear the extent to which Democrats, like Republicans, are captive to special interests with lots of money...
...Herbert: Those corrupt influences are a big factor in moving the Democrats even closer to the Republicans...
...So when we are talking about shredding the social safety net, there are many Democrats who are participating in that shredding...
...The public will follow strong leadership in almost any direction...
...Herbert: It's a question of leadership...
...It is not my idea that I am sending these thunderbolts of enlightenment out there...
...That leadership needs to be honest about what has gone wrong...
...Q: You recently quoted a speech by Hugh Price, president of the National Urban League, in which he said: "We must not let ourselves, and especially our children, fall into the paranoid trap of thinking that racism accounts for all that plagues us...
...Herbert: The problem of employment in this country is far and away the biggest problem...
...And I think it is an evil game...
...It will follow Lyndon Johnson to the left or Reagan to the right...
...we have to be able to move welfare recipients who are able-bodied into work situations, but work is not there for them...
...On U.S...
...As a society we pay an enormous price for permitting that kind of violence...
...Herbert: Jesse Jackson is really good on most of the issues that I care about...
...Herbert: No...
...corporations: "Most will follow the trail of profits no matter how gruesome the human costs...
...I am extremely worried about that...
...Before joining the paper in 1993, he worked for nearly seventeen years as a reporter, editor, and columnist for the New York Daily News...
...There is no revolt, no sense of outrage...
...Clearly, the Democrats don't want to be too closely associated with blacks, Latinos, and the poor...
...If there is a groundswell that continues to develop, it will have an effect...
...I believe," he wrote, "that will be not only the prescription for class struggle but the beginning of its reality...
...This is the one group that seems never to assert its rights, or even to acknowledge that it has any...
...But the right's onslaught has become so extreme that it is difficult to attack the Democrats because there is a fear that things are only going to get worse...
...We are suffering for it...
...I would have liked to have seen, in the early stages of the Clinton Administration, a modest gasoline tax and the revenues used to begin the rebuilding of America's infrastructure...
...I don't believe that for a minute...
...That would tend to pigeonhole me as way over on the left somewhere, when in fact, I don't believe that is true...
...So it all emanates from Jesse Jackson, the man...
...If we could take care of the employment problem in a reasonable way, we will have made great strides toward reducing the problem of crime and health care...
...And there ought to be forces organizing voter-registration drives...
...There is really a good chance they are going to lose the Presidency...
...His views are progressive and admirable in most cases...
...The Democrats are hurting so much...
...So my little mind was won over...
...I don't understand why murderers are allowed to be released from prison...
...I'd like to see a little more progress...
...I've already said the idea of cutting taxes is absurd...
...What inspired you to write when you were growing up...
...They can't win by chasing after Republican issues...
...It seems so obvious to me...
...We can pull ourselves out of this...
...The Democrats need to rally the ordinary working men and women of this country...
...It doesn't emanate from Jackson the Senator or Jackson the mayor...
...I especially liked Dickens, and I read Oliver Twist when I was about nine...
...Herbert: How did you hear about that...
...And our situation is not as dire as it was in the 1930s...
...That includes incidents that are perceived to be simple street muggings...
...Herbert: They are gravitating to the right for the wrong reasons, not recognizing the degree to which the right is responsible for their plight...
...Herbert: It is a question I often ask myself...
...It wasn't people on welfare who downsized middle Americans out of their jobs, forcing them to sit at home as "consultants," leaving them without health care, without fringe benefits, without a pension plan, and without any reasonable way to pay the mortgage or send their kids through school...
...The party has been overrun by corporate lobbyists and business interests...
...Politicians should be put on notice that they will be held accountable...
...Q: Your column is filled with the eloquent voices of ordinary people...
...I'm not going to discuss the plot, except it's an urban setting in the 1990s...
...Herbert: The term "welfare reform" really upsets me because nobody is talking about welfare reform...
...The Republicans obviously have a more homogeneous base, and they can more easily play the race card...
...Herbert: I don't see the Clinton Administration really going to the mat on any issue...
...The leadership of the Democratic Party needs to be reconstituted...
...Q: They think they'll get reelected the next time around...
...But when I go out into the streets and neighborhoods and speak to people, I am overwhelmed by what they have to say...
...I don't think there is such a thing as a "simple" street mugging...
...One of the ways to fight it is to constantly look for ways to make economic advances here at home...
...Q: Many are undoubtedly gravitating to the right, blaming their troubles on blacks and immigrants...
...What do the people who are promoting and proposing these policies think is going to happen...
...Then how do Republicans keep winning...
...When the Democrats turn to the right and try to play the Republican game, the Democrats inevitably have to lose...
...Q: You manage to point out that poverty and joblessness lead many youths into a life of crime...
...Q: Are you writing a screenplay for Jonathan Demme...
...His most admirable moment was when he was running for President in 1988...
...Q: Where will the pressure to reform the Democratic Party come from...
...If that constituency can be pulled together it would be politically cataclysmic...
...They want attention paid to them...
...Bill Clinton, when he started talking about changing "welfare as we know it," was playing the demagogue...
...Herbert: It has to do with empathy, and I think people pick up on that...
...Why they put up with it, I don't know...
...But the Democratic Party leadership has grown old, made mistakes, withered, and there wasn't strong leadership with new ideas to replace it...
...Q: Are you hopeful...
...Why would anyone take an imitation Republican when you can have the real thing...
...That was not the fault of all these entities cited by the Republican Party...
...Would you like to see him challenge Clinton...
...Clinton hasn't been a particularly good President, but he's the only Democratic President we've got...
...Q: You are one of the few newspaper columnists who writes about workers...
...We are in a period when the quality of our political leadership is particularly abysmal...
...In order to prepare welfare recipients for the world of work we will have to spend an enormous amount of money...
...It is easy, as a journalist, to be enclosed in an ivory tower and to look down at the masses...
...They still have a sense of optimism and a sense of hope about their lives.*" Scott Sherman is a freelance writer in New York City...
...But that compassion can vanish in the void where his soul should be...
...On affirmative action: "If you believe there is a bias against white males in hiring, just pair up a white guy with a black guy and send them off in search of the same job...
...How do we fight that global realignment...
...They are probably the only major group in this country that isn't organized, and they have no political clout...
...Newspapers and magazines were scattered everywhere, and works by Thomas Mann, Norman Mailer, and Italo Calvino lined the bookshelves...
...Q: Do you see Clinton as a man without a heart in the sense that he'll go whichever way the political winds are blowing...
...A columnist such as William Safire writes with an incredible sense of confidence...
...A very divisive primary battle can only harm Clinton...
...But it is a newspaper, and the tendency is to get caught up in the news of the day...
...They do not say that you are in a fix because of the policies of Reagan and Bush...
...American workers are humiliated and abused to an extent that is shocking...
...And then he is left buffeted about by the political winds, and then not only does he have a problem, but the rest of us have a problem as a result...
...To what extent are the Republicans playing with fire...
...The more you talk to ordinary men and women and kids, the less cynical you become because they are speaking with a sense of openness and honesty...
...When Clinton turns to the right, he cannot win because he's not going to get their votes anyway, even if he adopts their positions...
...They want to talk about things that are important...
...He has spoken out on so many issues—often courageously—but is now in the danger zone where not enough people take him seriously enough...
...Let's take him...
...There is often a terrible emotional impact that lasts for a long time...
...If you were to write a series of pieces, for example, on the benefits of proportional representation compared to our current "winner-take-all" system of electing lawmakers, it would get people talking...
...It would be easier to constitute new leadership within that party than it would be to create an entirely new entity...
...I wrote about labor during the NAFTA debate...
...Q: What do you think about Jesse Jackson...
...The guys do minimal amounts of time, and then they walk...
...Q: How has the column been received...
...Working at the Daily News, I've seen some of the most hideous things, including women who had just been slashed up by guys with razors and knives...
...Herbert: In my heart of hearts, I think politics taints everything that it touches...
...Since the New Deal, the Democratic coalition has been very diverse...
...So I am reacting to what I consider to be far-right or conservative excesses...
...Here is Herbert on The Bell Curve: "A scabrous piece of racial pornography masquerading as serious scholarship...
...Americans, for the most part, are comfortable with the idea of the two-party system...
...I've ranted and raved for years about the easy access to guns...
...Can he provide the kind of moral leadership you are talking about...
...Have you written it off...
...Rather, the danger lies in these extremely conservative or rightwing policies, which, incidentally, have a fairly large Democratic component...
...Q: Some readers call you an "ultra-liberal fanatic...
...He's not afraid to dispense advice to politicians and elites...
...I've seen people utterly humiliated by American corporations...
...Instead, we are fanning the flames of divisiveness, of hatred...
...Well, the people were applauding him because they had it in their heads that when Clinton said change welfare, he's going to throw them off the rolls...
...But it's a complex issue...
...People who physically harm other people should go to prison for long terms...
...While they are funneling money to the rich from the bottom up, they are saying to ordinary working Americans, "The reason you're in a bad situation is because of the blacks, or welfare, or immigrants, or affirmative action, or the liberals...
...It died...
...Herbert: Protesting what is going on now is important...
...The natural vehicle is the Democratic Party...
...Q: Why have so many Americans stopped caring about the plight of cities...
...It's been a long road since then...
...We are more than flirting with disaster...
...That was divisive and racist on Clinton's part...
...Bob Herbert: The column has been received really well...
...It is incredibly irresponsible, and I wish that the public, to a greater extent, were able to see through this flimflam...
...Herbert: The DLC and the Republican Party do not represent the majority of Americans...
...There are not many politicians that I have a lot of respect for...
...Moreover, people really have something to say...
...We need to be working now to ward off that sort of catastrophe...
...Herbert: Not particularly...
...If we have a combination of the Democrats continuing to lose elections, with a groundswell of effort by progressive individuals and groups hoping to create some kind of new political climate—one to the left of where we are now—perhaps it will bear fruit...
...The Republicans keep winning this way: instead of addressing the serious problems we face, they have been very good at taking symbolic, divisive issues and exploiting them...
...The Democratic Party became fat and comfortable...
...Herbert: The funny thing is that I don't consider myself nearly as liberal as most people tend to think...
...They need to rally the people who are hurting...
...Like Jimmy Breslin, Pete Hamill, and Jim Dwyer, Herbert is a storyteller, and his narratives seek to arouse indignation and fury among the Times's readership...
...For the most part, people want to tali about their lives...
...Herbert: The Republicans are playing with fire to an almost unbelievable extent...
...I don't understand why it hasn't generated more opposition from American workers...
...So many American workers aren't even aware of what is happening to them...
...Herbert: I see him as a man without a soul...
...November 8 was the Democratic Party's wake-up call...
...He began his career as a reporter on The?tar-Ledger of Newark, New Jersey, and has worked as a correspondent for NBC Network News...
...Not long ago you wrote: "There seems to be no limit to the docility of American workers...
...Herbert is the first black op-ed columnist in the history of the Times...
...Herbert: I was reading newspapers from the time I was five years old...
...Without labor-law reform, workers who strike can be permanently replaced...
...It's not Republican policies per se that are so dangerous...
...At some point these enormous amounts of weapons will come into play...
...We are flirting with disaster...
...How do you win their trust...
...And these people are the biggest natural constituency in this country: working men and women...
...Herbert: That's another outrage...
...The Republicans also benefit from a tremendous amount of ineptitude by the Democrats...
...Herbert: Yes, and then what...
...Q: You constantly assail the buffoonery and corruption of politicians...
...There is an awful danger that we will have an even greater social breakdown in the streets of America's cities...
...To do anything substantive about welfare, we have to do something about employment, something about jobs...
...This idea of permanent replacement workers is a wacky idea, and workers ought not to put up with it...
...The way to hold public officials accountable is to use the power of the vote...
...And everybody else looked up and said, "Hey, this guy can be taken...
...We are contributing to the idea among many people that they have nothing to lose...
...He has a heart in the sense that his instincts are genuinely compassionate...
...I think I have a fairly conservative approach to the problem of crime...
...And then we're going to have another incredible tragedy...
...Q: The Clinton Administration has responded to the Republican onslaught by moving to the center, even though it was mostly "New Democrats" who were beaten in the last election...
...Q: A.M...
...Herbert: At the moment, it is not realistic...
...We need to pay more attention to the impact of this global realignment and how technological advances affect American workers...
...I covered the aftermath of the L.A...
...I don't think the Democrats have come up with legitimate or valid or compelling ways to deal with a lot of these problems...
...It never occurred to me that there was this kind of power in literature...
...I think we are doing more than flirting with disaster: we are actively provoking disaster...
...1 What is your proudest accomplishment as a journalist...
...They need to rally the people who are struggling...
...I just haven't gotten to all of it yet...
...Herbert: I'll start by saying that I am opposed to the death penalty for a variety of reasons...
...If you were to read over the years, for example, my views about crime, I don't think that it could fairly be described as a liberal view...
...Or corporate America...
...Herbert: To a great extent that global realignment has already occurred...
...Q: A recent Business Week poll gave Jackson an approval rating of 46 percent...
...Clinton had a $16 billion stimulus package...
...Why they are so docile, I don't know...
...Are there any political figures you admire...
...We let far too many of them off too easily...
...We should have begun it on a large scale—in cities, suburbia, in rural America...
...The potential for social catastrophe is great...
...If we remedy the problem of employment, the other problems would take on a reduced scale, and it would be easier to deal with them...
...But he is probably spread too thin...
...It would have been a way to spark commercial investment and increase employment opportunities...
...I am strongly in favor of life without parole for murder...
...But this society really ought to come down hard on criminals, and especially violent criminals...
...So when a company decides that they are going to fire 1,000 or 5,000 or 10,000 workers, you can hear a little bit of gnashing of teeth and see people weeping and see people take up smoking and drinking and binge eating, but in the end they quietly walk out the door and go about their business...
...In America" is refreshingly blunt, its prose style quite unlike the sedate tone of most Times writing...
...On NAFTA, it was an issue where he appeared to be going to the mat, but in fact he was carrying out the wishes of corporate America...
...And I don't think he is grounded in a major national political organization, and does not have a political office or a specific position or a specific base from which to work...
...I remember being awed...
...But the most important thing is reporting skills...
...But the Democrats have been adrift for a very long time...
...But they are not organized...
...Corporate executives like to use the term "right-sizing" when they are in fact talking about downsizing, which is to my mind outrageous...
...Herbert: Yes, but I tend to have a great deal of confidence— although sometimes it wavers—in humanity as a whole...
...When all of those factors are set in motion the way they are now—with very little in the way of countervailing forces—we have a real recipe for social disaster...
...How do you respond to that...
...All of these things are linked...
...Yeah, one day Demme called and asked me to do it...
...It's going to have to be rebuilt anyway, and it will be cheaper now than later...
...His twice-weekly op-ed column in The New York Times, "In America," hammers away at the ugly reality of corporate greed and chicanery, the unending cycle of urban violence, the cowardice of politicians, and the declining living standard of the American worker...
...That is an enormous problem, and it continues to be a problem...
...Democrats and Republicans are both playing the same game...
...Herbert: This cuts to the heart of what I was talking about when I referred to moral leadership...
...Where do you stand on that...
...But he signaled right at the start that this is not something that he was going to go to the mat for...
...Q: Is it simply that the Democrats lack strong leadership, or is it that those who are capable of providing it—Ron Dellums, Paul Wellstone, Jesse Jackson—are being shunted off to the side in favor of the Democratic Leadership Council types...
...What if the Democratic Party is corrupt at its core...
...They are caught up in the maelstrom...
...And they've been taking him ever since...
...Q: With both parties moving to the right, many on the left would like to see the creation of a third party...
...It wasn't much of a package...
...If Democrats are afraid to say that racism is wrong and that politically divisive tactics based on race are wrong, then the Democrats themselves are left in a moral void...
...I spoke with Herbert on April 27 in his spacious, tenth-floor office at the Times, which affords a stunning view of Manhattan...
...On inner-city schools: "Death is so prevalent that some schools are equipped with mourning rooms...
...So having lost the Congress, we don't want to see them lose the Presidency...
...Herbert: When I write a column, I tend to think of the issue I'm writing about, the people I've talked to in connection with that issue, and my views, which are often very personal...
...I agree with many, if not most, of his political views...
...That is not what is going on now, and I don't know how confident I am that that can be done effectively in a third party...
...What they are talking about is throwing people off welfare, throwing needy people to the wolves...
...I would read anything...
...Jackson is always searching for the vehicle that will catapult him somewhere...
Vol. 59 • August 1995 • No. 8
