JEFFREY GOLDBERG: He has been described as the last of a generation of gold standard political reporters.

I think of him as the Cal Ripken of the Washington Press Corps.

Tonight, a conversation with the Washington Post's Dan Balz, who is stepping down as a full-time political correspondent with the paper after 47 years on the job, that's 12 elections and 8 presidencies he's covered.

I'll ask Dan about the state of American democracy and we'll find out which political leaders he thought fulfilled their promise and which ones he thought were actually terrible, next.

Good evening and welcome to a special edition of Washington Week.

No one in Washington knows national politics like Dan Balz.

He's a master of the granular detail and he is also an early spotter of grand and sweeping trends.

He first came to Washington in 1972 after a stint in the Army to work for National Journal, and he joined the Post a few years after that.

He's also been a regular on Washington Week for decades.

He's seen it all and he is here tonight to share with us his hard-earned wisdom.

Dan, welcome to Washington Week.

DAN BALZ, The Washington Post: Thank you.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Just you, no panel to lean on.

You're going to -- we're going to -- we're going to go all -- we're going to go.

DAN BALZ: This is scary.

This is scary.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: We're going to do like 50 years of American politics in the next 23 minutes.

Good luck to you.

So, I wanted to note something that I found amusing that you started in D.C. reporting actually in 1972 as a very, very young reporter, and your first story concerned the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

So, actually, nothing has changed.

DAN BALZ: Nothing has changed.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: We're still talking about controversy at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

What was that story?

DAN BALZ: Well, the story was actually a very in-depth look at how.

The economic statistics were prepared by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But over the course of the time I was doing it, and then later there was controversy about whether the BLS had become politicized.

Unlike what we're going through now, this was not a question of manipulating numbers.

It was an issue of the interpretation of the numbers.

And the -- sorry, the Nixon administration did not like the way the professionals at BLS were interpreting the numbers.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

There were a lot of controversies about that at the time, including anti-Semitic controversy, if you recall.

DAN BALZ: Well, they ordered Fred Malek to go count the number of Jewish employees at the BLS, which was part of this.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

DAN BALZ: Ultimately, the director of the BLS lost his job during the transition of 1972 to '73.

But when he -- when Nixon appointed a new director, it was a professional statistician.

So, it wasn't a political person.

It was a person highly respected.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Nixon did not do the things that we see today, for all of Nixon's faults.

It's an interesting thing.

So, the question I have for you about that is then is that in your half a century in Washington, have you found that time is just a flat circle, that every story is kind of like a story that you did earlier in life or there -- do you discover novel things in politics all the time?

DAN BALZ: Well, a little of both.

But, in some ways, you do feel like you are doing a version of the story you had done before.

But it all comes -- always comes in a different context and in a different time.

And over the course of the 50 years that I've been doing this, I think that the most important shift is that with each kind of iteration of that, politics has gotten tougher, coarser and meaner.

And so, you know, you look back and you say, well, I used some of these same words 20 years ago when I wrote about, you know, a similar kind of controversy, but this feels worse than that one did.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Has it been a one-way downhill slide or have there been moments when you thought politics was elevating and then coming back down again?

DAN BALZ: Oh, I think there's always ebb and flow in it.

And I think that, you know, this is a generally optimistic country and I think people want, you know, the system to work and to succeed.

But if you chart it, I mean, if you chart trust in government, you know, it fell off the cliff during Vietnam and Watergate.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

DAN BALZ: And it's basically been down ever since.

So, in terms of public trust, you know, I think the only moment when it changed was the immediate months after 9/11, when the country rallied, understandably.

But that dissipated pretty quickly within -- you know, certainly within a year or 18 months.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

I mean, these are questions of almost impossible sweep, but the question -- you know, a question I would love you to answer is, you know, the overall trends of government function versus dysfunction, and what has caused what as a coring of that.

Describe in the 70s and 80s what national politics was like.

We all know, we all remember the story of Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill meeting after work to have a drink and talk about the day, even though they were clashing during the day.

When did that -- what was that period like and what were the benefits of it and maybe what were the deficits of that?

DAN BALZ: Well, one important element of that is that each political party was a coalition of liberals, moderates, and conservatives.

So, to really get work done, you had to do -- often you had to do cross-party coalitions.

The Democrats clearly controlled the Congress through that period.

But nonetheless, they had a conservative flank that they had to worry about.

And so, you know, Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan's ideologies were miles apart.

But they were a couple of old Irish guys.

And they kind of understood one another, and I think they understood the boundaries in which you had to play the game of politics.

And so they were not prepared to kind of blow things up.

That began to change.

I mean, I mark something that most people have no memory of at all, which was a big battle in 1985 over a disputed election -- Congressional election in Indiana.

The details are, you know, complicated.

But the upshot was the Democrats ended up seating a Democrat who the Republicans thought had not legitimately won the election.

And on the day that they seated him, the entire Republican conference in the House walked out and down the steps of the Capitol and held a press conference in protest.

That, to me, was a moment in which within the Republican Party, confrontation overtook cooperation as a kind of guiding principle.

And the architect of that strategy was none other than Newt Gingrich.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

I want to come to Gingrich for a second.

Go back to this 1985 incident.

Who was actually right and who was wrong?

DAN BALZ: You know, it's impossible to know because there were a handful of votes that had been absentee votes that had not been notarized properly.

Some votes in some areas had been counted, but this small panel that had been created within the House itself to kind of adjudicate this came to a dispute about what should be done with those ballots.

So, I think at this point, nobody quite knows what -- if those votes had been counted, what the outcome would've been.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: But it's a moment that set off some hard feelings.

DAN BALZ: More than hard feelings.

It was a moment in which the minority, which -- you know, the permanent minority at that point was the Republican Party.

The minority was like, we are not going to take this anymore.

We are done with trying to get along with you all.

Now after that, they, you know, they got along in ways.

So, it's not as though it ended.

But I think that was a prelude to what we later saw in, you know, like 1990, '91, '92, and ultimately in '94.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

I want to come to '94 in a second, but stay on something that you mentioned, and I want you to talk about this for the young people out there that there was this -- there were these creatures who used to roam Washington called conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans.

And there were whole factions of them.

And they might be responsible, in retrospect for functioning democracy in a way that now that they've disappeared, or largely disappeared, you know, now we understand how important they were to the functioning of Washington or like this creation of some kind of bipartisan consensus.

Talk about them and that, and those extinct tribes.

DAN BALZ: Well, you know, in the Republican Party, it was people like Jacob Javits from New York or Matthias from Maryland.

On the Democratic side, it was largely southern Democrats, you know, Russell from Georgia and others.

So, that was one element of it.

I think there was more to it than that though, that there was, again, I go back to this sense that you played politics by a set of rules and Congress was supposed to work in a particular way and presidents worked with Congresses in a particular way.

In those days, committee chairs were gigantic figures.

We don't think of that today in the same way because so much has now been consolidated in the hands of the speaker and the leaders in Congress.

But in those days, there was action taken at the subcommittee level that we had to cover.

When I was doing economic policy, I would cover subcommittee meetings about taxes.

I would cover committee meetings at the Agriculture Committee.

That work is still being done, but it is not done in broad publication.

So, that's been a massive shift in the way politics works, but I think that it has led to a dysfunctionality of -- certainly of the legislative branch.

I mean, you can say, well, they have done some things, occasional bipartisan things, as they did during the Biden administration.

But as a whole, you look at that institution and you say it is a broken institution.

And that was not the way we thought about it in the 70s or 80s.

Was it perfect?

No.

Were there problems?

Yes.

Were there scandals?

Yes.

But it was a different era of politics and a different ethic, I think, that people who were in politics brought to their positions.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Let's talk about the early 90s leading up to '94, the rise of Newt Gingrich, who presaged a lot of what we see today in Republican Parties.

Now, that it's not to say that.

Democratic hearts also didn't harden and become more confrontational.

We saw that in the Robert Bork hearings.

But talk about Gingrich because he's a, he's pretty singular figure of that period.

And, you know, it's interesting reading some of your stories from the 90s, you quote Gingrich as saying of the Democrats, I clearly fascinate them.

I'm much more intense, much more persistent, much more willing to take risks to get it done.

Since they think it is their job to run the plantation, it shocks them that I'm actually willing to lead the slave rebellion.

I'm surprised going back 30 years at the modern quality of that language back then.

Those were kind of statements that people in Congress who were used to, accustomed to exercising self-restraint, rhetorical self-restraint, would never say.

Was he, in your mind, a revolution?

DAN BALZ: Yes, I think that's right.

I think it's fair to say.

I mean, when you look back on, you know, the whole arc of that period, Gingrich is a dominant figure and one of the most influential figures of the time.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: By the way, did he change politics more than the president he served with or in opposition to Bill Clinton, ultimately?

DAN BALZ: Well, I think they both changed politics in different ways, but let's stick with Gingrich for a minute.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes.

DAN BALZ: Yes.

Gingrich changed politics.

Because what Gingrich did was he brought, as I say, a confrontational style and a flamboyance and a willingness to attack his opponents in ways that other politicians would've been hesitant to do.

He went after, you know, Jim Wright, the speaker of the House, on ethics issues.

He used, if you will, flagrant language to describe his opponents.

It's the kind of thing that now seems ordinary.

You know, we see it all the time on social media.

But Gingrich was out there.

And I think one of the things that happened was that the Republicans were so beaten down in the House throughout that long period.

I mean, we have to remember the Democrats held the house for 40 years until 1994.

Republicans finally became convinced that the style of leadership typified by Bob Michael, who was the House Republican leader in that period, was not going to get them anything other than cooperation as a minority that would be stepped on by the Democrats.

Gingrich, when there was an election for a new whip, and I believe it was 1990 or '89, was surprisingly elected the whip.

And I think that signaled to, you know, the broader world, there is a sea change coming potentially.

And Gingrich then consolidated his power and was the architect of the 1994 victory.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

And talk about the relationship between Gingrich's rhetorical, stylistic innovations and the rise of social media, reality T.V., all of the things that have brought us to what politics are today.

I mean, you could actually -- would Trump exist without Gingrich?

DAN BALZ: Probably not.

But I think there were other elements, you know, that contributed to Trump as well.

So, I don't think it's simply a straight line from Gingrich to Trump.

But there's no question that that had a lot to do with it.

I don't know what's the best way to talk about it, but if you think about the changes in technology over time, Gingrich seized on a technology that had not existed prior to kind of his rise, which is television cameras in the House chamber on C-Span.

And what the Gingrich team did was they used this thing called special orders, which allows a house member to get up and speak for a limited length of time about any topic that they want to do.

And usually this is, you know, after or before regular order.

And Gingrich and his small band of rebels used that to begin to spread a message of, you know, Democrats are corrupt, this institution is corrupt, et cetera, et cetera.

They were speaking to an empty chamber.

But if you were watching it, you didn't know that.

Tip O'Neill finally forced C-Span to pan the chamber every now and then to show.

So, he used a technology.

You know, if you fast forward now to social media, it is a different way of targeting a message, aiming at people, doing it in a way that is designed to inflame the debate, not to, you know, ameliorate differences.

So, you know, we've been going through that for a long time and watching the technology and so, you know, we go from, you know, cameras in the House chamber ultimately to the internet, disrupting everything and democratizing information to social media, which is, you know, in many ways, a toxic environment.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Do you think democracy can survive this constant flood of very personal, unrestrained attack and this constant flood of information, true information and bad information, that comes to voters every hour of every day?

DAN BALZ: Yes.

I don't know, Jeff.

I don't know whether it can survive in the way we think it has been and should be.

I think it's under enormous stress.

And I don't think that's just, you know, the current president that we have in the White House.

I think it's a broader problem.

You know, this democracy is pretty resilient, but as a lot of people have said, you know, it's not something that just happens, that people have to work at it and people have to believe in it.

So, I think people, not just politicians, I think, the public at large is going to have to decide what kind of democracy we want in this country, and how do we assure that it is sustained.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: What were the downsides of the old way of doing things?

DAN BALZ: probably that it was too clubby, that it was -- you know, that these differences weren't ironed out in the ways they necessarily needed to be, that the debate wasn't as robust sometimes as that it needed to be.

But, you know, I think that was part of it.

You know, it was insular, you know?

But Washington I think has always been fairly insular.

I mean, you know, we think of it as, you know, the grand capital, but it's a small community.

It's a tribal city.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

And it's a bunch of people who are doing the same work in a kind of way.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: They become their own guild in a sort of way.

DAN BALZ: Yes.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Talk about a little bit -- I mean, you've met everyone, you've seen everything you've traveled.

I don't know what your frequent flyer miles are.

You've written millions of words and I'm sure you've accumulated millions of miles trying to understand politics across America.

Talk about the people you were impressed with in American politics.

I'm sure there's a long list, but -- DAN BALZ: There -- yes.

Yes.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: People who fulfill their mission to be something larger than their own self-interest.

DAN BALZ: Yes.

Well, you know, I think I would start just in terms of sheer effectiveness at the exercise of power with Nancy Pelosi.

You know, I think there's probably not been a more effective speaker of the House, certainly since I would say probably Sam Rayburn, many, many people, which predates my arrival here.

So, that goes back quite a ways.

But I think that I think that she was very effective.

I think, you know, in a different way and a different party, Bob Dole, when he was a Senate leader, was also very effective at understanding the institution and knowing, you know, how to try to get things done, and an ability to legislate.

I mean, it's a lost art, the ability to legislate, which today is really just, you know, can you hold your own party together if you have the majority to kind of push something through.

That was a different era of legislating.

But, you know, there are some other people that I think have been, I guess, I would say, laudable public servants.

You know, one person I have covered for 40-plus years is Leon Panetta.

I first started covering him when he was in the House.

He was the House Budget Committee chairman.

He was the director of OMB for Clinton.

He was then Clinton's White House chief of staff.

He left politics for a while, started an institute at the Cal State Monterey Bay, where he and his wife continued to run, came back to be the director of the CIA, then became the secretary of defense.

He has, to me, been laudable for a couple of reasons.

One, he is a very serious public servant.

He takes his role seriously.

At the same time, he has an ebullient personality, an ability to laugh, an ability to see the absurdity in moments both, you know, serious and not so serious.

So, he's one.

Dave Broder, who was my mentor at the Post, a great political reporter, instilled in me a recognition that you should pay attention to what's going on outside of Washington and you should pay attention to governors.

And so there are some governors over the years that I came to think were very good.

Roy Romer, the former governor of Colorado, who later went on after he left that to become the superintendent of schools in Los Angeles, for example.

Janet Napolitano, who was the governor of Arizona, who came to Washington and was the director of the Secretary of Homeland Security.

Tom Vilsack is another among the Democrats, two-term governor in Iowa, almost secretary of agriculture for life, but a person who was both a smart politician, I mean, and played the game of politics effectively, but also cared about public policy.

On the Republican side, I'd I would be remiss in not naming John McCain.

I think that's an obvious one.

And I think Mitt Romney, when he became a senator, showed a kind of, you know, a moral compass that I think was needed at the time.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Stipulating that you're for your judiciousness and modeling self-restraint, who that you met in the course of these 50 years really disappointed you, you thought, well, this is a person who's not good for the American democratic experiment?

DAN BALZ: Yes.

I -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: You're not going to be judicious now that I've said you're judicious.

DAN BALZ: Yes.

I may be judicious here.

I don't want to go down that road.

I will say that there are people who I saw coming up.

And, you know, I've lived my life in four year cycles with, you know, the presidential campaign being, you know, the key year coming up, getting ready to run for president, who I thought this person is going to be very effective.

Don't underestimate this person.

I will name one person who I underestimated initially.

Phil Graham, who I got to know when I was down in our Texas Bureau for a time, who, back in the Reagan administration, quit the Democratic Party and ran for his House seat and people thought, well, he'll not win as a Republican, and he did.

And I thought, do not underestimate this guy.

When he ran for president, he got nowhere.

He was completely ill-equipped.

I've seen that over time.

Those are the people I would say -- I wouldn't necessarily say he's disappointed democracy, but that was the kind of thing where you think somebody has certain capabilities and talents when they get in that arena, which is a very tough arena.

They're not there.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Let's talk finally about where we are right now.

This is a president we have who is unlike any other president, I think, in the modern era, certainly.

Maybe you have to go back to Andrew Jackson to understand this.

What is the threat of this president?

But also is there any promise here of something?

I mean, again, appealing to your judiciousness and logical analysis, what is the danger here and is there a chance that the Washington establishment is overestimating the danger?

DAN BALZ: I think there's some danger of overestimating the danger, but I think the danger is there.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: What is the danger?

DAN BALZ: I think the danger is a president who is solely focused on, A, the accumulation of power, at being at the center of everything that he wants to.

He wants to be the impresario of all events.

And that to achieve that goal, he is expanding and distorting the powers of the presidency in ways we have not seen certainly in our lifetimes.

Nobody has tried to do what he's doing.

But the second aspect of that is a kind of, you know, a hunger for retribution and a hunger to punish enemies.

Look, you know, politics is a rough business.

People go after people that they don't like.

But we've never seen that I can recall the kinds of things that we are seeing with this administration.

And they are, you know, coming from the top down.

So, I think that's the danger.

He wants to change the electoral system so.

Has he done some things that I think are probably helpful in focusing people's attention on problems?

Yes.

But the danger is there.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Well, we could go on all day.

Unfortunately we can't.

There's a lot to cover.

And we'll continue to have Dan on our show, thank goodness.

But we're going to have to leave it there.

I want to thank Dan, obviously, for joining us in all of his great journalism.

And I want to thank you at home for watching us.

I'm Jeffrey Goldberg.

Goodnight from Washington.