PB: Governor Whitman, it’s a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you for joining us.

CTW: Oh, I’m delighted to be with you.

PB: So, we have a lot to talk about including a task force that you and I are co-chairing, and why we’re doing that, and what we think that will show. But before that, can I ask you one quick softball cause it’s sort of in the news and you might have an opinion on it?

CTW: That’s always nice. I like softballs. They’re good.

PB: Good. Right down the middle. When you were the EPA Administrator, did you fear taking coach because of the need to interact with regular people?

CTW: No, that was never a consideration. But then again, in fairness, I didn’t have the kind of death threats that I guess he’s gotten. No, I never felt a threat from the public. I never worried about it. People didn’t know who I was. They don’t really know, usually, who the head of the EPA is. They’re not that controversial except in certain areas when you go out to public meetings on a particular hot topic in a community. Then they know who you are. But even then–

PB: I guess.

CTW: –no, I never worried about the public.

PB: (01:05) I’m not sure I could pick Scott Pruitt out of a lineup and I’m fairly informed on things. And it’s also not clear to me that there are people more likely to be murderers in coach than in first class. But anyway, just a quick view since you had the job for a few years under the second Bush administration. Any thought on how the EPA is doing and how this administration is handling the issues that affect air and water?

CTW: I’m terribly worried. I’m very worried for my children and grandchildren, for myself. The biggest issue that I have is this denigration of science and the seeming ignoring of science. Where they have put people in on, for instance, the science advisory panel or science advisory board, they tend to be all the people from the industry. Now the industry has a right to be at the table any time a regulation is being considered that affects that industry cause they know more about it and the impacts than anybody else. But they should not be the predominant force, and that’s where we seem to be going. And, there’s also this appearance of security, as we talked about at the very beginning, but it extends into the administrator’s office where he has this secret phone booth or phone booth that’s soundproof in his office. There’s a whole soundproof room in the basement of the EPA. You don’t need a separate one up there. But what it does is, there’s a lack of trust. And from having talked to people who work at the agency, they don’t quite know what to do. They keep their heads down. But they are very worried that we’re rolling back some of the protections that are so essential to ensure that we have a healthy environment and healthy air to breathe and water to drink.

PB: (02:45) I want to follow up on something you said that is a concern to a lot of people: the denigration of science. How do you combat that? What do you do about that?

CTW: Well I think you have to keep pushing back. The Congress really needs to step in and those people who get the microphone so much, which is those in Washington, need to talk about the importance of science. We need to get back to basic research and development. We need to understand that, certainly as far as the Environmental Protection Agency is considered, regulations aren’t just picked out of thin air. They are based on long look at what is safe and what isn’t from a scientific point of view. What can humans tolerate? When does it start to become a problem? Do they get it absolute the first time around? Not always. But they certainly err on the side of protecting humans. And it’s fair to go back and look at regulations cause some may have outlived their usefulness. We may have found out new things. We may have new technology. That’s all well and good but that’s not what’s happening. What’s happening is just, “We’re gonna do away with it.” And it’s a two for one. Any one new regulation you want to bring in because you found something that you thought was okay isn’t, or something new is on the market, and you say, “Now wait a minute, we’ve got to be careful about how much exposure we allow people to have to it,” if you want to bring that in you’ve got to get rid of two regulations as if there are a whole bunch sitting around there that don’t have any basis. For Environmental Protection Agency, that’s a very different thing than some of the other regs.

PB: (04:08) Do you think the denigration of science is across the board or has it largely occurred in a political environment where there are very, very strong feelings on both sides of the aisle with respect to the issue of climate change? Do you think that’s what’s driving the denigration of science more than anything else?

CTW: Well, that’s certainly driving it at the Environmental Protection Agency but it’s happening all the way across the boards. You see it happening at the National Oceanographic Administration in climate. You see it happening everywhere there are heavy science groups where that’s important to the work that that agency or department does. They’re being ignored and being cut. It’s ridiculous that we have this attitude that you can’t mention the word climate change. And you can’t go to any conference where maybe that might come up, even though that isn’t the central theme of the conference. We’re cutting our legs out from under ourselves on protecting ourselves in so many different ways.

PB: (05:02) Let me ask you one more question about the time that you spent as EPA Administrator because it’s an issue and a question that resonates now with people as we look at the Trump administration. So obviously you have a particular viewpoint. You’re an independent thinking person even though you were a part of the Bush administration and you were leading an agency to which you owed a duty and an obligation to promote the issues that were part of the missions of the EPA. And from time to time, if you’re an independent thinking person, you don’t always agree hook, line, and sinker with everything that the White House wants you to do. That’s why you have independent agencies to some degree. I’ve seen reports that you had private disagreements from time to time on issues relating to environmental policy. What is the right way, in your view, if you’re a cabinet official for any administration, Democratic or Republican, and you have a good-faith difference of opinion on how to implement something, or how to role something out, or what the policy on something should be, how do you go about resolving that?

CTW: (06:02) Well, first of all, you have to understand that you don’t determine the ultimate policy. You weren’t elected to anything, it was the President and the Vice President. So it’s their policy. And then what you do is you give them your best advice. You say, “No,” you don’t think it ought to happen this way. Or, “This is the way it should be done,” or that you think. And you keep pushing that. And you push it until the point where they make a decision. And then if it’s something that’s not worth falling on your sword over, you salute and say, “Okay.” And you go ahead and do it, even though you might disagree, think it doesn’t go far enough, or isn’t quite strong enough, or is not an issue you necessarily would tackle at this point in time. But then there comes a point where you say, “No, I’m sorry, I can’t do this. I just don’t feel comfortable.” And to my mind, you don’t make a big issue of that cause you weren’t elected to do it but you do owe the administration your loyalty. So you say, “You, the administration, deserve to have someone who can do this in good conscience and I can’t. So I will resign.” You don’t make a big deal about it but you quietly step aside and let them have a person who will do what they want to do cause they were the ones who were elected. And supposedly the public understood what they were getting and they wanted to move in that direction. So you step aside and let the administration have someone who can do what it is they want to do in good conscience.

PB: (07:24) So let’s get to the thing that you and I are co-chairing under the auspices of the Brennan Center which is an amazing resource and institution at NYU Law School, where I now teach. At the outset, let me say to the audience, you and I are not close, are not friends, but we have two things in common at a minimum. We’re both from Jersey. And we both care about what’s happening in our country and what to think about–

CTW: All the best comes from Jersey. You’ve got to get that down right away.

PB: (07:50) I’ve been saying that all along. You, me, and Bruce. I’ve mentioned on the show before, we are going to lead a task force on democracy to talk about the ways in which there might be things that we change, norms that are being transgressed by this president and this administration, as happens in other administrations too, and which of those norms should maybe be made into concrete laws so that we can make the democratic institutions that we hold dear stronger. Cause people are sick of hearing from me on the show, tell me why you think this is important and why you’re joining forces for this purpose.

CTW: (08:28) It’s incredibly important to ensure that the public has a level of confidence in the rule of law, in the government, in the independence of the press. Right now they don’t and any poll will tell you that there’s no institution they trust. They don’t trust business. They don’t trust Congress. They don’t trust the press. They don’t even trust, they’re starting not to trust, the laws and the judges and the lawyers. And that is really, really troubling. That’s when governments get into trouble. We will fight very hard for our rights under our democracy, but we forget that there are also some responsibilities that go along with that. That is, to be at least relatively informed and to vote. And for a long time, we haven’t been doing that in the numbers that we should do it. I think this last election has finally woken people up to the point where they understand that they’ve got to exercise that franchise cause it does make a difference. But, in the meantime, we have to sure up what we have always considered to be the norms of behavior and try to ensure that the public can be confident, that people are not coming in with agendas that are hidden. There’s always going to be some of it. We’re humans and unfortunately, that’s always been the way of humans in any form of governments. But still, there are things that people have to have confidence in. And they’re so confused now between fake news and outright denials of things that are obvious. There’s nothing that they trust and that worries me deeply about the future of the country.

PB: (10:03) So, we’ll be looking at a lot of things. Whether there should be a requirement to disclose tax returns if you’re running for president. Whether there should be more serious laws about conflicts of interest on the part of the president, because we like to say that no one in America is above the law, but it happens to be the case that in some ways the President of the United States gets special treatment. The president doesn’t have to pass a background check to get a top-secret security clearance or an SCI security clearance. The president doesn’t have the same conflict of interest rules that apply to him.

CTW: (10:31) Well, Congress is kind of in the same place too. Congress enacts laws that they don’t have to abide by. They get special treatment on things like healthcare, although this time they did decide they really better go along with what they were passing. But there are a number of cases where the Congress doesn’t adhere to everything they make the average person obey.

PB: (10:52) That’s all true. One of the things that I think is great in the conversations we’ve had with the Brennan Center and Michael Waldman who runs it brilliantly is the importance of doing this in a bipartisan way, and the importance of bipartisanship generally. You once said, “The compromise of principle is different from the principle of compromise,” which is a great turn of phrase and a great balanced line. Do you think people have forgotten that?

CTW: (11:16) I think so. We have this attitude that if you use the word, and I heard it when I first went up to the Hill for my courtesy meetings with the Senate before confirmation, if you even mention the word ‘compromise,’ somebody, whoever you’re talking to, thinks they’ve lost something. They don’t know what, but they think they’ve lost something. Don’t talk about compromise. And I want to say, “Have you read your history? Because if you don’t think that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams didn’t have really, really basic differences of opinion about how government should be set up, you don’t understand history.” And yet, they realized they were about something bigger than themselves and they reached common ground. They compromised. And yet, nobody would ever say that they gave up on their principles. They didn’t, but they found that common ground that allowed the government to be formed, that allowed us to move the country forward. And that’s why we have to keep looking in this and reminding people it’s not a sin to reach out across the aisle. That’s why the Problem Solvers Caucus is so important. That Problem Solvers Caucus is a group, now, of 24 Republicans, 28 Democrats who are working together on a daily basis to look at the big issues of the day. And they’ve agreed, if 75% of them take a position on an issue, they’ll vote as a block. And the more we can get to join that [party?] of No Labels, the more they can be a force to be reckoned with. This is where money comes into politics and this is where partisan politics now is trumping policy.

PB: (12:43) Where did you find it easier to achieve compromise, as Governor of New Jersey or as EPA Administrator?

CTW: (12:49) Interesting things on both. Certainly, as governor, I did a lot of work with Democrats. A lot of some of the more challenging issues that I dealt with I really had Democrats in the lead, on auto insurance reform and things like that. But even at EPA when we took on the non-road diesel engine issue, I put an engine manufacturer, a representative of one of the big environmental groups, into a room with the EPA and the Office of Management and Budget which ultimately controls everything, and said, “You work out a regulation that is going to help protect people and make our [emission requirements] stronger.” And they did. You can do it if you bring, as we’re hoping to do with this task force, people from the different relevant fields but from different political persuasions together and say, “Let’s look at this as a problem. Not as a partisan issue one way or the other, but just as a problem that needs to be solved.” And it’s amazing what can happen.

PB: (13:53) The problem, I feel, is it’s [?] for people to say, “There’s lots of polarization.” And that’s been true in a lot of times. Maybe it’s worse now, maybe it’s not. But people on one side, whether it’s liberal or conservative, develop these hatreds of the other side or particular people on the other side. There are a lot of people who hate Donald Trump. There are a lot of people who hated Barack Obama. I feel like that makes it harder for people to find something to agree with them because it makes it look like they’re consorting with the enemy. How do you get around this idea if one side hates a particular person from the other side? And let’s not say it’s based on nothing. It’s based on very deep feelings about what you think is right or wrong, and people are entitled to have those beliefs. But how do you get around that? Every time somebody says something nice about someone from the other side from time to time, they get excoriated on social media. I’m not sure how you get around [that].

CTW: (14:45) Well, that’s certainly the difficult problem which is the social media that we never had before and the way that reinforces opinions. And what we’re finding [is] that people go to sites that reinforce their preconceived position rather than sites that broaden their perspective. And I think part of the issue here, though, is that that is a smaller percentage than we think. You look at President Trump’s base and that’s 32%. And that’s going to be solid. That’s not going to go anywhere. As he said, he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and he’d be fine. And that’s true, I think, with that group. You can’t try to change their opinion. It’s not going to change. But 32% is not 50. It’s not 51. And so, you reach out to those that are feeling disenfranchised and feeling they don’t have a home. Republicans and Democrats are both facing this problem. If you look at the records of registered voters, it’s the Independent or the non-affiliated that are gaining and both Republicans and Democrats are losing as we move more to the right and more to the left. And at some point, just from the perspective of, “Hey, I want to win elections,” they’re going to have to figure this one out. Part of it’s going to happen with redistricting, with that Pennsylvania case that hopefully will make more equitable districts. So, on the House side, anyway, you’re going to get more competitive districts where the candidates will have to speak to the center, will have to speak to everybody, not just that small base. Because that’s all they worry about, now, is the primary. Primary’s the only thing that counts. General election, you’re good, today. Hopefully, we will make more competitive districts so that’s not the case and they have to reach out to both sides and they’re talking to both sides. So, that’s the kind of thing we need to work on. We need to understand that money is part of it. What happens when someone in Congress today decides that they don’t want to do what leadership is calling for, that they want to work for the other side or they’re coming to a different conclusion with members of the other party? Their leadership will often say, “We’re going to challenge you in a primary. We’re going to go after you.” It’s up to the rest of us to say, “We’re going to be there for them.”

PB: (16:57) Do you still consider yourself to be a Republican?

CTW: I’m an Eisenhower Republican. That’s the way I describe it.

PB: Right, but that’s not a box you check on the form, right? It’s not Eisenhower, Rockefeller, Reagan.

CTW: No. I’m an Eisenhower Republican and I’m going to fight for it because I believe it’s important to have two strong parties that represent the majority of the people. And I refuse to say that people that have, I feel, taken over the verbal platform, those who get the most attention, obviously, the ones who say the most outrageous things– I get that. That’s part of the 24-hour news cycle. You’ve got to say something outrageous and you get on it. But those are not the majority of the people. They’re not the majority of the party. I don’t know about you, Preet, but since we’ve announced this task force, I’ve had more people come forward saying, “What can I do? I’m just an average citizen, but I want to help.”

PB: (17:54) Yes. Same. The reason I ask is, to what degree is there a Republican Party when President Trump doesn’t seem to espouse a lot of the traditional conservative principles that you thought the Republican Party stood for? And so, what is the state of the two-party system when you have President Trump?

CTW: (18:11) Well, I think it’s pretty shaky. And I think it will be just as shaky if you have a Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren as president. That’s what I worry about. I worry about, each of the parties are starting to veer off to their extremes and we’ve got to be very careful about that because that’s not going to build a stable system here. It will be more of the, “I hate you because you’re a member of the other party, whether I know you or not.” And that’s not good.

PB: (18:37) So you’re making, as we say, an impassioned plea and argument for moderation. Let me quote you again cause you said something great. “By definition,” you said, “it’s hard to excited moderates.” I don’t know if that’s true. Is that true? Because there has been a lot of good reaction.

CTW: (18:53) Well, I think they’re getting excited now. Again, it’s ironic that this last election cycle, people suddenly woke up. You have women running for office in numbers you never saw before. Women have thought, “Hey, wait a minute. There’s a real attack on what we want to see and the way we think government ought to be run.” It’s not just about women’s bodily rights. It’s not just about Planned Parenthood. It’s about much broader issues. How do we handle the DACA kids? What do we do to have a pathway that makes sense? How do we continue to be the compassionate nation we’ve been known to be in the past? We’ve lost that, or we’re losing that, and people want to see that. We want to be the better angels of our nature. Abraham Lincoln had it right. And if we survived the Civil War, we’ll survive this. But we won’t survive it if we all sit back and say, “Well, we’ll get through it.” You’ve got to do something. You can’t just assume that we’ll get through it anymore. You’ve got to stand up. You can’t wait for the one right person. Who is the person who’s going to lead us out of this darkness? Where is he or she? We’ve got to be willing to get more into it to help ensure that that can happen, that that person can actually rise.

PB: (20:04) So that’s a great segue, [a] discussion of people getting politically involved to a discussion about your origins in politics. Your family was in politics. You were in politics in an indirect way in New Jersey when you were younger. And I want to describe how I first learned about you. I think I was an undergrad in college.

CTW: No, you were probably 10. It’s okay, I’m used to it.

PB: I’m not that young. And I will say, without meaning any offense, that when I became conscious of politics and leaders in the country, I grew up in New Jersey, a hero of mine and a lot of people was a senator, former professional basketball player named Bill Bradley. I was in college in the late ’80s and Bill Bradley was being touted as a future Vice President, President. He ended up running for President eventually, as it happens. Largely thought of, at least his reputation was, being beyond reproach. And this unheard of young woman named Christine Todd Whitman had the temerity to jump into politics when no one else would run against him because he was such a powerhouse and so popular in New Jersey, and decided for the 1990 cycle to run against Bill Bradley for Senate. What the hell were you thinking?

CTW: (21:23) Good question. As you know, New Jersey is kind of a bifurcated state. South Jersey usually wants to secede and it’s hard to get to know the whole state because we only have the two US senators and the governor who are elected statewide. Now we have a lieutenant governor but that person is chosen by the gubernatorial candidate. And at that point in my life, I had been President of the Board of Public Utilities. I’d been President of the Freeholder Board in Summerset County, the county commissioners basically. And I had decided I liked elective office better and the best job in the world would be Governor of New Jersey and a good way to get to know the state. I knew I wasn’t going to win, but I thought the best way to get to know the state was to accept the party was looking for a fall person. And they asked me if I’d run and I said, “Yeah, I’ll take that chance. I’ll see. It’ll either kill me and I’ll have no political future,” cause that’s what it had done to the women who’d run against Bradley in his first reelection. She lost by 16 points. But I figured it was worth the risk. And so I took it on. And turned out it was.

PB: (22:28) Why don’t you tell our listeners how close you came?

CTW: Well it was just maybe three percentage points. But it was one of those things. There really wasn’t that much difference in where we were on various positions between Bill Bradley and myself. And what it was, though, was the unpopularity of the current governor at the time, Jim Florio, who had raised taxes on everything. And I kept hammering Bradley about, what did he think about the tax increases? And he rightly said he had nothing to do with them and so he didn’t have an opinion. Well, that was just the wrong thing to say to the people of New Jersey. And I used to wake up every morning waiting for him to say, “You know, I hate taxes just as much as the next person but I’ve got to respect the job the governor does and so I’m not going to interfere.” And that would’ve blown me out of the water. It really would have. But he didn’t, and I think that’s because people in Washington were so convinced that he was going to win overwhelmingly. He didn’t need to worry about it. Nobody knew who I was. I didn’t have any money. He was going to be the next presidential candidate, so don’t get into the muck of New Jersey. And his very last ad, I always remember it. He must have cut it before he even knew he had an opponent. He was sitting behind his desk in Washington talking about something esoteric that he was dealing with in the Senate. And at the very end he kicks back and puts his feet on the desk and he has his basketball sneakers on. And people in New Jersey at that point were losing their jobs. 350,000 people lost their jobs and left the state in that timeframe. Or they didn’t all leave the state, but they lost their jobs. So they were really worried about the future and that was sort of a smack in the face that I think a lot of them felt. And so I got a bigger percentage of the vote than anybody expected and that kept me alive for the next cycle to run for governor.

PB: (24:10) It did. The reason I ask is, there’s a lot of discussion these days about how to get involved, who should get involved. And there are people who, I think, wake up and think, “Who am I? How am I going to run against this powerful person? How am I going to run against Paul Ryan?” It could be a very prominent Democratic politician too. And then there are stories like yours. You didn’t beat Bill Bradley then but I remember being just a private citizen and hearing about it. Maybe people don’t remember and they’re not from New Jersey. It was a shockwave for folks. And it launched you on a very amazing political career. Obviously, you were prominent in parts of New Jersey but not to the same degree as Bill Bradley. What is your advice to people, on either side of the aisle, if they have some passion to serve? And they have the particular passion to serve in elective office, which not everyone has. But if they do, what do you tell them based on your experience?

CTW: (25:01) Do it. And it’s especially true for women who will always sit back and say, “Oh, there’s someone better qualified. There’s someone who knows more about this than I do.” There will always be. I don’t care you go to work, what job you’re in. 99.9% of the time there’s someone there who knows that job better than you do because they’ve done it all their life, and you’re coming in as a CEO or you’re coming up with a new idea and there’s somebody that’s already been working on that kind of an idea for a while. That’s okay. Find them. Learn from them. Use them, in the sense of letting them help you be better. But don’t worry about getting outside of your comfort zone. You can learn anything. You can do things that you didn’t think you could do. But it’s worth the risk. You learn a lot from your failures more than, actually, your successes. But it’s something that’s not going to happen if you don’t. And you need to understand that you have a really good chance. You’d be surprised at how far you can get. But you’re certainly not going to get there if you don’t take that first step. And it may be scary, and it may look daunting, but if you can get a support group around you, whether it’s family or friends or people who just believe in you, you’ll be surprised at how it would grow. And it’s worth the effort. You learn an awful lot in the process. I lost that election to Bill Bradley but I got to be governor, and that’s really what I always wanted to be.

PB: (26:22) You were the first female governor of New Jersey. I think, when you became governor, there were only four female governors in the country. So that’s 8% of the governors even though women make up 50% of the population. Were there any particular indignities you faced in your campaign because you were a woman?

CTW: (26:39) Oh, just the usual of press saying my hair was too perfect and I looked too elite in a plaid suit. I can’t remember what I was wearing, pearls or something. So I just didn’t wear pearls again. You just couldn’t worry about it. You need to know why people are attacking you and where they’re coming from just so you know it. But, for instance, on things like being the first woman governor. Yes, I was. But since I wasn’t going to change my sex there wasn’t a whole lot I could about that. But I was the first person to defeat an incumbent governor in a general election in New Jersey since the constitution had been changed in 1949. To me, that was the political story. Not that I was the first woman and unfortunately to date, the only women. But it was that I was able to put together a campaign that actually won against an incumbent. What I’d say to people, something I learned in mountain biking, is, “Never look where you don’t want to go.” If you’re on a gnarly single-track and there’s a big rock up there, look at it, know it’s there, but then look at where you want to be. Because if you spend your entire time looking at the rock saying, “How am I going to get around it?” you hit it. At least I did almost every time. If I looked beyond it and I knew it was there, I could get around it. And that’s true of so many things in life. If you keep focused on where it is you want to get, know where people are attacking you and why, and if there’s something you can do about it, fine. You don’t, as I say, feed the beast. You don’t make it easier for them to build on whatever preconception they want to have. But on the other hand, you can’t spend your time worrying about that. You’ve got to spend your time focused on what it is you want to accomplish and why you want to accomplish it. The greatest definition of leadership came from Dwight Eisenhower. “Leadership is about getting other people to do what you want them to do because,” and he said ‘he’ but I say, “they want to do it.” There’s so much behind that, because if you can get people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it, that means you have to know why it’s important, why it should be important to anybody other than you, why should other people care, and you’ve got to have that passion. And if you can have that, it’s amazing what you can do.

PB: (28:44) I’m not an Eisenhower Republican but there’s another quote that I refer to all the time by Ike which is something like, “You don’t lead people by hitting them over the head. That’s assault, not leadership.” What do you think about the young people these days? Every generation says, “The future lies with the young people.” And they’re more animated than ever before. Now it really does seem to be true, in the wake of the shooting in Florida and with respect to other things. Do you think there’s coming a time when young people are going to be more involved than they’ve been before?

CTW: (29:18) I certainly hope so. I’ve spent a fair amount of time talking to and speaking at colleges and talking to kids of this generation. And the thing that I’ve found, which is a little troubling, is, first of all, they want to do good. They’re not so much about making millions. They want to have a good, comfortable lifestyle, but they want to make a positive difference in the world. It’s just they want nothing to do with politics. And I try to say to them, “That’s great, but in order to ensure that the progress you want to see is institutionalized, you’re going to have to get involved at some point. It’s going to take a law. It’s going to take something within the political framework to make sure that the change you want to see actually happens and is permanent.” And so, I hope they understand that. But even with Barack Obama’s first election, the average voter turnout in that 18 to 25-year-old group was 17%. You want to sort of shake them and say, “No, guys, you’ve got to get more involved.” And, as you say, after this last shooting in Florida, it looks as if the penny has dropped and they’re not going to let this go. And a lot of them are not old enough to vote, but they’re saying to their parents, to their peers, to their friends who are that one year older, “You’ve got to do it. You have got to stand up. You’ve got to go to the polls. Let those elected officials know that this is an issue of importance and we want to know where you stand on it. And if you’re not going to say you’re going to do something positive, we’re going to take it out on you in the polls.” The president, I guess, has come forward with a very narrow proposal on background checks but as the kids are saying, that’s not enough. And it looks like that might not even get through Congress which is mind-boggling but then we’re coming back to the influence of outside groups and money.

PB: (31:05) Your outlook for some kind of compromise of some substance on guns is what?

CTW: Very moderate. I am not as hopeful as I’d like to be, unfortunately.

PB: Well, too many bad things have happened and nothing has changed.

CTW: (31:22) Preet, I will tell you having talked to people after the Sandyhook shooting and every poll showed that 85 to 90% of the American people thought there should be some controls. There should be better background checks. Not everybody needed an AR-15 or an AK-47, any of those multiple round guns, automatic weapons. Bump stocks, we hadn’t even heard about back then. They were sure that something was going to happen and yet it didn’t. And it didn’t because the NRA, and God bless them, they were just using the tools that are available to every one of us, energized their members to the point where they flooded Congress with their opinion that, “You cannot touch my second amendment rights. There’s nothing you can do that will do that. And we’re going to come after you in the polls.” And so, the members, if they’re voting for what their constituents want, that’s what they were hearing. And yet many of them, when they went back to their states, found that, in fact, the opinion was just the opposite. And that occurred because those who cared and wanted to see some change argued with their television set or their spouse or their significant other and those people didn’t vote. They did not bother to take the time to let their representative in Washington, who at that point were the ones who were making the decision, what they wanted. And we’ve got to do that. It’s so easy today with technology to just say, “No, we’re going pay attention. You better vote for some restriction on firearms.” If you leave it to the groups that have one issue and that’s all they care about, they’re going to overwhelm those offices with emails and faxes and telephone calls. And the other side has got to be heard from, but we can’t do it just assuming that “Oh, well it’s so obvious that something needs to be done that we don’t need to do anything.”

PB: (33:10) I think that we’ve reached a time when a lot of people, the question is, are they more fed up with what is going on or more fed up with politics? And maybe if they’re more fed up with what’s going on, some people will realize that the route to change into things that they want improved is for some folks to think about politics and also other government positions and outside activity and activism matters also. I’m very inspired by some of the things I’m seeing on the part of young people around the country, and I’ve been saying that for a while. Especially because some of these folks are seeing how much impact they can have even if you’re a 16-year-old student who can stand in front of a microphone, or post something on social media. Those things have gone viral, and not just because they had been witnesses to tragedy and were almost victims themselves but because the kinds of things they’re saying are also, I think, strong and articulate and smart and are resonating with people. Let me end by reading you a final quote of yours, which may be my favorite. On this point of people who don’t think they have the ability to make a change, they actually do and you at one point said, “Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference has never tried to fall asleep with a mosquito.”

CTW: (34:32) It’s true. Every one of us can make a difference. And in fact, in a democracy, we’re the only ones who can. And that’s what we’ve got to remember. It’s up to us. We’re the ones who have the power. It’s our government. It’s our right to choose those representatives and we need to do it. And we can make that difference.

PB: (34:51) Governor Whitman, thank you so much for being with us and I look forward to working with you on the task force.

CTW: Me too, I look forward to really getting going on that and thank you. It’s been a pleasure.

PB: Take care, Governor.

CTW: Take care. Bye.