BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  JAN 15

“I think the country’s on a bad path, a dangerous path. I think we could lose what’s so unique about our country—this American idea the condition of your birth doesn’t determine the outcome of your life.”
House Speaker Paul Ryan on CBS‘ Face the Nation, January 10, 2016

It was an unusual Sunday morning talk show to say the least. Here was House Speaker Paul Ryan in a lengthy interview with Face the Nation host John Dickerson. The two of them, new to their jobs, appeared to be experimenting with a new and revolutionary format in television and politics.

They were talking substance.

Elsewhere in newsville, every anchor, correspondent, reporter, producer, and cameraperson remained immersed in the presidential campaign circus, recording every microgram of saliva lubricating the lips of ringmaster Donald Trump. As ritual dictates, after they capture a Trumpism, it is up the hill looking for Hillary, Marco, and John for their response, which is rushed back to Trump for another ‘ism’. The circle becomes infinite with nothing in the middle relevant or pertinent to the lives of hundreds of millions of Americans.

Not on this Sunday. In this, the second show of 2016, the Ryan interview was about substance, about the meaning of being American, government gridlock and mostly, the scourge of poverty in America, poverty that for too many painful years one party has benevolently perpetuated and the other absent-mindedly ignored.

Here is that portion of the interview devoted to the issue of poverty. It is long, but that, after all, is substance.

DICKERSON: “Let me ask you a philosophical question. Hubert Humphrey, a Democrat of course, used to say, the strength of the American economy is best judged by the weakness of any section or any person or any part. Do you agree with that?”

RYAN: “Yes, I think there’s something to that. I’m not a big Hubert Humphrey fan, but I do. I think — look, I — let me give you another Democrat, Jack Kennedy. ‘A rising tide lifts all boats.’ I think that’s true. But with poverty, we are finding deep and persistent chronic poverty. We have — we’re over 50 years in the war on poverty. We’ve had 80 new programs — 80 programs created since then at the federal level, spending trillions of dollars, yet we basically have a stalemate on our hands. We have a safety net that tries to catch people from falling into poverty, but we don’t have one that helps get people out of poverty. We’re actually treating the symptoms of poverty and perpetuating poverty, so we need to break that cycle and we need to go at the root causes of poverty and measure success not based on input and efforts and money and programs, but on outcomes and results. Are we getting people out of poverty?”

DICKERSON: “Is that what you mean by reintegrating the poor?”

RYAN: “Yes. Yes.”

DICKERSON: “That was something you said.”

RYAN: “Look — look, not to get into statistics, but our labor force participation rates are pretty awful. We haven’t seen these since like the Carter years. What it means — what that means is, able-bodied adults aren’t working or aren’t looking for work. They’re marginalized. They’re on the sidelines. We’ve got to get them back into the economy for two reasons. They share their talents with us, the rest of society, so we benefit from — from them sharing their talents and they get their lives back together. That kind of injection of human creativity, of work, of energy, that helps everybody. That helps the economy. That lowers the prison — the crime rate. That lowers the drug rate. That helps get economy and the society going. And, yes, that’s what we should be pushing for.”

DICKERSON: “You want folks to work — more work requirements for benefits. What progressives will say is, a lot of the poor have jobs and so what’s required is things to help them keep the jobs. So, fair work schedule, paid sick leave, medical — family medical leave –“

RYAN: “Yes.”

DICKERSON: “To kind of keep them in the jobs so that they can keep those jobs.”

RYAN: “I don’t want to keep people in dead-end jobs. I don’t want to keep people in jobs that keep them in poverty. I want people to be able to get the skills they need to get better jobs. I want people to have the ability to get on the escalator of upward mobility, which is slowing down in America. So we’ve got to get them the skills they need. And that’s not just a job. That might be many different kinds of problems that people are experiencing. But if we think all the wisdoms in Washington, you know, this — if we — if we’re telling our fellow citizens, pay your taxes, the government is going to fix poverty, Washington’s got a bureaucracy that will take care of this, that’s not going to work. That’s what we’ve been doing for 50 years.

“But if we say, you, each and every one of us in — in America needs to get involved so that we can, in our communities, help a person, and if we can remove those barriers that are making it harder for people to rise and get an economic growth that is growing the economy everywhere, then we can reignite the enthusiasm for the American idea, the American dream, reconnect people it to. Instead of treating the symptoms of poverty so people can tolerate it more, let’s get them out of poverty.

“And so I think what the left ends up doing is they speak to people as if they’re stuck in their current station in life and government’s here to help them cope with it. We should reject that. We want to help people get out of the fix they’re in and get on to a better life so that they can meet the potential and flourish. There will be differences in people’s lives, but that’s OK. That’s what — that’s what a free society has.”

Ryan was interviewed at the Jack Kemp Foundation summit on poverty in Columbia, South Carolina. The late Jack Kemp was a true Republican leader, a member of Congress, presidential candidate and Cabinet Secretary. He was a true believer in the notion that a rising tide does lift all boats and lifting people from poverty is preferable to making that existence more comfortable.

The summit got barely any press attention, except for the Presidential candidates who showed up and coverage of them was about them, not the critical issues discussed.

The Ryan-CBS conversation could be a breakthrough moment in journalism and politics if both journalists and politicians learn from it and the viewing public sees the value of tuning in.

The core issues confronting America, issues like poverty and those adjacent to it—health care, education, crime housing, income security—are all complex and not easily resolvable. Those of us who have labored in those fields know that all too well. Improving the human condition in all of these areas requires first an environment in which solutions can even be deliberated, let alone driven to conclusion.

We don’t even have that, as Ryan reminded CBS viewers. In a positive environment there is enough mutual respect for those with opposing views to at least recognize the validity of the other viewpoint. That makes compromise possible. Otherwise it is not. The basic concepts of inclusiveness and compassion and brotherhood are as deeply embedded in conservatism as they are in liberalism. You have to start there. The substance of public policy, the solutions we all seek are seldom drawn from just one viewpoint or another. They are found between the two, at the margins of both of them.

But if the public is not exposed to and educated about, first the legitimacy of both philosophies and then the intricacies of fusing them into mutually acceptable solutions, the public demand for change will never be strong enough for real change to occur. Policy makers will punt on third down when there’s no one in the stands, pressing them to score.

When the public is continually water-boarded with the drivel of sound bites and angry tough talk; when the public is torn apart by ideological and partisan division; when the desired outcome in politics and media is the dumbing-down of the electorate; when politics and journalism perpetuate a Pavlovian response mechanism for banal behavior, how can we expect governance to be anything other than dysfunctional, divided and constantly gridlocked?

Elevating the level of political conversation to a higher intellectual plateau takes courage and the talent to turn substance into good television storytelling. It can be done. John Dickerson proved it, and hopefully the ratings will back him up. Far better to listen to serious thinkers to educate us about the intricacies of issues critical to our lives than listen to journalists and pseudo journalists interview each other like the ringside commentators at a mud wrestling tournament, or worse yet, breathlessly announce the results of yet another poll hot off the streets of Des Moines.

We can only hope.

Editor’s Note: Mike Johnson is a former journalist, who worked on the Ford White House staff and served as press secretary and chief of staff to House Republican Leader Bob Michel, prior to entering the private sector. He is co-author of a book, Surviving Congress, a guide for congressional staff. He is currently a principal with the OB-C Group.