Killer Politics (3 page)

When we launched with just two stations and me spouting blood from my nostrils, I wondered what the hell I had gotten myself into. There were days that the shows seemed endless because there were so few callers, and unlike other shows where the talkers pontificate and like to hear themselves talk,
The Ed Schultz Show
has always been caller driven. I go easy on the sermons. The callers make the show.

We needed advertisers even more. Again, the critics and the know-it-alls didn't believe we would find the support to survive. If pride has
caused me to burn a few bridges in my time, it has also served me well at times like this. I got pissed at the very idea of failure. And when I was done being pissed, I got more resolute than I had ever been. If there is one thing I want to leave the kids, it's the memory that their dad never backed down, never gave up.

The number of callers increased and so did my audience. Advertisers soon discovered our show was an effective marketing tool. Because I know what it is like to build a business, I have a real admiration for small businesspersons. On Fridays for an hour, we do some “recession busting” by opening the lines to let entrepreneurs promote their businesses on nationwide radio. No charge. It started out as just something to do on a slow Friday, but it has grown into something I am quite proud of. We have helped businesses grow.

By the end of the first year of the national show, we had seventy stations. It was an incredible accomplishment for Team Fargo. But we were out of money. So I took out $600,000 in loans to keep the dream alive. Skin in the game, they call it.

By 2006, we had one hundred stations, and we were beginning to have an effect on the national discourse. You could feel the change in the air. Air America Radio, which launched shortly after I did, was out there, too, and my show was carried on many Air America stations. Suddenly, there were voices from the left being heard! Finally, someone was questioning the misinformation and propaganda coming from the Bush administration and their media supporters. I
know
we made a difference.

As the visibility of
The Ed Schultz Show
grew, we began to get calls from the cable networks for my commentary. As it turned out, having a bare-knuckle liberal brawler on the air to mix it up with the right wing ideologues was good for the ratings.

I was different from the liberals people were used to seeing on the air. Many of them were stereotypical geeky academic vegans with pocket protectors, bad hair, and Earth Shoes. I'm six-two, 250 pounds, and in a
suit I would fit in on Wall Street. But I have a blue-collar soul. I'm a gun-toting, meat-eating, beer-drinking jockstrap. I remember one woman e-mailed C-SPAN during one of my early TV appearances. “You look like a conservative, you sound like a conservative…but the words are different!” I
am
different. The beautiful thing about the progressive movement is we have a big tent. I know I may not fit in a perfect liberal mold, but I don't think anyone ought to have to pass a political purity test to be on my team.

If I can point to one gift the good Lord has given me, it is my ability to think quickly on my feet. Not everyone has it. That's why most talk shows don't like the unpredictability of unscreened callers. I love the challenge. I know what I believe, but it isn't about always being right. It's about the free and open debate. Sometimes callers change my mind. That kind of talk radio honed my skills and made me very effective on cable television. Eventually, Wendy and I had to invest in a satellite uplink so we could be available when the shows called. I began to think, “Hey, I can make a success out of this.” We started talking seriously about a television show.

A TURNING POINT

A pivotal moment for
The Ed Schultz Show
happened in 2008 when Barack Obama made a campaign visit to Grand Forks, North Dakota. I have long been an admirer of Hillary Clinton, but after meeting Obama in Washington, I was so impressed, I became convinced he was the right person at the right time to become president. Though I have been critical of him sometimes, I still believe that.

During Obama's visit to North Dakota, I was asked to warm up a huge stadium crowd. Now, anyone that has ever heard me speak knows I have one temperature and one speed—hot and full steam ahead, and I don't mince words. I had become increasingly concerned about John McCain's hawkish stance during the campaign and the idea of four
more years of a Bush-Cheney style approach to the two ongoing wars. Like I said, I'm not the kind of guy who minces words. I called McCain a warmonger. It wasn't the first time, but it was the first time network cameras were there.

Both the righties and the lefties went wild—for different reasons, of course. With the Right, it was pretty much “how dare you!” And from the Left, people were just glad someone had the guts to say it. In many ways, John McCain has been a political sacred cow because of his military service and because he's a pretty good guy. There is much to admire. However, I think as a candidate he began to compromise his own values to get elected—imagine any politician doing that! In the end, I think it was a good thing to confront John McCain.

It also raised my visibility nationwide. Was this a calculated dustup on my part? Heck no! I just say what's on my mind and let the chips fall where they may. I never intended to grow up to be controversial, but I recognize now that I am.

GO EAST, YOUNG MAN!

After Obama won his historic election, I felt drawn to Washington, where the action was. This was history and I wanted to be a part of it. The country was at a crossroads. From a professional standpoint, I wanted to be more accessible to the talking-head shows, and then there was a dream…that my next step in fighting this fight would be a television show.

The plan was to do a [local] Sunday-morning show in Washington and grow it just like we had the national radio show. Sure, some of it was about building my career. I believe in “growing the brand.” And like any man, I want to make sure my family is well provided for, but there was a larger purpose, too. I wanted my voice to be heard—I wanted to be a voice for change.

Unfortunately, we hit town in January 2009, just as the economy went into free fall; it was a terrible time to launch a show because people
were so worried about the economy, our deal fell apart, and there we were, facing another roadblock. We lost $500,000 in advertising sponsorships almost overnight. It's hard to tell you just how devastating it was—and just how uncertain our lives had become. We had moved to Washington, D.C., on a hope and a prayer, and it turned out, that's about all we had.

But my career has been built with what some would call gambles and what I call faith. A friend told me later, angels ride on the shoulders of the bold.

We lost the TV show on Friday.

On Monday, I got a call from MSNBC.

Phil Griffin wanted to meet me. Phil had become president of MSNBC in July 2008 after building an impressive résumé in other positions with NBC and MSNBC. He had been with MSNBC since its launch in 2006 and had helped put together a remarkable stable of talent.

In Phil Griffin I met my match and then some. This guy has more passion than I do—which is a little like calling the pope an agnostic. I was intense, focused, and ready to grab Phil by the throat and make him give me the job. He was equally intense, and his competitive spirit made me feel right at home. Well, a twenty-minute cup of coffee in a small café in a Washington hotel with Phil Griffin turned into two hours.

Wendy was waiting patiently outside for me in the hotel lobby when I finally emerged. She knew the length of the meeting was a good sign. I'll never forget that we both had tears in our eyes. The first thing I said to Wendy was “I think this guy is going to hire me,” and we hugged each other like we were never going to let go. This was it. I was going to get my chance at TV.

Not long afterward I found myself substitute-hosting the program
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
After the third audition, Phil Griffin said, “You're hired,” and he encouraged Wendy and me to move to Manhattan.
Can you imagine? You're talking about a guy who has a lake home in Minnesota so he can fish at a moment's notice. Now we would be living just a few blocks from 30 Rock, one of the most famous showbiz addresses in the world. I could not believe all of this was happening.

Sometimes hopes and prayers can be pretty powerful.

For five and a half years all we had ever heard was that progressive talk couldn't make it and that we could never make it to the next level. You don't just go from Fargo to 30 Rock…but
we
were on our way. We had our shot.

I remember thinking, “Holy cow! The kids are gonna think we're crazy.” We'd be leaving the lake country in Minnesota (fifty miles east of Fargo is where we live) for the big city and a small apartment, along with a hope and a prayer. None of our six kids—they're all adults now—could believe what was going on. They were all genuinely excited and happy for us. They knew how badly I wanted this.

I don't know if Megan, Christian, Joe, Greta, Ingrid (Wendy's kids from a previous marriage), and David (my son from a previous marriage) know how much they have influenced the way I view the world. They're all in their twenties, smart and thoughtful. They inspire me and motivate me to do what I can to leave them a better world.

Christian and Joe have been in my life for thirteen years and are my partners in E. A. Schultz Construction. They are tough, hardworking, and loyal men. The girls, Megan, Greta, and Ingrid, are all married with children. They are great moms married to solid men whom I trust—even when the fishing and hunting stories start flying around the room. My son Dave is a professional golfer. We all live and die with every putt.

Our Minnesota lake home is where everyone comes together during the holidays. At Thanksgiving, we set the table for thirty-four! I call the family the Brady Bunch on steroids, but when we all get together with Buck, our beloved black Lab, playing gently with the kids by the fireplace, the gang has a Norman Rockwell feel to it.

GROWING PAINS

Although I had done many appearances on talking-head shows, I had not done television full-time since 1996 when I had been a Fargo sportscaster, so it took awhile to get my sea legs on
The Ed Show
. Any new show has its growing pains as the team learns to work together. I was surrounded by professionals, and that was a comfort, but internally I struggled for the first two months. I wanted so badly to succeed I think at times I tried too hard. Sometimes I get so focused I forget to enjoy the experience! I don't care what it is, a town hall meeting, a Ladies Aid meeting, or a national TV broadcast, I prepare the same way I did for football games. I start to tune out everything before I go on.
Focus. Focus.

In time I began to reach a comfort level—something that comes only when you begin to trust your team and they begin to have more confidence in you. Some days it felt so good, I didn't want the show to end. One day, after a really good show, I told a friend of mine on the phone, “Man, I have an idea how a junkie feels. This could be addictive.” There's no better feeling than hitting it out of the park. It's like putting on the pads for a big game.

I remain grateful for Phil Griffin's patience as we went through our early growing pains. I was glad we could reward him with the best numbers MSNBC had recorded in that time slot—ever. Having 3.5 million radio listeners made a big difference because I was able to cross-promote the shows. If we can register the same solid, steady growth with the TV show as we have with the radio program, we'll have a good run. Make no mistake; it is all about the numbers in this business. The overnight ratings come out every day at 4
P.M.
You live day to day for the first few years in this business. You have to be a realist. The life expectancy of most shows on television is short.

The first
Ed Show
was broadcast at 6
P.M.
on April 7, 2009. In order to make room for
The Ed Show,
David Shuster, an Emmy award–win
ning broadcaster, got bumped from the time slot. David has been an absolute pro—very gracious. I've experienced a few knocks in my life, and I greatly respected the way David handled this one. He's a talented journalist and an even better person, a real stand-up guy. He continues to work at MSNBC as an anchor and correspondent.

I never imagined I would be standing on a stage quite so large, able to reach so many people. It's both humbling and an awesome responsibility. But without meaning to sound grandiose, I believe this is what I was born to do. After every show Wendy and I go back to the apartment in New York to watch the show on TiVo, just to make sure this really happened today…are we really doing this?

Let's Fly Ahead of the Plane

AS COMPLEX AS ANY NATION MIGHT BE, I BELIEVE THERE ARE SIMPLE,
essential components to a great country. I call them the Four Pillars. If you have been a listener of
The Ed Schultz Show
or read my first book,
Straight Talk from the Heartland,
you may be familiar with my concept. Since they are such critical elements of a great nation and a vibrant middle class, it's important we start this with an overview of these pillars:

• I. Defend the Nation
  
• II. Establish a Sound Fiscal Policy
  
• III. Feed the Country
  
• IV. Educate the People
  

A country that can successfully do these things will prosper. Weakness in any one of these areas is like a hole in the dike: In time, you're going to be under water.

The interesting thing about the American democracy, with all its checks and balances and built-in gridlock, is that it often takes a crisis of some sort—typically economic or military—before the country wakes up
and is ready to make the changes necessary to fortify these pillars. The bigger the crisis, the more likely it is that the nation will get to work.

Barack Obama seems to understand this as well as anyone since Franklin Roosevelt. Take the economic crisis of 2008–2009, for instance. A healthy economy is all about confidence, and both FDR and Obama understood they had to reassure everyone on a national level that the banking system wouldn't completely fail.

Just before Roosevelt took office in 1933, a nationwide banking crisis began to boil. Interestingly, Herbert Hoover reached out as a lame duck president to President-elect Roosevelt to issue a joint statement supporting a bank holiday, an offer Roosevelt declined, choosing, apparently, to keep all the credit (or blame) to himself. Once in office, he announced a bank holiday so banks could be inspected and declared solvent or shut down. As you can imagine, when those banks reopened with this government stamp of approval, citizens had much more faith in them.

In the biggest economic meltdown of our own time, most economists credit the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), which was introduced in September 2008, with keeping the country and the world out of a full-blown depression. Remember, this crisis took place late in Bush 43's second term, but he and President-elect Obama, perhaps learning from history, worked together, which helped steady the economy. One could make the case that from the start, Obama chose to do what was better for the country rather than choosing to cynically and politically let Bush go down with the ship as Roosevelt had let Herbert Hoover do.

The full effects of the Obama Stimulus Package, which involves a combination of tax breaks for individuals; state and local government relief; infrastructure, antipoverty, health care, education, and energy measures, will not be felt until 2011, but the confidence it and other measures gave us all in the short run was critical to stabilizing the economy.

The Cash for Clunkers program provided a shot in the arm to automakers and their suppliers. Critics don't realize that by stepping in to
bail out GM and Chrysler, Obama probably saved Ford and a multitude of parts suppliers that supply the Big Three. Had Chrysler and GM failed, it would have killed many of the suppliers that sell to Ford, and Ford almost certainly would have come crashing down, too.

Confidence is not something that is easily measurable, so critics have been able to Monday-morning quarterback the Obama administration on any number of issues—including joblessness and a rising deficit—but things would have been much, much worse had he not acted so decisively.

By December 2009, job losses—eleven thousand—were the lowest in two years, signaling the “beginning of the end” of the recession. Auto sales and retail sales were up. Housing sales grew dramatically in October 2009, spurred in part by an $8,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers.

So in the short term Obama took strong steps to point this country in the right direction. However, each step has been an excruciatingly slow process. Much of the problem has been Republican obstructionists in the Senate who drag out each bill and amendment—a stall tactic to keep Democratic reforms off the table as long as possible.

Imagine Obama as a schoolboy pulling a little blue wagon filled with playmates to school. If half of the passengers drag their feet, it will be slow going and they will be late. Naturally, they will blame Obama. That's what he is up against in the Senate.

However, a bill passed in the House in December 2009 (it will need to pass the Senate and be signed by the president to become law) offers hope. The bill seeks oversight of institutions “too big to fail,” creates a consumer financial protection agency to prevent risky lending practices like those in the real estate sector that triggered the Great Recession, gives shareholders a vote on executive compensation, regulates derivatives and hedge funds, and opens the books of the Federal Reserve.

If you listen carefully in the wind, you can hear screaming on Wall Street. But Obama's reforms come from the FDR playbook, which many
historians and economists credit with preserving the stability and integrity of the economy for fifty years. Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) warned in 1999 as he opposed sweeping rollbacks of FDR-era regulations, “I think in 10 years time we will look back and say, ‘We should not have done that,' because we forgot the lessons of the past.” How prophetic he proved to be.

OPPORTUNITY BORN OF CRISIS

Thinking longer term and thinking about leveling the playing field are keys to what FDR did. Recognizing that the economic crisis that was the Great Depression had a twin—economic
opportunity
—he set in motion changes that helped create a half century of unprecedented prosperity. By encouraging unions and then in 1944 establishing the G.I. Bill, Roosevelt set in motion the rise of the middle class. Unions tempered the strength of corporations, and the G.I. Bill helped educate and/or finance the homes of 7.8 million World War II veterans.

Roosevelt wasn't just reacting to the immediate crisis when he created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to instill confidence in depositors, or when he created Social Security to ease the stress of retirement, or created commodity safety nets to ensure cheap and abundant food. He was setting in motion policies that would transform the future. He was thinking ahead. All of this from a guy who was considered an intellectual lightweight.

FDR instinctively understood that greatness in America did not reside alone with the wealthy titans of industry, the aristocratic world in which he grew up, but in the middle class. Roosevelt understood at a gut level that given a fair shake, the common man would become the economic engine that would make America a superpower.

He could see generations ahead.

As a pilot, my life and the lives of my passengers depend on what is called “flying ahead of the plane”—that means anticipating problems
and devising solutions before things get out of hand. Everybody knows where we
are.
The trick is to understand where we are
headed,
and that kind of thinking is typically lacking in democracies and capitalistic societies because politicians are thinking in two-, four-, and six-year election cycles and, even worse, CEOs are trying to keep stockholders happy from quarter to quarter.

Most of our lawmakers get too preoccupied with short-term success for themselves on Election Day to look ahead and do the right thing for our kids' future. Congress gets a world-class pension and world-class health care. Relative to most Americans, they live like rock stars. Not like Mick Jagger, but maybe like Milli Vanilli, and that ain't bad.

And as senators and congressmen approach another election, they start thinking long and hard about the short term—about how each vote might be used against them in the next election; then they do what's best for their reelection chances and not always what's good for the country in the long run. So each generation of leaders in government and business lives in the now and blithely ignores the future.

Every political party and every generation has done it, though none as spectacularly destructively as George W. Bush's administration. He took a debt that under Bill Clinton was theoretically on track to be paid off by now, and saddled us with an $11 trillion debt by insanely giving tax breaks to the rich and picking a $3 trillion fight with Iraq.

George W. Bush put us into a crisis situation. OK. What's the opportunity in this self-induced crisis? Well, to start with, we have to recalibrate our moral compass as a nation and ask ourselves, Are we so lacking in character that we will allow our children to pay for our mistakes?

The good news is that we do have the opportunity to do something about our national lack of foresight: We can do something about the national debt right now. The progressive movement has the House of Representatives, the White House, and a majority in the Senate. This chance reminds me of George C. Scott's quote from the movie
Patton:
We have “precisely the right instrument, at precisely the right moment of history, in exactly the right place.” What remains to be seen is whether we have the
will,
whether the Democrats can stick together, and find one Republican with a conscience, because if they don't, this rare opportunity to save our children's future will have been squandered.

I think in some ways President Obama's task is more difficult than Roosevelt's. FDR enjoyed a strong Democratic majority in Congress. And during World War II, Americans and Congress understood the threat from the Axis powers and were more willing to back the president. Today, the threat to America does not seem as immediate to a tragically uninformed American public. Most Americans have not connected the dots between the crushing debt and the resulting inability of the country to afford satisfactory health care and education for its citizens. Most Americans don't seem to understand that the American Dream is growing dim and the carcasses of the late, great middle class are being picked clean by corporate vultures in a class war dominated by the rich. Tragically, the neocon opposition is willing to undermine the presidency and drag the country down in an effort to regain power. It's a dangerous, unpatriotic, political game, but it is a game progressives and the middle class could win by being informed and by having the courage to tell the truth to others.

Let's think long term—as most of our elected leaders do not. Let's talk about the Four Pillars.

Pillar #1: Defend the Nation

I'm not a general and I'm not a diplomat, but I've read enough history to know that (1) as long as there are men with dark hearts, we have to be ready to fight them, and (2) war more often produces two losers than a winner and a loser.

Defending the nation takes a delicate balance. Reach too far, and eventually the nation begins to fall apart. Consider Rome, Great Britain,
and the USSR—and the path America has been on for many years as the world's policeman. We need to look no further than Vietnam and Iraq before we see parallels with the superpowers of the past. While we have built a great military machine, we have shortchanged our citizens and ignored our infrastructure—and other nations have built up major economies.

In 2007, Representative Ron Paul, a doctor, a Republican congressman from Texas, and a two-time presidential candidate, told Maria Bartiromo for an article in
BusinessWeek
, “The easiest place to cut spending is overseas because it's doing so much harm to us, undermining our national defense and ruining our budget. I would start saving hundreds of billions of dollars by giving up on defending the American empire…. I'd start bringing our troops home, not only from the Middle East, but from Korea, Japan, and Europe, and save enough money to slash the deficit. We can actually pay down the national debt and still take care of people here at home.”

When it comes to defending our nation, restraint is a good thing. As mighty as America is, we are not mighty enough to force our sense of morality or our system on the rest of the world. The reality is, you just can't take out every despot. When it comes to being commander in chief, pragmatism is a virtue.

Historically, America's leaders tend to be pragmatic, but, as in Vietnam, we are sometimes too slow to come to realize that there's nothing to be won. As Robert McNamara, JFK's defense secretary, discovered, the United States can fight any war to a
stalemate,
but victory can be all but unattainable in what are really civil wars, such as Vietnam and Korea. In Iraq, we discovered that once we had removed Saddam's iron grip, what was left were two distinctly warring factions—the Sunnis and the Shia—
and
the Kurds, an ethnic group of Sunnis.

The Bush administration didn't seem to have a clue that this would happen. They acted as if with Saddam Hussein gone, Iraq would unite, and they didn't plan for any other scenario. Nor did they have a plan for
Afghanistan. We have al-Qaeda on the defensive, and we ought to continue to relentlessly hunt Osama bin Laden until the day he dies, but occupying Afghanistan is a fool's errand, as the Soviet Union discovered two decades ago. We can win territory, but is it worth the price of holding it?

We should not have been surprised by the thirty-thousand-troop U.S. surge in Afghanistan, which Obama announced in December 2009: He is doing what he said he was going to do—draw down in Iraq and finish the job in Afghanistan with a strategy to occupy and stabilize population centers while training Afghans to defend their country, a strategy that seems to be working in Iraq. And we should be encouraged that NATO immediately added seven thousand troops from twenty-five countries to help.

In this instance, Obama's global popularity has paid big dividends. In a very diplomatic manner, Obama reminded the rest of the world that defeating al-Qaeda is in everyone's best interest. He has also wisely reframed this fight not as a war against terror but as a fight against al-Qaeda—the specific group that attacked us on 9/11. The president's eighteen-month timeline for success may prove to be too optimistic, but giving a timeline sends a message of urgency to the Afghanistan government and, let's face it, placates the left wing of the Democratic Party.