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MOUNT MADONNA SCHOOL
Interview with Mark Kadish
Chief of Staff, Senator Dianne
Feinstein (D-CA)
May 19, 2000
Student: Could you tell us about your
responsibilities as the chief of staff?
Mr. Kadish:The responsibilities of the
chief of staff, at least in this office, are to make
sure that a Senator's office functions properly. That
means being responsive to constituents, and in Senator
Feinstein's case there are thirty-four million Californians,
many of whom want to come in and see her every day,
and you only have twenty-four hours in a day. She's
got committee assignments, she's got to go to markups
and hearings every day, she's got floor votes, and she
has to schedule all of her other activities. She has
a state schedule that she has to put together. She has
seventy employees, all of whom have, like most businesses,
personnel issues. Perhaps they want raises, or they're
unhappy with the working conditions, etc. So it's helping
her make sure that every part of her professional life
is organized in way that she can be effective and concentrate
on the things that she has to. California has a huge
number of issues that are before the Senate. Everything
from water issues, high technology issues, trade issues,
etc. It is different than if you're from South Dakota,
where maybe there are a handful of issues that really
affect your state every day. For California, it's almost
always the case that whatever bill is before the Senate
has some impact on the state. So she can not be unprepared
for any of those pieces of legislation. So, I think
I see my role as helping her to make sure that she is
ready to do the many tasks she has to do each day.
Derrick Diaz: What made you decide on a career
in public service?
Mr. Kadish:That's a good question. Let's see. I grew up
in San Francisco, and went to school there. When I was
in high school-- what year are you guys?
Students: Juniors and seniors.
Mr. Kadish:When I was a sophomore
in 1978, this is ancient history to you guys, but Senator
Feinstein was then president of the Board of Supervisors
of San Francisco, which is the local government. It's
a pretty big job because San Francisco is both a city
and a county. Mayor Moscone was in office at that time.
I don't know how aware you are of the history, but a
former member of the Board of Supervisors who had resigned
a couple weeks earlier, came back and assassinated the
mayor, and assassinated another member of the Board
of Supervisors. I remember that I was in chemistry class,
and for those who grew up in San Francisco, everybody
remembers where they were when it happened. That's how
Senator Feinstein became the mayor. I had been very
interested in government, growing up in San Francisco,
and knowing of Senator Feinstein. I went to college
and then to graduate school at the Kennedy School of
Government, which is Harvard's public policy school.
I thought it would be interesting to wake up and talk
about the stuff that's in the paper every day. My parents
were interested in government and politics, and so I
guess I always knew I wanted to do it. I never really
thought about doing anything else; this was always what
I thought would be interesting to do. It doesn't happen
that often, you'd be surprised, but every once in a
while, you do something that helps people and it gives
you a good feeling.
Jahmin Lerum: What's the most challenging
part of your job?
Mr. Kadish:What's
the most challenging part of my job? Every day I have
no idea what to expect. I walk in and have a list of
thirty things that need to get done, and a pile of phone
calls. People want to talk to the Senator, and they
might not be able to, so I try to take those calls from
people who want to talk to me. So I go in and say, I've
got to return these calls today, I've got to answer
these letters, and then all of a sudden, something happens
we don't expect. To give you an example, yesterday we
had on the Senate floor a vote on whether or not the
United States should cut off aid funding for our troops
in Kosovo. You all know what happened in Kosovo, and
we have troops on the ground that are helping the peacekeeping
operation. It's been a common argument in the United
States, what role should we play internationally versus
our European allies. The United States can't be everywhere
all the time, but yet we had a national interest in
keeping genocide from occurring. So we put troops in,
but it's really a constitutional issue. The President
is the commander in chief, but deploying troops is supposed
to be authorized by Congress. So there was a fight about
whether or not we should pass an amendment yesterday
that was put in an appropriation bill. Should we have
a timetable to withdraw our troops because we want the
Europeans to play a larger role, and because of this
constitutional issue? It's an enormous event that we
didn't anticipate, it happened within a day, and we
didn't know it was going to be attached in committee.
So you have to quickly decide, what does it mean if
we pass this amendment? Does it mean that we're going
to undercut what we want to do with our allies in Europe?
If we say to Slobodan Milosevic, we're going to be here
until July 15th of 2001 then we're leaving, is that
really going to make his government compromise, respect
human rights, and help build a civil society? Is it
going to make our European allies say, "We really want
to step up and help here," or is it going to make Milosevic
more stubborn, and make the European allies say, "If
you're not going to stay, why should we stay?"? Consequently
do we get back to a situation where there's killing
and genocide? So I had no idea that that was going to
happen yesterday. You quickly have to drop everything
else you're doing, come together and talk about it,
try to get expert opinion, and talk it up with the Senator.
No one person could follow everything that goes on in
this institution, and everything that goes on in California.
The Senator is helped by seventy people total. We have
22 legislative staffers, and we have 11 people whose
job primarily is legislative correspondence. Can you
imagine, we get up to twenty thousand letters a week
from constituents, who say, where does the Senator stand
on issue X? Is she for the death penalty, or is she
for a bill that does this? Now she can't type out and
answer all of her letters by herself, so we have these
eleven people whose primary job is to help her answer
those letters. What they do is they'll ask her, "What's
your opinion on this issue?", or they'll know her opinion
because we voted on it, she's gone to the Senate floor,
or she's made a speech about it. Then we have another
group, another eleven people, who are legislative assistants.
Legislative assistants and legislative correspondents
are usually just out of college, maybe they have a masters
degree, but we have at least one with a Ph.D., and a
number of lawyers. What they do is they help advise
the Senator on issues. So she may consult her foreign
policy expert on this issue we had yesterday, and we
all sit down and go over what this resolution says.
He's the person that's been talking to the committee
staff, who has the expertise, who might make calls to
constitutional scholars at universities to ask, how
do you interpret this? The Senator has a big staff to
help make recommendations on legislation, so she knows
what she's doing. If she says, I want a bill that would
designate this area of San Francisco part of the Golden
Gate National Recreation Area, she doesn't sit down
herself and write out the bill. She can, it's just too
time-consuming, so she says to her assistant, get this
bill, come back, and let's talk about it. Then they
sit down, she looks at the piece of legislation and
says gee, I really wanted it to say this, or let's change
it to this. The assistant only helps write it out. The
Senate has something called the Legislative Counsel
that makes sure we get the language absolutely right
because if a bill passes and becomes law, and you haven't
worded it right, it's a real problem. In the push of
business, it happens. You hear many famous stories about
it. At the end of the year we have to pass thirteen
appropriation bills. Those thirteen bills fund the federal
government; without them, the government shuts down,
and that has actually happened. A couple of years ago,
the Washington Monument, which has thousands of people
every year that want to go in and to the top, was closed
by the government. You had all the Smithsonian Institutions,
all the museums, closed. Everything that the government
did had to be shut down because they had no money. So
at the end of the year, we try to avoid that usually
by doing something called an omnibus bill. An omnibus
bill might be that high, could be a thousand pages,
could be more. Sometimes you pass them, you know, after
you've been up four days in a row. In one case, they
passed a bill and somebody had written their phone number
on it. Perhaps someone had called and said oh, call
me back about this. So whoever it was wrote his phone
number down, and somehow it got enrolled and passed
as part of the law. We had to go back then and change
it, but in most cases what happens is if you draft it
incorrectly, then the court might overturn it. Sometimes
if we draft a law and it's not right, the Supreme Court
will call us on it. How you draft a bill is very important,
and that's why we work with the Legislative Counsel
to make sure what we mean to do is exactly what's said.
If you make a mistake, it's there in the law books,
and can be very embarrassing.
Laura Johnson: Lincoln said in his debate
with Stephen Douglas, "You can't separate moral questions
from political questions." He went on to say, "Isn't
it false statesmanship to try to make policy based
on caring nothing about the very thing that people
care the most about?" What place do you think moral
issues should have in the political debate?
Mr. Kadish:Well I'm going to have a different
view, slightly. My view is everything we do obviously
has an underpinning. Such as how you approach an issue,
and how we live in a democracy. I don't know how well
you all know the Senate. Have you ever seen Mr. Smith
Goes to Washington? It's a great movie that I think
is a really good way to learn about how the Senate works.
It's a little dated, and it's kind of humorous. I always
thought we should show it to our staff because not everybody
has seen it. In the Senate, one person can stop anything
from happening. You do what's called a filibuster. The
longest filibuster was done by Strom Thurmond, who is--
do you all know who Strom Thurmond is? I don't know
if you have a good sense of history, but in 1948, the
president was who? Do you have any idea who won for
president? Harry Truman, very good. Harry Truman ran
against Strom Thurmond. Strom Thurmond is still in the
United States Senate. He's now 97 years old. In 1964,
it was concerning the Voting Rights Act, and he stood
up on the floor for 24 hours, and stopped a piece of
legislation. So, this institution only runs on compromise.
If you can't get a hundred people, they might vote against
it, but if they hate it, they can stop it if they want
to. Because of that, the kind of underlying current
here is that you have to compromise. If you can't compromise,
you can't be effective. You can't get things done. Now
you can stop things from happening, but you can't get
things done. So your question is more about morals,
but you have to build into a moral construct here that
the way democracy works. You have a general majority
rule, but with the protection of the minority, and that
is really our moral construct. Now within that you certain
issues. I think a lot of people come straight out of
school, and they come to Capitol Hill and they think,
"I'm going to debate the death penalty. I'm going to
debate matters of life and death every single day."
Most of what we do is funding of the Department of Education,
or we fund the General Service Administration. It's
not really that much of debating moral issues, but how
we arrive at legislation, how we make a democracy function,
is based upon moral concepts which is really the amazing
thing. There are so many ways for the legislative process
to just fall apart. If the administration, the president
and Congress can't get along that could stop everything,
but it rarely happens, and I think that's part of the
moral issue. A lot of countries can't make a democracy
work. We've been very successful, and I think that's
because we have a view of democracy with a moral underpinning.
I'll give you another example that's very recent for
Senator Feinstein, and morality does come into it. When
you're a Senator you're representing your state. Your
goal is to figure out, and this is always hard for every
Senator, "Am I doing what's best, am I doing what I
think is right, am I doing what I think is in the best
interest of my state? Am I working to the best interest
of the country?" All those don't always line up exactly
evenly. It's not the case that always what you believe
is the same as what the constituents at home believe,
and then what do you do? In one moral framework, you're
representing them. In another, you have your own beliefs
to answer to. One example for Senator Feinstein is the
Africa trade bill. The Africa trade bill said we
would provide better trade relations with Africa, Africa
obviously is a very poor country, we could open our
markets and help them grow. Most people generally agree
with that. Some people from states, particularly textile
states, like South Carolina said gee, that's terrible
for my constituents, I don't want that, because I might
lose jobs. Senator Feinstein thought, it's a good thing
to do and it's in our long term best interests that
these countries grow. They'll be part of the world community,
we can trade with them, and they can trade with us.
However her real issue on that bill was, as you might
know, about ninety percent, almost 23.3 million, of
the live AIDS cases are in sub-Saharan Africa. There
are, in just that one country, close to a million orphans
in Sub-Saharan Africa. Just think about it. A million
kids, the population of many states, that are orphans
because the AIDS epidemic is so much more serious than
it is here. I mean it's worse than the black plague.
In our trade bill, someone in committee quietly snuck
in something that said to get the privileges of this
trade with the United States you cannot use something
called compulsory licensing of drugs such as for HIV
or AIDS. What we understood that to mean was, under
current international law, if you're having a health
crisis-and this clearly qualifies as maybe the worst
health crisis the world has ever faced-- you should
be able to manufacture these drugs at your own cost
and then pay a royalty to the drug company, who deserves
something, because they have a patent on this. However,
in Sub-Saharan Africa, $200 is a yearly income for most
people, and if you're trying to live for HIV, it could
cost you $1,000, $2,000, $3,000. Well, these people
make $200 a year, period, and so they're just dying.
So she said I think that's absolutely horrific; we can't
do that. Now, did that represent Californians? Not really,
but she thought it was a moral issue, and we got it
put into this bill. Now when the Senate passes a bill,
or the House passes a bill, they don't often say exactly
the same things. They're the slightest bit different.
They go to through something called a conference committee.
So Senators and House members get together, and they
iron out the differences, and then they send the same
bill back to both chambers, and they vote on it again,
and then it goes to the president, and the president
signs it. Well we got it in the Senate bill, it went
to conference, and lo and behold, our amendment, which
was agreed to in the Senate, disappeared. We know what
happened; the pharmaceutical companies were quietly
behind the scenes saying take this out, it's a terrible
idea, we don't want to do this. She went to the Senate
floor a couple of times and said, you know, here's what
it means, we've got to do this, and they did it anyway.
So, what do we do then? We're out of luck. She called
the President, and said I need your help. This is horrible.
Then the President did something that the President
has the power to do, it's called issuing an executive
order. In the absence of a law, an executive order is
the next most powerful thing; it governs how this administration,
how our government works. So he issued the executive
order saying we will not enforce this, as long as they
do not allow the compulsory license and do not abide
by international agreements. So we got what we wanted,
but her whole reason for doing that was simply moral.
She was mayor of San Francisco when AIDS started, she
saw what it did, and the numbers in Africa are so staggering.
Santa Cruz is how big? Forty-nine thousand. So probably
that number is dying every day. The numbers are hard
to imagine. Twenty-three point five million, and they're
not getting treatments, and we've got drugs that at
least prolong life and make that life I think a little
better. People here are not as sick, although they have
HIV. There, you die, and the transmission is unbelievable
because it's happening between mother and child. Those
drugs could make a huge difference, and help people
have a better quality of life. So we don't have, in
Africa, if the present rates keep going, nothing but
orphans and very old people because that whole generation
in the middle is being wiped out. That's a long-winded
answer to say morals are what you think normally. I
mean, they're just not those debates on moral issues
every day. In the Senate what you're doing is running
a huge business in some ways, but it's also where the
moral debates happen. However you'd be surprised because
it doesn't happen as often as you think. Usually you
don't get up and feel like you're fighting that fight,
but occasionally you do, and you feel pretty good about
it.
Laura Johnson: I was more curious about the
morals people often discuss concerning how much we
should hold our politicians to a higher moral standard,
and how much morals should be a part of, not just
the debate, but also the people who are running the
debate. I was wondering, what sort of place do you
feel that the morals of the people who run the government
have in our government?
Mr. Kadish:You know, that's a real complicated question,
but it's a good question. I guess it's two things. One,
if you put yourself out there as an example, and you're
a hypocrite, that affects policy, but iss that fair
game in some ways for the media? The question becomes
is it fair for journalists to look at every element
of everybody's life, everything you did when you were
in college, even though that might have been thirty
years ago for some people. Maybe it is a marriage that
failed, or all of those personal things. It depends
on the issue itself, on what you're talking about. If
you are saying gee, divorce is the most horrible thing
in the world, anyone that does it is evil, and it turns
out that you were divorced, maybe it's fair game. It's
also the case that many people who may want to be in
public life put forth political commercials that are
really damaging and personal. Many people who would
like to serve the public get in it for the right reasons,
but are driven away. I'll give you an example. I don't
know if you all remember, back in 1988, Mike Dukakis
ran for president. What he did and how he conducted
himself was probably good and respectful. It turned
out that his wife had bad alcohol problems, but was
that fair game for the media? It's a real hard question.
I guess she could have been first lady, but I think
that probably a lot of people in their life deal with
things, and the question is, can they get through it?
If we hold politicians to a standard that's perfect,
nobody hits that. So I think it's partly how voters
react to what is on TV. People always complain, gee,
there are no good TV shows on. However when you put
a good TV show on, nobody watches it. They don't really
want a really good news program, they really want to
watch Entertainment Tonight because that's what gets
the ratings. Until people say gee, that was really unfair
and I'm going to vote against you because you're being
unfair, I think the candidates and media will continue
doing it. Is it fair to hold politicians to that standard?
I don't think it's fair to hold them to perfect. I think
the problem, though, isn't with politicians running
ads against each other, as much as it is voters not
holding people accountable. That's the hardest part.
Voters have to be educated enough and interested enough
to say, "I'm paying attention, I'm watching, and if
you were acting in a despicable way, I'm going to say
that's unfair, and I'm going to vote against you." In
the end, that's why people vote, and that's what politicians
respond to. That's the check on the system. If you're
not representing people effectively, you're not going
to win. If people think such conduct is an issue, then
they'll vote people out, but it doesn't happen that
often, you'd be surprised.
Katie Fayram: Congressman Sensenbrenner told
us that, while he had not yet looked at the decision
of the Supreme Court made in the Violence Against
Women Act, he imagined that they would look again
to try to find a way that they could bring it back
and have the Supreme Court pass it through. How do
you think the Senate will respond to this?
Mr. Kadish:Remember, with the Violence Against Woman Act,
the whole law wasn't thrown out. One small part of the
law that would have federalized certain types of crimes,
in this case, I think it was rape, was thrown out. What
the court said is, that's not appropriate use, it's
not appropriate to federalize that, that should be in
the state courts. That's part of the big debate that's
going on right now. That also happened was when we passed
something called the Gun-Free Schools Act. The court
said you can't tie federal monies to the fact that you
can't have guns within a certain radius of a school
because it is encroaching on state and local rights.
That's the bigger issue that's facing the Supreme Court.
This Supreme Court, unlike Supreme Courts of the past,
really since the fifties, has now taken a more narrow
view of what the federal government can do, versus what
state and local governments can do. That's a change
of policy. It has huge implications for how we deal
with our civil rights laws. We hung our hat on the interstate
commerce clause, to say the federal government has a
role within states because it affects the whole country.
The court now is coming back and saying in this case
it is not true, and they're much more willing to narrow
the scope of the federal role. So in this case, the
Violence Against Women Act, I don't know that we'll
come back and take a look at that one issue. I think
the rest of the Act was upheld, it wasn't thrown out.
We have legislation called the Violence Against Women
Act II, to further expand it. He might be right, it
might come back, but I'm not sure. This issue is going
to be an enormous one, because it's going to determine
what kind of laws the federal government can pass, this
legislation can pass, and the president can sign. We're
used to doing things that can have a broader sweep,
and now the court's saying wait a minute, I don't know
that you can always do that. That's a big change in
how the federal governments behaves because since the
mid-fifties, and certainly through the sixties with
civil rights legislation in particular, we've taken
a much more expanded role, and now the court's trying
to pull that back.
Karl Holzknecht: Benjamin Franklin once said,
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." To what
extent can we or should we consider laws to limit
some freedoms for the sake of public safety?
Mr. Kadish:I can't tell you exactly what the Senator would
say to that, but let me give you an example. One, I
think that when we take part in a civil society of any
type, we are giving up something. We're agreeing to
abide by laws the society creates. So, I'm not free
to jaywalk because I might get hit. Someone, a strict
libertarian might say I should be able to do what I
want whenever I want to do it. I think our view of government
is a little bit different even though we have a strong
libertarian bent, which is that the government should
generally leave us alone, except when we consent. That's
the democratic process. It's easy to pull out part of
Franklin's views on these things, but the whole reading
of Franklin, Jefferson and other Founding Fathers, is
more complicated as to why we set up this system. That's
why the Federalist Papers talk about balance, concerning
respecting rights, and how you do that in a society.
It is very different than saying I should be able to
do anything. I'll give you a concrete example. Gun control
is an enormous issue right now. You all know about Columbine,
and obviously it's just the most egregious example of
school shootings and violence in our society. The National
Rifle Association is the chief proponent of the idea
that it's my right, all the time, every time, whenever
I want to hold a gun, and it's in the Constitution.
You shouldn't be able to enact any laws that limits
my ability. If you ask the NRA, should we be able to
limit grenade launchers, the answer is no, it's against
our rights, you shouldn't do that. Now is that a real
fair reading of our Constitution? I don't think so.
We have court cases from the thirties on this issue
that say that Congress does have a right, at the state
and local government levels, to put reasonable restrictions
on guns. If the question is, are you giving up a little
liberty, I think our view would be, in a civil society
you've got to balance these things. Do you have a right
to own a gun? You might. Do we have a right to make
sure you're a responsible gun owner, that you know how
to use a gun, that you operate a gun safely, that the
gun works as it's supposed to work, it doesn't spray
fire, or it doesn't blow up? Sure we do. That might,
in your view, restrict some of your liberty. I want
to have any gun I want, and use it anywhere I want,
any time I want. The opposite of that is I might want
some freedom and liberty to be able to go into a church,
and know there's not a gun there, or I might want to
live in a community that doesn't have guns. That's a
balance, and there is not an easy answer because there
are strong feelings on both sides. We are always restricting
our liberty. I wanted to drive a car when I was fourteen,
but I couldn't because of the law. Did that restrict
my liberty? Yeah, but that was what we have decided
is the best for society. It depends how you get there.
If we were a community and decided that we didn't want
high-powered assault weapons in our schools, I don't
know if that's really a restriction of your liberty.
Josh Lewis: We've heard from several people
at the State Department, including Undersecretary
Pickering, that a lack of funding is putting our embassies
at risk because they cannot afford appropriate security
upgrades. Would your Senator support increased spending
for that purpose?
Mr. Kadish:You guys have seen a lot of
good people. That's pretty amazing. Yes. She's a big
supporter of foreign aid. How the United States acts
in the world is very important. We're clearly the world's
only superpower, but you can't have just military might;
you've got to have diplomatic might. You have to understand
and engage in the world, and understand what you're
getting into. So she supports it. She certainly supports
security for our embassies, also.
Chris Sun: What has been the most difficult
decision you've had to make in the course of your
job?
Mr. Kadish:Me, or the
Senator?
Chris Sun: You.
Mr. Kadish:When
you're a staff person for a Senator or a Member of Congress,
you have to understand that it's not your views that
come first. People didn't elect you; people elected
somebody else. I've been married for nine years, and
my wife and I don't agree on everything. It's not the
case that you agree with whoever you work for a hundred
percent of the time; it's never the case. I mean, two
people don't always agree on everything all the time.
So occasionally, she may have a position on something
that I just disagree with. It's never been anything
that I thought was a moral issue. I would probably have
a hard time working for someone that had a very different
opinion on truly key issues, but there have been issues
where I have disagreed. You can express your opinion,
you can try to change the Senator's opinion, but once
a decision is made, it's made, and you have to live
with it. If you can't live with it, you really can't
stay here because this is Senator Feinstein's office.
If I was working for another Senator, I'd have to abide
by their Senator's views. I think this is what we expect
from all staffers in this office, and occasionally it's
hard. I've disagreed with many a vote she's taken, but
none of them have been moral in nature. I think that
there are just differences of opinion. Sometimes you
go home and feel, God, I wish I had made the better
argument so I could have won, but sometimes you don't.
That's the way it goes.
Kyle Felder: Vartan Gregorian once said, "Total
commitment to every good cause equals total apathy,
because you cannot act upon all of them." How do you
prioritize between what issues you and the Senator
want to speak out on, because there are so many good
issues out there that are worth attention?
Mr. Kadish:That's a good question because every day you
struggle with that. Someone may come in with either
a heart-wrenching story, or a good idea. We deal with
it a couple of ways. We're on certain committees:
the Appropriations Committee, the Rules Committee, and
the Judiciary Committee. She knows she has to deal with
issues surrounding them because she's going to be involved
in the process of drafting that legislation, of hearing
it, marking it up, and doing the real details. So if
it's a committee issue, then automatically it gets some
level of attention. Then there are issues that are so
important to California, you have to deal with them,
and if you don't deal with them, your constituents will
be harmed. It may not be a committee issue, but it might
be something like trying to phase out NTBE, a gasoline
additive that's polluting our ground water. There's
strong evidence now that it's a carcinogen. The Governor
has decided, and the Senate has been pushing for a long
time that we should get rid of it. She's not on the
committee that does that, but it was important enough
for California, that she said we needed to get involved,
and take an active role in this. So she spent fifteen,
twenty hours, which is an enormous amount of time for
a Senator personally to take, meeting with people from
industry and from the Environmental Protection Agency,
to figure out how we could get this done. That's another
way. Does it really affect your state? Then the third
is something like this AIDS issue. Does it mean something
to you? So there's not just one way. Everything that
comes in the door cannot get the same amount of time
from a Senator, but you also have staff that follows
up, so maybe they could create a position where the
Senator can then help quickly. Other things you can't
do. They don't really affect California, or it's not
on her committee, so there's a triage that goes on each
and every day that's not formalized. That's interesting,
because people think gee, it comes in so organized.
It may be that the Senator gets a letter from somebody.
She likes to read every once in a while these letters
that come in. If a legislative correspondent gets a
really good letter, they'll bring it to the Senator
and she'll say, "God, we should do this, this is great!"
So I wish I could tell you that it was extremely organized,
and we had this great way to do it, but we don't. We
balance all of those things all the time.
Alicia Weston-Miles: So how does partisanship
affect your job, and the recommendations that you,
and the legislative assistants make to the Senator?
Mr. Kadish:That's
a good question. This is an interesting time because,
as you know, Senators are up for reelection every six
years and House members are up every two years, and
because of that only one third of the Senate's up at
any one time. It means that they take a little bit longer
view. Senator Feinstein is actually up for election
this year. With everything she votes on, you can be
sure that somebody from the other side is trying to
get her vote for the other party, regardless of how
good she is or isn't. That's the way some people are.
The House is a little bit more partisan in that regard,
because they're up every two years, and you know every
vote is going to be held against you in the next election,
or could be. If Senator Feinstein is right on the issues
for California, that plays into our hand. She was mayor
of San Francisco which is a very Democratic city, and
t he mayor's position was not partisan. You didn't run
as Democrat or a Republican; you ran as a person, and
that's the way she governs. With getting things done
here, as I said, one person can stop it, and you've
got to be able to reach the other party, and reach compromise.
That's her strong suit. When Senator Feinstein stands
for reelection, she usually talks not about tilting
at windmills, but what she's tried to accomplish for
the state of California. By her nature, she is not very
partisan. Our recommendations are usually for what makes
sense to constituents, and that is to get things done
that matter to Californians. So we try not to dictate
our actions by party lines, but you can't help it sometimes,
and you get caught up. For instance, we want to pass
a piece of legislation now, called The H1B Bill. The
H1B is to let in high skilled workers from abroad due
to the technology community's demand for these workers.
This is because the guys that we're graduating from
college can't do this work or we can't find enough of
them to do this work. The Republicans and Democrats
are in a fight over how do we do this, and Senator John
McCain, who ran for president, has decided he wants
to offer to any bill that comes up, his campaign finance
reform bill. There's all sorts of jockeying on both
sides, and you have to make a strategy; how are we going
to help move this bill? You have to be aware of all
the partisan rancor, and kind of navigate through it.
By and large, if you do what's best for your constituents
you're on safe ground, and that's what we try to stay
with. To give you an example, former Senator Bradley,
and Vice President Gore ran in the open primary in California
in March. Together, both of their votes totaled about
2.3 million, which was all the Democratic vote for president.
In that same election, Dianne Feinstein got 3.4 million
votes, meaning that she got a million votes that didn't
vote for the Democratic president. That's really what
she's about, which is try to govern and help all Californians,
and I think that was reflected in the fact that she
tries not to be extremely partisan.
Jesse Bazarnick: What's the most important
thing that you've learned as you've gone throughout
your career, climbing up?
Mr. Kadish:I think the most practical thing I've learned
is when you're in an environment like this, you've got
to be honest and deal with people straight, because
if you don't, it comes back to bite you. I may be completely
opposed to what another Senator is doing, but next week,
you may be on the same side. If that staff or that Senator
can't trust that you deal honestly, then you have a
very hard time reaching agreements when you do agree
because there's so much distrust. My view is that if
you're going to be in something for the long haul, you
need to treat people fairly, and if you don't, in the
end you won't be treated fairly. At least in an environment
like this.
Alison Alderdice: So drawing on your experience,
what is the key advice that you have to give to people
of our generation?
Mr. Kadish:I
don't know that I can do that. I'll tell you what I've
heard Senator Feinstein say several times, which is
pick something that you care about, and master it. Learn
it, know it, get credibility in it. Don't be afraid
to throw yourself into it, and learn everything you
can about it, because that's how you'll get known for
something. If you don't know what you're talking about,
people never really trust you, and they won't come to
you for your advice. If you really spend the time to
work at something, no matter what it is, whether it's
an environmental issue, or it's science, or whatever
you're interested in, it pays off. You have to really
master things. You can't just kind of skim along the
top. It's not really just about opinions, it's about
learning all the facts, learning all the arguments,
and learning how to marshal those arguments. It is about
learning how to be an advocate, and then figuring out
how to effect change, because you know the right answer.
That really takes a lot of hard work, there's no substitute
for that.
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