I mean, one of our great problems right now is nobody wants to be around people they disagree with. They just kind of write them off. Everybody watches TV that reinforces your already existing prejudices, and, you know, that’s how we’re kind of dividing ourselves up, and so we’ve created a House of Representatives where, if you’re on the left, the best way to get rid of you is by having somebody even further left run against you in a primary, and the same if you’re on the right, having somebody even further right. So there’s no incentive in so many of our districts for people to compromise because they’re afraid that if they disappoint or anger their supporters that they’ll put in somebody to run against them in a primary. But that’s our fault. I mean, we let that happen because, you know, we don’t really stand up and say, wait a minute, that’s not in the interests of the whole.

MR. BOZZUTO: The—you and I and Doug talked briefly in the hallway about how apartments are becoming increasingly attractive to young people and older people, and yet we have a housing policy that I will say discriminates against renters through the mortgage interest deduction. How—how should we create a more balanced housing policy that doesn’t discriminate against one group of people? SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, “balanced” is the right word. I think that, you know—from the, you know, the little bit that I know—you all are the experts—we’re going to need even more rental housing. It is, as you say, sort of the, you know, the Boomers plus the Echo Boomers plus people who have been priced out of or forced out of home ownership, and there has to be a balance. I’m—I’m a big believer in balance on nearly any issue, and I guess I would say just three things.

You just have to sort of figure out how to—getting back to that word, “balance”—how to balance the public and the private efforts that are necessary to be successful, politically, and that’s not just a comment about today. That, I think, has probably been true for all of our history, and if you saw the Spielberg movie, Lincoln, and how he was maneuvering and working to get the 13th Amendment passed, and he called one of my favorite predecessors, Secretary Seward, who had been the governor and senator from New York, ran against Lincoln for president, and he told Seward, I need your help to get this done. And Seward called some of his lobbyist friends who knew how to make a deal, and they just kept going at it. I mean, politics is like sausage being made. It is unsavory, and it always has been that way, but we usually end up where we need to be. But if everybody’s watching, you know, all of the back room discussions and the deals, you know, then people get a little nervous, to say the least. So, you need both a public and a private position. And finally, I think—I believe in evidence-based decision making. I want to know what the facts are. I mean, it’s like when you guys go into some kind of a deal, you know, are you going to do that development or not, are you going to do that renovation or not, you know, you look at the numbers. You try to figure out what’s going to work and what’s not going to work.