Arianna Huffington, a nationally syndicated columnist and author
of 10 books, spoke on campus Tuesday about the state of California
politics, the uneasy relationship of political parties, and her
ideas for reforming the American political scene.
She spoke in Ackerman Grand Ballroom to a group of about 100
students and community members, the first in a series of
promotional stops for her new book, “Fanatics and Fools: The
Game Plan for Winning Back America.”
Huffington spoke of her book in the context of her larger
political ideals and used her own life as a springboard to present
her ideas for political reform.
Huffington, a registered Republican in the early 1990s, is the
ex-wife of former Republican Congressman Michael Huffington. She
said she saw a shift in her political ideology in the mid-1990s and
became disenchanted with both the Democratic and Republican
parties.
“I’m very critical of the two-party system,”
Huffington said.
“Both parties have been too much enthralled with private
interests. We need to allow third parties and independents to have
a greater role in politics,” she said.
Huffington, who ran for California governor in last year’s
recall election as an independent, has described herself as a
“progressive populist.” She said she wants to
“completely put aside this paradigm of
liberal-conservative.”
To reform American politics, she said, everyone must become
willing to bear one another’s burdens and think in terms of a
unified country, not in terms of partisan politics.
Huffington kept the mood of her speech lighthearted by
interspacing jokes through her lamentation of the current state of
American politics.
“We Greeks gave you democracy, and you’ve basically
screwed it up,” she said, to peals of laughter.
Huffington, who lives in Los Angeles, shifted the focus from
national to state politics and was highly critical of the measures
taken to combat California’s budget concerns.
“Borrowing $15 billion … was just postponing our
problems,” she said of Proposition 57, which authorized a $15
billion bond to help manage the California budget deficit.
She also said Californians need to determine their priorities
with regard to social and economic issues. She asked the audience
to follow her lead and return the money they received from Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s car tax refund.
Instead, she said, this money should be prioritized for issues
like education.
“Effectively, we’re going to have 100,000 fewer
students going to community college,” she said.
“Cutting education has to be off the table.”
Huffington’s words registered with many of the students in
the crowd.
“It was kind of inspiring for people who are curious about
the political process,” said Jeffrey Linneman, a fifth-year
communications studies student.
“(She was) speaking about what is pragmatically right and
wrong for people instead of positioning herself on the right or
left,” Linneman said.
But the audience did not consist of merely students. Lee
Babbitt, a 70-something former researcher at UC Berkeley and
current Westwood resident, said he reads Huffington’s
editorials in The New York Times.
“She enriches the issues that we must address ourselves
to,” Babbitt said.
“As a senior with grandchildren at UCLA and Cal, I want
them to have a future with good political leadership,” he
said.
Huffington said she will focus her energy in the months leading
up to November entirely on the presidential election. On each stop
in her book tour, she intends to speak to the populations she feels
are underrepresented in the presidential elections, including young
people and single women.
“In the past, we have just pandered to the
electorate,” Huffington said. “We can appeal to a
different part of the electorate than we’ve been appealing
to.”