Over the past week, I have corresponded with former Senator Slade Gorton (R-WA) in a series of emails. After serving in the Washington state legislature from 1959 to 1969, Gorton was elected Attorney General, a position he would hold for twelve years. In 1980, Gorton defeated incumbent Democratic Senator Warren Magnuson. After losing his seat in 1986, he was later elected to two more terms, in 1988 and 1994. After leaving the Senate in 2001, Gorton served on the National Commission on Federal Election Reform and the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, where he and his fellow commissioners were charged with preparing "a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the" September 11, 2001 attacks.

Jonathan Singer: The State Department recently found that terrorist incidents in the world tripled last year to 655 serious attacks. USA Today reports that Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton are concerned that the nation isn't moving quickly enough to protect against terrorism. Are we getting safer or lest safe? What more can be done?

Senator Slade Gorton: We have come a long way; remember that there have been no terrorist incidents in the US since 9/11. Still, reforms in the bureaucracy are slow, and Congress has not reformed its own oversight structure at all. The Markle Foundation has done detailed work on this subject.

Singer: The President has wrapped up the first stage of his sixty day Social Security tour, yet still no Senate Democrat has signed on to personal accounts. What more should the President be doing? Will he be able to succeed?

Gorton: Democrats seem adamantly opposed to any Social Security reform. Presidential success is possible in the House, highly unlikely in the Senate.

Singer: By the forecasts of the SSA, the Social Security trust fund will run out in 2041, but the Medicare trust fund will run out by the end of the next decade. Is Congress dealing with the right issue right now?

Gorton: Medicare is an even greater threat to our fiscal situation, but I see no present willingness to take it on.

Singer: Tax reform is another ticket in the President's domestic platform. You were in the Senate during the passage of the last major tax reform in 1986, which flattened the tax rates and got rid of a number of loopholes. Should Congress follow the model of 1986? What lessons can be taken from that piece of legislation?

Gorton: The President's tax reform task force will report soon; there is, I hope, a somewhat greater chance of at least some changes for the better there, changes that will at least modestly simplify and make more fair what is now a real mess.

Singer: The Senate seems primed to invoke the nuclear or constitutional option. As someone who spent time in the Senate as both a member of the majority and the minority, what's your feeling on the possible move?

Gorton: I regret the necessity of changing Senate rules on extended debate. I hope for a compromise that will retain those rights and allow votes on all Presidential nominees. But in the absence of such an agreement, it would be disastrous to change the processes of two hundred years and begin a system in which confirmation requires sixty votes. The "nuclear option" is a bad idea, but the present position of the Democrats is far worse.