- We've seen a lot unfold today, some bold claims to power by presidents from two very different parties.

Maybe you were okay with some of those power plays, but maybe you were deeply troubled.

My question for you is this.

Is there anything that we can do better, anything we can agree on for how to move our country forward?

- The source of a lot of these problems is Congress has dwindled in power and prestige.

The American people should be holding Congress accountable for actually doing their job, whether it's passing appropriations, reigning in executive power, insisting that their laws be actually passed, holding investigations when they're not.

None of that is happening and, if you don't reign in executive power when it's your guy in office, then we're just on this never-ending cycle.

- [Aaron] Senator Ryan.

- I think we need leaders with guts.

Like, we need leaders with courage that are able to not just tell the opposition no, but to tell your own party, sometimes, no.

"No, you're crossing a line."

- You've gotta start talking to one another and you've gotta develop trust, and that's how you do it.

And you use the Constitution as the foundation for moving forward.

Congress can't be AWOL.

- I think Senator Tester is correct that we have to be able to-- - Vice president, please.

(all laughing) Way to go, John.

- So sorry.

(laughs) - That's why he's a freshman.

- I think Mr. Vice President Tester is correct that we do need to be able to sit down and figure out a solution, but before we get there, we need everybody to commit to wanting to find a solution.

- Strongly agree that Congress has abdicated a lot of responsibility, but you know, next year we celebrate 250 years of our country.

And I think that we don't often appreciate what an amazing system our founders created.

But our founders also said it's for a moral and highly educated people.

And I think that right now we have a system that's electing performance artists into highest levels of government.

And until the American people reclaim that responsibility, I think you're gonna continue to have challenges.

And I think it, ultimately, the system is working the way our founders intended, but it's the responsibility of the American people and the voters to elect people of high moral character who honor their oaths.

- You know, power is so intoxicating, as we know and so, to a place that power in someone who doesn't have the character to exercise it responsibly as the president of the United States, this is very, very dangerous.

- One last question.

Folks, is there any reason for hope?

- I'm hopeful.

As long as we can speak and speak to each other and debate each other and vote and then do it all again two years later, it will all work out because this experiment is working, in my opinion, even through troubled times.

- I'm not hopeful, no.

- You're not hopeful?

- I look at our institutions, all of which have lost the respect and trust of the public.

I worry about the future of democracy, obviously, and I don't see the path out, so I'm kinda down.

- [Aaron] Roger Severino.

- Well, I'm hopeful because the American people, you never wanna bet against them and our system allows course correction.

We've gone through a massive course correction.

So I'm much more hopeful now than I was just a few months ago and that really goes to the genius of our system.

You knew what you're getting once, you try it out, you see something different, you don't like it, you switch back.

What really gives the fundamental hope for us being able to go through all these problems, still go home as Americans, united, 'cause we know our democracy is what holds us together.

- This democracy is exactly what our founders represented it to be, which is not perfect.

And they say it right in the beginning of the Constitution.

It was an effort to form a more perfect union.

And so, to me, I'm hopeful because I look at all the other alternatives out there?

I'm not moving.

- [Aaron] John Tester.

- The young people that I've been around are gonna do a hell of a lot better job of running this country than my generation and I firmly believe that.

And I think, I tell 'em all the time, "Make a difference, run for office, and then when you get in, follow your gut because you got a better one than my generation had."