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GWEN IFILL:Next tonight: the debate over the role of the federal government.
The issue was a central focus of last year's presidential campaign, and it is at the heart of a new book by Ken Cuccinelli, Virginia's attorney general and a candidate for governor.
Judy Woodruff talked with him recently.
JUDY WOODRUFF:Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, thank you very much for talking with us.
ATTORNEY GENERAL KENNETH CUCCINELLI, R-Va.: My pleasure.
JUDY WOODRUFF:So, the book is "The Last Line of Defense: The New Fight for American Liberty."
Your main theme is about how the federal government has overstepped its authority, that it's taken liberty, it's taken freedom from the American people. And you say this goes back over a long time. So, who's responsible?
KENNETH CUCCINELLI:Well, you can't lay this on one person.
This has been a growing process. And we have reached a point in this particular administration where it's happening faster and more brazenly than in my lifetime and your lifetime ever before across the administration. But it isn't new. And we point out in the book Republicans have done this, other Democrats have done this.
It's a continual tension between the federal government, typically the executive branch of the federal government—though, with health care, you had them all engaged—and everybody else, typically represented by the states. But also, if you look at something like the first NLRB case with Boeing, that's ...
JUDY WOODRUFF:This is the National Labor Relations Board.
KENNETH CUCCINELLI:That's right—between an agency and a company. And the states can't step in there. They have got to fight for themselves.
JUDY WOODRUFF:You start—you actually go all the way back to the founding fathers, and you write about how they struggled about this balance between power at the center ...
KENNETH CUCCINELLI:Right.
JUDY WOODRUFF:... the federal government vs. the power of the states, the people.
KENNETH CUCCINELLI:That's right.
JUDY WOODRUFF:And you make a case for how they didn't quite get it right.
If you could have gone back and looked over their shoulder, what would you have had them do differently in the beginning?
KENNETH CUCCINELLI:Well, I was having a similar conversation yesterday.
And the two things I would do differently if—or I think the founders would do differently, put more accurately, if they could have looked ahead, were they wouldn't have done lifetime tenure for judges. They would have had long terms, but not lifetime. And I think they would have done term limits. But those sorts of things ...
JUDY WOODRUFF:You mean for members of Congress?
KENNETH CUCCINELLI:Of Congress and the Senate, yes.
And those sorts of things are pretty fundamental. And they're not going to happen now or, at least they're very unlikely. But the kinds of balance of power we're talking about really was much more gradual. If you look at one of those two changes, it's the lifetime judges, actually, because, gradually, in the end of the 19th century and as we moved into the 20th century, the court, particularly in the New Deal era, really opened up the power of the federal government relative to what it had been perceived to be for the 150 years before.
And that opened the door to much more expansive executive power. And we have seen that continue to happen and to grow. And what we talk about in the book is example after example where they're breaking the law, or where they're trampling the Constitution. And the states have a role to play. And I'm obviously an attorney general. I represent a state.
And we pushed back. And the founders expected us to do that. That part is working.
JUDY WOODRUFF:You mentioned health care just now.
KENNETH CUCCINELLI:Yes.
