models. in retrospect, this might be seen as the time that america stted fixing its education crisis for real. thanks for watching this special, "restoring the american dream: fixing education." you can read more of my thoughts in a "time" essay. join me for my regular program, "gps," sundays at 10:00 a.m. and "gps," sundays at 10:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com

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you. as a young man. 3 r 3 or 4 years oldmyo hr her with one arm. r in her free arm she h serratp serrated steserrate sticp sticks sserratese sticp sticks sticks it tongr tongp tongue map>s reading. >> why? p >> because i thought you, wwhy woulp why would your ? whp what effewhat effect w you? thatp that's that done to> there's9there's a lther. what's it done to my life. >> i've spent most of my life recovering from moments like that. >> stomach in the hammer. gave you electric shocks. she basically tortured you. your father as a war veteran and alcoholic who wants to end his life and you're surrounded with this unrelenting misery it seems. >> yes. >> do you remember it vividly or have you been able to -- >> i don't. i only put in the book about five or ten minutes of the first 18 years of my life. i don't remember all of it. i've been to lots and lots of shrinks. i've been to some pretty august institutions telling me we can't

handle it case here. it's not like i'm the only person in the united states or on this planet that has to enter into an agreement with a perpetrator to remain quiet. it does happen, you know. >> do you any theories yourself about why your mother -- >> because the same thing happened to her i think. >> she had been abused. i think she had been abused. i did take pains in the book to point out that i did spend some time meditating over the idea that my mother had once been very innocent just like everybody else, you know? i had this sort of vivid dream about that one night. i took it to heart, you know. i was trying to find a way to not be angry about my life anymore. you know? >> as you got older, what was your relationship with your mother like? >> well, i -- i called her and said, i'm in therapy for trauma and child abuse, and worse.

and she dropped her southern accent and in a very husky tone and deliberately and permanently said don't ever call here again and hung up. >> what age were you then? >> i was already on "saturday night live"". so i was getting up there already. i think the thing. what i wanted to write about was when a victim to some kind of abuse stays quiet, agrees to stay quiet about it, and that's kind of what happened in our house. you know? i mean, you think that it's because a, they could make it much worse on you, but b, really, your mom might abandon you if you confront her on this, and that's -- ended up being what happened. and then i -- >> do you have any more contact with her? >> not until her deathbed. >> how did that make you feel when she died? >> i felt nothing. i was very moved by my father. you know --

>> it's not surprising to me you're so emotional about this. >> i didn't feel anything. you know, i didn't feel anything at all. i felt like i had never met her, you know? she was a very gifted and confusing and attractive type of person who knew how to work the room that she was in to convince the people in the room that they were right about jesus and good things were on the way, you know? >> why did you feel differently about your father? >> i think because he -- he tried. >> because he had been through so much in the war? >> i think he tried to apologize and explain himself. do you have a tissue or something? >> yeah, sure. >> he tried as best he could. i mean, the best that he could do was put war medals on his chest when he was dying. i got these and these and here's what happened and here's who i was. while i was alive.

i wasn't so good at a lot of stuff, you know. >> was he aware of what your mother was doing? >> i don't think so. he was never there. >> he was apologetic for his own negligence really? >> for not being as good as he wanted to be, yes. thank you. yeah, not being as good as he wanted to be, yeah. i think that you know, he was genuinely obsessed with the war that he had fought in europe and he never ever recovered from it and i'm not sure he ever really did. i think he saw things there that he thought were cautionary tales of what can happen on earth. yeah, i mean he was afraid to go to church for a long time. you know, because i guess he killed a lot of people. >> when i see you now, never having met you before, i can see that this all the time, you must have been living with this kind of searing pain through all this. how did you juggle it? >> well i got old enough, i

started drinking. you know? when i left my parents' home when i was 19 i went to the university of florida and within 24 hours was in the mental health department and within 20 minutes, i was being told by the director there that they didn't have what i needed there. and this is a massive university. so, i just -- they've load me up on drugs anti-psychotics, all kinds of weird drugs and i drank and that's how i survived for a long time. >> let's take a break and get into "saturday night live." i guess in many ways saved you. this came. >> sure. >> -- along at a time when you needed something. >> sure. >> i'm interested to see how you feel about that. >> thank you so much. companies you're just a policy. at aviva, we're bringing humanity back to insurance and putting people before policies.

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>> that doesn't exactly sound like a ringing endorsement. >> i don't think i could be any more clear. i belong to the democratic party. barack obama is also in the democratic party. and i'm not a party wrecker. i love parties. >> that was darrell hammond's impeccable impersonation of bill clinton on "saturday night live." i guess bill clinton became the standard bearingham monday impression. >> i guess so. >> a lot of the great ones, sean connery. which was your favorite? >> i guess clinton is the one that you get the most mileage out of. he's the one ha people care about the most. i've had people ask me to do clinton in the most bizarre possible. >> where? i want to hear this. >> getting a colonoscopy. >> no. >> oh, sure. just right before it, like they're just getting ready to

insert that on the in that place that god never designed for object and the woman put the needle in my arm and she starts it so that you can feel the medication starting to come in. they're going to move me to twilight and just before i'm about to black in, she leans in and goes what would clinton say? i said, what is a nice girl like you doing in a place like this. >> so you do do it, you see? >> once in awhile. >> you're going to wish you'd never said that. now everywhere you go, you're going to be asked to do the clinton. >> yeah, sure, but really just before a colonoscopy, i think that's the most extreme example. >> any chance she was ever going to get -- >> wow, really? >> my favorite was donald trump because i love donald. can i have a bit of trump? >> trump? gosh, what was the line i used to do? i'm donald trump.

well, you know, trump is home based with mr. trump is this. you know, like you're over there going so i was over there at snl yesterday and we had a sandwich and went over and went to i an game. the whole time he's going -- and then he starts like going, i remember this one time, you th yeah. >> i think we should play you something now. we've got a tribute to you. from the great man. >> all right. >> so i'm interviewing darryl hammond, who does a very good donald trump, i have to say. what do you make of his impression? >> well, he's been amazing. he was on "saturday night live" for years. and really i don't think anybody ever hit me like him. but i think he's amazing. he's a great guy. and he has me down to a tee. and others. but people think he does it the best. >> wow. >> rare praise indeed. >> super flattering. >> actually, your head cut in there. i mean, you could be brothers. >> you know, i have this bland

face that the makeup artists say you can paint on because they say that you can't make everyone look like someone. but you can always make me -- i mean, look, it's very bland. and then it just can be transformed around. >> where do you get the ability to do impressions from, do you think? >> i guess mfrom my mom. my mom was great at it. >> really? >> really good. i think really good, yeah. >> after all we've discussed, that's fascinating. >> yes. it transported her. it mesmerized her. to talk like other people. >> who would she do? >> coaches, teachers, people in the neighborhood. >> anyone. anyone that -- >> yeah. she was pretty incredible. >> and would make you laugh? >> no. i didn't laugh too much. i just realized that she was being transported. her state could be changed by doing my 7 or 8-year-old version of paul scofield and ralph richardson in "a christmas carol." it just would change her. in the same way playing

tchaikovsky's 6th symphony transported her. i mean, her eyes would get dreamy, and trippy. >> so she was very talented as well as being very damaged. >> i mean, you know, growing up in the '50s in the south and you're a woman, i don't care what color you were, you might as well be, you know, a whore if you have any aspirations of showing all your colors and being everything that god made you to be. i mean, it's a hellish life. it could have been, i think. >> do you think with that and your father being the way he was, was she incredibly frustrated as well as -- >> well, she did say that the only reason she got married was because her father was going to, quote, beat the living daylights out of her. i mean, those were prearranged existences with moral checklists, and here's how you live. here's where you go to church. this is what jesus is. this is the kind of job you have. these are the kind of sports you have. these are the hand gestures you use. innately she understood all of

that and she knew how to make the room about the other person and not about herself. >> have you been able to forgive her in your mind? >> yes. i've been able to stop dwelling on it and hating on it. and i've been able -- i mean, once i reached the point where i realized she had once been an innocent little girl, it seemed to me that that's when the flashbacks stopped, that's when the nightmares stopped, that's when the cutting stopped. that's when people, instead of being on seven medications, i was reduced to one. or two. you know. i mean, it happened fast. >> you talk about cutting. you self-harmed a lot. you did it while you were on "saturday night live." you took cocaine. you even got to crack at one stage. >> but never on air. >> i was going to ask you were you ever high on air? >> no. i would never fly an airplane under the influence. it's ridiculous. >> never tempted? >> it's too hard. zblief se . >> i've seen some people do it. >> well. >> if they can get it right it's

amazing. >> no one liked to imbibe more than me but i wasn't going to walk out there in front of millions of people and have to hit my mark under the influence. it's ridiculous. >> are you clean now? >> yeah. >> you don't drink or take drugs? >> well, i haven't done as well as i wanted to with that, but it's been going pretty well. >> let's take another break and come back. i want to talk to you about how you got back on your feet. you left "saturday night live." you got a whole new world ahead of you. what you intend to do with it. >> thank you. at bayer, we're re-inventing aspirin for pain relief. with new extra-strength bayer advanced aspirin. it has microparticles, enters the bloodstream faster and rushes relief to the site of pain. it's clinically proven to relieve pain twice as fast. new bayer advanced aspirin. it's clinically proven to relieve pain twice as fast. ♪ sen♪ co-signed her credit card - "buy books, not beer!" ♪ ♪ut the second at she shut the door ♪ ♪ girl started blowing up their credit score ♪ ♪ she bought a pizza party for the whole dorm floor ♪ ♪ hundred pounds of makeup at the makeup store ♪

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right now with darrell hammond. darrell, it's been a roller coaster interview to put it mildly. >> thank you. >> for me and for you i think. tell me about your life now. are you happy? are you happier than you've been before? >> i think so. i think sometimes i even have good nights. yeah, sure. i'm a lot happier than i was. i mean, i am involved with groups that deal with things that i've been through. and that's the best part of my life. >> do you think "saturday night live" co-stars will be shocked by this book? >> i don't know. there must have been rumors floating around, you know, back when i was melting down once a week over there. >> did they know about your

background? did they know about your mother and stuff? >> i don't know. i know that lorne did and, you know, the producers over there. i mean, they went pretty far out of their way to help me. i think on some level they understood that, as you mentioned off the air, that probably the job saved my life. and also, you know, we did have a discussion after one particularly virulent event where we just said, you know, if this happens again you can't be on this show anymore. you know, we did have one of those discussions. >> how bad was the incident? >> it was pretty damn bad. you know, it involved being taken from there in a straitjacket, you know. and who wants to -- >> from the studio? >> actually from -- i think in the book it says the offices. i was taken from the offices. actually, it was the clinic underneath the theater. yeah. >> wow. >> yeah. >> i mean, again, this is extraordinary kind of parallel life going on where i just know you like most people as the guy

that does the donald. and then i'm reading this stuff going, wow. >> yeah. >> how could this have been going on? with this guy who just seems like he's the happiest, funniest guy you'd ever meet. >> it did. i don't know how. you know, i've been to enough hospitals that -- i don't know. i don't know if i could have paid for all that, to be honest with you, without "snl" money. >> what are you doing careerwise now? >> well, i'm doing "are we there yet?" the ice cube sitcom on wtbs. i'll be doing that next season. i'm doing -- i have a movie with johnny knoxville called "scoutmasters." i'm going to start working with will ferrell's internet company, funny or die. and i think that's a lot right there. >> what ambitions do you have professionally and personally? >> i just want to play truman capote on broadway. >> you'd be great as truman capote. >> i did him this summer. >> yes. >> i did him in the summer and it seemed to go pretty well. i got some good reviews. i did almost everything i wanted

to do except play truman capote. look, a guy like trump, i wouldn't mind doing a job with him sometimes. i like him a lot. >> i could probably fix that for you. >> i wish you could. >> i could see you and donald working very well together. >> i'd love that. >> can you imagine in the morning? morning. >> except he's a foot taller than me. which is kind of difficult. i look like a mini me version. >> can you imagine the joy of walking in hearing him going you are a special, special guy? >> you know, the first time i met him i didn't get a hey, how are you, i'm donald. i got a, you're going to make big money because of me. big money because of me. >> you've got to love the donald. >> you've got to. >> darrell, it's been a real pleasure. >> thank you. >> and it's a very inspiring book in many ways. i hope people read it in that i w way. thank you very much. >> my pleasure. ♪

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for years jack abramoff was one of washington's most influential power brokers. a prominent lobbyist with the friends and cash to help people get what they wanted. until he went too far and took a huge fall. sentenced to four years in prison for fraud, corruption, and conspiracy. the once all-powerful lobbyist then helped the justice department clean up influence peddling in the nation's capital. he's now out of prison, has a new book called "capital punishment," and he joins me now. jack, welcome. >> thank you. >> the book's curious in the sense that there are large dollops of contrition necessarily. it's more look, this is what washington was like, i got

caught. but a lot of it is kind of not vainglorious, but you're certainly pumping up the good times more than i perhaps would have done if i'd done a book for you. in the sense that, you know, a lot of it is, wow, it was great and we were going on golfing trips and i was meeting all these people and there are pictures of you with presidents and governors and celebrities and so on. when actually at the heart of all this people will be reading it going, well, hang on a sec, one of the reasons that many people believe america is in the shambles it's in now financially and politically is because of people like you. and i would have expected a bit more mea culpa. >> well, i think the book has an extraordinary amount of mea cul culpa. >> do you? >> yeah. i basically -- what i tried to do with the book is tell the story of what happened. not necessarily to give an editorial but to talk about what i did, what i went think, in part as a way to teach people

what goes on there. i didn't intend for the book to be some sort of cheerleading book for lobbying. quite the contrary. or even for what i did. i made not only mistakes, i did things, i crossed the lines, i did stuff i shouldn't have done, stuff i regret immensely. and i talk about that. and for which i was severely punished. and properly so. however, this is going on still. and i thought it was important people should know what does go on. at least in terms of my experience. >> what adjectives would you use about the jack abramoff before you got caught? what was that man really like? >> he was somebody who didn't know of any boundaries really. that didn't quite clearly see lines. the lines that all of us need to see in life. the line between right and wrong. >> the contradictions, i guess, are that you're clearly a strong family man. that resonates through in the book. you're clearly a very religious man. a god-fearing man.

that too resonates in the book. what went wrong? >> well, i think that with me a couple things went wrong. i entered the arena to achieve certain things. i didn't set out certainly to break the law or do things that were wrong. i set out to achieve paths and goals that were consistent with my philosophies as a conservative and as a free marketeer and limited government person. and eventually participating within the system, having success, having an ability to have power got to me as it gets to others. and i stopped thinking about, again, where those lines in the sand were. and as a consequence i in a tragic sense set myself up for the grand fall. and i'm not the first that happened -- >> that's certainly true. what people said about you at the time was, well, he had this coming, he used to strut around the place like he owned it. you know, you were like a kind of mafioso version of a lobbyist

in the sense of it was all about patronage. you'd have these restaurants you had with the great and good would come and pay homage to you. and in return out went the cash and out went the freebies and out went the holidays and the golf trips and so on. and that was how you played that system. >> i think that's partially accurate. that was in some small part how the system is played. i think when my career became a headline and when my e-mails were exposed to the press, i sent 850,000 e-mails here in the course of the few years that i was a lobbyist. virtually everything i did was on e-mail. and that first became available to the media, there was a sensation of look what's really going on inside the factory that makes sausages. >> on the e-mails people were more offended by the contempt you appeared to have for your own clients. i mean, here were people paying you ten times the going rate really for your services, and not necessarily getting a bad job. you were certainly helping them. but then they were being

described as morons in your e-mails. i mean, that to me was -- i wouldn't say it was worse than the corruption but it certainly left a pretty bad taste when you read that, you know. >> i -- i'm not going to defend my e-mails. i'm embarrassed about some of the things i wrote on the e-mail. i'm ashamed of some of the things i wrote. i regret them. and i will regret them for the rest of my life. i wound up using my e-mails as my primary communicator. and i was a very emotional and passionate advocate of my causes. my clients i loved. and just as i love my children. and would give my life for them. at times my wife and i would exchange e-mails talking about our children doing things that were idiotic or things that we disagreed. i sent 850,000 e-mails. 100 of them were taken that were a little salacious. and jocular and stupid. and i can't unring the bell. they were sent. >> what do you think was the worst thing you did? >> well, a number of things. first of all, i entered a system

that i think inherently has structural issues. and because of my personality, i'm a hypercompetitive individual, i operated within a system where some of the rules are vague and some of the lines -- some of the rules are made purposely vague, by the way, in terms of the gifts and how a lobbyist can interact with legislators. >> but they have now been changed. in 2007 -- >> in part. there was some tweaking. but the truth is all of the reform efforts to date are really feckless. they're not exact ly -- do we think there's no corruption in the system any longer? do we think just because jack abramoff went to prison and tom delay, who's picked on as the archetypal legislator who's evil, is sitting in jail the corruption's gone? it's not. the system still contains vast, vast amounts of loopholes. >> did you know as you were doing it you were breaking the law? >> i didn't consciously feel i was doing that. >> really? because you're a smart guy. >> well, even brilliant people, not that i am one, but even

brilliant people can go over the line. i'm an aggressive person. i'm someone who wanted to win. i wanted to win for my clients. i felt that the greatest dishonor was defeat. and so therefore, when i took a client and when i was their advocate, nobody was going to hurt them. nobody was going to beat them. and in doing that as a consequence i went over the line. >> how many other people at the time were crossing the line, do you really think? >> well, there are a lot of lines and a lot of these -- >> how many were breaking the law? >> i don't know. >> what would you guess from your knowledge of the system? >> a healthy percentage. >> what kind of percentage? >> 20. >> 20% of every lobbyist was doing the same kind of thing? >> yeah. >> and how many have actually been held to account? >> have been held to account? >> yeah. >> well, none. not a lot right now. not yet. there's a difference i think, and a lot of people become critical of why aren't more congressmen in prison, why weren't a number of staff people -- >> congressmen that went to

jail -- >> right. my experience with the justice department was they were careful to not proceed with prosecutions at least based on what i know unless they have actual evidence that somebody's broken the law. and it's very difficult to get. they happened to have my e-mails, every one of my e-mails, 850,000 e-mails. so it was not hard to paint a picture -- >> the crime sheet was there for you. >> yeah. >> let's just talk a short break. i want to come back and talk to you about the moment you were caught. >> all right. >> how you felt then. and also the moment you knew you were going to prison. because that must be pretty much the worst moment of your life, i would think. how can you get back pain relief that lasts up to 16 hours? with thermacare heatwraps. thermacare works differently. it's the only wrap with patented heat cells that penetrate deep to relax, soothe, and unlock tight muscles for up to 16 hours of relief. that's 8 hours while you wear it, plus an additional 8 hours of relief after you take it off. can your patch, wrap, cream or rub say that?

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i'm don lemon at the cnn world headquarters in atlanta. here are your headlines this hour. for the first time in 46 years the penn state nittany lions took to the field saturday without joe paterno as their head coach. paterno was forced out this week after allegations of child rape rocked the program. his former defensive coordinator, jerry sandusky, is accused of sexually abusing eight boys. penn state lost saturday's game against nebraska 17-14. president barack obama is in hawaii this weekend. he's hosting an economic summit with leaders from across the asia pacific region. part of the agenda is looking at ways the united states can tap into asia's economic potential. the summit begins a nine-day trip for the president with stops in indonesia and

australia. the national cathedral reopened to the public on saturday in washington. it had been closed since august after an earthquake centered in virginia damaged the structure. repairs are still under way. those are your headlines this hour. i'm don lemon. keeping you informed, cnn, the most trusted name in news. to start every semester fresh. but mostly it helps me try new moves on and off the court. ♪ [ male announcer ] featuring windows 7 and windows 7 live messenger. for a limited time, purchase select dell pc's and receive our holiday photo solution. our gift to you.

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of his influence on capitol hill. >> president george w. bush talking about jake abramoff. my guest. in 2006. so he didn't even remember meeting you, george bush. what was your reaction to that? >> he's the leader of the free world. i was in the middle of one of the biggest political scandals since watergate. what's he supposed to do? come out and say he's my best friend and i was hand in glove with him? >> but it's completely implausible that he wouldn't have been aware of you, right? >> he's a politician. >> you're the republican party's top lobbyist. how could he not know who you were? >> well, i -- yeah, i can't speak for him. but he's a politician. and at the end of the day politicians are politicians. whatever, republican, democrat, there's a certain characteristic politicians have and often they're with you when they need you and often when you need them they're not there. but he was also the leader of the free world. and he had other things to do besides stand around talking

about how he remembers the good old times with jack abramoff. >> take me back to the moment you knew the game was up. >> yeah. >> what was that moment for you? where were you? how did you know? >> i guess the -- what happened was there was an article in the "washington post." and then immediately after the article the congress called for hearings and justice department to get involved. i guess the moment when i knew that it was over for me was when my law firm that i worked for didn't stand with me. >> the senate hearings were pretty brutal. john mccain led them. and he seemed to really have it in for you. let's see him in action at the senate hearings. this is a little clip here. >> today's hearing is about more than contempt, even more than greed. it's simply and sadly a tale of betrayal. mr. abramoff betrayed a long-standing client, betrayed his colleagues, betrayed his friends. >> pretty strong stuff. you decided to take the fifth amendment. you got in the end convicted. you served 3 1/2 years in

prison. i mean, it was corruption on a big scale. i haemean, $4 million sloshing around washington. >> you mean in terms of campaign contributions and things like that or -- >> yeah. but just the general level of the corruption that was going on. this is very bad for american politics. >> i agree. >> for america. for its reputation. >> yes. >> you know, people will be watching this, going, they don't feel sorry for you. >> i'm not asking people to feel sorry for me. i'm not running for office. i'm basically not asking anything -- >> what do you want people to feel when they read this -- >> i want them to know what this system is. this is a system that i took advantage of, that i was in the middle of, that i was perhaps at the lead of at times. but that system is still there. this system is toxic for the united states. it has to be changed. so what i have done is as somebody who was at a certain level of that system, i've broken omerta. i'm not part of the system any longer. i don't know of anyone else who

reached the level i did who is now coming out saying this system is wrong, here's how to change the system, here are the real reforms that need to be made. whether america wants to make them or not is a different matter. but i feel that if i have a mission in life part of my way to perhaps offer some recompense for what i was doing is to say, okay, here is how to stop that from -- i'm never going to do it again. i'm not going to be a lobbyist. i'm not going to return to that world. but i can return to that world in the sense of educating people and showing people what's going on. >> what kind of thing do you think is going on that is criminal in your mind? >> well, whether it's criminal or not, it should be criminal maybe is the question. there are things that are not technically against the law because the law is made by congress and congress has interest in keeping many of the rules basically the same. they'll change a rule to say that instead of feeding a congressman a meal he can't be sitting down, he has to be standing up, or he has to use his fingers instead of a fork or something ridiculous like that.

real change has to come to washington to stop the revolving door and the power of money in the system. that is where i as a lobbyist and other lobbyists exercise real power and real control over congress and other offices there. >> what are you going to do now with your -- what are you doing with your life at the moment? >> well, i justify finished writing the book. and i'm going to i hope speak and talk about what goes on there. >> do you have a job at the moment? >> i have a job doing that. >> that's it? >> that's it right now. i'm working on some other projects in the -- that are somewhat related. but you know -- >> do you have any money? >> no. >> all gone? >> yeah. >> how much did you make in the entire period as a lobbyist? have you ever worked it out? >> i haven't added it all up, but it was tens of millions. >> all gone? >> yeah. >> what have you learned about money, which was clearly a massive motivating factor for you for so long? what do you feel about it now that you don't have any? >> i mean, money is a tool.

i used the money i got to do things that i thought were right. we gave away a lot of our money. my wife and i -- this is all in the public record. we gave away pretty much 80% of the money we made. we didn't live an extravagant lifestyle. we lived a comfortable lifestyle. >> why did you give it away? >> because i felt that i got this money to do good things with it, and so we gave it to educational causes -- >> you weren't doing good things though, were you? >> wasn't i? with the money? what was i doing with the money? >> i find it odd you were giving away 80% of the money you were making in a vaguely corrupt way. it seems a little perverse. why would you break the law to make millions of -- >> piers, i wasn't again while i was deeply into it, it wasn't i was sitting back thinking i'm corrupt or breaking the law. frankly, i think i was doing good. >> that's what i'm getting at. there's this weird contradiction between charging ten times the going rate, making tens of millions of dollars, and then saying i was father christmas, i was giving it all away.

>> there was no going rate in lobbying. the amounts that i charged compared to the value we delivered i think was very fair. now, that we charged more than other lobbyists at that time had a lot to do with the fact that we delivered a lot more. we did have to add up what was the value of the services we provided and they were in the billions, for which they charges in the millions. >> the sad thing was in the end, everybody ended up hating you. the clients hated you. they ended up feeling betrayed and letdown. the businesses you were in hated you. the politicians. everyone turned on you. i'll play a clip from a jon stewart "daily show" which kind of summed it up. watch this. >> if you thought you knew corrupt power brokers buying off politicians, you don't know jack. yesterday scandal-ridden lobbyist jack abramoff pled guilty to several felony charges including conspiracy, tax evasion, mail fraud, and impersonating a 1930s gangster. "yeah, i'm guilty, see. it's curtains for me, copier."

>> how did you feel being the butt of the jokes? >> well, i have a sense of humor. so most of the time i laughed. if they were good jokes. some of the jokes were pretty funny. some of them were lame. but what could i do? you know, piers, when this was going on, don't forget, i was in the paper, in virtually every section of the paper almost every day. there was so much going on and so many people were attacking me and making fun of me and just everything that i didn't make a list. i wasn't nixon. i wasn't making an enemies list or something like that. i was just trying to get through this and stay focused on my family and on my children and trying to survive. >> how have you explained it to your children? >> well, i didn't have to explain it to my children. they were there the whole time. they knew who their father is. i didn't have to come and sit them down and say listen, daddy's not really hitler. they knew and they know who i am. but they were hurt, of course, by the way our name became synonymous with evil and corruption and things like that.

and i don't think they understood that. i'm not sure i understood it at some level. >> what was the single thing you regret most? >> well, i don't know that there's a single thing i regret most. but i regret a series of mistakes and a series of -- when you set off on a voyage, if you're off by one degree, at the end of the voyage you're going to be on another continent. and i regret those one degrees at the beginning that i let myself get off course and wound up unfortunately crashed ashore somewhere that i didn't know where i was. >> jack abramoff, thank you very much. >> thank you. look, every day we're using more and more energy.

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richard lugar is the senate's most senior republican and the longest-serving member of congress in indiana history. he's also the ranking member of the senate foreign relations committee. and he joins me now. senator, welcome. >> thank you, piers. >> in all the time that you've been in congress, how many years now? >> i'm in my 35th. >> incredible career that you've had. have you ever known a year quite like this one, where we've had the arab spring uprisings, the end of mubarak, the deaths of bin laden, of gadhafi. it's been an extraordinary time for foreign relations with america in particular at the forefront of this. we've seen a change in american foreign policy, haven't we,

where you know, from the gung ho steaming into iraq to very much the behind-the-scenes manipulators in libya. what do you make of it all? put it into context for me. >> well, i believe the context is one in which we are engaged really in basic arguments on domestic politics. the rest of the world has been left to fend for itself. now, that's not true. >> is that a good thing? >> no, it's not. but it's an observation at least about our politics in this country now. it does affect the rest of the world because the rest of the world understands that too, is watching our politics. it's watching our economic problems. and so as a result, the question is, what kind of influence will america exert on the rest of the world? will armies, navies, air force head toward specific countries? the answer appears to be no, and in large part it's because we're constrained by the fact that we are heavily engaged now still in

iraq, although withdrawing, afghanistan, still for quite a bit -- while and we have troops all over the world from previous situations. we have a fleet that really holds the high seas open for everybody in the world. and this is a real strain on a defense budget which is under some constraints too in our domestic quarrels as well as in the fact that in due course, we probably cannot afford the foreign policy we have. so this is leading to foreign policy specialists now to begin talking about so-called networking. how america remains strong in the middle east or anywhere else through intelligence forces, through drones supposed to armies that march that occupy territory. >> isn't that in the long run better for america? i mean, america's had to be through choice or otherwise, the world's policeman now for a very

long time. certainly my whole lifetime, america has been the go-to country for help for either aid in disaster or for military intervention, whatever it may be. and whatever the merits of each of the individual interventions, there comes a point, doesn't there, when if america wants to compete with the likes of china, india and so on, then this constant marching around the world helping everyone has to take a bit of a back seat to helping america? >> well, i think we'll continue, but it will be done in a much more sophisticated and differently organized manner. in other words, i believe we are still going to be a people that cherish democracy and that try to feed the world and have humane views, but we're going to do so probably with less conventional military means. less expensive military means. and this is inevitable. just as we started the conversation, the number of countries in which we are involved is such, it's impossible to conceive we would

invade a country and try to rearrange its government one by one, and in essence, we're looking first of all to our own strategic defense against al qaeda, against terrorists, against others that may bring harm into the united states. but this is a more sophisticated intelligence procedure. >> who do you think is the biggest threat currently to america? >> i suspect the problems that are embedded in terrorism, in other words, cell groups, smaller groups of people who may, in fact, try to transport either a nuclear, chemical or biological weapons in some form to the united states and create havoc in one or more of our major cities or through plagues or other diseases. >> let's turn to your party. they're going through a fairly roller coaster ride in terms of this nomination process. five front-runners now have come and gone. who do you think is emerging, perhaps nobody is yet, as a