but coming from a coalition, there is no bad time to get into a coalition. other questions? >> time for one more question. >> it's lunchtime so i think that turns people off. thank you very much. >> okay. great. thank you. [applause] >> sarah, thank you very much.

>> coming back at 1:30. the lunches are out here already. and what i want you to do is break up into your groups. and have lunch together. and try to work together. if you don't have anything to work on, which would be surprising, just sit there and get to know each other a little bit more. but come back -- actually, 1:25. we start at 1:30. thank you very much. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> american icons, three original documentaries from c-span. now available on dvd. a unique journey through the iconic homes of the three branches of american government. see the exquisite detail of the supreme court. go beyond the velvet ropes of public tours of the white house, america's most famous home. and explore the history, art and

architecture of the capitol. american icons, a three-disk dvd set. it's $24.95 plus shipping and handling. one of the many items available at c-span.org/store. prime minister gordon brown has been absent for the holiday break. he returns wednesday at 7:00 am eastern. we'll have that for you live right here on c-span2. 2009 marked the 20th year of televising the house of commons. up next, a look at the past two decades. this is about an hour, 15 minutes. >> on november 21st, 1989, the british house of commons opened its doors to television cameras and broadcast its proceedings. up next, we'll look at some of the debate from the day and hear how televising the house of commons made an impact on the public's view of the british parliament for 20 years.

>> order. the question is, that all members who are returned for two or more places in any part of the united kingdom to make their election for which of the places they will serve within one week after it shall appear there's no question upon the return to that place. >> this is what it looked like november 21st, 1989, the speaker of the house of commons was bernard weathero and this was the first television versions of the british house of commons. we have peter knowles by bbc. what happens been the reaction on this looking at this 20 years of being on tv? >> i think that most they now

regard the decision to televise as simply the inevitably. very, very few now look back and think that they did something really remarkable that could be overturned. but at the time, it was a knife edge decision. and it had been many, many votes being turned down each time until eventually the decision was taken to go for it. >> the leadership at the time, what was its position. margaret thatcher was prime minister. >> margaret thatcher was absolutely, and determinedly defense te-- against televising the commons and thought it would turn it into something in which it had been. the vote was taken despite -- despite her influence. >> and after that, as i recall there was an 18-month kind of trial period? >> yes.

and there was a long period after the vote before nearly two years before televising actually started. and then when they did start it it was a 12-month trial period. and in terms of any changes that we -- that we asked for that we -- that we get now to the way televising or access to parliament is done, it always comes in by way of a trial period. in every case. to test the water and see whether it can be made to work. >> since the house of commons went on television, it's been seen every sunday night here on c-span. but my question to you is, who sees it in great britain? >> okay. well, there are really two kinds of audience. prime minister's questions is watched very widely and it's on pretty much every imaginable tv channel in the u.k., not just bbc parliament but it's on several different channels. and gets a very big audience.

and other people criticize it for being too knock-about, people obviously do want to watch it. but the day-to-day business of the commons and the lourdes and the scotch parliament is watched on bbc parliament and there are really two kinds of audience for that. the audiences at home. and very often it's retired people watching in the daytime. and then the audience in offices. and that may be people in the past who may have traveled down to london to westminster to see debates but often find it useful to tap it by watching it on television or online. >> yes. i should have made it clear. what people see in the united states is a very small portion of what you do. >> that's right. prime minister's questions is different from the rest. but it does give you a flavor of the competitive nature of parliamentary debate. and the way two sides line up

against each other in a kind of face-off. and it's very different for most of the european parliament. most of which are in cycles and a speaker may go up to the podium and read a speech. usually it's quite a small number of people. the commons has a very different style to that. >> here in the united states the house of representatives went on television before the united states senate. some said at that point in time that it was because the house was on television that the senate finally went on television. in your case, the house of lourdes was already on television. is that correct? >> that's right. the lourdes had been televised for four or five years beforehand. and i think the same could be said to apply. i think it just became very difficult for m.p.'s the members of parliament to justify why they could not be seen. when the lourdes didn't have a problem with it. and what's interesting is that ever since -- and we have had quite a number of changes to the

rules of coverage making it much easier to watch than it was at first. in every case, the changes to the rules have started like in the lords and then being adopted by the commons. and that's still the case for some changes that are underway at the moment. >> how many cameras are in the house of commons that cover the debates? >> we have eight cameras in the commons and six in the lourdes. >> and how are they manned or not manned? >> they are all robotically operated from our central control gallery. and what's changed in the 20 years about the way they're operated is that it's now possible to see -- you see wide shots of the chamber. you see listening shots of people who are taking part in the debate but who aren't speaking at that moment. we'd like to push it further. we'd like to have the full range of reaction shots just like a normal outside broadcast but at least it's a long way forward from the original position which is that you could only see the picture of the person speaking.

and really hadn't shown a shot of them and only that. >> since you cover this all the time, do you have any feel for whether the televising of the house of commons has changed the institution at all or whether it changes any of the debates? >> i'm actually slightly doubtful that it has made a huge difference. and certainly m.p.'s whom we've interviewed about this 20 years on have tend to deny it has much of an impact. they simply can't used to it. they're on television the whole time. they're just used to the idea of that. and some of the silly trickery at the start being on television and making points of order to get on television, that stopped. and there was a ridiculous device called bonusing. where people used to cluster around the person speaking in order to make it look like that person was surrounding by their friends and supporters and nobody bothers doing that anymore. so i think everybody just got

used to it. >> peter knowles joining us today from scotland. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> and now we're going to take you back to more of the session. this is the first session of the first day of televising of the british house of commons november 21st, 1989. you're going to see prime minister margaret thatcher as well as an interview that c-span cameras did that day with british tv producer michael cockarel. >> i have always voted against the televising of the procedures of this house. and i expect -- [laughter] >> and i expect that i always will. the brief introduction of the honorable gentleman did nothing to alter my view. [laughter] >> despite the -- despite the

strongly held opinions which i have on these matters, i received a letter three weeks ago. i believe that a copy was sent to each of us and possibly even to you, mr. speaker. which made the following preposterous assertion. and i quote, the impression you'll make on television depends mainly on your image, 55%. [laughter] >> with your voice and body language -- [laughter] >> accounting for 38%. [laughter] >> of your impact. only 7% depends on what you were actually saying. [laughter] >> i thought that i -- i thought that i should enlist the

sympathy of the opposition with that last proposition. [laughter] >> the letter went on, and you may think that this was an ex extravagant claim so far as myself is concerned. but the letter went on. we can guarantee to improve your appearance. [laughter] >> through a personal and confidential image consultation. [laughter] >> you will learn if you need a new hairstyle. [laughter] >> and where to get it. and the type of glasses to suit your face. [laughter] >> the house will understand. why i consider that i was beyond redemption on all counts.

mr. speaker, eastbourne has been a separate parliamentary constituency since 1885. then the electorate was 8,000. today it is 80,000. i am glad to be able to report that for 100 out of those 104 years, eastbourne has been represented in the conservative interest. the solitairely lapse took place in 1906. [laughter] but four years of liberal representation were more than enough. and provoked the highest turnout ever recorded, 90.3% of the

following general election. from then on, eastbourne has been true-blue and since 1974, dry as well. [laughter] >> east sussex has long attracted the retired and the semi retired. [laughter] >> my noble friend -- the right honorable member of the leeds east whose decision not to seek re-election to this place we all deplore, that right honorable gentleman is the squire of

friston. [laughter] >> and the noble lord, lord callahan, has his estate nearby. [laughter] >> it will be -- it will be a source of satisfaction to the party opposite, particularly, to those who sit below gang-way as it is to me to learn these three comrades have been able to share in the growing prosperity in the nation. [laughter] >> created during the premiership of my right honorable friend.

but others have shared in that prosperity, too. in these past years, 1,657 former tenants of our council have bought their houses or flats. they remember -- they remember, mr. speaker, that the right to buy legislation was fiercely opposed by the party opposite. i was -- i was proud. i was proud to have had a hand in extending the opportunities for homeownership in the housing act of 1984. last month, phase two of our district general hospital was opened. all of the medical wards have been transferred from st. mary's

hospital built in the napoleonic days to york hospital. i'm pleased to tell the house that our hospital has informed my right honorable and learned friend, the secretary of state for health, of its intention. to seek approval to become a self-governing hospital trust. in august 1980, the house gave a third reading to the eastbourne harbor bill. indeed, 180 of my honorable and right honorable friends stayed up until ten past 6:00 in the morning to vote for it. the house will want to know that construction work on the harbor project is well underway. jobs are being created in the short term and the long term. the new harbor will keep

eastbourne in the vanguard, no ahead of the vanguard, of the increasingly important and increasingly successful british tourist industry. when the harbor is completed, our fishermen will no longer have to drag their craft under the beach. there will be birds for 1,800 small boats. miners, entrepreneurs from new ham northwest, refugees from brent east, grocers from old bexley -- [laughter] >> intellectuals, real or imagined from chesham and the honorable gentleman, the

honorable baronet who's purported aspirations for the queen that i'm able to endorse. [laughter] >> all these -- all these and many more beside will be able to moor their boat or seek refuge from the storm in the new eastbourne harbor. there is absolutely no way in which i shall give way to a member of the liberal party. >> order, order. >> now must leave the virtue of eastbourne and turn to the merits of the speech.

i welcome the commitment to support the remarkable changes taking place in eastern europe. speaking in poland last month, the german chancellor said that moscow, warsaw, prague, budapest -- he made no mention of leipzig, as london, brussels, paris, rome, or berlin. dr. cole was echoing general demill's famous concept stretching from the atlantic to the euros. it's a concept which i share. i am strongly in favor of the free movement of people, birds and capital in the 12 capitals that make up the community. but i have no confidence in the presumed superior wisdom of the

commission in brussels as compared with the judgment fallible though it is, of this elected house of commons. recent events released in europe have reinforced that view. if we look forward to the day as i do when the whole of the european family can share in that freedom and democracy which we enjoy, then the long term enlargement of the community is more likely to come about if the nation states of the 12 do not succumb to the vaulting ambitions of the super nationalists. mr. speaker, i also welcome the commitment to the gracious people to defeat terrorism in northern ireland. in great britain. and in europe. we ought to send a message from this place to friend and foe alike that our resolve will never weaken. that those who choose the bullet and the bomb will gain no

concessions from her majesty's covenant. and that their campaign of terror is as odious as it is futile. terrorism flourishes where those who perpetrate it believe that one day terror will triumph. that is why we need all of us to give no hint that it ever will. mr. speaker, the gracious speech reaffirms the government's commitment to pursue firm financial policies designed to reduce inflation. it is a matter of deep regret to me that inflation is now more than 7%. high interest rates are not the only weapon to defeat inflation, but they are an essential weapon. >> order, order! >> i hope that the embankment of inflation until we secure our stable prices will characterize the stewardship of my right honorable friend.

mr. speaker, yesterday, the president of romania made a speech in bucharest which lasted for six hours. and which was punctuated by 67 standing ovations. >> order! order! it's order! it's customary to give a fair hearing to the member -- >> yesterday, the president of romania made a speech in bucharest which lasted for six hours. and which was punk waited by 67 standing ovations. i'm thankful that i was not asked to have a vote of thanks for him but it has been an honor to be asked to make this speech. it will be a matter of relief to the house to know that there is no precedent for the person who has moved the address being

asked to do so on a subsequent occasion. >> you're watching live coverage of the british house of commons on c-span. as the house of representatives has gone into recess for the pending of the call -- of the chair we're able to bring this on the main network, c-span. we do at any point of time the house of representatives might come back into session and we will be leaving our live coverage of the british house of commons for that. we want to talk a little bit about what our viewers are seeing before some of the main speakers get up to speak. and we are very pleased to have with us in our studio michael cockerell who was a chief reporter for panorama and an author and a television producer. what is your reaction that you've seen? >> i think it's fantastic. television in britain has been going for 50 years and for the first time television is now in the house of commons. i mean, it started off as if it were gilbert & and sullivan. the guy in the long wig and talking almost in latin.

you couldn't really believe that 600 grown men could be doing this sort of thing. and then we've just seen this speech by ian gow which actually was a very good knock-about speech. many of the jokes would be difficult immediately to understand for an american audience but i think some of them would have come over and lightly joke. and how he didn't like television and the image saying how you come over on television depends 50% on what you look like, 38% on your body language and 7% on what you actually say. yet, here was a chap who showed that the televising of the house of commons would be a great success and this was despite himself because he came over so well and he showed that television will actually be able to capture the drama of these great events. >> i remember when the senate went on television the first day senator john glenn went down to the floor of the senate and brought out his brush and

basically talked about how members will have to wear their red ties. will red ties appear on the house of commons to look better on television? >> there was always an idea that you look better on television if you wear a blue shirt. when the german parliament was televised for the first time, it had said that in the papers before the day before and every single one of the 500 german members of parliament came in wearing blue shirts but you can see there they're actually wearing different colored clothes. and i think that they won't all look like american anchor men. >> the gentleman we can take a look on now who is on the floor giving one of the introductory speeches, what can you say about him? >> this is a labour m.p. and he is responding to what we had this morning, which is -- the queen came and opened parliament this morning and traditionally, immediately after the queen makes the speech, m.p.'s from

both sides, a conservative m.p. ian gow and david make a speech how grateful they were. it's the vote of thanks. the loyal address. and it shows, you know, the queen has come to her parliament and they the members are very pleased to welcome the sovereign to parliament. >> speaker of the house has already risen and just this 15, 20 minutes of the house of commons to call for order. is that unusual for the speaker to have to call for order? >> it's not unusual. it would have been unusual if he hadn't risen within 15 minutes. and remember this is an event -- the house of commons is now absolutely packed to the rafters. there are 650 m.p.'s there's not 650 m.p.'s and they are excited as school boys and it's surprising there's not more people trying to hog the cameras. most was at their very best behavior.

there was at the beginning when the speaker started talking someone got up and made the first point of order. and that was -- he became the first m.p. to be on television. >> we hear a lot of the undercurrent, the undercurrent of talking going on, the rubble i guess what it might be called. is this something we're going to constantly hear? >> yes. the house of commons is an almost unique institution in that one of the things you don't do to show approval is to applaud and they never applaud in the house of commons. so the way they approve of things, here, here, here. so if you hear 650 people saying here, here, shame, shame, this is an extraordinary mass sound to hear. if you go to dinner with an m.p. and you say something mildly amusely, instead of them laughing which is the normal way

people communicate, they go here here. >> our author is guest live "live from number 10." how will margaret thatcher come across this afternoon. >> she has been very, very concerned about television coming to the house of commons and she's always voted against it. and she has said she voted against it because she believes it will destroy the intimate atmosphere of what is essentially a debating chamber and that the lights and the cameras will be very intrusive. ...

there are also, different views as to how she will come across because, the reason is, a close-up and intimate medium and if she is seen to come across as a fish wife, really, sort of shouting at top of her voice this may alienate many people. on the other hand it may have the opposite effect. it may make people, this is the iron lady. she sticks by what she says. i think what will happen it will work both ways for her. that those people who already think she is a wonderful iron lady, good on you, margaret and those people who can't stand her will have their own impressions intensify. i think she may learn,

because of television, to adapt her technique. what she used to do when they would do, we haven't heard any of yet, when they do the shouting and barking so you're really trying to talk over a wall of noise, what she would do is try to talk over it, over the top of that. mr. speaker i must --, that sort of way of doing it. i think what she may do now, she may lean back. be in the dispatch box and lean back and let the wall of noise build up so she is shown as lone woman of against a mob of beying hooligans and that may work to her advantage. >> other party leaders, i'm not sure the kneel kinikc head of labour party. how will they come off on television. >> neil kinnick, like me has not got that much hair and he is rather worried about the way he looks on television. he said to some of his colleagues on, the labour

front benches what we've got to do make sure we all grow hair. the camera shot comes above, as one saw with ian gow who did not have much hair. you can see, looking down on top of your nose, a bald head. this is may sound fanciful. but this is sort of thing people are worried about because television is an impressionist tick medium. kneel kin knock. is the -- neil kinnock. he is 15 points ahead. for him to influence the electorate, people who wouldn't switch on to him, they will switch on because watching historic televising of the house of commons. i think he will attempt to be very prime minute tearal.

he will try to curb, called the welch waffler. he talks too much -- welsh. uses three words when one will do. strings of sentences with no full stop. i think he will try to curb that. and seem measured and statesman-like. >> how do you expect this afternoon. >> neil kinnock, a lot of at stake this afternoon. every tuesday and thursday there is what is called prime minister's question time. a quarter of an hour the prime minister gets up and answers any questions from the leader of house. leader of opposition is allowed to ask four questions to the prime minister. this is seen as gladiator contest so a lot of pending on them. >> the house of schedule in the united states. this is the prime minister's question time one week from today on the 28th of november that is scheduled. we thank you very much for coming by. we'll keep you here. as much of the afternoon as we possibly can to help us fill in spaces where the

american audience may not understand. right now let's go back to the house of commons. >> seconding speeches over the years. and that research revealed that during the last parliament, there were two other members of the class of '83 with similar majorities to my own, who seconded the loyal address. at the subsequent general election, both of them lost their plea. [laughter] now, now, mr. speaker, this is marvel of kindness and courtesy, and although, i got his message loud and clear, the return to the house of my honorable friend, the member, who was one of those seconders is proof indeed there is political life after political death. our political life, mr. speaker, has been, are

being most exciting and dramatic of times. recent events in germany and eastern europe have shown, that history is a constantly moving pageant. and that nothing is set in concrete. either literally or metaphorically. it was mr. speaker, john kennedy whose words we have all recalled over the last few days of the berlin wall. it was kennedy who said, some men see things as they are, long quote, some men see things as they are and ask why. i dream of things that never were, and ask why not. it is because, mr. speaker, i believe that the program will reveal by the gracious speech, is an accord with the spirit of that message, that i have no hesitation, in commending it to the house. [shouting]

>> point of order. >> during the course of the previous speaker's statement, he made reference to sir klement. i remember sir klement freud in this house. never agreed with him. had many arguments. -- televised to make -- [inaudible] [shouting] to use the --, to use the occasion to make a snide comment about something about -- [inaudible] this time in the house of commons, and personally disagreed with him politically, was a good member and i, and i just, mr. speaker, that we're not

going to hear that sort of thing in --. >> order. in order. before we were televised the house would have heard me say that we have freedom of speech in this house and every honorable member must take responsibility for what he says here. well, order. not a matter for me. order. the question is, hamberg be presented to her imagine at this as follows. most greatest sovereign, majesty's beautiful and loyal subjects the united kingdom of great britain and northern ireland in parliament assembled beg leave to offer humble thanks, your majesty for the gracious speech your imagine jess -- majesty to both houses of parliament. the leader of the opposition. [shouting] s. >> mr. speaker, for those

who may be uninitiated, it is one of the most pleasurable kest toms of this house, that, the leader of the opposition is allowed on this occasion to pay compliments on their speeches to the honorable gentlemen who have moved and seconded the royal address. i do, that now with my usual passion and enthusiasm, particularly for the usual sparkling performance of the young woman, who gripped the house. he, as i looked across the chamber at him, struck me as one of our number who, like myself has not presented himself at any television charm school, for grooming. the only concession that i made in that direction myself, mr. speaker, i suspect that the honorable member is much the same, is to take possession of a kindly and generous offer made to me by one of my

honorable and learned friends who shall remain anonymous of something called, the --. which looked to me like, sort of cerebral blotting papers apparently for the purpose of mopping one's head. after the ordeal of moving the royal address, i would be more than happy, in the most fraternal spirit to pass this across to the honorable member, should he require it. he of course, in any case, needs no tuition in charm or indeed gentlety or subtlety. it was all these qualities i'm certain earned for him not inaffectionate title, he worked for the prime minister as parliamentary private secretary of super glass. [laughter] well, mr. speaker, i suppose it is better than super

iceberg. but it's, the case, uncertain, mr. speaker, he was through no difficulty in this new era of televised democracy from the fact that, on another feature which we share, he like me suffers from a certain tonsilory deefficiency. snead isn't worry at all about that mr. speaker only the case he has to look along his front bench, deputy prime minister, important foreign secretary. chairman. conservative party. exchequer, to be absolutely the assured, gray hair is not necessarily evidence of wisdom. [laughter] the, the, honorable gentleman has many times indeed so many, that i've been tempted from time to time, to try and convert him, provide hymn with allocution lessons, a different pair of

glasses so he could double the output of my right honorable friend the shadow chancellor of the exchequer because he bears much more than passing resemblance. his speech was of considerable delight. i mean of course in all respects earn political. -- other than political. mr. speaker we heard from the member, who is a man ernest member of parliament most certainly, shown in his time not inconsiderable courage it was he, who at time of 1983 general election to his considerable credit called upon conservatives in stockton, not to vote for the ex-national frontman who was the conservative candidate and i think everyone, would acknowledge the courage that it took and strongly support the honorable member in that. in fact, i know the honorable gentleman's wife, caroline, who is extremely active supporter of the

campaign for. we have encompassed mutually productive in the cause of securing that precisely that liberty which is celebrated in many ways rightly so in its advance in today's speech. queen's speech. the honorable member is also a star touched. not only is the consultant for the northern independent bookmakers association, and office of some distinction and considerable advantage i would imagine. [laughter] but he also, he also shows, no i leave the prime minister to talk to brian walden. it is more entertaining. [laughter] the, the, honorable gentleman for shares a birthday indeed precisely the same birthday with charlie watts, the drummer of the rolling stones. perhaps after the next election as the honorable

gentleman himself graciously he might become something after "rolling stone". until then, we shall continue to be informed and delighted by his contributions. >> prime minister? [shouting]. >> mr. speaker, sir, may i first join the leader of the opposition in congratulating my honorable friend, the member eastbourne in the way in which he moved the royal address. he did it in his own innim stability -- inimitable style, dry as always which i'm eternally grateful and with his own particular way even the opposition benefited very much from periods of conservative prosperity. i know when we were in opposition which i'm sure we will never be again --

[shouting] he was, he was -- >> order. >> then labour government, he moved private bill after private bill. a bill to sell council houses. a bill to privatize bus companies a bill to privatize the national freight corporation. a bill to privatize cable & wireless and a bill to privatize the british steel corporation. of course privatization got nowhere with the labour government. their socialists. they want not for nationalization and means of production and distribution and exchange. i'm happy to say all of those things were achieved under my administration. now, also, congratulate my honorable friend bear are you south who seconded the motion. he is well-known for won his seat and retained it against all the odds and will do so again. members, he has truly looked

after his constituents, looking always after the for a constituency member and their rights in this house will secure him another return and i was very glad that he pointed out we learned through a lifetime of labour government inflation is the father and mother of unemployment. and the learned in a lifetime of this government, his constituents profited enormously from more jobs for them to choose from. may i just finish. may i just finish, thanking my two honorable friends. then i will give way to the honorable jent minute. -- gentleman. it is a matter of very happy cons dinse in a year a gracious speech contains important proposals for legal reform and proposer and seconder are distinguished solicitors. a barrister myself, i welcome this early start to giving them rights of audience. my honorable friends are to be warmly congratulated. i give way to the honorable gentleman.

>> the -- >> this house, in what respects, given by the former chancellor of the exchequer of his departure was inaccurate. >> may i assure the honorable gentleman dealing with the economy in just one moment. if you will give me time. in the meantime i like to deal with some of the things which the right honorable, the leader of the opposition said which i haven't proposed to put in my speech and i better deal with them now. the national health service, he ad omitted to point out everyone pound labour spent on national health service this government has spent three. omitted that yes, we did achieve economic growth at a faster rate than our european competitors and that resulted in employment, of record number of people in jobs in this country under conservative government, a record number of all-time.

he talked about traffic congestion. he omitted to point out under labour government they actually had to cut the amount spent on motor ways. of course they did. they ran the economy so badly. he then came on to pensions. he then came on to pensions. he omitted to say the way which pensions are managed and pension rights in the european community are very different from here. moreover, he omitted to point out it was labour government who was not able to honor a pledge to protect patients against rising prices when the rising prices would have required a 20% increase and they just hadn't the money to do it. when he says about teachers, he omitted to say there is higher proportion of teachers in proportion to pupils than ever before in our history. there is also a bigger numbers in higher education. he spoke about war widows. he omitted -- >> order. >> this government that freed the war widows

pensions tax all together and omitted to point out that the age allowances which we have increased and the actual rates of age allowances for war widows will go up very much more than inflation next april. indeed for those age 65 to 69, the age allowances will go up by 14%, and for those age 80 and over, by, some dhirt%. he actually tried to say, that what they had in the soviet union was not socialism. of course it was. of course it was. the union of soviet socialist republics. [shouting] massive, massive nationalization and if you look back at his speeches in opposition he wanted more and more nationalization. massively high taxation, which again is a way of taking people's rightful earnings away from them. and massive detailed controls. such detailed controls that are the end of the last

period of -- government. >> order. >> end of last period of labour government, manufacturing out put was lower than it was at the beginning. he omits to say that. they said that manufacturing out put went up during the period of government. it didn't t was lower at the end than it was at beginning. he said we're being dragged along behind the e.u. c. may i point out far from being dragged along behind we are in fact ahead in way which we are implementing, ahead, for example, in the way in which we are implementing the directors for the single market. by now, some 68 single market directives should have been implemented by the end of june. france had yet implemented nine. denmark and netherlands 12. all others more than 12, when it isn't 33. we made the united kingdom, we have the record with only

three measures, only three measures being unimplemented. we have in fact implemented many other things, lead the field in europe. he tried to suggest, he tried to suggest that competition policies wasn't an essential part of having a single market. of course you can not have varying subsidies if you're to have fair terms to compete with other people. if you permit subsidies the richest country will have the biggest subsidy and there will be no common market, no single market and therefore, nothing extra for us to enjoy. he didn't point out that there were times when britain was isolated in her argument. yes, we were isolated in the european community when we tried to get a fair deal for britain for the budget. and we stayed isolated and we stayed isolated until we succeeded and got the fair deal which was due to the labour government. we were isolated when we tried to -- >> order. >> agricultural policy and eventually got the common agricultural policy.

yes we were isolated when they wanted a common withholding tax and we went on and with our argument and eventually we won. what he called isolation, is really leadership around winning your argument. [shouting] mr. speaker, this new parliamentary session, will be the start of a new decade. the 1970s were a decade when britain was in decline. when socialing aism meant we had retreated like some third world country and rescued by the i.m.f.. the 1980s have been decade where britain regained her strength and pride. we no longer are afraid of change but can respond to it with confidence. british industry has one moment, when i finish this particular paragraph. british industry has been set free to adapt to new ways and new technology, as at an unparalleled rate.

we can get once again a good return on investment. that's why over the latest three years we're seeing a 40% increase in business investment, an unprecedented advance. that's why industries like steel, newspapers and now the docks whose equipment and working methods were barely adequate from the 1950s have been transformed to compete with the best in the 1990s. that's why this country has been getting the lion's share of overseas investment coming into the european community. [shouting]. they prefer to come to britain. the government sees two main tasks in the period ahead. first we must do everything possible to encourage and sustain genuine democracy throughout eastern europe but in the euphoria of the moment, we must not underestimate the magnitude of the task. by genuine democracy, we

mean not just outward trappings but underlying substance. free elections in a multi -- >> order. order. i think the whole house heard the prime minister say she wanted to get on with her speech and wasn't going to give way at this point. the prime minister. >> mr. speaker, i don't think anyone has given way more than i have. by genuine democracy we mean free elections in a multiparty system, together with all the freedoms that were set out in the helsinki final act. that is certainly not going to come about quickly. indeed, in some east european countries to achieve genuine democracy and economic reform may well take years. so great are the changes required. britain has already helping poland and hungary. but we are ready to go more as part of an international effort. our second is to enable the great changes to take place in conditions of stability in europe, so that no

country feels its security is, its alliances or its borders threatened as a result of them. we should remember these changes would not be happening were it not for president gorbachev's courage and vision. all of us have a strong interest in seeing his reforms in the soviet union succeed. mr. speaker, these matters were discussed by the european community heads of government at a very successful meeting in paris last saturday evening at which this approach received wide support. we all welcome changes in eastern europe and agreed that the community should continue to give them every possible help. the particular urgency of poland and hungary's needs was recognized. the european council in strasburg over two weeks time will decide on additional help that the community can offer. covering not just financial help but food supplies and

training. we shall also consider the possibility of extending european community programs in areas such as technology, and education to eastern europe. britain's recent suggestion for looking at the various options for bringing eastern europe into closer association with the community will also be studied and discussed further at strawsburg. at the same time -- >> order. >> mr. speaker, the same time, mr. speaker, we agreed that nato and the warsaw pact continue to be the basis for defense. that borders are not on the agenda, and that we will continue to abide by the helsinki final act. indeed without nato and the european community, these great events would surely not have happened. mr. speaker, this was an excellent meeting and a very sack factory outcome. the next step is for nato heads of government to meet on the fourth of december

when president bush will report on his meeting with president gorbachev. before that happens, before that happens, i shall be meeting president bush at camp david later this week. the reaction of the right honorable gentleman, the leader of the opposition, is to see what is happening in eastern europe as yet another excuse to weaken our defenses by getting rid of nuclear weapons. even though they are a fundamental part of nato's strategy. it is because we have nato, because we have kept defenses strong, because we deployed cruise and pershing against the soviet union, ss-20, because we convinced the soviet union it could never succeed in intimidating or threatening the west, that they are now witnessing these great changes. mr. speaker, times of great change or times of great uncertainty and even danger. we have to be prepared for

any threat. however unexpected. as events demonstrate even more conclusively, we are winning the battle of ideas. we must make sure that subsequently we do not lose the peace. our nuclear deterrent, and collective security provided by nato remains the cornerstone of our defense. how we react to what is happening now will shape europe and the vital world for decades ahead. against the background of a strong defense, our programs set out in the gracious speech of enlarging opportunity, enhancing the quality of life and improving well-being is the right one for britain of the 1990s and i commend it to the house. [shouting] point of order, mr. speaker. >> you're watching live coverage of the british house of commons on c-span

television. just watch the piece by british prime minister margaret thatcher and prior to speech by the leader of opposition, neil kinnock, of labour party. joining us in our studio, michael cockerell, chief political reporter of panorama and author of books. this is this representative what you've seen on the floor of the house? >> oh, yes, representative although everyone is on their best behavior. both neil kinnock and margaret thatcher have given way. in other words, allowed people to interrupt them. a great deal more off the than they normally would. sometimes indeed the prime minister can be postively, sort of aggressive about it. i'm not giving way. i'm not giving way. the convention that you give way but, sometimes, people can stand up and try to interrupt you in order to put you off your stride. but as you could see she was very gentlemanly, very gentle about it, and say i have two customers there.

i take the first one and then i take the second one. i suspect, when they're not on their good behavior, and they're not playing up to the cameras they tend to revert more to the traditional forms. >> you have watched mrs. thatcher a lot and have written about her and television, the issue of television. how do you think she looked today. >> i thought she was very nervous to start with. i was saying before, earlier this in program she had this problem whether to wear her glasses or not. seemed to me the way that she had overcome this problem was that, she had got her speech written in very big type. so she didn't have to wear her glasses. but because neil kinnock raised some points that she didn't anticipate, she obviously written it down in her handwriting and had to put her glasses on in order to be able to read that, and at times she wasn't quite clear, whether she wanted to have them on or off. but, for most of her speech she didn't have her glasses

on. i thought she looked a little more tired, a little more matronly, a little, older than one has seen her, sometimes before. because, normally she will come into a television studio for interviews, and, it will be a great deal of work which will have gone into the makeup, yet, here she, no doubt she has been made up for television, she is in a hot, sweaty chamber for an hour before she got up to speak. and she couldn't very well go off and powder her nose beforehand. >> our viewers are seeing on larger screen, paddie ashdown leader of democrats. we'll go back to that in just a minute because we have 20 minutes more we'll be able to bring our viewers. i wanted to ask you a couple things to help us understand, the waving, members were waving something when we saw the wide shot. what are they waving? >> they're waving what is called their order papers. in other words that is the

order of the day's business. i was saying one of the things they don't do in the house of commons is actually to applaud. so they have various ways showing their approval. one of the traditional ways of showing their approval is to wave their order papers, and often say, here, here, at the same time. >> we had heard that the shot of speaker would be mostly head and shoulders. yet looking most of the camera angles of mrs. thatcher and neil kinnock you were able to see the person sitting in back of they will. it was a wider shot maybe than i expected. >> yes. i think, reports, which many broadcasters had, about how restricted the coverage was going to be, turned out to be a bit exaggerated and you had, not only, shots which were wider than just head and shoulders. you saw the background of people, and, in some cases, this may cause a great deal of controversy, it looked as if the deputy prime minister,

sir jeffrey howe, who was behind the prime minister, who is actually, falling asleep. now, we broadcasters are meant to be very, very good behavior for all this this is experimental transmission of the house of commons. after six months the house, we will decide whether they want it. so, it will be interesting to see whether on the british network news tonight, they run those pictures where, certainly it looked to me, as if the deputy prime minister was falling asleep during the prime minister's speech. it will be interesting whether we highlight that or, sort of hope and pretend it didn't really happen. >> michael cockerell, we'll be back to chat in 10 more minutes as we wrap up our coverage from london. in the meantime let's go back to the floor and listen to the speech by paddie ashdown, leader of liberal democrats. >> in number of times spoken during the last session. now, mr. speaker, it is a matter of record that he

spoke for 18 times and honorable member spoke for six times, six times. well, mr. speaker, we will have all listened to the prime minister's speech with great interest. i must say that, for my part the most remarkable statement that she made was that the statement, the house will recall, she made at start of her speech which she said we, referring to the benches opposite will never be in opposition. now, mr. speaker, what a remarkable statement that is. i remind the right honorable lady that this is a democracy. and that, and that, a little more humility on her part, a little more understanding of her electoral mortality might well lead to better government in britain and, rather less of the kind of abuse of power that we have come to see as the hallmark of this government. now, mr. speaker, both the

right honorable gentleman that spoke as leader of the opposition and right honorable lady were right to, lay down the criteria for judging this gracious speech. the fact that it is the last gracious speech of this decade and maps out the program for the first year of the next decade. this is right therefore we should look at it in those terms. look at it in those terms of what is it then that we assess as the fruits of decade we'll always be known in politics as the thatcher decade and whether or not they measure up to the requirements that now face britain in the 1990s. . .

>> we have supported them and the democratization of a trade union movement. we have supported them and moving forward on enterprise and liberalizing the market. all those have been good things. but we are not measuring this, mr. speaker, i guess what they have done in the past. it's against how they measure up to the task in the future. and on behalf of the gracious speech and the program for the next year of the next decade. lies in our judgment of vacuum. where it speaks what it says is

irrelevant to the real needs of britain and the future, and where it does not speak on the issue, on the issue of reinvestment, on the issue of europe where it desperately needs to be. it is a speech, a gracious speech full of leftism that if you like you, mr. speaker, it is a speech that reflects the decay. i would like to look for a moment mr. speaker, on what it might have said. as the program it might have addressed, personal, the program it might have addressed itself to in relation to the regeneration of the industrial base of this country. industrial base a fifth of which attacker to have been wiped away into recession with which this government visited the first years of this decade. is it not, mr. speaker, peculiarly brutal, common on the legacy of this government that they enter the 1980s with a

vicious, long-term recession that damaged british industry at the end of the decade they have been the government, perched and on the edge of another recession in the future? well, maybe it should be called a recession. i see the chancellor shaking his head. he will tell us this is not a recession. i shall refer to? stagnation? will that do? his own figures, mr. speaker, his own figures show that growth in the next year will only be 0.75%. >> well, mr. speaker, given to government records on agassi in these matters in the past, it is so confident that a tiny mark will not end up as quite as substantial minus mark at the end of the year which we now start? what we hear of course, mr. speaker, from the government is in the prime minister said in her speech, that this is all the price of success. this is all the price of success.

well, mr. speaker, again, the house needs to remember that when we get in the 1980s we were told we had to have harju dupuis had to have a recession because of the price. that was the price that we had to pay for past failures. now we are told we have to have an recession. we have to have a hard year ahead of us because that's the price we have to pay for success. it would be a sick joke, mr. speaker, whether truth not so painful. and the truth of course is that over all production in britain has only now just blipped, if i may use that phrase come about its level in 1979. after 10 full years. the truth is that our market share has dropped and continues to drop. our world market. the truth is, inflation is now running at the highest level of any of our major industrial competitors. the truth is that interest rates in britain are now higher than they are in any of our major

competitive country. the truth is that in britain are now running ahead of britain at a rate faster than any other of our major international country. and the truth is, mr. speaker, and the truth is, mr. speaker, i will give way in imola, and the truth is, mr. speaker, that we now have a trade deficit of record proportions. a full 6 billion pounds above what the government predicted it would be only six months ago. that's the truth of the present situation in britain. >> i am most grateful. could grateful. could he tell us what a mythical liberal government would do to control wage inflation? >> the gentleman has heard the statements we have made. one of the things we would wish to do would be to see this government, would see this government entered into the european monetary system which would mean we could begin to control inflation, and therefore, control, and therefore control wage rates without using high interest rates. but i'm here to discuss the

government program. the honorable gentleman -- i'm here to discuss the government's program. the honorable gentleman will know in a relatively short speech i simply do not have time to put forward all the alternatives which he seeks. mr. speaker, the government tells us that the success story is in desperate. well, the record shows that investment is a percentage of gdp. has now again only just blipped above its level. in 1979. it's a percentage of gdp. and with interest rates at the present level, who can doubt that they will begin, that investment levels will begin to plunge back? now, mr. speaker, this is described by the government as an economic miracle. i say it is not. and economic miracle. it is an economic mirage. you could only call this a miracle, mr. speaker, if you were entirely the prey of your own propaganda, entirely capable of deleting.

>> paddy ashdown speaking before the first televised session of the british house of commons. michael cockerell, the floor of the house of commons has gotten very small in comparison to what it was, compared to what was in the thatcher and neil kinnock speeches. >> it's empty. extraordinary. one of the things that happens is that two big speeches, everyone is there. but it shows in a way how quickly the effect of television has worn off with a couple of hours. the mps are prepared to go back to their normal practices. most debates and house of commons are very thinly attended. it's partly because members have other things to do and have committee meetings and so on. and it's only really for either the big speakers like the prime minister or the leader of the opposition, and some of the famous parliamentary names, that they attract people. but most of the time it's very thinly attended.

but one of the things you're saying, when you see the cutaway shot, you see how few people there are. but when you look at mr. ashton speaking, it looks like there are lots of your party has the smallest party, the third party which has only about 25 members compared to 200, 400 sort of thing. and what they've always worked out is that those members were all bunched behind. it's called though nothing. they will give the impression that at least all of his people are there supporting him, even if no one else has stayed on. >> you have worked in covering british politics for many years, being the former chief political reporter for panorama which is very popular. how do you think mps are walking out of the chambers now. what they are feeling about television? >> hot. [laughter] >> i think they will all be absolutely on edge because of

this, what i say, is a great day. historic moment. and the one thing that we will be doing is ringing up their wives, mistresses, their journalist friends to find out how he came over. because by definition, they don't know how it came over. >> and can't see at. >> that's right to call the notice how it felt like when they were in the chamber. and in the bars in the house of commons tonight, there will be endless talk about how he came over. because the house of commons has more bars than any other place in britain. there are 13 different places spinet within houses of parliament? >> there are 13 different watering holes, and some of them are specifically only formulas of the house of commons, and for privileged section of the journalistic community here and they need and they will say how good ago? what did it look like? they will be desperate to know and they will all be scanning the newspapers tomorrow and watching the highlights on british television tonight.

so that they can make up their own mind, because at the moment they're in a you. >> indian essays there are a variety of books that can be bought or received regarding background on members of parlin. without we would very be to go through the ones that we know of that are available here. one is if you want to go to the expensive route, dodge parliamentary companion. it sells for about 52 pounds and you can get it on an address that you see at the bottom of your screen. it has all the pictures of the mps and a lot of background and again has a much more extensive version. i'm going to go ahead and drop this one and show you another one. which is called the mps chart. it is done by jim and by the name of andrew roth, and you can a group called parliamentary profiles, and it is a little bit more of a lighthearted look at members of parliament and how they work. finally, the cheapest one that there is that we could find at least with one called parliamentary companion, which you can get from tufton street

and westminster here in london and you can buy that for 4 pounds, 95. you can write to the fellows whose addresses at the bottom of your screen if you would like to get one of these so you can more easily watch members of parliament and learn a little bit more about them. michael cockerell, what you think will be the impact of television and house of commons in regard to its future after this six-month debate here? >> i think i'm the basis of what i've seen today, the mps will certainly vote to keep the television cameras. i think we're in for some thrills and spills i had, and we the broadcasters will have to decide whether we put in the cheeky shots of someone yawning or someone falling asleep. but i think they can't turn the clock back. this was democracy in action and the mother of parliaments, using the most powerful means of nasty medication, ever invented. you can't say no, no. , we will go back. gokhale, horrid cameras.

for a long time, they even refused to allow writing recorders, journalists into the house of commons, because this was thought to be -- it would have its effect on the privilege of parliament and it was only, you know, 150 years ago that they allow the journalists in. it didn't ruin the house of commons. indeed, it made reporting much more active because what people were doing when they weren't allowed in was to invent what they thought the mps must be saying. and this is what happens now until the cameras came in. all you had was the written version, written really rather like a parliamentary sketch, like a theatrical notice. whereas now you can actually see the live flesh and blood and guts. so i think it's here to stay. >> a look back at the 20 history of televising the british house of commons that the house of commons returns from holiday break this week. we will resume our live coverage

with prime minister gordon brown and prime minister's questions this wednesday at 7 a.m. eastern here on c-span2.

>> fed chief defends role in housing crisis in atlanta. bernanke blamed soft regulation. i want to ask you about your thoughts on financial regulation, the role of the fed and more. go to pensacola. this is chris. cars on our democrat line. go ahead. >> host: curtis, you will need to turn down your set. >> caller: good morning. we've got regulations on the books, but bush and cheney would enforce them. i just hope they just enforce what we got we will be okay. and off the subject of it, i wish all these republicans about war would have their sons and granddaughters and enlist in the marine corps and army. thank you tran will face for your call this what. next up is marion illinois. coming up next, we'll get to next. here is the inside of the "washington post" is corporate bernanke urges financial

regulation to prevent crisis. neil r. when writing about the speak and we will show you some of mr. bunning to his comments on sunday. speaking at an annual meeting of the academic economists. bernanke laid out a case that interest-rate policy was at best a modest contributor for over inflation of home prices. one thing, there were home bubbles in many countries around the world, even many that were not as loose with a monetary policy. such countries as britain, new zealand and sweden had tighter monetary policy. yet their home prices rose more, and monetary policy explained only 5 percent of the variation in home prices in those country. to maryellen a. good morning on our republican line. welcome. >> caller: good morning. i would like to comment on the people, the politicians this morning, that we are fighting, like with republicans and democrats. and whether our citizen works

off of our attitude. and the country has got a bad attitude that if we just change that, we could change the direction we're going and the destruction we face just by getting along and quit are fighting and fussing and arguing, like our politicians do. any comment on that? >> host: i don't have any comment, but thanks for yours. to mark in eureka california, independent car, go ahead. >> caller: happy new year. >> host: and happy new year to you, you know, what i can't understand is why they haven't put more restrictions on already it's been a year now, and you know, i don't agree with china, but their bankers over there, i believe they shot five of them, and i don't know why we haven't prosecuted any of these people

for the crimes they have committed. and i'll take my comment off the air. thank you tran would face or your input. peggy on our republicrepublican line and new hampshire. what are your thoughts this board? >> caller: my thought is that we are regulated to death. now i am would've. i am 79 years old. and i have almost always voted republican. we have to many controls, and look what happened with the muslim there that get on the airplane. who did the work? not somebody from the government. where the government does nothing, it doesn't make any money, and believe me, i was born in 1930. i don't what it is to pitch, and that's why i can live today. my husband died eight years ago. i am still in the house that i was when we got married.

i learned a lot from my in-laws. and the less regulation, the better. my mother was born in 1898, and she thought roosevelt was god. then when i got older and got some sense, i voted for goldwater goldwater came to pittsfield. that was the kind of republican. >> host: he came there during the campaign? 19 cd4 or something like that? >> caller: yes, yes, he did. reagan came to pick the. went to the fire station. he's another man that told like it was. people are afraid. they are afraid of everything. i come from a time when pittsfield was a little tiny town. moved in 1945 because my sister married. >> host: let me ask you about the. the housing situation there. you are okay with your house, but what about around you?

what about your neighbors? >> caller: my neighbors are okay. the problem is nobody cares. look at kids. i mean, if you can buy something you've got to pay for it. my husband built a house, i mean, come on. >> host: thanks for joining us this morning inside the walter to our topic is for the next 40 minutes or so about ben bernanke, the fed chair, fed chief closes. blames lax regulation not central-bank policies for for the housing crisis. again, this was a speech he gave yesterday in atlanta, and being a economist at this years of economist, writes "the wall street journal," from around the world with top government officials have been dominated about debate, debate about the causes and consequences of the financial crisis. while many economists you believe a recovery is underway, many are wary about its strength and staying there.

that's the sport. wall street journal. to westminster maryland, and wayne is our democrat line. wayne, what do you think? is more regulation needed to permit, to prevent some of these financial crises, the financial excesses? >> caller: yes, idb -- i do believe that stupid i also believe the republicans motto is government doesn't work, that's the first thing they do when they come to power is to circumvent the government to put people in charge of the different offices of the government who previously were lobbying for the corporations direct the government's ability to regulate. and that's what happened in the bush era, and unfortunately, possibly through the clinton era. and you know, it was just

everything was, you know, all the different, offices of the government and bureaus of the government were -- heads of them, whose policy was to wreck the government, not let them work, make them work for the people. and the people got screwed big time. >> host: thanks for weighing in this point. folks in the washington area are getting a look at the new "washington times." this is how the front looks. you get in the news boxes or at home. the "washington times," all things change and we change with them. this is an overlay to the front page of this morning's "washington times," late last week radically revamped their editorial. i will open us up and show the front page of this point of the "washington times," which will be a newspaper that focuses, as they say, on general news and politics, local and regional,

national economic issues. they are down to two-step that they're going to focus on two sections. this main section, "washington times" front section here, and also in the polls off, and the commentator, and expanded commentary section in the "washington times." this morning leading off with columns from newt gingrich and peter r. and also from former un ambassador john bolton, who writes this morning global threats lacks 2009, rough 20 did. and he writes that a critical question there is whether the president has learned anything during his first year, or whether he will continue pursuing national security policies that leave us at greater risk. the outlook is not promising. too often, mr. obama seems either uninterested in the global threats we face, i'm persuaded that they constitute dangerous to the country, or content simply to blame his predecessor's. the thoughts of john bolton this morning in the "washington times." gary, your thoughts on ben bernanke and the issue of financial regulation,

particularly on the part of the fed. go ahead. >> caller: thank you very much that i really appreciate you taking my call. i had to use every little grey cells that i had to try to understand that mr. bunning d. last night, i listened to him on the radio, talking about that. regulation. and i agreed with them. and it just, i still got a headache. because it just attacked my brain because i really had a hard time. it's a very complicated and complex. but one other thing i would like to say, and i think it's very important, and this might seem like a different subject, but our uso shows over in iraq and afghanistan, i was watching some from last year, and we were

making sick, vulgar and juvenile jokes about that middle eastern women and their culture. >> host: what shows are you referring to? >> caller: the u.s. otiose we were going on in iraq and afghanistan that i was watching the pedagogy of. and i was really appalled. you know, i went to uso shows that i was raised overseas. and we used to always have officials and local nationals and indigenous personnel from that country, and just to hear the jokes that these comedians we had on. if i was the base command i would have put the mps out there and had been dragged the guy offstage, because it was appalling. and we're trying to win friends and the hearts and minds? i mean, it's a disgrace.

>> and now back to our continuing coverage of american university's political strategy lectures. this session is on polling and research. >> we are very proud of him. he's a partner and cofounder of the public opinion strategies, which is a republican leaning firm, although when it comes to issue campaigns that when it comes to working with commercial sector, they worked frequently with democratic firms, or along in those areas. . .

>> in an issue campaign as well as in a candidate campaign, he'll talk about that when he talks about polling and survey research in lobbying campaigns. he is a graduate of american university, he's been a regular in speaking here. i know you're very busy, and you always take time to do that. he's always been the directer of survey research and analysis at the national republican congressional campaign committee. and has had many other positions before he went to pos. welcome, glen. >> good afternoon. i see you're into day, what, about five or six here? so you've gotten a lot, you've had a lot of good speakers and interesting topics. i'm, obviously, here to talk to

you today about polling and survey research in campaigns, public policy campaigns. let me see. okay. what i'm going to talk about is why you should use survey research in a public policy research, what survey research can do for that campaign in terms of targeting and message development and what you should know as a client, as a user of the nuts and bolds of -- bolts of polling. as i'm talking, feel free to interrupt and ask questions, raise your hand, what have you. the first most important thing that i want to communicate to you today is that survey research is a planning tool, it is not a predicter for what you want it to do. there have been many campaigns that i've worked on both politically and in terms of public policy where our side of the issue has started out we hind, and we've used what we've learned from the message testing in the polling to figure out how

to get the ahead. you want to basically use the poll to determine the most effective way to impact the electorate to be able to win. so i want to look at what you might call the ballot or whatever it is to figure out, okay, this is what is, therefore, this is what will be. now, the whole goal of your campaign is to impact public opinion to increase your numbers, your level of support. and keep in mind on a lot of public policy issues you don't have a clear leader. you have a lot of the electorate who are undecided. you know, so -- and i'm sure other people have talked about this. you're not necessarily going after the entire quote, unquote electorate. there might be a key group that you need to sway be it opinion leaders but, yes, it helps to have public opinion on your side. it's much more easy to pass what it is that you want to do. and then the pollster for the campaign works with the other

members of the team to make sure that you focus the rest of your resources more intelligently. you know, you think about the resources that you have in any campaign, it is time, it is money, and it is talent. so what polling does is take the added time to figure out how you use what you have in terms of resources more effectively. so why do you do survey research? number one is to define your target audience. who is it that you need to get to 50% plus one or whatever it is that your goal is? you know? again, you know, public policy issue you may be trying to affect two key u.s. senators who are swing votes. my understanding is it's cap and trade, correct? yeah. on cap and trade or a couple of

key swing house members. that might be who your target audience is. so what is it that you need to do to affect them? who do you need to affect to affect them? and how do you get to 50% plus one or how do you get to a majority in the house and the 60 votes in the senate? so it helps you develop your communications and message strategy. who are you going to target and what are you going to say? there are four elements of a winning campaign, and this applies both to politics and to public policy. number one in terms of the policy is what is the quality of our policy? you know, is it a worthwhile policy that people can understand and get behind? and is it something where they can see how it's going to benefit them or the greater good? overall? number two is having a focused message. you have to understand that even

though you may have 20 pages of talking points, people aren't going to listen to those 20 pages. voters be it general election voters or key voters in a particular state or area aren't stupid. they are very smart. they just don't can pay as much attention to this stuff as you might want them to because they have other things going on in their lives. however, when they do pay attention, you want them to hear your strongest message. you want them to understand what it is easily, you want to easily communicate what it is that is a compelling reason for them to support what it is you're trying to accomplish. then you have to have enough money to get out points number one and two, and then it helps to have a strong grassroots operation. you know, boots on the ground that can help give voice to your

policy and support of your policy. be it through the blogs, be it through phone calls to an office, letters to a congressional office or showing up to rallies or, you know, whatever it is it helps to have a strong grass roots effort. what survey research does is help you focus and refine the quality and also what your message is. there's no point p in talking to voters about something that does not, they don't find belief bl or does not resonate with them. for example, a number of years ago there was -- i know this is going to sound archaic now, but in the early '90s there was a cell phone cancer scare, allegations that cell phones caused cancer. and i did some work for the cellular telephone industry association. on that. one of the points we tested was

that this technology has been around since the 1940s. nobody believed that. so that was something that we dropped from our talking points, from their messaging when they had spokespeople go on tv. rather than try and tell people something that they just flat out didn't believe because, you know, cell phones in the early '90s were relatively new in terms of the general population. the technology had been used by the u.s. army as far back as, you know, some of the japanese and european campaignings of world war ii, but people weren't aware of that, and they had so much other messages to get out there that that was a pretty simple thing to drop. so, again, you want to convey to people things that they find believable and understandable. it also helps, survey research also helps you target. and the four simplest ways to target your message are by

geography, by political party, by gender and by age. and when you do surveys or focus groups on your messaging, those are things that you need to think about. typically when i'm doing a public policy campaign, we're often doing them with, you know, a couple of different key groups out of the electorate, maybe we'll have done a survey first and found that maybe independent women are a key group or, you know, again, it just depends on the issue. cap and trade. i would think that independent voters are going to be extremely important in terms of where people come down on cap and trade because you have partisan bases, you know, kind of on both sides for the most part. so once again the swing is going to be the key group. so why do you target a message? you know, the theory is simple which is the more often that communication, that people hear

communications about something the more likely they are to understand it, to hear it, for it to sink in and to act on that message. it used to be that the magic number was seven was what was believed to be. so, for example, one of the old rules of politics was that you always bought roughly 700 points, grps. has somebody talked about media points? okay. i'm getting a couple head nods. 700 grps to get an ad burned in. that was a long time ago. now it's up to 10-12, a thousand to 1200 points. that means the average person sees it between 10 and 12 times. so the number's significantly higher in what this should remind you is when you figure out who your target audience is, you need to figure out the best ways to reach them as often as possible. with your message.

don't assume just because you've said it once and they've heard it that they understand it and are going to act on it. it takes repetition. i'll say it again, it takes repetition. i like to remind, you know, when you're talking about political campaigns, i often hear from candidates saying, i'm tired of saying the same thing over and over again in my speeches. and the point i always make to them is, look, you're having different people in different parts of your state or district come and listen to you. so to them they're hearing it for the first time. and, you know, i hate to tell you this, your job is not to entertain yourself, it's to get a message through to them. potentially apock rah fill -- i don't know if it's true or not but it sounded good, saying that

they have at the coca-cola headquarters in atlanta. the time you think you're going to get sick if you hear the jingle one more time is about the time a single customer can hum it. you might be saying the same things over and over again, but you also have to recognize it's just now starting to get through to people. so why do you do survey research? one is to measure the mood of the electorate, whatever that the electorate is. you know, is there a mood for change on this issue? on cap and trade, you know, where is the tipping point that people say, yes, we need to do something, and this is the right policy. because from what i've seen of public opinion on this issue, there's a lot more people who say, yes, we need to do something than there is people who say, this is the right approach. and that's one of the challenges that the pro-cap and trade side

has in front of it. how important is the topic to real people? what other issues impact your fight? obviously, one of the biggest ones right now, impacting anything on cap and trade is the economic and job impact. you know, with 10% unemployment, that's a much more major consideration on this issue than if unemployment were, say, you know, 4.5%. or even, you know, 5.8% or whatever it is. so what are some of the other issues that impact your fight? another one is the debt and the deficit. you know, there's been a huge increase in the concern over those, over, over government spending. and the role of government. that's going to impact the cap and trade battle as well. and also how is, in this case

obviously, congress perceived? how congress trusted is congress -- trusted is congress to be doing the right thing on such a big issue that's not just an environmental fight, it's also a jobs fight, a quality of life battle as well. and, you know, let's face it, congress has been in somewhat of a rough patch over the last five or six years. and, you know, that's dependent, that's despite having a switchover in partisan control. so you have very significant challenges facing both sides. obviously, the side, the view that you're working against cap and trade democrats control the house and senate by sizable margins, it's a lot easier for them, for the pro-cap and trade side to put together a coalition, i think, than it is for the side that's opposed to cap and trade. you also want to do polling to

measure the image of key groups and individuals. you know, who are -- what are the images of the leaders, the groups that are involved in this fight? how far out there do you want them? do they have, you know, positive and negative impressions of those groups? keep in mind, you know, lot of the groups that are involved in this really aren't that well known by the american public. plus, the public is not that particularly fond of those groups either. groups these days tend to be very polarizing. there was a, i think it was a tom cowles cartoon in "the washington post" a couple of weeks ago where it was about the end of polling, how everybody was getting, you know, a zero approval rating. and, again, that's just the kind of challenge. americans are conservative and i say it with a small c. by that they are concerned about change. and, yes, i know change is a rallying cry, it's been a

rallying cry in many an election cycle for both parties. but ultimately, and we see it on this health care fight how hard that's been despite the huge democratic majorities in the house and senate, how hard that's been to come to an agreement and how poorly it's doing in the polls. right now health care along with clinton's impeachment and the initial back in the early '80s vote on aid to the contras are the three things we've been able to find that have been the most poorly perceived by the public right before congress is passed. so that tells you some of the, i'm sorry, policy challenges facing the next big issue whether it's cap and trade, whether it's immigration reform. but, you know, for your purposes, obviously, you're focused on cap and trade. you also want to determine the impact and intensity of vulnerabilities, and this is

where you start testing messages. i want to the make a couple of notes about this. what you need to do is you want to test your best messages, you also want to test your opponent's best messages. the other side's best messages. so you can best understand several things. one is which ones do you have to respond to? which ones should you just ignore? which ones when they're putting them out are actually helping your cause when they're making that case? so you can kind of, you know, bait them into using those messages more. what issues, what messages do you, are you, do you have that does the best job of moving those undecided voters? and how do you get, how do you strengthen support among voters who are soft or being cross-pressured by what the other side is saying? to me you always hear talk about

bases in political campaigns, your base is important. you can't lose your base. but ultimately, the difference between winning and losing a campaign whether it's a political campaign or a public policy campaign is how adept you are at winning over swing voters. ultimately, unless you totally mess up, you're basically going to be -- your base is going to be with you. one of the ways your base is with you is by the other side attacking you. and they say, oh, i see, those people i don't agree with are attacking these people. i kind of agree with them, now i agree with them a lot more, therefore, i've got to be with them. so your base gets shored up simply by you being attacked in many, many cases. but the swing vote, the persuadables, they're the ones who are much more open. and the difference between winning an issue with the electorate, you know, where

you've got 40% with you, 40% with the opposition and 20% undecided is how well you do with that undecided. now -- and i know i'm jumping around a little bit here. now, i also understand that simply winning -- let's say you get of that 20% you get 60% of that 20%, so you've got 52% support, 48% opposed. let's say that's where the numbers fall out. that doesn't mean you automatically win the issue because in a public policy fight, you can have the public on your side and still lose. or you can have the public gwen you and still win -- against you and still win. but it's, you know, a lot easier if the public's on your side. so you want to figure out how do you target and message those swing voters and what of what your opposition is saying has an impact? there have been many campaigns, and you have to be very careful

on this, you have to when you're looking at what your opposition is saying, you have to be honest about what it is they're saying and test the it in the best possible light for them so you can see what happens when they do it. you know, the nice thing is, you know, compared to -- dating myself now, but compared to 15, 20 years ago, you can just go to their web site and see how they're couching things and basically take that language, take those talking points and test them. and that makes life a lot easier because you know you're being fair as opposed to having to read through all the clips, although that's helpful to do as well, and see how they're wording it. here they tend to, you know, on the web site they tend to say what they think is their strongest message. you also want to see what happens if you've been hit during the campaign if you're doing tracking on the issue or

occasional brush fires, and i'll talk about all that in a minute. i also know that you have a limited amount of resources in this campaign. and that's going to be, that's a huge challenge for you. and i want to hear from you in a minute about, you know, what your approaches are or maybe that's too soon. i don't know. when is your plan due? >> saturday. >> saturday, okay. hopefully you've got a good outline of what the -- well, we've talked about the themes and messages. oh, yeah. and then you want to use it to chart movement during the campaign both overall and among subgroups if you're, again, i know you've got a limited budget, but in an ideal world and maybe i also know that you're going out and you're trying to, quote, get money from other coalition members to put, kind of putting together a coalition effort. so what, you know, who can we pull away from the other side? who's most vulnerable to persuasion? finish you also need to do it,

survey research often can establish credibility with several different sources. number one is the campaign team itself. you have to have a reason for your plan, and it has to be based on something rather than just intuition. political intuition is important, but it also helps to be backed up by day that or certainly impacted and shaped by day that. so you might be heading down the right highway, but you could find yourself, you know, heading to the wrong destination. and polling helps you do that, and it also means -- helps convince you to stay with the plan. secondly, you know, it helps to be able to show people who you're trying to raise money from that you have a chance to win. and then finally, the immediate california -- media. don't always release your polls to the media. in fact, many times you don't. you use them for internal

planning purposes. but sometimes your polling or some of the things that you're learning it make sense to talk to the media about why you're doing it and what you're doing so that you get more favorable coverage and kind of more understanding of what it is, you know, your approach to the campaign to try and win the public policy battle. >> glen, before we go on is it true that if you have a high quality pollster, it helps, it gives people a comfort level in funding? in other words, if you go with some marginal survey group, sometimes it doesn't help in terms of going and getting more funds. is that correct? >> i think that's helpful. i mean, i think it's a sign that the campaign has a strong team the, you know, it's one element of a strong team. >> so if they go with pos, they're going to get more money. >> i don't know that that's always the case, but it's

certainly something they can say, look, here's some credible people involved in our team, and we have our act together. >> candidates are that way also. >> right. so dos and don'ts, look, the reason you do a survey is to help you sort out your messages, and i know you've heard me talk about message a lot. that is the heart of what you're doing. everything else is very important, but no matter what it is that you're doing, you're doing it to figure out how you're delivering your message or, you know, whether it's, you know, getting bloggers to take up your case, whether it's getting people to sign up for the texts, whether it's people, you know, getting them to do e-mails or phone calls, whatever it is it's all because they were all motivated by your messaging to get involved. plus you're using them to deliver your message as well. you want to figure out the

points of contrast. if we give our strongest argument against their strongest argument, who wins that fight? you know, and what parts of our strong argument work best, what parts of their argument work best that we have to deal with? as i mentioned, assess progress and plot a course to victory. it's not going to be for magical answers. us yo do a survey -- and this won't be hard to convince you -- if all you want to do is find out if you're ahead or behind. and if nothing has happened to change the political environment, the issue since the last time you did polling or survey research, focus groups, whatever it is that is part of your research effort. so the survey process you want to hire somebody that you feel comfortable with, working with throughout the course of the campaign. you want to work with the pollster to develop a plan and, of course, that plan is

flexible. it is very rare that we do a plan and then stick exactly to it. you want to work through multiple drafts of the survey with the pollster. survey's generally in the field for two or three nights. results, you know, should be available to you the morning after the last night of interviewing's complete. and then you'll want a presentation analysis with the pollster as soon as possible avenue after the survey is completed, usually 3-6 working days to get that ready. okay. you've heard, you'll hear, you've heard some of the terms identify thrown out -- i've thrown out, but when you look at surveys and, again, if you have any questions as i'm talking about this stuff because i know you want to apply it to your own plan, and some of what i say might be more helpful if you're asking, okay, here's what we're thinking about doing, you know,

how much is this and does this make sense, or here's what we're focusing on in our campaign. what would you recommend from a polling standpoint or, you know, focus groups? benchmark is usually the most comprehensive survey, it's where you test, you know, ballot -- it says candidate, but images of key people, groups. the importance of the issues, positive and negative messages on both sides. and that, generally, is the biggest -- it may take as long as 20-25 minutes per interview, and, of course, today, you know, we have -- there are a lot more challenges, and i usually get questions on this, so i'll start bringing it up in case it prompts other questions. there are a lot more challenges than there were, say, even ten years ago, six years ago in the survey field. and that is, you know, the increased number of people who are cell phone can only. and then the other is you have

declining participation rate. and just for an example, when i started in the survey business, first company i worked for i graduated au in 1985. i know i look a lot younger. that was a joke. [laughter] not the '85 part, the younger part. back in 19 # 5 we used to get five, we used to pull five numbers for every one complete we needed as part of our sample. so if we were doing, let's say, a 500 sample statewide, we would pull 2500 phone numbers. now, depending on the state, it's anywhere from 20-35 numbers that we expect because the participation rate is a lot lower, people are less likely to answer their phones and then cell phone interviewing is something that, you know, we've done in some instances, but it's a lot more expensive, and that

makes it, you know, a lot of clients say, well, let's make sure we just have enough younger voters in our camp sample that we're -- sample that we're not missing them because we're, you know, pause we're not doing the cell phone only. and that's another challenge is, it's a lot easier to interview people over the age of 50 than it is to interview people under the age of 50 because they're just much more likely to have land lines and answer them and participate in a survey. so, you know, when you look at those challenges, those are driving up the costs of polling because the harder it is to reach people, the more time and effort it takes. therefore, the more it costs. >> glen -- >> i like this guy. he's got a lot of questions. [laughter] >> some of your competitors are using internet polling, large pools of people who opt in to be, they're willing to be polled

four million, five million in the base. what's your opinion about that? >> well, for political campaigns it's just not a credible survey or sampling process. for something like this if there's certain audiences that you want to test the things on, that can make some sense. and we've done things where we've tested ads, for example, online with internet folk almost in a focus group, but they're able to look at it, go in and dial on those ads on the computer. you know, kind of up and down on whether they like the ad or not on their own schedule as opposed to, you know, everybody in one room in a focus group. so given can what you're doing, i think it would be worth looking at because internet polling is much, much less

expensive. the challenge is you cannot say that it is statistically project bl to the population as a whole for all sorts of reasons. but if there's a specialized audience, like, let's say -- a lot of times when we do work on environmental issues, we might do it with doctors, for instance. in terms of the health effects. so we can do internet polling with doctors. now, i'm not saying that for cap and trade. i'm trying to think of who you might want to use internet polling for cap and trade with. in other words, i wouldn't necessarily rule it out, but given your issue you've got to think long and hard to figure out what is a viable way to do it to make sure that you have a solid sample of who it is that you're trying to interview another group is let's say you want to test attitudes among

high-income households. you can do that by phone or that sort of thing on the internet. but, you know, very high-income households. again, i don't know -- i can't sit here and tell you, gee, this is how i would do it in cap and trade. >> thank you. >> yep. any other -- oh, go ahead. in the back. >> yeah. i was wondering when you were talking about targeting who you're going to poll, some surveys differ in the terms of whether they go after registered voters or likely voters? what, in your opinion, do you think would be better to two after? >> generally, i think that likely voters are better because they're the ones who are participating, and i know if i were a member of congress in a swing district, i really wouldn't care what adults think, and i would be semiinterested in what registered voters might think, but i really want to know what likely voters think -- >> [inaudible] >> yeah.

>> [inaudible] >> yeah. because that's who's going to effect my future as a member of congress next november. i'll just kind of work my way across. >> yeah, sure. about how much does messaging focus group cost and where, where would you say that you should do it in the process of, say, you start your campaign at the end of january, should that be the first thing you do? >> i think it's very helpful to do it pretty quickly. to figure out -- and i think in this case you might find that messaging focus groups are, like, your best option for research given your limited budget because, again, the point of survey research is not to bankrupt the campaign, it is to help you spend the rest of your resources more intelligently. and to me looking at what you guys are facing on issue, the most important thing you can do is get your messaging down pat. and, obviously, things can

change, but focus groups cost anywhere between the depending on the circumstances roughly 7,000 to 8500 a group depending on how specialized it is. and in terms of geographically where you would do it at, i think that is a decision that you have to make based on several things. one is i never like to do just one focus group. there's usually at least a pair. because you want to make sure that you're not getting some, you know, wacky result on one thing and you're hearing just sort of one person in a group can sometimes lead the focus group? the wrong direction. second thing is you have to figure out who it is you're trying to impact. let's say it's senator x from a swing state. it makes sense to do it among swing voters in that state. so to figure out what resonates with them, you also have to recognize, though, that there's a limit to that.

what works in, oh, let's say southwest virginia or west virginia isn't going to be the same as what works in new york, for instance. or ohio or california or florida. so you have to kind of, you know, take that into account as well. >> so i understand what you just said about the focus groups, but one of the polls that they release sometimes and i'm not sure if this is just for, like, media reasons or what, but they do polls on, for instance, congressional districts that these are, like, the 17 congressional districts that are all, you know, potential swing in the next one. and they say that they conducted the poll from respondents in all 17 of the congressional districts. so what my question is, taking into account sub sampling where, you know, you do 200-400 people just to get some sort of statistically-significant data, would it be more economical to do a benchmark poll that was spread out through, like, five or ten different states that you

wanted to target, that way all you have to do is come up with one question methodology or one response or would it be economically the same as spending money on five different polls? you would save money on the question development, wouldn't you? >> yes. and -- well, you've raised a number of different things. the challenge is to do a statewide survey, you generally need if it's a small state, an at-large state -- north dakota, for instance, south dakota, vermont although vermont's not a swing state in this case, obviously, or -- montana. you would need to do at least 400 interviews. if it's a larger state the, you know, kind of a small to medium-sized state, you'd want to do 500 interviews, 600 for the next tier up.

california, florida size you'd want to do l800. what max talked about is doing, you know, five key states. you might do a thousand interviews. you can't really look at the data per state, but you can say among these swing states, here's where the electorate comes down. and, yes, that would be less expensive than doing five 500-sample surveys because three things effect surveys. number one is the sample size. the larger the sample, the more it costs. obviously. so the difference between doing 500 in a state, you know, and doing 900 in a state it's not -- well, let me make the math simpler for myself right now. the difference between doing 400 and 500 in a state, if you're doing 500, that's 25% more

interviews. the cost isn't a full 25%, but it's about 20-22%. so if it's a small enough state where h 00 is sufficient, that savings is worthwhile. the other, you know, the other thing, another thing that affects the cost is how long is the questionnaire? a ten minute survey is less expensive than a 20 minute survey. it's not half the cost because the first minute of a survey is the most expensive. the second is the second most expensive, and it kind of goes down from there. just getting a qualified respondent on the phone is the most expensive part of the survey. and then the third thing is how easy it is to get people who qualify for the survey. for example, if you're polling and you just want to know where swing voters are and you don't want to interview republicans

and democrats, let's say swing voters are 30% of a state, that's what you call your incidence is 30% of the people you interview are going to qualify for that. and you have a list of likely voters, past voters. but 30% of them fit, and your incidence rate is pretty low. if it's, you know, if you broaden it out, then your incidence rate goes up. forget about incidence rate right now unless you're talking about polling a specialized group. so i'm not sure i fully answered your question. do you have a follow-up? >> yeah. would you recommend that at all, or -- >> yeah. >> -- or rather go the focus group route? >> if it's something you're thinking about simply releasing focus groups does not have a lot of credibility with the press, but if you're doing, as you said, 17 key congressional districts or five key statewide, that polling is going to cost a heck of a lot more than doing two, four, six, or even eight,

whatever, focus groups. so, you know, it's a budget trade-off. a lot depends on what you want to do with it. you think, hey, if we release this survey, obviously, you don't always know, you know, you might see some other data that leads you to believe, oh, we're going to get some pretty decent results but, you know, you might do the survey and find out this is not something you want to release because it's not going to help you raise money, it's not going to help you attract people and get them more involved. >> would it help with message testing? >> yes. >> [inaudible] >> and statistically it would be better, more helpful, more valid to you. it's just a trade-off of price versus, you know, what you can do in the campaign. >> what do 20-30-question polls

cost? >> 2500 respondent? how big? >> 20-30 questions? >> i haven't priced too many 2500-sample -- in fact, i haven't priced any of them, but you would figure it would be about, oh, let's break it down. oh, probably close to 100 grand. >> oh, wow. >> yeah. >> thank you. >> yep. >> slightly more realistic, i think, example. say i wanted to poll a thousand likely voters over, say, several states. would it be possible to get that done for, say, $30,000? is that a possible, possible out there with a reputable poller? >> for a thousand? >> $30,000. >> no, a thousand interviews? that would be a relatively short survey. my perspective would be if your budget is 30,000, try knock

it -- knocking it down to 800, and i think it's worthwhile to ask more questions than it is to necessarily have a bigger sample size. you have to recognize, though, it's for internal planning purposes which, again, keep in mind is the primary reason to do a poll anyhow is to help you in your planning. so -- >> [inaudible] >> sure. >> you're talking about focus groups. could you just give, like, a 30, 60-second explanation -- >> oh, sure. that's a good question. focus groups are anywhere from 10-12 people you pull into a room, usually with a one-way mirror at a facility sometimes in rural parts of the country you have to do them in a hotel room and you have the video camera in there and they have people, the clients behind the glass watching, and you have -- it's roughly a two hour-long process. typically we do two in a night, and the moderator, like, i moderate groups. you know, lots of trained

moderators will have worked with the client to develop the discussion guide. and the discussion guide is a loosely-structured thing that kind of brings you to the, you know, brings up the topics. you can hand out information, you can show advertising. sometimes there are the dial groups that you've probably seen, you know, you can use the dials to react to advertising. so it's a fairly free-flowing discussion. it is not a statistically valid sampling of the electorate by any stretch. what it does do, though, is give you clues on messaging, and it helps, you know, figure out what works and what is not credible. for example, you know, we used dial groups in, you know -- in a recent public policy initiative

that i did, it was a huge state and very expensive. so we only had enough for two weeks of television, so that meant we had one ad we could run, and we had to make sure that ad was perfect, and we were behind in the polls. now, we were on the no side, so it's always easier to beat something than to pass something, you know? it's much easier to be on the no side than on the yes side in terms of public opinion. but we did multiple focus groups where we, where the advertising agency put together anywhere from eight, you know, well, we started with eight different ads, rough cuts, and we tested those. we found out what people liked, didn't like, you know, about the issue and about the ads. then we came back two weeks later with four rough cuts. and they were vastly different than the first eight. there were some elements that were the same, but it was all stuff that we learned from the groups. then we came back with two weeks

later two more spots that looked like the last four but still were different and simplified. we tested those, figured out which one resonated the best in terms of getting our message across to the get people to vote no on this issue, and that's the spot they then, you know, actually shot and spent full production money on and put on tv. so, you know, that's an example of using -- now, that's a lot of different focus groups, but it was something that the campaign felt, look, we've only got one bite at this apple, we've got to make sure that it's the right one. >> this is sort of a general question, but what is it that makes pollsters have to be partisan? >> that's a good question. and it's a very simple answer. if i'm meeting with republican leadership and we're talking about strategic moves, i then can't go across the street or

across the hall and talk with democratic leaders about strategic moves. so that would be, that would be, you know, there's a lot of trust and confidence in pollsters. and we're like, you know, almost like attorneys in that it's very privileged information. so we can't be talking out of school. now, that said i've done work with -- our firm's done a lot of work and lots of firms have on nonpartisan issues or on public policy issues where we work with with democrat firms whether it be democratic polling firms or for media polls. for example, i along with stan greenberg do the polling for national public radio. i do three or four, oh, four or five polls a year. one of my business partners, bill, does "the wall street journal," nbc "wall street journal" -- got to get the brand right -- along with peter hart, long-time democratic pollster.

we're doing projects with democrats all the time, and in that i get to know them, and when we work against each other in campaigns, after the campaign we'll sometimes compare notes and say, hey, what were you seeing at that time? and it's remarkable how similar our data was. the differences are what are we recommending to the campaigns in terms of the strategy? and i will tell you this, too, which is, guess what? as a republican who's worked on a ton of republican campaigns, i understand republican primary electorates very well. i do not understand democratic primary electorates that well. so if i were working on a democratic primary, that would be -- and i'll give you a perfect example. one of my clients was senator specter of pennsylvania. and i have a great deal of personal regard for the senator and his team. but the day he announced his party switch which came a few days after a poll that i did for him showing that -- and this is,

you know, he's talked about this -- showing he had no chance in hell in a republican primary, you know, i resigned from the campaign. he did what he felt he had to do to best improve his chances of winning reelection to the u.s. senate, but at the same time i couldn't in good conscious try and increase the number or keep the number of democrats in the u.s. senate the same. and also, frankly, given that he's facing a democratic primary my experience in democratic primaries is next to nil other than looking at some of those polls. so i would not have been much use to his campaign anyhow. >> do you think that push polls are ever effective, and is there a place for them in issue campaigns and political campaigns? >> okay. we've got 25 minutes, i'm going to spend 24 of them on push polls. [laughter] okay, let me talk about what

push polls are and what they're not. what push polls are is what i prefer to call because more true negative advocacy calling. in other words, push polls are where you call thousands of people under the guise of a survey. you present them with -- could be true or could be false -- but generally negative information. it's usually the weekend before an election. you're going to say, look, glen, you've talked about testing positives and negatives. isn't that push polling? we're doing a statistical sample, maybe interviewing let's say in a pretty good-sized state interviewing maybe 600 likely voters. the cost of that survey s let's say it's $35,000. or, you know, that means per -- and let's say we're doing it, we're testing those messages in

june to get ready for the september and october media buzz. my experience is because i get these calls all the time from my campaign who says, oh, we have a supporter who was push polled last night by our opponent. okay, let me talk to 'em. what were you asked? well, they asked about my opinion of obama. they asked who i was going to vote for, and they said some not nice things about our candidate and all in all i think i was on the phone about 20 minutes. and that's the level of detail that they recall. you know, sometimes they can remember specific things that were tested, but the point of it is if you're doing a push poll in june, quote, unquote push poll in june of 600 people, that's a very expensive way to try and move the electorate. what you're trying to do is figure out, okay, if we do this, if we say this and they say

that, how do people react? and then you try and replicate that later in the campaign if it works to your advantage. there's lots of things that i've tested that don't work. and you say, okay, we spent a little money on that question, we learned it doesn't work, let's throw that out. but what push polling is is something that's done in the last three or four days. now, on a public policy campaign i don't know what it would be unless you're just trying for a specific area trying to spread a rumor or, you know, i mean, again, if you're trying to get across negative information that's factual, then you have to make a decision about whether that's the right thing to do or not. but it's not the same as polling, per se. or by any stretch. but you might just say, okay, that's a delivery mechanism. i don't particularly care for that because i think there's more effective ways to deliver a message, more cost-efficient ways as well. but, you know, sometimes late in a campaign a campaign will

decide to do that. again, push polling or negative advocacy calling, the information may be true or it may be false. if it is false, that is highly reprehensible. there's no room in a campaign for false information. and i have been in campaigns that have used false information, and it has been a mistake by the campaign. in other words, they didn't knowingly use false information. i've always been in campaigns where i believe knowingly false information was used. i think that's a mistake, that's a sign of a desperate campaign that generally is failing and does fail. but most of the time when something like, you know, boy, i'll tell you, there's nothing worse in a campaign than putting up knowingly false information because the press and your opposition is going to call you on it, and it's oftentimes going to blow up in your face. now, i'm sure you can point to something in a campaign that counters that, but those are going to be the exceptions

rather than the rules. >> glen, i know you've got a lot more material, but i'd like to focus on this for a second. push polls are not polls, and i was on the ethics committee of the american association of political consultants for years, and the two timed that we censured people during that year were when people used push polls, when they used untrue, negative calls and they called it a poll. so i hope you don't go away from this thinking that push polls are polls, they're not. as you said, they're negative calls, and many times they are false negative calls. >> i think the process is dying out because i hear about it a lot less. that doesn't mean testing negatives in a poll is dying out. what i like to do, though, is i like to test both positive and negative on my opponent and positive and negatives on ourselves too. because i want to know, look, there's stuff out there that they're going to the say about our side be it a candidate or an issue, we've got to find out

whether that is something we can ignore or we need to deal with. so there have been times where i've been in the field with a survey and people have called our candidate and said, hey -- or the campaign and said, hey, they're doing, you know, your opponent is doing push polling. well, what are some of the things they're saying about me? and it's all the stuff that we're testing on. so that's part of it as well. i have a little more stuff to cover, but it's not as important as answering your questions. i've seen some hands that i might not have gotten to. are there any questions? okay. i want to cover a couple of things real quick. let me go back to this. you'll -- talking about sample sizes and different margin of error, you hear a lot about margin of error. a couple of things you need to know about margin of error, it is, in my mind, the most overrated part of polling because if you pull the sample incorrectly, let's say you're doing a 500-interview survey and

the margin of error is plus or minus 4.8%. the next time you pull it that same way incorrectly doesn't mean the results are going to be within that percent of being kind of where public opinion is, it means the next survey should be within what the first incorrect survey was too. and the same is if you have a biased questionnaire or poorly-written questionnaire. so the margin of error only means something if you're doing the sampling and the questionnaire design correctly. and then the other thing is if i do a 500-sample survey in, oh, let's say south carolina, the margin of error is plus or minus 4.38. if i do a 500-sample survey in california, the margin of error is plus or minus 4.38. i'm sorry, california's too big,

too diverse to do a 500-sample, the more proper thing would be to do an 800 sample. so that's, again, why i feel when people are asked what's the margin of error on the survey i always answer them, but it's also, look, if the survey's done incorrectly or it's not appropriate to the geographic size and the diversity and the -- not just geographic size, but population size, then it's kind of a moot point as well. okay. understanding how to read polls. look, polls are not very good at predicting the future. they are snapshots at the electorate at a specific point in time. if you ask if they favor or oppose something. if you look back, for example, let's look at the recent health care fight. if you look back to early spring, you had majority, you had pretty good majorities supporting the health care plan.

you go back to the summertime, and it was getting close, it was still a majority, but it was much closer to 50/50. by late summer, early fall opinion had turned against it. and now opinion is strongly against it. again, the democrats in congress have said, hey, look, this is important to us. we think that once this passes and people have this program, this plan, public opinion's going to turn around on this. that's the risk that they're willing to take. but what this does show is that -- and they could be right. again, the opposition we see now could turn around in a couple of months or a couple of years. but, you know, as you, as you -- campaigns whether they be political campaigns or public policy campaigns are about biasing people. to support you. now, it's hard to move large numbers generally. you know, i will say this having

done bob mcdonald's campaign in virginia there wasn't a point in time before early october that i thought we had a chance to win big. if you looked at virginia, it had voted for obama by seven points a year ago, it had elected it last two u.s. senators were democrats, the last two governors were democrats, the house -- i'm sorry, the congressional make-up delegation went from majority republican by a large margin to the 6-5 democratic majority. and the state senate had gone to the democrats. the state house was, you know, teetering on the brink. so it was a purple state that was turning shades of blue. and the democrats nominated what they thought, who they thought was their strongest candidate. he won the primary by 2-1 over the other two candidates in there even though he was badly outspent. so for bob mcdonald to then turn around and win 59-41 was a

pretty remarkable achievement. some of that was helped by our good campaign and some was helped by an environment that tilted more in our direction than it had been even back in june. but again, that just shows you that a poll in june that we took that had us behind we were using it as a planning tool not to predict the election. oops. some of the pages didn't translate here. well, there's other reasons in terms of understanding how to read polls. but we're running somewhat low on time, so, again, the bottom line is and i'll then throw it open to final questions, and i know if you guys are either too tired or too shy to ask questions which i find hard to believe, that dr. thurber will have a couple of good questions. laugh but polling helps you put together a road map for where you want to be.

here's where you are now, how do you get to where you need to be either on election day or when the final vote is taken in the legislature, legislative body, whatever it is? the ballot test early on can be one of the most least -- one of the most least -- one of the least important questions in the survey. you need to use your polling, your research whether it's focus groups or what to test messages both for you, against your opponent, against you and for your opponent. i need to put that -- i know what i'm saying, but if i read it, i see where people could be concerned. late polling is important to fine tune the campaign and the advertise thing, it's not an academic exercise. in this case, you know, it helps drive your political strategy, so, you know, go to a professional when you do it. ..

>> what's a typical response? >> that's a good question. the best they can do is point to what it is in their survey that makes sense given what's going on in the broader picture of things. find other data that supports that. and also point to their track record. you know, in a particular area, state, or what have you. for example, i was eninvolved in the gubernatorial primary. and our polls showed the guy i was working for had a pretty healthy lead.

and somebody was going these push button polls, which i'm not necessary knocking that part of it. but this is somebody who had never done polling before. they were grassroots activist in the state, blogger type who thought this would be a good thing to do to get more attention from my web site and political consulting business. he was basically showing the racing of three way that he -- you know, everybody kept saying, glen, are your polls rate? are we doing the right thing? all i could do is point to the experience in the state to the fact that what he was doing was new and certain things that made sense. the happy story is that my candidate won by a healthy margin. this guy had to admit that maybe his polling wasn't right. but that's a very simple --

simplistic story. if they put out a poll, the anti-folks are going to throw cold water on it, and vice versa. that's just part of the back and forth on an issue. go to the back then i'll come over to you. >> going back, maybe like the roll-out strategy when you have a poll done and completed. would you say it's a good idea to -- who do you give more credence to to going out there and following the poll? members of congress that are on your side, more of a grassroots organizational level or the polling firm itself? who would you best go with it? >> i think in this day and age, it doesn't make sense to release the poll. even if it is a good poll, we

might not want to release it. the decision is yes, you want to get as much -- you want to get as much coverage, attention as possible. so, you know, you have as many different avenues of getting the poll out there, using many different as possible. >> i have a question about margin of era. i hadn't learned about this until not too long ago. i sure i got it wrong. i think the press was giving it to me wrong. they weren't aware of margin of era. when you say that plus or minus .4 percentage. say it's 54 to 55%. that one could be as high. they would report that perhaps as in my example, clinton has an eight-point lead. and the margin is plus or minus 4 points.

she's ahead. but really it's plus or minus four, you have to do that with each candidate. >> yeah, i tend to look at the averaging. on the presidential aa prove rating or presidential ballot, you tend to look at the a of that. and one quick note on presidential approval. what you'll see is adults, president obama always has higher than he does among voters and voters among likely voters. you know, so be it. when you see an outlier. let's say you were to see a poll right now that has him at 57 or 41? before you get -- if you're a supporter of the president, before you get -- before you get too excited about it, you want to see another one in that same area. or if you are an opponent you see one at 41, before you get too excited over that, you want to see another one that shows him in the low 40s range as

opposed to the upper 40s that he's in right now. if you see one, talking about the clinton/giuliani situation. if there are several polls out, it would be pretty low. then it's pretty -- you know, good assumption that she's over 50%, and he's, you know, more than just one or two points behind, anywhere between four to eight points behind. that's how you would want to look at that data. not every poll now or every issue has a lot of polls coming out. what you're going to see though once the cap-and-trade issue comes to the forefront again, it's going to be polled very often. one the biggest challenges you are going to face in analyzing data is how you word

cap-and-trade. because if you just say cap-and-trade to people, they have no idea what you are talking about. or very few have any idea what you are talking about. so, you know within the favorite recent health care plan proposed by obama and democrat and congress. yeah, i might not know every day tail about -- detail about it, but i know i have an opinion. i'll give you my opinion. do you favor current cap-and-trade bill? they'd be like huh? by the way, that might be a helpful thing tad. he likes to do, mark melman is do you favor, oppose, or not have an opinion. so one of the earliest questions in the poll could be your favor or oppose cap and trade. or do you not have an opinion. right now if you were to ask

that, not have an opinion would be pretty high. i couldn't predict what the favor is. just because i'm not sure how high the undecided would be. but what you might find is five months from now after the fight has been taking place, you might find that no opinion has dropped significantly. and just kind of knowing where the change has come would be helpful. i would also ask more than just that. again to me the key is going to be for your campaign that you are doing, what are the most compelling messages for your side, for the most compelling side against your oppositions, and then also knowing what they are going to come after you on and what you have to deal with. >> you have made the cost of running focus group in four to five different states campaign message would be? >> well, you have the cost of the groups. which i would budget roughly $7500 a group. but then you also have the cost

of travel. which, you know, might not be that i guess significant. so just depends on the key states. there are ways you can kind of keep that lower. by trying to use moderators from that particular area. but you still want, the poll that you have on your team would still want to be there and in charge of that. >> it's being tossed around on all sorts of things. >> yes, a lot of them aren't necessarily nice. >> what do you any do you physically write the questions, do the targeting, do the samples, ask the questions, and then analyze it? what -- how does the process work? >> right. here's what the pollsters should do for you. they should work with you to develop a research design. in other words, here's who are doing -- here's where we're doing to sample, here's the

sample size we're going to use, and then you work on the questionnaire. you know, typically what i like to do is we'll read a lot of background information on an issue. then do a conference call with the client. having taken on multiple people on suggesting things that we ought to test and do a first draft. get that to the client. the client then, you know, edits that, makes some comments, maybe we do another conference call to follow up. i like here's what's messing. we need to add this part. these things in here. we need to word this differently. sometimes, you know, there's back and forth arguments. argument is not quite the right word. but more of a we need to word it this way. i'll either say yes, that makes sense. i understand that better now. i didn't understand it when i designed the question. or no, that's biasing it too much. you have to be able to say no to

want client as well. but it's a process of working together on. because you know the issue well. and the pollsternos how to design questionnaires. and so both are involved. and we have a phone center that we have to understand what we are doing and why and the direction we ought to go. anything else? thank you very much. good luck with your project. [applause] >> i want to thank him also for hiring several of our graduates over the years.

sometimes they are still -- a couple are still there. we appreciate that very much. thank you. >> thank you. >> we're going to come back at 3:00. i suggest that you get up and run around the track out here in the cold weather for, you know, a mile or something. let it go into your brain. very long day. i told it it was going to be like paris island. today we have a lot of speakers. the next one is going to be terrific from microsoft. get up, get some exercise. see you at 3:00. [inaudible conversations]

>> they'll return at 3:00. we'll bring our live coverage. when they return the focus will be on corporate lobbying. we'd like to show the portion of the inauguration for the new mayor in houston. >> i do love this city. [cheers and applause] >> i bet you heard that before. but i can't stop saying it. thank you.

i want to thank all houstonians for honoring me with your trust, and your hopes for the future. to serve this city has been my highest aspiration. to work with you on the pressing issues and challenges we face, it my mission. i will respect the office, and i revere the oath i have taken. i want to congratulate our new city council members and the city controller, having served in both of those positions. i know the challenges and the opportunities that they face. i salute their service to our city. this is a good council.

truly representative of our city. and it's diversity. [applause] >> so please honor them again. [applause] >> there will be times when we disagree on how to achieve success. but understand each of us is here because we care deeply about this city. and we will bring our best forward. and i look forward to working with you. this is an opportunity for me to welcome my extended family. and to acknowledge the family members that i have here down on the front row. starting with my mother, kay parker. [cheers and applause]

>> i can't quite see them. but i know they are there. our children, marqita, danielle, and jovan, please stand. [cheers and applause] >> yes, our family too looks a little like houston, doesn't it? my sister, allison in from georgia and three of her four children. please rise. [cheers and applause] >> my sister-in-law, her husband, and their son as well, please rise. my inlaws, dick and ginny, and

mike's brother, rick, please rise. [cheers and applause] >> all the way in from buffalo, they like the weather here a little bit better. thank you. now to those of you in the room today and to those of you who may be watching or hearing this, i'm going to ask of you three things. first i'm going to ask for your prayers. we have enormous challenges ahead. all that we must do will be done. but there are many things that we should do that can be done. and we will strive mightily for it. i know that we can achieve anything that we want to do with

hard work and with your prayers. i ask for your patient. some things cannot be rushed. a city is a continue continue -- continuum. they are another and perhaps in another. it may seem as if very little progress is being made. and the compromises, the give and take of government, can be a slow and difficult process. but we have a range of voices and opinions in the council of chamber because no one of us has all of the answers. and all voices must be heard. sometimes democracy is a little messy. but we get there. and thirdly, i'm going to ask for your perseverance. we are in this together for the

duration. you must commit your time and your energy to houston. we rise or we fall together. we succeed or we fail together. actually, i'll ask for a fourth thing. as much as we try, and as hard as we work, and for all of the right reasons that we do things, we will make mistakes. and we will have failures. so i'm going to ask for your forgiveness in advance. [cheers and applause] >> i have already introduced my mom. and i know how proud she is of me. though my dad died many, many years ago, i know he too would be extremely proud.

but i want to say how proud i am of them. and of the values that they taught me. many of you know that i grew up here in houston. i grew up out in spring branch. and, in fact, i'll call out ms. startdig. we grew up on the same street. a little short street in spring branch. we did not have much money. both of my parents worked. my dad usually works two and three jobs. my mom always worked outside the home. both of my grandmothers worked outside the home. i come from a long line of working women. [cheers and applause] >> my family thought me to work hard. my family taught me to accept

responsibility. my family taught me to always get the job done. and my family also taught me to contribute back to my community. [cheers and applause] >> those -- thank you. [cheers and applause] >> those are the values on which houston was founded. hose are the values that i try to teach my own kids. those are the values that will shape our future as a city. in these past few months, actually more than a few months of campaigning, as i've traveled across this city, i kept meeting folks who reminded me of my own mother and father. people struggling with two and three jobs just to get by. fathers worried about putting food on the table. mothers worried about crime. worried about their children's education. farms worried about taxes.

neighbors worried about preserving the communities they love. [cheers and applause] >> i want you to know this. all of you. the city of houston is on your side. we will get through this together. i know that the city's work force is one of the best anywhere. [cheers and applause] >> i -- [cheers and applause] >> i see them every day. i know many of them. and i know the commitment they have to doing a great job. we hear on the news about the problems. the things that go wrong in the city. in truth, we rarely notice the smooth working of our city. how much of this city goes right

every day? we miss the smaller invisible events. like two water department crew who worked through a cold february night to repair a sewage leak. the nurse at one of our clinics that worked a double shift because they were short staffed. and then that worked that double shift three days in a row. the park employee who rescues a dog from the drainage kluver in a middle of a thunderstorm and not thoroughly soaked and ant bitten in the doing. probably along with the dog. but those are everyday acts for our city employees. thousands of small acts that most people never hear of. so to the unsung heros of the city work force i want you to know this. the citizens of houston are on

your side. we're in this together. [cheers and applause] >> every speech by every mayor will discussion the economic downturn. in many cities services has been cut back, employees have been furloughs or laid off, the quality of life in many cities was not what it was four years ago. we will not let that happen to the city of houston. [cheers and applause] >> we do face challenges. we have a budget shortfall here in the city. like all big cities, we have departments that could take a good look at themselves and

honestly ask if they are doing the best job. there are always opportunities for efficiencies and improvement. but i've been handed a good city in good shape and i thank mayor white for that. [cheers and applause] >> yes, we have an aging infrastructure, there are issues in our pinches, and we're going to have to redistrict this city in this term. those are channels, i know, that we are all eager to address. -- those are challenges, i know, that we are all eager to address. i will speak about the priorities when i deliver the state of the city speech in

april. but i firmly believe that our city's future will be shaped by our citizens, not our politicians. i welcome your suggestions, i seek your ideas for the future -- [applause] >> city's success can be measured by the involvement and satisfaction of its citizens. how they view the quality of life in their city. and what our citizens want the city to be for their children. as i said, we're in this together. and you are part of the process. a city must be a place as margaret meade said, where groups of women and men are seeking and developing the highest things they know. and that's what we are set to do. i know that houston is a city of open arms. and very warm hearts.

and after katrina, the whole world knew that as well. thank you for opening yourselves to those in need. [cheers and applause] >> we're a city of opportunity. and we are a city of optimism. we have a sense of partnering. and a respect for our differences. houston is a city built on dreams. but our dreams are always powered by hard work, they are guided by common sense, and they are inspired by creativity. i spoke on election night of this being an historic election. and my election made news around the world. now, houstonians weren't very

surprised that they had elected the first gay mayor of a major american city. we have a tradition of electing mayors not for who they are, but for what they believe we can do as a city. [cheers and applause] >> american icons, three original documentaries from c-span. now available on dvd. a unique journey through the iconic homes of the three branches of the american government. see the detail of the supreme court within go beyond the white house, the america's most famous home, and explore the history, art, and architecture of the capitol. a three disk, dvd set. one of the many items available

at c-span.org/store. >> there's less than a month left to enter c-span's 2010 student cam contest. top prize $5,000. just create a five to eight-minute video on one of our country's greatest strength or one of the channels that that -- challenge that our country is is facing. don't wait another minute. do to studentcam.org for contest rules and info. >> we're just a minute away from continuing the coverage of the strategy lectures. the next discussion will focus on corporate lobbying here in washington. while we have a moment a couple of real quick news stories from the associated press. secret service saying another person who was not on a guest list was allowed into the state

dinner from the prime minister. someone traveling with the indian delegation was allowed in. the rest who attended the steak dinner. also a former senior intelligence official confirming that the suicide bomber who killed eight people inside a cia base in afghanistan was a jordannian doctor recruited by jordannian intelligence. [inaudible conversations] >> welcome back to the public lectures. i want to say the members are becoming famous. we're getting all kinds of e-mails about some of you. but i won't tell you which ones. getting some positive e-mail from all of the united states.

a lot of people are enjoying it. i like that very much. it's sometimes hard for a speechers to do c-span, because they leave out all of the good jokes. but with ed, i don't think that's going to be a problem. >> i'm a big joker. >> he's always entertaining and wise. ed has spoken many times. he's going to talk about corporate government relations, how you build credibility and capital and how you manage around issues that might come up. as you know, he'll talk a little bit about it, microsoft for a while did not have washington representation. i found that amazing, because bill gates was an intern on capital hill for a while. he should have known better that you can't have a business model

without having some relationship with the government. he's been in this position since 2003. prior to that, he was an deputy assistant to the president. that described in the biography that handed out to you. before that, he worked at -- for 12 years at wexler/walker. you know about that, because we have joe come in to talk about coalition building. it's a bipartisan firm. widely respected. he served also in the george h.w. bush reelection campaign, he's been in the white house in other positions. and he has a publication that i've uploaded to blackboard for you, i recommend to you on government relations. how many of you have read it? okay. good. most of you have read it ahead of time. they are on top of it.

no, they are very busy. we are going almost night and day on this thing. his graduate of the university of tennessee. and most importantly, he has a degree in public policy from indiana university when i got my phd. i'm proud of that. he was a pmi, presidential management intern, now it's presidential management fellow. i recommend to all of you, you come in at a very high position. you're on the fast track if you don't screw up. you didn't screw up. you've done very well. welcome. >> thanks, jim. good afternoon. i'll start the session off by giving you a piece of good news. you know the geico, not the gecko. when i told in, i was told i had to pay for parking.

when i pulled it, it's complimentary day at the parking lot. you have to take that. free parking in washington, that's a big deal. anyway, i always enjoy speaking to this class. i speak to a number of different classes. i'm also -- i don't think jim mentioned, i'm also adjunct for nyu. i go up once a year and teach of a condensed government relation course in the graduate communications program. and i'm very much enjoy that. i teach a number of guest lectures here in town. but i honestly, sincerely, like this course because frankly the level and caliber and the studiousness of the class. so many of you are working right now, real time, in some of the jobs in town that, you know, are impacted by public policy,

politics, government affairs, that makes for a much more robust conversation. with that, with i want to make sure this is open dialogue. stop me at any time. ask me questions. challenge me. let's have a good discussion today. >> i didn't mention nyu, it would be like mentioning google to you. i mean it's really. >> it's in their core program. it's not a competitor. that's the only reason i brought it up. anyway. >> but we can talk about google if you want. [laughter] >> okay. we've covered this. okay. just to level set. i know you've been at this what a week already? okay. why does lobbying, government relations? what we're going to talk about is what is corporation government relations? at the heart of what we do in government relations on a daily basis and weekly basis is lobby. and lobbying, if you read the chapter. i think there was one person who

did. at least my definition. there was a number of definitions at the heart of it. lobbying is the practice of advocating one's policy position to a government official with the hopes of influencing legislation, regulation, or government action. and i put in the government action because, you know, you can lobby on something. you can lobby to try to get the president to include something in the state of the union. you can lobby on the presidential initiative. you're trying to affect government action. never the less, that influence in or attempt to fluent public policy lobbied. lobby can come in direct or indirect forms. direct forms are meeting with a member of congress and having the conversation and trying to directly influence public policy. another -- writing a letter to your congressman is trying to directly influence public policy. that is direct lobbying.

indirect lobbying is -- joel would have talked about that. grassroots lobby. trying to get others on your behalf or at least express and weigh in to express a policy position that you care about. so it's like the coalition work. it's the grassroots work. that's lobbying nonetheless. again, because you are trying to influence. your whole goal is trying to influence that particular piece of policy. now the broader world of government relation em compassing lobbying in addition to some other things. does anybody want to take a stab on what would fall outside the lines but would still be in the government relations bucket? let me help you -- for example, a political action committee which we'll talk about. a company or a trade association or a labor union having a political action committee is a very important part of a government relations portfolio.

but it is not lobbying per se. again because you are not exactly using that for a particular piece of legislation or regulation. providing strategic council. let's say that, you know, it's very common for me on a weekly, monthly basis to provide council, advice and council to my management. or if i'm a consultant providing for -- you'd probably heard consultants providing on what you should or should not if do. it is not directly or indirectly trying to influence legislation. but it may be in the broad sense sort of government relations council. that falls outside of lobbying per se. but it is very important on, you know, in the whole government relations field. also just advertising or running ad in the "washington post"

where you are expressing a position. it may not even impact a piece of legislation. that can fall. that sort of government relations communications falls outside of lobbying per se. but it is also considered government relations. okay. here's what i want to cover today. and again, as we go along, feel free to raise questions. or make points that you may have or raise points that may be other speakers have brought up. so we can have a good conversation. number one, why have a corporate government relations function? how would you -- if you decided you need one, how do you organize it? then what i call sort of the corporate g. r., the corporate government regulation regulationsbox -- regulations toolbox.

then reputation management. why reputation management on there? why is that a part of this? well, unless tour paying attention to your companies or your clients reputation, then all of the other ones are being moved. if you are not doing a good job of putting together good government relations campaign and if you're not doing a good job of protecting your company, your client's reputation, then frankly, your whole government relationship strategy becomes moved. okay. why have a corporate government relation functions? well, first and foremost, to build those relationships before you need them. you know, in any walk of life, whether it's your next door neighbor, whether it's your professor, it's always best to sort of introduce yourself, build a relationship with someone, before you actually god

forbid need them. need them to help you on legislation, need you to potentially stop legislation. so that's why, you know, we advice -- i advice people all the time, let's stay that are fortune 1,000 company and opening up a washington office is that it's of important to be able to build these relationships before you may actually need them. because it becomes much more effective if you are trying to influence policies. here's what our company does, here's what we do, here's how we employ folks in the state, here's how we help with the economy. it's like having with your neighbor. if you are cable goes attainted you need cable or -- if you've already introduced yourself, most likely you'll have a better shot of watching their cable.

this is defense. this is playing good defense. it's not unusual add all for a company to find themselves, you know, facing some legislation. i mean you can just throw a stick at anything going on to congress now. you've got the health care debate, you've got the energy debate. you have the tax debate. any number that can present problem areas for a company. you need to be able to go in. if you have the government replaces function, you can go in and represent your company and go in and explain to them why the particular piece of legislation or regulation would be bad for your company. here's how we can make it better to accomplish the same goal. by the same token, that's defense. you can also play offense. that's seeking advantage through the legislation regulatory

process. a lot of people react on the defense side. but frankly, if you're running the fairly sophisticated government relations operation in town, again, today my conversation would focus on companies. but this would apply to a nonprofit, it would apply to a labor union. there's also a lot of opportunity sometimes to go in and get on the ground floor of a proposed legislation or if you find out that a senator or member of congress or a committee is taken up an issue, you can go in and offer up some help and solutions that would advantage -- potentially advantage you in a way that you would otherwise be disadvantaged. so again, it's playing smart offense. now this only applies to companies, private

organization. fiduciary, responsibility shareholders. this is what i tell people who ask if we should open up a washington, d.c. office. you owe it to your shape holders to respond in an offenser or defensor or at least monitor issue that is would impact that company. you owe it to your shareholders to do so. just like a good corporate pr plan. you owe it to your shareholders to have good tax attorneys. you owe it to have a smart and capable board of directors. likewise, you owe it to your shape holders to have a smart and streakic government regulations and a plan in washington, particularly these guys, a presence in washington where you can monitor activity. in washington, defend against bad legislation, and potentially look for opportunities to take

advantage of other legislative or regulatory situations. okay. speak in your own voice. expect for industry trade association. it's very common. you may have already heard from someone from a trade association. they play extremely important rolls for companies like ours. we are members of a number of trade associations. they help. trade associations help companies speak in a broader voice. but there are going to be tames when an issue is just company specific, or there are going to be times when members on trade association who are on different sides of the issue. they are going to have to speak in their own voice. if you are fortune 1,000 and you just don't have the budget to have both the government relations office or a dedicated person to handle these issues, plus pay trade association dues, you may opt just to be part of a trade association. and in your case, that budget

decision, that may make p some sense. if your fairly aligned with other members of your trade association on issues that are important to your company. with that said, there are going to be times when you need to speak in your own voice. this is critically important. and gosh knows there's time when microsoft needs to speak in its own voice. 85% of the time we may be in alignment with other technology companies, but that 15% it's important to say i am from microsoft. here's where we are on this issue. again, i think that's critically important. and then finally, just show respect for the political process. and this frankly gets lost, i think, in a lot of companies. this is his -- who come to town. and they know that, well, this is something we should do. they go through the motions of doing it. then they really forget at heart of it is what it is all about. it's a public policy. if you're engaged in it, if you are showing up, who was it that

said showing up. it truly is -- it really is in washington, if you are engaged in it, you hired people specifically for this task. you are spending time educating members of congress and decision makers. you are part of that process. then that shows that you have a certain level of respect for that. that's important. and i've been on the other side. if i'm a government official and you're coming in and lobbying me, i know that maybe you don't have a presence, maybe some of your competitors do. maybe you've made comments on why you don't need a washington presence. washington is a pain in your rear end. that's not showing a lot of respect for the process. for me as a government official, i'm going to be less inclined to give you a fair hearing as part of that conversation. whether i'm a member of congress or executive branch official. i think it's showing a lot of respect for the political

process. questions so far? okay. how do organize it. the questions that you were going to ask, if you are going to start your own, how would you organize, where would you locate it, where would it be in the company? you know, microsoft, government relations is all part of the legal department. that's not uncommon. however, you'll find that other companies it can be part of the communications. maybe electric utility and one of the subsidiaries could be more regulated than one, you could put the department there. there's no one place that it fits in any company. as a company, you need to decide where does it make sense for it to be in our company. where to physically locate it.

now that may seem like an odd question. there may be situation where the company has more state exposure in certain state capitals. let's say they are california based. you have a lot of issues before the state of california. they made a sign, we're going to run our government regulations out of sacramento. we'll have somebody that will monitor. we care more about the state a level and spill over into the federal level. so that is not out of the question. but that would be the reason you could ask where to locate it. by and large, you're going to locate it in of washington, d.c. you'll have your state people spread around the country or back at headquarters or potentially working from washington, d.c. who heads the organization. okay. do we want a former member of congress? do we have a former cabinet? do we have a big name in the political and policy circles. or do we want someone that's much more policy grounded, that's more of the policy one

that can monitor the issues? it really depends on the company, it depends on their set of issues, it depends on the personalities at the company. it depends on what's going on at the time. you could have just walked in and before the xm serrius merger. you had to wrap up operations. and you may opt -- ere on the side of throwing a lot more horses than otherwise if you are a fortune 1,000 company and getting into the government relations game. you may start with a low-level staffer who is just policy smart and following the issues. it depends on the situation. how much budget? and in this day and age with a lot of scrutiny over budgets, a lot of concern over the economy. these are real questions that companies, you know, all companies are asking.

yes? >> what about your counterparts in other parts of the world for a company like microsoft? is there particular reporting line or are they separate? >> we do our u.s. government affairs out of washington, d.c. i have counterparts in a lot of the foreign capitals. but they report up to the general council. but compare that to a general electorate who they run all of the government affairs out of washington, d.c. office. so i compare notes with friends over there. so it's not unusual for a particular fortune 50 or 100 company to do their government -- global government relations out of washington, d.c. you are still going to have people in the local regions and foreign state capitols. we still do government affairs out of -- that's both state and federal out of d.c., but we have

country managers. beijing, tokyo, brussels, et cetera, et cetera. >> you mention that microsoft has been supportive of our brussels program. we have the european affairs there in the summer. they have always treated us very well and given great presentation. >> we ramped up. look a lot of this is not rocket science. if you just read the paper and the "washington journal" and final times. you'll read that european commission has really been after -- you know, it's been nipping at our heels for a number of reasons. well, in light of that we tend to ramp up government affairs operations in these countries. now they are sort of doing the same thing on intel. and so where you have a lot of activity, particularly where there's regulatory, whether it's potential legislation, and it may pop in brazil, tokyo, a lot of emphasis on china, you're

going to naturally ramp up activities there. and assets. >> okay. and this gets a little bit into the question that we had earlier. but in terms of -- there are different office models. there's the office model. you may have -- there are a handful of fortune 50 companies who are very large. they maybe 50, 60 $70 billion companies. they may only have one person. it depends on the company, how regulated. how exposed they are. and whether or not that they decide to have 20 people, 40 people, or one person in town and how they are structured. but it's -- particularly if you are a fortune 500, it's not unusual to have one or two people. we'll touch on consultants later.

they may be supplemented by d.c. consultants, in terms of full-time employees, they may only have one or two people. that's sort of the jack of all trades. one day you may be up on the hill, the next day you are talking education at the department of education. so you are really covering the water front. and then there are those organization that sort of have the issue lobbyist. this is a very classic model for sort of the fortune 100 types. you may have five or six or seven lobbyist. they are own baskets of issue of which they really start, they get fairly deep. you may have been somebody who attacks. you may have someone who does the environmental energy portfolio. you may have someone who does the work force education sort of issue. and so on, so forth. this is a very common model. and they lobby those issues all around town. whether it's going to the department of commerce. whether it's going to the house interview. whether it's going to the senate

and transportation. whether it's going to republican or democrats. they are lobbying the issues all over town. that's there set of issues. very common model. another common for the very big and highly regulate the. let's say the telecoms, energy companies,ing they may have the legislative and regulatory side. they may have, okay, we have our congressional lobbyist and regulatory. in the case, they may have the regulatory. their big focus is the fcc. obviously a light goes on there that impacts their company and their business. at the same time, they have the separate set who lobby the issue before the house and before the senate. fairly common on the regulated companies. microsoft is a little bit of a hybrid. much closer to sort of the third legislative and regulatory.

i mean, because we are not in a traditional since heavily regulated, we set it up sort of as the political legislative who lobby the hill and policy specials. frankly, these policy specialist team up with our legislative lobbyist to lobby on any given issue all around town. so let's say that there's a patent reform legislation that's being considered now before the house and the senate. we have, you know, and if the bill is moving in the senate side and on that particular day your lobbying the majority staff on the senate judiciary committee and the majority staff of course would be the democratic side. we have four lobbyist to mapped the quadrants. we have senate democrat, senate republican, house democrat, house republican, they work then with their policy colleagues. in this case, they'd work with ip or patent attorney and go in

and lobby. what this allows us to do is microsoft. it frankly allows us to walk in and walk with someone who has experience having worked in the senate let's say. and actually having worked on the democratic side. and in a probably a very senior staff role. or has lobbied the senate democrats for a long period of time. they have built relationships here. it is responsible for understanding and lobbying across the water front of issues. but if they are going in and trying to really refine legislative language or really be a policy resource, then they would tag team with the policy. go in and hopefully be fairly effective in that way. we can -- microsoft can take this approach much like the large regulating company can take this approach.

because we are -- we've dedicated a fairly sizable amount of money and resource toward our government regulations. we have 20 plus people in our washington, d.c. office. when you have two or three people, naturally, you can't take the approach. we've decided that it makes sense for our company to cake the approach, to have the subject matter experts work with the relationship and house and senate lobbying experts. people who have worked in those areas. we think that this is served us well. and we think at the end of the day, if i were you, you should take this approach. it all comes down to the type of issues this your company is facing, the history sort of your company and the type of products and services that your company has. and, you know, potential government action exposure.

>> if there was one slide on the takeaway. why did he babble on about it today? it was this. from a -- on any given day, if you want to manage a successful, corporate government relations function in washington, d.c., and again a lot of this would apply, you know, in state and international in the foreign capitals as well. if you want to manage a successful government regulation function, there are various things that you have in the toolbox that you can work with. again, some of these require a lot would depend on how big your budget is. but assuming you are a fortune 100 company and you have a fairly responsible size budget to work with, these are sort of the tools that are at your disposal that you should be on a monthly annual basis leveraging. some, depending on what is going

on, depending on what is moving through congress, you may use some of these tools more than you'll use other ones. but these tools are, you know, things that frankly on a assets and daily weekly basis is there to help sort of promote our government relations in our government actions and policies. at the top of the list is how we use consultants. :

who can really put you in the head of what a member of congress is thinking when they're approaching these sorts of issues. or you can say when we've are authorized this bill are your cigar this is what happened. that becomes dashed that is as good as your own insight staff may be. they cannot replicate some of the types of consultancy could hardly give you that strategic counsel to give you sort of a, you know, potential relationships that day may have based on their incredibility uncertain issues. so consultants can be critically important. and if you're fighting a major issue, they can provide you basic, what i call boots on the ground. if you need a fairly quick you're at a time if you got

three people inside on your own staff, and you hire some consultants you can have more ground covered in a short period of time and look how fast things are moving. if you're working health care he stays their rocket speed and relevant terms here it and so you have to cover a lot of ground in consultants can help you do that. we've touched on trade associations. how a company utilizes a trade association company can really make or break how successful they are. like i said before, there are going to be issues where the company will need to speak in its own voice. but a vast majority of issues will be issues that issues that other members of a trade association, other members of that trade will also agree on. and so, it's always better if you're trying as a person from a trade association told you and i agree 110%.

it's always better to speak with a broader voice. if you can speak on behalf of the entire trade or behalf of the entire industry then you're going to have a bigger impact than if you're just sandwell comments just over here and this company feels this way. so trade associations can be very important. so i company utilizes and works with them and manages their relationships with them, you know, can make or break your relations efforts. here's one that we always like to talk about in this class and i know jim always ask question on this. and that is packed, political action concept. there are few companies if you look at and i haven't looked at in a couple years but if you look at the fortune 100 companies who would still find a handful and maybe it's 5% or 10%, but in that neighborhood who do not have tax. most companies are going to have a political action committee. some will be a heck of a lot bigger than others depending on

how much attention they give within their company. but pac, in my estimation and where i come from, political action committees can be very important part of your portfolio. you can -- it's not the only thing, but it can definitely add and what i think it shows the best value is remembered aside that i said you have to show respect for the political process. well if you have a pac appeared if you're a company was represented in washington and you have companies particularly in this case a pac involving congress in the reelection spirit if you're lobbying them and then this is what microsoft thinks or this is what caterpillar things or this is what this company thinks and you don't have -- and you're making that case, but yet not member of congress thinks well, i happen to know that this company doesn't even have a pac, so they

want -- it's not for lack, it's a big company. they could have a pac if they wanted to, but they've chosen not to. so they may say to that member of congress that they don't respect the process enough to respect the fact that i'm up for reelection. i've got to get reelected. i'm pretty much in the same place that this company may be on the issues. they are in asking ask, asking me to support a certain position, you know, which i'm concerned with eerie begets, they don't have enough respect for the process to have a political action committee. and a political action committee again is not the companies -- from the outside it looks like it accompanies political action committee. and to destroy certain extent, but by law it is the employees of that company's political action committee because it totally voluntary. and so, the employees voluntarily give to the pac. and when they get to the pac --

i am the treasure of pac at microsoft. one of the key questions we get is well, if i give to the pac, if i give to the microsoft pac, are they going to support members of congress who i support on the other side of issues? and we say, that's all well and good, but think of it like a mutual. you should continue to give personal donations to those members of congress, those people running for office to support your issues. but the pac was all about supporting those members or those candidates running for office who support issues that the company cares about. so these are business decisions, the same way that you're going to have -- you're going to decide to have an advertising department and run tv ads. these are business decisions the same way you say we're going to use this much on this tv program

or were going to this much on online advertising. these are business decisions. a pac is a business decision and allowing employees to voluntarily continue to that and then direct to those dollars to members and candidates you support your issues is a smart thing and again, if for no other reason it shows respect for the process. >> i should've added an introduction your treasure of the microsoft pac and you also are chair of the executive to midi and the committee that makes determinations as to where the money should go from your pac. so you're right in the middle of it. >> we get a lot of an questions internally. how are pac decisions made? i give you money for the pac and if you're an employee of say ok, what we really want is that payroll deduction. he goes once you sign up for that, we've got it until you tell us to quit other ways you can read a one-time check for that year. but they say, where's my money

going to go? who makes those decisions? well, with a bipartisan committee of government affairs both federal and state meet in those decisions. and frankly, as i tell our employees you want those decisions made by the professionals internally who have or are closest to these issues. i mean, just like, you know, i want our tax attorneys working on our tax issues, you know, it's microsoft. i don't need to get better and much around on these tax issues in terms of if they are an accounting issue or a tax legal issue. so, we say it's bipartisan, it's three democrats, three republicans, members of both the federal in the state teams making these decisions. because in our case are pac not only supports our federal candidate but are state candidates. so many of taken from the federal playbook in a totally banned corporate dollars and no longer can a microsoft write a check to the rnc or to the dnc.

we can never write a check to a candidate, but we could up until 2000 to write a check to the corporate parties. in some states you can still do that. corporate money. but the political action committees, that's what they call hard money. you can write those checks out of political action committee notches to candidates but up to $15,000 you can write to the rnc, the dnc, can somebody tell me what the triple c. is? democratic. democratic campaign committee. so you can use the pact for that. we can no longer use the corporate dollars for that. okay, government affairs related pr. i mean, as i tell the students i talked to and people about the profession i'm in the communications business. on a daily basis, my whole job is communicating our public

policy positions to government officials. my audience is happens to be government officials. the government audience, you know, but in the communications business there are instances typically in the public at large. we are in the communications business so we work very closely with our corporate public relations internal counterparts. and they are part of our government relations is part of that toolbox. and that is, you know, we make decisions in the "washington post" or the national journal and do we want to run and not, what we call an advertorial for a particular policy at a time when not policy has been debated before congress. do we want to have someone from my company do an op-ed? these become corporate pr related decisions that have a very much government relations implication. again, if you remember the graphic it's not direct lobbying, but it is very important to the overall government relations plan --

program. how do we use corporate executives? you've obviously witnessed, you know, the financial crisis with the economic situation of the last year you've seen a lot of execs, particularly from the financial industries in the industries that have really been hurting come to town him and testified before congress, spent a lot of time with the administration. how i company utilizes and leverages those execs can be an important way of how, you know, successful they are at government relations. you can overuse and exact. the whole reason you have lobbyists in town is that it's our job on a daily basis to sort of do that. but from time to time, you need to be able to underscore or amplify to your government audience whether it's their cabinet secretary or an important member of congress that you're lobbying. this issue is so important for us, we brought in our company executive, our ceo, our president of the division, r. c.

zero we've brought them into help us talk about issues and the impact on our company or our industry. and so, again, the exact are going to be an important part of the toolbox. and not just execs, but employees at large. they microsoft we have 90,000 employees now. two thirds of those are still here in the united states and surprising to a lot of people, even people in this town, and that's, you know, becomes it, not to ask to educate members of congress that we are not just a washington-based company. i mean, that's where we are headquartered. the majority of our employees are there, but we have a large numbers of employees in many different parts of the country. you know, we have probably 1500 in north dakota. we have over a thousand in charlotte. we have over a thousand in

texas. we have over a thousand in silicon valley. though, it becomes news. and then we have five or 600. we have almost a thousand in the washington d.c. area. and again, a lot of those are employees who work with the government in the mid-atlantic businesses. but it certainly becomes news when we walk into a member of congress office and say our new york cases that we have seven or 800 employees here in new york city. it's important to utilize in rutledge those employees from time to time who are not only speaking on behalf of the company, they're speaking on behalf of the magic word, constituents. you know, and when you're speaking and he gets back to a duel will talk about and grassroots. if you're coming at them from all angles and you're trying to implement a policy under saviors for a microsoft and here's where my company is on this issue. at design time, you got your employee who may represent that company but they're also a constituent of theirs that, you know, that becomes very critical

and can really make a big difference in your lobbying campaign. again, these are the types of things you can't dwell it every day. but there may be issues and there will be issues on an annual basis that rise to the level where you want to go to the employee base and they would you call your member of congress in which you send an e-mail, would you twitter, would you go on face the, would you potentially come to washington and help us lobby on this issue so that they can put that sort of constituent hats on? yes, sir? [inaudible] >> i have a question in regards of leveraging your executives and employees to help you with your efforts. and he said that a lot of your job and microsoft has to do with pr. and so, i was wondering in terms of increasing the overall effectiveness of their contributions, how much public speaking coaching goes into

helping none better advocate the message you want them to advocate? >> employees or execs? [inaudible] >> we coach every exact from the top down. okay, you're going to go before this member. you're going to go before this committee. obviously you're coaching them on doing a testifying before a hearing or in a given one-on-one meeting. but were definitely coaching them. here's what you can expect here it again, it's based on our own experience. here's to the senator will have in the room with her. here's to this cabinet secretary, now he will approach this most likely. here's the three morning points that you would probably make right up front because they're going to jump in and try and take over the meaning. so we do a lot of coaching. that is really part of our job. the message, you've got to get the message down.

that becomes a part of the fundamentals will talk about in a point untrimmed second. communicating not is really half of the equation. the good of the greatest messengers in the world but if you're not going in, understanding the environment, understanding the audience, understanding the time limitation. we always coach our guys and say we're going to be needed in the center. she could get pulled off the floor at any time so you may only get five minutes with her. so if you only get five minutes, let's make these three points right up front. and then, you know, eight times out of ten, seven times out of ten you get the full hour, 15 minutes or whatever time is allotted. though we coach them and sort of put them in that environment and you can only do that if your government relations professional has had that sort of experience. and so, hopefully we'll have time for questions about sort of all the scrutiny on lobbyists and the profession at large. i mean, the profession again, if

you're in a company if you're a shareholder in a company you want to know that you've got professionals who know how washington works on your behalf. you want to know that you got corporate pr professionals who understand the advertising business, who understand the pr business. it want to know that you got tax specialist working on your behalf. you want to know that you've got lawyers working on your companies. we are one of those professions. other questions? yes, sir? >> just in terms of your interaction with the home office, microsoft technically their primary business has nothing to do with politics or originally didn't. you find your cells more so when is executing from a top-down policy that the people you're poor to our determined or are you personally in your team in d.c. acting as the eyes and ears and interpreting on your own where microsoft should see another to issues or where they should get involved in taking

that back to people? >> it's going to be all of the above. like right now, a major corporate jim heard me talk about it in the class before is high skilled immigration. in less companies like ours get access to the world's best and brightest students, most of those are masters and phd's who are getting educated here. unless we get access to those through our visa program, to the h. one b. and the green card program. unless we get access to those who will not continue to be the leaders in the world on technology. it is just that simple. meanwhile, we need to make our education process better and grow right here at home and smarts math and science. you guys know it. there's fewer americans going into these subject areas. so if we want to compete and we want the best, largest software company to be american base, then we need to have companies

like ours that have access to them. so immigration is a key business imperative force. so we lobby back and get that from dave, and steve. and we lobby on that issue is broader immigration. there may be other issues that you're alluding to is well that they are not on our business radar screen necessarily. these are issues that we're monitoring and washington d.c. and then we take back your executives and say this is something that's come up in this environment. it wasn't on our radar screen, but you need to know about it because it could impact our company in this way. so it's really both and we really need to be vigilant on both sides of that. and strategic as possible. yes, sir? >> you talk a little bit about utilizing trade association, but do you ever find yourself competing with the apple, google, all those companies for influence on capitol hill? >> sure, if there are issues that we're in a different place on that going to be the case.

the 85%, 90% of the time were on the same issue. let me just lay it out so you can think our technology company, what do they care about? patent reform issue is key. we are patent system system to be 21st century. so that companies that have intellectual property invested can continue to him and you know, get return on it. issues like trade, you know, major large u.s. companies and also even smaller to medium size businesses, free trade is really important. and so trade is a big issue for us. on all those issues that just means, you know, all the tech companies that you just named her very much on the same page. now there may be situations where one week microsoft is announcing some merger on this that runs counter to what maybe google wants or vice versa so we're on a different page. those are business decisions over going to use our own voice, lobby the hill or regulatory

agencies on those issues. but we're going to be on the same page with a lot of the tech guys that you just mentioned. intellectual property, access to the best and brightest, free trade, you know, tax issues. a lot depends their uncertain tax structure of a given company. okay, marshal employees, leveraging coalitions, again people like joe will come and talk about grassroots, coalition importance. trade association is not as a formalized group of members of companies that will make up a given trade or industry, right? coalitions can take that a step further, typically they are informal. meaning they may only exist during a certain period of time. it could be over a year or 23 dear period. so again if you're speaking from

many different industry voices they can have a lot of impact in terms of government relations. and then i've got happier working with think tanks. there are scores and scores of ink tanks in town from all that terms, working on any given issue from every different sort of political spectrum and there could be think tanks that are working on issues that you care about that you may want to support by supporting these think tanks are supported typically by individuals, corporations. these are nonprofits. and so, you may want to go when a partner with. if there's a think tank doing great work on immigration, the need for reform there, we may want to go win an partner and bring up some experts and have that. so that's yet another part of that overall -- again it's not lobbying, not direct lobbying the part of a government relations function and toolbox. and here's the fundamental as that i touched on, that i alluded to earlier. again, some of you will read

this and go that's not really rocket science, but just at a level set everybody. when you want to, you know, promote your businesses or your company's issue or your position on an issue. it sounds crazy, but you need to know what you're talking about. you need to know your issue, you need to have done your homework. and you'd be surprised. some of you make work on capitol hill. some of you may be a recipient of lobby is like me who come in and say a lot to talk to about this issue. and you're probably not surprised when some people come in and they may know as a little sliver of information but to get them to ask questions and becomes very evident they have not really done their homework. you know why no one government relations do your homework, anticipate questions, know your own issues. he able to frankly walk in and tell your opponent side of the story. if i'm being lobbied, if they don't volunteer to tell me i'm going to ask them, who is is

your opponents in this if i haven't already figured it out? what are they going to come in and tell me? and if you're doing a good job as a public official, you're going to welcome the opponents to come in and talk about that issue as well. but i think if you're being a standup, credible, you know, representative for your company you're going to say look, this is why the other side will tell you. at the heart of it it is know your issues and do your homework. and then there's the strategy development. notice strategy around it into with the audience here? is that the fcc? no, it's really not before the fcc. is the issue of the house energy commerce committee? is that the senate judiciary committee? where's the audience for that issue because where the audiences is really going to dictate the strategy. it's an issue that the house is not really paying attention to, but the senate -- there's a subcommittee on senate judiciary that paying attention to that issue.

all your focus is going to be on that committee and you're going to focus attention they are, on what experience you can't do that committee, what consultants know. members of the committee, but consultants of the stuff. and so it's a very different sort of set of strategies that you're going to have for that. so define your audience. her audience could be all of the above, it is a big piece of legislation on health reform. now, this is important. ownership. and this is to the trade association question, the coalition question. who really owns this issue? is this an issue -- if this is a merger issue, you know, if this is a merger issue is this one that only impacts that country and not the industry at large? and so, the owner is going to be, you know, it means okay that's microsoft. we on that issue. this only impacts us and it's going to be up to us to lobby on it. but most likely it may be bigger than one company. it could be that the entire industry ory sat of a given

industry, instead of companies within the technology for example may be a line on that issue so they become the owners. again, how you determine who the owner is is really going to dig at the strategy and the game plan. of course, there's a message, there's materials. those are important. and then how you execute and how you reassess and refine as things change. i mean, clearly as we've seen in this town over the last year that dynamic environment changes, politics changes, majorities change, the white house changes here at you have to change your game plan at every step along the way and reassess and refine. there's a relationship that we're talking about that's really key at the heart of government relations. it's going in, introduce yourself, explaining your company, educating them on your issues, offering to be a resource to them if and when the time comes that you can be helpful to them on a given issue. and then, i wanted to talk about

political matters like what we talked about and highlight this because i think this is one began work companies ball a lot of times fall short. they may be doing much or maybe all of these quite well, but when it comes to political management again as part of that is respecting the process, but they could do a better job of treating this aspect as a key piece of how they do their overall government relations. you know, in terms of, we talked about the respect. demonstrate fluency in the political process. again, if i'm being lobbied and you come in and start talking about the process and you may know your issue, but i can quickly glean that when that you don't even know how the bill is made. you don't understand that, you know, okay we may do it this way in the house and do at this in

the senate. you don't understand or be a conference and how that's going to work. you need to be fluent in how the political process works. the know your issue, do your homework, you know, and be current. that comes back to the question of the conversation we had earlier about leave it up to professionals. and if we professionals are dropping the ball in a and were not going to be in this business era. and so my employer is going to find someone else who was fluent in the political process, who knows the issues and knows how to build strategies around it. but again it's important to be fluent in this process. you know, and how to engage the process. we talked about the political action giving and how to use that and how to leverage that. again, infested a member of congress or that candidate, we respect the process. obviously there's been a lot of information on pacs coming out the last round of campaign laws. but ever sent the concept of the pac was created, they've

continued, there's been a lot refined and a lot of additional transparency added to the process. but they continue to survive. you know, if we could wave -- if we could wave the wand and say tomorrow that no money in campaigns and pacs are needed if we would all agree that wouldn't be a bad thing. but as long as campaigns cost money, pacs continued to be one of those best, you know, that's an personal donation is the best way to fund those. as long as that is transparent and of course it's very transparent now. you know, and a monthly basis we have two is a company, the recipients on the receiving side candidates have to report on a monthly basis and then those of us on the giving side after report. our pac last report on a monthly basis. as long as they are there, i think every company, if they are caring about the judiciary's possibility of the shareholders they're using every tool in

leveraging and utilizing every toolbox as part of that. and why to a-list political giving a separate? while they are is the pacs and that's giving and contribute into an employee, to accompany pac, but there's also just personal giving. you know, i give both to our pac. i also give personal dollars. there's a lot of situation where our pac will not support a candidate, particularly well pacs supports incumbents. some of them will support challengers in an open race. some pacs will not support an open race one or the other because you don't want to support, you know, you don't want to be wrong and support the person who ends up losing. so to fill that void, then employees can then write personal checks and then become involved into political giving as well as executives. again, it's all part of the

toolbox is all part of the government relations process, showing respect for the process. as long as it costs money to run these campaigns, we've got to find ways, legal ways, credible ways to participate in that process. and again, political giving pacs are part of it. corporate sponsorships. here's another one where it's not lobbying, not indirect lobbying, not to direct lobbying, but there may be causes out there in washington that we know let's say federal officials may pay attention to. and if microsoft is being seen as a sponsor of that cause, you know, we need to factor that into our equation. again, there are new reporting mouse for these when they are particularly involved with specific members of congress or elected officials. and that's fine. transparency is a great thing. but that said, there are good causes that do good in that it's incumbent upon companies like

ours and many others to decide how best to use their dollars. and in some cases, it may be sponsoring some heart association or diabetes or children's health benefit that can again the company being seen in a good light particularly as it relates to been seen as a good citizen on issues that government officials care about. campaign engagement, we branch this a particularly in the last several presidential elections but beyond that for the prez elections there'll be a number of mega-soft employees who will voluntarily go and work on an obama campaign, the kerry campaign, bush campaign. they'll do it on their own time and they're doing it because they want to. but we're able to take advantage of it because they are there. it's personal to them, but it's all so they are seen as a

microsoft person. again, engaged in the process and showing respect for the process. we encourage it. i get questions all the time, particularly every presidential cycle. should i volunteer? does the company care if i volunteer for this person or that person? know, if you want to do that, that's a great way to engage. it's not just federal. if you want to get active in your local community, if you want to get active in your state, you know, government. if you want to get out to the federal elections for all for it. again, it's what you do in your personal time, but a lot of that sort of really helps no matter to the candidate is. a lot of that really helps accrue to the company and we are aware of that. and so we like to see that sort of citizenship, that political engagement. cultivate allies, neutralize opponents, this sort of goes without saying. you're not going to get very far on issues that you really care about that you want to influence if you're not cultivating allies. in dallas in this case could be

beltran to cultivate allies who are decision makers, but it's also cultivating alleys to build that coalition of support. other companies, but other interests. it's not unusual for us to even reach out unlike the immigration issue to reach out and have conversations with the labor unions to try to find where there's common ground ground that we could work on some of these issues. so cultivate allies to try to move the ball forward. it doesn't have to be former coalition or through trade association, but building those allies are important. and again neutralizing opponents. if your opponent is exposing one line of attack, again, if you're doing your job of lobbying and we think that line of attack doesn't hold water or has weaknesses, you know, point those out. they are clearly trying to do the same with your approach. so, again, neutralize opponents, do your homework, and bring it

to the decision-maker and let them make the decision. and then finally on this, lend a hand on other issues. a company like ours learns over time that it's not just about what's on your top five issues. you know, what does it a microsoft wants, what is it that this company wants? in maybe many times that there's an issue that didn't make your top five that's been debated in town that has big implications and you're not going to change that. so it may be that you can go when and to help on that because it's something your company, health care is a good example. it's not one i make clearly a lot of our friends in the health care industry are working on the issue. but for a company like ours who cares about our employees and we have a very good health care program for our employees, we care about all our partners we

work with, with thousands and thousands of small and medium-sized advances we care about their ability to get health care. and so, we engage in the health care debate to seek reform. you know, we're best supporting actors that most in this period were not the leading actors in this, but we find that even one of our top 45 issues at some point you need to engage and that to can be helpful in your overall government affairs plan. stepping up in those occasions where they not necessarily directly benefit your self. again, it come back again to that respect dean the process and rolling up your sleeves to help that. and when it's all said and done, if you haven't through the course of this in telling your company's story in defending your company's position and building those allies and sort

of making your case. if you haven't done a good job of protecting your reputation throughout all of that, then as i said at the top, you know, it's all really new. i think it was warren buffett too said that it takes 20 years to build a reputation and five years to ruin it. i mean, we can rattle off a bunch of names and were not going to do each year, but we can all think of them immediately. just think for 20 seconds of names of people who are right here at the pinnacle of their careers and just an instant the rug was pulled out from under them and it could be for wrongdoing, could have been perceived wrong doing. and in an instant their reputation was whisked out from under them. same thing when, you know, from a person's same thing a corporate reputation is that you've got to know on a daily basis if i'm not seen as going

and an shooting straight, you know, with my audience. if i'm coming in and they know me as a company or as a person that comes in and sort of bends the truth or leave out facts or twist the story in a way that is misleading. you know, they're not going to give me an idea. and that is really going to get around and hurt my reputation, but also were to make companies reputation. yeah? >> i was thinking most of you said earlier about public relations in general. it would seem to me that microsoft would have to be a little bit more cognizant of kind of how the media and then eventually their conservatives interpret their policies on capitol hill. what i mean about that is a lot of them are typical corporations may be busy in d.c. are probably atypical diversified industrial where their name is somewhat removed from the subsidiaries or

products that they sell. so they would be a little bit more free with what they're doing in d.c., but the branding of microsoft and just a massive scope of your, you know, customer base is so much more unique. do you find in your job that you have to sort of worry about the more than more typical industrial firms that are ordered here? >> i think we do. there are other firms that i think have those same concerns given their sort afoot rent and given their profile. given the nature of our company and, you know, it's no secret. we've obviously been under the bright lights with regulators in the past. and light on the antitrust issues where we really think we've turned a corner we face a lot of those with brussels and that we just turned a corner with them. being in the throes of that, obviously, and then when you pile on top of that just like you said the company that we are

when we've got a very high-profile chairman as in bill gates. we have to be very caught and sent on a daily basis. and this to me is when it really becomes important. i think it's more important for companies that like ours because of what we just discussed, but i would say to anybody no matter if you're in that 2000 company or if your company number 287. i think i'm a daily basis, you know, as bill gates would like to say we were a small business at one point. you have to know that what you say and do today, ten years from now on a look at google. how long have they been around? twelve or 13 years. like a big and powerful they are now. what they did 12 years ago come addressed me they were in a town then. but in a span of two years a lot can happen and there are a lot of people who can still be in town were if you are carries a much better reputation, tenure slated your a big powerful company.

you need to know that you're living will survive this on a daily basis because it's going to come back and bite you at some point. and even if it does frankly if you care about and you do these things is going to make you a more effective government affairs lobbyist. i mean, i know there's always pressure and we always want to say there's pressure to cut a corner too sore to bend the truth on this or maybe leave that peace out here at it i can guarantee you on a net basis if you're sort of -- if you are doing these things and you care about this, matt matt you're going to be much more successful government relations success. we can have this about any number of professions, but given this sort of, the scrutiny over our profession at the moment i would think that you do these things whether you're at a microsoft or a ge or an intel or a caterpillar. if you're at that russell 2000 you need to be doing things

these way because in the long run or even the short run it will pay off. >> i don't want to put you on the spot, but how do you think of financial institutions and banking institutions of america are doing right now with respect to your good advice right here? >> well, their house has been on fire. and so any time -- and we've been there to a certain extent. not to the extent of when all the bright lights came our way sort of in the late 90's. their lives had been turned upside down. and so, what this tells me that they have to be doing this, but if they were not doing these things two years ago, five years ago, then those companies are paying for it right now. in other words, if you've been minding the sorts of sets of issues over the last five years, building those relationships and allies, when your house goes on fire and you're talking about government official -- even though that official may not

have been there but if you have been there and been a good agent, then you're going to be in a better position to positively influence that policy and you would have been otherwise if you decide well now that the lights are on we better start doing some of these things. because this shows. this will not -- if that's the case, then that will not pass the red face test your and people get that whether or not they've been in town or not. a surprisingly as we've seen in town, as jim does better than everybody, there's a lover's likely that goes on washington d.c. i've seen that in the 25 years i've been in town. i would tell any young and upcoming or government relations person at a small town and so be nice to everybody because you never know with that person may be tomorrow. yeah? >> what advice would you give to someone who's trying to build a coalition and bring a company like say microsoft into that coalition? how would you go about approaching them?

>> well, you have to have done your homework to see to what extent that you think it legitimately, realistically impacts microsoft. if it does come up at your case together. and meet with the right people and i say the right people, most likely that the coalition, if it's based here in washington is going to be our office in washington. and sit down and sort of make your case. you're so it impacts microsoft. here's how some of the other companies like microsoft who we have in the coalition. this is what you get by participating in the coalition of what you get is a seat at the table to help determine what our policies and decisions will be. so, you know, it's that sort of homework that you do and come in and just make your case. and in many regards, you lobbied microsoft about the coalition. yes, sir? >> you mentioned the role of the government relations office is one that pays offense and defense in the policy process handle communications, maintains reputation, and that sort of

thing, along the communication side. i'm interested to know what your thoughts are on the government relations office playing a revenue-generating role. within the government, there's always money being spent just within the stimulus package alone. there were billions of dollars in buckets like health care i.t. education i.t., smart grid technology. is that -- so, what i want to ask is the revenue driving the sort of government markets targeted role something that microsoft sees as a role that the government relations office can play? is that located somewhere else within the organization or do other companies structure their government relations authorities to have that office played a revenue-generating? >> well, that's a good question and a question that a lot of companies like ours have been facing over the last year. historically we've not been set up, we haven't built a skill set that follows money. at least not at our company.

i know some companies depending on the type of business relent government contracts. in our case, we work a lot in partners who rely on government contracts. in a daily basis, historically we've not follow the money. then all the sudden you have this, you know, economic stimulus package. it's changed the dynamic to a certain extent that every company i think all of a sudden sat down, starting with his washington d.c. office and looked at the package, probably brought in some consultants and make some determination. like in our case, you know, the folks who say we should be working with other partners in the states who are doing good and that we should work with to try to help identify pockets of money. like one big piece is there dedicating a lot of money on broadband deployment. and we have lobbied that issue and talk to the fcc and others on how we think that money should be deployed in the best way. we think that a lot of that money should go to what we call

sort of the cornerstone institutions and communities like hospitals, universities, you put the broadband they are and then things will sort of drives from that. and so, we've been lobbying it from that regard. but you raise a good question and that it's instructive that most companies did not have any sort of built-in apparatus to sort of follow, you know, like an economic stimulus. and they've had to create it pretty quickly to build the know-how, the apparatus, and some are doing a lot better than others and some are not doing very well at all. and a lot of many as being spent in the state. so a lot of it would depend on him a depend less on what, you know, the operation you have in d.c. it would depend better on what operations you have in personnel and consultants who may have had a state capital. >> if i could follow-up. someone argue that a big aerospace industry may be from

seattle. that market the defense department should have all those marketers as federal registered lobbyists. as much of the discretionary spending in the budget of the federal government and that's only about 30%, is the federal government buying things. and so, there's large corporations selling things, which influences public policy should those people be federal registered lobbyist? >> that's a good question. at the present they are not under most interpretations. and i raise that question frankly internally. should our government, facing colleagues who sell purely they are part of business, sell to the government, should they in any way because now they are triggered under some new obama and administration should they register as lobbyists? and what our outside counsel is telling us is no because of

under the rules about what constitutes a lobbying activity and lobbyist a should not be in most cases. it depends how do you file. if you're like most big companies you file in a certain way on your disclosure forms and they should not be. that doesn't answer your question on whether or not they should -- of what should be done. i really don't have a strong opinion on that because again, 95% of this business activity is not necessarily impact team policy, but i can't totally say, you know, inherent in your question that policy is impacted there. it would open up a whole new realm. by and large, i'm pro-transparent. i air on the side of transparency. what i don't like is when they segregate and they say if you are registered lobbyist you shouldn't be in this meeting. i think everybody in the company should be treated exactly the same.

whether you're in a company or labor union or interest group, you know, it should be transparent about it they want to talk about or reported that you went on a certain issue that's all well and good. they should not segregate your registered lobbyist, you can't go into this meeting, but your counterpart to sell to the government can go in this meeting. i think they'll need to be the same enemies to be treated the same weather again you're a company, labor union, or interest group. >> thank you very much for your time. caught [applause] the reason i brought up this class issue is the potential reform and so the unintended consequences of obama's attack on lobbyists. we talked about that a lot. >> i've said this before and particularly now that in the class now, having this conversation, about the backdrop of what's going on in washington

right now. >> it has been. thank you for coming. we are going to take just a little while right now to talk about some of the things that went on today. i want to answer any questions or hear your comments about today. but also, meredith is going to hand out our schedule for january 6. we're going downtown to the chamber of commerce and the aarp and jones and stuart [inaudible] there some instructions on how to get there on the back. i will take any questions that you might have. i assume that c-span is still on. it's off? >> almost. [laughter] i was going to tell you the great jokes i have your

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american icons, a three disc dvd set. it's $24.95 plus shipping and handling. one of the many items available at c-span.org/store. >> there's less than a month left to enter c-span's 2010 cam contest. $50,000 in prizes for middle and high school students, top price $5000. just create a five to mac eight minute video on one of our country's greatest strength or a challenge the country is facing. it must incorporate c-span programming and show varying points of view. enter before midnight at january 20 winning entries will be shown on c-span. don't wait another minute. go to student cam.org for rules and info. >> from this morning's "washington journal" this is about 45 minutes. >> you founded the cia's counterterrorist and the bin laden unit in 1996. here to join us this morning to

talk about al qaeda and to talk about terrorism particularly in the wake of the flight to 53 incident. overall, what do we know about the strength of al qaeda as compared to as 9/11 and even before that in 96 >> guest: well, i think what we know is it's grown into an organization that has even larger geographical reach than it did in 9/11 certainly. it has a functioning in north africa. one in iraq and a nascent wing in somalia and east africa. so the folks that argue that al qaeda has been isolated and unable to use or expand its organization on the face of it they seem to be wrong, simply on the basis of media reports. >> host: we see the efforts on homeland security and what we're doing to prevent people from coming in. we also read about and see the launches of predator drones

against some al qaeda operatives here want are we doing that we should be? just go well, i think that what we've seen is definitive root if there is such a thing in any topic that killing these people one at a time is not sufficient. it wasn't sufficient when we started to do it in 1995. it's far less efficient now because there's so many more people in the world in the muslim world that are about america. on terms -- or at least foreign-policy. very few muslims hate americans for being americans. in terms of airports, the watchlist is not a silver bullet. i think if anything, this gentleman in detroit was a rank amateur. he received training but had he been a professional, it would not have been a botched job. and so for americans to somehow to think if we have a great watch link system that's going to protect them i think that's

wrong. sometimes i wonder why we spend so much attention on the aircraft in the air system when we have three or 4000 miles of open sea and land border. >> host: are phone numbers are on the screen and we'll get to your questions momentarily. before we do that, going back to your comment a moment ago about the u.s. killing al qaeda one at a time. so, what should we do? does that mean a bigger military presence in places like yemen and other places like that? >> guest: briley i think we're at the drawing board because since we haven't progressed or a farce since 9/11, we are fighting an enemy that basically doesn't exist. the american people for the last four presidents including our latest president, our now president, continue to tell americans that we're fighting an enemy that's motivated by hatred for freedoms and our liberties. women in the workplace, liquor after the workday.

and so, it is therefore a fanatic limited number of folks. nothing could be further from the truth. >> host: what are they motivated by? >> guest: particularly our support for tyranny. we just reinforced the status of the yemen dictator. we support the police state that govern saudi arabia that governors jordan, that governed egypt and algeria. we give unqualified support to the israelis in terms of money. either the motivations of the enemy and it's not to say that those are policies are wrong. we all have our own opinions on that. certainly i would need to change some of them. but the idea that you don't recognize what your enemy's motivation is for political reasons, you'll never get a grip on the enemy you're fighting any to defeat. host out your feet featured in al qaeda's cross so it's a bit

of a double-edged sword if we don't support the leadership there. there's a vacuum of leadership obviously eerie but if we do support your same al qaeda that's one of the reasons that al qaeda is fighting the u.s. >> guest: we're fighting a very unusual enemy in that many times when he does something it is win-win. or when we do something it is win-win for him. for example, we did not have a plane explode on christmas day. that 80% of what al qaeda was aiming for in that attack was successful. they terrorize the american people. they seized at the air travel system. they caused the united states to spend much more money on screening and person out and it again suggested to the american people that their government can't protect them. so, these are unfortunately choice is between god actions, bad policies. host a look from our viewers. new orleans with earnest here

good morning on our independent line. although good morning gentlemen. i want to find out if you're one of the good cai guys? so far you said that we're fighting an enemy that doesn't exist. al qaeda means database. it's something that we gave the name to hear it they didn't give the name to themselves. i don't know how in tune you are with this last attempt to a terrorist attack, but can you explain to the people why a false flag operation is and then i would like to know this. during the reporting of this past terrorist attack, eyewitness accounts have been surprised. we're talking about the well-dressed gentleman that helped the accused hijacker or bomber to get on the plane, past

security, bypassing it all with no passport, no id, no visa. we are talking about the gentleman who was on the flight that still accused the entire flight nominee and it felt >> host: banks. a couple things to answer there. michael scheuer. >> guest: i don't know how the idea has grown that there is no such thing as al qaeda. it was an organization formed in 1988. there clearly is an al qaeda that's growing, expanded. it's a very sophisticated organization and to say that it doesn't exist is mostly in the wound of a social scientist who wants to divine the probable way rather than confront it. scription for defeating al qaeda maintains continuity with of the failed and stubbornly ignore an approach that washington has stubbornly adhered to since 1996. what is the failed approach? guest: maintaining that these

are an isolated and small number of peopl@@@@@@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ world's muslims agree with the osama bin laden in his view >> guest: muslim's agreed that foreign policy is an attack on faith. nowhere near will pick up guns. a smaller is a pot of people for the more americans to be fighting. >> with polls like that, how can any administration have effective partners in places like saudi arabia. >> guest: well, they can't, sir. we want to believe that we have effective partners. but the reality is that those

governments need to pay feelty to some extent to the muslims fighting the united states. because those muslims threaten their stability. >> host: here's the caller. good morning. criminal on the republican line. >> caller: yes, first of all, i attended your lecture at fort bragg and the intelligence. i agree with everything that you have said in both of those forums. my question for you is when is the intelligence community going to start coordinating with each other? i myself was a former counterterrorism intelligence officer up until about six weeks ago. i was arrested on september the 14th of 2009 because i was provided a username and a password to an individual that's not widely known within the states. but it is within the intelligence community.

and i guess, to make it quite simple, i threaded on the judicial branches monitoring of this individual. so when the is cia and the nsa and the dia going to coordinate with the judicial branch, i.e. fbi. >> you know, i don't know what the answer is to that. i know that unfortunately, the intelligence reform bill that was pushed through the congress with very few congressman reading it apparently was expanded the intelligence community from 16 to 18 units. and as a result, it has created a greater bureaucracy. we still have computer systems that aren't shared across the computer. i've been told that people at nctc have sometimes three or four different cpus in order to have conduct with different

agencies. i personally think that nothing sort of another attack on the united states will really move us off of dead center. the bureaucratic lethargy is extraordinary in this government. certainly, the leadership under the last several governments has not been inspiring. >> host: next on the democrat line. good morning. >> caller: good morning. i would like it know how we as americans can stop someone who's willing to put a device on themselves and blow themselves up and others. i would like to know how can we stop it? thank you very much. >> guest: i don't think there's a way to stop it with 100% assuredly. one way is to decrease the motivation of those people to attack us. until we're willing to recognize what the basis of their motivation is which is things like support for israel, support for the saudi police state,

we're not going to be able to stop any of them. or many of them. and the number of people willing to carry those devices and kill people will increase over time. so ultimately, we have to find a way to persuade them from focusing their anger on us and persuade them to focus their anger at what they themselves believe is the real enemy. the governments that govern them oppress them. and israel. >> host: i want to ask you about the release of the former guantanamo detainees. they wrote about a couple that was trained to fight, were sent to a saudi reha bibation program that used art therapy to reform the militants. they released a list of 85 most wanted saudi terrorists, 11 were in that policeman. -- program. and yesterday, the counterterrorism director reported in the raw story, obama

moves ahead of repatriation of yemen. he made sure the incident would not change the administration policy. i want to play a little bit of what he play. >> first of all, let me put p this into process. 352 detainees were transferred. during the administration, we have transferred 42. seven of those have gone back to yemen. first went six or eight weeks ago, the others went in september. when the detainees were back. several were put into custody right away. we're continuing to talk with them. guantanamo facility must be closed. is served as a propaganda tool for al qaeda. we're not going to do anything that's going to put american security at risk. working closely with the yemeni

government. right now we are looking at the other detainees. we're going to take the right step. we're not going to do anything to put the americans at risk. >> host: has the release been a success? >> guest: certainly it has not. first the idea that mr. brennan raised that guantanamo has been a propaganda victory for al qaeda is nonsense. how can you compare guantanamo to prisons that are run by the algerian generals. certainly, they don't like guantanamo. to think that's a major grove sense. it pleases the united nations. it terms of releasing the people to the rehabilitation of the arabs, the saudis, the yemenis

have all worked very hard since 9/11 to insulate themselves from criticism after the next attack. >> host: credit schism -- >> guest: by the western countries. yes. when the next attack occurs, and the arab are the attackers, the yemeni government want to be able to say we did our best. and they know that americans love to believe that everyone can be rehabilitated and persuaded from their former practice. what's probably going on in both yemen and saudi arabia, they have a few successes. most of these people go through the system. then they are allowed to be free, as long as they go somewhere else to fight. afghanistan or iraq. this is a palliative for us. not a real success. >> host: here's franklin new york. good morning. >> caller: good morning. i for one am sick and tired of

all of these jews coming on c-span and other stations and pushing us to go to war against our muslim friends. they are willing to spend the last drop of american blood and treasure to get their way in the world. they have way too much power in this country. people like wolf and other neocons that threw us into iraq, now we're going to spend the next 60 years rehabilitations our soldiers. i'm sick and tired. >> host: any comments? >> guest: i think american foreign policy is up to the american people. one of the things that we have not been able to discuss is the policy towards the israelis. whether we want to be involved in fighting israel's wars in the future ising with that americans should be able to talk about. they may vote yes.

they may want to see their kids killed to protect israel. but the question is we need to talk about it. ultimately, israel as a country is no particular worth to the united states. >> host: you mean strategyically >> guest: strategyically. they have no resources. their man power is minimal. their association with us is a negative for the united states. now that's a fact. what you want to do about that fact is entirely different. but for anyone to stand up in the united states and say that our support for israel doesn't hurt us in the muslim world or our support for dictatorship doesn't hurt us is to just defy reality. >> host:: let's hear from the republican line. >> caller: yes, i would like to hear about the answer for the first caller. somebody see the video of the counter when they -- when that

well-dressed man brought the suspect up to the counter with no passport. that was mr. haskel. he is very credible. him and his wife are lawyers. >> host: richard. your breaking up. do you have any thoughts about that? >> guest: i don't know about the man video taping the potential bomber on the airplane. the man came from a rich family. it could have been a nigeria diplomat. i don't have the answer to that at the moment. i guess we'll have to depend on the government. >> host: john brennan was asked about the apparent administration plans to try hewal remember in courts. i want to show you what he had to say and get your thoughts on that. >> we have an array of tools we will use. we want to maintain flexibility as far as how we deal with the individuals.

let's get the facts on the table. he was arrested on u.s. soil on a plane in detroit airport. he was, in fact, talking to people who were detaining him. there were people who were arrested during the previous administration. richard reid, others, all were charged and sentences. some cases to life imprisonment. just because someone is put into the legal process doesn't mean we don't have -- >> let me ask you specific. after abdulmutallab got lawyered up. did he stop talking? >> i'm not going to talk about before he was talking with his lawyer. we got information. we continued to have opportunitied to do that. as you talk with the lawyers and the individuals as they recognize what they are facing as far as the charges, conviction and possible sentence, there are opportunities to continue to talk about it.

fbi has some of the best interrogators in the world. i'm confident that we're going to continue to be able to work the system. >> one thing the miranda rights. he doesn't have to speak at all. >> he doesn't have to. if he wants to engage with us in a productive manner, there are ways to do that. >> why not treat him. you certainly have the -- still have the right to treat him as an enemy combatant. if we have more intelligence about future attacks and you say there's a real possibility of that, doesn't the president have a responsibility to do everything legal he can to get that information. >> the president has the responsibility and the department of justice makes the determination about what's the best tool to use. in this instance, we felt it was the best way to address mr. mr.abdulmutallab's case and proceed accordingly. >> host: your thoughts on how the administration is approaching this?

>> guest: i think the courts are a useful tool on the war against terrorism. but the point is here that mr. abdulmutallab was a warrior. he should be in a prisoner of war situation. he should not be in the courts. first of all, he can never be found innocent. the problem with using the american courts is people will expect these people to be found innocent, muslims in the muslim world will expect that if the system is fair, they'll be found innocent. he's never going to be found innocent. it's just going to make our judicial system look more fixed if you will to our opponents. the real answer to this is continuing either prisoner of war treatment or enemy combatant treatment. >> what's your sense from having been with the cia, how much information can be learned from this man? >> guest: it varies from

individual to individual. it varies on interrogation processes. i have to yield to general hayden who said that at one point two years ago they had produced 9,000 different intelligence reports from these individuals. i know in my own experience from '01 to '04 we got very good intelligence from some of the senior people. so to forego that on the basis of ideology that these people are somehow law enforcement problem probably is detrimental to american interest. >> host: next up. >> caller: hi, good morning. it's linda. i have a couple of things i would like to say if i can have the time. there are -- sir, i respect what you are saying. earlier, you said that the american government policies have brought about so many hatred towards the american

people. and, you know, the government is responsible for the war in iraq, the illegal war in afghanistan. because bin laden is not in afghanistan. and, you know, the -- many of the people who were imprisoned at guantanamo without any due process were innocent. how would you feel if you are imprisoned with no charges, no proof of guilt for six or seven years sick taken -- years taken from your family. that creates more hatred towards this country. basically, it goes to oil. all of this. the oil interest that -- and, you know, correct me if i'm wrong about this, but the way i see it is that when they started bringing oil over in the late

1800s or early 1900s, we started mucking around in the business of these countries. and no wonder so many of the people there hate us. it -- i think it's misdirected. you know, towards innocent americans. you know, that's the -- what did we do in the native americans? the country was founded on slavery and genocide. >> host: thanks for the input. >> guest: i think the answer to this is to treat the people as prisoners of war. this is not a war that people have uniforms. these people cannot be put in the legal system and be treated as americans. i agree with with cater that ultimately -- caller that

ultimately oil is one key to get us out of the middle east. if we had done something 40 years ago when the oil embargo was first imposed, we would not need to support the tyrannies. if we weren't supporting them, we would have much less animosity than the arab man in the street than today. >> host: you mentioned there was no strategic value for the u.s. support of israel. >> guest: yes. >> host: could you say the same thing about countries in europe, europe as a whole, eu, obviously allies of the united states. the fact that they are a democracy, at least fledgling democracies, is that not of strategic value to some degree for the united states in the middle east. >> guest: i think that's certainly the common belief and common fallacy. what does it matter to us

whether any other country is a democracy or not. as long as we perfect our democracy to the best of our ability, who cares? and i think you're -- the question is correct though. why should we be committed to war if the russians move against bulgaria or if the serbs move against kosovo. why should we care about that? i think that's a good question. israel is not the only country that we are committed to with blood and treasure in a way that's not in america's interest. >> host: staying in the neighbor a bit. an e-mail viewer writes us. was there a saudi hand in any of this, do you think? >> guest: i have no idea, sir. i know the saudis are probably in the world today the most dangerous government to the united states? >> host: why? >> guest: because first of all they control next to the israeli

lob by, the saudi lobby is the most powerful. they control the swing production of oil. they probably own the most of our debt. and so the idea that somehow we're the boss in that relationship is incorrect. when i was running operations against osama bin laden, they continually refused to help us. they really -- they don't mind terrorism, as long as it doesn't happen in the kingdom. and the final point i would make is they pay for an enormous amount of proselytizing in the united states and muslim mosque. they train the preachers and send preachers from saudi, and those people preach a brand of islam that is far more anti-western, anti-christian, anti-jewish, than anything osama bin laden stands for. >> host: next up carl on the republican line. go ahead, carl. >> caller: yeah, i'm a

republican. you know, i think if barack obama would give this man a call, he could gain a lot of good information about how these terrorists really work. you know, i agree with just about everything i've heard this man say. and i've seen him on a lot of programs. what i'd really like to know is his opinion on nancy pelosi says you folks come over to the congress and lie to them. and barack obama administration prosecuting some of the cia agents. what does that do for moral? youif you were still working for the cia, would you not hire the best lawyer to protect yourself from the democrats? >> guest: i would have to say that i believe that both parties are negligent in their activities to protect america. i was the person who founded the

rendition program. i ran it for 40 months in the '90s. i knew from the beginning that we knew that the congress would sell us out. and so most agency officers now purchase private liability -- professional liability insurance to pay for lawyers in case the congress decides -- or now the department of justice, decide to prosecute people for defending america. it is -- yes, it is a terrible situation to be in. how we get out of it is another question. on terms of ms. pelosi, the idea that she doesn't believed on everything the agency was doing in culvert action is either a lie on her part, or she's forgetten. or in many congressman and congresswomen do this, they send their chief of staff or a

staffer to get the briefing so they can say they were never briefed. but certainly mrs. pelosi's game of ignorance as far as i could tell is a dishonest statement. >> host: about 15 more minutes. until 8:30men of eastern. you just mentioned you founded rendition program? >> guest: yes. >> host: has the obama administration -- >> guest: i think we do select operations. it is not one that's at the top of the list. first of all, we don't have anywhere to take them. we took them to places like egypt and other places in the middle east. >> host: at the height, how many people would have in one facility? how many suspects? >> guest: during my -- during the almost three and a half years i ran the program, i don't think we moved anymore than 30 or 35 people.

>> host: total. >> guest: total. they said there was 100 in the period. i'm not sure about the other 65. it could have happened because no intelligence officer knows everything. >> host: i'm going to ask you a couple of stories about britain's role not only on abdulmutallab case, "the new york times" reported last week about the time the young man spent in britain and the sort of development of terrorism and terrorist potential in britain. why was -- for example, this visa information. why are the british -- why didn't we get that information from the british? why are we not seeing more from the british along these likes? >> our relationship with the british generally is excellent. as i understood, the visa problem was not a problem of the gentleman being suspected of

being a terrorist. but he lied on the visa application that he attended a school in britain that doesn't exist. so i don't think it was more of an immigration problem for the british. >> host: next up on the independence line, tim. welcome. >> caller: i met you in los angeles. you were so brave manage on the bill marshall, talking about how we are fighting these wars for israel and losing lives for israel. i told you about threat.com site. you were absolutely spot on. when are we going to get rid of this and get on defending america like george washington wanted us to. thank you, sir. >> guest: i think israel is part of the problem. it's not the entire problem. to me, people are almost embarrassed to stand up and say, yes, civilians are going to get killed. but we have to do these things to protect americans. the president of the united states is really not the

president of the world. not when it comes to national defense. he must put the protections of americans first. that's why i'm always -- again you go back to the airline concern. and it is a concern. it's a genuine threat. the idea that we are putting all of our eggs in the basket of airliner when someone can drive across the border from mexico in a pickup truck and never be seen were or can take a boat across the river in canada. we are paying attention to a very small part and letting the rest go to hell. >> host: yes, good morning to cabe -- caleb on the republican line. >> caller: how are you doing today? >> host: just great. go ahead. >> caller: i just wanted to basically say that what prompted

me to call in was john from new york's comments about israel and how the muslim nations are supposedly our friends. and to me that's a very asinine and very narrow point of view. it wasn't us and strictly our policies towards israel that prompted 9/11. it was a very -- oh, i guess to say a -- a policy -- it's basically the culture of our nation that prompted 9/11. it was the fact that we endorsed and we have freedom of speech, freedom of religion and things like that that prompted a radical faction of a certain

religion to attack us that didn't belief in the principals. >> host: how much of a part did that play? >> guest: it played no part at all. that's what our politicians wanted you to believe, because we have women in the workplace and primary elections for the presidency. if we were being attacked by people, they wouldn't even rise to the level of lethal nuisance. the politicians don't want to talk about the impact of our support for israel. they don't want to talk about their abject failure. they don't want to tell us that our sons and daughters are dying in order to support tyrannies in places like egypt, jordan, saudi arabia, and algeria. until we start to talk about those things, we are fighting an enemies that doesn't exist. this is a very precise enemy. there is no evidence. at least in the corpus of

materials from osama bin laden and hiri. they are ready to blow themselves up because we have mcdonalds and budweiser. that's nonsense argument. >> host: back to the capability of al qaeda. the "wall street of journal" did a look at bombers going back to october of 2000. is al qaeda still able militarily to launch attacks like that, like 9/11? >> guest: i think they probably are capable. they don't want to do anything of a lesser level than 9/11. they have promised and lived up to their word. a more expansive attack each time they hit the united states. i think they are perfectly capable of it. they have