of violence in certain video games that is no less harmful to the development of minors. when this court crafted a rule of law that permits states to have minor's access to such material outside of a parent, it did so with two fundamental reasons applicable this morning in this case. first, this rule permits parent's came to authority in their household to help in the upbringing of thinker children. this promotes the state's independent interest in helping parents protect the well-being of children in those instances when parents cannot be present. this morning, california asked this court to adopt a rule of law that permits states to restrict minor's ability to purchase violate video games that the legislature determined can be harmful to the development -- >> what's a deviant, violent video game as opposed to a

what? normal, violent video game? >> yes, your honor. deviant is parting from a established norms. >> there's established norms of violence. some of the fairy tales are grim to be truth. >> agreed, your honor. >> are they okay? are you going to ban them too? >> no. >> what's the difference? suppose being in a category of violate materials dangerous to children, then how do you cut it off on video games? what about films? what about comic books? what about fairy tales? why are video games special or does a special principle extend to all deviant violent materials in whatever form? >> no, your honor, that's why

california incorporated the three prongs of the miller standard. it's not just violence, it's violence that meets all three terms. >> i think that misses justice ginsberg's question. why just video games and not movie movies as well p >> we have evidence that the interactive nature of video games where the minor or young adult is the aggressor, is the individual acting out this obscene level of violence if you will is especially harmful to minors. >> do you have studies that show that video games are more harmful to minors than movyings are? >> it's the study regarding violent video games as exemplary teachers. the authors not video games are not only exemplary teachers of

pro-social activities, but exemplary teachers of aggression, the fundamental concern of the california legislature in enacting the statute. while the siensz is continuing to be developed and studies are released every month -- >> what was -- suppose a new study suggested that movies were just as violent, then presumably california could regulate movies like video games. >> well, your honor, there is scientific literature about the impact of violent material on minors. the congress and ftc and parenting groups have been concerned with the amount of violent media to minors. >> that's not answering the justice's question. one of the anderson studies shows the acts of violence is the same for violent video.

can the legislature say now we can outlaw bugs bunny in >> there are people who say the cartoon has little social value. it's entertainment and nothing else. >> this is entertainment. i'm not saying i like the video, the one you issued the five minute clip about. to me, it's not entertainment, but to some, it may well be. >> cartoons do not depart from the established norms of a level of violence to which children have been historically exposed to. we believe the level of violence in the video games -- >> that could have been made when movies came out. we had violence in grim's fairy tales, but never live on the screen. >> your honor, that's the beauty of incorporating the three prongs of the miller standard into the law. this standard ensures that only a narrow category of material is

covered. >> how is this any different than what we said we don't do in the first amendment field in stephens not looking at a category of speech and decide that some of it has moral value. we decide whether a category of speech has a historical tradition of being regulated. now, other than some state statutes that you point to, some of which are very clearly the same as those that we struck down, where's the tradition of regulating violence? >> your honor, california commits -- summits when the rights should be more flexible and recognize when the audience is minors, the same standard shouted not apply, therefore, the question should not be whether or not historically violence was regular lated, but whether or not the constitution guarantees my yours of --

minors -- >> should we get rid of rap music? have you heard some of these lyrics in some of the original violent songs that have been sung about killing people and about other violence directed to them in >> i would agree -- >> the state -- >> i would agree it's egregious, justice, however -- >> why isn't that obscene in the sense you're using the world or deaf i can't. >> i'm not sure it's directly harmful to the minors in the way that video games can be. we know violent and sexual material appeals to a base instinct in especially minors. it's presented in a manner -- >> when you talk about minors, what age group are you talking about? a video game manufacturer has to decide where its game stands. what age of a child should the

manufacturer have in mind? a 17-year-old, a 10-year-old? >> your honor, i would submit just like in the context for minors similar to ginsberg those california's law has not been applied, consider minors as a whole and in california that's under 18 years old. they instruct minors -- >> how did they do that? isn't the average person thinking what's appropriate for a 17-year-old may not be appropriate for a 10-year-old or an 8-year-old? >> your honor, i think juries and judges do this every day in the -- >> the state of california doesn't do that. california has in big letters, 18, so it's not -- is it okay for a 7-year-old? is it okay for a 12-year-old? part of the statute requires

labeling these video games in big numbers 18. it's 18 in california. does it make distinctions between 17-year-olds and 4-year-olds? >> justice, i think rightfully so. i think a jury would be charged with perhaps the standard of what the community believes an average minor, so the manufacturer would consider -- >> an average minor is halfway between 0 and 18? 9 years old. [laughter] >> fair point, justice scalia. i think a jury could be instructed to the typical age group of minors playing these games. >> why wouldn't you say a video game that appeals to the morbid interest of those 18 or under, let's take 18, and it's not suitable in the community for

those 18, and it has no redeeming importance of any kind, no serious literary artistic, political, or scientific value of those 18, that at least as to those you can't sell it without the parent. the parent can buy it, but the child can't. you can't tell a 12-year-old something that would be horrible for an 18-year-old. are we willing to accept that if necessary to make this okay on its face? >> justice, breyer, absolutely. >> could i take you back to justice scalia's original question about deviant violation? i read your briefs, and all i found you said is clearly covered by the statute and presumably the statute applies to more than one video game, so what else does it apply to? how many video games? what kind of video games? how would you describe in plain

english what morbid violence is? what you have to see in a video game for it to be covered. >> okay, justice kagan, i go back to the language of the statute, and the statute covers video games where the range of options available to the player includes maiming, killing, dismembering, torturing, sexually assaulting, and those types of violence. i look to games where -- >> so anything that has those kinds of violence counts? >> no, then you move to the three prong of the miller standard, your honor. >> how do you separate violent games covered to violent games just as violence that are not covered? >> well, your honor, i think a jury could be instructed with expert testimony, with video game clips, and to judge for themselves whether -- >> i'm not concerned about the jury judge, but the producer of the games who has to know what he has to do in order to comply with the law, and you're telling

me, well a jury can -- of course, a jury can make up its mind, i'm sure. but a law with criminal penalties has to be clear, and how is a manufacturer to know whether that particular violent game is covered or not? >> well, your honor -- >> be his own jury and try it before, you know, a -- [laughter] i, i don't know what to do as a manufacturer. >> justice scalia, i'm convinced the video game industry knows what to do. they rate their games every day on the basis of vims, the intensity -- >> so what's covered here, the mature category and ratings, is that what the statute is meant to cover? >> i believe some ma clur rated games are covered, but not all. your honor, just like with sexual material. we can trust individual panders of sexual material to judge whether or not it's -- >> let me make a comment on that

point. it seems like all, or at least a great majority of the questions today are designed to probe whether or not this statute is vague, and you say the beauty of the statute is that it utilizes the categories that have been used in the obscenity area, and that there's an obvious parallel there. the problem is that for generations, there is been a societal consensus about sexual material, and sex and violence have been around a long time. there's a consensus about what's offensive for sexual material, and there are judicial discussions on it. now, those judicial discussions are not precise. you could have had the same questions today with reference to an obscenity statute, and we have said that with reference to

obscenity, there are certain materials that are not protected. those rules are not precise at the margin, and some would say not precise in a more significant degree as well, but you're asking us to go in an entirely new area with no consensus or traditional opinions, and this is -- and this indicates to me the statute might be vague. i thought you'd like to know that reaction. [laughter] >> justice, kennedy, as with the regulation of sexual material and obscenity, we had to start somewhere. california is choosing to start now. we can build a consensus as to what level of violence is in fact offensive for minors just as the case law has developed overtime with sexual depictions. your honor, i believe the key is that the similarities violence has with sex -- this is material --

>> what about excessive glorification of drinking? movies that have too much drinking in it? does that affect minors? i suppose so. ion not concerned with the vagness, i am, but i'm concerned with the amendment that they can't bridge the freedom of speech, and it was understood that the freedom of speech does not include obscenity. it has never been understood that the freedom of speech did not include portrayals of violence. you're asking us to create a whole new prohibition which the american people never ratified when they ratified the 1st amendment. they knew obscenity was bad, but what's next after violence? drinking? smoking? movies that shows smoking? can't be shown to children, will

that affect them? i suppose it will, but is that -- are we to sit day by day to decide what else will be made an exception from the 1st amendment? why is this particular exception okay, but the other ones i suggested are not okay? >> well, justice scalia, i would like to highlight the fact the material issued in ginsberg was not obscene. the partial nudity allowed -- >> i think what he wants to know is what james madison thought about video games. [laughter] did he enjoy them? [laughter] no, i want to know what james madison thought about violence? was there any indication that anybody thought when the first amendment was adopted that there was an exception to it for speech regarding violence?

anybody? >> your honor, as for minors, looking at the historic statutes that were enacted in the past, there was a social recognition -- >> what's the earliest statute? >> pardon? >> what's the earliest statute and what's the enforcement? >> your honor, i don't know the earliest on the top of my head, but i believe they go in the early 1900s or later. i apologize. >> it's principle and it's been quite some years, hasn't it since this court held that one instance that courts, that the country legislatures can regulate are fighting words, and we regulate fighting words, don't we? because they provoke violence, and the american psychological association and the american pediatric association says certain kinds of video games here create violence, then

children are exposed. there's people who think to the contrary. there's two huge things of studies that think not to the contrary. all right. what are we supposed to do? >> well, justice breyer, i think in going back to justice scale yew's question, i find it hard to believe, and i know no historical evidence that suggest our founding fathers in the 1st amendment enacted to guarantee -- >> what justice breyer was asking because this court with respect to the fighting words in your face provoke immediate reaction. the court has been very careful to cut that off so it doesn't have this spillover potential, so you didn't latch on to fighting words. you're analogy is to obscenity

for teenagers as i understand it. >> yes. with regard to fighting words, the final interest in preventing acts of violence is different than the concern here at issue today. >> so, could i just make sure i understand that mr. morazzini because they gave up the argument the interest in the law is preventing minors don't go out and commit these acts themselves. instead the state says the interest in the law is in protecting children's moral development generally? >> justice kagan, we welcome that as an affect of california's regulation, but the primary interest with the internal intrinsic harm to minor is is what the state of california is deeply concerned with in this case. >> a point of clarification. we talked about the labeling parts of this act.

the circuit court struck those portions. you have now challenged that ruling. there are two sections to the act. one is a criminal act for selling to a minor, and the other is a requirement that you label in a certain way each video, and this say -- i think the kir cut said both were unconstitutional; correct? >> yes. >> your brief doesn't address the lailing requirements at all. >> we didn't. one holding on the 9th circuit hinged on the other. on the bid of the california's law, the restriction on sale the court found since it's not illegal to sell the games to 18-year-olds that the purpose behind the label itself was in fact misleading, so under the case law, i don't have the case before me, but regarding lawyers advertising of services, the

government can require a labeling so long as its necessary to prevent misleading the consumer. the 9th circuit found because they struck down the body of our law, that the 18 label would be misleading. >> that's an interesting concession on your part that the labeling doesn't have any separate from the restriction on sale. i would have thought that if you wanted a lesser restriction that you would have promoted labeling as a reasonable scrutiny restriction to permit the control of sale of these to minors, but you seemed to give that argument up all together in >> i didn't intend to concede that the ninth circut's opinion was correct in any sense. >> you have conceded it by not appealing it, but okay, your case on labeling rises and falls

on the sale to minors. >> at this point, i would agree, your honor. >> i gather that if the parents of the minor want the kid to watch this violent stuff. they like gore and may may like -- they may like violent kids, then the state of california has no objection as long as the parents buy the thing, it's okay. >> they are entitled to direct 9 upbringing of their children in the manner they see fit. it's important to the state of california that the parent involves themselves in these important decisions. >> that's basically all this is is a law to help parents? >> there's two fundamental interests served by this law, yes, ensuring parents to involve thermses. california sought to have a barrier between a sales clerk and a minor with regard to

violence like sexual material. california sees the developmental harm caused to minors is no less significant than that recognized by the court in ginsberg with sensitive material. the material issue -- >> i don't think there's a barrier in california to minor's access to sexual material? >> i believe california has a law, section -- >> california has a beginsberg law? >> yes. >> did you spend time enforcing that? >> i'm not aware, but there is a prescription on the sale of sexual material to minors. it's defined as harmful to minors similar to california's act. in fact, california's act incorporating the three prongs of miller goes even further than the law at issue. >> is there -- you've been asked questions

about the vagueness of this and the problem of the seller to know what's good and what's bad. does california have any kind of an advisory opinion, and office to review these videos and say, yeah, this belongs in what did you call it? deviant violence, and this one is just violent, but not deviant. is there any kind of opinion that the seller can get to know which games can be sold to minors, and which ones can't? >> not that i'm aware of. >> you can consider createing such, call it the california office of censorship to judge each video one by one. that would be very nice. [laughter] >> your honor, we asked juries to judge sexual material, and

it's appropriate for minors as well. i believe that if we can -- >> let the government do that? juries are not controllable. that's the wonderful thing about juries, also the worst thing about juries. [laughter] do we let government pass upon, you know, a board of censors? i don't think so. >> justice scalia, california is not doing that here. the standard is quite similar to that in the sexual material reel. . california is not acting as a censor. it is telling manufacturers and distributers to look at the material and judge for yourselves whether the level of violent content meets the prongs of the definition. >> even if we get past what i on difficult questions of vagueness and interpreting this law, suspect there a less restrictive

with a vie-chip? -- v-chip? >> your honor, that's the parental controls available in the new machines? >> yes. >> as we submitted in the briefing, a simple internet search for bypassing parental controls brings up videos on how to get around that. >> that doesn't work? >> i believe the v-chip is limited to television, mr. kennedy. could i reserve the remainder of my time? >> thank you. mr. smith? >> may it please the court, the california law at issue restricts the distribution of expressive works based on their content. california does not seriously con tepid it did satisfy the usual 1st amendment statutes to the law. they are asking for a free pass to the 1st amendment that would

deny constitutional protection to some ill defined subset of expressive works, and not just video games, but necessarily movies, books, and any other work that pore portrays violence in a way some court some way decide is deviant and offensive. >> what about the distinction between books and movies in the video games, the child is not passively watching something. the child is doing the killing. the child is doing the maiming, and i suppose that might be understood to have a different impact on the child's miranda rule development. -- moral development. >> it might, there's not a sled of evidence to suggest it's true. >> what was the state of the record that was present before the court in ginsberg? >> they were aware on science on both sides that made a judgment that as a matter of common sense they could decide that obscenity even somewhat in large obscenity obscenity -- >> the court acted on common

sense? >> yes, as long as there's science on both sides, in that particular area which is an exception that goes back to the founding. they field it was proper to adjust the -- >> if the material wasn't obscene, they were girly magazines, i imagine today's children they would seem rather tame, the magazines involved, but they were definitely not obscene with respect to doesn'ts. >> your honor, that's true, but one of the things to recognize about the case is they didn't pass the material before the court. they said it is a somewhat larger definition of -- >> we're talking about common sense. why isn't it common sense to say that if a parentments his 13-year-old child to have a game where the child is going to sit there and imagine here's a torturer and impose painful, excruciating, painful violent on small children and women for an

hour or so, and there's no social or redeeming value, it's not artistic or literary, ect., why isn't it common sense to say the state has the right, parent, if you want that for your 13-year-old, you buy it yourself which i think is what they are saying. >> well, your honor, the state has have to -- >> it does have a reason. i looked at the study, perhaps not as thoroughly as you, but it seemed to me that dr. ferguson and dr. anderson are in a disagreement, not that much actually, but they've looked in depth, you know, in a whole lot of video games, not movies or other things, video games. and both groups come to the conclusion that there is some tendency to increase violence and the american psychological association, the american pediatric association signed on to a long list on i think it's the anderson side that this does hurt children. i have to admit that if i'm

supposed to be a sociological expert, i can't choose between them, but if a legislature has enough evidence to have harm, the answer is yes. >> it's whether parents need help to exercise their role -- >> yes they need help because many parents are not home when their children come home from school. many parents have jobs, we hope, and when their children are there, they do what they want, and all this says is if you want that torture of let's say babies, make it as bad as possible, what you do, parent, you buy it. he's 13 years old. what's the common sense or science of that? >> two aspects. with respect to parental controls, there's a series of things parents have available to them and are using today to deal with any concerns they have

about what's appropriate -- >> any 13-year-old can bypass parental controls in 5 minutes. >> that is one element of about five different elements, your honor. in fact, talking about them, there is the ratings. parents are doing the purchasing 90% of the time. the child brings the game home and the child can review it. the game is played on the television or computer. think harm is supposed to take place over a period of years, not minutes. the parent has ample opportunity to supervise on what games are played in the house and there's control that is similar to the ones the court found to be significant in the playboy case and a variety of cases. >> how much do the videos cost? >> $50-$60 when new. >> not too many 13-year-olds walk in with a 50 dollar bill. >> if there is kids buying

without parental permission, they are very likely in the 16-year-old category. >> you're away from the common sense. if you're going back to the common sense of it, what common sense is there in having a state of the law, the state can forbid and says to the parent, the child, the 13-year-old cannot go in and buy a picture of a naked woman, but the 13-year-old child can go in and buy one of these video games as i've described. i've tried to take a bad of one i could think of, torture of children. okay, now, you can't buy a naked woman, but you can go and buy that, you say to the 13-year-old. now, what sense is there to that? >> well, there's various aspects of this that's important to understand. first of all the, violence is a feature of works that we create for children that encourage them to watch throughout the history of this country. we have a very different sense of whether violence per se -- >> love is not something that people have tried to encourage children to understand and know

about? i mean, what is the difference between sex and violence? both, if any? >> there's a huge difference. >> thank you. >> we do not -- [laughter] >> the difference is we do not make films for children in which explicit sex happens. we make films for children in which graphic violence. >> there's a difference. we do not have a tradition in this country of telling children they should watch people actively hitting schoolgirls over a head with a shovel so they are messyless and shooting people in the leg so they fall down. i'm reading from the district court and pour gas hen on them and set them on fire. we protect children from that. we don't actively expose them to that. >> parents have been doing that. the question for this court is

if you will create a new exception under the 1st amendment and whether if you're going to do it, you could figure out what the scope of that is. >> is it your position, i know this is a facial challenge, mr. smith, so is it your position that the 1st amendment could not prohibit the sale to minors of the video game that i just described? >> my position is that most people would think that's an inappropriate game for minors. we do not try to sell it to minors -- >> well, i know you don't, you're avoiding the answer. does the 1st amendment protect the sale of that video to minors, a minor? >> there is not a violence exception @ minors, and there should no be. >> your position is that the 1st amendment cannot, no matter what type of law whether this is vague or not, that the state legislature cannot pass a law that says you may not sell to a 10-year-old, a video in which they set schoolgirls on fire. >> and the reason for that is there's no possible way to draw

an exception to the constitution to the 1st amendment -- gr what is the state passed -- what is california took the list of video games that your association rates as mature, and said, there's a civil -- and you apparently don't want vend res selling those games to minors, isn't that right? >> exercising our -- >> you don't want that, and california said there's a civil penalty attached to that. >> what i do is transform the esrb, the private voluntary system that exists into the censorship commission that this court struck down in interstate circuit. when the government does that and you have to go to them for permission to allow kids into movies or these it's a licensing authority thats 1st amendment allows. >> there's really no good reason to think exposure to video games is bad for minors, expoture to

really violent video games is bad, is that right? >> it's important to draw a distinction between harm under the law and appropriateness. families have different judgment they make about their children at different ages and with different content and family values -- >> mr. smith, do they say that's a sufficient law to go guard? i understand the current studies dowght suggest harm, but are there studies that would be enough? >> well, i imagine a world where expression could transform to murders, that's not the way the miewm mind works, and here the reality is opposite. dr. anderson testified in the record that the vast majority playing the games will grow up to be fine. he acknowledged the effects of the game are not different from watching cartoons on television or reading violent passages in

the bible or looking at a picture of a gun. picture of a gun. >> you really don't

>> we have a history of new mediums coming along and people reacting to them and our children will be criminals and this produced a rapid legislation that was never enforced and started with economic books and movies in the 1950s and hearings across the street where social scientists came in tone the senate that half the juvenile violence was

caused by economic books. they censored it. we have rock lyrics, the internet -- >> do you think all video games are speech in the first instance? you could say it's the modern day of monopoly. they are games. they are things people use to compete. when you think about some of them, the first video game was playing tennis on your tv. how is that speech at all? >> the games have narrative events occurring, character, plot, and that's what the sphait is set out to regulate here. if these events occur here, there is violence, one person hurting another person, a human being being the victim and doing it in a way that they find offense eve, we're going to regulate it. >> are we going to separate video games into narrative and nonnarrative video games? >> you don't have to as long as the law is limited to narrative. that's what the law says.

now if the law says you shouldn't play video games with red images in them, that might be a closer case. >> well, what about a law that says you can't sell to minors a video game, doesn't care what the plot is, but no video game in which the minor commits violent acts of maims and killing. what about that? is that regulating speech? >> of course, your honor. >> it's not speech. saying you can't let the kid maim, kill -- >> i'm sorry -- >> or set on fire. >> what the lay would be directed at is not the plot, not the video game, itself, but the child's act of committing murder, maiming, and so forth. >> the events of the video game, what happens in the plot is a come combination of what the game gives you and what the

player adds to it. there's a creative aspect frpt other side referred to as a dialogue between the player and game. i submit both are protected by the 1st amendment just as a -- >> the person is speaking to the game? >> no, helping the plot and determining what happens in the events that acts on the screen like an actor. you are acting out certain elements of the play and contributing to the events that occur and adding a creative element of your own. that makes them different. >> your challenge is 5 facial challenge in >> yes, your honor. >> if you use the tests if there is one or any applications that satisfy the constitution, it fails? >> the tests don't apply to the 1st amendment context. >> i thought we referenced them that last year in the stephens case, and why we didn't decide what applies because we adopted

an approach that looked it over and said this statute is overbroad, and specifically didn't decide whether it could be applied in that case to cross videos. >> well, that's correct, your honor, but i think -- there's no argument here, i don't think, that if there's one game out there that this is constitutional applied even though it's unconstitutional applied -- >> well i understand the question, i think, is there games or minors, maybe a less violent game sold to that 17-year-old, but something like postal ii sold to a 10-year-old might well not violate the first amendment to apply that law to that. the way we approach the issue on hunting videos say it's too broad to apply the law to everything, we strike it down, but we've opened the possibility that a narrowly drawn statute might pass muster. why isn't that a good approach

in >> you could do that. certainly the key thing is you strike down this law because this law is broader than any one game. i would submit to you though there's no way in fact that anybody's going to be able to come back and draw a statute to gets who they they claim because the english level is not susceptible -- >> it's not susceptible. you've been arguing your point and that's fair and you have experts who favor you, and you make that point strongly, and your points a good one and serious one that it's hard to draw this line under traditional 1st amendment standards. but deal with their point for a moment, and i take it their point is there is nos new 1st amendment thing here. there is a category which really are involving things like torturing children, ect.. maybe you don't like to sell them to anybody, you have an x or some special thing, but they exist, and they fit within a

miller-type definition. they are much worse than the simple girly magazine involved there, and they will use traditional 1st amendment tests that is to say there is speech at issue, that speech is being limited. it is being done for a good reason, compelling interest, namely this problem with the x videos and the torture and bleeding it through, and there is no less restrictive alternative that isn't also significantly less effective, i want you to deal with that directly because what you've been doing for the most part is saying we'd have to be in some total new area, ect., but their argument is you don't have to be in a totally new area, ect.. apply traditional 1st amendment standards, and we win. that's their argument, and i'd like to hear what you have to say about that specifically.

>> your honor, they do not suggest there's an existing exception to the 1st amendment applying -- >> this is not an exception. it is the traditional, strict, scrutiny 1st amendment test. >> well, they make a -- >> well, to get you to focus on it i'll say i made the argument. >> there you go. okay. [laughter] >> i think if you apply scrutiny here, it's not close to the showing required under the 1st amendment. first of all, they have not shown any problem, let alone a compelling problem, requiring regulation here. in a world where parents are fully empowered already to make these calls, where crime including violent crimes since the introduction of the game is plummeting in the country, down 50% since the day doom went on the market 15 years ago, in a world where parents are fully aware of what's going on in their homes and aware of the rating system and can use all the other tools # that we have

talked about -- >> why couldn't you make the same arguments with respect to the obscenity? >> because obscenity didn't have strict constituteny applied to it. >> why shouldn't violence be treated the same as obscenity? >> we don't have the same history of it or pedigree of that exception, and as i was suggesting earlier, there's a fundamental difference in the facts. ginsberg works because we take everything explicit and say over here it's not appropriate for minors. violence would require you to draw a much different line between acceptable protective vims and unacceptable unprotected violence for minors, and given the lack of historical pedigree and the nature of what you're trying to do -- >> wells courts struggling for years and year, with obscenity

and we have the miller standards and the state has said this gives us a cat goir that we can -- category to work with reference to violence. >> you take out explicit sex and nudity, what do you have left? you have a structure with no apparent meaning. there's no way to know how a court would apply a standard like deviant viements, morbid violence, let alone decide which video games have a redeeming social, political, artistic value. the value of a video game is completely in the eye of the beholder. some say they are beautiful works of artistic creation. >> you can make that art with reference to obscenity sen ?i >> except that we know, we all know at least with respect to ginsberg rmt obscenity is a difficult line, i acknowledge. ginsberg works well because if it has sex in it, naked people

having sex in it and it's designed to be appealing to people's interests, you don't give it to minors, and you don't have a lot of cases out there about that. >> when you started ginsberg with something prescribable with regard to adults, and you know there is obscenity proscribed even to adults, where as in this case, i don't know there's such a thing as morbid violence which could be eliminated from ordinary movies. >> i think a little history is helpful here. this court has twice dealt with lawings attempting to regulate violent works in the past. one is winters versus new york with law applying to magazines and books, and the other was in 1960s the ginsberg came down and the city of dallas had an ordnance with a commission to review each movie -- >> let's be clear about your argument. your argument is that there is

nothing that a state can do to limit minors access to the most violent sadistic graphic video game that can be developed. that's your argument. >> my position -- >> is it or isn't it? >> it could be applied and given the fact and record and given the fact is the problem is well-controlled and parents are empowered and there's alternatives out there gives basis to scrutiny satisfied. >> just to be clear your answer is at this point there's nothing the state can do? >> because there's no problem to be solved. the answer is yes, your honor. >> there's nothing -- >> there's plenty of proof children go into stores and buy the games despite the voluntary rating system, the retailer restraint by some, there's still proof out there, and a lot of it

that kids are buying the games, and there's proof that some parents as well-intentioned as they may or may not be, do not supervise that. starting from the proposition there is a problem, it's a compelling state need, why are you arguing that there is no solution that the state could news to address that problem? >> the existing solutions are perfectly capable of allowing this problem to be addressed aseeming it is a problem. >> it's 20% of sales going to kids. >> that's when they send out someone who is 16 to test the system. there's no record at all that kids are secretly buying the games, bringing them into the home and playing it without their parents knowing. there's no evidence of that at all. >> could you have a law that says the state has to put, the

dealers have to put the violent video games in a particular area of the video store? >> there's -- >> that is not, and you know, minors are not allowed in that area? >> well, what you're saying is you're going do have a limit on the ability of minors to buy them. >> yeah. >> i don't know how that differs from the current law, your honor. >> your answer to the first question of justice and chief justice was yes, that you are saying there's nothing they can do, so now am i right about that or am i not right? >> yes. >> i am right. >> okay, they can't say for example all the highest rated videos have to be on the top shelf out of reach of children. can they do that? >> i think that's -- >> what about cigarettes? >> cigarettes are not speech, your honor. >> i know that cigarettes are not speech, mr. smith. [laughter] cigarettes are something we

determined are harmful to children. the question is you say the record doesn't support the idea that these video games are harmful to children. some of us conclude that it does. >> well, the record doesn't support it. the record says that if you take the studies at face value that are not more harmful than watching cartoons. that's what the record shows. >> on that score, mr. smith, there is a study by the fcc and the question is whether violence can be restricted during the hours when most children are awake just the way pornography is. i don't remember what are the hours, something like from 10 in the evening or -- i don't know, but didn't the fcc say, yeah, we could do the same

thing for violence that we're doing for sex, except we don't think we ought to do it, but congress should do it. >> they spent several years coming up with a definition to allow anybody to figure out what violent tv shows have to be put into the adult category and which don't. they punted and said we have no idea how to do that. congress asked us to do it, and we can't, they gave it back to congress to get a definition. this is 5 difficult task to use language to differentiate levels of violence in a matter to some way tell people what the rules of the game are. even if you think there's a problem to solve, you need to think carefully whether or not you authorize the creation of a new rule authorizing regulation in the area when no one knows the scope of it. >> you say there's no problem because 16-year-olds in california never have money available to buy a video game and because they never have tvs in their room and their parents are always home watching what

they do with their video games and parents and the video games have features that allow parents to block access, to block the playing of violent video games which can't be overcome by a computer savvy, california 16-year-old. that's why there's no problem? >> what we're going to do is judge the law based on what 16 and 17-year-olds are getting and whether that would be harmful to them. i think the problem there is the line between 16, 17, and 18 is so fine you're not able to identify any real category of games that fits into that cat goir, and it's important, by the way, to note that california hasn't told us whether we should judge, 5-year-old, 10-year-olds, 17-year-old, if it's 5, that's overrestrictive. if it's 17-year-olds it doesn't restrict anything. nobody can convince a jury that this is an 18-year-old game, not a 17-year-old. we draw that line in the death

penalty, don't we? with you're over 18, you can be sentenced. we do it for drinking and driving. >> here's it's for expression what age they correspond to. you can't cut it that finely and say this is an 18 game and this is a 17 game. i don't think that works. if that's the test, the test justice breyer suggested it ought to be, then the statute restricts nothing. if the test is 5-year-olds -- >> maybe it's restricting torture, and if that what it restricted, why is that terrible? they expreemented with other things, maybe you could limit it to that. >> i think it's telling, your honor. justice scalia in manufacturing a game you have to know the rules in advance. subject to hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties just for a game. >> you have your rules, so why

wouldn't the first step be to follow your rules, your rules, the x things are limited to people who are over 18, we'll see if we get prosecutorred for a different one, and you might never. >> our rules don't help you at all. they say the only restricting a smaller seb set of n rated games which are appropriate for 17 -year-olds. these rates conflict with the ratings on the packages used by parents every day to make these judgments, so it's actually interferes. the prospect interferes with the information already on the packaging. >> thank you, mr. smith. you have four minutes, mr. morszini. >> new games cost $60, but parents regulate and minors can't afford them and can access

them. i wanted to draw out the point that california's law really is not an ordnance directed to a plot of a game. it's directed to games with essentially no plot, no artistic value. this is the helpful nature of the miller standard. it's going after the nature of the game where the child -- >> if it has a plot, it has artistic value? is that the test for artistic value, anything with a plot? >> it's a factor to consider. >> well, one factor to be considered, sure, but you're not telling us that so long as there's a plot, it's okay? >> no, your honor. a single quotation from voltaire is not going to make that work nonobscene. >> can't have artistic videos

that include maiming and cutting off heads, so long as it's artistic in >> if the level of the violence just as an obscenity causes the game as a whole to lack the artistic -- it's a balance like sexual material. that's why violence and sex -- >> forwhom? a 5-year-old would appreciate is great art, is that the test in >> again, those under 18 years old. >> you think mortal combat is prohibited by this statute? >> i believe it's a candidate, your honor, but i haven't played the game and been exposed to it sufficiently to judge for myself. >> it's a candidate means yes a reasonable jury could find that mortal combat, an icon game that pass the clerks who work for us spend time in our -- [laughter] >> i don't know what she's

talking about. [laughter] just by candidate i meant the video game industry should look at it, a long look at it. now, i don't know off the top of my head. i'm willing to state here in open court that the video game would be covered by this act. i'm guessing games in the brief like mad world is covered by the act. i think the video game -- >> would a video game that portrayed a voluntary as opposed to a human being being maimed and tortured, is that governed by the act in >> no, the act is only directed towards the range of options that are able to be inflicted on a human being. >> so, is the video producer says this is not a human being, it's an computer simulate the person, then that doesn't -- all they have to do is put a little harder feature on the creature and sell the video game? >> under the act, yes.

california's concern -- i think this is one of the reasons that sex and violence are similar. these are base physical acts we're talking about, justice. limiting, narrowing our law here in california, there in california, to violent depictions against human beings -- >> so what happens when the character gets maimed, head chopped off, and immediately after it happens, they spring back to life, and they continue their battle? is that covered by your act? they happened to be maimed and killed forever, this is just temporarily. >> i would think so. the intent of the law is to limit those minor's access -- >> you think so? isn't that feedback for justice scalia's question? >> well, your honor, this is a facial challenge. this statute is not been applied or been construed by a state or federal court below, but -- >> thank you, counsel.

the case is being submitted. >> coming up next on c-span2, a discussion about u.s.-iraq relations with former ambassador ryan crocker. ..

>> the school district always calls this a violent operating statute. there's nothing voluntary about bible reading. >> changes need to occur in congress and it's only going to occur to people of our country really begin to get involved in the political system and begin to rent for congress and come over and make changes necessary.

>> today, the world affairs councils of america held their annual conference in washington. here's part of that conference with former ambassador to iraq, ryan crocker and the former commanding general of u.s. forces in iraq, ray odierno. this is 50 minutes. [inaudible conversations] >> i think i'll get started while they're getting their mics clipped on. and please continue to enjoy your lunch. hello, i'm maria santos, former vice chairman of the world affairs councils of america. and with the world affairs council of greater hampton roads. and glad to have you all here with us today. it is an honor for me to be introducing such a distinguished panel for today's keynote election address. in the issue at hand, u.s. iraq

relations, what next is the key element of our theme, u.s. foreign policy into the next decade. and let me start with a remark by marc grossman. since ambassador grossman has been introduced to at least five times at the conference began, and seven going to begin by thanking him on behalf of all of us here today for his service as chairman of our organization for the past two years and also for his involvement, not only of organizing this year's conference, both were also putting in all the time and energy and her members meeting on wednesday and throughout our two days of discussion. and i'm willing to bet -- yeah, give him a round of applause.

[applause] and i'm willing to bet that in spite of a stage up, vice chairman of the cohen group of very distinguished foreign service career, this is one of his most challenging assignment yet. [laughter] so thank you for taking the phone and making it such a great success. and we couldn't have two better discussants dan ambassador ryan crocker and general gray zero dear no, put together with odierno's predecessor, general petraeus, both the book on civilian military cooperation in a conflict arena. their working relationships were unparalleled and their success has become a how-to guide for similar come in future ventures. ambassador ryan crocker is also a household name for many of you here. despite a most distinguished foreign service careers ending

over 37 years, you never fail to follow his own mantra of making the hard choices and going to the hard places. and along with his current position as to seen an executive professor of the george bush school of government and public surface at texas a&m university, ambassador crocker has always found time to visit councils around the country, addressing many of you here today. so not only do we appreciate your outstanding service to our country, we are also very grateful to your service or organization. thank you. clark at [applause] general odierno is also no stranger to making hard choices and going to hard places having recently returned from serving as commanding general of multinational forces in iraq and taking on the relatively calm

her position, we hope, as commander of joint forces in hampton roads, virginia. we hope that you too will soon become part of the world affairs council family, beginning of course with your home council at hampton roads, virginia. and you can take that either is an imitation or warning. so please join me now and giving our illustrious panel a very warm welcome. [applause] >> is the son? thank you very much. i just wanted to also go en banc general odierno to safety with that is a great honor. you'll notice also that the retired state department has now set up surrounding and will try to go from there. general odierno as a meeting

with the secretary of defense a little bit later this afternoon. and so, we've got a hard stop until 115. the three of us thought we were sort of skip opening statements and 50 questions and that will have plenty of time for all of you to have the benefit of asking questions again. and so i found with her permission i'd be interested in following the ideas that maria had put out and talking a little bit about the future of iraq. i think it's also important at this stage to consider the future of iraq and the larger questions of strategy we were talking about this morning about the fight against extremism and terrorism an important subset here, pakistan says they've heard about it so much. we have the former ambassador pakistan year. we had to talk a little bit about that. third, for me one of the most interesting things for me to have people sit here is the day where she said the vanguard of civilian and military people

work together and what they did and also in the future. and i'd like to take a little bit of time to see what reference they take from this question of the united states and iraq. and so i say, well known as quickly as we can to your questions. i think that was a very important part. so i want to get into the issue, the future of u.s. iraq relations. i think that's fundamentally questions of the future of iraq. i wonder general i can start with you, sort of take on this question. here we are at this nexus of time and energy and blood. what happens next in iraq? [inaudible] >> -- how important iraq is i believe to the future, when a key place it is in the middle east and the role it can play in my mind of bringing increased

security, not only inside the middle east but the united states. iraq, as everyone knows is in a very strategic location inside of the middle east. the picture of many different groups of people, sunni, shia, kurds. it is says he ran on the right. to the east as many sunni arab states to the south and the west and has this large kurdish population in the northern part of iraq. and so, this represents so many peoples within the middle east. just iraq itself becomes an extremely important place for the future. then he put on top of that the fact that they have started to move towards the democratic process. they're interested in having an open, economic environment inside the country. and once this starts to take hold, it could be a great representation for the middle east. and in my mind, it could then

create an atmosphere of more stability. and an example for other nations. so as we look to the future of iraq, i would say let me first talk from a security days. there's still violence in iraq today, but it's a much different violence than it was just three years ago. three years ago we had a widespread insurgency throughout the country that was spread from the north to the south, east to the west. today we basically have three groups -- i. would say three different categories of security issues within iraq. one is you still have a very small group is involved which i would say this sort of an insurgency, where they're just trying to construct iraq. they want to see the government fail. they'd like to see someone else take power in iraq. not group now is extremely

small. second of al qaeda iraq, they are not conducting terrorist operations. they know longer conduct of spectrum counterinsurgency operations. they are conducting terrorist attacks, although much less than they used to, but are still conducting terrorist attacks. why are they doing not? their many theories on this. i believe they do not want the democratic process to fail. they don't want the state of iraq to become stable. they'd much rather see a gradual feeling so they can take advantage of that in order to move forward the idea of creating terrorism. i believe they failed in their attempt to do this, but they won't. so the important pieces we now create, we talk about this later, but we've now created a security force of my mind that is capable of dealing with this for the most part. and we could talk more about that later with questions.

so then, my position is iraq is now about politics and about economic issues. and we still have a ways to go to resolve some of the political issues involved. we still have some ways to go to continue economic relations. that's what's important -- >> first i'd like to say what a pleasure it is to be here today. it's a pleasure to be with my friend and comrade, ray odierno. this is the first time we've been together since we're both in iraq. [inaudible] [laughter] >> the second and like to do is move to my prepared statement. which actually has to do now

with me, but with you. i'm delighted to be at this annual gathering. i've worked with world affairs councils around the country for many years and have enormous regard for limitations. i've also worked with the national organization that we represent today. the world affairs council of america. there are some great councils around the country, but speaking from the policy side, as great as those parts are, some of the world affairs councils of america represented far greater. i had the opportunity in conjunction with general odierno should reach back and asked for leadership missions come to iraq in the transition between bush and obama. a number of you who participated tonight are here today.

they made a difference. i think there are other leadership missions that need to take place. i would like to see a leadership mission to afghanistan, to iran. i would like to see another leadership missions to iraq. we've turned the page. i'd like to see it get out there and make an assessment before we decide to close the book. and that's from a policy, that only really works if there is a national organization. so i commend you, marc grossman, laurie murray, and all of those he who have worked to put this together today. [applause] iraq going forward -- i would agree with virtually everything general odierno said. i see the glass as distinctly more half-full and half-empty.

he kicked through a number of very positive points. let me tell you what my worth is. for all the progress that iraq has seen over the past three years in particular, the challenges in front remain immense. carrying tension between shia and sunnis, ethnic tensions between kurds and arabs have decreased. those tensions lie on a rickety foundation of unresolved institutional and constitutional issues. states rights issues. the authority of the regional government in kurdistan versus the federal government here in baghdad versus the government and elsewhere. general odierno and his forces have literally done heroic work in conjunction with the regional government and the federal government to keep peace along

the green line. but this is a holding action. the hard decisions still lie in front of the iraqis. general odierno has painted the picture of what iraq could we. an enormous, strategic asset for the region and the world. iraq for the last half-century has really defined itself in the opposite manner, an adversary, a problem, an enemy. we now have the opportunity to see a different set of relationships move forward. we have an architecture for that, the agreements that i negotiated during my time as ambassador, but the security agreement and more importantly strategic framework that defines the relationships in all aspects. but there has to be content to these agreements.

so in addition to all the unresolved issues in iraq, here's my biggest worry. and america as we look at other issues overseas like afghanistan and pakistan to take our attention as we look at our domestic issues, particularly our economy, that we are not thinking about turning the page as president obama said. we are thinking about closing the book in iraq. that iraq is over, time to move on, goodbye, goodbye. if our thinking and if our resources in the new congress moves into office does go along those lines, i think the chances for long-term strategic success builds on the great work that general odierno and hisof braves have already put into this will diminish sharply. american interests will pay. the iraqi people will pay.

>> both of those are interesting and good answers, but they're from more than american lives. which results in the shoes of iraq at this point. and their two iraq is sitting here today, some of whom had national responsibility and some of whom are interested in citizens in the future. what do you think they would say? >> well, polling is an imperfect business as we all know and it's particularly imperfect in developing societies like iraq. i was struck by two poles connect to via the over 31st remission. cbs poll here found that 70% of americans were done with iraq. time not only to remission, just time to get out. then too long, cost too much, too many other things to do. a poll conducted the same week

in iraq have the same percentage. 70% of iraqis. 70% better be a terrible mistake for them if the u.s. decided to come home. rao's quarters has more recent experience, but what i encountered talking to iraqis and government and in the markets was the range of views on america, some tiny percentage who are really grateful for everything we have done from day one. a vast middle range with varying degrees of emotions fed boy, have you guys screwed this up to greater or lesser degrees, but all of them are at the end of the day sane stay here until it sticks because if you leave it will get even worse. so partly and a total, partly

based on surveying. partly based on the votes in favor of the strategic framework binding together as allies. iraq is in many cases may not like this, but i think in most cases feel that i wrote going forward is essential for their security and stability. >> i don't disagree at all. i would say what we have to be careful of using the last thing i said, it is very difficult -- i have trouble actually myself coming to grips with this. it's hard for a country to like somebody who has stayed for a very long time. no matter the problem they have with saddam hussein and the fact he wanted overthrown. so when you have foreign people in your own country in a foreign military within your own country, it's sometimes hard to like. they want to see themselves take

control of their own country. but they understand that where they think they can go, the division that they have, i believe iraqis believe that they have the potential to be illegal if the middle east. they believe they have the educational systems and their educated to be able to do that. i think they believe they have the natural resources to do that. but they need significant help because those resources and infrastructure associated with it has been so ignored, really since probably 1980. you can make the argument that iraq has been at war since 1980. the iran-iraq war from 1888. and other storms and then sanctions. and then you have the overthrow of saddam hussein in 2003. one of the things i realized as they went into iraq, was we underestimated the impact that sanctions had on the people of

iraq. i'm not so sure they had the effect on saddam hussein and the government. they have a significant impact on the people. if you would run attacks, doctors were able to update based on what the english medical technology given in english. they weren't able to have access to that. it hadn't been updated in 20 to 30 years. and it not been updated. in fact i called a societal devastation. i think one of the things we did is we underestimated the societal devastation mummy got into iraq. and that's partly why it's taken so darn long. we didn't understand what to modify. part of that was insurgency, par with other people taking control. the iraqis believe united states if they wanted to could fix this problem. and they think we've chosen not to fix it. and we've explained to them time and time again we have done everything we can to help them to fix their problems.

and so, what were trying to do now is they are not taking more control. they are now a sovereign nation based on the agreement that was negotiated and signed back in december 2008. and so what we're now trying to do is build their capabilities so they can move forward, to the people i've heard rack need our help to do that. there is still a mistrust between elements inside of iraq. they have not built up trust between each other. and we kind of act as an honest broker of somebody who was there to help them to work through their issues, not to solve the problems for them, either create the environment for them to solve their own problems. and i think that what we have to play to move forward. >> i'd like to stay with iraq for a moment, but yet turned a little bit to the questions of diplomacy and working together. one of the things it seems to me

is that u2 pioneered a way of working together. and when you think about the president national security strategy and focus on the whole of government any think about the lesson we learned of the bush administration about the whole of government. and here i would say it isn't just the state department working with the military, but it's the civilians power working with the military. and i'd be interested as you think poor dear, the african command now, military, civilians were together. in south come very much working civilians and military together. so what lessons can you draw and what lessons would you give to those who have come out and said i have the responsibility, the whole of government responsibility. how do we do with? >> i would just say that first off as i go around and talk to the military is in the schools,

there were never be a conflict again with pure military solutions. i don't see that happening any time anywhere. and the reason is because it's the complexity we live in, whether it be the information management, whether it be what people now expect instantaneous access and information where they know how to people can help them to solve their problems. the military can't do it themselves. their matter where we go, we have to have a civilian proponents of either goes to solve the problems that we have to solve. and we just simply don't have the expertise to do that. but we can do is we can do

something for the environment does not allow civilian agencies to operate because of the level of violence. so we can do some minor things. our whole way of moving forward is to set up an environment where the civilian leadership can come in and take over those things, what they have the expertise and if the ability to reach out and bring the expertise in to help us to solve these problems. for one of the lessons learned that i come out of this with and if even now down to eye with a brigade commander level or even battalion commander level as unity of effort. in the military we always talk about unity of command. unity of command is easy. to me to me that what works predict how much you want to do it supposedly they do it. supposedly. unity of effort is very different. unity of effort means we have this diagram is to draw. in one place in northern iraq, you had border police, so we at the department of homeland security working there.

we had other governmental security agencies and intel agencies working there. with the state department working there. we'd usaid working with the state department. with nongovernmental organizations. we at the united nations. with foreign military units working in my. ammonite brigade commanders responsible. if they want you to build unity of effort. and what you have to deal with is build relationships. you have to understand what they're trying to achieve and how you can assist each other in moving forward to what you're trying to achieve. what we have to do to achieve these organizations. we didn't pay any attention to them and it causes problems. made it much more difficult. it's gained unity of effort and realizing the four-star level. frankly i found lieutenant colonel's whole lot better than

the four-star generals. they did it for survival. what i realize is you have to teach these examples. and we have to made out of joy of a strong team and i think that's what we worked with at the state department when he was over there. and then carry that forward. and it's very important. again, all these other places -- the u.n. plays a major role in iraq and want them to play even a bigger role. so you have to at least meet and talk with them, build relationships, understand that they're trying to see. try and build a synergy between what you're doing and what they're doing. that's probably the number one lesson learned. >> two brief comments. purely military and purely diplomatic problems cease to be -- but it seems to be

important. it is now one big messy political military world. certainly in iraq and certainly in afghanistan. so you have to have that unity of effort. and it starts at the top. dave petraeus and race have one, it was the old american revolution mantra we have better hang together or most assuredly we will hang separately. any chance of success is going to come out of that unity of effort. and everything we did, we basically did together. we have joint strategic assessment teams, joint campaign plans, joint campaign planned implementation task force, joint working groups, joint task forces. but general odierno, members of the staff were members of my staff. my closest, most tightly held

meetings always had a representative of general odierno and office. there simply could not any daylight between us. and if you can get that going up to four-star level, you can push it down. not without pain, wailing, gnashing and sometimes bloodshed, but you can do it. so the first part of the insert is just get it done on the spot. the harder problem and one that in my view we still not masters institutionalizing this. there is no manual for the government approach. the state department came up years ago with an office called the coordinator for reconstruction and stabilization. it is supposed to coordinate the civilian effort worldwide. it's still a shell. what i found i had to do as ambassador was go to the speed

dial to various cabinet level secretaries, say in mr. attorney general, i really need 25 assistant attorneys and a need to know what from friday. okay. there isn't a mechanism to compel that whole government approach. to military and civilians. and i hope they move ahead as a government, we find ways to better impose and coordinate that. and just to pick up on gray's last point, it it isn't just whole of government. it's full of international effort. one of the things we successfully did in iraq was bring the united nations to coordinated operations, where they were off of our provincial reconstruction team basis. we house them. we secured them. he moved them. they could not have done this on

their own and they made a crucial difference is we moved into the election. so it's an internationalization of the whole of government effort right now that is being carried out more by the forces of will of individuals in the field than it is by any effective standard operating procedures. [inaudible] >> when we decide -- brian and i would be -- meet four times in the morning heard that sound like a minor thing. but you don't understand how much goes on every single day in iraq. and o'bryan would be working with military security issues and they overlap. if it wasn't for sitting down and let in us know what's going on, we would have disconnects and we'd end up working against each other potentially. and so, it is absolutely key for the senior leaders to sit down.

and then when we did a search, we invented state department teams with our brigade and we found all of a sudden regained a synergy with everything they're doing together. and so, it sometimes i'm mean talk about very serious issues every single day can make a huge difference. and there's no way i could've known everything he was doing and he could tell everything we were doing every day. and so it's important we sat down and discussed it. the other lesson i learned in that kind of learned this -- i was fortunate because i got to spend about 18 months as a military advisor to secretary powell and secretary rice. so i got to understand the state department a little bit. but what you don't realize is the military is overwhelming. i mean, we go into iraq with 175,000 people. and i have these huge stacks

that can do incredible things. and then you have the state department. of course we have 40 people for every one of their 50. [inaudible] [laughter] to what we had to do, as ryan said, as i started embedding people in industry and they worked for the ambassador, to build their capacity and use their expertise. and it served me better because then we learned what was going on. we do better idea how it could support and about the synergies together. so it's about leadership. and this is always about leadership. leaders are not willing to do this, you will not happen. if leaders are willing to do it it will happen. and especially now as ryan said, it's not codified. but we certainly know it must be, but we know in afghanistan

are doing the same thing. and even in pakistan where we have some military forces are doing some humanitarian things. all around the world they're going to be very tightly knitted with the ambassadors. if you don't do that, you never have the opportunity again. >> i invite you now to post questions. we have a few minutes before this panel ends. i would be very grateful for questions and comments. >> choice status with the world academy of harrisburg good i think everyone in this room pretty much is familiar with the middle east. and we've watched how in many countries the people will experiment at least with islamic governments. so the questions i'm asking you is indeed the u.s. closing the book, is clearly stepping away to allow the iraqi people to determine their fate. and considering what they know about the influence of iran, the majority of shiites in the

country, can you envision, you know, the possibility of an islamic state emergency after the united states leaves? and what do you see is the factors that would contribute or not contribute to that? and how do you think the american people will feel having basically created another one. >> well, it may first theorem on the middle east is complicated and you just asked one incredibly complicated question. there is little likelihood of an islamic state emerging in iraq because of iraq's muslims are divided between sunnis and shia. they would not be able to agree at all on a comment theocratic approach to government as

happened in the case in iran. another dimension of this is the relationship between iran and iraq. the vast majority of iranians, of course our shia, a substantial majority, get those two countries fought the vicious eight-year war to defend their histories, their borders, their nationalities, ethnicities against the others. the common bond shiism did nothing to ameliorate probably the most vicious ground campaign resends since the trends warfare of world war i. but that does not mean iran is not a problem in iraq. i'll come back to my earlier comment. iranians have been a couple of bad years in iraq.

when i got there in the beginning of 07, they were sponsoring militias because of the third that general odierno at all the people. we started a virtual circle, where sunnis turned against al qaeda, she had noticed that instead of sunnis fighting shia, were fighting a common enemy, they reassess their ties to militias. the iraqi government turned against those militias. so i got couple of years for iran. they should let the iranians are saying now? they're saying hey, your american friends are going home. and guess what? were still going to be there. we've always been there. and that is why i urge that as a government, congress and ap poll, we turn the page to

increasing iraqi responsibilities to an increase in civilian supportable, that we not close the book. because believe me there are others out there. also al qaeda, the syrians who also have a good bitter history with iraq, who are outside to march to the remaining chapters and it will not be a pretty story. >> you have to delineate between what iran wants and what is going on. i mean, they think iran wants to have a significant influence over iraq. they would probably like to see an islamic state established in iraq for some time. you know, there's also something we haven't talked about. but there's also this religious quarrel between iran and iraq debacle menasha, with the head head of shia islam.

and so, that plays a role in all of that. but what iran wants and what iraqis want are very different things. iraqis do not want iran to come in and have lots of influence inside iraq. as i've watched iraqis vote over the last several years, they want to have iraqis in charge into the democratic process because their participation has been tremendous. so what i worry about is that they lose confidence in the democratic process, especially as we continue to go through the long stalemate of forming the government. and i worry more about what that can be, not that i believe iran will have this way of influence. outlook and the iraqis will latch to have been. will they be factions? iraqis as a whole will not let it happen. i want to reemphasize o'bryant

jessee. i always worry about in summer of 2011, just a little over a year from now when u.s. forces leave, do we lose interest in iraq. and to me, that's the issue of the future, as we cannot disinterest. and it goes back to disk eject framework which talks about political economics relationships, cultural exchanges, educational exchanges, medical exchanges. these all play key role for a sustaining a relationship that also allows the iraqis to continue to build a more stable government, which allows them to stand up against countries like iran and from others who want to comment and try to dominate and have too much influence inside iraq. so in my mind, the next three to five years are the most critical. and it has to do with how we react to that. there'll be a lot of discussion about how much money we spend on iraq because they are an oral

nation and they should be spending their own money. i don't think anybody disagree with that. we know they will not reap the benefits of the world probably until 2013 or 14 because they have to rebuild that infrastructure to get it off the ground. and so until that time, we have to be there to assist them through political and economic issues. and to me, that's the way for us to stop what she described as happening. i would argue i think i would be -- i don't think that'll ever happen. but i never say never to anything. >> we've got a short question. two short answers. what i would like you to do is press a little further on this whole issue of capacity building. many of the current capacity building efforts are pretty much keyed on a timeline until the u.s. military begins to go home. in part because as i understand it, there is this habit at ensuring that nobody goes out --

outside the green zone until there's military export. the capacity building is going to have to be longer term. so how do we square that -- this is not level a broad strategy, but in terms of the operational piece of sustaining this capacity when we may not be able to provide the military support that we presently do? >> i think first off, the plan is -- it's a misnomer to think everybody's in the green zone. there were people all around the country. there's going to be other outposts, state department outpost. they keep changing and it's all colin outpost, where they will continue to support capacity building within iraq. they work with military escorts. some work with civilian contract escorts. over time, but we advise them to

do and they're now starting to do it is start with the iraqis to provide -- i have enough confidence in the iraqi military that they will be old to do that with some u.s. oversight. and so they have to start moving that direction that will allow us for capacity building. it's kind of related -- the one thing i changed it in my view over time, as they seem addressed as i believe there's a time when our large military presence becomes dead. and i think we're close to that time period were starting to become counterproductive. because says the iraqi security forces continue to improve, they don't understand why you need 50,000 u.s. forces on the ground. so that's what the plan is to slowly go down to zero as they increase their capacity. that's why today we just have

advisors. the iraqis have endued security in iraq since the beginning of 2010. so it's been about 10 months where they've really been in charge of everything and we slowly john downer for us. and they've done pretty well. we have not seen security gets worse. so we have to continue. >> i'm going to sneak in one last question. >> i really like the unity of effort that she taught well. and i just wondered if you could sort of speak to, is that pervasive in american military command or are you fairly unique? >> i would just say we've learned this. i mean, the last major conflict in iraq in 2003 was desert storm. we were in and out. with the win in, left everything is great. it went well.

this obviously was much more complex. we've realized that the only way you can seek speed and we realize that now in afghanistan. and so i think within the military we clearly understand this now. but my worry is that ryan just said. it's not codified. i worry that will lose overtime what we have learned here and will repeat mistakes in the past. so it's my responsibility and others to ensure we don't do that. in my foreign service career i've had it long volume paperback of relationship with the military counterpart. i would just give you a couple examples. i was ambassador in kuwait in the mid-1990's that saddam hussein looked like he was going to fade again. a swift response from the administration in 1994 precluded that. and then the central command tonight spent the next three

years working together to set in place security agreements in security architecture for stem presupposition of robust exercises and so forth to guarantee that could never happen again. civil military cooperation was in kuwait was the number one item in my portfolio. and pakistan in 2005, the great kashmir earthquake that killed 80,000 pakistanis and two minutes, led to the largest and longest airborne humanitarian relief by the united states since the berlin air lift. and that was a completely coordinated civil military operations. i chaired meetings three times a day, seven days a week for five months out of my office. arranged everybody together for a total unity effort approach. you can be done. it is being done around the

world because again, if you're smart enough to get to where the three of us have gotten unlucky enough, you have learned how important that sort of thing is. >> so you're off the hook now. if i could just -- the good news about this is where the a lot of officers both the state department and the military who have experienced this at the lower levels and they understand the importance of this. i think that will bode well for us in the future. i think you'll make an overstatement -- [inaudible] >> quickly, quickly, increasing the number of women in the state department and now in the military, you have the opportunity to get a lot of thinking into that. what right brained thinking get into iraq?

and when and how? >> ray, what do you think? >> it's a great point. [laughter] am serious here. the foreign service state department has worked very hard to get a foreign service that looks like america, particularly in gender balance. and i'm kind of pleased that three of my last four in the secretary of state have been women. we have an award now. this is going to sound incredibly postal and it is. in may of 2009, secretary clinton created something called the ryan crocker award for outstanding achievement in

expeditionary diplomacy. that means basically go to really, really awful places and if you come back alive -- [laughter] will present something to you. it's been given twice. it was given last year to a provincial reconstruction team leader in eastern afghanistan -- spent 18 months out there, what people through ied attacks, negotiated agreements between tribes and the military, then between tribes and tribes and then between tribes and government in kabul. she left three teenage kids at home to go to that. and the second award was just presented yesterday in court to end patterson, outgoing ambassador in pakistan. so for those of you who have

daughters out there who really want to see combat, don't send them to ray. send them to us. [applause] >> if all of you would join in on think you are to panelist for their the united states and also for this panel today. [applause] [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> continuing now with more from the annual conference of the world affairs councils of america. this panel discusses the results

of tuesday's midterm elections and their implications for u.s. foreign policy. this is an hour and 15 minutes. >> that afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. i'm a member of the national board and also on the board of the colorado springs council. i welcome you to this panel discussion. this discussion in case you might've missed it, we have elections this week. as we already have heard that this comp trends, those elections were about the economy. they were not about foreign policy. they were not about america's role in the world. but then again, it had everything to do with american foreign policy and america's role in the world. we have an outstanding panel for you this afternoon with people that you've read, seen come you've read them on blogs and newspapers and on websites.

you see them on numerous television programs across the political and media spectrum. so when we get right to the introductions and i commend you as well, the introductions in her booklets are in more detail. our moderator for this panel is doyle mcmanus, washington columnist for "the los angeles times." for 35 years he's been an award-winning foreign policy and it for the middle east including iran, iraq and afghanistan in europe and latin america. he's also covered six presidential election and he's only 25. last back you can read his biweekly column in "the l.a. times." and you're likely to see me on pbs's washington week among other programs. also on the panel is gerald site, directed at washington editor for "the wall street journal" before 2007 he was washington bureau chief for the journal. you can read his biweekly, capital journal in "the wall street journal" and you're also

likely to see him on fox business news, on abc and on cnn. also please do it with us cushier freelanced whose global editor for that reuters corp. and i want to recognize and give a special thanks to thompson writers for their important support of this conference and for lending to us not only christie this afternoon, but paulo dabrowski yesterday as active participants in the conference, so let me pause here and ask you to join me in 19 thompson writers for their support of this program. it's very important. as global editor for thomson reuters, christy breland is key to its new financial video service called reuters insider. she is their on-air person for external broadcast partners and she's also the senior contributor to reuters.com where she writes a weekly column on business and politics in she doesn't get a day off. last but not least, ronald

brownstein is the political director of the atlantic media company, the columnist for the national journal and leave the editorial strategy for the national journal group, which includes the national journal, congress daily, almanac of american politics in the global security newswire. he doesn't get a day off either. you can read his weekly columns for the national journal and elsewhere. he can also see him i'm not msnbc, hardball, morning show, "meet the press" and this week with george stephanopoulos. so this is an incredible panel. we thank them for being with us and i'm going to shut up and turn the floor over to doyle mcmanus. thank you. >> thank you, sky. thank you off for being here with us today. it's a humbling and challenge the gene experience to talk about foreign policy or american

politics in from of a group of people who are active in the world affairs councils because we know you're about the most erudite and engaged people -- civilians in the country. so that's my way of saying please hold us to a low standard. we have here a panel -- my own exceptions, very distinguished journalist, all of whom have worked at one time or another as foreign correspondents in places like london and iran, moscow and kia and at kabul, but whose current distinctions in the recent word out of you today as we have been rave off to adventure to places like cleveland and las vegas in the suburbs of philadelphia. here's what we are going to try and do today. i'm going to ask each of our panelists to do a very quick three to five minute sketch of some high points on his or her

topic. the panelists will be looked away in a disagree on that. we'll try and keep that to a half an hour or so at the top of our session. but we do want to get as quickly as possible to your questions and comments so we can engage with you that way. so will first ask ron to talk about what happened in this election. jerry to talk about what it means for the white house congress. i'll say a few words about foreign policy per se and christian will talk about the economic and trade agendas and the impacts they are. so rob, what just happened? >> thank you. and thank you for elevating these divine correspondence. i only had about four months were not quite in the same class as the others. what i do with that cover american politics and let's first take one step back and say cheers to go this time barack

obama was the most insightful victory for the presidential candidates in 1964. first democrat since johnson only second since world war ii to get the 50.1% of the vote here through six electoral college votes, when i say vote for bush ford. seven voted both times. for that voted democratic more than once. that was where we began this cycle. and by the way, democrats in the sack with larger majorities in the house and senate than the republicans achieved a pointer in the 12 years of control from 94 to 2006. what we experienced was about as close as we can get to the u.s. to a parliamentary election i believe. you know, congress is functioning more and more like a parliamentary institution. the levels of partyline republicans with democrats in political science to attract

this over the long term cost levels of partyline voting were the highest since reconstruction and we saw on vote after vote, essentially one governing party opposing the agenda and an opposition party resisting. so at the end of the cycle come perhaps not entirely surprising we end up with a parliamentary election, particularly in the house. president obama, whether he can pander stayed away lose heavily over the results. 85% of voters said they approve the president, voted democratic. 86% of those disapproves voter republicans. very similar to the patterns and 94 and 2006, which also were both on a quasi-parliamentary election. those who disapproved voted nine to one republican. and as a kind of take that brought him and see how it plays out within the actual context, there are 125 house democrats on election day in districts where,

treat at least 60% of the vote two years ago. none of them lost. .. thirty-six of them have lost. three-quarters of them were defeated and these tended to be blue-collar, i will come back to that in a minute. but bottom line, districts where obama was over 55%, only six of

173 lost, under 55%, 67 of 83, more than two-thirds of them were defeated. in the senate there was a little more capacity for candidates to achieve subornation. in nevada and west virginia. wanted to despite the lower approval ratings for president but even there the relationship is jury strong. apart from nevada and west virginia democrats lost all of the contested senate races in states where obama was at 46% or below. arkansans, florida, indiana, kentucky, missouri, ohio, wisconsin. where he was 47 or above, california, colorado, connecticut, delaware and washington. the only exception to the pattern or illinois, interestingly, and pennsylvania. the only two states where obama is at 47 or above, the democrats lost in that -- in that. the reason they lost was particular in both cases. overall, what we saw in this

election was not necessarily collapse of obama's coalition, but an erosion of it and a definition of their turnout, and then a really sharp movement away from the democrats among the voters. voters who were cruel to him in the 08 became ice cold in 2010. the heart, i will try to be quick, the heart of the democratic coalition was elected obama and what i call the collision of the defendant are young people, minorities and college-educated voters particularly women. dak rats led the group in 2010 but they didn't win. they still won two-thirds of hispanic and hispanic saved michael bennett and especially harry reid where sharron angle backfired. young people, 57%. college-educated white women wavered. i will come back to that but still in the high forties. the turnout was down.

the rest of the white electorate, and by that i mean blue-collar white men and women and college-educated white men all of which tend to be skeptical of government and the move sharply to the point where according to the exit polls the republicans won 60% of the white voters. in the history of the exit poll this goes back to 1982, no party had forgotten 60% not even 1994. there's another data set that goes back to 1952 which does the national election study of the university of michigan, and in that only twice in the party had gotten that high, 1974 and 1964 for the democrats. the erosion was the greatest among of the blue-collar voters who had been skeptical to begin with and had been hit hard by this recession and also tend to be the dubious the government will do anything to make their lives better. democrats only 134% of the voters which is an incredible number. the white collar voters were a little more diverse. the women were better than men

and the most interesting pattern, and i will close on this point, was we saw a really stark distinction in the way upper middle class whites behavior on the coast and in the heartland. you know, the biggest thing that's happened in the last 20 years that made democrats more competitive in the 60's and the 80's was the minority population has been growing and the upper middle class white electorate particularly among the coast had switched from the predominant republican to predominantly democratic. in this election, by and large in the coastal states, democrats still did pretty well with those voters. california, connecticut, colorado functions as a coastal state, places where the upper middle class is more secular. in the middle there was no difference between the blue-collar and white-collar. they voted almost as heavily republican, and as a result, when you consider the demography is less so, it is older, it is

wider, fewer minority college graduates to begin with and they are voting republican. you have a wipeout in the middle. other than vermont, ytoy and mexico after this election there is no state that doesn't touch an ocean in which democrats have a majority of the congressional district, the representation. just those three. so, the only kind of silver lining for democrats is that this continues and i will close on this point, this continues a period of volatility. this third consecutive election were of least 20 seats of back-and-forth between the party, last time that happened was 1948 to 1952. obama lost unified democrats had unified control of government, obviously in 2009 and lost after two years. neither party has been able to sustain control of the white house and the senate for more than four years since 1958. so, and obviously independent voters who moved sharply to the democrats and 06 basically

stayed there in lesser members and 08, moved back to the republicans. neither party has been able to achieve allegiance, lasting allegiance in part because neither party has been able to solve the problems which is going to be the subject of an excellent book soon. [laughter] and that, i believe, is kind of a silver lining that for democrats would be if there is a message for republicans don't on pack everything. that's what i would say. i will stop there. [laughter] let me ask a question. one is reminded me -- you mentioned and the democrats only win in the maritime states except for vermont. as i recall, you had an earlier version of that rule some cycles ago which was democrats cannot win any state where cattle out number people. >> that's true. [laughter] i like to say -- i said, and this is true again, in 2000 george bush won every county in america with a ciw exit vermont where you have the cows the work

for ben and jerry's. [laughter] and that is -- that is sort of where we ended up here again. this map, if you kind of look at the congressional district map it's kind of a throwback to the nineties when we talk about the democrats as a by postal party and having this tremendous difficulty in between exit proportions of the upper middle west. and we are kind of back there. i mean, this was a wipeout of enormous proportions in the center of the country. if this was a parliamentary system, like 94 in 06 this would have been a vote of no-confidence. >> let me ask a different question. to summarize what you just said, two things happened to the democrats. one was the shift of white voters of independence and the other was turnout didn't happen. turnout was foreseeable in the midterm election. this is a different way of asking what does this tell about 2012 if democratic turnout among young voters and long white

voters have somehow been equal in this election to its levels in 08 what would we be looking at? >> that's a really good question. so, both the u.s. and minority typically falloff in the midterm elections. if a lot more than usual particularly the minority turnout. the huge turnout average 12% in mid term, 18% of presidential since '92. was 11 this times what went down a little further. the bigger fall was in the minority share of the vote went down from 26% in 08 to only 22%. that will go back up. i mean, it will not only go up to 26, it will probably the past. it will probably go to 28%, based -- data on the rate it has the last 20 years minorities will be about 28, 29% of the vote in 2012, which means that mathematically if obama holds them at the same rates as the democrats have been doing, he could lose 60% of the white vote and get elected, which is the least of the national popular vote. the problem is -- this problem

is that, you know, where the collision was available to democrats, with the exception of pennsylvania and illinois. mostly because kirk was suburban white voters than republicans had, and which the suspects probably should have won that race and he woefully under performed in the philadelphia suburbs even though he was from there. he held his own elsewhere. he didn't collapse. leaving aside those two states, where the basic space collision, where there are enough of those people they held on. corydon, washington, connecticut, california. the problem is in the middle of the country that coalition by yourself, even if it shows up, it's not enough to win with. and you have to be at least -- you don't have to win most white voters but you can't get -- lee fisher, the can dig in ohio, won 29% of white voters according to the exit poll, and, you know, the question for obama is how much of this is permanent and

how much is recoverable? i think there is more a recovery in the upper middle class that is available to him than there is -- and again, we can defer in a second here. i think he won 40% of working-class whites in 2008, which is not a good number, but he will be very hard pressed to get back. i would be amazed if he gets back to that event. so i think there is a path to victory, but it may require a think it's right to be hard to win the kind of bending states that he won last time, and i think it may be for example in arizona eight diverse state that you may have to kind of look to patch together the 270 abs in the bigot economic recovery. >> in the burning questions for the chief -- chiefologist? >> we will see this before is telling what it means for congress to revive from kansas and the distinction between

political preferences of the week states and the corn growing states and those that farm thailand verses irrigation -- [laughter] that's good. you know, i think ron has done a very good job of describing an extraordinarily volatile not year but period in american life we are living through and that is i think what we saw further proof, and was the result of a bad economy obviously, that is the office also a kind of national mood, and i thought as we went through the year and as we did "the wall street journal" nbc news poll which i helped organize the there were two numbers i saw during the year that illustrated the mood as well as anything i can think of. the first one was we asked several times in the campaign whether if the voters were offered an option to check one box on the ballot and for what everybody in congress with one vote would lead would or not at all three times we ask if 50% of

people said they would do so which if you think about it is pretty astonishing. toward the end we ask a different question we said if you had a choice in the vote for the representative from your district in the house of representatives between somebody who had ten years' experience in congress and somebody who had no experience whatsoever who would you vote for and 50% said i would vote for the person with no experience whatsoever. so that's the mood that produced the result that ron described. now often, perhaps incorrectly that was described as a motivator. i think that is a little off. i think somebody from ohio lecture on this and the more i thought about the more he's right is a mood of fear. this is fear the country lost its way, fear that the country was slipping, fear the country was leaving kunkel with its own destiny and the economy was a big part of that obviously, but it was a little deeper than that and so that is what i think

produced the election results and the question we all ask ourselves and i will address briefly is what does that do to the agenda in washington and in the congress that will now a writer of the lame-duck session next month and more importantly to start over again in january, and i think the overall effect of the vote will have been in the words being read by republicans in particular to narrow the agenda in washington down to a few core subjects. the economy obviously which means job creation, spending, debt and deficit. i think republicans are looking at this and saying that's what the agenda is. now they will also say repeal of the health care bill is part of our mandate, but they don't actually i think believe that. i think -- has the believe the people who sent them here on that to happen by and large, but they also recognize it's not going to happen. so i think the house will pass some votes to repeal the obama healthcare looks stock and barrel. they will die, those votes will die in the senate or maybe they will somehow be a collision that

sends us to president obama's desk to die and they will go back and try to defund parts of the health care bill and stop parts of it from being put into affect and i think that is an important thing politically but the core issue of republicans is spending tax levels and that is i think the overall and first effect of the vote is going to be reduced the agenda in washington to the subjects of particular which isn't going to be pretty the way because those are the core questions in the political system which is what is the role of the government and the 21st century. what is the role of the government in americans' lives in the 21st century. that is really what the 2008 election was about and people felt maybe it's this and no, no, another election maybe it's moreover in destruction but i think the country, and i don't mean the political, and in the country kind of results in a general way the question of what is the role the we want a government to play on the 21st

century i think we will have a lot of swings back and forth and meanwhile in the next two years a lot of ugly debate about issues surrounding the question in washington. sliding toward going to have, you know, a lot of discussion about which government programs can go, which government programs can be cut in half, which defense programs are we willing to seek out the door, are we willing to attack entitlements or not, but i want the jury going to have a lot of resolution of those questions. republicans like to say they are prepared to cut $100 billion of spending right now which is fine. my question and response to that is where do you find the other $900 billion of spending the you're going to have to do to attack the deficit. so even $100 billion of spending cuts gets to the low hanging fruit, not the high hanging fruit. there will be an exercise in december in which the deficit-reduction commission of president obama that is bipartisan and bicameral will either produce or not produce some kind of a report saying what might be done to attack the

deficit, but i think in this environment is likely to be minimalist in scope and probably short-lived on this debate. i think there's a more important political date coming up early next year and a chill of the conversations will crystallized and it is in the march, april, may time frame there is a need to cast a vote in congress to raise the federal debt level. this is already emerging as sort of the flash point in which the tea party people in particular and their friends and congress, people elected by the tea party explosion and enthusiasm if not actual tea party candidates themselves are saying essentially no, we are going to draw the line. we are not simply going to do what washington does and vote to extend the debt ceiling. we will extract a price from the ad ministration for doing so, and the administration is likely to say well, you can shut down the government if you want, but that didn't work so well last

time the republicans tried that and i think a lot of democrats in congress are going to say you want to extend the debt ceiling fine, you vote for it we are not going to. this is what you get when you get power you get to make the tough votes. i think it's going to be -- it's going to begin moment in which some of the questions are how much are you willing to cut to the front of of line because republicans are going to try to say this is the price for extending the rates on the debt ceiling. you agree to this package of government spending cuts and i think democrats are going to say not what we read in the election. so i think that is the core of the elite. it raises the question about some other issues. what happens to them along the way, and some issues that are particular importance to this group. so let me tick off a couple of those and then we can move on. but you're going to talk of free trade i know. i think actually -- free trade and things like desultory and free trade agreement probably get a little easier to deal with in the new congress versus the old clunkers. will be interesting to see with

the tea party caucus says about free trade. the are not free traders by instance, and some of them are somewhat isolationists. we will see whether that is an over all dread. you also have new republicans like rob portman, the senator from ohio, who ran on in a difficult environment in an industrial state a platform of explicitly saying free trade is good for my state, it's good for a while, it's good for industry in the u.s., and he wondered 17 points? something like that. he won easily. and by the way, his running mate who ran for governor also was attacked for being a free trader. he also defended the free trade position and he also won. so we will see about free trade. immigration reform i think is less likely in this congress again that he party influence is somewhat nationalistic and not for immigration reform. both parties have the political need to deal with immigration, but they don't have the environment or the votes to handle a very well. the business community to give more h-1b visas is not offset for the republicans. the price of the political and

immigration bill that has something somebody can call and mystique, so i think that gets more difficult. i defy anyone hear me you know i can't remember the ad i saw this year in which a candidate said something pro or con about ratifying the s.t.a.r.t. treaty. [laughter] maybe i missed it. maybe in vermont. [laughter] i assume because it can slip under the radar screen it may be a little easier to just get it done in the lame-duck congress but i could be wrong because it's one of those things i think republicans probably don't want to take a stand on. they don't want to spend a lifetime are doing. it wasn't the easiest thing may be to move on but i'm just guessing because i've got to tell you, i haven't heard any discussion about it although there should have been. there has been a lot of discussion about another issue that i think will have consequences which is the demonization of china. this, you did see an ad after ad after ad this year that china is

the enemy, china is destroying our economy, china is the problem. it's overstated in the campaign ads as everything is overstated in campaign ads but it's the kind of rhetoric that has consequences in the long run. what consequences? i'm not sure exactly but i don't think figuring out a rational approach to do with china the next ten to 20 years because an advance in the campaign. finally, energy. it's interesting. i did an interview with mitch mcconnell the other day and asked him twice, i guess twice because i'm a little slow and wanted to make sure i heard it right, i said what can you agree with president oh-la-la on? and both times he said there's some energy things we can agree on. he said clinical technology, clear power, electric cars. those are things we can agree on. we can't agree on cap-and-trade crothers energy things. and white house people will say the same so i think energy is one of those areas there might be some possibility if everybody wants to show that they are responsible adults acting responsibly than maybe something would happen. but that's been it and that is the agenda the next two years,

and i really do think much of what we have had and much of what rahm described sets up in 2012 it has forward for the political system. >> let me ask you one question about the numbers in the house. back in september, congresswoman michele bachman from minnesota announced that she was sitting up called the tea party caucus. there was nervous laughter and no one was quite sure if anyone -- in overtime, a very short amount of time, something like 100 members of the house conference joined the caucus. if you look at the house republican conference in january, is the tea party half of that conference? is it a dominant part of that conference? >> i don't think it's have the caucus. i think it's less than that. i think it's influence on the caucus is much greater. by the way, i also think it is an influence on the remaining laughter democrats and there's only about 23 or 24 of those that's going to be enormous, and

more importantly, its influence on -- there's a group of senators, 23 democrats run in 2012. they come from states like nebraska, west virginia, montana, colorado, florida. if you want -- if you're a democrat running for reelection for the senate seat in 2012 and want to decide the tea party, good luck with that so i think there is a tea party influence that transcends the numbers but i would guess that the party caucus stands at 100 notes probably 150 when it settles next january. >> which side do you think, if either, has the senate try to find agreement or do they both mostly feel they are better off sharpening differences and heading into 2012? i kind of feel like the deals in washington happened not so much because of the specifics of the policies that both sides made the fundamental calculation they need to reach agreements.

does either side of the impetus? >> this is where i think the interesting anomaly on which the house changed hands but the senate didn't, and that's unusual item because it's important. of the senate had changed hands, i think would be much more important to the republicans to have an agreement than the current circumstances which they can shoot free throws in the house and pass whatever they want, they know what will body in the senate or under the veto of president obama and they don't have to take the blame. republicans in the senate don't have to take the blame for it. i'd think the republicans view that nothing has to happen next year with in a sustainable one of the get full control of congress but they don't. i get the bottom line to me is that it's probably more important for president of, but also more difficult for president obama. >> am going to ask chris to speak next because one thing we establishes this election was about the economy and it wasn't about foreign policy, let's stick for the moment to the election was about and i will finish up with a few things and

it wasn't about at least not directly. >> okay. well, thank you very much. pleasure to be here. and i just want to respond to one thing that ron said, and canadian by the become your moving toward parliamentary system. you are making it very bad [inaudible] [laughter] and in actual parliamentary system if you actually control the legislature you can do what ever you want. and -- >> as opposed to doing nothing at all. >> right. i recently príncipe added in a conversation between paul martin, the former canadian prime minister and paul brolin, and paul martin probably as big accomplishment in canadian politics and was to balance the canadian budget and he did that having it on the back of a big conservative accomplishment which would introduce a value-added tax. and it was obviously difficult,

you guys are now aware of the sort of national balancing the budget, etc.. anyway, quite recently paul and bald were talking about this, and reminiscing on what it was like, and apparently the day after the crucial vote in parliament to balance the budget paul martin was the minister of finance, and bob said to him how did it go? how many months of negotiating did it take and paul said you don't understand. we control the party. it took a year. this is the budget and they voted for it. so i said you still have a long way to go. [laughter] which is not a bad lead into what i want to talk about which was the implications for the economic parts of the foreign policy of the midterms and actively i know that jerry's point about s.t.a.r.t. not appearing in the campaign is an

important one that the foreign policy right now in so far as it figures and people thinking about their domestic policies in the u.s. is about the economy. so i would like to pick out four big issues i think will be of concern to america and the rest of the world. the first one jerry e. loaded to already which is china and trade, but i would ephriam it in maybe a more complicated way. which is both financial and balances. i think it is a really big question, and if nuclear arms negotiation were sort of maybe the dominant issue of the 1970's and 1980's, the big framework for the international discussion, looking for a big framework for the international discussion for this decade is going to be to giving out a global financial and balances. and that includes figuring out what should the exchange rate

become the right framework for figuring out the right exchange rate, but it also includes a something a lot more complicated and which has never really been a subject of international relations between states, which is what should be a country's level of savings in the country's level of consumption, and we already see this with of the treasury going out and saying particularly for the chinese and for the germans we think you are not consuming enough and you are saving too much. this is actually quite remarkable. but in foreign relations we would be talking not only about how many guns people have pointed at us and not about the control of the defeated islands, and not even about international standards or about the collective international states. we are now in what i think are the most important discussions between countries talking about what is your savings rate. the chinese are seeing what is your national health care system you guys have to improve your

national health care system, kind of rich coming from americans i would say, in order that your people don't have to save so much money so this is i think you really important really complicated issue, and i think really, really difficult because we have no idea how much tolerance national populations germans, chinese, are going to have for the global discourse starting to have some bearing on these sort of intensely personal intensive domestic issues. second sort of big issue i think these elections will have a bearing on in the global discussion is u.s. inflation. in some ways we are here talking about the midterm, but i think you could argue that the most important political event this week was ben bernanke and the

huge quantity defeasing program that he announced, and that is sort of fascinating because from what from injury described i have come to the conclusion there is going to be durkan good luck and jerry i thought had a final analysis of the motives of the two parties, so the elected politicians are not going to do anything. meanwhile, we have the on elected head of the central bank announcing a quantitative easing program which is almost as big as the stimulus was to read its huge. and it is hard not to conclude, particularly if you are a foreign observer of u.s. policy that there is this kind of unspoken consensus that won a politically less painful, and actually economically not so bad to start unwinding this problem of a huge foreign debt used to

print some money. it's nice if you're issuing debt in your own currency to read actually you can just pay the money back by printing it and getting it to the chinese and that is what we are starting to see happen and just as much as you have in u.s. politics the demonization of china and undervalued chinese currency was the culprit for the u.s. economic. i think you are already starting to see in life and you can see much more dynamic outside of the united states of other countries starting to accuse america as being an unfair economic player particularly if you see a lot more quantitative easing and people say come on, you guys are just plain unfair. the third point which will exacerbate the second thing that has happened is what happens

with the u.s. economic recovery. and oddly enough, the biggest concern that the rest of the world has about the united states, the biggest source foreign policy issue the rest of the world has about the united states as well the u.s. economy recovered, and everyone is hoping and praying as intensely as americans actually that it does because this great, you know, burst of global prosperity that we've had for the past two or three decades has been a very considerable degree powered by the u.s. consumer who isn't consuming that much anymore. final point on sort of big foreign policy issues. i think -- and this is something i think is already evident in u.s. politics but will be more so globally is one important thing we are seeing as we have been talking inevitably since the election about the partisan

divide, and i think a really important split that we are starting to see is the tale of two cities when it comes to globalization and technology revolution. we actually see some parts of america, some of the big multinational corporations, but also some of the smart entrepreneurial business people. need particularly in technology and finance but also some manufacturers for whom the global economy, the technology revolution are absolutely fantastic. this is a time you can build a company, built a branch almost overnight, and the global economy offers huge success to read it also means actually that your fate is much less tied to the fate of the country overall. that old line about what is good for general motors is good for america. it is less and less true and for

more important data point is the idea through the quarter results that were about ten days ago where ibm reported that the economy in the first three quarters of this year the profits have gone up 29%. that's kind of amazing in a crummy world economy, and what was i think even more interesting was part of what is driving it is this huge shift in just less than a decade of ibm from being an american country to a truly global one, so in 2003 they had 7,000 employees, now aged 75,000. and over that same period, the same seven years, they have reduced the u.s. workforce by 40,000, so it's now around 110,000. not that much more than the indian workforce and this is ibm, this is a u.s. corporation.

so that split meanwhile i think a lot of the heartland of voters who ron was talking about our having a very different experience in the impact of the globalization and the technology revolution, and i think this -- fees' conflicting results of what is going on are going to be driving kind of the process within both parties actually because i think both parties have a little bit of support for people on both sides. and then my final point on one thing we should be watching as this may be a little bit out of my -- i may be venturing outside the resolution, there's kind of the national debate in america decides its government, and one counthshould be watching very closely which is britain. britain had that debate before the election and they made an incredibly radical choice.

i asked economists when we would start to see if that was working or not. i called the nobel prize winner and he said of 15 years -- incredibly useful for policy-making. i think it could be sooner and it could even be really bad or really good, and i do hope that americans, maybe it's not going to be in the campaign ads but maybe washington can watch that quite closely because it is an experiment in what happens when you cut the size of the deficit but also the size of the government really sharply. >> say one more word about the british experiment. if you were to try to translate the british experiment into an american program what would it look like? >> well, what the of fun is just under 20% cuts. in the government services apart from health care and education. and that means about half -- it means about half a million jobs

lost. that's a lot for the british economy, just like that. british populations at 55 million. >> but also means big defense cuts. >> absolutely. defense we have not shielded all. the only areas the have been concerned about is health and education that had kutz but much smaller. the big -- there's an economic question, which is by throwing that many people out of work so quickly in a week to veto weakened world economy, are they going to do with britain into a much deeper recession or the argument which is everyone will suddenly feel confident the british budget is back on track and the private sector will win. so we will see. >> we will see if that changes were not shortly. >> i think you will be less than 50 years, but somebody is trying it out, so we are kind of lucky we are not british --

[laughter] we can see whether it works or not. >> will you send us an update? >> i think other people will be watching, too. >> thank you very much. that's terrific. now, even though we said at the beginning of this session and even if repeated that the election wasn't about foreign policy, and i know that hurts me and almost everyone in the room to think about that because those of us to spend a lot of our time thinking about world affairs and foreign policy in a strange way would like every election to be about foreign policy, i'm not sure -- a cui should be careful what we wish for. but, clearly this election will have an affect on foreign policy. and it's also worth remembering that 2012 presidential election will be partly about foreign policy and this election will lead us into that so let me say a few words where we've been on foreign policy and seek the immediate effect swear that will put us in 2012.

>> oddly enough although it is not almost unnoticed, the first 18 months of the obama administration were in a sense a period of a lot of bipartisanship in american foreign policy. it wasn't the sharpest point of disagreement between the two parties. far from it. yes, there were republican critiques of the obama administration especially the decision to set a target for the beginning of the drawdown in afghanistan. but compared to everything else that is going on, president obama got a pretty free hand for his policy of engagement on iran for example, which if you remember that 1908 campaign he was derided by the republican conservatives as hopelessly naive to think you could negotiate with the leaders of iran, north korea, and who was the third of the axis of people with the time? thank you. venezuela. >> cuba.

>> that's right, castro may have been part of it. the president got a pretty free hand on, even on pressuring benjamin netanyahu on selling israel that it immediately ran into trouble. it didn't work. i was bundled and that -- is essentially the president has gotten pretty wide praise for the way he's handled the drawdown in iraq. now, in an era -- in the earlier era we would have thought this was the normal tradition of bipartisanship, but we really haven't seen this for a while. why was that the case? in large part it was because barack obama moved pretty smartly toward the center in foreign policy. his withdrawal from iraq at the end of the combat mission was supposed to happen in 14 months. the deadline got kicked out. in afghanistan when the military

can and asked for more troops he gave them more troops. when they asked for more after that he complained about being asked for more troops and gave them more troops. we will see what happens if general petraeus comes in and asks metaphorically for a feared bite at the apple as july approaches and request for more troops it will be for more time. i think that will be tough. but i would argue that one of the affects of this election we just had, and the new calendar that leads to a presidential election in 2012 will be -- what you might call the real polarization of american foreign policy. there is now in the next 23 months every incentive for republican critics of the president's foreign policy and there are plenty of them out there for plenty of good reason

to sharpen those critiques. reasons for substitutes and political, and i think we are going to see that in two or three areas. one of them will clearly be the most important decision that's already on the calendar and that is the decision in afghanistan. well president obama decide to pull the trigger on the draw on that he promised we will begin in july? if the answer is yes. the answer is yes for substantive reasons. he's been a long time coming to the decision, and as far as we can tell he believes in it on substantive grounds, and the second is political. the main pressure on obama on afghanistan at this point is not from his right, it's from his left. his main danger between now and the election of 2012 is an anti-war democrat will render the primaries. it's folly to predict an

election narrative two weeks in advance but it's the most dangerous thing for any sitting president to have a challenger from the base of his own party. he wants to head that off. the easiest way as to do what he has already promised to do. but he wants to thread a needle. he wants to withdraw some troops gradually without creating chaos and prompting david petraeus to walk. that isn't a possible threat but it's the dilemma she faces. issue number two. iran. a crisis, if it occurs, if iran gets to the point of deploying a weapon, building a weapon or announcing the capability of building a weapon, but i think will instantly be the defining crisis of barack obama's foreign policy the next two years and

how he handles it will in many ways he is defining moment certainly as a foreign policy leader before the american electorate. it would be folly to predict how that might happen except i would note the administration's own people working on this believe that the iranians won't get their in the next two years. they say they are working assiduously to make sure they don't get their the next two years and when one of the white house top people was asked do you really mean your goal what this point is just to kick the can down the road to years, his response was in the business of non-proliferation taking the can down the road is a pretty major victory. so i think we can expect the can to continue to rattle down the road and the other unlikely outcome would be that iran might buckle in the face of the economic sanctions that have been ratcheted up and affect sue for peace. i don't think we need to spend

too much time on that unlikely that barack obama and the rest of us should be so lucky. the last major issue again in the "we should be so lucky" category is israel. at this point it is tough to see conditions in israel and the negotiations with the palestinians getting to rightness. if they did get to right now is that would be a dilemma for president obama. there are risks inherent for any president in investing a lot of time in trying to negotiate peace agreements in the middle east. not just the obvious risk of putting pressure on israel and irritating the supporters in the united states. among them the conservatives who have moved over the last 20 years from the democratic party, jewish conservatives from the democratic party and republican party, which has made is of the american party of lahood as the

democratic party remand the party of labour. but there is a somewhat more subtle danger for a president and that is when the electorate is asking him to spend full time on the economy negotiating peace in the middle east we already know it takes in the endgame weeks and weeks of concentrated presidential leader. every actor in the middle east has gotten used to having quality time from a president they are going to get there. none of them are going to agree to sign a peace treaty if all they get to talk to is the secretary of state or the national security adviser or even the vice president. joe biden would probably be very effective weapon to get them to finally sit down and sign a piece of paper. [laughter] so in a strange way i think the -- it's a terrible dilemma president obama me face that if middle east peace looks like a possibility, can he spare the time and energy to do it?

it is an unlikely choice. mcginn key and we should be so lucky, but i would be one of the problems he could face. in a more immediate sense of frequently, we will face a challenge, the administration will face some dillinger as i should say in the new congress. beginning with the s.t.a.r.t. treaty that jerry referred to on energy, trying to reassemble some kind of international energy, international climate change policy with cap-and-trade taken off the table was a possibility, and finally, the administration and the democrats in congress have been painfully trying to move step by step toward new openings and exchanges with cuba under howard berman who was the chairman of the house foreign affairs and the last two years the new chair of house foreign affairs is of course going to be a cuban-american from south florida who has no interest in relaxing the embargo so i think that one is off the table.

now, this sounds like a dog your picture. i will close by saying that paradoxically in a political sense it may turn out to be a good thing for president obama, a more polarized debate, sharp focus on foreign policy, actually allows a president who hasn't done a half bad job. you may disagree or agree with his policies that there have been idled agree no major disasters on his watch and that competitively speaking as a pretty good record. that will allow president obama to highlight his stature as a president who can operate in that view and to bring his opponent's qualifications and to the question and if he's looking and carries out his yacht on in afghanistan and have to withstand reasoned sensible conservative counter arguments against him and his political lieutenants will do their best

to cast them as the party but wanted a long career, bigger and tougher war and as he knows from 2008 that is not a bad platform to run on in front of the american electorate. >> i was struck and around the country to follow campaigns at the ambivalence and many conservative republican candidates about afghanistan. on the one hand, particularly in the tea party candidates there is a clear pullback from the bush vision of the u.s. kind of investing the treasury to make the will receive for democracy and on the other hand national republicans need to take a democrat is often the defense and every serious candidate opposed the idea of time limits for withdraw. so i'm just wondering if in fact petraeus and the pentagon do resist the drawdown obama envisions do you think there's a

chance the white house gets caught in a squeeze between the republicans on the one hand and the pentagon on the other basically raising a lot of barriers or resistance to him executing the plan he's laid out riss too there is a chance but it's not impossible to thread the needle. it's not impossible because the pentagon isn't a monolithic. it is not accept the tea party in the pentagon, but there are generals and bob woodward's baquero colin powell says to someone in the white house and mazie to barack obama you know, there's more than one general in your pentagon. you don't have to take the first piece of advice that's there putative if obama and his crew

handle this badly, and it's possible. we don't know. we may have a different secretary of defense of the pentagon. -- there's an x factor. >> you could have some kind of split on those lines and that would be dangerous. i will leave it to you whether in the electoral terms to be on the small or mac side rather than the large war side of your argument, but it is dangerous. >> i have a question, too which is to what extent do you think the economy will dictate as the decisions and afghanistan, to what extent does it become really hard to sustain a lot of planning in afghanistan at a time the u.s. economy is -- >> that is a terrific question because it has been striking how often, how blunt and how openly president obama talks about the economic cost of the war, and the opportunity cost of the war, to the many of us who covered

the 2008 campaign the obama argument that by downsizing of war in iraq and afghanistan we would have enough money to fund energy and education and health care seemed like a tricking talking point and it may have been, but there is no question that the enormous drain on the budget of those war weigh heavily and i still think in a sense the most important speech he's done as president in the structure of american foreign policy is his speech back in december at west point when he echoed eisenhower and said we have to learn to live within our resources, and so in a sort of a concrete immediate sense know, they are not going to make the decision based on the dollar costs and difference options but in a larger sense, yes, the framework of the obama foreign policy is intended to he goes from a very expensive neoconservative nation-building democratizing model of foreign policy to a much more economic

model. a lot of good questions. >> my name is james me finish from alabama. i would like to ask christine, what is the end pediment to depreciate the dollar it seems to me to be clear this is the fed's approach currently and probably prospectively, so what is to stop the fed, and how can the rest of the world -- why would you expect that their best of the world would do anything but have to accept it? >> that is a good point, and it is what is happening. i mean, what we have seen as a result is competitive devaluation. so you know the real losers as the u.s. dollar depreciates didn't have an impact on china because the chinese link to their currency with the u.s. dollar, but the real losers are such as the other emerging

economies that are seeing their currencies depreciate relative to the dollar, so you have seen them starting to try to competitive depreciate their currency, too and the economic nightmare that's sort of the communist dream scenario is we achieve this great global pact to rebalance the global economy and china and germany starts consuming more and everybody's happy that the nightmare scenario is america prince lots of money to have little inflation come to appreciate the dollar and for the deals starts trying to see the same thing. >> there is one other danger which is people could start to build barriers to capital flow, not trade but capital flow. and which others are starting to talk about doing. so, when -- people who worry about a great depression like the downward spiral, which they

attributed to protect and worry about the analog barriers, not trade barriers. >> it's hard to blame the brazilians to much because trade is directly in recent memory was the yen when japan was caught in a similar economic situation to the u.s. interest rates incredibly low and so the smart thing to do was moving quickly to another and made lots of money magically. people are doing that now with the dollar. >> exactly. >> i'm from naples florida. i'm sorry, my name is herbert from naples florida. as the agenda unfolds under the months what is going to happen in washington, what is your prediction for tax policy? >> tax policy? well, first of all i don't have one because of rebuttal negative

asked has given a different answer. nobody has a very clear in hansard i think the only option that actually accumulates the votes in the lame-duck session is one that takes the can down the road to use your metaphor and that is i would think democrats would settle for one, republicans would demand to. extension of all the bush tax cuts which doesn't need anybody but everybody will have to live with. and it's not because that's the one that has gathered the consensus, it's because the fallback option for everybody and i think this kind of where we are at. republicans want to extend them all, democrats want to extend three-quarters of them or decouple the two. i don't think that there is a center of gravity on any of those solutions, so i think taking it down the road for a year or two is the most likely outcome. >> this is none of those times you get to say the sentence to read a couple, two weeks ago we interviewed the president and asked him about this and key in

that conversation through a very hard line against extending all the tax cuts and said if the republicans want to extend the earners have to show where there are going to make up the $700 billion. yesterday tom was a bold different in a press conference. in this press conference and also in the indigenous comments about this idea of maybe just kicking the can down the road. i do not think that would be his first from second or third preference. i think he would rather stand and fight as al gore what say about stopping the extension of the tax brackets. but there are going to be a lot of shell shock democrats in 2012 and he doesn't have the horses with him. >> you know, i think that is a stalemate. you take that issue into the new congress and redefault this package was some other things.

there are trade-offs to be made. if you're a democrat you wouldn't want to make them in the lame-duck session you want to make them in the new congress. so i think that might happen in this horse trading that is going to have an edge in the ceiling and other types of things in congress. the overall lame-duck i think our reporting is the democrats of a little incentive to help republicans results almost anything in the lame-duck. i mean it's just kind of you to put $100 billion, here you go. we will fund the government said january and you take it over and i think they want to kind of makes them confront the implications of their campaign agenda. >> the chamber of commerce helped a lot of republicans who have a position on the interest the chamber wants to see the world want to see it go away. but i think next year. >> next question to respect my name is gail stevenson and i'm from vermont so thank you for the -- my question is about the budget and you specifically mentioned cutting 100 billion was the easy part, and my

question is one of the easy part's the function of 150 international affairs budget so it's not so much about any one foreign policy but about the ability to have a foreign policy and executed all, number one and number two if so is it an omnibus reconciliation process? >> good question. >> i would encourage you to go to the defense department website and read those speeches over the last year. he has said quite explicitly not to very many people are listening i understand we are going to have to get at the office, and here is my plan for doing so. and in august he actually said in may and then again in august he took his building you have to give me $100 billion in defense savings over the next five years so that i can go to the omb and say here is to% of our budget. i'm getting it back to you. you give me a return of 1% increase so that i can keep the force levels at the level they

are at now. and he is about to set out to make that happen. so, he's trying to get out in front of the train that you correctly identified and do it the way he wants to do that and what i think rational people would say is a smart way. we will see if it pulls it off but it's not going to go on skates, and i don't know if republicans are going to think that bob gates, who is none of the above, i think it is inevitable. ..