being quickly cycled in and out. and this was what i discovered when i start to ask clever bot about its love life. so i say, do you have a boyfriend? clever bot, not at the moment but i hope you find one soon. so i venture, i would like to be your boyfriend. [laughter] clever bot, that would be difficult since i'm happily married. [laughter] curious. i ask again for education. me, do you have a boyfriend? know i'm still looking for love. do you have a husband? i don't have a husband because it be illegal for me to have one since i am a male. male? okay. what gender are you? female. [laughter] once again just for good measure, do you have a boyfriend? not at the moment but i live in

hope. can i be your boyfriend? no, i'm straight. [laughter] >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. spent i want to thank you for coming today. i was almost late. i was detained for a few minutes, had a phone call from david coke and that lasted nearly 20 minutes. but i was unable to break loose and get here today to be with you. i do want to correct one thing, bob. i was not third in the republican primary. i've was second. i want to get -- that has a story that is often told that i worked really hard to be seconded not that means a daunting because when you come in second place there is no prize. or third or fourth. one of the release of politics. i think all of you have a copy, at least i hope you do come of the book. "a simpl"a simple government: e things we really need from washington (and a trillion we

don't)." i hope you'll have a chance to read. i'm sure you'll stay up late tonight and read all 228 pages of the. i truly hope that we should give a cursory review of it. in many ways being asked the question, not once, not 10 times, but 100 times, are you going to run for president. no matter how different ways i say this about 100 ways people reported. i once again tried to say to you that it's very much an option i'm considering. and i'm seriously and genuinely contemplating it. but i'm also wanting to make sure that people understand where i stand, what i believe, and what i think america's priorities are to me. part of a for writing the book is to let people have a clear insight so they will know on the front end before i went in before they commit, and part of the purpose in the book was to say here i stand. martin luther was the one who

nailed 95 theses on the door, i'm not sure this is such a significant. it isn't of course, but it is to me an important document, the statement of conviction. and i think if one reads the book you'll find there are some things that i say that are not necessarily politically correct. i don't always follow the company line of the gop. there are some maybe more unorthodox points of view that you'll find. and i think you'll find an extraordinary level of candor in which i talk things about social security and medicare. i want to today kind of give a summary of some of the maybe salient point that i think are most critical in understanding what's in this book, why i wrote it, and then, of course, i'll be happy to answer your questions. i've always said that in politics we call that too too and they come and that stand in your mind for questions and

answers. if you're at the point is to answer questions and avoidance. you ask anything you want, i do my best to avoid saying something to be a career killer. the concept of the book and even the title is that while the issues that we face in this country are extraordinary complex, often the answers to dealing with them, they aren't easy but they are simple. and it's necessary to back away and look not to a micro but through a macro lens has some of the problems and ask ourselves, is there a commonsense principle that we could apply that would make sense out of some of the challenges and issues that we face. so in each of the chapters what i've done to sort of create a subtitle. for example, the first chapter where i talk about the most important form of government is a father mother and children. countries i said it is because the first level of government to

which any of us are ever subjected is not the government of our city or state or even our federal government. it's the government of our own family. that's where we are governed first. and the fact is, it is that the form of government that serves as the foundation for all of the other forms of government. i tried to me, and i believe that i do make the case, that this is not just a social issue as often has been described. sometimes there are people who want to create in the artificial conflict between designated social issues and the economic ones. the first chapter of the book i believe will make it very clear that there is a direct correlation between the fabric of our culture and the relationship of its families, and the economy. of the country. i want to begin before getting into some of those figures by saying that i make it very clear this is not an attack on

president obama. i believe we hear a lot of talk about civility even though on any given day you find politicians who use the most inflammatory rhetoric possible, there were some comments yesterday that were utterly bizarre from a congressman regarding when to the streets. but i find that in the midst of that, it is important that we can sum a separate a person's policies from the person. i find it unnecessary, useless, and, frankly, a bit unnecessary to get into all sorts of debates over president obama's religion or the authenticity of his birth. i know for some people that is an obsession picked it is not with me. to be honest with you can i said this many times, i will say to you, if there's any question about the authenticity of his birth certificate, i assure you the opposition researchers in the hillary clinton campaign would have found and they would

have used it. so we can save ourselves a lot of time. secondly, he has personally articulated not once but numerous times of his christian faith are i take him at his word. i have no reason not to. for us to continue to dwell on that to me is missing the point. i don't disagree with those obama as a human being. one of the things i respect that much is the role model he has served as husband and a father and i think he has been an exemplary husband whose wife an extraordinary father to his daughters. frankly, america needs a good role model like that. and how can i on one hand argue and not recognize that in his own personal lifestyle he has given us an excellent example of a person who has his priorities straight in marking out time for his wife, and raising his daughter's interdisciplinary environment in which he recognizes that he, the parent

company is responsible for the atmosphere in which they are raised. and i commend him and salute him for the. i will further pension as a child growing up in the deep south, one who saw the evils of segregation and the horrors of racism, it did, in fact, give me cause to celebrate that in my own lifetime i saw an african-american elected to the presidency. i could have wished it to be a republican, and i can wish that natalie been there done that we will elect a republican next year. but i generally felt a sense of great satisfaction in seeing in my life that moment come. i do not celebrate his policies. and i make it very clear why. but this is not an attack on president obama the person. even though you'll see sharp elbows out the policies that he has put forth, specifically many of the economic policies.

the most basic form of government being a family, there's some things that i think we as a culture need to fully grasp. and one is if we don't have strong families, the government is going to end up with extraordinary cost as a result. for example, there are some figures that should get our attention. simple things like the family that does not have a frequent dinner together around their own table. children going up in that atmosphere are two times more likely to use tobacco and marijuana. and one half times more likely to use alcohol and to make seize or lower in school. now, i'm not saying the government out to have everybody must begin with their her family's five nights a week program. i'm not for a tasty. i don't want the government telling us not on what we are when to eat or how often we gather around a table. i do like for americans to understand that there is some common sense and it needs to be

applied and it has to start with them. but i'm also say that when there is not a sense in which families raise their children and expected them to do it, the taxpayers end up with an extraordinary consequence. and so, to those both on the left and the right who believe that there is nothing to be gained from a discussion of the importance and the primacy of that basic family unit, i asked them to wake up and smell the dinner table. because the fact is there are some direct costs of result from the broken is our most fundamental form of government. window in this country we have a $300 billion a year deficit that this is the amount of government that money government spends, assembly to support the children and labor to the taxpayers to pick up the cost of the consequences. that's real money. even in washington terms, $300 billion a year is a significant amount of money.

we also know that two-thirds of the children in america who live in poverty would not live in poverty if the mothers of those children were married to the fathers of the children of my wife was raised by a single mom who successfully raised five of our kids and one stepchild. and is a remarkable woman. there are ex ord a success stories that all of us a nation could tell people who in single parent homes have been able to overcome the odds. but it doesn't change the odds. the odds are that children who do not have the stability of the family where there is both a mother and a father present, and where the parents at least one of them is employed and for those parents have a high school education, means that child has a significant higher likelihood of living most his or her life in child -- poverty.

and stay gainfully employed. that's probably david cohen again telling --.org talk to him today. no more. daniel patrick moynihan back in 1965 let me to the fact that 25% of the african-american birth in this country were out of wedlock births. and nobody would ever say that daniel patrick moynihan was a raving right-winger. but he was a thoughtful man and his looking at this objectively. and at the time as a young staffer in the department of labor, what he saw startled him and gave him pause and he wrote about it and warned the consequences of a growing level of out of wedlock births saying that 25% was shocking to him. how chocolatey be fine 75% of african-american births are out of wedlock? and across the board among all demographic groups, 41% of all

american live births are now out of wedlock births. again, forget one's position on the political spectrum. this is a concern because there are economic consequences for those children. i'd like to think people on the right are just as interested in limiting poverty as people on the left. but the reality of eliminating poverty comes down to simply putting more money in a government program, does not address the root issue, which is that mothers and fathers are the most important form of a government. i also want to mention that i think we sometimes forget the origin of our country was one in which government was intended to be as local as possible and as limited as possible. and one need only to read the writings of jefferson, james

madison, john adams, to see that it was never intended that we would have a massive federal government. but what has happened since 2009, even states and cities get more of the revenue from the federal government than they get from any other source. this would be a shock to thomas jefferson, james madison and to our founders. who never concede the federal government would be so big that it would not be just as big as that would be incredibly much bigger than the collective states and cities that originally the federal government was to serve. but that's what we have come. and so my title in his particular view is that the further you drew from shore, the more likely or to be lost at sea. the premise is to me again, a common sense simple principle, that if i govern my own family, i can do that because i know my

children. my wife and i have three children, they're all grown. every 30 for your son, 30 year old son and a 28 year-old daughter, two of those children are married. and for some reason, and i don't think it was intended, but we ended up once the kids all got grown and moved away, we ended up with three dogs so we did have three kids, now we have three dogs. the kids think that the dogs have replaced them. they also believe we treat the dogs better than we ever treated them. i simply tell them that the dogs gave better than they ever did. but this much i know. i know my own children. and when they were going up i don't think it was any person in america who could have raised them better than me because first, they were of me. and i knew them. and i knew when they're going to cry and i knew when they were going to laugh. and i knew when they were getting angry, and i knew when i was getting through to them.

my middle son required a little more from this and discipline. my daughter, i could look at her in a certain way. she was the youngest of the three and virtually could melt or just buy my look of disapproval. now, all of that is to say that the closer you are to the people being governed, the better you're able to govern because you know them. government at the neighborhood, at the committee level issues and more effective for the simple reason your company people that you know, you like and you a candle to and responsible for. i often tell people and introduce myself, they set him on the school board. i tell them you have the hardest job in politics because people can see at the grocery store, they know we live and they can find you at a little league game and to you. i used to tell them on several layers away from that as a cover. i accessible and approachable but i know where i can get away. you're on the school board, they've got your home number. it's the toughest job in

american politics. that's a good thing. the more the government gets disconnected from the people are being governed, the less likely it is to get it right because it means that people are making the decisions don't really know those people. i'm not sure that any persons living 100 miles or 1000 miles from my neighborhood would pay raise my children than me. the application of that is that we have made a huge mistake, and let me be very clear, i do so in the book, that what is a democrat or republican administration, both parties have made i think the unconstitutional and unconscionable mistake of moving government further and further and further from the local community and closer and closer to this city. and in doing so, we have created not only a monstrous size of government, but we agree one that is very unlike the one that our founders envisioned. james madison in federalist papers come of age 29 of the

book, talks from the federalist papers as to why the power is not defined for the state. it's not just that they were, but he explains why. what we have come up with that is a formula in which the federal government by its own nature is able to get larger and larger by the granting of federal money to states and cities for programs, often just enough to get them hooked on something, but the long-term money is left to the states and cities. i remember when i was governor, the big programs about 100,000 cops on the street and that's how like a wonderful thing. made for great news conference in washington. we will fight crime and help the states and cities. for the first three years it was fun. if the cities and states have the money, the governors and mayors get it make announce its we have to let off some of these federal funded cops but the headlines never read federal funds dry up for police. it is mayors make our city and state. governors cut back the police

budget. so what we've find out is this whole idea of federal money is kind of like the free sample of heroin that your drug dealers give away to the ultimate effect is you get hooked and the next thing you know, the monkey is on your back for the rest of your life. we are seeing governors turned down federal money to any people in this they are throwing up hands and saying, what's wrong with these guys quick what you mean they don't want money for high-speed rail quick what you mean they don't want money to expand their medicaid program? because they are smart enough to understand if the money is a lean effort to, th years, if it's not on their watch, some governor in the future will curse them for ever having take money that they can't sustain once the federal funds of it dry up if that's what more decisions need to be brought back to a local community. when i was vice-chairman of the national governors association, marc warren was then chairman, and i've worked on getting all

the states and governors together on a medicaid reform plan using some waivers that we get to the hhs, go to congress can't go to dissent and asked them to approve the changes that would say the federal government money in exchange to give the governors more flexibility for 50 governors in america, 49 site on. that's remarkably every republican except one. rod blagojevich did not sign on. [laughter] >> he now wishes he had. had he done so all these bombs would've never happened for him. he was the only one who didn't at all the other governors, signed on. we thought this ought to be a slam dunk. we are represent some this is the federal government money. is not a clinical issue, not partisan. mark warner and i can one democrat, one republican, but. , this ought to be simple. here, guys. we can save several million dollars. ali asked of you, that has governed our own medicaid programs a little bit more if not completely, just a little bit more.

and it was the biggest fight i've ever been in. mark and i would look at each other after going to these committees and shake our heads. and say, what's wrong with these guys? because they wanted to fight fights we were not even having. and it taught me an important lesson. that the further you row the boat from the shore, the more likely you are to be lost at sea. and i am convinced that we've got a lot of folks in the city who are lost at sea. justice brandeis in 1932, i quote him because i think it's important quote of the book, he spoke of states as being the laboratories for experiments in government. this was really the idea that our founders had, that the states would be where the power was distributed and they would have the opportunity to try things. sometimes both things. sometimes those things would work. and when they didn't work, then not all the states would make

the mistake of attempting them. but at least that would've been one thing that would've been tried and put aside. maybe try something else. but if it did work in all the other states could adopt it. inc. about what we've done in the last year with obamacare, which i specifically reference one of his prime example is of rather than protesting something in the states which, in essence, it had been road tested in two states, tennessee and massachusetts, and it has not worked. it has proven to be not an effective way to lower costs and to limit the amount of time that people wait to get healthier. but no one really look at those programs. they decide even the two states have put them in the laboratory and it didn't work real well, let's go ahead and put all 50 states under the program so everybody can failed equally. and it's that kind of insanity that i believe we have to speak to. and by the way, speaking of insanity, every one of the attorney general's and the united states, every last one of them complained to the office of

the comptroller of the currency about the growing housing bubble and the fact that we were headed for serious consequences and dire consequences if we continue to follow the policies without stepping in with different levels of regulation on making loans to people who could not afford to take those loans. again, bipartisan, all the attorney general's in all 50 states filed a complaint that this wasn't democrats versus republicans. this was states versus the fed saying are you guys nuts? and basically they didn't say they were. but their actions said yes, we are crazy. and the result has been an economic meltdown now that has cost all of us dramatic impact whether it's in a retirement accounts or in the value of our homes. and for that we ought to be outraged and angry and demand a new level of accountability.

by the way, one of the things i want to mention, but i want you to say that part of this book was written last summer in june and july and august, but debate in in october and november. and nobody was talking about public employee unions and the impact but if you look on page 35 of the book, i feel somewhat validated because i talk about the coming meltdown that we're going to see it as a result of the public employee unions, and the fact that in the political unions first pop private sector that wages are 30% higher among public sector union employees and their benefit packages in health and retirement are 70% better in their corresponding private sector. i simply point out, and have been accounted for nearly 11 years, it became obvious to me if you look at this, simply the long-term calculations here that

is unsustainable. and the same way every governor looks this is medicaid program and he sees those cost going up anywhere from six to 12% figure, he looks at its state employee health program to every governor runs the largest health plan in a statement in my state it would require all the employees of wal-mart and all the employees of tyson foods, the two largest corporations in arkansas, combined and they still wouldn't equal the number of state employees. because in those days the state employee body is the largest group of employees in a single entity. and if they are unionized their even more expensive by virtue of the fact the collective bargaining has resulted in nearly disproportionate pay and benefits that has grown. and i call it a parasitic relationship of the state and a symbiotic relationship with the federal government. and as i say i feel a little bit elevated because you could see this come. now is playing out in the lead story every newscast and the front page of every paper in the country were in wisconsin and indiana and ohio probably be

coming soon to a theater near you there is a growing sense of urgency about how are we going to fund these costs. and again i'm going to tell you that while some will try to paint this as republicans attempt to bust unions, this is a factor that jerry brown is dealing with in california and andrew cuomo is the with india, neither one of them are white wing republicans, and i doubt they watch fox news every night. they should but i doubt they do. i want to mention one other thing and that is we can't spend what we don't have and you can't borrow what you can't pay back at you understand that in your family. if you are in real serious financial trouble in your family, the first thing you do is say okay, we have to stop spending. i've never met a mother and father, husband and wife is said and added that if i said i'd lost my job, i don't know what were going to do.

we are broke. we have no savings. so do you know we need to do? let's go to disney world. we don't go spend money. we figure out to cut back our expenditure. we started figure out what we can sell. when i ran for office and i know didn't have enough money to live on, i cashed in my insurance policy. i cashed in some annuities. we sold off things. my point is that you don't just go out and recklessly spend. if you don't have the. and the last thing you do if you can't pay back if you don't go to the bank as i would like to borrow several dollars but how will you pay it back? i have no idea. i don't plan to. and i tell some rather ridiculous stories of what i would love to do is to be able to go and build $100 million home in the hamptons. hire servants to take care of it. why do i not do that? because no bank would ever known me the money for the. because they would look at me and say there's no way you can

pay that i. and yet we have a whole series of times in this country where the government encouraged people to take out loans that they could not pay back. and why did they do that? the government had set the example to the government has been borrowing money that he can't pay back. for the first time in a country's history we owe more money than our total combined gross domestic product in a year. this ought to be shocking to us. the fact is that we now have a gross domestic product of all the things we make, manufacturer and put together, is less than what we owe. when you do that in your family and your assets, getting the questions they do, right? okay. either that or you're making a pass at me, i'm not sure which it was. [laughter] i'm going to is assume it's about the questions. but when that happens in your family to your underwater gaza we see. the last thing you need to do is pour more water on you so. so what i hope you would just take a good look at this book. i try to cover terrorism to

border security and all things in between. but most importantly i just want to say that this is an attempt on my part to say, here i stand. here's what i believe. and the question that you pop want to ask if are you going to run. the question that i have for america is, do you think this message resonates with you? if it does that gives me a whole lot more encouragement to go put myself through the sausage grinder of the campaign. >> visit booktv.org to watch any of the programs you see your online. type the author or book titled in the search bar in the upper left side of the page and click search. you can also shoot anything you see on booktv.org easily by clicking share on the upper left side of the page and selecting the format. booktv streams live online for 48 hours every weekend with top nonfiction books and authors. booktv.org. ..