that up. when you talk about particularly in that last third of your paper which i think is so valuable -- when you're looking at u.s.-china and where these schools of thoughts come out on china-u.s., i couldn't help but say -- if you're sitting in tokyo and you're having this conversation with either policymakers, intellectuals or others, the terms of the strategic bargain, i.e., the alliance with the united states were set way back when. and they were set at the end of world war ii. and i'm not going to in the direction of an occupation army here. i'm going in the direction of an a-nuclear era, the emergence of a nuclear era in which a deterrent required different sets of capabilities than the japanese were prepared to develop. and i'm not sure there's been an awful lot of rethinking about that type of strategic context, not the what about united states or what about china? but what can japan and should japan do, acquire organize itself to acquire that would allow japan to have an

autonomous capacity to defend itself. and at the end of world war ii, this was the beginning of the nuclear era, this is a whole new world. and japan was not prepared to go that way, for all kinds of reasons that this group is very familiar with. but that was the hug, that was the beginning of the strategic bargain with the united states that i think ever since then for the last half century many in japan left right and i think the paper lays this out very nicely have either resisted, gotten uncomfortable with, tried to reorganize, but i still think that hug is a slightly different hug than just a choice of strategic partner here and i think it's worth remembering that. second point, on the schools of thought and again, a longer range on post-war japan and i know, dick, your earlier work on this one on the mercantilist side of it is very important and i understand it completely but i still kind of bridle at the idea that oshita may have been a mercantilist and i know you're

presenting his doctrine as a mercantilist doctrine. that early period of '52 to '55 was fertile in terms of japanese political contestation, there were very different debate choices about which options japan had and what resulted was the oshita doctrine and dick and michishita on the paper does so nicely here but it was a reconstruction era. it was a very particular historical moment. and here we are again at a moment of japan trying to rethink and potentially be at that reconstructive moment again but i think the historical context sort of matters to me when i look at your school of thought and when does why matters and they strengthen and weaken over time and part of the question for the project beyond japan perhaps when you're looking at the introduction of new strategic policies or choices, how do you determine what's continuity and what's changed? how do you determine what's in the autonomy, you know, has been

there all along in the debate versus what is really signifying that the agency of change has changed, i.e., whether it was institutions or the individual decision-makers. when do you recognize that he's somebody fundamentally different or he was a blip on the screen over time? the second piece of this question is, of course, the dpj. now, has a new school of thought arisen? would we what we like to call the liberal -- the engagers, the globalists, have they arrived to japan to lead the japanese strategic thinking process, review process to fundamentally alter japan's choices? i don't think we have an answer yet. i think you watch the campaign. i think you watch a little reaction here in washington and people thought maybe that was what was happening but i think it's still too early. the dpj really hasn't been in power long enough for us to know but it is the specter of that new school of thought arriving in power, i think, that has energized our japan conversation

about these new voices. i suspect if we meet 5 or 10 years from now they might end up looking at the old ldp and i don't mean in the normative prose but ruling will help shape that i ever strategic understanding for what their latitude of choices is. i'll have to hurry because i think i'm running out of time. the third point how do you allow for new conception? and in here and again, this is for the japan paper, specifically, 1970s, you have detente. at least the portended end of the cold war. that japan can articulate what is natural japanese preference, comprehensive security, devise ago multiplicity of means to really follow japanese interest. taking issue on united states middle east policy, for example, you start to see japan moving in some ways in a much more autonomous set of choices than it has been able to in the past. new conception, new school of thought? or just new latitude to make

different strategic choices? i think the same thing could be going on -- or we could see the northeast asian -- northeast asian community concept very similarly. this is a moment where northeast asia is more receptive to japan being in this inclusive building especially the summitry is in my mind here. but hamimata scared us but you have a middle ground now in the japanese thinking. that doesn't really fall down ideological lines. but really is attendant to what's going on in northeast asia and japan being in that process but has been limited to that in the past. i think you used the elasticity of the metaphor, dick, i'm going to say the bread being sliced or the salami slice of bread, you know, i think what i sense all of us who watch japan are trying

to grapple with, is a new loaf of bread being baked and the elasticity of dough -- when you start talking about slicing we'll take this further. but the question in my mind, are we seeing new ideas that really fundamentally challenge schools of thought that were there before? in my mind the autonomy and the pacifists have always been there. they just haven't been a pragmatic policy agenda. and so it's the other two categories for me where we find everything happening. but maybe there's something new. how elastic is it going to be? and where are the agents -- you know, where is it going to come from? and i haven't heard anything yet and hopefully you'll disagree with me that suggest we've moved out of the traditional four schools of thought in japan. i think we're still in that middle ground but the agents have shifted. my final point is -- and i'm sorry 'cause i'm not going to answer your question about 3/11 and its aftermath.

so much of the schools of thought of japan have attempted to discuss the school of thought, post-war of ideology, the access of where you stand on article 9 and where you stand on the reconciliation on china and where you stand on the relationship with the united states has to do with japan thinking about the first half of the 20th century and how it's internalized that experience and i'm going to call it experience not to be offensive but one of the pieces that is so challenging for me and i'm doing this project that dick is going to help me with, i hope, is how does policy interpret learn, use experiences of past mistakes and who learns those lessons and how does that interpret the way -- i mean, how does that affect the way these schools of thought are generated? world war ii was a miscalculation by almost every school of thought. whether it's autonomy, pacifists or anybody else. that trajectory for japan did not turn out well, right?

and i find very few people in my views who will tell me they ought to go back and try again on that trajectory, right? .. >> we have about 20 minutes for questions and discussion.

okay. my apologies. let me let you respond. >> thank you very much. i would try to answer sheila's questions as much as possible and defer to dick. before i do so, let me, thank the originals nicers for including japan as one of the rising powers and i would like to thank the american people, the government and the department of defense, u.s. forces in japan for providing really important support in the time of need. i would like to have people here on this floor and in the u.s. come visit japan. this is a difficult time for us but it would be nice if we can see a lot of friend coming to visit us. tokyo is safe, fortunately. i just came from tokyo.

so please come, keep visiting japan and if are new this is great time to investigate what's going on. let me answer some of the questions posed by sheila. first one is deterrents. and i think we have been doing several things how we shape our deterrent capability. one the fact that we, our people, government particularly the minister of foreign affairs and ministry of defense have started really talking to the american partners to discuss the nature and the credibility of extended nuclear deterrents. and for this our government officials went to, came to washington in late 2008. some of them are coming from the japanese embassy here

and early 2009 and they talked to their american counterparts talking about what we would like to see in the u.s. defense policy and basically there are three important messages. first one our people said, told the american friends, they made a statement that usable and penetrating nuclear weapons might enhance credibility of extended nuclear deterrents. they didn't say we would like to see it happen. second, we asked the u.s. government to consult with us in advance in case the u.s. decides to decommission tomahawk missiles and u.s. government did decommission nuclear tomahawks later on. and the third we asked the

u.s. government to reveal or provide more information to us on nuclear war plans and nuclear posture that the united states maintains. so those are three. this is new. it's amazing how long we have been talking about, you know, nuclear umbrella, nuclear extended, nuclear deterrents without really seriously what is in the content of that nuclear umbrella but we have started to doing so. so that was an an advance. we have been backtracking since then. what i said happened under ldp, liberal democratic party rule. and when the dpj administration came into office they started to talk more about the world free of nuclear weapons which is fine and this is consistent with u.s. policy but debate

on credibility of extended nuclear deterrents. it is a little bit subsided. so we would like to see it come back again. second one with vis-a-vis north korea, we are trying to kind of bolster our deterrents, when we talk about extended nuclear deterrents we basically talk about, we are talking about deterrents by punishment right? but when we talk about north korea, deterrents by punishment doesn't really work because, you know, when they use nuclear weapons against us they will be, that would not be based on rational calculations that would be desperate kind of tile. they would attack us with nukes in a dying cause, right? it would be suicidal attack. in that case, deterrents by punishment would not work very well. right? so what we do is to bolster,

try to bolster deterrents by denial capabilities. in doing so we have besided to introduce a defense systems and we decided to bolster what we call a civil protection which is, actually through defense. thirdly when we talk about deterrents vis-a-vis china, certainly we talk to the american partners to bolster all kind of comprehensive deterrent capabilities but, in addition to that, in the previous, the last year we, the government of japan revised what is called national defense program guidelines which is kind of a basic document for the defense policy of japan in which we started to talk about dynamic defense and people get puzzled what do we mean by that it means

actually we kind of came to focus more on peacetime, strategic type of war with china which we, you know, with we are not talking about fighting wars with china, right? but we are engaged in this, you know, kind of coercive game of tug-of-war with china over taiwan -- over the islands, over the, not taiwan. hopefully. and over the, you know, natural resources deposited in east china sea. so when we talk economic defense, we're talking about, you know, kind of increases, kind of level presence of our armed forces and japan coast guard vessels in that region, in that area in order to kind of check the

chinese naval activities and check chinese maritime, commercial maritime activities and things like that. second point how does the kind of ideas come to, you know, get translated into a strategy? in case of the yoshida doctrine, when prime minister yoshida decide to engage this strong alliance, relationship with the u.s., it was in the 1950s, right? but at that time yoshida doctrine was not regarded as a doctrine t was doctrinized. the concept was doctrinized in the 1960s and '70s by people like scholars and, a the professor the university and the people like

professor of kyoto of university. and they doctrinized yoshida recently japanese scholars started to distinguish what really prime minister yoshida said and what, you know, professor kosak and what professor nagai about the yoshida doctrine. actually yoshida himself did not keep talking about rising strategy. he talked about, made that strategic choice back in the 1950s because that was only viable and, you know, promising option. but in the 1960s and '70s, they, actually, yo she had today said in his in his

book, the that japan would have to become more normal. he didn't use the word, but in the future. but they kind of made a different tack on, spin doctored what yoshida actually thought. you know, sheila talked about the community between ldp and dpj and i really agree with her because when we returned, besided that dpj government decided to return this, drowned captain from his fishing boat into japanese coast guard vessels last year, you know we kind, the government, the japanese government decided to back off, right? so it was criticized for being soft on china but you know, what, koizumi, what prime minister koizumi did

in 2004 he returned those chinese who landed on the island. they just returned them right away. so i mean he wasn't, he got criticized for being soft on china back then and so, i mean there is a, but difficult, the distinction that we have to make with ldp back then and how the dpj was they had very different policies towards the united states. thanks. >> thank you. and my apologies about that. i guess we now have about five or seven minutes for question and discussion and, as i was talking about with henry earlier, one of the good things about working at the department of defense right now nobody expects me to be polite. so i will be quite brutal in my policing up of things.

if i suggest we being stack up three questions and ask people to actually get very quickly to the questions and turn them over to our panelists for their thoughts and response. >> start over here. national defense university. my question to the professor samuels if you brought the sense of the dp j-1 or dp j2 0 ldp on that side we, price, both parties, the, is there any, pblt of a bipartisan cooperation of this issue between the ldp and dpj, dpj-2 under lpj? >> two. second would like to back of

the room over there. >> daniel, graduate student at george washington university. how prepared is japan for increased cooperation with its regional neighbors, particularly with south korea? >> and a final question to add to the stack, also at the back. >> joe bosco, csis we heard inadvertent reference to taiwan. there was a recent public statement by the japanese government that conspicuously did not mention taiwan and that was with regard to the countries that provided humanitarian assistance after the disasters. turns out that taiwan has provided more than any other country and yet there was no thank you to that government. >> we can take the questions in order and, dick, if you want to address the dpj-1, 2,

question first. >> it's a great question because it is something we spent a lot of time trying to figure out and the best we could do is what i'm going to do now which is to acknowledge that the dpj is all over the map. you know the dpj is a mutt, just to be clear. it is a mutt. it has a lot of, a lot of progenitors. within it are folks that are military hedgers and balancers. some who have had cabinet positions. there are those who are economic henners, who are the advisors to the first kdpj prime minister. they are the bandwagoners with china. you remember mr. ozawa brought 300 of his closest personal friends to beijing time that the prime minister was announcing that it was, from an american perspective that japan would renege on the agreement. so there are folks in that quadrant as well.

i don't want to speak for him and let him add his own two cents here but i think the current admission station has migrated toward the northeast here. so you have dual hedgers in place. that makes them not completely distinct from the ldp as we last saw it in power but i think it's a great question. the second part of your question are the prospects for cooperation? i'm sorry, cooperation with whom? >> [inaudible]. >> that's a different question. okay. so i will stay away from that. >> i would say that the prime minister hatomi didn't mean to with the northwestern region but stumbling into northwestern region by picking up on this sensitive. he didn't mean to but he did, went, he did go into this

bandwagoning area. so but, i would say they have, you know, under khan, dpj moved to the east being into a great area. on the second question, i would say, yes, cooperation with south korea is certainly important and we are talking about kind of mat tourizing the u.s. alliance and we have alliance and u.s.-japan al eye eyeance and we're trilaterallizing this alliance. and i talked about national defense program guidelines which we revised last year in which we actually talked about growing partnership or developing partnership with different, several countries key countries. south korea, southeast asia countries and india. and how why?

because these are the countries with which we tend to, you know, share values and strategic orientations and those we think, also in that document we talked about changing american --. >> [inaudible]. >> american position. i forget. there was a mention about changing, changing american position in the international world, in the world. which means -- [inaudible] we didn't say declining u.s. a changing u.s. position. >> changing deterrent power. >> okay. you can now take a look at original document. so anyway because we think, actually japan is not rising and declining and u.s. may be, its position is not declining but relative, it is, a relative decline of the u.s. position in

particularly in relation to china. so what we are trying to do is to, we have to mobilize support from new partners. we have to

change in but, it is really, we read it as a decline, an kpaektics -- expectation of decline. a, that the b, the united states would demand more from its allies. if you're a chief writer you have to deal with that. third there would be less provision of public goods in the region. so you would have to step up to that. so the japanese had an open conversation about something that i think the media and, most of the rest of us missed on precisely this question. that gets to sheila's question she asked us are is there a new sense growing in japan about how to realign its national security strategy and i think we're starting to see it bubble up in this way. >> sheila if i can give you perhaps one minute to take a whack at that question. >> the taiwan? let me, i'll do that in one way and partly a many could meant that i wanted to make

on the paper which is, it ends on a very interesting question and that is, what happens when these schools of thought in different countries align differently, right? i immediately thought, bush administration, obama administration and the dpj. forgive me this is a japan panel so. what i do think we ought to be aware of and this speaks only tangentially to the gentleman's question about taiwan but i don't have specifics. we watch ad new party come into power in tokyo. we watched it have to formulate policy on north korea which it dived into the campaign and that election in 2009 because they had in fact developed a position on abduct tees and security position and whatever. by the time they came into office there was pretty much clarity on north korea. second there was pretty much clarity on doing as much as possible to improve the relationship with south korea. and again the dpj came in with a sense of diplomatic imperative of reconciliation

with both south korea and china. i think they have been fairly successful in reorienting on south korea, the relationship today is very, very close. the taiwan piece, china as we know is not so close. they have had various difficulties over the last year. but 2010 with a new party in power learning how to make pragmatic choices in the moment, in crisis scenarios, right? you had north korea, you have had two incidents with north korea in 2010. you had the between japan and china. clearly taiwan we don't know where they stand, where they sit, what the choices would be should there be tensions, for example. and this brings us full circle back to the electoral transition which is are coming back next year which i haven't heard people mention but there is leadership changes throughout northeast asia that will matter significantly to these kinds of questions next year. taiwan. south korea has an election. russia as has an election. who am i missing.

we have an election. china will have a transition, significant leadership transition. japan may very well have an election next year. so a lot of the kinds of questions you're talking about here really will come to a head potentially to give you more empirical data for this project next year. >> well, let me thank our three panelists for what was a very rich and rich and worthwhile interesting discussion. i wish we had more time to q&a and discussion but i'm trying to give back some time for the organizers. i will say for me personally the time pressure will spare me any danger inadvertently committing policy which is always a good thing. thank you very much for a very good paper and a very good discussion. [applause]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> we have more from this day-long forum from george washington university. up next a look at indian foreign policy and shifting world views within that country since the end of the cold war. this is about an hour. >> while we're quieting down, let me just mention to you now the papers have been mentioned over and over again. i wanted to make you aware of the fact that two of the papers have already been published preliminarily and are in the washington quarterly, the china paper, in january, the india paper this month. they are available on a table out front. so you can begin to get some idea of the richness of these papers. the other papers are being assembled for an edited publication that will come out in the first half of next year. i'm sure that any of the authors of those papers would be happy to respond to you if you sent them an e-mail, if you had an interest in reading that

paper in further depth. let me turn now to the third panel before our lunch which is our panel on india. and i am very, very pleased to turn the program over to robert blake. robert is our, currently our assistant secretary for south and central asian affairs in the department of state. he has been an ambassador to sri lanka and to the maldives and as well as deputy chief of mission in new delhi. he is a graduate of harvard college and mi degree from the same school that i have an ma degree from, johns hopkins school of advanced international studies. robert and then our authors and coought thundershowers and -- coauthors, dan markey. dan is with the counsel on foreign relations here in washington and is engaged in many aspects of u.s. policy

and analysis in south asia. without further adieu, ambassador blake. >> thank you very much, dr. lau. i now realize why i was chosen for this. it was the scythe connection. it is really a pleasure for me toe be here today to chair today's panel on domestic foreign policy debates here in india. i want to commend dr. lau and deepa for organizing this. this is great opportunity to have a really important discussion. always a treat for me to get out of the bureaucratic trenches of the state department and come and listen to some of the real experts on a lot of these issues. and it is a particular treat to be with some really quite distinguished academics here and i will introduce them in a minute as well as my old

co-conspirator dan markey who was in policy planning for several years and we worked together closely. as someone who has been working on india off and on since 200 when i was deputy chief of mission in india i was really pleased and intrigued to read this paper by deepa and rajesh. to see how they placed a lot of my old friends like roger and others into their taxonomy foreign policy schools. i look forward to hearing more about that from the authors themselves. i want to offer a few opening points of my own to say first while such taxonomies offer very useful ways to think about foreign policy the actual policy of a given country towards another country reflect as constantly shifting dynamic itself reflects the

personalities and the experiences of the key decision-makers as well was the specific issues that have their own dynamics as well. so the long and the short of that it is often a lot more complicated than these taxonomies show. second as the paper points out, shifting domestic politics have a very significant impact in india as they do in the united states. and i guess i would point to an example of the nuclear deal, the civil nuclear deal where we never imagined that politics would lead the bjp to, which was then in the opposition, to stand so stubbornly against the nuclear deal when really they were the ones that first initiated it and really championed it when they were in power. when they shifted over to the opposition nda, they shifted into opposition against the deal.

so, you know, i think it sort of raises a question whether that was pure politics or did that in fact represent a new tilt towards hyper nationalism as the authors talk about in their paper? another point i think we should probably consider is the role of regional parties and how they fit into this scale since they often have very significant impacts, particularly on country-specific foreign policies. i would cite for example the dmk and the aia, dmk who off and on have had very strong impact on india's policy with respect to sri lanka. and then as they participate in central government coalitions, these regional parties also have a significant role to play in foreign policy i would point to prasad and the very significant role he played in the helping the passage of the civil nuclear deal. . .

>> but also i'd be interested in how the authoring the for the influence of the indian diaspora. this is a group that we in government have really made quite an effort to reach out to and really try to work as closely as possible with the

diaspora, and, again, i think that, you know, in new york, the tambo community and many others have a significant impact on our foreign policy, and it's useful to think about that as well, to the extent they have an impact on indian policy as well. with those short words, i'll turn it over to the authors and daniel markey. you have their bios so i'll say rajesh rajagopalan is at the center of national politics organization and disarmorment at jnu, school of international studies, and was previously a senior fellow at the research foundation. deepa ollapally was -- is the associate director of the senior center for asian studies and research for international affairs here at the elliot

school of international affairs, and she holds a ph.d. in political science from columbia university, and daniel markey is a senior fellow specializing in security and governments and issues in south asia. he served o. planning staff from 2003 to 2007. join me in giving a warm welcome to all of them. thank you. [applause] >> just a note that i flipped a coin this morning, and rajesh gets to present this morning. [laughter] we'll both take questions though. >> thank you. let me begin by thanking the organizers of this conference for inviting me to this

conference. we've gone through i think three or four renditions of this, so there's one more addition in the morning. before i begin, a few caveats in terms of how we sort of looked at the foreign policy perspectives. one is i think some of the issues have come up in the discussion already. one is in the case particularly the connection, the link between the external, the public policy debates and the policymaking, but we think it is important for a variety of reasons. one is that we think that even though there is, that link is somewhat a direct link, but that some of this is reflected within the government also. that is, you have a reflection -- the same sort of set of opinions within the government, and we have five or six different perspectives that

we outline outside the government. we think it's a reflection of that. the second reason why i think it's important is that there is what david talked about in the first session. we called it veto opinion, and that is that some sort of opinions or some policies that are, that have so much negativity, that opposed the public opinion, any change that is somewhat difficult. there have been more than one and the governments try to change, but because of the domestic political position, they were not able to do it. there's some policy options that are not available, and in a sense you could characterize that as david did earlier as

veto or red lines in our paper. in a sense because of that, again, that public debate does become important. we also see that in terms of other issues in terms of how the last session we talked about in society and some options are not precedented and so on. those issues are important when we look at public opinion. it's not that there's a direct influence in political policy, but in terms of reviewing specific options in terms of government options. these limitations have reduced over the period of time, but in a sense you have, i think, the domestic, the public debate that is important. having said that, let me just move on to the -- to the debate we have divided up the various opinions in the groups within the schools of thought, within

the indian foreign policy debate. we haven't put it on a scale. what we have done is use these sort of circles partly because we see some overlap over the perspectives. it's not completely distinct from each other. there are strong commons to the groups, but it's not that we wanted to, but the point we want to make are there are overlaps in the perspectives that are important. in a sense what we have is there was a broad, a broad census of policy from 1947 on ward to the late 1990s, 1998, and we have used but it goes back a little bit early, but the 1998 is a

good line to use because of the government taking over then. until that point of time, what we see is a very strong consensus, and you have on both sides you have leftists sort of positions, leftist sort different perspective, and you also have a minuscule right wing perspection. we have a broader sense of foreign policy and opinion even in the public debate so there is a debate. i think that's why there's a lot of argument within the context how about how it effects policy thinking and so forth. this is on the fact that there hasn't been a huge debate because of that long centralism, there's not debate about foreign

policy options. since 1998, there's a significant amount of divergences between the nationalists and what we character as a census, and the nationalists have in a sense divided into what we call the bar centrals, and the leftists have always been there to some extent. , but they have become more prom innocent in the last -- sense 1998. they have been there since 1947, but they have prominence in the 1994 nuclear debate and the u.s.-india nuclear deal obviously because there wasn't a government, and that gave them

somewhat additional sort of power at that point in time. the standard nationalists as i said still represents the broad center, and by and large many times they are aligned with what we expect of the great power leaders broadly the standard nationalists of what characterizes the establishment, but in theceps they are broadly supporting of the government, and therefore, changes of government policy they tend to support, so they tend not to have big incentives with their opinions and sometimes change somewhat with contradicted policies, but broadly they aim for a level of status, balanced growth, and primarily made up of the party or exdiplomat officials or others within the government. the neonationallists are characterized and views are of

the party with leftists in it, and that's what today is we have characterized the most as probably a good example of that. in a sense, that left over as it may. the leftover left is characterized as a neonationallists. the hypernationallists are essentially very obvious paranoid mill tarrists. there's also a community far within that. the ones that are -- the nuance in the sense that they are much more accommodationists. that's a key there, and include sections of both the elements

and the military folks, especially from the navy. the key difference between the globalists is that they focus on economic growth and not particularly interested in military issues or in foreign politics, international politics as such, but focus on economic laws and so forth. how does this break down in terms of major policy controversies and perspectives? we have divided it into groups where there's a broad convergence. on arms control, as you can see, there is are -- there is some support for arms control. arms control because india is the nuclear regime, and the

broad center was antiarms control in a sense in terms of the broader nuclear issue, but that has changed to some extent and there's conservation on issues like even on npd, for example, there's a small debate beginning on npd whether they should join and be a member if offered to be a big issue, but as a nuclear weapon state, but there is the beginning of the debate. you find some trefers there with arms control issues and some differences of opinion. u.s. allegiance is the most controversial of the lot, a significant amount of debate about getting close to the united states as a last suspicion, and how close the relationship with the united states. the issue was down to in a sense on india or on the u.s.

relations. i think leftists in policy, iran as sort of a -- as a model, as a litmus test of whether india's independ or not or whether it is going to the united states, and the vote in the iaea meetings are watched. again, i think there is a suspicion, but no status change a little bit, so what you have are policies and globalists who are mori supportive. the standard nationalists much more willing to sort of look at both types of issue where as the leftists and hypernationallists much more suspicious and much

more focused on the cost of bilateral involvement. where there is broad support or where there is convergence on policy issues on a variety of these issues, and now, there are differences. i think in the terms of way we looked at it, there are differences in terms of looking at some of the issues, but there's essential in in terms of what they can do. especially in terms of force. especially in the post-1998 phase, and one difference you find is there is no war party. despite publications from pakistan and so on, there is no support for any military action to deal with pakistan. in terms of looking at that issue that we have, but there is broad support for enhancing military sort of ableness, but not any support in terms of using use of force on itself. in terms of strategic alliances

and ties, you find there are some differences, but even though there are some conversation of close ties with the unite and so on, but the idea of having military alliances a completely outside, essentially very, very unlikely depending on what opinion as you take which is why it's one of the policy convergences. on china relations there's groups in terms of how they view china and that it is broad in terms of taking some choice, but no great difference in terms of policy. there are differences between the leader's perspectives in terms of the diagnosis of what the problem is, but there is, i think, a broad con consensus that we don't have very have many options with afghanistan.

one of the agents where they are stronger and to be of interest in washington is democracy promotion has no takers, and so therefore there is broad consensus they have that issue. broadly, what we see is a license prague -- pragmatic moving from the period and primarily made up as the pragmatic view made up of the liberal globalist and realists, but the shift is not completed in the world as it may, so it could go back, but the public is very intense. we note here that we have issues that we have not discussed earlier. i mean, you know, i think in the embassy and in 2003 iraq case

happened, and to even discuss that, you know, joining with the united states in the military is -- we will see it as a major change, and that's why we characterize that as a very intense public debate even though the shift is not complete, and i think the final conventional wisdom road that we've taken that there's a pragmatic approach becoming stronger and weight shifting in that direction towards a modellistic way of reducing, but, again, i think we are somewhat cautious in terms of making any final predictions about whether this is finished. it's similar progress. thank you. >> thank you, rajesh. did you want to add anything? >> [inaudible] >> okay, dan, please. >> okay.

thanks to the organizers as well. it's a great pleasure to be here, and i found -- i should start by saying that i found this paper to be a useful one. bob suggested that from a state department perspective, and i would echo this, had i been in the the state department and had a paper to read like this charting out the debates within indian foreign policy, it would have been a very nice way to begin my study of the country, so there's, there's a great deal of good stuff here, and i want to take my time to step through sort of three basic points. the first of these is to explore in a little more depth the practical utility of the process and then focus on questions and obsz vaitions --

observations of the details of the indian case and explore possible avenues for future study moving ahead. let me talk about this, the utility here, and i would just say that from a policymaker's perspective that it seems odd in a sense that political science would not have spent all that much time on the question of broad debates within other countries on their foreign policy. this seems intuitive. this seems like something that would be central and for the conference organizationers, obviously it is, but with my background in political science, i know it's not mainstream of international relations scholarship, and i think that that's been a problem to the extent that this is an effort to return these ideas to that mainstream i think it's quite valuable, but there's a reason why policymakers have been forced to continue to do this even if ir theorists have not,

and that is because you're in the business of trying to get into the mind of your counterpart. you're trying to figure out what they are thinking, maybe get ahead of them, find areas for cooperation and so on, and you'd like to do this in ideal circumstances by exchanging views with those leaders, but as a reality, this is not always possible. in fact, it's usually not possible, and so you have to settle for something that's second best, and that is attempting to gauge the mood or the prevailing schools of thought within a country and then see how those trickle down into those minds of the individuals who actually have the potential to do something about it, and, of course, in india, this is true. india is not an entirely opaque system in that respect it's probably more open than a few of the countries that you're looking at here today, but it's still difficult sometimes to read the official mind, and it's also a mind in a sense that's

been in flux. india's developing rapidly and changes, and it would be surprising if you saw complete consistency, so in order to get ahead of the changes or anticipate what the changes would be, this is the kind of study you would want to undertake. now, the question in india, and the authors do a good job of at least initially exploring this is how these ideas feed into the tbawl policymaking process, and in the u.s. system, we have a somewhat more direct way for this to happen. people come and go from the inside to the outside. people come from academia, serve in government, serve in political parties, assume power, and thn leave. you also have, i think, a fairly extensive effort by policymakers to attend meetings like this, to participate in them, to receive briefings, to be open to this outside world which i think, and

the authors would agree, is somewhatless seen in the indian case. still, there's no way even in the american system to have an exact science of how these ideas that are bubbling up from the outside translate into the inside, and in india, this is even more true. let me -- i'll come back to that point a little later, the extent to which the closed indian system is not necessarily immune from these things and may be changes, becoming perhaps more open as it develops. now, if we assume that the domestic debates do have at least an indirect bearing on policy, and i think in india this is a correct assumption, this kind of paper is useful for the outside observers or the people i was talking about before, but it's also useful because it begins what i might call sort of a meta debate, a debate about the debate itself.

this in the indian context is actually an improvement over the current state of affairs. i think we have had for a time, we have the best we could do is try to discern what indians think, but not then characterize it, catalog it, and then project that characterization back into the debate itself. by doing that, it's helpful for the debaters because the indians, somewhat many of whom are namedded in the paper, find themselves characterized as hypernationallists or nationalists or great power realists, and that sharpens the mind, and that forces them then to declare, well, no, in fact i'm not, and here's why and what separates me and my ideas from my peers and so on. that takes the debate to the next level and as long as we're not stuck on labels and labeling, we'll be in good shape, and i think this is a

good contribution in that respect. however, before we get there, i think labels matter quite a lot, and if i were to have one of my critiques of the paper and of the project is the way in which it labels, and here in particular you saw neonationallists and nationalists in the context. and there's a pause. nationalist is not a determined label. in fact, i think i understand as for reasons with this doing a comparative project, nationalists may have important connotations, it's not an entirely alien term, but it doesn't really capture what's going on, and, in fact, it

somewhat obscures what the mainstream perspective is, but i think there's other problems here too. you could be more clear about that i suppose would be a step in the right direction. even the other terms that you use, leftists, realist, hypernationallist, and so the leftists by definition are out of the mainstream. they are extreme, on the left. the realists have some -- i mean, in some ways that's a more positive connotation with an understanding of objective reality underpinning what's going on. there is a bias smuggled into this, and i think we need to be very clear, particularly as you get going in this kind of a project as so exactly what you make of it. there's another point here that some of the very american terms have been used by indians and are more extensively used now

than they were say two decades ago because these very indians have studied in the u.s. or have studied american academic literature on international relations, and so to the extent that they are now appropriating american terms and american theories or theories that have been developed most fully in the united states, i think there's an interesting dynamic going on here that indians may be, and their scholars may be, thinking about india's foreign policy in ways that have been framed by americans, and i think there may be an interesting sort of direction here for further analysis to figure out how that is shifting or playing into the indian dynamic or how the indian debate is more truly indian than i'm recognizing, in fact, how i may be wrong in this. the paper hints at some answers to how indian foreign policy is more truly indian or indian sin karattic in its way.

you point to an inordinate attention to the international status as being one of these areas. this might be an interesting avenue to explore. i wonder though if you might want to make a very, in a future study, make a very direct comparison with the united states in terms of the development of the indian debate as compared to with the development of the u.s. debate, and not the current u.s. debate because i think that's the wrong comparison. i would suggest you want to make a comparison as the united states was itself a rising power, so late 19th century, early 20th century united states. that is the critical area where the country is approaching its power and the system where india is now, and you might see interesting similarities between the two countries. now, i would say one of the best points of this paper for those who are going to read it or

should read it is your effort to get beyond the labels then and really focus on individuals, point out specific personalities in people who are really driving this debate within india. now, there's a reason for this and a reason why this is so important in the indian case, and you also note this. the indian debate is overpersonallized. institutions are relatively or appear to be relatively empty vessels into which prominent individuals enter, make a splash, make a case, and may move on in some cases leaving relatively little behind, and so i'll turn this around as a question. the question would be whether you're seeing a shift here, whether you see in india to greater institutionalization where institutions are starting to matter, and i'll come back to this in a minute, but, you know, in the united states to frame this for those who are not

focusing on india, you could say 245 if you look -- if you look around town at the think tanks and get an understanding of the basis of people where they sit, so heritage has a reputation, american progress has another, i'm not sure i see that in india, but it may be emerging. okay, now for specific observations here. the paper begins by arguing the domestic variables are very important, and it makes a pretty compelling case here. it talks about its benign condition, open democracy, a fractured policy, and the size, and all this means the foreign policy is influenced by what happens at home. when you go into trying to explain indian foreign policy and how it behaved, i think you shift quickly to a very structural analysis, the end of

the cold war. the end of the cold war seems to be driving a lot of the break down of what i would call the nationalist consensus. the globalization of markets seems to be driving the rise of the liberal internationalists, the liberals within india, gives them a boost. india's relative rise in power in the international system, and along with the rise of its neighbor, china, gives a boost to the sort of great power realist school of thinking in india, and i read henry's opening chapter to the volume, and he suggests some policy debates in a country lags behind the structural change, and it appears to me that india is a real case of this where the debate is following the structural shift, not leading it. in a way, theet representically at --

theoretically, it's saying the domestic policy debate is driven by the structure, and you're defining the relative rise and fall of players in the debate by what's happening on the outside. it's not a true domestic story here. in some ways it too easily slides back into the structural story. now, this becomes, i think, important because the paper then doesn't really do a great job then explaning why india decided at the end of the cold war to align more or less with the united states. i agree it's not an alliance in any formalceps, but as was -- formal sense, but as was expressed by china, their surprise as how india moved away from its tradition, nonaligned movement or near band wagon with

the united states, and so this suggests to me that something is going on here at the domestic level. some shift has taken place not determined by that international structure, but i don't know what it is from the paper. i don't know why different groups have been privileged in this policy debate, and the one thing that seems to be missing here is this issue of liberal values, democratic affinity, you know, you've suggested just now that india is not interested in promoting democracy, and i fully agree. that's off the table, but when you talk about democratic affinity, then you start to get some resonance, and, for instance, when prim minister sigh came here speaking, he contrasted the view with the united states and china. what was essential was shared values, democratic understanding of the world, principles and so on. there's something going on here

that's not in the paper. the question then that i would have is whether perhaps as india's not interested in promoting democracy now, but remember debate is lagging behind its relative power. perhaps as i india's power rises, the debate shifts and you get a change, and the important change in the way india behaves on this specific issue. we wouldn't expect to see that yet, but maybe in the future. i wonder what's driving that? is there a potential there under explored? i don't want to go on in too much length, but i think the china factor is missing. china is mentioned in the paper, but on my recent trips to india, i'm struck to what extent china is a litmus test for where to stand on foreign policy. the paper suggested it's mainly about the united states, but the china issue is tied to the u.s. issue, but in many ways it's also distinct and also

changing. it's a dynamic. it's a moving target, and how india responds to that moving target is very much influx, and i suggest that a future version of the paper might take up that issue as well as the u.s. one, so let me close with a couple of ideas or questions as i said for a future study. the first one is what are the domestic drivers? the really truly domestic drivers for these various schools of thoughts in india, and what might they be moving ahead to a more institutionalized version of the debate? for instance, will we see big business playing a bigger role? multinationallist industrialists corporations and so on basically sponsoring institutions more directly sponsoring schools of thought and allowing them to prosper within the system as the businesses rise? will we see political parties

taking an active role in this? so far we have not seen party schools or think tanks, or think tanks that exist to advance the agenda of a political party, but as that policy debate or party debate continues, you may see that. we are seeing the development of some bureaucratic or institutional drives for domestic debate coming out of the military because the military has seen fit to invest in think tanks. you mention clause or idsa might be examples of this starting to see an institutionalized military investment paying off in the form of ideas about how india's foreign policy should be, and that's very similar too. these are all developments we've seen at one time or another in the united states, so it's not surprising to see them in the indian context. finally, flipping back to the structural analysis, how the outside, how the changes in the world may affect this internal debate.

the three big things that i would suggest you want to entertain is a war with pakistan. this is not off the table, and you would think might play very directly into the date of the it's a foreseeable type of event going to effect policy debate, so i'm curious what you make of that. this continued trajectory, this rise of china, how that will play out, and then another with respect to the united states, an area we focus on a lot, is the end game in afghanistan. how the united states leaves afghanistan, how that plays into the indian debate about its own foreign policy and in particular about its relationship with the united states, so let me end there, and, again, congratulate you both. it was a great, very useful paper, very compelling observations, and i think overall, this volume and henry and deepa, i congratulate you for the piece of what it can do to help political science to return back to something that's

a little more directly linked up with policy studies, so thank you. >> dan, thank you very much. deepa has an hour's worth of questions, but you can have some short comments, and we'll open it up. >> first of all, i want to thank you for taking your jobs so seriously and giving us really a lot of foodback. i'm just going to focus quickly on two things that dan said and one point that ambassador blake made. first of all, dan, your point about structure versus domestic, it's an important one, and let me just say that you cannot actually -- i would argue and we argue -- that you can't explain the shift by the end of the cold war because, in fact, the domestic consensus about the model had been coming to an

end. i mean, there's -- there was more debate in the 80s about whether the model, the economic model, and the ballistic model had run out of steam because look at india. it was going at 2% or 3% rate. you look elsewhere in the region. they were galloping ahead, and this inward looking idea of india as a great civilization idea sort of being itself was enough, and that we muddle along and still be better than the rest i think just was coming under a lot of opposition, so if you look at the domestic debates, you would see there's a lot of resistance to that, so, of course, the end of the cold war brought it to a head, so, yes, it's a turning point, but i think it couldn't have happened this way without having that kind of firm before going on. the other point you raised was the counterintuitive about

democracy promotion. i think that merits some response on that. first of all, the -- i think -- i mean, yes, the prime minister's statement about the affinity, i'm afraid i think it's more rhetoric than not, and i would suggest why because i think the whole idea of democracy promotion is seen in new delhi as soft interventionallism. you know that the indians are allergic to intervention. i think that's the way in which that is seen. it is also, you know, the concept of democracy came up in 2007, january -- japan, india, australia, you know, it was seen as a good idea, but on the other hand, it was seen as maybe a creeping

agent of nato targeting china, and the indians did not want to go along with that. i'll leave it at that. one point, ambassador blake, you meads about the diaspora. i think it's or very, very important thing. it's a love-hate relationship in india because the nonresidents of india, once the government resents them, but also they need them, and i think they kept them at a distance for a long time until silicone valley happened frankly, and then they found that it was a useful as the indian market opened up also, and now they're going to town on ruining the diaspora, and it's important, so let me stop with that. >> one point about democracy because i think it's very important to note that one of the most important and striking things to come out of the president's visit was an agreement on the part of the indian government to actually

work with the united states for the first time to promote open government around the world, and from all your heard on the panel you might think that they're never going to touch the subject, but, in fact, they're going to work closely with us and a number of other countries. it's at the request of other governments when they want it, but it's an important step forward. india's debate on the right to information law is something substantial and quite an important example for the countries, and so we are quite excited about this. let me open it to questions or comments on the floor, please. >> thank you, david from the elliot school here. i'd just like to pick up on small that dan said in his remarks on how useful being in the staff would have been useful to have a paper like this land

on your desk and ambassador blake said something similar and as did others in the first session. this raises the question in my mind about what is the american intelligence community doing? [laughter] with the billions of dollars that it is spending, measuring whatever it is measuring, how many short range ballistic missiles are deployed where -- >> [inaudible] [laughter] >> in all seriousness this is a question for the panels, and the last panel and ambassador pickerring and particularly after 9/11 and all the emphasis of the 9/11 commission on so-called open source collection and analysis, what is going on with the american intelligence community if these kinds of papers are not landing on your desks as policymakers? i pose this question not so much for this panel, but just to table it for tharches and tom

-- this afternoon and tom pickerring. >> they land on our desk, but the question is do we have time to read them? [laughter] >> this is a question for ambassador -- this is a question for ambassador blake and a follow-up for the rest of the panel. in terms of domestic debates impacting foreign policy in a sense the more things change the more it seems to remain the same, and i'm talking specifically in terms of the indian extension on the libya word, and a lot of the think tank communities of proponents for india's endorsement as a permanent member of the u.n. security counsel but rather disappointed in terms of the extension saying it was a return to the old thing and the old sort of nonalliance thing of india. ambassador blake, how disappointed were you with the exattention? after all, president obama went

back on terms of -- for the panel, in terms of labeling, it's interesting and here in town last week, and in terms of questions from sort of the military industrial complex, it came out strongly attacks defense minister anthony saying maybe why he doesn't allow for private sector investment in the defense sector was because of his connections, the trade union connections, ect., so it's a leftist mentality to him. >> well, let me answer that very, very briefly because there's a lot of issues to talk about, but i would answer that generally by saying there's been i think quite an interesting evolution in india's u.n. votes, and for example some human rights issues on libya, things like that. there has been some forward progress in that area. india always voted in a way that we regard as positive with regard to the iaea, with respect

to iran. on the narrow question of libya, i think a lot of that was influenced by incontribute reports in the -- incorrect reports in the beginning of the high civilian casualties by the aircraft carrying out their speedometers under the -- responsibilities under the u.n. security, and that was incorrect and impacted by how other countries voted. again, india has been supportive of libya, and we have a very good dialogue going forward on that. >> tom? >> tom pickerring, hills and company, very briefly i was somewhat shocked not to hear two words mentioned, pakistan and teshmir, why?

>> in the chart there, pakistan is up there because it is one of the areas of convergence across the board, and i suppose it could have been up there in the same context of convergence because i think there are certain areas where there's pretty much consensus across the board, and we just negligented the kashmir question on that and we focused on major foreign policy issues with the u.s. and other rises powers as well, but that's -- we probably should include that in there next time. >> i think we'll take one more question. sir, there in the corner. >> yes, when i first read the title of your paper, "ambiguous power," like many of the things in economics, india muddles through and so on and very intrigued by your analysis, but

when i reflected on the contents of your paper, the question i had suspect today's world, ambiguity the name of the game? because i think in the old cold war days you could have doctrines and follow them, but as we're seeing in this town, the doctrine breaks down very quickly. is it really bad to be ambiguous in foreign policy? >> if i thought that ambiguity might be a cleverly disguyed strategic grand strategy, then, yes, it would be a good idea and a smart thing, but if it's, in fact, because there is opinions and people not paying attention to what a grand study should be or the strategic purpose pushing these foreign policymakers, then that's another issue, and i think it's the latter. i think it's shifting, but, you

know, i think gnu -- new delhi got used to not con franting a lot of issues. they had that stock nonalignment and the model to guide them, but since it ran out, i think now it's in this position of having to, in fact, come up with views, and so it is ambiguous right now, but i think it is also -- as you go back to the nuclear issue, india had a studied am ambiguity about that, very, very deliberate on that one particular question, but i think to suggest it's a good thing overall, i think it's, you know, given the rise of india, given the different expectations from outside, and what india, you know, the u.n., now india wants to be a part of the security counsel, i think ambiguity then

you can't go too far with that if you have to do something and be guided by certain principles. >> couple quick pointsment i think democracy came up a number of times. you're right about india in the negotiations, i think you have to look and see how many times democracy coming up with any other country. [laughter] yes, we do talk a lot about democracy, and because -- [inaudible] [laughter] >> policy works. [laughter] >> one other issue is i think if you look at the years and the division and you wonder why, you know -- [inaudible]

[laughter] in a sense it's policy, so i think, yeah, sometimes -- >> you wonder what they stand for and go back and forth. >> stand for coming back to both. [laughter] i think -- i don't think because, you know -- it's politics more than anything else. the ideals are very strong. >> i see that henry has come back in the room so i think that's my cue to end this session, but i know there's many, many other questions and comments, so i'm sure there's other opportunities to talk about it, but please join me in thanking our panelists. [applause]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> today the president's traveling to fort campbell, kentucky to meet privately with some of the private operation team involved with shooten bin laden. after the discussion, he's making remarks to soldier there and we'll bring remarks live at 3:50 p.m. eastern on c-span. next week, he's at a town hall meeting at the museum on wednesday moderated by bob scheefer from face the nation and questions from the audience. later today, michelle obama and dr. joe biden honoring military families at the white house. last week, they launched joining forces to national initiatives aimed at encouraging public

support for military families. president obama is recognizing today as military spouse appreciation today, and we'll bring you their remarks coming up at 3:30 p.m. eastern here on c-span2. the policy conference taking place here in washington, d.c.. speakers include rudy giuliani and reince preibus here on c-span2.

[applause] >> now a discussion on sustainable agriculture. the speakers include the ceo for stonyfield farms and talk about investing in organic food production, agriculture research, and biotechnology. this panel was part of a day long conference on sustainable agriculture and global food supplies hosted by the "atlantic " magazine.

>> that's food writer korby. he's one the most widely read authoritative and creative food writers in the country, and a dean among food writers as the san fransisco examiner called him. he joined the atlantic in 1981, and for the first three decades, he ran through the pages of the magazine writing about travel and culture, but, of course, writing mostly about food. you can go through his assembled writings and drop your finger on the page on any letter and come up rich. salad, salt, sandwiches, supermarket, stainability, soil erosion, subsidies. g -- gardens, gmo, greens, g -- c -- cheese, cold pressed olive

oil. a few months ago, he moved neighborhoods and now writing primarily on theatlantic.com. he launched the food channel in 2009 and oversaw expansion to a life channel, and he recruited a group of friends to his new neighborhood bringing an a-list of regular contributors and bloggers to the food channel including some people we will hear from today, mario batolli and others. he was a strawnt critic at new york magazine and serves in that role as boston magazine, a frequent food commentators and writes reviews for cookbooks and other books. he's the author of the pleasure of slow food and the joy of coffee, harolded by foodies and

others alike. he's in the running for a sixthth for a piece he did on the organic food movement. he's at the forefront of the issues we're discussing today. i'm happy he's at the forefront of the issues and here to talk today. [applause] >> thank you very much, and the only embarrassing thing is, you're right here, i don't have, i don't know that i'll be able to introduce our much more distinguished panelists in anything like the detail i didn't deserve from elizabeth. oh, by the way, the secret recruiting tool is all these people are going to appear on the atlantic life channel. you'll be frequent contributor, so we have a little plan when we invite you all on the stage, and we'll cover it on the right channel too.

what i find as i've been going through the writings and the speeches of our very distinguished panelists is it's an umbrella term of umbrella terms right now. in the food world, agriculture world, in the policy world, there's so many visions of stainability that you would think they can't live on the same stage, and yes we're trying today. we have people here today who are, i would say in the fore front and the country's leaders in different, very different visions of stainability, so what i'd like this to be is a crash course in stainability, what the term can exrens, and how it can fit all of the many visions people have for it, so what i'm going to do is go down the panel and ask our panelists to say what they think about

stainability and what all of you should be keeping in mind. it's a word we all use losely with different things in mind i think, and by the end of the today we'll use it a bit more precisely or have an idea of what a freighted term it is, so we're going to start with sarah alexander, the environmental practice at the keystone center for sustainable agriculture and she's talking about field to market, one of many initiatives that is brought together with a wide variety of stake holders from private sectors to universities who generally don't speak at the same table tore the same stage, but like here, they all come together at the keystone center in colorado or in washington or wherever they convene conferences. she's going to be talking about the field to market initiative

and what they brought together at keystone and what they view as agriculture challenges of the next century, and your visions of stainability because after all, it's part of your title. >> sure. well, just to start, at the keystone center, as you mentioned, we're the facilitators and conveners to address these kinds of issues, and so i think the safe definition that we use at key stope all the time for stainability is that it's a team sport. this is something that not any one entity can accomplish on their own and hence the need for a multistake holder engagement and agreement on what it is exactly we're trying to do when it comes to sustain stainability. four years ago we had a group of cultivation organizations like the world wildlife funds and environmental defense fund with producer organizations like national corn growers association, american soybean

association, and companies throughout the supply chain for food and agriculture from big food companies that wanted to be in the big companies that support formers on the -- farmers on the other end and provide them with the resources that they pull together. .. >> in a way that increases the productivity that we know isn't

one of the challenges before us but also decreases and environmental resources, improve human health and improve the livelihood of farmers and their communities. >> goes those last two or three points again because you want to them awful fast. >> so, the twist on the agriculture side of this is really that we look in care for both our current and future generations, in a way that both increases the productivity of food and other things that we rely on for agriculture, that we decrease the environmental footprint of the productivity, that we improve human health and we improve the livelihoods of farmers and the communities in which they live. >> good. wanted to hear that. and what will be your next steps in your future work? >> the group beyond the definition also agreed it was important, particularly for commodity agriculture who is not

larger than a part of a conversation with respect to sustainable agriculture. to both agree on the outcomes on expectations that we have a of agriculture. and then figure out if there are ways we can actually measure our progress oath on a big scale, can we actually know whether or not we're moving in you in a significant way rather than anecdotally we know this farmer over here is doing a good job and maybe this one not so good. do we know any big picture, are we doing that will appear and provide both farmers and the private sector that they work with tools to both benchmark themselves and figure out ways to continue to see improvements, that we know they have made over the past 20 years into the future as we address these key challenges of environmental resource in increasing productivity in tandem and looking at those together. >> and you just ruined a term, you were telling me was one of those now we have to find this, commodity agriculture. what do you mean by that and

what are some of the other terms we might be going by? >> commodity agriculture is largely, it's a passenger at the agriculture there's goat in the u.s. we're looking at specific crops such as corn, soybeans, cotton, wheat, rice, that are large-scale production, largely sold into commodity markets. so they are intermingled almost as soon as they leave the farm. so it's hard to like smb traditional market incentives where you're connecting to consumer all the way back to the farm, hoping that consumer might pay a little more for increased performance, more difficult in a commodity context. so needing to look at both different ways, measure and embrace what farmers are doing and encourage improvement probably needs to look different in those markets as well. that was the need for this. a ticket significant part of the u.s. agriculture today so it was

an important conversation that did happen with with respect to environmental. >> is another take on term, commodity agriculture. thank you very much. so, we're going to now turn to gary hirshberg, chairman, president and ceo of stonyfield farm and author of stirring it up, how to make money and save the world. i won't say how long we go back. we go back when you are just had a far in new hampshire, which is a very long time ago. and i will admit that i had -- this is an illustration of what kerry has done. he has decided that things can be beautiful and that small doesn't have to be the only way for organic to grow. and he, as you probably know, he's part of the group -- is that how you pronounce it? i was just reading about this

lethargic who started which was very interesting story. and he's become one of the countries leading spokesman for organic food production, for food policy, taken very strong stance and certain crops which we touch on today. but what he is the model of come you'll be telling us about what you think we need to think in terms of when we need sustainability and what gary is a model of, the very fact that disappeared and it was the only brand of yogurt at my hotel, this is sort of come and our boehner, by the way, at least two of our speakers have children have walked through the tour with coca-cola products, and there was lots of food on the table that may have well come from another one of our sponsors. so, this is a vision of growth that has made it into the big boys in the big world.

you have kept exactly what your same practice is when we first met. and your abilities and who you are having changed a bit. >> no, i haven't changed. >> but what has become is a video wrapper. and you can all -- i linked to a rap video about organics that gary put up. and i only mention it because he hasn't gone on to reputation.com to try to expunge it. in fact, he wants it to be viral. said gary is a man of many talents, and growth and in leadership. and going to ask you to tell us a little bit about your vision. >> okay. my 18 year old daughter is horrified by the last anecdote, so i'm keeping my day job. >> you told me about it. >> mentioned about us going back, i started in the organic yogurt business in 1983. you can imagine that's a little bit insane. americans were eating yogurt and

no one knew what organic was proud to say what a great business idea, just no supply and no demand. but things have come a long way. so now 25, well, we're coming up to 2010 numbers a bit, probably a $30 billion segment, about 4% of u.s. who. i could even use the word organic industry incentives through most of my cricket i think we need to be clear about that. but what organics is about, and with what stonyfield -- stonyfield is about -- which hotel by the way? never my. we'll get to that later. is a notion of sustainability that i think we have to confront. and, frankly, the language that sarah just express is really i think says it, but in practice what it really means is that we have to stop allowing ourselves this convenient exemption that our modern economic system

allows which is this notion of externalities. just remind you, if you missed economics 101, as, as i did, i think i slept through that one. externalities have a direct consequences our economic behaviors that don't appear on their income statements or rpm dells and, therefore, no is accountable for them. so a national obesity epidemic, a national diabetes epidemic of the president's cancer panel telling us that 41% of us will be diagnosed with cancer in our lifetime, climate change, the loss of family farmers since the 1960s, 50% of the top so that was here when lewis and clark made their way across the country, those are gone. those are consequences. what organics and my definition, our definition of sustainability seems to address is you can you solve a problem like water consumption our topsoil, or productivity and create other problems down the road. a baby born in any city in america this would want to

hundred 87 chemicals, compounds in her core blood at the moment of birth, literally in her core blood. half of which are known carcinogens. they are not at carcinogenic levels but this is a consequence. it's not a reflection of our food system. it's a reflection of modern-day living. again, i'm the business guy here, not the farmer, although certainly we have, i have done my share of milking in the early days. but we support hundreds of thousands of acres. and i by much more than know. i bought about 160 commodities to be precise. and the model that we use is a model in which, for us, it's critical that productivity, ecology, farmworkers health, animal health and societal health, nutrition are all interest. in other words, we are trying to underwrite and it may sound naïve, but i've got now 30 years of commercial success behind this to tell you we support a

win-win-win-win system. modern congress is often almost always about somebody or something losing, particularly future generations as we deplete resources that are nonrenewable. so just to grab this in business for a moment let me just tell you that aside from the incredible ecological wins that we've had come and made him give you a quick anecdote about one. we support now 40,000 acres of organic sugar cane production in brazil.?? people say, if you track sugar harvesting, sugar production, you know the first thing you do when you go into harvest is you burn a few. and that burn, that's because there's a lot of leaky biomass relative to the king. we in our limited human under involved way we see that as we sped. so we burn it so we can get access to the cane and get rid of rodents and snakes and so

forth. that's a carbon release of the first order of magnitude. if you have flown over florida, and many of us have, or louisiana or other parts during the sugar cane harvest, you are seeing this huge carbon release. but it is tripling a damaging because any nutrition has built up in the topsoil during that season is also turned into atmospheric co2. and you have to replace that fertility with something else, anand a starkly that's what we'e done. we've been asked -- we are not the first civilization to have done this. they have always thought there's another place to go when we use of our topsoil. for our fertility. in the past, for us it was going west. in the mediterranean culture it was expanding to other places. or we drove to defer natural gas. so our farmers recognize this as a basically an inflationary system that he didn't want to, business terms, the want to be a part of.

so what to do is the green harvest. and shred the organic, shred the green matter, but on the topsoil so the topsoil underlines these deals are never exposed to the corrosive effects of wind or water for even one second. then they drive low tide for the trucks that are harvesting and the dump trucks are taking away so they don't crush the topsoil. the net result is they had 90% reduction, since they convert to organic, 14 years ago. they've had 312 -- actually grew by 312 species have returned to this land. i have stood on organic dairy farms in the middle of central valley in california. where peace and birds are flying all over, and the farmers have taken me to their cousins not organic farms a quarter-mile download and there is nothing flying around because of the insects understand they will go where the action is. they will not be where the poisons are. they have improve groundwater

quality. they've gotten higher yield. 10% higher yield than when they were not organic but also than their conventional counterparts down the road. that's because they built up a carbon meta. been sequestered carbon. they are working to reverse this come a fact is contribute to climate change. we will not solve the climate choices by be more efficient by reducing. we will have to start to question and take carbon out of the atmosphere here they are building -- their gimmick matter, the carbon content underlying the soil is now almost equal, 97%, to what the forests were when it first went in, the colonists first went in and harvested. here's the economic punchline of all this. they've had natalie 10% increase in deals with lower input, but my organic shirt which i first started buying from them in the mid 1990s has now decreased in

the preview has decreased by 100%. it used to be 100% more expensive than conventional. it's not exactly at parity withw conventional.w and i think this is the key here is that we've been able to prove that this is not just good ecology and good humanity, but it's excellent commerce. and maybe i would just have one last piece about this, about sustainable business. i think this is an aspect of all this. you know, what i have learned, and i want to admit i didn't know this when i set out and business back in making 83. my gross margins from the very beginning, you know, the margin that is left after the production of my yogurt at the back of my dock, my gross margins are 10 points, 1000 basis points worst then the leader in my category. of my net margins are better than theirs. i want to say this again. somewhere between the gross margin line, higher cost and again i can't, when organic

sugar cost 100% more than conventional i could charge core before any of us, i might have charged you, but more for my yogurt. so my gross margins have been at a deficit their the bottom line, i make more money. why is that? again, at a conference run by a wonderful magazine, i shouldn't probably get into this into much depth, but i spend less in advertising. the way i -- [inaudible] [laughter] >> i commuted everything i just shared with you. i have yet to meet the consumer who wants yoga with more synthetic growth hormones into. i've yet to meet the consumer who -- i think you have to be delicious and history. but fundamentally what we've done is to create a partnership with our retailers, with our consumers, and with our producers. so the 1750 organic dairy farmers out there, i've done all

this without realizing the farmers. they aren't bringing on average of 60-40 coming to being on the -- more than what to do it their conventional. my sugar farmers have become much more productive. we have subsidized that. so everybody in my system is winning. including the consumers who now have come if you're on organic diet you are getting six times less phosphates that you can find in your urine. after a day if eating organic food than a dating conventional. bottom line for me is it's about win-win-win-win. that includes economics. >> thank you, and if you all want to follow his model you can buy straight up, how to save money and save the world. he is very transparent about the. there's so many things. i know you have queued up for our next speaker. thank you very much. this was a perfect lead in to nina fedoroff who's the president of the american association to the advancement

of science known to many of you as aaas. former science adviser to the secretary of state, and administered to the agency of international development, author of a book. and she has -- or vision of sustainability i think is going to be in so many regards similar to gary's, and in many points, he just that sony believes in common, but then a lot of differences in the details. so, let me turn it over to commodity agriculture who has been listening very intently to gary. >> well, i accept everything gary has to say, but let me tell you who i am to begin with. i'm a molecular biologist and a son working on plans back when people didn't even think that plans had dna. and contributed to develop of the techniques that we have

today for enhancing the properties of agricultural plants and other types of plants. i've watched over the years, the '80s, '90s, and following decade, as the techniques that we use to modify an organism are totally accepted in parts of the food industry, not other parts, certainly in medicine, what we do today without recombinant produced in microorganisms. and yet, in agriculture the world has gotten more and more -- has its mindset more and more in many, many places against the modification using molecular techniques to improve plants. not knowing that in the 20th

century, and in the centuries before, we have completely transformed both plants and animals to serve us better food. now, my view is that the principle of organic, everything that organic, not chemistry, organic farming, everything that gary says is absolutely true. we have to do better and we have to be more ecologically mindful comment even as we pay attention to the bottom line. but there are many ways to do it, and increasingly in the future we have to look at what we do to the land, and what we do to the nutrient flows, part of what he is addressing with organic techniques is the less waste, what we do today as we pull nitrogen out of the air. we turn into forms that plants can use. we mind fosters and we dump it

on the so. much of it runs off. all of that is extraordinarily wasteful. so much of the, much of what needs to be done for sustainability is well within our grasp your we just have to do it. and, frankly, although the sugar cane that you -- your producers grow can be grown without inputs of herbicides and so forth, one of the biggest boost in so conversation has come from the development of herbicide tolerant soybeans. and herbicide, people kind of shrink when using herbicide because they equate with pesticide.-= pesticide to things that affect insects, which are animals. herbicides affect pathways that we don't have. they disrupt the synthesis of

certain amino acids which we don't have. so they have no effect on animals. so, today we have only a couple of big commodity crops that are modified genetically. and, frankly, the bottom line is that we have done that to our self. we have erected such regulatory the government choose an introduction into production of genetically modified crops, and when i say genetically modified crops, i mean modified by my neck -- molecular techniques. we been using other techniques for a long time, and these are acceptable, organic, as well as what is now called conventional farming. but when it came -- [inaudible] >> well, i want to make a distinction. we now have genetically modified

commodity crops because those are the ones that are big enough to support the regulatory procedures, satisfy the regulatory requirements to introduce them into the market. it cost somewhere between five and $15 million to bring those to market. but we have essentially put our traditional scientist in the agricultural sector, we have made it virtually impossible for them to use these techniques to, for example, protect specialty crops, which includes all the fruits and vegetables that you like, from diseases. and pass it and this includes people who are at universities in the usda. we now have, after all these years, and despite the fact that

all the research that's been done on the safety of genetically modified crops, comes to the conclusion that there are no greater dangers in this form of genetic modification than any other priestly and more widely used methods of the modification. inspite of the conclusion that there are not any great dangers, we now the situation in which it's very expensive to bring make -- to bring a genetically crops modified to the farmer much more expensive than it is to use something like chemical which is okay and organic. and this all forms the formation of rules. those rules got formulated, in the first version of the organic rule included the use of genetically modified crops, because it was clear already

thin at this, that there was not any danger inherent in the use of these techniques. >> that was almost the most controversial part. >> it was indeed. in fact, so many people wrote in and protested that congress of the usda, go back and make it different to satisfy people. this is not what makes sense. this is not scientifically defensible. but this is what people believed, and they continue to believe that. and to me that's a terrible tragedy because these techniques allow us to do things in a more biologically sound way. we have already with several commodity crops decrease the use of pesticides. and decreased the use of filling spent and decreased water runoff and waste. >> indeed. >> why don't you lead us through

that? >> so, what it does is using herbicide to kill weeds only when the crop is already established. this means that farmers can adopt something called no till farming, which allows you to plant, never to take exactly the same objective that gary described, you don't ever take the residue off the olympic you never turn it over. you do not stimulate the release of carbon dioxide into the air. so, my point, and let me stop because there are other people who need to talk, is my view is, the principle of organic chemistry, organic farming, is fantastically important to maintain. but i would throw away the rulebook and use the most modern and up-to-date method that we have. if we can't use modern science to increase productivity, i think we're not going to make

it. and what we will see is more environmental destruction's and not less. so, making more off of less with less damage is the whole)1 objective. and there are many ways of doing it, which include all that you have heard today. >> thank you, nina. and, you know, i'm going to ask, i'm going to ask molly to provide the impossible task of saint why do we all get along? nina's point of view is one that is very widely shared upon, a surprising group of people, and it finds its way to "the atlantic" live channel pretty often, as a matter fact along with the are you keep saying he's going to be there. so this is -- these are two -- these are two points of view that want to arrive and a lot of similar goals. of conservation, worker health, of landfill, of environmental health.

maintaining resources for the future. they just have very different ways of going about it. so now i'm going to ask molly jahn has been at the usda who's been the dean of agriculture at the university of wisconsin at madison, and is now a thinker and consultant to the very same department. she was saying she gets to do all the stuff that dean's wish they were doing instead of administrating. and is also one of the country's leading spokespeople on sustainable agriculture, which we're discovering is a very loaded term. so, could you talk about some of the future for today and how they fit into what you think of as sustainable agriculture? >> surely, corby. clearly, any discussion of sustainability requires us to do something. we are not especially good at. and that is to think forward. so there's a temporal dimension to these conversations that as

important as that is and as obvious as that importance is, we are not that good at. and so that is one critical element in these discussions. in any definition of sustainability typically requires some consideration of systems imbalance. balance is something else we are not very good at. and one of the most important influences in my world, that organic agriculture has contributed is articulation and commitment towards our recognition of agriculture in our food production system, actually our choices with respect to land management, as a system. so one of the most profound transformations in our thinking at this time is a recognition that we need to move from local maximum, its yield, yield, you'll. that's all you need to know.

that's about local maximum. to much more complex balance within a system we now understand to be inherently close, and accounting turned out to be an incredibly important and exciting set of conversations within sustainability. because the catchy phrase internalizing our externalities turns out to be really transformative. that is, we need to understand in detail and to manage all the input, and all the output, not only those outputs we are used to focus thing on such as food, but all the other ballot sheets in agriculture, part carbon, water, air quality. ..

>> challenge the system and a recognition of the complexity in a closed system, our planet is a closed system.

we don't have anymore frontiers per se, and we know that. we have a specific management challenge before us, approximately a quarter billion people and approximately 40 years, we have one planet with reasonably well-defined boundaries. there is an emerging science focusing on defining those planetary boundaries, and they don't have names necessarily that correspond to the way the science apparatus of the 21st century was built. nevertheless, those boundaries are there. there's lots of work to be done and missing pieces in how to translate the planetary boundaries into targets on the ground with respect to our water use, with respect to our management of nitrogen or phosphorous or the acidification of our oceans, and that is where i am focusing under the

sciences, a title that is gaining significant traction. that set of link yags requires structures we don't have right now have. it's time to make the investments in our government, and in our government focused science and in the private sector initiative, focus on really reducing of planetary boundaries in the targets our producer communities must hit in the u.s. and globally. i have -- go ahead. >> you talked about two things i don't want you to forget. one is you led us through what you referred to as the environmental balance sheet that we can't leave out when we're talking about stainability and practices, and want other is last thursday and friday the

unexpected gathering of different producers. >> well, i have the privilege of sitting at a many table with sarah as the university scientists brought in to support the field-to-market initiative which is a multistake holder initiative and the work that keystone and other broad groups have done in defining the charm which was extremely in important in setting tools to describe the progress we make is incredibly important, and recognizing ourselves in each component in the value chain as part of a system,incredibly important. what we need now to understand is what the targets are we need to hit in order to stay within our planet's safe operating space, a critically important con cement for those -- concept for those of us in the science community. science is only part of the definition, but it is a critical part. kathleen mentioned efforts at usda to recognize the role that

usda plays in building that set of targets for us to hit with agriculture. there's a recognition through an international commission on agriculture, sustainable agriculture and climate change. i have the privilege of serving as the u.s. commissioner on that effort that recognizes the rule that the choices we make with respect to the food fly not only in food security, but in bringing the planet back into balance with respect to carbon, with respect to blue water use, with respect to many of the aspects of the way the planet works that are most important, and that's where the full balance sheet becomes so critical. i always say it's going to be libraries and federal statistical agencies where a lot of the really important action is going to occur. >> you were talking about that group of producers that were small and large scale coming to the and that you'd never seen them come together before. why was that?

>> right. as the efforts matured, we've come to understand that true progress is going to require some changes where all interests win at the same time or in the same way. i think this first generation of shifts by and large very much occurred with win-win, win-win, and it's been interesting how hard that is for us to see. we're now getting to a place where it's possible that certainly our producers are bearing both the cost of some of these benchmarking tools and also stand to reap the opportunity with respect to the benefits of the supply chain begins to demand adaptation of improved practices. towards that end, we are seeing the producer community, the agricultural producer community coming together as they never have before. this last thursday and friday,

there was a meeting in chicago which really is a very traditional meeting between the agricultural producer community and the group of public sector agriculture scientists that support the community. you heard others stress how important local commitments in this area are. we understand now that the agricultural producer in this country is the decision maker with respect to landscape management. the choices that producer makes are the critical choices with respect to water use, input choices, and ultimately there's a cost in our current system, so we're seeing producer community organize under a mon kier of the sustainable agriculture driving producer-focused and producer-led conversations towards stainability, and part of a very critical part of the conversation is the recognition that it is about continuous

improvement, by we have real targets to hit on this planet to stay within that safe operating space. we have the hit the targets at a rate that is intense, and a critical parameter of these conversations is we know there's not a single right answer, and there's not a one-size-fits-all solution. to nina's point about technologies, is we know every technology that intensifies productivity output and minimizes ecological burdens is significant. we relieve burdens forced out on the producer community to bear the cost of the improvement is important. we say success is going to be things bad for the environment cost more and things that are good for the environment cost less. nothing short of an economic transformission, a kin to the abolition of slavery with the dimension of consequences, really. >> that's a remarkable way.

we saw one example in your sugar of that balance finally coming into play, and we -- >> but we are now in a period of dissonance. the companies that hold the longest commitment to sustainn't find themselves paying a higher cost or a certain kind of higher cost. as dissonance resolves, we will see some transformations that are critically important. >> we have one more. >> yeah, i'd like to make the point there are things developing that are exciting that address the issues. for example, urban agriculture, growing -- maintaining greenhouses on the roofs of buildings. we have lots and lots of roofs, and that makes it possible for growers to get their produce to restaurants almost immediately or consumers. that's a marvelous movement, but one of the things we

particularly in this country have not paid enough attention to is increasing -- decreasing water use and increases productivity on land that we can currently consider unfarmble, essentially, desert land, and you see little bits of it developing, but i think we'll see much more sophisticated versions that minimize water use, maximize nutrient use and so forth developing, and in fact, there's cutting-edge greenhouses being developed in various places to the north and in the desert in california. >> you've been in saudi arabia, where have you been? >> i've been starting a research center in saudi arabia, the brand new international university. >> so water is just like the movement of the day. >> it's huge. >> it's suture under of what we talk about. are there any questions since i've been looking at the frantic green move the q&a sign for

quite a while now. [laughter] >> doctor, if you got a call from the president and the speaker and the majority leader of the senate, and they invited you in saying we understand the biotechnology is all wrong. we want you to lead in policy development. what are the three or four hallmarks you would ask for to reshape the policy? >> first i would bring it all together. some countries have already done that. we have three different agencies that are regulating, usda, epa, and fda, and i would -- back in the old days, there was something called the advisory committee in the nih which oversaw regulation in the very early days. it was an advisory committee. it had the flex the to sunset, to exempt categories when it

became clear that we had accumulated enough evidence to feel confident. today, we have plenty of evidence, but we don't have a regulatory system that can say, all right, we do not need to regulate this anymore, so it would be the possibility of sunsetting regulations, possibility of unifying them under one roof. it can be an inner agency group, but it needs to be together because right now part of the cost, the high cost is having to go to three different agencies, and it really constantly refining what is being asked so that the regulatory burdens are proportional to the risks. we now have a big initiative to e limb late unnecessary -- eliminate unnecessary regulations, and this should be a really high target. those are the two most important things. >> and i was going to ask gary

if he wanted to be in the same room as you. he has an answer. [laughter] >> look, i'm glad that, you know, what nina's arguing for it is we need a big tool box. we have a big problem, and if i were in that position, you haven't asked me, but i'll join nina in the room if invited -- [laughter] >> [inaudible] >> we need to level the player field here. we are putting enormous resources into one solution, to these problems, and as we try to solve, you know, water is a big issue, but so are all the other issues and the supply of family farm income and farm and worker health, so is -- and, you know, as my favorite philosopher says, we're all in it alone, each of us with our different areas. my admonition to our policy

measures would be let's pause. let's take a look at 13 years of use of these commodities, these seeds, and what you're going to find is for example, and listen, generic engineering, the point is dead on. million of insulin dependent diabetics are alive because of the advances of engineering. no one can deny that, but ge might solve many of the issues we're talking about might be the solution to long term stainability, but we don't yet know that it is. we shouldn't put all the eggs in this basket. let's look at 13 years of experience, and what we're going to see is that just in soy alone, 382 million powmedz of increased herbicide used resulted from the fact that now 92% of the our soy out there is genetically modified. these crops spread and pollinate

very aggressively and effectively. we'll see that farmers, again, farmer incomes, something that is a national security issue, keeping farmers profitable should be of a concern to us. that's part of the definition of stainability. we will see the seed costs for each of the four major commodities increased by factors of four as a result of farmers' net income. they spend between 4%-6% on corn or soy seed in the last quarter of the last century are now spending 16%-20% of their income. there's the explosion of superweeds, herbicide tolerant weeds. this is an unforeseen consequence of developing and aggressively using herbicide tolerant crops. again, i'm not saying that this is a dead end for genetic engineering. i'm saying let's keep the playing field balanced and put an equal amount of investment in

traditional plant breeding. organics, again, it's national security. it's improving farmer incomes, reducing inputs, making us less dependent on oil. what's going to happen with these superweeds? farmers in the south tell us with pig weed and others that they need to do manual cropping which they can't afford or go follow and put on defollow yents, i'm talking about vietnam era. maybe the herbicides are not by yo active in our bodies, but certainly we don't need an increased use of 24d because it's all the farmers can use to kill the weeds. let's use the tool box across the board here. there's not the -- we got excellent science, excellent

yield, excellent win-win-win where farmers and our stake holders are making more money and inputs are going down, and it deserves a larger percentage of our research budget. >> i'm hatching a devilish scheme for you at the end, but there's -- >> lots of inaccuracies here, and i will not get down to the nitty-gritty, but you need to assess the veer rasety of what he said. >> they are going to spend more on speeds if they are not making more. >> you have so many points in common, you just -- [laughter] i'm not joking. i mean, it sounds funny. this is my scheme. we have time for one more question, and then i'm going to pose it. >> i would like to give you the opportunity to address the inaccuracies because there are points to be addressed. i wanted to address this question to molly and nina which is in terms of more systems approach to agriculture research

and the more collaborative approach to research, it seems that perhaps there might need to be rethinking on how science is conducted in the area to bring science together and encourage competition. what are thoughts you have to do that? >> well, i totally agree with molly that taking a systems approach, and i think it's actually larger than just fields and farms. it's the whole system. it can be a covered agriculture system, then it's a self-contained microsystem, or it's the entire system. how do we use water? we are throwing down our own water resources in the southwest renewably, so i agree totally, bringing to the design food production design teams that are multidisciplined, that bring together hydrologists,

meteorologists, as well as researchers that work on plants and animals and everything in between i think is the wave of the future. it's not just in this country; it has to be global. i think that's an area, frankly, we've done best at using science in diplomacy, in the agricultural area, and we've gone away from that in the last 20 years. this is a really critical area worldwide. >> and i would just say the last decade has really brought a cultural shift in the way science communities come together. we have seen over a several decade period increasing private sector investment in areas that really are foundational. i would say one of the most important things that's happening now is increasing clarity about what precompetitive space is and what space is for research

investments that is extra competitive. it's not an issue that creates a competitive advantage, but one of the most important influences i've seen is that the conversation is shifting to recognize foreseeable unintended cons questionses, very -- consequences, and we're seeing many businesses do what businesses do well which is looking out to the horizon and anticipating risk. we're seeing significant shifts in extreme climate. we know that we can model those with respect to their consequences on agriculture, and so we're finding teams coming together that are completely different from 10 years ago focused on creating the local maximums of yield, yield, yield. we have climate scientists, crop breeders, modelers, a hosni mubarak of --

a whole host of groups. it's just not about food systems, but about the valued services that our land scapes generate and the management of the whole sweep of those valued services whether it's food or carbons in a system in long term balance. >> well, thank you, and in the view of balanced systems, here's my devilish scheme. gary and i are going to write a book together, and they are going to come into a room and discover how much they have in complon -- common, but also have differences and here's how they reconcile is meet at keystone -- >> what else? [laughter] >> molly is going to referee and put all of her economists at the university of wisconsin at their service, and the atlantic is going to publish chapter by chapter updates on the progress

along with the menus. >> fortunately that book has already been written by pam and her husband. >> i know that book, but we need -- >> an update? >> we need gary and you two talking. we're glad you started today and we're delighted to have everyone on this panel. thank you very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> coming up in about 10 minutes, we will hear from the first lady, michelle obama and jill biden. last month, the first lady and dr. biden launched joining forces, a national initiative to encourage national support for

military families, and we'll bring you their remarks at 3 eastern on c-span2. the president is in kentucky meeting with the specific operation team involved in the shooting of bin ladening. after the meeting, the president is expected to make remarks to the soldiers there, and we'll bring you live coverage from c-span. at 4 eastern the national lawyers association annual policy conference taking place here in washington, d.c.. speakers include former new york mayor and gop presidential candidate, rudy giuliani and reince preibus. let's look at making social security solvent. alan simpson and former wyoming senator and commission cochair spoke at a meeting of the investment company institute

this morning here in washington, d.c.. >> the budget as you've discussed is split between mandatory spending and discretionary spending which includes defense, foreign aid, and hundreds of domestic programs. how much of what you have in mind in your plan depends upon cuts in discretionary spending and frankly what impact would that have on american's quality of life? >> well, i think it's 12% that when you chop around in the discretionary budget and don't forget the biggest part of the discretionary budget is defense. it's $700 billion, it's huge. content conrad is a -- kent conrad is a warrior and an amazing man, but when he has been doing his work -- he's been doing this for 20 years -- we just say the myths, the greatest myth of all is social security,

that somebody stole $2.5 trillion, stole it, that's right, cheap corrupt politicians stole $2.5 trillion, the reserving the social security. the greatest mist in social security is this, hang on tight, it went to the aarp. i said if i'm lying, stop me. social security is not a retirement program. it was never intended as a retirement program. it was set up in 1937 and 1938 to take care of people who were in disstress, the depression, ditch diggers, to give 43% of the replacement rate in their wages. the life expectancy was 63 and that's why retirement was 65. the beginning of the ponsi. it never had anything to do with disability insurance which was added to it. it's not structurally able to handle that. that will be broke in eight

years. di, disability insurance is used and overused right now to be broke, and guess who takes care of that? the feds. it was never intended to take care of children in college up to 22. it was never built for that. in 1950 when i was a freshman at the university 16 people paid into the system and one taking out. today, there's 3.1 people paying into the system and one taking out, and in ten years, there's two people paying into the system and one taking out. how long do you think two people are going to sit still to finance somebody regardless of their net worth or income on that? we changed the cost for price index because cola. the law said if the inflation was discoer row, the -- zero. inflation is low, they don't get a cola, and it's the teaming way

of the coyote. [laughter] what do you do with people who when we tell them the life expectancy today is 78.1, not 63, and we say we're going to raise the retirement age to 68. it's 66 now, to go to 67 in the year 2027, if you can't raise the retirement age to 68 by the year 2050, there's no hope. if you can't get yourself organized to figure out how to take your social security in the year 2050 at 68, but here's the key, and we were stunned. the law of social security is so clear that if the scheduled benefits cannot be paid, and that's a clear word, they will give only the payable benefit. now, that may sound like garbage, but that's a real gut

wrencher because that's the one that's going to hit in 2037. last may, there was less coming in than going out. may, this may, last may, and so you get to this point, and you're going to get payable benefits and not scheduled benefits, and you can sue and moan and shriek, and it won't do a bit of good. that's goofy to me. we went to the adp saying you should help. there's 30 million people joined to their love of line discounts. [laughter] their magazine really picked up. it's a thriller now that sex over 50 is the cover, and now it's sex over 60, 70, and now their to the 80s. [laughter] the ads are about how to get something and not have to pay for it.

medicare pays for it. there's ads on sexual dysfunction. i mean, read the aarp magazine. it's a marketing instrument. these people are not -- i said to the top guy, i think patriots in here are just marketers. now, that's a harsh statement, and i intend it to be just exactly that. they haven't helped one bit. they say we have two things we can suggest, just modest changes to take care of social security through the years. what are they? we are still waiting. they just hammer us daily in their magazine. it's a joy to -- anyway, that's a myth. social security is what you say. it's the most noble experiment of the world's history, and it's the moist thing you -- most thing you pay into with your income, but for heaven's sake if we can't get the modest thing, change the point, that's big-time language nobody understands, but we hilt -- hit the guys who have more

progressively which is what everybody asks for, 10 the greatest -- so the greatest disstressing myth, and you haven't seen anything yet. i mean, when this baby comes up, and they have to talk about social security or everything is a fake right now whatever they come up with, and when that happens, the is a -- savage reince -- savage and what we're telling people, and we're going to give the seniors more than they get over 80, it's going to be seniors will get 5% kick over 80, the older old. we've done everything we can in our proposal, and finally you just say if you can't read and write, forget our website which is www.fiscalcommission.net. if you can't understand what we did to make this beautiful program solvent, listen to the garbage that creeps out of these

people who make money, and 38 million people paying $12 dues, how much do you think is rolling around at the aarp. they are 1.5% of every mailing in the united states. >> okay. >> 1.5%. [laughter] [laughter] [applause] >> you couldn't save me. [laughter] >> you anticipated one of my questions. [laughter] the social security question. i wanted to talk about the discretionary spending. >> oh, that's right. [laughter] i got that off my chest. [laughter] >> you did a good job of it too, by the way. >> you tried to stop me. [laughter] >> no. we cut the budget by $1.7

trillion over the next ten years, and we cut it proportionally between defense and nondefense. the good thing is that when people ask us specifically what would you cut? we can tell you exactly what we would cut dollar for dollar every single program, and i think that's what people owe you. we also put a fire wall in between defense and nondefense so that future congresses couldn't go back and take all the cuts out of defense or all of it out of nondefense. as i said earlier, we tried to get our spending back to 2008 levels by 2013. i think the republicans were right. you can get it back there quicker, but i do think you do run the chance of disrupting what i believe is a very fragile economic recovery. we cut health care by about $500

billion. we cut other mandatory spending by about $250 billion, and we cut social security in order to get it to 75 year solvency, but changes there result to $300 billion. >> that discussion you just saw took place earlier today. you can watch the entire thing online at c-span.org, but now we are in the east room of the white house where first lady michelle obama and the vice president's wife, dr. jill biden, are going to be honoring military families. last month, they launched a program called "joining forces" supposed to encourage public support for military families, and meanwhile, president obama today is recognizing this day as military spouse appreciation day. he issued a proclamation earlier, and while the first lady and jill biden honor families here at the white house, the president is in fort campbell, kentucky. he's meeting privately with some of the special operation team

involved with this shooting of bin laden. after that meeting, the president will be making remarks to soldiers at fort campbell, and we'll bring his remarks live at 3:50 p.m. eastern on c-span. meanwhile, jill biden speaks shortly at the white house at a mother's day and military ceremony. you're watching live coverage of the event here on c-span2. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats and silence all cell phones. thank you. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> ladies and gentlemen -- [inaudible] [applause] >> good afternoon, everyone. it is indeed a tremendous privilege and pleasure to be here at the white house.

please allow me to acknowledge and thank two wonderful mothers, the ever-gracious first lady michelle obama and jill biden for their warmth and hospitality -- [applause] in hosting this mother's day tea in this very special home. if we close our eyes and think of our own mothers, what comes to mind are the personal memories we hold dear, the legacy of women we knew or never knew in our families that are woven firmly within us and passed on through generations. in the words of a military child, and i quote, "my military mom is strong and independent.

she cares and comforts us. she raised us with enough love to fill the world. i am so incredibly proud of her." in spite of the unique and special challenges they bear, military moms are so often the glue that holds some of our nation's most generous families together. as spouses, they often parent alone when their soldier, sailor, airman, marine, or coast guardman is gone for long periods of time, or as increasingly the case, they serve our great nation in uniform themselves. among the military families of the active duty, the national guard, and reserves, the rich, proud military culture and

traditions are lived each day and rest in their hearts long after the uniform is shed. today, we are fortunate to have with us a splendid and diverse representation of mothers, daughters, grandmothers, military spouses forwhom today is your day, military moms, gold star moms, gold star spouses, for whom the sacrifices have been most dear. women veterans, pioneers in ground breaking work for homeless military women veterans, volunteers who share their giving spirits through the many organizations that help smooth the way for military families, this is an intergenerational gathering of mothers who continue to inspire

and nurture so welcome to you all. i'm so happy to be here with you and to have the opportunity to introduce a truly remarkable woman, mother, and grandmother, dr. biden is an extraordinarily talented woman of many, many diversed accomplishments. she understands the importance of military moms so very well because she is one experiencing firsthand the challenges faced by military families. she is an exceptional educator who earned a doctorate in education additional to raising her families and earned two master's degrees and is a full-time professor. she has proven herself again and again as one of the very strongest advocates and supporters of america's military

families across the country and throughout the world. one of her most significant recent achievements was her leadership along with the first lady in creating and launching the joining forces campaign which is the comprehensive national initiative to mobilize all sectors of american society to strengthen the support of our service members, our veterans, and their families by reaching out with gestures of kindness and providing opportunities they so richly deserve. i am so proud and grateful to have joined forces with her in this valuable and important work. she fully shares the president's, her husband's, and the first lady's unwaiverring commitment to serve those who serve and sacrifice. she has seen her own son off to war, endured the long wait for

his return, and felt the special pride of knowing that the burden of wartime service was not left to other families. it is my great privilege to introduce to you dr. jill biden. [applause] [applause] >> thank you, patty, for that warm introduction and for all you do for military families and especially the children. i always love seeing you, and i'm so delighted to see you here today, thank you. good afternoon, everyone.

>> good afternoon. >> it's nice to see so many friends here. i'm jill biden, and i'm a proud military mom and grandmom, and it's a special honor to welcome you all to the white house today. this has been quite a week, hasn't it? last week i joined my husband at the pentagon to comeme rate the victims of 9/11. none of us will ever forget that day, but the heroic actions in pakistan earlier this week reminded all americans of the extraordinary courage that our military service members and their families demonstrate on a daily basis. on sunday night as i was -- after the president made his announcement, i was -- it was late, and i was outside waiting for my husband. i had on my bathrobe, and i was sitting on the steps of our residence, and i could hear in

the distance because there were so many people outside, and i could hear them at the gates that opened to our driveway, and there were people there singing "god bless america," and it really just renewed what we all know, just really -- it just brought this country together, and i think it was such a great feeling. we and the entire nation are so proud of all of you. michelle and i are thrilled to have you here at the white house today as we express the thanks of our entire nation for those who serve. you are all heros from the moms who keep their families together while your loved ones are serving overseas, to the grandparents who step in with much needed support to the siblings and children who are strong and brave while mom or dad are away. just last month, i attended a

deployment ceremony where i met some folks i now call the grandparents. both parents of three children under the age of 10 were deploying, and these grandmothers decided to circle the way gone and -- wagon and take care of those children. what a relief it is for those children to know that their children are being taken care of my their grandparents, and what a gift to the children to be surrounded by love while both of their parents are deployed. last summer i traveled to iraq with my husband, joe, to visit the troops during the 4th of july. i had lunch with several female soldiers, many of whom were mothers. these women were managing all the challenges of parenting, arranging health care, child care, and education. thousands and thousands of miles away from their homes and loved

ones. one woman across the table fought back tears telling me she was missing out on taking her youngest daughter to college. i was at a loss for words. all i could do at that moment was just reach across that table and grab her hand. michelle and i have both been struck by these women fiercely proud to serve their country and never complaining, but still struggling with some of the every day challenges we all face in managing a home and a family. you hear today and all the women we have met in our travels are doing your part. the government is working hard to do its part, and each american also has the ability to make a difference in the life of a military family. that's what our joining forces initiative is all about, and now

it's my honor and privilege to introduce a woman whose doing her part as a strong leader and a constant advocate for our service members, veterans, and military families. i have had the privilege of traveling with our first lady to meet military ladies across this country, and i've seen firsthand how committed she is to doing everything she can to support them. i feel so fortunate to have her as a partner in this effort and to have her as my dear friend, our firstly day, michelle obama. [applause] [applause] [applause] >> oh, thank you, everyone. thank you.

[applause] thank you, all, so much. please, rest, enjoy the tea. [laughter] welcome to the white house. suspect this great? -- isn't this great? [applause] fabulous. everyone looks amazing. [laughter] it's like a room full of bursting flowers, and you guys have your pinkies up? [laughter] or something like that. [laughter] we're delighted to have you here. let me start by recognizing my partner in so much, and i didn't know that this woman would be not just a partner, but a friend, a blue star mom herself who has been sending out the call, educating this country long before she stepped into

this role focusing the nation on the sacrifices of the families, dr. jill biden, let's give her a round of applause. [applause] and patty, patty has been a tremendous adviser to jill and i throughout this entire process, and she is amazing and knowledgeable, and she is going to be a critical component of joining forces, and we are so proud of her and her service. let's give patty a big hand. [applause] timely, i want to -- finally, i want to thank you all of you. thank you. i know it's pretty exciting to be having tea at the white house in the east room. [laughter] but believe it or not, we are just as excited and probably

more excited to have you all here. i mean, it is really -- relove you all. we really, really do, and that's because over the last two years as jill said, we have been inspired by all of you in so many ways. spending time with our men and women in uniform and their families has been the highlight of our work in these roles. we've been moved by your strength and your spirit, by your courage, and more importantly, by your sacrifice, and as you have opened up your arms and your hearts to me, which you have so fully, and i feel it, and i know it. i'm not a blue star mom or a gold star mom, but you all scooped me up in ways that i wouldn't have imagined. you've also opened my eyes to what being part of a military

family is truly all about. you've shown me what it takes for one parent to do the job of two, juggling the car pools and the soccer practices on top of many of you handling the work of a full-time job and all the rest that goes into running a household, caring for a loved one who's been injured or mourning a spouse or a child who never made it home, and i know that there are people in the room today who feel the little sad because this mother's day is a little less than what you'd hoped, and all we can do is hug you and tell you that we are thinking and praying and working for you all, and we are proud of

you. some of you are as jill said grandparents caring for a grandchild, and others of you have served in uniform yourselves. you have shown us what it takes to be a military child, many of you, changing and leaving friends behind every few years, trying to keep up with homework and activities and trying to lead the life of a normal kid while worrying about a parent or a sibling who is in harm's way, and as jill reminded us just this past week as americans everywhere stood in awe at the bravery of the soldiers who carried out that daring operation in pakistan, it was also a moment for all of us to remember that every one who serves is able to do so because

of the love and support of their families. what you do is not easy. i won't say it's always easy. i don't think it's ever easy. [laughter] i know every day you deal with things that most of us can only imagine, but i also know that along with incredible challenges come incredible strength. that's something else i know from you all. rosanna and her daughter tyler are some of you who know what i'm talking about, with a father serving in the army, tyler is only a junior in high school, but she's already attended ten schools on three continents, and next year they are moving to germany. [laughter] oh, but tyler and rosanna never

complain as then of you do. they know it's part of serving their country, and then there's hellen norberg and her daughter, julia. they know a thing or two about what i'm talking about. when julia was deployed to iraq, hellen was there every day to help take care of their 3-year-old grandson isiah. she enrolled him in gymnastics, probably just to settle him down. [laughter] she took him to his first dentist appointment, and sense the only time julia and isiah could speak was during the day, hellen would often leave work, drive to his school with her cell phone just so he could hear his mom's voice, and then last year as julia's deployment was coming to an end, hellen's house was destroyed by a tornado.

hellen jumped on top of isiah to protect him. she broke two vertebrae in her back. when the storm died down, io isiah had nothing but a small scratch on his arm, and as julia said, she has been the best grandmother and mother any soldier could ask for. [applause] so -- [applause] there are stories like this at every table, in every one of your households and lives. i know that. these are only examples of what you live every day. make no mistake about it. even if you are not the ones wearing the uniform, every single one of you is serving our country, and every single one of you deserves our support, not just with words, but with

deeds. words are good. they help. deeds are better. [laughter] real concrete actions that make a difference for you at your workplaces, in your schools, and in your communities. that's why last month jill and i, with patty's help and so many others, we started joining forces, a nationwide campaign to rally this country to recognize, honor, and support our military families. we're joining forces across this country, and we're calling on all americans to ask themselves just one simple question, how can i give back to these families who have given me so much? we're joining forces across the federal government, building on over 50 commitments that departments and agencies have made for how they can get -- better serve military families. we're going to be joining forces with cities and states

encouraging them to adopt policies that will help you all. we're joining forces with organizations like the national pta and the military child education coalition to improve school outreach to military kids. we're joining forces with businesses and nonprofits, getting commitments from companies like wal-mart and sears to help military spouses find and keep jobs, and we're joining forces with families and communities. we're urging people to do whatever they can as neighbors, colleagues, and classmates to lend a hand to military families. we believe that this is what you deserve from us because showing our gratitude to those who serve our nation whether it's on the battlefield or at home is something that every single american can do, and it's

something that every single american should do, so to everyone here, i just want to say thank you. this is a very small way to say thank you. thank you for your strength, your commitment. thank you for setting an example for the rest of us. it has been such a pleasure getting to meet all of you so let's stop crying because i'm about to cry again. [laughter] just stop now. [laughter] remember, it is mother's day, so today is a non-let's move day. [laughter] eat all the cookies you want. [applause] ..

[inaudible conversations]

>> and we'll be taking a look soon at the 2012 debate in south carolina from today's "washington journal." and today president obama is recognizing the day at military spouse appreciation day. while the first lady and jill biden are honoring military families here in washington, the president is in fort campbell, kentucky. he's meeting privately with some of the special operation team that was involved in the shooting of osama bin laden and after the meeting, the president is expected to make remarks to soldiers there. we'll bring his remarks to you live at 3:50 eastern on our companion network c-span. and you'll be able to catch his remarks later on tonight. we'll air them at 8:00 pm. also later today at 4:00 eastern the republican national lawyers association annual policy conference. that's taking place here in washington, d.c. speakers include former new york

mayor and 2008 gop presidential candidate rudy giuliani and republican national committee chairman reince priebus. that will be live here on c-span2. a look now at results from last night's 2012 gop presidential debate in south carolina. from today's "washington journal." >> host: so craig crawford what did we learn at the gop debate? >> guest: the only known person there was ron paul. there were a lot of new candidates were introduced to the public in that debate last night and it was good for them. the great thing about these early debates when the big names don't participate is you get to meet some new people. and i thought some of them were pretty interesting. >> host: who? >> guest: herman cane surprised me. the focus group poll -- the group that frank had on fox

afterward almost overwhelming supported herman cain the father of grandfather pizza. you know, i mean, he's a long shot, obviously, but i thought he was very articulate and plain speaking and will probably get a real following in this race. >> did he bring anything new to the table? >> guest: i thought he brought the businessman perspective, no political background. straight talk. he reminded of a ross perot. he's like a donald trump without the crazy hair. >> host: now, there was a poll that cnn released today saying that ron paul comes the closest to president obama. that president obama beats all of the republicans at this point. >> guest: i noticed drudge did a screaming headline, shocker poll. that did surprise me. ron paul has been around a long time. he's got a very feverish

following and i understand he raised like a million dollars in one day yesterday. and he will be a factor. i learned by experience his supporters are very supportive. if you say anything critical of ron paul, you get a lot of emails. but, you know, i think that voice, that libertarian voice, really questioning the role of government in just about every arena is a worthy debate to have and a lot of americans believe that. there were a lot of things said last night that probably would not work too well in a general election campaign, but it's good to have that debate. that's why i sort of like these long shots in the debate. they talk about things that -- the short shots that are afraid to talk about. and i think that's great for the debate. >> host: let's go ahead and put the numbers on the screen. we're talking about 2012 presidential politics, particularly, the republican field to see how it's playing out. you can see the numbers there on

the screen divided by political affiliation. please allow 30 days between your calls. you can also send us is tweet, twitter.com/c-spanwj or email@c-span.org. craig crawford of tq roll call a columnist there. he's a quest. what did tim pawlenty bring to the table? >> guest: i think he was the most careful of the bunch. he was the one there that has the best chance of that group anyway of getting the nomination but he used his time to introduce hems some of his personal stories and i think a lot of republicans are going to flock to him. yeah, the big news last night was the people who weren't there. you had mitt romney and mitch daniels who hadn't decided was running yet. newt gingrich, donald trump, so this wasn't a real debate for the real race, necessarily, when we get to, you know, the crunch of that and those guys in the

debate will see a very different dynamic. >> host: if you were a betting man would you bet mitch daniels entering the race? >> guest: he does not like he has much fire in the belly. he played the reluctant candidate to the hilt. and wants to wait. i do find -- you know, every time i talk to insider republican for anything, i throw in a question, you know, who do you like in this republican field? and mitch daniels' name comes up more often, among insiders, you know, among the conventional crowd. and i think governor of indiana, he's there pretty well and seems to have a following in washington and among others that may not translate to votes in iowa or new hampshire necessarily but i guess to answer your question, i lean against it just based on what i've seen, what he said unless he's really playing a game here. he's not a game-player.

>> host: were insiders surprised by haley barbour's decisions? >> guest: i think so. he communicated to many people he was interested. this race is starting to remind me of '92 when clinton got in because all the big names didn't. clinton has said he ran for president only because al gore didn't want to. he didn't feel he could beat al door. mario cuomo didn't get in that race so a lot of big names were out because they were afraid -- they thought george bush was almost a shoe-in for the election plus, clinton proved them wrong. of course, this is looking like that on the republican side with all the big names worried that they can't beat obama. >> host: craig crawford is our guest. first tweet for you. it comes from boring file clerk, if cain or paul go third-party,

does that risk having a gop candidate elected this cycle? >> guest: i would see it the other way. i think it would happen obama -- >> host: that's what that tweeter probably meant. >> guest: i think that would be a big boost for obama. i don't see them doing that. i think they've got enough juice going in the republican nomination race that they would stay in the party. >> host: first call, clearwater. bill on the republican line. good morning. >> caller: good morning. >> host: hi. >> caller: i have two particular issues that i'd like to discuss with you, sir. and i'll be as short and concise as i possibly can. one is that this thing with the assassination is an old democratic trick of diversion. the president is leaning on some of his military strategists who

he has on staff of how to divert the thoughts of the american people off the fact that we sold our country to china and that we owe everybody of any substance substantial amounts of money. the interest that we're paying on that money each day is astronomical. so maybe mr. obama and his infinite wisdom will press the panic button and see what we could do that would be considered monumental enough to divert the american minds off the unemployment and the financial situation, which we find ourselves in. >> host: all right, bill, we got the point. craig crawford. >> guest: i think he said killing obama has been a diversion. that's been a long time

obsession for two presidents and this president spent many, many pounds studying this compound and planning this. it was hardly a panic button i think that he hit. i think he was quite methought cal. whenever presidents try to divert the public from what they want to pay attention to. it usually doesn't last that long and the public will pay attention to what they want to. >> host: craig crawford, george bush, 98% after the big war a lot of the big names dropped out of the '92 campaign. president obama has seemingly got a bounce from the killing of bin laden on sunday. >> guest: yeah. >> host: do you see it lasting? >> guest: "washington post" did a poll right after and it showed about the same high single digits of 9% i think it was bump

for president obama's approval rating which is roughly the same that george w. bush got after capturing saddam hussein. if that's really what the bump was, it's a little surprising because, you know, the iraq war didn't have near the consensus for capturing hussein that you had for killing bin laden and the iraq war was fairly unpopular by that time so that i would think he'd be more of a bump. i think in the long run, you know, this fades into memory, but i think it has helped him in the short run in the dealings with congress. i think maybe in this budget debate he might have a little more oompf and on the military front, it's going to be hard for republicans to say he's weak and weak kneed on foreign policy which a lot of them had been saying after doing this.

>> host: i'll get your reaction to this tweet from chris. any gop candidate that doesn't kiss grover norquist's ring and sign his no tax pledge can't win the nomination. >> guest: i don't know if grover has that much power. i think the issue is powerful. none of these republicans who are serious -- seriously taken are off the tax -- are on the wrong side of the republican tax voters, that's for sure. you have governors of not raising taxes, gary johnson in new mexico. his record should be fairly appealing other than wanting to

legalize marijuana to republican voters but i thought he was a little unsteady in that debate. it was bad introduction. >> host: what's his -- what's his purpose in running? i mean, back on the scene after -- >> guest: yeah, he'd been out for a while. he's a self-made millionaire, a construction business in new mexico and has a great track record on cutting spending new mexico. he vetoed half of the bills that had gotten to the governor's death. he's got a pretty good track record. he's to explain to republican voters his desire to legalize marijuana. and i think he brings up sort of a combination of a businessman background and a successful governorship that ought to be fairly appealing to voters but i

thought his delivery last night was halting and unsteady and tentative, i think, he seemed. and he complained about not getting enough questions, which he wasn't but that always looks bad. it looks like you're a whiner. >> host: wa-keegan, betty a democrat. >> caller: i want to say i'm a 72-year-old african-american, born in greensboro, south carolina. >> guest: that's last night. >> caller: and my memory was so horrible i don't even go back for family reunions. getting back to the debate, i watched it last night and it's good to see the republicans have an african-american standing there. i wish donald trump had came so i could see if he would continue with the birth certificate. thank you, have a good day. >> guest: that's an interesting -- i'm glad you bring that up because as i watched herman cain last night i

thought that would be interesting if republicans responded to the first black preds with their own black nominee. he's such a long shot because he has no political background, he tries to make an asset out of that, noting everybody in washington has elected experience, how is that working out for you, he says. i think he has a real strong style. he was -- for example, i was talking about gary johnson being so unsteady. herman cain -- i thought herman cain seemed like the more veteran politician in the room. of course he's been a talk show host for a while so he had a little practice. >> host: and, in fact, andrew who will be on the show later on has suggested that alan west and herman cain be the gop nominations. >> guest: that's right. >> host: did anyone ask candidates if they approved of the new gop's governors attacks

on public policies and privatization of government and public commons. >> guest: yeah, they got into that a little bit. that was asked, this whole wisconsin thing. i didn't -- there weren't any real memorable responses there. most of the focus was on -- in that section was on unions. and whether this was union bashing and the candidates seemed to back away from wanting to attack unions. i mean, one of the questioners made the point that in the past republicans -- ronald reagan, most notably succeeded by appealing to union voters, not necessarily on union issues, but getting those votes and going out of their way to bash unions might, looking at history, might not be too productive for republicans. >> host: next call for craig crawford, baton rouge, a

republican. >> caller: i find it really interesting that rand paul -- he even got an applause for every answer. >> guest: yeah, even on heroin. >> caller: and it seems to me they are determined to make him out to be some kind of caricature. he's never taken seriously to be the republican nominee. i just don't get it. i think if he got on stage and debated any of the democratic nominees, which will be obama, i think he would hold his own and he would get the american people to see that the primary cause of our financial woes is the way we conduct our monetary means by giving -- the printing of our money and regulating of our currency to private bankers, not who they are and where they come from. if we don't get ahead on that

and cut the head off the snake, it's never going to change because we'll never have our own currency. and my question to you, mr. crawford, why don't they take ron paul seriously. thank you for taking my call. >> guest: i think because he is so radical to conventional thinking in washington. he is taken seriously by a lot of voters. but i agree i think the media establishment and the washington political establishment -- when he says things about like abolishing the federal reserve, for example, that just seems radical to washington thinking. so i think he's threatening to them. there's a lot of threatening talk from ron paul from the conventional establishment, so there's an effort to marginalize him. and i take him seriously, i always have. and i think the financial meltdown really plays into his hands. i mean, that was -- that's an example of the sort of thing he'd been talking about for

years. >> host: craig crawford, do you think that ron paul has a chance of getting the nomination? >> guest: i'm beginning to think that this could be the year where republican voters figure -- kind of like a goldwater year, where republican voters figure, well, obama is going to win anyway, we're going to make a statement. we're going to send somebody to just scares the hell out of everybody because we know we can't win. i don't know. i mean, that might not be a conscious thought on a lot of voters, you know, but when goldwater was nominated against lyndon johnson, that's kind of what happened. that was really the birth of the conservative movement in the republican party. many, many republicans knew they couldn't win that election but decided, well, if we're not going to win anyway, we're going to make a statement and goldwater is our man and he went out there and -- what was it? violence in the name of liberty is no vice or something like

tha that. >> host: do you think it's inevitable that president obama will be re-elected. >> guest: i don't think it's inevitable but as i look at the republican field, it feels like. and obama is a great politician when he gets out on the stump he can -- he can turn it up. here's my theory about why i think he gets re-elected is there were a lot of new voters, minority ethnic voters who came out in droves, younger voters, who came out in 2008 to vote for him. they disappeared. you look at a lot of races, they didn't show up in the midterm election, which is why democrats did so poorly. my theory is when he's on the ballot again, they come back. they're all about.

they are not in the democratic party, and unless they are disillusioned, but i don't think so. i think there's a wave of voters -- >> host: could ralph nader do some damage on the left to president obama? >> guest: i think a lot of democrats have become savvy to the point that ralph nader did them harm in the past. i hear -- i hear a lot -- i've talked to a lot of voters who regret voting for nader because they realized they elected republicans because of it. >> host: and this tweet from sir k, it would be a very good idea to get used to mr. obama being president for the next five and a half, the man is incredible woodvine, maryland we're talking 2012 presidential politics. >> caller: first time c-span caller long time listener. my statement is about

marginalizing candidates such as ron paul when he polled above. and the cnn poll yesterday showed him with the best chances against obama and he raised almost a million dollars yesterday alone. so why isn't he a serious contender? >> guest: i think he will be taken more seriously this time. i think the media in the past certainly marginalized him, but those factors you mentioned are plain to see. and he's been around long enough. i think what comes with that, though, when you're not marginalized and not taken seriously is a lot more scrutiny, and there's some things in his past -- i don't want to delve into some of that controversial stuff about some of the racist things that were said way back when on his behalf

mostly, it seemed. but there were a lot of things that were kind of touched on the last. but from what i've seen, he can mostly survive scrutiny, i guess. unless there's something we don't know. but he's been around long enough that i think we know everything to know about his background. >> host: i was disappointed in the south carolina tea party for inviting judge roy moore to attend the debate. was this sponsored by the south carolina tea party? >> guest: he was the old -- taking the ten commandments out of the state-building. i thought he would run last time. that's when he was better known. i think the tea party is at a point where they need to reach out to some people that are more credible -- who actually can get elected and broaden their

support. >> host: 34 hunter tweets in ron paul cheats himself by setting on the stage with these clowns. he's a nice, patient, anachronism. it's a new world since 1870. kristin, are you with us? >> caller: hello? >> host: please go ahead. >> caller: you had mentioned this briefly earlier. i think someone had tweeted in about grover norquist. >> guest: yes. >> caller: the house republicans had to sign a pledge where they wouldn't raise taxes, also those new senators. my question to you, i didn't watch that debate -- but i wanted to verify if -- whoever runs on the republican side, i can't imagine the republicans have been running on not touching the -- naud na

[inaudible] [no audio] >> we're having some technical trouble with the program that you're watching. we apologize for the interruption and we're working to correct the problem. we hope to return to the program shortly. [audio difficulties]

[audio difficulties] [audio difficulties] >> we're having some problems with the feed coming from the white house so in the meantime, we'll take a look at something from earlier today on "washington journal." tim bishop, a congressman from new york's first district -- his

new legislation, the big oil welfare repeal act, which seeks to end taxpayer subsidies to the largest oil companies. he'll also discuss his thoughts on energy legislation in congress, the budget situation and the new employment numbers that are due out today. >> host: well, joining us is congressman tim bishop, he's a democrat from new york out on long island. and he recently introduced a bill called the big oil welfare repeal act. congressman, what's that? >> guest: it would repeal one of the tax credits that the oil companies enjoy that are frankly impossible to justify. and it would repeal the domestic manufacturing tax credit which basically allows the oil companies to reduce their income prior to assessing their tax liability by as much as 9%. and these subsidies were first put in place in 2004.

oil was much less per gallon then than it is now. i mean, even president bush said that once oil hits $50 a barrel, it's impossible to justify the subsidies, the recently retired president of royal dutch shell said the same thing. so this is something we need to do. it would save the taxpayer $1.3 billion a year, so $13 billion over 10 years. i guess the way i've been looking at it and i guess a lot of my colleagues are, our constituents are paying tea pump. they shouldn't also have to pay on tax day to subsidize these outrageous profits. >> host: why was it put -- >> guest: it was put in place to begin with to sort of -- it's not just for the oil companies. my bill repeals it only for the oil companies. it was to try to incentivize

domestic manufacturing and create jobs and put -- put people to work and in some of the industries that it applies to. it's certainly justified. but once you're looking at profits that are -- you know, the oil companies, the big five oil companies realized almost $80 billion of profits and they are selling a product at a very hide price that everybody needs. >> host: do you think that the high current price of oil is due to oil company policy or government policy? >> guest: i think it's due to a lot of factors and i think right now the least of the factors that play into oil prices is supply and demand. i mean, just look what happened yesterday. oil dropped by almost $10 a barrel. there was nothing that happened in terms of supply and demand or globally that would have resulted in essentially a 10% reduction in the price of a barrel of oil. there's lots of factors.

there is supply and demand. there is speculation which is a huge component right now. there's geopolitical factors. there's the value of the dollar relative to other currencies and also there's fear. but i think the biggest factor right now is speculation. >> host: and so what's the point of your legislation? is it to increase money to the government coffers? is it to lower the price of gas? >> guest: that's two principled purposes. one is to -- we all recognize we need to reduce our deficit, and we have to make tough decisions in order to do that. this is one of those decisions to take away a subsidy that the american people are paying for, that is simply impossible to justify. i think the other one is just fundamental fairness. i mean, if we're going to ask, you know, kids to not go to head start, if we're going to ask seniors to pay more for nursing home care, if we're going to ask college students to pay more to go to college, all of which the budget that passed the house of representatives does, then we

should also be asking oil companies to do their fair share. >> host: is there any similarity between your bill that you've introduced and the windfall profits tax of the jimmy carter era? >> guest: i don't really think so. this is not tax and profit. what this is saying is that the industry does not need the incentives to do what they're going to do anyway, which is to drill and explore and drill for oil. >> host: how did you vote yesterday on the house floor on drilling permits? >> guest: i voted no. >> host: you voted no, why? >> guest: because first off, i think that to fast track environmental issues is unwise and i also think -- i mean, we had a very -- a very thorough bipartisan study that resulted from the bp spill. that study made lots of recommendations with respect to safety. at this point now 14 months out from that spill, 13 months out

from that spill we have put in place none of them. and so the issue isn't about fast tracking permits. the issue is -- because we've granted a great many permits. i mean, there were 47 shallow drilling permits for the gulf of mexico. so far the obama administration granted 37 of them and 7 are under review. there have been 22 deep water permits issued. this is -- it's not an issue about granting permits. we have to have a process that's fair, that's reasonable, that with stands environmental scrutiny and also is safe. we need to be protecting the people who work on those rigs. >> host: and it was just about a year ago that the gulf oil spill -- >> guest: i think it was april -- i think it was april of 2010. >> host: right, light well, doc hastings chairman of the national resources committee spoke yesterday on the house floor. i want to get your reaction about oil permits. >> guest: my colleagues across the aisle will say that expanding drilling will do nothing to lower gasoline

prices. the truth is, and this is the important part, it will send a strong signal to the world markets that the u.s. is serious about producing our own resources and bringing more production, american production, online. furthermore, this argument has been used by opponents to american energy production for decades. we can no longer delay and prevent access to our own american resources. my colleagues will also propose increasing taxes on american production. let me repeat that, mr. chairman. they will also propose increasing taxes on american energy production. i have to ask, when has raising taxes good and it's never and it won't happen with energy. >> host: congressman bishop? >> guest: a couple of comments. first off, domestic production of oil in the united states is

at an all time high. and so this notion that the obama administration's policies are choking off domestic production is simply false. so we have increased over the last several years our production has done absolutely nothing to hold down price. this is not a supply-driven problem. this is a problem, as i say, at least at this point in my view -- and i think the view of a great many is that the price is being driven more by speculation than by anything else. the point that representative hasting makes with respect to taxes -- the house passed a budget that reduced the top tax rate for the top 1% -- reduced it from 35% to 25% so essentially a third reduction but also says that we're going to hold tax receipts constant as a percentage of gdp. at about 18%. right now we're at 14.5% of gdp.

so if we're going to reduce the top rate for the -- for the high earners but yet we're going to keep tax revan the same i don't think you need a nobel prize in mathematics to figure out that someone who isn't paying now will be paying and that someone are people that are below the top rate. so if we're going to increase the top -- increase the tax rate for the vast majority of americans, i don't think it is at all -- first off, we should not be doing that. but it is not at all unreasonable that we would increase the taxes paid by the most profitable corporations in the world and five of them are the big five oil companies. >> host: congressman tim bishop, a democratic from new york is our guest. phone numbers are on the screen. 202 is the area code. for democrats 737-0002 is the number for to you call for republicans. 737-0001 and for all others 628-0205. now, while we invite congressman

bishop on to talk about oil and drilling and taxation, et cetera, he is a member of congress so you can cover the gambit of congressional issues. i didn't mean to set you up like that. but he serves as well on the education and work force committee and the unemployment numbers just came out and i want to get your reaction to this congressman bishop, employers added more than 200,000 jobs in april for the third straight month, the biggest hiring spree in five years, but the unemployment rate rose to 9% in part because some people resumed looking for work. labor department department added 244,000 jobs and employers created 268,000 jobs the most since february 2006. >> guest: well, i think this is sort of a good news/bad news story. the good news we continue to add private sector jobs.

i believe this is the 14th or 15th consecutive month that we have added private sector jobs and as you say the highest number private sector jobs added since february of 2006 so all very good news. but the fact remains that we continue to have a chronic unemployment problem in this country and the problem of the long-term -- >> you can find this conversation online at c-span.org. we leave you now to go to the national press club in washington, d.c., for the -- >> it's really not chance -- >> their annual policy conference. we'll be hearing from former new york mayor and 2008 gop presidential candidate rudy giuliani. and republican national committee chairman reince priebus. >> and also as a good friend and mentor over those years. so i'm delighted to just say a few words about david. he's been fighting the good fight for a long time now. and he's won some and he's lost some.

fortunately more of the former than the latter. and -- but i think he went back and supported ronald reagan in 1967. who didn't predate that, your relationship with president reagan. bottom line, all that experience and years of service and the fight has really benefited the rla. we could not have a better chairman in the rla than david norcross. [applause] >> and because we're partners i get to work with him pretty much every day and i'll tell you he's been doing this for two years. and i just want to thank you and everybody thank david for the great work he's doing. [applause] >> i sort of got off-script, but people know david but he's a lawyer's lawyer. and he formerly served -- i think many people know served as the national republican

institute and the general counsel of the republican committee when haley was still chairman. still very active in the rnc and you'll hear about that and the center for general democracy but above all he's a great chairman for our organization and a great friend so david, thank you. [applause] >> thank you, jc. this is going to make all of that seem rather disingenius but it was my intention before you did that to thank you in front of everybody for what i think has been an absolutely extraordinary day. [applause] >> and a great program and i can tell you having seen jc every day since he agreed to take on this role but this has not done without great work on his work so thank you, jc, seriously. ladies and gentlemen, it's my

pleasure to introduce as often a person who needs no introduction but perhaps a little -- a little information anyway. many of you may not realize that he was born not in manhattan but born in brooklyn. and somewhere during his formative years he became a serious yankee fan. [laughter] >> which i suspect growing up in brooklyn might be the cause for some other kind of award but this isn't the day for that. born in brooklyn, went to manhattan college, went to nyu law school. lest you thank his new york bona fides are not real. when ronald reagan became president, rudy became an associate attorney general. and then much to the surprise of some folks, went back to new york city to become u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york. and while it may have been a

surprise to some people and rudy and i did not know each other at that time, as i look back on his career, i realized that my guess is what he was doing was going home to do something -- some things for his city that seriously needed doing. he tried the mafia commission trials which began to get new york out of the clutches of some people who certainly were doing it no favors. he ran for mayor the first time in 1989. he said at that time that if david dinkins won it would be more of the same. and he was 100% right. it was more than the same and perhaps worse than before. rudy not being a quitter came back four years later and at that time in a landslide lost the first time by 47,000 votes, i think, or something like that out of 2 million cast. came back the next time and won

it by -- better than 50,000, 53 my numbers tell me. he then became the first mayor of new york, i believe, ever to reduce taxes. [laughter] [applause] >> and then seeing that that worked pretty well, he did it 22 more times. and put new york on the road to recovery. i've spent over the course of a lifetime quite a bit in new york. i will tell you in the early days, in the '60s and '70s when i went to new york, it was my intention to leave as soon as i could get out. i noticed after rudy giuliani had been mayor really only a brief period of time, i noticed -- my wife is nodding yes. we noticed a very, very substantial, palpable change in the city.

rudy giuliani made an enormous difference for that city, and it has never looked back. much thanks to him. there is more to the law than being an academic, being an intellectual. part of being in the law is how you tuesday. and the reason that new york became as good as it is, is because rudy knew how to use the law. the squeegee mean come to mind. there used to be people when you came out of lincoln tunnel and they had dirty papers that would wipe your windshield and he told the police department to go out and arrest them and he came back and he said we can't do that. find a reason. that's using the law within the confines of the law. he's good at that. so we have -- we have today a

meese award winner who is deserving of this award which mr. mayor is the highest that we give. absolutely deserving of it and it is our pleasure to present it to you. i want to do, as i always do, read the precise description of the meese award because it's -- it's something that cannot be improved by ad-libbing or shoddy memories like mine. the rnla ed meese award is presented annually to a republican leader in recognition of a career of accomplishment and leadership for our country. this award recognizes those leaders who protect freedom and the rule of law while upholding republican ideals in the face of adverse political challenges. our awardee is all of that. mr. mayor, it is my pleasure and honor to present you with this award and thank you so much for being here. [applause]

[applause] >> thank you. thank you very much, david, for that award. it means a great deal to me. i have tremendous admiration for david, his contributions to the republican party and to the health and correct direction of our country are enormous. and it's a great honor to receive the award from you and to be with all of these republican lawyers. there are more republicans in this room than all of new york city. [laughter] >> i was the first republican

elected mayor of new york city in 25 years. i was the first one to remain a republican in 50. [laughter] >> it gives you a sense how tough it is to be a republican in new york. my predecessor republican changed parties while he was mayor and my successor republican changed parties about two years ago. so i don't know who i go back to. [laughter] >> for example, this is a city that didn't vote for abraham lincoln. [laughter] >> so you get an idea how democratic it is. but i -- i love being a republican mayor of new york city because -- like i got accused once of appointing too many republicans. well, i appointed all 6 republicans in new york city. [laughter] >> i couldn't possibly have appointed too many republicans.

i couldn't find any. but i used a republican approach to governing. i borrowed a great deal of it from ronald reagan, who i know you're especially commemorating at this -- at this meeting. the idea that we should reduce the size of government. we should get government spending under control. and i learned that from having had the honor of working for ronald reagan. and the president appointed me as associate attorney general. before i was appointed but after i was designated and went through my senate confirmation hearing, before they were completed, i had breakfast with 19 other people with president reagan and got to know him, and the day that i had that breakfast with him was the day that he was almost assassinated. i had a picture of my shaking hands with ronald reagan that morning and, of course, a few hours later he was shot. and i spent the rest of that day trying to get hinkley out of the

hands of the washington metropolitan police and turned over to the fbi because we were very worried that maybe something would happen to him because the idea of lee harvey oswald and what happened to him was still very fresh in everybody's memory and the attorney general was william french smith who decided that hinkley had to be arraigned in open court before the end of the day. and along with judge webster who was the head of the fbi at the time, we had to clear out the courthouse, check it out and make sure there was nobody there, then re-establish the number of people that went in, and about 11:00 at night, we had the arraignment in court, in the federal courthouse here, and it was a very strange day having had breakfast early in the morning with president reagan and then being in court with his attempted assassin. and i always wondered if god

forbid he had been successful, what would have happened to the future direction of this country now that we look back on it because i'm sure -- i'm emotionally biased in favor of president reagan having worked with him as associate attorney general and united states attorney. but i really do believe i'm objective in saying he was the most consequential president since franklin roosevelt, he had the most impact on changing the united states and changing the world. liberation of millions of people, most presidents don't get to liberate millions of people. ronald reagan did because he had such a firm, strong view on how to deal with communism, which was a lot clearer and easier to understand than his predecessors. he had the conviction that communism was evil, which he wasn't afraid to say and you had to confront it rather than negotiate with it. and the prior thinking about communism was we could live with

it. we could work with it. detente. and let's coexist. and he found the idea of coexistence with an ideology and a practice that enslaved millions and millions of people and that also by the way had them in possession of nuclear weapons which could be used to destroy the world -- that that was an unacceptable condition for the world. he found the idea of mutually assured destruction completely insane. you know, you keep the peace based on the theory that either one of you can destroy the world, therefore, neither one of you will unless either one of you is controlled by a maniac in which case you might destroy the world. and ronald reagan -- every day of his presidency had the desire to defeat communism and if you look at the decisions that he made, some of the very, very courageous, unpopular decisions that he made, i believe that that is the thing that finally

ended the soviet union; brought down the berlin wall and created freedom and the possibility of freedom for millions of people who didn't have it before. most presidents don't get to do that. and that would not have happened with somebody else elected president in 1980, whether it was some other -- whether it was the re-election of jimmy carter or even if some other republican had been elected because there were very few republicans at that point that had that kind of determined view of how to deal with communism. and his view on the economy was equally strong, and he reordered our economy. we're still reacting to the ideas that ronald reagan first promulgated when he ran for governor, when he ran for president in '76 and '80. were still debating them, how large should government be should it be a private sector approach. ronald reagan found the size of

government ridiculously large. he was a new deal democrat who converted to republicanism because he thought the new deal and then finally the great society went so far that it had become counterproductive. people were being locked into poverty as opposed to given a road out of poverty. and he did everything he could to change that, which he did during his administration by lowering taxes, beginning all of the ideas that eventually led to welfare reform. changing the way in which government interreacted with our economy, moving us much closer to a free market economy. and he did something else that we badly need today in remembering ronald reagan, all of that led to a resurgence of american exceptionalism, of american pride, of the idea that we've learned at the end of the american empire -- in the late 1970s, you can go back and look,

a lot of books were written and a lot of articles were written and a lot of speeches were given about how america was kind of out of gas. that we'd be overtaken by japan. we'd be overtaken by other countries. that we had run our course. and we were a country now of limited possibilities. it sounds familiar, right? [laughter] >> there are people who believe that today in america. in fact, some of them are running america. [laughter] >> the idea that we're either no better than anyone else. we're just another country with our set of problems and our set of assets. or maybe we're not even as good as others. and ronald reagan found that to be totally wrong.

not a correct view of his country and he changed in a very short period of time how we felt about ourselves. and do you know something? that's the most important thing a leader does. the thing i'm proudest of being mayor of new york city is not reducing crime, which i'm very proud of and i'm glad we're able to do it, or changing welfare. we moved 600,000 people off welfare, most of them to work. or changing the tax system and creating surpluses. all of those were building blocks and something much bigger than that. when i became mayor of new york city, the "new york times" took a poll, and the poll said something like, 68% of the people in new york city don't want to live in new york city anymore. they want to live somewhere else, if they could. and about 65% of the people in new york city thought new york city was going in the wrong direction. that is the most disturbing thing that can possibly happen because it means people have started to lose hope. and when people start to lose

hope, they don't create great things anymore. and i felt that -- what i wanted to do was to change that. and by the time i left office, we had a new york city in which roughly the opposite of that, 70% wanted to be there and liked being there. and 70% thought new york city was going in the right direction. and not the wrong direction. and i often think that in new york city, with the depressed attitude that we had in the early '90s would have had a much harder time overcoming as quickly the tremendous damage done to us by the attacks of september 11. it happened new york city that when we were attacked, we were a strong city, a confident city, an optimistic city, a city that believes that our best days were ahead of us. so the attack was a temporary interruption of that feeling and the city was able to get back on track very, very quickly. most important thing that a mayor, a governor or a president

can do is to re-establish people's belief in themselves. because ultimately they're the runs who create things, they are the ones who do things. they are the ones who produce jobs. they're the ones who invent great medicines or tremendous technologies. the government either hinders that or it steps aside and encourages it. and ronald reagan understood that. and this country needs that right now. i mean, we need to be reminded that america's best days are not behind us. they are ahead of us. there's every reason to believe that. there's every reason to predict that. that is not at all an irrational prediction. we're still the strongest economy on earth. we're still the country that produces the most ideas and the most processes and the most new ways of dealing with information. we're still the country that has the most altruistic attitude of

any country in the world. just think of the wars that we fought over the last century. it has to be the first time in the history of the world that a big country like ours sent hundreds of thousands of its young people to die, not to create an empire. not to expand their control over the world. there were great empires, the roman empire, the british empire but those empires were created for the benefit of rome and for the benefit of england. what was america doing in the first world war? trying to make the world safe for democracy. what was america doing in the second world war? trying to save the world from nazism and fascism. and what was america doing in vietnam? whether people agree or disagree with the vietnam war. what was the motivation of vietnam. to save people from the spread of communism and what is america

now doing in the middle east? and specifically as we speak, right now in libya? we're not -- we're not -- we're not conducting the things that we're doing in iraq and in afghanistan and in libya in order to spread the american empire. the only one that i can think of who has any thoughts like that is donald trump who wants to -- [laughter] >> not that i totally disagree with him. who wants us to take some of that oil to pay the bills for the trillion dollars that we've spent in -- there's a certain -- there's a certain logic to that, right? but that hasn't been the way in our country. but just think about that. that's a very unusual exceptional thing for a country to do. i can't think of another country that's ever done that before, a country that actually worries about the condition of other people and gives up lives in

order to help other people and to make the world a safer place for them because we recognize ultimately here's how it benefits us. it makes a safer world for us. if you look at what's happened in the last six months, whether it's in tunisia or egypt or libya or syria or i'm sure within iran, the whole set of values that america stands for are now the set of values that these people are demonstrating for, are protesting about, are demanding, are revolting for. in some cases they don't completely understand it. in some cases it's not the full version of what we mean by democracy. but the reality is, somewhere deep in there hearts, they've seen other people live in freedom. they've seen the benefits of what other people get living in freedom, and they're beginning -- they're saying to

themselves, why not us? .. participate in that? freedom and democracy are inconsistent with the muslim world. freedom and democracy are inconsistent with other parts of the world and president bush understood that that is the case. freedom and democracy aren't limited to religion, they aren't limited to regions of the world. there his lawyers that exist within the human heart, within the human soul, within the human

brain, the human desire is to have more control over your own life. in order to release that, you have to see examples of it. you have to see that it's possible, and of course the internet and the information revolution that we live through now makes the information available to everyone. people in china are watching what's happening in the middle east. and make no mistake about it, it is creating in them the same questions that are created in egypt. why do we live in this kind of oppression? why do we live without a system of law that protect sauce? why can't we be the determining factor about what kind of education of our children have or how many children we have without having the government decide that for us? so, what are these things portend? what they really show for us is a future in which more and more countries in this build, more places in this world are going to see the american model as the

model they want for themselves. it doesn't mean it will be a straight line in that direction. in many of these cases there will be detours along the way. it is quite possible in the revolutions we have going on we are going to have situations like we saw in iran, where a dictator is replaced by a worst dictator. that's going to happen. it will happen for a period of time. it's not bring to happen everywhere. in some places to be significant long-term improvement, but the general thrust of the whole process is in our direction. and instead of worrying about whether america -- america is going to be the preeminent power in the world, the question we should ask ourselves is if america doesn't leave the world, who will? who will do it as well, as america? there is nothing irredenta at

all that. there is nothing to be embarrassed about saying that. that's just the simple reality. with the world be better with china leading the world? would america be better with some of these countries that are still struggling with the idea, freedom democracy leading the world? the reality is the world has rarely had a super power that has the altruistic motivations that we have. it doesn't mean we are perfect, doesn't mean we don't make terrible mistakes. but in the course of human affairs this is about as good as it gets. and i think one of the things the country needs very badly is re-establishing american exceptional listen. first, we have to believe it. we have to present it to the world in the right way, not arrogant, not in a superior way, almost with a sense of humility because none of us deserve what

we have in america. we are very lucky to have it. most of the people that have lived on this earth have not had what we have, the opportunities we have, the help that we have, the rights that we have, the possibilities that we have come and it's our obligation, it seems to me, to try to share that with the rest of the world. and it's our obligation to ourselves and our children to do that because it is quite correct that if this world were made up of countries that were all democracies with a rule of law that's the way we would end war. democracies don't go to war with each other. fullfledged democracies don't go to war with each other. the dp teach each other. they argue with each other. the have treaty negotiations with each other, and sometimes they get real pingree with each other like when we band french fries from the united states congress. [laughter]

remember? but we didn't go to war with france. we banned french fries. we can deal with banning franchise or if they want to ban peaches. no, you can't ban peaches. [laughter] my grandmother would turn over in her grief. but the reality is that that is a correct view of what america can contribute. and it is an absolutely correct thing for america to offer this to the world. it doesn't mean we can intervene all the time. it doesn't mean that we have the resources to intervene all the time. it does mean we can always help. you can help the spread of freedom and democracy without intervening militarily. sometimes you have to. that should be the rare occasion. we didn't have to intervene militarily in poland, but poland is now free. how do we do that?

we did it by supporting their movement, buy giving them moral support, buy giving them other forms of support, buy giving them information, buy giving ideas about being on their side. that's what we should be doing in iran. it's inconsistent to me that we would call for the house enough gadhafi and not for the ayatollah khamenei and the mahmoud ahmadinejad. he's a really bad dictator. he's horrible to his own people, but he doesn't pose any where near the threats of the united states of america that iran poses. gaddafi is basically a neutered leader coming to this terrible things of which are unacceptable, but the risk that he presents the united states is nothing like the risk that assad presents or mahmoud ahmadinejad. and if we are going to be calling for regime changes

around the world and in certain places, why not remove some of the most unfriendly dictators when we are trying to do that, and not just see the ones that are partially friendly or somewhat muted it removed without taking advantage of the to try out of power some of those that are truly dangerous to us? [applause] it would seem to be one of the things missing for america is a clear vision of what our foreign policy should be with regard to all of these movements. and would be simple to stage what our foreign policy should be. we should support freedom movements all over the world. we should support it with everything we can possibly think of short of military intervention. and then we should militarily intervene when horrible things are happening in the country and that also presents a danger to

the united states of america. the second element has to be present otherwise we will be intervening in one-third of the world or one-quarter of the world. and the confusion this administration has shown the past four or five months about egypt and libya comes about because the front of a clear vision like ronald reagan had of what they want to achieve and why they want to achieve it. so when they get into the situations they don't have a clear philosophy or fission to turn back on that helps them through figuring it out and how to do it. you can see it with mubarak, demonstrations start in egypt and the first thing we announces that mubarak is stable, the vice president says to mubarak it's not a dictator. the was announced in the first two or three days, and our policy at that point was we're going to keep mubarak because we are afraid of what might replace

him. then things got worse. pressure group and the policy changed from mubarak is stable, mubarak is not a dictator, mubarak must go. without thinking out clearly what might replace mubarak and without knowing what might replace mubarak and it seemed as if the policy was being made on the fly rather than some kind of a superimposed policy that everyone can understand being used to try to guide us through that situation. then we come to libya, and that starts off a very much the same way. the demonstration started libya, the rebellion begins, and our first reaction was the we are not and we need to intervene. we are not when to intervene because although gadhafi is terrible and those terrible things, there is no clear present danger to the united states posed by gadhafi, by

libya. then as tensions mount, as the arab league decides gadhafi must go, the president announces gadhafi must go, but the president hasn't bought out the implications are of that are and a couple of weeks ago by as the president of china decides whether to join the no-fly zone, that france, england, the arab league and the united nations all want triet and finally rejoined the no-fly zone. but we still, with all of that, don't have a policy this makes any sense. actually, we have a policy that contradicts itself, which is why it's hard for the nato allies to follow us because we are not leading. here is our policy. we have intervened in libya with a no-fly zone to protect the people of libya, particularly the civilian population in libya. but, we are not in favor of

regime change. we are not going to remove gadhafi. that may have been the we are not going to do that. now, what are we protecting the people of libya from if it isn't from gadhafi? we are not protecting them from tornadoes or storms or some foreign elements that might come to libya. we are protecting them from gadhafi. so how can you possibly resolve this? how can you possibly in the this? how can you follow it and make logical decisions about it because if it's correct and we are there to protect the people of libya then we can only succeed protecting the people of libya by doing what we say we are not going to do which is removed gadhafi. the only possible way to protect the people of libya is removed gadhafi because he's no danger to them that our policies to protect them but not remove

gadhafi so nobody can understand this. i think there would have been to acceptable decisions about libya. the decision number one would have been not to intervene, the fury that although it was horrible and terrible and all of what he was doing to his people, this is not directly in the entering the united states of america. the way assad and mahmoud ahmadinejad directly impact the united states and helping to americans get killed in iraq. the second decision could have been that because the to ship the location being in the middle east because the middle east such a tinderbox and because gadhafi was in teaching in such a brutal action that could end up encouraging others to do the same thing it was necessary for the united states to intervene but we should intervene for the purpose of removing him and not intervene in this totally contradictory policy that makes

it very hard for people to follow or for people to figure out what are we going to do next? this is the failure of lack of vision, lack of being willing to set a goal people have to follow and this is the great, the greatness of ronald reagan because this was clear, he could articulate it. sometimes you can't always achieved every goal that you want but when you state people know what to rally enough. they know how to agree and disagree with you come in and we are going to face many of these questions in the next five or six or ten years because this movement is not stopping. it isn't under our control. it shouldn't be. this is happening in the hearts and minds and souls of individual people. and the information revolution we are going through this will

spread throughout the world. when you see in libya you will see in china. there are six or 700 million people in china living in poverty. and exactly why we are so afraid of china i can't figure out. i mean the idea that china will have the preeminent economy by 2016 will only come about if we are doing anything wrong. right now we're doing a pretty good job of that. [laughter] but if we do everything wrong china will become the preeminent economy. but china has to answer a question that nobody in the history has ever answered yet. between now and 2016 to have to move six or 700 million people out of binding, horrible poverty which is unknown to anyone in the united states and the have to continue to have their economy grow at eight, 10% and still solve that problem. china's economy is built on the false foundation.

it's billed on a foundation of hundreds of millions of people living in poverty. if we wanted to take half of this country or two-thirds of this country and allow them to live in the kind of poverty that chinese are living in, we would have the gdp would probably be three times the size of the gdp we have today accept it would be contrary to just a few people. china is going to have to overcome that and deal with a contradiction of being essentially a free market capitalist economy and an authoritarian political system. and they don't know the answer to it. and that answer may be superimposed on them and that is a tremendous challenge to have to go through. so the america should deal with china and have relations with china. america should help guide china in the right direction but we shouldn't see here being frightened of them because there is no reason for that. so what you really can't fit

this next election in 2012 is going to be about whether we can give ourselves the chance of another renaissance for america. the chance of the reawakening america, of inspiring us to leave it rather than to follow, being proud of ourselves for the things good about us and have us do what we always do which is correct ourselves. there's another way in which america is exceptional. america has been the most successful country and society in the history of the world of self correcting. we recognize sometimes a little late, but always the injustice and the bad things we are doing, and we straighten them out. we haven't had to somebody else come here and straighten us out in all the years that we have been a republic because we have a system that self correct you there's no reason why we can't do that again. we do that in the best way human beings ever figured out how to do it.

we do it by conducting elections. we do it by conducting elections that are as fair as you can possibly make them. and you help us do that. that's why i love the work that republican leaders do. you help us make sure that the elections are fair and honest and i will conclude with one story about the election on lost in 1989 about four or five days before the election when we would be very close, i asked one of my political mentors and a very experienced new york city political figure. i said to him how many votes to we have to win by to overcome the cheating? [laughter] because they're used to be a lot of cheating in new york. it wasn't quite like chicago it was pretty bad. he said about 50,000 votes. we are probably gone to have to win by 50,000 votes to make up for all of the precincts in which we don't have the poll

watchers, they want to make up for all of the did people devotee that vote. that's something i always felt very inadequate. every time i ran my democratic opponent i had a much greater ability to appeal to dead people. [laughter] denied it. we had an entire year cemetery vote. it was a amazing. he said 57,000 votes and i lost by 47 as david said. and there was the era before the 2000 election when you folderol of richard nixon which is you don't contest elections, however they did decide the ballot box you leave them alone. our was a catcher in baseball, got thrown out of too many games where the umpire didn't change his mind to contest the election. but the reality is the second

time we pray and we organized 3,000 or lawyers who went to every polling site in the city along with about 3,000 firefighters and correction officers who volunteered. sometimes the lawyers were afraid to go. but lawyers are very smart. but firefighters are to be dhaka and correction officers have a much bigger impact when a big dose of illegal voters show up who are voting for the third time that day and because they are in contact with each other the remember seeing them at one precinct and another and when the firefighters and the correction officers go up and say aren't you the same people voted two hours ago in another precinct? some how the bus turns around and goes the other day, and because of that at least we felt

we got an honest result the second time around. that reality goes on in america. it's not correct, it's not right, it's awful. when sure there are times that republicans cheek, too. republicans aren't free of fice. it's pretty much equal amount of virtue that goes around but republicans don't control the big cities and that's where you can get away with it much more than you can in the rural areas and what makes a bigger difference because the vote is much higher. so we need you in the next election that's coming up because i believe the next election will set the direction of america for a very long time if we don't get it right. so i think you very much for all that you do and i would be happy to take any questions that you have. [applause]

[inaudible] >> speaking of presidential elections and the necessity of beating obama, and as a giuliani supporter in the last election, is there any possibility that he would consider a run? [applause] sure, but not right now. i enjoyed the debate last night so much. i'm kidding. [laughter] i will sure think about it but not yet. it's too early and i want to see how we develops, and my major goal is to elect a republican in 2012, and if it turns out the plan the best one to do that, then i could probably be talked

into doing it or convince myself to doing it. if i thought somebody else had a better chance of doing it then i would be very enthusiastic supporter of somebody else. so let's see how it all develops. and luckily this is developing much later than last time. so we will be able to make a decision about that a little closer in time to win the election takes place. i remember in 2007 by this time we had 12 republican candidates. i had lunch today with john mccain, and he and i ran against each other last time and we were very good friends and came out of it very good friends, and i want to announce remove the dates if i wasn't running high would be supporting him. my staff got very angry when i said that. the reality is in 2007 we were debating issues that ultimately had no relevance to the election in 2008 because it was so -- i

remember our debates were about immigration. they were about stem cell research, they were about just a whole host of issues, very little about the economy. i went through a 11 debates. they'd been asked five questions about the economy. a lot of questions about iraq and as you would imagine because at the time that is when the president first decide on the search and the democrats were in favor of pulling out of iraq and republicans were mostly in favor of the surge, but not everyone. the election turned out to be decided on the economy and we have indicated that at all. we had been asked you questions about it, and certainly we didn't conduct our primary around who would be the best candidate to guide the economy? that wasn't even the fault on our mind. so this year it is developing leader and probably will help and we will get a better idea of

who can be the best candidate in the general election and we are going to have to do that. you have to win general elections you can't just win primaries. thank you very much. [applause] >> mayor, you know where hudson county nursery is, don't you? >> i sure do. >> and you probably know former governor brendan byrne? well, he says he wants to be buried in hudson county so he can remain politically active. [laughter] thank you very much. we are honored by your presence, and we hope you come back and visit us again. we are now fortunate, the leasing on the cake as it were we have to my right the current chairman of the republican national committee, a man whom i

have come to know over the last couple of years very well, a man who made a very hard decision frankly when he decided to run for chairman this time. fortunately for all of us, he made the right decision, he ran a vigorous forthright campaign, led for every ballot won going away. the that he took office, he began to repair what needed to be repaired. and frankly, there was a lot that needed to be repaired. but certainly not the least was our finances and the confidence of our major donors. rights certain that as i said i guess that election was over on saturday and he began that on sunday. i've talked to some of those people, and i know that he has

already accomplished much of that. and i know given his tireless effort and his abilities i should say when he ran for the chairmanship he was chairman of the state party of wisconsin, and i think all of us can be rightly proud of wisconsin and its most recent supreme court election, the election of a freshman senator and of a very vigorous governor who's doing the things we very much need to have done. all of that happened on the watch of chairman rights previous, would be appreciative mr. chairman, if he would join me and tell me how you did it and what you're going to do next. [applause]

[applause] >> weld good afternoon. i hope to try to keep remarks brief, but i did want to thank coleta and larry for having me this afternoon but i have to say to david the person who led the rnc as general counsel and just a life council really to the rnc and to me. i appreciate him. he checks and often, so what's going on, gives the advice appreciate people like that that teach you under their wing and the our statesmen to the party so thank you, david. [applause] >> well, it's true.

i know it's a bizarre name. i can promise you about as normal as they come. my name is jack. my daughter is brace. i tell people what happens when a greek and german get married? it is a cultural disaster. [laughter] in fact, this is how badly -- i had a lapel pan want at a fund-raiser in orlando, have to do lot of that stuff right now, but someone tore my lapel sticker off and said look at this. if you take the vowels of of the name reince priebus, the firstname you get, rnc, and it gets better, the last thing you get, pr, bs.

[laughter] so we know this is need for me. this job. well, obviously -- [laughter] the cheeseheads have had a pretty good run, and we will talk about the packers, but certainly leader on i'm going to mention a few of those cheeseheads as a walk through some short remarks for you today. it's obviously great to be back with you. i was here in grand rapids when you had your meeting a year ago. and today, you are celebrating ronald reagan's 100th birthday. and it is obviously an honor to be here along side of america's