much of our news about each other we get from tv, there are studies done that the more people look at tv, the more hours they actually look at tv the more afraid we are. so could we talk about fear as the basis of -- [applause] >> yeah, absolutely. um, i would love to hear his holiness', you know, comment on how fear of the unknown sometimes causes us to embrace violence. ..

>> i think basically a mental projection, and that also gives a state, a system that's such where there's more fear, more anxiety, more stress. >> louder -- >> they need to project more. >> oh, i think this is the sound, anyway, this fear that two levels of two kinds -- one fear with feelings.

avoid when mad dog come ready to bite if you still meditate compassion. it's rather foolish. [laughter] so then another little kind of fear mainly on say mental projection. there are many -- when we talk fear as a part of mind, a part of emotion so the system, the sensory, the world of emotion, there's many other emotions that are interconnected so fear, usually the mental

projectionness of fear -- of course every fear with dark coming -- it's described as selfish as part of our nature. without that, we men like robot. we cannot survive, so therefore, it is -- i mean, right, but i just telling we are selfish, but should be selfish with intelligence or wise selfish is much better than foolish selfish. [laughter] so here now the attitude brings more fear, more suspicion so the

unnecessary sort of suspicion of fear as it did based on suspicion and distrust -- that -- the other side the sense of fear, sense of sisterhood. no, every human being, i think rather sisters, and everyone wants happiness. they want something. i'm one of them, and we are fortunate as i said earlier. the more the community is happy, i get more happiness. it's impossible. there's no way to gain maximum benefit to one self-and forget

another. no. the sense of -- spirit of human of brother and sisters there, and also maybe stranger, you never know. you're a human being. if you smile, they also respond. if you show affection, generally, they also respond. so that way fear is -- [inaudible] the fear -- sometimes the people call individual sensory, the society, the culture, more individualistic. it's very important, but they are right, but too much is

self-centering, then i think sometimes too much competition and the source of competition and to that way more stress, anxiety; then as i mentioned, i convey the television usually is the showing those things which are more negative -- murder, sex, or others. these bad things. of course, these become news. the good thing like certain action to serve other people out of subtle genuine compassion -- these are not news.

we take for granted. then i think it's also on fighting. these -- [inaudible] entertaining, so little way i think there's some impact in our mind. it's very subtle, the tough, rough, and then these news -- only bad sights, and then eventually people get the feeling, we as a human being, the nature of a human being is negative. some people describe aggressiveness. yes, because of the ability, but that does not necessarily the exclusion of basic human nature i don't think. that's my view.

>> thank you. trying to keep watch on the time here -- [applause] we have less than 10 minutes left, so by way of making a closing statement, i would very much like to hear the panel respond to the following question. recently, with the killing of bin laden, of course, there's been a great debate in this country about the ethicky of violence. i don't need to hear you talk about bin laden, but, of course, you can if you'd like. from the perspective of a practitioner of nonviolence, i think it's very helpful to have it explained to us logically why

violence does not work as a long term solution to a problem. everyone understands the imptous to use violence and stop something in the short run, but if i could hear each of you talk, you know, briefly and logically about how violence is not an efficient means of solving a problem. i think that would bring clarity to a lot of us trying to adopt a non-violent way. why don't you start off, vincent. >> when i hear the example that you started out with, sidney, the bin laden murder, what came

to my mind when i first heard about that was another situation of terrorism that i was very close to. i was deeply involved in the movement that took place in burp -- burmingham, alabama in 1963 that helped open up to the world what was wrong in all society and what needed to be made right especially along the lines of white supremacy and the oppression of people of color. you've made me remember that

weeks after the march on washington of august 1963 in september 1963, the 16th street baptist church had a bomb placed at its base near its basement, and the bomb went off. it was a terrorist act, and it resulted in the death of four young sunday schoolgirls, and the injury to a good many other people in the church. what i remember is a conversation that i had with two of the most magnificent teachers

of non-violence that i knew in that movement. dianne nash was one of them, and at the time she was married to another great practitioner, james bevill was his name. diannevg tol$x

nevertheless immediately said, we've got to get back to burmingham, and we got to find out who did that terrible work and make sure that they never are able to do anything like that again, and they had great understandable, some would say justifiable anger, and the move in them was for revenge and retribution, but as they sat with their friends thinking about that action, they began to rethink that initial response,

and they said to each other we cannot copy that terrible path of violence. that is not who we are. that is not what we believe in. we will be unfaithful to ourselves, to all of the people who are part of our movement. we must think in another way about how to respond. we must respond, but we must find another way, and what they decided was that they would return to alabama, but they would devote all of their time and attention and skills to the work that was at that moment just beginning in selma, alabama

where a voting registration campaign was going on, and they said we decided that if we could really bring black people into the electorat to change those that are running that state, we can change the atmosphere, change the setting so that the possibility of such terrorism will be reduced, and so they decided then to go to selma to work on voter registration, and as you know, eventually, that marvelous selma movement ended up with that march from selma to montgomery. they had spent two typical

costly dangerous years working on the response to the death of the children, and what came out of it was the opening of another level of democracy in this country. in a deep sense, the death of a children led not to the death of more people but to the opening of new life, new possibility for this country. [applause] >> thank you very much, professor harding. hellen, would you like to

respond? >> just in the issue of time, the issue of the enemy is first to meet each other, and i believe the more we can connect with, do bridges, have different kinds of people meeting, conversing each other, having breakfast together, crossing the boundaries, these invisible boundaries set up in our culture, the university students going here who are here today, you're in a little -- you're in the environment of being in a university. you got the raserbacks, but the more we meet each other and begin to have the conversations, we will positively promote, i think, building community of this. [applause]

>> thank you, sister helen. >> your holiness, if you have anything educational on -- else on the way violence perpetuates violence. >> basically, violence is unpredictable. once you involve violence, then it often become out of control; then violence itself from violence it goes that way, and more damages or more back turns so i believe 21st century, i think otherwise involve quoting

some historian in the 20th century, the number of people who killed through violence are over 200 million. that problem must solve. i think that kind of action and also some other sort of exploitation also, i think, lay down the seed of hate, and sometimes it's the arabs and -- [inaudible] anyway, now this century, i was telling people or request people, now this century should be the center of dialogue. that's the only way as you mentioned. need to talk. the problems you see started -- some occasion as a response to

questions. if possible, meet him. meet him, listen. what is his reasons, you see, to commit these things? i'm a human being, but i'm quite sure there could be some kind of openness. in anyway, i visited few occasion in northern ireland. one time they sort of organized and invite me -- they organize the victims of both sides together in a one room. i think like that, and i'm in that room -- very tense.

each person's face full of sadness. then we start some sort of a conversation, and also i expressed some of my further beliefs. then after i think after one or two hours then we had meal together. the atmosphere completely change, then next to my visit, again, i met some of them, completely change, so i feel your sort of point is very, very right. then -- [inaudible]

the nuremberg leader, all of it defeated, but carry death sentence and charged with something, justice. at the time, i think 45, very upset. opposite i think victory aside, there's -- maybe prevent further problems, but defeated people so the death sentence, and at that time was upset, now defeated. old person really demod

earnized. the object is to feel compassion, not hate, not anger, so any way, so there's internet organizations, and they carry a movement upon issuing death sentence, so i'm out of the symmetry, so sometimes i just -- [inaudible] people a little longer, and then they may see the result of their wrongly, and then we can tease them, but teasing them. they can finish their life.

there's no opportunity to see the sense of their wrong doing, and then also i think like the death sentence, this actually carry the eliminate the person, not the action, so -- [applause] as i mentioned before, action. i think real effective subtle cause of that measure to seize the action is deemed with the actor or person; then hear their complaint; then talk. i think the real sort of control of that destructive action

otherwise many years ago after the death even happen, if we handle not properly, then after a few years, then bin laden. after more years another bin laden might come, so the change must take shape, not just a physical sort of elimination, so one person eliminate, but that person feels very bad, so that seed is more hated and saws off another sort of bond, but that's my view. of course, i think the bid laden sort of case i think hundreds of people have difference of opinion, so i don't know what to say.

some people apologize the death others brought justice. some people say oh, it's quite normal. some people say, oh, this is wrong. i think i am one of them. [laughter] [applause] >> well, that was absolutely wonderful. it exceeded even my highest expectations, and in my humble opinion i believe we just born witness to what is a historic conversation so let me thank vincent harding, sister helen, and your holiness, the

dalailama. >> tonight on c-span, activists remember martin luther. this event is a prelude to the official dedication of the martin luther king memorial on sunday. >> in relationship to poverty and militarism or certainly poverty, we've almost made no strides, and i would appeal that this is not just an issue that the president of the united states must address. it's an issue that all of us must address because dad said no man can be -- i can't by what i ought to be until you ought to be, and you can't be what you august ought to be because we are tried together in neutrality for what effects one directly

effects all of us indirectly, so we are at a critical juncture in america, and while we're celebrating this monument, let us not just put dad up on a shelf, and idolize him. let us practice his ideals. >> more from the event tonight at 8 eastern on c-span. you can watch booktv all this month in primetime on c-span2.

>> next, a forum on the presidency of george w. bush examining policies of the bush administration with comparison of that of presidents clinton and obama. ..

>> he's a great scholar, well, we don't have enough time. the most recent book, "presidential leadership" vortex of power," and "george bush presidency" and he's just completed a volume on the obama administration. currently he serving as chair of the department of political science at perdue, university. bert, the floor is yours. >> thank you very much, don, and thank you very much chancellor

garhart. i'm pleased to be here. we're here to talk about george w. bush, that i'll get to. in the latter stages of his presidency, bill clinton, there he is again, bemoaned the fact that his presidency was the void of the great challenges that could mark him as a great president. george w. bush was not so handicapped. he had many challenges, very severe ones in their tenure as president. but he lacked the werewithall of greatness. he came into the drawn out election outcome decided of a 5-4 supreme court majority that lacked grounding in any constitutional law.

but someone had to be inaugurated on january 20th. so nonetheless, the result was that a close election was perceived by the democratic base as a corrupted outcome, and bush as an illegitimate president. get over it was the republican mantra. but it was not so easily gotten over. though, in fact, it was gotten over by the public at large. given the resenments produced, bush came into office as a conciliator. acceptance speech, victory speech after the supreme court decision, and inaugural speech all promised this, very, very heavy emphasis on reconciliation. but things went south, certainly by the second year. the toxic political climate was fed by hyperpartisanship of the bush administration, at least

the bush administration's political gurus did little to relieve that hyperpartisanship over the court of the administration. their strategy was to fold the base together, and then microscopically cater to groups that had not made up their mind. they were very concerned, certainly about the mobilization of the base in the 2000 election. moreover, 2002 brought ugly campaigns. all of this fed the toxcity. in the end, he consumed by the toxic swamp of party polarization. his presidency was the most

deeply polarizing one in modern history. much of bush's fall could be attributed to his own hand, however. he was a careless decision maker to failed frequently to follow through, who failed to ask important and skeptical questions. and if as a decision maker you don't ask the most skeptical questions of yourself and of others, you are likely to get yourself into deep trouble. he contracts, i think, poorly in in regard with the predecessor bill clinton, and in that same regard, even more so with his successor, barack obama, both of whom were very deliberative presidents. in the end, bush had plenty challenges. he handled few of them well. leaving offense in the midst of a catastrophic recession which he little understood and a fiscal mess to which both me and

the party policies of spending without revenues contributed mightily. every president has his own unique strengths and weaknesses. bush's moral clarity served him well in areas that few americans may recognize or know about, for example, the program to fight aids in africa. but in other respects, his sense of certainty, lack of reflection with and skepticism, and seeming inability to master fundamental facting became deeply problematic. he would have learned from his father's prudence. he did not. most of us would be wiser if we can. after all, sometimes father knows best. thank you. [applause] [applause] >> thank you, bert. our next speaker is alexander

moens who comes to us from simon fraser university. he's an expert on american political institutions and in particularly american foreign policy. his most recent work is the foreign policy of george w. bush: strategy, values strategy and loyalty. he will talk among other things about the bush foreign policy and the bush doctrine. alexander? >> well, thank you very much. it was a great honor and privilege to join my colleagues and the audience today. i can assure you there are many canadians that carefully look at what goes on in the united states. i'm one of them. i came from europe in 1979, and i started studying the united states and canada and i haven't stopped since. in many of my classes, i get

students who are very nervous about the united states. you know, they are worried about a takeover, this, that, or the other thing. they have long lists of things to campaign about to the united states. would you sooner be poland with russia as your neighbor? or what about vietnam with china behind you? we are, canada, in fact, we are blessed with the best neighbor in the world. we take very seriously what takes place in your politics and foreign policy. it's a great privilege to benefit from the scholarship and the intense discussions that we've had in the last two days. now george w. bush to me stands out as a decision maker. or mr. decider. and it was very interesting to see that his memoirs are called decision -- "decision points." i think he sees himself as someone who will over time become more and more appreciated for what he did accomplish, and

less and less remembered for where he failed. i think he sees himself as harry truman ii, and you remember the famous book on harry truman by david mccolla was published 40 yeared after the truman presidency. so bush thinks of himself, i suppose he may say it in his own words, as misunderappreciated. now as scholars, when we get to bush's foreign policy, i think one the very interesting things is to dig into his decision making process. and as we do so, i think we find that it was very uneven, and it is still quite puzzling. it's very necessary that we gutted and continued the scholarship. it was uneven.

now bush was often over confident and over determined. but that's not necessarily a liability. provided you have a good process, indecisiveness which is the problem with other presidents can be just as much of a problem as over determination. if you study bush's foreign policy decisions all the way from the one on north korea, the one you might remember in march 2001 when the american airplane and of chinese fighter jet collided and all the way after 9/11 into iraq. some of his decisions were carefully done. they had a lengthy process. bush had the ideas and people pushed back. colin powell was the strongest in terms of pushing back. when bush allow the open process

as he did in enduring freedom, on the search in 2006, when he benefited from that, his decisions for good. when he did not, he went with too much confidence and everybody was loyal, this is what the presidents wants. then we see some very poor decisions. the worst one is what we see as phase four operations in iraq. that's decision on how to manage iraq after the invasion. which turned out how to be a case study in how to mismanage, which is the costliest decision in my mind that bush made. bush was no doubt polarizing. and in our scholarship, i think we have to be very careful about the two argument that is are out there in abundance.

on the left, there are a lot of people that have conspiracy theories and psychological theories and so on about how bush is completely -- what completely beyond his capacity as president. and then on the right you have over loyalty. including among christian conservatives. and i can speak as a christian conservative myself. and we had to learn put no confidence in princes. psalm 118. just because bush is a christian president that doesn't mean he's going to do the right thing. he needs just as much good advise and just as much criticism has anybody else. i'm hoping that the republican party and the democratic party will learn from the bush presidency. now polarizization is a real problem. and as a canadian, i dare to say something to you about this.

i'll try to warn you americans that you have a problem. now we've got lots of our own problems. so don't let me try to be arrogant or anything. but you have a problem. and that is the problem, if you don't know it. your system is polarizing more and more. every four years, every two years in congress, every four years, you get more and more polarization. you now have two political parties that are ideological war machines that get at each other all the time and get less and less done. you know, as a president, it is enormously difficult to pass a piece of legislation. enormously difficult. what do we see president's do? they are beginning to use all of the little strategic tactical things. they are starting to play a different game than what the founders, the founders of the constitution want. what i think americans need to

think about, and especially students who will be the next generation of leaders is in philadelphia, it was the art of compromise. it was bargaining that created your constitution and your system, your great republic. and unless you rediscover this art, your republic is in grave danger. and i'm hoping that you will revive and consider the challenge so that you do not end up with a system of government that can only do blocking and more blocking and more blocking. but that you have a system of government that can governor. we canadians need you to be a world leader for another 100 years at least. thank you. [applause] [applause] >> thank you, alex. it's delightful to have a perspective that is outside of the normal dialogue of american

politics. our next speaker is bob maranto. who's there already. he's in the department of education reform here in the university of arizona. he has a phd from the university of indiana, trained as a political scientist and is the author and editor on a number of works, include "the second term of george w. bush" and currently at work on a book about the obama administration. bob, the floor is yours. >> thank you so much. i will recognize my co-editor on that. we have a book on obama coming out on july, and i had a book "judging bush" that came out about a year back. i want to thank alex for a wonderful talk that feeds into mine. our political system is getting more like academic politics. we fight so much all the time

and the stakes are so small. i look at president obama who has kept two of president bush's three crisis managers on the economy and has essentially kept president bush's policy in iraq and afghanistan. and that's a very fascinating to watch. in part i have members of my family who really can't stand president bush and even though i've edited a book saying i thought it was a failed presidency, constantly say that i'm defending president bush. i have a friend of mine that i work with who constantly saying i'm defending president obama when i don't think e am. when we make the judgments, i would say a couple of things. i hope we have modesty. i think this group does have a lot of modesty. we're not sure how history will view these things. we're not sure which the decisions 20 years down the road might not look bad and which ones will be bad. we tend to judge presidents

compared to who. if obama does badly, it makes president bush look good. it probably cuts conservatives more slack, we probably tend cut liberal presidents were slack. that's because we're human being, it's not because we are bad, we need to be aware of the biases. i think to the degree that we can, we should focus on things that measure and we should look at. my friend who worked in the clinton administration wrote a wonderful essay in judging bush where part of what he does is look at statistics and say you know on the one hand, on the other hand. which is the good way to look at these things in terms of economy or anything else. my take on bush, i'm going to agree very much with alex and bert. i don't think that you could say the decision processes were necessarily good or bad. but they were incredibly uneven. and some were very bad. i think the decision to invade

iraq was not a familiarly good decision necessarily. certainly the way it was implemented was war. some were great. i will defend no child left behind. the death, when he passed we i thought it was dumb. now i think it's brilliant. his decisions on stem cells and others showed a lot of skill. one thing that strikes me, president bush did better when dick cheney wasn't involved. i think you could make a case that system of the more noted failures of the bush administration happened when dick cheney and don rumsfeld short circuited the process and went to bush directly and implemented things in a different way. they have a good book out on cheney making the case. i think you can say that president bush made better decisions in things he made experience. he was a texas governor and been fairly effective. i think this was an area that he had comfort with, he negotiated

very easily with liberal democrats like ted kennedy, and i think in the end got a fairly good bill accomplished. which i think president obama is not just going to keep, but strengthen. his secretary of education, duncan, has said that repeatedly. how do we make sense of this? experience is one way, cheney's involvement is another way. another way is in terms of ideology and events. too often, academics under value the importance. neoconservatives at least in the middle ranks played a fairly substantial role in the bush administration have learned from president reagan, maybe correctly, that foreign dangers must be countered, at least at times with force and over with overwhelming force. there really is evil in the world. which i hope most of us would agree is true. the problem, i think maybe they over learned that lesson and saw force as the use of -- the thing you use first instead of the thing you use last. and i think that neoconservative

ideology explains some of the less successful policies in iraq in particular. let me back up on that. i think the bush administration is mostly going to be judged in iraq. to quote my friend, david barrett. that leads to some discussion of failure, and the political policies in iraq. that's another discussion. i think the other thing is events. 9/11 was a an incredible event. changed from the domestic policy on which i thought it might have had responsible success to foreign policy. another event that we have to look at is how easily we won in iraq. in the run up to iraq or afghanistan rather in the run up to our invasion of afghanistan, operation enduring freedom, people were saying that we would need a couple hundred thousands troops there to win. people were saying it was going to take three or four years. people said this would be

incredibly difficult. instead we went in with a light footprint and won easily. ken pollack was arguing iraq is a different country. it wouldn't work that way. i think the relative ease won in afghanistan led the administration and lots of others to over estimate how easy the iraq invasion would be. that's something that we need to think a lot about. i think something we need to think a lot about is president bush's personal characteristics. my friend and i wrote a chapter on that in the judging bush book. bush is a bright guy. he's as near as we can tell, psychologist studied this. he's clearly smart enough to be president. he's 26-32rd out of the 34 presidents depending how you look at numbers. he's clearly smart enough to be president. but he does tend to see things in black and white. especially in areas he does not understand. that did not help. he had a bald streak in decision

making. unlike his dad, which can be a bad thing. a stanley characterizes this, right back at you. you are telling me to do this, i'm going to go the other way. he's extremely loyal. loyalty is usually a good characteristic. he's a good husband and father. frankly, most politicians are not. that's not a small thing. but we can be too loyal. i think the president's loyalty to dick cheney and don rumsfeld did not serve him well. a good leader has to be ruthless, and you have to be willing to fire people who are not working out, and promote people who are even if you don't like them. and i would fault president bush for that. now moving on from some of the psychological issues. if you look at iraq, these led to forced and unforced errors. i recall invading iraq as a forced error. president bush is correct, actually the best book written

on this is the gathering storm by the -- "the threatening storm" by ken pollack, who was the top iraq guy in the '90s. it was a good bookmaking the case for invading iraq. the americans cia was pretty sure saddam had weapons of mass destruction. for logical reasons, everybody points in the things they got wrong like a curveball. we had good informants, the former iraqi intelligence chief who told us they had wmds, there were good reasons. it was the easiest way to make sense of the regime that refused to let inspectors in. you have to look at the impact of the events. when we thought iraq had disarmed in the early '90s, we found out they did not. that stunned the american intelligence community. as did other things. a normal country does not invade a nation two and a half times it's size. but saddam did in 1980. and then after eight year of

war, you do not invade kuwait. saddam did. past events led american intelligence to misunderstand much of what the regime was doing. i consider those forced errors. i don't blame the president. frankly, western intelligence mostly agreed, so did egyptian intelligence. i see that as a forced error. here's the unforced error. very bright people were advising the president, not that he listened to them, or trying to advise him. certainly people in washington were saying this in the run up. we would need a minimum of 100,000. more than twice of the numbers. we would need a very carefully thoughtful occupation strategy which donald rumsfeld did not agree with and do. we went with half of the troops that thought was necessary, no plans for how to employ the iraqi army, instead they disbanded, telling them couple hundred thousands arm people, go

home, keep your guns, there's no place in the new iraq. what did we think would happen? president acquiesced. for three years, the president failed to fundamentally rethink how we were doing the iraq war and how to change it. i think unfortunately -- it's for those sort of forced errors, things that -- unforced errors. things that president bush could have, should have, asked questions, thought about things carefully, made the right decisions that ultimately made the iraq war a fiasco. had it gone well, had we done the occupation well, i think it's quite possible that we could have democratized and that could have led to a new era ultimately domestically. it didn't happy think that president bush deserves a lot of the blame for it not happening. i'll leave it at that.

[applause] [applause] >> thank you, bob. now we have the pleasure of welcoming someone home. back to fayetteville. sunshine hillygus. she has her b.a., and then went to stanford to get a phd. she's the co-author of "the hard count: social and political challenges of the 2000 census" and co-author with todd shields, there he is again. that book won the prize for the best book in political psychology for the year it was published. from 2003 to 2009, she was the associate professor of government at harvard and the founding director of their

program in survey research. sunshine, welcome home. >> yes. thank you so much for giving me the excuse to come back to the university of arkansas. i should just point out, although you can't see it, i have a razerback necklace on. i would be happy to entertain questions not only about the presidency, but ryan's draft prospects if that's of more interest to the audience. as the nice welcome pointed out, my focus on research is on public opinion and campaigns and elections. so i'm going to focus my observations of the bush presidency in those areas. what i'd like to do is perhaps mention three myths about the bush presidency. the first myth that i want to talk about is that bush polarized the public because of his personality, traits, because of his leadership or management style. we all know that conservative

wisdom right, the latte sipping liberals could not relate to the boot wearing texas christian. and there is little doubt that bush ran a campaign saying he was going to be a uniter, rather than a divider. that's absolutely not what happened. the question is why? bush the person, or were there other processes at work. that's what i want like to focus on. i want to emphasis that i want asked not to show any reports. it was based on a number of reasons that we shouldn't blame the polarization that we observed in the public on bush the person. the first is there was a historical trend in polarization. looking back over the last several decades, we've seen it about every politician, and

every president. and so, yes, it is the case that bush is currently and although i suspect that obama is soon to be, the most polarizing president in recent history, he's very much just following a trend that we have seen started many decades back. the second than it's not just bush the person is that if we look at polarization and public opinion, over the course of bush's term in office, that it follows very consistent trend that we see under every presidency. and what this reflects is citizen learning about the man holding the office. you might be surprised to hear after a very high profile presidential campaign, there are a lot of theme don't have opinions. across the variety of different poll, you'll find about 20% of people that are not offering an

evaluation of the person that wins. over the course of the first term in office, those people come to have opinions. not only that, those democrats and republicans who initially had opinions, we know based on political psychology that as new information is learned that they tend to polarize, because those inevitable bias processes in the information that they received. and so if we look at bush, that pattern during the bush presidency and we compare it to the clinton administration and eisenhower administration, that we see a similar type of trend. to be sure, it was slightly more pronounced in the bush presidency in part because of the iraq war. what we found is that -- and sorry 9/11. 9/11 focused on the public's attention on politics that we didn't often see during the term. when we looked at things like how many people said no opinion when asked about the president's job approval, after 9/11, people formed opinions in part because they were paying a lot more attention to politics,

generally. the third reason that i would say is not just about bush the person, it's because of changes in the information and media environment that had al gore won both of the electoral college, as well as the popular vote that we would have seen a similar type of polarization, in part because of the incentives created by a new information environment. and i want to explain that a bit more. i think it has not been acknowledged enough by scholars and has had such a profound effect on governance. as well as campaigns. and that is that there is an insent iive now for presidentias candidates and all politicians to narrow cast their commune cases, their engagement with the public rather than broadcasting it. i'm sure that many of you have heard the term microtargetting. it's something that during the 2004 presidential election that the bush really perfected. again, every politician and

obama did the same thing. the ability to microtarget very narrow messages. individualize and personalize to each individual voter. reflects changes in the information environment and changes in computing and statistical power. sometimes often people don't actually realize when you register to vote that information is now after the help america vote act, collected into a statewide database. it is then passed along to the parties and the candidates. those data files contain your name, address, and in a lot of states your party registration and most states were your turn out history. if you voted in the last election and previous election and the election before that. to that information, the parties and candidates marry information from consumer data files. thousands of variables about whether you own or rent and what magazines you subscribe to, what type of car that you own. and then they do extensive

polling to figure out what you -- your type of person will be interested in in terms of the issues that you might care about. and then rather than broadcasting the messages and going to every single person and saying the same thing from one neighbor to the next, you are going to receive an individualized and personalized campaign message that is different from the person sitting next to you. it's based on the issues that you care about. and just to highlight with for instance, the consequences of this, we saw in the 2004 election that the two presidential candidates took positions on 75 different issues in the campaign. 75 different issues in direct mail. not in television advertising. we're not having a public and sustained debate on 75 different issues in the campaign. rather, people are being told what they want to hear based on the issue that we already know they care about. and so what this means is the

fragmentation of campaign dialogues means that number one that people are voting on the bases of different things; right? you are being told that the christian conservatives were being told in 2004 that the -- what was at stake in the election were moral values. at the same time, the other people were being told that tax policy, small business owners were being told that taxes were the thing of issue. it has consequences, some negative. it makes it difficult to interpret the meaning out of elections. i know a lot of you are too young to remember the 2004, those of us that can, you might remember the debate whether it was moral values. was that what the election was about? it wasn't; right? the reason was because some people were being told that was what was at stake in the election. another consequence of this type of fragmentation of campaign dialogue is that it -- we get polarization.

right? this contributes to the polarization that we're seeing. the candidates now have incentive to take positions on more issues and on different types of issues. if you are broadcasting messages to an electorate that's diverse, you are going to talk about problems, economy, education, and foreign policy. the content of narrow cast messages are wedge issues. abortion, gay marriage, social security, environment, things that candidates might not be willing to talk about in their broadcast messages. my favorite example is actually from the 2006 election, congressional race in which the michigan republicans were sending direct mail to snowmobile owners and saying that the republican candidate would be the best for snowmobile policy. again, some of you might not remember 2006. there were a lot of things on america's plate at the time. i'm not sure that snowmobile policy was the thing that most

people wanted to hear was the focus. that candidates were saying was at stake in the election. finally, i would say that the consequences of microtargetting, it takes it difficult to be successful governor. and the season is because you've made these variety of different promises to a variety of different constituencies, and then you actually have to try and pass policy. and so if we remember bush's second term, he came into office and said let's reform social security. and the -- you know, the christian conservatives were like wait a second. that's not what you said the election was about. whenever the terry schiavo conspiracy -- controversy erupted. i thought you were saying it was going to be tax policy. it makes it difficult, number one, for us to determine the

type of mandate and for someone to governor successfully. let me finish with the last two myths that stem from those observations. the first -- the second, myth number one was that bush the person was responsible for the polarization. the second that bush won in 2004 because of moral values. and as i've discussed, i think that that's absolutely not the primary reason that he won the election and todd and i have an article making that case. and finally, there was a lot made in 2004 about how bush was really catering all of his policies and all of his campaigning to the base voters. and ignoring everyone else. but the reality is in politics today, no president can win by just catering to the base. the distributions don't work out. there aren't enough just democrats or republicans to elect someone to be president. and rather, this strategy, the microtargetting strategy was

being used to try to win over persuadable voters. so when we looked, for example, at the incidence of abortion messages in direct mail, they were more likely to be sent to democrats than republicans. i think that characterization, a lot of people said rove was focused on those base voters. the reality is that bush just like every politician goes after the persuadive voters. thank you. [applause] [applause] >> thank you, sunshine. i'm sorry to be the time keeper for our speakers today, but we want to move to that part where we begin to involve you audience in the discussion. our next speaker is mitch sollenberger. he's the author of "the president shall nominate how the

president trumps executive power." his co-author is not with us today. he's on a state department speaking tour in china, vietnam, and korea. which, of course, gives mitch the ability to say that anything you disagree with the other fellow wrote. mitch? thank you. >> well, thank you for having me here. i want to switch gears a little bit and focus on presidential power. unilateral executive action. specifically as it relates to executive privilege. now president bush adopted a rather expansive view of the executive privilege. and you took a maximum advantage of circumstances during the presidency to increase the presidency power. largely it was based on the underlining theory of executive. everyone is a unitary exec tiff. we don't have plural, council running the branch, unitary executive ump of it is that all

executive authority ultimately rests with the president. the second issue is that it's a matter of degree. how much power does the president have or how much authority does the president have to exert? and increasingly, presidents have been exercising more and more power vis-a-vis their predecessor. executive privilege is the concept that certain information, executive branch is protected from disclosure to congress, the press, and ultimately, the public. executive privilege is constitutional. it's grounded to article two. it comes from the supreme court united states versus mix son, dealing with watergate, you know, the aftermath. bush's goal in the aggressive

use of executive privilege was to take back presidential power. what his administration saw was president's post nixon presidents have pseudod power either to congress or they just allowed the presidential power to lapse. they saw that as a failing of post nixon presidents. although there are a number of high profile case that is i could discuss, two in particular that are representative of bush's theory of the president si and his use of executive privilege. they are epa executive and environmental protection agency privilege case and also one dealing with u.s. attorney firings. both happened at the latter stages of his administration. so the first dealt with bush's claim of executive privilege regarding documents to deny the state of california the

authorization to regulate greenhouse gas emotions of the motor vehicles. this decision went well beyond the traditional confines of executive privilege. traditionally, executive privilege, at least at its height can be claimed on the presidential function. so like if a president is exercising his pardon power. or the power to nominate. that's grounded in the constitution. what bush was doing here, he was claiming executive privilege on an agency decision that was not grounded in the constitution, but in law. specifically the clean air act. it was a decision not made by the president or legally could be made by the president. it could only be made by the environmental protection agency administrator. so it was a fally view of law as it relates to the executive

privilege. it's one example of what bush did, even though he interpreted the law and constitution in a way that was somewhere misguyses, it was ultimately a success story. it happens at the end of the administration. he's able to run out the clock. so congress is -- they are, you know, one particular committee, house committee that was run, is subpoenaing the documents and saying, you know, you got to turn it over. we're carrying out the function. and eventually, just the clock stops. he leaves office and he's able to expand. the second case has to do with the firings. this began right after the second term victory.

the bush administration, particularly the department of justice did an comprehensive over view of all of the attorneys in the united states. eventually, it was a two year study that decided to remove studies. reports came out in the senate and house judiciary decided to launch investigation because there was questions of misconduct over how the process was run, but also the basises of the decisions. were they fired because they were executinging -- or prosecug a case that the bush administration didn't want? so when these investigations started, it -- you know, this is the thing about commodity and interbranch exchanges. congress asked for documents, usually the executive branch gives them to them. here they said no. they stone walled. both committee the house and senate decided to

issuesubpoenas. the bush administration decided to claim executive privileges. things came ahead and they decided to issue a contempt citation. while this is going on, the department of justice issued a memo, legal memo, and this memo claimed that form -- current and former presidential aides have absolute community from compelled congressional testimony. i mean this is an absolutely remarkable statement to be made by any president. and it's one that was unprecedented. it has no bases in the law, and no basis in history. you know, no president has compelled congressional testimony.

they are claiming this. the house of representatives decides to hold. by law, it has to be enforced. the same way it occurs, the doj and white house say we are not enforces. what is is the house left to do? well, they have to empower their lawyer to go to the federal court into the d.c. court system to get a judicial order to enforce the contempt. exactly what they do. and the d.c. district court judge in the case ultimately issues opinion that basically rejects the theory of absolute immunity. say there's no such thing. no such thing in law, no such thing in history, just it's baseless. however, the bush administration and by the time this is going on, it's 2008. the administration is just winding out the clock.

late 2008 and the bush administration decided to appeal the case to the circuit court. circuit court issues a stay and they issue a brief of opinion saying look this is all moot. bush is leaving office, there's going to be a new president at the start of the year, there's going to be a new congress, since there's going to be new political branches, let them work out a compromise. ultimately in the epa case and the u.s. attorney firing case, in practice, bush was able to expand executive power. or unilateral executive power. however, again, the history and law was not on its side. now although bush's claims were inherently flawed and ligly contributed to a downgrading of this constitutional privilege, there's a couple of impacts that his time in office will have on executive privilege and the

successors. because bush's actions will become, this is currently the case under president obama. politically difficult for future presidents to claim executive privilege. at least out right claim the privilege. so far, president obama has not made a claim as executive privilege, a formalized claim as executive privilege. however, he has refused to allow top level white house policy advisors to testify before congress. and in addition, obama has been uncooperative in a senate committee investigation dealing with the foot foot -- fort hood shooting. so there's resistance even in a president, current president that claimed transparency to fully cooperate with congress. remember when obama's white house council said, we don't want to diminish presidential power. and this was, you know, a

remarkable claim from a president who said he was going to be open to congress, he was going to do things differently than bush. but this pattern fits with my assessment that bush made executive privilege claims, politically inacceptable in the short term, so the president -- the pushback on congressional investigations are going to go under ground. so in the end, it's two terms -- and it's too soon to determine bush's legacy, however, bush's left presidency power in a stronger position vis-a-vis the congress than what he found it. thank you. [applause] [applause] >> thank you, mitch. we're going to hear one more formal presentation before going to questions and discussion. at that point everyone on the panel will engage the questions. the last speaker is steve

schier, he has wrote on the presidency and various presidents, and he asked to be last assuring -- see, he's laughing already -- assuring me in eight to ten minutes, he could wrap it all up and provide a satisfying conclusion to what we've done. okay. give us some satisfaction. >> oh my. oh my. [laughter] >> well, i've been sandbagged. i'd like to thank you for having me to arkansas. i flew through snowstorm in minneapolis to get here. now i'm besieged by thunderstorms. i hope it's back to minnesota, and because they have been very helpful to me in the last couple of days. one of my book projects involves figures out how the american political system was dysfunctional. they have given me both loads of evidence. and i'm -- alex just this morning sprung one on me with ideological war machines. i can work than. what an image. right, sunshine in her comments

athought was very helpful in describing the relationship between microtargetting and governance. something i hadn't fully developed in my mind. i think it's important. mitch's comments about the growth of presidential power central to what i want to talk about today. i want to start with a quote from bert. because bert had a very good comment the first night that we met. and it's sort of the premise for my concluding remarks here today. bert said the other night that president's officer come in wanting big change. as he said, the continuing spaces is a morage. to get a new a, you need a deal. it's difficult for presidents to do this. i would simply recall to you

that i think it was in the second debate with john mccain that barack obama was asked you want to do all of the things, reform health care, completely reconfigure foreign policy, you want to do a whole bunch of other things, can you do this all at once. he said yes i can do this all at once. which is also sort of what george bush was saying and also i think bill clinton was saying in 1993. the fact is presidents cannot do it all at once, but they often try to do it all at once. and i guess what i'd like to do to illustrate the difficulties they have in trying to do it all at once is to talk about some research i've done on presidential, political capital. that's a phrase you've heard before. george w. bush in his first press conference says i have earned political capital, i plan to spend it. i'll briefly demean define it here as popular support for the president and support for the

president in congress. there's more too it. those are things that i want to emphasis. some of it i have examined through the presidential political capital since president roosevelt in 1937. and having a lot of political capital is necessary if you are going to bring about big change on the continuous basis. you need a lot of political capital. what i've discovered is president's, particularly since 1965, having a shortage of political capital. lower levels than before 1965, and also very variable levels than 1965. to briefly summarize, presidents compared to those from 1930s to 1965 have made fewer partisans voting support in congress, less apreyful of the party, and have usually encountered an increasingly adverse policy mood as they

govern. specifically, average problem approval has dropped, net job approval, represident-electing greater polarization, which has been discussed. the view in the public is lower and has become more volatile across years, terms, and president -- presidencies. voting support for presidents in congress is lower and more variable and the number in house and senate has fallen and become more volatile. presidents have been seeking to accomplish a lot with political capital that is in accomplished supply and often more variable than it was before if if you are using fdr has your model, i got news for you. your world has changed. right, the world has changed since 1965. and i think many presidents discover that to chagrin too slowly and it gets them into trouble. specifically because i think when president's discover their

political capital shrinking, they fall into what i call the presidential power trap. what is the presidential power trap? while the political capital has been shh -- shrinking, the powers have been increasing and presidents have been seeking to increase the powers. i don't think there's a coin -- coincidental relationship. it leads you to operate unilaterally when you can with power. the problem, and here's the real risk for presidents, i think we've heard of this before, over reaching, over confidence, and it often reduces disasters, political results for presidents. specifically, let me just read a little bit to elaborate. the presidential power trap. maintaining political capital is hard and frustrating work. but in seeks to maintain it, presidents encounter widespread

constraints pushed back from congress, and the interest groups, et cetera. yet the modern presidencies grants many powers, and presidents have been grabbing more with executive privilege. i give you a list, appoints, demands of troops, executive orders, signing statements, executive privilege, white house czars, all of these things have been developing in the last several decades. i think in reflection of the political problems presidents have faced. the basic calculations that i think becomes this for many presidents. look, i've lost my political capital, i guess my power to persuade. i'm going to order things and claim more powers where i can. why not use the power where you have it? here's the trap. when you use those powers, you can destroy further your political capital. richard nixon's presidency is

the signal example of this, i would argue. where his political capital shrank and his assertions of formal power further endangered him and actually ended his president sir. i think jimmy carter took his political capital for granted. by the time it was gone, he paid a price in 2000 -- 1980. reagan gradually relied on more executive power and unilateral actions as political capital problems grew. and i think it's partially explained by that. george herbert walker bush exerted war powers but not in domestic capital. his popularly dropped down by the 30s by the time he failed to get re-elected. i think bill clinton faced a political capital shortage. he never won 50% of the vote. and certainly later in his term found his powers formerly under attack by congress. bush's use of war powers that i

would argue in iraq really helped to destroy a lot of his political capital and produced a very difficult second term. so -- and i think just to talk just briefly about bush in this regard, several traits that the panelist came up with over the last couple of days that i think contributed to bush's tendency to burn up his capital and assert his power, short agenda, absence of follow through, and big ambition. we sort of agreed on those traits. you put that in this situation, and you have someone who is going to be pushing ahead and asserting powers and in a way that burns up political capital. to me this is the central political problem barack obama faces. his political capital has already shrunk, congressional support is down, job approval in the mid 30s. situation like that, let's assert power here.

i don't have the capital to persuade people, i'm going to have to do some unilateral power assertions. now i would just leave you with a few questions about this. when does the cycle end? if each president starts pushing for more power. at what point does the governmental system become at the national level presidential? and i don't think that -- i think hamilton will be okay with that. i know james madison wouldn't have been okay with that. it's certainly not something foreseen by any of the founders. i think even hamilton and his wildest fantasies couldn't have enjoyed this this much. can we bring an end where out of political frustration presidents claim more power and produce more difficulties for themselves politically and also i think produce some unbalance in the national political system. the constitutional implications of this are very large as mitch was indicating with the unitary

presidency. i hope you will ask some questions about this and anything else that other people have brought up in the panel. it's been a wonderful experience for me. and we look forward to your questions. [applause] [applause] >> thank you, steve. i clearly am satisfied. for a while at least. it's your turn. we welcome your questions, please come to the microphones. with questions or request to discuss something the panel may not have yet put on the table. don't be shy. please. >> hello, i'm in the national relations major. :

would you explain why we are in that position? thank you very much. >> perhaps, just jump in whenever you want to. perhaps i should go first on that second question. on iraq, why did canada not support the united states in its

decision to invade iraq in 2003? it was a very controversial decision in canada. a lot of people were very worried about whether we were doing the right thing by saying no thanks, but in the end it comes down to a fairly simple explanation. namely, you remember perhaps that colin powell and tony blair were very adamant about advising president lish that if he was to consider military action he should do so with a clear united nations security counsel resolution. that live the way was an example when he listened carefully to powell and rice and decided to indeed take the route of going through the united nations, which cheney did not agree with. but, at the end, most other

countries in the world believed that the united u.n. security council resolution 1441 required one more step before military action was possible. so when the bush administration felt to get the vote on the next step and decided to go ahead with the coalition without the u.n. security council resolution, canada essentially said if the u.n. is not part of the road, then we are not on the road. mind you, meanwhile, we had a lot of, well a fair amount of canadians helping underneath the radar. so, there was politically -- it was politically impossible for us to contribute openly but in fact militarily, we were there.

now you notice that the next government after the liberals, the conservative government with steven harper, they realized how sensitive this was because for a long time, the people in the pentagon couldn't pick up the phone when we called and that is literally true. i talked to people in the pentagon who told me that this is what happened. so we were quite nervous because we were calling them all the time about stuff. you know, sorry, call display is on. [laughter] so our conservative government in 2006, they said we have to fix this image so we basically rebuilt our army since 2006 and we have been serving in afghanistan, and there we have whatever doubts they were in the american mind, think we have compensated for it by serving beside you and continue to do so in afghanistan.

>> would others on the panel like to comment? >> i thought the arab-israeli question was a very good one and i thought one of the things that we see in president lush psychologically, he does have a tendency towards -- and he is a very bright guy. never did quite as well in school as his intelligence would suggest that i think he does have a problem with attention sometimes. i thought the road roadmap announced shortly before the invasion of iraq, i think partly for reasons of international politics but i think it was a genuinely meant attempt to bring these together. i think it was a good plan. i think it needed a lot of american effort, a lot of american energy from the president on down, a lot of follow-through which the administration did not provide and i think that is one of those examples with maybe the president coming up with a decent plan with others but not really bothering to implement it.

>> well there is also you know the fact that i guess that 800-pound gorilla in the room. there is a quite powerful israeli lobby as well. bush's father came into contact with that. barack obama has come into contact with that. i think it is particularly important for republicans to pick up that segment of the population, the jewish population in particular but also the evangelical christian population that is deeply deeply committed to israel and to the status quo. >> i'm not sure the israeli lobby --. >> if i could had something to the discussion. i think that some of the panelists here have noted there is a lack of deliberation in many stages in the bush administration and i think that

carried across also an international spirit, so there was not a lot of coordination with the either allies or enemies in the islamic world as evidenced by just not taking into account some of the historical context in places like pakistan and afghanistan when making decisions about foreign-policy. that has also been a problem not just for the administration but going forward for the american military establishment and the political system as well. >> other questions? >> thank you for doing this discussion today. we really appreciate it. my question is that would you agree necessarily that during bush's presidency american

policy was characterized by a desire for the u.s. to take on the duties of what someone would call a world hegemony. they have kind of taken a backseat concerning libya and other issues. with that being said you think this trend will continue and also will that be good or bad? i do not buy the idea that george w. bush was trying to establish world hegemony at all or getting oil from iraq nor settling the family family vendetta. all those explanations don't cut it. there were some people in the administration that had ambitions about world hegemony but i don't think they really carried today with george w.

bush. my concern is not america's strength that america's weakness. i think america, relative american weakness relative to the rivals out there and the challenges out there and your economic resources and your fiscal management, weakness of the united states is united states is a much greater challenge and danger to international relations than too much strength. i think president obama showed great restraint in libya because if you think about what steve has said and mitch have said about how presidents are tempted to use these extra little bit of extra political powers here, think of obama. he has faced a tremendous amount of criticism over health care and is under a lot of stress in terms of the deficit and so on so it would have been tempting for you to do something in libya to change the agenda anti-he showed a lot of restraint. i think that is good so far.

the only vulnerability though is most of the world, including us are wondering what does he really believe? what did he stand for? what is the bottom line for him? how does he see american security? what does he think the threats are? so we are happy with his restraint. we are happy with his careful deliberative approach that we do hope there is a bottom-line there somewhere. >> i think if i can jump in, i think that defense secretary gates made it clear that america's involved in two wars now and if there is a third one in the defense secretary will resign amongst other unpleasant things that may happen. he will fairly soon. i think one of the great failings of the administration and again i think this is sort of the adhd quality in saying president bush likes to style himself through harry truman in some respects as someone who at

the time people thought was a bad president 40 years later looks a lot better. something harry truman did at the onset of the cold war was come together with deviously isolationist republicans and make a very coherent case with the soviet union as a serious long-term global threat. and when you face that sort of 10, 15 or 20 year strategic threat you can't face up with one political party. you really have to have something of a bipartisan consensus. i think after 9/11, there was a moment when president bush could have done that with the democratic party. i think many of the democratic leaders were not inclined to anyway within their face but i think had he been able to do that in developed the sort of 20 year strategic foreign-policy consensus that was needed, our role in the world was much more secure and our enemies and allies had a better sense of what to expect and our own military and state department would have a better sense of what resources they need and how

they should make long-term plans. and i think that was, think that was a great failure. >> many issues of which the party disagrees, there is probably also this one. that is, the extent to which the u.s. should be unilaterally assertive or multilaterally involved with the world, and i think george w. bush reflected the assertive side of that and i think particularly true when dick cheney was involved in decisions. i don't think there is any doubt as to where cheney stood. all of this is also consistent with the notion that being a decider is equal to being highly assertive in terms of the american definition of its involvement in world politics. now having said that, 9/11 turns out to be an absolutely critical event i think because bush, and

if you recall, came -- campaigned and came into office with actually a rather low profile of what the united states should be doing abroad, much lower than the clinton presidency had. obama on the other hand i think reflects the democratic party's leadership view, which is you have to pick your fights very carefully. when you do you want to bring allies to the table and make sure you strengthen the coalition, and at this point, we were as bob has just mentioned, i think very very overcommitted on both of military bases and a budgetary basis. so, obama has been conscious, careful and gets of course the question still stands, which is okay, what if the existing

policy in libya fails? what do we do next? and what we are trying to do is to get the main nato powers the main european nato powers to step up and you know the british are also you know, have budget problems and they are going to be spending a lot less on their military as well. so here we are. >> i think i also want to add that a lot of the differences we see apparent between obama and bush as far as foreign policy is concerned are actually largely rhetorical. no matter what we say it is our policy in the world, the u.s. as the hegemonic power in the global system and that is not likely to change for another 100 years at least. for example the operations in libya, a lot was made of british and french participation. we come to find out a few hours after it all began that 95% of

the missiles had been fired at the u.s. and not the allies. so i think it is important to understand that. the presidential declarations are not always reflective of the actual magnitude of u.s. presence in a type of environment. >> i think libya is a good example of some of the broader themes that i was mentioning. the president goes into libya militarily without consulting congress in advance, unlike what other presidents had done, in at least notifying the leadership as to where power so that is a power assertion and power projection. congress does not rally uniformly to the president side. there is big partisan division about that. the public does not rally to the president side so it is a power assertion with immediate political costs and that is my syndrome. [laughter] >> i think also to piggyback on what dr. maranto said with obama there is a clearly different view of the world and if we look

at his inauguration speech, he does acknowledge that the large portion of the world has been exploited by colonial behavior, not only in europe but in america and i think we are starting to see that in his foreign-policy particularly in this time of democratization particularly in egypt and libya. so i think we are starting to see that shift in there is going to be pushed back. it totally goes against the grain of what we have seen in american foreign-policy. >> i want to par with disagree. i think with the bush tragedy jacob waltz. wonderful book, and he argues there is six different bush foreign policies to look at. we came in and we are not nation building and we have to be modest elsewhere. there is the after 9/11 strike any enemy wherever. there was the democracy building one and i'm missing one or two. in the last two years there was one of relative modesty again and let's be very careful and incremental. and away you could argue that the president obama's foreign

policies formed the continuation of his last two years of the bush foreign policy including bob gates in charge says secretary defense. >> the phases are different. >> tying in with rob said about what alex said early about how bush's processes seem to vary and his policies are also seen to various foreign-policy. we often have a stereotype that he was a big general laterals cowboy was going to blow up the world. that is beguiling to some but actually what is happening is six different foreign policies and burying policy processes. more so probably than any recent president and we are still trying to figure out why. [laughter] >> i want to echo steve's point about the constitution and law. we are talking about unilateral presidential power. i mean bush went into iraq with

an authorization to use military force. obama bombs in libya without the consent of congress, without consulting congress and those few days afterwards he sent a letter to congress where he mentions the war powers resolution but he doesn't invoke it are. in fact there's only been one president since the war powers resolution was passed in the early 1970s that didn't and that was actually after the military action in question. so no president has actually invoked the wave the war powers resolution was supposed to legitimately be exercised and it is surprising that you have the president and obama who said during the campaign that he would consult with congress on in offensive military action and libya is one. you are bombing military infrastructure. it is clearly -- a clearly calls for at least lisa consultation with congress as required by the war powers resolution is not an

authorization for use of force that is required by the constitution and neither of those were done by obama. >> alexander -- let me play alexander hamilton here for a moment. this is an emergency situation. deliberation is going to mean defeat basically. and not that i am justifying this constitutionally, but this is a dilemma that the president's face. are they going to act in a circumstance and to not act means he will in fact have been defeated. >> was this really an emergency situation? congress went on recess and obama starts bombing. i mean he had two weeks where civilians were being slaughtered. the there were two weeks before the civilians being slaughtered. to me it is not an emergency circumstance and even any benefit was he had ample time, two weeks to consult not only the heads of the house in the senate but all but all members of congress and to seek

congressional authorization. i mean this isn't as if we are being attacked. libya in terms of national interest it is a stretch to say that what is going on in libya -- and i'm not saying civilian casualties aren't something we should not be concerned with what it is not in our national interest to necessarily be the worlds policeman and it doesn't really serve the constitution to not consult congress and not seek congressional authorization. i mean it's the height of presidential power whether you do what we are talking about with the war power. executive privilege, mostly it is a domestic issue but war power is something entirely different. >> just to make one comment on that and then we can let it go. obama was spending a good bit of time actually with nato trying to get their forces to step up so the u.s. role could presumably somewhat more in the shadows or the background. >> i actually don't have a problem with this type of decision-making but i wish it

was in the service as some broader agreed-upon bipartisan doctrine. >> bipartisan doctrines require a mitigation of polarization and that is something that predates bush and his ongoing. obama is not a less polarizing president than bush. this may be the new normal and so if you want a bipartisan foreign-policy doctrine you probably have to go back to 1950. >> i want to thank all of you for coming to our campus but i have a question that is more domestic policy rated. we have heard a lot about russia's decision-making process which i think is great insight from all of you, but can we talk about katrina and can we talk -- i would love to hear some insight from the experts about the decision-making process they are. i don't think it is to subsay it is a failure and is a louisiana resident i'm haunted by it still

in i would love to hear your insights in your comments on what went wrong there and how is that a new kind of function of the presidency to deal with natural disaster in that capacity that becomes racial, economic and political? >> i am glad that someone brought it up. i was going to interject because i'm a look at domestic policy we have to talk about katrina and even issue immigration because those two issues deal directly with the issue of citizen rights. and so when we look at hurricane katrina and the disaster and the failure to govern -- the government to respond effectively what we are seeing is exactly what happened in the earlier discussions. we can see it in bush's policies particularly his failure to form a cohesive civil rights agenda and actually in his somewhat change what he viewed as a civil rights particularly in interject in the kinds initiatives and

actually reversing some of the borders that had been directed towards better agencies about how to fund federally funded contracts. with hurricane katrina was interesting, when they look at 9/11 bush expanded his power when it comes to national disasters or part steer caylee 9/11 with the development of homeland security. but one may look at the timeline of what happened with katrina there is a failure. i think one to understand the fight of persons and what i called marginalize and we have still failed to address those persons within the country and we saw those marginalized and how their needs were much more larger than hurricanes that hit florida and other parts of the country. and one is the institutional factors far as how do we respond to persons that need government assistance the most? two, there's also the issue of cronyism. they were persons who were in charge weren't not affect the

leaders. fema had already been a weakened weakened institution anyway so the issue of the mad art existed but to have a catastrophe such as katrina really shows how an effective ad agency was. and so we do see that the failure does reflect this bubble that we have talked about in the last few days particularly in who president bush spoke to, the advisers he did not talk to, his understanding of the issues and there does seem to be, looking at some of the documentation about when he received information and how he responded that did seem to be a perception that he did not have an interest, that he didn't have understanding even when he was asking certain questions particularly about the levees. his response was no one knew the levees would break. he did know. he was informed that they would break. they were informed several days before the hurricane that the levy could possibly beat reach. there again it goes to the

discussion about his decision-making process and i'm not going to get into the psychological discussion about him. and he mentioned adhd but i'm not going to go there. i think there's an issue of his -- but the failure to address the institutional factors that contribute to these population that needs more in the situation of a natural disaster. >> i want to add, think this was an unprecedented disaster in the and the government bureaucracies generally didn't do well. i would also add setting up his apartment of homeland security great and we can fema and the year before hurricane katrina michael brown the fema director ask a wrote a series of memos talking about how it would make the agency less effective when or if a big storm came and michael brown was looking for another job when katrina hit. he thought that yeah he thought it wasn't going to work and he turned out to be right. michael chernoff was admittedly did a very good job but he was

not effective i thought an effective leader at the department of homeland security and yet bush kept them on as a matter of loyalty which is disturbing. i would also add that kathleen blanco who wasn't really terribly cooperative with the federal response despite being pushed on this deserves part of the blame. so i think some of it is the immensity of the disaster and some of it is that there is a lot of blame to go around in terms of incompetent crisis decision on the part of bush and others. >> in the short-term managing the crisis was not well done. actually 2000, early 2005 was a bad year for karl rove because they preferred to try and reform social security instead of immigration and in his memoir he says you know i am sorry. we should not have done that. we should've should have tried immigration reform first and then tried to worry about restructuring social security so that was no region than it was rove who suggested we don't need the land. just took out the window. of course that became a lasting

image, looking out the window. >> the consequences of katrina on public opinion were quite severe so if we 2.2 the things that by the end of bush's term in office, and really kind of drove democrats and republicans to extremes. one was the iraq war, which was much more gradual over the course of office then katrina. >> i think you can say the iraq war cost -- over to nick years and katrina cost that into a an ad today's. >> and didn't come back. >> if i could respond to the general question about policy. furs quickly with katrina, it is certainly the case that here was the absence again of bush's what is. what if this could happen and what effect it happen? but it is also a function as bob mentions of institutional issues and reorganization issues and the fact is that in the creation

of the department of homeland security, fema's traditional roles got downplayed so they weren't in much of a position to address those. furthermore, there was a lot of and again i agree with the notion there is a lot of blame to go around. all the locals and the governor of louisiana, the mayor of new orleans, weren't adequately prepared either so there was a compounded mess and i think it would be fair to say and i don't think it was exclusively bushes fault. he suffered a lot for it. he did have some role to play in the failure to respond accurately. >> let's add the army corps of engineers to building the levee system decades ago. >> i want to point to two particular problems that we haven't really addressed. one which resulted in the financial meltdown in 2008, with which we are still living and again i want to emphasize that

is not, also not exclusively bushes mess. we did nothing to alleviate it. it was in part the mythology that if we don't regulate financial institutions they will do everything right anyway. that was a big big mistake. it is being only partially addressed, much more severely addressed elsewhere then it is here in the united states, and that goes back certainly to the asean days of the clinton administration. but it was continued by the bush administration. the second thing is the fiscal irresponsibility of the bush administration. they spent a lot of stuff on the war in iraq, afghanistan. these were not cheap.

the prescription section of medicare. a lot of spending commitments with no revenue coming in and no plans to bring the revenue in. the big tax cuts are kind of interesting to say it now, the big tax cuts are justified on the grounds that we were at a very prosperous economic climate. the money ought to go back to the people and went back disproportionately to the very wealthy and now the argument is we are in a recession so we can't -- and they have course sat there for two more years. they were passed only on a temporary basis on exactly the same grounds that obama got the health care affordable, whatever it is, patient act -- i can never remember the full title, which was to bypass the usual processes through reconciliation

requiring only majorities. that continues frankly to be the basis of the fiscal mess we are and which is it is not just too much spending. that is part of the equation but it is also too little revenue. we are the lowest level of revenue intake and about 60 years. dad is a big problem and that is the lead me not exclusively obama's fault of any stretch of imagination. >> i want to add into things. that is policymakers always learn from history and something that they failure to win re-election of george herbert walker bush is never raise taxes. i think unfortunately. we are an aging society and as the baby boomers like some of us appear aging we are working less and starting fewer businesses and requiring more in terms of medicare, medicaid and social is 30 etc.. >> so we are counting on you.

>> make lots of money. [laughter] that is their underlying fiscal dilemma and it is the same as in japan and europe and our policy members of either party have done a terrible job of facing up to it. >> my name is christian lemberg and i actually have a question. you preempted what i was going to ask about the economy. that is on the minds of many americans today. i guess specifically in regards to the decision-making process behind the bailout and maybe intervening in the collapse of lehman brothers. i guess its overall economic policy from his whole presidency and how you think history will judge that? >> why don't i start off with it? yeah, okay you are right. the decision not to intervene in lehman brothers collapse might have been a crucial one in generating or speeding up the

financial collapse. but it was you know, i think the ongoing conventional wisdom that one shouldn't do that because you know that is what markets are there to do. so it wasn't done and of course the effect was to spread panic a sickly among the investment houses of the banks and everybody was holding onto whatever money they had and not trusting any other financial institution. so in the end that probably was a mistake. may be an unavoidable mistake given you know, the general take on what ought to be done. the bailouts, you know there has been a lot made about them politically but i would like you to consider first of all that the proposal, the initial proposal to do the bailouts came from the treasury secretary in the bush administration, hank

paulson. it would have been catastrophic. i don't think there is any other word to use if there had not been bailouts of the financial institutions. one could argue about gm and chrysler although i would say that was really important too. if the argument is you don't do tax cuts during a recession, you also don't to -- you also don't fail to rescue rest global industries during a recession of this sort which would have just deepen further the recession. so on that, both administrations, the bush administration and the obama administration have their hands in it. they both did the right thing in my estimation. and we should be grateful that they did. >> let me just talk about the kind of electoral consequences because i think there are a lot of people who assume that bush

essentially made it impossible for john mccain to win the election because of the economic collapse. in fact it is not the case if you look at the dynamics of public opinion during the campaign. people were already really settled on candidates. they had already really settled on obama in large part to visit the state of the economy prior to the actual economic collapse, so i think that in terms of the criticism that bush has hurt particularly from tea party types is that he had made obama the winner on the basis of these actions during the campaign. there is not any empirical evidence. >> i want to jump in with two thoughts. one is not failing of lehman brothers probably was a mistake in hindsight that there is a serious moral hazard in if you are too big to fail they will

bail you out. we are going to get much less responsible behavior on the part of traders and that i find very disturbing. the second i find a lot of fun to watch, when the bush administration was doing bailouts, democrats were properly appalled and capitalism and now with the obama administration is doing the same bill as with essentially the same leaders and republicans are appalled at this capitalism. i am enjoying watching all that have been. >> that brings up polarization again. one of the things we have to worry about with the financial reform is it hasn't really diversified or deconcentration the accumulation of financial power. that still exists and we still have a whole bunch that are too big to fail so that situation is not been sharp surely altered. weather could be is beyond my pay grade. i can't really get into that but the broader problem of polarization that bob rings up

is particularly important to going forward. we are facing some pretty momentous decisions this year about the debt limit and about a budget solution for either the short term or for the long-term. and, i think many people, myself included with probably the most effective and perhaps the only likely solution is bipartisan yet we have it locking system with partisan polarization and i would not design a system like this to solve a problem. [laughter] >> just to follow-up on what steve is saying, we have to remember the sub -- subprime mortgage crisis that started all this and i would agree it needs a bipartisan environment in which you can make bread manic decisions because if you think about it, here is the united states. it is one of the worlds biggest examples of capitalism but in the mortgage market, it was a very poor example.

here you had fannie and freddie, so you basically had the federal government behind people making very bad mortgage decisions. in canada for example where we have a very similar housing market, the banks didn't have such a big government. they were responsible for the risks they took on mortgages, so they didn't want to take the risks you took. you have got to run capitalism with a much more pragmatic form of government. >> good afternoon. my name is stefan and i'm international -- at the university of arkansas studying political science and international relations. i would like to thank you for coming. is truly been a privilege and honor for me to sit here and listen to you. my questions will be centered around by merrily elections and the presidency, more specifically to dr. moens,

dr. sollenberger and dr. hillygus. i particularly enjoyed their presentations on polarization of elections and the increase in executive power and also touching on the political capital which you all mostly spoke about. my question is, how do you think these issues will affect the next presidential election of 2012 which will be starting in november? i drove us to relevance because i think this is something that is going on now and i just want to find out from you, how do you think the polarization will influence the next presidential candidates and president obama going into his second term and i would like to get your perspective on how do you think that executive power will increase in the next presidency and if that would be a negative thing? and finally, concerning capital, what remedy do you think can be

brought forward? if that is not something that is working in a democracy right now, how do you think it would be a solution to a president using their political capital to be more effective by the president? thank you. >> i can pick up on elections first and let me just say we could spend hours talking about the next election and i'm sure many of us will. and at the end of the day, the big question mark is going to be the state of the economy and kind of what are the indicators over the course of the next year and generally speaking if we look back at history, this pattern of polarization that i mentioned that occurs within the course of a president's term also tends to accompany an increase in combatants he and dan is so incumbents teen -- tend to be reelected.

it really is an exception when a president does not win re-election. there are a number of advantages running as an incumbent, and in those cases, where you don't have an incumbent winning, you know that is when we look to kind of extraordinary events like a failed economy, like a failed war effort. and so there are these uncertainties that certainly make it you know, uncertainty about the outcome even though on average i would put my money on re-election. >> let me say something. obama is an extremely interesting incumbent. we can sum up polarization. when we look at 2008, it was one of the most diverse, actually

the most diverse and if we look at it in ohio and north carolina he won because he had to increase a three and a percent african-american voters so how do you get those voters to turn out when there's a sense he is ignored and particularly the fact that african-americans have had an unemployment rate ranging in the 16 to 20% since the recession? then you have the bat lashed that says he may address racial issues. hardy then maintain white voters who are fearful of him addressing racial issues but not just racial issues but issues of poverty. he is going to have to walk a very fine line again and still try to increase immobilize that base that is still looking for him to give them something of substance. >> i want to pick up on that point. a former student of mine ran the iowa caucuses for obama in 2008 and washington program students in d.c. last year. the first thing he said is that

will never happen. it will never happen again. it was unique in my experience as a consultant. there is no way we will get the sort of enthusiasm we had in 2008. ante base that on the fact that his research permit had in doing a lot of focus groups with young people. what these young people were reporting to his associates were hey we voted, deal with it. we are done. we voted and that is all done and we are moving on to the next do things. we are not committed and we are not going to get vocalized for issues. i think the obama campaign understands that and i think they understand it is not going to be as easy a race as it was in 2008. the other thing i want to mention is remembering back to 1980, i knew democrats who crossed over in the wisconsin primary to vote for ronald reagan because they were sure he would be such a weak candidate in the general election but that was who they wanted. we just don't know what this field is going. we have sense of what it is

going to look like a good quality candidates but we won't know that until the fall. that is a huge imponderables which makes estimating outcomes very precarious at this point. >> if i may touch on the implications of unilateral presidential action and the constitutional republic, the ultimate implications of presidents increasing unilateral executive action is 535 representatives don't matter on a lot of things in governance. you know when presidents can block oversight, congressional oversight and when presidents can block information sharing on public policy making, when presidents can make public all a seed and implement public wolesi in the white house and executive office of the president, that really speaks to profound implications of our republic. and what what we were debating earlier about libya and going to war without authorization or consulting congress. you know and obviously that is

with obama but with bush we haven't even talked about the war on terrorism. right after 9/11, bush sets of military commissions on his own. bush claims that habeas corpus doesn't apply in gitmo. i mean these are profound implications for a constitutional republic and there is this new book on presidential power called -- and that is basically what the indications are, the constitution and laws. >> let me jump in. i am part of the department of education reform so i'm fairly abscess with education and i think we educators has something to answer for because we have tended to encourage or at least not stop the mindset when we deify her demonize president so we elect someone like rocco bomb and we expect too much. in some ways we expected too much from bush. it would be healthier if the american people had a more

realistic understanding of what they can and can't do and people in it to operate who operate under very uncertain information the problems that they have this leader's. >> that doesn't sound like much of a re-election. [laughter] >> but i'm not running for re-election either. >> the 2012 election -- math. >> i'm sorry. >> ours is going to say that 2012 election is going to be a bit of a struggle for obama. the democrats will probably gain some seats in the house, but probably not take the majority back. i think the republicans have at least a 50/50 shot at taking the senate just simply because there are twice as many democrats as republicans and they are often more vulnerable seats than the republicans are. the polarization keep in mind has a lot more to do with the activist than the people who know more about politics than with mass public in general.

but, that leads to a different kind of question. and sunshine is absolutely right that the elections can hinge a lot on the economy. .. >> we have in the united states because of complexity of our system an immense difference of

what people understand people in washington can do and what they can't actually do. >> yeah. >> and what's actually going on. that's one of the complications of our political system. it's a very con convoluted system to understand and to make people accountable. >> thank you, burt. you had the first word and the last. [laughter] you have some sense on this as the difficulty and complexity of the issues. we've been talking about for three days now, and this discussion will continue, and timely result in a book. let me end with a request and an invitation. the invitation goes like this -- at some point in the future come back for act iii. we can't tell you one where that will be, but it will be called the institute blair center study

of the obama presidency. my request is you join me in thanking the panel for what they've done today. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

>> host: today finishing up the series on medicare. monday we focused on an overview and history of the medicare program and discussed on to discuss medicare advantage. prescription drugs we talked about yesterday, and today the fiscal challenges of medicare, and at the table to tell us all we need to know is brian, a medical doctor, and a health policy professor at george washington university here in the district. he's a former democratic staffer on the ways and means committee back in the 80s and early 1990s. what is the state of the medicare's finances? how is the program doing right now? >> guest: well, the overall program is health care costs in the nation as a whole, and so

like private health insurance and the rest of the system, medicare costs continue to increase more rapidly than the economy as a hole. on the other hand, compared to private health insurance, medicare costs are growing less rapidly than private health insurance. >> host: what makes the cost of medicare grow. give us some examples. >> guest: what happens in health care is three almosts. you got price, quantity, and intensity of care. intensity is new services from biomedical research. what we know is the majority of the increase in medicare costs and in health care costs generally are the increase, not so much in prize, but in volume requiring the care every year, and particularly the continuing introduction of new high-tech services. >> host: the phone numbers are on the bottom of the screen. we are talking about medicare

costs and the ideas out there to reduce costs. republicans call 202-624-1115. democrats call 6411 and independents 202-624-0760. our guest is a former democratic staffer as ways and means getting us to congress, of course, talking about ways to reduce costs like everyone else. what are the most significant ideas out there to reduce the cost of medicare and are they practical ones? >> guest: well, i think the, of course, most of medicare costs 90-plus percent of medicare costs are payments 20 hospitals, doctors, nursing homes, and so both at this time and historically, the focus has been really to reduce the rate of increase in payments to

providers. that's the first area. there's a new area with the benefit, talking about prescription drugs, farm suit call drugs. that was first implemented in 2006, and i think there's studies now indicating that the u.s. pays substantially more in medicare own prescription drugs in in medication. that's a second area. the third area, of course, is to shift the cost to the elderly and the disabled. the fourth element is raise the care of medicare eligibility to 65 to perhaps 67 tracking some of the changes in social security, and the fifth area would be to transform medicare generally from a defined benefit into o defined contribution to medicare advantage or private plans. >> host: lots of different ideas out there.

we'll see where this goes. before we get to calls, the first point, explain for us how that structure works right now. >> guest: well, the structure, again medicare was first enacted in 65 and implemented in ' 66. they tracked how the payments were set by hospitals and then individual groups of physicians. medicare changed 20 a prospective basically medicare sent payments to hospitals beginning in 1983 and to physicians beginning in 1989 so those rates are set in advance with a fixed rate of increase by medicare. >> host: explain this so-called doc-fix we deal with every year it seems in washington. what's that all about? >> guest: again, it's back to the price quantity and intensity, and when medicare payments were switched from sort

of retrospecktive local physician determined to a national basis, the system included not only prize, but adjustments for increases in volume and intensity, and what's happenedded since the late -- happened since the late really 1990s up to the 2000s that physician charges to medicare, particularly for volume and new services, increased more rapidly than the formula allow, and so the update in the price has been negative as much as 4%-5% a year, and that has not been acceptable, and so year after year, the prices generally been brought back to a freeze or a very signal increase, but as a result of that, the deficit in that calculation is now something on the order of $300 billion over ten years. >> host: going to calls for

our guest, the figures for the 2011 trustees report, they talk about hospital insurance and in their view by 2024 it's insolvent. also figures here, medicare is a percentage of the total economy. 2010, 3.6% of the total economy. by 2085, it without 6.2% if doctor fees and other costs are reduced. if not reduced, medicare of the total economy would be 10.7%. >> guest: those are big numbers. two factors -- one is the rest of the republic system again whether it's blue cross or united employer is also increasing more rapidly than medicare, and secondly, of course, we have the aging of the baby boom starting this year, and so the number of individuals in medicare will double over the

next 20 years. >> host: going to maryland now for the first call for dr. brian biles. josh, democrat, good morning. >> caller: hi, good morning. how are you doing? >> host: doing fine. >> caller: my suggestion about like cutting the costs to the health care was as far as like testing goes, i know to be, you know, today like you don't have a really general practitioners anymore and everybody like when you have a problem you get tests and the tests cost money, and then that tells you which, you know, specialist to go to, and like people are complaining about the cost of the machines. like i was thinking why doesn't the government create a new thing like the social security administration, one of the offices like to your locality, maybe create testing centers where people get free tests like x-rays, cat scans, and ekgs gs gs is s and it's paid for by the government and you get one or two free ones 5 year with your credit score. >> host: thank you, josh.

medicare and testing. >> guest: again, 75% of beneficiaries are in a fee-for-service system. we don't have many primary care physicians, and a lot of specialists. they order tests, imaging, and that, as the physicians are on the private sector side so at least at this point with the exception of a relatively small number of public locally owned hospitals, the health care system and medicare as in the u.s. generally is in the private sector. >> host: new york, rob, republican. hi, there. >> caller: hi, yeah, hello? >> host: good morning. >> caller: yeah, i -- good morning, dr. biles. i'm 7 # 6 years old, a medicare recipient and so is my wife. we look at these -- these benefit statements 245 we get

all the -- that we get all the time, and many times i think they are overcharging, these physicians are overcharging. the physicians, the hospitals, the health facilities, but what really i see strange, and this has happened several times 1 my wife and i both, we get medicare checks for ten cents. i'm how much is that cost medicare to process the checks and mail them just for ten cents? don't they have a system where they could just transfer that ten cents into our account or something, our medicare account? >> host: thanks, rob. to the point of the overcharging. >> guest: well, what you see in those explanation of benefits are billed charges in medicare for, again, 20 years hasn't paid bill charges. it's an all-inclusive per stay or a diagnosis-related group

payment, so while those statements, as you say, are complicated and look expensive, that's not actually how medicare pays the hospital. >> host: how is medicare funded? can you explain for us? >> guest: well, the hospital or part a side is supported from the payroll tax. >> host: uh-huh. >> guest: this is essentially 1.5% on both the employee and the employer side. that's 3%, and one of the points about medicare is that the social security part of the so-called fica tax, if you see it on your payroll stub, is limited to roughly $100,000. the medicare side of that is unlimited, so if we think a professional athlete making $20 million in that year, that individual would pay $1.5 million in medicare taxes between the individual and the employer side. >> host: more about medicare spending by the numbers here. these are figures from

kieser2010. $885 billion is part a. part b, doctor visits, $150 billion. medicare advantage, $116b, and part d is $58 billion, making a total of $509 billion. it's growing. maybe can't be sustained. the idea of cuts might come from congress, if the committee doesn't have an agreement, there's across the board cuts we're hearing by law now. how does that affect medicare? >> guest: the cuts of the sequester or however you want to refer to it is 2% so if there's no agreement then payments 20 provider -- payments to providers in 2013

and going forward would be reduced by two percentage points. now, the point is that we've been through reductions in medicare costs in medicare, a payment really all the way back to the early 80s, and particularly the reductions in medicare payments in the health care reform bill, the affordable care act averages something on the order of nine and ten percentage points. while the 2% is significant, it certainly is not as substantial as we've seen reductions in previous years incoming just last year in the health care reform bill. >> host: hearing from clearwater, florida, joseph, independent. hi, there. >> caller: yes, sir, good morning. >> host: morning. >> caller: i do believe that the gentleman that previously called, supply, i think, is a huge cost. medical supplies. as far as the overall costs of

providing care. my daughter was on oxygen for the first few years of her life. the machine was not removed until a pulmonologist signed off on it, and this machine that retailed for $758. what doe you do to implement to change that? >> guest: well, again, this gets back to the congress that addressed the issues for years, and there were changes in the bill last year, and then previous bills, this so-called durable medical qiement, and the issue that you just mentioned is understood. we have had many gao studies, and so i think both on the payment side and beyond that there's frankly been elements of fraud and abuse in the dme field

have and are being addressed, and, again, that's a well-recognized problem, so i think the caller is correct. >> host: linda calling from tennessee now on the line for democrats. good morning, linda. >> caller: good morning. sorry to bring up fraud and abuse again because i understand that you're trying to really get people to understand that the tidal wave of demographic reality that's flooding the system, but you're talking 20 individuals on the phone who have individual problems, and we all want to help, and what we see are the individual things that happen to us, and, again, we have a problem with what we think is fraud from a physical therapist. the points i wish to make are how difficult it is for the individual to do anything about it because the system is not set up to facilitate it. service providers are not required to send copies of bills to their patients by default.

up stead, you have to -- instead, you have to send them -- i got off the medicare line and found it out, a written request for an itemized bill, and they have 30 days to reply. evidently what's supposed to be in the system to catch the overbilling 1 the quarterly statements. you have to remember what was done for you, the quarterly statement comes in and you cross check your calendar for what they did to you. there's no separate line in medicare for fraud. it appears to be a completely separate track and you have to call a separate number to complain about things. is an individual trying 20 catch the little ways in which the system is being bled to death by 5 thousand small -- a thousand small pricks. nothing is out there to make it easier to do that. >> host: your perspective? >> guest: i think you're right about fraud and abuse.

one of the things the obama administration did two years ago is create a new position in the administrative unit that manages the centers for medicare and medicaid services, a new deputy position, and this is dr. peter bedetti, both a physician and lawyer. he's working broadly both on very much of a systems basis. of course, all medicare claims are paid by a huge software computer system, but also with fbi teams in major metro poll tan areas to address this issue, so i think the issue that the caller raises is an important one and it's being addressed, and the specific details, i think, are really ones that, again, the people in cms are working on, and the question is how to do it simply most efficiently. >> host: is it too early to tell how that most recent effort is working, and is there potential cost savings attached

20 that deal? >> guest: there's large cost savings, and one of the things again with these big computer systems, they are now able to screen for claims before they are paid nationwide, and they have not been able to do that. they have been paid in phoenix or new york or in miami, and now they are all beginning to be in a big national system so they can find double billing and fraudulent claims. >> host: let's hear from cleveland, mike, republican for dr. brian biles. good morning. >> caller: i'm not a republican, just an independent conservative. it's just the line i got in on. i'm a recent graduate from college, and the college i graduated from, we have a close relationship with the cia fact book which is the world's most correct i would call it demographic research website, and the population in the united states under 30 is only about

20%-25% of the population while 55 and over is 60%-plus. now, with those numbers, how are we going to pay for this? as the baby boomers retire and go into med tear and their needs, there's only 20% of the population, the working population paying into that. on top of it, the population under 30 is the highest unemployed at this time right now at about 25% as well, so i just wondered how are we going to pay for this if the economy does not turn around because it's the youth paying taxes and paying this new health care program. thank you very much. >> host: well, again, the point was generally the new health care reform program broadly, and then medicare, and i think the question about medicare is both total level of

cost and what we know is that the, again, medicare costs have not been increasing as rapidly as private health insurance costs, but nevertheless again they are including more rapidly as the economy as a whole, and a doubling of the population as a whole, there's higher costs in the future, seen the two sides of the equation are to try to reduce payments, continuing without jeopardizing access to care, and then i think the point is new revenues, and, of course, we can look at the payroll tax if necessary. it's not actually been increased for medicare since 1983 or look at other sources of revenues in the economy as a whole. >> host: we have 20 minutes left with our guest. we're talking about medicare finances and potentially reducing costs.

dr. brian biles is our guest from gw university, professor over there. dr. biles, we talked about the debt deficit committee put in place and what if they can't agree, but what if they can agree. what are you expecting from them? what's the realistic possibility as a former hill person yourself? >> guest: well, i would think there's a couple of points. there's background, and the other is the elderly is basically low income. 50% of the elderly are less than 200 in poverty, a couple with an income of $29,000, and that the current health care costs for the elderly are quite high. out of pocket costs average for a couple $8,000 a year. medigap, as much as $5,000. 23 you compare that with incomes of $29,000, it's substantial. at the same time, again, we've been through now ten, twenty,

thirty years of reductions 234 payments, and medicare is paying hospitals about 80% of commercial, physicians about 70% of commercial, and, again, with further reductions over the next decade, so those amounts -- you got low income individuals and payments to the private insurance. what could we expect? i think there are a couple three areas. one is further reductions, and we mentioned earlier the possibility of reductions in the pharmaceutical side. again, it's just implemented in 2006, and we clearly pay more than other nations with johns hopkins. the value commission says medicare pays too much for indirect medical education for

some of the big teaching hospitals and for some rural hospitals. clearly, payments to some specialties are more than certainly primary care and other physicians. there's some targeted areas. one that i think we do get into the question raised earlier about additional revenues in the long run. >> host: more about the deficit reduction commission that is six republican and six democratic lawmakers as we now. the leaders of the committee say they are already at work in terms of organizing and dialoguing. $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction is what they're working on. 23 they don't agree, automatic spending cutses take place, but no cuts to the beneficiaries themselves, only cueses for -- cuts for doctors and providers. here's a twitter. physicians -- [inaudible] why can't they grade doctor quality? >> guest: well, there is work in the quality area going on.

the point is, again, this is not particularly a medicare issue. it's an issue trt health care system and the country as a whole. generally and historically, we have licensed physicians and then we have left that both to the states and to the specialty boards to assure quality. more is being done, but certainly not enough. >> host: burg, louisiana, jane, democrat, good morning. >> caller: good morning. i'm really upset about the cuts in medicare. doctors in our area, some refuse to take medicare because the reimbursement is so small, and so it is for the hospitals. i have a supplemental with united health care. why pay that into medicare, and that would make medicare sol vent. with regard to the drug plan, i did not join because the one

medication i was on, the co-pay was more than i paid for the drug. would you please comment on that? >> host: thank you. >> guest: well, i think the point about payments 20 physicians -- to physicians and they reluctant to take medicare is the other side. medicare pays physicians about 80% of commercial rates, but with this sustainable growth rate issue that you mentioned earlier, that's beginning to decline by about a percent or two a year, so if we're at 80, it goes to 75 and then maybe to 70, and then, of course, physicians do have the choice of accepting new patients. the studies seem to indicate today that certainly nationwide it's not a major problem, but that is the sort of other side of why can't medicare payments be reduced, that if they are reduced too much below again

what blue cross and others, providers may not be willing to see medicare patients who are elderly and need a lot of care. >> host: john from virginia on the line for republicans. question or comment, john? >> caller: yes. dr. biles, you mentioned 1.5% of federal withholding goes towards i guess medicare, i think it was when i first dialed in, but really double that is being paid because 1.5% in addition is paid by the employer. that's potentially income that the employee is not getting. that's kind of a dishonest way of stating that. i think that the federal government's dishonest approach to these intrackble problems is i think what's wrong with the economy. i mean, people like me, we realize that federal government is not dealing with these issues.

they are just sidestepping it, and i have a question also. what do you think of ron paul's approach to the medicare and by the way, ron paul can win, and he came in second in iowa, and nobody's talking about it, so what do you think about ron paul's approach? >> guest: i'm not actually familiar with congressman paul's approach. i'll pass on that. >> host: can you speak to ryan's approach? we have a small piece from in with his plan. let's listen in. here's paul ryan. >> we want to harness the power of patient choice of competition on behalf of senior citizens, future seniors in medicare. what we're proposing is no changes in medicare for anybody who is 55 and above. they get the medicare, they organized the retirement aroundment because medicare is the biggest driver of the dead,

because medicare is going insolvent and bankrupt according to the trustees because we want to save medicare so people can rely upon it when they retire, we propose to transfer young people to another program that we enjoy. it's choice, competition. it's protection. >> host: the chairman speaks choice in competition. what do you make of the plan? >> guest: this is the area that my research at george washington is focused on, and i think the first thing we know is that health plans, again, after more than 20 years, their costs to provide the medicare package is about 102% for the medicare fee-for-service system. they are not cheaper. that's the first point. secondly, we also know that, again, after 20 years, there's not much competition. we did analysis of the 100

counties with the most enrolled in medicare advantage, and we found by the department of justice in the federal trade commission standards only three of them were actually considered fully competitive, so i think my own sense is that plans can be good and particularly kieser and the tightly organized plans, but after, again, 20 years they are currently not a maimingic bullet. >> host: new york city, maria, democratic line. good morning. >> caller: good morning. i have a comment about -- and i'm asking questions. other western industrial developed nations have a universal house coverage plan. i lived in germany years ago. granted things are changing there. they have a fine universal health care situation for everybody, even foreigners if you qualified. now, how do they manage? plus, i want to say please don't fall back on the smaller

population argument. plus, medication? i know many people who get medication from canada and india and don't question those sources because 80% of the ingredients of our medicine comes from out of the way places including china. there's a large article on it in the "new york times". can i ask you to comment on those two points, those issues? >> host: thanks, maria. >> guest: what other nations do, and she made the point of germany with about 200 health care plans and the funds actually flow through the private basically employer based plans that look a lot like our own blue cross plans. japan is another country with private health insurance, but what they do is -- in germany it's basically a province or state level in which they work cooperatively, collaboratively

with the providers to agree on payments not only by a public plan, but by all the plans. again in japan, they do this on a national basis, so -- and that they then agree to limit the increase not only again of a public or a program for the elderly, but for all ensurers to a certain percent of their national economy or gdp. that is an approach. actually the united states, the state of maryland has such approach on the hospitals side. >> host: one of the many write -ups on this is the new new "new york times" op-ed. cut medicare and help patients. medicare is going to be cut. that is inevitable. there's no way to solve the long term debt problem without reducing the growth rate. they talk about smart cuts,

eliminate testing on medical tests and reduce treatments 245 don't work, and they can be made without shortchanging patients. there are plenty of examples. they do say in the piece though that the sad truth is washington is never going to do a good job of making smart cuts 20 medicare. the reason is they've got to get reelected. the point they make here. what is that sentiment telling you about where the future needs to head? >> guest: well, i think the problem is, again -- and, again, medicare is 20% of the total health care spending in the country, and it's the largest program, but it is only 20%, and generally, again as everyone knows, we have a very private sector and individual generally small physician practice health care system, and so it's hard to go out and limit what, you know,

hundreds of thousands of physicians are doing with regard to millions of patients, so we've tried this 30 years ago. we had something called professional review organizations, and they basically were ineffective, so on one hand i think dr. e mmanuel was correct, and maybe correct on both points that there are unnecessary tests, but it's very hard to deal with them in our very individual health care system, and that, again, is not only a problem for medicare, but the employer plans all over the country. >> host: we have time for a few more calls before wrapping up this series on medicare. ben is on the republican line from north carolina. hi, there. >> caller: hi. doctor, i know this is a big

number, but has anybody ever considered if we've limited the reliability and malpractice legal costs out of the medical system, how much that reduces the real costs of what we're doing? >> guest: there have been studies as you guessed on both sides of the issue. some people suggested it's substantial and others suggest it's not very major. it also varies greatly by the specialty and particularly some of the surgical procedures and obstetrics tend to be high, primary care and routine visits tend to be pretty low. i would think that the general view is that the total increase in cost is something in the single digit percentage, and, again this is one of the areas that would be hard to squeeze out. much of the reforms that people talk about have been adopted in

california, and we do know that costs in california are not appreciably lower than elsewhere in the country. >> host: dennis, democrat for dr. brian biles. >> caller: good morning. i'm a 47-year-old male, disabled for close to a decade now. i could speak to you all day long. i wish i could. i have a couple comments. first of all, the way to save money -- a couple ways to save tremendous amounts of money in this system are this: number one, you have a part d. system that's a private system separated from the medication, separated from parts a and b. i have one particular medication that in a pinch at the very last try i take. it's a pape killer. if that does not work, i must go to the emergency room.

usually, nine out of ten times, more than nine out of ten times, it works, but they -- but the insurance company, the private insurance company won't pay the $19 a piece so i have to go spend or medicare spends thousands in the emergency room instead of $19 for one lasange. number one. number two, paperwork. you have every company, everybody and their brother has an insurance company today, and i go to at least two doctors a week every week, and i see that 85% of the staff are filling out forms for insurance companies. if they standardized the forms to one set of forms, i mean, every time i go to a new doctor,

i have to fill out ten pages of forms. if i it to do that one time, if they had to do that one time, and it could be sent to any insurance company or medicare, it would cut hundreds of billions of dollars. >> host: several points there, dr. biles. >> guest: well, i think maybe the final point about forms, i think it's very clear that, in fact, our, you know, hundreds of thousands of independent physicians and providers do spend a substantial amount. i think sometimes the numbers estimated that 10% of total health care costs dealing with these many independent insurance companies, i think the one thing, again, there's been a big national initiative for health i.t. information technology and one of the things that system would do would be to unify the

payment system across insurers including medicare. i would think generally that medicare -- this is one of the areas where medicare is a leader nationwide, and that is electronic billing, and then electronic screening of billing, and then back to the fraud and abuse system now moving 20 even more advanced screening for unless, and again outright fraudulent care. >> host: down to the last couple minutes. one or two more calls here, but anything we have not talked about that you would want us to know about reducing medicare costs? >> guest: well, again, i think the overall point is that i think sometimes we get into these debates and people say, oh, here's medicare. they have not thought about that previously, and the point is that every time there's a budget issue in the country, people focus pretty intensely on

medicare, and so there was obviously again $500 billion taken out of medicare, this under 10% last year, and that has resulted in projections of medicare growing 1.5% or two percentage points each year, less than commercial insurance. medicare, again, now pays positions 80% -- physicians 80%, hospitals 70% of commercial insurance so that these are not issues, and a lot of issues that don't get resolved this year get studied and developed and debated, and then get adopted next year, and so i think, again, one of the things on this round is prescription drug prices were not addressed last year, but they may well be considered this year. payments for teaching costs at hospitals were not changed last

year, but may be changed this year. i think it's an ongoing pain if not every year, but every two or three year process. >> host: tennessee, john, independent, you will be the last call from tennessee. hi, john. >> caller: hi, good morning. a very important topic. thank you, doctor. i want to emphasize how we could save trillions through prevention. our medical system is thick with people and spends billions on them. if we had most studies i've seen have proven that most of our diseases are preventable or the incidence greatly reduced through better diet and exercise, ect., so my proposal would be have a counselor available and even mandatory for every medicaid and medicare

patient and help people change their lifestyle and over a ten-year period, we would save lots of money, and i want the doctor's comments on that. thank you. >> host: final thought. >> guest: well, i think you're exactly true and accurate, and a lot of this work, of course, has been done by our center for disease control, cdc, but it's clear the population of the united states is very much overweight, much of the population is very much overweight, and that does lead to diabetes, card vascular and other disease, and the question is this is not really classically acute medical care, and what can we do broadly in the nation to deal with diet and exercise, and, of course, that has to begin before age 65 of medicare. 2 has to -- it has to really get build into the entire culture. there's policies in the area and some funding in the health care