.. [applause] >> thank you.

hello, everyone. [applause] >> wow. >> who knew? the mechanics' institute, such a robust crowd. thank you very much for the warm welcome. >> [inaudible] >> no, you go. >> well, we thought what you'd do is just kind of have a conversation which is, in many ways, what the book is, the result of many long conversations about what had happened and where we had been. so we'll kind of kick things back and forth, saving some time at the end to hear your thoughts and questions about the relevance of "a governor's story" and where america goes next. so when people hear jennifer's native state -- >> not native. >> not native. i knew -- she's starting already on me. [laughter] born in canada, raised in california. but when people from here think of michigan, they probably think of detroit primarily, and they

think of gm and think of ford and think of chrysler. and we may well talk about them tonight. but i thought it would be good if you start with a small town that probably nobody's ever heard of called greenville which was in the middle of michigan about 8,000 people. because i don't think that if there had not been this story, jennifer will tell you about greenville, that there would be "a governor's story." to me, in my experience, our experience, i think it was the crystallizing thing. >> it was. thanks so much. so michigan, automotive state, manufacturing state, and i'm elected as governor in 2002 and took office in january of 2003. and if you recall, 2001, 2002 the nation was just emerging from a recession. george w. bush was president, there was all of this talk about whether he was going to allow stimulus to happen for the

states so they could get through and, in fact, he did pass a stimulus package. when i took office in january of 2003, the economists were saying that michigan would be able to ride the cycle up, that we would be bouncing back along with the rest of the nation because, of course, this was just another cycle that we were going through, and when the nation catches a cold, michigan catches pneumonia because we were making things that people buy, but very large things like cars. so at the end of my first year in office after the economists had said that things were going to bounce back and i kept waiting and, you know, everybody was saying this is a really good time to be elected governor because you're coming in in the valley. things are going to emerge, and it'll be an excellent time to claim credit for all of the resurgence of michigan. so at the end of the first year when the jobs were not bouncing back even though the national economy had started to recover, i was scratching my head over why this was not the case. and i got a call from the head

of our michigan economic development corporation which is our economic development arm in michigan. and he said, governor, we have a big problem. and i said, what is it? he said, greenville, this little town -- you know, in michigan we carry our maps on the end of our hands. who's here from michigan? anybody here from michigan? look at you all. so you know. all right. so our map of michigan, and greenville's sort of almost -- it's close to lansing in the center of the state. there's this tiny little town called greenville, and they are about to lose their enormous refrigerator factory. in fact, greenville had called itself the refrigerator capital of the world. they, in fact, in this tiny town of 8,000 people had north america's largest refrigerator factory employing 2,700 of the 8,000 people who live inside that town which, you know, when all 8,000 people are, you know, grandparents and their kids, this was a one-company town. the whole town had grown up

around refrigerator manufacturing. so, he says, they're going to leave. they're going to move to mexico. and i said, oh, no, they are not. we are going to go to greenville, we'll put whatever incentives we have on the table, and we'll make them an offer they can't refuse. so we went to greenville, and we were in a room probably about this size in this little town, and the mayor was there, and the city manager was there, and the guy who was responsible for the community college was there, and the whole, the workers were there, they were represented. the whole town and their representatives showed up to try to prevent electrolux which operated the refrigerator factory from moving to juarez, mexico. we put everything we had on the table. everybody emptied their pockets figuratively of all of their chips, and we made a big pile, and we slid the pile across the table to the management of electrolux, and in the pile was

zero taxes for 20 years. we offered to build them an entirely new factory. the workers represented by the uaw offered $30 million in concessions every single year. they didn't even want us to tell anyone how much they were offering because they were afraid of copy cat request from others who wanted recessions. our pile was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. and the factory, the management, took our list of incentives and went outside the room for 17 minutes. and they came back in, and they said, wow, this is really generous. this is the most generous offer we have ever been presented with. but there's nothing you can do to overcome the fact that we can pay $1.57 an hour in mexico. there's nothing you can do. so the month that the last

refrigerator came off the line there was a gathering in the town, and it was of the employees. and the employees called the gathering the last supper. it was at a big pavilion called clackles' orchard pavilion. and i went to this gathering and walked into the big pavilion, and there was a band playing sad music, and people were sitting around eight-top tables, checkered table cloths eating out of boxed lunches and sort of saying, you know, what are you going to do next? what are you going to do next? it was like a big community grieving almost. and i went up to the first table, and this guy -- and i didn't announce i was coming or anything, but i just wanted -- i felt like, you know, i just felt so much a part of this community and felt like we had lost this huge thing. and i went to the first table, and this guy comes up to me, and he's got his two daughters, and

he's got his baseball cap on backwards, and he's got tatoos on, and he says to me, golf, these are my -- governor, these are my two daughters. they were young teenagers. he said, i've worked in this factory for 30 years. i'm 48 years old. i went from high school to factory. my father worked at this factory. my grandfather worked at this factory. he said, all i know is how to make refrigerators. and then he put his hand on his chest, and he said, so, governor, who is ever going to hire me? who is ever going to hire me? it wasn't just him. it is workers all over the country that are experiencing the ramifications of globalization. and it wasn't just greenville either. >> so let me pick up the tale there a little bit. what we've tried to do in this

story was kind of share how piece by piece this thing came out. as you heard, jennifer had this optimism about how things were going to turn around. we've always had this cyclical economy. all of us in america are sort of saying, okay, where's the upturn, and, you know, the dow if you've been watching in the last six weeks it's up, it's back down, it's up, and it's back down. but one of the questions we had was, when does it come? and one of the things that we learned is that the recovery actually came, and the recession really wasn't as real in the first decade as we thought. now, that may sound ridiculous, but met he ex-- let me explain. here's why it probably sounds ridiculous. you wouldn't know this, but america lost 42,000 factories in the first decade of this century. 42,000. so, you know, on average a thousand a state. a thousand factories shut down.

um, so what happened, we lost 2.5 million jobs among american companies that were multi-national companies, that had a presence somewhere else. we lost two and a half million jobs. but the crazy thing as jennifer and i started to look at the numbers and start to see, experience after experience like the one she'd described, none as poignant or as just nuclear as greenville was, but experience after experience of jennifer getting what are called warrant act notes where a company that employs over 500 people, i think? >> they were going to do a mass layoff of 50 or more. >> so a company that's going to lay off 50 people or more, is contemplating that, has to inform their governor by federal law. so these were flooding in at a certain point in '08 and '09 when things were terrible, right? so we have this terrible shrinkage. but at the same time those companies grew 2.9 million jobs

abroad. so there was actually a net growth. now, think about it, this is the era that we've all lived in of tremendous efficiency and product it, right -- productivity, right? of two people doing one job, of increasing overtime, especially white collar overtime without having to pay for it, of pushing your health care costs onto people. all kinds of things, right? to get more and more efficient. to use technology in every way possible. and during that time they were still adding jobs. it was not pure shrinkage, 2.9 million. and what jennifer and i sort of noticed and like to say is that adam smith, you remember, the great capitalist economist talked about the invisible hand. and he said when people make efficient decisions, when they decide to make more to earn more, they decide to buy a cheaper product, all those decisions create this invisible hand where money and resource is moved to the most efficient places. and that's exactly what we've

experienced. we've watched as our jobs have migrated elsewhere, and we've lived still within a protected sort of bubble of our thought process that we're in a closed economy, that we're in an economic system. and so, for instance, if you give companies more money or if you give wealthy people more money, they'll think how do i invest this and make more money. which is great if you're in a closed system. but if most efficient place to spend that money, to use that money as a business person is to invest abroad, then we've got a major jobs problem. likewise, on the consumer side if consumers do the most prudent thing which is go to walmart rather than somewhere else to get a lower dollar amount, where do those dollars go? well, a big chunk of those dollars flow across the ocean to china. so we're in the midst of this tremendous situation where we're still in 20th century minds about what the economy's like.

we'll talk more probably about michigan and how our michigan residents were very much -- and i think it's true in california, i think it's true even in my brilliant berkeley students across the bay -- still thinking with 20th century mind about 21st century problems. >> yeah, in fact, i mean, when this happened with electrolux and i realized that this was potentially the, you know, the harbinger of all of this stuff to come for us, we decided that we in michigan were going to do an analysis on our economy, and we were going to do everything possible to be able to keep jobs in michigan. so despite the global economy. so i listened to the business community, and i cut taxes a lot. in fact, in the back of the book i've got the list in the first term, first four and a half years i cut taxes 99 times. they were small, they were large, they were targeted, they were, you know, individual. 99 times. in fact, by the time i left

office michigan had cut by far as a percentage more out of government than any state in the country. we had cut just our raw numbers by far more employees, public employees than any state in the country. by the time i left, we were 48th in terms of the size of government. our corporate tax burden had dropped between 1997 and 2007 more than any state in the country. so you would think that the prescriptions of small government and cutting taxes which many people, um, continue to put forward as the solution to our national economy today, you would think that if those were, in fact, the only solutions to be able to use that michigan would have had the most robust economy in the nation. and yet we still had the highest unemployment rate for the vast majority of the last decade. there was a mismatch. i was not applying solutions to

a 21st century problem. i was applying 20th century solutions to a 21st century problem. now, all of that means i do believe that you have to be efficient in government, and i'm not suggesting that you want huge, bloated government. i think you have to cut where you can in order to invest where you must. but the thing that started to turn us around was the ability to partner with the federal government to make strategic investments in areas where with michigan could compete globally. one example, so when the recovery act was first adopted, um, president obama said he wanted for there to be a component of that that would allow for america to make electric vehicles. and you can only do that if you make the battery, the guts of that electric vehicle, here in this country. before 2009 the vast -- all of the electric vehicle batteries

except for 3% were made in asia. and so what the president had said repeatedly on the campaign trail is you don't want to substitute our reliance on foreign oil for a reliance on foreign batteries. let's us in america make the electric vehicle and the guts for that vehicle. so we raised our hand, we said, look, we made vehicle 1.0 as the automotive capital of the world, we want to make car 2.0 as well. and so in order to compete for those federal grants we team with the the private sector and with universities to be able to put together a really compelling series of proposals to the federal government. and in august of 2009, in fact, joe biden came to michigan to announce all of the, all of the winners of that opportunity. within the space of 18 months, michigan had developed an entire battery cluster in our state

because we had done an analysis, and we were able to co-invest with the federal government. that investment is supposed to create 63,000 jobs in michigan by the year 2020. in fact, one of the battery companies just hired their 1,000th person, a123, and we identified a whole supply chain not just the folks who were building the batteries, but all the suppliers to the battery companies too. we knew we had gaps in the supply chain, so i went to japan and said come to michigan and provide the cathode material if the battery, please, and i said, come, provide the electrolyte for the battery supply chain, and i went to korea and said you make all these batteries for these consumer products, you're going to build the -- >> you're sounding like howard dean now, be careful. [laughter] >> okay, yes. i was, wasn't i? >> we're going to south carolina, we're going to florida!

[laughter] >> at any rate, the bottom line is we were able to develop this whole cluster, but we would never have been able to do it on our own. it was only in partnership with the federal government and the universities and the private sector that we were able to do it. so, um, the trajectory of the learning for me as governor was one that lasted really almost the entire eight years. we tried a lot of stuff throughout that time. and the only thing that began to work was this ability to invest in our economy. and the proof of that is that in 2010 our unemployment rate dropped six times faster than the national average, the gallup organization said that michigan's job performance, job improvement was the most improved of all of the states. in august "newsweek" said that michigan was the number one state for job creation opportunities even though we have a long way to go. we're not there yet, nobody can claim it, but it's finally

started to turn around once we were able to strategically invest in order to bring jobs there. >> um, why don't you talk for a minute just about states and the fact that, you know, you were competing with haley barbour in mississippi, and he was trying to pull auto jobs there, and you were in mitch daniel's backyard in indiana -- >> and in california too. >> or in california. that's a favorite place for governors -- >> governors love to come to california and try -- >> what was the problem with that? >> i mean, so here's the issue. no state has the opportunity or the resources to compete against, say, china or germany or other countries. no state, even a state as powerful as california because you have to balance your budget, and you've got no resources to be able to do it. but, um, states do compete against one another all the time in whatever way we can. and we, the only way we can often compete is by throwing tax incentives at businesses, and so

luring businesses, and you're moving them around from one state to another. every governor, we are constantly competing with one another to say, oh, i got that one from you guys or, oh, i got that one from you. in fact, a magazine that facilitates this. it's called site selection magazine, and they have a governor's cup every year to see which governor won the most investments for their state. >> did you win? >> i did. several years, i'm proud to say, except that it's a stupid national strategy, right? because you're just moving the, you know, the jobs around from one state to another when the real competition is overseas, right? so what do we do as a nation to be able to crack the code to keep jobs here when the movement of jobs and capital as we have seen so readily flows to the places not just that have the cheapest labor. greenville was an example where they had the cheapest labor, but also where there is an offer of a partnership on behalf of other

governments. and i'll just say a quick story, and then i'll flip it back to you. i was in march in china, and i'm very interested in the opportunity that the clean energy economy can provide in terms of jobs. and so we went with a group called securing america's future energy, and we met with a number of chinese officials to see what they were doing to be able to attract. in fact, they've attracted so many solar jobs from california used to promote side a huge number, now it's a very small number because they've been very aggressive. so the chinese, i was at one of the meetings, a chinese official pulls me aside and says, so, when do you think the united states is going to get a national energy policy? and i said -- hooted back there. i said, i don't know, congress, it's so divisive, i just don't know. and this is what the chinese official did, he goes like this. [laughter] he grinned, he rubbed his hands together, and then he said to me, take your time. [laughter] because they see our passivity

as their opportunity. we have to recognize that the federal government in this, in this country in terms of energy policy and getting jobs has brought a knife to a gunfight. >> and i think that's one of the issues i can't help but think we're on the verge of an election cycle and what should we be talking to each other about and what should we be asking candidates to take stands on and where should they be. and i think this is one of the most important issues. i'm going to steal one of jennifer's stories which is, actually, a george bush story. in his biography he talked about being with hu jintao, the president of china, and they're talking about their situations in life and, you know, their peers, their colleagues, right? they're just kind of hanging out, chilling. and so president bush as a kind of conversation starter says what keeps you awake at night? and hu jintao says, well, what keeps me awake is creating 25 million new jobs a year for the people of china.

and, of course, the good gentleman, he flipped the question and said, how about you, president bush? what keeps you awake at night? can you guess -- you remember eight years of president bush. what do you think he said? [inaudible conversations] >> saving the world, cutting taxes. no, what was he -- what's -- there's something else. spread of democracy. but what kept him awake at night? [inaudible conversations] >> the texas rangers. >> terrorism, right? terrorism is what kept him awake after that bad news that he got while he was reading to those kindergarteners if you ever saw that michael moore movie. it was quite a scene. anyway, but here's the point then, is are we really focused, not just saying we're focused about jobs, but are we focused about creating jobs now in the kind of economy that we're in, in a global economy where countries like china we won't embrace an awful lot of what china is, but what we can

embrace is really an aggressive desire to generate economic activity that leads to the bottom line. so consider the contrast when we bring nissan to tennessee, or you bring honda somewhere. you're happy to have the plants, you probably give them the land. somebody like jennifer has said, you know, we can give you this incentive and that incentive and come here, don't go next door to alabama or tennessee, come to us. and the deal is struck. well, when gm goes to china and says, you know, we want to work with you, have a little joint vebture, build some cars, sell some cars just like your asian friends are selling cars to our people, let's strike up a little deal. well, who do you think owns that operation? china. china owns half. shanghai motors. and shanghai motors is owned by the city of shanghai which operates under pretty strict federal guidelines on issues. do we want that kind of rigidity? probably not.

in the long run, will it help them? maybe, maybe not. but is it helping them now where 50% of the return is going to come back to shanghai to think about investment in their schools, investment in their roads, investment in their infrastructure, the things that america thinks that we did in the past but don't seem to want to or need to do. so somehow what we've got to be thinking is how do we be as intensely competitive as they are, and do we want the government sitting on the sidelines? this is still the beloved ideology we have. put the government on the sidelines, let the market do its thing, and everything is great. you know, to which you say how is that working for us right now? it's really not. and so we need an american style, an american mix of capitalism and democracy that works for us. but we need a government that's determined and not one that says, hey, trust us. in time it's all going to work out, you know? leave it to lehman brothers and the individual investors and the rest, and everything will work its way out. clearly, that's not working

here. >> in fact -- >> we need to go somewhere else. >> yeah. i was moderating a bunch of multi-national ceos on a panel earlier this year, and the question was, what should the role of government be, you know, for the united states in job creation. and i said to them, so, is there -- since you're in a bunch of countries, is there a country that does it best? who should we model ourselves after? >> and this was john deere, coca-cola, at&t, so we're talking about people who are really seeing the globe, right? from the business person's standpoint. >> right. and so what they said is, to a person, singapore does it best. and i said, well, what is it that singapore is doing that we might learn from? and what they, what singapore is doing is they do an assessment of their economy, they identify their strengths and their weaknesses, they identify the clusters that they could attract, the clusters and sectors that they could attract that will be globally competitive in singapore.

they go get those companies, they have specific goals for foreign direct investment. so they go out, find those companies and bring them into singapore, create a cluster that has suppliers and has, has customers as well. then they offer streamlined permitting for businesses to come and open up shop very easily. they give access to capital for businesses who have got heavy equipment and technology that is very expensive to be able to get them in the ground. in short o, they offer them a full-fledged partnership, not a top-down, but a bottom-up partnership with the business to say how can we make you competitive. now, in the united states what could we do, what should we be looking at? i think we ought to be going after foreign direct investment. i think we ought to be taking advantage of the diversity of this country and saying to international businesses if you want to do business in the united states, come, hire our people. i think we ought to be having

specific goals. i think ambassadors should have goals as they are assigned to countries. how many companies can you bring into the united states to be able to employ our citizens. i think we shouldn't be afraid of identifying the clusters that work for us. in california you've got this phenomenal silicon valley, and all of these ideas are incubated there. but where are they taken to scale? where is the actual manufacturing of them occurring? >> [inaudible] >> right? many a lot of it's in china, a lot of it's over overseas. i would come here and say if you've got a product, we'll be able to make it for you in michigan. >> and there is. they all have companies. >> okay. i've got to ask you about solyndra. you see it down 580, is that the freeway where i see it? 880? is that where it is? those beautiful plants on the east side. so what happened there?

there's a situation of $500 million of doing exactly what you're saying, guaranteeing loans, federal government playing an active role, building a new sector. we talk about that in the book. what are you going to say about that? >> yeah. it is the tough question. i mean, does the united states provide access to capital for industries that it wants -- that it believes is in its critical national interests? do we belief as a nation that we should be energy independent, should we spawn and invest in new technologies? sometimes when you invest in new technologies you win, sometimes you don't win. this particular program had 40 applicants, this one project failed. it was a big number. but if you place no bets, you lose every time. and other countries are playing bets aggressively, and if we are not in the game, we will continue to be bystanders to the loss of jobs. now, that's one solution. i'm not suggesting that that

should be blown up and used everywhere, but if you have a comprehensive, uniquely american economic development strategy that is an assist from the federal government, then i think you can start to have some um -- impact. >> let me jump in there a little bit because i think one of the things that happens is we get into this black or white syndrome, you know, with the parties. and so this government investment in the private sector was crazy. look at solyndra. we lost all this money. separate the government from the private sector, build the wall like the one, you know, they're build anything israel and the one we want to build in mexico, build a wall and separate business and government. and this is really kind of a crazy idea, if you ask me, in many respects. because there are some things that we want to invest in, that we know we have to invest in. certainly, as a society. we've decided we want to invest in education. we want to invest in roads. and many times in those cases we

have a mix of public and private coming together to do that. i don't know what it's like in california, but almost every road bill -- you won't find the state building roads, you'll find them creating competition and bidding work just like somebody would in the private sector and letting the market mechanism work so that you get the best builder of roads that you can get. so it's not purely one or purely the other. solyndra's sort of the extreme case where it was actually government money that needed to be there at the beginning, a guarantee of a loan, otherwise you wouldn't have had that private money. and it was somewhat risky. but the government does lots of stuff that's not as risky. one of the things that jennifer did in michigan and i'm sure governor brown is doing here is that you bargain for what you need. so if you're the state, what is it that you're looking for? what's your big interest when you're offering grants or when you're ouring some land or when you're offering a tax credit? if you were the governor, what would you say you want from those companies? >> jobs.

>> jobs, right? so when do you pay the credit? when do they claim the tax credit on their little income tax form? >> [inaudible] >> when they hire people, right? when they prove that they hire people. so it's not as though entirely one or the other. it's not as though the government can't think and can't decide what are we interested in investing in and how do we go about that investment, and then let the private sector work. find out ways to let both work. what we have been hood winked to believe is that government's a bunch of idiots, and is there too much money in government? of course there is, but are there great people, tons of them who are really trying to do awesome things? absolutely, there are. and we've got lots of checks and balances in our -- >> we've gone a half hour. two points, quickly. the issue about tax policy is a really porn one. what dan just said is that when states offer tax credits that are tied to job creation, you are tying tax policy to something you want.

just across the board kind of tax cuts without tying it to job creation in the united states, you might actually be giving somebody some extra money so they can maximize their shareholder return in the best possible way in a global market and investing it somewhere else. if you don't tie that tax policy to job creation in the u.s., you could be, in effect, sort of, you know, facilitating the flight of jobs. and so that's really for us in a global economy now, that is a really important point. allall right, last thing becaus, you know, we wrote this book together even though it's in my voice, but i insisted he be listed as a co-author because he's so, you know -- >> he's what, come on. >> wonderful and all of that. [laughter] so i'd love for you to just say a word about the various identity crises that we -- >> i'll say a word about that, and you don't have to listen to me because you can be thinking about what questions or comments that you want to share with us.

but what was interesting in the book is jennifer told the story about the man, right, with the ball cap and the tattoos and the kids in front of him who says what am i supposed to do. and what was devastating in michigan were those individual stories. i happened to be there on a number of occasions where people came up to jennifer and asked, what do i do? and where grown men are crying or very chose to crying and really at wits end. there was also, though, true on a larger scale. so that man had a real identity crisis. he said, who's going to hire me, what am i going to do? and you say go back to school, and we had a wonderful program called no worker left behind that i won't spend a lot of time on it, but it was really about retraining workers and giving these 45 and 50-year-old men a chance somewhere. but he had to reinvent himself. and we had a state that had to, has to still reinvent itself. that it's gone through these crises. and every time our big three have come back a smaller three. sometimes a half-owned german three, sometimes a half-owned

italian three. sometimes a taxpayer largely-owned three in the case of gm that we're all owning that company. so next time you think about those cars everybody in california seems to drive, think about a volt or something because you own that company too. but that editorial aside, in michigan people could work low-wage, high-income jobs. they could go from the graduation line to the employment line and have a job for the rest of their life. and in michigan they would be up north, right? that means you have a cottage in the north. it might be in the west or the east, but we just say up north. and chances are you even have a boat. all that on a high school diploma. that has to change. okay. so the interesting thing was that we realized in writing the book that there were two other identity crises involved, and we talk about this somewhat in the book. one was my wife's. that this is a person who had always succeeded at everything

and believed if you're smart enough and you get the right people and you work hard enough, that's going to get you there. those three things, you know? a little bit of talent, real hard work and find other people who can make it happen and just couldn't. there's a great story in there that i won't tell about when barack obama called and what a moment that was in jennifer's life and in my life and how to respond. and then the strange thing was there was another identity crisis which is mine because i really did want "a governor's story" to be my story when i was a young man, and i'll tell you very briefly that when we were in law school and fell in love and our friend matt was there -- >> matt -- >> we were at the third session with the priest, and he was preparing us for the vows of matrimony. and in the first two sessions we had talked about all kinds of great things that you'd never expect a celibate man who hadn't live inside a relationship to know. what are you going to do about money? how many kids do you want to have? all kinds of really great stuff the. well finish this third session

we're sitting across from him, and he says to me at the beginning of the session knowing that i'm going to go back to michigan where my seven siblings live and all my hundreds of cousins and where my dad had been involved in politics, and i'm going to be writing one day, "a governor's story," he says to me -- mind you, this man's 35 years old right off central casting, a handsome young priest. he says, so, dan, what happens in eight to ten years if party comes to jennifer, and they say there's an open senate seat and you're a lawyer, and you're smart, and you're attractive in lots of ways, and you're a great speaker, and by the way, a good time for a woman. he said, you should run. dan, how would you feel about that? and if i could have told the truth, i would have said, well, i feel like i just got hit by a 2x4, father, right across the forehead. but i said i would probably be jealous and a little confused, but if jennifer felt call today

that vocation, i'd be 100% behind her. the priest had this story completely right. it was truly prophetic. and so what happened over the course of my time, and i'll keep this very brief s that i had an identity crisis as well. i thought i was supposed to walk in the shoes of my beloved and wasn't, and somebody had to take care of these wonderful three kids who were 6 and 5 and 1 at the time jennifer was elected attorney general who were going into first grade, seventh grade and ninth grade when she became governor. and that role fell to me. and the short story is, it was an incredibly great and continues to be an incredibly great experience. and like michigan that was asleep, we're sort of asleep, especially men, asleep through enormous change that's ongoing underneath us where 60% of the college degrees are going to women, women are earning more law degrees now, more medical degrees, there are more female supervisors in the world than men, but we're still sort of

asleep in terms of how are we going to raise our families, and how are we going to make this whole thing work? and so there's another story to be written written somewhere that there's a great opportunity for men not just women, a great opportunity for fantastic women to jump in and lead and a great opportunity for men to have a very different kind of life than they thought -- >> when he was growing up, he either wanted to be president or pope. [laughter] and he went to yale, you know, majored in theology, he was going to go to the seminary, and eventually we met, so that didn't work out. [laughter] so he didn't become a priest, but he did become a saint. [laughter] all right, let's open it up for questions. >> yeah. >> what, i mean, we could go on and on and, obviously; we've got a book signing to do here -- >> we have a microphone -- >> right. >> and, you know, being filmed for c-span, so it'll be great to be able to hear your voice and so people at home can hear as well. there's one here and a few --

>> everybody, please, wait for the microphone. >> there's one right in front of you. >> thank you very much, both of you. if you're both co-presidents of the united states, what would you both do to bring unemployment to 4.5%? thank you. [laughter] >> well, all right, so a good hypothetical. can't happen because i wasn't born in this country, but i do think that a start is what the president is proposing in the jobs and recovery act which was to tie tax policy to job creation in the united states and to invest in key infrastructure that businesses believe is important. i also think that we do have to have a national economic development strategy. i'd like to see a jobs race to the top, you know, in the same way that we had an education race for the top. if you just put a small amount of money out there for governors to compete on jobs, if they do an assessment of their states and they've got a strategy to develop certain sectors that are innate to them, you know, with that education race to the top

was $4 billion. and it caused every single state to -- 46 out of 50 states, to jump through hoops, to change the standards in a way that they never would have thought possible because states are really cash-hungry. if you had just a little bit of a competition among states for a small pot of money on the federal level, you would see states changing their permitting, streamlining, you'd see them l develop cluster strategies, you would see them leverage technology, you would see them partner with universities in sweden. it's called the triple he lick where they partner -- helix where they partner between the private sector and business. in singapore it's called the golden triangle. we don't have a national economic development strategy that is partnering with the states. states would bend over backwards to make that happen. >> and i'll just give you one more idea which jennifer has suggested already which is foreign direct investment. and transform our thinking about the world from we're going to create all this democracy, and we're going to police all these

countries, and we're going to be ready for big disputes, and we're going to deploy hundreds of thousands of people around the globe to do!,%6 that. and instead think the real -- i don't want to use the word "war," but the real competition and the real opportunity for, um, positive competition is in the global marketplace. and so say to our ambassadors, number one, tell hillary clinton to stay and give her a new mission which is to revamp state in a way that it becomes more of an economic development tool. and we embrace the globe and not fight the globe, and we ask how to we build great companies, how do we build great partnerships that make the world interdependent in a positive way and that grow jobs here in the country? >> we have a bunch of recommendations in chapter 10 of the book. >> specific goals of how many jobs they would create. >> right. >> otherwise, we'd get a new ambassador not based on how much contributions they've raised for their candidates, but based on how many jobs they can bring to country. >> you know, there's a bunch of

folks in the back that have their hands up too. >> yeah, you know, maybe just work the mic back would be easier for you and more efficient. >> um, hi. i was thinking, though, that any jobs, all jobs that need are in manufacturing would have to be done in china, right? because we can't compete wage wise. >> that's a great question. >> and so i feel like we're destined to fail. >> so -- >> i mean -- >> so let me give you some hope on that. i think that the repetitive motion, low-skill jobs, you're right. we have lost a vast majority of them, and it will be almost impossible for us as a nation to get them back. but advanced manufacturing you'd better believe we can be competitive in. and, um, the advanced. >> the story of lg. >> the advanced manufacturing realm -- i don't know what you mean -- the advanced manufacturing realm, um, requires high skill. and, in fact, you know, a lot of people say that, oh, our unions, etc., are driving, um, you know,

investment overseas. the new union model at least from michigan, the new head of the uaw, for example, the fellow named bob king, he stood before all of the manufacturers of the auto industry and their suppliers at a big conference in michigan and said once he was elected this is not your father's uaw. our goal is to keep jobs in america. we want to partner with management to make that happen. our enemy is not management versus labor. that's not the conflict. the conflict is us versus the globe and how can we have the most efficient processes and the most sophisticated level of skill to be able to make you globally competitive. right now labor is only 7% of the cost of a vehicle, and the vehicle is the most technologically advanced, maas-produced product in the world. you need to have people who know how to program the robots, who know how to maintain a robotic line. it's not easily transferable. so on advanced manufacturing

you'd better believe the united states can still be competitive. but we will not be competitive if we do nothing. other countries are eagerly jumping over us both on skill as well as on partnering with the private sector. and, um -- >> [inaudible] >> well, i wouldn't, i would say we have to have federal policy that partners with strategic sectors that we know are in our nation's interests. for example, i think that having -- we have a critical national need to be energy independent for purposes related to wars and, you know, our strategic intres overseas and all that. if we are serious about having a critical national need for that, then we need to invest and make that happen. period. that's got to be something that the united states government partners on. so maybe you do provide access to low-cost capital. maybe you do team up and provide partnership with the private sector financial community to make sure that it is a good business case for those advanced manufacturers. maybe you team up with the universities to make sure

they've got a pipeline of skilled talent or the community colleges to be able to feed into it. but we aren't even having those conversations about those, that level of partnership to make a good business case for them to locate here. we could do it, but alone on their own when other countries are offering all sorts of partnerships, we will not win. >> i think the other thing that your question gets at is that the irony is that in the old days in the factory you picture the ford assembly line, you know, they were men who were strong, who were bending steel literally, who were risking their hands and other body parts who were enduring all kinds of incredible noise and dirt. so i worked in ford factories during college in the '70s, and it resembled that in many ways. it was noisy, it was dirty, it was dangerous, um, it was redundant and repetitive and said itself all over again and boring as boring could be. okay, so the irony is that

places like china and mexico have stolen some l of that old-fashioned manufacturing. but in the process what they're getting is they're getting all of this intellectual talent -- >> right. >> -- and we risk losing the next phase which is, as jennifer's describing, a much more high-level sort of situation, a flexible workplace where you or i or jennifer may be engineer, we may be worker, we may be cfo, and we're all talking about the process and able to understand how do we make this thing work. the scary thing is that what's happening educationally as, you know, you've all read this how many ph.d.s and engineering trees are coming out of cal like patricia's did, but they're coming out of universities like india and china, that we're being whipped. if we want to look back in 30 or 40 years, it's not going to be taxes, it's not going to be whether we had a 9/9/9 plan like herman cain or 38%, it's going to be did we invest in our work force and children, did we

develop human capital? because the years in front of us are about this, they're not about bending steel -- >> and, just to jump on that, once you lose the manufacturing capacity, the engineers will follow. you cannot separate the two. >> right. >> and people don't realize, they think, oh, we'll just be sort of a service nation, and we will just do the design, but we won't do the manufacturing. engineers have to see what the products look like coming off the line. pretty soon the research and development centers will move as well unless we get serious. >> two thoughts. one is in education. can't we be, put more emphasis on entrepreneurial, teaching students to be entrepreneurs so that they don't have to work for somebody, they can work for themselves? and another, um, comment regarding the first question, and this race to the top for

jobs for getting companies to come to your state. wouldn't that, um, lead to states asking, states offering to, what's the word, deregulate so that the companies would come there? >> right. you have to have, i think on the second question you have to have a floor. you cannot, you know, you're not going to incentivize behavior that's going to end up damaging, you know, the nation even if it's damaging only one state. i think you have to have a floor on it. you have to craft it in such a way that you're not, certainly, violating federal environmental protection laws, etc. >> the state has their own -- >> they do. they do. but you can do, you can do -- you can do stuff like accelerating permit, you know, having, limiting layers of bureaucracy that are not necessarily related to protecting the natural resources of a state. so you'd have to craft it in a way that insured those protections. >> and let me jump in to your

first question, and the answer is yes and. so as to entrepreneurism, yes, we need to teach that. we need to teach people's ability to invent and create. this is the world we're in. um, and part is that it's not just about being an entrepreneur. what we have to create is an entrepreneurial mindset everywhere. so the idea that kids still have, very much have -- we have a niece living with us who's moved to california and is looking for a job. we know lots of young people, and they still have this idea that there's a job out there somewhere. so let me wander around and find the perfect job that i sit in and i sit in. and what i'm trying to say is, no, it's not about what a company's going to pull out of you, it's about you having a sense in a company, a school, a government that you're going to generate added value no matter who you are. if you're a janitor, i don't care who you are, these kids have to understand that if they don't generate value, if they're

not adding knowledge and creativity and collaboration and great stuff, we're sunk. because we're starting at a wage difference shall of -- differential of $1.57 or less in china and india, and kids coming out of college are expecting $18 an hour, $20 an hour, my niece wants to earn 40 or 50,000 is what she thinks she needs to live here. that's enormous differential. so how do we justify it? the only way is incredible knowledge. and, i believe, entrepreneurism. and it's a different kind of leadership. i mean, i left class today with my leadership students saying, okay, we're halfway through the year, and we're not there. i'm not there with you because y'all are still sitting here like bumps waiting for me to -- and i'm fairly innovative. but you're still waiting for me to guide you. this is, of course, leadership. >> it has to start before college. >> it does, right. >> they've got 15 years of sitting, you know? >> right, right.

>> some schools have certainly changed, but overwhelmingly it's wait until somebody tells you what to do. what do we need? proactivity more than anything else. create it, collaboration. not that i'm the boss and everybody listens to me, but this environment where people have genocide and we're -- ideas, and we're sharing ideas and driving each other along. so yes, yes, yes. [laughter] >> i'm an engineer, and what i've seen is when i've gone to factories in the last couple of years is i haven't given up on manufacturing in this country. but what i've seen is the machinists, they're all in their 50s and 60s, they don't have enough work for the young people, and at some point the economic standards in china and mexico are going to go up. what i'm afraid of is that we're going to lose that institutional knowledge. when i go to allentown, pennsylvania, i look over, and i think bethlehem steel factory is

now a casino. so how do you feel about protectionism or keeping some of those jobs here by american clauses? >> i think that we have to be aggressive in the trade arena, and when i say that, um, i think that, first of all, we've been a pussycat at the world trade organization rather than a tiger. and we need to have that mindset of we've got to create and keep jobs for our people. does that mean i think we should put up unilaterally walls? no. but i do think that once other countries assess tariffs or non, you know, tax barriers to our products being able to be shipped in, that should be a signal that allows for us to do the same. and to say strongly that we are serious about creating fair, a fair playing field. i think we can compete. i really do. i worry about the generation of the 50, the 50-year-olds, that band of 50-year-olds and

40-year-olds and, you know, maybe even into the low 60s, all that knowledge and those jobs being gone. but i also know that every single day there are ideas being generated and regenerated to do advanced manufacturing products. but we just are not playing at all. we're not playing offense, and we're not playing defense. and i consider the trade arena to be a place where we should play strong defense on behalf of our people. >> thanks, i've enjoyed it very much. i have two things to say. one, the most brilliant guy i know in washington said you'd be the best president but, unfortunately, you can't be. [laughter] three things. and michigan has the highest amount of tech jobs right now -- >> great. >> because of what you did. but another aspect is not necessarily positive is in 1974, i don't know if you guys were born then, but i was -- >> we were. [laughter] >> i'm not being facetious, but there was a book that came out

during the middle of watergate, "global reach." the professor here probably knows. but that laid it all out in '74, the incredible lack of attitude that american manufacturers and mbas and guys like me had about, you know, get your check and go home. so do you think that there's absolutely a way that we can reinvigorate our country to say, hey, we're not the best generation anymore, we need to work harder? >> i mean, it struck me as sort of ironic as a democrat, and we get trapped that, for instance, the republicans are talking about american exceptionalism. and, unfortunately, we're not exceptional in some areas we want -- we're exceptional in our physical girth, we're, you know, we're exceptionally large people. [laughter] but, i mean, a lot of the places we want to be exceptional we've been sliding. it's not a god-given gift, and the right, of all people, should

know that. [laughter] so this notion that if you criticize the country and say wake up, you're somehow unpatriotic is really repulsive to me. and i think it's ironic because it comes at a time where certainly in my life we've never -- i mean, since world war ii, right? we came out of world war ii as the most dominant country on the globe, militaryically, economically, we helped rebuild the rest of the world. since that time we're probably in as precarious a position as we've been in. we have income sliding, right? we have home ownership sliding. we have educational levels fairly flat relative to the rest of the world's growth. so it's hard to wake us up. you know, it's hard to create a crisis when people are running around saying he doesn't believe america's a great company -- country. obama doesn't -- [laughter] or company. that's a good slip, right? that's a good slip. so. i mean, most of the time you need a burning platform. and i feel like we missed that chance sometimes. we were so frustrated, i'll tell

one more story. i know you're begging to get in. but when in the last, in the last presidential campaign senator mccain and governor romney came to michigan. and senator mccain said i wish i could tell you your jobs are coming back. they're not. and senator romney, governor romney said, my dad was the head of american motors, i'm going to bring america back. i'm going to bring these jobs back to you. who do you think they voted for? i mean, romney carried michigan. and then he wrote an editorial in the new york times saying let detroit go bankrupt. [laughter] and he still thinks he's going to win that state, and he might. so i'm not sure how we wake people up when there's this craziness out there about, you know, patting ourselves on the back. >> i think the occupy wall street is, um, starting to be a wake-up call, honestly. i think that it is an expression of frustration -- [applause] you know, but what is that

frustration embedded in? yes, it's embedded in the inequality of income, and there is a nobel prize-winning economist at stanford who just did an analysis of the united states' economy, michael spence. and in that analysis he evaluates that has happened over the past decade. and yet started in the '70s, but we didn't have the trade agreements that we have now and, of course, the world wasn't as flat as it is now. so the movement of capital from both trade agreements as well as technology has made it so easy. so michael spence has said that what has happened is astonish anything the united states because we have seen in the past decade the movement of all of these tradeable goods jobs which are manufacturing jobs and the increase in services jobs. the increase in services jobs, he says, you've got a problem because they're not going to pay as much. so it contributes to this growing inequality of wages when you don't have good-paying,

middle class jobs that are tied to things like manufacturing. so when you look at occupy wall street, the frustration that people are expressing is, yeah, we don't have jobs, we've got this huge inequality, these folks on wall street are being paid hundreds of millions of dollars in some cases, and we can't even get a service job that is going to put food on the table. i think that that is the beginning of a wake-up call. >> yes. um, well, i had a, um, we went to detroit where we both lived for a long time. i worked at the uniroyal plant at -- >> wow. >> was a tire builder, her father was an engineer there. we went back, we asked for something as simple as a map of detroit. um, let me show you something. this is very shocking. what you have, a little area

about a 5-mile radius of the downtown. or one-half mile radius of the downtown,.5 miles. one-hall mile radius. it doesn't even go up to grand avenue, grand boulevard. on the other side, there is, um, detroit as a tiny spot in a picture of southeast michigan. it's just one amongst many of suburbs. we were able to get maps of every single suburb with detailed streets, but then the city line, the streets vanish like nothing had happened. there are still at least 700,000 people living in the city. it's amazing. we went through there, i talked to my old neighbors. it is true the city, most of the people are very poor, most are african-american. i can't help but think that this is race related in some way even if it's for economic reasons because it's a form of discrimination. that city, you cannot get a

street map of it. .. >> detroit happens to be the poster child which is that the industrialization of america. detroit went from killing people for now 700,000. on a secret that was built for 2 million. ya pockets of just vacant land and buildings. it's a very, very sad.

so much of that is related to the changes, the structural changes in the economy of michigan. which is the loss of these good paying jobs. question over here. >> i have lived in europe and australia and canada, and something that strikes me is the tendency in this country to have, to disregard something -- generally for example, -- germany has a system of apprenticeships. in france, companies have to pay 1% of the salary base for retraining to workers. and i'm wondering, is there any sustained effort to look at what other countries are doing and see if we can replicate them here? >> there must be. in fact, this is a really great point. germany which is a country that is roughly at our wage level, right? roughly at our level of

industrial development. and yet they did lose the level of manufacturing that the united states has lost. why? their government is active in keeping manufacturing. of direct policy that makes a good business case for them to locate there, but they're also very serious about this training pipeline. we talk about here. i think we ought to be looking at adopting a version for the united states. in our little state of michigan we adopted something called no worker left behind where we went to the federal government and said look, can we repurpose all of our work force training money and give those people who are unemployed and opportunity to be retrained for specific areas, like an apprenticeship to get a certification or in a of need or it entrepreneurship, but we need to have our federal dollars relevant to the 21st century. they allowed us the flexibility to do that.

i stood at a state address and i said to michigan, the first 100,000 workers who come in the door, we will give you two years of tuition at a community college, $5000 per person up to $10,000. at the catchy as you have to agree to be trained in an area of need. so an area like we are developing or in health care or in something that we know will be to a job. you cannot go and get a degree in french or political science. those are my degrees so i can say that. [laughter] we need no one like me, but we do need nurses. we do need entrepreneurs but we do need people in clean energy. and as a result of that and we borrowed a lot of our efforts from what was going on in germany. as a result of that web not only 100,000 people enrolled, we had 150,000 until the feds turned off the spigot. our placement rate was four times higher than the national

average. anybody who went through training, 82% of them found jobs in the areas they trained in interstate that is such a high unemployment rate. so i'm just saying our whole workforce training and pipeline related to apprenticeships is very 20th century. >> and it's a great question. jennifer talked about germany. she could've talked about sweden. she mentioned that before, in both cases there's a sanity. especially in scandinavian countries. i wrote about this a while ago. we have this terrible problem where we have huge unemployment, chronic unemployment, around 10%, 12% here in california, then we have this extreme over employment where people are just working like they have never worked before. so why can't we just do a little bit of its? why can't we figure out okay, let people take, at least give people options, maybe a 5% cut. let 20 of us take a 5% cut that

allows us to have a little more time and freeze up some money so you can hire people. your question was about how to get to 4.5%, we can get there if we would make some of those moves, some with national policy. for instance, on unemployment, allow people to get unemployment and take it and get it while they are at work for a while which would stimulate the employers to bring people on board if they could have a source of revenue. so maybe that's a way to leverage. >> than i have a comment and to question. first comment, hello from san carlos spent san carlos california. i graduate from san carlos high school which no longer exist. >> ms. san carlos. >> oh, my god. >> the first one is i've been confused at of the national dialogue around detroit bailout. and it seems like big success story, these businesses survived, they got rid of some

crappy business models. money is getting payback. if i believe the national media, this is viewed by everybody as a failure across the country which i wanted to reality check and see if that's how you perceive the perception. and the second is, i was wondering if you get, whether it was harder to get agreement with the legislature on the budget or hard to get agreement as a couple on the outline for the book speakers that's a great question. first, first is, this has been a huge success, the other recovery effort, that all of these other companies are now making a profit. they have paid back their loans, they are making, i'm driving, i just drove in my bold which is an electric car, plug into the garage. the cars had been waning all of these awards now. they have been totally retooled. the older model is so 20th century, the new auto industry has been an enormous success, thanks to the efforts and the

intervention of the federal government. spent i have to jump in. is such a great example i think of government and private sector because the president, read the book, the president beat the heck out of chrysler and gm. everybody, the uaw came a chastise and make huge concession. so which had with all kinds of movement in all kinds of places. the company went through an incredibly deep down, got rid of ceos. it was really deep. labour came to the table and it really different things. they are very different companies than you had before. they embraced energy efficiency in the way they hadn't before. so to me it was really an extraordinary story. >> if we lost the manufacturing backbone of america, it would've been the steel industry, it would've been the glass industry, electronics, materials, rubber. all of these industries, the

collateral damage would have been horrific. instead what you have, the revitalize auto industry long payback and a saving of the manufacturing backbone. >> it could've gone into bankruptcy. but they forced a really seriously fast bankruptcy. and creditors lost and dealers lost. everybody paid him. so i just want to make one point about the bigger picture which is if we had a choice, jennifer would be in favor of occupy wall street but i would be in favor them maybe you would become at a different movement which is a movement for rationality and compromise. this book was easy to write because we love each other and we compromised a lot. the legislature on the other hand, that is the point, where you get intense ideological position, we will not compromise, i don't know if you watch the first republican debate. there were 10 after and they said okay, this was right when the debt ceiling was being raised, remember, the government almost shut down and we lost our

credit rating, dropped for the first time ever, and the moderator from fox news said if you had a deal right now for the one point a trillion or whatever that has to be resolved, if you had a deal right now, did you see this question? 10 part cut, one part tax revenue increase. would you take the deal? did you watch? every single one of them, one of them hesitated but everyone of them said they would not take the deal. so i'm in favor of a party, a new party of radical compromise. what happened with the big three, with everybody get a little bit, and i believe that's what we need to be in this country. and right now we are anyplace where the party, the party on the left, you heard jennifer conscious of it, my democratic, i want to say remind and you're a democrat. i got more out of government than anybody. my tax rates are low than anyone at all that stuff is true.

this is a democrat. so folks like, we are moving to we understand there's a market out there we need to create jobs. we're moving. on the other side it's like there is no movement. there is no taxes. >> bottom line, we want to close outcome is that everything that's happening to the country right now happened to michigan first. i'm not kidding you. that goes politically because the question was a good political question. we have a whole chapter on that as well as economically. so we really are very grateful mechanics' institute for hosting this and for giving us an opportunity to share spent and league of women voters. >> and the league of women voters. love them. >> you can feel the warmth in here, and so on alert. >> no one fell over, so that's great. thank you all so much. thank you. [applause] >> but i have one more question i want jennifer to comment on her upcoming tv show, the war

room, which is going to continue a political conversation, number one first with the book. i hope everyone will purchase a book and have it signed. also further conversation as the election continues. >> i was invited by al gore to do a tv show following keith olbermann on current tv. so starting in january i'll be doing a tv show that's focus on the election, political junkie like me, i'm interested in politics and policy. so it would be called the war room, the war rooms of political campaigns. so i hope you will do him. 6:00 your. thanks so much. [applause] >> to find out more visit the author's website, jennifergranholm.com.

>> professor jeremi suri, what is nation-building? >> nation-building is the effort to ask you get involved in and of the society and help the society improve itself as you improve your self as well. >> who does the nation-building? >> a variety of factors but one of the points i make in my book is that a part of nation-building is actually being part of a process that involves bringing americans to another society, not dictating to another society but working with people and another society. so it's americans, working together. >> "liberty's surest guardian" is your most recent book, and i want to read just a portion here. nothing could be more american than to pursue global peace than the spread of american-style institution. nothing could be more un-american than to expect ready support from this process from a mix of local populations, international allies and, of course, the united states

government. >> yes. one of the things that is so quintessential american is deeply people can come together to make the world a better place and that it can be done in a representative powering way. americans believe is instinctively even if it doesn't always happen. i argue in the book is something that comes from our own experience at home. our society has and still is a nationbuilding project and we believe it's possible to do that elsewhere. i embraced that idealism myself i must say. >> how have you organized this book? >> i've organized the book around a number of case studies. the first chapter lays out the general argued but the general argument comes from our own experience during the revolution. i think in madison and washington and the phrase libya shuras guarding is from george washington. i go through a series of cases, philippines, germany, vietnam and afghanistan. >> ewers toward reconstruction throughout. reconstruction after world war ii. why that would? >> i believe part of the

american project in nation-building is to reconstruct. empires believe that societies can change. they have to be dominated and controlled from the outside. americans believe that societies can be rebuild and better for themselves and better for us. it's self interest as well. >> on a personal level do you support the concept of nation-building? >> i do. i don't see how we can escape it. i argue that i cannot predict, no one could predict next foreign policy crisis but i can see the predict that the next president will be involved in nation-building again. it's in our dna as americans. it's what defines us as americans. >> hasn't been a prison was not involved in nation to? >> not a president who oversaw any major expansion. there have been presidents who served in short periods and that's okay. there are moments we might be in one of those moments right now. in an expansive period when americans have gone out and sought to expand their interest it has always involve nation-building.

>> when has it been successful? >> under two conditions. went americans are committed to the case they are involved in. and when we have good overseas partners. one of the questions we need to ask ourselves other going into a place in the world that we believe in and where people there are willing to work with us. if we answered no to either of those questions, i argue we shouldn't do it. >> where have we done it successfully? >> germany is the example most people bring out after world war ii. japan would be another would i argue those are extreme cases. most will not be that successful and we should hold that up as the standard. the best we can hope for is pretty much what we had in reconstruction after the civil war in in the philippines in the early 20th century, we go into a part of our own country or another society that's undergone major transformation and we contribute to making the place a little bit better. it's always a muddy process.

it's never short and always involve setbacks as well as forward movement. >> what about a case such as iraq where perhaps the u.s. spurred the change in society and now it's going into the reconstruction phase? >> this happened very quickly in iraq in part because the traditional merrick kelley part of the operation ended quickly. americans were not prepared for what came next. there was a case to be made that we could've done a job in iraq and made we started to do a good job by 2007, 2008, but we went in without proper planning and we went and unprepared for what we're doing. most of all we went in before we finish the job in afghanistan. what strikes me about iraq, this is the only case i've seen whether united states chooses to do to make a nationbuilding operations at the same time, generally we try to do one first if we're going to do when, finish it and move onto another. >> what about afghanistan?

>> i think we had a real opportunity in afghanistan. i believe this firmly that in late 2001, 2002 the people of afghanistan from various tribal groups want something different. they had a history of a function nation in the late '60s and early '70s. not a nation that any of us would want to live in per se but a function nation state. they wanted to go back to that. we took our eyes off the ball. we promise nation-building but the we diverted all our resources to iraq. >> jeremi suri, is there any other place in the world that the u.s. is nation-building? >> some say we are in libya and we should acknowledge that. we are part of a multinational operation that unseated a long serving dictator, moammar gadhafi, who'd been in power more decades and we've been working very closely and along with our allies with the transitional council which is basically made up of various rebel forces. we are part of this process. to say we are involved in

nation-building doesn't mean we have to do a military occupation or do it justice those. we are part of this process and if it fills a libya our military operation will have been a failure as well. if a new adopt the arises then we will have wasted our time and wasted our assets but if we can contribute to a more participatory and peaceful society there, that will be to our benefit of will as the benefit of the people of the region. how can we not do nation building there? >> two of the other aspects that you say are needed are a growing population and international allies. win have the three of those besides germany and japan, when have the three of those things coalesced? >> they have coalesced in the number of the cases i point out. i think after the civil war most of our allies wanted us to succeed in wanted stability in this part of the world. in the case of the philippines we benefited from a lot of other interests that saw us as a better alternative in the

philippines than the germans or to the british. benefited from being the new kid on the block. and i believe in afghanistan than in late 2001-2002 wind a lot of those advantages as well. let's separate afghanistan from iraq to our allies supported what we did in afghanistan. our allies wanted stability in afghanistan. we squander that opportunity. so my point is let's be attentive to win our allies will support us and let's take advantage of those opportunities. >> jeremi suri was a former professor of history at the university of wisconsin, and he is just recently moved down here to the university of texas. what are you teaching down your? >> i'm teaching a course on international history of the last century, what have we learned from the wars and reconstruction and nationbuilding activity. i'm also teaching a course on strategy and global policy, how do you strategize to run an organization or make policy in a global world today. next year i will teach the american server which i love.

i love having freshmen and i love being able to expose them to this material. spent on an american history survey course where do you start? >> i start in 1865. i would love to do a year-long course. i think there's so many issues there and all the issues that are old and new again working with the debt crisis, dealing with questions of american foreign activity. they are there any 18th century. they are there today. >> is also the author of henry kissinger and the american century and american foreign relations since 1898. y. in that but did you start in 1898? >> 1898 marks a moment when the message really announced itself on the world stage. it's recognized by other powers at least been a major entity, a major actor internationally. so that the kind of breaking point but as i argued in my new book, civil is perhaps the breaking point. >> get henry kissinger participate in your book, your

2007 book about an? >> he did. i spent on time talking to him and getting to know him reasonably well. he is an amazing figure. i have mixed feeling about him, as most people do but i don't think anyone who has spent time with them can help but respect him. and i share that respect. >> jeremi suri, professor at university of texas. is most reasonable, "liberty's surest guardian," american nation-building on the founders to obama. >> is a short author interview from c-span's campaign 2012 bus as it traveled the country. >> doctor starbuck, you have written a few books on archaeology. why is it important for people to learn history to archaeology? >> it's often said history is written by the victors, and we read about such things as major battles, generals, military

campaigns. history talks about those who want to get talks about the famous, talks about the great events. archaeology on the other hand talks about ordinary people. we dig up the remains of soldiers on average days at the fourth and the military encampments. it's the real lives of real people that archaeology gives that. whereas history has traditionally been biased towards the famous people, the important people. well, to an archaeologist everyone is important. when i do that military camps i'm digging of the activities, the things that people were doing 360 days out of the year. not what they did on that one or two days they were fighting during the year. so archaeologists love to say it's everybody's story, we try to tell. >> you spoke how you have done multiple kinds of archaeology.

how did you decide to transition to the military archaeology, of the forest and battle for? >> i was originally trained in central mexico, it was fun, exciting to dig in other countries. but gradually i started to hit historical sites in america. things like early factories. i dug a gun factory many years ago. i have dug glass factories, i dug mills. but somewhere along the way the national park service asked if i would start working at the saratoga battlefield. i never worked on military sites before. i did know though that when you dig up early american, people in general are drawn to certain types of things. and other things maybe they don't find quite as exciting. it was 1985 when i first started digging a battlefield, and i was amazed to find that everybody is fascinating by early military history. and it's not just memorizing

facts, memorizing battle strategies. people want to actually go where the action was. they want to stand where the soldiers stood but they want to stand where the battle was going on. and they want to see and touch the things of the past. a musket ball, a conflict, a bayonet, part of a musket. people want to physically connect with evidence with traces from patchwork of her past battle. the moment i started digging forts and battlefields, many more people started signing up to dig with me. magazine started requesting articles, television started wanting to do programs on military digs. looks, everybody wanted books about digging up ports. i never realized that level of interest exists here in america for all the old military campaigns, all the old forts. and i suddenly realized i never

planned to dig before in my life, but all of the sudden people cared. people wanted to visit. people wanted to connect with past soldiers. and for 25 years now, i have dug up the remains of america's forts and battlefields and in tenements trying to find out what soldiers lives were really like. >> there's a lot of interest, you mentioned in america with people with forts and battlefields. in the forward to your book it states that sometimes a compromise material record, what does that mean? >> i'm afraid that the battlefields are such famous popular sites that the moment a battle was over, anytime in our our past, local people would descend to pick up souvenirs. and in no time at all those musket balls, those bullets, those bayonets would be picked up and carried off. also, if people lived nearby, if the remains of a ford were

starting to crumble are starting to rot, they tears and had left, local citizens, local townspeople would always go there, read anything they could walk off with, whether its bricks, older fireplaces, timbers, and take them off and use them for their own houses. so military sites are compromise all the time by people wanting souvenirs and wanting things to recycle for their own use. so by the time the archaeologists are rise, there's only a fragment of what was once there at a military site. >> what are some the things you found that you wouldn't, people would expect you would find at a ford or a battlefield and what types of things tell the most storied? >> i think what people expect us to find would be things like musket balls and influence, gun parts. that's always interesting. i've seen lots of students get very excited the finding a

musket ball. but i think more unexpected things are usually the personal items, things that a soldier action had on their body, buttons, buckles, cufflinks, anything of a personal nature, you suddenly see that button and realize a real person was wearing that, and you're connecting with that soldier from the past. i think among the unexpected things we find no, it's the fancy things. i think we assume everything is sort of standard military issue, everybody is going the same thing, fighting with the same weapons. all of. all of the sudden you find something nice, and one for the comes to mind is fort orange. that's where the city of albany, new york, is today. for orange was an early dutch fort, and he would expect on the frontier in the 1600s everything would be simple and crude.

well, they had found the fanciest glass vessels, glass bottles, glass bowls from holland, the nicest things way up there on the frontier. soldiers, people living in fort did not just have crude, simple out of date garbage, if you will. they had nice things. they want to bring the best things from home, from the mother country, from europe to the frontier of america. when our judges find really nice things, we sort of smile to ourselves and say, those officers, those soldiers, they did okay for themselves. >> what are you digging now? is there an archaeological dig you're working on right now? >> well, i'm doing two things right now. in the summertime i'm taking fort william henry in lake george, new york. fort william henry is the site of the last of the mohicans. so for anyone who