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there's a great economics group. i work on energy subject, have been working a great deal on that and i've also been trying to reflect about my experiences and see if there is anything that can be learned from them. i wrote a book to try to do that. >> host: and that book is called "issues on my mind." what is the main issue on your mind today? >> guest: of the main issue is that the world that the united states had a great deal to do with constructing after world war ii, in fact we conducted a security and economic commons that served us and serve everybody well. that is being torn apart right

now. and we have to understand what's happening and we have to be ready to interact in a constructive way to build a more coherent world than the one that is developing could get. i reflect my experience is on the different ways that we need to go about. we have some real opportunities in front of us. we have some issues. a lot of the things i propose or talk about are so controversial nobody even wants to hear you talk about them, but i do so i enjoy that. >> host: how is the world security wise as opposed to the 1980's? >> guest: to the 1980's when i was the secretary of state we had a main threat of the soviet

union and the nuclear arsenal and our nuclear arsenal and how we contain that and the nuclear cloud was always somewhere. i think that has diminished in terms of russia and u.s. although it's still there but the threat is more of a greater disbursement of nuclear-weapons of the proliferation of them sometimes that are not the trouble. but in other ways the world is kind of falling apart and this is very disturbing i think. >> host: iran, potential nuclear power. how should it be handled? >> guest: we have said is unacceptable. i remember -- and i use this in

my book when i was a bullet in the marine corps you think that you have then you go to boot camp and it's a few surviving boot camp that you become a marlene. i remember the day the sergeant canceled me my rifle and said take good care of this this is your best friend. and remember one thing, never played this rifle at anybody unless you are willing to pull the trigger. no empty threats. now, i told that story to president ronald reagan on occasion and he loved it because we said to ourselves we are going to be very careful what we say. so people would realize that when we say something, it's going to have consequences. and it does. and if it's not going to have consequences, we don't say it. so what the administration has in mind, i don't know. but they basically said it is unacceptable for iran to get nuclear weapons, that the option

is not -- i think secretary carry testified it's not containment if the option is prevention. so i don't know what their strategy is for preventing. but it better have some toughness or it isn't going to succeed. >> host: secretaries shultz, what about the super powers that have nuclear weapons -- russia, the u.s., china -- should there be more talks? should there be less weapons? should they be dismantled? >> guest: one very positive thing has taken place, a lot of positive things but one more recent was about three years ago i guess president obama convened a meeting in washington, 40 heads of government came, and the object was to see how everybody involved can do a better job of controlling fissile materials. fissile material was what it

takes to make a bomb. that is the hard part getting the fissile material. and then there was followed up with another 12 years later and i gather that there is another one scheduled in amsterdam and more and more heads of government are involved in that and trying to get ahold of that problem. i think that is a very constructive thing and in a recent thing that i'd written along with it, people i'd been working with on henry kissinger said joel bill perry -- let that more often to a global enterprise and get all of these more constructive long rogue states together to keep working at these different kind of things that need to be done. there's some between us and russia that need to be done but there are of the things, too. >> host: what about when it comes to the rogue states in the

80's? you were part of the administration that was strategically bombed libya. what about the bombing iran at least its nuclear facility >> guest: i know part of any intelligence except to say that it's probably difficult. the israelis were more worried about it than anybody because iran the other day said they want to eliminate israel and wipe that out if they had a nuclear weapon on the end of a ballistic missile, they could do it. and so, i think that we have learned from reading my encompassed -- mayn kopf we have to read them seriously but we think about forceful means -- synnott and inform the net

position to say more than that. >> host: in "issues on my mind" you're right when it comes to terrorism we in this country must think hard about the moral stakes involved if we truly believe in our space values and way of life we must be willing to defend them, the passive measures are unlikely to suffice and the means of deterrence must be considered and given the necessary political support. >> guest: you save you having law enforcement approach with a terrorist act have been, then we find out who did it and we tried them in the u.s. court and if we make him guilty there are endless appeals and they go to jail. well, what does that accomplish? a certain determines that in the meantime the terrorist act has taken place and a terrorist act like 9/11 can kill a lot of people. so if you know something is coming at you, why not stop it?

from happening? in other words, prevention. and i think when i first said that in 1984 it was very controversial. but after 9/11, people said of course we should be trying to stop that from happening, and so, i think that this doctrine of trying to prevent things is very important and it's become common and we do a great deal in this country. i think there's been lots of terrorist acts that didn't happen because we found out about them for intelligence and prevented them. >> host: we are talking with former secretary of state, former secretary of labor, former secretary george shultz about his new book, "issues on my mind." mr. secretary, what was the famous trauner that you ever had? -- david job you ever had? >> guest: use a job. a job in place something you

have to do to get some money. if you say that, i never had a job in my life. i've always done things that i have found rewording and interesting. and if i wound up doing something i found out something else to do. but in the government it is a great privilege and opportunity to serve. and i had a succession of jobs and all of them had their tough moments but all of them were rewording starting with my two and a half years overseas and in marine corps, and there i was fighting for my country and in the end we were victorious. i didn't have much to do with it, but i was one person out there. i served in the eisenhower administration has its council of economic advisers. it was a great privilege. i remember going down my office was in the big office building

right next to the white house, it used to be called the old state building. anyway, i had an office with a window that looked out on the south lawn of the white house and my father who died not too long after that came and i took him to my office and he saw this view and he said sun, and you have a riot. so it was great to work their. and when you are working in the white house complex, you have a view of the whole government. and i learned a lot about how you put the statistics together that we talk about all the time, so that was a great experience. then when i was secretary of labor, i had -- i knew the subject matter very well, and i knew the department will because i had done some things in both the kennedy and johnson administrations they gave me that exposure plight didn't know anything about washington and politics and the press and all

of that, so i had a good base of knowledge from which to learn about these things, and i was fortunate in persuading a man named joe to come and be the press person. he had worked "the new york times" for i don't know, decades coming and he was the premier of labor reporter anywhere. he was really good. everyone read his stories. he said he would sign on but he had conditions. i said okay, what are your conditions? he said first of all, if i'm going to be the spokesman, i have to know what's going on i don't want to be blindsided. if i'm blindsided, then i'm over. of course, you can go anywhere you want. anyone would be glad to have to there. you are a contributor.

what else? don't lie. i said come on i don't buy a pity if you would be surprised what happens to people. maybe they don't lie but they mislead. misleading is as bad as longing. so, you have to be straight. i said okay. what else? he said never have a press conference unless you have some news. i said don't reporters kind of like to and they said look, you don't understand, they are trying to make a living and the way you make a living is you get a story with your name on it and it's on the front page of your paper coming you call a news conference and the reporter thinks this is my story and he comes and you don't have any news or are you going to do? he's great start asking questions to try to meet you say something stupid and that's the news. and he had a whole bunch of things like that that i called

off so i learned a lot about the press from him, and while sometimes people white things you don't like on the whole, he had a constructive attitude and helped them get the facts straight you're going to be much better off. then i had a guy named brice in the white house who was the political counselor and congressional relations by and he took me under his wing to a certain extent, and he had rules. he said never make a promise unless you can deliver on that. and if it turns out it's really hard to deliver, try all the harder because people only deal with you if they trust you, and they trust you if you do when you say you are going to do. and his word was trust is the

claim of the realm. cornyn is the trust. so i always tried to remember that. but in the labor department, i had some -- my first big battle in the congress and i learned something about that, so it was a great learning thing. then i went from there to be the director of the budget, and there you have the whole government out in front of you. so that was great. then i can the secretary of the treasury and was the time when we redid the international monetary system. so lots of dealings with people all over the world. and i learned a lot about how to do something internationally. so, that was great experience for me. learning was fun. i enjoyed it. enjoyed the people. some are still good friends today. but of course when i was secretary of state, the tectonic plates of the world changed.

when ronald reagan and i took office, the cold war was as cold as it could get in there was all over but the shouting so that was a huge thing to be involved in and then watched unfold. >> host: mr. secretary, in your book if she was on my mind, you have rules for leadership and a couple of those you already expound upon. the bryce harlow rule. but the first is to be a participant. >> guest: that's what democracy is all about. early on when i was working in the primaries ronald reagan gave me at tie and on it it says democracy isn't a spectator sport, so be part of it coming and be part of the politics, but be willing to serve and be a participant. >> host: rule number five,

competence is the name of the game in leadership. >> guest: it is a great start to be competent. if you're not coming you are going to get in big trouble. i had a tough experience with that though. i told you when i went to washington as the secretary of labor i was kind of an innocent at politics, and i had a bunch of political appointees places to fill and i realized that you are trying to work with a diverse constituency, so i said i need the best management in this industrial labour relations field that there is and everybody told me it was this guy named jim hudson at lockheed. i talked to him and they said we have to have a real labor guy that advises you, somebody that negotiates and contract and stands for the election. as we found a guy named bill to

do that. have to get somebody that really knows manpower training. so, we got that. got to get somebody that has worked in the area of how to deal with discrimination in the workplace, a lawyer that knows the labour market. anyway, i get a lot of these people lined up and the president-elect nixon thought they would show progress in his administration. why don't you bring them to the hotel and we will have a little meeting and you can introduce them to the press. so we have a meeting and go down to the press and i introduce them then he asked all kind of questions and was pretty obvious he was a pro and he knew what he was doing. someone in the back of the room holds his hand up and says are you a democrat or republican? and in my innocence i never even asked him. he said i'm a democrat. so i remember johnny was

dazzling and he just was the same one that holds his hand up and says i'm a democrat, and went like that. the last one was jeff who was our nominee to be the head of the bureau of labor statistics, and he was a statistician and arthur burns, who was very close to president nixon was somebody he wanted and i wanted so i thought i never got a republican, so the same day i asked him the question and he stands there like a cow chewing. he said i guess you have to say i'm an independent. anyway, get back to my hotel room, the phone is ringing off the hook and all the republicans on the senate labor committee are saying so on. i said i cleared these names in the white house with a ranking republican, jacob javits.

but anyway, i will give him credit because all of my guys did a terrific. they were competent people. and even some of the people who objected called me and said we like your guys. jim succeeded me and later became the ambassador in japan. arnie weber became the first amendment omb and he was a burly and president of northwestern university and so on. so, if i had ruled all these people out, i have ruled because they were registered democrats. i wouldn't have had the competence. i'm not saying -- i should have asked the question and done something about it. but anyway, if you have competent people around you, you are going to do much better than if you don't. the first job is to form your team and get people who are competent and that those. >> host: that leads to rule number six in the george shultz

book, finally give the people on your team responsibility and reward them for exercising. >> guest: you want to be able to say here is what we are trying to achieve. this is our objective, and your part -- this is what you're supposed to be doing. and yes, you and i will work on it together but this is your responsibility. and i want to administer on the basis of no surprises that if something happens dad, i want to know about it right away, if something happens that surprisingly good i would like to know about that, too because you can learn from those things. but you have got to give people leadership and objectives and hold them accountable. accountability is very important in the economic system more governmental system. i'm fond of sports as a teacher

of accountability. and in my book i have some pictures of sports things. but american people love sports and i think one of the reasons is the sense of accountability. there you are standing on the green. you have the potter. there is the ball, there is the cup. you hit the ball and when it stops rolling the result is unambiguous, real accountability that is a picture of a golf course. they watched president ronald reagan and me to the he was our referee. ronald reagan and i had a new year's eve golf game every year and one year they showed up and it was quite a day. they were fun. >> host: george shultz, in "issues on my mind" coming you

write about your time as the secretary of treasury. why did you resign? >> guest: well, the atmosphere became rather discouraging even though we had a lot of really good experiences. one day i'm sitting in my office and the director of internal revenue, the commissioner comes to see me. his name was johnny walters. he said i just had a visit from john dean, the president's counselor. and he hands me this list of 50 or so names of people to do a full field investigation of their tax returns. that is a very unpleasant process. what do i do? you don't do it. what do i tell john dean. report to me and if he has a problem he will come to me. it's interesting in the nixon tapes i heard him discussing this with john been and they basically said who the hell does

blue walleye is think he is not doing what we want but they never had him in there to put it to me because if i designed, refusing to do something improper with the internal revenue service, that wouldn't be a very good story for them but anyway, then i inherited the administration of waging price controls which i had opposed originally but it wasn't in my domain. incidentally, the two people running it for me or donald rumsfeld and cheney. anyway, we were in the process of trying to get rid of them, and against my advice, president nixon reimposed them to the it and i said well, mr. president, it's your call. you are the president. i think it's a mistake and you should get yourself a new secretary of the treasury. so i resigned sort of on the policy issues. >> host: mr. secretary, did you have -- >> guest: it also illustrates

something i think in these jobs they are very rewarding and you have a chance to deal with major things to the often you can really make a difference. so, you tend to enjoy it. but you can't love the job too much. that is you have to be true to yourself. and i felt if i stayed under the circumstances of this decision i wouldn't be true to myself. so, you can't like the job too much. >> host: mr. secretary, did you have a good relationship or what kind of relationship did you have with president nixon? >> guest: we have a very good relationship with them. we did a lot of really constructive things together. one of the first things i did as

the secretary of labor was in philadelphia in the skilled construction trade there were no blacks at all, yet there were those around who were skilled. so, we decided -- i decided, and art fletcher who was working for me in this area decided we should break this up and so we devised something that became known as the philadelphia plan and told them you've got to have some hiring but nevertheless, get more people there and let's have an objective, you must have a timetable to get going so we were trying to manage this process. as you can imagine, it was very controversial. i was new as the secretary of labor and all of a sudden - controversy and i called to

testify in the senate and somebody is saying try this system. i said i'm trying to replace one. i'm trying to get rid of one. the quota is zero. it's been very effective. so we went back and forth and then there was a vote in the senate. i went to the gallery to watch, and scott, the republican leader gave me the sheet reprinted in the book. we won by ten votes. it was a very bipartisan vote for and against. but it was traumatic but it was my first battle and i felt good about it because i felt i was in a sense morally on the right side of the issue. incidentally one of the senators that voted with me was ted kennedy and we can in an odd way good friends and respected each other, had different views on a lot of things that got along well, and that was helpful to me later when i was the secretary

of state, he was a good colleague. >> host: are you still in touch with donald rumsfeld and cheney? >> guest: he was over in london. i had the privilege of being a leader with jim baker in the american delegation and he showed up there and his wife and they were good friends so we had a chance to see him come he is amazing. he went through -- i said you are looking great he said i'm feeling fine. i had three hard years. he had a heart replacement and so on but now he is looking great and feeling great, so catch up with these people. >> host: what about secretary rumsfeld? >> guest: i don't see a lot of him, but i'm in touch with him. he has a new book coming out and i wrote a little blurb for him and had a little back-and-forth. he has done this known and

unknown and stuff, very clever phrase, it is a good interesting book. >> host: what was your relationship with margaret thatcher? >> guest: i had a really good relationship with margaret. often we argued about things. she is a pretty fierce are your, but she doesn't like lap dogs, people just say yes margaret, and so, we wouldn't go added, but our underlining way of thinking about things was very similar. so a lot was constructed by the bald reagan and thatcher relationship and i was glad to be part of it and i was glad to go to her funeral because i had been close to her both before i was in office and after we left office. we still had times when we were together. so i was glad to have a chance to go and pay my respects

because i think it is a fair statement that between margaret thatcher and ronald reagan and their leadership, they changed the world, the art of history was changed. >> host: page 245 of "issues on my mind" coming you write that in my view the most striking trend now is something else. it's the growing dynamism, cohesion and cooperation of like-minded nations that share an important set of positive goals. >> guest: that is what i think what u.s. leadership we manage to do after world war ii. remember there were some really great statesman in the truman administration, then this was carried on. these people look back and what did they see? >> guest: they saw two world wars, the first one settled on

rhetoric vindictive terms and the second world war, 70 million people were killed and untold others displaced. they saw the great depression. they saw the protectionism and the currency manipulation that helped aggravate it. the holocaust. they said it to themselves what a crummy world. and we are part of it whether we like it or not. so, they set out to construct something better. then they saw the soviet union as an aggressive force. they developed ideas like containment, institutional structures like nato. the brentonwood system on economics, the trading effort to construct a successful effort to construct a training set up and the security efforts that were made. and over a period of time come

each successive administrations made its contributions. there was constructed a security and economic commons and that is what i am referring to come in and people contributed to it and benefited from it. there was u.s. leadership without a doubt, and i think it's fair to say that without u.s. leadership, constructive things seldom handle. that doesn't mean that people do what we want, but it means that when the u.s. is there with ideas and an effective participant, it helps to get things moving. i've seen that personally on many occasions. so, that has been a great achievement. i can remember in the early 1980's i was in china and had a meeting and he said now china is

ready for the two openings. i said what are the two openings? he said well first of all the open for the movement of people within china, and opening within china. what's the second one? and opening with china to the outside world. and there is a reason for the world to open up to. he understood that very well. so, that is what i was referring to and that's it right now this is being torn apart in many ways. it's changing. >> host: how should we view china? >> guest: it is a big country with a lot of talented people. it's had a remarkable economic renaissance. it has very large problems to contend with. but its major relatively new in

modern times anyway actor on the scene, so i think we ought to have -- develop a close working relationship and the devotee to talk through problems with them. that's the way we need to go about it. >> host: do we have the ability now? do we have that relationship now? >> guest: i hope so. but i don't -- i'm not part of things. i've been out of the office for 25 years, but i'm part of a little group that henry kissinger organized that has meetings some in china and some here, just seven or eight of us, and about a year ago we were in china, and the man who's now president and he gave a dinner and spend time with a lot of discussion. and the next day we spent about an hour and a half with the new premier, and i thought -- and i

checked this out with henry kissinger and others on our little the obligation to get i said you know, they are giving us a message. if they want to have a collaborative relationship with the united states that doesn't mean we don't have problems, but it means that we can talk about the problems come and maybe we agree to disagree on some or find ways of dealing with them. i know when i was in office, my first meeting with the chinese i said, and they liked the idea with my counterpart, they said you put on the table everything you want to talk about and i will put on the table everything i want to talk about. let's make an agenda out of that. and let's agree i will come to china once a year at least and you come to the u.s. at least once a year and probably there are three or four meeting places where we both come to a meeting

of some kind and set aside three hours or so just for us to work through this agenda and that served us well that we identified some opportunities, we saw problems some of which we couldn't deal with, but on whole -- we developed in the soviet union the same where wu could say to me i know you are trying to get here and you are trying to get it this way and we can't handle that. but if you come around like this, maybe that could work. so that's the way to do things if you can give a look a reasonably trusting relationship with the other party. so we will have our big

disagreements with china. right now the cyber area in our judgment but the way to do it is to sit down and talk to each other, be realistic, be strong, have an agenda, don't go in without an agenda and be ready to engage. host could you want to be the secretary of defense? >> guest: that is tough. i was never asked to do that and i didn't think about it very much. but having been very close to it is a hard job. i guess if i had been offered i would have taken at. the president asks you to do something i consider myself still to be a marine so i'm still in the military forces and as the secretary of state i have

a lot of dealings with the military. and i said to my counterpart one time, i said according to the statute, the national security council consists of four people to the president, the vice president, the secretary of state and secretary defense and says it is entitled to military advice. they said i'm going to talk to you. they said you aren't wearing a uniform, you have to talk to the guys in uniform. so when that happened i found that the then chairman of the joint chiefs liked to play golf. and i had been a member of the golf club for a while and noble fir turns down an invitation to gulf so i invited them down for the weekend so we got to know each other and it's important to have direct military advice when you are trying to conduct diplomacy with various something

happening. >> host: did you have a direct line when you are the secretary of state? >> guest: we had a system he and i had two private meetings a week and obviously whatever he wanted to talk about was first and i always brought an agenda to talk about. we had a sort of understanding we would never try to make a decision in those meetings because they should be argued and a broad context but i would go and say look here is this problem it's a gathering storm you can see on the horizon we don't know where it is going but here's the way that we are thinking about it. here is what we are trying to do about it. what do you think? and we go back and forth. and he was a union leader at one point. he liked to talk about the bargaining negotiation.

i had my experiences in the labor arena so we swapped stories back and forth and i got to have a really good understanding of how we went about things. so i felt that was important because i am representing him and people sometimes say to me what about your foreign policy? i say i don't have one bit of the president has won. my job is to help them formulate it and carry it out but he is the one with a foreign policy. he was elected, not me. >> host: has the role of the secretary change since you were there in the etds? >> guest: well, it looks to me as though there isn't the same kind of relationships that i had with president nixon or that jim baker had with george bush

because -- i don't know exactly the reason that the other day the national security adviser went to moscow to meet with putin and started arranging that relationship. if i were secretary of state i wouldn't tolerate that. that's my job and as the national security adviser it is a staff person, not a principal to that i remember when colin powell got the job as the national security adviser he understood and he came to me and said i'm a member of your staff. the president is my main guy but my job is to stuff the council said that is beginning to get out of kilter and in my book i have quite a lot to say about the structure of the governments and how it's going in the wrong

direction. >> host: secretary, a couple more issues on the mind. demographics. you are worried about the demographics? >> guest: i'm not worried, observant about it and i see that the demographics of the world have changed and are continuing to change. the developed country have low fertility, raising longevity but getting to be older societies which has an impact on your outlook and your capabilities. the russians of a demographic catastrophe on their hands. a very low fertility, longevity of men a little dirt and 60 and the women live 12 years longer than men and the talented people were emigrating. they have huge problems in the caucasus to deal with.

there's a long border with china. a lot of people on one side and hardly anybody else on the other. but the demographics underlining this far devastating. china has the most interesting demographics because of around 30 years ago fertility dropped like a stone. that meant for a quarter of the century, china has had a growing labour force and a declining number of people they had to support called a demographic dividend. now the courts in the population are moving up gannett the situation is about change like that. where suddenly you are going to have a declining labor force and a rising number of people the

laboce haso support. it's a big change. meanwhile, you have the north africa and middle east countries fertility has come down some but it's still very high and longevity is big cities are very young societies. and some how many of them have gotten organized in a way people don't have much to do. and the information and communication people do not have a monopoly on information on ability to organize that is entirely changed. so, in the middle east we see the arab awakening and the spark, there was a little guy indonesia and all he wanted to do is sell a business with fruits and vegetables and the

regulators wanted to get a bonnet and he refused so they squashed him. how do you expect me to make a living? and worked as a lot for you. it gives you dignity. you get some in, from work and feel i deserve that. i did something and i got paid for at. so i think in that term while we are seeing in the middle east and north africa it's not going to settle down until somehow people have something to do that's constructive. there are many issues turning away on that but it's a fundamental issue you can see a look when it is in the demography. >> host: tied into that you mentioned another issue you talk about its technology and the use of technology. >> guest: as i was saying, i don't think people quite

appreciate the depth and the meaning of the information and the communication revolution. it's changed the process of governance. in the space government they were accustomed to paying attention to what people want, but nevertheless it shortens the distance between the people who are governing and the people who are being governed and it's changing because people anywhere for basic information they can also communicate with each other and their self phones and organize and we are seeing that all of the place and of course it's been prominent in the middle east, but the russians have been struggling with it, the chinese struggle with that call if it's a phenomenon that's very much present.

final issue, domestic and international, what should be done about drugs in the u.s.? >> guest: we have to be willing to discuss the issue. do you agree, are you willing to talk about it? >> host: i'm just listening. >> guest: for a long time nobody will discuss it. we had the war on drugs and i remember in the nixon administration, we were worried rightly about the damage that drugs due to an individual and to a society. so i'm very much of the view that we need to figure out how to deal with that. there was the idea and pat moynihan was the counselor in the white house, one of the

things to do would be to fix it so drugs are just not here. so he had a program of denial and the two of us are riding up to camp david and i had a presentation to make so i'm studying my notes and he's in a state of euphoria. he says to me don't you realize we just had the biggest drug bust in history? congratulations. as long as there is a demand for drugs in this country there is going to be a supply. i looked at him and i said there is hope for you. but this effort to keep drugs out of here is a complete failure. the problem with drugs in the

united states is relatively great compared with many other like-minded countries. so, we ought to at least discuss this and see what other people are doing. i think that there is a lot to be said for decriminalizing deutsch and small scale possession, that is possession only for your own use. if you do that, you don't get thrown in jail if you go to the treatment center and try to get some help. and to also keep the jails from being full of people caught smoking marijuana or something. and throw people in jail all you do is make criminals out of them that's where they learned. they are even getting drugs in jail. so we should take a different approach because it is so vitally important to try to

persuade people not to take these drugs because they are so bad for them and it's bad for society. you can do things. look of what we've done in this country with cigarettes. there are still people smoking them but much less than before because we've had in fact based campaign, not just advertising, but a campaign to persuade people not to smoke. i remember the days when they had the advertisements i would walk a mile for a camel and a pretty girl saying blow some of my way with the smoke and all those kind of things. well, now if you see somebody smoking you think there's something wrong with them. building understand they are killing themselves? so the whole atmosphere has changed. all kind of things can be done beyond what we are doing. but we are spending gigantic amounts of money on this war and

another one of them is huge violence. in mexico for the last five or six years some 50,000 people have been killed, that is more than the war in afghanistan and iraq. so there are huge costs. we think it's a mexican problem. where does the money come from? the united states. where do the guns come from? the united states. so they have better equipment and the air better organized than the government. the new government seems to be struggling with it and we need to say we have to do something about it. and one time when i was in office nancy reagan had her just say no program. she understood this and she went

to the united nations. she was invited to give a speech on the subject and i enjoyed her and she said very directly that solutions to the problems start right here doing something about people taking drugs. it was a beautiful statement she made. >> host: in your book even put a letter from nancy reagan to you. >> guest: there's also a nice picture at the u.n. consulting. but at any rate, she got a lot of pressure not to say what she said. but just like her husband, if that's what she thought, that's what she was going to say. and she did. the impact on the world was just the opposite of what the drug bureaucracy father would be. that as people respondents saying her it's so refreshing to hear you say that we will be

working with you. >> host: are you still in touch with mrs. reagan? >> guest: i talked to her the other day i gave a report on the thatcher funeral. >> host: two final questions. you mentioned earlier, mr. secretary, you're father -- >> guest: i thought earlier you said you had two final questions. >> host: on issues. this is in general. you mention your father. who were your parents and where did you grow up? >> guest: i was born in new york city and my parents moved us to inglewood new jersey which is a little better the community. my father worked in new york. my parents were just wonderful people. my father grew up on a farm in indiana and somehow got himself to the university, first member of his family ever to go to college and then he was interested in history and got a scholarship to columbia and got a ph.d. and wrote a book with

charles famous historian, and then he was asked to start of school in new york stock exchange to train people in the ways of the stock exchange and he started that school called the new york stock exchange institute and developed it into a fine institution and he would take me in those days people work on saturday mornings. now nobody works on saturday anymore what he would take me in with him when i was a kid and afterwards i know there was a place called a b. and gee sandwich shop. then we would go to a football game at columbia or if there was an interesting lecture or something we would go to it and he would take me to all these things and play catch with me endlessly with a baseball football. he was a wonderful father and my mother was just a wonderful

person. she sat very high standards and wanted things to be just so she had great taste. so i was very fortunate to have nothing, talented wonderful parents. i've got pictures of them all around everywhere. >> host: here at the hoover institution another former secretary of state is located. your colleague condoleezza rice. what do you think it secretary rice ran for president? >> guest: she's a very capable person. i haven't ever talked to her directly about that, but i know that she understands the political process. it's different running for office than being an appointed person even in high office like secretary of state. so whether she wants to indulge in that, i don't know what she would be very appealing

candidate. >> host: did you ever run for office? >> guest: yes when i lived in massachusetts a little town in massachusetts when i was on the faculty of mit, we have a few students per class and massachusetts have a program for regional schools all little towns would get together and i thought i was a good idea and so people said why don't you run for the school board? so, i did. and the voters in their wisdom turned down the regional school but elected me by an overwhelming margin to a nonexistent office, so i ran. >> host: for the past hour or so we've been talking with former secretary of state, labor and treasury george shultz, "issues on my mind" strategies for the future. you are watching book tv on c-span2.

i've got five books on my reading list and i call them my reading of wish list because if i get through even if the i consider it a success. the one i'm finishing right now is called tenet letters by eli saslo. he read this a year-and-a-half ago and it's a look back at the people that write letters to president obama. we know that he reads about ten letters a day from everyday americans. so he went back and found ten of them who threatened to the president with real stories of whoa in the economic successions of it is a look back and a dive into some of the interactions people have with the president. it's not so much about him it's the people what reached out. almost done with that. when that is done i will go on to the act of congress by bob

kaiser another from the "washington post," who looked at how the congress dealt with financially for a few years ago and used it to show how the congress is so broken these days. he covered congress back in the 1970's and says it is a big difference between that and now. it's completely lt yes to most people but he finds the real dysfunction in a few different ways and it is supposed to be a good read. after that another book by a guy from the washington post. i'm not doing it on purpose but if they have done a good stuff. collision 2012, it is a look back at the 20 top campaign. he did a similar book in the 2008 campaign so this is his look at the race and talked to all the guys involved. that will be later in the year. the other one is through the perilous fight which is why steve vogel also "the washington post," a colleague i worked with closely. he took a leave to work on this book. it's a neat look back at the six weeks during the war of 1812 when washington was really under siege and a look at what they

went through and have it changed. it's supposed to be a good read and i hope to get into that. if i get into even two or three of the spokesman going to be pretty proud of myself. the only other 1i try to finish is the great gatsby. i hope to finish at as well.

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