writing different because of this when he talked itself judaism? >> yes. he just force himself the reawaken himself that was something already inside them, deeply ingrained inside and. he successfully kept at a distance i believe, and i also -- a book where he says he felt that being an immigrant, a jew from chicago was to provincial. when he felt he needed to go, go to paris, you know, he went, you know. i mean, that's the short answer. >> greg, wha want to thank you. it was a wonderful discussion. urging people to get the book. you will be available to sign them? >> i think someone will take me to the signing room. >> we continue the discussion at the table. thanks very much everyone. >> i will caution you signing

and talking don't go very well together, my experience. [applause] >> former secretary of state george shultz sat down with booktv to talk about his new book, "issues on my mind." in the book, he weighs in at such topics as nuclear weapons, the economy, energy development, and the war on drugs. this interview was recorded at the hoover institution on the campus of stanford university. >> george shultz, what are you doing for a living these days? >> i try to live up to my four great grandchildren, who to me represent the future. and i look at them and i say to myself, what can i do to make the world better for these kids? >> as a distinguished fellow at the hoover institution, what is it that you do? >> well, i worked on the problem of nuclear weapons, and how to

get better control of them, eventually eliminate them. i work on economic issues. there's a great economic screw. i work on energy subjects. and i've also been trying to reflect a little bit on all my experiences and see if there's anything that can be learned from them. i ask the road a book to try to do that spin and that book is called "issues on my mind." secretary shultz, which the main issue on your mind today? >> the main issue is that the world but just states that a great deal to do with constructing after world war ii, and the fact we constructed a security and economic commons that served us and serve everybody well. that comments is being torn apart right now.

and went to understand what's happening, and we have to be ready to interact in a constructive way, to build a mold coherent world than the one that is developing. no longer a chaotic world. so i reflect on my experiences in the book that you help up on the different ways in which we need to go about it. we have some real opportunities in front of us. we have some issues. a lot of the things i proposed and talk about that are so controversial, nobody even wants to hear you talk about. anyway i do, so i enjoy that. >> how would you say the world is, security wise today, as opposed to when you are secretary of state in the 1980s? >> very different. in the 1980s when i was secretary of state, we had the main threat of the soviet union and their nuclear arsenal and

our nuclear arsenal, and how to contain that. and maybe you remember from those days. the nuclear cloud was always somewhere there. well, i think that is diminished a great deal in terms of russia-u.s., although it is still there. but the threat is more of a greater disbursement of nuclear weapons, of the proliferation of them, sometimes in the hands that are not deterrable and in other ways the world is kind of falling apart and this is very disturbing i think. >> rogue states, iran, potential nuclear power. how should it be handled? >> well, we have said it's unacceptable. i remember, and i use this in my book, when i was a boot in the

u.s. marine corps, he joined the marines and you think you're joined the marines. you haven't. you go to boot camp to its own if you survive boot camp when you become a marine. i remember the day the sergeant handled me my rifle. he said take good care of this rifle. this is your best friend, and remember one thing you never point this rifle at anybody unless you are willing to pull the trigger. no empty threats. now, i told that story to present reagan upon one occasion, and he loved it because we said to ourselves, we are going to be very careful what we say. so people will realize that when we say something, it's going to have consequences. 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's unacceptable for iran to get nuclear weapons. that the option is not i think

secretary kerry testified, it's not containment. the object is prevention. so i don't know what their strategy is for preventing, but it better have some toughness in it or it's not going to succeed. >> secretary shultz, what about the superpower that have nuclear weapons, russia, u.s., china? should there be more talk? you to be less weapons question they be dismantled? >> one very positive thing has taken place, a lot of positive things but one more reason 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 material. fissile material is what it takes to make a bomb.

that's the hard part, getting the fissile material. and then that was followed up with another 12 years later in seoul, and i gather there's another one scheduled in amsterdam. and more and more heads of government are involved in that and trying to really get a hold of that program. i think that's a very constructive thing. in a recent thing that i've written, along with the people i've been working with on this, henry kissinger, bill perry and sam nunn, we say, let that morph morphed into a kind of a global nuclear enterprise and get all of these, i'll say, more constructive than on rogue states together to keep working at these different kinds of things that need to be done. that are so between us and russia that need to be done, but there are other things, to spend what about when it comes to rogue states? in the '80s you were part of the administration that

strategically bombed libya. what about bombing iran, at least its nuclear facility? >> well, just how he would go about that and how difficult it is, how successful you can be, i'm no part of any intelligence except to say this probably. difficult. the israelis are more worried about it than anybody because i ran every other day says they want to eliminate israel, why put out. it had a nuclear weapon on and other ballistic missile they could do it. and so i think we've learned from reading "mein kampf" when someone likes that makes a statement we should take it seriously. and believe them your so i think we have to think about forceful means, but i'm not informed enough to say you're.

>> in "issues on my mind" you write when it comes to terrorism, we in this country must think hard about the moral stakes involved. if we truly believe in our democratic values and our way of life, we must be willing to defend them. passive measures are unlikely to suffice. means a more active defense and deterrence must be considered and given the necessary political support. >> well, you say if you have a law enforcement approach, you say, okay, let a terrorist act happen. then we find out who did it and we tried them in the u.s. court, and if we make them guilty, endless appeals, and they go to jail. well, what does that accomplish? a certain deterrence but in the meantime the terrorist act has taken place. antiterrorist act like 9/11 into a lot of people. so if you know something is coming at you, why not stop it?

in other words, prevention. and i think whenever said that in 1984 it was very controversial, but after 9/11 people have said, of course we should be trying to stop that from happening. and so i think this doctrine of trying to prevent things is very important and it has become common and we do at 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 through intelligence and prevented them. >> we'll talk with former secretary of state, former secretary of labor, former sector of the treasury george shultz about his new book "issues on my mind." mr. secretary, what was your favorite job you ever had? >> well, you say job. job it implies something that you have to do in order to get some money.

and if you say that i never had a job in my life. i have always done things that i found rewarding and interesting. if i wound up doing something that wasn't like that i would find something else to do. but in government, it's a great privilege, an opportunity to serve. i had a succession of jobs and all of them had their tough moments, but all of them were rewarding, starting with my two and haltwoand a half years overe united states marine corps in world war ii. and there i was, 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 as his council of economic advisers. it was a great privilege. i remember going down to my office, was in this, the big office building right next to

the white house. edges 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. i remember my father, who died not too long after that, but he came and it took them to my office he saw this year and he said, son, you were right. so it was great to work their, and you're working in the white house complex you have a view of the whole government. and i learnt 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 well because i done some things in both the kennedy and johnson administrations. that gave me that exposure. i didn't anything about washington and politics and the press and all of that. so had a good base of

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

i said, come on, joe. he said he would be surprised what happens to people. they come down here and they get under pressure. maybe they don't lie but they mislead. misleading is as bad as lying. so you've got to be straight. i said okay, i will be straight. what else? he said, never have a press conference unless you have some news. i said, well, don't reporters like you can schmooze around? he said you don't understand. reporters are guys who are trying to make a living. the way you make a living is you get a news story with your name on it and it gets on the front page of your paper. you call a news conference and the reporter thinks his is my story. and he comes and you don't have any news, what's he going to do? he's going to start asking questions to try to make you say something stupid, and that's the news. he had a whole bunch of things like that. so i learned a lot about the

press from joe. and while sometimes people write things you don't like on the whole, you have a constructive attitude and you help them get the facts straight. you are going to be much better off. then i had, there was a guy named bryce harlow in the white house who was the political counselor in congressional relations died, and he took me under his wing to a certain extent, and he had world's. he said, never make a promise unless you can deliver on it. 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 what you say you're going to do. and his word was, trust is the coin of the realm.

trust is the coin of the realm. so i always try to remember that. in the labor department i had some big, 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 director of the budget, and there you have the whole government out in front of you. lots of dealings with people all over the world. i learned a lot about how to do something internationally, so that was great experience for me. it was fun. i enjoyed it. enjoyed the people. some are still good friends today. but, of course, when i 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. and when we left it was all over but the shouting so that was a huge thing to be involved in and watch unfold. >> mr. secretary, in your book, "issues on my mind," you've got some rules for leadership. a couple of those you've already expounded on. harlowe wrote down the joe loftis role. but your first rule is to be a participant. >> oh, yeah. well, that's what democracy is all about. early on when i was working with him in the primaries, ronald reagan gave me a tie, and on the tie it says, democracy is not a spectator sport. so be part of it and be part of the politics, but be willing to serve and be a participant. >> rule number five, confidence is the name of the game in

leadership. >> well, it's a great start to be competent. and if you're not confident you're going to get in big trouble. i had a tough experience with that though. i told you when i went to washington as sacred of labor i was kind of innocent of politics, and i had a bunch of political appointee slots to fill, and i realized that you are trying to work with a diverse and speech wednesday. so i said -- diverse constituency. so i said i need the best management guy in this industrial relations labor relations do. nobody told me he was a guy named jim hudson was a lockheed that you would never get. i talk to him and we got him. i said we have got a real labor guy. not an employer who would physis unions for someone who negotiates contracts. a real union guy.

so we found a guy to do that. yoyou have to get someone who really knows his manpower training, so we got that. you've got to get somebody who's worked in the area of how to deal with discrimination in the workplace. so although he knows the labor market. anyway, i get a lot of these people lined up. president-elect nixon thought it would show progress in his administration, so he said let's bring them to the hotel and we will have a meeting. you can take them down and induce them to the press. we have a meeting and we go down to the press and introduce the first, jim hudson. to ask them all kinds of questions. it was pretty obvious gym was a real pro and you know what he was doing. some guy in the back of them holds his hand up and says, mr. hudson, are you a democrat or republican? in my innocence, i never even asked them. he says, i'm a democrat. so next i remember earning

weber, whose dazzling and he was just the same to hold his hand up and says i'm a democrat. it went like that. the last guy was our nominee to be head of the bureau of labor statistics, and he was a statistician'statisticians stat. and arthur burns who was very close to president nixon was some what he wanted and i wanted, so i thought finally, we've got a republican. so the same guy asked them the question committee stands there like a cow chewing his cud, and then he finally says, well, i guess you'd have to say i'm an independent. anyway, i get back to my hotel room and the phone is ringing off the hook. and all the republicans on the senate labor committee are saying, didn't you know there was an election? so one. i said look, i cleared these names with the white house and the clinton with a ranking republican, but anyway, i will

give them credit because all my guys did a terrific. they were confident people. and even some of the people who objected called me and said, you know, we like your guys. and jim hudson succeeded me as second of labor when i moved. he later became our ambassador to japan. earning weber became the first -- he was a brilliant president of northwestern university, and so on. so if i wrote all these people out because they were registered democrats, i wouldn't have had the confidence. i'm not saying, i should have asked the question and done something about it. but anyway, if you have confident people around you, you will do much better than if you don't. your first job is to form your team and get people who are competent in those slots. >> and that leads to rule number six in the george shultz a book, finally to the people on your

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

and accountability and in my book i have some pictures of sports things, but the american people of sports, and i think one of the reasons is that the sense of accountability. they are you are standing on the green, you have the potter, there's the ball. areas the cop. you hit the ball. when the ball stops rolling, the result is unambiguous. full, we'll accountability. that's the picture of a golfer -- golfing for someone. tom watson, li walter and the referee. ronald reagan and i had a new year's eve golf game every year, and one year later the to and tom watson show up as our golfing team. it was quite a day. they were fun. >> george shultz, in "issues on my mind" you write about your time as secretary of treasury.

why did you resign? >> well, the atmosphere became rather discouraging, even though i 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. and 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's a very unpleasant process. what do i do? well, you don't do it. what do i tell john dean courts telling you report to me. if he has a problem, he can come to me. it was interesting later on in the nixon tapes i heard him discussing, this with john dean and they basically said, who the hell does bless think he is not

doing what we want? but they never had the nerve to put it to me because if i resigned, refusing to do something improper, with the internal revenue service that wouldn't be a very good story for them. but anyway, that soured me. and then i inherited the administration of wage and price controls, which i had a post originally but it was not in my domain. incidentally, the two people running it for me word on rumsfeld -- for me were don rumsfeld and dick cheney. anyway, we were in the process of trying to get read of them, and against my advice to president nixon we imposed and. and i said, well, mr. president, it's your call, you're the president. i think it's a mistake and you should get yourself a new secretary of the treasury. so i resigned. on sort of policy issues. >> mr. secretary, did you have a -- >> also, in these jobs they are

very rewarding and you have a chance to deal with really major things. often you can really make a difference. so you tend to enjoy it. but you can't want the job too much work that is, you have to be to yourself, and i felt if i stayed under the circumstances of this decision i would not be being true to myself. so you can't want the job too much. >> mr. secretary, did you have a good relationship or what kind of relationship you have with president nixon's? >> we had a very good relationship. we get a lot of really constructive things together. one of the first things i did as secretary of labor was common in

philadelphia in the skill construction trades there were no blacks at all. yet, there were blacks around who were skilled. so we decided, i decided that we should write this up. and so we devised something that became called the philadelphia plan, and told them you've got to have some hiring. you have to find people who are capable people, but nevertheless get more people there and let's have an objective. and let's have a timetable and get going. so we were managing, trying to manage this process. as you can imagine it was very controversial. i was new at secretary of labor and all of a sudden i'm in this controversy. and i'm called to testify in the

senate. and somebody is saying, you are trying to impose a quota system. i said, i'm trying to replace one. i'm trying to get rid of one. what do you mean? the quota is zero. it's been very effective. so we went back and forth and then there's a vote in the senate. i went to the gallery to watch. and q. scott it was the republican leader gave me his tally sheet that is reprinted in the book. we won by 10 votes, very bipartisan vote for and against. it was dramatic 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 centers devoted with me was ted kennedy, and we became in an odd way good friends, respected each other. we held different views on a lot of things but got along well. that was very helpful to me later when i was secretary of state. he was a good called it.

>> are you still in touch with don rumsfeld and dick cheney? >> yeah, dick was over in london i had the privilege of being the leader with jim bakker of the american delegation, and dick showed up there, and his wife. they are good friends. so we had a chance to see them. he is amazing. i said you were looking great, dick. he said, i'm feeling fine. i had three very hard years. he had a heart replacement and so on. now he's looking great, feeling great, strong. so catch up with these people. >> what about secretary rumsfeld? >> well, i don't see a lot of him but i'm in touch with them. he has a new book coming out, and i wrote a little blurb for it. is a book on, you know, he's done this, known unknowns, known

unknowns, very clever phraseology. it's a good book an interesting book. >> mr. secretary, what was your relationship with margaret thatcher? >> well, i had a really good relationship with margaret, and often we argued about things. she's a pretty fierce arguer thomas but she doesn't like lap dogs. people who just say yes, margaret, yes, margaret. so good go at it, but our underlying way of thinking about things was very similar. so a lot was constructed by the reagan-thatcher relationship and i was glad to be a part of it. and i was glad to go to her funeral because i had been close to were 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's a fair statement that between margaret thatcher and ronald reagan, and other leadership, they change cd the world. the arc of history was changed. >> page 245 of "issues on my mind," 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 step in positive goals. >> well, that's what i think the u.s. leadership, we managed to get after world war ii. you remember, there were some really great things -- great statesman and the truman administration, and this was carried on, but these people look back and what did they see? they saw two world wars. the first one settled in rather than to give terms, helped lead

to the second. 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 help to aggravated. they saw the holocaust. they said 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, and they saw the soviet union with his aggressive force to deal with. they developed ideas like containment. institution structures like native. the bretton woods system and economics, the trading effort, successful trading effort to construct a success model. and over a period of time each successive administration made

its contributions. they constructed a security and economic country, and that's what i'm referring to, that people contributed to it and benefited from it, there was used leadership without a doubt, and i think it's fair to say that without u.s. leadership, constructive things are 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 effective participant, it helps to get things moving. i've seen that person on many occasions. so that has been a great achievement. i can remember in the early 1980s, i was in china and had meeting with deng xiaoping, and he said now china is ready for

the two openings. i said, what other to openings? he said, first of all we open for movement of people within china, and opening within china. and what's the second one? the second one is an opening of china to the outside world. and i'm looking, that there is a recently coherent world to open up to. he understood that very well. so that's what i was referring to. and that's the threat right now that this is being torn apart in many ways. it's changing. the world is changing. spirit how should we view china? >> well, it's a big country with a lot of talented people. it has had remarkable economic renaissance. it has very large problems to contend with, but it's a relatively new, and modern times anyway, actor on the scene.

so i think we better have developed a close working relationship, ability to talk through problems with them. and that's the way we need to go about it. >> do we have that ability now? do we have that relationship no? >> i hope so, but, you know, i'm not a part of things. i've been out of office for 25 years, but it was part of a little group that henry kissinger organized that has meetings, some in china, then here, just seven or eight of us. and about a year ago we were in china, and the man who is now the president, he gave a dinner for us and spent time. we had a lot of discussion. the next day we spent about an hour and a half with the new premier. and i thought, and a check this

out with henry kissinger and others on a little delegation. i said, you know they're giving us a message. they want to the 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. and maybe we agree to disagree on some, or maybe we find there's ways of dealing with them. i know when i was in office, my first meeting with the chinese, i said and they like the idea, deng xiaoping and my counterpa counterpart, i said you put everything on the table you want to talk about and i'll put on the table everything i want to talk about. let's make an agenda out of that. and let's agree, i'll come through china once a year at least, you come to the us wants a year at least, and probably there are three or four meeting places where we both come to a meeting of some kind.

let's always set aside three hours or so just for us to work through this agenda. and that service well and we identified some opportunities. we saw problems, some of which we didn't, couldn't deal with, but on the whole, we developed, we developed with the soviet union the same. where they get sick i know you want to get here and you're trying to get it this weekend we can't handle that. but if you come around like this, maybe that could work. so that's the way you do things. if you can develop a reasonably trusting relationship with the other party. and so i think that we will have undoubtedly our big disagree much with china.

right now the cyber area is very tense, in my 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. >> were you ever asked, did you ever want to be secretary of the military of defense? >> that's a tough job. i was never asked to do that under really didn't think about it very much, but i know having been very close to it is a very hard job. i guess if i'd been offered it i would've taken it. if the president ask you to do something that you can do, i think you have an obligation to do it. of course, i consider myself still to be a marine song still in the military forces. and as cited in state i had a

lot of dealings with the military. and i said to my counterpart, cap weinberger one time, i said according to the statute, the national security council consists of four people. the president, the vice president, the secretary of state and the secretary of defense. and business and the statute each member is entitled to build your advice. and cap said on your, i'm willing to talk to. i said currently, you don't wear a uniform. i want to talk to the guys in uniform. eventual i found the then chairman of the joint chiefs like to play golf, and i had been a member of augusta national golf about and no golfer ever turns down an invitation to come. so i invited him down for the weekend so we got to know each other. but it's important to have direct military advice when you're trying to conduct diplomacy, or when there's something happening.

>> do you have a direct line to president reagan when you were secretary of state? >> we had a system where he and i had two private meetings a week. and, obviously, whenever he wanted to talk about, that was first. i always bought an agenda to talk about. we had sort of an understanding the we never tried to make a decision in those meetings, because those should be argued out in a broader content. but i would go and say look, here's this problem. it's a gathering storm. you can see on the horizon. we don't know just where it's going but here's the way we are thinking about it. here's what we are trying to do about it. what do you think? and we would go back and forth. and you know, he was a union leader at one point. he loved to talk about marketing, negotiation. a big part of this was about

negotiation and i had my experience in that arena, so we stopped -- swapped stories back and forth and i got a really good understanding of how he went about things, how he thought about things. so i felt that was important. because i'm representing him. people sometimes said to me, what about your foreign policy? i said i don't have one. the president's got one. my job is to help him, formulated and carry it out. he's the guy who got elected, not me. >> from what you observed has the role of the secretary of state changed since you were there in the '80s? >> well, it looks to me as though there isn't the same kind of relationships that i had with president nixon, or let's say jim baker had with george bush.

because, i don't know exactly the reason. but i saw, for example, the other day that the national security advisor went to moscow to meet with putin and started arranging that relationship. if i was secretary of state i would not tolerate that. i would say that's my job. and the national security advisor is a staff person, not a principle. i remember when colin powell got the job of secretary of national security advisor. he understood, and he came around to me and he said, i'm a member of your staff. obviously, the president is my main guy of my job was to staff council. so i think that's beginning to get out of kilter, and in my book i've quite a lot to say about the structure of governance and how it's going i think in the wrong direction.

>> secretary shultz, a couple more issues on your mind. number one, demographics. you our word about demographics. >> i'm not worried about it. i'm observant of it and i see that the demographics of the world have changed and are continuing to change rapidly. the developed countries basically have low fertility, rising longevity. they're getting to be older societies, which has an impact on the outlook and your capabilities. the russians have a demographic catastrophe on their hands. they have a very low fertility, longevity of man as old only in the safety. women live a lot longer than been a lot of the town is immigrating. they have huge problems in the caucasus to deal with. they have a long border with

china. a lot of people on one side, hardly anybody on the other. so but, the demographics underlying this our devastating. china has in some ways the most interesting demographics because around 30 years ago fertility dropped like a stone. that meant four a quarter of a century china has had a growing labor force and a declining number of people that the labor force had to support. call it a demographic dividend. know those cool courts -- cohorts in the population are moving all of the, if this situation is about to change like that. where suddenly you're going to have a declining labor force and a rising number, this time older people, that the labor force has to support. it's a big change.

meanwhile, you have a north africa, middle east countries, fertility has come down some but it's still very high. the longevity is not that big. so these are very young societies, and somehow many of them have gotten organized in such a way that young people don't have much to do. and information and communication age want to talk about in the book, nowadays the people in charge do not anymore have a monopoly on information or ability to organize. that is entirely changed. so in the middle east we see the arab awakening, and the sport, only a spark, this little guy in tunisia, and all he wanted to do was start a little business selling fruits and vegetables. and the regulators wanted to get a bribe from him.

he refused and they squashed them. how do you expect me to make a living? he just wanted to work. and worker commune, does a lot for you. work do you dignity. work, you get some income from work and you feel i deserve that, i did something and i got paid for it, deserved it. so i think in the turmoil we are seeing in the middle east and north africa come it's not going to settle down until somehow people have something to do. that's constructed. i know there are many, many other kinds of issues but that's a fundamental one. and it comes from, you can see when you take a look at the demography. >> hide into that you mentioned it, another issue that you talk about is technology and the use of technology. >> well, as i was saying, i don't think people quite appreciate the depth and meaning

of information of the communication revolution, which changed the process of governance. it's particularly hard on autocratic governments that a been there for a while, but in democratic governments people are accustomed to paying attention to what people want. but nevertheless, it's a new, it shortens the distance between the people who are governing and the people being governed. and it's changing. because people anywhere can find out all basic information. they can also communicate with each other, cell phones, and organize. so we are seeing that all over the place. and, of course, it's been dominant in the middle east, but the russians have been struggling with it. the chinese struggle with it. it's a phenomenon that's very much present.

>> final issue, domestic, international, the drug war. what should be done about drugs in the u.s.? >> well, first of all, we have to be willing to discuss the issue. it can't be a taboo issue, right? do you agree? are you willing to talk about it? >> i'm just listening. >> see. but for a long time nobody would discuss. we've had the war on drugs. and i remember in the nixon administration we were worried, rightfully, about the damage that drugs do to an individual and to a society. so i'm very, very much of the view that we need to figure out how to deal with that problem adequately. and there was the idea, and pat moynihan was counselor in the white house, thought that one of

the things to do would be to fix it so drugs are just not here. so we have this program of denial to the two of us were riding up to camp david and i have a presentation doing so i'm studying my notes in passing the state of euphoria. he says to me, schultz, don't you realize we just had the biggest drug bust in history? i say congratulations. yet, but this was in verse a. that was the french connection. that's terrific. go back to my notes. he pulls himself up and he says, i suppose you think that as long as there's a big problem demand for drugs in this country there will be a supply. i looked at him and i said, moynihan, there's hope for you. but this effort to keep drugs out is a complete failure. and the problem of drugs in the united states is relatively great compared to many other

like-minded countries. so we ought to at least discuss this and see what other people are doing. i think there's a lot to be said for decriminalizing youth and small-scale possession. that is possession only for your own use but if you do that, you don't get thrown in jail, you go to a treatment center and try to get some help. and he also keep the jails from being full of people who are caught smoking marijuana or something. you throw people in jail and all you do is make criminals out of them. that's where they learn. amazingly, they are even getting drugs in jail. so we should take a different approach. because it's 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. and you can do things. look at what we've done in this country with cigarettes. there are still people who are smoking them, but much, much less than before because we have had a fact-based campaign, not just advertising, but a campaign to persuade people not to smoke. i remember the days when they had the advertisement. i would walk a mile for a camel, and a pretty girl saying blow some my way, with the smoke and all those kinds of things. well now, if you see somebody smoking you think there's something wrong with them. don't they understand they are killing themselves? so the whole at the star has changed. that can happen. all kinds of things can be done. beyond what we're doing but we're spending gigantic amounts of money on this war, and one of

the results of it is huge violence in other countries. in mexico over the last five or six years, some 50, 60,000 people have been killed. that's more in our wars in afghanistan and in iraq. so there are huge costs. >> mr. secretary, -- >> we think it's a mexican problem. where does the money come from? united states. where did the guns come from? united states. so these druglords often have better equipment and are better organize than the government. the mexican government seems to be struggling with it. we can struggle with them but we need to say, we have to do something about it. one time in office when i was in office, nancy reagan had her just say no program. she understood this year and she went to the united nations but

she was invited to give a speech on this subject, and i went with her. and she said very directly, that solutions to this problem start right here with doing something about people taking drugs. it was a beautiful statement she made. >> and in your book you include a letter from nancy reagan to you. >> yes. well, there's also a nice picture of nancy and me at the u.n., consulting. but at any rate, she got a lot of pressure from the drug bureaucracy not to say what she said, but just like her husband, if that's what she thought, that's what she's going to say. and she did, and the impact on the world was just the opposite of what the drug bureaucracy thought it would be. people responded saying, array, it's so refreshing to hear you understand that. we work even harder with you. >> are you still in touch with

mrs. reagan? >> after i talked her -- i talked to were just the other day. i gave a report on the thatcher funeral. >> two final questions. you mentioned earlier, mr. secretary, your father's biggest i thought earlier you said two final questions. >> these are just in general the earlier you mentioned your father. who were your parents and where did you grow up? >> well, i was born in new york city, and my parents moved us to inglewood new jersey which is located in 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 depaul university, first member of his family ever to go to college. he was interested in history, and he got a scholarship to columbia and got a ph.d in history and wrote a book with a famous historian.

and then he was asked to start a school by the new ixtoc haitians to train people in the ways of the stock exchange. and he started that school, called the new york stock exchange institute and developing into quite a fine institution. and he would they become in those days people work on saturday mornings. now nobody works on saturdays anymore. but he would take me into new york when i was a kid, and afterwards, we would go, i know there was a place, a sandwich shop, i can taste them today. the best sandwiches. then we 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. he played catch with me endlessly with a baseball or football. he was a wonderful father. and my mother was just a wonderful person. she set very high standards but

she wanted things to be just so. she had great taste. and so i was very fortunate to have loving, talented, wonderful parents. i've got pictures of them all around everywhere. >> and here at the hoover institution at stanford university, another former secretary of state is located, your colleague, condoleezza rice. what would you think if secretary rice ran for president? >> well, she's a very capable person, and i haven't ever talked to her directly about that, but i know that she understands the political process. it's a different running for an office than being an appointed a person, even in high office such as said a state. to whether she wants to indulge in that, i don't know, but she would be a very appealing

candidate. >> did you ever run for office? >> yes. when i lived in massachusetts, when i was on the faculty at mit, our school had only a few students per class, and massachusetts have a program for regional schools, all the little towns would get together and create a regional school. i thought that was a good idea. and so people said, well then, why don't you run for the school board? selected. and the voters in their wisdom turned down the region school but they elected me by an old woman margin to a nonexistent office. so i ran. spent and for the past hour or so we've been talking with former secretary of state, labor, and treasure, george shultz. "issues on my mind: strategies for the future." you are watching booktv on c-span2. >> is there a nonfiction author a book you would like to see featured on booktv?

send us an e-mail at the booktv@c-span.org, or tweet is at twitter.com/booktv. >> what are you reading this summer? booktv wants to know. >> right now i'm reading "where'd you go, bernadette" by maria semple. it's a novel that is told in the form of a bunch of e-mails as a daughter tries to piece together clues about why her mother disappeared. the mother is quite eccentric, and the story is set in seattle with some really interesting quirky characters. it's a lot of fun. i don't know where it's going but am really looking forward to finishing it. after that i'm going to be doing something of a book club with my son, miles, who is 16. this is something we did a couple of summers ago. we pick a couple of books and we read them and then would go to our local diner to discuss them and have breakfast. and this summer we have picked up two books so far. we are reading a biography of

bruce springsteen, which i think should be a lot of fun. we're both springsteen fans. and interested to learn a little more about his background in new jersey and how he got to be who he is. and we're also going to read dan brown's "inferno" which i think is the ultimate summer beach book. i've read the other dan brown books, and i think miles will enjoy this one. he has a real knack for in his chapters with cliffhangers that make you turn the page. and so i think miles will enjoy that a lot and i think we'll have lots to talk about. there should be a fun summer of reading. >> let us know what you reading this summer. tweet us and the booktv. posted on her facebook page or send us an e-mail at booktv@c-span.org. >> booktv is on facebook. like us to interact with

booktv guest interviewers. watch videos and get up-to-date information on events. facebook.com/booktv. you've been watching booktv. 48 hours of programming beginning saturday morning at eight eastern through monday morning at eight eastern. .. >> by representative donna ed