twitter. thanks for joining us for your observations. a reminder that all of the oral arguments we covered on c-span are available on our website at cspan.org. >> coming up, booktv in prime time fic time. a panel from the former maryland governor talks from annapolis. and then a talk about global challenges in sub-saharan, africa. and then is panel discussion on minimum wage. we are back with the final panel from the annapolis book festical. robert ehrlich and al from talk about american politics.

>> good morning. we are in for a treat. we have two authors with us this morning who have vast experience in the world of politics. so our conversation about the future and changing american politics in the future couldn't have two better informed c contribut contributors. we will talk for about 40 minutes and then invite you to ask questions. so as you listen think about what you would like to share with us. i will start with introducing the speakers. al from is infounder of the

democratic leadership council. in feb of 2010, the new york times magazine called the organization under his leadership one of the two most burped think tanks in history. i wrote something about this but al points what what was in his book is better than what i came up with. it called it one of the two most important think tanks in history. from played a prominent role nhl 1992 election of bill clinton and served as domestic policy advisor. before forming the dlc, he was the executive director of the house democratic caucus and served in carter's whitehouse and staff director of the subcommittee on international government relations. he lives in annapolis, maryland

and you may purchase his book after be finish. and it is privilege and honor to in introduce former governor, robert ehrlich. he is part of the public policy group at king and spalding and advices council members. he served as maryland's first government in 36 years -- any republican who has served of government of maryland is in select company. he served as a congressman, state legislature, and civil t litiga litiga litigate. he restored the chesapeake bay

foundation. governor also created the first nation's cabinet level department of disability and earned the highest recognition award from the u.s. secretary of health and human services among other awards. he served four terms in the u.s. house of representatives before becoming governor and served in the maryland house of delegates representing baltimore county. as you can see it is a lengthy lith of political contributions. i will ask for the panelist to share an overview of their books. starting with al from. >> thank you very much. it is good to be with you governor. i do remember another republican governor. but i won't mention him. it is terrific to be here.

as charlie mentioned, i am just honored to be at this book festival and really honored to be here with the governor. on election night, 1980, i through a party and no body -- threw -- came. by the time the party was supposed to start, we lost the whitehouse and i lost my job. i was in the carter whitehouse. we were on the way to loosing the u.s. senate and loosing over 30 seats in the house. so everybody who was supposed to come to the party was like me. we had lost our jobs. there was no reason to celebrate. but fast forward to june 2000, in burrlerlin, leaders of 14

countries, led my bill clinton and tony blare, signed a progressive declaration defining their common themes for governoring -- opportunity, responsibility and things and communities. president clinton was completing his second successful term as president and the new democrat philosophy was modernizing progressive politics all over the ground. i dare say we saved progressive politics because my book tells the story of that political journey from the wilderness in 1980 to a politics that led most countries in the democratic year of 2000. i wrote it in part because political memories are short. "the new democrats and the return to power" control the whitehouse and have a

demographic advantage in elections. but just a quarter of a certainry ago the situation was reversed. in the 1980's we had three presidential elections and the "the new democrats and the return to power" won a smaller percentage of votes in those three elections than any party has ever won in three consecutive american elections since the beginning of modern parties in 1848. it isn't a stretch to say the democratic party was out of touch and out of ideas it is safe to say. the new democrats were part of the foundation i founded in 1985 after we lost 49 states for the second time in four elections. as president clinton wrote in

the forward to my book, when we began, we were not very poplar. that was an understatement. the party leaders tried to shut us down. but we were determined. when you read the details about what we did in my book and in a few minutes i am not be able to cover it. but i want to talk about some of the highlights. the new democrat movement was an idea-based political movement and that is the second reason i wrote this book. i believe ideas and politics today with social media and cable news and all of the other stuff that goes around ideas are just too underappreciated. we believed that the resurgeance of the democratic party had to proceed its political resurgeance. you can talk about candidates all you want but if the party wasn't standing for things people wanted to support people were not going to vote for it.

and think about the 1988 election where "the new democrats and the return to power" thought they were going to win and the party image helped bring down mike decaucus and think about 2012 where the fundamentals all favored mitt r romney but the image of the republican party and pulled to the right with issues like immigration in the primary cost him the election. in 2012, if romney won the same number of votes from hispanics that bush did he would be in the whitehouse right now. our strategy was to shape a message that someone, we had a good idea of who it might be, could run for president on. and not only that when we won could govern by.

our goal wasn't to accommodate, we didn't want to be acceptable to party readers. we wanted to win. and we knew along the way we would lose friends and some of them would disagree with us and fall off our reservation. but that was a necessary price to pay because our challenge was not to unify our party. walter did that in a sense and had every interest group behind him in 1984 and lost 49 states. our challenge was to expand it. because we could not prevail in the regular party forums we had to build our own playing field so we could have our own advantage. we nurtured a generation of leaders with clinton, biden --

he was young once -- and bill gray and other leaders. we developed parties that challenged to orthodox and within the first four years we were a political force but the landslide loss that we expected to win in 1988 cave gave us the push. and after that we became an unstoppable force. in april of 1989, i travelled to little rock, arkansas to ask a young governor to become chairman of the dlc and i told him we would pay for his travel around the country, shape an agenda i thought a accurate would win the whitehouse on and he would be president some day and we would both be important. bill clinton took at deal.

we immediately embarked on a four part strategy. if you think about where the republicans are today you might want to think about this kind of a strategy. >> i don't take strategic advice from the opposition. >> i don't like to give it to the opposition but it is good for the country. first, i call it reality therapy. we tell it like it is. when you lose an election, people in the party say it is because they had a good candidate and ours was terrible. it was because they had better media. all of a sudden we will find a candidate and sweep the victory. but when you constantly lose by 40 states it isn't just because one candidate is bad. we lost with three different ones. and one was elected president

one time. the problem was we were going to work every day and the people you need to have and people bill clinton called the forgotten middle class and we pointed that out in graphic detail. soographic that when a professor at the university of maryland presented it at a conference in philadelphia the reverend jesse jackson referred to us as warm spit. that was the first thing. we had to accept the political context so the press would say these guys have a purpose. and admit it a lot harder when the reality was on the table were the party regulators to say all do is tinkering here. and the second thing was we layed out our own philosophy. it was called the new orleans declaration. you can see my boat on thomas creak and it is called the new

orleans declaration as well. it was a very simple 20 sentence document that said what we believed. we believed that the promise of america was equal opportunity not equal outcomes. private sector growth is important for "the new democrats and the return to power" and was the key to opportunity. on and on about you know people having an obligation to give something back to the country. a whole set of principles. 20 years later at hyde park president clinton said the new orleans declaration was the key to his success because it gave him a platform to everything we did and tied everything back to a principle in the new orleans declaration. the third deal was to do the governing agenda.

we went to 25 states travelling the country. not raising money. not doing any serious political organizing but talking about ideas and that was the important thing. now, you know, governor erlich, i don't think governors get to travel quite as well as presidents, but everybody thinks -- >> southwest for us. >> right. southwest. clinton just did a bock partner in new york for me and thanked me for putting him in all of these unsafe airplanes. what we did was we certainly didn't have airforce one. we had five people in the travelling party and hopped on anything we could. sometimes we had -- we were treated not like this was going to be the president of the united states. we were down in north carolina,

actually we had flown into raleigh and learned that north carolina was playing the university of kentucky in basketball and clinton wanted to go to the game. got tickets and went and the state police told us to park near the main interest and went in and watched them play and when we got out the campus police towed the car. for two and a half hours the next president of the united states sat in chapel hill, north carolina trying to get his car back at a police station. >> it is a red state. >> it was jim martin -- probably the most harrowing of the experiences was a flight between denver and wyoming. it was april.

we had a blizzard and a four seater with five people on it so one person had to sit on the john. i am sure marilyn has the same rule. we had to have two pilots. no seats needed but two pilots. we go up in what we thought were clouds but were snow covered mountain tops. i knew we were in trouble with clinton picked up the phone to call hillary and tell her how much he loved her. luckily we made it. some of these things were important. wyoming has an early caucus. and that caucus, the secretary of state is equivalent lnt to lieutenant governor there, and that caucus was held in kathy's basement. it was clinton's first major win

in the 1992 election so he probably not the flight was worth it. at cleveland, where we laid out our agenda, we were not poplar are democratic interest groups. the host senator created a group called the coalition for democratic values to oppose us. we woke up to having jesse jackson protesting, the teacher's unions were c complaining we were for chartered schools, and leaf letting because we were for nafta. we got through it all and at the end we outlined a political philosophy with the themes

opportunity, responsibility and community and put ideas like national service, welfare reform, nafta, community policing, charter schools and a growth strategy based on people in technology and trade and also reinventing government. the fourth part of our strategy was the market test. in american politics, unlike the parliamentary system you don't have a conference you decide what you stand for. you stand for what your presidential nominee stands for. bill clinton resigns from the dlc and went in and became a candidate. and let me give you three our four days you might not compo about leading up to the election that were significant. one is july 14, 1987. that was the day clinton decided not to run in 1988.

he might have been elected had he ran but he probably would have been pulled down by his party and certainly not have worked with the dlc. i was in mississippi giving a speech and supposed to meet with the former governor bill winner that day and he canceled because he was going to little rock to launch the campaign. i was surprised when i landed in cincinnati to have press calls asking why clinton dropped out chatty best thing that happened to me, the dlc and probably him. the second was in december of 1990, it wasn't clear if sam nun or bill clinton would be the democratic candidate. most people thought sam could be the candidate.

he was clinton's domestic policy advisor and wrote a letter suggesting a clipon-nun ticket. both liked it but both wanted to be on the top of the ticket. we sat down in a house room off a hearing room and decided we would spend five months on the road shaping this agenda but because clinton had a legislative issue nun had to do the lifting. nun led the opposition to the gulf war and clinton got all of his legislative stuff in four days which was normal to him. as a result, sam nun took a terrific amount of criticism in

georgia and around the country. his approval ratings dropped and for nun it was too much. he called and said i don't want to do any more of this stuff. so from that point on it was clear that bill clinton had to be the nominee. i will tell you one other story then wrap this up. the -- clinton had a few problems on the way to the nomination. there was this story that came out in a tabloid about a long affair with a woman named jennifer flowers. we had written a letter and tried to get out of the draft and during vietnam.

i was going up to new york and i had just done an outward bound with a man who was about to be the publisher of innew york times and in those dis newspapers were really important. they were the whole talk of politics in many ways. so i decided authorer had ju-- just took over as publisher and i get up to the 11th floor and the executive offices and arthur is at the elevator saying there is an emergency and you have to call the office. i call my office and somebody on my staff read me a story that was going to be in the star tabloid within the next two days alleging a 12-year affair that

bill clinton had with this woman named jennifer flowers. i go back having made the call from "the new york times" publisher's desk. he takes me down to meet with the editorial page of the time and we had a seven year bet we could find a candidate that could pull together the working class and win the nomination. he was saying bill clinton was the man and i was sitting there bound to not saying anything about that story because i didn't want it in the mainstream press. we had bumps along the way. clinton was elected and served

two terms with a 66% approval rating and i still believe that animating philosophy of the new democrat movement and opportunity for all and the ethic of mutual responsibility and the emphasis on empower government and equips people to solve their own problems and the family and faith and inclusion are as viable for meeting challenges today as they were then. i think there are lessons for both parties in what we did and i write about that a little bit in my book. that is third reason i wrote this book. very briefly for the democrats. we need to think big. there is a lot of emphasis

because we have a demographic advantage and thinking if we just get this group out and this group we will win. a lot of what republicans call class warfare and we call issues. if you want golden eggs to pass out, i was told you have to have a healthy goose. so we have to have a program to grow the know and i am happy to talk about what i think that should be. and we have to reinvent government to make it work. unlike the republicans, we believe government has an important role but an in efficient government undermines our philosophy. i was interested to see jeb bush and bobby jindel formed a new group. it is important because they need a power center to take on

the extremist in the tea party. that way the candidates are not out there alone when they try to do it. the second thing they need to think about and i think this group may try to do that. they need to develop ideas that people want to support. they need have an agenda that can build poplar support and it can't be running against obamacare. third, they need to forget about party unity. if you just unify the base you don't have broad enough appeal to win the whitehouse. you have to expand it. we learned that.

i am not in the business of ad vising republicans but i do hope they listen a little bit and look at watt we did because as long as the tea party extremist.

>> if you want to see me, see her not him. what al just said is why i wrote by book. he just redefined obamaism as the centerpiece of the democratic party. a european style leftist,

entrepreneurship, hyperregulatory approach. the counter culture in this country. i wrote the book because he is winning but not in six months when harry reid is minority leader. but you are correct. a lot of what i heard and i could not stop myself from writing comments here. ideas are underappreciated. and no won knows what hope and and change really are. we didn't have a definition and we have this african-american and even though he is a machine politician from chicago.

he is a classic liberal politician as you see. this is why i wrote my book. i group in maryland. -- grow up -- there wasn't a republican in ten miles or maybe 20. and that democratic party my mom raised me in and mom was a republican from pennsylvania. that was a working class blue collar, pro-gun, pro-life, marriage wasn't an issue, hard working work ethics. moved to the suburbs and germans and irish party.

the local barowners went down and represented their people. fast forward to today. and the political insurgency has been successful. there is no doubt about it. when i was growing up in this state the mandells and birches -- it wasn't republican and democrats. i was one of 13 republicans of 147 when i was elected. we met in a small phone booth. it didn't matter republicans were not existent. it was healthy because there were liberal and the county had its own thing. and it was a healthy state. and a healthy country. the jackson and john f kennedy stood for cutting taxes.

look at today. kennedy couldn't get the nomination today. and by the way, i want to go home and watch primary colors again and see what was true and what wasn't. the era of big government -- president clinton said that. he was absolutely wrong and that is another reason why i wrote my book. there is a lot of editorial comment with regard to the right. you heard the tea party and the whack jobs. the tea party came about because a bunch of working people in the country went to washington and asked congress to balance their budget and do what they do everything day. no social issues. and after the 2010 election they were dangerous because obama lost big and john boehner became speaker no longer nancy pelosi.

so the narrative was we need to d demonize that group and call them racist and they did and it worked. create a narrative, repeat the narrative. so there is all of this attention given and by the way i think many cases the tea party and whatever you want to call them are wrong. and i disagree with the government shutdown. but that was tactics. a disagreement over tactics but substance. every last republican voted for obamacare. i am no longer a member of congress so i did read the bill. and so there is plenty of comment with regard to the right and the problems on the right but the reason i wrote the book was because of what al said and where i grew up and what i see in all seriousness.

the democrat leadership and bill clinton moderate deal that was sold to the american people and i think with regard to trade and charter schools it is reality has become a european social democrat model for consumption in this country. counter culture with regard to economics. it is far more progressive and private sector union dominated. there is a profound distrust of markets. the regulatory state is upon us. there is a profound belief in the power of government over the individual as you see every day in washington. and they are winning. this is one of the elements and each chapter in the book is devoted to one of these elements. it is a second role in the world and that is profitable to the american people.

draw them out in afghanistan and iraq according to the president one being the good war and one being the bad war but both wars drained the american publics interest in foreign engagement. i get it. but if you know history, and read about it, when vacuums are created and the good guy and the greatest force for history in the world, united states of america today, goes back stage and leaves vladimer putin's fill that vacuum. that is not a big deal today unless you live in the ukraine or you are a saudi arabian or you live in israel or i can fill in the blanks. it is the anti cowboy and the world apology with the president beginning in the first six months, he went to apologize for

american imperilism when american stands for a strategy. we don't conquer. sometimes it doesn't work out so well: vietnam. but we are not interested in conquering other people. and the president is apologizing for this american imperilism when the feminiirst thing they d is when are they comingome -- coming home. there is an entire chapter on obamacare in the book. obamacare is a big deal. a lot of people don't care

about benghazi or other things. but this is anti market, regulatory state ascending and it is a man-made disaster. it wasn't meant to be -- i will come back to obamacare in a second. it is economics on steroids. all of the shovel ready jobs were not and adopting a living wage and whatever the local labor unit means. government decides what a worker is worth to his or her employers. and it is great for some marginal workers. getting a raise is a good thing. if you are worth ten dollars and the minimal wage is 11 you are going to lose your job as the government just said. some will gain and some will

lose. heck of way to achieve economic development in my case. it is a loss of sovereignty and open borders. i have seasonal allergies. i blame my mother. people know who i am around annapolis. but when i go to cvs and i buy my sinus medicine i have the show my id. but when i go vote it is like we don't want to know who you are. what kind of priority is that. i go exercise the greatest thing i can do is no one wants to know who i am. work is degraded in this

country. it is not coal dependence. social security disability has quadrupled under obama in five years. that trust fund is almost broke. we have 50 million people on food stamps. 50 million. every time work requirement is built into a bill in congress democrats are up there screaming. work is changing the social a rangement we love so much. we also have this really interesting thing. i want to hear your questions but we are opinionated. it is so secular. this country wasn't built on the idea of being hostile against

religion. i see this attack on religious freedom in obamacare and it is fascinating. this was the prochase led-choic legislature in the country. and not even the most liberal democrat attacked the conscious clause. obama went to notre dame and said we will respect religious freedom. but obamacare ran over it. now it is at the supreme court. religious liberty and tolerance means something. running the culture is dangerous and not what the social contract was ever about. the book has a chapter devoted

to each subject. but the bodm line to the book thaw cling to their guns and religion. if we could start over i would go for single payer. they didn't build that. you didn't build that. three comments from the president of the united states. think about what they mean. it is that interesting arrogance you see where they cling to their guns. that is red america. obamacare is a mess because they couldn't get single payer payoff by the democratic house so they

threw their ideas into 1100 pages of regulations up to 20,000 soon with all sorts of ad hoc exceptions done in an ad hoc manner. but they really want single-payer because it works so well in canada. and you didn't build that. that is what this country is about. this sort of anti-entrepreneurship, anti-society, anti-work culture is the reason i wrote the book. thank you all very much for being here today. we are having a feast of ideas.

i hope each of you is thinking of a question. i will exercise the moderators purog and seize the first question. al, you said after 1984, you led the democratic party to two successful elections. looking ahead are moderate voters still to key to victory for the democrats? if they are, what has the best strategic party in to keep the majori majority. >> i was listening to governor erlich and trying to figure out what country i am living in. in 2009 when i left the

democratic leadership counsel president obama was elected. i might add for people that know history that president obama has won majority twice. he is the only northern democrat other than fdr to win the majority poplar vote and get elected. samuel won the majority in 1876 but congress took the election away from him. but, you know, the american

people have a different attitude. what i think? of course i believe that voters who go to work every day and play by the rules are the key to election. it isn't all his fault but a good part of it is was. we are starting to build back a little bit and unemployment rate is going down and over the last four years it has been down about 3.5 points. i love to hear conservatives rant and rave about obamacare.

obamacare is private insurance fund first proposed by the heritage foundation. if you are going to have private insurance and you want to cover everybody and most people think it is good idea to give around a chance to buy health insurance. you have to organize the market. the obama administration did a great job of launching their system? no. but bush's prescription drug deal went through this, too. over time the reality comes to the front and people will judge it on if it works. people like conditions. you have to pay premiums and benefits for somebody who is not going to come close to covering

the cost. that is why you have to get the young people in so they pay for the health care people that are sick and they get older and sick and other young people pay for them. this is a private insurance plan. there is not a public option in this. it is a private insurance plan. and with an attempt to organize the market place so we can each buy individual private plans. last time we were in charge we created 23,000 jobs and budgets were balanced until bush gave the money away to his friends. crime was down. we changed the system and

created something that and in my book i have an agenda and the issue is you have to grow the economy and make sure everybody has a chance to take advantage of that growth and you have to go for middle class voters and people who go to work every day. i asked interesting ideas and some are radical. i think president obama should take advantage of the agreement. we need tax reform as well. and the tax on work and replace it with it green tax.

i also look at how we deal with the entitlements. both parties talk about entitlement issues but if you want to save social security you have to modernize it. when social security was passed the retirement age was, i think, 65 and life expectancy was 83. things have changed. and maybe it means raising the retirement age. before it got politicized, rob widen, the democrat ahead of the finance committee and paul ryan had an interesting idea for

medicare and said for poem that want to keep the current medicare keep it. if you are under a certain age and want in the private world you can do that, too. i say because i happen to believe that this country is build on a civic ethic and everybody has an obligation to give back i would tie all financial aid to serving in the service. i am proud america-core is a good idea. >> i am going to cut in. governor erlich gave us an exciting picture of his

political movement and european social government comment made me wonder if there is a role for moderates in the republican party. i thought i would ask the governor to talk about will the republican turn to power by appealing to the center or the folks already in favor of policies such as he spoke of. >> i think we have to find dogs out to find moderates left in the democratic party first. for a couple reasons because of the court and the politics legislatures are drawing safer lines along the country.

when i was a member of congress there are were northern liberal republicans and southern democrats. they existed. they are wiped out and maryland is a great example. in texas, it was on the flip side. i went to congress and woke up one night and awakened and no longer lived in my own district. they changed the lines on the cities because they had so much in common. and texas republicans did this to democrats.

the bottom line is as you create safer districts you get more party in each party. so you have very strong liberals running. and what al said -- i might vote for him. but what he is saying -- bush went out there and got slaughtered. let's not reinvent history here. and we can talk about charters but more african-american kids in washington, d.c. are far worse off because obama cut their vouchers. over the objection of the maryland state teacher's association screaming bloody murder. both parties are more i

idealogical and you go back and because of the lines drawn you have a safe seat. and you hear go get them bob and joe on both sides. you go back in power with no motivation to compromise because you heard it from the town meeting. shut the government down. and raise taxes. and work till june to pay government as all levels. that is not freedom and the era of big government being over. that is the era of large government telling you what to do. >> i agree about what happened to the parties. we have become parliamentary parties and our system isn't built for it. our system is built for parties that build coalitions before the elections. not after the elections.

and the redistricting is a big part of it. in the last election, the republicans because of the way the districts were drawn and more republican governors and legislatures, the republicans have a 20-seat majoritmajority. this time the vote is going to be closer and maybe even with the republicans having an edge. they will win the house. in the senate in part constitutionally because there are small states and each small states get two senators. republicans have an advantage and this time a lot of the anti-obama states are coming up and they may win the senate but it is different than

presidential politics. and you know the democrats and republican party is too homogenous. we are a diverse party. i don't always like what people in my party do. but 40% liberal, the rest moderate and conservative and racially we are very diverse. republicans get an all white, 80% conservative vote and that is why in the end if they donbrn they will have a hard time winning. >> that didn't play out in the presidential election of 2012. obama lost independents. >> the issue isn't independent voters. it is who wins the majority. >> i am just saying -- you said a great job.

>> but the number of independents is going down because more people are in these polarized parties are identifying with them. but you still have d-- it used o be the country had a slight right majority. i used to think that if we had no other factors involved but two candidates up and republicans win it. but on issues of gay marriage i would not have said five years ago it would hurt the republicans. look at the way young voters are registering. the republicans are getting killed because they are viewed as an intolerant party. they have to become more accepting. that is a important for the

country. >> clearly our two speakers have a lot to say to each other about we would like to hear from you. if you have a question you would like to ask go up to the mike. we have about five minutes. keep them brief and i will ask you to respond briefly. >> thank you very much. you have done what you were supposed to do which is discuss the current polarization of the american government. my question to you is instead of why our legislatures knock each other why can't they all get together to work to fix what is wrong with this country? >> that has never been the case every. jefferson and hamilton were hiring surrogates to trash each other in the newspapers. what makes is so in your face

and real-time these days is social media. the smoke filled room is no more. it had its place. just from running for the legislature in the 1980s from running state-wide in 2010 the difference in parades. it used to be -- parades are weird. i hate cars so we walked. and we would have fun. with kids and parents. and you get the candy and you cannot do that stuff these days. and someone is filming or video taping or recording. it is hit on us to prove this.

it is art not science. i think you have a problem. so i think that when people say why can't we all get along. we never have gotten along. we started as a revolution. that is not to say the definition of leadership had to do this. where was never going to get hundred percent of what i wanted. so was i getting 62% of what where wanted or 41%? with 61% i might sign the bill but 41% i will not. it is the art of compromise. sometimes a bad deal is better than no deal. >> let's move to the next question. >> we only have a couple minutes. >> i agree politicians call each

other's names. sometimes worse than today. but we used to have times and i grew up in the united states working in the united states senate when people worked together. a month ago we were down in florida for spring training and we had dinner with my friends from annapolis bill and sandy brock and senator brock was a republican senator in the 1970s from tennessee. when i worked for senator ed musky, senator brock and musky were allies on every piece of legislation and the committee chairman had a rule we would not do major piece of legislation without a member of the other party being the principle co-sponsor. you can do it. what happened -- bob is right about the social media and cable news. those are disasters for good

sensible public debate. but you also need leadership and you need leadership -- who are the great giants of the senate. i don't see any. you need presidential leadership and we had it twice. one was ronald reagan, i disagreed and the other was bill clinton. they both came to the whitehouse i might add with an agenda that they fought for that challenged their own parties and made their own parties better. >> i will use my discretion to say we have three questions and to the panel we will have to give brief responses because i got the word we are not good listeners. >> governor erlich, the social democracy of europe by many

metrics are providing a better quality of life for people than the united states. >> not the freedom metric. >> not the freedom dimension? that might be a relative thing. we have tried a market-based approach to providing a better life to the american people and that seemed to have succeeded in providing a better life to the american people on top of the pyramid. what is freedom worth against quality of life? is freedom the measure of quality of life? is it the perception of the people of the european democracies that they don't have freedom? >> it is fascinating to see this viewpoint as income in equality becomes a mantra because you go do class warfare every time when

you are in trouble. what is fascinating is despite the tax increases and the progressives and 20 new taxes in obamacare and stimulus. income inequality increased during the obama era. higher taxes and you didn't build that and degrading the sense of entrepreneurs and freedom which is what we have always been about. and my body had a comment about equal opportunity and equal outcomes. >> let's move to our next question, ma'am. >> i am talking about health

care because i have two brothers who died untimely deaths because they didn't have health care. so the idea of repealing is repugnant to me. >> repealing what, ma'am? >> the affordable care act. can you suggest a way to increase it so people in states without the rights have a fair share at premiums. >> i think this was suspending state supervision and allowing politics to be written across state lines so you increase choice. choice and markets work. >> i want to thank you for being with us today.