exclusive authority to establish a uniform rule of naturalization and the supreme court clearly stated the formation of immigration policy is entrusted exclusively to congress and the plenary authority of the congress over italy and is not open to question. this was reassuring to do just a couple of years in arizona versus the united states and the quirks of the congress could fund the state laws preemption doctrine that the competing executive branch authorities could not. ..

>> to exercise prosecutorial discretion. prosecutorial discretion with respect to an executive's enforcement duties are based on equitable consideration in individual cases or in a small class of cases. and by the way, the immigration and nationality act already provides authority, congressional authority, for many equitable exceptions. for instance, our immigration laws provide for asylum or for temporary protected status for those who will, if returned, be subjected to hardships, be it civil war, natural disasters or if they will likely face persecution because of religious or political beliefs. these are all exceptions congress created based on special considerations that can be taken into account in particular cases and which fulfill the objectives of our

nation's immigration laws. what the president is doing here has absolutely nothing to do with responding to a national disaster, civil strife or political persecution. he is implementing by executive fiat a policy based on his policy preferences that exempt a huge class of people from the law's applicability against the will of congress. popes, kings and dictators give themselves the authority to grant dispensations to determine based on a whim that certain laws will not apply to certain favored individuals. presidents do not have that authority. prosecutorial discretion is designed to help achieve statutory objectives, and that would include promoting the integrity of our legal immigration system and deterring violations of our immigration laws, not to frustrate statutory

objectives or to effectuate policy changes. as former ins commissioner doris miser, who served under president clinton once stated: prosecutorial discretion should not become, quote, an invitation to violate or ignore the law. but that is exactly what this will do. the president's actions are an invitation to violate or ignore the law. the president has essentially announced that over half the illegal immigrants in this country, if you add in those covered by the deferred action for child arrivals, clear lawbreakers have nothing to worry about that they should come out of the shadows, to use the president's words, and that the immigration laws won't apply to them. in fact or, we're going to give them work permits. now, this may be many things, but it is not, in my opinion, the faithful execution of our immigration laws, and it is not, in my opinion, a proper exercise prosecutorial discretion.

by doing what he's doing, the president is, in my view, establishing a very dangerous precedent that violates fundamental principles of separation of powers that are served as a bulwark to protect our liberties and which which establish the government of laws and not of men. thank you. >> thank you, john. and next ramesh? >> there was a moment early in the president's remarks last night where he explained in america we are not prisoners of our past, and we always have the capacity to remake ourselves. and i guess that is his implicit answer about those comments he made in 2011 about not having the constitutional authority to do what he's doing. actually, if you remember the context of those remarks he made in 2011, he was denying he had the constitutional authority to do considerably less than he was doing last night. but unfortunately not content with just remaking himself, the president seems to be remaking our constitutional order at the

same time l while lecturing us in a particularly nice touch about what democracy means. the, i think quite as alarming as what the president's done on his own is the kind of argument that he's making for it. but i guess you have to step back, because there are two clashing arguments that he's making. first, there is the prosecutorial discretion argument. essentially, nothing to see here, it's just regular, routine prosecutorial discretion, right? if you believe the olc opinion yesterday, this is the wording presidents have had going back to eisenhower, i guess just nobody noticed it, and it's, you know, he had the sentence "we are going to continue to prioritize the removal of criminals." you know, we're just keeping on doing what we're doing. you begin to wonder why he's giving the speech.

but there is a second set of arguments that he's making where he's explaining that what he's doing is a substitute for congressional action, it is something that he has to do because congress hasn't -- and the way he puts it -- stepped up to the plate, and it is intended to prod congress to do the allegedly right thing. and it seems to me that when he makes that kind of an argument, he is essentially conceding that this is a legislative act, that the argument just doesn't make any sense if all he's doing is exercising prosecutorial discretion. and it is a kind of legislative act that the constitution just clearly doesn't have any room for. i mean, it is not the case that our form of government consists of a president threatening to make law by himself if congress doesn't make the kinds of laws that he wants. people have described that as blackmail, but that's actually not true because blackmail

typically involves a threat to do things that outside the context of blackmail would be entirely legal. you can tell people that somebody is having an affair, for example. this is more like extortion, because what he's been threatening to do is something that is not a legitimate exercise of his powers. now, the word from a lot of republicans in the run-up to this announcement was let's not overreact, let's not go crazy. i'm not for going crazy, but i do think there is such a thing as underreacting as well as overreacting, and i think we are at more risk of underreacting than overreacting right now. the line that we're hearing is, well, the president cant wants re-- wants republicans to go too far, and i suspect that's right. i mean, there is an element of intentional provocation in the way the president has conducted himself. but i'm sure the president will

be just fine if republicans don't do anything. and i'm not sure -- i don't think that either one of these things should be done. and, of course, you know, i should also say, well, talking about republicans, there are democrats who have at least voiced some disagreement with the way the president is conducting himself, and they ought to be invited to make good on their own rhetoric. it's not quite true as we heard earlier that the president hasn't created a bipartisan coalition. there is, he had deliberately smashed a bipartisan coalition for some of the same immigration proposals that he wants, but he does seem to have created a little bit of bipartisan opposition to what he's doing. now, it seems to me in thinking through what the response by the legislators should be, first of all, there has to be one. i think that's true for political reasons in terms of

the conservative base and party likely will not stand for there not being response, but secondly, you just, you have to register some kind of support for the constitution when the constitutional order is being threatened. i mean, the whole system of government does, in fact, depend on, you know, the phrase the interests of the place and the person being united. it seems to me that there ought to be three goals in any kind of legislative response. they would be thwarting the president's policy objective, undoing what he's trying to do, second, registering opposition to what he's doing or looking at it from the other side, avoiding complicity in what he's doing and, third, raising the political costs of what he's doing. all of that, i think, falls under the heading of trying to reassert the political and constitutional norms that the president is undermining.

now, the problem with those goals is that i am not sure that they are all achievable. i am not at all sure that there's anything that congress can do that will actually stop the president's policy from going forward. i suggested earlier this week and other people have also talked about it a two-part budget strategy where you fund all portions of the federal government with the exception of the immigration service, and then you pass a bill separately that funds the immigration service but with a cutoff of funding, no funds whether raised -- whether appropriated here or raised from any other source can be used to carry out the president's plan. there's been some pushback from the appropriations committee to the effect that you can't tie the executive's hands in that way, which is just not true.

and, of course you can. but the problem is you can't force the president to sign that bill, and you can't force senate democrats to go along with that bill, and they don't need the bill to pass in order to have nearly full funding for the agency and, therefore, to be able to go ahead. now, if congressional leadership is interested in this sort of strategy, it seems to me that it shouldn't be beyond the wit of man to find other parts of the federal government that we can sweep into this strategy. parts of the justice department that you can put in there that without, you know, if there's a standoff terribly inconveniencing the vast majority of americans and frustrating, at the same time, the president's ambitions. but it's not clear to me yet anyway that will exists to even look for those sorts of avenues on the part of the congressional leadership.

but even if there is no better strategy than the one i outlined and that's a strategy that terminates in the, in a presidential signature of the overall budget bill and a filibuster or veto of the immigration service, still worth doing, i think, because the alternative is for the entire congress to be complicit and to legitimate this kind of action. i mean, i just don't think that republicans should go on record supporting funding for carrying out this lawless kind of order, this extraconstitutional kind of order, and at the end of the day i find it hard to believe that they're going to. i think that conservatives are going to be too outraged to allow that to happen and that right now the balking of some republicans is just a kind of wasting time because their going

to eventually have to end up being where i'm suggesting they should be. and i guess one last point on this, on these sort of strategic questions. it does seem to me that if you have a president who is willing to go rogue, so to speak, you can't have a yearlong budget. you've got to have, you know, it's not the ideal circumstance in a lot of ways, but you've got to have short-term funding mechanisms because who knows what he'll do, you know, in february in support of some other activist group's goals. and you have to maintain the ability to put restrictions up even if, even if they're not ultimately successful. you've got to at least slow them down, you've got to have a fight. and on this question of whether the congressional leadership has the will to even explore this avenue, i guess one point i would make to them and to other republicans who might be feeling that way, if you are going to

wait around until you find a strategy that is guaranteed to succeed in all three of those objectives, then you're not going to ever do anything. and you should just say so, right? i mean, we can't have, i mean, it's sort of absurd for all these folks to troop over to the cameras and say we are going to legislatively respond when the legislative response is something that is just sort of purely symbolic. i'll close with just three comments more about the shape and form of a reaction, a response to what the president's doing. first, i will give the folks who worry about overreaction something. i do think that it's important when we, when we talk about these issues not to, not to communicate personal animosity toward large groups of people, even people who have done something wrong like breaking the law. i think -- i wish they hadn't

done it, i think our policies should have been very different towards them over the years, but i think it is in many cases very understandable thing that they did. second, we should put what the president's doing in the context of a pattern of lawless behavior, you know? the fact is this president has repeatedly stretched the laws in ways that have drawn unanimous rebukes from the supreme court which is to say rebukes from all of the democratic appointees, rebukes from the appointees that he himself put on the supreme court. so, you know, i don't know why we should be cowed by the olc said these were perfectly legal. and third, and this is just repeating something and maybe expanding a little bit, we should make the point about legal immigrants being disadvantaged by this order and

not just in terms of sort of form of line jumping, oh illegal immigrants who are already here, but also there's a serious question about the bureaucratic passty to actually carry out this plan, i mean, do all of these background checks and jump through the other various hoops that the president for now is insisting on, and that is going to mean that legal immigrants are going to get underserved, and that's something that conservatives can make an issue out of. but again, all of that presumes that there is, that there is a will to have a fight on in this issue and that we're not just doomed to underreacting to it. >> excellent. thank you, ramesh. please join me in thanking our panelists for their remarks. [applause] we do have time, ten minutes or

a little more than that, for questions. if you have a question, please, raise your hand, wait for the microphone, identify ourself and ask a question. we have one right up here. >> i have two questions. no? okay. one question. >> all right. [inaudible] the bill passed by the senate, immigration reform bill, thanks. >> okay. that's 744. anyone want to take that? >> how much time do we have? [laughter] i think there were a couple problems, significant problems with that bill. i think that the doubling of legal immigration levels over the next decade, much of it low skilled, is not a solution to any pressing problem that the united states currently faces. it's not as though we have had extremely tight labor markets in recent years. it's not as though there is a public clamor for this kind of

increase in legal immigration which typically polls in the low 30s in terms of its public support. i think that providing a legal status for millions of illegal immigrants before you're sure that enforcement is going to actually be implemented and going to to be effective and has survived the court challenges that supporters of this law would doubtless have brought against it is reckless because it creates the potential that you have the magnetic effect of an amnesty; that is, people just assume that the country doesn't take the law seriously and that there'll be a further round of amnesties in the future. so those would be, i think, the two major problems. and i guess i would add a third one. i think the guest worker programs are wrong in principle. i don't think that the country should have a large group of people that we have laboring, but we deliberately don't want to participate in our civic, our

social and our political life, essentially, a helot class to do menial work. if, you know, we're talking as the president did last night about what the country's about, i don't think it ought to be about that. >> anybody else want to add anything? >> i just add that, i mean, all the problems we've described of the executive amnesty would be worse under the gang of eight bill. the only saving grace would be, well, i guess if it were passed, at least you'd have congress onboard, respecting the constitutional order. but as ramesh says, it would aggravate all the problems. instead of adding five million additional workers to the american labor pool, we'd be adding, like, ten or eleven million workers to the labor pool. you know, we already have a generous legal immigration system. doubling it going forward would aggravate all the problems that we've talked about involving stagnant wages and unemployment, underemployment, people struggling in part-time jobs.

>> all right. question, we've got one on the far right over here. >> this was a difficult election where republicans had to make a choice, you know, and many times to, whether or not to vote for a candidate that they may not have agreed with, but everybody got together. and there were a lot of people getting those people around the idea of a republican majority. this is the first big test. what happens if republicans fail on this test to rein in this obama? i've certainly got my views, but i want to hear yours. >> ramesh, you want to take that one? >> yeah. i think it's a huge problem. i think it's intensely demoral izing and is would be divisive among republicans. look, there are times when you have to disappoint some of your

supporters. many of your supporters. when some of your supporters have outsized expectations of what you can achieve. but they, but people do expect you to try. people do expect you, you know, if you have a press release saying that the president is acting as an emperor and a tyrant, that has to be met with something, i think, a little bit more robust than a rescissions package. >> i would add that, you know, that the 2014 election cycle is over to, we're already in the 2016 election cycle. the only, you know, it's a completely different issue. trying to elect a president is different than fighting these legislative battles all across the country. i think the only way the republican can get that, the republican party can get that critical majority that it needs is appealing to the american working class and making it

clear that it's the republican party that represents the best interests of the american working class, that it's the republican party that's concerned about the stagnant wages and the high rates of unemployment and underemployment. it's the republican party that's concerned about the lack of benefits and the part-time work. and the only way we're going to improve that is by tightening up the labor pool. why is bill clinton so popular, right? i mean, why is this nostalgia for bill clinton? because bill clinton's administration coincided with a period of relatively high employment in the united states and low unemployment. so if you're in a group of people that's traditionally the last hired and the first fired, you have fond memories of that period. there was a tight labor market. president clinton signed what was thought to be a tough immigration law that sent the message out to the world that, oh, these americans are really cracking down on immigration now. they're going to tighten up the labor market.

so i think, you know, it's nothing about the man personally. i think that people have a nostalgic feeling about the clinton era, that it was a time of high employment, rising wages, and that's what the american people want. >> a question over here. yeah. >> thank you. leann bernstein, russian press. my question is about where the united states constitution is going and, of course, the executive action takes place in the context of what you described as a pattern of lawlessness, the confrontation on war powers, the recess appointments, the lawsuit that i believe was just filed today against obamacare, but it seems like there is legal justification on the president's part to take these actions in a sort of, in these gray zones.

so if this kind of thing continues and there isn't a response, where do you see the constitution, the u.s. constitution going? >> john, do you want to take that? >> it's a very, very broad question. i would say that, look, i'm an eternal optimist when it comes to the constitution, but i would say that the trend line at the moment is not good. i would disagree with one thing you said which is i don't think with respect to these immigration laws there's a gray zone here. in fact, when the president made his remarks last night, he said let's be clear, all of these people are lawbreakers. where he is hanging his hat is, again, on prosecutorial discretion. well, prosecutorial discretion normally operates this way, which is the law applies to everybody. but if you have an individual lawbreaker based on very compelling, equitable circumstances where you show some, you take some other action sort of prosecution -- short of prosecution, that's what prosecutors do day in and day out. what the president has done here

is sort of flipped that. he has said the law is not going to apply to this huge number of people, but if there's an individual case among that group that are particularly bad, maybe that person gets removed. well, that's not, that's not prosecutorial discretion in any kind of a traditional, or in my belief, reasonable sense. >> probably have time for one more question. up here in the front. >> paul -- [inaudible] powerline. i wonder what the panel thinks about the prospects for a successful legal challenge, and in particular the overcoming potential problems of standing. >> john, do you want to lead off? >> well, standing is going to be a difficult, is going to be a difficult challenge. so let's see who the potential people are out there. one, the house has already filed

its lawsuit today on the basis of obamacare. i suppose that they could introduce another resolution to expand the scope of that lawsuit to cover this if they wanted to. all of the issues of standing that apply to the obamacare case would apply there, and they'd have to establish some kind of unique institutional injury where they could establish the standard things, you know? injury and fact causation, redress can about by a court. redecember about by a court. there are at least two states attorneys general, scott pruitt in oklahoma and greg abbott of texas have said they're going to file a lawsuit. i would guess, although i don't know, that that lawsuit will be based on sort of an anti-commandeering concept of the refusal to enforce immigration laws has now imposed a huge additional cost on the states. standing will be difficult there as well. there's, of course, the lawsuit that senator sessions referred to by the i.c.e. agent that was filed by secretary of state from

kansas, kris kobach, on behalf of those i.c.e. agents. that case, although the district court judge said he believed the president had acted unlawfully with respect to daca, that case was dismissed on standing ground, and i've heard there may be some talk of union workers or other workers saying, look, we can't find jobs precisely because these work permits are being given out to all of these illegal immigrants. you know, i don't want to prejudge the merits on any of those things, but standing is going to be a tough issue with respect to any of those. and when you add in the traditional argument about, you know, really this is just an exercise of prosecutorial discretion, that's going to make it even a little bit tougher. >> can i just concur in that? i think the prospects, i'm not overly optimistic about the prospects of the i judicial remedy. i think the courts have historically been reluctant to take up what they consider to be political questions, and although i will mention the

youngstown sheet and tube case which i meant to mention which i think everyone who's a lawyer has studied at some point in their lives on the limits of presidential power. and justice jackson said in that 1952 case involving the seizure of steel mills by president truman that the president's power is at its peak when he acts with the concurrence of congress. and it's at its lowest ebb when he acts in defiance of congress. and i think that even though there's, yeah, there was no question of standing in that case, i mean, that's an important concept here that the president's power is really at its ebb, and that was the basis for justice jackson's vote on why the presidential power had to be limited in that particular case. >> ramesh, how -- would it fit in the underwhelming category if all congress did was rely on this lawsuit that could take years and has very dubious chances of success? >> absolutely. you know, i think whether or not a lawsuit should proceed, it

can't be the chief way that the legislature tries to defend its rights. that's not the constitutional set up. and if we're trying to vindicate the constitutional order which is, i think, you know, which is a bigger problem than just the policy dispute we're having, then the legislature has to do something other than sort of run to the courts for help. >> all right. well, we've concluded our time. please join me in thanking our panel again, and thank you for coming. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> well, coming up in about an

hour, the carnegie endowment for international peace will host a forum on jihadist movements in the middle east, namely afghanistan, syria and iraq. that'll be live today starting at 3:30 eastern. tonight on "the communicators," tim hwang, founder and ceo of fiscalnote, on their technology that predicts outcome to congressional legislation using data mining and artificial intelligence. >> our analytics get a lot more granular than just seeing, you know, whether or not something passes. so we can actually break down on a legislator by legislator basis how likely they are to vote on a certain bill. so from a tactical perspective, there's a lot of opportunities for attorneys, lob bists u whatever -- lobbyists, whatever, to say here are the 50 people that are most likely to vote for it, here are the 50 people least likely to vote for it, and you can start looking at sort of developing a strategy in terms

of getting at the information that you need. so what i will say is, you know, our ab littics don't provide all the answers. it's not a crustal ball where we can -- crustal ball where we can ask any question. that being said, there is a lot of power being able to provide some of the analytics we provide with human intelligence on the ground. and sort of being able to combine those two things should get to the answers you would like to get to. >> tonight at eight eastern on "the communicators" on c-span2. well, texas governor rick perry said that texas might sue president obama over his executive action on immigration. governor perry spoke during a panel discussion at the republican governors' association's annual meeting in boca raton, florida. the governors discuss congressional partisanship, government shutdowns, education, welfare and the 2016 presidential campaign. >> here we go. all right.

host of nbc's "meet the press," chuck todd! [applause] >> voice of god. well, as you can see, and i'm going to put this out there, these are the only governors that expressed an interest in running for president in 2016. [laughter] that's why they're up here. governor christie, i assume that means you're not up here anymore. totally understand. that joke work for everybody? you guys all right with that? i kid, of course. >> i didn't express anything. >> nothing at all. oh, see? it's all about roping you in, i told you. i'm going to kick things off here in a minute. one of the things i want you guys to be able to do is there should be some notecards. we're not going to have people stand up and ask questions, pass the questions up. there'll be people on the sides collecting them as we go. we're going to go for about an hour, and i figure we're going to kick off with just talking about some issues of the day, and i hear there's some news

that might be made on immigration. and i want to start first with three of our five governors here have all served in congress. and and so, governor kasich, let me start with you. you're close with speaker boehner. you've served in congress. how should congressional leadership respond to the president's action that he is going to announce tomorrow night? how should -- what would you advise congressional leadership to respond? >> i think my view is they should have been at this right away, and as soon as they heard he was going to do it. my sense is they should have asked him to put it off, but to make it clear to him that they're not going to listen to the people that have no interest in a solution. and, you know, in our state over in ohio we've looked at problems and offer solutions which is what we did and, you know, had a really gratifying win. so that's what i would have done -- >> you think they should have already been trying to pass a bill, trying to do something -- >> no, i think they should have

sat with him and said, look, we've got some common things, let's hammer this out because if you go real quick and don't include us, we don't need to poison anymore wells. maybe they can even still make the plea to him, look, we're not in a position where we're just going to roadblock you, and we're not going to have unrealistic solutions. we're going to maybe each go back and take a look -- when i was back in congress in 1986 when ronald reagan came up with a plan, you remember simpson-mazzoli, i think you want to try to work with the president when you can, and i think it's a mistake for him to move forward like this unilaterally. so i think cooler heads need to prevail. and, you know, it's never too late until it's too late, so that's what i would suggest. >> governor pence, you were in house leadership at one time. there's lots of stuff that's being talked about. power of the purse, you've said that, power of the purse could set up a showdown that could make for some ugly politics. >> i think it would be a profound mistake for the president of the united states

to overturn american immigration law with the stroke of a pen. i truly do. i believe that issues of this magnitude should always be resolved with the concept of the governed. and, look, the senate passed an immigration bill, and the american people changed the majority in the senate. and so what the president ought to do is precisely what john kasich just said, and that is the president ought to sit down in january with the new republican majority in the senate and the historically large new majority in the house and surgery for common ground. that's what leadership looks like. that's what we do as governors every day working with our legislatures. we sit down, we hammer it out. signing an executive order, giving a speech, barnstorming around the country defending that executive order is not leadership. the likes of which we practice every day. and i would implore the president to reconsider this

path and to, and to demonstrate the kind of leadership that the american people long to see and that is that this administration would sit down with this newly-minted republican congress and find genuine common ground, border security. there's a series of piece-by-piece reforms that i believe could be advanced in this congress that would be in the long term interests of this issue. >> governor jindal, the third member, third governor up here who has washington experience. i know you have to hide that these days. but would you, would the -- would the congressional republicans be in a better negotiating position had the house republicans passed something last year? you know, started this incremental -- and that's what the white house says, hey, we've waited and waited and waited for the house to do anything. there's nothing that they've done on this issue. >> well, look, i think two things. one, this president, he purposely -- he was very plain

about this. during the election he said i'm going to wait until after the midterm elections to take action, knowing this was going to be unpopular, knowing that he didn't want to hurt his democratic candidates. and then he went out and told us my policies are going tock on the ballot. -- to be on the ballot. we didn't say that, he said that. overwhelmingly, the american people rejected those policies in blue states, purposing states and red states. so he says i'm for political purposes i'm going to delay taking action, i'm going to have an election where my policies are on the ballot. he loses, and instead of listening to the american people, i think it's the height of arrogance for any president to say i'm going to ignore the constitution, the laws, i'm going to do whatever i want. he may be the first president to consistently ignore the separation of powers. what i think is amazing is you don't have good democrats of conscious who say, look, i agree with the president on substance. there may be democrats who agree on substance, but this is not the right way to do this. we're setting a precedent. because imagine if there's a

republican president who says i'm going to pick which laws i'm going to enforce, the way, for example, he has selectively picked which parts of obamacare to enforce. i think it's the height of arrogance to go around the law and the constitution. secondly, he had a supermajority in the senate his first two years, he had the majority in the congress, in the house the first two years. he got obamacare done, his stimulus bill. if this was such a high priority, he could have done this. if you were really serious about negotiating with the house leadership, he would be sincere about securing the border. they've made it very clear, and rightfully, that that's a priority. so i think the president's the one that bears responsibility -- >> you don't think house republicans have any responsibility for not passing anything in the nearly two years that they had the senate bill? >> look, i've been consistently saying we've got to be a policy of solutions for reforms. i think our immigration system is broken, i think we need to make it easier for people to come here legally, but i also think it's right for the house republicans to say how can we trust you when you're not

securing the border, what you could be doing already. he's got to be a trustworthy negotiating partner. if he wants to have that productive conversation as john and mike have said, he needs to secure the border. he can do that. that is within his ability to do. it's not hard, and i would define the border as being secure when border secure governments like jan and rick and others say the border's secure. not because they've spent trillions or billions or other dollars, just ask the border state governors. they'll tell you. >> governor perry, what it appears the president's going to announce is, basically, somewhat codifying in executive order the reality that's already there. we're not deporting these folks. there seems to be consensus that nobody wants to break up families, so these are parents of people that are legally here. aren't we sort of arguing over something nobody was ever going to, nobody was ever going to enforce anyway? >> no. and let me address your question about the republicans and --

>> yes, please do. >> -- the congress from my perspective. one of the reasons they didn't do that is because the american people are not for it. what you're going to see is this president is going to take this action supposedly tomorrow that is unconstitutional in his own words. >> we don't know if it's unconstitutional yet. >> in his own words he said a year ago that this was not legal for him to do. he did say that. whether it's statutorily or constitutionally, i'll let the lawyers hash that out. but what he admitted that he couldn't do what he's going to do tomorrow. and so that's just bad public policy. and the american people are not for this. then you start building a case that the republicans in the house and soon to be the republican majority in the senate will come to him with what is most important to the american people, and that is to secure the border.

and lay a thoughtful bill that does, in fact, fund the needed personnel, the technology, the drones, the fast response teams, the strategic fencing -- >> in that senate bill, right? >> that clearly addresses the border security issue singularly. you will not get americans to support an immigration reform bill until -- not together, but until the border is secure. and at that particular point in time, then americans are going to be open to a conversation about how do you deal with these people, but not until then. when i'm -- as a matter of fact, it's interesting. the farther i get away from the border of texas and mexico, the more intense people seem to be about -- >> what does that tell you? because i agree with you. i did -- i've noticed the same -- >> i've been over the course of

the last month? >> besides iowa, new hampshire and south carolina? [laughter] come on, i had to put that in there. there is a different conversation in the middle of the country than here in florida or in the state of texas. >> it's true. it is a, clearly, the american people by and large want to see the border secure. when the sheriffs, the district attorneys, the police chiefs come up to me in various and sundry places and say, governor, thank you for deploying your national guard to secure that border, because we're having to pay inordinate amounts of money to prosecute individuals who are in this country illegally that are committing crimes against our citizens. so i think the president is taking a major, major political chance with what he's doing. i think he's putting his party in jeopardy, and i think he's putting members of the senate and the house in jeopardy.

now, maybe he doesn't care about them. but i will suggest to you if he goes through with this and he sticks a finger in the eye of the american people with no thought about it other than this is what i want to do, and i'm going to do it, then i think he jeopardizes long-term the democrats ever to get back in power again in washington d.c. >> governor walker, you haven't spoken on this yet. i want to puck up on something governor -- pick up on something governor perry talked about, a single, stand-alone bill on border security. where is it? i mean, the house republicans would put something up, i'm just saying, the conversation could be a lot different now if there was a bill that the house republicans passed on border security. >> could be, but unfortunately -- and i'm an optimist, but in this case i'm cynical about the president. this president who came in and campaigned in my state a week before the election in a ward in my state that was 99%, what, 99% for him in the last election to try and drive the vote out, and he went in other states, he was

in maryland with one of our new governor-elects and others, michigan, others across the midwest, i think this president -- it goes beyond immigration. i just think it's cynical. he looked at the fact that the american people soundly rejected the policies of this president, and he desperately and his political team desperately wants to get the topic changed from the issues we got elected on. we did not get a majority in the united states senate, in the house of representatives or in the majority of us here elected as governors were not elected where we're for or against immigration reform. we were elected -- >> it was a big topic in some of these house and senate -- >> certainly wasn't in any of our governors' races. you look at states like colorado where i was born, the new senator-elect there actually did very well amongst hispanic voters without being for an aggressive immigration policy out there. i would say this president doesn't want us focused on things like a north american energy policy, about repealing obamacare in light of the gruber

announcements, he doesn't want us to focus on loring the taxes, reducing the national debt, balancing the budget. those are things republicans were elected to do in the house, in the senate. they're exactly the things we're doing as governors. and i think that's why this president's making such a big deal about it right now, just shy of two weeks after the election. because he wants to key accelerate attention in -- divert attention from the very things americans empowered republicans to do both in the senate and statehouses. >> you know, i was in congress in some of the most turbulent times and also the most successful times. we went to a government shutdown after we won the '94 majority in the house for the first time in 40 years. we had the shutdown, and as the chairman of the budget committee, the clinton folks who, you know, beat us up pretty badly, he sent feelers up to my office, over to senator domenici to say, hey, it's in all of our interests to get a balanced budget. the same thing is true on this issue.

but, you see, this is emblematic of the overall tone we hear in america today. the country's just too divided. we just -- it's like, you know, you got your stuff, i got my stuff. what did we end up with? when we finally had the feelers, when we finally were able to work through many tough issues, we got a balanced budget in 1997, the first time we had one since man walked on the moon, we had prosperity. did i like everything bill clinton was doing? what are you kidding? but at the end of the day, guess what? good people need to be committed to solving problems. and we say a border bill first, he says, no, border bill first. maybe it can be worked out. everybody here knows we have a problem in the country. they want this fixed. people want problems solved. and you've got to be careful with the rhetoric, you know? because you get too far out on that, and people don't want to deal. and so my only message is you've

got to talk to 'em, you've got to talk to 'em quietly. you've got to say -- you've got to find out, are you interested in solving this problem? because we are, and if you're interested, we'll make some compromises, you're going to have to make some compromises. that's what i would have suggested. >> do any of the other of you here on this topic, do you think you should go to, congressional leadership should go to the brink? governor kasich is saying let cooler heads prevail. there's other talk. do you force, do you engage in the budgetary aspect and force a shutdown? does anybody here think that should be done? >> i wouldn't force a shutdown, i think you should go to the court -- >> you would go to the courts. >> i think there's a pretty compelling argument -- >> who's the aggrieved party in this, by the way? i assume there's going to be a court challenge -- >> the american people. >> let me give you -- >> one second, john. john said something i agree with, but it's interesting. bill clinton did not say the

republicans of congress aren't going along with me, so i'm going to do an executive order and do a balanced budget. he sat down with you. >> no, the government got shut down first. [laughter] >> there was tremendous animosity. >> it was -- >> but he did not go to, he did not issue an executive order after that. >> no. he vetoed our welfare reform -- >> he had to sit down with you. isn't that the difference here though? you've got a president -- set aside immigration. what this president's doing, a president who has repeatedly said over the last two years that he's the president of the united states, not an emperor, a president who repeatedly said as rick alluded to that this is illegal, he can't do it, he defended it time and time again when he was pressured by activists that he couldn't do this is now going to take action. and i think you'd be hard pressed not to find anybody but a partisan democrat who wouldn't say this is illegal. that's a big difference on give and take. there's no give on his part. >> when you're sitting around and you've got newt gingrich and

bob dole at each other over a shutdown, it wasn't easy either. i don't like what he's doing, i don't agree with what he's doing, i think he's making a mistake, but this is emblematic of where we're going forward as a country. i mean, are we going to deal with the real problems of health care, of immigration, are we going to deal with the problem of a divided country? i mean, we're not -- look, one thing i learned in congress is if we had not gotten the clinton people to the table to negotiate , and they didn't get -- we didn't get everything we wanted. we got a lot of it, but we didn't get everything we wanted. had we not done it, we would never have balanced the budget. nothing gets fixed, social security, medicare, medicaid, nothing gets fixed without bipartisan support. you've got to look for the places -- and, look, i did it. i was one of the architects of that balanced budget. i know what it was like, and it wasn't fun. you have madeleine albright come in and talk to you about foreign aid and, i mean, that's enough for a lifetime, okay?

[laughter] >> governor pence. governor pence? is there a limit on what you would advise house leadership on how to fight the president on this? >> chuck, the power of the congress is the power of the purse. >> so go ahead and -- because governor kasich in some ways is saying, look, the shutdown was good. in an odd way, you're making a case at the end of the day, the shutdown worked for negotiations. >> let me say shutdowns only happen when you have one catch-all bill, call it an omnibus or a continuing resolution. i have every confidence that speaker boehner and the leadership will get out of this lame duck session and will keep the government moving forward. what i'm also confident about is that the new republican majority in the senate and the renewed republican majority in the house for first time in the about seven years are actually going to write a budget. they're going to adopt a budget. and then they're going to go through a regular and orderly process of appropriations bills. i think there's 13 different appropriations bills. and that's -- wen i talk about the consent of the governed,

that's where the american people work their will. and if the president of the united states, if he were to go through with this -- i think he's acting outside the consent of the governed, and he's not providing real leadership to solve this intractable issue facing our country in the way the american people would expect a leader to do. but that's where the american people can object by defunding, by preventing funding, preventing implementeddation. but for the -- implementation. but for the president with the stroke of a pen, the stroke of a pen to announce policies and travel around the country defending those policies after a national televised address, i want to say again, and it's true of every one of the governors up here, that's not the leadership that we practice. that's not the leadership john kasich was experiencing, and that's the leadership the american people long to see in washington, d.c., a president and a congress who sit down and figure it out on a principled basis and move the country forward. >> governor perry, you were saying on the lawsuit front, who's the aggrieved party?

who files the suit? >> i'll speak from our perspective from the state of texas. i think we're spending some $12 million a month on border security. we're also, i think the numbers are just out in harris county, some 3,000 additional students from central america have been absorbed into their schools. the cost to the people of the state of texas is an extraordinary amount of money that this president is exacerbating with his announcement that he's going to allow for this -- >> you believe -- [inaudible] state of texas. >> no, i don't know it. i mean, i don't think it, i e no it. >> sounds like you're going to fuel suit. >> i would think that there's probably a very real -- >> this could be the state of texas v. the president of the united states, v. the u.s. government? >> greg abbott, who is the new

incoming governor of texas who, by the way, is going to be just a fabulous governor, his job description over the last six years when he was asked what do you do, he said i go to the office, i sue obama, and i go home. [laughter] [applause] >> so you believe the state of texas will have standing to the challenge, challenge the implementation of this executive order. >> i do. >> okay, governor jindal. >> i want to build on something that both scott and john said. and, look, i do think they should force -- think about how ridiculous this is. before i made the comment, we're talking about how do you make the president of the united states follow the law? i think congress can sue under separation of powers, i think there are a lot of ways to force him to follow the law. to scott's and john's point, the president's got a decision to make. does he want to continue to demonize republicans, continue to play politics, or does he want to do the hard work of

governing? there are real issues in our country. scott's right, instead of trying to distract us, this election people went to the polls and said we don't want a top-down, government-run approach to our lives. we don't like the bureaucrats in there with the doctors when it comes to health care. we want a replacement to obamacare. keystone is just one small example of what this administration is doing to stop us from being energy independent. they want more school choice. these governors have done school choice reform, they don't want government-run monopolies. now what do republicans need to do? we need to be bold, we need to be principled, we need to pass bold, conservative reforms, put them on the president's desk. show him how we can break up the monopoly in education, show him how we can be energy independent and challenge him to change. is he interested in the leading or demagoguing and being partisan? john was right, he was there in the fight. bill clinton didn't get everything he wanted, and he did compromise. and that was the only reason he balanced the budget, was he had

a republican majority. the only reason welfare became law after he vetoed it is because he had a republican majority that he worked with. even jimmy carter, this president needs to admit that his approach has been rejected by the american people. but republicans -- >> let's go back to immigration. wouldn't we be having a different conversation if the house had passed something? golf walker? -- governor walker? >> no, again -- >> don't you think if they had passed something on immigration? some form of a bill that maybe he didn't like, but there was something there to begin with? >> no, this has always been a political tool for this president. if he was serious about it, several mentioned this manufacture -- mentioned this before, he would have dealt with it when he had the house and the senate. he brings it up when he thinks it serves him well. >> do you view it as a problem? >> what's that? >> do you view immigration as a problem? a lot of things have been played

on both sides. >> a lot. >> absolutely. >> well, but let's be real. if this president was serious about it, you have a house and a senate. if you could ram through obamacare even when you knew people like gruber knew what they were saying about the american people, if you were genuine and serious about it, why wouldn't this president have pushed it through? no, because he wanted it for the next election. if he said his policies were on the agenda for this election, why wouldn't he have pushed something before that? he waited until afterwards. i think it is a cynical ploy to try and draw attention away from the huge successes republicans had connecting with the american people one state at a time. and look what's happening? instead of talking about the huge things that we have on the agenda, we're talking about immigration when really there's a lot of other things that each of us have articulated that i think the vast majority of the american people even in swing states like mine desperately want to talk about. come out with me on the road, and i'll tell you there aren't a whole lot of people talking about immigration.

>> you don't feel like immigration's a big issue? >> it's not certainly as big as economic reform, tax reform, energy reform, school choice, education reform. you've got -- welfare reform. you go down the list -- >> securing the border. >> or securing the border, you're right. >> i think that's where the president really misses this, and i found out that the president is not particularly interested in it when he came to dallas and i asked him to come to the border to take a look at what was going on -- [inaudible conversations] >> hang on a second, chuck. let me just share one thing i think is important here. the president of the united states did not know that his border patrol agents were 45-50 miles away from the border in an apprehension type of a position. rather than on the border in a prevention position. he looked at valerie jarrett and said, is that right, valerie? i said, i can answer it for you, mr. president, it's true. the president does not care, i think, about securing the

border. i think that's the problem. american people do. and until he sends a clear message, congress sends the clear message that we're going to secure the border, he is wasting his time and, i think, the american people know it's a waste of time. >> let me just say one of my pet peeves is i hear secure the border. give me a metic that tells you. what's the metric? >> well, you come to the border, i'll show you. >> what's the -- >> you're going to give me the same answer the president is. >> what is it? >> you put the boots on the ground. >> yeah. >> you put the aviation assets. here's what's happened since may and july. we had over 10,000 apprehensions per month in may -- excuse me, yeah, in may and june. in july after we had surged our law enforcement, department of public safety, texas ranger recon teams, wildlife wardens, literally putting those wards in the river in the boats, we saw a

50% reduction in apprehensions in july, we saw a 50% reduction in august. that's the metric you're looking for. we are headed in the right direction because we're sending a clear message. there are personnel, law enforcement and military individuals, on the border. you cannot come and just cross the border, throw your hands up and say here am i and stay in this country. so it's not unlike what you would see happen in a community that had a crime problem and you put law enforcement or patrol cars into that neighborhood. crime goes down. and that's what the president, i think, doesn't understand or does not want to see implemented. i'm cynical in the sense of i think this president is not serious about border security. he's never sent us a message that he's serious about it. until he does, the american people aren't going to trust him. ..

we've now spent 30 minutes talking about the president breaking the law tomorrow.

i would like to talk about education. it is significant that the american people said we are tired of the government running our lives. if we allowed russia and putin to go into ukraine i think everybody here is an agreement we need to secure the border. i think it would be good if we spend time talking about how to become energy independent. >> you don't have to talk to you could spend a long time talking about it. secure the border first.

we should ring skills. [applause] >> my grandfather immigrated to this country and i don't think that we should do never a word people with citizenship. it was a violation of the law but i'm saying is that senior senator and i worked together on a compromised proposal that was well received at the white house and on capitol hill and after the democrats took over the congress any thought of moving forward in a thoughtful way went away by the boards. the president had the senate and the white house but i really do beauty view the that's putting border security and a setting aside amnesty but there is a way that we can reform the immigration law including as the

economy continues to grow both to secure the border into the economic prosperity. but i want to throw my voice in an essay -- if they say we want to change the direction in washington, d.c. and i also think that has changed the subject and focus on getting this economy moving again and restoring america's place in the world. >> is there if they're going to have to be one? >> you can't figure out who is coming. but here's the thing we have to think about what is going to bring about healing. i don't like the idea of citizenship when people jump the line we may have to do it.

it may be laborious. i would say that we have to do that to allow them to stay here. we allow them to work and ship them to the border and the issue of citizenship i'm not close to that because everybody in this country has to feel so they have the opportunity. i know what they did. i know they jumped the line. there are a lot of people that have gone through the glee that haven't jumped the line who were bitter about this and at the end of the day it may be necessary. i'm open to it. >> i'm thinking you are going to get invited to do a moderation for the presidential debate. [laughter]

>> the last time i checked immigration is not -- >> what is the story. >> there already is a path to citizenship in this country and i would suggest that it does need to be changed. if you want to be a citizen, go get in the line, do the jews and pay the time. >> between the two education. it's the number one issue. you asked the number one issue in the state if it's going to be one or two, jobs or education. this issue of common core. you are funny about it. it does seem to me we need to have a format standards but now common core is a four letter word instead of what it is. >> that's what i'm wondering here and let me start with the governor as you sort of laughed

it off. >> the federal government sets national standards but we have to expect the children to reach the standard and there ought to be uniform. my understanding is the governors got together with state superintendents and principals and they came up with this. we are not doing well in the world. if we are not careful, google and paypal will be invented to somewhere else. it's interesting to see them land on a spaceship on the comment. why wasn't that here? we are saying the curriculum that is proposed as proposed by local school districts into pairs parental advisors on this and to me i don't see that somehow this is obama core or

some other thing. i've looked at daycare for me. my concern is we debate the impact of the test but the idea that kids in iowa and california and ohio ought to be at a higher level of achievement and i'm completely forgot. if the federal government starts meddling in this and starts doing all this education policy out of washington, i am not for that but as long as the school boards and parents are involved in writing the curriculum to reach a higher standard particularly in math and science we are not going to do history with it i think it makes a lot of sense. >> you were for common core for a while. >> what i object to is the federal department of education making the curriculum.

testing does drive what gets caught. in louisiana we had to leap even before there was common core of high-stakes testing and we were able to judge of her students so we could compare how our students are doing against kids in ohio and wisconsin on math and science and other subjects. my concern about common core is that it becomes something is never intended to be. one it's become a one-size-fits-all federal approach and i certainly agree with the concerns. i think that it does does direct the click of a decision and the federal government shouldn't be doing it. i think state and local teachers and parents should be able to do this. there was no transparency and even the folks that start off said wait a minute why didn't we have couldn't we have open comments invited and we invite other experts. so the first concern is philosophical whenever allowed the government to make the decisions and we shouldn't start under common core. i would encourage and invite parents are undecided to go actually look at the other

standards and i know this as appearance, not just as a governor look how they teach second grade math and common core. a a sample problem in third grade if they had a set of math problems a team plus for his 20 that kind of stuff. he got all the content answer is right on hundred% that you look how common core taught you how to show how you got those answers they took a simple problem like 18 plus four and turned it into a process with all kinds of diagrams and u2 round of 18 to 20 was ridiculous and frustrated the kids and even math professors would say this is the most intuitive way to teach math and i think that's what happens and you have a one-size-fits-all approach. i have the objection if there are other states and school boards that say we want to adopt this they should be free to do that with the federal department of education shouldn't say you don't get race to the top funding for no child left behind and the department of education shouldn't even be funding the tens of millions.

several department of education under the tenth amendment under the federal statute has never been about interfere with local curriculum into that to me is why i'm against common core. >> almost like i could read he is being too sensitive to the criticism. you get to the point we all take it very personally but at some point we have to agree upon something. i want high standards which is why i opposed common core and we changed that process even more in wisconsin. >> the scores have gone up since i've been governor and they are the second best in the country. graduation rates have gone up, third grade reading scores from all those things have gone up i would say the reason why we have schools in many parts of the state isn't because we don't have a high national standard

commits because we don't hold our schools accountable for what they are teaching today and i would argue no surprise from wisconsin is the biggest reasons is because the collective bargaining in the schools we treat good teachers and poor teachers exactly the same. one of the biggest reasons are test scores have gone up is because three and a half years ago we unleashed that burden upon our schools. we we did and just went to the collective bargaining, we allow our schools to be run by the school boards so that local officials could be held accountable by local parents and others they are the ones running the schools now. if you look around the country particularly in the larger urban areas one of the biggest problem is we have schools filled with many great teachers but we also have a lot of the schools where teachers go through don't belong in teaching under the old collective bargaining most of the cities have around the country they are stuck there. there's no reason.

we could hire and fire based on merit and based on the performance performance of we could for the best and the brightest in the classrooms and that's what we need more than the national. >> would he want the federal government isil have to get renewed at some point or another. what do you want in education sex i know you don't want the federal government involved with what can you do to improve education tax >> my first year in congress even though it was president bush's top priority at the time i was part of a group that opposed no child left behind because i believed then and now that education is a state and local function. the question i would say resources, not red tape. if you want a block grant education resource to allow the state of indiana to craft new solutions, innovation in indiana we are committed to making the career and vocational opportunity and available. the federal government funds to

free up resources for us to do that more power to them but when i became governor the legislature took a hard look at common core and they sent me a bill and we became the first state to recall common core and we went through the process of writing our own standards. and i really do belief that it's the principle of who decides here. those things that are most important to us in terms of education and public safety and health and welfare of our people want are to be managed and governed and accountable. in indiana we will soon have the largest education voucher program in the country. we've been expanding charter schools and the test scores graduation third-grade reading is up and so when we rewrote our standards i said i wanted

written and i think that our state and the states represented here demonstrates that we can lead and govern and achieve excellence in education so my message is resources, not red tape. >> i think we are on the verge of a return to federalism like you've never seen in this country before and our friends in washington i hope will understand the solutions are in the states. i see no reason to reauthorize no child left behind. we didn't participate with race to the top were common core because just like the other governors on the stage, we agreed that the governors and legislatures in this country know better how to educate their children than the bureaucracy in washington, d.c.. so the idea that washington

knows best in a host of different areas whether it's health care, education or transportation infrastructure, all of those needs to have a good conversation about what is the most efficient way. it was louis brandeis, a liberal supreme court justice that said that the states are the laboratories of democracy and if you want to put programs into play, do that at the state level and eventually fouled up the state, not the entire country and i would suggest to you that is a good message for washington, d.c.. >> i have a little bit of a different message here. comments were my understanding is it was the governors very concerned about the fact we were not testing as well as students around the world in other countries and it was the

governors who -- state superintendents of education and principles to set a standard so that they don't have have to leave high here and there wasn't going to be one student in one part of the country who could and did do as well as somebody. -- the evaluations and third-grade reading and 96% of the kids doing well. all these things we are talking about putting my state meet this is different than other states but in my state it is a local school for that develop the curriculum to meet the standards. there is nobody from washington or columbus towing the school district with the curriculum of tv. it's purely local control.

i don't have any complaints from anybody in the state to meet a higher standard of my problem is back to what bobby was saying the test ought to go out but higher standards for every kid in america have to listen a process for the local school districts to meet the standards we have sats and ac teams to measure people. they didn't have on have arnie duncan or these people writing this. the converters do it and thought that's what we wanted that i'm going to look at what they say and i will be open enough to say there's something i missed here. moving to the states being laboratories, two of you have at

least openly started negotiations in some form to taking medicaid. with the start with you. make your case for why you decided to find a way to take the medicaid money. >> i think first of all we have a lot of people that have been made promises to that have been ignored. i can get my money back in washington and i know what to do with it in washington and i get to bring that money back and i get to free up money at the local level so that the drug addicted, the working poor and a much broader set of services are available to people that live in the shadows and they made it clear if the government changes its rules and pull the rug from under us we will withdraw from

the program. but when i was campaigning and i did alright i got 186 out of 88 counties in the state that's been decided by that much and i was that at every republican group and i talked about our reasons for sensibility first and foremost economic growth. if you don't have that you have nothing else. but i'm proud of what we've been doing for the people living in the shadows and living under a bridge and the people have responded to it and conservatives in my state has have responded to that by and large but we are also now involved in welfare reform 2.0. we want every office to not did not just give aid and we want the training and the businesses located because as i told the members of the legislature the other day welfare and medicaid should be a temporary place not a permanent place. i was involved in the law that we passed in congress and now we think we need to take the next

step into the next step involves treating people holistically. train them to make it is connected to the job and let them move forward and ride. >> you have to the medicaid funding that you're trying to get approved. >> i think obamacare should be appealed lock stock and barrel. he will never convince me that ordering every american to buy health insurance that's why we've ruled out with respect to all of my colleagues we've ruled out expanding traditional medicaid and the state exchange but state exchange but have a dozen years ago the state of indiana received a waiver from the bush administration to create a consumer driven healthcare model and it's been

in effect during that time we've significantly reduced emergency room use using primary care and preventative medicine at 93% of the people these are medicaid eligible some 60,000 in the hopi indiana plan to make a payment to the whole savings account 95% said they would reenroll. from the outset i said look i am ruling out the exchange and expenditure because i think it is a deeply flawed system. we would pursue that and we managed to receive a waiver on the current program last week but we've been in discussion. there is government government

of jordan government driven healthcare and consumer driven health care and the state of indiana has been a leader in covering individuals to take greater ownership in their their healthcare and back to this larger theme of the federalism, a great quote by ronald reagan when he announced the campaign in new york city he said we have long since decided to help those in the country that cannot help themselves but we've also concluded that the federal government is the least equipped and reliable to accomplish that. i paraphrased that about essentially they are to be sold to the state level and i hope if indiana is given the freedom and the flexibility to give aid in this regard i hope it will demonstrate that if you give states the resources and flexibility.

>> any regrets? >> let me share with you why. i don't agree with this president very often. but in 2009 he said that medicaid was a is a broken system and i agreed with it and why he would we take money into a system that is clearly broken and that is going to drive --. it's economically viable to have

5.6 million people moved into the state. it was overwhelmingly supported here is the biggest here's the biggest issue that we ought to talk about is how in the federalist model we are going to go to our friends in washington, d.c. and say here's the solution to this week to deliver healthcare. i would suggest to you that almost every governor in here with take less medicaid sellers in exchange for flexibility being able to put the program into place at the end of the legislatures he passed on how to deliver healthcare when you can do it more efficiently and effectively, cover more people and i would suggest substantial savings.

as much as that would cut spending and to cover more people in your state that is a solution governors are ready to make to the congress and over the course of the next 24 months >> why not take that money and create -- >> i want to agree with everything he said. medicaid is a top-down government run program was designed for children and disabled americans. it would make more sense to put it into the system. they did a study that is both received and after spending all that money they found absolutely no improvement, none.

they spent a lot of money but found no improvement. the reality is if we continue to make more people dependent on the government that's not the future we want for our children and grandchildren in louisiana. every state does have to come up with their own solution. i think that this idea of the grants in the state, and i asked the president this why not if we were to dedicate expansion for every uninsured person we would have to keep more than one person out. it's not a one-size-fits-all. the administration is clear. >> at anybody or nobody. >> one is on flexibility and one-size-fits-all benefits

package we could give you more flexibility have define and verify not give more flexibility on the healthcare delivery and that is something talked about how you deliver the benefits but more importantly and they asked this question directly we had a meeting with the governors and i asked about them directly why wouldn't you give them more flexibility with medicaid spending and hold us accountable. give us less money we are going to move these restrictions and that's the end of the day that's what we are after. if they didn't get healthcare we needed that's the problem this president's time and time again doesn't believe in federalism, he truly be beat for the government knows best and he chose not expand medicaid because it was another government-run healthcare but isn't the right solution.

like other states we have our own solutions. >> you made an expansion up to 100% and medicaid iab leave. >> we took the predecessor and lifted eligibility kids, pregnant women, seniors, just talking about adults without children. he moved up to 20% but it's typically done on the left. so under the democratic governor mike steve had a waiting list for people living in poverty. it's what the supreme gave us in that decision because while they upheld the law they gave the states the right to do what they want to do and medicaid. it's not those above did so i put the eligibility down from 200% and eliminated the list for people living in poverty and transition everybody about it.

i'm not going to criticize the fellow governors because every state is unique that is what's great about federalism but in our state we can cover everybody living in poverty hopefully at the short-term and transition marketplace and still protect because i believe this congress running for that they have put the federal government two years ago passed the budget shortage about 40% of the $600 billion i had to put her medicaid reimbursement as it is today without an expansion. how can we expect that when it's at its shortest the larger philosophical that is ivy league but how many people are dependent in the government and how many people are medicaid and how many people are unemployed. ideally we should measure success in government by how

many people are no longer not because we pushed them out to the polls because we understand the true freedom of prosperity doesn't come from the right-handed comes from the power of people with dignity. we've seen significant improvements with a lot of people. we have single mothers now to get treatment who couldn't get it because they were up to 100% of poverty. 138% go try living on it for a while. it isn't a great now it's up to 130% getting treated and second, ronald reagan expanded medicaid. the people that were left out of the understand when they can't get comprehensive health care they get sicker and then they end up in the emergency room and guess who pays for it, we do.

let me tell you why that doesn't work. medicaid expansion allows us to do something and the reason why the affordable care act is bad is top-down and has nothing to do with their jobs. we got a program in ohio and the payment reform but me tell you what we are doing. higher quality and the company providers will share and i'm going to give you a perfect example. we have them working on reducing the number of visits for children into the hospitals who have asthma and because of that the hospitals get less money and insurance companies get more. the only advancement in health care is related to the low price and we can drive that.

>> it is in a rise or policy failure. it is my particular pleasure to see that this event in that regard i'm happy for this colleague. the question is entirely in the movement in afghanistan and iraq and what are the reason for the phenomena that we see today. to what extent is that the result of the not so smart policy over the past decade. >> this is at least where we will try to address it this afternoon. to do so we have three or four

speakers who've been in the past fellow at the carnegie endowment as a professor of political science at the university into the article in afghanistan including ending the revolution. next we connect with the studies center located in three places actually, damascus and beirut. it's part of a larger network of some 27 across the world. that is a member of the french

researchers to get accustomed to the field and we assist with the residents going from one year. as the violence fellow at the university and generally have no research. we needed no less than the original u.s. air force reserve and of course my colleague was the senior associate and as you all know it was a failure at the

in the countries we see that. and then the withdraw was not done in a very reasonable condition because it was my political consideration in washington and it appears of the producers especially in iraq and afghanistan because the u.s. is

coming back without allies on the ground. what we are seeing now in iraq and syria what we are going to seek the next few years to be in the country you don't have any more allies. >> we speak about the withdrawal and consequences and then we are building the allies and we are mostly the two programs. the first took me a few years to understand what was exactly this problem is the best description of the local society i do u.s. administration inside of the

u.s. diplomacy is a very particular of the local societies because the afghan or the iraqis the iraqi or syrian societies. the first is that almost without exception they are overplaying the local tribe in the fragmentation of the society. at the same time, it is as if the tribes were the basis of the countries. it is at least a state building in the country. on the one hand we have the

state institution in iraq and afghanistan. they are destroying the very idea of the state and the country. and it's a situation where of course it was a failure. the second point i would make is about sectarianism. the u.s. policy beyond the question of the local tend to have the sectarianism between where in 2003 and 2004 they were

between shia and sunni services also an element. the second problem one of the most fascinating aspects of the policy in iraq and afghanistan has been the fact that there was a lot of attention to the input and the output. but there's not much about the outcomes. so in fact the question is about what should we do. what are we going to do with it. at the most perfect example of this is the surgeon and afghanistan.

it was to create the processes. it is a logical consequence of sending too much money in a country that has no infrastructure to use. it is the logical presenter. there is also, and this is part of the process, the fact that the state cannot be neutral and the state is a state or for the political party at the local groups. it means you cannot breathe the consensus for example this is

not possible. but what we are seeing in both iraq and afghanistan is the process that stopped to be sure and this is a key element. the election in iraq and afghanistan led to the total policies of the state. and the first one was perfectly okay and there was a huge amount in the community and more than six months later.

so the way the u.s. is using it as a way to destroy the allies that are supposed to be built. >> thanks to carnegie and to continue what happened after the withdrawal of the sources in syria. the institutions led by the afghan regime and institutions were not about. first on the population in the process they are selected with

the international community according to what shall be the democratic process. and then so the only way for the people to rule the country the money and the resources put inside the police security forces in iraq are amazing. you cannot find a solution. you cannot negotiate only for the security forces at the trustable institutions to deal with. then it was made by the american forces in iraq and it wasn't working so well after the withdraw because of the support of the development as you know. that puts those people who are

choosing by american or maybe elected during to rule the country on the special negotiations to control the territory where they are to deal with or to begin with. that second point deals mostly with the kurdish and shia to stabilize and find a way to stabilize the situation's and decrease. there is the withdraw in the group that was mostly destroyed and they don't have any more so

a lot of people left the insurgent groups to join the institutions and try to get the normalized situations. but just after the withdraw of the u.s. forces after they tried to arrest that starts a huge crisis two or three years of demonstrating in the country to the comeback of all qaeda. in afghanistan we are confronting the deal between the network of the one side trying to take more opposition on that

very then sure because maybe it will start inside of the afghan institutions have been we will come back. the withdraw of u.s. forces held to the same afghan army. it's from the iraqi insurgents. there is too much put in the institution that there is no cohesion inside the unit that we

try units that we tried to create in iraq or afghanistan. it was amazing to see how much because the commander. [inaudible] even the huge resources in the muslim world and the base in iraq was not about to confront the group as it is coming back to iraq. the last two years very quickly.

but it went from hundreds to thousands. and there is no role that you can take to move from one city to another and that is made extremely difficult for the new regime. the last point was for the insurgents in syria and on the response from the international community, the same international community finds solutions and puts the regime in front of the responsibilities to make a huge gap between the insurgency.

in the entire countries there are less and less allies district to create some new states and institutions to the regime. that's also a huge problem we saw in the middle east even when we have people fighting in the credible institution we run with these allies and we are not able to do anything to develop any strategy on the legitimacy in

the administration. in this conflict they tried to avoid getting stuck in an inning of afghanistan and iraq and syria. one can remember a year and a half ago when they were doing an op-ed in "the new york times" and it was a brilliant title. he has proven that it's not the proven intelligence here and in a sense in iraq into syria we think that's the main problem that has been plaguing the united states in the past show in turn will consideration you

have a campaign with the well to have no troops on the ground and looking for allies when none exist and though we do not speak about it anymore, they've become very important. and a lot of places there is an american ad campaign going on. there are many signals of pressure on the united states to combat and the report is already something very telling. as for the obama administration has been advising that it would withdraw. the rhythm is very washingtonian. it's not what happens.

and you can see in the way it played a huge role in the decision to intervene much more than the structural factors which is a tragic model and not a strategic issue. how much can play a bigger role in the discussion and the structure in the middle east despite the fact that they are going through one of the biggest crisis since the end of the ottoman empire. let me state to examples. there is a rationale the organization was suspected of

planning the attack but by doing so, america has alienated one of its central allies which at the moment it was confronting the state and allied that was a strong military needed to avoid more than anything else to stop fighting in the fear that the u.s. would start building up against the state and the situation is simple today. they've taken every big part of the territory and already fighting the regime at the same time. the choice to intervene on the front perfectly understandable and to do but why do we understand that when they are slow the sunni iraqis are not.

when they are in the same problem the choice to rely on the air force is telling when you decide to bomb without any strategy without stabilizing the region is the population without any prospective and it's also in the islamic state territories when we are targeting in the city and the critical infrastructures against affecting the population you can't explain or make people understand in those countries there is a campaign at some point but when you have the campaign that is stressed saying

that this is only made with no plan to go beyond the people in the villages have to have the electricity. this strategy is opening the nonstate actors of the various types and there is a big risk to the countries. in afghanistan was the core elements of the strategies to withdraw has been to support the various networks which increase the risk of the fragmentation and you have more and more taking positions in the countryside and it's actually one which in the middle and of a long-range they've are shifting towards human order you need to

support another actor. and in syria the united states is doing what it expected never to do which is a group on the list also ended up being able to support in iraq with a risk of one of those movements asking for autonomy and having sanctions. what is the implication of such a strategy? the implication is severalfold. you have a dynamic organization of the state despite the attempt to train for example the sunni iraqi army units in al anbar province which the iraqi states does not want to use. you end up having the state which is more and more into the

have no alternative and it's still not supported. the institution is working really well impressive because it will do it without money. they've been largely undermined by the situation and it is a victory over the islamic state. every time the islamic state won the territory extends to slow the populations but now every time the state loses a territory they get floated. ..

which is really coherent with what happened, you always had deals, more or less. so you don't have a a country like in pakistan, like in syria, that strategy could ultimately -- ultimately outweigh that risk. to conclude, what we are trying to explain, what we are trying to do, high

investment to a slow income. and with we argued that in evidence which seems to be not that evident, structure factors are not that important for american foreign policy. there has been an agenda following us internal logic. and coming back from this follows largely the us afghanistan and agenda. there is a we will today to forget the lessons of two wars and a decision not to engage and support an insurgency. i think those lessons are very important, and if you think of the situation we have today, there are a

couple of things that we think could be interesting to think of. one is that, in afghanistan if there was the we will to advance an agenda they would only make sense if there was a negotiation agenda. there is a whole narrative whole narrative of being segmented. being several movements does not hold any anymore. you have attacks in every province. and in such a context, if there is a will they we will we will have to go through a negotiated settlement with that movement. in iraq and syria there is a consistency. if if that would happen, the islamic state would end up, a place being lost.

in such a case there is a need a need to have a scenario for what will happen in sunni areas in iraq and syria. there is an need to engage and to be prepared for more and more slaughter as long as the iraqi army and shia militia advance on this front. and in the east of the country if at some.in this actor, which has been major and transforming this war, if you want to camp -- compound that issue we need to build and give them the possibility to rebuild an alternative future. thank you. >> thank you very much, adam i am i am being nice here, so before we turned to the audience, let fred react to

this free intervention and give us his model of that. >> sure. well, thank you, again, for inviting me. it is a delight to host our colleagues. i am sensing a lot of common threads. when i lot of common threads. when i reflect on them, i am struck by the title of a very well-known book on americans foreign-policy in the middle east. and what i am struck by is the fact that us policy in all of these cases is really a series of trade-offs. we are dealing with an perfect partners, searching for new allies, in many cases they are drawing us into localized power struggles we don't fully miss under -- fully

understand. we tend to see things as a patchwork of tribes or sex and get drawn into very localized power struggles. there is an appreciation for the limit of us policy. the us was not responsible responsible for the sec. as secretary is a nation of iraq on the rise of militia politics you can pinpoint a lot of that to the latter years of the saddam regime. he began hollowing out the military. the same thing in libya, a lot of talk about the nato intervention and what it did. the genesis of it was really under qaddafi. we are confronted with fractured states where we have the hollowing out of centralized security structures.

we don't have sufficient partners or know how to operate in those environments. the question is, what are the future contours of these states going to look like? you have very hollow, corrupt, notional state institutions working alongside paramilitaries, paramilitaries, tribes, and this is going to be the future. how does the united states insert itself into those very fractured states? i completely agree with much of what was said here about, you know, the absolute corruption of many of our allies and the fact we are working through centralized regimes who are fueling the very extremism they purport to be fighting.

we often here this talk of regional rising our counterterrorism operations. there are more partisan. i certainly see this in a place like libya. again, in the absence of on the ground us presence, regionals are stepping in. i i did not here much about the enablers, meaning the funding from gulf states, foreign volunteers from tunisia. why is this state providing so many foot soldiers for that she had a movement in syria and iraq? and then we have to dial back even further to look at the role of prison. i really think much of this is about judiciary systems, the ink carts duration of

jihadists. we know come buka in iraq. and so when the us engages with its allies, how much oversight and leverage does it really have over these incubators of jihadists and radicalization? i think we are in a difficult bind on a number of countries. i agree with what was said about airpower. the question is, what would be a better strategy. when i hear i hear us officials justify the national guard program, and you are right to warn about the dangers of that program increasing fragmentation and militia rule, they are aware of the fact that this force needs to be tethered to the

central government, and i would argue it is not something that the iraqi government does not want. he is trying trying to work out the command and control issues. again, i guess in terms of the theme of this panel, you know, is it a policy failure or an inevitable rise. let's go let's go back to january of 2014. we start hearing about isis. what would you advise him to do differently? it was not an intelligence failure. at that., could we have stopped it? and then i want to press you a little a little bit more. you said, the lack of support to the fs way paved the way for liberal actors. if only we had backed the right allies.

we know from history is that our allies are often imperfect. it, perhaps,, imparts too much legitimacy to the fsa. if you could explain that a bit more in terms of the amount of training and arm is required. there is a lot of debate that i would welcome your thoughts on. >> thank you very much. i expect some delight. >> thank you for your nice comments. maybe we focus on syria right now. actually, after our first incident in syria in december that recall plan.

we were trying to do exactly this, advise. and what was argument? argument was that we were actually seeing in syria, there was a strong movement of institutionalization, municipalities were working, much better to live, and it was very optimistic. at the same time clearly there was to dangers. the fermentation in the north. and the other danger, we were very clear that the way to manage these two dangers was to support the free

syrian army. at the same time, we are clear that the free syrian army was not and would not be very efficient but the key.was that it was all about the strategy of bishara al-assad. clear with the strategy of producing strategies, to empty the north of syria and then to be able to marginalize. most of them were led by people coming from jail by al-assad. liberated at the end of 2000. 2,000. the key thing was to say, we have to have a no-fly zone or give enough craft weapon

to the insurgents. and this was a key decision because now you have more than 1 million refugees in turkey. these people could have stayed in the northern part of syria. syria. it was possible to rebuild an alternative state and would have been extremely difficult. no support. much more difficult for them to do something. and the dynamic, again, the same question was asked in the summer, summer, and september actually, 2,013 when the attack from the us administration, very clear, not going to intervene. we are not supporting the

insurgents. and. and again, i remember it is an important.,, the beginning of 2,000 there was a huge clash, and all the walls united. and the islamic state lost not all its positions but a lot of its positions in syria. at that time do with -- the logical move would have been saying, okay. we did a pretty good job. so to give you some kind of support. we did not do that. and it came back from the outside. so these moments where the united states decided, okay, these guys are brave, but not very well organized fighters but at the same

time they can strategize one or 2 million people in the north if we protect them against al-assad. i think to answer the question, the game in iraq is much more complicated. liberated after the withdrawal. afghanistan is the same. 2,004, five, six. no good solution right now. it is, frankly, and possible >> thank you. you. briefly, please. >> an idea we have to come back to, i think the us

administration was leading this movement. they don't have to deal with secretaries asian. it showed the institution was built. that is why us don't have all the power to do anything but when you talk about 2,007 when the u.s. army the awakening of tribal leaders and groups command that was working, people doing good job. job. isis in 2,011 was totally destroyed, but then there was true of america, militia made the system very which. a lot of people no that a lot of them joined isis and

explain to me why and how. it is perfectly logical for them. when they fell milky stopped sectarian militia. a lot of militia. iranian support against sunni insurgency. tried to sectarian eyes the army, tried to stop. and this time it was exactly the months where the interior was launching a huge attack. and expelled from all the

west antilles. so at this critical time i tried to stop malik key, to push on malik e to open the way to a sectarian strategy. >> thank you. >> again, let's turn to the audience. please introduce yourself and indicate to whom you are directing your question. >> the pakistani american league. thank league. thank you for the opportunity and enlightening discussion. my admonishment, us on the

preview that we want to get rid of weapons of mass distraction and then changed and said we want to bring democracy and get rid of the tyrant. and and it took them so many years. again, the stated policy and intentions become questionable to the people. and look what happens. the nation is still paying a price. on the other hand, in the case of afghanistan he had asked to hand over osama bin laden. he did not believe it. i am telling you the actual story.

so my question is, do you think the us needs to review there policy toward the middle east in particular or toward the muslim world in general? and if they do in the middle east and toward the muslim world, what? thank you. >> who would like to answer first? >> thanks for putting me on the spot. abcaseven. >>or putting me on the spot. abcaseven. >> i apologize. i think i answered the question. we would have to consider what our policymakers

considered success in those three countries, and it is obvious that success would have been to establish compliant regimes. that is sort of a dream considering there is a resistant history in this country. what is second-best? failed states, proxy armies, what we are seeing today. syria is severely weakened today. i don't think we care whether that becomes a failed state. after germany invaded russia and the soviet union and before we had gotten in,

harry truman at the time a senator said we should support. right now the muslims are doing a good job of killing other muslims, which muslims, which maybe distracts them from bothering us. >> well, that is -- abcaseven. >> a short and long version for that. who wants to start? >> i'm taking this one. so of course, just the way you ask your question means that you no it is not good, and it would be very un-american. there is one thing here.

first, you think it is a local crisis. then it becomes more and more complex, complicated. and then who is paying for the refugees? it's us winning also turkey and others. so you can have a local crisis staying local goes against everything we no. there there is no civil war that is strictly local. if 90% of civil wars have regional dimensions, and when it has regional dimensions you have to pay for the refugees. you have to pay in terms of security. the idea is maybe not to

weigh -- wait until the last minute to intervene, probably best to send the planes are troops on the ground, but maybe do some thinking before, and a way to a way to answer the question about the review of us policies which is too aggressive and agendas. stop thinking stop thinking that you can ignore crises. i think i wrote a paper in 2,009 saying focus on cities. at some.we globalized. to quickly because it would destabilize.

and instead, and it was not -- well, it was a reasonable strategy, and instead of doing that, we do a search. too many men, too much money and if there is one advice i would i would offer it would be, stop playing this game. strike a deal with the crises when they are small, local crises, and think about all we have that has totally changed the game. >> on the us policy question, i mean, look. the us the us has inherited the mantle of an imperial power since the 70s, tied to a network of

authoritarian regimes. the history has been a succession of confronting broader threats, and i think now it is transnational terrorism. these methods of confrontation and containment have blinded us to things that will create additional threats tell the road. what i am am arguing, and there's a policy paper i have co-authored with a colleague, that in the rush to solicit arab support we are ignoring dangerous trends under the surface inside the states that could lead to a greater extremism. you talk about a preemptive strategy. i i would argue for greater scrutiny of what is happening inside the states we recall our allies. the democratization agenda, but perhaps a greater focus

on rule of law, reform, looking at the prison systems,, but it is not all about and external containment strategy. we have allies that have signed up for the fight against isis. and sunnis are going to join isis. there is a radicalization threat. this is an age-old problem. it strikes me, the choice of enemies. enemies. it is always a choice of trade-offs. how how well do we manage long-term threats looming on the horizon? in an era of absolute exhaustion we can't underestimate this. financial, moral, psychological. it will be hard to see a

real coherent, coherent, constructive policy emerge. >> thank you very much. i think you have mentioned a key factor. let's go back to the audience. not not all at the same time please. yes, please. >> thank you. jessica matthews from carnegie. you know, it is -- we could sit here until tomorrow at this time and discuss all of the mistakes that were made in these voice, but setting aside the initial decision to go into iraq, and setting aside the catastrophe over the red line in syria over the chemical weapons, one

can ask the question whether the logical end result of the arguments that you are making just simply arrives at a bottom line that the us should never have gotten near it because it seems to me that you started by talking about the failure to find allies and then a few minutes later about policies that actively destroyed the states who are trying to create, and those policies were generally policies to create allies among various tribal entities and leaders. at at the same time, you know, the president initial conviction about syria was an attempt, i think, to

learn the lesson of iraq. iraq. you don't go in unless you can see at least the outline of a solution. and nobody could find such an outline. outline. on the other hand, the world has hated the us attempt to wait for such an outline. it's called withdrawal. the world world feels naked without the us providing the security that it has provided since the end of world war ii that allows everyone else to live and grow in relative peace. so i am sympathetic to the arguments being made, but i must say,, i cannot see a

logical conclusion to them other than, that we should never have gotten in, and that does not seem like a good -- or at least it seems like a very highly risky strategy or recommendation in and of itself. so i wonder whether you can really take on at least what seems to me to be the significant contradictions in your criticisms of us policy? >> well, hello, jessica. well, actually, all depends on how you define addressing a crisis. my.the us should have never

put troops on the ground in syria should be absolutely clear. it. it never. just never. at the same time, in northern iraq and 91 barrio way to stabilize syria. i don't think i'm wrong about this. instead of comparing the 2,003 the good comparison was to come to northern syria. there was a huge stabilization of the area. let's imagine now that the us did not intervene in 91. what what would have happened to the refugee camp in turkey? i have been in refugee camp

in northern iraq. trust me. it could have been an extremely bad civil war. so the right moment, you really need the scope of the crisis. in syria the idea was not to send troops because it was going against the strategy of the shar in a very efficient way. this is crucial, the most difficult. but the trade-off between short-term and long-term. let's take, for example, the drones in human, and the drones in afghanistan. they are useful because they are killing enemies. from time to time.

basically you can say it is useful. at the same time, you no that drowned have on the long run a very destabilizing effect on local societies. i'm not sure it's working, actually. they are working in the eastern parts of afghanistan , but i think you have a trend in the us policy to make troops the beginning of the end of everything. but it can be extremely dangerous. and all we can do is trust

them. we don't have the leverage and resources to change the game. i don't see a solution, negotiation would be the perfect thing. >> i'm trying to answer your question. >> if i may interfere in that debate, let me say one thing. and. this is not about an initial decision. precisely you are referring to now, in the west. much cheaper to be smarter

afterwards. among the things in afghanistan, even the political process has been, at the very beginning of it, framed as a way to serve -- to facilitate military intervention. you have produced a problem that we will be impossible later on. in many ways we are paying for that mistake. you can say now it has been done, done, what should we do? again, this is a whole,, and there are lessons that can be drawn from it. >> i am wondering if we are

not being too focused on our own experience. let me refer to the two experiences in foreign countries, one that ended badly and one that was successful. the success, vietnam and cambodia, they went in there and cleaned out the khmer rouge. and they were destroyed. the vietnamese went back across the border. the khmer rouge did not come back cambodia is not a failed state. what did the vietnamese to fight and the israelis do wrong?

>> yes, sir. >> and interesting region. what is wrong with the arab world that it cannot govern itself? the rest of asia has effective government. my sense is that hesitation is the right thing to do. >> three years working from the ngo side in syria. coming out january 2014.

i i was on the ground. it very clear what was happening. we knew what was happening. potentials on the ground. ground. i just think the us has been selected. is this a lack of we will to get involved or a lack of confidence in the american government and its affiliates to communicate with the ground and use all of its resources to make small changes happen? who would like to answer first. >> it calls for an answer. >> perhaps we could save that tragical debate for

later on. something interesting in your comparisons. i mean,, on your own question, the fact you asked the question this way means you already have some answers. >> to be honest, i have tried to look at what the vietnamese did in cambodia. there is very little literature on it in english. of all the interventions, that one seems the most successful. they totally crushed the khmer rouge. they went back across the border. cambodia survived. i would love to no how they did it. >> absolutely nothing to say on cambodia, but what i think is the way the

situation was framed in syria is actually the thing you should not do. you take syria has a new iraq, and it is not because the structure is different. the idea that all interventions are going to fail, it's not a good idea. that kind of intervention can work. the problem in washington is that when you see i want i want to intervene or i don't want to intervene there is a political subtext. neocon, liberal, and

everyone is playing politics. i would argue that just looking at the problem, not the political undertone, is the key. and the idea was perfectly right, everybody interested in syria cannot really clear they were going to catastrophe. the strategy was easy to understand. international policies are not that complicated. to us, and it's quite simple. and what a rewarding spring 2,013 was easy and

predicting the next six months. >> in a sense a sense it also comes back to her question of what we mean. the situation. the american foreign policy is very different. they should require policies. there is always the sort of debate about should the us be isolationist, or should the us intervene? and i think it only makes sense in the university. the dimension can work, the context of which you are going to say.

between cambodia and lebanon that would not. we will not like among those populations. you know, if we look at the islamic state on the taliban side you have two very different movements. the the islamic state is a movement, immigration, citizenship. for them an american citizen or french citizen is someone that is acceptable to them. the taliban, you should engage. example, you have a movement

whose dream is to integrate. you should not look at them in the same way. >> thank you. other questions? >> lauren hershey. i was a fulbright fulbright scholar in 1968 in india, and i continue to read the andrea story. it is hard to formulate a good question for a panel like this because you are brilliant. i want to ask you to give me a scenario for the retaking of the large city of moses in northern iraq.

we had a civil war in the united states in 1861 that lasted for years. this is civil this is civil war territory. it is an iraqi city in the hands of another self-declared state authority. so each are the four of you, give us this scenario. how long we will it take? part of the union again. >> someone for that. [laughter] >> look, i mean, the problem , as this new york times article, we are dealing with a military followed out by corruption and nepotism. the most effective combat forces on the ground, it has

to come from the sunnis. the us strategy of empowering provincial movement, an armed wing under this national guard, there will probably be some sort of effort to split the pragmatists who can be bought over, the baptists, the question is not so much the liberation but what comes next. are you going to have enough confidence being conveyed to the sunnis that they are part of the national project this is the long-term struggle. you could argue that we have done this before, airpower, indigenous forces. we have these tribal poet -- paramilitaries.

but what comes next? i was in iraq, in baghdad. as we heard, a qi was declared dead, the the tables have turned, but we no that these movements can reemerge like a cancer. >> i was not far when the attack occurred. but what to do, your do, you're right. the threat, you cannot break isis in iraq without taking back muscle. the problem is the way we are dealing with the iraqi army. it is not the solution.

you have to deal with the arab sunni elite political but also the same way with the different groups. you kill a lot of civilians. you you destroy most of the local elite, the nobility and it becomes impossible to dream about stabilizing the solution in a serious way. so kurdish military are not effective. they are very divided. what will happen probably is that tdk or you pk will make a competition between them to no which one could increase its power. then you have the iraqi army

but now they are irani were syria militia. the offense continues. it is really very difficult for the iraqi army to progress itself. a very bad sign. i spoke with a lot of arab people still living there. for them they have more fear about the iraqi army come back than the isis state. they know that if the iraqi

army comes back it we will be slaughtering for the people. for the moment they are not for that, of course. i think the solution, we have to negotiate. >> all right. time for one last question. >> thank you. i have a simple question. combat troops and increasing training forces. does this signify changes in national security? thank you. >> i don't know who wants to answer that. >> what was the question?

>> is there a change in national security -- i mean, does the the decision to maintain troops in iraq and afghanistan signify a change in the us strategy in those two countries? >> well, i well, i can speak for iraq. those troops are purely an advisory. you have heard general dempsey say, at some.it may become necessary, and they want to leave that option open. i don't see a significant significant shift from what obama articulated in his earlier speech. >> you cannot speak on the moment on the afghanistan note. what we could see is that probably the us commitment will be frayed by the deterioration of the

security. the naked decide to give more support and things like this and probably more troops. that is a possibility. if we don't do anything in two or three years it is likely the talent and will take control probably at some.someone is going to say we should do something, but right now it is not clear. >> on that optimistic note let me ask. >> if we look at what we have been saying, what we are trying to argue here, how the us acts in the middle east there was a genuine interest to have a stable region, and in that

sense one of the failures has been not just in kabul but on the role with afghanistan, not to look enough at how the iraqi state was de- institutionalizing itself in the last year of its withdrawal. how the free syrian army was building and how important it is to have actually states in this regime. the moment when you have borders in such turmoil and might be contested, thinking of having not state building policies is actually something to consider.

>> jim. >> actually, i don't have a great -- maybe i would say that we have differentiated. the recommendation would be to sustain the current government to the.where it is possible to deal with the talent then. if the talent and take back afghanistan,, it is not a big problem. could be wrong. we should try to play the negotiation card. the second would be in syria

we should absolutely do something if the islamic state presses. if these two movements, we have a major security problem. and my first recommendation would be the probably we should find or try to find a way to open washington to what is happening on the ground and the debate. i think probably it is possible to make it a little better and be sure people are speaking about outside

world and not totally focus on washington. i think that would be great. >> okay. i just tried to do a knew resolution on syria. i know it is a critical situation. in the next months, not because of the regime of the sharp al-assad but because of regime. it continues to progress. i have to note the rise of isis claiming that territory , judicial systems are still working there. i want to warn about the militarization of the crisis, especially in iraq.

saying that the militarization is a big threat in afghanistan, it is also the way al-assad is acting toward sunni children he tried to send some islam militia into hezbollah. the problem is they were doing the same. the militarization of the conflict. we have to care. that.especially to focus which people are training on the ground and which people are bringing the weapons and support that we are sending to iraq. thank you. >> the last word. >> i guess this is ending for a plea on what the us can accomplish in this area.

just because we have awareness does not necessarily mean we are equipped with policy tools to affect a complex situation. certainly there were mistakes made. i want to clarify one thing. no fly zones are gateways to regime change. ..

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

our analytics get a lot more granular than just seeing whether something passes so we can break down on a legislator basis how likely they are to vote for a certain bill. from a tactical perspective there is a lot of opportunities for attorneys, lobbyists, whatever to be able to say let me look at this bill. cosponsors here are the people most or least likely to vote for it and you can start looking at developing a strategy to get at the information that you need so what i will say is that our analytics don't provide all the answers. it's not a crystal ball where you can ask the questions but there is a lot of power to be able to come by and analytics we provide with the raw industry intelligence or human intelligence on the ground. being able to combine those two things should be able to get to

the answers you would like to give to. start telling that to some of the people involved in the congress back in the 1830s to 1860. certainly stephen a. douglas these people were struggling desperately to try to work out compromises to keep the union afloat and avoid splitting up. >> i think we have a lot of talented glut of talented and younger members and it's not just mrs. pelosi. i think she's been a great

leader and she's really good at raising money. that's not one of my forte is. i was never good at that. bringing the younger people into the caucus to become hopefully the future leaders. one of the things i believe with my heart and soul you have to know when to leave terri is >> thursday thanksgiving day we will take an american history tour of the native american tribes that set of 10 a.m. eastern following the washington journal and at one time go 30 attend the ceremony of the new diplomacy center in washington with former secretaries of state and supreme court justices clarence thomas, samuel alito and at least:30 p.m. eastern that is the thanksgiving on c-span. for the complete schedule go to c-span.org.

for national security adviser stephen my national security advisor stephen hadley and former deputy secretary of state participate in a panel discussion looking into u.s. relations with russia. the aspen institute hosted this event where the panelists discuss russian president strategic ambitions as well as the ongoing conflict in ukraine. this is just over 90 minutes. welcome, everybody. mr. ambassador, good to see you, all of you. one of the great joys of being president of the aspen institute is occasionally you get invited to the strategy group with my friend angela and steve and of course run by nick burns the crisis with russia every day takes another step that but

these are the people best at adept at dealing with it and it was started 30 years ago with the crisis in russia so i would like to turn it over to the director and professor at the kennedy school at harvard. thanks for doing this. it's a great pleasure for me to welcome all of you here at the aspen institute. this is the washington ideas around a table. we have four ambassadors from the allied countries and the ambassador of finland and

estonia and not see glassy and the ambassador denmark. we also have three former members of congress jim doody and walsh and it's also perilous in the room like this to recognize special friends but we have two special friends given the topic given the crisis with russia over ukraine. it was a long time specialist and great friend to all of us on this panel. and ambassador steve pfeiffer in ukraine long-time russia ukraine specialist. so congratulations to both of them and thank you for being here. we are going to get today's talk about one of the major strategic challenges in 2014. president putin's invasion began annexation by the russian duma, the efforts by president putin and the russian government to

destabilize eastern ukraine over the last nine months and the reaction by the west by the united states, canada, europe and the countries that sanctions, the building of american power in the and the baltic countries and poland and romania. this is a book published by the aspen strategy group. the aspen strategy group and in its 30th year met in early august in aspen colorado as we do every year to take on a big subject and this year this nonpartisan group republicans, democrats, independents, mostly americans joined by several european and asian leaders met to discuss with the west should do in response and i do commend this book to you it contains a

lead essay by strobe talbott who gave the lecture and try to frame this in historical terms and in terms of the evolution of the path since the fall of the soviet union in 1991. accompanying essays by many other americans and europeans. how do we think about this crisis for the strategic ambitions and has the west reacted significantly and effectively in the implications for china and the relationship with the left so we will talk today about these issues but i do want to commend the book and i would ask you if you have an interest purchase it on amazon and that helps to fund the expenses of the nonprofit organization. our leaders are brenda spoke brenda schoolcraft who doesn't need an introduction to this

room and for 30 years they've been at the of the opinion that americans should be able to have serious discussions about the major international challenges in a nonpartisan environment and that's what they created and what we celebrate today. we are going to have a discussion for the next 30 to 40 minutes with three panelists. as all of you know he served as the deputy secretary of state in the clinton administration lifelong expert on russia has been interested since he was a very young man. angela to my right professor at georgetown university, longtime soviet and russia expert has also served at the national as the national intelligence council for the u.s. government. and finally steve has worked in

the ford administration with the administration and as you know since the 1970s as a long perspective as to angela all these issues. since it was a big part of our discussions he knows a lot about russia and served with great distinction in the george w. bush administration. we need to get to the heart of this crisis once we finished and i want to invite all of you to offer your point of view and ask the most challenging question you can think of for the distinguished panel. let me start perhaps with you. you kicked off the strategy group for days together in colorado and try to give us a

historical framework so we could understand the motivations of president putin and the readership both with us and also more importantly the relationship with ukraine. nobody seemed how shaken the confidence is between the west and the russian leadership and the dramatic impact it's had negative on our relationship has tv is a crisis is this and do you believe that we will be able to contain it. >> three stomach three dimensions with regards to russia itself there is a plausible scenario whereby what we have seen particularly over the last year but also in the run-up to not just the

annexation but the virtual occupation and annexation of much of eastern ukraine will be a catalyst for a process over time that will greatly weakened state and lead to the russian state. it's a resurrection of the policies that caused the ussr.

you might recall there was a state called the ussr to end up on the trash heap of history and that would be an ironic, and by the way it very dangerous outcome of the whole world i believe. this isn't to wish for something bad for russia is to fear something bad for the world. it is a crisis for the western community for the atlantic community which up until a few years ago was moving in a direction that involved integration of the russian federation itself as well as its neighbors into an expanded international community that they would be playing by the same rules and would have certain norms in common and would lead to the 21st century

which russia would be not just at the board of directors of the world but with the a collaborative and cooperative cover and what we are looking at now is a nontrivial set of conflict and potential conflicts including on the periphery of the then ukraine itself that could lead to armed conflict and here i am particularly concerned about three nato member states that had been constituent republic mainly the baltic states even though the u.s. and others in the west have never accepted their annexation. and the last crisis is for a positive future for the process of globalization.

we cannot have a salutary system of international assistance if russia is not part of it. it is simply too important for an exercise and in its clout and in its ability to bb either abstract or helpful in dealing with the big issues of our time. >> maybe i could just ask you the same question. i will expand it a little bit. you are a long time to tend to be so -- putin watcher. what is he trying to achieve to destabilize the major states in the central part of europe. >> what does he want to achieve but really we know what they don't want us let me just agree with what was said since before mikhail gorbachev came to power.

when you go back to what he wanted this is the culmination of his point of view were 25 years of frustration or feelings of humiliation after all we remember that he was serving the office and seeing all of that happen in having lost his country and feeling if one is to believe what he says for the past 22 years russia suffered a series of humiliation. so i sat there a few years ago when he delivered his aunt was also present at other discussions and it's quite clear they will no longer accept the rules of the order that were defined by the united states and do not take their interest into account. so this is a broad and i think

the president is at war with the west but is behaving as a revisionist power calling into question the cold war settlement and making legal arguments for other things that happened at the past 22 years but again saying they double standards and we need a new world order. i am not sure that they actually know what this new world order should be but we have to take seriously when we look to the future that i will probably be other areas where russia will bb that it can reinterpret the rules. we already see the presumption of a lot of cold war tactics in terms of harassing that long range flight. of course it's not the cold war but we are in a broad question

of how this world order continue president putin was in many ways a friend of the united states. there were times in the iraq war when he was very much opposed to us. knowing him or at least getting a sense of his worldview do you agree. have you see the price of that developed. >> but it's one of the great tragedies of the 21st century i think that he meant that

sincerely. early on when he came to power he thought there wasn't much he could do about it. it wasn't wasn't great prospects and i think that we also made a pitch during the first administration to try to convince him that his legacy would be to move russia permanently into the west where they always should have been. this was his calling and the people that i don't with when we had a strategic dialogue with my counterpart and the word we got buzzed yes, putin understands this is his historical opportunity but there are dark forces in russia. he saw an opportunity to split with us on iraq.

the administration is the price of oil went up he became stronger and decided he had more options. they have an opportunistic person he sees opportunities, he seizes them. and he -- if he succeeds and is not resisted by his objectives grow over time. one, he is already wrapped up the post-cold war consensus on europe. borders would be respected and sovereignty be respected and countries could choose their own alliance. while he has ripped of all of those. second, the objective is to keep ukraine beat and divided on the hope that it doesn't permanently

lost that the period of time. maybe it is better if we move east and not last. clearly i think that is on his agenda. the question is whether if he succeeds the objectives become more expensive. he's already doing a lot of things in the czech republic to put divisions within the eu and i think if he does this kind of destabilization campaign in a place like the baltic states that will be there to show article five in nato and the defense commitment doesn't mean anything and isn't worth the paper that it is written on which will be a blow to the willingness of countries in europe to stand up. and at the bottom line the big

payoff would be if he could reestablish russia influence in the former soviet space and central and eastern europe comparable to what the soviet union is this isn't sending the troops and occupations. this is influence. as with the states have to take into account and they do take into account russian interests in the russian desires. to me if you ask him what is his dream, that might be it and that is a kind of europe that would be bad for europe and bad for us and ultimately bad for russia because it would vindicate the russian nationalism and feed their ego and the present sustainable over the long term and it takes russia away from what its objectives would be which is to become a part of the 21st century. i want to get together on whether or not they can be

detected in trying to counter putin but there's two questions to put on the table briefly. and the first is this. i don't want to be the witnesses but when you encounter russians and i have in many conferences over the last seven or eight months the line is sometimes the americans drove us to this when you took in ten countries in the nato three of which had been constituent parts of the line. you drove us to this. it was your aggressiveness. i don't agree with that at all but i wonder how one should respond to that. are there any misgivings most of us on the panel were involved in the clinton and bush administration did we hurt his feelings too much to ask?

>> you're looking at me and it's passing strange the debate over the expansion would be once again the forefront of controversy not just between the west which is a geographical term we thought was expanding to include many on the east. but it's also back as a point of controversy in the u.s. and particularly among those of us you can either call us about delete foreign policy. the rationale for expanding nato to include countries who had either been released by the prison house of nations by the

reformist government of gorbachev were released from the prison house which was to ussr bought by some thought and the in the west but the reformist leaders driven by public opinion inside the ussr that would end of the bifurcation of the world between the free world and there could be institutions that would among other things provide security. in the public and the former members of the warsaw pact. now here we are and by the way that rationale was accepted by the russian government at the time. we had specific episodes of

collaboration particularly in ending the mayhem in the balkans it's taken a much longer time if it hadn't been for the russia participation. so all of those positives had created a movement towards what i think that hasn't been stopped but put into reverse. there was always with the expansion of nato what the secretary defense at the time called the hitch factor and that is that it is possible that someday in the future they might break down and that was a reason why all of the countries that were taken into nato which represents something like 100 million europeans now. let me get to the russian complaints the notion that the

west created this problem is kind of turning the facts on their head. it is a counterfactual but i would guess that they were the three baltic states and you wouldn't just have little green men creating mischief in those countries. you probably also have russian boots on the ground. let me stop on the point that you raised. >> steve and i worked together when we took the new countries into the summit in 2002. the russians were very unhappy, but we had lots of conversations with president putin and his staff and we created the council subsequent to that and we began to work with russia and we tried to work on the big security

issue. we try to bring them in that it didn't work out. i want to ask angela and steve the second question. you mentioned. do you think that president putin may intend to confront nato in the baltic states you mentioned the theoretical possibility. will he try to come about you try any initiative that will begin the commitment in the next year or two is it possible? >> it would depend on his calculations and risk the reworked trade-off. it's one of the reasons to see it so he won't be tempted to try to do something in the baltics because i do think that. that's why the policy needs to

be strengthened. i think that we have focused too much on the sanctions. i understand why we have done that but they have some unfortunate effects and encourage the russian economy that's good for the russian sense of itself and its foreign policy. it also encourages it to the integrated the economy with europe and the rest of the world. i don't think that's good for russia were the reason strobes had over the the long-term. and i think that the russians have made it clear they are prepared to accept economic hardship in the interest of the dream of russian greatness. so i think that we are underplaying other elements of our influence that we need to get in place now. we talk about talked about strengthening nato. i think we have to get the troops on the ground now in the

baltic state and poland and in the balkans so that putin understands if he goes into those areas there is a risk of a direct military confrontation in the united states and i think we need to strengthen the capacity of the states to defend themselves but because they are going to defeat the russian army, but because they are going to raise the cost to russia if it does do something. ..

these are a number of things which in the short-run raised the cost to russia and putin that he should think about this adventurism and in the long run reduce his leverage. that said, i think at the same time i'm sounding very hawkish, i think we have to recognize that ukraine is a historical and economic problem for russia and we need to leave the door open for an arrangement which the best arrangement would be if the united states ukraine and russia work to get together and talk about how to stabilize the ukrainian economy and get it moving in a positive direction. that would be a better neighbor for russia actually that putin has to be willing to engage in that kind of conversation. for the moment i think he's not. the question is did we miss an opportunity under yanukovich in

the initial discussions about ukraine joining the e.u. and russia said could we be in on this conversation and the e.u. said no. was that a missed opportunity? don't know. we should leave that door open but putin would have to walk through. at the moment he would be inclined to do so. >> now that steve is leading us into what is the proper way to respond i want to turn to you and steve i want to bring you in here too. chancellor merkel who has been a very important in the western response and president obama made a decision early on that we were going to fight for ukraine that there was no legal or ethical obligation for nato to fight for ukraine. instead we would try to isolate the russians politically and we would try to build up that steve has just described the nato position in the baltic states and poland as a deterrent device and that we would drive up the cost in economic sanctions.

we have had a couple of rounds of sanctions. they were quite weak and they were slowed development until the shootdown of the malaysian airliner in mid-july and then fairly significant sanctions the e.u. and nato put forward the second week of september but since then angela the russians have put more men, more apcs, more tanks across the border into ukraine. they are clearly intervening against the u.n. charter inside ukraine. is it now time for the europeans and americans and canadians to say we need to raise the strength of the sanctions? >> the challenge is how do you deter uncontained rush and it's on your head and ukraine as an existential question for the russians. they defined it as such and it's detrimental to their own security. it's not an existential question and so being faced with this asymmetry from the beginning and then the question is if there is

this a cemetery and since they are going to care more about this than we do how do you determine going further in what they are doing? and so we have had several rounds of sanctions. they clearly affected russia economically. we had people in this room that follow this very closely. the economic situation is deteriorating. the fall of the ruble $28 million in capitol just in october. we can go on and on to economically it's been very detrimental but instead of leading russia to maybe step back in this war it has redoubled its efforts even recently. the minsk cease-fire agreement of september i want to say it's not working very well. you have hundreds of casualties and it's really questionable whether more sanctions, and i guess the sanctions were proper sanctions again on energy and the banking system, whether

that's going to alter russian policy there. i think steve is quite right that the other way you deal with it is you have to build on the credible military posture for those nato countries who are allies and make sure russia doesn't think it can go any further there. it's all so i think we have to think twice about whether we want to isolate russia more than we have now. if you isolate reticular leg vladimir putin in the situation now where he is feeling beleaguered and under attack from the west and we can argue about that, as i going to achieve the goal that we want to? in other words we have to really think about what it is we want immediately and obviously viewed like russia to step down if you like in eastern ukraine and together the separatist allies there to step down as well. but it doesn't even seem to want to do that at the moment.

i'm not sure that tougher sanctions are really going to achieve that goal. i think we probably also need to think about however difficult it is opening some kind of back channels of possible to have someone talk to people in the kremlin, to putin. not that is easy and i know people around this room have been in discussions recently do with that person be? it's much more difficult to do this even then it was in the brezhnev area -- aaron certain in the gorbachev era and then there's the question of whether we step up our military assistance in ukraine. i think we need a mixture of policies going forward but i think we have to be very careful with the assumption that if we isolate putin further it's going to achieve what we want in the longer-run. >> thank you very much. let me ask steve following up on what angela said have the sanctions be effective?

should present a bomber and prime minister harper pushed the european union to a new round of tougher sanctions and do you think steve that president obama should offer lethal military assistance in the poroshenko government so they can defend their territory? >> thank you, nick. had the sanctions been effective, the sanctions have been effective in taking a worsening economic performance in russia and forcing it to a worse state and without a doubt the russian economy is feeling the weight of the sanctions. has it been effective as in has it changed behavior for the russians? no it has not so it depends what your measurement of effectiveness is. on the question of what's lethal military assistance does ukraine need a sovereign militarily elected government have a right

to defend themselves. the same time i would discourage the ukrainians from restarting hostilities. they have to defend themselves but to initiate hostilities i don't think they are in a position to achieve any success is on the ground. i think putin will escalate them and we are certainly not in a position to engage in that way so yes they should have access to all material necessary to defend themselves as a sovereign democratically-elected government but i don't think hostilities are helpful. let me also touch on a couple of other things i think we have to put in here and we discussed as a group that have the complete picture. one is i emphatically agree with steve hadley's point on the essential nature of deterrence with nato members. if anything were to happen one of two consequences result. either we collectively defend the nato member and then we do have a worsening crisis potentially in europe or we don't and we seized the end of

nato so either way there's no good choice for there to be an iota of doubt about what happens in if a nato member is in any way shape or form stabilized. there is a guarantee ratified as in the treaty of united states that will meet that commitment i'm confident. but that doesn't answer the big question which is -- nato moldove of central asia. we need much more effective policies to engage in these countries because this is really clear ohio's likelihood the stabilization occurs. second, we haven't talked about it on the panel yet but ukraine has to be at the center of our policy. we have to redouble our efforts with the european union to strengthen the economy and the political stability in ukraine. without that the economically and politically stable ukraine none of this would result. as long as there's a question about ukraine survival in a sovereign state there will be a temptation to affect that

future. so we have to give them more closely. we have to resource those policies. and third and finally one that i also don't want to leave unspoken, we have to engage russia. yes we have to deter more problematic behavior and yes we have to discourage, we have to avoid any work with them but we have to engage the russian government at every possible level. we have to remain engage with the russian economy, to strengthen ties between russia and the outside world and also above all people-to-people contact with russia. we have to do everything we can to promote exchanges and continue to. isolating russia is not an option for us. it's too big of a country into port of the country. isolating behaviors from the russian government may be a foreign-policy priority but we have to stay with russia.

>> this conversation is taking a very interesting turn because as we think about all four of you have talked about how we can construct essentially containment regime against president putin and expansion. i think we are struggling to put all the pieces together but is it fair to say on the question of lethal assistance to the ukrainian government greater economic assistance that steve deagan has talked about in reinforcing nato and nato's position particularly in estonia latvia lithuania and poland. steve hatley talked about that. does president obama need to go into new phase of this conflict and do a lot more to build up american policy? maybe if i would ask you all of that is including question and then open it up to everyone else. strobe. >> let me pick up on something very important that angela said. ukraine is an existential issue for russians and that's largely

at the very human level. the two cultures, the two populations are interwoven in a way that leads many russians to feel that the independence of ukraine, at the end of 1991, was like having a limb severed and that they still feel the pain of the severed limb. we in the west do not have that feeling about ukraine unless we are ukrainian americans or ukrainian canadians but alongside that the independence of ukraine is an existential issue for ukrainians and that includes many, many russian speaking ukrainians. steve pfeifer of course will be speaking i hope in the remainder of the conversation. so that leaves i think into a point that steve beacon just

made. it is i think almost an imperative that when the ukrainians say to us, the ukrainian government says to us, we need help in defending ourselves, our state our forces in our population from russian forces that are on our territory and are firing mortars at us and killing us you have given us according to press reports, the means to identify where it goes mortars at the russian forces are using are but you are not giving us the means to knock out those border installations. that should be a no-brainer. it is under debate and i completely agree with steve beacon that debate should be resolved in favor of giving the assistance. the argument against it is that if we give the so-called lethal

defensive assistance to the ukrainians that will provoke the russians. hello? the russians are already -- and i think the argument should be just the opposite. if we don't give them the assistance, it will confirm putin's theory of the case which is that the western united states are weak and we will let him do whatever he wants. >> i would just caution and i agree with most of that, but if we do give them lethal defensive weapons it could then also be an excuse for the russians to redouble their efforts and to increase their presence there. you have heard hints of that and i think we have to be very careful to think exactly what kind of equipment it is that you are giving. i would just say one more thing. going forward you have to remember that if we don't have our serbian allies with us on all of this our own policy is

going to be less effective and you know it's been amazing in a way to see the change in germa germany -- germany is particularly chancellor merkel and she has taken the beat and all of this and trying to get the europeans behind it but as someone already said if you look at hungary and if you look at some of the east central european countries you know they are softening up the bed. i think if these facts on the ground continue in eastern ukraine and if you have, i mean it's not successful but you don't have large-scale hostilities it will increasingly be used as an excuse in some countries to say well things have stabilized and is not the way we wanted it but let's go back and engage russia and our businesses are suffering. our people are suffering from the sanctions and let's get rid of the sanctions if they have an expiration date for the europeans of next july. going forward we need to deal

with this hybrid warfare with this undeclared warfare and i think maybe this is the final thing i will say, one thing that is very clear from this conflict is there's an information war between russia and the west. there is no agreement on any of the facts and in fact you hear from russian media barons now saying while there is no such thing. it's very postmodern. you have your factors and we have our factors. rush of the television channels are mainly controlled by the state and people get one message. yesterday i did it to our video class with my georgetown students at the state institute of international relations. we have totally different understandings of what was happening. i think we need to do better. we in the west even though we have democracies and we can't change is to say we need to do a better job of countering the steady stream of nonfacts coming

out of russia. >> thanks. steve hadley and steve begin your thoughts on the way forward? >> look, i think europe today and the u.s. administration have so many problems and challenges they just wish this one would go away. and there's a tendency to think well we have got to do something so let's do sanctions. we have been in that business, kind of easy to do. everything needs more sanctions. the problem is, we are not taking the kind of integrated ambitious strategy we need to solve the problem and prevent it from getting much, much worse. that's the problem and that requires us to do a lot more than just sanctions. i think we have put a lot of the pieces on the table here and what we haven't done is integrate it into a strategy that will be effective over the

long term, because we are going to be with us for the next 10 years. it's going to be a long-term challenge and we need to have an integrated strategy that will be robust over time. i think most of the elements we have talked about here and let me say three things quickly about it. one, angela is exactly right there's an information war going on. we lose it every day. in all putin has a great propaganda operation. he has got almost exclusive media control within russia and he's doing very well thank you very much in spreading that view around the globe. we have got to counter it with the truth in a systematic way. we are not even in the game. second, if i were in my old job i would be thinking about lethal assistance yes but this is why you have the cia. this is why you have covert action and i would be thinking do we want to do it explicitly and send a message to putin or

do we want to do it covertly? we i thank tend to talk too much and act too little. sometimes if weapons just start showing up on the battlefield. you know putin is doing this very well. stuff happens and he denies it. you know all in favor in truth but sometimes doing things without talking about it is a more effective way to achieve your objectives. lastly, i think we have got to find a way that we defeat putin strategy to create frozen conflicts in georgia, moldova and ukraine that freezes the states in the netherworld between the western europe and russia. we have got to say that actually that's not going to stop us and we are willing to continue to bring these states towards the west even though they have not resolved conflicts. that i think is very important. now we have to do that in the right way. we have to show that we can

bring countries west economically and diplomatically without severing economic ties to the east. we have not thought about it in those terms and i think if we can step this crisis down it might be a way over the long term defined way out if putin decides he wants to. >> steve your final thoughts before we moved to the audience. >> two things. one is that we should inventory when our own strength fire. you have heard some of them here. we have a strong alliance. we have an economy that has faced its own challenges but we still have the wherewithal to lead a significant economic effort to stabilize ukraine. we have the attraction of a rules-based democratic society that uses the market to deliver economic opportunity to its citizens. these are our strength and we

need to fall back on our strengths. so that's the first thing. second, and by the way patients. we need to act but we need to be thoughtful and patient. the other thing is we can't delay. we can't delay. we can't wait. i suspect, having with steve served in an administration that has had more than its share of national security challenges around the world, that there is a certain fatigue at this point in the obama administration that's likely taking over and with two years left the thoughts of spending any significant time or political capital with russia is probably pretty unappetizing to people. i think they're very well could even be a view that this is one that's going to be left for the next president. these next two years are critically important. we cannot be asleep on this set of issues because only worse can

come from it. so, my word of concern or advice to the current administration is make this the highest possible priority. it has got to be a high priority. >> thank you but i want to open up the conversation to all of you. i would suggest if you'd like to speak what your name up and we will call on as many people as we can. we have got 37 minutes left perhaps. i want to bring in first steve pifer and jim collins because what they did in ambassadorship is directly related. the question i have for you is can ukraine be helped and is what steve begin was talking about. if there's a major european union and north america and canada will be a big part of the effort to sustain them economically. here's a country with massive corruption almost a failed state, poor governance, most of us on the side of the table have been dealing with them since december 91 and they are hard to

help. based on your personal expense as american ambassador if steve gets his way we have a major expansion of age and will it do any good? >> thank you neck and thank you for a good panel which is outlined a lot of the pieces of the problem and some of the policy response. let me take a crack at that question on vladimir putin and russia. i think it's going to be a solution to this crisis ultimately you've got to find a way to get ukraine economically stable. they have got to be able to get into a different situation than they are in today and that's going to require additional resources from the west in large amounts but i think before the united states in the european union consider that they need to make sure that the ukrainians do the necessary steps in terms of adopting the necessary forms and energy sector, the economic sector -- the ukrainians have to take the steps that they have

not taken for the last 20 years to get their economy right. and if they don't weaken throw lots of money at it and it's not going to fix the situation. i come back to say ukraine is in this weekend for's larval situation. the single biggest reason they are in the situation today is for the past 23 years ukrainian leaders had made bad decisions. they avoided reforms because they were fearful of the political consequences, understandably. if you are going to raise the price of energy you have to have a consequence. they have a completely crazy energy system now which is just creating corruption and it has put them in this hole. in some cases unfortunately a leaders who put personal interests and the previous pan panel -- yanukovich was a primary example. ukrainian leaders have to take decisions now and if they don't

it will be beyond the west to know. the second question or point i would like to make on vladimir putin i think the panel has made really good comments on both agreements with the idea is now that he is resources and can push back but i wonder about his understanding of things outside russia and what triggered this was steve hadley's comment about maybe putin thinks he has an idea that he can get ukraine back in a few years. i actually think he believes that in that's totally divorced from reality. i was in kiev for i was in key of a two-month surveillance the biggest thing that is changed since i was there back in the 1990s was the central ukrainian national identity. there are flags everywhere people painting national colors everywhere and the unfortunate part of this identity s i think there's a very strong anti-russian element. i think putin has lost a

generation of ukrainians and as one ukrainian said it's not just anti-buddhism but anti-russian. we have seen over the last seven months what putin has done and the russians have now spoken out against it. in the long term i don't think that's healthy because russian and ukraine are neighbors and that's not going to change but it gets to this question, everything he has done in the last seven months has pushed the ukrainian people away but this idea that somehow he gets it back in three or four years races to question him in my mind as he understand what's going on in ukraine and outside the borders of russia. >> thank you could i want to turn to investor jim collins with the american ambassador in russia but also served as a long-time russia expert and the question i want to ask you is angela's suggestion that in a time of crisis the united states should have some kind of effective channel to putin so that we can talk and we can listen and i ask this because in

our strategy group meeting and if he read the book i think all of us to a certain degree that we had to oppose putin in ukraine but keep a channel open to him on iran, afghanistan, north korea, can't counterterrorism in the middle east. do you agree with angela's suggestion for a channel and how the dude sustaining a relationship with rush on those global issues as an important actor? >> well before i answer that let me just underscore my agreement with steve that if we really look at what's at stake with ukraine is going to be economic. they have and he can speak to this better than i can but is certainly my impression that there's a massive requirement for funding to get them through the coming year or two and that is only going to be effective if they get their act together politically frankly.

i think the second steve made this a very good one. the great thing putin has done for ukraine in the last year is essentially to unite ukraine at least in not accepting what russia is doing to them. now maybe that's something we will get a better result this time than we have had every time we have had this problem for the last 20 some years. i have my fingers crossed but it's going to mean serious money from the european union and the united states if they do the right thing and gets to them have the wherewithal to make something of it. so far as mr. putin is concerned a couple of points. number one i find it very unfortunate that we have so personalized all of this. you know i have been back and forth to moscow quite a bit in one of the things i have to say is that it's not just mr. putin who is thinking in these terms

and therefore we can't delude ourselves simply talking to mr. putin is going to solve the problem. and the problem basically and forget about who was guilty and what we didn't do or did you write. the problem is that the euro atlantic security system isn't working to resolve this issue at this point. and so whatever we may think is right, wrong and different or whatever the question is how do we get ourselves out of this mess? now i happen to agree very much with steve hadley on this. i think there are things that are within our control if you will, the alliance with the united states, that we can do without really having much recourse to thinking through how we deal with the other side of this. so we can strengthen the forces in places like the baltics or in poland. we can do other things within

the alliance. we can take measures that in some sounds give confidence that we are not going to be pushed by the russians and there is a line they had better not cross. putin is no fool. he knows he's playing a weak hand frankly the second thing it seems to me is we do need to find a way to engage him. the real problem here is we largely are not asking the right questions because i think we need to go to mr. putin and say look, we have a mess on our hands. what's your idea about how we get out of this? i don't think mr. putin has the answer either of how he's not going to lose or how he is going to win at the moment. my sense he has a on his hands in eastern ukraine at the mome

moment. does he go all the way to key of? i don't think that's a viable idea for him. i don't think he has got the capability first of all. and so there's a lot of bluffing but it doesn't seem that east ukraine has ended up sort of producing the groundswell of support for his ideas that i think he thought was going to come just as he thought it did in crimea. now he has got a problem. i say the time to talk to him is when he thinks he's got a problem. my suggestion would be to find a way and i think it has to be from president obama and the question is what are we going to do to get ourselves out of this? is not in your interest and not in ours that neither of us can afford to see ukraine go belly-up economically or in

other ways it won't benefit so what do we do? ..

groups in society in the private sector who want none of this idea of isolating russia and president putin's idea that isolation is the answer. i am concerned when we do not encourage all of those people who have a stake in the relationship between the united states and europe by cutting off there own capacity to conduct that relationship. unfortunately we have done too much of that. some of it is just because people are smelling the way the wind is blowing. we need to find a way to encourage, as much as we can

, and the building of the tides along those who see the relationship between the united states and europe as a central part of russia's future. >> i would like to have a few more people offer thoughts or ask questions. mdm. amb., i no that you would like to speak. if any country understands russia it is finland. a finnish perspective will be welcome. >> thank you very much. i thank you very much for the very, very, very informative. a couple of things i would have asked, one of the issues i have a feeling, mounting apartheid, you were mentioning that it is president pollutant is

obvious positioning. positioning. so the discussion that actually does government is at the moment empathetic on the issue. how would you you make it then that your president is sort of having a dialogue with president putin on that? and then what would be the agenda? if you closely read the putin agenda, you no it much better than i do,, that he has been repeatedly saying his agenda which includes very much of the spread of interest, dominates in some of the area. he feels still very much lost. i would imagine that when you have a dialogue you want

compromise. what would be those compromises? and then the other one is that you're actually article five, the issue for challenging the nato action at the moment is something which needs very close attention. we have seen several activities, of course increased activities globally, not only the nato members but active partners with nato are challenged. >> thank you, madam ambassador.

we tried to draw closer to sweden and finland, not members of nato, but partners that have a big interest in your part of europe. since i have read your book, i no you have been watching the russians for 50 years, i'm sorry today you. [laughter] how do you see all this, and what is your question for the panel? >> for russia ukraine is an existential problem. for the united states it does not appear to be. therefore when you talk about sending, as sen. mccain has begun to talk about as the new chair of the senate armed services committee, about sending lethal weapons to ukraine. the question comes up over

many decades now that the united states has been involved in one war after another without a clear definition to itself and for itself about what way, american involvement satisfies the direct national security interest of this country. when the ukraine and the support of ukraine can somehow address that central issue, how is it in the direct security interest of this country that we go to the extent of providing lethal military assistance? that would be my question. >> who would like to respond, respond, both to the ambassador but also to marvin? >> if president putin and president obama were able to achieve a consistent dialogue, what would be the agenda or purpose of that? >> it is very difficult.

one of the problems is president pollutant's information services. the german chancellor said he is living in a a different type of world. this is a shrewd, tough guy. his information sources are very much in the hand of the intelligence sources, and i am not convinced they give him an accurate and true picture of what is happening in the world, and that they feed a lot of biases. when you serve the president you have to be careful about serving his biases. president portioning goal is here. he said, it's a problem, every time i talk to putin i talked to a different putin. after two or three hours i i can get him to understand. but then when i don't talk

to them for a week it is back to believing his propaganda. he is a difficult guy to manage. second, why focus on putin? one, so far as we can tell, he is the only decision-maker. and, true, he is reflecting opinions but also manufacturing opinion through propaganda. that is why we keep talking about kayseven. the agenda it, you know, i have to be careful about this one. someone someone said to me once that one of the problems is he would sit with american presidents and explain things, and an american president would say, say, great. i will go fix it.

i think what we need, someone who can sit down and say, i'm prepared to sit here because i want to try to understand where we are because this is a problem that needs to be fixed. that is where we would start. spending a lot of time and doing a lot of listening. the president sent me to here everything you have to say about the settlements, and i am supposed to stay here and tell you tell me everything you think he

needs to understand to know your view about settlements. he said, interesting. no 11 has ever asked me before. we then spent four days together. began to build the basis of trust. late in the day. i think that is where you start. >> the euro atlantic security architecture created in the 1990s was created in such a a way that russia does not and really never had a stake in it. if you take away everything about new world order how do we regulate that better so that we don't have russia deciding it can violate the sovereignty of ukraine. in order to get there you

have to take number of smaller and larger steps. the last time this came up everyone said we don't want those. we need something else. that is the big agenda item. in order to get thereobviously e to be taken including restoring at least what is left of ukraine's territorial integrity. >> i will take the prerogative of the chair to him briefly and with great respect to disagree with angela about whether we gave russia essay. we brought russiathe heart of nato and brussels. i know that president bush was serious and president --

serious about bringing them into peacekeeping missions. i can say the ambassador turned it into a debating society. i just think that we gave them their chance at a critical moment. >> we probably need to give them another chance. i think we are at a.now where the system is broken. >> i just wanted to come back up to a couple of comments. jim collins has been one of the best colleagues and friends i have had. i think the most important thing he said was to_-- two under score the stupidity of

the us isolation. containment and engagement, including diplomatic engagement. i am a little bit skeptical, jim, on your push back against the personalization of this around putin. it deserves to be. he is the most powerful kremlin leader since joseph stalin. he is not not as powerful. stalin had administrative techniques that put him in a whole different league, but every leader since then has either had to report to a politburo as a board of

directors who could fire him, him, as they did with khrushchev, or yeltsin who had political weaknesses of his own. if we could find the perfect envoy to go talk to putin what he would say in one word is, let's do minsk. and what he would do, in one word, is let's do done yet. he is playing a double game game and getting away with it and will continue to. >> if there are two front-line states in this conflict they are latvia and estonia.

>> thank you. thank you, nic., nic. i want to thank all of the panelists. europe contributed a lot personally to the achievements of these hundred million people in the region. we celebrate we celebrate the 25th anniversary of the fall of the wall, and i want to say a word of appreciation to all of you. i know what you have done. i appreciate your thoughts today. i think that i have two comments and one question. where we where we are today, it is not just bad weather. it is climate change. it is difficult to reverse the climate change, as we all no

bad news but also good news, i would say. the bad news everybody knows and the question is really, you know, what are the important issues? and i think a few points that are important from our perspective,, probably first and foremost, transatlantic link, the synchronicity of the united states and europe , not only european, nato allies but also european union. we see this really, the effect of that transatlantic unity when it comes to sanctions, and this is one

area where i disagree with the sense that i got from the panel that sanctions are not working. i think they are working. they are changing the atmosphere inside russia. we need time, and it could be a long time, but we should be ready, and we should continue with the sanctions. i think that what really came as a shock to the russian leaders was the very united front you had in august and september. so long-term, readiness to continue, one issue that was brought up, energy security and getting us or the

region, region, actually all of your account of the russian energy influence. i think we see lots of things happening in this regard, but that takes time as well. it takes probably five to ten years to see real results, but it is an important issue so that in ten years time we can diversify. third or fourth.is, the presence of allies. i think you said, the front-line front-line countries like us, it's important. we we have good news here,

too. the united states sent troops to the region three days after crimea was invaded. now, what had happened in the past six months in that sense, the american engagement, engagement, the nato engagement, also european allies in the region is more than we have been waiting for for the past six years since georgia crisis. now it is happening. we have first cavalry division in the region. we see that that the administration is working on the european reassurance initiative. we we want to see that to become sustainable long-term , not just one or two financial years issue. we see that nato is thinking deeply on what to do with

the region. we have to implement results i see political willingness from the european allies to implement the decisions. my question is what we lack is the strategic vision. my question is how to achieve the strategic vision , work strategic vision should contain really. sometimes we like in our debate, what are we really defending? it is not the specific countries or people but the values, the western values. we have to be very

straightforward and defending these values. i feel that somehow that debate is missing, whether we talk about what the strategic vision should be. think you. >> we don't have a lot of time left. left. i think we we will go into extra innings, if you are a baseball fan. brief comments and questions i can ask each of the four panelists to answer whatever aspect they would like to come out whatever final points they would like to make. i no that nato put on a great airshow yesterday. does that help, that symbolic show of support?

>> thank you for organizing this terrific discussion. especially when we tried to put somehow together a good agenda for next year partnership in may. neither you or perhaps here in the us we have a strategic creative vision. i fully support what was just mentioned. what we what we have, of course, it is symbolism but practical and serious stuff. we have not seen things since peter the great opened the window to europe in our region. i think that gives us more

calm when it comes to development. i just wanted to say one very short statement and then a question. ukraine, to my understanding , is extremely important strategically. i still believe that it is possible to do things right in ukraine. but we are missing three points in ukraine today. one, ukraine does not have a chance to defend itself. i think that is important. the second is that ukraine economically is weak. zero course ukraine needs assistance. a little bit reminds me, a failed state. it does not mean that it we

will help. it will be a mistake a mistake to wait and tell ukraine goes through the reform process. those two parts should go something like hand-in-hand. the third.is one very important piece which ukraine is missing, perspective. when we went went through the process these reforms are painful, costly. politicians are afraid of them. public very often did not have a clue. for ukrainian government to prove that these reforms would make a difference without kind of strategic clarity, it is a problem.

developments are unfolding. things are happening as well not necessarily the baltic states. it's a problem for europe in general. my question goes to the.of what angela said.

apparently we argued -- what we aren't losing here. >> if i could just ask you brief questions so that the four panelists can sum up. >> i would like to get straight to the information warfare. >> the russians asked for a revision of the so-called flank document. this is esoteric today, but the fact is, this is after the war and we wanted to strengthen the incipient

democracy of yeltsin. a vote in the u.s. senate was 100 to nothing. it it was very significant. second, very quick. senator biden and i went to moscow. we went to russia first. yeltsin had been at the summit. he was described as an disposed in the suburbs. he met with just about everyone he talked to, including his national security staff. we talked about details of possible enlargement, paul and czech republic and hungary. were they happy? no. they felt wounded. were they the slightest bit worried? no.

could it someday join nato. so that is it. the lethal defensive weapons, the weapons, the decision is going to happen sooner than later. there their are at least two bipartisan bills in congress right now. for your jobs program. he said that that the administration felt it was about time. >> if you can ask your question in 60 seconds or less you we will get two extra copies of this book. [laughter] >> thank you very much. i wanted to add a sense of

urgency. the ukrainian economy will melt down if nothing seriously is done. what ukraine needs to do is to unify the energy crisis. it is a serious reform. what what the west needs to put out is the package on top of the $17 billion. the next five or six years. >> thank you. well done. >> tonight founder and ceo. >> our analytics are a lot more granular. if we can break down on the

legislator by legislator basis. except from a tactical perspective there is lot of opportunity for a chinese lobbyist to be able to go in and say let me look at this bill, the 50 people that are most likely to vote for it, the it, the people who are least likely to vote for it. what i will say is that, you , you know, our analysts do not provide all the answers. that being said, there is lot of power in being able to combine some of the analytics we combine with raw industry intelligence. >> tonight at 8:00 o'clock eastern on the communicators on c-span2. >> the state of grace and

the ferguson, missouri case. their predictions and personal stories from there own experiences with police and law enforcement. hosted by the brooklyn historical society. the forum contains language which some viewers may find offensive. [applauding] [applauding] >> this is beautiful. what's up, brooklyn? [applauding] give yourself a big round of applause. [applauding] >> was that like a black power thing?

>> be careful. be very careful. so can we give it up for the brooklyn historical society? [applauding] and raquel was backstage, very glad to here how her name was pronounced. >> it is very interest -- irritating. it puts me in a box. i am american, i am very comfortable being american and latino, but for me that is not something that bridges me to both. when i hear somebody,, it is like putting me in a box. i am here to be received fully.

if we meet outside, please don't call me back out. if you call me rachel and not even going to pay attention to you. >> you wrote a book. how is that working out? >> great. i have three or four now. like a 400 percent increase right here. i went on a date with the dominican girl. >> how can you hold on to that until now? >> i don't know.

>> you guys destroyed it by showing up. that is amazing. >> i want to apologize. >> it drove me crazy. waste of taxpayers money. >> the proposal we have for this evening, we propose to address one topic which is right off of the news, ferguson. the solution three minutes from now. many of you have noticed on your chair,, cards of the topics you want to discuss. we will dip into that.

hear what you have to say. then we we will share the microphone with you. is that okay? >> when you see us on our iphones we are not texting. we texting. we are paying attention. so, you guys ready? >> ferguson, about to jump off again maybe, possibly, according to the governor. >> are of pre- declared state of emergency. >> and confirmed on fox. >> so you know is true. >> you know some shed is going down. >> former mayor rudolph giuliani. you guys love yourself. good for you. in so far as fox news can be said, they are all ponds for the next coming of stokely

carmichael to just erupt out of this. and it strikes me of circumstances in new haven. on trial back in the day back in new haven. huge protests. the radicals were going to come and do big demonstrations, huge demonstrations all over the country. all petrified that it would turn into something. but he knew wisely the first way to set off the powder keg were descending. so they quietly assembled the national guard and just told no one. nothing happened.

>> is not what is happening here. doing everything he can to precipitate what he said he wants to avoid, getting everyone primed for the fact that black people we will go crazy. >> can i ask you to speak for all white people briefly is he basically just doing this for white people? is this like, hey, white people, i people, i know you're nervous. let me send in guns to protect us. >> he is a politician, so he he is trying to cover all his bases. should you should you have law enforcement standing by? of course. things could go sideways anytime people are undead. we have to counsel all the black ministers. us, all you white people go

by handguns just in case. that is the settlement. someone got a hold of the budget appropriation police department from last month and it's like $50,000 in rubber bullets, $6000 and beanbag and beanbag guns. they are preparing for all of this. >> how are they going to miss all of the white protesters when they unleash the military on the community? >> you know, i mean, they are just going to -- who knows what is going to happen. >> you sent me this link for the sean hannity show. did you see it? >> i did. it made my day worse. >> using the same terminology that i heard on the news, especially fox five.

explosive situation, threatening violence, all of this to scare people. giuliani went on there and said he had handled situations like this before. we think god because he became the mayor. but going to be the legacy that he left behind. it was very dismissive. and brought up the whole idea of white privilege. >> white people have tons of advantages. a lot of people deny that

this exists, which is stupid to me you have to sort them into different categories. one is the ill-gotten gains and the other is things that white people have that everyone else should be afforded also. >> human privilege. >> human privilege. >> that's trending. >> white people can walk around without the fear of getting shot in the face by the police, and some people would define that as white privilege. i would say it's citizenship i i feel like you get that word attached to something and we start focusing on all the things that are bad rather than focusing on the true problem. >> for me it is really not about white people. it is it is just a reminder

of what being born nonwhite kind of confers. >> nonwhite disadvantage. >> exactly. exactly. white privilege. >> and allows it allows you to project resentment upon white people. >> a lot of people think that just because you are white you are born with a silver spoon in your mouth. we have black basic rights. i remember when i first held my son i was like,, i can't believe i had another kid. he looks chinese. the third thing was, damn, i am going to have to worry about him going to the store my daughter saw me panic.

and i had no postpartum depression. i was happy, happy, but i started shaking and panicking. my cousin and i had this conversation, i had to think about people not respecting him or loving him, going to the store and not coming back, teaching him to question what he thinks and what he is being taught in school but at the same time don't go too far with authority because you can get shot in the face. these are these are things that lead to the stress and resentment. this whole idea with don't shoot is about human privilege, people being upset at what we do not have >> what i have seen, so much beauty. i think the government

playbook is the same. threatened force and applied force in disproportionate measure. the response on the ground has been the black youth movement. much more gender open. artist driven. it makes me feel old. watching some of these young people respond so creatively and so persistently, whether it is pretend to be dead and lying on the street and it still nonviolent, but they are very persistent and poignant.

>> what is the difference between what happened with mike brown and trey von martin and oscar grant and name after name after name. >> there has been a little bit less co-opting by traditional organizations. you have new groups forming out of this. you have -- i am not here to necessarily because his heart is in a good place, but it's not his show anymore. it is an new cast of people that we have not seen any more. i remember seeing during mckesson. there's a product which tech companies use.

if you are interested in a a cheaper way to get luxury car service sign up here. this is a problem for the 5 percent. young activists are using that same platform. and that is different, interesting, not spokesman ship, not media designation. let's go to obama and see what he thinks. the president is kind of incidental. i think that's good because he won't be the president for much longer. >> i'm sure that the hannity's of the world, this inside thing. we always talk about the stupid shed on the daily.

>> what do you think will happen with the grand jury? >> i think that he we will be acquitted. >> we all agree. can we poll the audience? what do you think for no indictment? hands up for no indictment. hands indictment. hands up for indictment. a vast minority. we have seen this before. >> i think he is going to walk. the problem is that the thing that happened that day justified the shooting of michael brown. there is a brief interval. anytime there is a sliver of uncertainty it goes the cups white. the question is what we do

with that information once it comes out. >> the governor stands the troops down, sends and cupcakes. what i would love to see the governor do is show up open mic. just take it, just physically have the people. so tone deaf and grandiose and requires funding and negotiation. so little is just i feel like if you set sat in the room like this and took it for like five hours and just here people, and just your people, he would be beautiful for him. >> i i don't think he cares. he is coming off to me like a slightly less evil version of giuliani. i don't know. i i think that their may be violent

reactions to my but on the positive side i do see a new political movement happening, what you were happen -- talking about the other day. i think this this whole democratic republican crap is nonsense. i am from harlem. there are dozens and dozens and dozens of different political parties. i may not agree with what you are saying but i will start my own party. we are obsessed with cramming ourselves into these boxes. >> one person lately agrees with you. >> okay. >> but on the positive side we're seeing. i mean,, our senator from kentucky saying some ship that i can rock with. the war on drugs. >> what are they asking for?

>> to stop shooting black and brown men. >> there is that, but there is also representation. they feel very strongly about who the police are versus the populace. a very perverse relationship between how the government is funded. there are cameras on police. a. a specific request that has come out of this. probably other things. equipping policeman with cameras. >> it's a question of what happens. >> the main thing i have a

problem with is the representation angle. we need more black representation so that we control our own destiny. to me that is a false tack because they are not questioning the basic premise underlying that which was explained to me by the principle of my old high school. the reason why cities work is you have a broad a broad tax base and a broad array of social services. young people young people paying taxes but not using the medicare elder services, businesses paying taxes to use the roads and bridges but not the school. in these little towns and fiefdoms and suburbs you have no industry, sunlight retail, but your primary tax

base is property tax. some of these. meanwhile, people using some of the city services, everyone is there for one reason to exploit your good public service. a completely untenable system. the only way that works is if you have extreme wealth. these really wealthy places can afford to keep the world out, not have any retail and support an excellent public school. it does not work for anyone else. it does not even work from middle-class tax people. those suburbs continually have to expand. so these places like

ferguson, it is a completely untenable model. we need to run ferguson. you think that white people don't give a shed about ferguson now? just wait. once it is an all-black city the tax base we will decline is minimal. that's great. that is an advancement part rich white people have designed a game that is rigged. it does not make any sense. we want to be annexed by the city of st. louis so that we have access. these five terms are the problem.

>> it just can't be the black body. it has to to be the right blackbody. i mean,, you have people, people, they are not the right people. >> you went to the system of money. i have not heard this talked enough about, police and their training or the lack thereof. very protective wall around police officers as if they are holy figures and can do no wrong. they can do very much wrong. a friend of mine, he drew this map.

probably not. he would get popped in the mouth. >> their perception of your threat determines your life. that is a pretty flipped up equation, c-span. and there is a psychologist. i tried i tried to promote his work as much as i can. a little bit of neuropsychology. something to think. they are not aggressively or explicitly. that is out of fashion. you cannot walk around

shouting those things, but the implicit thing poisons all of us. 14-year-old boys with 30-year-old men, that is all programming that the media has done a very effective job with us. probably going to shoot a black boy or man, not their racism but their masculinity and basically cops that are weak in their own men had, they have to flex. if you challenge challenge them in any way they have to put you down. they don't no how to carry themselves has grown. >> victimized by cops. the thing that we were always taught to look out

for because of the history of being emasculated and the fact that as a community we have not dealt with ptsd in our memory. a young country, we carry in our memory part of our dna, ptsd. part part of that is emasculation. i have heard a lot of kids in my neighborhood. a lot of times i have had to be careful more so with people who look like me and my family members. a lot of things in the bottom that we are not dealing with. i think at the bottom of all of this is ptsd.

i think it is even correlated to black on black crime and down on brown crime. how are you going to come together and coalesce as a movement. so i think a lot of that, how we are not talking about race. thank god we are here. ..

she was just going to be the next trayvon martin and was the greatest victim of all time and the cop was like, ma'am, i just need to see your i.d. and i'll leave. these encounters between minorities and police are so fraught and so loaded at every instance. i've never had an encounter with my police in my life -- a bad encounter in my life. >> i don't drive, my husband does, i get tense, especially out of new york. i start to shake and i'm always afraid something will happen to my daughter or son, even though he's two years old, if any of us step out of line. >> not unreasonable. i held a story from my older

sister. my mother, my oldest sister and belinda and me, my father didn't live with us. he was killed when i was very much young. so handful of memories of this guy. my sister was in the car, with -- actually my sister was in the car with my father. this is the washington, dc circa 1976. and the cop pulled up. they decide they're just goal to full force, he was doing something they didn't like, and principally talking back to them. they grabbed him out of the car, beat the crap out of him, take him away, and leave my seven-year-old sister in the car alone for hours. and so a random lady on the street rolls up and convinces my sister to roll he window down. are you okay? she remembers something about her address and she is able to get thome mother, who is livid, obviously, at the time. so, your concern about your small child isn't totally

misplaced. >> to protect and serve. that's what they do. >> you know, and not to bee -- when i was in labor with my daughter and we took a cab to lennox hill, and the cops just stopped us out of the blue, and when they opened the door they wanted to prove i was in labor. my husband said, at the time, please don't touch her, and the guy was like, get the f out of the car, smart ass, and basically i had to get out, fall on my knees on my stomach and beg them to stop, and without telling them, you know who i am? i i'm a writer. they don't care. a white cop. because of the civilian board, need to write names and know whether they have their badges covered and device display on their field was turn down, and i was really young so i wasn't thinking about, what is next? i was thinking about now. finally they took my bag, my

overnight bag, and searched it for drugs with a baton and just threw it at my husband at the time and said, have a nice night. when i got to the hospital i almost lost her because of the stress. so that is what we live in day in and day out, and it doesn't matter what the hell you do. doesn't matter i wasn't 12 years a slave. doesn't matter. and that is what i think people are getting fed up with, and i think that people of all backgrounds and all races should be fed up with, as our country and your grandchildren are becoming more and more and more nonwhite. by 2043, it's over. >> very happy, very happy. >> we'll still have a lot of the money in 2043. >> is that a promise or threat? >> it's just a fact. we have -- >> one percent? >> we have a lot of money so it's going to take a while to -- >> that's true. with the vote i.d. laws. >> the thing about -- those were my ideas.

the thing about the police is that there is a phenomenal arrogance, a cultural problem in the police department. i have a friend who is a cop, and he explained to me a lot about how it works. the nypd was notoriously corrupt. all the frank seprico years and cops on the payroll, and -- when build bratton and ray kelly and these guys came in under giuliani, as bad as they were for the racial element of policing, in terms of corruption, they went in and arrested the top people and marched them out and took away their badges and said, anyone else does this, you're fired. and of course there's still some corruption but that systemic, deep, deep corruption we remember from the '70s and '80s was largely rooted out because the leadership said no tolerance. the at the leadership of the

nypd saved tomorrow anyone who commits a civil rights violation is suspended without pay for the first one and fired for the second one, it would end. rather quickly. because it's -- whether it's steroids in baseball or corruption in politics. when there's a cultural change at the top that says this is not tolerated, things change, especially a paramilitary organization like the nypd. >> yes, and. where are my prop people at. front and center. and if it's paired with the training. we also expect -- we make broad statements that are not backed up by our intrinsic behavior and we're like, don't see color, but we do. i see it. i don't want to but i am trained by the same stimulus that has trained the rest of us so i am also racist against me. because i've been conditioned.

>> don't do that to yourself. >> i don't want to. i look in the mirror and i'm like, you could be so much more handsome. but there's a level to your point about the ptsd, racquel. there's like a mass therapy that we skipped some steps. we got great words in america. really beautiful, florid, quality for men and women, congratulations, ladies. from time to time you get heard. but our nature and our socialization and our habits have been built up across generations. and the statement from application, not going to be tolerated, needs to be supported with psychological retraining efforts beyond conflict resolution and diversity trains. our heads are messed up. we have been psychologically violated, all of us, whether you're the oppressor or the oppressed and that's going to take doing. i thought about this -- i made a chart. i like charts.

that you're not going to see. and i got frustrated with our own inpatience. we expect so much in so little time. in the great sweep of just american history. and like several hundred years of legal disenfranchisement, segregation, dehumanization, and then extra legal and supported and socially acceptable versions of that, 300 years, 400 years so we're 50, 60 years post that, and we still have a deficit, deficit of good will and a deficit equality. so maybe by the year 2300, we can talk about things like post racial inequality and equity but it takes some real time investment, time is a part of the currency here. >> i remember when i was researching my book, i came across -- i think it was "time magazine." >> perfect segway. nice. >> the headline was like why there are no black executives on the boards of fortune 500

companies, 0 no blacks in the boardroom. it's because we're 17 years out from illegal apartheid. when i think about my own life in relation to america's racial history, i'm actually not -- i'm just poor white trash. my great-grandparents were southern louisiana sharecroppers so there you go. and my grandfather got to leave the farm and get a job with the works progress administration and then got va benefits after world war ii, and we built up and built up, and now i'm this middle class, upper middle class white guy in 2014 who kind of gets to do whatever i want. i'm not rich but it's because i chose not to be rich. i chose to do something that doesn't pay any money but i could have chosen to make money. and so -- but that process start to finish was 80 years.

so if it takes 80 years to go from sharecropping to upper middle class, total freedom some opportunity and privilege, as in people would say, it takes 80 yearses if you're a white man. so, we're only, like you say, 50 years out from the end of legal apartheid. game yourself on that spectrum. my family is also incredibly lucky and we worked hard and did everything right. since 1968, black people have been kind of unlucky in a lot of things, and we continue to do many things wrong that retard that progress. >> i think that people -- nobody white people in america should do what they're doing in the caribbean, with 14 nations, getting together, having a conversation, and suing their former colonizers, and even though we all know that nobody is going to win and may not win, the good that comes out is conversation and dialogue, and when i actually read in that -- in the papers they were talking

about ptsd issue couldn't believe it because i hadn't seen before i said it so brilliantly, that ptsd was something we carry in our memory as people, regardless of what color we are, who are new americans, and i also think that because especially in new york city we're so diverse -- i wish there was another word than diverse. >> awesome. >> another word. if there's any word that can take the place of diversity, please tweet it to me. i hate using that word. we are so. >> colorful. >> colorful and transnational and multicultural we should be looking at our community as larger than just north america. we should be looking at ourselves as americans, and if you won't look at yourselves as americans and you're latino and you feel like public enemy number one, pat yourself on the back because america started in the east of the -- i don't know -- in the dough minimum

kick -- dominican republic, the first, quote-unquote, european settlement, the first place where there was indigenous slave and i transatlantic trade. that's why we're so racially ambiguous. so we have to start looking at ourselves as an insular community and see what other people are doing and start the dialogue and start talking in numbers we're more powerful. was that a little new-agey. >> that was. >> sorry. >> people who wrote things down on cards, if you could send them to the aisles, we have a short -- >> we have military outside. >> we'll collect them, bring them up here and try to dive into some of what you have been asking. lost track of time. we ripped hard. >> i don't want to talk about taylor swift. >> okay. >> that's too easy. >> so, that's brooklyn

historical tweeting. actually, seth -- is seth here? yes. so, you tweeted: i feel what is missing from the national race conversation is the traumatic paranoia experience by the founder and the offended. we -- by the offender and the founded. i appreciate you tweeting that in. the idea of chasing victimness, and -- specially on the conservative side, we're victims, too but not the way you think. like offenders are also victims of the system. did you -- in your book, did you come across any -- >> to call white people victims, it's ridiculous. >> what is the burden of the offend center. >> i think we're all products of the same system, and therefore we are damaged in different ways, for people of color there's this ptsd, this feeling

of inferiority sewn through the culture. to be white and a product of that society, it's kind of like growing up next to a lead paint factory. you're just kind of like a little dense and can't really see, you're a little slow, and it's amazing to me -- i've now sort of gone through the looking glass. i'm no expert or genius about things about race but i have a level of awareness and i know what i don't know, and i sort of know a few things. was listening to a podcast a few weeks ago, very intelligent, smart, political commentators, and one of them mentioned that she had read that an editorial by a black filmmaker that there was this renaissance of black film and tv in the early '9s so with the hughs brothers "in living color" and died if and turned into malcolm and eddie on upn and friends and sign --

seinfeld. and now white people are have agricultural voice again. and totally shocked by this. they were like, i can't believe that. is that true? and. >> then you said, data. >> then i was like -- and i don't fault them for that because four years ago i would have said the same thing. having started media in advertising advertising and culture and everything, see it, but i was back at them, you don't see that? how can you not see that? but they don't. and so like with the -- parity in the dear white people thing, these white people having these black face ghetto parties on college campuses and then black people are on twit are saying they're deliberately trying to offend us. and it's like, no, they really are that stupid. they really are. and -- >> actually don't know better. >> i know because they're my people, and i come from that place, and --

>> can we just send you to talk to them? you be the ambassador of reasonableness and decency? >> and there's a fear of approaching this issue, like even dish love my wife, lovely person, but -- >> but? >> but every time -- >> very, very careful. >> caution. >> got to be funny. i wrote a book inspired by the fact that obama -- we had a black president but i didn't know any black people. i thought, that's weird. we have got top this juncture where we accept a black president but i don't know any black people. none of my friends know in black people. what up. so whenever i went to pear is would say i am riting a book about i don't know any black people and that would make people uncomfortable. and my wife would introduce me, she would say, he is writing a book about racial integration and she could never just say i'm writing a book about i don't

know any black people. she was nervous about being that forthright and dumping it out there. and i see that -- and i single out my wife which i shouldn't. all my friends do that. they read my book, like my book, and so whenever it comes their turn to talk about what they -- they seize up and clinch up and have a difficult time. what they don't realize or what white people in general don't realize, the first phase of dealing with race, you either become bill o'reilly and become angry and defensive. what are they asking for? we have done enough already. white people don't have so it great. you get that angry defensive bill o'reilly mode or go into the hard core, make a youtube video after trayvon martin about how being white is so terrible which while taking advantage of everything about being white so it's disingenuous, and white people don't approach it because they don't want to go there

because they're very uncomfortable. either with anger and denial or the guilt. they don't understand if you go deep and long enough you get through that and get to the other side and talking about racism is like talking about whether or not you like this beer. and you get used to and it comfortable with it and all that white guilt and anxiety is gone. and it's so -- >> the white rock missed land? >> -- white promised land? >> kind of us. >> can i get a pass. >> i have been to the promised land, white people. it's going to be okay. >> honestly, like, when you -- >> when the white promised land only blacks exist. it's binary. i saw dear white people, it was off the hook. i loved it. i loved your beautiful face on it. you're the hottest thing in there but there -- and i wrote it down, three mentions of latinos in passioning and so many of the experiences i saw being played out from both sides were things i really identified with and i just felt like

invisible kind of sorta but not really. >> we're so obsessed with each other. >> forget about me. >> you have to have a consideration -- i thought that barack obama becoming president would open a dialogue that wasn't so binary. i remember when he was running the first time around and i would go on an airplane, people would stop me, like older white people, we got to get him in, right? and i'm like, yeah, yeah, and my daughter was like, who is that white lady and i was excited because i thought we would start having these conversations. everything economisting in a gray space. but we haven't. it's like being -- everything is just black and white and that's not how this world works. we're living in gray. the promised land is gray. >> it's both. >> the quote of the night. i'm calling it. >> north americans of racial dynamics you're absolutely right there is a totally multiracial dynamic along the spectrum of race that needs to be dealt with. it is also true that bar tune

day and i have some shit to settle that doesn't involve asias -- >> but it does vessel involve fisticuffs. >> right. it shouldn't be a bind mary conversation but black and white define the continuum, rightry or wrongly. >> but lat find knows being latinos are black and white. so you're staring at the solution but you guys are like, you don't see anything. >> we have a pile of beautiful and somewhat illegible thoughts here. this is a question that -- no names on these so apologies for the lack of citation. do you think there's an overall anxiety about the changing demographic within the u.s. and the emerging powers of india and china?

i ask because rules are changing so fast to allow certain powers to amass so much influence that they don't care anymore. so you mentioned the demographic 2040, 2043, by 2060, we'll have some changes here. also the global nature of shifting power and where innovation is happening and where capital is happening and people are getting educated in different ways. what is the anxiety, racquel? >> we should be anxious because wore into busy sending our children to war not looking at each other as human beings that we're falling behind what everybody else is doing. i think scandanavia will rule the world. >> i'm going to call you on that one. >> i think so. because they're like -- they're investing in their children, -- they're into conquering because their vikings. it's that dna, that dna. and they are spending a lot of money on technology, schools,

and the crime rates are very low. you're right, maybe it's because people are born there and everybody looks alike. >> i don't think it's going be to scandanavia. they're too small. it's -- but i do think that -- i agree with you on us wasting time, whether sending our kids to war or making a binary conversation -- >> our inability to deal with our internal demographic problems that leaves us vulnerable to the challenges from without. >> because other people are getting it together. slowly but more surely. we're building -- we need immigration. we need it to stay young. technically. america -- oar we'll be like italy. italy is old, physically old. their population, the young people can't support the old people because they stopped having sex long ago, and the pier midst is all inverted. and end the got superantiforeigner and have no new blood or new ideas. what sustains the u.s. threw all this drama is that by force or

by lure, people kept showing up. and not we're threatening that, and that's internally -- i think with respect to what is happening around the world we're risking sending amazing talent and amazing ideas away, saying you're brilliant, but you're not welcome here because we have the short, game view that we have to maintain some ancient idea of what america was, even itch it's just black and white and doesn't include you in that. >> my read on where we're going to be in 2042 is i don't think it's going to quite two the way that people think it is going to go. there's still -- think about it. in 2042, white people will only be half. that's a lot of white people. still a lot of white people. >> but we can contain them. >> we'll built more suburbs. >> no, because white people still have a whole lot of money. all the available downtown realization, chicago, manhattan, white people own all of it. we have a lot. and you also have to -- white people will only be 50% but what personal of mixed race and

minority people will be assimilated into the middle class and more identifying with the power-holding majority than minority populations today? what i think will happen is the whiteness will split in two. one, the kind of old school white people who hang everything on being white and are scared and nervous and retreating further and further into idaho and west virginia and -- >> going to mountains. >> and be hill people. then other white people, like myself, who are like, whatever, i don't see integration as any kind of threat. if my son marries someone of a different race, don't care because i'm already in the upper middle class. this is historically true. working class white people are pets triidentified of. is taking over. upper middle class white people are tolerant because you can't threaten us. and i know that my kids are going to have access to these social and cultural and financial capital to remain in

power, regardless of how many people -- >> but you're assuming stability. you're assuming that this imbalance can persist for another 30 years. and i think at some point the system itself breaks, and -- >> it is going to break. you're going to have a break. one portion of white people who will break off and deassimilate themself and good off to idaho and be lonely and sad and one group of white people that will partner with the more assimilated and educated branch of white people to be a new beige majority, get to to be part people of color and part white people who are fine with that, and then you're going to have a faction of every immigrant group and racial group who doesn't want to assimilate and they'll be in the corner and angry that it don't have hack sent to the became majority. beige is the new white. >> you have so many quotes tonight. >> i don't know. should we keep it going. >> it's up to you. >> i don't necessarily agree

with that, even though if race is a social construct, maybe even before, let's say, became, light-skinned latinos would become white -- >> i mean more cultural barriers. >> then the next white man is the black man. >> how so? >> you're talking about assimilation and out of all the groups that are immigrants, we're probably -- what is happening is that immigrant groups are -- they're selectively acculturating more and more. so they're taking what they like about the old country, where their parents came from and what they like about being american and they're fusing that together. so there's no such thing really as assimilating to what? to what? we have to kind of redefine all of that. >> one of those old standard of assimilation is not that anymore. but there are still a lot of white people with a lot of money and a lot of job openings, and so to the extent that you want

access to those industries and you have to conform a little bit that way, even if you don't go as far as 56 years ago where they changed their names and that's why i say beige is the new white. >> i definitely disagree but we'll save it for a future forum. we got this on twitter. is jazz toilet in the house? riffing on the toilet. how do i have a meaningful conversation about race? actually using a hash tag -- with would white liberal friend with a black friend, who has a -- do you want to clarify that? [inaudible] >> so they think that gives them license to be ignorant. [inaudible] >> like a racism insurance card. >> yeah. block. [inaudible] [inaudible]

>> because they lean back on that friend as an excuse? [inaudible] >> they think they know everything because they have one person in their lives. is that it? >> okay. >> a., never say that. and, b., it is just not true. i don't know your particular friend -- >> i don't mean my particular friend. >> thank you. [laughter] >> an amazing costume. >> i just think white people who are, like, i already know about all this, i took ethnic studiys issue read all the articles. we don't knee to talk about this because i already know. so there's no -- >> the things that pop into my head immediately, based nontoday, this is fake science coming out you real strong. shift the category.

would this person say that about north carolina verse south carolina? about scandanavia versus norway? ... yes all women so there is no the opportunity to not make it about race but the purpose is reminding them that there is a unique set of diversities and

there's not a spectrum where if you know one thing you don't know everything. >> so peter holden, instead of diverse how about -- amalgamate you go. [laughter] that is awesome. it's a mouthful but it has a sparkle. >> a rainbow with sparkles. >> thank you so much for that. >> is there a question there? >> we will use for the balance of the evening we will use amalgamate magical. we can't speak beyond that. >> this is a question of us about it. it's the race gender and age diversity or lack thereof in the

audience what you would expect concerning or in a way of real progress so what do we think you people and when i say you people. [laughter] >> i'm really impressed by those people because i was expecting it to be a little bit more like girls on hbo. >> the expectations of brooklyn. >> i was having a conversation with raquel a couple of weeks ago and they were talking about it and she is like e i got tired of brooklyn it was just getting too white. i mike when did you leave? she said 1997.

>> it was actually 1996. i was in brooklyn heights and i was expecting to see older just white, not cool, not hip and i'm seeing older white faces with a lot of hip outfits. so yeah yeah and a little less amalgamate you go been what i'm saying because of where brooklyn has gone. >> if you identify as male raise your hand. all right, hands down. if you identify as a female raise your hand. ladies night apparently. you got a discount. it's tuesday night at brooklyn's author society. if you identify is neither male nor female raise your hand.

it's about three-fifths female by my math. i didn't have expectations to directly answer this. i remember looking around the corner from the green room closet. [laughter] i just thought wow there is a range of hairstyles, really. >> it is better than talking about race in vermont. [laughter] which i have done and there's a distinct phenomenon when i do these sorts of things. this is much better than being a white guy standing at the podium explaining how racism works but when i've done solo events when i have a good mixed-race audience and i can make some of the black people left on some of the white people laugh come it's okay to laugh but now they find that if it's a majority white audience, and the black people

aren't feeling it that none of the white people will have permission to enjoy themselves at all. everyone will just sit there like. and it's horrible. i have never died as a stand-up comedian but i imagine that's what it feels like. >> i do know why you were looking at me when you say that. my friend is not doing well as a comic. i looked on wikipedia the first time yesterday. i was a painful tragic experience. >> i give this audience of palms up. >> i.d. too. i feel like we are not talking about intersectional oppression. all right, church. i feel like somebody busted out some fans. preach. so it's a two-part question but let's focus on that part. intersessional oppression and why have we failed? to overlay these issues.

>> do you want to define intersessional oppression? >> the intuitive definition that race, gender and sexual orientation are inseparable, class and they play out in different ways depending on where you are in those spaces so you can't have a solo conversation about race if you don't also take gender into account or class as examples so how does the intersection of these things play out? >> i think we did talk about black blackmail brown male bodies right? >> we have only been doing this for like an hour. >> and we talk about religion being born off-white and i assume if you are born you are a male, female or somewhere in between. maybe we did but maybe we didn't go in depth. >> i feel like this as you know,

it's very difficult to have these conversations because you can never please -- this is such a broad topic. >> this is about race. >> there are so many intersections that you can never please everyone. part of the reason people having these conversations is i wrote a 2001 article for slate about this and about this a backup barrage of tweets. you can talk about this and its 2000 words. i picked one thing i was going to talk about and i didn't talk about the other 90 things because i only had 2000 works to talk about that one thing. hang around long enough and we will get to intersessional. >> i want to talk about white people. this is a two-page comment. [laughter] someone actually wrote page one. [laughter] they put a page count.

>> i have a card rather than a monologue. >> they scratched out all at page two. it seems to me that white people unless they are surrounded predominately by people of privilege don't realize how much whiteness is talk about when they're not around. that being said i wonder how important is to make the signification of white is more public a deliberate practice i.e. let's not be afraid to talk about whiteness in mixed company. hope that makes sense. the tone just jumped off the page. i hope you don't mind my conservative license. so yeah you spoke out raquel -- raquel feeling invisible in this black-and-white conversation but there's a line that's drawn between the public conversation and whatever white people do and what is that? instead of asking i will throw my own flaws on this. i think we need to talk about

whiteness. we don't call a privilege and i know you have a problem with that word but it allows us to walk through the world as if color doesn't matter and on my show recently i had someone to the whiteness project about buffalo new york. they set a bunch of white people down in front of cameras and just let them think out loud and there were some thoughts there. there were some definite thoughts and a lot of resentment and why are we doing all these things to the black people and the resentment as you spoke of earlier comes out clearly on this film and herceptin with class like in buffalo. so i would love in some ways not pass the baton to share the baton a little bit more of what the race conversation is. that is part of why you are here because you did some of this work solely for yourself. >> what i found is the power, i

think white supremacists understand whiteness the least because. >> and grammar. >> they are very bad with grammar and history and culture and dancing. white supremacists are these rubes who bought into the promise of whiteness that it is this pure white race that has been endowed with all this spirit of the other races which is all nonsense. they bank everything on the purity aspect keeping peer for moral contamination. i don't think that's where the power of whiteness comes from. the power of whiteness comes to the fact that it can mean anything. tom and his blogs that whiteness is pretty and in nature and if you look at this definition today it's completely changed. that's sort of why i do about the year 2042.

whiteness will be whatever it needs to be to stay right where it is. that is the enduring the underlying power of that idea. it's a horrible idea is a pernicious idea and we know why it's bad but let's acknowledge why is so powerful. communism is dying in nazism is gone, fascism is out out of vogue but white supremacy barges on year after year. weiss is a powerful? because is so infinitely flexible it can be anything. like in the french revolution you had 40 families who had all the money and you said that the aristocracy. all right let's kill them and we kill them all and they have a new regime. why people are the ruling class america. two are white people? they are whoever we say it is. how do you that aristocracy? pitches mutates and now it includes catholics and jewish and i will include an expanded and if we need to kick out some white trash to say you don't belong anymore go to idaho

whiteness will do that. whiteness will get rid of those. >> i'm going to come at it from a transnational space. i use it in public often where whiteness and blackness of the look of the whole island it's defined differently than what we even think it's defined as. if you listen to skip gates he's leading you down the wrong path. it's not the way he looks at race are white supremacist lens. the way we look at it has to do with economics. so for example i went into a doctor at dentist who looks like a shorter version of michael jordan and one of my mentors there said you know that guy right there, he's considered white here. it's almost like in brazil if you look at pele soccer player pele the more money he got he bought his way in and he became white. some people stop referring to

him as being black. in the dominican republic gets that way and in the dominican republic there are areas also in haiti where the ruling class there is considered white. that is close to the ruling class and the dominican republic. they look at basically power, race, what you look like has nothing to do with it but how much power and money you have. i look at where america started when i want to gauge where we are going in north america. maybe it's another way of saying what you were saying, whiteness and blackness is fluid. >> i don't know if i wonder or i simply hope for it instead. the perseverance of whiteness, i still feel like that's temporary. i wanted to be temporary for sure and i'm also looking at people who are so bored with the

program after leave, have a great night. i'm just kidding. i know you have to go. [laughter] you talk about transnational and someone mentioned india and china and china in particular. there are things that are going to change in such dramatic ways that things are happening outside of the bubble of this conversation and the power of culture as we see a lot of black culture for so long yet with the white power structure with jazz and hip-hop and all these things with black faces and black movement are sold all around the world but what happens when it's mostly in mandarin and what happens culturally when the world powers shifting away from traditional. >> china is huge and is going to challenges in huge economic waste. friend of mine is a linguist and the interesting thing about

english whiteness in english rose up in the world contemporaneously obviously with your opinion expansion and the interesting thing about english, english sort of took over the world in a very capricious and advantageous moment. france was the language of the world and the world than there were these different languages. english came along with the typewriter, with the internet with a computer and all these forms of technology in english has the advantage of being infinitely flexible. the english-language given blackness of whiteness can absorb -- mcveigh put omg in the dictionary. english is a language that can expand infinitely to be whatever it needs to be where's mandarin and chinese very infinitesimal and they are trying to change that now. they're trying to make mandarin easier so it can be an international language and to that extent is whiteness going to be like english where it continues to mutate and expand

and adapt like a virus, i don't know. that's not to advocate for whiteness. i'm just trying to figure out what whiteness is going to do. >> is their american english? >> that's my point exactly. there's international. it can mutate and spread. it's not a rigidly defined thing. >> there is more in the pile. we don't have a plan exactly. [laughter] but we want to save room. let's do the mic thing. let's hear some of your voices. thank you so much. why do you start where you are with the hat in the scarf. are you cold? do you are very zipped up. okay.

>> hi. >> hi. >> yeah so i just want to maybe expand on why you wouldn't think that intersection analogy, i asked that question in and the second question about privilege which i won't go into, but if we could maybe talk about why you wouldn't think it's important to maybe have this be a really intersessional conversation only because going back to what you had mentioned about how race is a social construct why not include all other social constructs that equally affect our perception and our projection of what is race? so if you could just expand on that? >> i will give you quick answer. ferguson was in the news. we picked that. it wasn't intentional. >> it was not a conscious

effort. i i think in some ways probably for most of us this concept of intercession on the as bait den and it's not like we are going to have an intersessional conversation about race. it is kind of open source it up and to give you quick background on why this is happening, so words were said and printed in the books and i wrote this book "how to be black" and i met tanner through mutual friend and he wrote "some of my best friends are black." i was asked to blurb it and i asked what where to do that and then i read it and what does tanner know about a race and it turns out a few things that i thought were sharing. we come to blurb and did a lot of events. we thought about going on tour together and we couldn't do that because it takes a lot of work. we did do one live event exactly a year ago and there was a much

better -- you are much better audience. and the conversation about race as tanner and i am solid of o'brien were experimenting, we talk to each other in a group? to talk about obama and race stuff and we wanted to continue this conversation and expand it so we reached out to raquel and we had lunches and e-mails and we are honing in on this event. so this came out of an attempt to expand the conversations we were each having or it's made out of pigeonholing that we have put into to represent our people. talking about immigration and then i want to hear if you want to talk about something else as an example. this was like the second iteration of that live event one year later. there was no conscious effort

for intercession holiday but i think we are accepting the open is that it's necessarily a part of the context of the discussion. we all have race in the titles of our work and have been called upon and chosen to some degree to explore race as their primary variable in an identity. >> and we were going to do a podcast essentially do we fight all the time? how are you doing? >> hello. i wrote the first question about anxiety. the reason why i put that question together in the sense that it seems like we talk about obama and the election and what brought me to that was we came together and we elected what is

the process that we took to elect a president obama as far as little donations and so it seemed like the whole community got together and as soon as he came into the white house, as soon as -- citizen united the manchurian supreme court took up our way from the regular american to make the smaller, richer foreign donors and opec type of stuff come into the politics and really rewrite the direction where america is going. i just wanted you, because we are talking about race but i think there's a lot going on that is really taking away our entire definition of what america actually is. >> you are here. i think it got ratcheted up after president obama's election. i think that rewrite has been ongoing from the glorious statements in the founding

documents which were never intended for most of the people in this room to benefit from some american democracy is always going to become a sham. it's really good marketing and it lured a lot of people here and a lot of investors and resource extractor is. get mine and keep the? that sounds good. the promises never been matched by the reality. we have tried to get closer and that's part of the project. the whole hyperreaction to the president i enter estimated. i got all caught up. i was knocking on doors in texas and virginia and pennsylvania and i was like yes open source hypocrisy. were going to write the rules and it just got slammed in the face with reality that the sport doesn't get played down here. the donors were the lobbyists are always there in the fear of people who have had power and a very concerted and collaborative decision to make sure whatever

this president said was never going to happen. it was just never going to happen. so much so that we heard them say that out loud. we are going to stymie everything we are for. we are not for if you put the word obama in front of it. that is what the whole political party did about the heritage foundation originated health care plans successfully implemented, about to start nuclear proliferation treaties, about everything. our guys at the top in the way the electoral system works the persuasion of voting in the impatience or lack of persistence that a lot of us have for the midterms the follow-through is not there. so we showed up for the big game and not the scrimmages in between which determines how your team really does. >> i don't know that i would say we really came together to elect obama. the beauty of obama's campaign as far as getting himself elected with all hope and change

and yes we can sell a bomb iran. >> and also not bush. >> also not bush. didn't vote for the iraq war but you know barack obama presented himself as hope and change in every single person could fill that vessel with whatever they aspire to. i was part of my inspiration writing a book. there are a lot of white people supporting obama and a lot of black people supporting obama but we are all doing it in different zip code and for possibly different reasons. i think you saw that. he is a galvanizing figure and we all saw what we wanted to through him. i think that was very deliberate. his campaign was marketing, branding brilliance from day one. that's not to say he is not a man of substance because he is but that campaign was genius from start to finish as a phenomenon. he's almost an anomaly and there was a study they came out two days ago that america is no

longer functional democracy and we are an oligarchy where the interests of the middle class as defined by polling and voting in everything else are not followed most of the time and the interest of the top 5% are followed all the time. when you're just coincide with the top 5% fewer like democracy as like democracy is being responsive when actually it's not. you just happen to agree with the top 5% on that issue and they are getting what you -- they want that they are no longer in that sense of democracy so you get the money out of politics and everything else. >> quickly i was cautiously optimistic about it from the beginning. you know he was making a lot of lofty promises about immigration that i just knew he was not going going to follow through on in the last year they got the more i was not not believing him. i stop believing him and i voted for him because i could not live in a country where palin and mccain were running. so i voted for him but i don't

know i think hillary clinton could have been a great president as well and one thing that she had that she has and has shown that she has that he hasn't to my lament is are his palin would say kahaani's. i feel like bush and everybody else they went against -- bush went against what the democrats wanted and whatever we'll just take the hit. i will stand for mine whatever. obama hasn't done that. >> the question is he has not done that or he has done as much as he can? >> he shouldn't make lost the plot promises especially around immigration and say i can't do anything without congress. you knew you were going to be fighting an uphill battle. >> i think he was shocked. this is 2004.

the guy on pbs with the kids and what not and he believed it and he came to this office and the first thing he did was say how can i work with you and they were like go screw yourself. he's like whoa on the president they yelled at him calling him a liar. there was a level of anger, disrespect and totally unprecedented even though bill clinton -- didn't deal with some of the things that president obama has. i think he just got the extra dirt because he was the first. they were going to test him and remind him that there's only so far you can go without us. where's the mic? >> thank you for this panel. as a millennial, i feel like for me what's important about the conversation about race is

justice because race is one of the biggest markers for how justice is delivered whether in the criminal justice system or education or health across-the-board. i liked that you touched upon the one person and how 96.1% of the 1% is white and among the 5%, 80% of that is white. and you know the invisible, effects of us are not even visible in this conversation of the black-and-white binary which includes huge numbers of asian-americans that are running many companies and tech companies that decide futures of black and brown people as well as native people and the role of white supremacy in their communities as well as latinos which goes back in history from chicano history all about america. cross the border to them them so how do we complex of five this conversation to shift the national narrative on race itself in the story of race?

thinking about solutions in moving forward. that's what my generation cares about because we are tired of just being beaten down and told you know we can't do anything about it. there's something wrong with us. >> there's an interesting moment. thank you. [applause] there are two things going on here. there is are some incredibly complex faulty ration the reality that white supremacy affects all of these groups in the discussions we had and when affirmative action started in these programs put in place to redress the ills of slavery and jim crow for a long time that was seen as programs for blacks but the laws were written at all minorities got access. they stop talking about affirmative action because the word was poisoned and it was no longer about justice for the people who had been victimized

by slavery and jim crow. it was about floating diversity because diversity was good for companies. part of the selling point to the whole black establishment was hey white people are tired of hearing your complaints so we are going to take a trojan horse added and the handicapped and elderly and women in all these ethnic groups and we are just going to slit people in there with them and everyone will go in together and make this big pitch about how diversity is good for companies. all the black institution like jim crow said hey that's great for all of our asian and brown brothers around the world but this is about us because we were the ones who were victimized by segregation. you'd chose to come here. you were an immigrant, get in line behind the latest -- native americans in the blacks because is