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well, okay, i. just. i just thought. my days in t ♪♪ >> my days in this office are nearly through, but my days of service are not. in the years ahead i will never hold a position higher nor a covenant more sacred than that of the united states, but there's no title that i will wear more proudly than that of citizen. thank you. >> serving as president was the highlight of my life and the most rewarding of it all made it all possible and what i began with. citizens of the united states, being an american citizen brings profound privileges, but also, sacred and shared responsibilities. privileges are many and they include the right to express our beliefs without fear, the

let freedom shape our fortunes and security with dignity and the opportunity to take advantage of our many blessings and resources, to support better tomorrows for our family and whether at home or around the world. our responsibilities are many and hinge on the truth that we all do better acting together. that idea was first embodied in america's national motto, e pluribus unum, out of many few, our privileges and our responsibilities, as citizens. we live in an interdependent world, so one of the ways i've embraced my citizenship to emphasis the positive aspects

and minimize the negative ones, with shared opportunities and shared obligations. one of the beauties of america citizenship is an equal opportunity, it's for everyone and a team that always needs new members. whether you finish one chapter of your life and moving on to the next like i was or just starting now. the title of citizen is always there waiting for us to embrace it and when we do. there's no limit to what we can accomplish together. ♪♪ >> ladies and gentlemen, please welcome former president bill clinton and senator cory

booker. [applause] >> well, hello, everybody. i want to jump in. this is an extraordinary read and you were, i thought, very vulnerable in it. you really opened your heart up and your spirit ap there's a lot of themes that really hit me hard and if you don't mind, i want to start with just reminding you the first time you and i really had a conversation. it was 2006. i had just been elected, i hadn't been sworn in yet, as

mayor of the city of newark and somebody said do you want to meet bill clinton? and i said hell, yeah. and so i-- >> you came to see me. >> and i thought it would be one of those formal things and you would tell tall tales about your experiences, but you greeted me at the door, brought me in showed me some great pictures on the wall and sat me down. you had a mission, you came up to me and i used to do an imitation of him that i'm embarrassed to do now. >> do it. >> and should i try you, korey, i need to tell you something and you said, i want to talk to you about the earned income tax credit. and you spent a half hour talking to me about the earned income tax rate and you said it's the greatest thing i did to fight poverty and most cities are leaving tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions in uncollected eitc

money. i went back to my staff and i sad we're one of the lowest income cities in america and the former president told me about the earned income tax credit, and they sort of leaned in to say what? and we set up free tax centers all over our city that ended up bringing millions of dollars back that was going uncollected. i didn't know you told me people could go back three years and collect their money. we saw people were getting 9, $10,000 that we started up financial empowerment centers in newark where people could realize it could be a down payment on a home. it was the most transformative advice i had ever gotten in politics. i want to say thank you. [applause]. >> thank you, thank you. so, you know, the one thing that i wanted was to make it self-actuating, but the republicans didn't like it, it was the only tax cut they didn't like.

[laughter] >> and i loved it because you couldn't get it unless you were working, but you had to have mod test income. and so i discovered after i left office that we had 160,000 people in new york city alone who were eligible for this tax credit and weren't getting it. and so we started working on that, but in 2019 there were two long articles in the new york times analyzing the rapid drop in child poverty since 1993. and he said that -- and the guy said, one third of it came from the earned income tax credit, from the first cut and then we kept raising it and doing things, and you did that, but i -- i was also trying to make the point that a lot of people

had tried and failed at doing various things in your city. and then i thought, everybody knew you were smart, good looking. [laughter] >> young. but if you proved you could do something that it was going to set you apart. it sure did. >> and helping people put money in their pockets and keeping more of their pay. that's extraordinary and that's one of the exciting things in the book to me that i think shows your super power. when your post-presidencies people have a vision of what they want to do in the world. you seem to have this ability to connect dots i've never seen before in my life and i want you to talk about that a little bit because you say -- and it's really powerful if you don't mind -- that you have this

understanding that drives your life between two different stories of humanity. since the beginning of time, there's two different stories. one is us versus them and the other is just us. and you spend a lot of time throughout the whole book talking about connecting people, creating community, letting people inform you, listening enough to know what their needs are, and if i can read this to you, you said, you formed-- i asked myself and view life through a simple screen. will this or that action increase the positives and decrease the negative forces of our interdependence? or do the reverse? once i could answer that, i could determine what i was for and what i was against. and you go on. i've heard you say this in speeches and the first speech i heard, it blew me away. i went home and got this

author's book. you quote eo wilson and eo wilson, this is, you say, in his rise and fall, argues, this is you writing, that since the fall of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, our planet's most durable species are ants, termites, bees and people because they prove to be the best at adapting to changed circumstances, but also, by developing life changing enhancing habits of cooperation. humans have been the best because we have a conscience and a consciousness and so it seems like you are pushing at a time that there are shearing forces dividing us, that your post-presidency is about trying to get people to wake up that we belong to each other and that we need each other. >> yeah, i agree.

that's what i believe. and i think we may get away with some of the game playing we're doing now and that isn't the difference, all that matters are our differences, but if we keep on doing it, eventually it will be our undoing because look at the united states. i've spent $3 billion of your tax money. [laughter] >> to finish the sequencing of the human genome. and so what difference did it make? well, we knew that it had the capacity to, if we could really understand the differences in all of our biological make-ups, solve a lot of health problems that we've been dealing with and all that, but to me, the most important political result of sequencing the human genome

is the fact that if you look at this crowd, every non-age related difference you can see is lodged in one half of 1% of our genome. now, since there's, you know, over two and a half billion genomes in everybody's body, maybe three billion, that's a half a percent and almost all of us, spend 99 percent of our time on half of that percent and i don't mean just the pch politics that we have. you walk by and see a picture of yourself reflected in the store mirror and you're thinking, oh, if i'd had lebron james' body-- half (laughter) . >> i would have gotten into a different line of work.

so we all do that in different ways. it's a crazy way to spend it, but we ought to think about the 99 1/2% we have in common and understand that our differences are really important. they make all kinds of progress possible and they make life more colorful and interesting, but only if they're embedded in our common humanity. and this is where people get in trouble because we're so arrogant sometimes in our intelligence, we think we're smart enough to cut all the corners. and we can get all the benefits of our common humanity while emphasizing only our differences. and sooner or later, it's going to slap us in the face hard. so that's how i analyze all this stuff. you ask me what's your position

on x, i'll try to run the possibility on all the factors on my mind and tell what i'm for and against, but in the end will it increase the number or shrink them or the other way around. >> and i would dare say that, go ahead, please applaud that, you know. [applause] >> you all forget that we come from more than evangelical baptist tradition where we're used to the call and response in church. you don't have to be quiet, if you like something, you can say amen. >> amen. >> amen. you forget that obama was great, but this might be the first black president right here. [laughter] [cheers and applause] >> you know, when my friend

tony morrison said that. >> if tony morrison said it, it's true. >> when she said it, you know, it was about -- it was halfway serious and halfway making fun of me the way i talk and kind of around and took it as a great compliment and my ancestors, i grew up in a white, southern working class family where my grandfather owned a country store and all of his customers were black, just about. i mean, he loved them and they loved him and they couldn't afford food and there was no food stamps, there was no medicare, no medicaid. if they were working, or actively looking for a job, he told them to take whatever they needed because anybody that was

willing to work deserved to feed their children and he just wrote it down in a book and he said if you can come back and pay me some day, do it. [applause] >> and it's amazing, korey and cory and i were talking about this on the way in, he read the story about my stopping on the way into a town in ohio that had one of these famous barber shops like you've seen all the barbershop shows on tv, what goes on in the -- anyway, i was going down to visit one on the way into down, there's this black minister standing on the side of the road in a nice suit and a big kind of reddish vest and a cross with big red stones. so i said to the guy that was driving me on the campaign bus,

we were campaigning for hillary in 2016, and i said stop. i need to say hi to this guy. i just had a feeling, i did. i shook hands, he said i'll tell you sometime, he said i'm for hillary. he said, and he said i was for you, and i was even for in 2008 when she ran against then senator obama, he said, because i'm the proud grandson of luther black of hope, arkansas. and he proceeded to tell me a story about his grandfather being in the store one day and my grandfather looking at him belonging, as he stared at the food. luther, you need to feed your kids, you don't have any money, do you? he said no, mr. cassidy, i work every week, but i don't get paid every week and keep in mind there were no food stamps

then, none of that. and so he told him to took the food he needed for his family and sign for it and he said my grandfather said, he didn't just do that for me, he did that for everybody, and he didn't have much more money than we did. but he did have the food. and he said you have to be for governor clinton because if he's just half the man his grandfather was, he'll be a great president. [applause] >> and that-- it stayed with me my whole life and so there i was and hillary is getting this guy's vote, 66 years after her then 4-year-old husband was sitting with his grandfather in his country

store feeding this man's grandfather. and we can't forget that. you cannot give up on people. you know, if you scratch anybody long enough there's usually still a person down there and we overlook the impact that things like that have. and you had another one or two, you wanted to-- >> yeah, i had a well-laid plan how we were going to go through it, and he's jumping all over the place, so if you-- we were walking in and i was really moved by that story in the book, but it wasn't the only example of you showing that no matter what's going on in the world, forces you can't control, but the one thing you can control, to be good to her people and you have story of story of story, so that country store and a white man and a black man reaching across the

divide of the time, but just showing human decency. here, let's go to another moment you say this, in the last few days, we had begun friendship that would become one of the greatest lessons of my life. according to his biographer jon meacham, the barriers began to break late one night on a plane when you urged former president bush to sleep in the plane's only bed, in a compartment with a bathroom and tv and at the time you didn't notice the act of kindness, it wasn't a big deal to you, i thought it was no big deal, he was older, served president first, and slept more. i used the air mattress and i slept on the floor, the friendship was-- that was easier for me, and you always said i always liked him and you go on, just to talk about the human decency between the two of you. in my recount, in my life, another great book, i had become a real fan of his in

1983 when he hosted the governors at kennebunkport at the conference in maine when i introduced him to my threaten 3-year-old question chelsea, and the first question she blurted out was the bathroom and the president of the united states took her by the hand and led her there himself, stopping only once to introduce her to his mother, and you said, i never forget that small act of kindness and this is the predicate which is amazeening this book because you detail it of you and him, twice in a way that changed the world at a time that the world was on its knees, first after the horrific tsunami that swept through asia right during the christmas holidays and another time when you two responded together to deal with another grievous storm within our own land, but the seed of kindness between the two of you between political parties and even though there were challenges, you guys ran a tough race, you found a way to start with just

human decency and build from there. . >> well -- [applause] >> it's a good story. [laughter] >> and it's true. but i always liked george bush, george h.w. bush. and i later became friends with his son and that was a harder hill to climb. [laughter] >> because -- because i disagreed with him on several things and he reversed to giving you a balanced budget and he went back to trickle down economics and he was mad at me because i beat his dad. and so i had this wonderful relationship with george h.w.

bush. we did things that i wrote about at length in the book, about fighting to help people start their lives again after the tsunami and his son has ahead an american effort and the united nations asked me to stay on as the coordinator for tsunami relieve and i did it. and then we did the same thing after katrina and we had an amazing time. and we worked together hand in glove and it was very important because even in the united states, if a natural disaster is big enough, there will be needs that will not be filled by the existing government relief program. so, that work is important.

and then my friendship with george w. bush, to the things that brought his father and me together, and his mother. barbara was a tough case, you know. and i just loved her, but she would look at you with those steely eyes, saying i've got your number, boy. but i like you anyway. [laughter] >> so, we had a good relationship and then when haiti was struck by an earthquake in 2010, president obama asked me and george w. bush to try to help haiti and i had been working there for about a year as a u.n. special envoy, but he was great.

we got together, we raised all of this money and we decided we could best help the small businesses reconstitute themselves because they were all wiped out and we did a really good job of it, i think, and then later i was able to raise almost $500 million for just on my own for the clinton global initiative in addition to all the money that americans will given, about a billion dollars. [applause] >> and that's -- but if you forget about whatever you've been fighting about and all agree on the same goal, then it's amazing how often you come to consensus. >> and you say that and i don't want to trivialize these

numbers and i didn't really know them. you put them in detail here, whether it's the tsunami in asia, whether it's haiti, whether it's katrina, you teaming up with these other presidents and through the clinton global foundation, it's billions of dollars and what i loved about it, you didn't just raise the money, you went to the sites and met the people, had real deep connection. i mean, i love the story in sri lanka, which was stunning to me where the mother comes up to you and says, would you please name my child. will you tell us about that, the young baby you named in sri lanka. >> yeah, well, they brought her -- this mother thought the youngest child in the village there after the earthquake, after the tsunami and said, you know, we want you to name this

child. and i said, do you have a name that means new beginning? and the young woman who was my interpreter said, yeah, lucky for you in our language dawn d-a-w-n is a girl's name and not a young boy. and we'll name this young boy dawn and symbolize a new beginning. so a decade later -- [applause] >> a decade later i went back to the same spot and i met the boy who was there with his family and he didn't have a clue. [laughter] >> i mean, he was a day old, right, when i met him. >> yeah. >> and i just was another old

gray-haired white guy and i thought it was great because that's the way it ought to be. when you're dealing with a disaster like that, you want to put people's lives back together and then let them get on with it, live it. and not live in the -- from all that happened which they can never honestly remember and were entitled to escape. >> so it was a marvel to me and i love that you detailed all of these stories and so i knew that pepfar is credited as one of the great achievements of one of the american presidents, it's george w. bush and one of his great legacies. his biographer, meecham tells about the program, but one of my favorite stories in the book, you were simultaneously doing extraordinary work on dealing with the aids virus through your foundation, and

because you didn't do what the temptation is for a lot of us who are in the political arena, which is to demonize the opposition so badly that you can't have a conversation with them, and people often ask me how do you do with a ted cruz or a lindsey graham, i say i've gotten some of my best things done in congress with people on that side of the aisle because i keep the door open as you say explicitly in this book toward shared humanity. and i love this, here is george w. bush and you talked very openly about building trust. when he was president, w and i would walk once or twice a year whenever he had the time to call he was busier than i was, whenever i needed to run something by the white house i run it by the staff. and the thing that built trust in our relationship is that i never leaked our conversations and a little later you talk

about that that relationship sets up your ability to make his legacy to take it to a whole other level because he was firmly rooted that we should not use these drugs that are not the name brand expensive ones and you were trying to convince him to use alternatives that would drive down the costs and help more people. could you talk a little about that? >> yeah, first of all, you may remember this, but president bush had a brilliant slogan when he ran for president against al gore in 2000. he said that he would be a compassionate conservative. and it was really effective. it was like because the unspoken message to swing

voters was i will give you everything clinton did with a smaller government and a bigger tax cut. wouldn't you like that? and that was the real -- that was the political message. and then beneath it he had a bunch of statisticsty were far to the right of the slogan, but he knew that there was win thing that he wanted to do that would lay claim to compassionate conservatives, which is to do more than the democrats had been able to pass through the republican congress to help deal with the age crisis. and people were dying like flies. so i was thrilled when he passed the pepfar program. the president's emergency plan for age relief and he did get more money, the most i could get was $600,000 a year.

for the program that was -- people were dying by the millions and bush immediately got like 2 or $3 billion because the christian evangelicals were for it and the republicans found it easier to vote for him than to me in this congress. but i didn't care, i just wanted the people to live and by then i was out with nelson mandella trying to raise money. so pope john paul died and the president called and asked me if i would like to join his father and other members of the administration in the official funeral delegation, which i was only too happy to do. i met three or four times with the pope and really liked him. and it's very interesting. and w met with him three times

and he would -- both times he would disagree with me on women's reproductive rights and disagree with bush on the iraq war and then go start talking about things that we could work together on. and he was a very impressive man. so we went to his funeral and on the way back, the president sent for me and he said, let's talk about your age program. and he said, what did you do, how did you get all of these people, millions of people aid. i said i convinced the people involved donating money to let me try to establish a grocery store model. you'd run the grocery store,

have a low profit margin and make money on huge volume it was like running a jewelry store model. if you run the jewelry store you've got to give people a lot of choices in watches and engagement things, stuff like that, you have to carry a heavy inventory and not a lot on the sales you do make. and then you have to know that the sales aren't all 100% because somebody's likely to break off the engagement and bring the ring back. you laugh. but that's what we were dealing with. they didn't know if the sales were predictable. so i said let's make the grocery store model work and had five countries give me $100 million over five years and then bargain with the drug sellers, sell us generic drugs at less and less money even at

$500 a person per year what the generics are made in india. and, but this was 500 so we cut the price to 169, 139, all the way down to 90 dollars a person a year. and they were always making money because we were always helping them improve their productions and we paid them very promptly and we increased their volume staggeringly. so i told all of this to bush. he said my guys say they're not as good. the big drug companies that supported him against al gore, but he didn't like gore or me because we were trying to use the generic drugs, but i told him, i said i know they say

that. and first of all, you're-- if you're asking for help by the generic drugs, they're only 60% as effective as our drugs. and i remember the first time one of the guys made the argument to me, i don't know if i'd say that if i were you. and i said why? >> because your drugs of still 10 or 15 times more expensive. so if you're trying to save more lives you'd still buy the generics and that made him mad. i didn't mean to -- i didn't think talking about math would make anybody mad. [laughter] >> but anyway, so i asked george bush, keep in mind, you know, you do have to raise money, it's a campaign and you don't like to lose big donors and you don't like to make

powerful interest groups mad and i said to bush, i said, look, i know you've got to respect these people so what about this, what if i take every drug that our foundation puts into any human body anywhere on earth and submit it to the food and drug administration. if they say they're safe and effective will you tell the countries where you give funding that it's okay with you if they decide to buy the generics? and he said that sounds like a fair deal. he didn't even blink. and i'm sure that a lot of his staff members were cursing themselves for not being in the room with us. he didn't blink. in other words, he really didn't want to save as many lives as he could. he said you're going to save a lot more lives with the same amount of money. so, sure enough, then we submitted them and the f.d.a.

didn't slow walk it and pretty soon 22 of the 24 drugs were approved. and today in the pepfar countries, the ones funded by the united states government, 95% of the drugs are generic drugs and immediately after george bush okayed the presentation and the -- was done, immediately there were 15 countries in the pepfar alliance, not seven. they immediately more than doubled the number of people whose lives were going to be saved without spending one more red cent. and i -- [applause] >> and now, if elon musk is

really serious about this job he's allegedly going to do for president-elect trump, that's the kind of thing we ought to be doing. [applause] >> and i think-- so anyway, that's what happened, but it shows you that -- and bush and i got so interested in all of this that we set up a leadership program together in which our library co-sponsor with his father's library and so he picks 30 and i pick 30 and they're all mid career professionals, a lot of them involved in health care, but there are a lot of veterans, for example, that are involved in veteran support

programs. and they come to his library and mine and the other two and they study some aspect of presidential decision making. and then they break up into small groups, again, 50/50 and they agree on some problem that would be good to solve and go off and meet for the remainder of the three-month period and over 70% of cases they reach complete consensus and whatever it is they're worried about and we do a graduation. and starting about five years ago, i noticed that the republicans were seeking me out and the democrats were seeking him out to thank us because they didn't -- the republicans didn't know that there was anybody like the democrats than that. and the democrats didn't know there was anybody like the republicans they met. i know i've gone on too long

about this, but this is important. [applause] >> but i had two iraq and afghan war veterans both of whom had lost a leg, one who hadn't had all the shrapnel removed from his face who had started a veterans group trying to restore and they thanked me because of one of the people we put in the mix was a 5 foot 10, 11 inch, very foreboding woman who ran the gay rights movement in arkansas and they said, we haven't met anybody like her before. she's got all the skills we need to do what we're trying to do and we just want to thank you. i'll never forget. when they began with the end in

mind, and stopped worrying about who she went home with at night and instead what skills she had that could help the veterans who had been so badly wounded. amazing. [applause] >> that's great. that's great. so that brings me to two of my favorite parts in this book. twice in this book you tell a story of getting an apology from far right republican, one was a congress person and this one came at a time that you made yourself vulnerable, in the 9/11 commission. you opened up and said, you said it was a mistake, you talked about your mistake that you made, leaving being a president before 9/11 happened and you said, start out by saying, you're going to welcome the commission's questions. all the members asked good ones, but the first exchange was the most memorable. john lehman, the president's navy secretary thanked me for

being so candid and open he to criticism and started out i've made mistake, we're all here to learn and said something it's hard to imagine in today's political climate. and quoting him now, since you've been so open, i want to start by saying, i owe you an apology. i am a republican and believed everything my party's critics said about you. i've reviewed 1,000 pages of terrorism security documents you received. your handwritten comments and quotes are all over them, you cared a lot about this, and learned a lot and want today make the right decisions and wanted to do more against al-qaeda but you were poorly served by an unintended consequence of the goldwater-nichols act which you go on to explain. he asked if i specifically asked the chairman of joint assistant staff where the special forces commanders, whether they agreed with the

recommendations and said i hadn't and lehman says you shouldn't have to. the pentagon have become so comfortable, for the president's informed dissenting opinions that deserve to be heard. lehman says if i'd have been told i might have made the staple decision, but at least i would have been better informed, i'm telling you this, you write, to make a larger point. no matter how smart you are and on the level you are, if you make enough decisions some of them will look wrong in light of subsequent events, and those errors will happen more often when you base those decisions on unwarranted assumptions or fail to follow up on troubling leads. that's a big reason why, if they share a common goal, diverse groups with different backgrounds and knowledge make

better decisions than homegennous ones. and he recognized we shared a common goal no more 9/11, doesn't matter if you're a republican or democrat, we need to make a contribution to that. [applause] >> that's -- that has great relevance to the present day, right? >> i have to be honest with you, mr. president, i'm a little worry about a guy that doesn't read his president's daily briefings. what you show there is your immense curiosity, sir, you are one of the most curious, wanting to learn person i know, and that republican showed through thousands of pages of documents was a testimony to the real truth of who you are. >> but -- [applause]

>> thank you. look, there shouldn't be a party issue. >> no. >> dwight eisenhower became very famous when i was a boy for having warned us about the dominance of a military industrial complex and a lot of you of a certain age will remember being taught that in school. very few people, however, at least when i was of age, were taught there are other great warnings which has more relevance today. he was concerned with what senator mccarthy was doing, trying to people up in a fit, i'm not sure we can preserve our democracy. there's a reason that we were

then closing in on being the old democracy in human history. it requires a lot of mental discipline to learn what the facts are in different circumstances and to try to think through them and work with other people who are trying to do the same thing and deal with honest differences, and the thing that i have worried most about in the current environment is that -- that it seems that the people that are running the transition, equate unquestioned loyalty with patriotism and questions with this disloyalty and with lack of patriotism, and when i was became president, the first week in

office, all the young people that supported me into the office and i said if any of you ever comes in here and tells me what you think i want to hear on any of these issues, i might as well shut this place down and run it with a computer. [applause] >> because the groups make better decisions than lone geniuses. you're here because you know a lot about the job which you're assigned and you will learn better and i may not agree with you, but nobody's ever going to get fired or iced out or demoted or whatever for disagreeing with me. your job is to say what you think is best under the circumstances. and if the time comes when you

can't live with the decision i make, the honorable thing to do is to resign and if you do, i'll praise you and recommend you for any job that you want. [applause] >> because that's what i think works better. so i get the chills when people tell me that we're going to have one set of rules for one crowd and one set for another, you know, i have no use for people, it don't-- i don't want to be surrounded by people who always say yes. and so that's a big difference that we have now and have to work through, but i hope there will be somebody like john layman in the other party who will say, hey, look, let's get off our high horses. this is not a partisan failure,

this is a bipartisan failure 9/11, and we've got to fix it. >> you know, i want people to buy this book because it has these moments and i don't want to spoil the second apology we got which reminded me of john lewis when the person who beat him, i think it was during his freedom ride. >> yeah. >> would later come to his office to apologize. na was the second apology, reminded me of that, it wasn't physical violence, but somebody that was involved in your worst tormenting and then came to you to apologize. it's a really beautiful vignet, but vignette, but we want to -- we were joking earlier about you being the first black president, and we talk with fisting this unearned

wretchedness from the world and comes and visits in our community and mass incarcerated our children and red lined us into neighborhoods and pushed us into poverty. yet, somehow, we-- the african-american community keeps this spiritual resilience that doesn't just help them, but helps to move the whole country forward. and so, in this book, you are unflinchingly laying it out there from your own mistakes. you say i made a mistake numerous times and painfully you talk about rwanda and your regrets there and you talk about what you wife went through, i have to think is almost harder than going through it yourself. it was a nightmare. >> a nightmare and you spell it out here in ways that made me just feel leak i was taking gut punch after gut punch to see how unfair was and you are interesting to me when you said in your campaign, when i was a young man and i was in oxford,

you ran for president, we were all a bunch of rhodes scholars when you came to visit us to the presidency and first time i met ralph and you were the man from hope and so exciting and i loved to newark, new jersey where i live now, a community below the poverty line, a majority black city and my position of hope was changed a little bit, but reading this book makes me think that you have the same opinion of virginia jones, from a tenant in a high rise project and son was murdered, and didn't move out when she had enough money to do so and she taught me from this book, the understanding that real hope is scarred, real hope is wounded, real hope has to be resurrected time and time

again. real hope is saying that every day i'm going to decide that despair won't give the last word. and you gave this beautiful moment that made me smile, because i remember these toys. when the going got rough, i tried to imagine that i was a big boy like big huey or the casper the friendly ghost, you could knock them really hard and they'd bounce back up. to survive in politics, that's what you have to do over and over and over again. maybe we should start producing those figures again as representatives of happy warriors still reaching across our great divides. people could keep them at home and work and starting every workday by knocking them down

and smiling when they bounce back up. it might be clear-- it might clear our heads and help us to get back into building and the cooperating business. you are so raw in talking about the times, forgive me, mr. president, you got knocked on your a-- but what is amazing to me is in every instance, you tell stories about how you got back up and kept going. your beautiful speech, sir, when you thought the clinton global initiative was closing, horrific things were being said about you, books like clinton cash, which were so, as you document, clearly here, so unfair yet you still have this extraordinary resiliency of spirit that just to me is amazing. i'm going to-- and keep reading your words, you all better read this book.

i want to read this. a pretty low moment, 2016, your wife is going through it, you're being attacked already and yet you stand up at the close, what you think is the close of the clinton global initiative having been through a lot of hell, sir, and you look at everybody and say these words that i read after this election and really helped me. don't be disheartened, don't be deterred, on the wonderful words of my tradition, do not grow weary in doing good. deal with the headlines, but never forget the trendlines. the trendlines are better than the headlines. good news about what's going right in this world is hard to sell today, but look to the trendlines. don't ever give up on what brought you here. the next 30 years could be the time of greatest discoveries and possibilities and creativity the world would ever

know, but only if we get up tomorrow knowing that if we just get caught trying and we do it with somebody else, chances are, it will work out better than we dreamed. [applause] >> i still think the united states is the best nation country in the world in the 21st century. [applause] >> i still think. but we're living in a time of particularly savage political conflict where, i mean, people will say anything and a lot of people will believe it as long as it hits the designated target and since you were kind

enough to read those things, i think i need to give credit where credit is due. nelson mandela probably gave me more help to manage the effort to drive me from office during the second term than anybody. we just became friends and we liked each other and i asked him questions. and so, i was going through a fairly tough time and i said, you know, mandela, you're a great man and all that, but you're also a shrewd politician and it was really smart to put your jailers in your inauguration and put the people they work for in your cabinet. but tell me the truth, when you were walking in freedom, didn't you hate them all over again? and he didn't blink, he said i absolutely did for about a

second. and then i realized if i still hated them, i would still be their prisoner. and i wanted to be free. and so i let it go. and he said, so should you. >> wow. >> and then i asked him -- we started talking about sacrifice and loss and he said -- i said, when did you quit hating people that did this to you? he said i've been a little more than halfway into my 27 years in confinement. he said i was 14 years in and i was breaking rocks and god, i was in great shape, i was stronger than an ox, but i was serious. i said look what they did to me.

they've abused me physically, abused me mentally, they destroyed my family, i never got to see my children grow up, and it eventually claimed my marriage. every day could kill me without consequence coming up. and one way i was breaking those rocks, they could take everything, except my mind and my heart. he said those things i would have to give away and i decided not to give them away. and then he looked at me and smiled that million dollar smile of his and he said, neither should you. wow. [applause] >> and i said -- and you know, one of the reasons i love this

work i've done the last 24 years, i'm always seeing people who have overcome staggering odds, and you read the story about the guy who lost his face in the earthquake, and the woman her husband fighting the narco traffickers in colombia and all of those stories are in there and i always try to remember that there's somebody somewhere right around the corner that has it worse than you do, your loved ones and they still go on. ... treat every like a gift. they still go on. that's what i think all of us have to do now. and if we think we know something that our adversaries know, we're duty bound to share it with them, even if it's just

go duty-bound, even if it's ignored, just go on. >> it is interesting i felt like this was a free man, a free man. you wrote this in a way with, you didn't flinch from talking about chapters to mere wish american history gone a different way. i wonder how you could get over that. this spoke to me. you said we have more yesterdays than tomorrow, living in a president and for the future requires nurturing good memories and making peace with the less happy ones. but forgetting somethings is also board. a couple years ago i read scott smalls brilliant book forgetting, the benefits of not remembered. as we age we need great space for months to make better decisions. like many older people i forget where i put things and i need, the things i need and i still rememberle things clearly i need to let go of, but i'm working on

it. it seems like yo' are. this is the meditation in truth telling and vulnerability but also loving those who hate you. >> it is. i find everything is paid off in some way. evenen' though sometimes it's totally of us. member once at the end of my presidency i was in a struggle with the republican leadership in the congress and the senate. the majority of youth and was trent lott of mississippi. and he and i had a remarkable similar childhood, alcoholism in her home, domestic violence, we

grew up in a working-class home -- he grew up in a working-class home in mississippi and he wanted -- [inaudible] one day one of the sunday morning talk shows, he called me a spoiled brat. and and i was in my second ted said all the young people listening were so upset and i said, golly, so he got in vote and he says, did you call to chew me out? i said i certainly did. but not for what you think. he said, , what do you mean? i said, you worked hard all week. your staff talked you into believing you had to go on one of these talkshows. i try to keep my people even watching them. [laughing] and i said, so you went and you had a headache, you didn't feel

good and they baited you with me, and you took the bait. he said, that's exactly what happened. [laughing] i said, forget it, but you need to to have better sleep on the weekends. we had three incredible weeks where we made all these agreements and got stuff done. it was amazing. just because i tried to put myself in his position. and you're really good at this. that's one reason you get a lot of those republicans. they feel better about themselves if they can say they they've done a deal with you. and that's okay. that's okay. [applause] john lewis was a genius at it. he and i were friends from the 1970s until the day he passed. but i remember he just kept

being nice and decent to people. and even his most vicious opponents admitted that they respected him because he was always on the level, was never responding to an interest group or pressure. justice, wholeness rose from every time he took a breath. there so i think you know, we should all. try to bring that in people and. that's why, you know, i've loved doing this work. i've done all this. the clinton global initiative and now we've got 500 million people we can document who have helped the the aids work i've done and all the other care work that's saved millions of lives. and i had a good time doing. and i think most people are

happy doing something that's productive. but if we're not careful, we can start keeping score our lives the wrong. and that's the last thing i would say. you know, i kept saying in this thing, we all keep score. what are you all admitted or not right now? every one of you is keeping about your life and some way you. i am i'm sorry that i can't eat as much as i used to without gaining. so i've got to eat as. i have three choices. i can eat less. more do both or just whine about it. i mean, we all keep score all the time time. and i think one of the things i urge you to do, it drives this whole book is i had to decide

why when i got out of the white house, what was going to keep score the way i had in my public life, and if so, how hard it would be to learn to make change without power, but that's what i urge you to think about tonight. you go home. how do you keep score? i have, you know, these three wonderful grandkids grandkids and my daughter and son in law have, you know, the. my daughter just ran the third new york marathon. and less than 4 hours and at 44 and i've got these three five grandkids and i adore my son in law is a sort of a patronizing, old fashioned to say but i have

my. worries are over once i realize how much he loves and their kids and they're all going to take care of each other. but. i think the best way to keep score is whatever, whatever effort you've got or people better off when quit than when you start. the children have a brighter future and are we coming together instead of being torn apart? that's i keep score and other people keep score differently in politics and but that's how i do and if you can yes. to those three questions then it doesn't matter nearly as much if you lost a few elections or you had a couple of seven backs or somebody mad at you or whatever. and i think that that ultimately

that's what this book is about. this book is about how i try organize my life to make the most difference i could saw the most problems i could and leave things better shape than i found them. and and along the way, i talked how our family, even when my daughter was young, hillary and i, we we've had most interesting meals. when she was six years old, she started reading the newspapers and i was at a very tough governor's race and the guy was i was running against and terrible about me. and she read it. so we explained all the issues. and then i said, okay, tomorrow we're all going to play the these guys, the both and governor. i said, so one of us is going to be me and one of us is going to

be each of them. and at chelsea, you're going to i had to fight my opponent's. and she said, no, i want to play you. i can beat him. that ha ha ha. six years old. well, well, let let me say, because this we talked about this right off stage. right. we were coming up and waiting for the voice of god to introduce us and know his daughter. she is one of the more extraordinary human beings i've ever met. just who she is. my mom has a saying about, she says, behind every successful child is an astonished parent. and and but my favorite quote about what my favorite quote about parenthood comes from james baldwin, who said children are never good listening to their elders, but they never fail to imitate them. you're daughter. the story we were hearing over there before we in was this

moment that i was just a humbled by her humility and that she was considering about going to oxford. you and i had this prestigious experience. we wrote scholars. the people were encouraging her to apply the roads and and in a reflection of the values in which she was growing up in what she say to you. she called me one day late at night because she was at stanford and i was in washington, the white house, and she then i got some good news and bad news and said, well, what's the good news, she said, stanford wants to nominate me for a rhodes scholarship. i said, that's wonderful. well, it could be bad. she said, i said, no. she said, i'm not going to do it. i don't want to do it. and i said, do you not want to

go to oxford anymore? she said, no, i really do she said, can you afford to send. and i said, well, thanks to kenneth starr and special counsel, not today, but i'll be. but i said, i, i said by the time by the time you're done, i will be able to and i would be honored to. she said that's what i want to do. well then i said, why? and she said that that rhodes scholarship changed life. you were a from arkansas who never would have had a chance to do anything like that. and i said, well, you think you won't win? she said no, i think i probably would. i said, you think you'd just win because of who your parents are? she said, no, i would win because of the life had the experiences, had the people i've

met, the things that i did of you and mom. and he said, some people should not get award for the life they've already they get it for the life they could live. and he said so if you can afford to me that's the way i'd like go because somebody whose life will be changed deserves to have this slot. and i've never been more proud her in my life. i just love, you know, it was like, you know, but there her family, she teaches her kids. my son in law does that they be brave and be kind and as the family motto and get god trying. and that's you had to do you had to just get god trying life is totally unpredictable passes a

flash and you know this little planet of ours is 4 billion years old and people have been hanging around on it probably 200,000 or so years. and our pre-human ancestors would take us back to about how old was lucy of mom? two and a half. 3 million years old. i mean, we are just passing through and we have to make the most of it, the good and the bad and we have to keep cells in perspective. you know, remember, it's a talk in the book about going hawaii and meeting, going up to one of the big telescopes and staff of monarch out and looking at.

you can see from there outside our own galaxy, the milky way galaxy and the andromeda. so and i did that in january 88 degrees on the ground and 18 degrees when we got to the telescope. then we went back started coffee with the american scientists who were there and, the german person who was in charge of the group and said, do you guys ever argue about the likely hold of life on other planets? he said, all the time. i said, do you have big differences? he said, huge. i said what are that? you said, well, some of think it's 85% likely and others think it's 95 or something like that. and he said it, though, with a straight face. i said that balance. i like differences. well, he said there are a billion galaxies in the universe and they're getting bigger all the time.

so the 10% difference is a very large real number in terms of all the problems entities. but he said, you know even in solar system, there are several planets or stars around planets, little ones, not our name, but that clearly have the right atmosphere. conditions for oxygen and water. and it's just we think it's highly unlikely that there's no life out there somewhere. well, once you start thinking about, it's hard to believe it matters much. who is on mount rushmore or, any other human pretense. it's it's the itself. it's the gift. it's the chance to do something kind and good and construct give and to live up to your fullest capacity, knowing that it'll

pass a moment. i'll spend half life being the youngest person who ever did what a role was doing for us. and one day i woke up and i was the oldest man. the room. and i have no idea it happened. but i'm pretty sure. it had something to do with. the process that none us can turn back. so we need to embrace. that's what this book talks about. well, mr. president, part of your family motto is to be brave and kind. i will tell you right now, this is a book and it truly does. kindness, decency, an indefatigable indefatigable, relentless love. thank you. thank. european. thank you.

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