work with our neighbors in this hemisphere, and i want to call a hemispheric summit just as soon after the 20th of january as possible to fight that war, but we also have to deal with drug education prevention here at home, and that's one of the things that i hope i can lead personally as the president of the united states. we've had great success in my own state, and we've reached out to young people and their families and been able to help them by beginning drug education and prevention in the early elementary grades, so we can fight this war and we can win this war and we can do so in a way that marshalls are forces, that provides real support for state and local law enforcement officers who have not been getting that kind of support, do it in a way which will bring down violence in this nation, will help our youngsters to stay away from drugs, will stop this avalanche of drugs that's pouring into the country, and will make it possible for our kids and our families to grow up in safe and secure and decent neighborhoods. >> frank newport, those are just

three examples of how a campaign, the dukakis campaign riding the polls in the summer and came to a crashing defeat in the fall of 2008. the willy horton became a metaphor of other issues in 1988 the dukakis campaign faced. this is the pre-internet age but gives you a sense of how one issue moved the public opinion. >> there are a lot of examples and of course what we're getting into here is this broad view of how campaigns are won and lost, and it has to do sometimes with the single issue spots like that, commercials that happened to hit a responsive chord from the public. you have to give a lot of credit so to speak to the people behind the scenes sitting around a table like this. lot of people decry it say it's bad, we have so much spots to shift public opinion but that's the environment we live in, products and services, we have commercials that move back and forth so that's how we live today is that people respond kind of intuitively, kind of

respond emotionally to these kind of ads and the persons themselves, and that can make somebody win or lose a campaign. dukakis, the example you showed there, if your wife was raped, what about the death penalty, and the problem of course pundits said was that you didn't get a visceral emotional reaction from dukakis. you know, they said oh his first reaction should have been outrage and i would do anything for my wife, even though i don't support the death penalty, maybe i would have strangled the guy with my own hands, he could have answered in ways like that. he didn't respond right and maybe the public learned something about dukakis withfro watching that. >> david gregory said he lost the election that night. >> that's hard to prove. it's one of the things that led vice president bush to that election. we're not polling so much but the big thing how campaigns are weighed and fortunately or unfortunately we see big examples of how people win or

lose elections. if gore was more of a lively person would he have won and beat bush in 2000? was kerry too stiff, windsailing off martha's vineyard, is romney stiff? is that going to hurt him this fall? images picked up by commercials, they do affect who people vote for. >> chrystia in a brenwell from bryant university, go ahead, please. >> hi, my question is in reference to your the mandate and how you say it's educational for people to take into account polling. do you believe that that encourages group think or band wagoning, and if so as a nonpartisan group what do you do to try to deter that. >> if you sit together with friends over off coffee and talk about the individual mandate and get their opinions, well it is. we all are social animals. i'm a sociologist. we tend to like very much to compare ourselves with others,

and we like the opinions of others and we like to know how others think either on a small or large scale. that's how opinions are formed to some degree. none of us form opinions in isolation, none of us just sit in an isolation booth, remember the quiz shows, sat in the isolation booth and we're constantly bombarded with groups, so hearing a poll result is just another example, and i think again i have a lot of i guess i would say admiration for the average american to take all this into account and make the decision if they want to. so if a person studies the data on whether americans support or don't support the individual mandate and takes that into account in forming their own decision, i say more power to them. that's a legitimate input just like if a person went out to dinner with eight friends and all talked about the individual mandate. they say based on this

conversation i learned things that might change my opinion. >> linwood donaldson, you're next, linwood. >> i'd like to quickly return to refusal rates. i was wondering if you could give us like an average rate of refusal, and whether you believe that average would go up or down if you were to return to in-person polling. >> i'm not sure it would go up in in-person polling. put yourself in that and ask nair yo, somebody knocked at the door with a clipboard, i'd like to sit in your living room, which is what gallup used to do. we're constantly looking for other ways to do polling, one is the internet but that has its own problems and that's why we don't think that's appropriate for general population studies i should say more precisely. refusal rates are different components in terms of how you analyze them.

when a polling firm will start out with 100 phone numbers and call them, you could end up completing the interview with 10% or 20% of those so 80% of them either you never got hold of or they were busy or people said i don't want to do the interview and things along those lines. as i mentioned earlier refusal rates don't bother us in the industry as much as evidence of refusal bias. that's the key. do we have some evidence that those people who answer are different than those who don't and the current literature suggests that can vary from question to question. some questions it doesn't matter and others it could have a difference. you have to analyze it carefully. my position it's not just the generic refusal rate that matters but up to the researcher to say is there evidence that somehow refusal bias entered into the pattern of responses we got in this question or evidence that it didn't. >> steve dechere, you get the last question. go ahead, please.

>> mr. newport, you just mentioned always looking for new polling methods. my question is, with new polling methods especially the internet, how drastically do you think that could damage the credibility for a polling company like gallup, because of people maybe taking the poll two, three, four times or saying to their friends, hey, you should get on and take this poll, and just having a widespread data? >> well, that's up to us, as an industry. you know, what our goal is at gallup and in the industry, as i mentioned, is to say here is a sample which we purport accurately represents what we would have gotten, had we interviewed everybody in the country or here is a sample result that we think predicts a certain outcome. that's up to us in the industry and at gallup to maintain the standards that allow us to say that. in some instance, if ten years from now we're using the international polls and people are bombarding with as happens

often with a lot of like people trying to jam the numbers one way or the other, that would be up to us to know that was going on and to try to keep it from entering into our polls or we wouldn't release it. so we in an industry at gallup have to be vigilant that what we say, like today, this poll we think accurately represents what we would have received if we had interviewed everybody, we have to be vigilant we can continue to say that even if, as i'm sure if we're back here in ten years, that we're going to have new methods involved in trying to understand and analyze american public opinion. >> so let me conclude with this question as you look at where the country is today, between democrats and republicans, those who support the president, those who oppose the president, those who want change, those who like the change. how divided are we as a nation moving into the 2012 election? among those who are going to vote? >> very divide. are you asking who is going to win the election? >> i'm not going to ask that. it's too early. >> right now it's very close. we are divided. we're not strong in one way or

the other right now. we have more conservatives than liberals for example but when you put it all together i would say the nation is quite divided and therefore that means the outcome of the election next november could go either way. with that said there are indicators like the economy which are big predictors of it. look at obama's job approval rating, roughly speaking it's about even. we have about 47%, 46% of americans approve but almost that many say they disapprove so that's a key indicator of how split the public is at the moment on obama, and that's a pretty good indicator of the fact that the country is pretty well split in general. >> frank newport of the gallup organization, editor-in-chief, thank you very much for being with us. >> my pleasure. >> on behalf of the students we appreciate your time. >> my pleasure. >> thaul week in prime time on c-span3 we've been bringing you

american history events and tonight beginning at 8:00 eastern from our american artifacts series we travel to orange county, virginia, and james madison's montpelier and 8:30 p.m., old sturbridge village, massachusetts, depicting life. and at 9:00, gowns and white house china and learn more about the influential role of first ladies in presidential administrations. >> this weekend marks the anniversary of the bloodiest battle to be fought during the civil war. up to that point, the battle of shiloh, with almost 24,000 casualties and we'll tour the battlefield with chief park ranger stacy allen and sunday night at 7:00 the angel of the battlefield and founder of the red cross, clara barton, operated the missing soldier's office in a washington, d.c.,

boarding house until 186. join us as we rediscover the third floor office as it's prepared for renovations, this weekend on american history tv on c-span3. this saturday at noon eastern, on c-span2's book tv, join our live call-in program with distinguished former navy seal and author chris kyle, as he talks about his life, from professional rodeo rider to becoming the most lethal sniper in u.s. military history. at 10:00 p.m. on "afterwords." >> if you think of yourself as a family and think of yourself as a team, she says i got a raise it's like we got a raise, the family got a raise. she defined providing to include what her husband does and had a lot of respect for what her husband was doing. >> "the richer sex" author liza munday on how women breadwinners impacts the lives. also "america the beautiful"

director of pediatric neurosurgery at johns hopkins ben carson compares the decline of empires past with america and shares his thoughts on what should be done to avoid a similar fate, sunday at 3:30 p.m. book tv, every weekend on c-span2. the clinton global initiative hosted their fifth annual student summit in washington last weekend. the conference kicked things off with a discussion on the power of public service and civic engagement. founding chairman and 42nd president, bill clinton, moderated the panel, which included former secretary of state madeleine albright. the event was held on the campus of george washington university. >> thank you very much, and welcome to the fifth clinton global initiative university meeting. i thank you for being here tonight and i especially thank president knapp and the whole staff here at george washington

university, who have been so great to put this together. they've done a wonderful job. [ cheers and applause ] gw is the perfect host for this conference. more than 200 years ago, president george washington called for the establishment of a great university to forge citizen leaders. today the george washington university is the embodiment of that vision. under president knapp's leadership, university has established the center for civic engagement and public service to help develop the next generation of public service leaders and last year the steven and diane robinson knapp fellowship entrepreneurial service learning was established. fellowship inspired by the deep commitment to service and community engagement that gw students exhibit every week.

i'd also like to thank the sponsors who enabled us to have this meeting free of charge, for all attendees. the victor pinchuk foundation, the peter peterson foundation, microsoft, joan and irwin jacobs, peter kovler, the prospect fund and boos allen hamilton. thank you very much. [ applause ] tonight, there are more than 1,000 of you here, from more than 300 universities, more than 80 youth organizations, 82 nations, and all 50 states of the united states. you have already made 915 commitments to change your schools, your communities, and the lives of people across the world. you represent your generation, young people who have a greater ability to enact change than any

before you. in the past year, more than 30,000 students, faculty and administrators have become engaged in cegiu's commitment to action. as a result of the commitments in 2011 alone, more than 146,000 people have improved access to health care and social services. nearly 31,000 students have improved access to education, more than $1 million has been raised for scholarships, human theirian relieve, hospitals and other worthy endeavors. i am fortunate to see a lot of amazing examples of people taking this kind of action. this september we'll have the eighth annual meeting of the clinton global initiative, convening heads of states, ceos, non-profit directors, philanthropists from all across the world. they have in seven years made nearly 2,000 commitments, which

already have improved the lives of some 300 million people in 180 countries. both cgi and cgiu are global networks of people seeking to use the resources at your disposal to make a difference. but you have something they don't. more time, for one thing. all the years i was in politics, i loved it, but we spent most of our time arguing over two things, what are you going to do and how much money are you going to spend on it. you're going to cut taxes or put more money into education? what are you going to do and how much money are you going to spend on it. we didn't spend much time on the third question, which i think is the most important he request of the 21st century, which is whatever you propose to do and however much money you have or don't, how do you proproose to

it so you turn your good intentions into real changes in other people's lives. one one of the reasons i think we see so much innovation from college students, you don't have all that money so you have no choice but to think about the how question but if you think about it and implement it you might draw tons of money to it and really, over the last ten years or so, one of the most hopeful things about our future is that it is now possible to raise very large amounts of money in very small units. when the tsunami hit south asia, americans gave $1 billion. half of it over the internet. first time. and the median contribution was about $56. when the earthquake hit haiti, the americans gave $1 billion,

and the medimmediat median cont even smaller, you could not only give over the internet you could text the number of your favorite charity, the red cross or clinton haiti fund or whatever it was and immediately transfer $10. so when we recognize the commitments that are made here today, they are worthy in their own right, but some of them are capable of dramatic expansion or adoption or modification. creativity is really important. i'll just give a couple of examples of the commitments that have been made this year by you. christine chandler of duke will work to connect female engineering students with girls aged 14 to 17 for mentorship and

partnering to assemble low-cost medical devices for distributions to clinics in the developing world. she plans to implement this program in all 40 engineering world health chapters worldwide. why is this important? because only 14% of america's engineers are women, and only 15% of engineering students in our universities are women. it is well-known that the united states has a shortage in the so-called stem field, science, engineering, technology and mathematics. what is not so well-known is if we could abolish the difference between women and men in those fields, and the difference between station americans, european americans and americans of middle eastern decent and african americans and hispanic americans within a few years, our shortage would disappear. meanwhile we ought to give

immigrants more visas, i think. shirley cody of virginia tech is committed to replicating the hands for haiti model in order to increase employment and food security, she and her colleagues started a very successful egg laying facility in haiti and they want to take it to scale across the country. the country has a serious protein deficiency that can be remedied partly with chickens and eggs, whichever one comes first, and partly by growing their own fish in an environmentally and healthy, responsible manner. you're going to hear later about a student from vanderbilt university who is now graduated, who started a couple of years

ago a program to train offenders who had been sent to prison, and who were in half way houses, having been released from prison but not into society yet, so that they were employable in hoping to find jobs. this is a huge deal. people who go to prison and get out, which is more than 90% of the people who go to prison, are much less likely to become repeat offenders if they have jobs, and yet even though we say we're a people of second chances, and once you pay your debt to society, you're supposed to get one, the truth is that one of the first casualties of the budget crisis of the last few years have been the job training and job placement programs for former inmates. this is something that nearly every college or university in america could adopt. so again, i say don't be discouraged if what you're doing starts off helping a relatively small number of people, because if replicated or taken to scale,

it could change the future for a huge number of people. we are going to try to address these challenges step by step, knowing that, as my good friend, former governor of new york, mario cuomo used to say, in politics you campaign in poetry, but you govern in prose. the same thing is true of citizen service. you work in prose. you take one step and another step and another step and pretty soon you look around and you've walked several miles and a lot of people's lives are better as a result of it. i thank you for your commitment to take those steps. now i want to introduce our host, who has worked tirelessly to make education possible for thousands of students, the president of george washington, dr. steven knapp. he has, i want to tell you a little about him.

he has a long history of supporting students. he was a professor of english literature at the university of california at berkeley. [ cheers and applause ] dean of the college of arts and sciences at pro vost at johns hopkins university, up the road in baltimore. as president of george washington, he's made it a priority to increase student opportunities for public service. in order to be accessible and better serve the students here, he chose to take up residence on the campus, the first president of this university ever to do that. maybe he was just trying to avoid the well-known washington, d.c., traffic. [ laughter ] but it looked to me like he was trying to remain open to the students. he's made a lot of green renovation to the residence, demonstrating a strong commitment to sustainability, and trying to make the university a model for

sustainability. this kind of complete view of public service, how it permeates every decision he makes, makes president knapp not just a good president for the students of gw, but an inspiration to people everywhere. please welcome the president of george washington university, steven knapp. [ cheers and applause ] >> thank you. >> thank you, mr. president for that very kind introduction and above all, thank you for the inspiring leadership that has launched this extraordinary initiative. let's all recognize that leadership if we could. let's do that. [ applause ] ladies and gentlemen, it's truly an honor to host the fifth annual clinton global initiative

university and i'm pleased to acknowledge the presence of quite a number of distinguished guests, our distinguished panelists. we have a number of university trustees of our university who are present here, as well as our presidents ameritus, lloyd elliott and steven joel tracktonberg. above all i'm delighted to welcome the more than 1,000 students who successfully competed in this year's cgiu. as the president mentioned you come from some 82 countries, all 50 states of this united states. you represent some 300 colleges and universities. now, president clinton was very kind to mention the fact that the founding vision of our university goes all the way back to our namesake, who dreamed of university in our nation's capital that would educate the citizen leaders of the very new nation he helped to found. and we have preserved that mission except that now instead

of training citizen leaders just for our nation, we educate citizen leaders for the world, and at the core of that mission is a commitment to service. it's reflected in the way two years ago first lady michelle obama challenged us to perform 100,000 hours of service during the course of an academic year, we greatly appreciated that. for the third year in a row last year we sent more students through the peace corps and passed the 1,000 peace corps volunteer mark this past spring. for the past four years the number one employer of george washington graduates has been teach for america, but in fact, this generation of students is marked by a deep commitment to service, not just at gw, but worldwide. just to give you one statistic that was published in "the washington post," in 2010, more than 3 million students in the

united states alone, more than 3 million students volunteered more than 300 million hours of service. now two nights ago, we held a reception for gw students participating in or volunteering to support cgiu, and i was inspired by the variety and creativity of our students' commitments to action. they ranged from a plan to make bicycles out of bamboo -- [ cheers and applause ] -- panda bikes, an extremely inexpensive, sturdy and renewable material that would really make a difference in many parts of the world and in fact they're so inexpensive that this program will be able to donate one bicycle for every one it sells. they include a program using art therapy to prevent suicides among adolescents, in the iguali tribe of the lakota people. they include the collection of

unsold food from local restaurants for donation to d.c. homeless shelters. but in fact, we could multiply those examples a hundred-fold and you've heard many examples from the president a few moments ago so you realize how much imagination and dedication and creativity has gone into these commitments to action. i'd like to thank the clinton global initiative and the university's department of relations for setting up such a terrific weekend. i urge you all to take advantage of the activities we have in store for you, including the plenary and breakout sessions tomorrow, and the service project on sunday. and let me close simply by saying congratulations to all who were chosen to participate in this weekend's events. you are making a transformative difference in our world, and i hope you'll enjoy your time here at the george washington university. thank you. good luck to you. godspeed.

[ applause ] >> i'm going to begin as we always do, first with the announcement of two new commitments and i'd like to ask the people who made them to come forward. first, the commitment named pay it forward, dave lopez, undergraduate at illinois state, caroline shannon, shelby couch, underdwrad watt, christina lee, undergraduate at minnesota's twin city campus. these are involved in a group called students today, leaders forever. they are committing to create new you programs which will provide community service opportunities for young americans across the country. between september of 2010 and september of 2011, just under 25% of ameri