we ask that you delay a moment for the microphone to get to you. the floor is open. don't be shy. >> all right. why don't we start back here and then we'll get to you. >> in regard to america's military role particularly in the middle east, do you think the american public's patience is going to give out or do you think our ability to finance all of that will give out on us? what will happen first? >> well, i think in some ways that has a lot to do with energy. our core interests -- there's a couple core interests in the middle east. our alliance with israel but the need to have lots of troops there to have stability while that's generally in our interest, a lot of it has to do with our desire to have a secure

flow of oil. we are becoming more energy -- or less energy dependent on the middle east. we have new sources of production in north america, mexico, other sources of even oil in north america, russia, elsewhere and so we are beginning to find ourselves to be able to wean ourselves -- unfortunately we're not weaning ourselves off of oil entirely but we're less dependent on middle eastern oil. as long as our economy is reliant and will continue to be over the short-term on energy from the middle east, i think the american public will understand that the investments that we make, which we believe provide for stability and security, that energy supply are something that we can continue to have to do for the

short-term. i think this gentleman was next. >> i'm curious. there are scheduled cuts right now in the military that are coming up and the republican party seems a bit split on that in that some aren't too worried about the cuts and others don't want to see that. where do you think romney is going to come down on that issue? >> well, let's just get everything on the table here. so president obama part of his view about how the deficit should be handled has put down almost about half a million in cuts over the next ten years on the table. that's been worked into his budget plan. if you recall when we were having the debt limit debate around this time last summer, which nobody found particularly pleasant, what was eventually agreed upon was that if congress

did not cut and find another 1.2 trillion to cut from the budget over the next ten years, that automatic spending cuts in addition to what was in the budget already would go into effect and half would be on national security issues and half would be on domestic spending. and those cuts have not been made by the congress. you'll recall that the supercommittee that was created flopped. and therefore this automatic sequester is scheduled to be into effect in january. and that would mean an additional $500 million of cuts over the next ten years so combined with the ones that are already in the budget, that would be a trillion dollars. and actually there aren't very many democrats or republicans who are eager to see those cuts -- maybe strong anti-defense democrats and really strong budget hawks on the republicans but they are in the deep minority.

the problem is this is law. they are going to happen unless a budget deal of some sort is made and very few folks think that we're going to be able to do that before the election. so to what extent that becomes a campaign issue, i don't know. i mean, romney will say he's against the sequester from going into effect and we should make all of the cuts on the domestic side. at some point cutting means hitting medicare, health care spending, and medicaid and doesn't talk about that very much but that's going to come up. if you are for large increase in defense spending and you are for canceling even what obama has put on the table in terms of defense, that means that you are proposing medicare cuts. romney will swear that's not true. it's not a credible argument.

so if it comes up, i think that's what's going to come up. if you're not for any defense cuts and you're not for increased taxes, the only way to get spending under control as you say will be large scale cuts in medicare and that's how it will play out during the election. please go ahead. >> i wonder whether the issue of whether the war in iraq was a mistake will come up in the campaign or will people just try to forget about that? >> well, i think it could possibly come up. i think i tried to allude to some of those concepts in my talk where obama will try to paint romney as having supported all of the policies of george w.

bush and the iraq war was ultimately not seen as a failure and we led with honor and new iraqi government and relative stability although i will note that there was a recent bombing and so there are still problems in iraq. i don't know if we'll rehash it. i don't really think we rehashed it in the 2008 election. i don't think it will be a rehash but it will come up in terms of obama trying to link romney to what he would say are failed policies of the past. the gentleman in the gray shirt. >> i have two questions. one is a question of weakness from the left. when a lot of people possibly in this room believed that obama might be an anti-war president.

in 2008 they voted him because they expected peace and some people would argue that's not how he's governed. he's been active with drones and taking out bin laden in quite a brave manner. i wonder if that will weaken his position on the left. it's not that they would vote for romney but they wouldn't vote at all. that's one issue. second, and the weakness might resonate with those that believe that his economic policies have not been as friendly to the masses as people hoped and from the right, the big weakness i feel is the other side of being pragmatic is not having a clear vision and the two big threats in the world are pakistan and iran and possibly russia. i'm not sure how much progress he's made on any of those. one possibility and one thing that some republicans might say is he could have pushed more

aggressively within america and if you got to hold oil prices down to $60 a barrel, that would weaken russia and iran and others. >> there's a lot of questions there. let me see if i can at least get some of them. gas prices when they go up is always bad for incumbent president. bill clinton would talk about the relationship between the number of cents added to the gas prices and how it would impact his approval rating and thought there was a relation to that. fortunately for obama, some believe that gas prices will hit $5. they kind of peaked at four and are calming down and from obama's perspective, maybe that will continue throughout the

summer and we won't have extraordinarily high gas prices come november. i think that's an issue that really depends on where prices at the pump in 30 days before the election. you know, environmental versus domestic production is a classic democrat/republican issue. we have this argument frequent. obama's record on domestic production is pretty good. he'll say that he's increased domestic production over the course of his tenure. whether you're responsibility for it or not, you get credit for it if it happens. republicans will argue that's everything that bush did to improve new wells and open up new lands while he was president and obama got to take advantage of that. obama will argue that he's worked on domestic production and i think the fact that what i

outlined before canadian oil sands and new areas in mexico, we're less dependent on oil from our enemies and obama will make that argument and romney will make the republican typical arguments on energy. we need less reliance on oil from the middle east and russia. in terms of counterterrorism issues and the left and the idea that obama in 2008 ran as an anti-war president and hasn't fulfilled those promises. i think one problem obama has faced on one of those issues of what people thought is people attached to obama what they wanted to hear and didn't listen or were willing to look away to

other parts of his record they didn't find appealing. independents liked his talk about bringing the parties together and having a less confrontational idea of politics. didn't really, you know, listen with respect to a new health care plan and other things that weren't on the top of their agenda. i think with respect to the left and counterterrorism, when i listen to the obama campaign, he said very clearly that he would use force to go into pakistan to eliminate the terrorist threat. now maybe people on the left weren't listening to that part. to me he projected he was a president who would be willing to use force to deal with threats to our security. so what he's done is not

surprised me personal ly, and i don't agree with the criticism from the left about him not -- let's put it this way. him not taking steps toward making this a more peaceful world. obama did get our troops out of iraq. he escalated the war in afghanistan but against the will of the military and most of his advisers. he set a time line for that church to end and is drawing that conflict down. he has resorted to sanctions rather than the use of force to deal with the iranian nuclear program. so i guess i would counsel folks on the left who are disappointed

in the obama record to look at the totality of the issues and not just the things that maybe annoy you about the record over the last four years. please. >> i wonder if you would comment on the recent national security leaks both from the political aspect and then from truly from the national security perspective. >> sure. from a political perspective, i think republicans are as i said i think they are disappointed in some ways. they wanted to make this obama as a naive weak leader argument and here we have cyberwar, drone strikes, al qaeda leaders

getting knocked off every week, and obama conducting a covert action campaign that republicans would have been proud of under the bush administration. i think that frustrates them to a great degree, and the claim about leaks is a way to try to take some of the luster off of that. so that's the politics of that. i find it a little difficult to get too excited about this issue. dick cheney would go on "meet the press" and say things and argue that while since he had declassification authority whenever he said it, it meant it was no longer classified. there's a little bit of you protest too much with respect to that issue. now, that said, i work in the

government. i had a security clearance and i worked on legal cases where individuals had not fulfilled their obligations and that is a serious issue. having been a government servant, individuals take it under their own authority to believe what they think should or should not be in the public domain. i think we do keep too many secrets. we do classify too much. we have too many people entitled to have security clearances. i'm not one to believes in closed government. i feel strongly against this leaking and it is a prevalent part of our national security establishment and this is true both before and after obama.

can we get some ladies to ask some questions? we're over half of the electorate. we should hear from you. we'll go here. >> two questions. to what degree given there's at least in media a focus on what are called the swing states, to what degree do these issues resonate more or less in swing states and the second given that you talked about their campaigns and the possibility exists that the pacs may follow different directions, do you expect the pacs to follow the same directions in attack or in different manner? >> well, a lot of what i got in terms of trying to construct the romney narrative was from romney's speech and looking on his website and from an article that karl rove wrote about how to beat obama in one of the fall issues of foreign policy.

as you know karl rove is running one of those big pacs. i think in general the pacs are going to -- there's a symbolic relationship between them whether legal lines are crossed or not, i don't know. if you are going to see certain thematic things coming out of the romney campaign, you'll probably see them coming out of the super pacs. the super pacs may try something and if campaigns look and say that work well, you may see the campaigns following them. in terms of the specific foreign policy issues and having residents in certain states, yes, i think for sure. for example, you see trade and international trade policy being much bigger deal in the rust

belt than in the south or in the west. there's a big jewish vote in florida. there are more residents in florida and if new jersey becomes a swing state there. there are pockets of ethnic possibilities. for example, muslim vote is becoming stronger. that leads the domestic side more than national security so i didn't raise it so it is part and parcel with national security so immigration will be a big issue in this campaign. that's going to be discussed in a lot of the western swing states. woman in the pink. >> would you comment on syria and the relationship of russia

and our view from our side, i know we're watching it but could you just encapsulate that for us? >> it's a difficult situation. in terms of the campaign, which we're talking about now, the difference between the candidates i think so far is that romney has agreed with senator mccain that we should try to arm the opposition in syria to counteract and make it more of a fair fight with assad. the administration hasn't gone that far at least overtly. we don't know what they're doing covertly. syria, i think, the case has been clearly made that it is different than libya. number one, if you recall a number of years ago israel invaded syria and knocked out a nuclear project, which they believe was a nuclear weapon. after that, syria invested a great deal of money in

anti-aircraft defenses. after a day we were able to knock out what gadhafi had in libya, our ability to control the skies would require much longer and deeper investment. it would be more difficult to do without civilians. so it's not -- you know, if we wanted to try to use military force, and i think there are very few experts who believe that's a good idea at this point, would be more difficult and more costly. libya, also, is pretty clear both geographically and ideologically where the lines were being drawn between the opposition and the government forces. and in syria, the opposition is more diffuse, less organized and not as geographically identical bl, so that makes it harder to, you know, provide aid, safe

haven of corridors, even transfer weapons. there is concern in syria about some of the opposition being more in the direction of kind of fundamentalist extremists and so you'd be taking a lot of risks in providing advanced weaponry to them because then they might be used for terrorism possibly against israel or somehow make its way to the hezbollah or other groups. so i don't have any easy solutions. i think what is happening is that more and more pressure is going to be placed on russia to take a more responsible action here. maybe a possibility is that we have a non-assad regime that is still fairly pro-soviet. a successor regime that's put in place which maybe the opposition might not be happy with, but

we'll get assad out and maybe be a little bit more representative. maybe the russians could live with that if they were still able to sell arms and have its relationship. but i think in terms of what i've been talking about before, sure, it's easy to go and call russia your geopolitical foe and try to make hay out of that, but in the real world, the russians have power. whether we like it or not. they have a lot of energy. and so here's an instance where having a more positive relation with russia is potentially giving us maybe some leverage or some ability to engage in diplomacy to address this particular issue. yes? please. oh, one sec. we'll get to you next. gentleman here. no, go ahead. >> what decision do the candidates take on north korea?

>> i'm sorry, what position -- >> what position are they taking? >> they don't like north korea. i mean, i think the position on north korea has actually been fairly stable through what i would say the second bush administration, through obama. i mean, again, talk is cheap for the challenger. so he'll be able to say, you know, we have a growing threat against north korea and the president hasn't solved the problem. president bush couldn't solve the problem, either. our ability to influence the north koreans is very low. they have a huge amount of weaponry that they could use against the soul of south korea. so some sort of unilateral attack, or even if it was a strong western attack against a nuclear facility there would end up in a lot of lives lost in

south korea. so that's an option that none of the parties or presidents have felt was really on the table. so in many ways the only game in town is trying to get the koreans to the bargaining table and six-party talks. and a lot of that -- china has the strong leverage against the north koreans. what's happening in north korea now is the leadership transition. so in a autocratic closed state like this, what that new leader, new, young, inexperienced leader is very beholden to the military, very much in need of seeming strong to his domestic population. so you might see a lot of rhetorics and provocative actions that come out of north korea. but i don't really see a president romney or president obama doing much differently

about it. yes, please? >> the united states has an enormous federal debt. it's going to catch up with us. it caught up in germany, spain. what's going to happen? >> well, our debt problems are not as extreme as what are being faced in europe. in terms of what -- the way we look at things troo try to be able to compare apples to apples is our debt to gdp ratio. so how much is our debt compared to how big our economy is? obviously if you have a small economy, so that's what makes a difference. so our debt, which would be our total debt, which i think is approaching $16 trillion, that's our public debt. i believe -- you know, i could stand to be corrected but i

believe it's close to around 60% of our gdp. so right now what we're looking at in places like greece and ireland and spain is debt to gdp ratios that well exceed over 100%. and the feeling is that if we get to that point, that then we would be in a serious crisis. now, left untouched, leaving the defense budget growing at the rate it's growing, leaving the expansion of the medicare, especially, is going to explode in the next couple years as the medical care keeps getting more expensive and baby boomers, who are now, you know, in their 60s and still pretty healthy in 15, 20 years they're going to be 80 and not as healthy. and there's a big -- there's a lot of them. even social security is flipping in terms of it not bringing in as much in contributions.

so the explosion can really come in the next maybe 15 years from now when our debt to gdp ratio would start approaching over 100% and get into a danger zone. so we have a short term debt problem which is we're running $1 trillion deficits every year. we have a medium term one, and then we have a long term. so it's very clear that every person involved in this says, and says we need to take action on our long-term debt. we need to bring the trajectory of our spending down. and then there's a big debate about whether we need to bring our rate of taxation up to meet that. so what's going to happen in november after the election, and i guess it's really january 1st where it happens is taxmeggedon and the sequester we were

discussing. so the sequester will take $1.2 trillion of spending out of the economy and taxmeggedon, which is the expiration of all the bush, obama, bush extended by obama tax cuts, which i think over ten years if you take the totality of them, and nobody thinks that all of them will go back to the way they were in 2001, but we're talking about $5 trillion of savings over 10 years if all those tax rates revert. so $5 trillion more taxes, another $1.2 trillion in spending sucked out of the economy. people believe that that could put us into another recession. so there will be a tremendous incentive, especially once the election is over, for some sort of political deal to be made between the parties. and i think both parties are waiting to see who will be president so they will know what their relative bargaining strength is going to be.

obviously if romney wins and the republicans hold on to the house, then the final plan is going to be more spending, domestic spending cuts, and less taxes. if obama wins, it will be tilted with more taxes, more defense cuts, and a little bit less on the medicare spending. but i do believe there will be something because under current law things are unsustainable in the long term and everybody knows that. >> we have time for one more question. >> i believe this might be a former student, so i'm now worried. >> that is correct. you mention that obama may benefit from the perception of being on the right