because of circumstances. i'm proud of my service, i'm proud that i am an american. and i'm proud that i could do what i did to keep us a free people. thank you very much. >>. [ applause ] >> i guess its my turn now, i'll try to be a little bit shorter than woody. where i grew up, i grew up at the end of world war ii, my father was in the navy, he served in world war 2. he taught me the values that i grew up with and i lived by. and he taught me respect in the love of this country, and what it stands for. though as i was a child, we were no longer engaged in a conflict

situation, until korea started, i can remember as a young child in school, we would do air raid drills, which meant every time i a siren went off we crawled under our desk. what good that was going to do, i don't know, but that was the way you would defend yourself. but we really didn't have much concern about a conflict, korea started happening while i was in junior high school and i had actually pretty much had ended by then, i had some teachers that served in korea who were also instilled in us a great respect for the freedoms that we have. and i had always intended to serve this country, i was brought up to believe that we should at least give back

sometime to our country for everything that it's given us. and i did intend to serve. as i went on in schooling, of course the vietnam war happened, vietnam conflict, excuse me, it never was a war. can't quite understand that either. but we knew at that time that we were probably going to have to serve. it was a draft type situation back then. there were a lot of volunteers as well, certainly, but draft boards pretty much controlled who was going into the service and if you were a student, you were pretty much exempt. when you graduated from college, that exemption ended depending on the board. so i knew i was going to go in and i intended to serve, you know, i wanted to go into the navy, i wanted to fly airplanes. so i enlisted. and the -- my experience in the

service had been one of the most rewarding opportunities i ever had, and i was appreciative to be serving in some way. but the things that helped form those opinions were some of the back grounds that i got through my, not only through my family, but through the various people that i met as i was glowing up. so i wasn't quite in the same classes as woody was, world war ii was probably the war that kept us from speaking another language. the conflicts i was involved in were more or less sustaining actions to try and keep other countries from being overrun or keeping them from becoming democratic type countries. but i fully intended to serve and i went in actually, i

volunteered and went in after my college education. and i was proud and still am proud to be a person who served for the great country that we live in. thank you. [ applause ] >> growing up, i grew up in northern california, where i was born and raised. and i had a history of family service, my grand father was a world war ii, was on the beaches of normandy, battle of the bulge, my father served in vietnam, both my older brothers served in the military. so from an early age i knew it w wasn't a prerequisite to be a part of my family that i was going to serve, it just felt natural.

al to listen to my father talk and my grand father talk and my brothers talk with such pride of their comrades they served with, their battle buddies and growing up in this northern california town, it wasn't very big, i like to brag, i'll use a soccer ball to -- i got to graduate the top 14 of my high school class, of the 15 kids that went there and like woody, i didn't want to milk cows anymore or stack hay, so i joined, one as a sense of, you know, family honor, two to get away, to expand any horizons, to travel the world, to go see other things. and i very quickly realized that i joined for one thing, but i ended up serving for another, and that was for my battle brothers to my left and right,

that was for, as soon as i joined the military, it was 1989, but my first duty station was germany and within the first week after arriving there in germany, i got shipped off because my unit was already deployed to kosovo, i got to see firsthand what a country looked like with no freedom, a country that we had to do military escorts for them to get groceries and fueled so they wouldn't get captured and killed in mass genocide, stuff i took for granted as a punk 17, 18-year-old kid, stuff that simple that i have seen afternoon the world isn't given freely, isn't available to everyone. and that's why i actually ended up serving. i was going to do three years, get my family stamp, call it a day, figure out what i was going to do with the rest of my life and continue on. and shortly three years turned into six, six turned into nine

and nine turned almost 12 before i finally got out of the military. it's the sense of pride and the sense of honor to understand that the sacrifice set before me, with these great gentlemen here with with all those who had conserved, it was the least i could do to pay back in gift that i received at no cost, just for being born in this country and i'm so appreciative of it. that's what motivated me to not just join, but to actually serve. >> there certainly is a common thread of heroism in the citations that we heard at the front end and there's certain themes from the comment tear, but we've got three separate wars, as mentioned, separated by decades and in fact three separate services. if you wouldn't mind, take a

moment to reflect on your military training, the experiences you had before going into combat and how that prepared you. >> in my day, growing up and there's some here that can fit this picture too. discipline in the home existed. my father died when i was 9. so i was raised by brothers. i was the last of the litter so i was a runt and i was raised by brothers. when i went into the marine corps, discipline was not a problem for me, because i had

lived under that kind of displain at home, so that wasn't a problem. but the thing that i learned in the marine corps, was that the other guy, the other guy besides you on your right and left is also going to be responsible for you and you for them. i had never had that before. i had never ungd, evening with brother brothers if a brother got into a fight, it was up to him to win his own fight, i'm not going to help him. if he gets beat up, he gets beat up. so that was a complete change to me, that i had to be responsible for that guy on my right and left. but that in the long run is really what saved me.

in my citation, had i written that, it would have been a newspaper long. they didn't ask mefully questions, they didn't ask me to write my own citation, i'm thankful for that. but in there, there's one word, he went forward along. now if i had been writing that citation, i would never have put that in there, because i truly was never alone. i had marines around me that were just as concerned about my life as i was about their live. and i have said since day two, day one, i was so scared i couldn't even talk. but day two, i did get my voice back. and i said since day two. that that medal that i wear does not belong to me.

it belongs specifically to two of those four marines who gave their lives protecting mine. so when i wear the medal, i never wear it for what i did. i was only do a job for which the marine corps had trained me to do. they did more than that. they gave their lives. so i can never repay what i owe. thank you. >> sir. it's hard to keep up with him. >> v. >> it's interesting to hear how your up bringing prepared you

for military service. i don't think you can be prepared for military service, you knew a little bit about what it was like to serve in the military. but you had no idea. i had discipline in my family, like woodys did from the world war ii time frame, you learned to be respectful, you learn to be disciplined and do what you're told, and you had your jobs and duties to do. and you did it, like woody said to the best of your ability. i don't know if any of that prepared me for the expose your i had when i went into the military. i think later we're going to be talking about combat training. but when i first went into the military, like i said, i went into the flight program and for those of you that go into that,

you're a new kid on the block and you come into a indoctrination program, and all of a sudden, guess who runs that program, is marines. that's an eye opener right there. that introduces you to the military. but as far as being trained ahead of time to serve in the military, i didn't have any exposure to that other than stories i would hear when my father would speak of his service, which he didn't do very often. most of the people from that era didn't talk much about what their service was, they served, they came back, they lived their lives and that was it. so, you know, i was kind of unprepared for what i was going to experience when i went into the military, so it was a whole

new exposure for me. but like woody said, i was very proud to serve this country. and i can't -- i can't thank enough the experiences that i had in the military and what they did for me in my later life. and i'm extremely grateful that i had that opportunity and served with the people that i served with, because each and every one of them, we all looked out for each other and you can't -- when you get in combat, the people around you become closer to you than your family. and it's an incredible brotherhood that you are part of and join. and it is something that is rarely experienced elsewhere.

but as far as being prepared for it before i went into it. i really wasn't, i just kind of went into it blind and made the best of it as i could. so -- plausz applause. >> kind of growing up for me, like i said, i did have a lot of tradition of service in my family. i really reflect back to my grandfather who taught me so many great life lessons, he always told me, when you tell somebody you're going to do something, you do it. don't talk a lot because when you do say something, people will listen. it was kind of establishing values and not priorities because values are always constant and priorities can always change, kind of helped me along the way.

i graduated high school when i was still system and like i said, i didn't really want to stick around that summer and continue to milk cows, so i told my dad i was going to join the army, and he told me right off the bat if you're going to do it, at least pick a job that's not combat mos, be an x ray tech or something. and i said, all right, well, i'll think about it and then i went down to the recruiter, talked to him, came back and told my dad that i wanted to be on the harbor branch and be on tanks. and he looked at me and said, it mig might be next year, might about the year after that, but we were basically at peace. i will not sign for you to go into the military at 17, your

nation will call upon you to do something that will stick with you the rest of your life. before you make that commitment, make sure you understand this, when you turn 18 and an adult in the eyes of the law, you can make that decision on your own. as soon as i turned 18, the next day i signed up and shipped off shortly afterwards. but i always kept that in the bang of my mind. because like i said, when i did join in '99, kosovo was the big deployment. the war on terror wasn't really thought of in the main stream eyes. and i carried that with me a long ways through the service. nothing will prepare you for what you're going to truly experience when it comes to your first time in basic or boot camp or the first time you do ship to a foreign land that you have never heard of on the map, but to have those values established, to have that base, that foundation that starts off

with everything else, i felt really gave me a competitive advantage going forward in life. [ applause ] >> thank you, gentlemen, you help us see through a window that many of us can relate to, which is life prior to the army or navy or marine corps, you have helped us see through a window that many of us here can kind of see through, which is the preparation, once you've gotten into the service, i would ask that you help us understand that we're not going to see through this window, obviously, but help us understand what you are thinking about in combat, perhaps specifically in the events surrounding the citation that was read, or anything in combat, generally, to understand the process, the mindset

required in extreme situations, such as the three obviously that you were involved in, sir. >> leadership is a difficult thing to really define. in my own case, i have to go back to my childhood, that when i was told i had to do something, then i couldn't depend on someone else to do it for me, it depended on me. and if i didn't do it correctly, then to the satisfaction of the brother that was supervising the

farm, was do it the best that you could. when i got into the marine corps, they emphasized very strongly, at least in my boot camp,a you never know when you may have to take over a situation and whether you have two stripes on your sleeve or captain bars on your shoulder, when those circumstances occur, you have got to step into the breach. it's -- they're going to depend upon you. the day that my commanding officer captain beck asked me if i could do anything about the pill boxes that had us stalled, we had lost most of our marines in my company.

we had lost all but two of our officers, we had sergeants operating as squad leaders and platoon sergeants and corporals acting as squad leaders and section leaders because at that moment in time, somebody had to step in the breach and do something. and that day, when we were gathered in that great big shell crater, that an nco meeting, i'm a corporal, i'm not supposed to be at an nco meeting, corporals are just little less than a private. i wasn't supposed to be there, i was not classified as an nco officer. but i was told i would be there because i had a unit, when i hit the beach at iwo jima, i had six

in my ---six demolition operators, we were trained to either blow it or a ---so i am it, i'm the only flame thrower demolition expert in my company, and when he asked me today, could i do something about those pill boxes that had us stopped, i had to step in to a leadership position. and i had no idea what i said, others said later, after the campaign was over and we got back to guam, somebody said my response to the captain was i'll try. i don't know what i said. but when he assigned those four marines to me that was read in

the citation, they became my responsibility. and had i backed off, had i not followed through with whatever little bit of leadership i had, you would have never heard of woody williams. so whether it is engrained in us, but i think everyone had within us in a moments of time when it's very important that we do something for somebody else, 99.9% will do it. if that's leadership, then thank god. [ applause ]

>> a question of leadership is, you know, can be defined in many, many ways. if you take it down to minute actions or to events that you were involved in, you make decisions -- you evaluate that and hopefully you have enough good judgment and common sense to make the correct decision on how to handle the situation that you're faced with. in combat, some of these decisions are made instantaneously, and they need to be. you're trained, you go through an enormous amount of training before you ever deploy. your people are with you, particularly in my situation, i

had an extremely well trained unit that i was part of. all of them are very, very capable people, all of them could be leaders. they were just exceptional units when i -- or individuals when i deployed. and i had been in many, many battles and conflicts. during my tours overseas. when think particular mission happened, i didn't get selected for this mission because i was anybody's special, they didn't say, geez, this is the only guy that can do it. but in essence, i was the only guy left. this was at the time frame that the north vietnamese were overrunning south vietnamese country. it's called easter offensive and the only thing that we had to combat them was airpower. and as a result of that,

electronic planes got shot down. of the six-man crew, there was only one survivor, and over the course of eight days, both the army and air force tried to extract those people, it cost them 14 lives, two people captured, lost eight aircraft and they got to a position where they couldn't continue that rescue mission, and ground effort was suggested and at the time the units that were going to run that, i mean i was the only s.e.a.l. advisor that was still in country and could run the mission. you don't really even know what you're walking into, all i knew was that we had three pilots that were on the ground and needed to be rescued and we have

an oncoming north vietnamese offensive pushing into south vietnam, had no idea how many were there. found out later that because of the action of another marine, a fellow by the name of ripley, who blew up a bridge, which was one of the few bridges that the armored units could use to cross the river, neogang river, actually, he destroyed it. that left one other bridge available which was where all these pilots were shot down, and that put all those north vietnamese forces right in the middle of where i was going. i didn't know it at the time, i later found out there was over 30,000 north vietnamese there, i knew there was a bundle because i moved through them every night.

we had a get them out of there because there was no other way to do that. and that's what drives you to perform your operations, heroism is kind of a strange word, i don't -- none of us here believe we were heroes, none of us here believe that we did anything extraordinary. we did we did what we had been trained to do. we certainly don't wear the medal for ourselves. we wear it for those who can't. for all those who served, for those who gave their life in that service. sure, you know, you're not -- you don't ever consider yourself a hero. if you were successful in a

certain mission and somewhere later down the chain, somebody thinks, geez, we've got to reword this guy, you don't go after that reward. sometimes you get it whether you want it or not. but it just happens. you do what you'd been trained to do and thankfully, i was successful enough to be able to rescue those folks. but it's not something that you can train or prepare for. you do your job the best you can and that's all most of us do when we serve. we do the best job we can. and that's pretty much what happened in my situation. >> tommy said it quite well there.

i mean, there's no real training that will prepare you exactly for one particular scenario. the training you receive, though, does give you that good foundation and base line to build off from. the thing i've always noticed, though, is the best experience or the best training woes experience and relaying on that, relying on the guys around you that have been there and done that before. for us, that day before we were going to afghanistan, sergeant kurt was just in that same area, less than eight months beforehand. and you can watch all the powerpoint presentations you want, and all the s2 briefs you want. they don't give it any justice until you get boots on the ground and see it firsthand. we had sergeant kurt who was there for that and we adjusted some of our training to counter that, teaching guys how to do angle fire or shooting straight up and down mountains. but that day, you know, the thought process, i don't know if

i'm slow or not, but i don't remember thinking a whole lot that day. it was a 13-hour firefight, and i don't remember have many times i was actually thinking more than i was feeling. feeling the need to do my job, because i knew my battle buddies around me were doing theirs. feeling the need to continue to push, no matter what the odds were. feeling the need to, you know, and i hope you guys can agree with me, and as you hear these citations, the medal isn't given out off of body count. it's not a status of who killed more that day or who didn't. you look at every one of these citations, we were doing it to save a life. to protect our brothers. to do it because we didn't hate the enemy in front of us. we did it because we loved the men to our left and right and our families that support behind us. that's what motivated the the overall trend of that loyalty will get you so far. that duty will get you guys to accomplish a mission, but

loyalty will get them to follow you anywhere. and that day when i walked into the barracks to ask for that group of volunteers, in the midst of getting overran, to come up with a harebrain idea of, let's counterattack. who counterattacks when you're getting overran. and five guys without hesitation stood up. i wouldn't have done it. at least, i can't imagine if someone ran into a barracks like that and asked for volunteers that i would go. these five guys, no hesitation said, we'll follow you anywhere. because we knew we had guys that are stranded, that were overran and isolated is. and if we were out there, the rest of them would have came and got us. and it was the least we could do to repay them back. just that loyalty to each other, not doing anything more than any other soldier would have done that day, to understand that to

save a life, the love for your fellow man is way more powerful and way more motivating than hate toward an enemy. [ applause ] >> gentleman, before we throw this open to questions from the audience, one more thing i want to ask of you. as you look around, there's a lot of young people in the audience. high school level, certainly a lot of midshipmen have joined us today. if you could share something to build on, some of the nuggets that you've already shared with us, to help them prepare for the service ahead of them, the sacrifices that they'll make in their careers, of whatever stripe they have, what would be that nugget you would share with the next generation? >> i guess i would go back to my schoolteacher.

pay attention! i have said many times, i don't think i've ever had an original thought in my life. but i did this morning. there is a miracle still happening in the world. i came up with an original thought. we even googled it, and we can't find anybody who has had this same original thought. so i think i'm safe. if google doesn't have it, it doesn't exist. do the vice, pay the price. do the vice, pay the price.

i guess my advice would be, basically, pick a good role model. somebody that has been successful in their life. you don't want to be like them. i don't mean that. but that individual had something that you could build on and some basis in which you can pattern your life. we have a 400-bed prison within four miles of my house. there are 650 people in the 400-bed prison. and as i talk to you around the country, do not pattern your

life after a failure. if you do, you are going to fail. and those individuals do not make good role models. so don't follow their pattern, follow that individual who has been successful. because they have characteristics, they have integrity. they have a basis, a ground from which they build and you can build on that very same ground. so i'll say again, pay attention.

>> it's kind of an interesting question. a nugget of information that would help people be successful in your careers. i don't think there's any one nugget that you can throw out there. i think, probably, the thing that always helped me was, i always strove to do the best job that i possibly could. i did listen, i did pay attention. sometimes i ignored it, but, but i evaluated and i made decisions which i thought were -- would help me or help the group i was with to perform the job successfully. i remember when i was in school, in high school, there was a coach that we had, it wasn't mine, but he was a great basketball coach, as a matter of fact, john wooden, and wooden had a couple of sayings that

were very -- impressed me by quite a bit. one was, be more respectful of your character than your reputation. because your character is who you really are. your reputation is what people think you are. and that's kind of stuck with me. and the other thing he had was, winning the game is a result of the rest of the team, not an individual. and that is so true. to be sure that your team is -- you're not going to do things by yourself. you're going to need people to assist you and help you. and when you're in combat, it's the guy beside you, on either side. and you depend on them to do their job. if they believe in the same

desire to perform the best they can, you're going to come out ahead. and i always try to use those guidelines when i was going through some of the trials that you go through in life. and they all served me successfully. and that's what i would try to impart upon you. but i'll tell you, i can't thank the military enough for allowing me to serve for it, because it was an incredible opportunity for me, to gain the wisdom and the experiences that later helped me live through the rest of my life and to all of you that are, you know, now in the service or just starting out, it's a great career. enjoy it and make the best of

it. and thank god we have people today that in this country that volunteer to serve and to keep us free and my hats off to you and thank you so much for that. >> kind of my experience with some of the best officers i ever had as an nco were the officers that came into the platoon and would straight admit, i don't know what the hell i'm doing, and would listen to the experience of the guys around them, for the midshipmen that will be out in our fleets pretty soon, you know, i'm not a fortune teller by no means, but it does look like we are starting to draw down some of our combat experience. and that experience is going to get hard to come by very quickly, and let's not waste the opportunity or pass up the opportunity to pick those guys

brains before they're gone, they're no longer available to do that. like i said, i always thought experience was one of the best tools ever. because you never know what you're going to experience in life until you experience, and you never know -- you're never going to know how you react to it until it does happen. it's as simple as that. and to understand that, you know, don't just make yourself better, but make those around you better. you can be the best at everything you do, but if you're around people that are struggling and do nothing to assist them, the team is weak overall. and a very strong team will beat an individual any day of the week, hands down. it's a proven fact time and time again. that's really, really true. and that's the things i would just like to pass on.

is something as simple as that. >> you know, as a young recruit at paris island, a balance commander i'm sorry, and also a medal of honor recipient named james liveston, who was very found of saying that honor and bravery are passed from one generation to another, and i don't think that i've ever actually seen it on display or could have imagined it on display quite this way, whether that be 1945, 1992, 2009, we get this feeling of the theme that carries down through the decades. and also, once again emphasizes how unique experiences is and how privileged i personally feel. i think we all are, for all of that. so with that in mind, i would like to open it up to questions. we have microphones and some folks delivering microphones.

so right here's one. there's a mic, if you don't mind, please. >> how did you deal with the bridge between your father joining the military? >> there really wasn't friction there, more than just the -- more of a concern of, you know, he had been there, he had been through combat, and it's something you don't understand until you're there. and that was him being a father. i can't thank him enough for giving me that advice. i wouldn't change a damn thing, hands down, i wouldn't. but to understand that he cared enough about me to pass on that from his generation to mine. and i will continue to pass on that to my children, if any one

of them come and ask me, you know, dad, i'm going to serve, i'm going to tell them the same thing. you're going to be asked to go and do things you'll never forget and you don't have to do it. we are a volunteer army. and less than half a percent of this nation serves right now. and it's a beautiful thing to watch that. but i'm hoping that i can instill the values that my family did in me, into my children, because one day of combat isn't defining my life. my life will be defined when my children grow up and they're successful and they continue on. >> thank you. >> down here. >> gentleman, in all of your actions and i'm just so curious how you managed to overcome the fear and feeling of self-preservation and that i know most of us feel in the circumstances you've

experienced. >> who would like to take that? >> first firefight does that. you get -- you train and you train and you train and you're exceptionally well trained by the time you go into combat. but, like i just said, you can't explain what combat is like until you've been in one. you don't have time to be frugal. you're too busy trying to stay alive and keep your people alive that you -- fear is not a factor until maybe you get back afterwards and have a beer and think, how'd i get out of that? you know, it's a -- you're reacting to a situation and you react the way you create. and you're depending on your teammates to do the same.

and fear doesn't enter into it. you don't really have time to be fearful. you're too busy trying to save the situation you're in or the people that are around you that need assistance that fear is not a factor. and i've seen fear. well, let's put it this way. when i was -- during that rescue mission, we got mortared and rocketed every day. and there was a 20-man unit, vietnamese unit there, that was supposed to be a guard force, but they were under orders to leave whenever they felt unsecure. and the first day we got mortared and rocketed and we lost half of that. they just froze. they could not perform. they were seeing their buddies blown away and they could not

function. so myself and my -- the other vietnamese officer that was with me, he just went around and started throwing -- trying to get them up and return fire, get them, return fire from where we were taking the assault from. and then started getting bodies and triaging people and throwing them into cover and trying to get these guys thinking. we've got to fight. my guys were ready to do that. because we'd been trained to do it. but i've seen it. but it never happened with the units that i was part of. because you don't have time to think about that. you have time to think about and react to the situation and that's what you do. so i hope that answers your question. you got anything else? >> could i add to that?

>> sure. why do -- why don't we use 65-year-old men to fight wars? >> good idea! if we did, we probably would never win one. at 21 years of age, you're invincible, number one. number two, you have been pr training to perform. and automation, we had automation in world war ii, not quite as much as we have today, but we had automation because automatically, you'r training took over. and i attribute my accomplishment totally to my training. if i had stopped and thought, hey, if i try and walk out that pill box, other people might kill me, i wouldn't have gone. heck, let somebody else go do

that. so my training took over. automation took over and i began doing that for which i had been trained. so, that's my answer to winning and it's got to be done by young people. once we reach a certain age, our caution, our preservation takes over. and we begin to rationalize. hey, i'm not going to do that. i wouldn't do today what i did then. i'll guarantee you. >> you know, just to add a little more to that, it's -- you know, it's like anything you do in life. the second you think, i can't do that, i'm going to fail, i'm going to lose, if that thought enters your mind before you even start the mission or take on the

task, you've already lost right there. you can haven't doubt in your heart. you can't have, you know, fear in your mind. it's not healthy, it's not helping. so why even put that negative thought there? hey, we are the greatest fighting force in the world. we are the movers and doers. there's no obstacle that's going to get in our way. we're always going to win. we're always going to overcome the greatest of odds. and you've got to have that first and foremost in your mind, wherever you tackle on any task. >> commander? >> good morning. i took a few notes so i don't completely mess up my question, but just listening to you all, whether you're wearing the metals around your neck or not, you represent what's best of america and it's been an absolute honor to listen to you, so thank you. some of the things i was hearing from all of you, you learned your patriotism from your

teachers, you said that, values over priorities. if you look in the media today, i guess i'm looking more towards the future. the opening speaker said if we don't learn our history, we're doomed to repeat it. and if you look in the media these days, you're seeing that the american flag is not allowed to be shown in apartment complexes at schools, the pledge of allegiance, people are fighting saying that, the "under god," there are high school students in colorado that are actually walking out of class, protesting a patriotic history curriculum. so i guess learning from your history and your experience, where do you see america going? do you think we're losing the values that have made us great? do you think that we're in danger to call our enemies who they are and to take the fight to them and if you do see us going there, how do we get that back? >> great question. >> i'll take that.

>> you know, you always see a cycle in democracy, of tyranny followed by revolution, followed by prosperity, followed by overabundance and back into tyranny. in my opinion, i think we're on the verge of overabundance right now. we've had life too easy for too long. and we've gotten in a comfort zone and we're, as a country, we've forgotten our values, greatly. we're teaching priorities to kids. we're teaching that there are no winners and losers. everyone gets a damned trophy. but i'll tell you what, life isn't fair. there are winners and losers. you can have the best of everything in life and bad crap will still happen. and we need to make sure we continue to teach this lesson to our youth, because our youth is going to carry this message forward. they're going to continue with it and carry it on. and it starts in our families, to teach our children, don't rely on your teachers at school. it's not -- i mean, yeah, you send your kids off to school for

18 years of your life, or however long you go to school, i wai barely graduated so i forgot. but it needs to be us as an individual, as a family unit, to bring those values back to our children. and then continue to push that. because it's by the education of our youth to never forget the sacrifice of what was given beforehand. for the benefits we reap now, that are just being forgotten. but there's not enough skin if the game, it seems, that everyone forgets. just not too many years ago, the sacrifices at iwo jima, guys in vietnam, you know, this is paid in blood, sweat, and tears, this america we live in today. and we can never forget that and we must, we must teach our children that. >> i agree. [ applause ]

i think a lot of it comes to teaching our kids what this country has gone through to be the country that we are. and yes, you do see examples of what seems to be unpatriotic activities and unfortunately, they get the news media. i don't know that our whole country is like that. where i live, i don't see much of that at all. and we still have, thankfully, people that volunteer to fight for our country. the sad thing is, the small numbers, referred to it as like 1% of our country, to serve for it. that's sad. that is really sad. but why is that? is it that we do live too well?

that we don't experience or see what it's like not to have the things that we enjoy? another statement that clint made, when he was overseas the first time he'd been to a third world country, what it was like to live in a third world country. every american should see what it's like to live in a third world country. to realize the benefits and the freedoms that we enjoy. but we get more moved away from that. and sometimes i think we think, it can't happen to us. and that's not what reality is. it can happen to us. and we need to reeducate our future kids, men and women in that mind-set. but it needs to come. it's not only going to come from

their friends and their classmates, but from their parents. and if their parents don't believe it and try to instill that in their kids, who's going to? and i think that's probably where our -- where it needs to start. and thankfully, there are those that already are on board and volunteer to serve and to sacrifice. but it should be this whole country that does. and i think that's where we need to start, is in the homes. [ applause ] >> let me say, i don't have a high iq. in fact, i'm not even sure i can find it. but i do feel, maybe this is

egotistical, that god blessed me with a little bit of common sense, which i think we have lost in this country. we have lost our common sense. i believe we become what we're taught. the principle difference between the japanese and the american in the pacific, i can't speak for germany, because i was not over there, but the principle difference between the japanese and the americans in the pacific was, our belief was, we want to survive. and we're going to do whatever we possibly can do in order to preserve that life. their belief was, it was an honor to die for the emperor. which made us total conflict and

even though we would try to preserve them, to treat them, to save them, that isn't what they wanted. because to save them and become a prisoner of war was one of the most disgraceful things that could happen to them. that was their culture. that's what they were taught. and if we in this country do not get back to the basics and teach what our nation has stood for all of these many years and that there are values that you never forsake, you never give up, unless we get back there, i do have fear, it won't come in my time, i've maybe got ten more

years, i'm trying to reach it, but i don't think i'm going to make it, but in a few years, we will lose our very basic values of love for one another, helping one another, and surviving. i believe that. >> do we have time for one more? midshipman, you've got the honor of the last question. >> gentleman, what were your prospectives like immediately following your medal of honor experiences? did you stay in your service and why and how did you eventually have a chance to leave your service? >> i can do that one. that's easy for me. i was already retired.

i was wounded fairly severely about six months after the operation, in an operation up in the north vietnam. got shot up recovering my guys in a firefight and i had five guys. the others, i had a another s.e.a.l. with me who rescued me, he received a medal of honor for that action. but i'm a nice guy. everywhere i went they shot at me. i don't understand that. but at any rate, the navy retired me as a result of those injuries. thank goodness we now evaluate people who have been injured and wounded and give them the opportunity to stay in if they want to. but -- so i was retired when i received my award. if -- the question of how it affected me after that is -- was that part of your question?

you know, wearing this medal is i think more difficult than it was to receive it or earn it. you do your job to earn it, but, wearing it is, people put you on a pedestal. people think that you're somebody special. and you don't feel that way at all. you're humbled. you're -- you don't feel that you should be placed in that position, but you're very proud to have been presented it. and it certainly opens a lot of doors that you otherwise would never have had open to you. certainly wouldn't be sitting in front of you if i didn't have

it. and it opens a lot of opportunities that you have to utilize those and remember that you're a representative of -- excuse me, of this country. and those in uniform that have served this country. and what you do and the choices you make reflect upon that. because people look at you as an example. you need to have a very careful about the actions you take and what you do. so it was -- it's both a wonderful benefit to be able to wear that honor. but it also has a lot of responsibility that goes it.

and it's something that you need to always remember. this medal doesn't represent you. it represents all those that served and gave their lives in serving this country. so it's quite is a responsibility to carry, believe me. but it's quite -- it's an honor and you're -- as much as it sometimes becomes a burden, it's also a responsibility and you only hope that you can carry it with honor and with dignity. [ applause ]

>> i'm going to be last. >> you're not 35 anymore? >> for me, i was going to get out of the military or before i even went on my last deployment to afghanistan. me and my wife decided that we'd done enough, it was time to grow up and figure out what i was really going to do with my life. the decision was already made before even going overseas and immediately, after that day, the thoughts were never, you know, i did something to receive something. my big thing was to make sure that the guys with me got acknowledged, and more importantly, i was proud of that moment walking into the barracks and having five guys volunteer to go on a counterattack, while i was so impressed with the true

grit and just the willing bs to continue on. because we had nine more months left in country after that day. it wasn't you get done and get a free ride back to the states. you have to pick up the pieces. and to watch my platoon reconstitute after so much loss and recorporate after the replacement guys and bring them into the fold just like kicker and mace and heart, and take them and have them step right into their shoes and finish the mission and when i got out in early 2011, i had no idea. it wasn't until almost a year later that i had gotten a call from a colonel out of the pentagon, asking if i'd come

back to d.c., i don't have enough vacation days, i'm not going anywhere. and what did i do wrong? to finally being brought out to understand what my actions were, were getting recognized with but like tommy said, it is a responsibility to wear this little blue ribbon of silk around your neck. just the caretaker of it. this represents every man and, every marine, airman, sailer, coast guard, air force, every aspect of our military. past, present, and future. this is their reward. we're just selected to wear it. and every time i put it on, i think about the eight guys we lost that day. what would they think of me with this decision i'm about to make? would they appreciate it? or would they turn in disgust?

and that's how i continue on and continue forward. [ applause ] >> well, the medal of honor certainly changed my life. when i got home, they started giving me $10 a month for it, i thought, boy, i'm rich. i was a country boy that was very shy and bashful. you don't believe that, do you? but i was. but probably the best thing that happened to me was receiving the medal of honor. i'm talking about psychologically. we didn't have ptsd in world war

ii. we had psychoneurosis. so if you were diagnosed with psychoneurosis, you were a psycho, and nobody wanted that connotation associated with them. i had a brother that cracked up, we called it, in the marine core and that was the diagnosis and when he came home, he would not permit to file a claim with the va for psychoneurosis, because that would mean that he was a psycho. when i received the medal of honor, i had no choice. from the second day on, i became

a public figure. i didn't want to be that. i wanted to go back to the farm and dig a hole and get in it. because i had a lot of whatever they term now ptsd, but in those days, as i said, it was psychoneurosis and we had no treatment facilities. we had no psychiatrists, we had no psychologists. we had no va facility that we could even go to. and being forced by the public to talk about what happened to me was the best therapy i could have received. i couldn't pin it up, i couldn't hold it in, i had to let it go.

and that helped me tremendously to adjust back to civil life. you guys, all of you in the military know that when you grow up and your folks are teaching you things you ought to know, one of those things they teach you very firmly is, you do not kill, period. there is no exception. and then you go into a combat situation, where you have to reverse that completely. if you're going to survive, now you must do that which you have never been permitted to do and taught not to do. and our case in world war ii, i was in the for the duration.

and when the war was over, they handed me a discharge and said, we're done with you. you've done well, but just go home in 24 hours and revert to where you were three years ago. almost an impossibility. because the brain doesn't stop working. it keeps going. we have similar problems here today, with individuals who have the ptsd. fortunately, our facilities, our treatment methods, our knowledge and information about it is so much greater and more accessible than it's ever been in the history of this country. and we all can be very proud of

that. i am. i was a veterans counselor for 33 years and in the early part, we had no answers. we had nobody to go to. nobody to talk to, except each other. i'm grateful that somebody had the wisdom and the foresight to establish the situation that we have today, because it is so much more beneficial to those coming home than we've ever had. i'm grateful to my nation. thank you. [ applause ] >> yesmgentleman, i want to ext

thanks once again. this is a rare, in fact completely unique opportunity to hear the prospective across generations like this. and i can't say how privileged i feel and i know we all feel for this opportunity. so with that said, captain, would you like to bring us home? >> so it is with great regret that i have to bring this panel to a close. ladies and gentlemen, please join me in thanking our distinguished panelists for their extraordinary service at the moment of crisis and for their extraordinary humanity ever since. thank you, gentleman. [ applause ]

>> it's also my privilege to present each of our panelists with a book, entitled "the accidental admiral." on the next washington journal, sunlight foundation editorial director bill allison discusses the effect campaign spending ad on the 2014 midterm election. and a look at how voters reacted to marijuana ballot measures this election cycle with john hudak of the brookings institution. that's followed by a discussion on the role of physicians assistant with john mcginty, who heads the american academy of physicians assistants. we'll also take your phone calls and look at your comments on

facebook and twitter, beginning live at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. >> each week, american history tv's real america brings you archival films that take you on a journey through the 20th century. produced by frank khapra, "the negro soldier" is a 1944 documentary intended to encourage african-americans to enlist in the u.s. army during world war ii. the film traces the history of african-american contributions to society, during war and peace. beginning with the revolutionary war, then showing their work as teachers, judges, scientists, artists, musicians, athletes, and soldiers. in 2011, this 40-minute film was chosen to be preserved in the national film registry of the library of congress and was recently restored by the national archives. >> a paratrooper in the nazi army, men turned into machines,

challenging the world. joe lewis, training for the fight of his life. this time, it's a fight not between man and man, but between nation and nation, it's a fight for the real championship of the world, to determine which way of life shall survive. their way or our way. this way, we must see to it that there is no return engagement. for the stakes this time are the greatest men have ever fought for. and what are the stakes? the american stakes. the german stakes. the nazis. the gospel according to hitler. i'm not going to read all of this. but there are one or two things in this book that will interest you. i quote, what is denied to us,

the german fist must take. if our forefathers had made their decisions by the same pacifist nonsense as the present day does, we would possess about a third of our existing territory. further, he says, from time to time, the illustrative papers show how a negro has become a lawyer, a teacher, perhaps even a minister. it never dawns on the degenerate middle class america that this is truly a sin against all reason. that it is criminal madness to train a born half ape to one believes one has made a lawyer of him. this book was written 20 years ago. the plan which it foreshadowed has become a raet. and the nazis now instruct their disciples in terms such as

these. we must straive by any means to conquer the world. any methods are permissible. lie, betray, kill. kill and kill again. kill the slobs, the russians, the poles, the czechs. don't stop, whether you have an old man, a woman, a girl, or boy. kill. we want to create our great german empire. we must exterminate everybody who stands against us. the liberty of the whole earth depends on the outcome of this contest. americans have always guarded liberty. the seed took root in boston. in that city is the granary burial ground, 1660. within this grounds are buried the victims of the boston massacre, march 5th, 1770. the first to die in the boston

massacre was christmas adams. the longest freedoms calls the wise contend, dear to all the country, shall your fame extend, while to the world, the letters stone shall tell, whered a docks, gray, and maddock fell. >> on newsmakers, independent vermont senator bernie sanders, the chair of the veterans affairs committee. he talks about efforts to revamp the va by veteran secretary, robert mcdonnell, the lame duck congress, and what he expects in the next congress with republican leadership and campaign five decades, as well

as his own ideas of how the news media has changed in the 21st century. this is just over an hour. >> thank you, peter.

and most importantly, thank you for all of you to come out and supporting this wonderful institution. it's my favorite museum in washington. my father helped found it. when you walk in here, you see the first amendment plastered to the wall, that can be seen from the capital. and it's so very important that we come here to celebrate the role of the press and the fourth estate and i think the fourth estate is less popular than hmos right now and oil companies in some polls, but i promise a new generation is trying to do better on that. but let's talk to a living legend, as i like to say, tom brokaw, who if you ever mention tom brokaw, you'll meet some people who say, i woke up with tom brokaw every morning with breakfast on the "today" show, or ate dinner with tom brokaw on "nightly news." it's tom brokaw at the dinner table every single night along with my mom and dad and it was so great to get all kinds of

stories and an instant history lesson at any time. we're approaching the 25th anniversary of the fall of the berlin wall. i did some research today. you were the only network news anchor there, the only broadcast, the west germans did not have time to get set up live. amazing backstory about how all that happened. but you took it upon yourself to go over there while there were mid-term elections going on, because you believed that this could be the bigger story. and you won't to a press conference where the propaganda minister from east germany said these things, you had an interview with him, i want to play that right now, can we do that? and we'll go into the question. >> do i understand correctly, citizens of the gdr can leave through any checkpoint that they choose for personal reasons? they no longer have to go through a third country? >> they are not further forced to leave gdr by a transit,

through another country. >> it is possible for them to go through the wall at some point. >> it is possible for them to go through the border. >> freedom to travel? >> yes, of course. >> good evening, live from the berlin wall on the most historic night in this wall's history. what you see behind sme a celebration of this new policy announced today by the east german government that now for the first time since the wall was erected in 1961, people will be able to move through freely. this crowd has gathered here tonight spontaneously from the east german side. they have a water cannon, as you can see, on some of the solvents, but it doesn't seem to make much difference. we'll show you a videotape of what happened earlier tonight when there were more people on top of the wall. the west german police have moved in here. suggests that they move back, saying that the situation is already complicated enough. but it doesn't seem to make any difference. the people are here to celebrate

freedom. freedom to travel anywhere in the world. >> that was an amazing moment. two things. the first time i've ever been interviewed by someone who i first saw on a sonogram. [ laughter ] >> there we go. >> tim came to me and said, i'm going to have a son! and here is the proof of that. and it was a thrilling moment for everybody and i'm so proud of how luke has continued the legacy of his dad, with his mother, marie, and he has become a cherished, not only surrogate nephew, but also a great, great journalist. so i'm thrilled to be on this stage with him and i know that tim is lacking down and says to us, go get 'em. >> yes, indeed. thank you. thank you. >> a couple of things about

that. he didn't know what he was talking about. he had been given this note at the end of a news conference and politburo had a lot of restriction on how people could go back and forth through the wall. he read it not quite knowing what he was saying. so people did go to all the exit barriers and start pushing back and there was a lot of confusion. and as we went on the air, we had not yet got an video of people who were going through one or another of the exits. so we needed to show that immediately. the water cannon didn't work very well. the guards on the other side didn't quite know what to do. at one point, they did drive everybody off, except for one man, who stood with his back to the water cannon and i said to my producer, go get him and bring him back. he's the face of the new liberated east germany. my producer came back about ten seconds later, doubled back and laughed and said, not what we think.

and i said, what do you mean? and he said, he's a drunk. he's been living over here in the forest and hasn't had a shower in two weeks. he's very grateful for what's going on. but that was the beginning of the fall of the wall and it was the symbolic end of communism, obviously, as the controlling factor in the satellite states and the soviet union was coming unraveled at the same time. i'm a child of the cold war. i grew up studying it and thinking about it, about what kind of a world we're going to have. and when that happened, i have two really reactions to it. one is, it is a liberation the likes of which we've never seen before and a lot of people didn't expect it to happen until the 21st century. and i don't think that the west then reacted in a way that they might have. i had just gotten back from berlin and in germany, i was there with dr. kissinger and jim baker at the american academy. and we talked about this. it was not the kind of effort that should have been made to say, how else can we use nato.

nato was our western alliance and remains that, but it has kind of come unraveled around the edges. it's not as unified as it once was. it was an incredibly important and potent force and facing the east and dealing with issues together, and not always perfectly, but it was the alliance. now it has a lot of parts to it, and they're often not greater than the sum of their parts, which they need to be. the other part of what we're watching here tonight is that it was so thrilling and hard to explain about how the dramatic people who had such a terrible 20th century, mostly self-induced wounds, then were divided. and you'd have people in the west who had cousins in the east. the people in the west had democracy, consumer goods, and hope. and when the wall came down, their cousins and the other fellow germans came through in acid washed jeans, two-cycle

lottos and automobiles as if they had come from the moon to venus. they just couldn't believe what they were seeing. and so, it was one of the most dramatic events, i think, of the 20th century, in kind of a 24-hour period. and then it went on from there. there was a big debate about whether german should be reunited politically. much later, i was presiding at a conference in atlanta, organized by a corporate lawyer. we had gorbachev, president bush 41, and helmet cole. and helmet got up, big bear of got quite emotional, got tears in his eyes and he turned to gorbachev and said you did not send the tanks and that gave us a chance to be a whole country again. he turned to president bush, and he said you stood for unification when others, including margaret thatcher said we have to keep them divided. it was one of those moments in history when you saw three men with courage and vision come together and they were so

personal in their interaction, and it kind of gave me hope. we don't see a lot of that anymore. >> one amazing thing in that newscast, aside from you being the only broadcast anchor there, a huge win for nbc news, if ever there was one, probably our biggest one in history, is i was reading sort of a breakdown by the e.p. at the time, bill wheatley, and he goes, you asked for about 15 to 20 seconds at the end of the newscast to give a little essay, put it in the context of history. why was that important for you to do at that time, and how did you come up with that in the commercial break, is how it was described? >> two things happened. first, it was such chaos, i couldn't hear myself, and i was very well dressed because i went over with in one of my raggedy outdoor jackets. this is going to be on tape for a long time. one of my colleagues bought a smashing topcoat in london, lent

me the topcoat, so i'm there in the topcoat, i said to the control room in new york, i'm going to have to add to this, i have to get through this the best i can. you'll know when i'm going to call for video. when we were doing the special later, i thought, we have to put this in context. i thought 1968 would be the defining year of my career. 1968, lyndon johnson stepped aside, we lost 68,000 people in vietnam. bobby and mccarthy were running against each other, dr. king was assassinated, we had the chicago riots, miami convention, george wallace was running, and we had that heated election that fall. people also forget at the end of that year, a man stepped on the moon. so that was a very, very rich year. and then i phrased some of that and what we had been witnessed in 1989, which was the

rearrangement of the world, if you will, which included china. i was also in teiananmen square and russia and poland. i interviewed gorbachev in '87 and persuaded him for a couple years he was the only american journalist he should talk to, and then he caught up to that. i said we have to put this in a context so people can understand the warp speed at which the world is changing. >> in our present day, the main adversary the use faces is islamic radicalism and fundamentalists and it's changed the way we cover the story because a lot of journalists can't get into syria, into parts of iraq because it's so dangerous. the story has changed and it's not as clear-cut as it used to be. it's not the united states versus the soviet union. you have these sort of tribal wars playing out in the middle east. what's important for media consumers to digest from, a, how we're trying to do our best over

there in terms of getting the story out, and what does it mean for future generations if the prolonged conflict in that part of the world and a guerilla style, not only through newer technologies and also radical ideologies seems to be defining global struggle? >> you have touched on a critical issue of where we go from here and our national security consideration. we're so locked in. even those of us as journalists who should know better, to the idea of nation state confrontations. that it will be between the east and west, between russia and the united states. as i said, i was in berlin with kissinger and baker, and kissinger said we could have anticipated what would happen in the satellite states. we could have anticipated even the rise of someone like putin. we didn't see what was going to hap in in the middle east, and what we have in the middle east, now, of course, is not just

asymmetrical warfare where we have these highly trained, extraordinarily motivated ra radical islamic forces that are moving easily, too easily in my jum judgment, across that part of the world. they all came out of ort financial states, states designed after world war i. the tribal culture is what defines them. it's faith based in most instances and goes very deep and it's been there for a long time. when you're there with them, and it's not just with the militia but with the people in the streets, of the various cities, that's the first thing they refer to. and the one place that they close up on, you can be talking to a shia or a sunni, and they'll have extraordinarily stark differences, but then you talk to them about the west coming in, and they close up. and they say, this is our world. you can't tell us how to live here. and that's what we have. we have not yet in my judgment dealt with the culture.

we don't get it yet because we have such an different impression in the western culture about how life should be lived. you cannot overstate the faith-based motivation that they have. and it's ancient, and it's narrow, and we have a hard time understanding it, but it is a hugely motivational force, and it leads to the kind of radical, unspeakable behavior that we have been witnessing of beheading journalists, and they think they're doing it in the name of their faith. there's nowhere in the koran that says you have to behead somebody who doesn't necessarily agree with you, especially innocent people. i think the hard problem for us is we don't have that part of the world, we don't understand it as well as we need to, and we're losing what allies we had. you know, one of the things i said recently is how do we deal with isil or isis, however you care to characterize it? i said i like to take a lot of those idol rich young men when i

go to saudi arabia wandering through shopping centers and put them in uniform and make them special forces. the king is saying it's up to the west now. it's up to everybody. this is a deeply dangerous situation. and moving into the political syria, it's going to define president obama's presidency in many ways. >> part of the success of the new forms of radical islam is based on their skillful use of new media. completely bypassing any of the traditional forms, and even to some degree, their success in the united states has been in terms of recruiting people has been in that manner. what has surprised you the most about the new media age we live in? we all talk about how the barriers are now being blown away that exist. it's more free in some ways, but that freedom also brings with it a lot of liabilities. >> i think that's good news and bad news. i think during arab spring,

twitter was powerful for people to stay connected, who were in the streets and not sort of revolt, but have an end of the revolt. my issue with the social media is it allows almost no reflective time. you don't have a chance to stop and think and have a real dialogue. it's, you know, 140 characters or whatever it happens to be, bang, bang, bang. and we don't know the sourcing of it. i mean, it could be some guy in his underwear who couldn't get a date, sitting there, and he's giving the impression he has hundreds of thousands of followers and saying anything that is outrageous that comes to his or her mind. and i'm telling you that in the middle east and the jihadist camps and other places, they're ahead of a lot of where we are in terms of how they communicate and stay in touch with each other. if something happens here, bang, it's all out over there. i said something on "meet the press" right after the boston marathon bombing where i said we have to re-examine, re-examine was my phrase, we have to

re-examine our drone policies because if you hit one innocent in a village, then that rockets around the middle east. on all the social media sites. and bill o'reilly among others came after me hard saying, oh, he just wants to fold up and he's the guy who wrote about the greatest generation and sometimes there has to be collateral indemnity. i wasn't saying we have to stop. i knew at the intelligence agencies and the military, they were concerned about the drone attacks and knocking on doors. everything you do over there has consequences of some kind and we're fighting a war the likes of which we have never fought before. it's very hard and we're now on our third war. >> another area we can turn to that seems to be constant war is american politics these days. you're so good at having a historical context for all of us in terms of what you have seen and heard. i want you to go back to about 14 years ago, election night

2000. closest election in history. florida had gone to al gore, and then had been taken out of his column and gone to george w. bush, and then taken out of his column. the 25 very precious electoral votes, run to tape about how it looks 14 years ago. i remember it like it was yesterday because it was a defining moment in my household, but let's take a look. >> the networks giveth, the networks taketh away. nbc news is now taking florida out of vice president gore's column. it's just far too confusing. we're about to make an official call, and it's just too confusing. all night long, it has not been a sterling evening for both projections in that state. oer originally, nbc and the other news networks projected al gore was the winner, then at 2:18, we

projected -- all right, we're officially saying florida is too close to call because of a reca recall. let me show you one more time. florida. >> it's morning. >> it is, indeed. >> it was that kind of night. and then it went all the way to the supreme court case that happened in december that ultimately decided. >> we were working class kids. we love politics, we had grown up with it. at one point when i met big russ, your grandfather, he got out of a car where i was waiting for him at a baseball game and tim got a car to drive him out, and he got out and said my limo driver was late. it was a great line, and i thought, that's exactly what my dad would have said. where's my limo driver? i have these kids with limos. we were joined at the hip, the two of us. i still, especially at this time

of year, i want to punch his number in and say, hey, what do you think about what's going on in arkansas? we were there together that night and it was one of the great confusing nights of our lives. we were both off camera saying how do we get out of this? and at one point, tim remembered me trying to make a quick break, and i came back with a mouthful of saltine crackers. and that's probably the only time i made sense all night long, by the way. i had never been through anything like that. thank got the country has not gone through it again. it was kind of the beginning of the unraveling, i thought, of the american political system as we had grown up with it. it was drifting off in many parts. we're all looking at tuesday of next week, for example. and president obama has a world of troubles. i was just looking at a harvard poll today. he's now losing the millennials, the young people. the white millennials. still a racist divide, but he's dropped down to under 50% in the

millennials who don't think he's taking care of them with education cost, with job training. they don't like obamacare. this is going to be a tough election for him. on the other hand, the republicans are coming into office with no grand plan about what we do. so for the next two years, we'll have a protracted run for the white house. and not much done in congress. you know, wednesday morning, rubio, cruz, santorum, jeb bush is now looking more like a candidate than he has in recent months. they'll be out there getting ready to run again. on the democratic side, you've got hillary, obviously, but jim webb taking a look at it, some of the other governors taking a look at it because the landscape now is moving in a lot of different directions. and who knows? my favorite theory of politics is the ufo policy. something could happen between now and the next election. a lot of democrats are already

saying, you know, we're going to lose the senate, and they'll go nuts to the white and then we'll get the white house back. republicans are saying we have to learn some lessons from the past, and we've got to get our act together. i a very prominent republican strategist who is no longer as active as he was, but i'm telling you he was in the thick of it all, i asked what is your best outcome? he said, mitch mcconnell gets beat, we still win the senate. they think some of the leadership in the republican party has to be set aside. the next two years are not going to be great for the country necessarily, but it's going to be rock 'n' roll in the political arena. >> you don't foresee any chances of obama trying to savage some legacy domestically? it's pretty tough. >> it's tough. you have two years left. they know that. you really don't have the full two years. you have 16 months maybe. >> you run out the clock. >> they're already, reading the papers today, kerry and hagel are not happy with how they

can't fit in there. he's getting, seems to me, when he talks about the ebola quarantine, he seems angrier than he has been in some time. this is not unusual for a president in his second term. you may remember that george bush 43 in his second term hank paulson was trying to hold the economy together, and the president went to him at one point and said i would like to help you, but i would do you more harm than good if i stepped in at this point, because it's a tough, tough business. and they take the measure of you very quickly. you can be the chief executive and commander in chief and live in the white house, but if you don't have the underpinning of power and support, you don't have a lot to play with. >> the president came in in 2008 with a resounding victory, came in with a huge majority in the house, a big majority in the senate. filibuster proofs for some time, and then in 2010, the gop wins 63 seats and we seem to have been in this perpetual trench

warfare where the big idea is the country is so changed, one could say, some change did occur, too much change too quickly. ult mele from six years in as we go into the last two years which seem to be a lame duck, where do you fall in the sense of do you think this was a republican opposition from the beginning? did the president have poor relations with congress? is this a defining thing that has stuck to obama during his term so far? >> i don't think it's one thing. i do think there are lessons in all of this. one is the lesson of president obama, brilliant man, obviously a charismatic campaigner with extraordinarily well organized campaign running against in the first instance john mccain, who was not the stronger candidate. he has all kinds of other qualities, but as a presidential candidate in the depths of the recession, he didn't have a lot to say about it and how he would handle it, but this president

had no managerial experience, he had not run anything before. a state senator and community organizer and somebody who had been extraordinarily successful in getting elected to senate, but he hadn't been there for long, and he's made clear over the last six years he's not crazy about the political process. if you read those accounts of when he lost the debate to mitt romney the first time in denver, you go back and look at the preps, he said at one point to his team that was preparing, you know, guys, this is not who i am. that's what presidents have to be. i thought it was symbolic when he won that election, he wanted to reach out to congress. he took the people he wanted to talk to, the jefferson hotel for dinner. take them to the white house. i have never seen anybody walk in there that their knees didn't buckle. whatever side of the political spectrum they were on. and he's had a small, well contained group around him. national security and domestic

affairs. no one wants a president to fail, republican or democrat, that's not good for the country. but once there's blood in the water, you know, then what happens is that everything is unleashed. so i think the next two years are going to depend not just on what happens on the republican side or in the democratic side or at the white house. it's going to depend on all of us. where is the country on all of this? these are issues that go beyond conventional politics. i have said it before and i'll say it again. i didn't think the tea party was good for the country because they were too narrowly cast and they were not interested in any compromise. but as a longtime political reporter, i was deeply impressed by their organizational skills. they got angry, they got organized, they stayed on message and stayed in the fight. they're not going to have a great year this year, but they rose up from the ranks and they then wanted to take their place on the political field. and we need more of those

citizen kinds of movements if you're going to change things, whether it's in the republican party or the democratic party. >> last few minutes here before i open it up to questions from the audience, so if you have a pressing question, start thinking about it now. that's your gift from me. give you sort of a barbara walters type of question here. >> please. >> all right. if you were any animal -- through your entire career, is there a story that haunlts you the most to this day? >> you know, it's interesting. i have never been asked the haunting question. i have been asked a question about the most memorable interviews and that kind of thing. i think the haunting question for me is what i see when i go to the third world. and my wife has a project going now in malawi, one of the poorest countries in africa, one of the poorest continents. and i see the goodwill of the women who are running a canned

tomato project is what it is. and she -- those of you who know her know how remarkable she is, but she went over there on some other project, loves doing the kind of things that we grew up with in the midwest, and she saw all these tomatoes and they didn't have anything to do at the end of the season, they didn't know what to do with them, they didn't have preservation, canning. she went back, shipped over, sold some property her dad left her, shipped over containers and canning equipment, organized women to go to africa and i went back with her. this is a very difficult country. i have been all over africa, this is about as poor as it gets. she organized a cooperative of these women. some were great in the field, others were great at managerial stuff. they were just a speck against all this degradation of who they were and the aids that had infected their country, and the corruption at the top. and those are the stories that haunt me, while the rest of us

in the west are moving with silicon valley and medical advances and all the other changes coming in our lives and there's so many people in the world who are just stuck in place. and they have real skills, and they have real intuition. these women, if you turned africa over to the women, men don't have leadership positions anymore, women are going to run the continent, we'd be a hell of a lot better off. >> and you bring that up as important, because i think this point should be made. it's difficult to cover that story because there's not a lot of appetite in the united states. there's an instant reaction that we have our own problems and our own things that are depressing. don't depress us anymore. there's a real challenge of being a journalist to sort of get that point of view out there into the mainstream. >> it is, and the ebola crisis is a perfect example of that. the real ebola crisis is not in texas or in this country, quite

honestly. you know, we've got to have a system for dealing with it, it's indisputable, but we really have had, what, one person die in texas at this point and a couple people quarantined. and we've got all these great agencies swarming all over it. i'm on the board of the mayo clinic. the mayo system is now in a complete overhaul of what they're going to do about infectious diseases, closing down icus and turning them into isolation units which may never be used. but in west africa, you have brave young western doctors going in there just trying to contain it in some fashion in these remote villages, and that's the really tough issue, frankly, that we're going to be dealing with. and it's hard for, i think, americans have compassion fatigue. and i understand that. you know, we're in our third war. we've spent so much more money in iraq and in afghanistan than president bush and especially dick cheney and don rumsfeld told us.

it was going to be profitable, they were saying, then we spent a trillion dollars in the first year and a half we were over there, and it's unending at this point. i think people are here withdrawing from the idea they have an obligation to the world and they're worried about their children and if you'll permit me this, the american dream is still there, but we probably have to kind of reconstitute it. the american dream was always seen in economic terms, my parents were perfect examples, they dream was i would go to college and have more economic security and a kind of grander life. they had a wonderful life, the two of them, but they could not have imagined the life i would have, but we had it. that was the american dream. every generation would live better than the last generation. but we're kind of hitting the ceiling on it. how many houses can you have? and do you have the kind of working class job that my dad

had, and does that pay for the house that you would like to have? and so we have to rethink what is the american dream? the american dream ought to be about other kinds of opportunities and how we come together and the government and other social agencies that are nongovernmental can do for you. i'll take 15 seconds and tell you -- well, it will take longer -- about one of my grand hopes. we kind of have it under way. i would reconstitute public service in america. i would make it a public/private enterprise. i could create six public service academies in land grants across the country and have them governmental and private sector. john deere fellows, for example, in sophisticated farming equipment and water systems. johnson & johnson fellows, post graduate work in infectious diseases, nurse technicians, whatever. ge fellows and small power systems around the world, and

they get the special training, the companies get a tax break, and the kids get paid well. and they're assigned domestically as well as internationally. domestically because when we have a national disaster, we send in the national guard. that national guard unit may have been in afghanistan twice already and they're not necessarily trained well to do this kind of thing, and then we give, it seemed to me, the younger people, the millennials a reason to care for the country and a hope they will get a skillset. we need a big idea, is what i think, as much as anything. so i would hope we are trying to gin this up and begin a pilot program at arizona state and maybe as something that can excite the country again. we don't have many things out there that are exciting folks right now. >> going through the cross tabs -- well, let's give the brokaw plan -- [ applause ] >> are you running for president? going through the cross tabs on our latest state polling, what i

found interesting on your point about the american dream is we're talking so much about isis and ebola and all these different issues, but the number one issue in all these states was job creation. and which candidate can help me there. and number two is breaking gridlock. which are sort of two things the media does not talk about that much in the context of coverage. on your point about the american dream, do you think we're doing enough as journalists covering the real income inequality that exists now in the united states at levels we have not seen and the ongoing poverty occurring in the united states in historic levels? >> no, i don't. and we're not going to turn back to happy days where mom stays at home and dad goes off to work, and you can afford everything. i grew up in that environment. you know, my mother did work because she wanted to work, but she didn't really have to, but it did give us an added advantage, but almost every friend i had, and a lot of them were quite poor, the mom stayed home and the dad was working. and now, you know, the mom may

have two jobs, and there are more single mothers out there, which is another issue. and the dad doesn't have a job that pays the kind of benefits that he got before. and a lot of that is economic reality. there's no question about it, but the disparity between the people at the very top in corporations and what the working class gets down in the middle or, it's quite extraordinary. truth in advertising, i get paid a lot of money. i get that. i understand that. i like it, but i have enough of a working class background that i think, man, this is a huge difference between what i'm earning and what these wonderful people that i work with, technicians and editors and the others, are getting as well. we have opened up all these big gaps between the earnings. and then it becomes the goal to have the house that costs so much money. cannot imagine what's going on in manhattan right now.

real istaestate has gone nuts. all of our working class people in the building are living farther and farther out because they can't afford anything in the city. one apartment was sold the other day now, 90th floor now for $97 million. you look at a small apartment in new york, it's got $2 million, nothing less than that. and this, it seems to me, feeds on rest. it's not just manhattan, it's the ever more crowded areas around america in which this is going on. more renters going on. and we are in a seismic shift about what expectations are. unemployment is coming down. they're not great jobs. there are a lot of service jobs. so how we solve that is kind of beyond my ability to nail it. >> before we open it up to questions from the audience, i'll give you my last question. who -- and we'll keep this this

deceased individuals. who is a deceased individual you interviewed throughout history that you found the least impressive? >> well, there are a lot of them. i mean -- there are a lot of them. i remember i went down, when cl colombia was trying to change from being a cartel to a democracy, and i opened with a question to a guy, and he absolutely went blank. he couldn't even talk for about 40 seconds. i looked at the public relations guy, and he said, i don't know what we're going to do. i said, we spent a lot of money to come down and interview this guy. you know, there were people that, and tim i i used to talk about them in washington, who were not as prepared as they thought they would be. i'm not picking on him because he's had certainly enough of his self-induced troubles. john edwards was not as good as

he thought he was. he would show up and he was slick and a courtroom performer, but your dad nailed him one of the first times he came on "meet the press" because he started to talk about support for israel, and he didn't have a clue, quite honestly, about what was going on. the problem with interviewing now is most of these people that you're interviewing have been so wired in a way, so preprogrammed, that you don't get the spontaneity out of them, you don't get the stuff out of them. are we on the record or off the record here? i wanted to tell a joe biden story. i interviewed joe biden, who i actually -- i thought joe biden was a great legislator. he was in the thick of things in the senate. he cared about it passionately. and i was -- this is at a critical time in the iraq war. there were a lot of claims coming out of the pentagon we were really training the iraqi army and they were going to take

care of their own country and their own security. i was over there a lot and i was watching these people coming in in tennis shoes joining the iraqi army, and i said to petraeus, how do we know who they are and where they're coming from? he said, we're kind of counting on their fellow warriors to tell us. not a very good vetting system. joe was running the senate foreign relations committee at the team, and he had his team evaluating how the training program was going, and they didn't think it was going well. i came down to interview him. he was right on top of his topic. this is sometimes the best part of journalism. when the interview ended, joe, who i have known forever, turned to me, his only joke, and said how are you and meredith doing with menopause? that's comes out of the heading of a question i did not expect. and i said, well, like everybody else. and he said, god, i was

blindsided by this stuff. now, i've got my camera crew and all my producers there and everybody. and i said, well, you know, joe, it's been around for a while. he said, yeah, i'm thinking about getting a federal study. i said don't go there. it's in every woman's magazine every week. you don't have to do that. that was, for me, the quintessential joe moment, and it was not -- it was not that he was unprepared for the topic at hand, but he just loves to talk ability whatever happens to be on his mind at that time. and there are, you know, there are lots of people who are -- they're not impressive. i'll tell you about putin. i interviewed gorbachev and we really did become quite close. putin, i interviewed twice. your mother was at the dinner that i gave for him, and your dad was there as well, and your mother had done the thing on the banking system in russia. >> wonderful