now that could be informative to this administration. one from the past. all of you know that president-elect obama did one of his first acts, i'm going to close guantanamo. one of the first acts. now, he did not -- in preparing this, they put everything in motion. the executive order. the speech. they did not deeply consult with congress before they made their move. had they consulted with congress before they made their move, were there people in congress who quietly would have said, yes, we'll help you? yes, there were such people. there were some republicans. senator john mccain, for example. you see, the challenge here was if you're going to close guantanamo, replace it with what? then if you have a plan for, well, let's replace it with this

and we have a plan developed basically which state is going to get it. then you might have a chance of getting political support among the representatives of all the other states. and get it out of the way. by announcing we're going to close guantanamo, and then you hadn't done the homework with congress about where and how, what happens? well, every member of congress gives out a statement. politics become poisonous and this becomes impossible. here we are eight years later and guantanamo is not closed. i believe this was a possibility. it might not -- it could have been done. you were thinking executive branch krepb trick. didn't work. now an example from right now. one of the discussions in the news about terrorists or different things to restrict

trade, which is a big time foreign policy question. maybe the most important foreign question in the foreground of this immediate administration. how many of you -- raise your hands when you know what i mean when i say destination basis taxation. all right. there are about six or seven of you. this is hugely important with respect to trade right now. right now the house majority led by paul ryan, kevin mccarthy, kevin brady are developing corporate tax reform that basically all the broken stuff had to do with product shifting, a long broken problem. hoarding of gigantic cash piles overseas. they're trying to develop an approach that has to do with

territoriality that would involve -- it basically would turn our corporate tax system into an income system that is a facsimile of the systems that almost all our trading partners use and would create a more equal playing field in many ways. because the border adjustments that will happen in implementing, not dissimilar to the adjustments you make and then take it out, this will have the effect, if their plan goes through, of having a huge import. there will be no taxes at all on things sold forex port. it has enormous implications as the people who are watching this understand. there will be lots of adjustments in arguments over wto compliance and so. i think it is a creative idea of

great interest. my point is this. if you in the executive branch, if the people right now on the landing teams dike dan damico and others, and will hold their fire, you can't work that agenda and also do what paul ryan is going to do at the same time. and if paul ryan has a chance of getting through his package, it will have such a substantial impact you're going to want to wait is and see what that impact is before you decide if you want to do a lot of other stuff. it could result in the repatriation of hundreds of millions of dollars and a lot of other positive things that kevin mccarthy and kevin brady will gladly describe. so congressional partnership.

i spent a little time on those two examples. i'm not going to spend time on the other two suggestions because i want to hear from eric. so does martin. and so do you. the second one is put a premium on policy staff work. written policy staff work. in my professional experience now going back more than 30 years, i've seen an enormous decline in the quality of written staff work in the government regardless of administration. what happens then is people make their staffs larger and they hold more meetings because people don't know actually how to do written analysis. written concrete operational analysis where they detail choreographies, describe pros and cons and then isolate the key issues in writing for decision to concentrate time and

focus. this seems like a trivial procedural detail. quality staff work is a matter of life and death. that is not hyperbole. that is a true statement that i have seen happen in the wars in iraq and afghanistan. it is a matter of life and death. and it is scarcely even taught to people who are going into even mid-level offices. third and final, there is a lot of good discussions, which we'll get into about the nec staff, and its relationship to the executive staff and so on. i want to tag something which doesn't get too much attention. linking policy planning and policy analysis to budget development. the budget development. if you actually studied nsc staff and didn't notice where does omg fit in, the answer is, well, not much really.

but everyone in here who has private sector experience knows this is the first principle. of course you manage with budgets. well, except in national security. except at the top of the government. and that has very large consequences. and we're about to enter a period in which there will be fantastic budget strain and arguments which i hope will be resolved. so i think that is a maxxum worth remembering. >> thank you, phil. eric, what's your advice? >> well, first of all, thank you, martin. it's great to be here with you and phillip. thanks to bill for bringing the miller center to be part of this terrific project which i think has done fabulous work. let me start out with a confession. yesterday when i should have been preparing to speak here today i was watching the redskins instead. and redskins sort of managed to

beat the hapless philadelphia eagles. as i was having pangs of bad conscience about not preparing, i thought tomorrow i to talk about blocking and tack the elling, the real simple things that need to get done in government that we don't do. so i would say two things. one on personnel and one on policy, and they really are the same thing. first is on the personnel side. one of the biggest challenges that a president has in national security is getting their arms around the apparatus of the government that conducts affairs. henry kissinger made this back in '66 before he became secretary and justly famous essay about domestic structure is and foreign policy.

about seven years ago i think i was here on this brookings stage doing a book event for the book "presidential command." this is the first and most enormous challenge that a president has. so the focus on personnel is really important. but as one of the earlier panels noted, the tendency tends to be on the high profile cabinet positions and not enough attention i think focused on putting together teams of people who both in the agencies can work together and across the agencies can work together. because if you can't get that kind of teamwork, you will inevitably have all sorts of dysfunctions particularly in the first year when a lot of people aren't confirmed. now on average it takes about nine months. and i believe it will be longer in this transition, to get

everybody in place. phillip and i both were part of the romney transition team planning in 2012. we began our work in july. and by the even election we were prepared to go in and phillip was on the intelligence sigh is. i was on the defense side. we were prepared to go in. we had shraeuts of candidate for all the senate confirmed positions that could be presented to the cabinet designees. we had focused at least on defense transition, very much on how can we get people who can-can work together so you don't get the kinds of dysfunction you sometimes have when right now with secretary carter and the navy secretary maybus and other defense departments with subcabinet appointees. the second part of that personnel issue is to understand that the career elements in the

department of defense, department of state, and central intelligent agency are not the enemy. they are the subject matter experts who can help you succeed but only if you establish a relationship of trust with them and also provide them leadership. they have to know. they have to have commander's intent as we used to say. they have to know which direction the new team is trying to move in. on that score, they have to overcome the new team, whoever it is, has to overcome a deep bias. my foreign service colleague bowen had her iron law transitions. no matter how much you hated the last political appointees who were your overlords, the new team makes you have nostalgia for the old one. which i think is a testimony to the sort of rough shakedown that

almost every first year of administration turns out to be. the second piece of advice i would give is to try in the early period spend some time in the first few weeks, before events start to drive you to understand the policy in being before you start trying to change it. there are caricatures of what the policy is. the folks in government have been working in extraordinary detail. there is a lot that can go wrong when you start to make adjustments. it's not that you shouldn't change the policies. every administration that comes in wants to do that appropriately. you need to understand what it is you're changing before you start changing it. all too often people come in with bright ideas, as phillip said and i agree, about staff

work. they haven't been adequately staffed. and the first order of business for orderly staff work is to understand what it is that is in place before you start to change it. >> thank you. one of the things that i would like to focus on is the relationship between the white house and the department ths an agencies of national security. there is a good deal of tension between the president and the cia and the standard tension between the cia and the fbi. you think back to kissinger's days, with berzynski, the nsc and state department were really

at loggerheads for much of those early years in the nixon administration and the carter administration. and same with bush 43 between rumsfeld, colin powell, and vice president cheney. what's your sense given your experience with all of that? how to ensure that it doesn't end up disfunctional? or is it nature of the personalities rather than the structure of things that you're going to have these kinds of tensions? is there anything that you can advise about what needs to be done in regard to avoid the things we have seen in the past? >> yes, there is.

first let me talk about the nc staff issues and then i'll touch on the cia, fbi issues. is the nsc staff too large? yes. is it micromanaged too much? yes i think so. i think it's because basically it's extremely large and they're holding constant meetings because they don't know better. but it is not a democrat/republican phenomena. >> what was it in those days? >> 50 professionals. >> it was regarded as awe highly functional staff. >> it was too small. >> no. >> i thought it was too small. >> we were able to end the cold war and win the gulf war. by the way, when franklin roosevelt won world war ii with the largest national security establishment the country has ever seen and running 50% of the united states academy to boot,

they did it with nine white house staffers. this is not because roosevelt was disengaged. so this tells you something about the -- what you are doing is important. the point is, though, shrink it by a third. i was on a transition where we get on the transition, shrink it by a third. that is a meaningful thing to say. what you want the staff to do and what do you want the executive departments to do? and then work on the staff numbers that flow from that if you are clear how these jobs are defined. most don't even come with a written job description, much less any training. not one day of training.

a lot of it will begin to take care of itself. you don't make the president any wiser or more powerful. that's the difference. so n is sc staff. talk about the fbi, cia issues. because this is -- i'm uneasy about this. when i did the 9/11 commission work, one of the administrations was the clinton administration, which as you may remember, martin, had a dysfunctional relationship that they might be engaged in criminal activity the that he would have to investigate. no matter who was going to be elected in november, a difficult relationship with the fbi director was and is assured. but that's one of the reasons

congress tried to give the fbi director a high degree of independence and the way they set up the job. we'll see how that works out. if you keep the current director, it is strained. if you fire the current director, it could be worse actually. so there's a problem. you have then all this flack with the intelligence community. so here's the i want to make about this. all of this black is undermining a condition of trust. now, i want to stress the donning of trust is not so they salute when the community talks. that's not the point. you get the trust not they will always agree but so you can have healthy arguments. usually a condition of distrust results in frozen relationships

where each side begins behaving in passive aggressive ways, throwing their assessments across the transome to the others, ignoring and so on. and what you don't get is the healthy give and take and interaction which can be tough minded and has to be. the greatest intelligence disaster of my lifetime was the wmd catastrophe with iraq in 2002. the problem in that catastrophe was not that they interacted too little. they should have been interacting much, much more. they should have been a tough minded argument going on about the nature of the intelligence. that should have been going on back in the clinton years. so you are building trust frankly so you can have those kinds of discussions with different intelligence agencies quarrelling over different

things. fbi has this or cia has that. but nobody in the conversation feels like they're threatened by that. and as the atmosphere gets frostier and frostier, it is is not a matter of whom agrees with whom, it is the quality of the thought and the quality of the conversation. >> i largely agree with phillip. first of all, it is natural that your cabinet officers and the other members of the national security council when they meet with deputies or principles are going to help the view of their agency, which has a specific mission and therefore will look at things differently. in the department of defense we look at things differently than the department of state. and from the white house you have yet a different view. and having at various points in my career been in all three of those positions, it's natural.

and you want some agreement. you don't want uni tpuninimity. as phillip was just suggesting. that is the very hard thing to orchestrate, particularly when you have very big personalities and, you know, previous reputations, et cetera. and in particular i think one of the challenges is that the cabinet secretaries and the director of cia or director of national intelligence have a kind of janice faced role. on the one hand they are the instrument of the president imposing his agenda on the respective institution. on the other, they are the voice of the institutional interests

and prerogatives of the institution they sit on top of. and trying to make that point of view heard in the inter agency deliberations. and in maintaining the balance of those two roles is very hard for individual cabinet officers. is and frankly an emotionally intelligent president will be looking for people to balance the two roles when they pick their cabinet officers. >> do you expect to see the kind of bureaucratic warfare we have seen between previous national security advisers and other secretaries of state, secretaries of defense, or because we don't know who the secretary of state will end up at this point. but we have former head of the intelligence, defense intelligence agencies national security adviser had pretty

strong views about the intelligence agency. so it looks like it is baked into the system already. >> as one of the panelists said, i don't know. i think it will be hard to tell. i will say this. anybody who thinks it doesn't matter if someone was a three star or four star hasn't worked a day in the pentagon. and i think that i'm going to be very interested to see how the dynamic between -- or among, i should say -- >> having been a three star. >> kelly. >> kelly was four star. >> the dynamic among generals kelly and mattis. and a first rate intelligence professional in his career, flynn, it will be interesting to see how that dynamic plays out. >> does it matter we will likely

have a general in charge of civilian side of the pentagon? >> i do think it matters. i think the law was drafted carefully in 1947. the circumstances have changed. the circumstances when we were initially unifying departments and creating the department of defense. so maybe the urgency is a little bit less than it was. but there still is i think -- there are a number of issues that come along with this. general mattis is an outstanding, thoughtful, well-read officer. i'm sure he's well aware of the pitfalls and dangers and i'm sure he will avoid stepping in those. >> so let's go back to congress

and a different dimension of this. >> i want 20d bring up this mental image of high school chemistry class gone wild. where you let the students use any compounds they want and start mixing them up. who knows what will happen? you kind of stand outside in the hall. you hear all the stuff physing and smoking in the classroom. you know, fumes begin to leak out through the door. i wonder what's going on? i wonder what will will happen? >> it feels like i wonder what will happen. >> we're all wondering. even here i'm sure is wondering. we haven't had a president that sees a constructive and productive way moving forward.

what kind of challenge is that going to pose so the national security agencies where the first instance of that was from the president of taiwan. kellyanne cop way said trump will move the embassy to jerusalem. >> centralize these operations in asia. >> so do you have any experience with this how the national security bureaucracy is going to deal with this kind of disruptive approach? >> this is kind of what they thought would happen in december 1980 after reagan was elected. they thought the apocalypse might be coming. didn't quite turn out that way. but you just have to recover some of the images people had

back then. but this is different. donald trump is generous. a natural born diplomat is he. but on the other hand he wrote a book called "the art of the deal." like an 8,000 word essay coming up called "the art of the global deal." where i see, gee, if i really took this seriously, here's how one might go about connecting the dots. because here's the interesting thing that i think i'll encounter. there are some things that they're going to want to get done. the domestic agenda alone i can see where that's going.

there are serious people involved in it. that will take up 150% of the oxygen in the room. >> tax reform, infrastructure bill. >> and a little thing about health care. man, they are serious. that's 150% of the oxygen in the room. and then what's left over is foreign policy. how much noise do i want foreign policy to make. when president bush came into office in 2001, he wasn't looking to make a lot of headlines on foreign policy. so does mike pence and paul ryan. so there is that factor. the on other factor, i can find people who will want to pick fights with about three-quarters of the country in the world. i think i can pretty seriously just about get there without working hard. and it turns out if you do the

that, you're going to make a lot of noise and a lot of oxygen. i actually think the last few years have been very bad for the united states and for the global system. so my big takeaway is, ladies and gentlemen, we need to enter a time of preparedness. we he need to make our country stronger. if you think of this as if it were 1975 after the vietnam war. or if you like darker a analogies, 1935. preparedness. it doesn't mean you go around pigging fights with everyone you can find while you're getting prepared. if you speak softly and carry a big stick, first start getting the big stick ready. ideally that would mean you would avoid all necessary products while you were getting stronger, you were making your

institution stronger. and you would try to attract all the friends you possibly could if you were worried about our situation. that begins to drive you. even if you're worried about the condition in the world, which the president-elect says he is, that could drive you into thinking about diplomacy. if you want to attract friends, avoid unnecessary fights while concentrating on preparedness. diplomacy will be your hand grenade. >> interesting. eric, we're going to go to the audience for questions. since you worked for vice president cheney as security adviser and it seems clear vice president pence will take on a lot of the load when it comes to national security, foreign policy, what do you think about that? how is that going to work itself out? >> there is one big difference between the relationship that

george w. bush and dick cheney had and andy carr is in the crowd so he can correct me if i'm wrong. the relationship that president-elect trump and vice president pence had. and that is that vice president cheney had no higher political ambitions. and the relationship he he therefore had with the president was i think unfreighted by that natural tension that occurs between other presidents and vice presidents. and vice president pence i think clearly is someone who potentially has a political future in elective politics. that will introduce some tensions. i also think that, you know, i have very high regard for vice

president-elect pence. of all the statements by any of the three candidates, he was the most articulate, the most compelling when discussing syria and russia. in the second is presidential debate, it didn't take too long before the president-elect disowned him and threw him under the bus in terms of positions. so i think there is potentially some danger here in that i would say, martin, to your earlier point on disruption if i could, this i know is sort of heresy. i personally was not troubled that much by the phone call from the president. i think it's fine. >> the taiwanese president. >> i think it's fine to throw beijing off balance a little bit. that doesn't bother me. what does bother me is one would

have hoped it was a deliberative process and part of a clearly thought out strategy with a plan for how you manage all of this. and it's pretty clear from the president-elect comments over the weekend that was not the case. and, you know, i also think that the reaction from beijing, which i think was pretty mild, should not have elicited a tweet storm. i think part of the issue here is it's fine for the president to try to change our policies. he was elected. he has the right to do that. and it's, you know, fine to decide you don't want to be bound by the one china policy anymore. but to just say we're not going to be bound by things we have undertaken before through multiple administrations has ripple effects he may not yet be aware of in terms of the way it will call into question both for allies and potential

adversaries, america's commitments in other parts of the world. and i think the credibility of our commitments have already been undermined by incumbent president who has not paid enough attention to that and who has been dismissive of the harping on credibility. i think it is is actually very, very important. >> it might be interesting to give an illustration what we mean about diplomacy and strategy. so eric just talked about the phone call with the president of taiwan. we both share the view that in itself that is not necessarily shocking. and then the follow on tweets. we are preparing to push them hard quickly.

as a strategic matter, do you say to yourself, if we're going to have an economic, we might have a economic confrontation with china in the coming year. let's make this a confrontation on other cores having to do with sovereignty and other things in the region. and let's confront them at the same time. >> the president-elect addressed that yesterday as something he would trade off. but i think president tsai of taiwan would have a problem being a card. >> a pawn. >> used in the tradeoff. >> you could imagine like, gee, if henry kissinger on steroids was available. >> he is available. >> he's not taking steroids anymore. >> now you are worried about

everything. we're going to construct this incredibly elaborate deal in which -- basically we're going to roll back our relations to where it was in the mid 1970s and try to recraft the whole bargain from all of these issues. that would test the skills of the wisest and most experienced statesman we had. so maybe if we thought we could pull that bit of domain off, that's one story while we were doing all of this domestic stuff. it is not ducking a fight with china. it is more structure. and the chinese leaders noe

difficult phase is coming. they like to channel that constructiveively and manage the threats in their world. >> disruption with a purpose rather than just destruction. let's go to the audience and take three questions first of all.

>> you talked about preparedness. i would like to know what the definite seuion is. we're hearing a big military budget. i would like your definition of what preparedness really means in the con of which you were talking about. >> third question? okay. eric do you want to start with preparedness? >> well, i think if the president-elect is going to make good on his philadelphia speech in which we talked about rebuilding the military, i would hope he would take advantage of the window of opportunity that people in previous panels have talked about in terms of united government to seek a repeal of the act and move back to a top line. i would argue as we did in the

bipartisan national defense panel that reported out two years ago at the request of the congress that it be at the level that bob gates is set it at for the fy 12 before bce and sequestration hit which would in effect go out in the next 10 years, essentially restore a lot of money that was cut out the last eight years. that will have a diplomatic effort. i'm quoting george kinnonwho gave a lecture in 1946 in which he had you have no idea how much more civil and polite diplomatic exchanges are if you have a little bit of military power sitting behind you. and i think that's an important facilitator for the president.

and i would add that i think there ought to be a is supplemental as chairman thornberry of the house armed services committee called for to deal with some of the readiness problem that have been identified by the obama administration and the chiefs right now. >> andy carr, who is here, looked after this question in 2001. if my memory was right, two big ones, taxes and education, both on the domestic side. this administration i think currently is planning to do at least four, possibly five huge lists. immigration, tax reform, health care, supreme court. that's four. you want to throw in infrastructure? whether or not you can overall budget, balance, budget targets

is yet another. we could go on. but you're already seeing -- you're already getting a sense of the scale. and you do have an unusual constellation of is circumstances and people in which much is maybe possible. but then the question will be how much and, again, it that has implications how you want to manage your foreign policy stuff. if you're thinking strategically. now, the question about preparedness, eric's point is exactly right. which i would only add two things. one is think about -- i believe both the foreign policy and defense policy institutions are fundamentally still stuck in the late 20th century and highly optimized and remain so 25 years later with various clip-ons

snapped the last 25 years. i think both foreign and defense institutions are actually in need in profound overhaul and rethinking of the kind that occurred in many respects in the 20s and 30s but also the memory of what we did in the 70s and 80s after vietnam is very interesting. especially on the defense side. but we need that kind of on gravity of thinking now. just take the example of cyber security alone, which is very much in the news today in terms of the level of our capabilities, even in we made negative conclusions if you started asking yourself, well, what would we do about it if we came to negative conclusions about foreign intervention in our country's politics? what would we do about that? what options could a president consider under current circumstances and so on? you begin to see the concerns

about preparedness. it's not just a defense matter. above all, it can make it just spend more money. if you spend more money and basically dysfunctional and broken institutions you will get 20% thermal efficiency for your spending. you will make a much better case with congress for much more spending if you couple that with dramatic and vivid interests in a different story how the money will be invested. after 9/11, don rumsfeld effectively was given a trillion dollars of additional defense investments between fy 01 and fy 06. more than a trillion dollars. what did we do? did we get a trillion dollars worth of bang and adaptation for that buck? and i contend we did not s. we shouldn't do that again. >> so donald trump tweeted about the 747s for the president and

said boeing was too expense i. and today the f-35s were too expense itch. what do you think about the idea that we need a new story. should we expect donald trump will take on the defense industrial complex? >> i agree with phillip that i would not invest a trillion dollars going forward in the record as it exists now. the department of defense has been living on the benefits of the carter/reagan defense bill for a long time. and we have not been investing in maintaining our qualitative edge over potential adversaries for a long time which is why secretary hagel and secretary carter have been very focused on the potential of our losing that

edge and the importance of what they call the thirdoff set strategy which is an effort to find ways to leap ahead in new technologies. it will be interesting to see what the new administration does with that effort as they come into office. i am troubled by the way president-elect has been attacking boeing and lockheed and neither one of them are paying me to say this. but, you know, the president of the united states has just enormous power. and i'm not sure the president-elect appreciates how much that what he's doing is affecting the stock price of these companies, is going to shape the way they respond to different kinds of defense department requirements and contracts. there is a whole chain of things that will flow from this that

i'm not sure he's thinking all the way through. and i think it's troublesome. f-35 has had its problems as a program. but i don't think tweeting is the way to deal with it. >> we'll leave it at that. thank you all very much. [ applause ]. >> -- really pulled this all together on the governance side of brookings and the general staff here at brookings, our own staff from the miller center, in particular terry mcgrath, tony lucadamo and the advisory council, many of whom are here i would try to name them all but there are handouts in the back, they are there. for fear of leaving someone on out, please pick one up on the way out. thank you all for coming and thank you to this terrific

panel. [ applause ]. >> president-elect donald trump and vice president-elect mike pence continue their thank you tour the of states they won in november. today they are at the central florida fairgrounds in orlando. the rally is scheduled to start at 7:00 p.m. eastern. it will be live on c-span. and saturday, the president-elect has another big rally in mobile, alabama. that's at 4:00 p.m. eastern, live on our companion network c-span. and saturday the memorial service for astronaut and former senator john glenn. in 1962, he became the first american to orbit the earth. and 36 years later, while serving as a u.s. senator from ohio, he became the oldest person in space when he flew on a shuttle mission. senator glenn's memorial service is ohio state university saturday at 2:00 p.m. eastern. you can see it live on c-span.

i do think you can learn from failure. i think if the next president wants to aspire to be like somebody they probably want to be washington or lincoln. you can't have the civil war. so what do you do next? aspire to be james monroe? i don't know. but you can aspire not to be james pwabuchanan. >> his latest book he "worst president ever." the potu is s game and the legacy of the least of the lesser presidents. >> i think the differentiation of good presidents and bad presidents, washington, lincoln and fdr are always at the top of the surveys historians take. they were decisive men. you can't come to the top of the ladder and not be decisive. buchanan was a waffler. james polling hated him for being a waffler as secretary of state. he went back and forth on

decisions. advise me. tell me what to do. that's how he was as president. >> sunday night 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span's q&a. >> c-span, where history unfolds daily. in 1979, c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. in 2003, the wealthiest man in russia was kodakovsky. he spent the next year in prison. he offered his thoughts on vladimir putin and the prospects for democracy in russia.

>> welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. my rather grim task after those inspiring talks from ray and tom about the empowerment of everybody in our new world is to bring us back to the reality of president trump, president putin's expansionthe ism, a great deal of global tensions, and the worldwide growth of rightist movements. and i'm joined by mchale kodakovsky, fierce opponent of president putin, and yukos oil corporation, spent 10 years in jail on charges that an international court was found to be utterly without foundation. mchail, you like others have

observed this curious friendship or sympathy between president-elect donald trump and president vladimir putin. what is is it about money? is it about testosterone? what is this about? and how dangerous or menacing is it for the world? [ speaking a foreign language ] >> putin has experience of being friendly with billionaires. both russian ones and non-russian ones. i too am curious what it is is that he finds that he has in common in these conversations. >> putin is a billionaire himself, right?

>> but he denies this. a former kgb agent and a billionaire. i don't know. it's possible. but to speak seriously, putin is a person who by virtue of his profession knows how to create relationships with people. he orients himself very precisely to a person. if he wants you to like him, you will like him.

especially if you've got a weakness such as for example when you like it when people say nice things to you about you. >> many people have that weakness. how dangerous might this relationship be? we have seen president putin's expansionism, whether annexing crimea, fomenting the small war in the ukraine, something we were told in the united states that was not possible to do. there are lots of danger statements. >> i don't think putin is in a simple position right now. things aren't going that well inside the country.

and he's always had a simple explanation for that. this enemy, america. everything that's bad is america's fault. the people joke about -- they say if your doorstep has mud on it, it's obama's fault. putin put his stakes on hillary winning. >> but he backed donald trump. in fact, he interfered in the election. >> and yet he was counting on hillary winning. >> how do you know?

>> but what's important in this situation, everything is quite simple for him. we have the enemy. >> right. do you think he's quietly unhappy about donald trump's victory? >> his inner circle is happy about it. you may have heard that when trump won, the state duma gave a standing ovation. but i don't think putin is particularly happy with the result because now he still needs to make america into the enemy, but it's now going to be more difficult. >> he needs that because internally the russian economic situation is very bad after the imposition of sanctions?

>> i wouldn't say it's because of the sanctions per se. that's 10% of the answer. >> okay. >> 50% of the answer is the drop in oil prices. and the rest is just poor management of the country. but it's -- it wouldn't be good idea for the president to tell the people, your standard of living has been falling for the past two years because i am an infective manager. >> that's not putin's style, is it? >> absolutely not. he was asked do you have any regrets about anything you have done and he said no, i did everything just fine. >> let me be very blunt. i'm sure the audience would like to know the answer to this

question because we had a question yesterday about how dangerous is the proximity of president-elect trump's finger to the nuclear button, and we got a long answer which in essence said there are lots of stages that have to be gone through before he can press the button. but what is the likelihood of some major conflict in the next four years? for example, might president putin do in estonia what he's done in ukraine, and in that case, if president-elect trump hasn't dis membered nato, nato would be obliged to react. are you worried about some -- if not global at least major war breaking out? >> i don't even want to joke about that topic.

because i truly am afraid. yes. putin is used to being the only unpredictable player on the playing field. and now there's a second one and in terms of his opportunities, you know, what he's capable of, he's the number one. >> so you're worried, very worried? >> yes, i am very afraid that if putin continues to play the way he has been playing in the past -- >> and where do you think that

comes from? >> we'll be closer to such a conflict? >> where do you think that conflict could erupt? what would be the spark, the catalyst? >> something that's the most unpredictable. some -- let's say flyover over an american frigate. >> right. >> it's -- it's been said a hundred times over, don't do this. it's idiotic, don't do it and yet they still keep doing it. >> you know the founder of open russia, you want to change russia. you want to get away from this nationalism/imperialism of president putin. but look, putin is ascendant. a little while ago, obama called russia a regional power and now a military power and we have seen over the last few years

president putin really moving center stage again after a period of geostrategic decline in russia since the end of the cold war. do you feel you're losing the battle? what can you build upon in terms of creating a more open, accountable, transparent, democratic russia that is closer to the west and its values? aren't you engaged in a losing battle? >> this is the difference between the picture on the wall and the room in which you actually live.

i think most russians would say that they would like to see better roads, better health care, better education in their country than we have now. rather than some kind of achievements in donbassa and syria. most regrettably, putin is asking the russian people to pay for this picture on the wall at a time in when in a real way they don't have enough money for food and clothing. >> but he's very popular.

>> your russian colleagues do their jobs very well. >> that job is a little different than mine, i hope. but i mean, seriously, he's muzzled the press. he's muzzled tv. he's thrown out pretty much a lot of ngos. resistance to him has been crumbling. what i don't get is, mikhail, what are your building blocks? a lot of the resistance to president putin is outside russia, not even inside the country. so are you just some quick study dreamer or do you actually have a program? >> my colleagues and i have the experience of the past 150 years behind us.

which showed that authoritarian regimes in the 20th century were already not viable. they live for a while and then they die. we see that in nearly 20 years of rule, putin has pretty much destroyed all institutions of state. what we are very concerned about is that once he does go that the situation needs to improve very quickly, not slowly. >> once he does go, you actually envisage that?

>> i do assume that putin will leave before 2024. >> 2024? so that's eight years from now, right? >> yeah. yeah. >> he's a legalist. >> he has given himself two six-year terms. and i think he takes that seriously. >> yeah, but can he come up with some other medvedev type of stand in for a couple of years and be back? >> for now, as of today at least he has closed off such an opportunity for himself. but of course he could change everything. except the country. he can't change the country. and that means that everything will end both for him and for the country that much worse.

he really has no nice way out right now at all. after 2011 when he finished his back and forth with mededev. >> right, but don't you feel -- you know a quarter century ago at the end of the cold war, we all assumed the democracy and what we seem to be seeing right now is the rise of autocratic models whether they're russian, chinese, in the united states we have a president-elect who many regard as a demagogue and feel that the american constitutional system could even be tested. so isn't the tide actually going away right now from what you believe in. in france, an election in may, where there's a serious contender in the world and the interconnectedness, but growing

nationalism, emerging from growing anger. so don't you feel historical drift today is a wave from what -- from your convictions? >> i have my view of this problem. i think that we have gotten too fixated on building institutions that reflect public opinion. you can't follow society blindly. you need to take society's opinion into account. no question. but you shouldn't just be parroting it blindly.

people have begun to feel they're lacking political leadership. and because the traditional parties have stopped offering them this political leadership, they've started looking for political leadership where it has always been, out on the fringes. society has a demand for political leadership, and the traditional parties have stopped supplying it. >> let me ask you a personal question. what is ten years in prison do to somebody? how have you changed? >> ten years is a long time. i changed in this time simply

because i got ten years older. i began to better understand people whom i had never even associated with before. this is important, because i understand the russian power better today, because of that. the psychology of the people in power in russia is very similar to the psychology of those people that i spent ten years with. i spent all my life working in business. but ten years in jail beat any interests in business out of me. i continue to believe this is an

important aspect of human life. but i discovered that human life consists of a lot of other things as well. which i had managed to forget about. >> a cynic might say you can afford not to be interested in business any longer. >> yes, this is one of the advantages that i have, yes. >> did jyour values change? >> i think they started changing somewhat before that even. it is one of the reasons why this huge conflict that putin and i had occurred in the first

place. we had a split on values. his values remain the same. mine changed. >> what do you do with your anger? >> you know, i didn't have it. >> no? totally trumped up charges. sorry to use that word, "trumped up." [ laughing ]. >> that's an interesting question. i'm sorry. that was an interesting experience. it is apart of my life. i can't say that i fell in love with putin.

i'm not saying that i have forgotten or will forget these 15 years of my family's life. >> do you fear for your life? >> i don't think about that. in fact, i don't think about putin all that much. until i come to america. because in america, people ask me about putin a lot for some reason. >> i'm going to throw this open in a minute, so please prepare your questions. do you fear for the direction of the united states of america right now? >> i would say better answer

would be i'm finding it interesting. >> along with the rest of us. >> i had a meeting with some specialists in the political area here. and they said to me that they wished they had as much faith in the american political system as i seem to. >> what do you think the -- such as they are. what do you think of the economic or business opportunities in russia right now? a lot of these, the people here come from the fashion luxury businesses. there are other businesses represented, tech nol go and so on. if you were investing in russia today and in the past, you proved a wiley investor. what would you invest in in russia?

>> there is a big risk. big possible profits, though. i would probably invest in retail. >> online retail, or? >> any field that doesn't have -- doesn't require big capital investments. because i know that there are no institutional guarantees. there is no guarantee of property ownership. so you need to dive in. play your game and get out. >> dive out. >> let me take a couple of

questions. maybe i'll take two here. any questions? yes, sir? grab a mike, please. >> -- i'm sorry. >> if something were to happen to him today, the next leader of the country would be mikaghiv. i would hope that putin would have the brains and courage to hold -- i'm sorry.

mikaghiv would have the brains to write a new constitutional order. after this, a transition period will be required. some 24 months approximately. during which political reform would need to take place, and the ground set for free and fair elections. and after that, free and fair elections, the person to be elected would be someone who in your terminology would be a left social democratic of some sort. >> okay, last -- yes, sir, your hand was up, yeah. the mike, please. >> so if put pin hangs around for another eight years as you said, what's the role you see for russia, both politically and

economically in the world? post putin. >> i think that russia has very great potential, irrespective of putin. this is, like it or not, the biggest country in europe. both in territory and in population. so at any rate, russia is going to play a very big role on the european continent.

as for the economic side of it, we know from the experience of germany after world war ii that any crisis takes several decades to resolve. >> thank you very much. thank you. [ applause ] president-elect trump and vice-president elect mike pence continue their thank you tours of states they won in november. today, they're at the central florida fair grounds, it will start at 7:00 p.m. eastern and live on c-span. another victory rally, this one, in mobile, alabama. 4:00 p.m. eastern, live on our companion network. saturday, the memorial service for john glenn. in 1962, he became the first american to or bits the earth and 36 years later, while

serving as a u.s. senator from ohio, he became the oldest person in space when he flew on a shuttle mission. senator glenn's memorial service is at ohio state university saturday at 2:00 p.m. eastern, live on c-span. this week on c-span. tonight, states could you please tell their electors votes, coverage of the counting in illinois, pennsylvania, virginia at 8:00 p.m. eastern. tuesday night at 8:00, jerry greenfield, ben & jerry's ice cream talks about business practices. >> the idea that we couldn't sell enough ice cream in the summer in vermont to stay in business, that forced us to look for other markets. >> wednesday night, former advice press, dictik cheney and leon panetta. >> the challenges are very great

and we have unfortunately over the course of the last many years done serious damage to our capabilities to be able to meet those threats. >> we're living in that period, a lot of flash points, and a new administration will have to look at that kind of world. and obviously define policy that we need in order to deal with that. but then develop the defense policy to confront that kind of world. >> thursday at 8:00 p.m. eastern, a look at the career of vice-president elect mike pence. >> culture and law, we have stood without apology for the sa sanctity of life. >> fair werewell speeches to ha reid, barbara boxer, kelly ayotte. this week in primetime on

c-span. c-span, where lhistory unfolds dale daily. in 1979, america's cable television companies, and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. google this week hosted a discussion on the digital advertising strategies of republican candidates in the 2016 election. we'll hear from gop campaign str strategist and political reporters. >> okay, i'm going to kick this off from the good looking

republicans that are in the house, the senate and hold the administration. i mean, come on. i'm going to kick us off with a video because most of you heard me say over and over again, and most of you taught me to say it over and over again, this the year of the video. tell a story. nobody taught candidates better how to tell a story than someone who is going to be our first guest today. brad perskell. so i'm going to kick it off with a two-minute closing video, both candidates did two-minute videos to close the campaign three or four days before the campaign. i urge you to go and watch hillary's. this is a lot of hillary face to camera, sharp contrast. this the closing argument the trump campaign made to voters. i lived all my life to say this. gavin, roll tape. >> our movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt political establishment with a new government controlled by

you, the american people. the establishment has trillions of dollars at stake in this election. for those who control the levers of power in washington and for the global special interest, they partner with these people that don't have your good in mind. the political establishment that is trying to stop us is the same group responsible for our disastrous trade deals, massive illegal immigration and economic and foreign policies that have bled our country dry. the political establishment has brought about the destruction of our factories and our jobs as they flee to mexico, china, and other countries all around the world. it's a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class,

stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities. the only thing that can stop this corrupt machine is you. the only force strong enough to save our country is us. the only people brave enough to vote out this corrupt establishment is you the american people. i'm doing this for the people and for the movement, and we will take back this country for you, and we will make america great again. i'm donald trump and i approve this message. >> that video -- that video

became the sixth fastest trending video on youtube the two days before the campaign organically. it told a story. it motivated people and it motivated voters. so i'll let brad, i won't steal his thunder and i'll let him tell you how he came up with that ad. let's dive into 2016 beyond the presidential. so everybody has heard us say this over and over again this year. voters spent more time online in 2016 and were more influenced online by what they read and saw online about candidates than ever before. we are finally at the point where voters are spending more of their time online, and have been persuaded more often by something they saw online, by a friend, neighbor, advertisement. and this might actually lead to us in politics catching up to the corporate america. in 2016, corporate america is going to spend more money on digital online advertising than

tv. politics tends to be 10 years behind corporate america. our party doesn't have ten years to wait, catch up. let me tell you, the good news is we did a great job in 2016 because of many of you. this graph is going to blow the minds of ddscc. on average, gop candidates spend earlier and spent more on google products. i would make the assumption on other online products as well. but nobody ran a better race online than rob portman. and nobody opened up a wider lead against their opponent sooner on the gop side than rob portman. i'll let you make the correlation. one of the top lessons from 2016 we all learned and i hope we carry to the next cycle. go big, go big online, don't go small. and go really big. gop campaigns with google products spent three times the

amount their democrat opponents spent with google on products. i'd like to credit that to a great sales team. but i honestly think it's because people that were running great senate campaigns heard from word -- everybody heard about word's mandate. but they believed in the products and they saw the results. what's really striking is that gop candidates outspent their democrat counterparts between april and july -- this is not the traditional time where people spend money. it is not post labor day. april through july they outspent their democrat opponents 20 to one online with google products. that opens up a huge lead. this wasn't only on the candidate side. we saw it on the super pacs. gop super pacs spent four to one on google products. some campaigns like a presidential campaign went even bigger. one of the things we learned from the trump campaign, do not make assumptions about voters. you may find voters where you least suspect to do so.

so where most presidential campaigns and this one concentrated their money in nine or ten states, they also didn't forget that there are a lot of other americans out there that need to be motivated to vote. a youtube masthead can motivate them and activate. the trump for president campaign was the first gop candidate to ever buy a youtube masthead. previously it was just obama. not only did the trump for president campaign buy one masthead, they bought two. they bought the one after the first debate where we see a huge surge of online traffic and they bought one election day. the hillary campaign bought one. so when you think you've got big, go even bigger. lesson two, go early. a lot of you saw this search graph. i had a gop campaign manager tell me the other day that he decided how and when to drop

opposition research on their opponent using this graph. because as you know, if you drip, drip, drip opposition research and news, guess where voters are seeing that. on google. he made sure every time someone googled someone's name, there was not a flattering story. he made sure did he it early. 50% of the interest in elections, candidates, the gop race, the race for president, the race for senate happens by july. next time your campaign manager tells you, we really want to hold our money until after labor day, they are being very foolish. best thing about going early is you can define yourself as a candidate. what you should be doing is defining your opponent. two senate campaigns that defined their opponent early and never stopped defining their opponent was the todd young for senate campaign and the rob portman campaign. i mean, you can even see here that the opponents don't even have search ads up to counter the attack ads that were being

run against them. i'm proud to say in every gop senate campaign, either the candidate or the nrsc were up to search ads for the opponent and the candidate. they defined themselves and their opponents. they didn't let anyone define them. the other really interesting thing about going early is that it really allows you to hopefully save money in the end and pull away. the green graph is the amount of money and when portman for senate spent on google products. the gray line is the average senate campaign, that's democratic and republican. look closely, when portman's spending spiked, which as you can see is april, may, june, that's when he started to pull away from his opponent. does anyone remember how many points portman pulled away from his opponent on election day?

over 20 points. start early and start big. start often. lesson three, go big, go early, go often. we get asked all the time, what's the right frequency i should have with an ad? corporate america tends to go seven or eight times for the frequency. we saw with most campaigns on the political side that they were going about three or four times. three times generally showed a two times greater favorability shift and a four times greater intent to vote. it was greater when it was a true view ad. when somebody opted in to watch it. if your content is good enough for the voter to watch your content, you can win that voter online. we found senate races were particularly open to voters to look at advertising. again, i think part of it is because presidential candidates are so well defined by the media. senate and house candidates have to get out there and define themselves, which is another reason why to go early. 2016 lessons we learned, thanks

to all of you who ran gop campaigns, go big, go early, go often. and then you will go home to your constituents and be hopefully re-elected again and again and again. so thank you all for a really interesting race where we all learned a lot. now i want to turn it over to natalie andrews from the wall street journal and brad. what? everyone come fill the seats. i couldn't figure out what that hand gesture was. natalie, brad, come on up. [ applause ]

>> i'm glad we're here to talk about the last 18 months or so. >> 624 days. >> 624 days and counting for you. still very much involved in the campaign. >> tell me about your first role with the trump organization and walk us up to here. what were you doing then? how did you get involved? >> way back? >> let's go way back. i think you started in 2011? >> 2010. >> 2010. give us the very condensed version. give us the very condensed version. but you are now -- your title is digital director. it's a pretty expanded role from what a digital director was in 2012. >> yes. in 2010, i was hired -- actually, a phone call happened before that. i was hired to be -- to make a real estate website. it was basic. however, i knew it was probably a good step to get inside with the trump organization and trump family being from san antonio, texas. we don't have a lot of trumps there.

got a contract making a website. i knew that i had to have a competitive price to compete in the new york market, since i had only been to new york once in my life. that's how i first started. over a six year period of time, five-year period of time, i got more and more contracts with the trump family. i became kind of -- throughout the organization knowing the family and different things going on, so when the campaign came, i got an initial contract. it was basic. $1500 for a splash page for the exploratory committee. at the end, we know now about $93 million my company was paid. >> calling you a political outsider wouldn't be an understatement. >> i never worked on a political campaign before this one. >> now $93 million later, what

would you sum up as some of your biggest things you brought into politics? >> that's a big summary. >> i think you have to understand the entire process of the campaign. if you look at the campaign, it was stuck in three major stages. if you follow the media, that was tied along with two major firings or let goes or people leaving. version 1.1, which i pretty much called the day he came down the escalator to pretty much the republican convention. that's version 1.0 of the campaign. that role, my role is probably the smallest. not minuscule, but it wasn't as large as in 3.0. you take the 2.0, the campaign from the republican convention right before the republican convention to i believe somewhere in august -- august 22, i think, is the date. then that's where 3.0 started. then you have 3.0, which is i call the general campaign where we became a media engine.

go to the first version of the campaign, my role was more of a consultant. i ran most of the entire primary digital and advertising from the laptop in my living room. i had no -- they didn't want to pay for my staff at that point. we had no budget. most of the major vendors -- twitter, google, facebook -- didn't know i existed. i got random phone calls in the night. are you the guy doing the digital stuff for trump? as it became obvious he was in this. i built most of all -- i didn't have any data scientists. i didn't have the great people i had later in the campaign. i had to do pretty much home-based marketing efforts to try to maximize our effort across social media platforms. now one thing i learned in politics, the 1.0 version is a more ideological different competition than version 3.0. the needs were different.

i think as you see as we progress on to 2.0, i would actually say my role is the least in 2.0 around the convention. the rnc started to step up. you have coa operations. you have people that have a big implementation what's going to be done. at this point, we're just -- 2.0 turned into fund-raising, less into media operations and persuasion. 3.0 turned into kind of the -- what i would consider the closest to what have i done for 20 years, a media conquest of trying to bring home the vote. you have to understand the three things to ask the right question. >> you had a candidate who famously talked a lot about how he didn't need data early on. >> he didn't need it in 1.0. >> things like that. was it you that was doing any of the convincing to say, we do need to bring on data? we do need data in this campaign? what turned that tide?

>> if you ask mr. trump today, he would still say he could win it. i think that there was other people within -- kushner who is ivanka's husband and mr. trump said -- he didn't rule it out. he just said make me believe. i think that's something he now does. the 1.0 was different. i think at that point, what mr. trump's message during media and those things, it was an important role as 1% here and there to win certain states. it wasn't the overarching thing driving the campaign in version 1. in version 2, the significant thing, digital operation brought the turn key digital fund-raising in a few days. that partnership came with the relationship with the rnc, individuals out here who made me look really smart. the people from the rnc stepped

in to help us build this fund-raising opportunity. we ended up raising over $260 million online. i think that was an important step of that. then 3.0 things changed again. >> one thing you guys did -- you brought a lot of people together, like you said, in a very short time. how did so many different minds come together, work well together in such a short time? a lot of different people. campaigns bring different egos. what worked best in such a short time? what strategy -- who brought what to the table? >> well, i think all things take different types of leaders. i had a great leader above me, donald trump. who obviously doesn't have a lot of room for error. then you have the second one, kushner and myself. i think we -- all of those leaders are people who let talented people do their work.

there was a lot of things i had heard about previous campaigns when i would come in. i had no preconceived notion how things were supposed to operate. i would ask a lot of questions. why are you doing this? why do you think i should do this? one thing i heard was, to get an e-mail out the door, get content approved, there was 14 people in the last campaign had to approve it. our campaign, there was just one, myself. for most of the content. i could approve content that was going to go out the door. mr. trump and mr. kushner entrusted me to do so. i didn't need to have every single piece of content if it was within the means of what our campaign goals are. so i think simplifying that approval process is one example of how we streamlined operations so we could move forward. by the end of the campaign, i had dictated other people. i said you have the ability to approve this now. don't mess it up. >> you faced -- i sat in a forum

not like this but similar to this a few months before the campaign. i think it was august. they were criticizing the trump campaign. it was a republican-based forum. they were worried that they were going to lose. there was criticism of the trump campaign. they were worried targeting was going wrong. they were worried there was a lot that wasn't being done right in the digital forum to have the republican candidate win. how do you think -- how have you interacted with your peers now and how do you see politics that you have changed republican politics for the future? >> the good thing i didn't have peers in political digital. i didn't know everybody thought i wasn't doing a good job until i read it in the newspaper. to the entire campaign, i made zero initiative to make any of the marketing about myself until i think jared in the bloomberg article that came out -- it was

a couple weeks before. that was the first time i had officially talked to the press, other than you. it was a month before, right? we gave away little bits. people didn't know what we had running. it wasn't until the last week, until the end understood that heck, we had a huge operation. there was a lot of things we did -- can you hear me? significantly different. the entire campaign for the last couple months ran around digital and data. meaning, where mr. trump went on the ground, where we bought our media, how we bought our shows, how we bought -- how we made our tv commercials, the rnc -- i was the rnc liaison as well. i met and became the center point of how the ground game was going to operate from a budgetary standpoint. i tried to explain this on tv. you only have 90 seconds to explain it.

if you look at the campaign previously with a flat hierarchy above it, and this time, the campaign that ran a circle that was around the data. by doing so, our universes and our people didn't have to double work. we had a third of the money or half the money that hillary clinton did. so we didn't want to do the same work twice. i would sit there with the political director and say, we're doing this here, we're doing this here. what money do we need to spend? how are we going to make these phone calls? i can't imagine many decisions where the digital director was making the budget decisions. that was a significant difference. i knew how much data we had. i didn't perfectly eyeball that. we got pretty dang close. we ended the last day with just a few hundred thousand dollars in the bank. including that two-minute commercial we produced. getting that in the right social media spots to try to get last persuadable targets over. if you look at that and that

central point of view, that was a significant change. the other thing i stated multiple times is we spent 50% on digital. over $100 million on digital. that's a big change. at harvard, the dnc was happy to tell me that they didn't think they needed to spend more money on digital. they spent plenty. if i would have done it, i would have spent even more on digital. i think all the data shows clearly that mr. trump had a huge impact with digital social media and advertising. but you cannot not spend on tv. you couldn't just -- that would have on every newspaper, brad messes everything up, he spends all money on digital and we lost. all of us wouldn't be happy if i had done that. had you to have a balance. >> it's easy to play the hindsight game. we're going to play it.

when you look back, can you say, we won because of data? or did we win because of the message? how do you -- >> it's easy to say why we won. it's donald trump. >> do you balance those things out now? do you say, two years from now if we look at mid terms, what do you advise future campaigns to do? what do you -- >> what's funny is i didn't have any previous campaign experience, which either made me really good or just really bad at explaining this question. when i got into political advertising, this might go to -- i don't know how many digital people here and people have to get into creative. one thing that was different was i never looked at media in a way of being in the content being produced so line item the way political people looked at it. i always go back -- i was lucky enough to be in the dotcom boom in the late '90s. i remember one one thing that

for all electronics did back then. you got two types of advertising. back then, everybody remembers the ipod came out. you had the zoom or whatever the other thing was from microsoft. so they would advertise their products and have these line items. you would see line numbers. the fastest processor. what did apple do? apple showed a picture of a woman, a microphone, a silhouette no color, dancing and said, if you buy this ipod, you will feel this way. we were like, greatest product ever. it didn't explain what was in it. anyone know what's in an ipod? apple is never going to tell us what was in there. we knew how it would make us feel. what i didn't understand about political advertising was, you try to sell candidates by the pros and cons of them instead of what you are going to feel like if you voted for them. if you look at our advertising, it was based off the emotional feel of what it meant if donald trump would win. how it would change your life. people vote like they perfect

-- purchase things. they vote with their emotions. i think that political marketing started to get in the same bad problems that other companies got into advertising, which was start to sell the pieces. we have this four pieces. you have three pieces. you have three -- we're positive one. we win. unfortunately, humans don't think that way. think about that original ipod commercial. why was it so amazing? it was amazing because we just wanted to feel that happy. i believe voters wanted to feel that happy. if you watch the commercial or the change commercial or choice commercial, there was few times we went into the details. no, let's not tell about the details. mr. trump is going to bring change. he's going to make people feel better about being in america and make the country feel -- it's great again. i think that's important. that's how i think people think. that's how we make consumer decisions. why wouldn't we make our political decisions the same way? that was one of the most significant things i just didn't understand why it was a line

item contest when no other great products sell that way. that's a very consumer side view. you asked me what i brought over. >> true. in an election where we had a lot about twitter, a lot about -- a lot of content on the internet, did you ever wish that donald trump hadn't tweeted? about something in particular. or maybe distracted from the news day or distracted from the message you were trying to get out that day. >> i was never distracted from the message. do i wish, you know -- was my life ever complicated by things that happened on the campaign? yes. it's a very tough question. luckily, it's not my job to solve those communication problems. however, it was perfect and he is a genius because he won. if the goal was 270 and he won, then he won.

i never played sports all those years and said i only won by one. i played bad. >> hindsight, again, but you do a lot of things in campaigns. there's always things that don't work. you still win. what didn't work? you still won. but what are things out there that just -- >> what didn't work? >> okay. we still won. >> youtube worked beautifully. you know -- what didn't work? we didn't have enough money. wish we had more of it. >> what are things out there that looked like new and shiny toys but maybe aren't the newest and shiniest toys? >> you know, i think what doesn't work in politics and my personal opinion is this, i think live calls don't work. i just think they're worthless. i think romney made 200 million live calls and we made 2 million. i couldn't understand that. i'm not in the political

decision. that wasn't my decision to make those. i felt dollar for dollar, digital money went further. i feel like there's this thing, we have to do everything. we have to sprinkle money here and there. let's double everything. no one starts a business and goes let's double everything because we have endless money. no. do this because it makes us the most money. let's not do this because it loses money. that's a consumer thing. let's spend money everywhere. why don't we spend money where it works? i pulled from phone budgets as much as i could and to other things. i think traditional mail has its place. i think however we spent less -- i think $50 million or $60 million less than romney there. i think -- i don't know if we spent more in digital. i'm sure we did. i think tv and digital and

messaging and geo-tv were very important. it's hard for me to say with a didn't work because we won. we won almost every state we competed for but colorado. a mistake i made in colorado, i should have spent more money earlier. didn't expect how many people were going to mail in their votes, like 44% in the first few days. i thought people were naturally going to be lazier than that. colorado people really want to vote. i didn't expect that. that's a big enough the first week. i thought i had more time. i think it happens to me a couple days after a couple videos came out. it was like timing. >> let's talk about fake news. it's a buzzy topic. did it ever as you were going throughout the campaign -- >> don't talk about the "washington post" like that. >> did it ever -- did fake news help or hurt the candidate? was it something you guys talked about as it was being spread on different sites? >> you know, i have some pretty harsh comments about this. i said at harvard and everybody at the dnc almost fell out of their chair, i think i spent

most of my time fighting the largest super pac in the country, mainstream media. sorry to say that. i know you are at "the wall street journal," which i respect. i think that the media bias was i was a white supremacist. i think that it was pretty sad what the media did. i think fake news, it's not a hard line. i think everything in life is a gray area. i think all media has somehow not a sense of truth to it. there's people who write all truth and then people who write opinion and then people who write to make money. and somewhere the line in between that and i think that's probably a first amendment thing. i'm not a person that makes those choices, luckily, because

i'm not a politician, but i think at some point, the consumer has to make a choice no different than if i go in and is that tv better than the other tv? it's up to me to make that choice. when you go online, you should recognize not everything you read might be absolutely true and you should try to get yourself educated to what that is. as americans, we have responsibility to believe what we believe and not what other people say. and maybe i just have a different view to that. i think that you can't expect everyone around us to be perfect. we should just try to do what we think is right. >> we talked several times about how you brought your business experience to politics. what do you think businesses should learn from campaigns and stuff like that? >> what businesses should learn from campaigns? >> they have a set deadline. there's a definite. >> there's definitely a set deadline. i don't know if, you know.

>> lessons? >> lessons to business politics. i don't think i've ever been asked that. let me think of what i learned in politics. i think i learned that, well, see, it's different. i feel like in business, the media is kind of your friend. in politics, i learned that they will completely not your friend. there's so much more emotion in it and opinion and in business, the writer doesn't go, god, i just want to destroy your small restaurant business. let me take this down because i just hate your enchiladas. it's just like, it doesn't happen, right? so you're like, okay, we're all friends. free enchiladas, you can write a nice story, maybe a negative story you don't like the food but it's not so personal, you know? i think, and the one thing, the media. so i thought, a few reporters i met with my friends and then they terrorized me and called me names. i was like, whoa, i guess you don't like me. that was lesson one.

but that didn't have to do with business because that doesn't exist on the other side. i didn't know that was a thing, but now i do. what else did i learn? it was really nice to have a really big budget. you had to show what you can do. the beautiful thing about politics is with marketing, i've been doing this nearly 20 years. never had the opportunity to have this big of a game where i could show the different skill sets i have and bring teams together. i think that was an amazing experience and a little bit of luck mixed with a lot of hard work. you know, it's weird to be sitting up here after all these years and that's a very humbling experience, at the same time, very exciting experience. sometimes, maybe spin something to make it and i think politicians show there's no reason to end up winning the money the day after and sometimes, spend it all to make it and make choices that are a little weaker because what happens if they don't make it? but in politics, you don't have

a day after anyways and it's other people's money. so there's this certain difference opinion but i think businesses can learn from that. maybe we should spend a million dollars in advertising on this and maybe we'll make 10. it's just a different risk reward program. >> and final question, what's next for you? are you moving to dc? are you saying to go back to san antonio? >> no, i think that san antonio would be a unique experience to return to now. i have an apartment in new york. i plan on spending some time in new york. i'm close to the family and i'll continue to work with the family. i got a lot of great people i've learned along this journey. like i said before, matt, garrett, kobe, parks benny. molly, i can't say her last name.

i think those people, there's new opportunities and new experiences available and i think all of those people did amazing things and there's a lot of room for us to go out and show other people what we did. if anyone could actually really look at see, there were some of the meetings with matt, garrett, me, and see what we did and how much we did, i think they'd be shocked and just, we got a lot done with a little team. and the dnc probably had 100 people for every ten of ours and but i think a couple of things. one, people felt more connected and more pride. it's amazing when you get a group of people that feel so driven to do something that it doesn't take a lot of team to do that. i think i could take one of those people against ten people who it's just a job. and i think you saw that in the republican group. i think the rnc epublican natio committee was perfect and trump, we didn't have that team so all

of the sudden, we could all come together and i think when those people, i'm excited to see what all of them do and what i could do with them. good? >> thank you so much. >> thank you. >> going to stick around too. i know a lot of people have questions for you, brad. next up, we'll do this in silicon valley style. and next up is daniel huey to talk about the expenditure arm. >> hello. sorry, can you hear me now? okay. i'm daniel huey and this cycle, i managed the rnc's expenditure program. i got a handful of things i wanted to show you here. mostly about the mentality of

how we approached our advertising this cycle, some principle things we stuck to that surfaced very well. so none of this is rocket science. very old problems that are getting worse all the time and the solutions are all extremely simple. everyone in this room understands. the devil is in the details in implementing and executing it all. things that were talked about, more clutter than before, audiences all over the place on different scenes and more ways to buy each of these types of plans. so our solutions, we had three basic principles that guided us here but targeting the same audience across all of the screens. layering our media plans and creativity consistent through all of our advertising. the first one, you know, we used the exact same voter file, found our model target voter audience, exact same voter file is what we used for television, same one we sent to facebook and obviously, the same one we used to target

the yenaudiences online and two things. one, compare apples to apples better about the most financially efficient way to serve one more member of the target audience but then also, to do something we thought was innovative and measure total message penetration. and media plans, i think this is one of the more novel pieces very difficult to execute once you get into the nitty-gritty of it. efficiency is great. going into the cycle, everyone talks about data and efficiency and being hypertargeted and that's great, but on television, you're so efficient, talking to a small percentage of the audience because you're not buying, quote unquote, wasteful advertising and online, your microtargeting your audience but at some point, you can't scale that. i think there's a bias towards efficiency we need to move from away a little bit. and then a broadcast impression the same as a digital impression and i think that's the wrong

argument to be having. i think we should talk about attentiveness of impressions and so, sorry, but a lot of web sites, essentially a digital yard sign. it's the same television yard sign during the daytime news, no one is watching it. but program, there's a place for that at a certain price but we should place a premium on advertising such as true view, people opt into and are paying attention to. i think that's why live sports is more important on television by far. video on demand with the cable, essentially true view on television. and the final piece is holistic media plans. instead of saying the media budget is x, and this percentage goes to tv and this percentage goes to digital. let's allocate to the thing that the medium is best at. broadcast is best at generating a lot of reach, targeting people at once. but the price efficiency and ability to scale down to reach frequency to your target yenls