what happens if you bring indians and chinese to the u.s., you put them in silicon valley, and a marinade, and they take advantage? taking this people and putting them in singapore, they are not going to in of unnecessarily. i think you have to recognize that it goes beyond individuals. >> i actually tried singapore several times, and the first time was about 12 years ago. .

[laughter] singapore is a model for something else. singapore represents everything else in the world. it is off the grid, and in 50 years to become one of the most developed countries, so singapore is an archetypal case study of the potential but also possibly the limit of innovation if culture is destiny.

did your questions ready. why don't we ask all three questions and then leave it open for the panel? >> i have twin 7-year-old in california. i was just there when they pass it. what do we need to do to raise our children here in the united states, to take the advantage of the point that the world is not flood, to taking advantage of this. -- is not flat, to taking advantage of this and so forth.

>> public university. and the infrastructure. california has been so innovative for so long. we are squandering it. but we used to have great infrastructure. i do not think it means a lot, but it means investment, and it depends on where you live if your kid gets a good education or not. if you live in the right place they are going to be raised to be creative. you may get shot at when dropping your kid off. it is not common. it is not that complicated for california, but we have such of horrible political stalemate. i would say sacramento. >> if your innovating, it is for home.

saying, why would one been stimulated to be an entrepreneur? it is not unreasonable to ask we do more on education, and we do not to the very well at all. i think once we do that, we have the system build and to be entrepreneurial. >> cultural intelligence, language skills, the ability to act effectively would all be helpful. >> i think the u.s., japan, and china are the worst because the markets are vague enough they are very insular. the reason -- rbd enough they are very insular. the reason is they have to start a global. some of the best do not care about the rest of the world.

i think the global system -- there are so many people here the people do not look as if the markets more quickly. >> i think if i did -- if i could change anything, it would be understanding the world and building the community. i did not get that as a child. >> i teach entrepreneurship for engineers. i went to the conference that is like the un for the developing world, and it was basically described as one of the 15 nations and singapore. -- 115 nations and singapore. >> let me add one thing that is relevant. there is a representative from singapore year.

-- from singapore here. if he wishes, i am going to give him the microphone. >> i think that is appropriate. >> i am kidding. i could also add, he is also on enemy territory for a second reason. he is from stanford. >> i am sure there are many other alumni here. i did not realize what i was getting myself into, but it is quite interesting listening to this discussion. i think singapore is a country and where the model we adopt is unique to our history and constraints, so to say the singapore model could be applied

to america or rwanda, i think you have to take that with the huge pinch of salt, and these are valid points, but i guess the fundamental issue we face is how do we build advantages? we need to be able to direct resources in a focused way. to adopt the american model -- that is a an idea. that is maybe a myth that we all aspire to, but it is something we cannot afford. if we want to do that, we do not have the critical numbers, which is why when john was in singapore, we had a chat. to really do large-scale innovation, there's a certain balance between directing, and i

guess from where i sit, which is where we do long term investments into innovation, it is about building that greenhouse. it is allowing that serendipity. he was working with a member of my staff and working, so it is little niches of various places, but i think coming back to rich's floyd, to say singapore is the world's great grandchild oversells us. >> i think we're at a time when there are lots of promising practices and provocative examples, but the thing i always say to people when they try to figure out what to do is you have to write the book, not read it. how can each country figure out its own path where?

rwanda, which now has a national innovation agenda arguably more sophisticated than the one we have in the united states and other interesting points. >> there are two books you should read. >> we are all in general agreement. every place is different. no place will become the next singapore. you will be a hybrid, and you have to build on your own unique history and your own people. i think one of the things i will say -- national innovations system is the category i have a trouble with any way. innovation tends to happen at this of national level. it tends to happen at local spaces. if you think about pumping

resources, it is like input. if we add more money, it is not how innovation happens, and i am not sure they have that much to show for the money, and you take more than just pumping and resources. >> that is why you cannot read somebody else's flav vote. -- somebody else's playbook. >> it is a competitive advantage. what is your unfair advantage? you have to have an unfair advantage to read. as a country, you have to think about, what is it about your country when have the leverage your unfair advantage? it is geopolitical. it is cultural. >> i am going to disagree with the board director. i think it is not about money. it is about prospering, and these are not the same thing.

if you talk about an unfair advantage, winning matters, but as a culture, we have to prosper, and that is not the same as winning. we have too often written the lexicon about winning. i asked them what their overall goal isn', and you want a prosperous industry, but if we focus on winning, they do not use the tools your organization has, which is collected and cooperative activity. >> part of the problem is we have these two different models of floating around for the 20th- century. we have to free the market, and then we have the state to guide us towards community, and neither is working very well, and we are all looking at public-private partnerships. we are trying to grope around for a model that works, and that

is where the big gains will be, as we try to identify not a remedy for every place, but what kinds of remedies need to be made by the states, and when can we back off and let people act serendipitously? >> i call on a gentle man back there, because we're almost out of time. i am going to try to get as many voices as possible. >> we talked about nations and individuals. i would like to ask about corporations. is there any advantage if you are starting a new company being geographically co located? >> ok, keep that in mind. other questions? i see one all the way back there.

why don't you take the microphone first, >> i know we have been discussing this a little bit, but i find that cross-disciplinary focuses in my generation are superseded by specialization of your sugar ration. can you touch on that a little bit more -- your generation. can you touch on that a little bit more? >> the gentleman. >> we talked about -- i guess the question is, are you familiar with the startup unit in the u.s. salmon we get visas for entrepreneurs who want to start a company. >> i am here with innovation

america, but i also happen to be a consulting professor at the national university of singapore, hand i had an interesting, and i thought would go with a discussion. i am part of a program the university has where they send approximately 154200 undergraduates around the world to places where there is lots of innovation going on. they have a program in philadelphia, and their job is to send a year working in an innovative, entrepreneurial company of less than 50 people and bring that knowledge back to singapore to set up that whole way of thinking in the country. as the country, they are doing that.

>> i met one of the students in the program. >> i want them to all look of the red blinking light. you all have 30 seconds to make your final summation. >> i think one of the biggest barriers is xenophobia, so the visa thing is really important. seven investors got a special deal with singapore. only one of them was a singaporean. in japan all of them would be japanese. in america all of them would be american. they are very inclusive as a culture. i think it is really hard in the united states. it is not like you do not notice

it when you are here, but generally speaking, it is really difficult. >> innovation suggests a set of capabilities which nations, societies, regions, individuals can use a lot of ways. it really does make a difference whether you're talking about a finite game in which innovation becomes a hammer for battering down the competition versus what the literature calls an infinite game where the game is successful if everyone wins. we do not have a model for innovation at a global level, let alone a global inventory of capabilities for thinking about it as a global system, but i think it is a project well worth working on. >> it is a concept that has been floating around for a long time. we are trying to work the up side of the realm of digital and creative work. for me, the biggest thing is to

foster a common capability, in other words to actually build innovation that is pretty competitive in its classical sense and available. that will stimulate countless nodes of capability manifest, which is innovation. >> i could not agree more, and i wanted to say my generation increase educated to -- my generation is educated to specialize. ignore us. this is your future. you should learn different things. who the world does not break up into society and engineering. all these require being able to go across barriers. i am a program that is multi disciplinary, and i have a hard time communicating. we solve problems difficultly,

so forget the disciplines. break out and find out what problems you need to solve. >> i would like to echo what you said. join me in thanking our panelists. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> good afternoon, everybody. welcome back after your break. i am the bureau chief economist and also wrote a couple of folks. "the road from ruin." those are subjects about innovation of their heart.

arianna huffington has chosen this as her book of the month, which means i have to ask a soft questions. not really. i would like to ask her of two- stage. auriana -- arianna does not need much of an introduction. she is one of the great destructive innovators of our age, certainly to the extent no one in the media feels they're going to have any money in the future as a result of this brilliant "huffington post," and convincing people to read for nothing, but the subject -- to write for nothing, but the subject, is america a third

world country -- it is interesting. almost my instinct was it would probably be better to be a third world country, because there are a lot of exciting things going on in the developing world in terms of new technologies and so forth. what lies behind your concern of america becoming a third world country? >> as matthews said, it is a great coach. >> i did not say the barrier -- i did not say that. what he says is a new way of addressing the issues i am addressing in this book i am writing about whether america is becoming a third world country. if we look at what is happening to the middle class in the foundation of a first world country, we see the american

middle class is being squeezed to the point of major danger, not just for our economy, but for our democracy. this is not something that just happen because of the financial crisis. it is something the has been going on for decades now, and i do not want to bore you with the statistics, but when you have one in five americans out of work, one in five whose homes have been foreclosed, one in nine with food stamps, one in eight who cannot make their credit card payment, 1100 thousand declaring bankruptcy every night -- every month, there is something happening in. >> that is interesting. i saw some statistics that for

the median household, the only source of increased spending power until 2008 was mortgage and equity withdraw, so without that, there would have been no increase in the average income and american household has, which really underlines your point. >> it goes beyond economics, because america has been a country of of ford mobility. the american dream within reach of everyone, so when that is replaced with downward mobility , your children are expected to do worse than you in just about every indicator, including life expectancy. that changes the whole tone of the country, and it changes america from being an optimistic and basically happy country, a welcoming of foreigners like me

and you end to a country that has suddenly become angry, and we see these explosions of anger with the tea party movement or the explosions in congress over the weekend. this is kind of unusual, and it happens anytime there is major economic anxiety, when people begin to operate out of fear rather than rationality and dealing with the facts. >> where do you think the answers lie that reverse this trend famines -- this trend? >> i do not seek any other way to have job growth. we are not going to have job growth based on consumption, because people do not have the money to spend, and those that

have money to spend are saving more. the government has no iodide for big programs. -- no appetite for big programs. the president just signed this bill, which is not going to make a big dent with unemployment. detroit now has 50% unemployment. imagine what i've means. the decimation of an entire city. so this has to become a primary importance, when it comes to government policy and when it comes to the private sector.

innovations coupled with community. there is a new book that's basically talks about the need to bring more humanitarianism. it is really talking about this great game here and in the third world. if we can tap into that and get people to actually become involved in solutions in others lives, and many people in this room are doing that, but it is a combination of for-profit and not-for-profit. whether it is micro lending for college students or any of the groups here, innovating and at the same time creating jobs and

opportunities, that is part of the future. >> it is interesting you describe a load of social networking and so forth that is taking place, which in many ways also empowers, yet at the same time, the political process seems to be coming -- to be becoming more fractured and incapable of actually taking the big decisions that need to be taken. is that going to resolve itself? >> our political system is completely broken. at the moment it is so dominated by social input. when you have thousands of lobbyists descending on washington, many of them former members of congress or former chief of staff, they know what to do, and they have millions of dollars to spend to buy back the quality, and basically that turns both political parties

into dysfunctional parties. the republic gulf region republicans suddenly decided to become a party of -- the republicans suddenly decided to become a party of obstruction. and non-citizens have a greater role they have not to play than they would have. there is a movement that has suddenly spread everywhere called "move your money." we are frustrated. we thought, how about if the citizens made the bank's smaller by moving their deposits, and in the process, basically made it possible that community banks and credit unions would have more money to lend to their communities and create jobs, and

we launch did just before the new year, and now about 9% of people have moved their money. it is a combination of people wanting to be in power, and feeling increasingly frustrated by the lack of action, even when you have the financial reform and tim geithner speaking today. again, there is a sense they are not tackling the big problems. they're working around the edges, and for it to work, you have to allow companies and banks to save, and that is what i like about your book.

it means the government is going to be on the hook. there is no way you can regulate against the sufficiently. live in how many regulators were at aig and lehman brothers. >> it is interesting that you looked at the proposals of the moment, and there are no real attempts to wipe the slate clean. there are so many regulators in america, all of whom seem to make somebody else responsible for its, and there is no proposal, because they would not be getting the financing donations to oversee those regulators common so it's

corruption seems to go to the heart of the system and paralyze it against institutional reform. one thing i talk about is how the media fails in covering financial markets. eventually, the media did start to disclose what position -- to force the pundits to disclose what positions they have, and why don't we have a list of all the money they have received? that kind of popular publicity about the corruption -- it does not seem to be the anger in a price to go way you are seeing. >> first, i would love to see

precisely the innovation you are describing. i think anyone working on new tools, if you can produce the kind of tool that every time a politician speaks for every time they write, something would pot of, and we would know where their contributions are coming from, -- would pop up, and we would know where their contributions are coming from. it would tell you whether what they are saying is the truth or not, because another issue we are dealing with is the complete breakdown of trust. when you hand sarah palin talk about the tamils, wouldn't you like to have a bubble actually -- about death panels, wouldn't you like to have a bubble that says, it clearly says nothing

about that in the bill. when barack obama said over the summer he had not supported during his campaign the public auction, a bubble would come of with his campaign websites and supporting the public auction, and you would begin to deal with the fact that right now people cannot tell what is factual and what is not. >> maybe we need a lie detector. no politicians should be allowed to speak on television without going through a lie detector. >> what ever it is, some kind of innovation, because you cannot have a functioning democracy -- trust is the new black. we are obsessed with fact checking, and despite the fact

we have citizens, journalists, and hundreds of loggers, you cannot do it without making sure you can earn your leaders trust. >> are you and optimism about technology in the media? i think many people worry about what happens in the media when we do not get investigative journalist and that we're also going to get people selecting their own content. it reinforces preconceptions. the worry about that? >> i am constitutionally an optimist and a double optimist on greece and the nationalized american.

we need a device that would be an internal gps system that would tell us when we are no longer aligned. i feel we do not spend much time being connected with our own intuition, and our own sense, and we need that. i am convinced even if at lehman brothers if somebody was getting enough sleep and disconnecting from their devices, they might have caught it, because there was nobody. we need more of these leaders. the greatest strides it -- strategy of a leader is being able to see things. in order to do that, you have to be connected.

you have to be able to see beyond. we have an entire section dedicated to living. i committed to getting eight hours a night, and if changes how creative i feel, and i do not know how many people here. tonight, make sure you go to bed early, but it is not just something that is a minor matter. it is a fact of our creativity, our own sense of finding solutions, so that is number one. the technology and being able to connect to the technology. in order to sustain investigative journalism, we need to find different models. it is not going to be sustained

by advertising alone. we have a not-for-profit model. we are funding it, but it has also raised money from foundations and individuals, because it takes a long time, and you do not have instant results. one more thing, and when you mention business journalism really failed us, i think part of the problem is access, that in order to maintain access members pulled punches and even find themselves. -- aligned themselves. that is something the media can also do a better job of that, by being real time reporters on what is happening. >> i think we have started to

see what is going to happen with the field. we had an event on ethical supply chains where we had an interesting discussion about how if you get something where people are clearly wanted to have a direct personal relationship with somebody struggling with a problem in africa, could you not shift that into a company supply chain and essentially, my coworker would have a communication between people working in the factory in thailand or indonesia with people back in the states, and how would that change the dialogue in the company about how to relate to someone earning a fraction of what i am learning during a different job and living a different life? how does that change the whole debate about international trade and all those sorts of things. i think there is nothing like that at the moment, but i imagine it would develop pretty fast.

people are finding ways to see each other out and communicating with each other. >> i love that. we need that. the godfather of social entrepreneurs has seven it is going to be increasingly critical, because we cannot imagine a healthy world without gond, and there's something in the zeitgeist that encourages that. there is a reality show on cbs which no one expected to be the hit it is called "undercover boss." it has been a sensation, and it basically takes one of these guys and has some work with seville lowliest, and they see

how they work and what they go through, and it is a microcosm -- they work with some of lowliest, and they see how they work and what they go through, and is a microcosm. the bottom 20% stagnate. >> there is a sense about how those businesses we have seen have seemed so remote anfrom the ordinary person. i can see how this has resonance. we are open to questions now. let's take some right at the front. not just say who you are and which company. -- just say who you are and which company. >> roger tucker.

my question is, i did not know if you read this book, but now the author talks about the creative destruction force of the internet and looking back over 15 years in newspapers, how it causes so much disruption that so many jobs have been lost, so my question is, as you are the leader of the huffington post, which is a major innovation, how do you look arafat as being of cortex of this creative obstruction of so many jobs, whereas innovation is supposed to be creating new innovation?

>> i have a lot of help from craigslist. it is a perfect storm that has led to the incredible loss of jobs in the mainstream media. it includes what is happening on the internet and the changing consumer habits. people like to go online and go deeper tie following the links. -- by following the links, but it also have to do with the fact that so many in the mainstream media miss the boat. it is what is described in the book about disruptive innovation, and it is a combination of all this stuff. despite the fact that we had a

near financial meltdown, so all that happened as once, but right now they are doing a very good job of moving online and doing really good things online, so you have this distinction between mainstream media and online media, and it is not as significant. it is going to be both. we are increasingly hiring reporters and moving into what has been tradition -- the second round of traditional journalism. >> we have a question right in the middle. i am picking people as far away as purse -- as possible verio -- as possible.

>> hello, i was just wondering why shouldn't america become a third world country? maybe that would increase our empathy. >> we wanted to make sure we do not become a third world country, because one of the main problems would be the destruction of the middle class, which has been the foundation of america, which has also been the foundation of the american feeling that we do not begrudge the rich because they aspired to be rich, and they believe they will be rich or comfortable, so when downward mobility becomes the new reality and you're suddenly living in a different country where there is anger and success, and that is not a

healthy country to be living in, and there are only suboptimal solutions to our big problems, and that is where innovation is needed. we cannot afford financial reform like the one chris dodd is shepherding through the senate now. we cannot afford solutions that basically are going to fail in the medium term, and that is reason, so we can all imagine what may happen. that is key, because remember how often after something tragic happens, whether it is the destruction in new orleans or 9- 11, or even the financial meltdown, one thing people often say is, who could have solved

that? who could have imagined planes flying into the twin towers? there has been a lot of predictions of a lot of stuff written about all that, but we have ignored it. >> i think we need some kind of marshall plan or manhattan initiative to take the trade and revive it. that is the way you have to go. >> the think we need something of the national lovell like the manhattan project, we over -- but we also need something massive deficit is some level. -- something massive deficit is some level. we need our recognition that we need to do something for people around us for our own community, so it has to be a twofold response, not just coming from the top.

>> do we have another question? right at the front here. >> a short comment and a question. the third world country, i do not get the question. i can tell you katrina would not have happened in certain - countries. the response system is better. so my question is, why are you putting this as a topic in an audience full of americans? what is behind this provocative question? >> we like provocative questions. i think the reason for the title -- first of all, it should

be is america becoming a third world country, because nobody is arguing is right now, and the reason for keeping a title that is provocative is in order to wake people up and have them pay attention, it is like sounding an alarm bell. it is like saying, there's something going on we are not paying sufficient attention, and there was a study by northwestern university that shows unemployment among the people making 150,000 or more is only 3%. unemployment in the bottom 10% is 31%, so if unemployment was that high at the top, you would be hearing about it all the time, so what i am trying to do

is have a national conversation about it before it is too late, because we have a window where we can respond, and after a certain time, the window closes. remember cassandra? she was not popular, but she was right. at first people do not like cassandra because they want to say everything is fine, but it is better to worry about now then when it is too late. >> i found that interesting about the reaction. there seems to be such a desire and also in washington to pretend this is not a catastrophic moment where we need to make decisions. how do you wake the public up? that is the note we should and

don. do you have a sense of how you can wake the public optima >> 3 did the public up? >> the first thing is exactly what you said. not just now, but throughout history, people want to pretend everything is fine. we solved the problem. they are paying off bonuses. all is good in the world, and we need to make sure we do not fool ourselves into thinking we solve the problem before we have fundamental structural changes, which is what you advocate in your book, what i am advocating in mind, and what is national conversation needs to be about in order to wake people up. >> unfortunately, we are on a

tight time frame. >> i can give you my e-mail address. is arianna@huffingtonpost.com. thank you so much. >> thank you. [applause] >> i am the u.s. economic professor of "the economist" magazine. at my old public -- publication, they used to say, people want to read about animals, people, and numbers in that order.

i decided to write about numbers. if got to be dissatisfying because there was some money making the decisions that cause the economy to do bed. it unlocked the question of what were they thinking. that is how i started the research. christina and david romer have spent a lot of their academic career actually trying to figure out what those in congress were thinking when the critical decisions were made to determine whether our economy grew or whether it was stagnated, so we're very fortunate to have dr. romer here. the last time she spoke to an audience, she changed titles. barack obama selected her to be

chairman of the council and the follow up of 2008, because he was facing unprecedented economic circumstances, and he naturally wanted to know what brought people thinking about these circumstances, so dr. romer is now there every day advising on the best economic minds have to say about his various problems, so i would like you to all give a warm welcome. [applause] >> this is a group spending all of today and tomorrow thinking big thoughts on innovation and so forth, but let's pull the camera bag and put this in context of the economy -- the camera back and put this in context of the economy and what the president wants to do to get the environment right.

we are told the recession is growing, get unemployment is still very high. sales of existing homes were quite poor. what is the state of the economy? why does it seem so weak? >> this is such a weird feeling. i have taught introductory economics for many years, and if it does not usually look like this. i think the way you characterize it, we are recovering it. the easiest way to see that is the difference from where we were a year ago. the gdp was falling at over 6%, and in 2009, we grew at over 6%, so that is an incredible change, but you pointed out the important thing. i think we would have to say we are not yet doing anything close

to what we want to be doing. usually when we talk about the labor markets, the usual pattern is the first place that shows up as productivity surges, when you start to seek temporary employment, and finely you see employment growth, and we have those first three. now we have seen tremendous productivity growth in temporary -- and temporary help employment co-op, -- go up. i think we're going to see positive job growth. we're certainly going to be watching. from my point of view, there's no question we're on the right trajectory. the question is, how strong is it? our forecast is to grow about 3% in 2010. now that definitely puts a lot of pressure on the unemployment

rate. we're pushing for more targeted action on jobs because we need to do better than that. we need a robust gdp growth to bring the rates down quickly. >> one of the first things the president did was push through the big fiscal stimulus of almost $800 million, and you said if this was done right, we should be a will to push unemployment down. what went wrong? did the stimulus work? >> it did work. it is continuing to work. we got the baseline forecast wrong for the unemployment rate. greg and i were talking earlier. if you look at the forecast earlier for gdp growth, we did remarkably well. now i think we were predicting we grew 3/10 of a percentage point. we were actually incredibly

close. what has in fact happened is the recession has been particularly hard on the labour market, so that as part of why the unemployment rate surged, so nobody was guessing the fiscal stimulus, but the evidence is growing. we think of the end of 2009, it will be about 2 million. certainly that number is going to keep going up. that is not just us. that is the congressional budget office. it has also come to one of the themes of the obama administration, which is very much transparency, and a place that showed up was the recovery act of actually having monitoring for job creation.

i notice that because i check on congress every courter for what it is doing, but we also have direct recipients, and only a third of the funds have direct recipient reports. i think there is another kind of read on whether that is what we're doing. >> let's talk about what the economy does from here. barack obama would often talk about the flaws of economic growth we have experienced. he said too much growth was based on bubbles, on speculation, and on debt, and he wanted an economy not based on those things. what does he mean by that? we had bubbles in the 1990's. can we grow without bubbles? we have an economy that is addictive to speculation and bubbles? >> no common and we are not addictive to bubbles -- no, we

are not addicted to bubbles, and we can grow without them. there are a couple of things. one thing you pointed out is the president ran for president before the financial crisis, before the recession on largely economic issues, the idea that middle-class families would see their standard of living stagnate, that health care -- far too many people did not have access to health insurance. it was too expensive and rising too quickly. we were not investing enough in education. those were all parts of the deteriorating status of ordinary families. that was a big part of its common -- part of it, so there was something in it even through this crisis. we want to come through this even stronger . i will ask you to the death in

1950's and 1960's. here are decades of good growth and innovation, and we did not have bubbles, so i think it is not an inherent feature of economic growth. it is not an inherent feature of capitalistic economies. .

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[captions copyright national cable satellite corp 2008 barack barack >> there are a lot of places where if you really want to have a high profile, get the argument and juggle that with family, it

is not easy, and it may not be the right choice for an awful lot of people. but it is the issue. >> i was surprised to hear that the issue in enrollments is lower for people because in ancient days when i was at columbia i was running a gender discrimination clinic. there was a disproportionate number of women signing up for those clinics. i remember one exercise in particular it was -- the school had a simulated constitutional literature seminar. i had a seminar that was working on whatever i was working on. at that time the aclu was bringing cases to establish that women have the same obligation

to serve on juries as men. the constitutional litigation clinic did a moot court on that question, and my students who were working on a case called hayley against edwards, they were ever so much better because this was a live case. it really mattered. some huge cases against at&t, against "the new york times," women were very enthusiastic about becoming part of those. >> that is still true. if you look at clinical enrollment, we have a number that are disproportional. they are direct services clinics. the community law clinic is very heavily women. the youth in education law

clinic. we have had trouble in the supreme court clipic getting women in. i think this is a point at which virginia was saying a couple minutes ago plays in. if you are thinking about an appellate practice, there is no other kind of practice to balance it with whatever you want to balance it with. you almost always know when they are going to be due long ahead of time. you can work at them in nights and weekends, you can work at them at home. it is amazing the places now with the snet revolution and everything, it's amazing the places you can work on a brief and the times of day you can do it. so, you know, it is a fantastic practice. i think if you look at government offices that deal with, for example, the brooklyn district attorney's office,

where you look at the legal defense center, women are quite well represented in that practice, because that practice the case has acome to you. so it doesn't require you to be a business getter, it requires you to be a business do-er, and this is an incredibly wonderful kind of work to do. if you like writing and research thrrk is nothing better than it. i think the supreme court practice has this additional problem because of the scarcity of the argument opportunities and the fact that the supreme court bar has become ever increasingly -- it has become much more -- so that it isn't the case that you see high-ticket cases or even remotely interesting kisses where someone who hasn't argued a case before gets the case once it's at the supreme court. the one place where you do see a

difference there is a case where, for example, justice beginsburg -- ginsburg was quite instrumental. she gave someone a case recently which is rita sevare against munchnick. the justice from that sirkt, i think, is -- from that circuit, i think, is responsible for picking up that case. without your first case, it is very hard to have a second case. there wouldn't be a second case without a first case. >> just before debbie merit's argument, there was a case from the seventh sirkt also. these were cases where the parties agreed on whatever was

the thresh hold procedural point, so the court needed to have someone to bend the court of appeals, and that's how -- >> amended. >> yes. i think i wrote the opinion in her case, and i said something in the text about how well she had performed, even though it was an impossible case in the sense that here were both parties agreeing it was appealed wrong. >> as virginia says, appellate law really ought to lend itself to that. although i won't say there are more emergencies than you would think. people give up the briefs two days before it is due. and we once had a summer

associate in my practice who came to me at the end of the summer and said, you know, it has been a tough summer. it turns out, i am very bad at deadlines, so i think i should be in the appellate practice. i sometimes worry about functionly speaking it ought to be do-able. when you get to the supreme court point, i think there are still people out there who think, well, she works part time, she's not really a star lawyer, she's not that committed to her career. i don't want someone who works part time to argue my supreme court case. i'm good at it in other ways, but i have a different vision of what a supreme court advocate looks like, and she doesn't to me look like someone who works part time. she looks like someone who is more committed to my case. even though it may be functionly

very do-able, there is still a bit of a probable in the way we conceptualize the perp who stands up to -- the person who stands up to argue before the supreme court and that seems like someone different. >> and whether it is even a "she" that they visualize, is an issue. >> one would like to get more women on the supreme court. i think it has been vital that justice ginsburg and justice o'connor were there. i think that's an important part of the picture. most companies, that's the end of the road for them. when they see more diversity on the bench, obviously we did not

discuss the issue of racial diversity, but that is a whole other issue to deal with. it is enormous change from her vantage point. i think the problem is, as you get more change, there is a snowballing desire for more rapid change. i think that's where we encounter the frustration. >> i have a client from the major league baseball association that has been my client for years. i have a relationship with them. they don't care that i work part time, that i have worked part time for 18 years, they know when they have a problem, a strike or whatever, i've been there for them. the fact i have a long-term relationship would get me businesses in those cases and

they have taken a couple cases up. but in most cases, you don't have a relationship. you are going in to get a short-term event with someone. so it doesn't play to what i consider a strength, i hope, for myself and many women, this ability to build a relationship where someone has confidence in you and to know that you will be there for them even if you are a part-time lawyer, as i have been for many years. you have to take into account that a-- account that appellate relationships are -- >> you have to look outside the united states that people were sitting on the bench, how that is changing. we had an exchange last week with the supreme court of canada.

that supreme court sent a delegation, their supreme court, who was a woman, and three associate justices, only one of whom was a man. you know, you think that people would think, my goodness, isn't that strange? nobody commented on it at all. nobody noticed that the delegation from canada were three women and one man. i think as the numbers grow, now we will be three and four and maybe more, i think that does make a difference. and let me say in that regard, putting women on the bench, the president who deserves enormous credit is jimmy carter. because when he became president, there were none. almost none. there was one woman on a u.s.

court of appeals in the entire country, shirley huftetler. carter made her the first ever secretary of education. he was determined, as he put it, to change the complex of the u.s. judiciary by selecting members of minority groups and women in numbers. although he was our president only four years, by the end of that four years, there was an enormous change in the complexion of the u.s. judiciary and no president ever went back to the way it once was. that was a person who was determined to make a change and looked for people where other presidented -- presidents -- looked in places where other presidents hadn't looked before. >> i do want to make sure we

have time for questions from our audience, but i wond if our panelists would be able to offer words of advice for women that may be considering a career in appellate practice generally, what to expect and how to prepare. virginia? >> sure. clerk, take federal courts. i think an ability to think across areas of law is one of the most sort of critical skills for an appellate lawyer to think about. standing, mootness, rightness, fine at. all those areas. if you can link different areas of law and think creatively, you are better likely to be a good appellate lawyer. that might be better than finding a great professor -- finding a great professor, i think is critical. if you have a great mentor in law school, talk to that person.

when you have summer jobs, talk to people in practice areas, ask them how they worked and got where they are. ti think clerking -- i think clerking and working are the best ways to begin an appellate practice. >> if you just decide it is something you want, put your head down, and go for it, don't people tell you that's not the rules, that's not the right way. i didn't clerk on the supreme court. i went to the government, which wasesn't how you were supposed to go to the attorney general's office. i built relationships. you have to keep working. you have to work real hard and have the kind of work that people are willing to get behind and endorse. look for members, both female and male.

thank goodness there are plenty of males, even before, who are supportive of women. so don't assume you have to have just a female mentor to push you in this process. get as many mentors as you can. if you decide this is what you want or whatever else it is that you want, i think it changes, some by luck, some by right relationships, and a lot by people saying that's what i want and pushing and insisting upon it. >> if what you want to be is an appellate lawyer, the thing you should do in law school is spend as much time as you can on per swacive legal writing. so learn how to do the per swacive legal writing. work for an organization when you graduate which may well turn out to be either the state and legal government or a nonprofit that will let you take on appellate work early in your career.

a lot of courts will give you a case to brief but will guarantee you if you take a case out of their pro bon posm that you will get argument time. start building a track record. that track record is really important. so in addition to the kind of thing patty was talking about in addition to the clerk and work, there is a third one that rhymes, which is don't be a jerk. a lot of how you will get clients and referrals is from the people you already know and the people you are working with now. the reputation you get early on in your career for doing a good job on cases will follow you through your cases. then if you are lucky enough and a supreme court case comes along, you will get that. my career, certainly it has been great doing supreme court cases, but the appellate work i did

generally, i would have been satisfied with that as a career and i wouldn't say if i had never -- i didn't spend "time" thinking if i never get another supreme court argument i want to be struck by a train because i have nothing left to live for. >> i think we should take up a point that patting introduced and we didn't talk about it. that is, there are no closed doors for women, but what happens when the baby comes? i must say that in my own life, the luckyest thing i ever did was to pick my life partner. one of my classmates in college said to me, you know, marty, my husband, is so competent in his own ability that he will never regard you as any kind of

threat. on the contrary, he will be your best booster because he decided that we would share our lives together. so at different times the balance has been different ways when marty was a young lawyer climbing up the ladder to make partner. i remember saying to him about my son, this child is 4 years old and you haven't yet taken him to the park. then i got my first good job in dees when jimmy carter in dees when jimmy carter appointed me to the deessirkt -- d.c. sirkt -- circuit. everyone assumed i was commuting from new york to d.c. marty transferred to georgetown. there was no question that was

the way we would live. he has become a super chef. i haven't made a meal in 30 years. so the support that i have had from him because he believed that my work originally was as important but now more important. than his. but it takes that kind of strong man, or whoever your partner is, someone who never regards you as threatening, but someone who is really good and who should be helped along her way. >> certainly can't improve on that. if you all have questions, if you can just come to the microphones, we would be happy to expand this conversation a little.

>> on a similar note, i was wondering because you were talking about it before, i was wondering why aggressiveness necessarily has to be the doe main of men. as i understand it, in this society, to get to the top of any career, you have to be fairly aggressive in the law. litigation in particular is very aggressive, which i think requires a certain amount of aggressiveness. "will point out in our court 3-4 finalists were women, and i can't imagine them not being cableable of aggressiveness. obviously they were here in front of people arguing in front of four justices. there is some competitiveness.

there is an argument today about whether being -- about whether aggressiveness was required or whether women could be or should be aggressive. any responses? thanks. >> i didn't feel in my academic career that i needed to be interpersonally aggressive at all. obviously i have to write in an assertive way in life, but i didn't have to call up places to give me offers. i put the thing in the mail and some law review takes it. it doesn't require the same kind of selling of myself in which i feel i am personally making a comparative, competitive claim that businesses always does. i think the academy -- maybe that's one reason i was attracted to the academy, that i

could get the work and i would always get the work without having to say me, me, me, me. >> the work speaks for itself. >> yes. >> i just wanted to add two things. one is to absolutely second justice ginsburg's last point is that what makes it work is to have a husband that is absolutely, totally supportive. that was proved for us when we both had supreme court arguments in the same week, and we survived it. the other thing that i wanted to emphasize, it's been mentioned, if you want to -- i agree that the solicitor's office is the place to go if you are

interested in supreme court practice, but i also want to add, i hated oral arguments. i really hated them. briefing was great fun. but the scope of the issues you get, the variety, and they are all cutting edge, and brief writing is lots of fun. and if you don't think you are going to like oral arguments, don't let that stop you. the solicitor general's office is a great place to be. [applause] >> i wond how many people would say the reason this is is attractive is how important it is their spouse was supportive.

>> for me, i love oral arguments , except for the two days beforehand and afterwards. i love oral arguments. i like the brief wrirks which is where i channel my -- i don't know if aggressiveness is quite the word, but i want to use that word, that's where i channel it, and that's where i put my sights and my vigorous new advocasy and my vigorousness about fighting for my client and i tchan he will it into there. and i think the question is not whether you have to be aggressive or a zealous advocate, but i figure that's where it should be. that's the job. that is not my personal relationship outside writing briefs and outside the group, where many for a lot of men it is to keep that level up.

do we have to become like that, or will the world come to accept women as channeling where they do this zellous performance but still being able to have, like virginia did, a nice conversation with a client who then wants to hire you because you are not doing the pushy aggressiveness that other people are. i don't have -- >> i don't have a problem being aggressive on behalf of my clipets, i have a problem being aggressive by myself. you don't want one of the self-help on being your own best friend. >> you do want to think, i am my own client. i think it would be easier for me to hire patty, instead of calling them and saying, you ought to hire patty to be your

lawyer instead of saying, you sought to hire me. and it's not just because -- and it's not because she's going to do a better job. >> we can work out a deal. >> i think this is aggressive. i am far from an aggressive person. but i went to law school with nine women in an class where there were two of us in each section. and he felt that if we were called on in class, we had to get it right because if we didn't, we would be failing not just for ourselves, but the professor would say, that's what women law students are like. so we were acustomed to being in the limelight.

we needed to teach our classmates and teachers that women had everything it takes to be in the law business. so people you would not describe as aggressive, in our law school classes, we felt that obligation to put ourselves forward, show how good we were. >> i appreciate your time. i have a question, because i know miss seitz of dealing with these masculine traits and knowing whether you have to adopt them for yourself. i wond if the flip side works at all, that the typically feminine

characteristics have helped you as well. >> yes, i have definitely had benefits, and i have had a long-term relationship with my favorite client of 20 years, and i built that relationship personally, you know, with request sharing about children, sharing about a variety of family things. as my husband says, you put more personal things in a cover letter than i share with my bevt friends. but i do say, appellate work can be kind of a one-night stand, so it doesn't necessarily carry over as well. but, sure, i want to be who i am.

>> it forced me to spend a lot of time working with junior lawyers. i was going to need their time because i couldn't be there all the time. as a result i ended up with amazing associates who were incredibly loyal to me. we had a very, very good working relationship, and that was forced on me by the fact that i worked part time. many of my colleagues who worked full time, it was easier for them not to bother putting in the time at the front end, just sort of assume they could do the work themselves and not be left with much -- without two things, support from junior associates, and really just incredibly rewarding and worthwhile meantoring relationships that grew out of nits, and the fact that i was working part-time. so i always felt that working part-time was different being a woman, but had enormous benefits in the relationships i developed personally and professionally.

>> this is not women in the supreme court, but bem in the workplace, generationly we now have -- it is not just the woman who wants to take leave after the child was born. we had a man in our office who was an exam bl of who made children a prorte just like women in the office. we have i think a change generationly -- generationally in this. this is not just a female issue anymore. i think that is because of the issue of women in the work force. i think as that changes, that will hopefully put more wind in

the sails of bem and in the law profession in particular. >> in sweden, a country i know a little bit about, introduced parental leave in lieu of maternity leave, someone commented to me, well only 10% of the leave time is taken by men. many i said 10%, that's a good beginning. one of the most attractive law clerk applications i ever got came from a georgetown graduate. he was going to georgetown in the evening program and he was the primary caretaker of two then young children, and he said the reason why he elected for the night program here was that his wife had a good job at the world bank as an economist and

he was the one who was picking the children up at school, going to soccer practice, and the like. he was an excellent law clerk for me twice, once in the court of appeals, and once in the supreme court. but i think more and more you are going to get people on the bench and think oh, my goodness, i wouldn't touch him or her because of the child care. a number of us have had law clerks with two small children. the justices who have made that choice have never felt short-changed because these people are super efficient and they have a life that gives them a great deal of personal satisfaction.

>> i wonded -- wondered if you thought the supreme courts with regard to religion as it happened to gender, would the court benefit from more religious diversity, looking in new places that it hasn't looked before? >> well, we're not representative of the united

states. we have six catholics, two jews, and only one white anglo-saxon protestant. that's unusual in american society. i don't think any of us would like to be identified, say for me, the jewish justice, or the catholic justice. we happen to have a certain religious heritage, but we should not be chosen for the court, i think, on that basis. >> following specificly on a point that justice ginsburg made, justice you alluded to some of the old days when you were in your law school class, and the extra level of pressure that you felt to represent, to some extent, the capeabilities of any or all female law students at the time.

i wond if the panel feels a similar type of pressure or proprietorship or that extra level of reputation. if that's true, to what extent to you impart that to other women who may be coming through the pipeline, or are we just -- are you just so successful at this point that you don't think about it at all? >> i think about it all the time. i particularly think about it with respect to part time. i have been working part-time for 16 years, and i am aware of the stigma of part-time, so i am always say yeah, if someone wants me to do something extra, i never say "no" or i try not to use my kids as an excuse to not take on a project. there are enough women in the practice i don't think i have to prove that women can do it, but

i do feel i have to prove that part-time can work so i don't deprive anyone of the opportunity that someone can work part-time. it has made my life stronger as a mother and a woman, and i would hate to give it a bad reputation. >> i think we can all feel that way. i think to the extent that virginia and -- they have done it so successfully. they have developed tremendous reputations. i think you have more than succeeded in doing that, and that will make it easier for other people. i know i feel very conscious all the time because one of them is just my own personality. i am the insecure one who wants to begin with an apology for asking a question. thank goodness justice stevens

does the same thing. he's my hero in that regard. it comes across better when he does it. in part, it is because my nature to feel i have to work eight times as hard just to get it right, and i'm a perfectionist by nature. i do worry that people will say, if you don't do it right that they will be, you know, wandering off. i had a case where i was chosen over a male to handle a supreme court. it was apparently a controversial decision. i felt acutely conscious all the time that if i don't come in at my absolute highest level, i mean you are absolutely killing yourself with your family, with a family and balance, it is hard to find balance, but that's the struggle i find any self in

trying to be the absolute best because you are concerned with the repercussions of not being the absolute best will affect not just you but others. >> i think the hardest thing is, you are never better than the last thing you did. so the pressure is always there that if you screw up this time, no one will ever remember that you ever did anything good before this. i think the fear that if you have done a terrible job so you must have done everything terrible up to this point. that never goes away. so you never have enough time to do everything and do everything well. so whether it is kids, a

scholarship, your family, at the stage i am at you start thinking about your parents. so you can never be a good enough lawyer, a good enough daughter, a good enough partner, a good enough friend, a good enough scholar simultaneously. what is the thing that today i'm going to do in a half-assed way? [laughing] so some of it is just trying to feel that you are just doing them a little bit well all of the time. but it is very hard. i mean the balance, you know, virginia, and patty and tim are talking about balance with kids. don't think if you decide not to have children that it's going to be all that much easier unless you decide you are only going to do one thing. i think if you decide you are only going to be one thing. you know if you are smart and you are dedicated, you can do that one thing in an excellent way. but otherwise you are always going to have this sense that

you are short-changing something. that pressure will only get worse, actually. i mean i worry about it more now. >> stop! [laughing] >> on that note -- to quote something from one of my great heroines who was a nobel prize winner in the 1980's, a nobel prize winner in medicine. her name is rita lavy-matatany, and she wrote a book called "in praise of imperfection." she took it from a poem by yates that says in life one mi must

prove perfection of the work or the life. you cannot have both. she said that she in her long life had come to agree with the poet. you cannot achieve perfection of the work and of her life. but, she said, in my imperfect ways, i have lived my life and derived inestimible joy from the things i have done. therefore i have come to conclude that imperfection, rather than perfection, is the natural way of humankind. >> i am curious in why you think increased participation of women is an important thing? do you genuinely believe that

more women participating in the creation of law will have some sort of beneficial impact on society and on the law? >> yes, i believe in the inherent value of equal opportunity and equal participation. so, yes, i think it is an inherent good. i can't defend that proposition other than by believing in it. i also find and believe that we bring to baron the profession what we practice our daughters are watching us and all women are watching us, and we set an example and open up the doors for the generation that comes after us. that's a good thing for everyone feeling they have an opportunity to doing everything they choose. so for both of those reasons i think it is a good thing for people to feel they have an equal chance at everything, not just arguing before the supreme court. >> and to quote some words from

some of the jury cases that you worked on when you were a litigator, "what difference does it make when you have a jury that's all male or all white versus a jury that's a variety of races, and a flavor gets lost that you can't quite pinpoint what it is because you don't know exactly where it comes from in life. i think that's true. did i argue that the bankruptcy case that i argued differently than tommy would have argued if he had argued it? maybe, but i don't think it was like bankruptcy in a different voice. it gets higher and starts asking questions at the end, you know? i think over the cours of dozens and dozens of cases and dozens and dozens of argue lts, the fact that people are different from one another in a whole variety will make a difference

to the quality of the law. it is that flavor that will be difference, but you can't distill it out, it is not like chocolate chip ice cream where the woman is the chip, it is more of a blend of things. you never know where it is going to be left if everyone isn't a full participant in the process. >> thank you all for being here. i am curious about the contradiction between the nature of appellate work being well suited important traditional female and the fact that there is less politic consultants in the -- less applicans in the bar, and that is there is no sub stantive expertise -- substantive expertise in the law -- i believe you need to have experience -- but there is a sell in selling it as these beauty contests knowing a little

about an area and being able to puff it up as being more. i am wondering if that is something that plays into the dynamic or what you thoughts are on that. >> when someone asked me about a career in appellate law, i always say, in addition to this expertise, developing a substantive expertise working with a sector of the economy or business. certainly there is a great joy in expertise. i was a labor lawyer before i was a supreme court lawyer, and i still love that someone can call me on the phone with a labor law question and i can answer it without looking at anything. i know the answer to their labor law question. so there is a joy in expertise that i think is extremely valuable and it is always worth doing that. most supreme court practitioners will tell you they have some substantive expertise. i don't think that explains it. i don't think i know very many

supreme court lawyers who don't have an underlying supreme court expertise. >> let me say on that that the apellate advocate will learn an enormous amount of this tiny corner of the law. having gone through that learning process, maybe that person is better equipped to convey it to the courts, because the court is going to go through a similar learning process than someone who really knows the deal cold and may be too advanced for the bench. [laughing] when i was growing up, expected i would be a teacher. in my advocacy, even what i do

today, i think that's mostly what i'm doing, trying to impart what i know to people who haven't thought about those questions, to take people step-by-step to where i would like them to go. as i said, sometimes not really coming to it without knowing anything about the particular field can be helpful. >> i would just actually thank you, justice for stating this. i was making this exact argument in a pitch for a case. i call it my expertise translation, and that is taking a complicated problem in a specialized area of law and translating it into the area of the legal concepts that they tend to grapple with and how they are likely to approach the issue. so it is actually being the

intermediary between the specialist in the case and the appellate court. and just backing up to the prior question, i want to say one of the reasons i think gender diversity is important is because i think -- i don't believe in reincarnation, and i think everyone should take whatever it is very really, really want to do and be able to do it. whatever it is, find what you want to do, but you should be able to do it and regardless of your ethnicity, your race, you should be able to do it. it is the right way to do it, and it is an enormous waste of human resources when people can't do something simply because of artificial barriers. i want my daughter to be what ever she wants to be, as long as

she can support me. [laughing] >> i hope you will all join me in thanking our wonderful panel for being here. [applause] >> thank you all very much for being here with us. >> on wurnl a review -- on " washington journal" josh rogin and fredrik assistanton. following that an investigation of patient rors with charles denham and actor dennis quaid.

>> today a discussion with the obama administration and middle east trade at the woodrow wilson center. >> this week on "q & a" autotune the news featuring the gregory brothers. >> he havian and michael gregory, if you tried to explain to someone who has never seen what you do, "auto-tune the news" what would you say you do? >> we take video primarily from the internet and set it in a new form, as it should be, in a

music video. we use music technology, commonly known as auto tune, to make the folks in the news, politicians, newscasters, reporters, what-have-you, make them sound like they are singing. these are technologies widely available today in the recording industry, the music industry, to help singers sound a little bit better, or to hit pitches a little better. >> why do you call it "auto-tune the news"? >> because we're using technology commonly called "auto-tune" usually to fix singers that are off. we use that on joe biden, katie couric, whoever is on the news,

to make them sound better. >> can either one of you explain this lettuce thing? >> this particular example, which became a popular chorus of ours, was delivered on the house floor by steve boyer of indiana about how we were going to regulate the legislation of tobacco. he complained why should we regulate specificly tobacco when really anything you spoked would be bad for you. it is not so much the nicotine in tobacco that's athe claim, so you might as well smoke lettuce. we thought this was a remarkable piece of rhetoric. >> the didn't barack obama give this speech in cairo? >> i think that is exactly the problem. it is not just the berlin

speech, but he said any world order ♪ >> i'm laying down a beat for you. go ahead. >> any order that elevates one nation over another, i think that goes against the idea of american exception al i'm -- exceptionalism ♪ most americans believe this nation was blessed by god ♪ and we are better ♪ god bless america ♪ if you were take that lettuce and dry it and smoke it you are going to end up with similar problems than if you were smoking with tobacco ♪

♪ we would need a warning placed on there warning americans about the dangers of smoking lettuce it is not the nicotine that kills it is the smoke it is the end relation it is the smoke if they want to have their nicotine ok it is the smoke ♪ the more problems we come across the more problems we see don't you know i wore a long white fluffy dress and a white hat you look like quite a star we can be

dropping times like rain bring it on we've got some breaking news let's go to tracy burns she has all the news actually tracy is busy i don't know what the hell is going on let's go to you know i'm trying to get ahold of this myself breaking news, guys i don't have it les, i have to send it back down to you clearly this is a fascinating story we're going to get all into play as soon as we can here ♪ >> so where do you do it? where do you physically do these? >> we do these uth michael's bed in his apartment in brooklyn,

new york. >> how many in the group. >> there are four of them. andrew and i and his wife, sara. >> they are here, but we don't have room for them on the set, so we have to make-believe they are on camera. you find yourself sitting in a senate seat. how do you do that? >> the best purchase i made was a green sheet. you put the green sheet behind you, and simple software that's free, it will erase everything. this is what they do in star wars now. they do everything in front of the green screen or blue screen and then erase that color so they can put them on whatever background they want to. so for us, that's the floor of congress. >> he havian, where did you get this idea?

>> it was really a gradual evolution in the sense that we started out making music videos. all four of us are musicians, that's our background. i think it was maybe a year and a half ago michael was making a music video about the 2008 presidential election, and it was around the time of the dwaze -- debates, and we step-by-step came up with these other ideas incrementally that maybe in addition to a music video we could plake it sound like the politicians could be singing with us if we took the technology to turn their spoken word into what sounds like singing. after that we had the idea, well, we'd like to do this again because we thought it was fun, and we really just wanted to do something we thought was catchy and interesting, so we turned it episodic by looking at current events. >> when did you have this interview with the obama girl and who is she?

>> obama girl rose prominent during the obama camp -- campaign. she put a video out called "i got a crush on obama" and it got millions of hits. ♪ hey, baby, if you are there pick up anyway call me back you seem to float onto the floor convention twour i never wanted anybody more than i want you so i put my -- so i put down my kerry sign knew i had to make you mine your package sexy oh, so fine because i got a crush on obama baby you're the best keat i get hot when i hear the dway

i got a crush on obama baby 2008 baby you're the best keat ♪ >> ever since she's been an internet star, and we had an interview with her. >> let's watch it. it is only 50 seconds. let's watch it. >> viewers want to