tv Capitol Hill Hearings CSPAN August 10, 2011 8:00pm-1:00am EDT
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>> tonight on c-span, historians and evaluate the obama presidency. the co-founders of twitter talk about the future of the internet and how the u.s. can assist the pro-democracy movement. >> recently, presidential biographer's met to evaluate barack obama's presidency. brands, alter, and packer l sat down andynn sherr.
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>> i found myself behind a car with an obama 2008 a bumper sticker on it. my initial reaction was, thank goodness there is someone that keeps a car as long as i do. then i looked closely. i realized that the bumper sticker was worn, abused by the elements. it was still quite legible. it was very red, white, and blue. not to be too silly, i wondered if that was some kind of metaphor for what this president is now going through. how successful is he? how bruised is he? how is he doing? i want to start out by saying that if i were president obama, i'm not sure i would want to be here this afternoon to hear the answer. with all due respect, the idea of being discussed and dissected
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by the biographer's of lyndon baines johnson and franklin and -- franklinevelt' roosevelt, of that would be daunting to everyone. i do not mean to suggest that any of these gentlemen is prepared to quartered the president. some have written and said very fine things about him. some of them may or may not have voted for him. two of them, caro and brands had a dinner at the white house earlier this week. that is all i can find out from either of them. that'll be the end of that conversation. some have indicated the differences between our 44th whoident and the man when
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have preceded them. they have deep insight into what the president should do, what makes a president the president, what makes him succeed and indoor and what is bring him down. over 2.5 years into the obama presidency, what better time to discuss this? we have 16 months to ensure all of the nonsense. 16 months before the next election. what a critical subjects. let's begin with the introduction. we are going to play among ourselves up here. we will let you listen in. then i will be opening up to questions from you. please come and get your questions ready. we want to hear from you. i am going to introduce everybody in the coorder which we are seated. george became a staff writer in
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2003 and covered the iraq war. his book was named one of the 10 best books of 2005 by the "new york times." that is among many other awards. george packer has written about some of the most inhospitable countries. he received press club awards. one was about the reconstruction of iraq. the other about the civil war. he is the author of the "village in waiting." he also wrote "blood of the liberals." it is about american liberalism and the 20th century. he has written two novels. he served in the peace corps and is currently working on a book about "institutional decline in
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america." welcome. >> thank you. [applause] i am glad to have beaten the traffic in hampton. >> george drove out from brooklyn and nobody gave him the back road map. here he is. bob caro, who many of you know because he is one of us and lives here, as you well know, has written an extraordinarily biographees. he twice won the pulitzer prize for biographies and the critics circle award for best non- fiction work of the year and has gotten basically otheevery other literary honors. i would love to read them all but i would rather get to our subject.
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his first book was the"the power broker." i would say it echoed the words of many. it is the single best book about a city and certainly our city, new york city, that you will ever read. bob and his wife moved from new york to the texas hill country and then to washington, d.c. to live the like that lyndon johnson lives as he is growing up. his first book in the series was called by the washington post " proof that we live in a great age of biography." the second volume was called " brilliant. no review does justice to the story he is telling."
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the third volume was held by the london times as a "masterpiece. he has written one of the truly great political biographies of the modern age. we are awaiting a volume fo ur." thank you perce >> you're doing great until you got to the last line. >> he was born in oregon. he sold cutlery in the family business. he went to vanderbilt. he is now at the university of texas at austin where he is b. dixon allan anderson professor of history.
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his books include "traitor to his class, and george jackson." some of his books have been best sellers. you can see him on television. you can hear him on the radio. he is now working on a book about a another president, ulysses s. grant. please, welcome h w brands. >> thank you perce >> let's start with an assessment for each one of you on how this president he is doing. is he the "i got osama bin laden president?" bob, i will let you start it off. >> thank you. how we think he is doing will look a lot different in some years than it does now. if there is anything i have
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learned from my books it is that things look so different at the time than they do a few years down the road. i can give you an example from robert moses. he was so popular in new york city. everybody in our class had to write for their junior paper, robert moses is a great example of a great night in literature -- knight in literature. that is in the 1950's. by the 1970's, a key was the great villain of new york. everything changes. >> you're not going to answer my question. >> i will. i think that things that look so important and vital in the obama presidency right now are going to the difference. for example, in the event of the
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moment, that captures everyone's attention, it is seldom mentioned that when he took office people were walking around worrying about whether they had more than $100,000 in the bank because the bank might fail. he came to office with a war in iraq. that was really a problem. most important, he came to office and no one really mentions this, the tide of conservatism began. it had come to a crest and is crashing with the irrationality of the tea party movement. these are all things he has had to face. i think however we feel about it now, a history will look at these more in the context of those things.
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>> bill, let's go to you for another history point of view or not. up to you. >> president obama is doing about as well as any president could under the circumstances. he became president and was handed an extremely difficult hand to deal with. it was difficult precisely because it was not absolutely terrible. you probably remember the cover of a magazine after obama was elected where he was in the franklin roosevelt pose. they photoshop something with a cap on his head and a cigarette holder. the caption was "franklin obama." there is some thought that he would usher in a new deal. in fact, a lot of obama's supporters hoped that was what was going to happen. it was bought what was going to
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happen because things were bad not bad enough. if you recall when obama was elected, led the unemployment rate was six%. wall street was teetering. what this meant was that he had a huge challenge. he had to deal with bad economic times. unlike franklin roosevelt, and they were not so bad that he was free to do whatever he wanted. franklin roosevelt was elected after the country had been in a full-blown depression for 2.5 years. because of this, americans gave them carte blanche to do what ever he wanted because things are so bad they could not get worse. a bomb had in mind that there were some major changes -- barack obama had in mind that there is a major changes to the financial system but cannot take
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the steps to get there. everything he did have to be weighed. would it make this financial crisis a full-blown depression? the full-blown depression did not occur. one can argue that, with the sort of things you never know, it did not occur. he ought to get some credit for the fact that it did not occur. he is not going to get credit. in american politics, you do not get credit for things that did not happen. you get responsibility for things that did happen. he has managed the american economy and about as well as i think it could have been managed given the opposition in congress and the fact that he has got republicans in control of the house of representatives. i would say that he has done about as well as could be done
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under the circumstances. i know there were plenty of people who voted for him and were thinking dishabille transformational president. it will not happen because the context -- thinking this would be a transformational president. it will not happen because the context. >> we will get back to that spirit house he doing? >> he has been very surprising. he is so different from the candidates. it has taken a long time for the public to get up for the real president that he is. he sees the world's imagination when it straight to the nomination. he is not a roosevelt. he is not a figure who would
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fit a depression era. he reminds me of an earlier time, may be a progressive figure in his time mindedness. he is so reasonable. he is so lofty, his reach. he is very comfortable with moralizing. he reminds me a little of the wilson in that sense. he is a bit remote and aloof like wilson. he would probably have done better if he had been governing at a time closer to the progressive era when it was not one crisis after another. there was no fox news. there was no michele bock men. -- bachman. there were rational tendencies. it was a time when an appeal was there for a civil-m reform.
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they had a real audience, especially among the professional middle classes across the country. instead, obama is a reasonable man speaking into a hurricane all the time. that is why it is presidency has fallen short, that is why it has. >> you are presenting a picture of a man who is at odds with the times around him. what i think so. he may be behind and ahead at time.the same i'm writing a book about the climate. obama may see his job as to manage as well as he can a time of american decline. i do not think this is a president who really believes that we will bestride the world like a colossus. >> he said yesterday some
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version of this is a time we have a chance to do something big. we can make a big change. not to be striding the world but what you are talking about. >> seeming cutting $4 trillion from the debt? -- you mean cutting $4 trillion from the dead? of course he said that. all presidents have to say that. i think what obama is really thinking -- the think he bailed out is a strange thing. it is connecting to the public. this is what he did so well in 2008. he has had a difficult time moving people, persuading people, being heard above the noise of the hurricane that is out there, a political, economic, cultural, and news hurricane. there's so much noise. obama is so thoughtful and
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unwilling to descend to the that ayters president needs in order to reach the public any deep way. i think he has failed to lead in that sense. that is the disappointment. >> this is for all the people who said i wish you would just do something in be the man who i voted for. >> how many phrases can you remember from his presidency? i could quote base on the books of these two gentlemen wonder two dozen phrases from the first couple years of johnson's presidency and roosevelts. there's something called the new deal and the great society. what raises have come from obama? and nothing. >> audacity of hope. >> that is before he became president. since he has become president, he has been so consumed with tremendous problems that he has inherited and coming up with in
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his way reasonable policy solutions, almost as if he cannot do that and reached out to the broad public with those memorable phrases that i think are part of the job. >> which you have to have. bob, let me go back to you and talk of about the lbj comparison that in some ways is so terrible. start with the difference between the way president johnson got things done and the way that this president is or is not getting things done. >> how did lyndon johnson get things done? there were quo ate from a signature use said president kennedy was a wonderful communicator. when he needed a vote, he would have the signature down to the white house and he would give him all the reason to like him.
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if the center said, if i give you this it will kill me with my constituency, kennedy would say "i understand." lyndon johnson would not understand. he would charge me or threat new or cajole you or break you. he would do what ever he had to but he would get your vote. you would see this would johnson over and over again. he would get votes in the senate that you did not believe are possible. >> is that what americans want for a president? to they want a lyndon johnson who cajoles and pick your burke of choice -- verb of c hoice for a more reasonable diplomat? >> it depends on what lyndon johnson you are talking about. he passed medicare, medicaid, at
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great civil rights bills and 77 education bills or you talking about the lyndon johnson of 66 or he is a figure who deceived the american public and try to get this into a war in asia and tried to do it -- this firster johnson's education. he did on the saturday because he did not think again mit woult much coverage. ithere is something to be said for a president to establishes a persona. persona obama has established is honest,,, smart,
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and is trying to go through a hurricane. there's a lot to be said for that. >> you have written about another wartime presidents. to what extent are these zero wars -- is there any parallel with the world war ii and fdr or are they so utterly different that he cannot make its way through it? >> of the wars that the united states is fighting in afghanistan and iraq and libya are so different from world war ii that there is no meaningful comparison. with this group, if we were not told that there was a war going on in afghanistan, you would hardly know it. very few people that i know have relatives who are fighting in iraq or afghanistan. it is a war that is bought by an all volunteer, professional army. i have been a college campuses teaching since the 1980's.
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there are no protest against the war in iraq and afghanistan. public opinion polls show that americans think the united states needs to get out of afghanistan but the game's attraction because that opposition -- there's nothing to mobilize the opposition. with franklin roosevelt, one of the reasons he was able to get so much done during his first hundred days, he had no idea there is going to be this. and he dealt with the fact that the banking system was collapsing. he is going to send them an emergency banking bill. they were so willing to go along with what he since. one thing led to another. he had huge majorities in both
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houses. he could do whatever you wanted. barack obama had to deal with a divide in congress. the definition of a filibuster still confuse me. now to get anything through the senate be have to have 60 votes. he did not have that. he had to deal with an opposition that decided to go into opposition against his presidency. mitch mcconnell said the first order of business was to make sure that president obama would be a one-term president. roosevelt did not have to deal with that. there's something else. obama was the victim of his own brilliance as a campaigner. i have been observing american politics since the 1960's. the first campaign are remember was the 1960's campaign. i have never seen a
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other than a victorious general who came out of nowhere. before the summer of 2004, almost no one had heard of barack obama. four years later, he was elected president of the united states. he was this individual who allowed people to project onto him their hopes for what america could be in a difficult time. his campaign slogan "yes, we can" was absolutely brilliant. yes we can what? what ever you want. that is fine for the candidates. when you get objective, it is no longer yes we can, but no, you cannot. when you're kennedy you do not have to choose. it is worth remembering and you have your own opinions on this,
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john mccain would be president of the united states. as long as the most salient issue was the war in afghanistan, obama's biography did not measure up to mccain. more less out of the blue, the the ground changed. wall street shuddered. the war biography as hero and no longer meant anything. people were willing to look at and give obama a closer look. they thought it was time for a change. now he is president. all sorts of people think that he is going to bring in this brand new revolution. it was not going to happen. the crisis was not quite deepen. he had to tread gingerly. i happen to think that obama is
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probably waiting to get this debt ceiling issue resolved one way or another so he can move back into campaign mode. he is a brilliant campaigner. i stinky will be able to connect with the americans reject i fink he will be able to connect with americans -- i think he will be able to connect with americans in the way he did in 2000 for a. a recent poll showed 87% of americans think the deal with the deficit and debt ceiling, there ought to be some combination of spending cuts and tax increases. the trouble is that the particular public is not the one that republicans in the house are responding to. they're looking over their right shoulder at a much smaller public that will throw them out in the primaries next season if
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they vote for anything in the way of a tax increase. once this issue was off the table, then he can reach out to the broader american public. i think he does well with the broad public. as long as it is put up with democrats on one side and republicans on the other, he cannot reach those of ballots. >> he were saying he comes out of the egg as a whole different person? >> i think he goes back to who he was in the summer of 2008. he can campaign in some of having to govern. >> it will be hard for him to do that. during the 2.5 years of his presidency, the real unemployment rate basically one
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in six americans is out of work. that is a staggering number. it is the closest we have been since the 1930's. what obama is -- that will be what he has to account for throughout the campaign. i honestly do not know what the theme of the campaign will be. americans can quickly understand and subscribe or night. the only bill in washington is who he is. i do not think that is a wildly successful campaign theme. one thing that obama lacks is a movement. fdr had eventually labor behind him. he also had the discontent of the 1930's that some ways a post them but in some ways became the overwhelming majority.
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lbj had the civil-rights movement. there is no movement behind obama. the only movement we have had since the biggest financial crisis is the depression is the t mark to a -- tea party movement that is extremely hostile. when to became president, that 10 million names that was his e- mail list, which was the movement that brought him to the presidency disappear. it went down. there were no longer being asked to do anything. without a movement in a critical time like this, it is very hard for the president to summon the troops. he is going to be on the hot spot because republicans are
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going to say one in six americans are out of work. >> what do you see to the driver of this car that i saw who were obama supporters and who are still obama supporters who are disappointed? they say he is not speaking up. i voted for him and i will again but i'm not getting what i want. quite that is politics. get over it. you wanted a miracle worker. you did not get it. you got a human being who has amazing qualities. >> what is left out is what is governing? turning a movement into laws, what is governing in a democracy? governing in a democracy is passing laws. lyndon johnson called writing it into the books of law. we talked about civil-rights for
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100 years. they had a civil rights movement. the seveners control congress. no civil rights bill -- the southerners' controlled congress. no civil rights bill passed in 80 years. johnson has to get this bill through. the southerners are not going to let it through. to watch him do that is to see genius. he works out this deal. he said the important thing is to get something passed to show we can get something passed. it can be a bad bill, but we can always go back later. he gets the southerners to agree that they will allow a weak bill to pass as long as they can be assured that if the liberals tried to amend it into a stronger bill they will have a block of votes on their side to sustain the filibuster.
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johnson knows he needs a block of votes. he is 10 or to votes short. you can see him in the library trying to figure it out. he figures it out. there is a dam on the river between idaho and oregon call the hells canyon dam. the westerners have 12 democrats there. 12 democratic votes. they have been trying to get this for 20 years. the south has always blocked. he goes to the westerners and say i will give you the damage you agreed tovote with the south. they agree. he has linked a dam in the northwest to the civil rights movement and got it then within three forebodes a passing. then he comes into play. now he has to get them one by one. atch him know what the
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senators want and to hold what they want or give it to them is brutal. it is governance. >> let me add here. bob told me the other day that when he won the national humanities medal in 2010 president obama said to him "i think about robert caro and reading the power but when i was 22. it helped to shape how i think about politics." what has president obama learned about politics? >> i am sorry you asked me that. i think that so far the things that george said, the difficulties of doing this are very real.
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part of the problem is senator obama was only a senator for three years. for part of that three years, he was out campaigning. it is very hard to learn congress. it is another world. when you come in -- i like to think he has been on a learning curve. >> on the job learning is not what we want for our president. what can i add something? the equivalent would be the health care bill. obama really needed every last vote. i studied that closely. he did it against great odds pick maybe democrat said forget it.
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i went down to virginia the next day. it was called mining country. he had just been defeated by someone who did not even live in the district. i ask people, why would you throw out this popular congressman who brought home a ton of bacon to report area. obama disappointed us. we thought he was a new kind of politician. we saw him wheeling and dealing and trading medicaid payments and the louisiana compromises in dealing with the insurance companies and the hospitals in giving everything away. he was not supposed to be there. he is living in an age where two hours after the deal that lbj woodcuts with whoever was done.
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the whole world knew. it's a stomach turning. obama master legislation in that case. it killed him. >> he did not have to do that. what lyndon johnson would have said was the important thing is ridiculous always try to save the important thing was to get a bill passed. we can always go back and fix it. once they lose the virginity, it will be easier next time. that is what i am writing about. he had that phrase. he would say, we have to do it. my feeling is that obama could say we have a health-care bill. adobe easier to fix it then to pass a bad bill. i do think it is a bad bill. it to be easier to fix it and start all over again. >> is is all about politics? is it all about whether he can
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govern and not live up to campaign promises? how much of what we're seeing has to do with personality? is a historic day there a precedent to has withstood so much comment about is the too aloof or not dilute enough tax -- or not aloof enough? the personality thing is astounding. >> start with george washington. there is a notion that a semi model that media has broken apart into all these fractions. the people can watch fox news if they do not want to hear what cnn has to say. you can choose your media outlook. that was really the model of american journalism in the 18th and 19th century. there were newspapers that were attuned to particular newspapers. -- to particular parties.
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we're reverting to that time. this may or may not be coincidental, but it was also a time of relatively weak and insignificant presidents. the presidency achieved anything like its modern form only beginning in the 20th century. during the 19th century, congress was a dominant force in american politics. everyone thought that is the way it should be. there were three exceptions. there were small parties like the civil war. they needed a force of nature like injured jackson. until the 20th century, the president was not the center of american politics. in terms of the role of personality, personality matters tremendously. the personality that worked for andrew jackson did not work for abraham lincoln. abraham lincoln's personality would not have worked in the days of franklin roosevelt. franklin roosevelt's presidency would not have worked now.
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the personality has to match the time. with lyndon johnson, if you have been to the johnson library, you can see mockups and the television with the three screens. johnson was considered such a voracious consumer of the media that he would watch all three of the evening news shows at the same time. imagine a president today trying to keep track of all the media outlooks. it would be impossible. the president today faces a different kind of challenge. it was his mastery of the principal medium of the day. the fireside chats became legendary it was his way of getting a round the largely
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republican is pair per -- republican newspaper press of the day. ronald reagan and jfk or the master of the media. i do not know if the media today can half this. it is a lot harder for the present to get the message out. i'll add one more thing on obama. george is right. the american economy is in the worst shape that it has been in since the great depression. having said that, barack obama just might get elected. the fact that he just might get reelected is an astonishing statement given the context of the economy. when the economy is doing as badly as it is today, presidents do not get reelected.
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historically, there should be an uprising within the democratic party. he should be having to fight off challengers simply for the nomination. he is not geared i would say he is going to win at nec's share in part because the republicans cannot figure out who they are in the of gotten themselves in a situation where the only type of candidate they are able to nominate -- and here i will share. this is not because i live in texas and i hope my governor will go on to different things. but i think rick perry is going to get the republican nomination. we can talk about why. he also cannot beat obama. this is typical of red republicans are. they are so split. they are so hostage to their right wing that the only person who think it the nomination of someone who cannot win the general election. that is where we will see obama's strength, reaching out to the broader public.
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>> he will win by default. >> that is going to be my next question. what right now, in terms of governors and reelection, what is the biggest challenge that president obama faces? is it the economy? is the tea party? is it the divided congress that's what do you think is the biggest thing he has to get over -- is it the divided congress? what do you think the biggest thing is that he has to get over? >> we do not know what the internal polls are showing. one thing that strikes me about learning about lyndon johnson is your read the newspapers on what is happening on a certain monday and then you go to the white house and the internal communications and it is lighke the shadow to the substance. this is what they're really
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thinking. i do not think -- i would just say one thing. they're only for our five states that are really in play. they all seem to me ohio, michigan, pennsylvania, to the states where unemployment is the big issue. >> also florida. >> that is the one i left out. if you're trying to get reelected and this is what the polls are showing, and he has a tremendous problem in being reelected even by default. >> what do you think the biggest issue is that they face facts ? >> i am optimist. i was an obama's camp, i would be an optimist.
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i will start with the current negotiations. things are shifted in a way that he wins no matter how it turns out. if they get a deal, he can say we got this deal. >> i did it. " yes. if they do not comment he is the one that is sounding out -- >> yes. if they do not get it, he is the one that is sounding reasonable. he will come across looking like the reasonable person. one of the wild card is for policy. -- while cards is foreign policy. a lot of bad things could happen during the term that did not. foreign-policy has done reasonably well. there are so bad things that could happen between now and next november. if plenty of that happens, he
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said dealing with that. >> too many wild cards. >> i think it is a profound sense of discontent in the country. that has been with us since 2008. he did not to break for it. in 2009, he arrived with all the wind at his back. not an overwhelming majority but a really big majority in congress with a big majority of the popular vote, unlike anything we have seen since ronald reagan. we could do a counter factual list to the things that he might have done and a different order that might have produced different results in terms of popular support. he has been fighting a head wind from the very beginning starting with the fact that republicans shamelessly having largely
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created this mess refuse to do a thing to help them to clean it up. they basically made the calculation that if they do not help them out, the country will decide that it is his burden. when things do not get better, it will be his fault. i think that was the cynical decision made by the republican party even before the inauguration. he lost the ground he came in with, and the ground where the country had invested their hopes. but because he lost it or because circumstances lofted for him? >> i remember the early weeks, a whole lot of things happened that looking back seem like critical things. at the time of was the even paying attention to it. it seemed like we were on a longer time horizon. one week can make a gigantic difference. for example, the aig bonuses
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came out in march. there was a tremendous national uproar. it was the first time the anger found a target. instead of harnessing it, finding a way to say "i am just as angry as you and we're going to do something about it" because the people who brought the country to the knees should not be profiting. basically, timothy geithner said there's nothing we can do about it. larry summers said, these are contracts. the house was up in arms. there were bills about 90% taxation. it would of been unconstitutional. in his way, obama decided i would rather do the unpopular but right thing and not touch those bonuses and not say anything and not be a demagogue. he lost some of the public's confidence at that moment. there are other things that
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happened around the same time. the stimulus bill never was explained to the country and what it would do and how it was going to work. start, he was so consumed with all the things coming at him, more than any human could possibly deal with, that he began to lose its hold on the public from the first day. quite the that the clarification that -- >> could i get a clarification? when you say high-minded, deeming that as a criticism? >> no. when you have someone who can write a speech accepting the nobel peace prize that invokes and write a speech about race
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that invokes james baldwin. it is a merkel we have a president like this. it is not the only thing he needs. there to kind of politicians, one who practices the ethical response ability and one who practices the ethics of [unintelligible] that is the key word of his presidency. it becomes an end in itself to become responsible. the republicans practiced the ethics of all end. we will go with our convictions. obama has one but not the other. neither can present the full personality. >> we will turn to the audience. why don't you get are questions ready? more to come. wallace are circulating, i do not want to do some version of a
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lightning round. what is the single best accomplishment of this of penetration so far? -- administration so far? >> passing the health care bill. 40 million people who did not have insurance before have it now. >> i would say the health care bill. >> moscow to some of your questions. where is a microphone? >> let me start in the back. >> i think he was wrong when he said that the severity was not severe enough to make a difference. there were three economic crises at the same time. >> the first as the middle class. this is 75 trillion dollars.
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it is impossible number to look at. in 2001, the private sector stop creating jobs. yet no way to create jobs. he paid no attention to these issues. maybe he did not know what to do about it. >> thank you. >> i cannot agree more. i think he does care about these issues. he talked about them constantly during the campaign. he may not know what to do with them. with the stimulus, and they got what they thought they could not get. maybe they did not push hard enough to get more. it was too weak given the long-term erosion that you're talking about. i do not know that politicians
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know how to solve these problems any longer. this is all about restoring the middle class. they can solve these big problems. you are right. the people he picked not only were some of the purveyors of policies that led to the financial crisis, but also were the type who when it came to things like aig bonuses advise the president to ignore the public into the high-minded thing. in that case, i think the wrongdoing. his advisers to not have a feel for the pulse of the country. inevitably, a presence becomes isolated in the white house. we do not hear from him for long. of time. -- for long amount of time. he gave one speech on the war what he was in very serious
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meetings planning an escalation. he is great at those meetings. for some reason, he fadeout in the public imagination. it is a weird thing given the gigantic figure he was in 2008. >> he is the great conciliator. if you look at american history, the biggest steps forward occur when a president separates the om the goats, when he singled out those bad people and is able to isolate them and reduce their numbers so they cannot resist. those roosevelts were brilliant of this during.
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obama was a cool personality. i do not think he is the kind of guy who can get mad. i think he did the opposite of what the roosevelts did. rather than drawing a line, he said let's all be adults. >> they say why is he not shake them? why does he yelled? >> this is probably something you cannot take. >> you have to wonder how much
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>> there in the white house on monday. >> good question. the president tried to downplay it. i assume we have to wait for both their memoirs to find out what happened. do we have another question-can you stand up and wait for the microphone, please? >> i want to continue with the personality issue. it seems much greater than not getting that in public. and not being afraid to appear at an angry black man. by the fed great leaders like alexander the great, cleopatra, certainly robert moses and lyndon johnson, and these people were very comfortable with their aggression. it seems to me that barack obama is very tied up in his own
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identify as a nice guy. he was a nice cushion blais, a health-care is a nice thing to give all of these programs. -- he was a nice christian boy, and health care is a nice thing to give all of these programs. there seems to be 11 to what one can accomplish. to do that, one has to be comfortable saying i had a nasty side. i have a values i want to of hold. -- uphold. >> she is pushing "nice guy." >> there is no question that the ones we consider to be the great presidents had in very many
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cases had a kind of ability to channel which you labeled their at aggression. i would give you the example of the person who is considered by historians to be the greatest president of all. abraham lincoln did not have an aggressive bone in his body. he was ambitious but he was exceedingly thoughtful, reflective, and he put the greatest priority on trying to bring the country back together. there is no single model for presidential success. >> it is odd that "nice" is the word. people i know obama it describes them as the most unsentimental and a ruthless man they have ever met. that this is a man who will, once you are no longer going to be able to help him, you are
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gone. his counsel he was an early supporter of obama had been a clinton guy into the risk of becoming an obama guide and was cut loose with apparently not a second thought to the horror of a lot of people in the white house. this is not a softie. he has a lot of steel in his skeleton. how else could a black man get to perhaps no better it scene and then with osama bin laden. >> how can you in truly be funny the night before at the white house correspondents' dinner? his timing was amazing. all the while knowing that the next day --
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>> a very steely moment indeed. >> i am the national director of the roosevelt campus network. i am graduated in 2008. thousands of young people in our network work hard to select obama. i think a lot of us believed we were working for a movement. your referenced movements earlier. it was a new kind of government. organizing for america with a great example of that. tons of young people believed that organizing for america represented a new way of governance. people across the country could get a sense of the public's entries. -- interest. since that did not work out the way we thought it would, -- we are thrilled that health care task. a lot of the things he has accomplished in the past year, i
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think a lot of young people are waiting that. while i think that young people will come out for barack in 2012, what do you think you can do to ensure the youth vote in the same numbers? >> let me ask you a question -- it the young people who organize for obama in 2008 are disappointed, who will they vote for? >> a lot of people will make the decision on whether or not to come back and work for the campaign. a lot of people are. i believe they still believe in barack obama, but we are not sure of the same numbers. >> that may not turn out in the same numbers, which were critical at the time. >> altman, especially in these economic circumstances, it is harder to run as an incumbent then it is as someone with a blank slate. but to govern is to disillusion people.
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that is just the way it goes. the case people have to make is "better meet then someone else." i will continue to fight the good fight. you have to stick with me. it may be the kind of campaign he runs will be the campaign of the president in the middle of a war where you have to stay the course. victory has not been achieved. maybe this is abraham lincoln in 1884 -- 1864 where george bush in 1984 -- 2004. if you throw me out now, we will lose all the progress that we -- then we made that things will be worse. >> can we go over here? the gentleman in the white shirt? yes. you? please stand up when you get the microphone. >> one of the major responsibilities of a president
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is the stewardship of foreign policy. how would you assess his handling of the palestinian- israeli negotiations? secondly, the arab spring? >> thank you but the question. who was to start with that? >> i think foreign policy has been his strongest point. he handled two wars, a third that was laid out on his table, and the most vexing relationship the united states has ever had with any ally in its history, pakistan, about as well as i can imagine any president doing. the palestinian-israeli conflict will make every president look bad. it may bill clinton look bad and he devoted every day of the last 1.5 years of this present see to it.
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obama made eight you rookie mistakes in 2009, but i will not lay that on him. that is a situation that no american president can possibly work his will on. as for the air spring, he was always a step behind. i do not think he quite grasped what a historical moment this was. there was an audience in the arab world paying very close attention to what he was saying, but i think his country by country choices -- do you push mubarak out in egypt? basically, he handled them very well. i think he is a very shrewd tactician in foreign policy, which, again, is not what if we thought he was going to be when he ran. we thought he was a visionary transformer. i do not think his foreign
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policy is particularly transformation, i just think he was very short-handed. >> go back to what i said at the very beginning -- if you look at the historical process that -- context and say how big with the arabs spring appear years from now -- if you take it in a historical concept, when he came to office, the united states was the subject of anger and contempt due out the world. somehow he brought the united states back into a position where everyone is cooperating. i think that, in a broad sense, maybe the most significant. >> ok. another question. down here, please? >> as i look or round, i may be the only african-american male here.
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let me just say this -- barack obama is a tight. he has been trained by his parents and his grandparents as i was trained by my grandparents and parents not to get you angry with white folks. [laughter] that is the opposite effect of what we want to do. we want to be a participant in american life. if i were angry, bitter, and walked around frowning all day i would not have many friends in life or business partners. we are trained in a largely, professional white world to behave a certain way. i learned that from my mother. she learned it -- he learned from his mother and his grandparents. we did not get angry. -- we can get angry. my wife can attest to that. [laughter] our behavior is to be up right,
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but not up tight. to be real, not a phony, but also to listen spanish and try to convey that we are not going to -- to listen and try to convey that we are not going to [inaudible] i am 1000 percent -- 1000% supporter of the president. he can learn. by all learn of the job. andrew johnson could not read. he had to be taught how to read by his wife. let's get real. not every president wants in and as a bed of roses. lincoln did not have a bed of roses. george washington, they wanted to make him a king. he said, nope. he could have been king george iv.
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in america, there is a debt ceiling and a dull ceiling. we were we going to get past the dallas ceiling about this man? [applause] >> do you think his upbringing has handicapped him in any way? >> his upbringing was different. quite the question was, do you think it has said it kept him in any way? >> handicap in a sense that his grandparents schooled him on how to behave, unlike my own grandparents. my own grandparents were african-american. his mother had him in indonesia. his grandparents also had him in hawaii. i think it has and it can -- handicapped him in a behavioral way.
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he became the editor of the law review at harvard. if he had angered those guys at harvard law school, do you think they would have made an editor of the law review? come on. let's get real. he had to be diplomatic. if he had to be smart about it and he had to be influential. he was all that. i think it is a handicap. it was a handicap for me in business. i could not show my true feelings to a client, a colleague, or a competitor because i always had that thing. lincoln -- how would lincoln have handled fox news? how would run a reagan handle fox news? it is a whole cabinet in this country -- cacophony in this country. who has the noise of the day? the daily noise of the daily
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news. we have to, in this society, sit back, deliberate, and be more honest and honorable. he is an honorable man. the is an honest man. i think america would do itself an injustice to not reelect m. [applause] >> i like the image of how with lincoln and built fox news. hallett lbj have handled fox news? >> if he would have had a fourth screen in the office. >> in the back. the gentleman who has not had a chance yet. >> it was touched on briefly, but you have mostly been talking about how barack obama has been finding himself. i feel that, historically, barack obama is unique in that he has been almost defined by
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the opposition as he has been defined -- as he has defined himself. he has been trying to present himself as a diplomatic figure, but at the same time, he is a secret muslim, he is a secret communist to hangs out with anarchists. while that really angers conservatives, there have been a lot of people, especially in afghanistan. obama was always, throughout his campaign, saying we get out of iraq and go into afghanistan. i think people bought into the opposition rhetoric, thinking he is a total of them will get us out of all the wars. they are disappointed when obama actually does what he says he was going to do. how do you feel that the opposition narrative has affected barack obama's presidency? >> thank you for the question.
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to what extent has the mitch mcconnell position -- i will do anything to not give him reelected again -- has that been either good or bad for him? >> i would like to draw a parallel with what happened to truman after the 1948 election. truman inherited the president of what franklin roosevelt was the death in 1945. he won by a very narrow margin in 1948. republicans were so embittered in large part because they had taken the high road on foreign policy. they were so sure they were going to win that they did not want to spoil the realm of foreign policy they were going tread themselves. truman squeaked past. the morning after, republicans made the collective decision that they would destroy the presidency. they went into opposition right across the board.
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when china went communist in 1949 and when the korean war began, they essentially destroyed truman's presidency. there was no constitutional ban on truman running for election again in 1952, but he was so unpopular that he could not have gotten the nomination even within his own party. he packed up and went back to independence, missouri. this unrelenting competition, unfortunately, sometimes it works. it has worked pretty well against obama. i say this despite the fact that he has done about as well as anybody could have. given what george called the "a head wind" he has been facing into, he has still done remarkably well, but that is not going to go away. >> another question? let's go down here. please? please stand up. thank you.
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>> i listened to mr. brands discussion about having large majorities in both -- both houses and immediately went to dr. caro saying johnson needed 12 votes, but he only needed one to filibuster at the time. i heard george talked about how shrewd and ruthless obama is what i want to raise the prospect of is that obama needs to raise $1 billion. obama needs to make the aig bonuses look like they are high- minded even though they are legal, but unethical. citizens united should change the playing field. with 59 votes you do not even feel like you have all the democrats because they can go
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get money. lyndon johnson did not have to argue quite as hard against money. is it not the context straping this presidency rather than the feelings and personality of the president? >> lyndon johnson did not have to worry about running against money quite so hard, probably because he always had the texas oil money behind him, but he had something just as a tough, which was the southern conservative, a midwestern conservative domination of congress. when johnson came into office, this conservative coalition was formed in 1937 in response to the supreme court. stay in power for 26 years. roosevelt never got a single major domestic bill through congress after 1937. no major legislation passed until johnson came into office.
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every president has huge problems facing them. just to give back, i have to say one of thing -- we talk about being comfortable in your personality and not being a great debate riklis. i will tell you what being reflected for lyndon johnson. i was listening to a tape or something for something i am writing now. everyone knew that if you denied him a vote, he would never stop trying to pay you back. he is now president. there is a crucial moment in the finance committee. it is 9-8 against him. he has to change the vote. he gets a call for a vote within the finance committee. he has five minutes. because the democrat from ohio. he says, i cannot do that. my company needs this tax break. i will lose face.
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lyndon johnson says -- and yet to hear his voice on the tape -- you saved my face today and i will save your face tomorrow. [applause] [laughter] >> you are absolutely right. the context is different. it is hard to compare. money makes a difference. media makes a difference. one thing is permanent -- how to use power. one aspect of using power is to instill fear. i think he is used it with the wrong people. it is more the people who work for m or who are his allies at one time or another who can tell you he will cut you off if you stop. do you think john boehner is afraid of obama? do you think mitch mcconnell is afraid of the obama? do you think joe lieberman is afraid of obama? >> should they be? >> yes.
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absolutely. i asked david axelrod about this when i was writing a piece about obama's per year. one thing i thought was missing was fear -- his inability to let potential friends and enemies know that there will be a reward for being a friend and would be a penalty for being an enemy. if you cannot do that, there is no price to be paid for opposing view. democrats opposed them all the health care bill in ways that were terribly damaging. republicans have done nothing but oppose him. maybe it is just keep in him that he does not want to be seen as punishing people. you have to be willing to punish people. it is a missing weapon in his arsenal. it sells crude to talk about politics in this way, but it is part of what it is about.
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i guess the number of senators, "is obama feared on capitol hill?" they said absolutely not. >> as opposed to the former speaker of the house, nancy pelosi? >> she was feared. she got more done than obama did. lyndon johnson was feared. >> we are going to wrap it up. if you want to include a final thought, go ahead. or not. >> obama faces a challenge lyndon johnson did not face and franklin roosevelt did not have to deal with. that is we have gone be on the dais where bipartisanship was possible. until the 1960's, both political parties included both liberals and conservatives. it was possible, for example, to find a coalition that included people from both parties because the democratic party had all of
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the democratic, southern conservatives, but it also had liberal democrats. the republican party had northeastern liberals and it had midwestern conservatism. with the passage of civil rights, more precisely, when lyndon johnson nailed the flag of the democratic party to civil rights reform, he gave the southern conservatives permission to leave the democratic party. and they did with the result that they all became republicans. the south became the center of gravity for the republican party. we have achieved the point now where you are a conservative in the country, you are a republican. if you are a liberal, you are a democrat. there is respectively no overlap with the result that the party system fizzles out. gerrymandering with computers said every seat in the house of representatives is safe for the
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incumbent. republicans in congress do not have to worry about a challenge from the left. they are all looking over the right shoulder. democrats are looking over their left shoulder. the day when you could reach across the aisle to form some kind of consensus is gone, at least for the time being. some of the states are appointing independent commissions to draw congressional districts. that will dilute of 42 a certain extent. right now, you cannot expect the other party to go along with you. >> that is a subject for a whole another panel. gentlemen, this has been wonderful. i know that bob caro will not be writing and -- a biography of obama. i do not know about bill because you are moving through a lot of different presidents. >> my boss already did it. i cannot show him up. >> are there any circumstances -- i think the biographication
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of our presidents are in good hands. state james for what happens next. -- state to or what happens next. >> thank you for coming. there is a coffee break out in the garden if you would like to join us. at 4:30, we have a panel on the media. please come back at 4: 30. thank you. >> tonight on c-span, the co- founders of twitter talk about the future of the internet. syrian dissidents talk about how the u.s. can assess their country's pro-democracy movement. later, a panel of historians evaluate the obama presidency. president obama will be in this again tomorrow highlighting technology's role in the economy. he will speak at johnson controls advanced battery plant.
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you can watch it live on c-span at 2:40 p.m. eastern. >> i am preparing myself for the very small salary i will be starting out with as a journalist. >> put aside your bias and support the facts, the truth. >> the reason people like fox news is because it is an experience. it is emotional. it is love and hate. >> from george mason university, aspiring high school journalists on ethics, the role of opinion in commentary, and where they get their news and information. that is sunday on c-span's "q&a". up next, biz stone and evan williams, the creators of twitter. they talk to former time magazine editor, walter isaacson, about the future of the internet. stone and williams announced the relaunch of the obvious corp.,
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the company that created twitter. this is on the aspen ideas festival. this is just over one hour. >> i am jerry murdoch. this session is entitled [unintelligible] steve jobs once said that if you want to predict the future, be best way to predict the future is to invent it. these three gentlemen have all had something to do with the creation of the internet and post-internet. walter isaacson, that when he was at a time as editor, released when the very first internet portals in 1984 called
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pathfinder. it is still out there today. biz stone and evan williams are co-founders ankle creators of blogger and twitter. both of those inventions will be feeling the repercussions of that for another generation. without further ado, walter isaacson, biz stone, and evan williams. [applause] >> can you put your name tags back on so i can remember them? it does not matter. >> we are going to start with a piece of news about the future of the internet. these are the co-founders of twitter. they are happy to announce today -- >> evan and i and jason, our
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longtime collaborator, -- he knows he is ball. the three of us have been longtime collaborators and really good friends. our dream was always to build our own company where we get to make what ever we want, whenever we think is going to be helpful to the world and make the world a better place. we put up a web site today and we are calling our company "the obvious corp.." we do not have anything specific to say about exactly what we are working on just yet, but i am ready to reveal that. we are excited to announce that we have started a new company. >> it actually is the loss of the new company, the obvious company. >> it is actually a relaunch. it incubated twitter before spending -- spinning it off into
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its own company. the original idea was that we were going to create multiple things and see where they went. we did not end up doing that many things. this is a relaunch of that company. we are very excited. or mission is that we do not have specifics about what we are going to build. we are excited about building systems that help people work together to improve the world in various ways. we think that is so much of what the actor that promises -- the internet promises. the bright side is people working together to become greater than they could individually or greater than
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institutions can be. >> without going further than you are ready to go, you're talking about what -- launching a new product that would help people collaborate. >> yes. collaborate in the various things. twitter-like quality can mean various things. our goal is to have an impact. if we get as likely as we did with twitter, that would be great. -- if we get as lucky as we did with twitter, that would be great. there is a whole wave of new companies that are about helping people work together to do things. it touches on things that twitter actually does. it will enable people who would not necessarily act on their own to find light-minded people. it is one thing to find light- minded people, it is another
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thing to find light-minded people and do things. that is what we see in the middle east. we have seen smaller examples throughout the history of twitter. it is christmas time and there are a bunch of homeless people on the street, let's go get them blankets. who is with me? we heard stories like this. we are convinced that this would not have happened if people did not have this communication channel. they do not get out there unless you get the mechanisms to connect with other people. that scratch the surface of what is possible >> i was going to use that phrase. it seems what we are just beginning to scratch the surface on the and internet and on specific applications like kick -starter and donor's choose
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where people can collaborate to affect positive change. twitter has helped to do that. it is not entirely what it is about, but it has done that in certain cases. there is a proliferation of start ups and apps that are doing that now. as we get into our discussion about the future of the internet, hopefully, this is the lead topic. >> in some ways, this is the history of the internet. it started as a collaborative media and became something different for a while. >> its original goal was to help scientists collaborate. then it took on this very where thel loamode default mode -- the fall paradigm of commerce is one way. people will consume our media and our advertisement. then there is the next wave
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where we realize this is a two- weight media. people do not just consent, they participate. there are great examples of people collaborating on the internet to create great software, to create information on wikipedia. to bring that collaboration back to the real world is the next phase we are pushing. what's there was this pure collaborative d.c. seed in the very beginning -- collaborative seat in the very beginning. -- seed in the very beginning. blogging came along and a seedling started to sprout to the crack. we lowered the barriers to self
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publishing. now we are entering the third phase where it is not just an overwhelming amount of information, there are people working on things and to give you information as quick as possible. it also includes taking the virtual and making it true, real, positive to global changes in the world. >> why you call it the obvious corporation? >> originally we called it obvious for a couple of reasons. one is we want to create products that are obviously easy to use and straightforward, not tricky. not try to be too clever. we are not that clever. probably a bigger reason was the biggest ideas or obvious in retrospect.
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only in retrospect. >> for the first nine months of twitter, people thought it was totally useless. they said it to our face every day. finally one day, evan said, "what is -- so is ice-cream." do you want us to ban ice cream and all julie? -- and all joy. >> you will be the ceo, correct? >> i am on the board at twitter. differ -- we all have different relationships. >> all of us are deeply invested personally and financially in twitter predic. evan is an active participant on the board.
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i worked through this with dick, our ceo. i said i would get out of the way. if you need me, just ask me to do something. i will be working a lot with bouncing ideas of a product. that is pretty much it. jason is kind of a guidance counselor. all the employees at twitter are constantly asking jason for a private meeting. he is involved. we are all involved. we want to see it succeeds tremendously. we want to help as much as possible. >> before we get into the future of the internet, let's talk about the arab spring. we talked about that many times and twitter and how it affected it. someone said "the revolution will not be tweeted." >> first of all, it was weird.
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no one was arguing that -- his argument was "these revolutions are not twitter revolutions per "no one said they were. that was weird. that is what he was arguing against. basically i wrote eight rebel that said, look, -- basically i wrote a rebuttal that said, look, the telephone did not bring down the bill -- berlin wall. i think it is a straw man thing. i think he was angry that people kept writing twitter into the headlines. he said, twitter had nothing to do with this, but, in fact, it had a sideline part because these people were ready to speak up.
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twitter was a tool that help them realize that others felt like them. it emboldened them and allow them to feel they could do this. it has eight roles as a simple tool, -- it has a role as a simple tool, but it must remain a neutral technology, not taking sides, not getting involved, not celebrating any part of helping in any success. >> you call it a neutral technology. the be ask you a question -- do you think from gutenberg to twitter, the technologies that enable a fleer trove of information and communication inevitably -- enable 8 free ya freer flow of information --
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>> i want to know what you think. >> the answer is, yes. it empowers and enables people. it does not compel an author jerry of regime. -- and all third tyrian -- authoritarian regime. quite the thing we are facing now -- the state department is suddenly very cozy with twitter. "we would try to get ak-47s and you die did it with tweets." "can we be friends? i maintain that it has to be a neutral technology because there
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are different forms of democracy. you do not want york technology -- your technology to be a tool to spread the united states version of technology around the world. -- democracy around the world. you want it to help for good, but you do not want to look like you are in the pocket of the u.s. government. we tried to do that as much as we can. speaking of the future, as people have been starting internet companies, one thing that has changed a lot is the global nature of the internet. now if you create a consumer web service, most of your users will be outside of the united states.
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it does not matter if you are in the heart of silicon valley and lodged only in english, there are other people outside the u.s. that changes have you think about things from the get go. it comes up in all kinds of policy decisions when you get big. the state department stores calling and a weird things start happening. -- the state department starts calling and weird things start happening. you can make something truly global. it is more global than it was even five or 10 years ago. i went to korea to lot twitter in korean in january. twitter and maybe facebook now are the first two services to grow substantially in korea that
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are not from korea. even though they are very advanced -- they have high-speed internet, they have lots of homegrown and internet services -- there is something culturally that get those people on the homegrown side. now with things like twitter and facebook they have local competitors, but people want to be connected to the global network. they want to follow what is happening with bill gates. you cannot separate this stuff anymore. it has to be part of one massive system, which also these two things like the internet becoming more closed at less decentralized. that is another topic. >> let's get to the topic -- is there a problem with the future of the internet? the you think it will become more closed? >> absolutely. there are a lot of trends that push it toward being more
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closed. specifically, the economics of the centralized system and the user experience is very powerful. >> are you talking about apple, for example? >> apple is a good example as is facebook and youtube. let's take youtube as a lesson taught about example. youtube is not closed, but it is very centralized. 10 years ago if you had talked to any technologist, they would say obviously viet was coming to the actor that as bandwidth increases. at the time, no one i know would have said that 80% of the videos would be run through one service. that would have been a strange thought because the actor that model was decentralization. every website, every newspaper as an island on the internet, what would that not be the same way?
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if you want to publish a video, you probably publish it on youtube whether you are a -- unless you are a major media outlet. people published on youtube because it is a lot easier and because that is where the viewers are. it has the big network effect. that will keep it more and more powerful. same thing with facebook and with apple. if you want to write a mobile phone application, you can publish it to the apple store because that is the only way to get it on the telephone. that is great for users. it is the same thing over and over again. the user experience is superior if it is centralized and the rich is better in the economics are better. what we are getting into our platform wars where there are a few major players that are getting bigger and bigger and there are opportunities for
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little guys to be on these major players platforms, but i think we are more dependent on these platforms. >> can you put twitter on that list? >> yes. "elite. [applause] [laughter] -- yes. hopefully. [applause] >> most of us grew up thinking of the internet as http web pages. we have had 20 years of a web based internet. now you are saying that we are moving towards a social network based internet, but there will be certain platforms like facebook or whatever that will be more centrally controlled? >> if you can go on your i applied touch -- ipod touch and still get almost everything you
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need. there is an app for that. everything is on there. >> the distinction that is important is not http. that confuses the story a little bit. what is important is the paradigm shift from a completely decentralized internet to a centralized internet. you have to give to the apple store to get an application for your phone. that is different than anyone can put up a website. it the website uses facebook connect or twitter accounts to log into the websites because people automatically have accounts, that is very different for the days you created everything from scratch. i liken it to in the early days where people were on an island
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and try to attract tourists to the island. tourists which show up and it would issue them a passport and feed them whatever coconuts they grew on that island. over time and lot of islanders said we cannot be completely self sustained, so we will import things. we will import modernization. we will import surge. -- search. your cmf.mport now you can import your identity. now people are saying, screw it. we do not even need to own the land. we are going to read it. -- rent it at all the services will be provided for us. that makes a lot of sense from
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a money standpoint. but that means you are dependent on that land owner. >> what is the downside? >> maybe the landowners to get too much control. they changed the rules. when we started odio with a -- which was a podcasting service, apple said we had that with itunes. that was probably a good place for it. it was probably better than our website. once they made that decision, we had to give it. -- we had to pivot. -> if you're doing get app nkable as is not as likab
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much. >> they are not connectable. it is a step backwards. >> the lighting just got different. [laughter] it has gotten more gloomy. >> what else are you worried about the future of the internet? >> you should ask goldman. he is the more cynical one. we are hallucinogenic lee optimistic. jason is always a light, "these are the 10 ways we can get screwed. about quality of content. for the last 15 years we have worked on lowering the barriers to content creation.
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it seems like there is -- that no one has been working on how to improve the quality of content on the internet. i think this is highly possible, but if you look at what reading an article on the web looks like today, it is basically the same as if you read it in a magazine. once it is published, it really changes. the collected intelligence available in the world does not collaborate to improve it. the process of creation is not much different than traditional media, the distribution is the only thing that changes. all these things could potentially change. the consumption, the production process could be weighed more efficient and (that is an opportunity and a way that things could improve.
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in the publishing industry there is a lot of turmoil and disparity. they think the internet screwed their business model, which is true, but is optimistic that there are more fundamental things to change about publishing dan distribution. >> i think there has not been nearly enough. -- i'd think there has not been nearly enough experimentation between user generated content and professional content. they are pretty much different worlds of the internet today. the best you get is an article and then a bunch of comments that can be from anybody. no one ever read them. i want to read my new york times
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after walter has read it, highlighted it, and written in the margins. depending on what the article is, i do not know exactly what that looks like, but there are all kinds of ideas. with wikipedia, there is a collective intelligence the collaborates to provide information. just to your point about collaboration, there are much more ways of thinking about collaboration on the web than specific applications created for collaborating. apps like twitter that are wide open, where you can follow anyone. whether you tweak or not is up to you, but you can follow your mom, you can follow cnn, you can
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follow anything -- nike. i think there is a lot of potential for collaboration because people meet others they would have never met at the door on a social network because you connect with people you already know there. you're just confirming your relationship. that you are on a system we were falling people you wish you knew rather than people you used to know, it is more of an aspirational thing. we've seen it over and over. people say, "we have all started falling each other on this -- following each other on this twitter. why do we not get together and meet in real life?" it has wonderful repercussions. one of the early 20's was "let's get together and raise money for
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charity. pub, get together at this pay a $20 ticket, and that money will go to people who do not have clean water in developing nations." they raised millions of dollars on one tuesday night. >> that is a good example, but there are not that many of them, of how you make the virtual world connect with the physical world. in other words, a virtual friends or virtual ball worse -- -- virtual followers. >> you no longer have to be sitting at your desk to experience the entire net.
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it is more interspersed in our daily lives. this simple idea of -- this simple idea is kind of integrating. you do not have to tell the taxi where you are, you just press a button and it shows up to your house. >> what i am excited about is more people -- have you heard of carrotmob? it is the opposite of the boycott. the idea is people should vote with their dollars, but the only organized way to do that is to boycott this business. that is negative and does not seem like there is necessarily an effect most of the time. this guy got the idea that we
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could use the carrot instead of the state in which to go to the business and say we want you to do this and, if you do, we will all spend our money. for example, this guy from san francisco went to all of these liquor stores in the mission and got them to bid for how much they would contribute to improving efficiency in their store out of all the people who organize and bought stuff. the highest bid was 22%. they rallied the troops and got all these people to show up. they bought everything in the store. bigeye normally makes $1,000 a day. he made $10,000 that day. . $2,002 into replacing the lights. it was not a discount. they presumably bought things they would any way and then date referred or invested in the
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store emotionally and, actually come out financially. >> the picture he showed us of the first of that shows all these people talking to each other. since then there have been others in germany and around the world. it is taken on the life of its own. >> with the future of the internet be better if there was less anonymity, or at least the option where you can be secure in who people are? >> i think so. there are a lot of benefits to anonymity, but not most of the everyday use cases. i think in more dangerous situations you need to be able to protect your anonymity. other times when you want to open up and get ahead in life because you want a better job or whatever, you want to use
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your real name. you want to open up ensure your interest. if you are more of a whistleblower in a dangerous area, you want to be able to protect your privacy. >> the reason i ask is it seems to me a collaborative web is being able to trust the ut i am collaborating with. >> we need to replicate that to some degree on line. behind the scenes, it is the way to combat abuse. abuse is a huge problem if you are running what the services -- spam and what not. it is not even necessarily anonymity. you do not necessarily have to use her real name. you can participate under a pseudonym or something, but
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there needs to be longevity and a history of your actions. there has to be cost to going away and identity and creating a new one. if there is nothing, there are no consequences. >> bugle to date lost bugle -- google today launched google +. the ec the possibility that facebook could be displaced as myspace was? >> the general answer to that is -- when you get this place, it is because she displaced yourself. myspace took their eye of the user and focused on junky
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advertisements. it is the same thing citi did. they got involved in credit defaults swaps and all that stuff predicted their eyes of their customers. by almost lost their $200 -- to one year old institution. their new metrics are let's keep 1 million people from foreclosing. of the 4 million people we know we are going to foreclose on, let's preserve their credit and get them at 28 rental. those are actual measures they are trying to achieve. the key is execute, keep your eye on the future, do what you need to do. facebook seems to have a firm grasp of its users, but they also seem to have a "we are going to do it whether you like it or not" attitude.
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>> suppose you were building a new service or product that needed to be based on the platform of a social network with the identity or whatever. would you be comfortable basing it on facebook? >> we did that early on and did not have all lot of success. >> i would use facebook if it were useful. it is useful for users and science to bring in people you know. but i do not think facebook will be displaced. however, what they do is to fundamental. connecting with people you know. sharing photos is a very fundamental to most of the world. but what is going to be hard for them is the same thing but it's
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hard for every big company which is extending that to everything. what i hear from people who use facebook a lot is that it gets to appoint word is too big for certain things. you form a network on facebook based on what you do on facebook. google has been public about their theory the to do not want to share all things with everybody. they can give people who create the circles, whatever they are calling them, that they will more naturally maps to what people want to do. that can be successful. people will use facebook for the steps to use facebook for today. that will be hard to displace. something else might be better for a specific other use which
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is what happened with twitter. >> i think being so obstinate as to say, what can she say everything in one place? water you hiding? that is silly. everyone has different aspects of their personality. >> facebook house all the functionality the new group will circle dollars. people are not used to using it that way. greeting these services is, the norms of the culture of the system define what people do with it much more than the functionality. if that makes sense. people, people can hook their twitter to their facebook and publish their tweets. for a lot of people who use
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facebook, this does not make sense. the house tax and user names do not have the meaning of facebook. it is the type of things up people share on facebook. it is a different thing for what people do want twitter. even though the functionality is a ouse subset of quarter. >> never used twitter, never use facebook, and never reason why he would do it. do you have a response? >> i would have a -- challenge on him if he has used twittered. have you ever watched cnn or red and york times? rk read tehe new yo9 times. chances are he has read a tweeted. >> are there people who can get by with essential that working?
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-- without social networking? >> on the web? >> on the internet? >> yes. [laughter] >> let me open it up. run to a microphone. yes. >> the other side of the internet is connecting to the massive computing power that has a lot of knowledge. the latest example is ibm's watson. it seems to me that maybe we should be thinking about those kinds of uses where a physician wants to get a best practices or something like that. he is not going to get in on facebook or you get a whole bunch of ideas from lucky people. you want to get it from something that has distilled all
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of this knowledge and really gives you something to go. there has to be a place for that side of computing. >> that is a great question. >> i agree. that is a great example of the collaboration we're talking about. it does not mean with everyone in the world. most of the systems developed has not allowed for, it is like user generated content first is professional. -- vs professional. ford is a closed system. there has to be new ones in between that and to allow people to our credibility or to be able to connect with only those to a certain level of trust. >> one of the things we're excited about with twittered is that maybe one day down the line since was designed to orkhon all mobile phones because they all have sms and it is 140
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characters, we always thought we might be able to have an impact in our rural areas. can i get a better price on the screen or a pregnant woman western travel 50 miles task -- who has to travel tuesday miles? tests have been done in new gun and other places with simple sms or lives have been saved because they have been able to report medical diagnoses over sms. some guys in berkeley invented the microscope you can put over and iphone and you can take a microscopic picture of the virus and send that picture in an e-
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mail from a ramshackle clinic to fancy clinic and get back with any minute and a diagnosis of that virus. . you have where somebody takes a cat scan of somebody's something and says the seven collaboration around mad? could you create a high-end product? >> definitely. >> probably somebody already has. every time we have this genius idea we look it up and there are already tenderize working on it. [laughter] >> he started off talking about the separation of the internet with companies but there's also the separation of the global medium with countries. i'm wondering if you have any concern about that, iran or
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china, in terms of the global common medium of the internet. and if you have any interest in pushing for a single to joe market. >> i mean, you know, our philosophy is and has always been the open exchange of information can have a positive impact on the world. we also often get blocked by countries that cannot agree with that philosophy. we are blocked in china. the funny thing is people find ways to continue to use quarter. we have found that in order to completely shut down people from the twittering, yet to shut down the entire communication service. when you do that, you cripple
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the entire state. who was it that did that and they had to turn this thing back on? even now that we are blocked in china, we still see traffic coming from china. people are figuring out ways around the block to continue to collaborate to treat and to share information. does that answer the question? >> what i worry about is the separate world within the u.s. and people a only paying attention with people who agree with them. that is one of the more ironic things about one of all the -- what all of these technologies have created. more separation rather than connection. there is less of a common marketplace of ideas and to some degree because people are filtering out everything that is from a different viewpoint.
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the technology encourages you to block the sings out. you have to shuffle the deck. >> some of what would was doing was tweets from people they are not following. one of our dreams has always been to say, ok, we know you live in berkeley in you drive over the bay bridge every day. it is like 4:45 and maybe would like to know the bay bridge fell down. you would be like, ok, yes, i do like to know that. thank you. you would not say screw you, why are you treating me? -- tweeting me. there is information for everyone that is relevant. we have to work hard on delivering those relevant
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tweets to people who need them so their lives can be made a smarter, richer, better for it. >> yes, ma'am. >> um, could you speak to the conversation about the singularity and the role that you have adopted that this is coming and a lot of them have accepted that this merging is going to happen? >> the singularity. that is a book i read in the sixth grade. >> this is different. go-ahead. [laughter] >> it seems crazy but i am not that well versed in a singularity. [laughter] think we have to
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worry about it yet. i have read of wired magazine's and other counts but i do not think we're going to lose control. next year we will put it on the agenda and find out whether we are right turn not. >> i will save four systems and involves thousands of computers, it is hard to keep them working let alone working on the run. >> similarity is when they do not need us anymore and they to work on the run. i almost think the opposite is that we keep seeing the limitations of machines every day as opposed to the facts to the they could run amok with irs. -- without us. we do not have before sir face recognition. >> we need to learn to work together before we can teach
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machines to work together. one of the things, when twitter first broke out, it was because we went to a conference called south by southwest in austin, texas. we went to the inner portion. it was early on in the twitter's history where it is basically nerds. there was a huge overlap. a few things happen. there was a guy at a pub who wanted to talk more freely with his colleagues at the pub but was really loud. so he used twitter to say it is too loud, let's go over to this other pub. in the eight minutes it took him to walk, it was filled to capacity. there was a line around the block. his plan backfired. what had happened was in eight minutes, a 800 people had converged from one tweet.
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the metaphor that came to my mind was a flock of birds moving around an object in flight like a tree or a telephone pole. when you look at it, it looks like it is choreographed and complicated and yet it is not. the mechanics of flocking are rudimentary. it is simple communication in real time allows many to behave as if they are one organism. for the first time ever, we were seeing people behaving almost as if they were one organism like this. we had never heard of a tool or seen anything like this before. that sent chills down our spine because we thought, this is a party but what of it had been more serious? a disaster or political situation.
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we'd form to twitter incorporated because that is when -- that was the first big realization that we were on to a new form of communication among humans that could potentially change the world. >> hello my name is jason pollack. i'm a filmmaker and twitter attic. have 92,000 followers on twitter. it has changed my life. thank you so much for creating yet. we read about people like me who use of all the time but we are a minority of the user base. a lot of people know what water is but not a lot of them are active users. i am wondering how you guys are tackling that issue. >> it depends on how you described an active user. we like to say you can give value without creating a web page. 6 billion and tweeds every six
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days, there is a lot of info out there. there's a lot in there to find. but what were you going to say. ? >> most of the reports about what the percentage of active users are only looking at tweet creation. there is a misunderstanding that people have. i talk to people who do not use twittered. i have nothing to say to the world. it turns out they read tweets all the time and it turns out we can create a twitter stream that they love and go back to all the time. two out of three to recessions result in no tweets being used.
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twitter cares about the people who are getting information just as much as the people creating information. that percentage is increasing because early adopters were more likely to create. so there are a lot of active users. two, because of that misunderstanding that we have been trying to correct for a long time, people are getting more and more of an understanding. the osama bin laden thing was a great milestone for a lot of people. disinformation came out on twittered. twitter is a new source. i get now. it is not about the cliche here is what i had for lunch today. it is about information happening in the world. i may not even have to have a twitter account but this stuff is year ended israel time and relevant to me matter where i am.
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>> just me, i'd probably checked twitter 20 time today. -- 20 times a day. i think for a long time allotted internet companies have defined engagement the wrong way. if you define a engagement as hours spent staring at a computer screen, our users spend eight hours looking at our site. i think that is an unhealthy way to measure engagement. if your users are checking your service 20, 30 times a day for 10 seconds at a time to make a quick decision or figure out what you're going to do next, that is a way better type of engagement that shows that our services helping them make
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choices everyday efficiently and smarter and saving time, etc. i prefer that level of engagement over the slump over a computer screen for eight hours playing a game. >> questions? johnnie in the light blue shirt. >> i have a question which applies to twitter and also the internet in general. when is misrepresenting yourself or sort of creating a new identity good and ok and part of fair play and when does it change to manipulation that is not ok? for example, people who are protesting should be allowed to crates of falsehoods about who they are. i am a comedian; personality is not a real person by any measure.
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i also misrepresent companies on twitter. i have a fake relationship with them that implies they perform ceremonies on twitter. when does it change when companies are doing or if they misrepresent support. light yesterday and professor was talking about a site. obviously a company cannot create shell accounts to make a trending topic. i'm sure you guys would see it. could you got on a mechanical -- mechanical turk and a people can sense to make a trendy topic and would that be ok? or if people are representing themselves as citizens when they're working for corporations.
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>> just recap the question. [laughter] >> i got a. the answer is pretty clear. you're creating comedy versus trying to manipulate the world for profit. one is ok and what is less ok. -- one is less ok. this is happening ala. these type of campaigns is probably a lot greater because a lot of it is a very hard to detect. so, that is a problem. it is a problem that relates to walter's question about reputation and authority. that is something that all of these questions are just getting started. they are pretty primitive. eventually i do not think an account that is created
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overnight for 10 cents is going to have very much influence. influence has to be turned over time. there's a little bit of that in twitter today. i think that is inevitable. it is not going to have the authority it is capable of. >> parity accounts are allowed on twitter. impersonation accounts are not. during the bp oil spill, someone created bp global pr. they started saying all of this sad but funny things. as if it bp could not care less. bp did not call us to take it down. i actually thought i was a brilliant move because it was
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letting off some steam. if they had gone to shut down the account, it would have been like they were completely and utter the evil beyond all means. >> but it was funny and clear that was somebody doing a parody. >> it have the logo but it was stripping. [laughter] >> would you have shut it down if there was somebody pretending to be bp pr? >> if it said we are official and here it is, we would have said that is impersonation. >> to letters just down impersonation accounts every day. -- twitter shuts down impersonation accounts every day. >> alexander graham bell -- i
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was going to ask you. alexander graham bell thought it would be a great way to listen to conserves. i'm curious what has surprised you about what winter has become? i am assuming the scale and the diversity of it is beyond what you might have anticipated? what has been a surprise to you as twitter has become in the emerging phenomenon and change your time? what you think might become in the future? >> can i answer the first question? so, there is an element of "holy crap." but we had worked on blotter so long and allowing people to create a web page for free that spoke about injustice or was the only way they could get their information out, it was
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important. we supported that. we designed our rules to keep it free and open because we knew that it was important in the world. we had a feeling when we were working even though it was fun in the beginning that there was the potential of it also having that same kind of impact in the world. what was not expected was, we lowered the bar so much more down. with blogger you had to have an internet connection. you had to know how to use ftp and stuff like that. with twitter you just have to know how to use a text message. what really surprised me was the
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speed that twitter grew at and the speed at which all of this stuff was adopted and the way it's better of democracy and business and all the other things. >> was a wholly shift moment when people said hello i am jared from the state department and don't do maintenance because -- >> there was some energy in the office when we did that. [laughter] but again my primary thing was, oh boy, i do not want people to think we're doing this because they asked us to. i said we get hundreds of e- mails. we had a lot of phone calls. one of those phone calls was from the state department. we decided to change the maintenance window because all these users thought it was a
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good idea and because we should be up anyways. becausee not doing this the state department asked us. we wanted to have the global, neutral lied to us. there was a lot of energy that day. >> another thing that surprised me is the casualness with which a large number of well-known people use a twitter. all lot of accounts are handled by pr people or interns but there are people like lady gaga who is on twitter all the time. >> and the people on congress. >> we have gotten to the and without saying that dreaded name. >> that is part of what i meant by the casualness of usage.
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people are out there saying stuff. >> at the beginning i had an argument with ev and said celebrities are not going to use twitter. they're celebrities because we do not have access to them. they are special. we look forward to seeing them in movies. we do not want to see their regular lives. but then they all started to go on twitter like crazy. it was great for us because celebrities have built in the people who love them and follow them. >> i have been ignoring this side of the room. >> hello my name is peter. i have a 13 followers on a tour. >> it is about quality, not quantity of. >> of our company has a mere 200.
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how do small businesses get more recognition and get followed aside from being bigger ? >> the beauty of small business on twitter has not escaped us from the very beginning. you do not have to have a lot of followers. early on i walked by a bakery that did cookies. they had a cardboard box with a magic marker that said follow us on twitter. when the cookies combat of the oven warm we will tweet. even if only 98 people in the neighborhood followed that account, when those guys say chocolate chip cookies are coming out of the oven at three in the afternoon, everyone runs down there and baez cookies.
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even if it is only 90 people they just sold all of their cookies. they can go home for the day or make another batch. and all they needed was a sharp be and a piece of a box. -- sharpie and a piece of a box. they could save follow me and i will tell you if i get a special grain next week. there is a huge group of small businesses that are not going to build a web site and by and advertise and do all that sort of stuff when they can get a twitter account for free and get a chalkboard and go for it. >> the last question there. standing up. >> my name is eric and i'm a talent agent at eta focusing on
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social media. my question to you is there is a lot of talk about the attack bauble. is it going to burst? i'm not going to ask whether you filing for an ipo but i would love to know your thoughts about where you are in the bubble. >> that is a good question. >> i am not a speculator about the stock-market but i think there is a lot of excitement because a lot of stop -- stuff is getting real. the people for sought and the internet from the first company. now the user base that you can reach a billion people on a service and make a lot of money is very clear to people. as usual, investor inside me -- excitement is outpacing the
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development of the businesses. long-term, i do not think it is a problem. twitter stalker for the long term. i think if there is a correction, these things go in cycles. that will be fine. there are fundamental businesses that are here for the long term. >> jury murdoch's, where are you? first of all i want to thank jerry murdoch. [applause] going to come up and talk about the yoga that we can do. but first let me think our people here.
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we really appreciate it. [applause] what is the hash tag for this? aspenideas is the hash tag. thank you all very much. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] >> coming up, a panel of historians evaluate the obama presidency and the founders of twitter talk about the future of the internet. on the "washington journal," patrick donahoe. we will talk to michael hirsch about a federal job-training programs. it begins live at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. >> this week and nonbook tv,
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it's frederick olmstead is remembered for designing the central part. but justin martin looks at his life as a journalist and abolitionist. we stopped by a large party for latest.liams' pirating in the 21st century is with night vision goggles and gps units. we take you inside the pirates of somalia. sign up for a book and tv alerts. >> the u.s. announced a new round of sanctions against syria and response to the violent crackdown on protesters and the nuclear proffer -- a proliferation activities. here is victoria .
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>> should the president stepped down? >> let me say the focus of our activity, as you know, based on the meetings can and numerous phone calls with the foreign minister is to continue to sanction the international correspondence regarding the a solder bridging. i think that this community of countries willing to call assyria out for what it is doing is growing. for the past week, based largely on his actions, but also because of the strong diplomacy that we
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have been conducting with a number of countries, ec moves like the arab league, the gulf cooperation council, kuwait, bahrain, other countries taking increasingly strong stands and making clear that what is going on in syria is unacceptable to the international community. the fact that we got this presidential statement last week speaks to the fact that countries like china and russia are no longer willing to sit by. the question now is what message is the assad regime going to take from this? are they going to stop the violence? are they going to allow a real democratic transition to take place? that is where we were -- we are.
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as you saw, the treasury department today announced a new set of sanctions. we sanctioned the commercial bank of syria. we concur -- we sanctioned their largest mobile phone purveyor. >> this is the focus of the diplomacy we are engaged with. europeans and various neighbors, to encourage, as you said yesterday, as many countries as possible to take national action, to tighten the noose and insure that we do as much impossible to increase the
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pressure on the sod. we want to deny him the money to commit to this kind of violence. >> while the state department announced stricter sanctions, a panel of the dissidents was discussing the government protests. they talked about what the u.s. stance should be and how they can help pro-democracy. this is an hour-and-a-half. >> thank you for your patience today. we have had quite a turnout. i'm with the middle east institute. thank you for joining us for this discussion about development in syria. we are fortunate to have an excellent group of panelists for
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going to land their insight and experience into this question of the development of syria and a potential solution to the spiralling crisis. these last 10 days have been horrifying. the crackdown on hamas, the it continues as we speak. hundreds have been killed. the bloodbath of the last 10 days has prompted a more robust international response to is happening in syria on august 3. the security council issued a statement -- statement that was anemic but it condemned violence. back on the other powers moving. the saudis have been conspicuously quiet on this issue. finally they issued a statement saying king of the law was calling for an end to the killing. the next day kuwait recalled
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their ambassadors. there is a six hour meeting beef during the foreign minister. supposedly the turks laydown the ultimatum of that. the results of that have yet to be seen. there are reports of the obama administration is going to issue a stronger condemnation of syria, calling for him to step down. that is going to be coming out in the next day or two. censure is building but the syrians are notoriously impervious to outside pressure. it bounced to make them nervous. defense minister was asked to step down to to health reasons the other day. yesterday it was reported that he died. some claim he was assassinated because he has been critical of
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the actions being taken by the regime. i'm sure it that will be addressed. there have been no serious defections within the army. the major cities have been quiet especially where there have been very few protests. how that change will come about and who helped lead to the change is the million-dollar question. our speakers are going to touch upon these issues, bringing their insight to this important discussion. for the sake of time, i'm going to introduce them briefly. there fall biographies are on the handouts i gave you. i will introduce them in the order they will speak. he is the director for human rights studies and co-founder of the syrian center for strategic studies. he is one of the key voices of
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the syrian opposition. he is many close contacts. he is also involved in the protests using social needed to coordinate between organizers throughout syria. ambassadorial theodore kattouf leads an organization that works with the middle east. he searched twice in syria, first as the deaf -- deputy chief administer and then -- andrew taylor is filling in. he has to leave early but we are appreciative that he is here. he spent many years working and
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living in damascus and is the author of the forthcoming book "in the lions' den." we're pleased to look for that. it is a privilege and honor to have everybody with us today. i also want to thank peter for his support of the programming. i apologize for the size of the room. they have also provided a lunch. many thanks to them. i also want to alert you to a journal we are selling. our spring issue that has several articles on syria. there's one on the muslim brotherhood and be a slaughter scene. why one on your way out. thank you. now i would like to invite radwan ziadeh to the podium.
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>> good afternoon, everyone. thank you for the nice introduction and thank you for this opportunity. let me begin with how ramadan will be critical for this year in the uprising. since march 15, the uprising started in syria. the protests are getting more momentum. regarding the size of the protest. they're asking for reform. as there are more killings, it is calling for the opposite. at the same time, the protests
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cannot get momentum with the central core of the regime still solid. we do not see any defection. we do not see any defections among the ministers or parliament. this is why the protesters prepare themselves for ramadan. since every single day in ramadan -- friday became the day of prayer in the muslim society but does that -- that does not mean that the remain uprising is religion or something like that. our 47 years of dictatorship, the people cannot get together only in the moscow churches. otherwise you have to get permission to have a gathering
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of a few people. this is why they use the opportunity to start of the product -- protest. this is why the main point of the protest. this is why the regime was acting on that is just one day before ramadan with a military operation. it became the flashpoint of the protest. in hama, they have half a million. there were not many killings or armed guards. they're beating that. the n.y. times wrote that
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interesting piece. he claimed himself -- this is why we give some explanation why the harsh response of the violent military operation. they need to send a message that if they do protest the response will be exactly like they are unable. all the means of communication, cellphone, not allowing even that for a medical supply. we need more confirmation about that and the babies born in the hospital where actually -- all
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the babies born have died in the hospital. nine of them. their collective punishment became very terrible for the resident of the city because as they start to protest, it will punish the whole city. but the same time, of course it will affect the number of people who are protesting. they have a huge number of injured people. it exceeds 2000. at the same time, it does not affect the will of the syrian protest. every night in every city. we have seen that.
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there are youtube videos every day in the north and south and all over the country. what is important is there are more the invoices for talking about taking the community as a hostage. the overall security officers are part of the community. all of the stories about torture and about the killings have been blamed on officers during that period even if there are other officers during that period because the regime insists on the sectarian, this is between all other communities. what is good in the last three
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weeks, there's a lot of leading forces from the community asking why the regime is taking a hostage. we discovered with other communities -- we have no such kind of a struggle or fight with others. this is why we can see that the voice of the well-known novelist and others, the former minister of information when he announced what is called the national democratic initiative. of course the ceiling of this initiative is not acceptable by the syrian people. he is calling for someone to lead a transition and calling for a national conference. this could send a message, ali
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duba, one of the icons of the military service. we believe that such initiatives gives the sense that there's more and frustration among the community. what is good that this time this is a different [unintelligible] this is in the message we're trying to send to the community. it is not like that. there is no role of the muslim brotherhood in organizing the protests. they have a much more -- the young generation is very young. most syrians are under 30.
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this is why the high number of the people being killed with documented 1152. this is why the young is a leading the protest mainly by indigenous ideas about the local court in asian communities and other types of organizations. of course the initiative also reflects the replacement of the minister of defense. the minister of defense -- he is no connection to the security. we know from the beginning he is
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not satisfied by involvement of the army in attacking the civilians by himself. with all the history of hama, he says this will make more sense among the people. the syrian army is a professional one did is not like egypt or libya. it is something in between. from day one of the army trying to enforce it, there's a lot of stories about the security in syria. and have civilian clothing but they change them and give them military clothing to confuse the protesters that there is no institution they can rely on even though they have been attacked by the army.
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people feel they are fighting along with no international support other than condemnation. we are hearing more voices from the arab league and from the security council. this helped the protesters on the ground to gomorrah rental -- to get more momentum. then the replacement of ali habib, the army is not on the same page with the syrian regime and attacking civilians. there is no indication -- what
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we have in the army, and the rebels. there interview where the officers started operating to encourage more army generals to defect. it is not a significant number from the senior army general to defect or break with the regime. but how that will affect at the end. what is more important is the army. having them can -- condemned the violence and having king abdallah direct to the syrian people and talk to them directly, this is had a great impact on the people on the ground. with all of the important role
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of saudi in the region, they have been leading the community in libya from behind but right now it is silent on syria. this is why the speech may get some more arab countries to stop the violence and syria. basically along with the international community, with some security council, this is non-binding and has no influence. we're hoping for resolution by the security council which condemns the violence against the protesters but also puts sanctions on security officers in a criminal court.
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this international effort should be coordinated. the turkish have been seen as much more acceptable. turkey after the visit yesterday london to do some action. they said this is a time for action. this is a time of war. the turkish minister visited damascus -- damascus 60 times. this is why he keeps hearing the same promises but nothing on the ground. yesterday he tried to reach in this three hours meeting to send a clear message that this is a time of action. we will not wait for the turkish prime minister.
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we think this is too long, two weeks. since the killing is going to continue. hopefully with the visit by obama tomorrow, he has to step down. more countries will have joined forces to stop the killings or the end will have started transitioning. thank you very much. [applause] >> good afternoon, everyone. thank you to the middle east institute. with the clock ticking, i seem to be set on a position as a
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post-assad era. the ability to work together on into a civil,syria modern state. historically, the opposition in syria was composed of the damascus fractions, the kurdish parties, and a wide spectrum of islamists. but there have been new factions and parties. opposition groups traveled all over syria, neighborhoods, towns, and the cities formed their own committees to protect their neighborhoods and coordinate their work. each city has its own local committee and media group but they have formed coalition committees to act together. as a result, we are coordinated
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together. 70% of the protests are expressions of many of those opposition groups evolve and emerge over time, springing fourth bigger committees, the biggest grass- roots groups in syria, the local coordinating committees, llc and srcu. most gained media exposure as groups, but that does not mean that the syrian streets zero their mobilization to them. srcu and llc have an imperative presence, as they maintain the unbiased nature of the revolution.
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people were demonstrating long before those groups were formed. this is largely owed to funerals. people of certain localities in of never been to mosques their entire lives, such as atheists, christians, , and otherwise, started frequenting the sunni mosques to take part of, or sometimes inside to demonstrations. whatever transpires from such congregations, it represents a will of the substantial portion of the population in that particular area. it is important for the aforementioned points. the expectations of one unifying governing body of the syrian -- what syria is currently experiencing is a democracy. millions of syrians are expressing their desire to persecute the regime. dozens of grass-roots formations and complete political parties have been formed and are being formed to competitively lead syrian society through the transitional period.
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many of those parties were formed by prominent intellectuals. they have written manifestoes and are nowadays starting to think about party memberships and representation as well as which constituency each would appeal to. they already have started discussing the future constitution and the restructuring of security and armed forces, for instance. most cruise realize they need a government that serves the benefit of all syrians. more movements and political parties will certainly sprout, and counting only on the current ones is premature. it would be better to start thinking about the actual leadership after all of the syrian factions have a chance to develop into parties. what could be done but is the provision of more support to the inside factions by connecting them with the oxide
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-- outside opposition groups. there are many grassroots movements at the moment that will help the great drive the transition forward by may be forming a transitional advisory council. the u.s. and the eu could help coalesce groups and individuals from the outside and inside under the same risk. the opposition groups based outside have more understanding of foreign policies and are on the same page of expectations of most inside grass-roots opposition groups, so they are the best candidates to act as buffer between syria and the outside world. however, they should not be minimized to court nation and should be invested in dow futures key figures go. this is what the syrian opposition is missing, and they
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could rally inside and outside support. they have been extensively demonstrated inside syria and have participated in conferences abroad. they have suffered the most due to the regime. they would more likely run into a regime member. the regina might be made of one group mostly, but that is only because of the family alliances. they may try to make the revolution seem sectarian, but that is not true.
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there is no way the regime is surviving. their control is faltering though. the past 10 days, since the beginning of ramadan, with the demonstrations, the city and the suburbs in these two areas have unilaterally expressed their dissatisfaction. no longer special considerations. they are now getting shot at, and the regime no longer tries to hide its brutality from the europeans. most demonstrators around syria have to face live bullets, even write in the heart of the capital. the clock is ticking for the regime in syria, and the assad era is over soon, except in court. thank you.
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>> things. it is very nice to be here today. as she mentioned, i am pinch hitting, so i have to think a little bit on my feet. i did not have that much time to prepare, but given the pace of events, our current focus on syria, i will bring up a couple of important points and probably stand on those of the others. maybe some of you know, but some of you do not, i came to washington about two years ago. i spent about 14 years in the region, and seven of those were in and out of lebanon, and during that time, when i was in damascus, i worked for a period of time for a charity's gripped by, and the reason why i bring
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this up is not just to prove to you that i am not a neocon, as i have been branded in the press, or a liberal hawk, or whatever they want to throw at you. this was before the syrian economy was cool. they used to tell me, "you just do not get it. they do not care anything about economics. it only cares about politics." well, i can tell you i am not exactly sure about that, but when i worked for the charities, the cherokees were organized and obsessed with one thing, that during the last time we had this kind of repression in syria, everybody stayed home for about 15 years, more or less, and what do men and women do when they stay home for long periods of time?
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they have a lot of children. there is an intermediate step that we will not talk about, but they have a lot of children. during that time, syria was among the 20 fastest-growing populations on the planet. syria. and all of those people are now hitting the job market. a lot of people who have worked in the syrian reform, and i think we can put quotes around it, were seeing this come for a long time. they knew that economics was key to their grip on power, and nowadays, even more than before, and i will get into a discussion about very briefly u.s. policy options at the end. after five months of killing, there is now convergence with arab countries and even turkey. they do not have a concerted
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plan to get out of this. the last straw really was everybody questioning the wisdom, why would a minority dominated regime launched a massive attack on the eve of ramadan, that they had carried out in 1980 to one of the worst massacres in the history of the middle east? this does not really smacks of a great leadership. steadfastness and flexibility, which is what one used to call it, it just does not seem like a confident pass out of the current crisis. i was just recently in europe and in turkey, and i can tell you a little bit. i think there is convergence that assad does not know how to get out of this. his credibility has been undermined in terms of any type of political solution, but i think there is not yet complete
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convergence on what to do about it. i think you'll see president obama, i do not know if you knew this, but syria was desperate -- designated by the treasury department as well as another for proliferation issues. this is as concerns oil payments, and i think as some of you see in the press, and i will talk about this later, the introduction of an energy sanctions bill on syria last week. there have been considerable constraints in the position since this has broken out. ted is going to go more into this. i will just rattle off a couple. i think it is fair to say that the opposition has come a long way, but it is very difficult to coordinate when in opposition and then such a robust movement on the ground. it is difficult to quarter and
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eight these two positions. also, the protests are being primarily driven by young people and some of these folks i described earlier, and how they communicate does not necessarily lead itself to coherent leadership. this is natural for these kinds of organizations. again, if they did form a linear structure, the assad regime would probably try to decapitate it, so its strength is also its weakness. the europeans. someone who tells you that the regime never moves and response to pressure, they were obviously not at the airbase on april 27, 2005. i was there, when the syrians pulled out of lebanon, ok? the syrian regime does move in the face of conservative, multilateral pressure.
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it does not happen very often. so in this particular case, we are moving towards that. and in net to give their case, it will be interesting to see how that pressure works, vis a vis the syrian domestic policies. again, we do not see a plan for the assad regime to get out of it, but multilateral actions along with others -- for the last two years, in discussions with the united states and the europeans, in exchange for a peace treaty with israel, we're going to drop our sanctions on syria. it would be a quid pro quo, part of a long process, but this is the beginning of a process, so why would the hardest bargainers in the world put sanctions on the table first that did not matter to them? that is because it does matter. the economy does matter to the syrians.
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it is a trading culture. contact with the outside world matters, and that is a matter of beverage. we talk about the regime. we talk about the opposition. i do not think anyone is interested in gauging the regime the way it is. you are not going to make very much headway. on the other hand, we do not just have the opposition and everyone sang it is a fragmented and whatever. no. there is a third option. a coup. this could lead to some sort of transition process and a democratic process. now, we do not know where that is, but the resignation indicates there is a division around the regime about what to do. i think the community knows that in order for there to be a soft landing for this, or that there does not have to be a hard landing for this. there could be a soft landing.
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that is not yet clear. very important was the saudi announcement a few days back. why? it allows the other arab countries, bahrain, qatar -- saudi arabia is very influential in eastern syria. i spent a lot of time when i was there. they often have saudi passports. there are family ties that go down into saudi arabia. they use syria as the primary route for truck traffic. there are constraints there. that will get right into the interest -- it will be very interesting to see what turkey chooses going forward. the position is much more subtle and i think we will see that.
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last but not least, opportunities for leverage. i think you will see president obama come out and make statements combined with today's announcement on sanctions. i think too much has been placed on whether he has to go. there is convergence on that. there is a more idealistic conscious faction that realizes that all of these protesters are getting mowed down. turkey is a suny power. a lot of people are concerned about what is going on in syria.
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one of the major supporters is the middle tier it industry. there are the ones who have benefited the most from the zero neighbor policy. the major industries export primarily to europe. these metal industries export to there. they use syria as their primary referred truck traffic. there are constraints there. that will get right into the interest -- it will be very interesting to see what turkey chooses going forward. the position is much more subtle and i think we will see that. last but not least, opportunities for leverage. i think you will see president obama come out and make statements combined with today's announcement on sanctions. i think too much has been
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placed on whether he has to go. there is convergence on that. i would suspect that president obama will say that at a certain point. i do not know if it will be tomorrow or the next day. the primary area of leverage is energy sanctions. not throw the book at them like iran. but oil exports. they account for a third of revenue. in syria, it is only a quarter or a third. it will cripple the regime, but it will not decimate society. will it affect society? yes, it will. in the face of this kind of brutal crackdown, western leaders both in the united states and europe do not know what else to do.
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it is a primary area of leverage and i think you'll see it deployed over the coming days and weeks. there has been a bill introduced in the senate that will be accompanied by one in the house. that would be in september. that would give the obama administration additional legal authorities. the designation will allow the -- that will affect this policy. that is about it. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> i have been asked to speak a little bit about u.s. policy. obviously, i do not represent the administration.
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i have been out of the state department for a years. i am certainly not speaking for my organization. my daddy won a panel like this, it is perhaps -- my value on a panel like this, i first arrived there as a young political officer. i have served their subsequently as an ambassador. my career it tended to intercept a lot with this regime. it is the only regime that has been around since i was young. [laughter] ever since talks broke down in geneva, when clinton met in april of 2000 in geneva. the united states has really not known how to approach syria. what policies -- a lot of policy fights and a lot of just gridlock.
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the bush administration tangled with foreign policy professionals, they still did not really prevail. syria was not next after iraq. he was proudly shaken after the assassination and the demands of march 14 movement with the backing of the international community that syrian troops get out of lebanon. in the end, he became quite confident because he outlasted the u.s., turkey, and saudi arabia helped to break him out of this isolation. he saw the bush administration come and go and he was still there.
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he became quite smug about it. i think the overconfident attitude was very apparent and the january wall street journal that he gave after we saw initial uprisings in tunisia and egypt were he basically said, as far as syria goes, it cannot happen here. democracies need a lot of dialogue and we are in the early stages of that. it was a very patronizing, a very smug interview. one that i hope he regrets. meanwhile, when the obama administration came in, they came in with the idea that we're going to talk to our
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adversaries. that included syria. while they sent on a voice there, -- envoys there, they never quite got around to naming an ambassador. there were always looking for syria to give us something tangible that would justify sending an ambassador. it was not and the cards at all. in the end, we did send an ambassador, in december of last year. the good news, we got the appointment right. we sent a very good man to do a tough job and he has been doing it in admirable fashion. we also have been fortunate in having others who know syria well over the years to have been involved in advising
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senior levels of the administration. i believe that the obama administration has been right to be cautious in how it has approached all this. maybe they were misguided and the beginning in thinking that he would be chastened by the offensive dialogue and would leave the movement and help syria to a soft landing. i do not think regimes go around killing their own citizens if they are ready to
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reform. that was never really in the cards. at the same time, the administration really was hoping, too, that there would be a more coherent leadership that would emerge from the opposition. maybe a leadership with which elements of the regime could engage in some dialogue, etc. andrew referred to the possibility of a coup. since the backbone of the security services and the noncommissioned officer of the syrian military is composed of a minority that has experienced discrimination and impoverishment, there was the reason they were living up in those coastal mountains of syria. they are going to need some encouragement to move against this family.
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i think the administration recognized that we did not have the leverage. with libya, we did not have the arab league. we did not have the u.n. security council that was ready to pass any kind of a meaningful resolution with the sanctions. turkey, one of the most important country in this equation other than iran, was not yet ready to abandon the regime, and you may have invested so much.
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timing is everything and the timing was not right. for the administration to take bold action. after all, we just lost 30 brave men in afghanistan. we are still involved in iraq. no sooner had the administration answered calls to get involved in libya, they were on the receiving end of a lot of complaints. why isn't gaddafi gone yet? the administration did not want to take ownership of syria and its problems. indeed, the syrian opposition
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has not ever called for foreign intervention. certainly, they would like to see the regime of much more isolated and brought under far more economic pressure than it has to date. there are ways that that could be done. i think there is an understandable reluctance on the part of the administration, not knowing a lot about the opposition. obviously, those are people that any u.s. administration would be happy to deal with. there was a hesitant because they were not sure if the liberals, if the democrats were the one you could truly speak for what was going on in syria. as brave as the opposition has been and as peaceful as it has been, there is always that fear that one day, somebody is going to say, who allow them to rule in libya? it was the obama administration. they have been cautious. the administration is ready to call for the president to step down.
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not that he is going to heed that call. he and his family are fighting for their political lives. i am sure he watched a former ally of the united states, mubarak, on a hospital bed in a cage in a courtroom. i think the administration now is in a position with the secretary general reporting back to the security council and with south africa, india, brazilians just met with the syrian foreign minister.
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meanwhile, it could be expected that turkey will be much willing to take visible actions to further isolate the regime as well as the european union without waiting for security council resolutions. having said all that, i would hope the administration would recognize that barring the crew -- the coup, that this is a regime that does command the loyalty thus far of extensive and overlapping security services, certain elite units in the military. while i do not have precise numbers, a couple of weeks ago, a state department officials
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said they did not believe at that time that more than a thousand syrian soldiers had defected. again, the military would need to be stretched much further and we may see that in damascus. the army cannot be everywhere all the time. at some point, they may reach a breaking point. meanwhile, there is a question how we is gone to pay all these people if the economy collapses. >> thank you very much. [applause]
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thank you. i think we can expect more protests and bloodshed. not that it is seen as legitimate -- there is fear of a power vacuum. there is the obligation that it might entail. i would like to know if the obama administration does go as far as to call on him to step down, i would be curious to know what you think domestic and regional effect of this kind of pressure might be, how might that might affect the opposition.
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what could be the impact of such a bold statement? thank you. >> thank you. this will encourage more people to go underground. from the leader of the united states, it will encourage more arabic countries and muslim countries to do the same. this is why when you have such international pressure, it will encourage more armies and officers to defect. most of the syrians [unintelligible] this is why not hearing from president obama -- no remarks on syria. that is why they believe there is a bargain or a deal underground.
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there is a long history of that and the region. this is why it is important. what is more important for the community -- they start with the history in the 1980's. they are always making the comparison between nowadays and the 1980's. in the 1980's, the united states did not take any position at that time.
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there is the statement condemning what has happened to. more than 17,000 disappeared in the 1980's. until now, nobody knows. this is why the this community hears from the united states, they understand this is quite different. we have the original context, then we have different wars. yesterday, the foreign minister of information said exactly this country cannot be owned by one sect. this is quite different than what we had in the 1980's. this is important for president obama to say something like that. >> thank you. >> the response is always that those people invested and there is too much for them to lose and risk unless they see a clear sign that they are serious
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there is no point in sending messages or trying to address the security forces. what we would propose is to start to articulate certain messages by president obama, secretary clinton. you do not want to be associated with the regime. you did not want to be targetted afterward. you want to play a role in a prosperous syria. it is a message to the army. you have to do your own job protecting the borders.
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disassociate yourself from the regime. once these messages are articulated and we start to hear them eckardt and the major capitals, i think we will start to see some type of move. the circles around the regime will pull them to look inward. >> i will be very brief. i agree that conspiracy theories abound in close societies. they abound in our society as well. that is another subject for another day. maybe another organization. it is important that the president of the united states himself, out and say the words. this man should no longer be president of syria.
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he has betrayed his people. having said that, there is not a magic incantation that will cause the regime to collapse. i would caution that we should not expect to match the day after. maybe the ambassador was allowed back as ambassador for the very reason that you suggest. having a u.s. ambassador may give a mixed message. do not get me wrong, i was for having an ambassador there. i still think it is good if he can stay there. there'll be no false message
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sent. again, there is got to be a way to throw a lifeline to a lot of the people who have been keeping the regime in power. if they feel that they are going down with the regime, they're going to fight and fight very hard. >> we are going to open the floor to questions. we have about 30 minutes. we're going to take three questions at a time. the panel can take the questions that they are most interested in. i will start over here. state your name and affiliation. >> thank you. we heard a lot from the panel about their role -- the importance of the international community to create a distance. i am interesting in hearing about the role that iran is playing.
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whether in terms of arms or social economics. what about the chances of the community [inaudible] decide to create its own area of influence in northern syria? very quickly, i will stick to one question. >> cnn. thank you very much. i just want to follow up. about what happens the day after if the regime -- it is not enough to get the regime to step down. does that do anything? does that limits the u.s. influence related to the arab spring?
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>> when we initiated in late april, we suggested that the chiefs' staff of the army -- to send a message to the minorities in syria -- in this area. basically, after what happened in egypt, the army is playing an important role. it was not about -- you do not expect after 47 years for it to happen in a few days or a few months. the question about the
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institution can control the country to be stable, then we suggested the role of the army. the army is professional. it is one of the largest. the army still has some respect among the syrians. if he is able to do that or not. this is why i am not surprised but the replacement. he is a military man and has no connection to the security before.
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i am surprised that he cannot find any senior officers to support his initiative. for the third question regarding the obama speech and debate about the influence, we do believe that when the president of the united states says something like that, it should not be empty. there should be some translation in legal and political actions. basically, with the role of the united states as the security council with other powers, this is why we do believe that something will help to do more actions on syria. we should understand that -- they are not conservative. much more important to understand that otherwise is not about security and the army general.
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the allies have huge contributions to the syrian society. a lot of big names in the syrian culture. they have much respect to their contribution to the syrian culture, to syrian society. this is why we do not see them as only security. this is the huge difference. when i mentioned some names -- this is why i do not believe that they are stuck with iran at the end.
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they have different points of view. he said exactly that he had to leave. the last question about the opposition. the opposition, it is clear that they are fragmented. we have to understand that both regimes could last without having a united a position. it is not easy to bring all of the figures united in a few months. libya is a different case.
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they appointed themselves and it goes from there. they know exactly what they want. they know exactly what they want from the regime. this is why the regime and i did some opposition figures -- none of the opposition attended. they said it is an important strategy. there are certain conditions that should bring the army back to its place. before that, none of us would accept. >> i want to answer the question on iran's involvement.
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they are quite heavily involved. iran and syria, they have a joint committee. irrigation, transportation, communication. it is a joint committee on x and y. they are quite involved. does the u.s. have a dog in this fight? it certainly does. >> [inaudible] >> by articulating certain messages. engaging with the regional powers, having the same agenda. this is already taking place. pressuring china and russia and
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the security council to pass a resolution, referring back to icc. you need a champion to lead that effort and we hope the u.s. will continue leading the effort internationally. in a strong establishment to keep the country together the day after. that is why you were calling upon the military. one of the feasible scenarios being articulated, regardless of the probability, when things reach a cliff, top army generals will not fall off the cliff. they will arrested the chiefof intelligence. some of the tribal leaders on
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the eastern side of the country. bring on board some of the civil society and respected figures in syria. to form some kind of a transitional council or a national council that will lead to a second stage until we have a referendum or a constitution. that is one of the most probable scenario is when things reach a tipping point, which we hope will be soon. >> i will try to be brief. as i indicated, i think the
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administration is right to be cautious. continue to be a bit cautious. you know, a regime like this one, has wiped out civil society. they have always wanted to set up this dichotomy, it is the only place the people could meet were in mosques or churches. other places, it was illegal to have gatherings. that is a game that a lot of regimes in the region have played. it has left syria in a difficult situation where when the regime goes, i am not saying there will be a vacuum, but there are many strains within the opposition as to what should be done.
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it is concerning. i think it would be good for the u.s. that the regime falls. after all, the regime has done has no favors over the years. it would deal a blow to iran. it could conceivably give lebanon some more breathing room. but not guaranteed. if we sell a democratic syria, still demanding the return, it would be harder for israel to say they did not have a credible negotiating partner. i do not think this country can afford to allow public opinion to believe that we are going to do whatever it takes to get him out. if you have been watching the
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stock market lately, and our treasury bonds, you may see that we have some other problems right now. this idea -- i do not see that happening. i agree there would be great irony for the lebanese. they would try to set up their own state. how are you going to keep them down on the farm after they have been down in the big cities? they are not going back to those mountains. >> thank you. >> the gentleman in the corner. gentleman over here, second. >> today, the ap ran a story about hezbollah and its shrinking image. it alleged collusion with the syrian regime and a crackdown. can you comment on that? is hezbollah actually involved in this in some way? is it just speculation?
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>> regarding hezbollah, from april, the people started to believe that has below was going back into the regime in different ways. this is why [unintelligible] later on, we started hearing from witnesses on the ground, specifically the snipers. the high number of casualties of the syrian people were killed by snipers yesterday, yesterday, they killed one of my friends. there are only 50. it is not a large number. this is why we start talking about a quota. there is such ordination all of the overt -- there is such coordination all over the country. they know exactly the only
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tactic by cracking down. when they stop the killings, they have five or 6 million on the ground. i have been in all the security offices. i do not expect such a high level of killings every day. the snipers are mainly from hezbollah. they have a longer lease, but the lease is abandoned in the syrian army. there are some credible stories by some on the ground that most
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people are not security. the syrians choose non-violence not because they have been trained by the great books. the only way to tackle the regime is by nonviolence. they know that if they start violence, the response by the regime will be so harsh. they know exactly the story where 25,000 have been killed. by the way, after 50 years, we are still talking about the numbers. nobody knows exactly how many people have been killed in hama. some experts say 25,000. this is why the syrian people
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choose nonviolence. they know if they turned to be violent, this is when they lose. day by day, the activist start learning the tactics of nonviolence and adopt this by using different ways. the balloons reach the army. flowers. water. there are many ways. singing the syrian national anthem by in front of the security. different ways, but still keep itself non-violent.
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at the same time, there are some incidents by activist using guns. but when you see activists accused of raiding your house -- this is being confirmed. the washington post says for women had been raped. you cannot actually convince those activists to give in to nonviolence. right now we are facing this challenge. we are receiving calls and messages.
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they know it will be much more difficult. >> thank you. >> hezbollah -- snipers, tactics, strategies, also videos documenting people who were captured and speaking in a lebanese accent. it is a confirmed fact. a question of the non-violence -- you cannot expect any wonder% non-violent. it is "largely nonviolent. there is a conviction that we should not fall into any of these traps. people have seen libya, egypt,
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and tunisia. they do not want the liberalization of the syrian dates. it will cause more casualties and cause international boots on the ground. nobody wants that. the shortest route despite all of the atrocities in the killings is still cheaper than the life cost rather than going into an armed conflict. it is part of not being able to control the institutions. the only position the control is the military. it is a public uprising.
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there are leaders who are eager to do something in terms of weapons. the minute you use arms, the regime will respond in a completely different way. they know the regime is pushing for that. they want to oppose it. many videos.is in with a mobile camera they say, "shoot. i do not care." >> a question of the politics of lebanon. everyone knows that lebanon is largely different. syria is next door. in an interview in the wall street journal, i do not think bashar realizes that something
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will be prepared and launched on march 15. not even any of the syrian experts will come close to a vote. they say it is a dead case brigit when i studied the eastern european experiences, i applied the model to syria. i remember my professor asking me why i was wasting my time. apparently i was not wasting my time. >> i would agree with ausama. it is amazing that the syrian demonstrators have been as peaceful as they have. obviously, as pointed out, there
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have been some who did revenge killings. there have certainly been some credible reports of officers having been killed in ambushes. but it is not widespread. the regime would probably like nothing better than for a significant minority of the demonstrators to take up arms because that would give them a license to really go crazy. they would be inviting in the foreign press and saying, "see? we told you that this was going on." it is in nobody's interest -- lebanon, iraq, even israel -- that this turns into a sectarian war. one has the sense that the family that rules syria is definitely trying to implicate a lot of people in the army of crimes and make them composite
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so that they will -- composite so that they will -- complicit so that they will be against any change of power. it would not be good for lebanon if this turns into an air essentially al qaeda identified sectarian clashes and civil war in syria. yet already seen so many clashes in tripoli. it would be bad. >> thank you. i want to remind everybody that are syrian issue is on sale in the lobby. please join me in thanking our wonderful palace. -- panelists. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011]
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>> tonight on c-span, historians evaluate the obama presidency. the co-founders of twitter talk about the future of the internet. syrian dissidents talk about how the u.s. can assessed their country's pro-democracy movement. -- assist their country's pro- democracy movement. >> on washington journal, patrick donato. the wall street journal's stephen moore will discuss policy. we will talk to national journal reporter michael hirsch about job training programs. washington journal begins live at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. throughout this month, c-span radio will present the lbj tapes.
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this saturday, your president johnson talked to senate republican leader everett dirksen about vietnam, the paris peace talks, and the presidential race. >> i am try to do a job and i am going to do it. if i can get pike -- peace at 4:00 that afternoon, i would do it come or high water. >> nationwide on xm satellit channel 19. >> every weekend, american history tv highlights the wondered 50th anniversary of the civil war. this week, the new york city draft riots of 1863. >> he said look, you are going to go to war.
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you cannot afford the $300. you'll go to the battlefront. a black slave is going to come and take your job. your family as "star of "rich stay home. >> the new york historical society holds a panel discussion. the civil war, every weekend on american history tv on c-span3. >> recently, presidential biographers met to discuss and evaluate barack obama's presidency. robert caro, h.w. brand sat down with lynn scherr. >> i found myself behind a car with an obama 2008 a bumper sticker on it. my initial reaction was, thank
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goodness there is someone that keeps a car as long as i do. then i looked closely. i realized that the bumper sticker was worn, abused by the elements. it was still quite legible. it was very red, white, and blue. not to be too silly, i wondered if that was some kind of metaphor for what this president is now going through. how successful is he? how bruised is he? how is he doing? i want to start out by saying that if i were present obama, i'm not sure i would want to be here this afternoon to hear the answer. with all due respect, the idea of being discussed and dissected by theiographer's of lyndon baines johnson and franklin and -- franklinevelt'
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roosevelt, of that wou be daunting to everyone. i do not mean to suggest that any of these gentlemen is prepared to quartered the president. some have written and said very fine things abo him. some of them may or may not have voted for him. two of them, caro and brands had a dinner at the white house earlier this week. that is all i can find out from either of them. that'll be the end of that conversation. some have indicated the differens between our 44th whoent and the man when have preded them. they have deep insight into what the president should do, what kes a president the president, what makes him succeed and indoor and what is bring him
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down. over 2.5 years into the obama presidency, what better time to discuss this? we have 16 months to ensure all of the nonsense. 16 months before the next election. what a critical subjects. let's begin with the introduction. we are going to play among ourselves up here. we will let you listen in. then i will be opening up to questions from you. please come and get your questions ready. we want to hear from you. i am going to introduce everybody in the coorder which we are seated. george became a staff writer in 2003 and covered the iraq war. his book was named one ofhe 10 best books of 2005 by the "ne york times."
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that is among many other awards. george packer has written about some of the most inhospitable countries. he received press club awards. one was about the reconstruction of iraq. the other about the civil war. he is the author of the "village in waiting." he also wrote "blood of the liberals." it is about american liberalism and the 20th century. he has written two novels. he served in the peace corps and is currently working on a book about "institutional decline in america." welcome. >> thank you. [applause] i am glad to have beaten the
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traffic in hampton. >> george droveut from brooklyn and nobody gave him the back road map. here he is. bob caro, who many of you know because he is one of us and lives here, as you well know, has written an extraordinarily biographees. he twice won the pulitzer prize for biographies and the critics circle award for best non- fiction work of the year and has gotten basically otheevery other literary honors. i would love to read them all but i would rather get tour subject. his first book was the"the power broker."
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i would s it echoed the words of many. it is the single best book about a city and certainly our city, new york city, that you will ever read. bob and his wife moved from new york t the texas hill country and then to washington, d.c. to live the like that lyndon johnson lives as he is growing up. his first book in the series was called by the washington post " proof that we live in a great age of biography." the second volume was called " brilliant. no review does justice to the story he is telling." the third volume was held by the london times as a "masterpiece. he has written one of the truly great political biographies of
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the modern age. we are awaiting a volume fo ur." thank you perce >> you're doing greauntil you got to the last line. >> he was born in oregon. he sold cutlery in the family business. he went to vanderbilt. he is now at the university of texas at austin where he is b. dixon allan anderson professor of history. his books include "traitor to his class, and george jackson." some of his books have been best
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sellers. you can see him on television. you can hear him on the radio. he is now working on a book about a anoth president, ulysses s. grant. please, welcome h w brands. >> thank youerce >> let's start with an assessment for each one of you on how this president he is doing. is he the "i got osama bin laden president?" bob, i will let you start it off. >> thank you. how we think he is doing will look a lot different in some years than it does now. if there is anything i have learned from my books it is that things look so different at the time than they do a few years down the road. i can give you an example from
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robert moses. he was so popular in new york city. everybody in our class had to write for their junior paper, robert moses is a great example of a great night in literature -- knight in literature. that is in the 1950's. by the 1970's, a key was the great villain of new york. everything changes. >> you're not going to answer my question. >> i will. i think that things that look so important and vital in the obam presidency right now are going to the difference. for example, in the event of the moment, that captures everyone's attention, it is seldom mentioned that when he took office people were walking around worrying about whether they had more than $100,000 in
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the bank because theank might fail. he came to office with a war in iraq. that was really a problem. most important, he came to office and no one really mentions this, the tide of conservatism began. it had come to a crest and is crashing with the irrationality of the tea party movement. these are all things he has had to face. i think however we fe about it now, a history will look at these more in the context of those things. >> bill, let's go to you for another history point of view or not. up to you. >>resident obama is doing about as well as any president
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could under the circumstances. he became president and was handed an extremely difficult hand to deal with. it was difficult precisely because it was not absolutely terrible. you probably remember the cover of a magazine after obama was elected where he was in the franklin roosevelt pose. they photoshop something with a cap on his head and a cigarette holder. the capti was "franklin obama." there is some thought that he would usher in a new deal. in fact, a lot of obama's supporters hoped that was what was going to happen. it was bought what was going to happen because things were bad not d enough. if you recall when obama was elected, led the unemployment rate was six%.
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wall street was teetering. what this meant was that he had a huge challenge. he had to deal with bad economic times. unlike franklin roosevelt, and they were not so bad that he was free to do whatever he wanted. franklin roosevelt was elected after the country had been in a full-blown depression for 2.5 years. because of this, americans gave them carte blanche to do what ever he wanted because things are so bad they could not get worse. a bomb had in mind that there were some major changes -- barack obama had in mind that there is a major changes to the financial systemut cannot take the steps to get there. everything he did have to be weighed. woul it make this financial crisis a full-blown depression?
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the full-blown depression did not occur. one can argue that, with the sort of thgs you never know, it did not occur. he ought to get some credit for the fact that it did not occur. he is not going to get credit. in american politics, you do not get credit for things that did not happen. you get responsibility for things that did happen. he has managed the american economy and about as well as i think it could have been managed given the opposition in congre and the fact that he has got republicans in control of the house of representatives. i would say that he has done about as well as could be done under the circumstances. i know there were plenty of people who voted for him and were thinking dishabille
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transformational president. it will not happen because the context -- thinking this would be a transformational president. it will not happen because the context. >> we will get back to that spirit house he doing? >> he has been very surprising. he is so different from the candidates. it has taken a long time for the public to get up for the real president that he is. he sees the world's imagination when it straight to the nomination. he is not a roosevelt. he is not a figure who would fit a depression era. he reminds me of an earlier
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time, may be a progressive figure in his time mindedness. he is so reasonable. he is so lofty, his reach. he is very comfortable with moralizing. he reminds me a little of the wilson in that sense. he is a bit remote and aloof like wilson. he would probably have de better if he had been governing at a time closer to the progressive era when it was not one crisis after another. there was no fox news. there was no michele bock men. -- bachman. there were rational tendencies. it was a time when an appeal was there for a civil-m reform. they had a real audience, especially among the professional middle classes across the country.
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instead, obama is a reasonable man speaking into a hurricane all the time. that is why it is presidency has fallen short, that is why it has. >> you are presenting a picture of a man who is at odds with the times around him. what i think so. he may be behind and ahead at time.the same i'm writing a book about the climate. obama may see his job as to manage as well as he can a time of american decline. i do not think this is a president who really believes that we will bestride the world like a colossus. >> he said yesterday some version of this is a time we have a chance to do something big. we can make a big change.
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not to be striding the world but what you are talking about. >> seeming cutting $4 trillion from the debt? -- you mean cutting $4 trillion from the dead? of course he said that. all presidents have to say that. i think what obama is really thinking -- the think he bailed out is a strange thing. it is connecting to the public. this is what he did so well in 2008. he has had difficult time moving people, persuading people, being heard above the noise of the hurricane that is out there, a political, economic, cultural, and news hurricane. there's so much noise. obama is so thoughtful and unwilling to descend to the that ayters president needs in order to reach the public any deep way.
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i think he has failed to lead in that sense. that is the disappointment. >> this is for all the people who said i wish you would just do something in be the man who i voted for. >> how many phrases can you remember from his presidency? i could quote base on the books of these two gentlemen wonder two dozen phrases from the first couple years of johnson's presidency and roosevelts. the's something called the new deal and the great society. what raises have come from obam and nothing. >> audacity of hope. >> that is before he became president. since he has become president, he has bee so consumed with tremendous problems that he has inherited and coming up with in his way reasonable policy solutions, almost as if he cannot do that and reached out to the broad public with those
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memorable phrases that i think are part of the job. >> which you have to he. bob, let me go back to you and talk of about the lbj comparison that in some ways is so terrible. start with the difference between the way president johnson got things done and the way that this prident is or is not getting things done. >> how did lyndon johnson get things done? there were quo ate from a signature use said president kennedy was a wonderful communicator. when he needed a vote, he would have the signature down to the white house and he would give him all the reason to like him. if the center said, if iive you this it will kill me with my constituency, kennedy would say "i understand." lyndon johnson would not
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understand. he would charge me or threat new or cajole you or break you. he would do what ever he had to but he would get your vote. you would see this would johnson over and over again. he would get votes in the senate that you did not believe are possible. >> is that what americans want for a president? to they want a lyndon johnson who cajoles and pick your burke of choice -- verb of c hoice for a more reasonable diplomat? >> it depends on at lyndon johnson you are talking about. he passed medicare, medicaid, at great civil rights bills and 77 education bills or you talking about the lyndon johnson of 66 or he is a figure who
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deceived the american public and try to get this into a war in asia and tried to do it -- this firster johnson's education. he did on the saturday because he did not think again mit woult much coverage. ithere is something to be said for a president to establishes a persona. persona obama has established is honest,,, smart, and is trying to go through a hurricane. there's a lot to be said for that. >> you have written about another wartime presidents.
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to what extent are these zero wars -- is thereny parallel with the world war ii and fdr or are they so utterly different that hcannot make its way through it? >> of the wars that the united states is fighting in afghanistan and iraq and libya are so different from world war ii that there is no meaningful comparison. with this group, if we were not told that there was a war going on in afghanistan, you would hardly know it. very few people that i know have relatives who are fighting in iraq or afghanist. it is a war that is boug by an all volunteer, professional army. i have been a college campuses teaching since the 1980's. there are no protest against the war in iraq and afghanistan. public opinion polls show that amerans think the united
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states needs to get out of afghanistan but the game's attraction because that opposition -- there's nothing to mobilize the opposition. with franklin roosevelt, one of the reasons he was able to get so much done during his first hundred days, he had no idea there is going t be this. and he dealt with the fact that the banking system was collapsing. he is going to send them an emergency banking bill. they were so willing to go along with what he since. one thing led to another. he had huge majorities in both houses. he could do whatever you wanted. barack obama had to deal with a
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divide in congress. the definition of a filibuster still confuse me. now to get anything through the senate be have to have 60 votes. he did not have that. he had to deal with an opposition that decided to go into opposition against his presidency. mitch mcconnell said the first order of business was to make sure that esident obama would be a one-term president. roosevelt did not have to deal with that. there's something else. obama was the victim of his own brilliance as a campaigner. i have been observing american politics since the 1960's. the first campaign are remember was the 1960's campaign. i have never seen a other than a victorious general who came out of nowhere. before the summer of 2004,
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almost no one had heard of barack obama. four years later, he was elected president of the united states. he was this individual who allowed people to project onto him their hopes for what america could be in a difficult time. hisampaign slogan "yes, we can" was absolutely brilliant. yes we can what? what ever you want. that is fine for the candidates. when you get objective, it is no longer yes we can, but no, you cannot. when you're kennedy you do not have to choose. it is worth remembering and you have your own opinions on this, hn main would be president of the united states. as long as the most salient issue was the war in
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afghanistan, obama's biography did not measure up to mccain. more less out of the blue, the the ground changed. wall street shuddered. the war biography as hero and no longer meant anything. people were willing to look at and give obama a closer look. they thought it was time for a change. now he is president. all sorts of people think that he is going to bring in this brand new revolution. it was not going to happen. the crisis was not quite deepen. head to tread gingerly. i happen t think that obama is probably waiting to get this debt ceing issue resolved one way or another so he can move back into campaign mode.
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he is a brilliant campaigner. i stinky will be able to connect with the americans reject i fink he will be able to connect with americans -- i think he will be able to connect with americans in the way he did in 2000 for a. a recent poll showed 87% of americans think the deal with the deficit and debt ceiling, therought to be some combination of spending cuts and tax incases. the trouble is that the particular public is not the one that republicans in the house are responding to. they're looking over their right shoulder at a much smaller public that will throwhem out in the primaries next sson if they vote for anything in the way of a tax increase. once this issue was off the table, then he can reach out to the broader american public.
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i think he does well with the broad public. as long as it is put up with democrats on one side and republicans on the other, he cannot reach those of ballots. >> he were saying he comes out of the egg as a whole different person? >> i think he goes back to who he was in the summer of 2008. he can campaign in some of having to govern. >> it will be hard for him to do that. during the 2.5 years of his presidency, the real unemployment rate basically one in six americans is out of work. that is a staggering number. it is the closest we have been since the 1930's.
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what obama is -- that will be what he has to account for throughout the campaign. i honestly do notnow what the theme of the campaign will be. americans can quickly understand and subscribe or night. the only bill in washington is who he is. i do not think that is a wildly successful campaign theme. one thing that obama lacks is a movement. fdr had eventually labor behind him. he also had the discontent of the 1930's that some ways a post them but in some ways became the overwhelming majority. lbj had the civil-rights movement.
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there is no movement behind obama. the only movement we have had since the biggest financial crisis is the depression is the t mark to a -- tea party movement that is extremely hostile. when to became president, that 10 million names that was his e- mail list, which was the movement that brought him to the presidency disappear. it went down. there were no longer being asked to do anything. without a movement in a critical time like this, it is very hard for the president to summon the troops. he is going to be on the hot spot because republicans are going to say one in six americans are out of work. >> what do you see to the driver of this car that i saw who were obama supporters and who are
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still obama supporters who are disappointed? they say he is not speaking up. i voted for him and i will again but i'm not getting what i want. quite that is politics. get over it. you wanted a miracle worker. you did not get it. you got a human being who has amazing qualities. >> what is left out is what is governing? turning a movement into laws, what is governing in a democracy? governing in a democracy is passing law lyndon johnson called writing it intohe books of law. we talked about civil-rights for 100 years. they had a civil rights movement. the seveners control congress. no civil rights bill -- the
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southerners' controlled congress. no civil rights bill passed in 80 years. johnson has to get this bill through. the southerners are not going to let it through. to watch him do that is to see genius. he works out this deal. he said the important thing is to get something passed to sw we can get somethingassed. it can be a bad bill, but we can always go back later he gets the southerners to agree that they will allow a weak bill to pass as long as they can be assured that if the lerals tried to amend it into a stronger bill they will have a block of votes on their side to sustain the filibuster. johnson knows he needs a block of votes. he is 10 or to votes short. you can see him in the library
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trying to figure it out. he figures it out. there is a dam on the river between idaho and oregon call the hells canyon dam. the westerners have 12 democrats there. 12 democratic votes. they have been trying to get this for 20 years. the south has always blocked. he goes to the westerns and say i will give you the damage you agreed tovote with the south. theygree. he has linked a dam in the northwest to the civil rights movement and got it then within three forebodes a passing. then he comes into play. now has to get them one by one. atch him know what the senators want and to hold what they want or give ito them is
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brutal. it is governance. >> let me add here. bob told me the other day that when he won the national humanities medal in 2010 president obama said to him "i think about robert caro and reading the power but when i was 22. it helped to shape how i think about politics." what has president obama learned about politics? >> i am sorry you asked me that. i think that so far the things that george said, the difficulties of doing this are very real. part of the problem is senator obama was only a senator for three years. for part of that three years, he was out campaigning.
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it is very hard to learn congress. it is another world. when you come in -- i like to think he has been on a learning curve. >> on the job learning is not what we want for our president. what can i add something? the equivalent would be the health care bill. obama rlly needed every last vote. i studied that closely. he did it against great odds pick maybe democrat said forget it. i went down to virginia the next day. it was called mining country.
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he had just been defeated by someone who did not even live in the district. i ask people, why would you throw o this popular congressman who brought home a ton of bacon to report area. ama disappointed us. we thought he was a new kind of politician. we saw him wheeling and dealing and trading medicaid payments and the louisiana compromises in dealing with the insurance companies and the hospitals in giving everything away. he was not supposed to be there. he is living in an age where two hours after the deal that lbj woodcuts with whoever was done. the whole world knew. it's a stomach turning. obama master legislation in that case. it killed him. >> he did not have to do that.
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what lyndon johnson would have said was the important thing is ridiculous always try to save the important thing was to get a bill passed. we can always go back and fix it. once they lose the virginity, it will be easier next time. that is what i am writing about. he had that phrase. he would say, we have to do it. my feeling is that obama could say we have a health-care bill. adobe easier to fix it then to pass a bad bill. i do think it is a bad bill. it to be easier to fix it and start all over again >> is is all aut politics? is it all about whether he can govern and not live up to campaign promises? how much of what we're seeing has to do with personality? is a historic day there a
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precedent to has withstood so much comment about is the too aloof or not dilute enough tax -- or n aloof enough? the personality thing is astounding. >> start with george washington. there is a notion that a semi model that media has broken apart into all these fractions. the people can watch fox news if they do not want to hear what cnn has to say. you can choose your media outlook. that was really the model of american journalism in the 18th and 19th century. there were newspapers that were attuned to particular newspapers. to particular parties. we're reverting to that time. this may or may not be coincidental, but it was also a time of latively weak and
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insignificant presidents. the presidency achieved anything like its modern form only beginning in the 20th century. during the 19th century, congress was a dominant force in american politics. everyone thought that is the way it should be. there were three exceptions. there were small parties like the civil war. they needed a force of nature like injured jackson. until the 20th century, the president was not the center of american politics. in terms of the role of personality, personality matters tremendously. the personality that worked for andrew jackson did not work for abraham lincoln. abraham lincoln's personality would not have worked in the days of franklin roosevelt. franklin roosevelt's presidency would not have worked now. the personality has to match the time. with lyndon johnson, if you have been to the joson library, you
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can see mockups and the television with the three screens. johnson was considered such a voracious consumer of the media that he would watch all three of the evening news shows at the same time. imagine a president today trying to keep track of all the dia outlooks. it would be impossible. the present today faces a different kind of challenge. it was his mastery of the principal medium of the day. the fireside chats became legendary was his way of getting a round the largely republican is pair per -- republican newspaper press of the day. ronald reagan and jfk or the
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master of the media. i do not know if the media today can half this. it is a lot harder for the present to get the message out. i'll add one more thing on obama. george is right. the american economy is in the worst shape that it has been in since the great depression. having said that, barack obama st might get elected. the fact that he just might get reelected is an astonishing statement given the context of the economy. when the economy is doi as badly as it i today, presidents do not get reelected. historically, there should be an uprising within the democratic party. he should be having to fight off challengers simply for the nomination. he is not geared i would say he
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is going to win at nec's share in part because the republicans cannot figure out who they are in the of gotten themselves in a situation where the only type of candidate they are able to nominate -- and here i will share. this is not because i live in texas and i hope my governor will go on to different things. but i think rick perry is going to get the republican nomination. we can talk about why. he also cannot beat obama. this is typical of red republicans are. they are so split. they are so hostage to their right wing that the only person who think it the nomination of someone who cannot win the general election. that is where we will see obama's strength, reaching out to the broader public. >> he will win by default. >> that is going to be my next question. what right now, in terms of
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governors and reelection, what is the biggest challenge that president obama faces? is it the economy? is the tea party is it the divided congress that's what do you think is the biggest thing he has to get over -- is it the divided congress? what do you think the biggest thing is tt he has to get over? >> we do not know what the internal polls are showing. one thing that strikes me about learning aut lyndon johnson is your read the newspapers on what is happening on a certain monday and then you go to the white house and the interl communications and it is lighke the shadow to the substance. this is what they're really thinking. i do not think- i would just say one thing. they're only for our five states that are really in play.
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they all seem to me ohio, michigan, pennsylvania, to the states where unemployment is the big issue. >> also florida. >> that is the one i left out. if you're trying to get reelecte and this is what the polls are showing, and he has a tremendous problem in being reelected even by default. >> what do you think the biggest issue is that they face facts ? >> i am optimist. i was an obama's camp, i would be an optimist. i will start with the current negotiations. things are shifted in a way that he wins no matter how it turns out. if they get a deal, he can say
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we got this deal. >> i did it. " yes. if they do not comment he is the one that is sounding out -- >> yes. if they do not get it, he is the one that is sounding reasonable. he will come across looking like the reasonable person. one of the wild card is for policy. -- while cards is foreign policy. a lot of bad things could happen during the term that did not. foreign-policy has done reasonably well. there are so bad things that could haen between now and next november. if plenty of that happens, he said dealing with that. >> too many wild cards. >> i think it is a profound sense of discontent in the country. that has been with us since
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2008. he did not to break for it. in 29, he arrived with all the wind at his back. not an overwhelming majority but a really big majority in congress with a big majority of the popular vote, unlike anything we have seen since ronald reagan. we could do a counter factual list to the things that he might have done and a different order that might have produced different results in terms of popular support. he has been fighting a head wind from the very beginning starting with the fact that republicans shamelsly having largely created this mess refuse too a thing to help them to clean it up. they basically made the calculation that if they do not help them, the country will decide that it is his burden.
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when things do not get better, it will be his fault. i think that was the cynical decision made by the republican party even before the inauguration. he lost the ground he came in with, and the ground where the country had invested their hopes. but because he lost it or because circumstances lofted for him? >> i remember the early weeks, a whole lot of things happened that looking back seem like critical things. at the time of was the even paying attention to it. it seemed like we were on a longer time horizon. one week can make a gigantic difference. for example, the aig bonuses came out in march. there was a tremendous national uproar. it was the first time the anger found a target
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